“How are you adjusting to all this travel?” Solas wants to know. You’re taking a bit of a break from reading, for your voice’s sake if nothing else. You’ve flopped down a bit listlessly on your bedroll; Solas is sitting upright on the blanket you leave out for Cole on the off-chance he actually needs it. He’s towards the center of the tent, just so that he can sit up without his head hitting the top of the tent.
“…Adequately, I guess? I haven’t died yet,” you say, rolling onto your side to face him. “I just have to make it til we get there, and then hopefully the Inquisitor will drop me off somewhere relatively stable.”
“It is worrying but ultimately unsurprising that your baseline for ‘adjusting’ is ‘not dead,’” Solas says dryly, and you laugh. “It must be tiring you… I was surprised when I came in this morning and you were asleep. If I’d known, I would have let you keep resting. If you prefer, perhaps you can find me in the mornings if you wish to stretch? If you’re asleep, I don’t want to disturb you.”
You stare at him for a few seconds longer than is strictly necessary. You realize it’s not why he’s offering, but not having him poking around your tent at night or in the mornings would be quite the blessing. You’re stressed out enough about sleeping in, essentially, the middle of a pack of starving wolves. You know Cole can’t exactly spend every night with you in Skyhold, so this is—horribly—your best bet for getting some safe shut-eye, but still.
“…Sure,” you agree, instead of giving any sort of voice to what you’re thinking, which is mostly just wondering what you did, exactly, to deserve someone as considerate as him in your life. Objectively, you know it’s just dumb luck, and that there are plenty of other wretched things in your life… But right now, you’re feeling a bit fortunate. Things could be a lot worse. You’re in danger, but the people you’re with aren’t pure evil or anything. Not even Seeker Pentaghast, although it would frankly be much easier if she were.
You have Cole watching out for you, and even that little bit goes a very, very long way. Solas’s at-times-clueless assistance is just icing on a cake that already had icing on it.
Just thinking about Cole makes you yawn, which Solas immediately picks up on.
“Speaking of which, I should let you rest now,” he decides, beginning to gather his books.
“Ugh, no,” you say, making a grab for one of them. “I only get this once a week. Don’t be cheap with your time.”
Solas snorts. “Perhaps you should be a little more cheap with yours?” he suggests. “Then maybe you’d gather enough for a good night’s sleep.” He pulls the book harder, and you let out an audible complaint somewhere between a whine and a grumble. You grip even more firmly, and his next tug pulls you physically off of your bedroll. You still don’t let go, and he winds up pulling your arms halfway into his lap. He looks down at you, expression between irritation and bemusement. “Have you absolutely no dignity?”
“None,” you say blithely. “Leave me the book.”
“Absolutely not; you’ll read it instead of trying to sleep.”
“No I won’t.”
“Liar.”
“I’ll fail to read it instead of trying to sleep.”
Solas rolls his eyes at your pedantry, but you’re still holding onto the book. “If you prefer,” you suggest. “You can just drag me and the book all the way back to your tent. I’m sure the sight of that won’t backfire for either of us, and we definitely wouldn’t spend the entire rest of the trip hearing about it from literally everyone.”
“Tempting,” Solas says dryly. “But I’ve thought of a third option.”
You feel a jolt in your hands, as if you’d just grabbed hold of an eel barehanded. Your hands release more or less on their own, perhaps out of shock, as your whole body jolts. “Ow!” The shock sent you sitting halfway up, and you stare momentarily at your hands, and then back at Solas, who’s already tucked the book into his bag. “You absolute ass, you just magicked me!”
“It was a very light shock,” he says mildly.
“What if I started crying, huh?” you ask irritably, the very fact you’re asking strong evidence that you don’t actually intend to.
“You’ve never shown any sign of being scared of destruction magic,” he points out, and you scowl.
“Everyone’s scared of destruction magic. It’s in the title, Solas.”
“And yet here you are, not crying.”
You almost start just to spite him, but instead you continue to glare. “I’m going to tell Sera on you.”
Solas looks slightly pained. “Don’t.”
“Leave me the book, then,” you repeat, leaning over him to get to his bag. You don’t even want the book that badly. At this point it’s the principle of the thing.
“It’s a book of poetry you can barely read,” he points out.
“Exactly,” you say, exasperated. That is clearly the entire point. It’s a book you can barely read, therefore it needs to become a book you can read, ideally as quickly as possible. You manage to get one hand on his bag despite his attempts to twist it away, although to do so you’ve basically climbed over his lap. He tries to kick backwards away from you, you respond by squirreling further on top of him and digging into his bag, dropping your weight onto him. You’ve been wrestling a Qunari, so honestly, you don’t know why he thought he stood a chance. “Oh, hey, you’ve got bread in here!”
“If I give you the bread, will you get off of me.”
“Found the book!” you exclaim, gripping it with one hand while fighting off his arms with the other.
“Good night, Emma,” Solas says with a sigh, and then you fall flat onto the ground.
You blink several times, trying to figure out what had happened. Solas had… vanished, leaving you to collapse, since you’d been essentially on top of him by that point.
“Oh, come on!” you exclaim, realizing what had happened, and you hear a chuckle from outside your tent. “Using magic is cheating!” you yell out at him. “And I’m still telling Sera on you!”
You don’t get a response, so you flop back down onto your bedroll.
…You should have just taken him up on the bread offer.
You want to cry. You want to scream. It’s lodged in the back of your throat, leaving you unable to speak a word. ‘You can’t go, you can’t just leave me here alone, what will I do, I can’t be alone.’ You don’t say any of that. There wouldn’t be a point, and it would just make her feel worse. You can already tell she’s barely hanging on. There’s a film over her eyes that you recognize, a lack of focus implying she’s only partway into the present as is.
Even then, she’s smiling. “I’m only going because they promised me a white griffon,” she lies, foggy eyes dancing with fake mirth. “Take care of my dad while I’m gone, okay?”
Her dad hates you. As soon as she is gone, you sincerely doubt he’ll tolerate your presence, especially given that she’d just foisted off some other unfortunate onto him. He’s well-off for an alienage elf, but there are limits.
“And I want you to have this.”
It’s too big for you, but she presses it firmly into your hands anyway. It’s not right; you shouldn’t be the one to have this. She should keep it. The fact that she’s giving it to you makes you think that maybe she doesn’t intend to survive.
Alienage elves aren’t allowed to have these things. You bury it behind the orphanage, with the intention of taking it with you when you leave. The six little gemstones glint up at you from the hilt before you cover it with dirt. Fen’harel’s Fang. You’re still young enough to believe it was pried from the very mouth of the Dread Wolf himself.
It’s a long time before you get it back, but you take it with you to Orlais, and some superstitious little part of your soul wonders if that’s why six red eyes found you in the alley that night. After all, the Dread Wolf never loses a scent.
You wake up with a snarl and a disorganized mind. One of your hands is wrapped around the front of Cole’s shirt, the other has found Fen’harel’s Fang where it still rests under your clothes. It takes too long for you to remember where you are, to remember why Cole is here, though you fortunately recognize him quickly. He doesn’t look even slightly worried about the fact you’d been about thirty seconds away from stabbing him, or about the grip you still have on his shirt. You release him with a tired groan.
That’s right. Cole had come in shortly after Solas had left, told you Solas had gone for a walk rather than going to sleep. You probably haven’t been unconscious for very long.
“Ninety minutes,” Cole informs you, without waiting for you to ask. You have no idea how he knows the time so precisely, but you just accept it.
You want to go back to sleep.
Instead, you sit the rest of the way up, rubbing your sore head with one hand. You feel like death. Your head is killing you; you feel intensely dehydrated. You’re sore all over, actually. You know, objectively, you’re getting more sleep now than you have in ages, but it feels like shit.
“Who’s awake?” you ask, voice coming out hoarse.
“The Inquisitor and Dorian,” Cole replies, and you nod tiredly. The Inquisitor is a novice Templar at best. You don’t really have to worry much about him within that context; he’s more dangerous as “the Inquisitor” than “a Templar.” If Seeker Pentaghast is asleep, you can relax a little. Not enough to let your aura back out, of course, but you let yourself fall back down onto the ground. Your eyes are too tired, your mind too foggy. You can’t work like this, so you might as well rest.
You drift in and out of sleep, or something resembling sleep, until you hear movement outside. The camp is beginning to wake up, which means you can too.
You’re beginning to fall into a little bit of a routine, which is comforting. You help Blackwall with breakfast—no Sera today. She seems to be a bit of a late riser, which makes the fact she woke up early specifically to hang out with you and Blackwall even cuter in retrospect. The Inquisitor and Seeker Pentaghast are the next ones out of their tents, despite the fact that the Inquisitor had a late watch shift the night before. He looks about as groggy as you feel. His ever-growing facial hair is even more apparent since he normally doesn’t have a huge beard like Blackwall does, and only serves to make him look that much more haggard.
He and Seeker Pentaghast start in on some sort of morning practice. They’d done it before, but you hadn’t really paid much attention. Today, however, you wind up idly watching while you prepare breakfast with Blackwall. It reminds you a bit of early morning practice with the Iron Bull, even though the two of them are clearly practicing armed combat and not hand-to-hand. Although, given the way the Inquisitor appears to be looking at the Seeker—or more aptly, her body—when she’s not paying attention, perhaps it would be more apt to compare it to your morning stretches with Solas. Including the implication any questionable side-eyeing being entirely one-sided. She thinks his stupid jokes are funny, however, and the two would certainly be a match. They’re equally shitty. You wish them luck and a lot of troublesome babies that keep them too busy to kill any more mages.
Speaking of Solas, stretches, and one-sided lust, you do morning exercise with him again once he rises. It’s as soothing for your body as it isn’t for your frazzled mind and libido. You could see yourself doing this regularly, although when you’d fit in time for it back in Skyhold, you’re not sure. You could do it before morning practice with Bull, maybe. But it’s probably less important when you’re not self-tenderizing by riding at a canter for twelve hours.
When you set off after dawn, the Inquisitor takes Sera and Blackwall with him for the advance group. You wouldn’t have minded him taking the Seeker with him, but since she doesn’t really bicker with the others the way Blackwall and Sera do, it’s actually a somewhat peaceful set-up. You half-drowse on Vhas, soothed by the steady beat of hooves and the sound of idle, peaceful chatter between your companions.
A sudden drip of cold water jolts you out of your reverie, and you look up at the clouds. They’re thick and gray, but it’s too warm for snow now that you’re out of the mountains. You’re about to be rained on. You pull your cloak out of one of your saddlebags. It’s the one you arrived at Skyhold in, and it has… seen better days. But the one you got in Orlais is in your other bags, so it’ll have to do. Most of the space in the bags you keep with you are taken up by the books you can’t risk leaving behind or someone else finding.
You pull it around yourself just as the skies open up and rain begins to fall steadily from the sky. It only picks up as you go, and your cloak only does so much when you’re cantering headlong into rain. You pull the cloak as close to your body as you can, but you’re still getting soaked. Soaked and tired. A chill is setting in, too, compounded by the rain and the wind. You slump a bit in your saddle to ward it off and just focus on warmth. The heat inside you, the heat from Vhas’s body beneath you, warm against the insides of your legs. If you focus on that, you can almost forget how cold the rest of you is. The pounding of hooves becomes the pounding in your skull, a painful rhythm you can adjust to if only because of how steady it is.
The next thing you’re aware of is smashing into the ground, of cold wet all around you. Disoriented, you don’t even sit up right away, instead trying to take bearing of your surroundings. You are on the ground. The cold wet you’re feeling is mud, which you are laying in. You’re still in all of your clothes. It’s still raining.
You sit up slightly, and see your companions ahead, all coming to a stop at varying degrees of urgency. Seeker Pentaghast is already off of her mount and running towards you, which is an extremely alarming sight even though she’s probably just concerned. You did, apparently, just fall off your goddamn hart like an idiot. You must have fallen asleep, even just for a minute, and careened right off.
“Are you alright?!” Seeker Pentaghast exclaims, coming to kneel beside you so fast that she skids a bit in the mud. Solas is coming up behind her; Dorian is still on horseback, holding onto Vhas’s reins.
“I’m fine,” you say, then wince as you shift to try and stand. You’d clearly landed on your left shoulder. You move it, testing. Not dislocated or broken, which is lucky considering that’s the shoulder that’s popped out before.
“Why did you fall? I thought for a moment you’d been shot,” she says, gripping your arms as if to check that they’re both still there. You try not to wince as your shoulder is jostled.
“Sorry, I must have fallen asleep.”
“Fallen asleep?” the Seeker asks, seeming horrified. “Are you not sleeping well on the road?”
“She has chronic insomnia,” Solas informs her, and you watch as she turns to look at him, an expression of stunned disbelief on her face.
“We are taking an untrained linguist who is chronically exhausted on our breakneck journey across Orlais into danger unknown?” she demands, as if it’s Solas’s fault. Solas merely shrugs. She turns to look at you with the same expression, and you shrug as well, although it hurts to do so. Seeker Pentaghast rubs her, face, smearing a bit of mud on her cheek as she does. “I’m going to kill him…”
“Please don’t,” you quip with a grin. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to find out if the Inquisitor’s mark still works when not attached to his body.”
Solas snorts, and even the Seeker rolls her eyes, looking a bit less strained. “Are you sure you’re fine?” she asks again.
“I’m fine. I landed in this nice soft mud,” you inform her.
“Should we tie you into your saddle?” she suggests, and you shake your head.
“No, I’m sorry for the delay. It won’t happen again; I was just a bit distracted due to the rain.” Seeker Pentaghast looks skeptical, but you’re definitely not about to let anyone tie you to anything.
“Does anyone have a spare cloak?” Dorian shouts over the sound of the rain. “She’ll freeze solid if we don’t get her out of that mud-covered one. Not that you can tell the difference, just looking at it…”
You scowl at him. Was it really necessary to point out how ugly your cloak was? You know it’s seen better days.
“I have a spare,” the Seeker says immediately. “I believe we’re about the same size.”
“In height, maybe,” you mutter under your breath as she turns to fetch her cloak. The Seeker is significantly broader than you in literally every aspect, strong shoulders and muscles that would put even Fenris to shame. She looks like she bench presses horses in her spare time, for the Maker’s sake…
You manage to stand out of the mud pile after shooing away Solas, who reaches out to help you. You don’t want to get him covered in mud as well. You strip out of your cloak, letting the rain rinse off the parts of you that weren’t protected. Thank the Maker your hood was up, so your hair has escaped relatively unscathed. You don’t much care for the idea of trying to wash mud from your hair with freezing stream water.
The Seeker returns with her cloak, which does in fact fit you fairly well. The clasp on it is a Chantry amulet. You run your fingers over it again and again after you’ve mounted back up and Vhas and begun to move again. The familiar sharp ridges keep you very focused indeed, and you don’t drowse off again.
You’re very awake by the time you stop for lunch. You’re also very muddy, wet, and extremely sore. Your mood is similarly dire, although you’d like to think that’s understandable given the circumstances. You see to the horses in a wet, irritated daze, barely even aware that Seeker Pentaghast—and possibly others—is helping you. Once you’re done, you flop listlessly next to the others to get something resembling a decent lunch into you. You run the back of your hand over your forehead when no one’s looking, but you can’t tell if you’re hot or if your hands are just frozen. You suppose it doesn’t actually matter either way.
“We’re lucky that today is the day we’ll be so close to Verchiel,” the Inquisitor is saying. You’re barely half-listening. “There’s an inn on the outskirts, near the road. We can stop there tonight.” Now that knocks you out of your stupor.
An inn room means proper, non-cloth shelter from the rain, and warm beds with actual blankets, and probably even a bath if you play your cards right. Speaking of cards, there’ll probably be a lot of ale and a lot of travelers willing to gamble. It could be a fun way to pass an evening, assuming you don’t want to just lay in bed for twelve hours.
You’re quite cheered by the news, and eat the rest of your lunch with more vigor as the others discuss the particulars.
“We can do two rooms, since there are eight of us,” Seeker Pentaghast says. You make a face into your bread at the concept of sharing a room with both her and Sera.
“And almost enough women to fill an even room this time,” comments Blackwall. “I’d been getting used to sausage stew being the everyday.”
“Cole can room with us,” Seeker Pentaghast says, and you laugh at the same time Sera scoffs angrily. “He’s already been sharing a tent with Emma,” she points out to Sera. “And before that, myself.”
“He can be an honorary woman for the night,” you suggest, bemused and probably at least lightly delirious from lack of sleep, fever, or unrelated illness. You can’t be arsed to figure out which.
“It’s not like he’s actually a man, either,” the Inquisitor points out. “He’s like a… nebulous… spirit… thing…” He waves his hand vaguely at Cole, who seems unperturbed. “He doesn’t even need a bed. Does he even sleep?”
No one answers, not even Cole. Solas merely shrugs, as does Dorian. You follow suit when the gaze turns to you. Hopefully just because you’ve been sharing a tent with him.
“It doesn’t matter that he’s a spirit, I mean, he has a man’s body, right?” Blackwall argues. “With all the bits associated, I assume.”
“You assume,” you say with a snort.
“Well I haven’t seen it!”
“Then does it matter?” you ask dryly. “Would it matter anyway?” you add, thinking of Krem and your newfound knowledge of the ways bodies don’t really matter, even in humans, let alone spirits. “Instead of talking around his dick while he’s right here, I’ll show you a trick.” You turn to Cole, give him a chance to focus on you instead of staring blandly up at the rain, thinking his own thoughts, which he’d been doing while the conversation circled around him.
“Cole, do you feel like a boy?” you ask simply. He blinks in owlish confusion, then seems to consider it.
“Not the way they do,” he says finally, gesturing at the others. “More like the way you do.”
“See?” you say, turning back to Blackwall. “He’s… miscellaneous.”
“What does he mean, the way you do?” Blackwall asks, wearing a confused expression that clearly states he’s now wondering about the contents of your own trousers.
“All that matters is that I’m not a guy, and probably neither is he,” you say with a shrug.
“Is that because he’s a spirit?” Blackwall wonders.
“It’s not as though no spirits have genders,” Solas interjects, and focus turns to him as nearly everyone blinks at him in confusion.
“He’s right,” Dorian adds. “You’ll see ones that associate strongly with one gender or another.”
“Particularly if they’ve spent a great deal of time in contact with our world. They emulate things they see and like. Sometimes, a gender is one of those things. Sometimes it’s not.”
“Is that really a gender, though, if they’re just copying?” Blackwall wonders. “It’s not as though they really become human by copying, either.”
You gesture towards Cole, then squeeze his shoulder fondly, both a method of attempting to ground him since he’s obviously drifting off into thought again, and as a way to demonstrate how solid he is. “He’s pretty close, though, right? Besides, who says only humans can have gender?”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Blackwall says quickly, and you laugh to let him know you knew he hadn’t. No point in giving him a hard time about wording at this point.
“What I mean is, isn’t that just what children do? Boys see men and emulate them. Girls do the same with women; we all do it with people we admire and see ourselves in. Professions, traits, morals… we take it all into ourselves by copying, right? That’s why people are so different depending on what society they’ve grown up in. Why would gender be any different?”
You’re clearly getting a bit over Blackwall’s head with this, but Dorian and Solas are more than willing to pick up the conversation.
“If you were to argue that spirits and humans were the same in this, though, you’d be implying that all human children are nebulous blobs,” Dorian points out.
“Have you met many babies?” Solas asks dryly. “Blobs seems an apt word.”
“What I mean is, surely some of it is inborn.”
“I thought all of it was inborn,” Blackwall says, a bit sulkily, but with good humor.
“Well, I mean, at that point we’re really getting into the question of nature versus nurture… Which… Has that been explored much, with regards to spirits?” You direct this question towards Solas, mostly, but Seeker Pentaghast chimes in.
“Some, although likely not in the way you mean, nor for the reasons you suggest.”
“Spirits are different than the people of this world,” Solas says. “They are not ‘born’ in the same sense. The spirits we think of as spirits, rather than mere wisps, form when there is enough distinct about them to give them will separate from the rest of the Fade.”
“It tends to be a strong emotion or something similar that gives them shape, rather than something so nebulous and human as a gender,” Dorian adds, sounding amused. “Before you ask if there are any spirits of maleness.”
“There are certainly spirits of virility that take a page from that book,” Solas quips, and you can’t help laughing at the way eyes go wide and cheeks flush around camp.
“Is this conversation gonna keep going?” Sera asks irritably. “Warn me now, eh?”
“Probably,” the Inquisitor informs her sympathetically. “There’s no stopping the intellectual type once they get going.”
“Is there a strong difference between spirits of virility and spirits of fertility?” you ask, largely ignoring Sera and the Inquisitor.
“Not so much as one might think.”
“But still some,” Dorian interjects. “You can often tell just by seeing them, even if the lines are blurry.”
“Could gender be a determining factor?” you suggest, and just like that you’ve started a debate about gender vis-a-vis spirits that carries you, Dorian, Solas, and at times Cole through lunch and onto the road. Blackwall, Sera, and the Inquisitor seemed very glad to be rid of you when they left. However, Seeker Pentaghast seems mostly bemused as the three of you bicker and posit endlessly down the Imperial Highway.