Archive of Our Own

"Seeker."

Cassandra looks up from her list of things to be done in Skyhold to find Solas hovering in the doorway. There is no calmness in his expression: only something that she begins to recognize as worry.

The realization chills her.

"Yes?"

"Come with me."

She follows Solas to the strange dark niche behind the Herald's Rest - whoever decided that Skyhold needed a bar needed a swat to the head - and leans her shoulder against the wall, waiting for him to speak.

Solas can't quite seem to look at her. His attention is fixed firmly on a point to her left. "Have you noticed anything... strange about Inquisitor Lavellan?"

"Not particularly, though I haven't seen her since we closed all the rifts on the Storm Coast. She's been in her quarters."

Solas looks at her, then, and there is tragedy gathering in his eyes. "Yes. She's been in her quarters because she's been sleeping, hours upon hours, waking only to eat enough food for a high dragon, and yet she is never full. The Anchor is widening."

"Spit it out," Cassandra growls, because if Solas is telling her what she thinks he is, then it should be done in one swift slice, like lancing a wound.

Solas says, all in one blow, "The Anchor was never meant for a mortal form. To use its power - to close rifts, to tear apart opponents - drains energy. Drains magic. Drains life. It is killing her. "

Cassandra slumps against the wall. The world slips beneath her feet, and it's like watching Anthony die all over again, seeing the light fade from his eyes, his entrails spill upon her feet.

Solas gazes at her with something maddeningly close to pity.

"I don't suppose there's a cure." It isn't a question, because she has never been so lucky. Thedas has never been so lucky. Its heroes always die; the Hero of Ferelden, the Warden, went with her sword in the Archdemon's breast, its blood painting her armor, and bought them a better world with her life.

"There is only one ending. The Anchor will kill her; it is only a question of how quickly. Closing the breach for good will no doubt take the last of her." Solas folds his hands behind his back, and Cassandra wants to hate him for this, how he's torn their hope out from under her with only a few words.

How had Cassandra not seen this coming? In some ways, she had: how Lavellan’s hands had been so frail about her daggers, how she had never recovered from the cough she contracted after Haven's fall, how her rift-green eyes blurred with exhaustion.

"Have you told her?"

Solas hesitates. "No. I don't - I am unsure how to tell her." Shame bows his shoulders, and for a moment, he looks like someone Cassandra could understand. Like someone who could be weak.

"But she deserves to know. I thought you could tell me-"

"No." The burden threatens to bend her further beneath its weight. "I will tell her. I brought her to the Inquisition. Made her who she is. She deserves to hear it from me."

“I will come with you,” Solas says, and Cassandra is selfish, is glad she does not have to do this alone.

They mount the stairs to Lavellan’s quarters in silence, climb even as the weight of unspoken words presses on their shoulders.

Cassandra opens the door, and Lavellan looks up at them from where she’s seated at the desk, wrapped in furs even as the fire blazes in the fireplace.

How had Cassandra not seen-

How had they all not seen how thin she’s become, worn ragged at the edges, her bones pressing at her skin? The Anchor’s dim green light seeps through the bandages twisted about her hand and forearm, as if to hold her arm together.

Denial, even in the Inquisition’s finest.

“Yes?” Lavellan says, the same calm inquiry she always speaks with.

“We have news,” Cassandra says, and Maker, what a stupid way to begin, but there is no way to say this right, “about the Anchor.”

Lavellan glances at her hand, her arm. It’s trembling: a spasmodic jerking of muscles, her fingers held stiff and rigid. “Yes.” Not a question. Only acceptance. As if she knows.

“The Anchor is widening,” Cassandra goes on, “Solas has confirmed it.”

Solas, at her back, nods, but says nothing more. Perhaps there is something of the coward in him, after all. Something flawed.

“Yes,” Lavellan says, her voice half-distracted, her attention fixed on her arm. Her voice is thick. “I know.”

“You know?” Solas says at last, brow furrowing. He takes a step forward. “You knew, and you said nothing?”

Lavellan turns to them, hunching into her furs. She is not one given to smiles, but one side of her mouth twitches in something bitter and dry as the Wastes. “I bear the Anchor in my hand. I may not be a mage, but I know what it means. What it is, to lose something of myself every time I close a rift.”

“Then you know the end,” Cassandra says, and regrets it when Lavellan nods once more. How long has she known? How long has she labored beneath the weight of certainty?

“Of course. Closing small rifts takes so much of me, it’s obvious that I’ll die to close the Breach. A rift so large – it will take all that remains. All that’s left.”

She’s so calm – as if she doesn’t believe it will happen. As if she doesn’t plan to die, and it’s that certainty, that lack of fear, that makes Cassandra frown.

Cassandra doesn't want to ask. Doesn't want to think that Lavellan could run, could abdicate her duty, but stronger women have done so, and- and if Lavellan – Ellana, because she deserves that from Cassandra, if nothing else- runs, Cassandra will hunt her down, because the Anchor is their only hope.

"Will you stay?" She hates herself for asking, for making the unspoken knowledge real: that Cassandra will sacrifice her gladly to close the Breach, to mend their world.

The chair screeches on the tile as Ellana lunges to her feet, her face a mask of cold fury, half-falls, catches herself against the desk even as Solas jerks forward, too late. The Anchor flares poison-green between them.

"Falon’Din take you, Cassandra!" She has never seen Ellana like this; even in battle, she's quiet, focused - not this woman with naked rage in her voice. "Did you think I would say no? That I could say no? Knowing that Thedas depends on me? On this Anchor?"

“Others have run,” is all Cassandra can muster, and Ellana laughs, the sound wet.

“Even if I run, it’ll kill me in the end, whether the Breach closes or not. Better for my death to mean something, don’t you think? Or do you think so little of me?” Her smile is an ugly, sharp-edged thing, razored with hurt.

Cassandra drops her gaze. “I apologize. I had to ask.”

Ellana’s expression twists, but she holds her tongue against Cassandra, turning instead to her chair. She eases herself into it with painful deliberation, her jaw tight, and Cassandra spots at once the rabbit-fast throb of her pulse in her neck. How much she needs to breathe from the small exertion of standing and shouting.

“Breathe deep,” says Solas.

Ellana glances at him, then says, every word measured, “I will not. I may be dying, but I will not be weak. Not in Skyhold. Not where I must be the Inquisitor.” Her façade has dropped once more, veiling all hurt, all rage. “Thedas has made me their Herald, and I will be what they need.”

A flicker of hurt on Solas’ face. “I would hope,” he says, folding his arms behind his back, “that with Cassandra and I, you might feel free to be who you are.”

“No.” Ellana rests her left hand on the desk. Its flickering green light catches her eyes, sunken now in a wasted face, sets them alight.  "If I were to be who I am- to say what I feel- I would never leave this room. I would crawl into my bed and stay there until Corypheus knocks down the gates. I would howl until the windowpanes crack." Ellana avoids their gaze. The firelight flashes on her hair, picks out the first gray hairs emerging at her temples, throws the hollows of her cheeks into shadow.

Cassandra swallows. She has never been close with Ellana, has found her remote, in that way the Dalish have- set apart by time and history - and now she wonders if Ellana's polite rebuffs, her cordial mask, have been the desperate gambits of a woman pulling away from life. Giving up on hope.

"I'm dying," Ellana says, flat, "very young for a Dalish. I had- I had expected so much more time-" and her voice, for that one moment, wrenches with grief. "I had- I had plans for the Inquisition, for my people- I wanted to make the world better-"

Solas takes a step back, drawing a deep breath. He looks stricken, gutted, and why is that? He has never shown much attachment to the Inquisition.

Ellana takes a deep breath. "I'm scared," she finishes, and for a moment, she looks heart-breakingly young. "I can be what Thedas needs me to be. I can lead an Inquisition, give up my clan, my people, my past to serve all people, but-" her hand clenches, veiling the Anchor's light.

"Why do I have to die for this?" She turns to Cassandra, and oh, the grief etched in her face -

Cassandra would endure nearly anything to ease that pain.

"You say I'm the Herald of Andraste." Ellana is still. The motion of her breathing is swallowed up in the furs, as if she has already gone, spirit snuffed out without anyone knowing. "Did Andraste will this? That I must sacrifice everything? Did she decide that all the dead of the Conclave were not enough?" Her eyes glow green as a rift, alien as their terrible song. “Did she decide that I must die like her?"

"I don't know," says Cassandra, and it aches to admit. "I do not know why the Maker wills this."

Ellana laughs, and there's no joy in it, nothing but ashes. "Yet the Anchor takes."

"Forgive me," says Solas, and he brushes by Cassandra, is down the stairs and gone between one breath and the next. Why so sudden, when Cassandra has never seen him so discomfited?

Ellana watches him go, head tilted, then returns her attention to Cassandra. Fine wrinkles are beginning to form around her eyes. Her pulse beats blue beneath thin skin, too fast. She is ancient, older than the moon, all her pain forced back.

Shame settles heavy on Cassandra's shoulders. She has asked too much of this woman already, forced her onto the pedestal of Thedas' hero, and Ellana has accepted it all, given into the masks and the burden and the damnable, damning Game.

And yet, always, she must ask more. Must ask for everything, at last.

"Be at peace, Cassandra," Ellana says, and smiles. The curve of her mouth holds an ocean of tears. "I will die for you."

It's that, that naked declaration of intent, that makes Cassandra break. Because yes, Ellana would die with the Inquisition or without it - would suffer either way - but she is choosing to die for something.

To die for others.

To die for a world she will never see.

"I wish I did not have to ask this of you," and she will not cry, Andraste take her, she will be iron, she will bear the weight of this guilt.    

Ellana looks at her, through her, into the death that lingers in shadows, waiting. "What is one life against all of Thedas?"

"It still isn't- it isn't right."

A sliver of a smile, bright in moonlight, sharper than any knife. “It’s only my life.”

But what a life.

-

"Josephine."

Josephine looks up from her second draft of a petition to the court of Halamshiral to find the Inquisitor in the doorway. The Inquisitor stands painfully straight, her eyes glittering green in her thin face. Too thin, even with the stress of surviving Haven and getting Skyhold up and running.

"Inquisitor? What can I do for you?"

Lavellan descends the steps to Josephine's desk and settles herself in a chair, a faint wince passing across her face.

"We have a problem. A problem that will affect the Inquisition, and I need your advice on how to share this problem, and with whom." She sits back in her chair as she finishes, hands clenched about her knees.

Well. Such obliqueness is unusual for the Inquisitor, who cuts straight to the heart of things. Josephine lays aside her pen and paper and settles her hands on the desk, leaning forward.

"My knowledge is at your disposal, Inquisitor, and if nothing else, I am always willing to listen to your troubles."

Lavellan searches her face for something, and Josephine keeps her expression placid, friendly, welcoming: the mask of the diplomat.

Lavellan seems to find what she was looking for, and nods to herself. Then she fixes Josephine with her gaze and says, "Solas and Cassandra have informed me that the Anchor is widening with each rift I seal, and the expansion is accelerating." She swallows. "It is killing me, and to seal the Breach, as I must do, will take all that is left of me."

Josephine half-starts from her chair, heart missing a beat, but Lavellan waves her back into it and pushes on,

"My weakness is becoming more and more evident, and I fear we will need to take steps to hide it, or explain it - something. I do not wish the Inquisition to be more of a target than it already is. And I need your advice on how to tell the others, and I will have to set up some form of succession, possibly start delegating more tasks as I become weaker-"

"Ellana," says Josephine, softly.

It’s the first time she's ever said the Inquisitor's name.

The Inquisitor stops. Inhales a great breath. Her expression shivers. "I need your help," she says, and the admission costs her something of herself, Josephine can see it in her eyes.

Josephine's mind whirls. This can’t be right. The Inquisitor isn’t supposed to die- she’s meant to lead them, to destroy Corypheus and change the world for the better, not to die in some blaze of glory.

Not that Josephine has given much thought to the future of the Inquisition after Corypheus, but what little images she has always have Ellana in them: calm, resolute. After surviving the Conclave, Haven - it seems too terrible to be real, that Ellana could be dying now-

"Josephine?"

She's taken too long.

She shakes herself, allows the smile to drop from her lips, because lies and propriety can do no good, not now. She reaches out for Ellana's hand, and the Inquisitor gives it, brow furrowed.

Josephine embraces that hand in both of hers, though it’s cold as stone.

"You have my help, Inquisitor. Ellana. Always. Are you sure-"

Ellana shakes her head, preempting Josephine's hope.

"Solas has tried everything he knows. As far as he's aware, there is no cure. No way to stop it, or transfer it, or close it." The ghost of a smile twitches her lips. "Trust me, I've asked him the same question. But it seemed to hurt him to answer, so I've stopped. My fate is certain."

Josephine swallows. "All right." She forces down her fear. "You're right that we will not be able to hide this for long."

Ellana nods. "What should we say to others?"

It seems too cruel to say aloud, but Josephine's duty is to shake the world and put it right, and change never comes without cruelty.

"We should tell the truth, publicize it. To know that you're dying for Thedas, to save us all, and doing so willingly - it will only draw more to our banners, gain us more resources, more intelligence. The great men and women of Thedas will not deny someone willing to die for us all, not if we ask them publicly; their lack of charity would shame them. And those that believe you to be Andraste- how much fiercer their faith will burn, seeing you go as she did. They will aid us even further." She hates herself for saying it, but Ellana stares at her, seeking, and then she half-smiles.

"They will make me a new Andraste, I'm sure. Even though I'm Dalish, even though I believe in my own gods and my own ways, they'll take my death and make me her." She looks down, and though Josephine's Andrastian, has always believed in Andraste's holiness, the pain in Ellana's slumped shoulders burns her eyes with tears.

"I should be buried whole in the earth so the soil takes my bones, and a tree planted above my grave so my soul grows to the sky, but they'll try to burn me as an Andrastian, with foreign rites. I say as much as I can that I'm not Andrastian, I'm Dalish, but the Chantry won't listen-"

Josephine squeezes her hand until Ellana looks up, fury rising inside her, and she swears, "I won't let them. If I have to stand between you and them, I will, if I have to bribe them, I will, if we have to ferry all your people across the sea and bring them to Skyhold, I'll make Cullen do it - you will be buried as a Dalish, I swear on the Maker. Whatever we have to do to give you the rites of your people, we'll do."

Ellana stares at her, blinking, and then falls forward, forehead on the desk, those strong, slim shoulders quaking. A terrible sob rips the air, and Josephine can't stand it anymore-

She gets to her feet, rounds the desk, pulls Ellana into her arms, her cloth-of-gold damp with the Inquisitor's tears as Ellana weeps, great wrenching gasps for air that tear Josephine in two.

"Thank you," Ellana manages. "Thank you."

-

Sera's the last one into the war room, and just her luck, the only spot left is by Vivienne.

She stands by the door instead, the better to escape the second there's an opening. Meetings are boring shit.

"What's this all about?" she says to the room at large. The usual crowd is here - Bull, Dorian, Solas, Varric, all the field crew - but creepy Nightingale and Josie and Commander Stick-up-his-arse have shown up too. Odd.

Josephine shuffles her papers. Looks uncomfortable. "Inquisitor Lavellan has an announcement to make."

"Must be big," Varric says, and then the door opens and Lavellan enters. She's moving slow, her left hand clenched and trembling, her hair bound back - was there gray in it before? - and she takes them all in with one glance.

"Good. I'm glad you're all here. I don't wish to make this announcement more than once."

Hopefully this isn't some announcement about Sera's pranks going wrong, or that she's making Skyhold any more fucking elfy than it already is. Sera likes Lavellan well enough - she's clever, sharp as a knife, loyal, has a great pair of tits - but her insistence on sticking to traditions dead as dust irritates the shit out of her.

Lavellan closes the door behind her, crosses to the table, and leans one hip on it. She folds her left arm close to her chest, and Sera blinks, because the Anchor's glowing, faint and eerie, through the bandages wrapped about her hand.

Lavellan stares down at her hand, the terrible light, her expression still and cold as stone. She doesn't seem to realize anyone's there.

Josephine closes her eyes, lips trembling, and Solas, who hasn't shown an ounce of real feeling this whole damned time, bows his head.

The clank of armor as Cullen shifts in the corner, and tension, threatening to snap.

"I hope you've called us here for something, boss," Bull says, "because I was beating Krem's ass in cards."

"Metaphorically or literally?" Dorian asks, and Sera grins.

"I did." Lavellan takes a deep breath. "I'm-" a halting breath, "I'm trying to think of how to say this right."

Something has gone very wrong. Something is clawing at the roots of the world, because Inquisitor Ellana Lavellan never sounds frightened. There's a great pit opening up in Sera's stomach, in the room, and everyone's gaze is fixed on Lavellan, on her fingers, toying with the bandages about the Anchor.

"I could-" Josephine starts, but Lavellan lifts her head, and Sera recoils at the pain worn into her eyes, the exhaustion that makes her lean heavy against the table.

"No, Josephine. I will - I will show them." Lavellan's jaw clenches, and she stares past them all, into someplace else, as she begins to unroll the bandages about her left hand. They come away wet, dark with blood, bits of skin stuck to them.

No one breathes.

No one says a goddamned word.

No one looks away.

The bandages crumple to the floor between Lavellan's feet. Lavellan swallows hard, and oh, Maker, no, Sera has never wanted to see tears in the Inquisitor's eyes. Lavellan lifts her hand.

The flesh of her palm has been consumed, metacarpals thin slashes of black against the green. A thin ring of flesh about the outer edges of the mark holds her hand together, but she’s bleeding where the mark carves deeper, green tendrils spiraling up her fingers, carving deep into her wrist.

Sera's feet scream with the urge to flee, to throw herself from this cold room, the terrible light encompassing them all, the awful green mark that is eating Lavellan alive.

Bull breathes a curse in Qunlat, his hand going tight on Dorian's shoulder; Dorian says nothing, his eyes wide and dark, fixed like some animal seeing its end.

Vivienne sucks in a hard breath.

The thing - Cole - starts to weep, like it cares, like it can-

Blackwall sags back against the wall with a thump.

Varric's mouth crumples, and he drops his head into his hands, sighing, "Oh, Maker-" and the words ache with tears.

Solas, Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine - they don't look surprised, and of course they knew, of course they knew and didn't tell anyone, skulking about in their towers-

Lavellan's mouth hardens into a thin white line. "As you can see, the Anchor is consuming me. It grows with every rift we close, and when we go to seal the Breach-"

No.

She will not say it, she must not say it, but there's a thousand prayers in this room right now and the Maker is not listening.      

"When we seal the Breach, I will die."

Lavellan speaks deliberately, coldly, like she doesn't see the horrid thing in their midst, but Sera's seen people at the edge before - Lavellan's holding onto calmness by the ends of her fingernails.

"I am dying now," she says, and drops her hand to her side.

A clatter of metal as Cullen shoves away from the wall and strides from the room, expression fixed and terrible, brushing aside Leliana’s hand, Cassandra’s call.

Lavellan watches him go without a word, but she crumbles, leans against the table as though it’s the only thing holding her up. Something in her eyes flickers and dies, but she doesn’t even look surprised.

How long-

How fucking long has she known?

“I’ll go get him.” Leliana starts for the door, but Lavellan shakes her head.

“No. I’ll talk to him.” Her mouth twists, pained. “He deserves that from me.”

Wait, have they been carrying on together? No wonder-

“My condolences, my dear,” Vivienne says at last, drawing her courtesies over herself like a shield. “Will we be leaving rifts be, then? The people will be suspicious.”

Lavellan gathers herself and stands up straight. She tucks her terrible hand inside her jacket, veiling the sickly light from them all. “No, Vivienne. Any rifts that open up near populated areas, we will, of course, close. It would not do for the Inquisition to let people die when we have the means to stop it. But the rifts in unpopulated areas, such as the Hissing Wastes or the deeper areas of the Emerald Graves –"

She looks away, hunches into herself like an animal cornered, like the feral dogs Sera’s seen in Denerim, but there’s nothing to fight, nothing that can be stopped.

“Those, we’ll leave to their own devices. If we can, we’ll station soldiers near them to keep demons from heading towards villages or camps, but.” She takes a deep breath. A muscle leaps in her jaw, and she reaches for her hair, runs her fingers through it. A lock of hair falls from her plait, and it’s mostly gray, aged beyond bearing.

“I don’t know how much longer I can last, and if I have to leave rifts undone so I can live long enough to seal the Breach and save us-“

Except not us, not really, because she will not be saved- and Sera’s crying, hopelessly, horribly, and she hates it-

“-then that is what we must do. As for the people, Josephine and I have agreed that there is no hiding this.”

“Sensible,” Vivienne says, “There is an advantage to that.”

Sera wheels, but Varric's already up, already jabbing his finger at Vivienne, snarling,

"This isn't some political game, Iron Lady, this is about her fucking dying, show some empathy for once!"

That just sets off Cole, who starts ranting, hands clapped over his ears, "Green, green, great and glittering and it's devouring me alive, I eat but I can't get full, I sleep but I don't rest, I hurt, hunger, don't heal, never-"

Solas reaches for Cole, and Josephine bursts into tears, and Bull starts heading towards Vivienne and Varric, and Lavellan is pale, shrunken, silent, agony etched in the harsh jerk of her chest, her wide eyes. The room howls with noise, and Lavellan's slipping sideways, hands lax on the wood, knees weakening-

Fire licks the air in great sheets of white flame as Dorian reaches her, gets an arm about her waist, and bellows,

"Silence!"

Blissfully, everyone shuts up, and Lavellan says into the emptiness,

"Don't do this. Not in front of me. Do you think I need my frie- my team squabbling with each other while I'm dying?" Her voice shakes, and she's weak, she's fragile, and Sera's never seen this in her, never wanted to see this-

"Because I'm dying, and I'm in agony, and I want- I want to live and none of this is fair, and it's not right, and the last thing - the last fucking thing -" her voice rises into a shout, into a shredded howl of inarticulate horrible rage, "-I need to worry about while I'm trying to figure out how to die is you all fighting like children!"

She shakes off Dorian's arm and limps through the crowd, her breathing the hoarse rasp of an injured animal's. At the door, she turns back, and says, panting, tears on her hollow cheeks that she takes no notice of,

"Leliana. Discuss with Josephine how we can leverage this to our political advantage. Josephine, begin dispersing the news. The rest of you, inform the troops. As for myself, I will begin delegating my responsibilities among you and informing my clan so they can begin the preparations."

The door clicks shut behind her.

"Vishante kaffas," Dorian breathes in the wake of her departure, slumping against the war table, ignoring Cole, who brushes by him and out the door to follow Lavellan.

"All right." Cassandra steps away from her position against the wall. "We have our orders. Let us do as the Inquisitor wishes."

"And just ignore that she's dying?" Varric folds his arms. "Even for you, Seeker, that's cold."

"No," Solas says, and his support of Cassandra is so unexpected everyone turns toward him. "The Seeker is being practical. To the best of my knowledge, and I have much, there is no cure. The Anchor's power is too great for any mortal frame to contain, and nothing we do can change that fact."

"That's a pretty big assumption, Solas." Bull's eye glitters, his expression focused, intent, dangerous. "I've got contacts in Seheron, Dorian's got friends in Tevinter with access to rare texts, Varric knows half of Thedas - hell, even Blackwall might know some Warden lore that might help. You didn't even think to ask us?"

"It's not a matter of trust, Bull," says Leliana. She's all shadow and stillness, calculation, and Sera knows what she'll say, because all those like her think the same horrid way. "It's a matter of resources. If we devote ourselves to the search for a cure rather than stopping Corypheus, she may die before closing the Breach, and we lose our opportunity entirely."

"So, what, we want her to die?" Sera snarls. "We'll just sit around with our thumbs up our arses trying to kill her quicker so we can all be safe?"

At that, Josephine sobs and hurries from the room, but Sera doesn't feel sorry for her, can't feel sorry for her.

Leliana shrugs. "As much as I wouldn't put it in those terms, yes. That is essentially the Inquisition's mission. We exist to close the Breach, to stop Corypheus. If she must die for the rest of the world to live, then that is the price she'll pay. She understands this. You all should as well."

Silence again, and Sera hates her.

Cassandra heads for the door, pauses. "You are all right. It isn't fair, and it isn't right, but very little about the world is fair or right. Inquisitor Lavellan will die whether the Breach closes or not. It is up to us to make sure her death means something." Cassandra's eyes are cold steel, hard and unyielding. "Doing as she asks, making sure she can depart this world knowing her duty has been done, knowing the Inquisition stands ready to protect the weak - this is-" and Cassandra's voice wavers, her icy calm shakes, "-this is the last and only thing we can do for her now. Before all this is done."

-

"Ellana!"         

Ellana pauses as she reaches the doorway to the great hall, though she doesn't want to; she wants to climb the hateful stairs to her bedroom, crawl in bed, and chew elfroot until sleep takes her, until she can have one hour of peace from the agony burning in her hand, her stomach, her head.

"Cole." Her voice shakes.

Why had she made such a scene in the war room? She should've just left, quietly, calmly-

"Let me help you. Where are you going?" Cole bleeds compassion into the air, his pale eyes enormous, reflecting her in all her weakness.

"I need to find Commander Cullen."

She does not want to. She does not want to face her betrayal. Foolishly allowing herself to love another, to allow that love to be returned, knowing her end-

A disservice, a dishonor done to a man who has been nothing but honorable, nothing but kind.

Cole tilts his head. "In the training yard."

Down stairs, then, and later, back up. She has grown so sick of stairs. She nods and takes the first step, the first of many. No one understands how terrible it is for a single step to drain you. How thousands upon thousands more loom before her in a vast wasteland, but she can't let herself think of that, she mustn't, or she will go nowhere.

Cole, grasping her arm, wrapping it about his waist.

"Cole, don't-"

"Let me help," he insists, and his wavering voice wrenches at her.

"Everyone will see-" but then that's the point, isn't it? Everyone will know. Everyone will stare at her with damnable pity in their eyes, and she won't be the Inquisitor any longer, though it's a role she will never understand.

She will be the Inquisitor who is dying.

Ellana closes her eyes, and the brief darkness gives her the strength to nod.

She is dying, and soon the world will know it.

She had best accept the fact.

"All right, Cole. Please help me to him." The words sting her lips. She has never wanted help, never asked - Clan Lavellan, ragged and wandering and hunted, could not carry those who couldn't carry themselves.

He half-carries her through the hall, past whispering nobles who fan themselves, down the stairs. His strength bears her up, though he carries her as though she's fragile, and there is nothing to express the utter humiliation of it.

Cullen is easily found by the clatter of steel. A training dummy lists to the side, half-broken, and he's going at it in a ring of thunder, vicious, hair matted with sweat, and his men whisper and mill but say nothing.

Once she would have sat and watched him drill. Allowed herself to be drawn in by the play of muscle in his arms, the sweat beading along his throat.

Cole deposits her on the crates beside the dummies.

"Thank you, Cole," and at her voice Cullen stills. "Please leave us be for a while."

The spirit wavers at the edges, and is gone.

"Inquisitor." Cullen's hand shakes on the hilt of his sword as he turns toward her. His hard and hollow eyes are an open wound.

"Commander."

There are no words, in any tongue, for this moment. For this pain.

Cullen glances aside, and Ellana can't bear it, this distance, this silence.

"I'm sorry," she says, and tries to smile.

"Sorry-" and Cullen whips back around to stare at her, hand nerveless on his sword, the blade crashing to the dust. He steps forward, halting, and his voice is a wretched thing that burns, "Why? You have done nothing-"

"I should have told you." She cannot bear to look at him as he draws closer. Stares instead at the inside of her left arm, her hand still tucked inside her coat. Her veins pulse at her wrist. Glitter green. The Anchor spreads, consumes, and one day she will lose her arm, her shoulder, the rest of her. Her blood roars in her ears. "But I was a coward."

His warmth beside her. The sweat and iron smell of him. The press of his leg into hers.

She will miss him.

"I didn't-" and no, she will not cry, she will not, but her trousers dampen with her tears, "I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to think that-" and she can't even say it, can't find words for this, this betrayal, this terror, this sick and clinging horror that won't let her go.

She swallows, throat dry.

She is always so thirsty now.

"I had hope for the future," she manages, through her clenched teeth and the aching clot of utter unfairness in her throat.

Cullen, breathing. The faint shadow of his red mantle in the corner of her eyes. "So did I," he says, and Ellana sobs, muffles it with her right hand on her mouth, bites her flesh. The shock of pain is a welcome distraction from the searing bone-deep ache in her left hand.

She drops her hand to her lap. The imprint of her teeth shine white and then red, and Cullen hisses between his teeth as he sees the mark.

"Ellana," and it's that, her name in that beloved voice, that steels her for what she came to do.

"Cullen." She looks at him at last, finds him looking back, his eyes red-rimmed. His mouth trembles.

His name is sweet in her mouth. The last sweet thing.

"Cullen. I release you from any obligation you hold to me." The words scorch her tongue, but she says them, because she has betrayed him once. She will not do so again. "I do not expect or wish you to shackle yourself to a dying woman."

His brow knits as he draws back, searching her face. His nostrils flare in fury, his eyes gold fire. "Do you think so little of me that I would leave you now?" The words seem to hurt him to say. "You think me the kind of man that could abandon you at your greatest hour of need?"

Ellana grips the crate with her hand, anchors herself to earth. "Do you not understand? I'm trying to spare you pain! I would not have you stay for pity, and if you love me, then stop, before my death hurts you more."

Cullen moves in one great wave, tidal, inexorable - wraps his arms about her shoulders and draws her into the solid warmth of him, presses his face into her hair. He breathes ragged against her.

"Do not ask this of me, Ellana," and she can't stop herself from sagging into him, resting one hand on his arm. "It isn't pity that bids me stay, but love, and I will not let you face this alone."

She smiles at that, and it feels a thousand years old. "We are all alone when standing before death, Cullen."

His chest, and the great heart within, shakes against her. The bellows of his lungs gasp on a sob. "Then in what remains of life, let me stand by you. Please."

She is a coward.

She turns her face into his chest, his heartbeat drowning out all thought, all pain.

"Very well."

In what remains of her life, in the ashes of her hopes, she will have this.

This, as shield against what must be done.

-

At Halamshiral, Ellana cannot dance, all of her being bent on breathing, walking, remaining upright. She leans heavy on Iron Bull, who holds her up, grim-faced, though he tries to joke, to pull her away from the consuming fire of the Anchor. The nobility crowds, says in sickly-sweet voices that she looks well, that they can't believe the news, that there will be a cure, they're sure of it.         

She would spit at them, had she strength to ignore the mission, but the mission is all. It must be done before she can rest.

Dorian burns Florianne to death in the gardens as she watches, winded, unable even to fight, and they present what is left of her to Celene and Briala.

"Thank you," the Empress says, and Briala, "Orlais shall remember you."

Ellana bares her teeth in a smile and does not say that she would give up being remembered for another day of life.

The dance goes on, nobility whirling in sumptuous silks beneath frescoed ceilings, and she finds Cullen on the balcony. She leans into his warmth. His hand nearly spans her waist, fingers dipping into the hollow of her hip, where the Anchor has worn her thin.

"I'm sorry I can't dance," she says to the night, to him. Part of her wants to question him, even now: has he stayed with her for pity, does he know how much his goodhearted love will wound him?

But she is dying and a coward and she will take his warmth, his love, his pity, with her into the darkness where Falon’Din waits.

He breathes deep, and she hears the hurt in his voice, the determination not to betray it. "I was never any good at it anyway."

She smiles, though it hurts; curls her fingers between his. "It's still lovely, even without dancing."

Cullen presses a kiss to her graying hair. "Yes. You are."

A moment of peace, to steel her against all the moments to come, and their sudden stop. A moment where she can lie to herself, can forget what is yet to be done.

-

The Fade burns her, breaks her. She walks out of it with an arm torn by rifts and a belly concave with hunger unceasing and eyes that see only the end.         

She survives, because the mission is not yet done.

The Breach is not yet sealed.

That must be done before she can lay down her arms, her body, her soul. Before all her suffering is enough.

It must be done -

-

Skyhold groans beneath the weight of the gifts the people send, in thanks and in blessing. Linens, herbs, fine foods, crackpot potions that purport to cure her.         

Gifts mean nothing. Ellana has Cassandra distribute them among the people, because looking at them, deciding what to keep, will take time, and time has become more precious than anything anyone can offer.

Time is her last gift, and she gives it to her companions.

She sits in the sunlight in Blackwall's barn, watches him whittle her a cane etched with the symbols of the Inquisition, a halla in flight, a dagger piercing the Breach.

"You will win at the last," he says to her as he presses the cane into her hand. "Remember that."

She dozes in Sera's room, cushions keeping her weary bones from the cold wood, her head in Sera's lap. Sera rubs her temples with callused thumbs, tells her tales and jokes and carefully never once mentions the Anchor, the oncoming shadow.

She plays chess with Dorian, using only her right hand to move the pieces, and though he looks at her with tragedy in his eyes and swallows hard whenever she pauses to breathe, he also smiles. Touches her hand. Tells her how he will change the world, make it better, make it righteous. Because there will still be a world, when she is gone.

Iron Bull gets her drunk when the pain is too much. Laughs with her. Carries her to her bedroom. Best of all, fends off the throngs of worshippers, of martyrs, of people invading her home to thank her for her sacrifice, to remind her that this is finite, that this will end.

She plays cards with Varric at his table in the great hall, and he makes her laugh until she can't breathe. He feeds her lemon cakes, tea, all manner of Dalish foods, and though she can only take one bite before her stomach rebels, he never stops trying. He keeps the fires tended, so she has a place to go when she is cold, as she always is.

Solas paints her. A triptych, of who she was, a fleet runner among the Halla, a warrior bearing Andruil's mark. Who she is, hollow and burning and thin but alive with purpose. Who she will be, aflame with triumph as the Breach heals, her bones trees, her soul the sky.

"You will be remembered," he says, "as Dalish. I will make sure of it."

Vivienne does not know what to say or how to help, and is honest about it. Somehow, the truth means more than a thousand empty platitudes that come from kindness. She gives Ellana the only thing she has ever had: brutal honesty.

Cole makes her bed appear in Josephine's office when she no longer has the strength to climb to her room. Brings elfroot for her to chew just before the pain crests. Touches her fevered brow with hands cold as steel daggers, eases her down into sleep, where she dreams of nothing but fields and halla and life, endless and easy, and not hers to keep.

Cassandra says nothing to her, but every night before she goes to bed, armor clanks in the hall. The hiss of pages. And Cassandra, her voice shaking, praying, "Though all before me is shadow, yet shall the Maker be my guide. I shall not be left to wander the drifting roads of the beyond. For there is no darkness in the Maker's light, and nothing that he has wrought shall be lost."

Cullen lies behind her in bed, his body curved about her shrunken, failing one, and says nothing about how she is skin and bone and muscle, how her breathing rattles in her chest, how every day it grows harder to wake. He rests his hand on her heart. He tells her, voice broken, tears splashing hot on her shoulder, of hopes undone, children unmet. Of how he loves her, regardless.

How he will always love her.

She closes her eyes and holds fast to him.

She loves him.

She loves them all, and yet, before death, she is alone. There will be no space for anyone to stand beside her, when it is done.

When she is done.

-

Corypheus is approaching, and Skyhold waits. Its lanterns are doused, its fires banked. Its people sleep fitfully in corners and cots, and those who remain awake cast glances at the doors to the great hall, where the greatest light is dying out from among them.         

Black banners hang furled at the top of every tower, waiting.

Solas watched them put them up, the grim pain in the soldiers' faces as they hung them.

He stands beside the door to what was Josephine's office, now the Inquisitor's sickroom, and breathes. The smell of sickness, the tense and hollow faces of his companions in the firelight-

So much like Arlathan in the last days, their empire crumbling beneath their feet, and him, blind as he has always been blind, choosing not to see.

Dorian and Bull sit together beside the fire, knees touching. Vivienne writes a letter, her quill catching the dim light, and affects the complacency of a mirror, and its coldness. Varric and Sera and Blackwall play cards, the stiff paper snapping against the wood in the silence. Cole watches the door, and says nothing. Cassandra prays.

All of them, waiting. All of them knowing what's behind the door. All of them fumbling for words to say at the last, when words mean nothing in the face of what's to come.

The door opens and Josephine, Leliana, and Cullen emerge. Everyone pretends not to see the tremble of Josephine's lips, the brightness in Cullen's eyes, and it is so human of them, so blind, to care about propriety now.

"She's ready," Leliana says.

Solas enters first, because he is a coward, and he bears the blame, and he would have this over quickly.

The room presses in on him: heat, and sweat, and the sour smell of sickness and death, and her.

She's propped up against the pillows, and though she has never been large, she is terribly small in the bed: thin and hollow and fragile as porcelain. Her mouth, which has sometimes favored him with smiles, been stern in battle - it's chapped and dry, red where she's gnawed in restless dreams. Her hair, full gray now, curls against her sweat-stained collar, and Solas has tried, oh, how he has tried, to bring her fever down, to give her one hour, one moment without pain-

He takes a seat beside the bed, and part of him wishes she will not wake. That he will not have to see what he has done to her.

Solas knows what the rattle in her breathing means. The chill in her hand, when he reaches for it.

Lavellan turns to him, opening her eyes. One side of her mouth twitches in a smile.

"Solas."

"Ellana."

"Is there anything I can do?"

She licks her lips. "Ice."

He flicks his hand, fills a goblet with ice chips.

She opens her mouth for him to place one on her tongue, and it burns. That she who has stormed across battlefields, through the Fade, brought dragons to earth and crawled over mountains and never once asked for help-

That she could be reduced to this-

That she has been made to accept it, that no resentment burns in her eyes any longer-

He is a fool, and a thief, and the worst thing he may have ever stolen in his long existence is this woman's life.

She swallows the water, and leans her head back against the pillows. "Thank you, ha’ren."

Solas had thought himself unable to be surprised anymore, but this gift-

"Do not call me that, Ellana. I have done nothing to deserve it."

Her jaw tightens, the old fire snapping in her eyes. "You have labored to cure me, and though you were unsuccessful it was not through any fault of yours. If there was a cure in Thedas, you would have found it."

Every word is a dagger through his long dead heart.

He cannot bring himself to say no, not now.

Her expression softens. "It's not your fault, Solas," she says, and Solas could weep.

She squeezes his hand, draws his attention to her face: lined and worn and gentle, a tragedy. “Solas. You said that when great beings die, sometimes they leave spirits in their wake.”

He nods. “True. Generals leave spirits of command, great authors inspiration.”

“What spirit would I leave?”

He can imagine it, even now – a great dragon of rift-green light that purifies where it passes, that lends strength to the weary in the shadow of its wings, its roar a song to lift the flagging heart.

“You would be Courage,” he says at last. “A spirit generals and rulers rely upon, but so too would the smallest of people: a man wanting to confess his love, a young woman standing up against tormentors too long unchecked. You are worthy of such a name.”

She smiles, and reaches to touch his face, and he endures it, though he cannot ever deserve it.

"Thank you," she breathes.

The moment stretches between them, frail and eternal. He does not want to break it as he has broken her, but wolves kill.

He looks down. "It has been one of the great honors of my too-long life to know you, Ellana Lavellan. Da'len."

Her smile tears him in two.

He stands, and kisses her fevered forehead. Breathes a last blessing into her, so when she arrives in the land beyond the shadows-

She will be met by wolves.

"I'm so sorry," he says as he leaves her, and she will never know why.

-

Dorian can't stop talking. He paces, rambles, makes pictures in the fire as she watches, smiling and saying nothing-         

He is wonderful with words, has always had a quick wit, a bladed tongue, but here there are no words which mean anything, and he has nothing important to say.

Nothing but the one word he does not want to make real.

He is a necromancer, he can see, feel death embracing her, claiming her for its dominion, and he does not know what to say.

"Dorian," she says in the middle of his rant about the library's abomination of a filing system, and he shuts up. Falls into a chair beside the bedside.

His eyes itch and burn, but he will not weep-

"I'm sorry," he manages, and his voice shakes, and goddamnit, were all those months of rhetoric for nothing?!

"I'm rubbish with goodbyes," and wonderful, he is weeping, he is useless, always so useless.

"Dorian," she says, and opens her arms.

He falls onto the bed, gathers her into his embrace, though she is frail and so light wind could break her bones. He holds fast to her, who gave him home and hearth and unstinting trust, who stood against his father and all the might of Tevinter for him.

Him.

"Don't say goodbye," she says into his shoulder, her breath barely a whisper across his skin.    

Before her illness, she had been remote, untouchable, afraid to seem real, afraid to seem mortal to those who held her high as a savior. Dorian had only touched her in the heat of battle, helping her up, submitting to her worried inspection. Death has a way of stripping such concerns bare, and now she leans into him, soaks up his warmth with a sigh.

He chokes down grief. His hand rests on her spine, the ridges of her bones so sharp they might cut. Death coils about her, enfolds her in its dark wings.

At last, a dragon they cannot defeat.

She shifts in his arms, glances up at him. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes dark, her lips painfully cracked, but she is beautiful. Her vallasin shines in the firelight, and Dorian would mourn for Tevinter, that it has never known the strength that the Dalish carry within them.

"Tell me how you'll change the world," she says.

"But you won't be-"

She frowns at him. "Obviously. You make me believe that the world will be better, after I'm gone. That even Tevinter can be saved."

"Tevinter can be saved, but… it'll mean less without you to see it."

Ellana closes her eyes. "Then make me see it."

For a moment he stares at her, struck dumb. Then he closes his eyes, summons up every memory he has, and there are many. Tevinter was a prison, but it was home, and he loves it still. He describes Minrathous, its vast catacombs with the statues of its archons, worn blind with centuries; its grand arena, and how he dreams of it as an academy; its markets, and how they will bustle with thousands of souls, free all.

An empire of justice. An empire of conscience. An empire of freedom.

She slackens against him, and he looks down to find her eyes closed, a smile on her lips, as though she sees Minrathous itself, the stone against the water, the sun sinking over its towers and gardens.

"A beautiful dream," she says as he trails off. "Make it real."

He cannot speak for the grief in his chest. Tears well in his eyes, the kohl stinging.

She touches his face with a cold hand. "Dorian Pavus. When you don't believe in yourself, remember that I believed in you."

He manages a nod, and bends to kiss her hair. "Thank you," he says, "for everything."

"My honor and my privilege," she whispers, and he places her carefully back into her bed, draws the sheets up to her chin, maneuvering things by touch alone, for he is blind with tears, his mustache wet with them, a terrible clot thick in his throat.

He will make Tevinter change, and in its great squares he will raise her banner. His dream will live.

-

Bull holds her, the bed creaking beneath his weight. She is curled into herself, her sharp spine against his chest. His hand spans the hollow of her belly, thin skin stretched tight as a drum. Her hand rests atop his, and it is cold as the snow outside.         

He knows what it is to feel broken, to feel untouchable: to have people look at you and see horror. How sometimes the only thing that means anything is the warmth of another.

The Qun has words for martyrdom, but they mean nothing here, in the face of this oncoming darkness, this monstrous trade they are forced to make.

She laces her thin fingers through his, grips him hard, as though he can hold her to this world.

Bull is strong as steel, but here, his strength is not enough.

He would never have thought he could come to this. When she came to them on a storm-wracked beach, slipping through the trees like a wraith, and gazed at him with somber and weary eyes-

He had thought he would die at her side, perhaps, or in some far-flung country. He had never thought she would depart the world first, and that he would grieve so for it.

She sighs, and the sound rattles in her chest.

He engraves this moment in his soul: the faint rise and fall of her ribs against the inside of his arm, her failing warmth, the whisper of her breathing.

She trusted him despite all evidence to the contrary, accepted him and his people without complaint. Asked nothing of him but his courage and his axe, and he gave them and friendship besides.

"Boss."

She rasps an inquiring sound. 

"The Chargers and I- we couldn't have asked for a better boss. Or a better friend."

Ellana takes a deep breath, squeezes his fingers.

"Nor I."

He holds her as though he can shield her from the horrors outside the room, from the price that must be paid, but no strength and no power in the world can stop the bargain that has been made, all unknowing.

The Iron Bull understands trades: gold for a secret, a letter for a death, one life for the world.

He understands the necessity of what will happen.

It doesn't make her any easier to lose.

-

The Inquisitor is shrunken and still in the bed, her face pale, nearly waxen.         

Vivienne takes a seat beside the bed, ignoring the stifling heat of the room with long practice.

Lavellan opens her eyes. "Madame."

Vivienne is struck by the absurdity of the situation. She does not even like Lavellan - she is undisciplined, thinks that mages should be allowed free rein, that she can attend balls in Dalish rags, that there is hope for the Dalish, but worst of all she understands Vivienne, knows her.

Lavellan knows that Vivienne seeks power, and fears her for it.

Such naiveté, to think that power is an unquestioned evil, and not a good. Hypocritical, too, for a woman, hailed as Thedas' hero and given carte blanche to do what she likes, to look down on Vivienne for seeking the same.

Still. It doesn't make it fair. Lavellan has asked for none of this, and has accepted the burden of command, of sacrifice, with admirable strength.

"I will not say, 'don't be afraid.'"

Lavellan half-smiles. "Then you do me a better service than most of the world, Madame de Fer."

True. In Montsimmard, before the Harrowings, some fool would always tell the poor initiates to not be afraid, as though fear was a mistake. As though fear would not save their lives.

Fear will not save Lavellan's life, not now, and it has been a good life. Strange and powerful and gone too soon, like a comet or a spell.

"They will place you beside the Hero of Ferelden in their myths," Vivienne says.

Lavellan coughs, levers herself up to clear her throat. "There are worse fates than shemlen myths."

"True."

She pauses. She has no idea what to say to this woman, who has been enemy and friend, destroyed the world and built it anew - not as Vivienne would like, but there is time for her to change it. Because she has time, and that is the one thing Lavellan no longer has. 

It is a gift, and a burden.

"You have changed the world, many would say for the better. Never doubt that, Inquisitor. While I have not always agreed with your decisions, I am glad that I was there to see them. Becoming part of history is a privilege I do not take lightly."

"I am glad to have had you at my side, Madame Vivienne." There is no artifice in Lavellan's voice. 

Vivienne hesitates. Offers, "Were you Andrastian, I would hope for you to walk in the Maker's light. But as you are not, what shall I say?"

Lavellan blinks, and for a moment, shame burns hot in Vivienne's gut. How has she treated this woman, that she is so surprised by momentary kindness?

"You wish to know?"

"I do."

Lavellan sinks into the pillows, a smile touching her lips. Her eyes slip shut. "Then say this:  

O Falon'Din

Lethanavir--Friend to the Dead         

Guide my feet, calm my soul,

Lead me to my rest."

A simple, quiet prayer for a life that was neither.

Vivienne repeats the words, and startles to see tears on Lavellan's sunken cheeks.

"Thank you, Vivienne," Lavellan whispers.

Too close, too much-

Vivienne stands, fusses her skirt back into place.

"May Falon'Din meet you on the roads beyond the Veil, Inquisitor."

She wishes she could cry for the agony of it all, the tragedy of this woman, this elf who has upended the world in her wake, but she is Madame de Fer, and the name is a cage.

What may she weep for, if not for this?

But Madame de Fer may not weep, and for the first time since she became such, she regrets.

-

Sera says the only thing she knows to say: a terrible joke that leaves Ellana wheezing with laughter, because she can't-         

She can't be honest about this, how much it hurts, because if she does she'll never recover-

In the end, all she can say is, "You weren't so bad, for a Dalish."

Ellana sobers. "You weren't so bad, for a city elf."

Sera nods to her and leaves, because what else can she say? The world is rotten and fucked and unfair, and raging against it doesn't do a damn thing, and she refuses to weep over Ellana's deathbed where Ellana is fucking dying-

Better if Ellana doesn't worry about her.

Better if Sera doesn't cry.

After Corypheus, maybe.

After it's done.

-

Blackwall - Thom Rainier, though the name will never rest easy on his shoulders again - stands at the foot of her bed, hands behind his back. It feels eerily like his judgment, where she stared down at him and condemned him to strive to be a better man.         

The burden strangles him. That she, who has been heroic, has had so many years stripped from her, and he - a coward, a traitor - has so many left to live-

What Maker would will this?

How can he make sense of this?

She gazes at him, silent, still in the vast bed.

He has never been good with words, and the speech he'd carefully composed while waiting flies out of his head, crumbles between his fingers. He struggles for something, finally says,

"I will - I will live my life to make you proud."

She stares, unsmiling, withered away, alive only with fierce intention to see this last war done.

"I will not be here to see whether you live a good life or not, Thom Rainier. It will not matter to me. Live a good life because the world is full of terrible wrongs to be righted, not because of me."

He bows his head. "Thank you for the chance to do so."

She nods at him, and it's a benediction.

-

Cole tucks rare eldermoss beneath her pillow as she rests between visits: a Dalish blessing for sweet dreams, for peace, for comfort in Falon’Din’s country.

She does not wake, but her hand finds the eldermoss, clenches it tight.

Falon’Din awaits her, but the way is now prepared.

There is nothing else he may do to help her, not now.

-

Varric thinks he should be used to this by now, after Kirkwall fell, and Hawke left, and they all scattered to the winds, his strange makeshift family obliterated in one swoop.         

He'll never be used to loss.

Ellana looks as bad as Anders did in his last years, skin and bone kept alive by the fierce spirit burning inside, the terrible determination to see this last thing done. She's on her side, one thin hand curled against her cheek, her left hand - nearly all Anchor now - hidden beneath the covers.

Part of him notes every detail - the firelight on her lashes, still the bronze of youth, the heavy scent of smoke and illness, the cavernous hollow of her throat - but he fights it down, because this is not something fit to be written about. This is not a moment he will ever share.

This is his last moment with one of his greatest friends, and he must be here, even though it rips him to the core.

Ellana stirs, licks at dry lips, and he holds a chip of ice to her lips for her to eat, though he can't help but remember her as she was: efficient, calm, solitary, refusing to ask for help. Was she really that woman, or had she been forced to become that because of illness?

Had he ever really known her?

Water runs over her cracked and bleeding lips, and she draws it into her mouth, swallows.

"What are the soldiers saying?" Her eyes stay closed as she speaks, as if to conserve the last measure of her strength.

Varric glances at the windows, where in the courtyard below, hundreds of soldiers have gathered around campfires, their voices uplifted as one.

"They're praying for you. For Thedas. The creepy ones are even calling you Andraste reborn."

She snorts. "I doubt Andraste constantly fell off her halla or had to worry about her knuckles going stiff."

Varric leans back in his chair, smiles at her. If it's tired, wobbly, she won't see. "If she did, they wouldn't keep it; those details humanize your hero, and whoever wrote the Canticles didn't want that. Besides, long Canticle recitations are already boring enough."

Ellana half-smiles, opens one eye to peer at Varric. For all that she lies still and somber, a fragile shape beneath pale sheets, her eyes still gleam with life. "No one warned me that dying heroically was so boring."

Varric swallows. "Got to make people want to do it," he says, but his voice is thick.

He wishes Hawke were here to punch him in the shoulder until the threat of tears recedes.

"Vivienne said they'll place me besides the Hero of Ferelden," Ellana grumbles. Her voice is a reedy thing, pressured, as though her lungs shrink with every breath.

"I talked to Morrigan about her." A bad decision on his part, but Varric was curious, and Ellana was dying, and he'd thought that someone else who'd seen their leader cross the Veil before them might have advice.

"What was she like?"

Varric stares at his hands, remember Morrigan's face: the pain in her tight mouth, the resignation in her voice. The Warden must have been special, to make the Witch of the Wilds mourn her so.

"Quiet, Morrigan said. Always interested in other people, who they were, how they lived. And though she had a shield and a sword and cleaved darkspawn in two, she was still - surprisingly young." Morrigan had looked away at that, swallowed hard.

'It is my greatest regret that I was not with her as she smote the archdemon. That she died thinking me a betrayer. Do not treat the gift of this last hour with your Inquisitor lightly, Master Varric.'

Ellana blinks. Her eyelids look bruised. "When the end came, was she afraid?"

Varric bites his lip, remembers Fenris, Isabella, Bethany - all afraid, and yet going forth, because they were who they were. "Yes. She was."

"Oh," says Ellana, and slackens against the bed, as though some chain has been loosed. "Yet no one tells that part of the story, do they? Will anyone know after I'm gone that I was terrified, that I thought of running?" Her voice scratches, grows wet, tears welling in those terrible green eyes. "That I want to live, and I'll die for this, I have no choice, but I-"

"Oh, Ellana-" he can't breathe, he can't think, he's so goddamn sick of loss-

"I don't want to go quietly," her chest heaves for breath, words rattling against her ribs, "I don't want them to make me a myth and tell everyone that I never feared death, that I wasn't real."

"I won't let them," he promises, and she blinks at him, stunned, "I'll tell your story right. 'The Tale of the Inquisitor,' and I'll make everyone know that you fell off your halla and were hopeless with a bow and that you hated fish. They might call you the Herald, but they'll know you were real. That you lived, and were afraid, and died as a mortal, because you were one of us."

She reaches for his hand, and he gives it.

“Varric.” Her voice is one to move mountains. “Don’t let them make me a myth.”

She already is, but the truth will do her no good, not now.

“Ellana. I swear. I’ll make the world remember you.”

He hopes it is not a false promise.

-

It seems appropriate that Cassandra is the last to speak. She brought Ellana to the Inquisition, gave her the news, prayed for her soul night after night.

Ellana gazes at her with tired eyes, propped up on pillows, old tears from other conversations on her cheeks. "Cassandra."

"Inquisitor. Ellana," she amends, when Ellana frowns at her.

"The men and the fortress are ready?"

Cassandra glances out the window at the fortifications below. "As much as we can be."

"The grave is ready?"

"Yes." Casssandra had dug it herself in the garden, the splintered handle of the shovel tearing at her palms, Dorian and Bull and Varric standing behind her, silent.

Mother Giselle had prayed over it, Dalish soldiers had tossed unknown flowers into the hollow, and now it waited, an empty tomb.

"Good." Ellana leans back into the pillows, dwarfed by them, by the burden heavy on her shoulders. "You know what to do when they bring me back?"

Maker, she resents this, resents being the architect of the funeral, of the grave, but Ellana would only ask this of someone she trusts, would not burden Cullen with it, and so Cassandra has the duty.

"Yes. The seed is in my quarters."

"Thank you for handling this," Ellana says, and she looks so horribly young in that moment.

"It was my honor."

Ellana's eyes drift shut. "Honor. They say I'll be honored forever for this. What need have the dead of honor?"

Cassandra studies her fingers. Guilt clogs her throat. She did not give Ellana the Anchor, but she kept her here, made her the Herald. Prolonged her suffering.

"No guilt, Cassandra."

She startles, looks up to find Ellana gazing at her, weary, smiling.

"It wasn't such a bad life."

"Not long enough," is all Cassandra can muster, but Ellana only shrugs one shoulder, the motion seeming to drain her strength.

"I had friends and home, more laughter than tears, more joy than sorrow. What greater life may one desire?"

Not even a mention of power or lands or glory. Of being Inquisitor, or shaping history, or saving Thedas.

Only the essentials of a life.

"Still." Cassandra struggles to speak, because even though Ellana does not wish her guilt, it weighs on her. "I am sorry. I’m sorry that I must ask this of you. I’m sorry that I’m losing a friend.”

“But not sorry that the Breach will be closed.”

She wishes she could be. She wishes that more than she has ever wanted anything else in her life, but Truth is what she stands for, and she cannot lie. Not to Ellana, who deserves more than that.

“No,” she manages, and then she allows herself to give into grief.

"It's all right, Cassandra," Ellana says, soft, her very gentleness a cruelty. "I go of my own will, unbound and unburdened."

Cassandra gazes at her through the veil of her tears, opens her mouth to speak, but outside, the cry goes up: Corypheus.

No, the moment cannot be here, the dragon cannot be closing its wings, she can't go, not yet-

Ellana closes her eyes, taking one last deep breath, and then she pins Cassandra with her gaze and says,    

"Help me to face him."

Cassandra lifts her from the bed, choking back horror at how light she's become, how childlike she feels in Cassandra's arms- sets her on the floor, holds her upright-

Everyone is there now, and there are tears on some faces, grim determination on others, and in the middle of them all, Ellana, her hand a great light, a torch for the way-

Ellana looks at them all. There is the ghost of youth in her eyes, the faint spark of the years unlived, but she does not weep. Only says, voice a weak whisper,

"Let us go."

-

Ellana stands in the sky, her companions at her back, but here, at last, it is only her and Corypheus.         

She reaches for him, Anchor screaming, burning her alive from the inside out, and she tears-

“You feared death?” She bares her teeth, because the moment is here, the last sight, the last breath-

“Fear it now,” she says, and pulls the Fade into him, through him-

He screams, face twisted in a rictus of hatred, pain, and she would pity him, but she cannot, because he is taking her life from her, all her years still to come-

The Anchor snaps, the ever-present agony in her hand flickering out of existence.

Corypheus falls.

Ellana staggers back, bones going to water, and slips. Someone catches her, lays her down gently on the stone. Hot tears splash on her face, her chest where her heart skips a beat, then one, then two-

Out of the corner of her eyes, flickering in her darkening vision-    

A blue surcoat over silver mail, a woman with shield and sword.

The Warden.

She breathes out.

The Warden kneels at her side, and her face, careworn and kind, is the only light in the shadow.

Lay down your arms.

She cannot feel her daggers any longer. The consuming fire in her hand has burned itself out. Numbness, and the absence of pain. No greater peace than this.

Victory is yours.

She closes her tired eyes. The rocks beneath her back fade into softness. No sound but her heartbeat, and the Warden's voice.

"Is it done?"

The Warden's hand rests on her heart, and her touch soaks Ellana in warmth.

Your war is over, Ellana Lavellan. Inquisitor.

Her heartbeat slows. Falters. Fades. Darkness, and silence, and warmth, and the Warden's voice and hand, guiding her up and into glory-

Lay down your burdens. The greater light awaits you now.

It is done.