Chapter Text
She leaned one hip against her desk, her back to the doors overlooking the snowcapped mountains as she read and reread the letters and notes. The pieces were coming together and she wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.
In the beginning, with the Inquisition first forming, she hadn’t trusted its advisors, hadn’t trusted the Chantry. She’s reached out through letters and messengers in the hopes that the People hadn’t abandoned her to human hands. Her hopes hadn’t been misplaced. The information they could provide her might not have been as complete as what Leliana could give her, but it had been enough to soothe the fears she’d had and at least give her confidence in the information that Leliana was bringing in through her network.
So many little things had led her to this point, so many conversations and words that she had had with her companions and the Clans.
“You were never going to wake up. How could you, a mortal sent physically through the Fade?” It hadn’t made any sense to her either. She had walked through the Beyond and come away with nothing more than the Mark.
“It seems you hold the key to our salvation.” Solas had said it twice and it had left an impression on her. A key could do more than close a door.
“How does that work, exactly? You don’t even know, do you? You just wiggle your fingers and-boom-rift closes?” The matter-of-fact questions had irked her when she had first met Dorian, before she had gotten to know him. His knowledge and connections had proven invaluable once the idea had settled in and he was damn fun to work with.
“To me, it says key. But keys do lots of things. Open, lock, switch. Some open one thing, some open everything. It sounds like Corypheus made it to open. It looks like you can use it to close. It may be that simple.” Dagna’s enthusiasm and skills had worn away her caution at the idea of using the Mark for something other than sealing the Breach.
Solas and Cole had taught her how to view spirits as more than dangerous, as more than something that existed within the Beyond. Cole had helped so many despite their never knowing it and she had watched his transformation with interest and learned from him as much as he could teach her about the Beyond, the Beyond. The loss of Wisdom, Solas’ friend, had shown her that they were people, if not by the standard definition. They could hurt and die just as easily as anyone else.
In the Temple of Mythal, there had been the statue of Fen’Harel and the translation that had suggested that they’d gotten the translation of Betrayer. It had made her heart ache to think how much they had lost over the years, how much the language had changed. And Abelas. She’s wanted to throttle him for being so scornful of helping their people, but she hadn’t missed the words he’d spoken, the truths that the Well had confirmed after she had taken it into herself.
“The shemlen did not destroy Arlathan. We elvhen warred upon ourselves. By the time the doors to this Sanctuary closed, our time was over.” She’d never entirely believed that the elves had lost their immortality to the humans, never believed that the ancient elves of Arlathan would have been so broken as to let the humans take over. She had seen their strength and power lingering within the Crossroads. There had to have been a catalyst of some kind.
And in that same temple, in that same stretch of time, Solas had spoken to Abelas as though he had known something and Abelas’s response had been, “Elvhen such as you?” The question had been imparted to Solas who had had nothing but scorn for her people. It had been another piece to consider. And then, “‘Elvhen’ legend is wrong. The Dread Wolf had nothing to do with her murder. She was slain, if a god truly can be, betrayed by those who destroyed this temple.” That had been interesting and something she was still struggling to piece together with Flemeth, not because she didn’t understand but because the implications were staggering.
Then, there had been the ancient talking, darkspawn Magister that had convinced her of a few things, namely that the old stories and histories might not be entirely wrong. She’d scorned the Chantry’s tale of how their Maker had created the world and then created the Beyond, their Fade. But what if-what if-the magisters had met something that had changed the fabric of what they had been? What if their Black City, the one constant in the Beyond, was something other than a “throne” as they had believed it? What if it was the location where Fen’Harel had banished the ones the Dalish worshipped as their Creators? She still had nightmares about the answer the Well had tried to feed her.
Her hand passed over her face, her fingers linger where her vallaslin had lain across her cheeks for so long. She’d let Solas cast his spell, trusting him when he had told her of how the marks had been ones of slavery. It had fit too well with everything else she had gathered up.
There had been other conversations between them, moments where he had said things that almost connected to something larger before he had backtracked and tried to explain away those slips, but they lingered still.
“I had forgotten how I missed court intrigue.” He’d been so stiff and angry when she’d tried to tease him about it and he’d tried to explain it away as dreams within the Beyond. She hadn’t forgotten and Abelas had made her wonder if it couldn’t be part of the puzzle too.
And now, now, the questions she had posed to the Clans were finally coming back with more information than she could have hoped for when she sent out the missives requesting locations where the Veil was thinnest, where the Clans avoided. There were still other things that she needed to understand, other questions that she had to have answers for, things that had to wait until after Corypheus was defeated, but-really-she was just avoiding the conversation she didn’t want to have.
“In another world-”
She swallowed the tears that threatened to overtake her. He had made a choice and that was fine. It had to be, but she couldn’t forget the way his shoulders had dropped, the way he had walked away.
“Why not this one?”
He hadn’t had an answer for her. It didn’t matter, couldn’t, except that it did. It was the words that were ringing in her ears when she left the notes and letters and descended the stairs of her room.