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Rain began as Jinx Hawke hurried down the thick stone wall damming the river outside Crestwood. Gentle, unlike the deluge that relentlessly pounded them until the inquisitor closed the Fade rift in the center of the lake.
At least, what had formerly been a lake. Jinx glanced out to where the ruins of a village lay. Rain drops dusted her cheeks, the bared skin of her arms.
She picked up her pace, soon arriving at the tavern door and throwing it open, practically flinging herself inside and pulling the door shut behind her. The abrupt darkness forced her to pause. She tapped her thumb against the side of her hand, willing her eyes to adjust already.
Jinx had looked everywhere, this was the last place that Solas could be, unless he’d quit the camp entirely. It wasn’t impossible, she’d grown used to running across him in unusual places, but she rarely had to seek him out. He was always just…there.
Except now that she wanted–no, needed–to find him. Caer Bronach was a day’s journey the wrong direction to the Western Approach, but she’d convinced Stroud to make the stop anyway. “For supplies.” The truth of their stop was much more complex. She wondered if Stroud might suspect why, but he’d certainly never guess who.
Already the shadows had brightened, aided by the torches lighting the small hall. She forged ahead, toward the great room in front of her. Her eyes were immediately drawn upward to the upper level. Before she could take a step, a chuckle, deep and throaty, drifted from her left. “Discovered my hiding spot, I see.”
Jinx’s back straightened as she tossed her hair over her left shoulder and turned towards his voice. “I did nothing of the sort,” she said, willing flippancy into her voice in a vain attempt to cover the rapid beating of her heart. “I simply needed a drink and where better to find one of those than a tavern?”
She looked at him quickly, intent on not allowing her eyes to linger. He sat on a low stool next to the fireplace, an ankle draped carelessly over the opposite knee. A thin volume was balanced on his leg, his hand holding a piece of charcoal just above the page. “Drawing?”
Before he could answer, she continued her perusal of the room, looking for the alcohol stores. Barrels in a back corner, but no bottles that she could discern.
“However did you guess?” His reply was dry, a hint of irony teasing at the edges of the not-truly-a-question.
“I’ll have you know…” she started, turning back toward him, but trailed off. He lifted a bottle towards her, his slender fingers wrapped around the neck, offering it to her. “Ahh. A man after my own heart.”
He lifted an eyebrow as she stepped forward to take the bottle. The last step brought her near enough to him that she caught his scent, like warm spice and fresh herbs. A curious combination, one she’d never thought would work together, but on him, somehow it was perfect. Her fingers brushed his as she took it from him, and a kaleidoscope of butterflies took flight inside her chest.
“Well, if I had a heart anyway.” She pulled back, a shiver ran down her spine despite the warmth from the fire. She covered it by making a show of inspecting the bottle. No markings of any kind, but still sealed. Might not be any good, but at least it’d be safe.
Solas closed his book, setting it and his charcoal on the wood pile next to him.“Lady Hawke–”
“Maker,” she interrupted and waved a dismissive hand. “Call me Jinx. We’re past all that Lady Hawke nonsense.”
“I admit,” he said as she slipped her knife out of its sheath at her thigh and lined it up to remove the wax seal. “I had hoped you would allow me to use Hyacinth.”
The knife slipped at his use of her Maker-forsaken given name, glancing over the wax and into air. Murder danced at the tip of her tongue as she jerked her head up. Solas’s straight face betrayed nothing, though amusement danced in his eyes.
“Cullen must have a death wish,” she ground out, lining the knife up again and slicing the wax with one swift, sharp cut, “if he told you about that.”
Solas chuckled. “The commander kept your secret well.”
“Then I’m definitely killing Varric.” She returned the knife to its sheath and worked the cork back and forth to loosen it, wiping away crumbling wax as she went. When the cork finally released, it barely made a sound. Jinx sniffed and reeled back at the pungent scent. Too bad. Whatever was in this bottle would have to be good enough for tonight.
She brought the bottle to her lips and upended it into a swig. It burned down her throat, like torch fuel. She blinked rapidly and cleared her throat, fighting off the cough that threatened to upend the contents of her stomach. Jinx held the bottle out in front of her, eyeing it suspiciously. “Maferth’s balls, what is this?”
“I see your reputation is well earned,” he observed dryly.
“My sparkling vocabulary? My witty humor?” Jinx flopped to the bearskin on the floor in front of the fire. Against her better judgment, she struck a pose, bending one leg as she turned her body to give him a coquettish look. “Or perhaps my stunning good looks?”
Solas’s eyes held her gaze for a beat longer than necessary. “I believe Varric called it your ‘stabbiness’.”
“Ah, that.” She did appreciate Varric’s vote of confidence when it came to her knife skills. “What can I say? Knives are more subtle than magic and my sense of self-preservation is top notch after all.”
Solas lifted an eyebrow. “I would not call that”–he nodded toward the bottle Jinx was bringing back to her lips–”self-preservation.”
She winked at him and then swallowed down another gulp from the mysterious bottle. It still burned going down, but no worse than the first time. With another clearing of her throat, she gazed into the fire and lazily waved in his direction, “Yes, yes. Desperate times and all.”
He didn’t respond, but it was nearly no time at all before she heard the gentle sounds of charcoal on paper. She chances a glance his direction. He once more had his notebook in his lap and was bent over it, hand moving to capture something. When he glanced up with a certain look, she realized he must be sketching her.
For once, she managed to keep her mouth shut and let him work. It reminded her of the first time they’d met. Freshly arrived at Skyhold, she’d wandered through his rotunda, hoping to bump into him. Her curiosity had been well and truly piqued by Varric’s descriptions of the man, but Cullen’s warning was enough to march her straight in.
The rotunda was empty when she arrived, but she couldn’t resist peeking through the books spread across his desk. Especially one that involved theories on the Fade. She’d never known anyone to take an interest in itself , so she’d curled up on his couch to read and next thing she knew she’d woken covered in a blanket with a few more books next to her, all on similar topics.
He’d been hunched over his table, intently charting what she later learned was those earliest frescoes, capturing the birth of the Inquisition and what came after...
She looked at him, his focus as deliberate now as it had been that day. He looked up at her, his face half in shadow, and smiled.
The butterflies erupted again and she took another swig of the alcohol, the turning in her stomach shifting to keeping its contents intact. “What are you drawing anyway?”
His hand hovered over the page, charcoal in mid-air. A question seemed poised to tumble from him lips, but instead he pressed them closed, set the charcoal down, and handed her the sketchbook.
It was her.
Of course Jinx had known it, after all she’d watched him sketching other things enough, but it filled her with a warmth all the same. The sketch was only partially complete. Her left was all soft lines while the right had begun to take shape. And the way he’s captured her was with her scar front and center. It was the most honest she’d ever seen it depicted. Most shied away from showing the Champion’s scar as it truly was, but nor was Solas most people.
She flipped back a page, not wanting to see the reality of what she’d become. She didn’t look much different from the Jinx Hawke she’d always been—minus that nasty scar and a few greying hairs—but inside she might as well have been a different person entirely. One could never really be the same after the decisions she’d made and what had been borne of those decisions.
The previous page was the village, before. It was filled with people. “Is this…” she glanced up at him, leaving the question unfinished. What could she say? Is this the dead that haunted this place?
He watched her, his gaze as intent as when he’d been sketching. A quick nod. “Memories. From the Fade.”
“All these people…” Jinx murmured, running a hand down the page. “They were looking for safety. For help. They needed compassion, and instead they were drowned.”
When she looked back up, Solas’s gaze was still on her. There was a look on his face she couldn’t quite understand, yet it seemed that he once more saw through the front she’d built for herself.
“But there were darkspawn after all.” Another swig, to cover the pain of the truth. She was warming up quite nicely, but not enough for the hard edges of her to soften away. “What’s a little collateral damage to defeat them?”
“Lady—Jinx,” he quickly corrected, “I have heard of what you did in Kirkwall. The hard choices you—“
She shook her head, sharply. “I don’t want to talk about Kirkwall, not now.” Kirkwall was never far in her memories and in her dreams, lingering. Another swig of the tavern swill, another moment of fighting back the nausea. It was all better than remembering. Nothing good ever came of that. She pulled her legs to her chest, wrapping her arms around them.
“All I meant,” Solas’s voice was gentler than she deserved, “is that leaders must make choices, even when they are hard ones. Perhaps especially when they are hard ones.”
“I did what I had to do.” Her voice came out small, and she bit her lip. What must he think of her, the great Jinx Hawke crumbling into this.
He slid off the stool onto the floor, coming to sit next to her. “All great leaders do. It is a thankless job, but necessary. Rest well in knowing you did what you had to.”
But there’d been so much blood on her hands and it hadn’t had to be that way. “I don’t sleep,” she blurted, her alcohol-warmed mind willing her to throw caution to the wind. “Not when I’m alone, at least.” Maker, what was she saying? She always slept alone. “I mean, when I’m not sharing a tent with… well, maybe even then. I have nightmares. I just…” Giving up, she turned over her hands so her palms faced the ceiling.
“You’re just tired,” Solas finished for her. She nodded, and he slipped his hands into hers, tugging her toward him. “Come.” Her breath caught at the closeness of him. His eyes searched hers in earnest. “When was the last time you really slept?”
She shrugged one shoulder noncommittally. She couldn’t remember the last time. Less than a handful of times total since that fateful day in Kirkwall.
“Lay down,” he instructed her. She thought she should say something, give him a retort, but the alcohol had gone to her head and she really was so very tired of being strong all the time. So tired of being the one to solve others’ problems and fix her own. That would be for tomorrow.
She laid down on her back, her head near his lap. Solas cleared his throat and she looked up at him, his face upside down in her vision. “May I rub your head? There are some pressure points that—“
“Sounds heavenly. Go ahead.” She closed her eyes, and waited.
When nothing happened, she cracked open an eye to meet his gaze. “Jinx, I’ll be right here with you while you sleep. I promise.”
“I—“ She didn’t know how to properly respond to that, except to say, “Thank you.”
He nodded and moved his hands to her head to start rubbing slow circles on her temple. It didn’t take long before sleep came for her. As she drifted off, she could have sworn she heard Solas telling her that he’d find her in the Fade and deal with her nightmares.