Work Text:
“Yet today
my love has flown away,
and I'm without my love.”
-
i.
The snow hadn’t let up since leaving Haven.
Blackwall’s boots were soaked through the lining, his cloak and even his beard stiff with ice. The others were in no better state. Sera was almost up to her waist in it, practically clinging to Tevi’s side as the qunari plowed her way through snowdrifts. Cullen’s cowl had gone white with ice. He turned towards Blackwall, expression grim.
“We have to turn back,” he shouted over the howl of the wind. “If we search any further tonight we’ll freeze to death.”
Blackwall gritted his teeth.
“Turn back if you like. I’ll keep looking.”
“Look around you, man, do you think you’ll be able to see a damned thing in this blizzard?” Cullen snapped. “The camp needs you right now more than you need to stay out here and freeze. We’ll send out another search party once the storm has passed.”
Blackwall closed his eyes for a moment. Listened to the wind screaming through the trees, listened in vain for a voice he knew wasn’t coming.
He blinked, brushed the snow away from his eyes with one frost-stiffened hand.
Tevi stood like a mountain in the snow, cloak half-wrapped around Sera’s shoulders. Sera was shivering violently. She’d refused to admit she was cold, but her threadbare clothing would hardly protect her from this sort of weather.
Blackwall clenched his fist around his lantern. The oil wouldn’t last much longer.
“Fine. Let’s…let’s get back then. Quickly.”
Cullen didn’t say anything else, which Blackwall was grateful for. He felt sick to his stomach at the thought of retreating now, he had no desire to hear that condescending voice rubbing it in.
With one last look towards the forest fading in the storm, Blackwall turned and followed the others back to camp. Each step taking him further, further away from her.
ii.
The camp was chaos.
Blackwall helped set up tents for a little while, helped move supplies and settle injured soldiers into makeshift cots. The sick feeling lodged in his gut only grew stronger as he worked.
“We have to focus on the people here, right now,” Cullen said when he brought up leading the next search party. “There’s no shortage of people here, now, people who are still…”
He trailed off, seemingly thinking better of whatever he had been about to say.
Still what, commander? Still with us? Still breathing?
Blackwall never had cause to dislike the man before, never had to speak to him much at all. But right now he loathed Cullen nearly as much as he hated himself for letting her go in the first place.
Josephine and even Cassandra, surprisingly, were gentler in their orders. But they were all saying the same thing. Wait. Stay. To go back now would do more harm than good.
It grated on him. No, that wasn’t strong enough. It infuriated him. Didn’t anyone else care that she was gone?
He let mindless work carry him through the next few hours, until the encampment was still and quiet, sheltered from the howling storm. The others had set up bedrolls and cots in the areas they’d cleared of snow. He hadn’t bothered to do the same.
He felt the pull like a string tied to his ribcage. Was it a connection to her, a sign that she was still alive? Was it just guilt making him imagine something that wasn’t there? He forced himself to believe the former. There would be time for guilt later, especially if...if he was wrong. Now was the time for action.
There was a supply tent near the edge of the camp. He crept by several sleeping forms--Varric, propped up against a pile of tarps. Sera curled up like a cat, her back pressed against Tevi’s. Even Josie, passed out at a makeshift desk among all the stacks of crates and barrels.
Blackwall quickly stripped out of his still-damp clothes and dressed himself with shaking hands. Dry cloaks were few and far between right now but he took two--one for himself, one for her, because surely, surely she must be cold out there, alone, where they left her.
He was pulling on gloves when a low, hoarse voice came from somewhere in the vicinity of the tent flap behind him.
“Going somewhere?”
He turned, had to tilt his head up to meet Tevi’s gaze. She was drawn, exhausted, her curls tangled and plastered to her neck. His jaw tightened.
“What do you think?” He picked up his sword belt and buckled it over his gambeson.
“I think you’re going back to look for her,” she said. Her voice was neutral enough, but Blackwall had no patience left for neutrality right now, for carefully worded suggestions that meant nothing as long as Tanith still wasn’t here, with him.
“Spit it out, then,” he growled. “Tell me not to go. Whatever you need to say right now, just say it.”
“I’m coming with you.”
That gave him pause.
“What?”
“We’ll cover more ground that way. And be less likely to end up frozen in the blizzard.” Tevi’s mouth set in a grim line. “I’ll get a couple lamps. Any dry clothes left?”
Blackwall nodded dumbly as she went to rummage through a nearby crate.
“Adaar...Tevi. You know…” He fiddled with the strap of his pack. “You don’t have to...I can do this alone.”
She gave him a look over her shoulder.
“Nobody gets left behind this time,” she said. “Not Tanith. Not you.”
Blackwall’s heart gave a traitorous little wobble at the sound of her name.
“I don’t know what’s out there,” he said. “We might not...come back.”
“We will,” Tevi said.
Simple but sure. The force of her belief nearly made him trust it as well. Nearly.
But nothing was certain anymore. All their carefully laid plans shattered in a single night. There was no guarantee of survival out there, with angry gods and dragons and who knew what else on their trail. Without Tanith, the beacon of her presence, somehow larger than life.
“How can you know that?” He asked.
Tevi swung a pack over her shoulder and held out a lantern. As exhausted as she looked, there was not a shred of doubt in her expression, not a single crack where the fear could bleed through. He desperately envied that sort of surety.
“Because we have to bring her home,” she said.
And that was that.
Bring her home.
As she followed him out into the snow, trusting him to guide their way, he allowed himself to be just as sure of it.
iii.
They could have been walking for minutes or days.
The snow was so thick around them he could hardly see, let alone look for landmarks. They’d been able to follow the remnants of the tracks leading into camp, but the older footprints were completely hidden in new snow by now. Hopefully their path had stayed constant.
Though he hadn’t wanted anyone else along to begin with, he was grateful for Tevi’s presence. She was silent but constant at his side. When the flurries tore at them, they huddled against each other. He wrapped an arm around hers, let her lean against him, saw her breath turn to harsh puffs of vapor in the air. Her massive, hunched form shielded him from the worst of the gale.
Still, his breath was freezing in his nostrils and his face aching from the constant beating of snow before long.
They walked on. It may have been only a few hundred feet from camp for the pace they had set, though it felt like hours since they had started walking. Blackwall’s legs burned with the effort of pushing through the snow. It didn’t matter. This was the smallest sacrifice he could make for the woman who had saved them all. The woman who he had once again disappointed, pushed away--
He tamped the thought down. Now was not the time.
Tevi tilted her head up. Her voice was nearly drowned out by the wind.
“Snow’s clearing.”
Blackwall squinted against the wind. She was right--though the biting gale still tore through the mountains, the snow had stopped falling so heavily. He could see now, dark as it was. The pointed shadows of the trees, the sweep of snowdrifts, the looming shoulders of the mountains. He ran a hand through his hair to loosen the clumps of ice that had formed. Tevi shook her head thoroughly, sending bits of snow flying.
“Do you think she was able to follow the same path we took?” Tevi asked.
Blackwall cast an eye around the forest. Now that he was able to see, the trail through the snow wasn’t completely gone after all. Enough feet had walked that path to leave a wide furrow, visible even with the newly fallen snow on top.
A glimmer of hope wormed its way into his heart. He took a sharp breath. His throat stung with the cold.
“I hope so. The snow wasn’t as heavy in Haven,” he said. “If--when she got out, she might’ve been able to see the trail we left.”
They kept on the path and passed through a narrow gap between two crags. Familiar. Blackwall remembered it, vaguely. The flight from Haven had been like a fever dream, dazed with loss, stumbling over the lingering effects of libations and bruises.
When they emerged into the white plain beyond the gap, he saw her.
Dark against the snow, stumbling, far away, but still. He would have known her anywhere. Tevi gasped beside him but he was already running, forcing his aching body through the snow, her name tearing from his lips without realizing it.
“ Tanith! ”
It didn’t sound like his voice. It was an animal sound. It was a cry of pain, the gush of blood from a wound, the screaming of a mongrel strung up by the neck.
She fell to her knees.
He barely reached her before she hit the snow. His arms were around her, her head falling onto his chest, and he buried his face in her frozen curls for a scant moment as the world righted itself around him. His heart clenched in his chest. He had never felt relief like this before, this utter, this profound.
She shook against him and he snapped from his reverie. Tevi knelt down by his side, pulling the dry cloak from her pack.
“Thank the Maker.” Her voice trembled.
“She’s alright,” Blackwall said. His tongue felt thick and clumsy in his mouth. “She’s alright. She’s alive.”
Between the two of them they managed to strip away Tanith’s battered, frozen coat and wrap her up in the cloak instead. Her eyes were closed, lashes white with ice crystals. Blackwall reached out and brushed them away with a hand that felt too large for the task.
Her teeth chattered, even in her half-unconscious state. Her lips were tinged blueish. His stomach lurched as he recalled the last time he had stared at those lips, the playful smirk, the clever tongue, her breath hot against his mouth.
A surge of guilt soured in his stomach and he shook his head.
Lifting her in his arms, he turned to Tevi.
“With the storm dying down, it should be easier going,” he said. “Run ahead and let them know we’re coming. Get a healer.”
Tevi’s lips worked for a moment, silently. Then she nodded.
“Get her home safe, Blackwall.”
“I will,” he said. “Don’t tarry, Adaar.”
He had never seen a qunari run before, but Tevi turned and did just that.
iv.
The healers had given up on forcing him out of the tent.
It might’ve been due simply to the lack of resources. Not many people could drag Blackwall anywhere, and the two largest members of the Inquisition stood firmly behind him. Not worth the effort just to get him out of the tent.
He stayed back while the mage did her job, watched the cuts on Tanith’s face fade and wink away, the dark bruise on her chest going from purple to mottled yellow to a healthy brown. It was mostly exhaustion and frostbite, she said. Once that was taken care of, all she needed was rest.
He sat down by her side. Just to be sure.
She slept through that night and the gray day ahead. People filed in and out of the tent--the healer, other mages, Varric and Iron Bull, who both gave him knowing looks. Tevi stopped by with a bowl of stew and a crust of stale bread and Sera, who glared at both of them in turn.
“Stupid. Both stupid. Up and leaving like that.” She scowled, though her gaze softened as she looked down at Tanith. “Glad she’s alright. But still. No more running off.”
She poked him hard in the chest to emphasize her point.
Blackwall’s stomach lurched. The last time he’d left Tanith, Haven had fallen. She had almost fallen along with it.
He glanced down at her. In sleep, she looked smaller than usual. Delicate. Her ears twitched slightly, nose wrinkling, and the sight made his throat ache.
“No more running off,” he said.
The rest of the day was quiet. He held her hand for most of it, comforted by the warmth of her skin and the steady heartbeat at her wrist. When Tanith whimpered and stirred in her sleep, he stroked the damp curls at her forehead, murmuring nonsense until she fell back into calmer dreams. He read out loud for a bit from some ridiculous book of Cassandra’s, hoped the sound of his voice would be a comfort rather than an unwelcome intrusion after what he had done to her.
She had come to him again, after all, before everything fell apart at Haven. Another chance, another moment where he could have reached out and taken everything he wanted. Her hand resting on his shoulder. Her body pressed against his, leaning up on tiptoes to whisper in his ear. She had reached out again and again, and Maker, he was tired of not reaching back.
His common sense only caught up with him by the time they were pressed against the door of his cabin with her fingers raking through his hair and her lips just a breath, a heartbeat away from meeting his.
He cringed at the memory of slipping from her embrace. The excuses he gave her. He barely remembered them. What he did recall with perfect clarity was the hurt in her eyes, and the slow look of resignation that crept across her face. She was giving up on him, as she should, and the knowledge of it knocked the breath from his lungs. Selfishly, he wanted to run and never see that look again. Selfishly, he wanted to turn and sweep her into his arms.
He loathed himself for wanting her so badly. Her attention, her affection. He loathed himself for being able to have it, and for being honor-bound to push it away.
He squeezed her hand tighter.
Once she woke, he would do the right thing. But somebody had to watch over her now.
He opened the book again and kept reading.
v.
By the next morning, worry had settled heavy over his shoulders. Why hadn’t she woken, yet? Was it worse than the healers had claimed?
He kept losing his place in the book. Anxiety, exhaustion, grief, it all weighed on his skull until his head spun. Words blurred together on his tongue.
“The comte kept all of his letters. Decades of correspondence sorted by, apparently, kingdom of origin filled his writing desk.” He cleared his throat and turned the page with trembling hands. “Don...Donnen rummaged through them, looking for darker ink, fresher pages, anything that might indicate--”
A low groan tore him from his reading and he dropped the book, fumbled to grip her hand where it lay on the blankets.
“Tanith?”
Dark eyes fluttered open and Blackwall sucked in a breath. It felt like the first time he had breathed since Haven.
She blinked up at him, slow and hazy. Her lips curled into a smile.
“ Blackwall. ”
It fell from her lips as a sigh. Washed over him in a shock of warmth, like sunlight on chilled skin. He swallowed hard. Unable to resist, he reached out and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. He cupped her cheek in his hand, dusted a thumb over the freckles there.
“You gave us a good scare there, duck.” The honesty tripped from his tongue before he could stop himself.
Tanith’s smile widened. Her eyelashes were already fluttering shut again, though, and she leaned heavily into his palm. She needed longer still, it would seem.
Would she remember any of this when she next woke?
He eased his hand from under her cheek and watched, chest aching fondly, as she sank back onto her makeshift pillow and drifted back to sleep.
She was alive. She would be well.
She was the most beautiful thing he had seen in years.
The strength of his affection hit him all at once, a sick realization that made his stomach lurch. This was no idle flirtation, not on his part. Maker, it might have been easier if it was. This was something real, something that made him feel raw and flayed to the bone. This was…
This was something that could not be. For her sake.
Best to remember that. Best not be carried away.
Best, perhaps, to be gone by the time she really awakened.
With one last look at her--memorizing the way her curls framed her freckled cheeks, the stubborn jut of her chin, the gentle rise and fall of her chest--he turned, and he ran away.
-
“Oh, when your heart's on fire
You must realize
Smoke gets in your eyes”