Chapter Text
Dorian smiles as he props his feet up and leans back into his chair. Warm sunlight filters through the window nearby and casts his latest find in perfect clarity. It is an uncreased copy of A History of Influential Magisters to help him in the search for Corypheus’ weaknesses and despite the material he feels more relaxed than he has in some time.
Skyhold has settled into a quiet peace as the Inquisition’s main forces still march back from the Arbor Wilds. The incessant, obnoxious cawing of filthy vermin above is blissfully muted and no endless prattle about the Fade wafts up with the heavy scent of paint. The Inquisitor and Solas are on some romantic getaway to Crestwood and Dorian can just imagine all the interesting discussions happening there.
There are no distractions, no annoyances, no bumbling qunari brutes threatening to knock every book off its shelf with those horns. And no, he does not look up at the sound of every elephant footed servant to check if Bull is back, thank you very much. He’s gotten so much studying and work done, it’s almost been a dream come true.
All in all, it’s been an uneventful week.
The hairs of his mustache stand on end and tickle his nose a split second before a hole in the universe opens in the middle of the rotunda. It booms and crackles with errant bolts of magic searing the air and blows a strong wind outward that turns every loose piece of paper into a maelstrom of words and ink.
Dorian fights his way to the balcony to get a better look, cursing all the while as his library flutters apart. When he is halfway there something falls through the rift followed by a loud, whining scream no mortal could ever make. He covers his ears just as the phenomenon buckles and collapses and sends a shockwave bursting out that knocks him from his feet.
When the ringing stops, he hears shouts and a struggle from down below. He does his best to hurry down the stairs and assist with whatever horrors this blasted, broken world has spewed forth now. Maker forbid he go one week without ruining some article of clothing with demon ichor.
“Get away from me! I’ll kill you all I swear!” an angry voice yells, but the vitriol does not take away from the fact that it’s a very human sounding voice.
Dorian finally jumps the last step and enters the main floor of the rotunda. Soldiers surround a young elven woman backed into Solas’ desk. She holds a pair of daggers with blades on fire, but they sputter, choked, and instead of threatening flame they give off pathetic puffs of smoke.
Blood runs from her nose, tears cutting through ash on her cheeks, and everything about her screams of malice and misery. There is something familiar about the dark ebony color of her hair and the lines of her face.
A scout approaches her, palms extended. “Calm down, miss. We just want to help-”
She laughs, bitter and disbelieving. “The Inquisition wants to help me? Fuck you!”
“Now, now, no need for such hostility. We’re all friends here,” Dorian announces.
Her eyes snap to him, bright yellow blazing suns, and he has to blink hard to see if this is some sort of dream. There’s no mistaken the resemblance at the sight of them. Dorian has only seen eyes like that on a few people. There’s a few differences, true, but she is strikingly similar to Kee-
The woman gasps to see him, her fury transforming into shock. When she speaks again, it is in a hopeful whisper. “Unca?”
“Come again?”
There’s a sickening thud and those strange eyes roll back into her head, daggers falling from her grasp as she tumbles to the floor, unconscious. A soldier stands behind her with the pommel of his sword raised. Dorian pins him with an annoyed glare, the edges of his mustache twisting with his frown, and the man shrinks in on himself.
“She was-I thought, I…I’m sorry?”
Dorians sighs and looks down at the mysterious lump on the floor.
Yes. All in all, a rather uneventful week indeed.
If Skyhold was burning down upon her return it is unlikely Keela would notice. She keeps her head down and hood up to protect herself from the light rain and wandering eyes. There was a tense moment when the forward scouts didn’t recognize her until she flashed the green light of the anchor into the sky. She didn’t have any answers for their questions when she can barely comprehends why her face is free of the vallaslin. It all made perfect sense in that glade, beneath his touch and loving gaze. But now the sting of the last few days seems far worse than the memory of marks etched into skin.
For a brief moment she considers sweeping into the rotunda when she enters the main hall to see if he will solve these riddles now. Would it be unreasonable to drag him before her throne and demand them? She thought, with time, he would finally reveal his secrets. She could practically see them on the tip of his tongue that night, but maybe the only way she’ll ever know the truth is by force. A darker, pained part of her wonders if it’s even worth the effort anymore.
She almost makes it to the door of her tower when a frantic voice finds her. “Inquisitor, Inquisitor! Master Pavus said to fetch you at once when you arrived. I- oh! I, your…uh-”
At the woman’s open mouthed confusion to see her changed, Keela feels the flame of frustration rising ever higher inside. “What’s so urgent?”
“Er, right! Earlier today we caught an intruder in the rotunda. They came through a rift of some sort. Not a demon, but an elven woman. We’re holding her in the dungeon and Master Pavus wanted you to join him immediately.”
Keela takes a breath and steels her mind to this new task. Rifts are something she can handle much better than lying lovers. Shouting flows up the passageway to the cells and Keela winces at the sharp echoes. The first figure she runs into is Dorian, hand clutching his chin and eyes deep in thought.
“Ah, there you are. I-kaffas! What’s this all about?” He gestures to her face and she gives a low growl.
“Later. Who is our prisoner?”
“Not a demon, though could be a spirit like Cole for all I know. She appears to be a mage with fairly erratic abilities. And besides falling from a rift, the most interesting part is that she looks incredibly like you. Expecting any family members? A sister, perhaps?”
“I do not have any sisters.”
They approach the last of the cells where an Inquisition templar stands sentry. “At least give us your name?”
“You know exactly who I am, harellan. Did you even hesitate to betray your people by serving the Inquisitor? Seth’lin scum, I will tell you nothing!”
“Sounds charming,” Keela waves away the elven guard and comes to stand in front of the cell. The stranger paces the length of her confines like a wild animal caged, dried blood caked on her ripped clothes, dirt smeared across bronzed skin. “Perhaps you will speak to me.”
Inside there is a gasping breath, feet nearly tripping over one another in shock, before she jerks towards them. Dorian was right to think they were kin. It is almost like looking in a mirror of a decade ago and there is even something familiar about the differences. There isn’t much time to think about it as she rushes towards the bars and Keela startles to see tears in yellow eyes.
“Mother?”
“Mother!” Dorian and Keela repeat together.
The girl glances down at the mark glowing quietly. Something clicks in her expression, but the revelation doesn’t seem to be a pleasant one. “No, you-your arm, you’re still…Fenedhis, it actually worked. I’m in the Dragon Age, aren’t I? In Skyhold?”
“What worked?” Dorian asks.
Their prisoner takes a breath and wipes at her face, fingers shaking. “I was trying to stop a ritual involving time magic and ended up here, in the past. Please, you have to let me go. I have to find a way back. I have to stop him!”
Keela glances over this other woman, her supposed child. There is something strange about her appearance besides looking so much like each other. Her black clothes are foreign, leather and chains and wool mixed together. Things familiar, but thrown together in a way unseen before. Golden cuffs cover the tips of long ears, metal pierced through her nose, and Keela can see some sort of tattoo peeking through a tattered sleeve that looks nothing like vallaslin.
“Time magic is a dream, nothing more,” Keela argues.
“Is it?” The elf cocks an eyebrow and turns expectant eyes towards Dorian. He looks amazed and guilty like a child caught stealing snacks from the kitchen.
“Dorian?”
“I told you about my mentor, Alexius. Time travel theory was something of a hobby for us. We hypothesized the Breach might make it possible but only within the confines of its creation. We were close to developing an amulet when I left. No idea if he was ever successful.”
“There is another way. I stole notes from the laboratory before I got sent here. Check my pack!”
“And this hatred for the Inquisition?”
“You’re not the Inquisitor forever. The Inquisition of my time is nothing like what it was. It’s hunting my family, hunting you. All of us have been separated for months. We were traveling with Unca and then-”
“Which, if I remember correctly, is me,” Dorian adds quickly.
“You believe this?” Keela asks, incredulous.
The girl leans forward and grabs the bars to give them a feeble shake. “I’m telling the truth! Do you think this is some…some fucking Venatori plot to get into your graces? Dress up someone like the Inquisitor and pretend to be her daughter? Please, Taliesin’s life is in danger and I-”
“And who is that? Another time traveler?”
“No, he’s…he’s my brother.”
“Your brother? How many children is she supposed to have in this future world?” Dorian asks while Keela’s mind reels over the possibility of more offspring plummeting from the sky.
“There’s three of us. I have two brothers, Taliesin and Aneirin. Twins.”
Keela squeezes her eyes shut for a moment. Twins. She never gave much thought to fitting a family in the puzzle of her life, not until recently. Not until him. She takes a step forward, heart trembling in her chest. This can’t be real, and yet… “And you? What is your name?”
“Fenera.”
Fenera. The wolf’s dream? Keela shakes her head, her tenuous belief in this story slipping further away. “A strange thing to name my daughter. How could I be sure any of this is the truth?”
“What can I do to convince you? I don’t know. How many people have you told about breaking your nose while staff training? Or how you’re deathly and hilariously afraid of wasps? Your mother was a twin and named you after her brother.” Fenera pauses, eyes skimming over Keela’s bare face. “And Solas recently told you the vallaslin were slave markings in the time of Arlathan. Before he took them away and left you.”
“Maker, is all that true?” Dorian asks. Keela is for once speechless and only nods her head in acknowledgement. “Incredible,” Dorian continues. “Not the vallaslin part mind you, and we’ll talk about our dear apostate later, but the possibility of successful time travel and you settling into domesticity. Tell us, who is your father?”
Keela finds something else familiar as she catches a glimpse of a corded necklace beneath clothing. She reaches out through the iron and slowly pulls the leather strap up until the pendant attached slips into view. Dorian swears in every Tevene curse known at the sight of the jawbone and Keela would laugh if she thought it wouldn’t come out as screams.
Solas stares at the final, blank wall of the rotunda and wonders if she will destroy it after this is finished. He does not believe her capable of the act but knows it would be deserved. And she has surprised him before. He hopes Keela will keep it, that one day she will look upon it and see what was beautiful instead of what was lost.
With a long and tired sigh he steps into the small storage space where he stores his paints and palettes. A sinking feeling in his gut tells him there will be little time until the final battle, but the need to do whatever he can to distract his thoughts is greater. As he mixes colors together, Dorian and Keela’s voices drift into the room beyond and his spine straightens, tingling to hear her so close. There are too many things left unsaid between them, he knows, but he cannot tell her and risk everything.
He steels himself before walking back into the open and finds Keela perched atop the desk with his sketchpad in hand. “Inquisitor.”
But when she turns it is like the world shifts and he gazes at a similar stranger instead. The elf woman’s black hair is much longer, braided tight and draped over a shoulder, skin not the deep bronze he has mapped with reverent caresses but something brighter.
It is the same mischievous smirk that crosses her mouth, however. “Close.”
He glances at the peculiar clothes, at the blood smear on her neck, and pulls protective magic around his limbs.
“I felt that. Barely though.” She waves a hand in the air. “It really was difficult to reach for power here, wasn’t it? This whole Veil business is very annoying, but I suppose you know that.”
He isn’t sure what she really means to say for she cannot know the truth of it. “You are a mage?”
“I can manipulate the nebulous energies of the Fade,” she says, mimicking his voice with startling ease and accuracy. “But I wouldn’t call myself that.”
Solas narrows his eyes. “Who-”
“The murals are incredible. Dreams don’t do them justice,” she interrupts and the playfulness in her expression falls away to something somber, weary. Now that he is closer, he can see her eyes are strained red with dark shadows lingering beneath like she has not slept in days.
The young woman hops down from the desk and approaches, eyes flipping between him and the pad as her fingers continue their work. “I was trying to save my family when I was transported here. The place where I come from there is no separation between the Fade and the waking world. You can grab hold of it like thread and weave it into skin, clothes, buildings. I don’t consider myself a mage because there isn’t an elf alive that isn’t touched by magic in some way.”
Her words make him take a sharp breath as alarm coils tight within. He looks closer at her, through her, magic reaching out to meet hers. Her essence is something fluttering and new, not belonging to the steady tune of his Elvhen kin. He knows every agent in his service and she is not one of them. But what she’s recounting, what she knows-
“Thirty-six years ago my father woke up to this world he created. Thirty years ago he destroyed the Veil to undo what he had done in the first place. There was…it was a mess, honestly, but thankfully my mother was there to fix his mistakes once more. Now that things have settled some people, humans mostly, have risen up wanting revenge. They didn’t appreciate the world being broken. One of them became the new Inquisitor. He was attempting time magic to travel back here, to stop my parents before they had the power to thwart him in some way, but I came through instead.”
“This is-it cannot be possible.” But Solas sees himself in the freckles across her nose, in the soft cleft of her chin, in the charcoal smeared across her long fingers, and there is no denying whose golden eyes she has inherited.
She turns the sketchbook to show her creation. It is simple but skilled given the time spent upon it - a portrait of the two of them, her head covered by a wolf headpiece with many eyes, he standing tall behind her. The ground beneath Solas’ feet seems to fall away. He is overwhelmed by a past and a mantel that he can never escape and a future that cannot be.
“I haven’t told her any of this. I don’t think Skyhold would survive it. I told you because I need your help to get back and because, well, I know what you’ve done and what you will do and I wanted you to know that it works out in the end. More or less. Despite the mob chasing us right now and the world burning for awhile-”
“…what we can.” They both turn to at the sound of Dorian and Keela descend the twisting stairs. “It will have to be enough. Fenera, you-” The Inquisitor’s words fall away as her eyes strike against him, but he has heard too much already in the name alone.
Solas turns to the girl and swallows the thousands of hopes he has never given voice before. Of all outcomes, he cannot believe his actions would lead to something so wonderful. The future could only be death and destruction, loneliness and betrayal. Not this. Not this vision of acceptance and love blossoming into new life. He does not deserve it. His weighty mistakes could not lead to such a forgiving sentence.
“I…” Standing grows more difficult, legs buckling beneath burdens and revelations. He reaches out, blindly, and it is Fenera who catches his arm to anchor him to the ground again. To this mess of a world he made where she is the result. She gives him a smile that is all her own and it is that small act that finally makes everything real. “Fenera?”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
He laughs and dares to let his touch fall on her arm in return. She is warm, solid. Alive. “More than you could imagine.”
Fenera shrugs. “You’d be amazed at what I can imagine.”
“Solas.” Keela’s quiet call pulls them both back and he braces himself before facing her. She wears the stiff mask of the Inquisitor and although it is meant to show little of her intentions, he knows what it means for her to use it. It is a shield, a bolster of strength and courage when she cannot face what is to come alone. He hates that she wears it because of him now.
“Keela.”
“Elvhen such as you,” she replies and he resists the urge to step back as she moves closer with every word spoken. “Dirth ma, harellan? Ma banal enasalin. Mar solas ena mar din. What if you wake up to find the future you shaped is worse than it was? Did you think I wasn’t listening?”
He does not know how to tell her that he has always hoped she was. Keela stops next to Fenera and he can feel the heat flowing off her skin, but still her face shows nothing of what lurks inside. She takes the sketch and does not look shocked to see what is there. “Is that it then? The great, horrible thing you would shatter everything between us for? The secret you must protect me from, that I couldn’t possibly understand? Is this your truth?”
“Yes.” It is easy to say after all. He expects her to lash out with flames and fury and give him the retribution he deserves. The pages of his book crinkle in her fingers and something catches within her gaze, but she surprises him. Again.
Without another word, Keela passes him and walks through the door.