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In the aftermath of the battle, it was as though all sound had disappeared in the void the fight had left. Silence droned on, deafening and maddening, not even the sheets of metal of her haphazardly thrown on armor scraping together would make a sound.
Reluctantly Serket tore her eyes away from the body before her.
“We should move camp a bit further”, she stated.
Nobody seemed to move for a moment, all of them just standing around her where they’d last slain an enemy, bodies still tense in combative stances. She couldn’t say for sure who was who, the light of the fire was in their backs so they were more shadows than people.
“Even if we burn the darkspawn, their stench will linger”, she continued. She didn’t like this, how her words seemed to ring out in the dead air. Nobody was speaking. They were only looking at her.
“Move the camp”, she reiterated. “I’ll take care of this.”
The first figures shifted, moving to follow her command hopefully. Some lingered uncomfortably, leaving with protests she didn’t bother to hear, staring them down instead. She must’ve said something too, but who cared what it was so long as it got the job done.
Good. She watched them, not turning her back on them just yet, not as long as she couldn’t be sure they’d stopped looking at her. Their eyes weren’t needed here, their questioning, prying eyes. Not a single one of them. Serket wouldn’t let them find answers because these weren’t questions any of them should be asking.
Something brushed up against her hand unexpectedly; her mabari Isun was circling her, unwilling to leave her side. First her sword slid from her grasp, then her shield fell to the ground as she reached out to pat his broad head with trembling fingers. “You go too” she said, pushing gently but unyielding as the animal whined in vain at the rejection. With a sad little bark he eventually relented, trotting away to where her companions were busying themselves.
Once the sounds of the camp being torn down reached her, she set out to do her part, grabbing the nearest dead shriek. The horrid smell coming off of its deformed body stung in her nostrils and the repulsion stirring in her gut mixed with the exhaustion made it difficult to drag it away. This first one wasn’t too bad yet, she dumped it into a natural shallow pit in the earth not far away. The second one was tougher, heavier and requiring her to get up close to securely grip it and hoist it up enough to carry. Her face was inches from its foul skin, lungs breathing in the blighted fumes. It was something visceral to hold on to, an anchor that kept her thoughts from wandering.
By the last one, her limbs were shaking a bit under the strain, little shocks like lightning running through the muscles of her legs occasionally, her hair and her clothes sticking to her sweaty, itching skin, metal digging painfully into her flesh.
She surveyed her work, this little mount of meaningless dead meat. Time to face the facts. She staggered back to the field of the fight.
The sight of what remained of Tamlen was like a small earthquake, a rumble deep down at her core barely reaching the surface despite its violence. This wasn’t a corpse that left the comforting illusion that he was only sleeping, instead the torment Tamlen had endured was readily apparent. His hands resembled claws now with how strangely contorted they were, his body twisted. He had no hair left on his head; his skin was stretched tight over the bones as if most of his flesh and muscles had simply melted away, darkened in many places from decay. Serket couldn’t even make out any last traces of his vallaslin. His face too had changed in blight and death from that which she'd known. So this was where he’d been all this time. This was where she would follow if the Archdemon didn’t get her first.
She’d have to dig a grave. Staying the night to sing for him wouldn’t be an option, neither would be planting a tree in blighted soil, she couldn’t offer any of the proper burial rites but she could dig a grave at least. At the very least.
Blinking against the stabbing headache, Serket looked around for any tool that could assist her because even like this she knew that she wouldn’t be able to do it with her hands. Frustration bubbled hot and angry in her when nothing caught her eye and it became apparent that she would need to go back to the others; she tried to run a hand over her feverish face but recoiled when she touched it to her skin and realized it was still covered in grime.
She didn’t want to go where people were with their unfamiliar eyes, full of curiosity and pity and incomprehension. Everyone was a stranger to her, in a strange land, at once miles away from her and smothering.
With a silent sob, Serket picked up her shield again, raised it high above her head and thrust the pointed end into the earth. Again and again she hacked into the ground with it, coming to kneel in the dirt.
But of course there would be footsteps. Her eyesight now blurry from either sweat or unshed tears, she squinted at the approaching figures. This time she could see that it was two of them, one had to be Alistair, the other Zevran, trailing a bit behind. It was a cruel joke to play on her, she thought. Like a hot iron to her vulnerable flesh.
“Can we… help?”, Alistair ventured, and she could see the way he helplessly turned his head as if looking to Zevran for counsel.
Serket shook her head. She wanted to tell them to go away, but as so often her tongue was tied suddenly, the words clear in her mind but somehow not coming over her lips. When the two men wouldn’t immediately leave, desperation took hold and she tried to communicate, trying to get her hands to sign words but they wouldn’t unfurl, wouldn’t release the shield she was clinging to.
“Are you sure?”
Of course she was. She wasn’t stupid. She willed her mouth to form words, anything to make them go away.
“I only need a shovel”, she managed to get out, relieved that her tone didn’t seem to betray the effort it took to speak. Despite the pain she managed to get back on her feet. She wasn’t going to give them anything to see, this wasn’t the time or place for any of this.
Zevran stepped forward. “Wouldn’t it be—“
“I need a shovel, not you.”
The harshness of the words only registered in the way she had to spit them. She meant it. She really meant it.
“I guess I’ll… I can check if we have one”, Alistair said, taking the first step backwards before he turned to face the camp instead. Zevran did so as well, but not without another look at her, and as they walked away she saw that they were exchanging words she couldn’t hear. For a moment she was overcome with the urge to call them back, to beg them to help her, or to gouge out their eyes for seeing her like this.
Serket listlessly stared at the little hole she’d made. Everything about her felt so brittle. She’d hoped she would carry it with a little more dignity, but apparently not. She resumed her work even as the shield proved ineffective. Perhaps it would’ve been wiser to let them intrude and endure their presence, because then at least they wouldn’t have known that it hurt.
But it wouldn’t have been fair to Tamlen and her.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed by the time she became aware of another presence nearing. Who was it this time? Serket hit the shield down harder. Wynne? Morrigan? To tell her that a spell could do what she was doing much easier or to berate her for her sentimentality? Sten, here to let her know that a buried ghoul does nothing but taint the earth? Leliana, with empty condolences for something she didn’t understand? Or one of them again. Alistair was alright with how easily he listened, but Zevran…
When she lifted her head however, it turned out that it was Isun approaching fast, carrying a shovel in his mouth as he ran up to her. Expectantly the dog peered up at her, wagging his short little tail and nearly bumping the shovel’s handle against her from the excessive movement. Serket blinked at him.
Wordlessly she took the tool from Isun and set it aside before she slung her arms around the mabari and buried her face in his bristly fur. Everything seemed to crash against her all at once and she was getting sucked down under fast; she pressed her eyes shut and waited for the onslaught to ease. Everything was too much all of a sudden, the intangible anguish somehow more real and manifest than any single one of her physical ills. Everything inside her seemed to be going up in flames. A wail she refused to release lodged itself in her throat, it pushed upwards but she stemmed against it with all she had, even as it choked her. She wasn't going to give in to helplessness so easily. She dimly noted the tears streaming down her cheeks as she waited for the end to come, one way or another. Her heart was pounding in her head. This was more than grief alone, wasn't it?
Isun held still for her as long as it took.
“I believe it’s alright if you help now”, Serket said when the tide receded and leaned onto the shovel in order to stand. Isun barked a few times and pawed restlessly at the ground until she gave the sign that he could begin digging.
Serket had inevitably witnessed a few funerals in her lifetime. Life and death were intertwined, that was a law of nature they were all subject to, so these occasions were always commemorations of both aspects joined together. That was why they were always a communal effort as well, to be reminded of the connections between them all, even those they gave to the earth. Inseperable and enduring.
The ties that bound her and Tamlen together were knotted and wound tightly. That day they had been on the threshold together facing opposite directions; Duncan had pulled her towards life for another day then, and today she could give Tamlen that push he’d needed to go forward as well. In that way, things had ended as well as they could. Neatly and tidy.
Serket felt like throwing up. Nothing about this was good, no matter how she twisted it. She’d told Tamlen not to touch it. The clan didn’t know where he’d gone. They didn’t even know where she was now and where she’d come to rest one day. It was so unbearably unfair, all of it, that she had to bury her friend in this place so far away from home, in this pitiful grave with nothing.
She felt like throwing up, but maybe this was exhaustion.
At the end she was almost too weak to let Tamlen’s fragile body down into the hole, along with a branch she’d broken off a nearby tree. She had to arrange his limbs as much as she could so that it would fit. Once he was nestled into his resting place, Isun and her covered him back up with dirt, watching as Tamlen disappeared for the last time. What remained was only a little mound to mark the spot.
And like that she was left the last witness of that day.
A bit delirious, Serket scratched the mabari behind the ears, hoping that the gesture could convey her gratitude when it was all she could give right now. Soon she’d have to leave, go find the others again and find a way to pretend this hadn’t happened.
There was one last rite still that she could give to her friend.
The prayer was one to speak for a hahren, not somebody like her, but perhaps Falon’Din would excuse the emergency. She repeated the remembered words,"Falon'Din. Lethanavir – Friend to the Dead. Guide my feet, calm my soul. Lead me to my rest.”
Serket averted her eyes upwards to the sky, the night still dark but bound to light up soon. It seemed like the right time to collapse and fall into a grave of her own. Where everything had been aching before, her body was numb now.
Isun, stubbornly loyal, wouldn’t let her. He lead the way for her as she stumbled along the path, yelping and barking at her each time she was threatening to lose her balance, pacing nervously around her each time she stopped.
“Serket?”
The sound of her name startled her as if she’d been caught out. Instinctively she attempted to correct her posture to appear more like herself again, glaring at the intruder without any teeth left to bite at him with.
Zevran didn’t seem to even flinch, putting up his hands defensively. “I came here to meet you half way, not to spy on you. I didn’t see anything.”
Serket had no words for him. Why should she believe it. And why would it matter, if he was still looking at her now. Maybe he hadn’t seen the deed itself, but she still felt raw and exposed in a way she didn’t want to be in front of him. It was stupid enough the first time, by now it was nothing short of humiliating.
The normal thing would be to keep walking. So she did that as well as she could, nearly tripping over her own feet when she brushed past him. With each step the weight of his gaze seemed to grow heavier; he caught her when her legs gave in.
This was so mundane. They’d supported each other like this before, when the fight didn’t go like they’d planned and they leaned on the other to walk in a simple act of camaraderie. He was too close now, too personal, but even she recognized that struggling would do nothing to help her. Don’t strip back another layer of skin now.
“Comfortable?”, Zevran said in a misplaced jovial tone. Thank the creators. A million times better than feeling, than those looks.
“How long”, she asked, the last words of the question coming out silent. She coughed, nearly throwing them both off balance.
“Not far”, Zevran replied, “just a bit further down. We can surely manage that?”
A nod had to suffice as answer. It was difficult enough to move her legs when she couldn’t feel them. ‘Not far’ only told her that they’d likely be back sooner than she would be alright, even if time was more than relative in this moment. What was a journey to her could have been only a few minutes on foot. Tamlen was drifting years away from her now, maybe a whole life.
Serket looked around, hoping that something would enter her field of vision that could give her an excuse to stay behind just a little longer, so she wouldn’t be in this pitiful state when she’d have to face them. She needed to pull herself together and buy herself some time.
“Set me down here”, she commanded abruptly.
Zevran halted, but didn’t let her go just yet. “What for?”
Whether he was planning on releasing her or not, Serket tried to shake him off so she could be back on her own feet, transfixed by what she’d spotted partially concealed by tall grass. It wouldn’t get better than this river to make her inhabit the self she needed to be again. “A bath. I’m covered in filth.”
Without awaiting her companion’s response she staggered off the path the others had taken, clumsily trying to undo the bands of her breastplate but barely catching them between her fingers. There wasn’t even frustration anymore or despair, just helplessness.
Zevran kept to her side like a judgmental mosquito. She could see him eyeing her with a tilted head, anticipating the moment he might try to block her and guide her back to the flock. He snorted. “Well, maybe not such a bad idea.”
They made it to the edge of the river, the water lapping at her boots. She still was clad in her armor, too uncoordinated to undo any of it.
“May I…?” Zevran started, stretching out his hands towards where she was fiddling with a clasp, hovering inches away. It felt cheap to agree, like giving in to a vice rather than accepting relief. Even though Zevran was thoughtful. There was nothing overbearingly personal about it as he helped her out of the bloodied metal and leather and the stained fabric she’d worn underneath. Only gentle assistance for a companion, as though for this brief period this was the most ordinary thing in the world. Nothing more complicated than that.
Free of her armor and no thought spared to modesty she could observe the extent of the damage. Compression marks that would become bruises if not for Wynne’s interference with the process, putrid smears of darkspawn blood all over her hands and forearms, she could feel splatters of the taint dried up on her face.
Serket clicked her tongue and Isun, who had been rolling around in the grass, came up to her excitedly. She bent down and held out her arms to allow the mabari to lick off the blood as she half-remembered that the poison would otherwise wash into the water along with her.
At Zevran’s bemused expression she only replied “It's alright. He's already tainted.” Then she waded into the dark river, the coldness of the water knocking the breath out of her. As she gasped for air, her senses were sharpened to a needle-point, rammed right into her brain. Despite the shock she willed herself to get in just a little further, just a little deeper, before at long last she let her legs break away from under her. She landed in the water with a little splash in an awkward sitting position; the cold squeezed tight around her, agonizing in a way that made sense to her. Like the rivers in the Brecilian forest in early spring.
“You can go”, she called, drawing her maltreated legs to her chest.
“Ah, I think I ought to stay”, Zevran answered without hesitation. “If you don’t mind, that is, of course.”
“What for?”
“If I come back without you, don't you think the other grey warden might get suspicious of me? Yes, I think he’s been expecting something like this.”
Serket shot him a wary look over her shoulder.
The grin on Zevran’s face fell a little, but stubbornly clung to a corner of his mouth. “‘Where is the warden?’ You see, I left her injured in a freezing river after our fight. I don't see what could be the problem!” He didn’t say anything for a while as the current tugged softly at Serket. "Not that I'd need to be worried for you... perhaps though it might be less questions asked, for both of us, if we return together.”
Somehow, Serket wanted to cry again. She only hummed. Back in that moment, it had only hurt in that dull, distant way. Back when he'd explained that it was all about fun. It had made sense, of course, and she'd felt foolish for being taken by surprise at all. But it was nothing that wouldn't mend. She'd allowed him under her armor, but hopefully not her skin. So she'd concealed the wound from him, thinking she'd steeled her heart. But now the embarrassment flooded back, worse, more immediate, mixing with the foulness of her sorrow.
The problem was that Zevran was already in her heart. It yearned for him despite herself, against reason, against the certainty of being alone in this. That’s why his gaze was hardest to bear and yet the only one she wanted on her. His gentleness in acknowledging her weakness, the way he didn’t recoil made it worse. The light of the waning stars gleamed on the water surface, little spots that danced distractingly before her eyes.
Zevran was permitted to stay, the damage was done anyway. Couldn’t even be trusted to bathe in the river by herself because of how she’d expended herself. The way they’d see her wouldn’t be the same anymore. And she was terrified of seeing her own face reflected, not wanting to know who she’d find there. Was it cowardice? To not want to be seen as frail.
Ah… the pit in her had only grown bigger. With halting movements she curled in on herself, leaning forward so that her face was submerged. Dull pangs of pain rang out in her chest as the oxygen slowly went out, drowning her thoughts.
She wished she could compress this ache, could grab it with her two hands and press it to her chest so it could stay close and private with her. She wanted to bury the memory of Tamlen deep under her skin so darkspawn couldn’t get it. She wanted to wring the neck of any feeling that could make her this brittle again.
So swallow it down.
“There was a hunter in my clan”, she said when she pulled back, sluggishly blinking away the water running into her eyes, “who left to investigate elven ruins he’d come across, without telling the keeper about it. In the end he contracted the taint and never returned to us.” She began scrubbing away at her skin, noting that she couldn’t get the soil out from under her nails even as everything else washed off. “Now he asked me to kill him.”
“Death was a mercy for him”, Zevran’s voice sounded distant. “Though I suppose somebody you know asking you to kill them is not exactly pleasant.”
“I don’t feel guilty”, she replied, trying to get up again, “since I did as he asked of me. He even received a proper burial. …I overreacted, a little.”
By the shore, her companion had crouched down and was splashing a bit of water in his face. A long night for him too. “Oh, I’ve seen people do worse. I appreciate that you have not pulled a knife on me so far”, he said cheerfully with a shrug of his shoulder, moving aside a bit for her as she got back on land.
The bath hadn’t done her physical condition any favors, shivering rather than shaking now. Patiently Zevran helped her put her garments back on even if they undid some of the good of the bath. Her armor was left in the bushes. Somebody could come pick it up for her while she rested. And her sword and shield? None of them could go there. It was a burial site now. Zevran only laughed. Tomorrow was another day. Who was going to steal her things? The shriek Sten nearly cleaved in half?
She knew what he was doing. Gratitude and shame swelled in her chest in equal measures.
Zevran shouldered her once more as they continued onwards. Nature around them was beginning to wake and even as the fog in her mind had grown heavier and her eyes unfocused, she could make out the camp up ahead by the flickers of a fire. With every step, Serket took on more of her own weight while Isun already charged ahead.
“Don’t treat me differently now”, she murmured, her hand still on his shoulder. "Please don’t treat me differently, not you."
Zevran didn’t reply right away. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
The call of an owl rung out through the quiet of the night.