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Loss and love are two sides of the same coin. A lesson the Inquisitor knows all too well.
The news of Clan Lavellan’s death arrives in a messy stack of urgently marked papers. It’s easy to miss, a drop in the storm that is Corypheus gathering his forces for an assault. Maybe it would’ve been better to let the sealed letter fall unnoticed to the floor, shuffled underneath a desk to be found months later. Instead, it lays heavy in her shaking hands. Cullen at least has the sense to look apologetic while Leliana and Josephine push through with the agenda. There’s no time to wait. They must move out now if they want any hope in stopping Corypheus from reaching the Eluvian. So she swallows down that bitter emotion and when they call, “Inquisitor?” she nods and gives the command.
She doesn’t blame Cullen. As Inquisitor, she chose to trust in his counsel. She chose to give him the charge. Blame is hard to lay elsewhere when she should have gone herself to protect them. Her clan deserved that at least. But an Inquisitor cannot disappear for the Free Marshes to satisfy personal needs. All this power at her fingertips and yet she could not do this simple task. Still, it’s a little harder to meet his eyes these days.
Gone. All of them. Massacred in a single day.
Her swings are a little more ruthless now. She cleaves a path towards the Elven temple with blood-soaked hands. Cullen stands just outside the entrance, breeches wet to his knees and golden hair slicked back with sweat. His expression is tight as she moves toward him. Months of casual words and lingering touches already lay heavy between them before the added weight of this moment. Time spent in cautious patience for her to make the first move, hopeful in the face of her hesitation. But she’d been waiting on another steady presence at her side to move beyond proprietary. She looks to Solas standing next to her, his fathomless eyes trained straight ahead.
Does he know of the grief she carries? Could she even form the words to tell him? She nods at Cullen and moves on. The battlefield is not the place for her tears.
Every turn they take through the temple sends her head reeling. The unknown history. The buried culture. Solas and Sera bounce terse words back and forth, but she barely hears. The enormity of the power behind these walls makes her feel like a small child sitting in her grandfather's lap. Such stories he wove against the backdrop of the night sky pointing out legends among the stars. A wave of dizziness hits and she reaches out a hand. Cassandra’s warm fingers wrap around her own waiting patiently while she evens her breath.
“Are you alright?” Cassandra asks, and the question nearly breaks her. But she's a professional, the leader of the Inquisition. This reminder carries her up endless flights of stairs, through battle after battle to watch Samson crumble before her. So much pain in a blink of time. They stand at the edge of the Well of Sorrows and the brief quiet is enough for all her smothered thoughts to revive with a vengeance.
Gods, she’s desperate to grasp onto anything that reminds her of home. The thought of a shemlen, even one as bold and brilliant as Morrigan, possessing the collective knowledge of the ancients is too bitter to bear. Compared to that, Solas’s warning rings hollow in her ears. She keeps her eyes fixed on the pool’s center as the cool waters rise from ankles to knees to thighs. Her heartbeat pounds and the tension of her companions thickens the air. As she cups her hands and raises them to her lips, it is not her reflection she sees but her mother's.
She drinks.
There hasn’t been a moment to grieve and there may never will be. The gods of old have reared their deceptive heads. She is bound to Mythal, the holy protector. How many times had she joked with cousins, chosen their roles of tender sacrifice in play to the gods? When she finally meets Mythal face-to-face, the holder of her newly forged chains, she can’t help but be disappointed. A fate as a puppet hurts less than remembering she has no one to share the story with.
For a moment she wants to hiss at Morrigan how lucky you are to even have her before she recognizes the true source of anger. She sinks her teeth into her cheek until it bleeds. A penance for leading her clan like halla to slaughter. All the precious faces with vallaslin arching like branches across their brows and cheeks, they were the ones worthy of this moment. She swallows the blood in her mouth and pretends it’s a message to the dead.
The weight of it all finally threatens to bury her under. She seeks out Solas for comfort, something she’s not dared to explicitly ask for before. For that possibility she bears the brunt of his despair. For her, he insists. For her cursed future. His lecturing tone washes down and she imagines her clan’s voices mixed in. Even this is a lesson. A trial. The secret history of their greatest tradition is one stained in blood and suffering.
Solas makes his offer, hands delicate as they cradle her cheeks. All she feels is indignation and a wretched solitude. She pictures her Keeper’s expression if she were to walk into the circle with a face blank as a child’s. The image stings, the impulse rises, and the words come out far more bitter than she means. He watches her with a softness that makes her want to scream. The moment lasts long enough for her to change her mind and when she doesn’t, he sits her down with a tenderness she didn’t know she craved.
It tingles.
An incessant vibration as his fingers graze the contours of her face. She shouldn’t be able to feel the loss, but she does. Like skin scrubbed raw under cold water. It’s the most intimate thing they’ve shared. His lips press gently on hers, a new feeling of home bursting through her chest. A bliss so pure it lets her, if only for a moment, forget.
And then it’s gone. One look at his face, the thousand apologies it holds, and she knows.
She’s not proud of the way she breaks in this moment. The tears in her eyes, the crack in her voice. She hasn’t been this pitiful since the attack on Haven. Pain shooting through her arm as she begged Corypheus to take it back, I don’t want it, please. Her lowest point until she learned to build herself up to become the shiny fearless Inquisitor of today. All of that armor gone in a moment as Solas pulls away.
A glimpse in the mirror the next morning almost has her screaming for the guards. A stranger’s face greets her and for a moment she doesn’t remember why. The memory trickles down like water through a cracked wall and she breathes deep waiting for regret to wash her away. When the feeling doesn’t come, she stands a little taller. Vallaslin or not, she is still Inquisitor Lavellan, the last of her clan. The boost in courage carries her downstairs to face the rest of Skyhold, breath held in anticipation. She stares them all in the eye and dares them to let their gaze wander.
Never before has she felt such a stranger in the Inquisition halls, her halls, and yet where were her people? Surrounded by shemlen with masked faces and white robes, the Maker’s name a drumbeat on their lips. Herald, they call her no matter how many times she asks them not to. Their bodies form a sea of strangers lapping at her sides in their want and wonder.
Where were the hunters with bows slung across their backs? Where was the basket weaver with children knotting grass on the ground beside him? The crafter who cooed with pride at every weapon, tool, or toy she made? Their ghosts play along the walls like shadows cast from firelight, distant and cold to the touch.
To be a Lavellan meant to care first and foremost for your clan. Now it means to be alone.
Josephine’s office is the closest sanctuary, but the stuttered greeting at her naked face is the final shake in confidence. Her voice manages to keep steady as she explains, my choice, it was always my choice. She refuses to meet anyone’s gaze as she sweeps across the grounds and climbs to the highest empty tower. The view of jagged snowy mountains and endless sky do nothing to appease the suffocation.
She can’t stand to be here any longer.
Dorian watches her from across the fire, eyes slanted and knowing even as the Iron Bull reenacts an epic fight in the space between them.
“The leader of the Inquisition cannot disappear into the mountains alone,” Leliana had lectured. Caught attempting to sneak away by her own spy master; she should’ve known better. “You must take someone.” It was not the authoritative tone or any true sense of responsibility, but the gentle hand on her arm followed by a soft, "please," that made Lavellan agree.
Dorian had laid himself bare before her. They'd walked through his family trauma hand-in-hand. The Iron Bull was a good time and a half, had chosen her over his past again and again. It’s these two she rouses in the cold of night. They follow no questions asked.
There lies some guilt in her choice, as with all her choices these days. She loves Cole to death but hearing her thoughts spoken aloud now might truly be the end of her. And as much as she craves Varric’s easy humor, it’s a friendship she can’t bring herself to deserve after leaving Hawke in the shadows. She had pictured all of her companions in turn only to cast them away in fear and excuse. They love her, she knows. They would do anything for her if she could only tell them, but knowing something does not require the same strength as doing.
Dorian laughs and she remembers to laugh along, to be present in this moment. There’s a warmth to Bull’s gaze she hasn’t noticed before. When he passes another cup of wine to Dorian, their hands linger a moment too long. The sight makes her heart squeeze. Dorian shoots her a playful look to keep her mouth shut which she returns with a warm smile. Isn’t this the reason why she suffers on? To protect the little drops of happiness sprinkled throughout this mad world? She takes the cup Bull hands her and drinks down the bitter red lulling her to rest with the dead.
“You’re not allowed to make fun of my flirting,” Dorian proclaims. She doesn’t mean to, but they’re being so obvious about not being obvious, she really can’t help it. “You should’ve seen Josephine’s face when she realized she missed her chance with you all those months ago.” The Iron Bull looks equally scandalized and devious, a daydream already running through his head. She laughs it off and punches his arm, tugs Dorian’s ear for good measure.
Her companions had all dazzled her when she’d met them, each bright and beautiful in their own ways. She couldn’t help but fall in love a little bit. Her tongue tied on sweet words they took as gracious praise from their Inquisitor. Only Solas noticed her intentions and even then, it took a bold kiss to get them across properly. Now she dares to dream of her companions as family, the only family she has left. The thought is a cold punch to the gut. Is it fine to have lost everything and loved something new? Is it this love that had forsaken her clan?
She wants so badly to scream into the frosty air, let her lungs run ragged with the effort. All she’s done to save this world weighed against that one great failure. A warm hand cups her chin and lifts her face from the cave of her body. The Iron Bull holds her solemn gaze. “Tell me who I need to kill, boss.”
Everything rushes out from her mouth, the dam of her tongue broken over the force of her words. The death of a clan relived in the telling.
When she finishes, she doesn’t feel better. There is no better when it comes to this, but she feels different. A little more solid. Less like a ghost in her own skin. The telling becomes easier each time.
Clan Lavellan is dead and I’m still here.
I’ll save the world regardless.
The Inquisitor returns to Skyhold, to finish the job, to face her companions. Each worried after her in their own way and she falls in love a little more. Blackwall kisses the back of her hand in sweet reverence. Cassandra offers a book Varric would surely make fun of her for possessing. Sera drags her up to the roof, a thousand vengeances planned for every noble involved. Solas stands at the top of the stairs waiting for visual proof of her safe return. When their eyes meet, he turns away back to his haunting grounds. She does not follow.
Her conversation with Varric is a confession of guilt he doesn’t accept. “There’s enough blame for all of us to share. It was Hawke’s choice in the end. There’s no point in regret.”
She wants to make him admit Hawke should be the one standing here now, pry the words out of his mouth with petty argument. He pulls her into a hug much like the one she gave him all those months ago and the words die on her lips.
There is nothing constant in this life except loss. And maybe the love of those who help you through it.
To face Cole is to face a fear he doesn’t deserve. She sits in the rafters of the tavern preparing for the thousand things he might say. Did the clan despise her? Die with her name a curse on their lips?
“A death sentence on paper. The words drop from trembling fingers.”
He appears beside her with a sudden warmth filling the empty air. She closes her eyes.
“Sadness pours in like water, overflowing from the edges. It’s easier to feel nothing. To be numb. Run forward blind.”
She lets her head droop to the side until it touches his shoulder.
“She is Inquisitor and she is afraid. She is Lavellan and she is alone.”
He fidgets beside her. She lifts her head and meets his unfathomable gaze.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help.”
He whispers it, ashamed. She holds his hand between her palms. To help is to be here now with no empty promises or platitudes. It is to watch over her, whether from close or afar, even though she’ll never ask for it.
“You were always too big a dream. They knew you would leave them one day.”
A dream born of mother's kisses and grandfather's stories. Of Keeper's guidance and cousins' laughter. The collective memory of Clan Lavellan held under her skin till the end of her days. May they come to greet her when she finally falls.
Their names become a mantra as the days pass. Look, Shiala, Mythal’s dragon. Can you believe it? See, Lethon, how the leaves in Skyhold fall. And when the ground shakes and the sky divides and Corypheus himself stands before her, it is their names she breathes.
Look, look! Watch how I fight. Fear not my blood. I will not fall. I will not die.
Wait for me a little longer.
Lavellan grips her weapon with the full strength of a clan and splits apart a would-be god.
Tonight, fires rage across the countryside. Not in violence, but celebration. Adults weep with joy and children sing to the stars of a scarred sky. Loved ones hold each other close as a prayer with the name of the Inquisition a third lover on their lips.
Tonight, Lavellan dreams of dances in the moonlit woods, a circle of bodies spreading the tale of one their own. A Dalish elf who saved the world from ruin.
Tomorrow there will be new problems to bear. Tomorrow she will walk through the library and ruminate in Solas’s absence. Tomorrow the soldiers and merchants who’ve crowded Skyhold's yards will decide whether to stay or leave.
Tonight is the glow of the aftermath.
“Do you regret any of it?”
Vivienne moves like silk around her, a gentle hand on her shoulder as they look out at the cheerful ruckus in the hall below. She thinks of who she was when this journey began. Of all those who started at her side and did not live to see the end. The grief is still there, a stone in her throat to carry for the rest of her life. But tonight, it is smooth and small and a warmth blankets her in contentment.
To regret would be to invite all the failures a permanent residence in her heart. An endless game of what-ifs and fantasy. Once the regrets start, there is no end.
She holds her head up high.
Vivienne’s sharp gaze melts to one of affection.
“Good.”
A survivor.
Her mind blanks out at the word, but Cullen waits patiently and says it again. A survivor of Clan Lavellan.
"You’re not alone."
Sera confirms it with a promise to continue looking for more. She needs to be sure without a doubt before allowing any hope. Was it one of the children? The elderly halla tender? Her mind swims with possibility before she remembers where she is. The world crumbling to pieces again. Everything she’s worked hard to build hanging perilously off the edge. She breathes the perfumed air of the Winter Palace and can almost smell the wet earth of home. The pain in her hand pulses.
To be a Lavellan meant to care first and foremost for your clan.
Though she had lost many of them to undeserved violence, she had gained some in the form of smooth talking dwarves and rogue qunari, converted spirits and chaotically empathetic elven, shemlen kindred of all kinds. No matter how far they roam or what new titles they bear, they will always be a part of her.
She will save them from this new ruin. She will go out and gather those once thought dead. And one day, many years from now, she’ll finally plant this seed of grief into the ground.
Let the memory grow into something whole and new for all the world to see.