Chapter Text
She watches dust dance within streams of light breaking through the curtains. Their steps are slow, uncaring, void of purpose except to simply exist. Muted noises curl through the air to join them. Garbled voices, music filling in the empty spaces, feet shuffling towards unknown places. All of it is fleeting, meaningless, the last stanza before the inevitable end.
Soft sheets rustle as she turns and tears fall down her cheeks jostled free from the movement. She cannot stop crying. Perhaps she should have paid closer attention to the structure around her soul, noted the cracks and loose mortar, really looked instead of standing so far away for so long. This is a flood of her own making, of her own blind pride.
Why did she think herself so above the possibility of breaking? Who was she to ever grasp the fabric of fate and demand it weave to her whims? She is a frayed stitch, a discorded tangent in a beautiful tapestry.
She is someone’s mistake.
Keela has not looked at her arm since, cannot look, but there is no need. She sees it in the reflection of her companions, their smiles strung up on trembling threads threatening to snap. The last two days they have all come to offer support except for Dorian. The amulet lays ice cold against her skin, burning without flame. That hill in the Storm Coast had one more life to take after all. What comfort could they offer one another in the face of such a bitter end? What comfort could she be, the one who caused it all.
Whatever she is with what remains.
She sees it in every blink- the bright, final surge of the anchor forever marring her memory, muscle and bone withered and blackened without its light. There was little pain in the aftermath, or maybe there is too little left of her to feel. What is she without the mark, without the Fade rippling through her eyes and kissing every spell that flies through her lips? Who is the Inquisitor without the power resting in palm? What use is a symbol that no longer exists?
It is all gone. The thing inside her that made her special, the spark that ignited fires across Thedas and purpose within her breast. Her friends will drift like dandelions in what calm wind remains before the hurricane. Her heritage is burned away to ashes just like the vallaslin across her cheeks, a piece of her past sacrificed to fading future. Her heart given freely, unreachable beneath layers of an avalanche building for years and over in seconds.
And it is all her doing from the moment she chose to go left instead right, decided to interfere when she was only tasked with investigating. Would this world be here if she hadn’t been there, fingers outstretched towards glistening orb? What has she done but trade one judge for another and keep the same sentence?
Solas thinks she could never understand, but she does. It is the reason she has not slept in two days. He cannot wake up to the reality of what he has created and she cannot shut her eyes against her own legacy. She knows the demons will be waiting to offer her everything and just like him she will not be able to resist the temptation to take it all back. Not now. Not after this. Keela turns her gaze back to watch the dust drift and looks for the one speck of hope lost within the endless ocean. She is a broken, tattered thing, but every flower twists towards the light. After all this ruin, who is she now?