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“Cassandra,” the Inquisitor says out of the blue one day, “I need help.”
She’s just gotten her sword stuck in the practice dummy, and she has one foot awkwardly planted on where its groin would be as she tries to pull it out. She grunts before she responds, somewhat distracted, “I—would be honoured, Inquisitor. If you would—give me a moment.”
The sword pulls free and she raises her arm to wipe the sweat from her brow. She gasps for breath and it comes disperses into the cold morning air as thick white puffs. They are alone in the practice yard, the sun still rising above Skyhold’s half-repaired ramparts, and she is used to Emren Lavellan joining her for her early morning training. That he stops mid-swing and proclaims he needs help, of all things, is borderline absurd—normally they enjoy the silence as they work, speaking only to suggest what weapons they might spar with or what forms they might improve together.
But his expression is eager, his amber eyes wide and the olive skin under them marred with dark skin, and Cassandra finds herself frowning in concern.
“Yes?” she says when he does not speak, lowering her weapon. “What is it, my friend?”
His hands are white-knuckled on his greatsword and his expression as he considers what to say twists the bold lines of his vallaslin.
She almost considers teasing him, just to lighten the mood, but she is not as easygoing as Varric or Bull, so she remains silent, considering the way his hands worry at the leather that’s come loose on the sword’s grip. His ears are physically drooping, just a little, and the sight of it is so strange that she finds herself staring without even thinking.
She blinks rapidly and meets his gaze when his eyes dart up from the ground at his bare toes.
“I need to know about human courtship,” he blurts, the words all running together as one. His jaw clamps shut on the last syllable, and his expression as he finished the sentence is one of abject horror.
Cassandra, for her part, stares at him rather stupidly. “What?” she asks, not because she means to but simply because her mouth moves on its own and when it does that sound has to come out of it.
Emren opens his mouth and closes it several times before he lets out the most frustrated, embarrassed sigh and ducks his head. “I uh—I need—you know. It’s for—forget it.”
He turns and moves to the weapons rack, and he manages a few extremely stiff steps before Cassandra says, “Wait.”
He stops and looks over his shoulder at her, eyes wide.
“You might…” She clears her throat. “If this is a matter of policy or… protocol, you might be better off asking Josephine. She is quite knowledgeable in etiquette across Thedas.”
The expression on his face tells her he hadn’t even considered their ambassador. “Oh,” he says, softly, turning to face her again. “I suppose—yes I could have. But uh, she won’t be in her office for—a few hours, and I was up late last night thinking and—well here you are, and you read all those books—”
“What books,” Cassandra hisses, and the tall elf physically shrinks under the force of her gaze.
“Books that are—Elgar’nan, I shouldn’t have said that. Perfectly normal books! Anyone would read them! I just assumed because you had that little wistful smile when you were reading them around the campfire—”
“Wait,” she says, and she leans her sword against the stone wall next to her. She must look quite threatening, standing there glaring at the Inquisitor with a sword in her hands. Her friendship with this young Dalish warrior is at times uncertain, but she respects him and does not want to distance herself from him over this. And he did ask for her help, albeit very strangely. “You were—I thought you looked miserable this morning. Did you sleep at all last night?”
His shoulders slump. “When I did I just dreamed about lying in bed thinking,” he says, defeated. “I just—I’ve never, you know, with a human—alright yes I have but it was one time and I only had any luck at all because my lethallan told me what to do and how to say hello let’s—you know—without sounding like a total idiot.”
She holds up a hand to slow his rambling, and he clamps his jaw abruptly shut again. She can’t help a smile—she’s never heard him speak so many words at once, and she finds herself remembering just how young he is.
“I—I am not an expert,” she says, as gently as she can. “Especially not in… this.”
He somehow seems to deflate even more, and she says, hurriedly, “But I will help you all I can. Do the Dalish have… a particular way to court someone?”
He sticks his sword point down in the dirt and begins to pace, his hands crossed over his chest. “I tried that, Cassandra. I looked for—forweeks for a suitable kill, and I took the greatest care in skinning it—and then I didn’t have measurements for his hands so I had to look at them foreven longer just to find someone who was about his size—”
“Wait,” says Cassandra, blinking rapidly. “You were stalking those August Ram in the Hissing Wastes.”
His cheeks darken with a furious blush, and he freezes in place. He looks about to deny it for a whole heartbeat before his shoulders sink again. “I—yes.”
“You—we relegated significant Inquisition resources to that mission.”
“Yes.”
She allows herself one exasperated sigh. Then she shakes it off and says, “So I presume you made a pair of gloves.”
He glances up at her, appropriately bashful. “Yes.”
“For Dorian.”
His spine jerks completely straight, and he blinks several times at her with wide, startled eyes.
She meets his gaze with an expression she hopes is without judgement. It took her three days to clean the sand out of her armour and she still isn’t sure she got it all out.
He sighs, wistfully. “Yes.”
“Well?” Cassandra prompts when he says no more. “Have you given them to him?”
Emren begins to pace again. “Yes.”
She resists the urge to grab his shoulders and shake him. “And?”
He throws his arms up in the air and makes a frustrated noise deep in his throat. “He—he said they were quaint. And then he put them aside and kept reading.”
“Quaint,” Cassandra parrots.
“Quaint!” His footsteps have made a line of green in the thin dusting of snow on the ground. “That—that’s not much better thancharming, or rustic. I should be grateful it wasn’t interesting.”
She doesn’t quite know what to say, but she can picture the exacttone of voice Dorian would have said it in, and she finds herself trying her best not to smile.
“I’m—Cassandra that was all I had. There is no more Dalish way to say to the person you’re interested in, hello, I would like to have—you know—with you.”
“You can just say sex,” she tells him, the corners of her lips twitching upwards.
Emren stares at her blankly. Cassandra has to bite her lip to keep herself from laughing.
“Sorry,” he says finally, and he rubs the back of his neck with an absent hand.
“So,” she says, ignoring his furious blushing, “you have exhausted the Dalish way completely?”
“Aside from asking for him to meet my by the statue of Fen’harelat midnight? Yes. Maybe it wasn’t the right gift…” Emren starts to pace again. “I thought he was cold so I made him gloves—maybe he wants something less practical? He likes books but I can’t make one of those. Jewellery? I was a da’len the last time I made something like that…”
“Why don’t you just tell him you’re interested?” Cassandra asks.
Emren looks at her like she’s grown an extra head.
“Or,” she continues, trying not to smile too much at his expression—she’s supposed to be helping him, not laughing at him, “there are more traditional human ways to approach… courting. Flowers? Poetry? Candles? In less noble circumstances you might offer his mother three sheep and a cow.”
Emren blinks at her.
She sighs, exasperated. “You asked,” she says, feeling a little embarrassed.
“I—I did.” He shuffles his feet and manages to look a little bashful. “I just—where can I get a cow in the mountains? The sheep I can scrape off the walls—”
Cassandra’s answering laugh is more of an undignified snort. Emren’s answering grin is lopsided and easy, and though his eyes are still tired they have that mischievous gleam that’s been missing all morning.
“And what,” comes a familiar voice from somewhere behind Emren, “pray tell, is so funny so early in the morning?”
“Dorian!” Emren more yells than says, turning around with all the grace of a wobbly toy soldier. All still legs and locked arms as he attempts in the worst possible way to look natural.
Maker, Cassandra thinks. He’s helpless.
Dorian is approaching, making faces at the puffs of his breath in the air, his boots crunching in the thin layer of fresh snow on the ground. “It’s much too cold to be laughing at anything,” Dorian protests—as dramatically as possible, Cassandra thinks with a small smile to herself. “Whatever you two are prattling on about can wait until we’re inside and eating whatever passes for breakfast in this miserable country we’ve settled ourselves in.”
Dorian removes his hands from his pockets long enough to gesture with no small amount of significance to the grey sky over their heads. “And look,” he proclaims, even as Emren’s eyes follow his hands and not where they’ve pointed, “it’s snowing again. As if freezing all night trying to give some semblance of order to that disaster of a library wasn’t enough, I have to suffer through howling winds and blowing storms in this draft-riddled fortress throughout the day as well.”
“You’re wearing them,” Emren says, and Cassandra notices the soft, blue-tinged leather gloves on Dorian’s hands.
“I—” Dorian actually stumbles over his words for a moment, something that makes Cassandra’s eyebrows shoot right up. “I find them quite well made,” he finishes, his voice as soft as the smile creeping over his features. “Excellent craftsmanship, really. Suppose I was too busy being an ass to notice before.”
Cassandra makes a noise deep in her throat—it’s not quite as disgusted as usual, but Dorian and Emren don’t seem to notice. “Get a room,” she tells them, picking up her practice sword and moving to the weapons rack to deposit it.