Chapter Text
It is a foolish mistake.
He would like to claim that he is not prone to them, but the long record of his life would attest otherwise.
He forgets, sometimes, how swiftly the modern advancements of the world can encroach upon the wild spaces left in it. This region is one he has not run through for a few dozen years. It hardly seems like much time, and yet he does not expect the road; and once it is beneath his racing paws, hard pavement in place of packed soil, he definitely does not expect the car.
It is a blow that would have killed a real wolf.
He is, thankfully, not a real wolf. So it only cracks his ribs and breaks two of his legs, gashes his chest and sends him sprawling across the ground, pained and alarmed. The front of the vehicle dents violently inwards as it screeches to a halt.
Part of him is expecting an ignominious end; an irate driver emerging to finish him off, or speeding away and leaving him to expire on the roadside. His kin are far away and scattered, and would not think to look for him for months. Even magic could not sustain him for that long, and there is so little of it these days, he doubts he could heal his injuries enough to get to safety.
Death by car crash.
It’s almost funny, in a way. Such a mundane thing. Such a common way to go.
The driver gets out.
She’s a petite elven woman, dressed in a bizarre combination of yellow plaid tights and a red sweater. Her blonde hair is straight-cut and wispy. She looks unharmed. He supposes he shall be grateful for that – the accident is as much his fault as hers. It would be a shame to take a relative innocent out with him.
“Holy shit,” the woman says, as soon as she catches sight of him. “It’s a fucking – you’re a fucking – shitebaskets it’s a fucking huge arse wolf.”
Ah, the eloquent tones of one of the People. Truly, he will die satisfied, with such melodious poetry ringing in his ears.
The woman gets back into her car. But she doesn’t drive off, as he is expecting. Instead she seems to sit in place, shooting him disquieted glances as she gathers up her mobile device, and taps her fingers against it for a while. Or at least, that's what he assumes she is doing. He gets confirmation when she calls someone, and lifts it to her ear. He can hear her half of the conversation through her open window.
“...This is why I don’t fucking drive out of the city!” she says, which seems a strange greeting.
“No, you don’t understand. I hit something. My car’s fucking totalled now and it’s a wolf and I’m… well, look, I think it’s still alive. You have to come!”
She sounds rattled. Probably not very old, he thinks. Though most elves live and die young these days.
“...I don’t know, it’s a wolf! What if there are bears out here, too? Are there fucking bears? Am I going to get stranded out here and get eaten by bears or mooses or some shite?”
“...This is why you have to come visit me. In the city. Where people are supposed to live, not freaky animals and dumb arse wolves that try and fight my car!”
“...It just jumped out at me what, was I supposed to do?!”
“...Alright, alright. Yeah, it’s the same road. Yeah, I’ll be here. But you better hurry the fuck up if you don’t want this wolf to die or whatever, because it’s looking not so good.”
There’s a ‘beep’ sound as she hangs up.
Interesting, he thinks. He may actually survive this mess after all. That would be preferable, he decides. If word ever got around that Fen’Harel had been taken out by a simple motor vehicle, his reputation would be left in utter shambles.
Or worse shambles than it's already in, rather.
As it stands, being rescued by shemlen from the side of the road like a common animal is not something he’d like to see get around, either.
It’s a long, painful wait before he hears the rumble of another engine heading up the road. The woman who hit him sits in her car and watches him pensively, as if she half expects him to lunge to his feet and attempt to maul her through the window, and half expects him to expire on the spot.
The new vehicle comes up from behind him, which makes him more nervous than he would care to admit. It slows to a halt before it gets near enough for him to see. The rumbling of it stops, and a door opens, hinges creaking. An older vehicle, he thinks. Large. Perhaps a truck.
Light, rapid footsteps approach.
“Oh no,” he hears a woman’s voice gasp.
Then the new arrival moves into his sight, staring at him with wide, horrified eyes, and he immediately feels a jolt of anxiety. She’s elven, too, but Dalish; dressed in simple jeans and a worn shirt, appropriately barefoot, with gloves on her hands and dirt stains on her knees. Dalish are often hunters, and often dislike wolves for entirely unreasonable motivations that should in no way be related to any possible inconveniences he may or may not have inadvertently caused them over the years.
At least she is not carrying any weapons. In fact, she seems to have some sort of first aid kit in her arms.
She approaches him carefully, slowly, but without fear.
“Cole, get the stretcher!” she calls back towards her vehicle.
The elf who hit him with her car emerges from her vehicle again, only to linger anxiously at her friend's shoulder.
“Is it gonna make it, then?” the wispy blonde asks.
“Can’t call it yet. But you hang in there, my friend,” the Dalish replies, fixing him with an entreating look that he finds himself inexplicably reluctant to deny.
The asked-for ‘Cole’ emerges, then, carrying what he assumes to be 'the stretcher'; a light platform obviously meant to hold relatively large animals.
“I don’t think we have a crate big enough for him,” the youth declares. He’s young, scrawny, and human, and half buried beneath a massive sun hat. But when their eyes meet, there is a flash of undeniable recognition.
A spirit.
A spirit in a body. It’s been centuries since he’s seen it before, but the effect is undeniable.
He wonders if either of the women know.
After a second, the boy looks away.
“You won’t need to put him under,” he says.
“Even friendly animals can lash out when they’re in pain, Cole. Even friendly people, for that matter, and if he won’t fit in a crate it’ll be kinder to knock him out for the drive. Safer, too.”
True enough, he supposes; and while he does not relish being in any way compromised, it’s a small price to pay to ease the nerves of people who are attempting to render him aid.
He’s in a lot of pain, besides. She makes soothing noises, and he is surprised to find them effective. It’s not the crooning baby-sounds of an indulgent owner to their pet. Instead she hums and talks in a low, slow tone, and the easy cadence of her words seems to draw him away from the worst of his agony. And keeps him distracted from the pinch of a needle.
“Stupid wolf,” the blonde mutters at him, her brows knotted and her posture guilty.
“He was running, free. Wild. He forgot that cars existed. That even people did,” the spirit boy says, dreamy yet insightful.
“I imagine most wolves would prefer to forget that people existed, if they could,” the Dalish replies, and her touch is careful, clinical as she assess his injuries. Mindful not to cause him any additional pain, or to linger too close to the range of his jaws.
“Oh, wow. You’re a magnificent one,” she informs him.
He is a little embarrassed at how much the unexpected compliment pleases his increasingly-groggy mind. It’s been far too long since he was in solicitous company.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wolf as big as you before. You must have come a long way to get here, hey? Did you bring your pack along?”
“No,” Cole interjects. “Lonely and alone. Wandering. He has been by himself, preferring the quiet of solitude to the noise and demands of kinship.”
“A lone wolf, hmm?” she replies, and the way she takes the spirit at his word tells him that she knows at least something of the boy’s true nature.
“It’s creepy when you do that,” the blonde says to Cole.
“She feels badly for hitting you with the car. You frightened her,” Cole says, to him.
“Not true you lying tosser!”
“Calm down, Sera. Wolves don’t judge,” the Dalish interjects, smoothing ruffled feathers.
He huffs in amusement, before at last he loses the battle with his consciousness.
~
This wolf, she decides, is the most amazing wolf she’s ever seen in her life.
For one thing, he’s the size of a damn house. It takes herself, Sera, and Cole all lifting together to get him into the back of the truck. And while none of them might look particularly strong, that’s pretty much an optical illusion. Underneath her sweater Sera’s got enough shoulder strength to punch out one of those bears she was worrying over, and Cole’s all wiry muscles, and she spends most her day hauling enough shit around the rehabilitation center and the rest of it practicing with her staff, which isn’t light – so the old standby about ‘spindly’ mages can go stuff itself.
She manages to get a healing spell over the wolf before they settle him into place, and strap him down so he won’t go rattling around the back as soon as they start driving. His fur is pitch black, thick and glossy enough to make her worry that someone might have been keeping him as a pet, and when he clocks out and she checks his mouth, his teeth are in great shape.
Apart from getting creamed by Sera’s tiny little car, he’s superb.
Speaking of Sera’s car, a quick check reveals that most of the damage is superficial. Sera complains about nature and the wilderness and friends who live in ‘bumfuck nowhere’ the whole while.
“I visited you last time,” she reminds her.
“You should visit me every time! You know what doesn’t happen in the city? Fucking wolves, that’s what doesn’t happen in the city!”
“Hence my not living there,” she replies, but tries to keep it good-natured. Sera’s touchy and clearly feels like actual shit for hitting an animal, whatever she says, so there’s no need to rub salt into the wound. It was an accident. Hell, one night she hit a halla herself, and wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole and die of grief when the poor creature didn’t pull through.
Sometimes even being careful and having stellar reflexes just can’t match an animal suddenly bursting onto the road.
“He will make it,” Cole tells her, as they pile back into the truck. She turns the key in the ignition, and checks to make sure Sera’s following them as she pulls out.
“Yeah? You think so?” she asks.
“He’s stronger than a regular wolf.”
She’s not sure if he means that he’s just a really exceptional sort of wolf, or if he means they’ve got some kind of demon-abomination wolf riding in the back. After a minute, she decides it probably doesn’t make much difference. As long as it doesn’t try to bite her head off – and regular animals in pain are as liable for that as non-regular ones – then they’ll still do what they can for him.
It’s their job, and anyway, after the zombie horse they can’t really claim to discriminate.
The Haven Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre isn’t a big organization. Not yet. But they still see a lot of traffic. It’s the area, really. The next nearest animal shelter of any kind is Hawke’s Rescue, and that’s all the way over in sunny Kirkwall. Which means Haven gets the call for the injured wildlife in the region, and for a lot of the abandoned domestic animals, too.
Keeps them busy. She still remembers the evening when Cole turned up, carrying a box full of water-logged kittens he’d pulled out of a river, and looking twice as drenched himself.
They pull up the gravel driveway towards the main building, and she frowns a little when she sees an unfamiliar car already parked at the top of it.
Did Vivienne get another new car? But she almost never visits during the week. Just on Saturdays, usually to drag her out to lunch and make certain that her donations are being well-spent. Besides which, the bland grey sedan really doesn’t look like it’d be her style.
Well, they’ve got a patient in the back, so whoever it is will have to wait.
The wolf’s still sleeping soundly as they unfasten him and pull his stretcher free, and manage to get him into the operating room – a little side building that Bull and the gang built for her last year, to try and clear up some space in the main house; mostly so she wouldn’t have to keep sleeping on a pallet under the kitchen table while the animals took up what was supposedly the bedroom.
And also most of the kitchen, really.
Not that they don't still do that anyway, from time to time.
The exterior of the building stands out, newer than everything else, not yet worn away from all of its freshness by time and the elements. Her staff rests in one corner of the room – that’s where she left it, right - and the lights flicker a bit when she turns them on.
Cole helps her narrow down their patient’s injuries, and they splint his legs, and she uses a spell to close the gash on his chest and carefully mend the cracks in his ribs. She has enough oomph left over to deal with some splintering in the bones of his hind leg, but after that, she makes herself stop. The owl pen has a new resident who will need some spellwork for her wing again tonight, and things could still go south for Leliana’s litter of baby nugs, so she can’t afford to exhaust herself.
The wolf’s stable and he doesn’t seem to have any internal bleeding; it’ll do.
She gives him another quick check-over, and is surprised to see his eyes slit open.
“Hey there, handsome,” she says. “You’re doing great. We’ll get you back on your paws in no time.”
His tail gives a half-hearted little thump.
He seems as surprised about it as she is.
“We’ll put him in pen 3b, close to the woods,” she decides.
“So he’s going to be alright?” Sera asks, lingering by the doorway.
“Yeah, he’s gonna pull through. You did good when you called me,” she confirms.
Sera scoffs.
“Wouldn’t’ve had to call you if bloody stupid animals didn’t have a death wish,” she grumbles, but it’s less tense than before.
“How’s Dagna?” she asks, steering the conversation onto less guilt-ridden subjects.
As hoped, Sera immediately lights up.
“Widdle!” she exclaims. “She got the scholarship! And she asked me to move in with her, it’s brilliant, about fucking time those snobs at the college stopped being all snobbish about dwarves and stuff, like just because you’re short and you can’t do magic doesn’t mean you can’t do stuff with magic and things anyway…”
And she’s off, then, singing her girlfriend’s praises as they carefully lug the wolf over to one of the pens for resting. She keeps a close eye on him, but he must still be pretty out-of-it, because he hardly moves as they get him settled. The pen’s a good choice; she cleaned it this morning herself, and it’s near enough to the toolshed-slash-unofficial-reptile-house that it doesn’t feel exposed, but close enough to the woods that it shouldn’t be too alien, either. Not too big, but he won’t be able to run around any time soon yet, so hopefully the confinement will feel more like safety than imprisonment.
She’s a little surprised when she moves to try and gently transfer him from the stretcher; the wolf gets up on his own, slow and ginger and heavily favouring his good side, and limps the few steps onto the bedding himself.
Then he slumps down.
“Thanks,” she says, reflexive and impressed.
“He can’t go far, so he may as well stay here,” Cole murmurs.
“Smart as well as handsome. I’ll be sad to see him go,” she muses, smiling reassuringly – not that a wolf could know that – before she closes the pen door.
“You’re always sad to see me go,” a familiar voice intones from behind, and she whirls around, startled but delighted.
“Dorian!” she exclaims.
The man himself is standing behind them, dressed in a pair of the plainest pants she's ever seen him in, with a billowing shirt that still makes him look like something off the cover of a romance novel. Without further ado she launches herself at him, ignoring his protestations that she’s muddying his clothes.
He hugs her back, just like he always does.
“Wait,” she says, pulling away after half a second. “You’re supposed to be in Tevinter! And don’t tell me that piece of shit sedan is yours?”
“Firstly, that is a rental,” he replies. “Secondly, you are no one to be calling anyone else’s vehicle a piece of shit. You’re still driving that damn forest green deathtrap masquerading as a truck.”
“Fair enough. But you’re still supposed to be in Tevinter,” she insists.
“I can’t just fly over for a surprise visit to my best friend?” he asks, with exaggerated affront.
“In election season?” she returns, raising an eyebrow at him.
He sighs, gusty and a little too genuinely defeated, at that, for her liking.
“Alexius pulled out. The campaign’s shot,” he says.
“What? No! You were doing so well!”
“It was Felix. He finally…”
His face falls, not quite crumpling into tears but only, she thinks, through dint of effort. And long experience at suppressing them.
“Oh, Dorian. I’m sorry,” she says.
“Well,” he says, an awkward, pained laugh escaping him. “We knew it was coming.”
“Never makes it any easier,” she gently reminds him, and offers him another hug.
After a minute, Cole’s spindly arms join the fray.
“Oh, Maker. I’m being group-hugged in the middle of a mud pile in the wilderness. I’ve reached a terrible new low,” Dorian says, part joking, part grief-stricken.
“Fuck it,” Sera says, blowing out a breath, and throws her arms around his other side for good measure.
“This is pathetic,” Dorian reiterates.
But he doesn’t shake them off.
After a minute she ferries him over towards the house, with offers to let him stay the night. He can take her bed and she can sleep under the table again, like old times. She knows he’ll turn her down in favour of a hotel well before he does, but the offer gives him something to rant about – her living conditions, in this case.
Poor, poor Felix.
Sera puts out a few calls for her and asserts that Bull and the gang are on their way, and she texts Varric and then calls Josephine to see if she can scrounge up any short-notice volunteers to come and help with the animals while she deals with Dorian’s crisis. Then she has to go check on the baby nugs; when that’s done Josephine herself turns up, along with Cassandra, Leliana, and Cullen, all piled into Cullen’s jeep.
She does a mental calculation on her bank balance, figures she can afford it, and orders pizza for everyone.
Most of the focus is on Dorian, in between running around tending to the animals. They tag-team it so that the grief-stricken mage is never left alone in her kitchen. Where there is, admittedly, a lot of alcohol. In between reminiscing about Felix, Sera gets to regale everyone with her new ‘I-Hit-a-Wolf’ story, which is rapidly evolving into a ‘Monster-Wolf-Attacked-My-Car’ story.
She checks on said wolf a few times; usually to find him sleeping, and sometimes to find him watching her with that sharp, intelligent gaze of his.
She’s used to that from wolves, though. Foxes, too, and a lot of the crows and ravens. The smart ones can either be the easiest or the hardest to work with, depending.
Just like people that way.
Felix had been one of the smart ones. Not quite the genius Dorian was – though Dorian would probably refute that – but wise, with a long view that didn’t match such a short life.
“You pull through,” she tells the wolf. “I’d rather not lose anyone else today.”
It’s probably her imagination, but she thinks he nods.
When it finally gets dark and Dorian heads back to his hotel, her night, as ever, is filled with scheduled interruptions. She gets up for late feedings and check-ups, and to make sure the nocturnal patients aren’t up to trouble, and to check the wards and make sure the heating enchantments are heating, and the cooling enchantments are cooling.
Usually she’s got more volunteers to help, but for now, it’s just herself and Cole. Ever since the incident at Wycome. It’s been hard, for a lot of reasons, and not least because Clan Lavellan can scarcely offer a wildlife shelter much more support than its last surviving member.
When she sleeps, she dreams of the wolf; padding curiously into her room.
“Hello,” she greets.
“Hello,” the wolf replies, in a surprisingly melodious voice.
“How are you feeling?” she wonders, with the hazy logic of dreams.
“Much improved. I will not be a burden for very long,” he tells her.
“You’re not a burden now,” she replies. “You’re the reason a place like this exists. You’re giving it purpose. No matter how long it takes, that’s never a burden. It can’t be.”
The wolf looks momentarily taken aback.
“…Still. My recovery will be swift,” he promises her.
“That’s good on its own, then,” she decides.
He nods, and on a whim, she reaches over and runs her fingers through the fur of his neck. He’s not frightening, and she thinks she might be dreaming. Wolves don’t generally talk in real life. Probably, it’s a spirit echoing her own thoughts and concerns, but if so, it seems a benign one.
“I never really get to meet many animals under happy circumstances, so you’ll have to forgive me for saying so. But I’m glad I got the chance to know you. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a wolf quite like you before.”
“I doubt you have,” he agrees. “I must thank you for saving me. I owe you a debt.”
She shakes her head.
“No, no debt. Like I said before. You’re what this place is here for.”
“I understand, but I also insist,” he says. “It is a matter of pride.”
The air feels a little strange, for a moment.
When she wakes, she worries briefly about whatever spirit that might have been. But then she shakes the unease aside. She gave it no foothold, and turned away its offer. That should be more than enough to take care of any potential issues.
Right?