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It was difficult to look in the mirror now, even more so than after Haven. The Inquisitor was used to avoiding reflections, but this… This was different. Then, he was still at the beginning, his hands full of tasks to accomplish, too busy to stop and think properly about what happened. The wounds on his face healed quickly and the scars were almost welcome: a visible reminder of the things that changed. Deep lines in his skin always helped him remember that he was no longer in the Circle. He was no longer alone.
Now it was an end of some sort, even if not the definite one he feared for months, when the pain spread through the nerves of his left hand. Right now there was only emptiness in place of suffering, so sudden that it almost made him numb. He could not think straight, could not stay still for a moment longer, but others expected him to do so, as if he had lost his whole life along with that cursed limb. He untangled his hair with trouble and long waves fell onto his back, finally spreading across his shoulders untamed as he ran his fingers through them. Stripped of his rank, crippled and defenceless, how could he expect others to still want to follow him? Without his hand he was a Herald of nobody, only himself, and Herbert Trevelyan never had much of anything in his life.
It was not hard because of the arm, his Inquisition, or even the sum of those two. Herbert never possessed many things just for the sake of owning them: only his mother’s recipe, a few drawings and a number of letters stashed between Varric’s books in his bags, an enchanted ring he always kept on his finger and a medallion on his neck. There was an amulet tied to his belt from Cole, a knife from the Iron Bull, and a brilliant ruby set in silver that he kept in his pocket. Nothing more.
He really had to cut his hair now.
It was easy to find a pair of scissors, harder to cut anything with one hand. His hair slipped from his grasp, so he had to tie them together before he could do anything else. Then it was time to decide: how short? He was not sure, and he determined the fates of whole nations in the span of seconds not so long ago. Funny how it worked sometimes. The mirror reflected him perfectly as he was thinking, contouring his body with the whiteness of bandages and painting an image that could only be incomplete. Practicality soon won over the doubts and he decided: short enough to manage, long enough to cover at least a part of his face.
Herbert could not bring himself to make the first cut.
He only noticed he was not alone when someone slipped scissors from his fingers, Dorian’s hands shaking badly as he untangled the tie from Herbert’s hair. The mirror reflected every detail without mercy: deep shadows under his red eyes and wrinkles he could swear were not there the day before. But now it was easier to focus, to take deep breath and maybe even smile as his lover’s fingers combed through his tangled hair, as if the incomplete picture could still be whole.
“Let me help,” Dorian offered finally, almost without any room for refusal, and Herbert nodded, his throat too tight to say anything at all. “We both know that when I do it, it would be perfect.”
When he was finished, the ends of way too short hair tickled Herbert's neck.
“I really hate you,” Dorian said, but when Herbert looked in it, the mirror as always reflected only the truth.