It’s Over, Isn’t It?
You’d been half-joking about traveling together when you’d said it, but you have to admit, the notion is a little tempting. It seems particularly poignant right now, as the two of you sit, staring out at the sliver of Satina on the horizon, rehashing cover stories and discussing exactly what kind of information you want to feed to the Inquisitor now that you have his ear about at least one thing. You’re tangled up in each other more as cold settles over the desert like a heavy fog, sapping warmth out of the endless sands beneath you. Sera had graced you with a kind of closeness you haven’t had in a while, and you’re as grateful for it as you are apologetic, but this… It’s different. Sera doesn’t know anything about you, not really. The more she sees, the more repulsed she’ll be. She wouldn’t want anything to do with you if she knew you were a mage, and so doing this while she doesn’t know… It’s wrong. You know it’s wrong. And it’s worse because you know it’s wrong and are doing it anyway; you can’t seem to quit.
Alas’len already knows the ways touch can bring you comfort, but more importantly, he knows the ways it can bring you pain. He knows to avoid grazing your ears when he runs a comb through your hair; he knows never to touch your neck; he knows how to ask without words whether now is a moment when you want to be held or a moment where you would rip his throat out with your teeth.
You are beginning to wonder if you didn’t realize how badly you were missing him until he came back. No, that’s not right. Until he tracked you down.
You are hadn’t realized how much you were missing being touched until Sera did.
You are beginning to wonder how many other things and people you are missing very badly, little holes in your soul that you never notice because you’re too used to being riddled with them.
You would have been very content to snuggle up in your confusing and upsetting mix of comfort and melancholy all night, if allowed, but as one might have noticed, you and nice things do not exactly coexist comfortably, or without conflagration in general. It’s therefore entirely unexpected, in many ways, when you’re disrupted by the person you want to see the least in the entire world, both in general and right now specifically: Cassandra Pentaghast.
You hear her approximately a heartbeat before you see her, the sound of boots in sand. That’s enough for your mind and body to come to swift, immediate agreement on the proper course of action, and by the time she comes around the side of the tree, you’ve turned around in Alas’len’s lap and have your mouth firmly attached to his. Alas’len, who’s as familiar with this particular cover as you are, doesn’t even startle, casually wrapping his arms around your waist to help line you up for a more believable makeout position.
The two of you are well-practiced in all sorts of theatre-kisses, but given that Pentaghast is essentially on top of you, you elect for a real one. That is perhaps why your tongue invades his mouth; it could also be that your body is moving automatically and were kissing Sera not very long ago. In either case, he handles the situation well, both by not protesting the invasion, and by cupping your ass to grind your crotch against his. It would be very believable if not for the fact he was as soft as a depressed nug.
Cassandra, fortunately, does not have access to that particular insight, and is rushing away, probably mortified, before you even have to stop making out with Alas’len and pretend to notice her. Good on her, honestly. You have a lot of terrible things to think and maybe even say about her, but she does seem to be remarkably good at running away and pretending she absolutely did not see you doing anything lewd. It is perhaps the only thing you’ve noticed that speaks well for her character.
Okay, you’re being a little too unkind there. Her extreme concern for your well-being absolutely speaks well for her character, given who she thinks you are, it’s just also condescending and extremely annoying, unfortunately.
Once you’re sure she’s gone, you pull away from Alas’len, who has an absolutely insufferable smirk on his face.
“Sorry,” you say, and you mean it. Kissing people with absolutely no warning is something you really don’t prefer to do.
Alas’len waves his hand in the air carelessly. “We do that all the time,” he points out.
“We did that all the time,” you correct. “I would have liked to check in. Particularly before involving tongue,” you add, mortification beginning to creep in now that the instincts and adrenaline are wearing off.
“That’s cute,” Alas’len says. He pokes your nose with one finger, and you immediately stop feeling bad and start wanting to bite him. Smartly, he pulls his finger away before you can. “But it’s fine. If you hadn’t done it, I would have. She came up on us fast.”
“She does that,” you say with a scowl. “I hate how quietly she can move without that armor. At least Templars have the decency to clank when they’re coming up on you.”
“I think we’ve won ourselves another few hours, at least.”
You snort. “A few hours? Please. We’ve won ourselves a believable fifteen minutes.”
“At least an hour!”
“I’m not saying I don’t believe you,” you say innocently. “But we have to consider what the others will find plausible.”
“Just for that,” he says with a scowl. “I’m keeping you out here for another three hours.”
Solas is on watch when the two of you return to camp, twenty minutes or so apart and from slightly different directions, not that you think you’re fooling anyone; you just wanted to look like you’d put in some effort towards discretion. You don’t know how much of a loud mouth Pentaghast has about these things, but if you’re going to use slutting it up as a cover, you might as well just let it happen. The Inquisition practically wrote this one for you, with as determined as its been to pair you with every eligible man you paused to speak to.
Alas’len had kept you out there for over an hour longer, and he’d spent that time braiding your hair, which you’d only allowed him to do because he’d braided it up into a bun close enough to your regular style and a lot more secure. He’s good with braids; if you’re careful about your sleeping position, you can probably wear it for a couple of days before it completely falls apart. Longer if you let him touch it up, which frankly, you might. You’re feeling spiteful towards your companions at large.
Solas doesn’t say anything, nor does he even bother to look at you in a meaningful way. Him being on watch is useless; he’s already figured out who Alas’len is to you, so all this damned posturing was essentially for nothing. Well, at least you have Pentaghast and the Inquisitor fooled.
Cole is in your tent already when you crawl in, clearly a little fussy that you’d been missing valuable “Solas is awake and the Seeker is asleep” time. He knocks you out almost before the agreement to sleep can leave your lips.
Late afternoon is the only time your apartment gets any light through the window. There’s about a 15-30 minute period each day, depending on the season, when it manages to break through the buildings surrounding and conquer the awkward angles and, miraculously, shine directly through the little basement-slit you have just above ground level.
You’re not always home this time of day, which makes it all the more important that you luxuriate in the sunbeams like a fat cat for the brief time that you’re able. A sound at the door interrupts your peaceful reverie, making you look up from the book you’re reading, illuminated by the rare sunbeam.
Alas’len walks in, looking older than he should in your memories thanks to your recent update on what he looks like these days. He’s dressed in the dark blues and blacks you used to wear to blend in with the Val Royeaux sky when working. The mask is resting casually on top of the side of his head; how many times did you tell him not to do that?
“Feeling nostalgic?” he asks, looking around the apartment. “You know, you really have a lot of nerve, dreaming about this place like you’re not the one who ran off and left it behind. It’s just a home for strays now… although I suppose it always was.”
It’s not something you would have necessarily noticed before Solas waltzed right into your dreams in Val Royeaux, giving you such an upset and an embarrassment. When something acts a bit odd in a dream, or stands out a bit much, it’s your normal instinct to assume it’s a spirit or a demon of some kind; you are a mage and that does happen, after all. But you’re aware of possibilities, now, and more importantly, aware of what they feel like. This is not something he’s done in the past, but you’d always suspected it would be a possibility.
It would be so like him to do it like this instead of just fucking telling you.
You panic. You absolutely, full-on, one-hundred-percent panic. Because you don’t know what the rules are. You know how Templars and Seekers detect magic and spirits, and how mages do, because it’s all written down. You know what’s not fucking written down? Detailed studies about somniari, and you have one right outside this goddamn tent, doing who even knows what.
You bolt up from your perfect little sunbeam and rush to Alas’len, pulling him through the door, glancing through it, and then slamming it shut.
“You absolutely cannot fucking be here,” you hiss. “Are you insane? Why would you just come strolling right in? When did you even—that doesn’t matter, none of this matters, you have to get out. Get back to your own corner of the Fade, and stay there, fast.”
Alas’len looks amused. “Are you worried about the Seeker? You shouldn’t be. As far as they’re concerned, this isn’t even a possibility for them to be worried about. They certainly have no way of detecting—”
“It’s not the fucking Seeker you should be afraid of!” you snap. “It’s Solas!”
Alas’len looks completely baffled. “The old man? Does he have some sort of way to—”
“He’s a somniari too! He walked in on my dreams when—remember that trip to Val Royeaux?”
Alas’len’s face is a painting of mixed emotions. You see confusion, fear, excitement, and then anger and hurt. Not just on him—it’s twisting into the stuff of your dreams, warping it into a nightmare. “You’ve known since then, and you didn’t think to mention that you’d found— You told me I might be the last one!”
“I’m not in the business of telling other people’s secrets!” you hiss. “Particularly not this kind, as you damn well know! If I’d known you’d developed this far, I would have warned you, but someone decided they’d rather be dramatic. Now listen to me, you have to go back to your own dream and you have to stay there. I know he wanders around and pokes in on people, because he did it to me. You have to pretend to be a normal mage.”
Alas’len’s distress radiates out into the room, melting countertops and turning the sky outside stormy. “I don’t even know if I can! I don’t know what it looks like from the outside—”
“We’ll figure it out! We’ll figure it out together. I promise. But you have to go; you’re fucking with this corner of Fade and I just know it’ll attract his attention if he falls asleep. He’s always lurking around; it’s super goddamn annoying. Go! Hurry up and go, and we’ll figure out what to do.”
The dream dissipates with a pop, and you find yourself groggy and confused in your tent. It’s dark, so you can’t have been asleep for very long. Cole isn’t here, which probably means Solas is still awake. You hope that means Solas is still awake.
You’re just starting to sit up, trying to dispel the exhaustion and nausea that frequently comes when you wake up from one of your deep, Cole-induced mini-naps, when the entrance to your tent bursts open, and through it scrambles one half-dressed Alas’len.
Well, this might as well happen.
You pull him down onto your bedroll, face very close so you can whisper so softly that it couldn’t be heard even by elf-ears right outside the tent. It’s barely a breath.
“Did anyone see you?”
“No, that spirit of yours is distracting the watch.”
Why is everything and everyone always being determined ‘yours’?
“Good.”
“How could you not tell me you found another Somniari?” he demands, voice raising slightly to hushed whisper, and you shush him as quietly as you can. “That’s need-to-know-information! For fuck’s sake, no wonder you were all over his dick in Val Royeaux—”
You flick his nose, making him recoil backwards. “I told you, I don’t—” The phrase ‘kiss and tell’ wilts on your lips. “Share that kind of information. I had my reasons.”
“No, you don’t get away with your stupid shitty ‘I-am-your-wise-mentor-who-knows-what’s-best’ bullshit shtick right now! I’ve been alone, lethallan!”
You sigh. He’s right. But you don’t know that he’ll appreciate your reasoning.
“I had two reasons,” you explain, holding up two fingers as you silently breathe secrets into the inches of air between the two of you. “One is that I don’t know exactly what he is. I know he can walk through the Fade like a somniari should be able to, but… I don’t know, something else is up with him. His stories never quite feel right, but I don’t know enough about the Fade or magecraft to really solidly disprove anything he says. I think he might be an abomination or something… something even weirder, or older, or… I don’t know. He might not even actually be a somniari. I don’t know how to tell for sure.”
Alas’len absorbs all of this silently. “I could probably check, if—”
“If what?” you hiss, a little too loud, you catch yourself and quiet your voice back to barely-moving-the-air. “If you go to him in the Fade? Congratulations, your dumb ass immediately tripped into reason two I didn’t tell you; the likelihood you’d go sprinting full tilt towards him in excitement. Because that’s what you do, that’s what you did with me and look where it got you.”
“Excuse me, I did not—”
“Lethallin, please. I don’t say this to be cruel, but you’re a puppy looking for a kind hand, and you always have been. I didn’t want to dangle the hope of someone like you, someone who’d understand, only to rip it away because I said so, because it’s dangerous. I didn’t know if you’d listen to me. I still don’t know if you’ll listen to me. But please.”
“He could be the only other one in the world! Or worse, what if he knows others? What if there’s a whole group, hidden somewhere…?”
“And what if he’s the only one because something happened to all the others? What if he happened to all the others? What if he reacts to spilled secrets like I do, lethallin, or worse?” you insist. “We can’t know, and there’s no safe way to find out. Not yet, not like this.”
“…You don’t trust him.” Alas’len breathes it out like a realization, although you’re surprised he would be surprised.
“Of course I don’t. That’s why he doesn’t know about you. That’s why he doesn’t even know about me.”
Alas’len blinks in surprise. “What, really?”
You’re offended. “Did you think I’d tell him?!”
“You didn’t hide it from me,” he points out.
“That’s… that was different, you already… you came at it from the other side, you already knew Banal’ras was… so it was more like I… look, shut up.” You don’t normally fluster, but you’re very close to his face and you can see every detail of the smug grin growing. You want to headbutt it off his face and it’s getting hard to resist the urge.
“So you’ve seriously been keeping it in all day, every day?”
“All night, every night,” you agree. He winces.
“Are you okay?”
“No, one of these days I’m going to collapse and then vomit out pure mana, I think,” you say flatly. He looks deeply concerned. “I’m fine. Cole is helping. And once we get out to the desert, I think it’ll actually be pretty easy to slip away from the mages and Templars for a while. They’re going to be dealing with that Warden business, and meanwhile my job is playing house with a draconologist. Look, this isn’t important. He’s already sniffing around you, lethallin. It makes me—” It makes you feel. A lot of the things: scared, defensive, aggressive, possessive. It’s a complicated knot of emotions and you have no inclination to even bother trying to untangle them. “Worried,” you decide.
“So you want me to, what, just avoid him?”
“Yes. Especially at night. Please.”
Alas’len is pouting, but it’s not his defiant fuck-you-I-do-what-I-want expression, which you’re intimately familiar with.
“…Fine,” he says finally, and you breathe out a too-loud sigh of relief. “On one condition.” You suck that sigh right back in.
“Condition?” you demand, offended. Does this seem like the kind of moment to be adding in conditions?
“You find out for me.”
“What?!”
“He doesn’t know you’re a mage, even though you practically live with him, and have for months. I’m not an idiot, lethallan, and I know you. You’ve been spending this whole time studying him like a pinned insect, haven’t you? I bet you’ve got notes. I bet they’re in Elvhen.“
“Absolutely not, he can read that,” you snap, before catching yourself. Alas’len looks unbearably smug at the incidental confirmation.
“Just tell me what you find. You said you didn’t know yet what he was. That means you absolutely intend to find out. He’s what’s keeping you with this stupid Inquisition, isn’t it? You’ve found a riddle you can’t solve, and you can’t stop fussing at it.”
You dislike the accuracy for several reasons. Your curiosity doesn’t always—didn’t always—overwhelm your good sense. The idea that it might be doing so here is something that’s been haunting you with every decision not to flee the Inquisition. Because he’s not wrong. Solas is a puzzle, and you can’t stomach the idea of walking away before solving it. Everything else… everything else is just decoration, just side bonuses. Deep down, you know it. You’ve been trying not to look directly at it, and Alas’len drawing attention to it makes you feel untethered and more than a little sick.
“Fine,” is all you say, wanting the conversation to be over.
“Dirthsal?“
“Dirthavaren.“
Alas’len doesn’t leave your tent that night. He didn’t ask to stay, and you don’t tell him to leave. Both of you are, perhaps, feeling a little unsettled, if for very different reasons. The discovery of another somniari would have explosive consequences for Alas’len.
You had been the one to introduce him to the concept, learned of from your long studies into Elvhenan and ancient Tevinter. It was the only explanation you had for his trances, which you quickly discovered were not fits, as his mother had thought, but him entering the Fade while awake—well, sort of awake. You hadn’t known his abilities had improved in your absence, to the point where he can now wander into someone else’s dream the way Solas can. You suppose that means he really is a somniari… It had always been a little uncertain, to you, and you hadn’t had anyone either of you trusted enough to ask. Alas’len had believed it longer and harder than you had.
He never said as much, but you’ve long suspected that his ‘fits’ were quite related to his mother ultimately abandoning him on the streets as a child. Learning that they were, in fact, a sign of his ultimate value as a thing out of legend… probably came as a comfort. It had seemed to, at the time. That wasn’t why you’d said it; you hadn’t been thinking about his state of mind at all. At the time, you rarely considered anyone’s.
You’ve always been a selfish, self-centered person.
In fact, you suspect that if you hadn’t also been unsettled and in need of a distraction, you wouldn’t have let him stay in your tent. More selfish behavior. But you accepted this about yourself long ago. What you can’t accept is behaviors that are more… recent.
To distract yourself from these thoughts, and distract Alas’len from his, you show him some of the books he’d helped you steal from the Circle in Val Royeaux, which you’ve since hidden away in dull-looking covers. He’s fascinated, but unlike you, he does need sleep, and eventually succumbs to it. You peel his face out of the book he’s fallen asleep on and carefully roll him onto your bedroll.
Sitting in the middle of your tent, you wait for dawn alone, considering Solas and what he might do almost as much as you consider yourself and what you might do.
Alas’len stirs a little after dawn. You can already hear people up outside, waking and beginning to break down tents. You had considered sneaking out earlier, but you hadn’t felt ready to face your traveling companions. Plus, all the damage would be done whenever they saw him leaving your tent, regardless of whether or not you were also in it. Regardless of whether or not Cassandra told anyone what she walked into, you’re going to seal this rumor here and now. If the Inquisition is so determined that you be a slut, a slut you shall be.
Still dressed in your clothes from yesterday, having never taken them off due to Alas’len’s presence, you throw open your tent and emerge into the bitter sunlight, Alas’len trailing behind you. You don’t turn to look at his face; you don’t need anything to make this situation any more embarrassing than it already is. You don’t want to see the kind of expression he’s making.
Blackwell and Sera are making breakfast, and the two of them take immediate notice. Great, just swell, just absolutely the two people you most wanted to see in this fucking moment. You’ve freed yourself from having to see Alas’len’s expression, but nothing can save you from Sera’s. She looks shocked, then hurt, and then absolutely thunderous.
You wonder, numbly, how determined she’ll be to hurt you just as badly. In your experience, they normally are. You have enough time to idly hope she doesn’t stab you, because if it happens with two blondes in a row you really will develop some kind of complex, before she’s storming over.
“I suppose yer also gonna tell me this,” she hisses, gesturing towards Alas’len. “Is also jus’ a massage?”
Maker, she’s just started and you’re already getting a headache. Actually, you might have had a headache already, you’re not sure. You’re in a desert; you’ve barely slept in you think possibly multiple months; and you just spent all night wondering if you were risking not only your life, but your friend’s, all because you can’t leave a question unanswered. The headache might just be omnipresent in your life in general right now.
To her credit, and you don’t feel like giving her a great deal of credit right now, she grabs your arm and starts pulling you away. You let her; you also don’t feel like having this conversation in plain view of literally everyone. You glance enough of Alas’len to see he looks concerned, likely due to how your lover’s quarrels have tended to go in the past.
She pulls you off behind the same tree you and Alas’len had pretend-snogged behind last night, a fact that you absolutely do not bring up. She takes a deep breath, and you can tell how badly she’s trying to not absolutely explode. A stab of pain manages to make its way through the numbness, to your dismay. She’s trying to do better. It’s just such a shame that it’s you she’s trying with. There’s no better to get to.
“Wot the fuck,” she manages finally.
“Which part are you angry about?” you ask, knowing full well that asking for clarification is generally not the go-to in these situations. But you’re genuinely not sure, with her. Different people have different expectations and demands, and hers have felt even more baffling than usual.
“The part where you just crawled out of your tent with some slut of a man we just met!” she exclaims, voice raising enough that they can certainly hear her back at camp despite the care she took in pulling you away from it. “You said… You said you hadn’t! You said there wasn’t anyone but me that you were even…!”
“There wasn’t! I didn’t lie,” you insist. “There’s nothing going on between me and Solas or me and whoever else people think, I dunno, Iron Bull or whoever. There never was.”
“Oh, but this guy!”
“Yes, this guy,” you agree, rubbing your forehead. “Didn’t I tell you literally yesterday there wasn’t a ‘we’ or an ‘us’? Haven’t I said a bunch of times that I can’t give you whatever it is you clearly want? You keep getting mad at me based on your interpretation of what’s happening here, but I don’t remember promising you shit.”
That’s enough to set her off. “Oh, fuck you, so wot, I was jus’ some fun experiment? Wanted to try a girl before you hopped right back on the next elf dick you saw?!”
“In what fucking world would you think this has anything to do with you being a girl?!” you demand, frustration leaking into the fight despite how hard you’d been trying to keep yourself distant. “This is about me! This is about me, and how I’m a mess, and how many times I fucking told you that, but you wouldn’t stop, and you want to know why I fucked him and not anyone in the Inquisition, not any of the parade of elven dicks around at any given time? It’s because he’s going to be gone in a matter of days and then I will never see him again, and that is preferable to me, do you fucking get it?“
Sera stares at you, furious and baffled.
“No,” she finally says. “I don’t get it—I don’t get you—not a single fuckin’ bit.”