Chapter Text
Tamsin finds, in the weeks following the end of her relationship with Solas, that breakups suck.
She always knew they were terrible, and had experienced a few when she was younger, but it had always been different, always more… final. It helped that the only one that had hurt had been with a hunter from another clan, so they could avoid each other entirely.
But being in Skyhold near Solas, catching sight of him when she enters the rotunda to speak with Dorian or Leliana, planning her traveling parties around him, feeling the ache in her body and emptiness in her bed from his absence… it’s all more painful than she thought it would be.
A week or so after their evening on the tower, Tamsin wakes up and cleans her teeth and splashes her face with cool water as usual. As she’s drying her face, she looks up and catches sight of herself in the mirror. No wonder it wouldn’t work, she thinks, look at me. She immediately knows the thought is madness—Solas’s opinion of her looks had never been in doubt, and he had reaffirmed it up until and including their last evening, and besides, she’s never had a problem with her own face before—but the worm of self-doubt sneaks into her thoughts and digs in, and does not leave.
It starts to get to her. She doesn’t really think about it, but in hindsight she realizes that it was there, apparent to anyone who was looking. She starts putting her hair into a single braid that hangs down her back, lacking the motivation or desire to do anything more complicated—or flattering. Dorian soon offers to teach her a complicated Tevinter braiding style. She declines. Iron Bull pulls her into sparring practice a few times, pitting her against Krem or Dalish, sometimes even going against her himself. She’s grateful for the distraction, but that’s all it is.
There is a lot of planning to be done. As soon as Harding reaches the Western Approach and sends her report, Tamsin goes to meet up with Hawke and Stroud, bringing Varric, Blackwall and Dorian with her. Their encounter with Erimond leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth, and as soon as they return to Skyhold, Tamsin starts preparations for what will be a siege on Adamant fortress. But preparing a siege takes time—a lot of time—and so she has nothing to give her purpose, outside of planning and waiting for their forces to muster.
She can’t stand to be alone in her quarters, and her old comfort of reading in Solas’s study is no longer an option. Eventually, almost without thinking about it, she starts visiting Cullen more often. He seems pleasantly surprised by this, once he gets used to her presence, and she is relieved to find that with him, as with Dorian, Bull, Varric, and on a good day, Vivienne, her chest aches a little less.
She ventures south to check on reports of a new cluster of rifts, and finds that not only is there a new cluster of rifts, they’re very close to each other, which is wonderful, because it pits her, Dorian, Blackwall and Cassandra against four times the usual number of demons. A rage demon gets behind her as she’s trying to close the third of four rifts and leaves an impressively terrible wound down her side and her leg, reopening her healed but tender hip. The journey back to Skyhold is slow and difficult, and Dorian has to steady her with a spell before she can walk up to her rooms without limping atrociously. The surgeon visits her there, a cheerful Elle in attendance, and murmurs about how lucky Tamsin was that the wound had not been worse.
“Yes, lucky,” Tamsin agrees drily. “I am so fortunate that I constantly find myself against foes who are stronger and faster than me, but who I still must subdue in Andraste’s name.”
Elle giggles at the thick sarcasm in her voice, but the surgeon taps the skin beside Tamsin’s wound sharply, earning a yelp of pain.
“You are lucky, Inquisitor, that you find yourself in these difficult battles and emerge with flesh wounds. You are very lucky. You could have easily lost your leg.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Tamsin replies meekly and the surgeon, mollified, patches her up.
She goes to visit Cullen once she’s bandaged and dressed in clean clothes, asks him simple questions about the state of things, and eventually finds herself perched on a hay bale in his office, spinning one of his small throwing daggers—which she hadn't known he had—in her fingers and thinking. She remembers how, shortly after this whole mess with the breach started, a near-fatal error on a fight had made it painfully clear just how out of her depth she was. She had spent the next two months training on her own nearly every night, until she was sure she knew how to fight, instead of just how to hunt. Cullen had noticed her training after a while, and took to waiting for her at the base of the hill she trained on, as he dismissed the recruits to dinner around the same time that she returned to Haven. They would walk back to Haven’s gate together, chatting amiably, and he eventually asked what she was doing on the hill. In his office in Skyhold, Tamsin runs her fingers over a long, thin scar running down her cheek. She’d told Cullen, back then, that she would never become complacent with her skills as a fighter.
The surgeon’s words pop into her mind, and she realizes in a burst of clarity that she has found herself outpaced by her enemies yet again. And so she begins to train in earnest. Heir, the assassin, begins to take her out on two-day excursions into the mountains, and runs Tamsin through grueling drills that leave her sore, shaking, and much too exhausted to think of anything outside of the task right in front of her. That single-mindedness gives Tamsin relief from the constant ache in her chest, and so she takes refuge in training, in pushing herself hard every day. She doesn't think about the fact that she put the mirror in her room into a closet and has yet to get it out. She settles into the idea that her bed will only have her in it from now on, and gives the Inquisition everything she has.
After a month and a half of this, her friends step in. Tamsin is in the kitchen, eating an apple and listening to the head cook talk about grain shortages, when the woman glances up over Tamsin’s shoulder and stops talking.
Tamsin turns around to see Vivienne, of all people, standing in the doorway. The enchantress looks so out of place in the kitchen, with her immaculate white clothing and regal bearing, that it’s almost comical. “Will you excuse us?” Vivienne says to the cook, but it is not a request, and soon they are alone in the kitchen.
“Can I help you?” Tamsin asks, frowning. Why is Vivienne here? And in white silk, no less. Surely she knows that even passing through the kitchen chances soot or soup stains. The cook likes to accost passers-by to sample new recipes.
“My dear,” Vivienne says, “you have been positively morose these last few weeks. I do understand the merit of letting sorrow play itself out, but this is getting out of hand.”
“I… what?” Tamsin’s frown deepens. “How is it getting out of hand? It’s not like things aren’t getting done, Vivienne.”
“Oh, I am aware of that.” The enchantress glides forward, and Tamsin resists the urge to lean away. She is very fond of Vivienne, but the woman is intense. “The problem is not your productivity. It’s your self-care.” She reaches forward and picks up Tamsin’s braid, examining it like a particularly unimpressive trinket, and then lets it fall from her fingers.
“You’re being a little insulting.”
“Such is the price of honesty.” Vivienne fixes Tamsin with a look. It’s not quite a stare, not quite a glare, but it is a commanding, intimidating, and decidedly displeased expression. “I do not know exactly what has happened, though I can surmise the essence of it, given your sudden stark separation from our resident elven apostate.” Tamsin flinches at the mention of him, she knows she does, and it’s a minute movement, but Vivienne sees it and raises an appraising eyebrow. “Hmm. Whatever troubles you must run its course, my dear, but there is no need for you to appropriate the aesthetic of a mouse while it does.”
“A mouse?” Tamsin asks, incredulous. Vivienne takes a small step backwards and gives her an imperious once-over. Tamsin glances down at herself, at the pale brown of her daily wear and the tight tuck of her arms against her body, which she didn’t even realize she was doing.
“Dorian, Josephine, and I depart for Val Royeaux in the morning, and you are coming with us.”
“I… what? Josephine’s going? I can’t leave. There’s too much to do.”
“It will get done whether or not you are here,” Vivienne said firmly. “You have very capable advisors, and I have already spoken with Cassandra about providing the third voice for your council while you are gone. Leliana can address any diplomatic problems that may arise, and should she come across something Josephine must attend to, our spymaster has the fastest ravens in Ferelden.”
“Have you already planned this all out?” Tamsin asks, a little bitterly.
“Of course, my dear.” Vivienne turns, skirts sweeping behind her and somehow stirring up absolutely no dust or soot. “We are leaving after breakfast. Kindly don’t be late.”