The Biology and Politics of Sunburn
You wake up to the taste of ash in your mouth between gritted teeth. Cole must have woken you, though you don’t see him anywhere. Maybe he’s decided to make himself scarce as you wake so he doesn’t have to deal with your bad mood. And you’re in a frightful one right now. You absolutely ache for someone to take this feeling out on. It crawls under your skin like ants, a sensation that demands action. You used to take this feeling out on chevaliers. Never ones actually making their rounds in or near the alienage; you’d learned better than that. But you’re sorely lacking chevaliers right now, and there are too many eyes on you for any of the bad behavior your instincts are screaming for.
So instead you light a candle and get some work done on your stupid fucking book.
No stress relief means no actual improvement of your mood. You sulk all through breakfast, snap at Blackwall when he tries to make light conversation, and then spend the rest of the morning preparing the mounts and snapping at them instead, since they take much less offense. Well, for the most part—you have a few unkind words for Revas and he responds by nearly peeing on your foot.
To make things worse, the morning dawns hot. It’s hard to believe you were getting soaked two days ago, because the more you travel, the hotter it gets. The sun beats down on you with nary a cloud to get in the way. You don’t mourn the loss of your armored jacket or chest piece anymore, and what little armor you have left—protection for your shoulders, arms, and legs—feels hot, heavy, and unnatural. You can’t imagine any of the ones wearing chainmail are feeling great about it either, but you can’t really tell by looking at them that they even notice the sunlight or heat.
The scrubby grass and bushes you’d been paying so much attention to become scarcer and scarcer as you gallop across western Orlais, and sand is indeed taking over. It’s as odd as you expected, to see so much sand but not smell the salt of the ocean. You can still see trees and rocks dotting the landscape behind you, but towards the west, towards your destination, there is very little to break the monotony of the horizon.
So this is what Blight does to the land. Perhaps only now, you feel like you better appreciate how easy Fereldan got off during the last Blight. Your mind drifts briefly to Leah. This does nothing for your foul mood.
It’s hot. It’s sandy. You feel uncomfortable and violent and angry. The horses kick up sand, and it’s getting everywhere. You already hate it, and you know it’s only going to get worse from here. Sandier. Hotter. More bullshit to deal with further away from where you wanted to be and further away from what you wanted to do. The only benefit to this is that your foul mood keeps everyone, even Cole, at a distance, leaving you to focus on the inconvenience of heat and sand.
You fetch your giant floppy hat—the one you bought, not the one from the prostitutes which you think Sera has anyway—and it helps a little. But it turns out that your tunics, most of which you bought with a winter in the mountains in mind, are not particularly conducive to riding through a desert. You had purchased lighter clothing to an extent, but you’re not used to this kind of sun and dry heat. So, captive audience be damned, you wind up eventually stripping to your undershirt and just tying the tunic around your waist.
It’s not as though your undershirt is indecent; frankly what Dorian’s wearing covers less in a technical sense. It’s just not something you’re used to wearing in public. And the presence of your traveling companions definitely makes this qualify as public despite the fact that the only judgmental passersby would probably be lizards, who are generally very open-minded.
You can’t lie, it feels whole worlds better. You doubt the few tunics you brought will be getting much use for the rest of this trip. During lunch, you can dig out some of the more lightweight clothes you had the foresight to purchase. Until then, undershirt it is. You just won’t think about the places sand is probably getting.
You suppose you’re in the desert now. That’s all you can really think when you stop for lunch. You thought the shift to scrubbiness had seemed abrupt, but it was nothing compared to the transition to blighted wasteland. You slide off of Revas, at first relieved and then wincing as the movement of your limbs stretches your skin. You… are not normally aware of the stretching of your own skin. You place a hand on your own shoulder—hot to the touch, but that could mean anything in this weather—and then look at your arms. That redness isn’t just irritation from the sand and wind, or flushing from the heat, you’re willing to bet. You’re sunburnt.
You curse under your breath at the realization. Of course, you’d taken your tunic off and left your bare arms to bake in the unbroken sunlight. Idiot. You hadn’t even thought about it; despite your red hair and the stereotypes attached to it by humans, you’d never been one to burn easily. But even you couldn’t avoid a vicious burn after baking yourself in desert sun for half a day.
“You can’t possibly be surprised,” comes a voice from behind you. You don’t even turn to glare at Solas, instead going to rummage in the saddlebags that carry your excess gear.
“I’ve never been in a blighted desert before,” you grumble at him. “Normally the only time I have to consider the sun is on the ocean, and that’s a rare enough occurrence. Plus a hat is normally enough to…” You finally pull out a lightweight but longer-sleeved shirt and turn to face Solas. Your eyes narrow. “How are you not burnt? You’re bald and not even wearing a hat.“
“Surely you can guess the answer to that,” Solas says, sounding amused. His outfit has changed somewhat as well, you note with some relief. At least he isn’t completely immune to suffering from the heat as you are. He’s stripped off not only all excess layers, but his tunic as well. You weren’t really necessarily ready, emotionally, for the sight of his mostly-bare arms, but you’re coping admirably, you feel.
You roll your eyes. “You have a magic spell to prevent sunburn.”
“You say that as if it’s so extraordinarily unnecessary,” Solas quips, poking your burnt shoulder. You give out a little hiss of pain and slap his hand away, and he smiles, barely. His smile is always such a tiny little thing that you suspect most people would miss it entirely. “However, I had the foresight of assuming you would not be comfortable with me casting that spell on you every few hours, and also that you would not bring a natural sunblock.”
“I bought some in town!” you say, exasperated. “I just forgot to put the damn stuff on!”
“The end result is the same as predicted,” Solas says, and you roll your eyes again. “Although if your pride is such that you don’t want my aid—”
“You’re not wasting your magic on curing a sunburn,” you say, exasperated. It’s ridiculous at the very concept.
“I’m not,” he agrees, holding up a little jar with something clay-colored inside. “Amrita vein and aloe vera grow all over the Approach, so I sincerely doubt we’ll be in any danger of running out of this little cure. In fact, if you have any interest, I’m certain we can find the time to teach you how to make it yourself.”
You perk right up at that. “I’m always game to learn a new alchemical recipe,” you say, smiling for the first time since you woke up well before dawn. “Is it really a cure?”
“An aid,” Solas concedes, gesturing you towards the rocks and rubble that are serving for your resting area. “And preventative. I’m sure you won’t be the only one using it.”
“Some o’ us had the foresight not to wait!” you hear Sera yell from—you presume—the other side of the rocks.
“Indeed,” Dorian says, eying your burn with some obvious mirth. “As they say, an ounce of prevention…”
“Sorry that I’ve never been dragged bodily through a desert, Dorian,” you say sarcastically. “As this is my first and hopefully last time, I’m sure it will be a learning experience.”
“This, at least, is a mistake you’re unlikely to make again.” Solas sits down on a rock and gestures for you to sit down on the rubble in front of him. “This will stain your clothing, if you care,” he warns you.
“Even after it dries?” you ask, frowning, and glancing down at the longer-sleeved shirt you’d been intending to throw on.
“Wait perhaps thirty minutes after application, and you should be fine. Your undershirt, however…”
“Do I look like I give a shit about the condition of my undershirts?” you ask with a roll of your eyes. Solas, no doubt remembering the condition of ones he’s seen you in before, nods in concession.
“Very well. Have a seat.”
You can’t help but glance at the positioning he wants you in—on the ground in front of him, practically between his legs. You raise an eyebrow and make pointed eye contact with Dorian, who just shrugs, although he’s grinning while he does so. Honestly. You wish you could get Sera to understand how clueless Solas can be about these things, exactly like the Inquisitor the night before—though both would be quite offended by the comparison. Of course, on a sliding scale of clueless, Sera is closer to them than she is to you or Dorian. She never gets your dick jokes. It’s kind of delightful, but it’s also why you’d never expected her to be the type to suspect sexual intent from any sort of physical contact.
You give your head a little shake to clear it and go ahead and sit down on the ground in front of Solas. The sand is hot, but not uncomfortably so. With a sigh, you just go ahead and take your boots off. They’re not much use for walking in sand, something you genuinely hadn’t considered at all. You’ll just have to unpack your foot wraps and elf it the rest of the way. Hopefully it won’t annoy Sera too badly.
You’re musing over your girl troubles with such focus that you aren’t paying attention to Solas. When he lays a hand on you, you yelp out loud, more than a little undignified. Normally you’d consider yourself somewhat armored against his touch—or anyone’s—but in this particular case, his hand is covered with cold goop and it is alarming. No less so because despite the goop, or perhaps thanks in part to it, your burnt skin is horribly sensitive.
“That feels terrible,” you complain.
“If you’d had the foresight to put something like this on in the first place—”
“Don’t lecture me, mamae.“
“Of course not,” Solas says, and you can practically hear his eyes rolling. “Nothing up to this point would suggest that you’d listen to it.”
“Hngrk,” you respond instead of what you’d been about to say, because he’s just spread the balm up onto your neck, his hands rubbing in small circles. Your breath catches in your chest as one of his hands slides around the front of your neck; your hands spasm into the sand, grabbing great fistfuls with such force that had it been grass, you would surely have torn it from the ground.
You clench your jaw, eyes finding the middle distance and staring determinedly until he’s done with your neck. When he moves back onto your shoulders again, you let out a breath you hadn’t even been aware you were holding. You don’t think you can open your mouth to complain when he reaches slightly under your shirt to rub more in.
Well, you don’t complain, but Sera picks that exact moment to walk back from the other side of the rocks. Solas just keeps on rubbing the ointment in, lost in his blissful Solas-y unawareness of how things look. You, however, are very aware of it, and make apologetic eye contact with Sera. She looks unamused; you can see the twitch in her jaw as she clenches it. But it’s for sunburn. You will her to remember that it’s just for sunburn. She appears to, since she says nothing and just keeps walking. You let out another little sigh of relief. That’s progress, right? This is a type of progress.
Completely unaware of the danger he just narrowly avoided, Solas continues on. “You don’t burn as much as I’d expect of one of your complexion,” he comments as he works the salve down one of your arms. You let in a hiss of breath as he does; your skin is more sensitive than you thought, especially on your arms.
“Really? Because I feel exceedingly burnt,” you say, wincing. “I feel like a piece of toast left in the oven for far too long.”
“In my experience, most redheads begin to burn if they so much as look at the sun,” suggests the Inquisitor. “One of my sisters is a redhead and she doesn’t get even a shade darker in the summer; she just burns.”
You shrug, which turns out to be a poor idea with a sunburn. Your skin feels weird and sticky against your shirt. “I’ve always just assumed it’s different for elves.”
“Oh?” Solas asks, which seems bizarre to you.
“Oh? Are you asking me something about elves, Solas?” you ask, exaggeratedly astounded. “I thought for sure you were about to explain the history of red hair in the elven population.”
“I simply thought you might have some observations there yourself, given that you have red hair in the elven population,” he replies dryly.
You snort. “Just that there are more redheaded elves than redheaded humans, and that the traits you see in redheaded humans don’t necessarily translate. But I always figured it was just like these.” You tap the corner of your eye. “Almost all elves have green eyes. But elf-blooded humans seem no more likely to have green eyes than the average human.”
“Really?” asks the Inquisitor curiously, leaning closer. He’s sitting on a rock nearby, probably absolutely roasting in his chainmail. He looks flushed, but not burnt, so you can only presume he, like Sera, had the foresight to prepare himself ahead of time. “I had a friend in school with green eyes; he used to get bullied about being elf-blooded by the other students.”
You wave your hand, shaking your head. “If anything, they tend towards brown eyes, but that’s useless as an identifying feature given the prevalence of brown eyes in the general population. Humans always like to presume there’s some way to tell what humans might have elf blood in them. There’s not. No slightly pointed ears, no rounder than average eyes. The child of an elf and a human is a human, and so far as I can tell, any trait that makes us different fails to pass along.”
“I wonder why that is…” the Inquisitor muses. “You’d think—”
“Inquisitor!” you hear Seeker Pentaghast call from a distance. “I require your assistance here.”
She hasn’t even finished the sentence before he’s off the rock he was sitting on and rushing over to her. You smirk in no small amount of amusement. “A bit early for the Inquisitor to be so whipped, don’t you think?”
“I wouldn’t know,” Solas replies, and then interlaces his fingers with yours. Shocked, you look down, only to realize he’s merely ensuring full coverage. Of course; your hands are your most valuable asset. Embarrassed by your reaction and with no Inquisitor to distract you, you look back up at the middle distance and wonder if being burnt means no one can tell when you’re blushing.
“You seem to have paid a lot of attention to the human children of elves,” he says, and you latch eagerly onto the distraction.
“I saw a lot of them when I was living in alienages. They stick out like sore thumbs, obviously, but you learn to tell them apart. Humans want to be able to see the elf-blood in their companions, but what they should be looking for is a human who lowers his head when walking through a door frame. A human who treats the elven servants with respect, who hires more elves than other humans, who tenses at the word knife-ear. If they were even the slightest bit more self-aware of their own behavior, they’d be able to tell that the tell-tale trait we pass on to our human children is empathy.” You pause, considering. “And a keen awareness of how tall one is compared to door frames.”
“I’ve found myself with that problem in alienages, as well,” Solas comments, and you laugh.
“How many door frames have you headbutted?”
“I do take some pride in my sense of self-awareness—”
“How many?”
“Several,” he admits, and you laugh again. “Your arms and shoulders are covered, but I will need to apply this to your face and head,” Solas warns you.
“Should I close my eyes?” you wonder.
“Only if that is your preference. I won’t be getting too close to your eyes. Sit up here.” He’s standing, and pats the rock he just vacated. You scoot up and backwards onto it, and he squats down in front of you. You realize immediately that the real problem presented by this is that to keep your eyes open would be to be staring directly at him, and close them at once.
That’s not really much better, as he starts around your neck again. Your eyes snap open, and there must be something in your eyes, because he stops immediately, hands retreating a few centimeters away from your neck as he waits for your reaction. When you say nothing, he keeps going, and you aim your eyes up and to the right, glaring vaguely at the sky. You think about anything other than how nice his hands feel while he rubs ointment into your cheeks. One of his hands stills on your cheekbone, and your eyes fall back to him, annoyed that he should decide to take his time with this.
Your complaint dies on your lips when you see his expression. He looks like he’s in pain. But when he speaks, all he says is,
“You’re healing up nicely, considering how much damage you sustained back in Skyhold.”
That, still? Underhill has barely even crossed your mind since you left Skyhold. You shrug. “I had access to a great deal of healing magic. There was no risk of me not ‘healing up well.'”
“You were blind in one eye for days.”
“Because it had swollen shut, not due to any real damage to the eye itself,” you remind him. You know that for a fact; you’d paid a lot of attention to what the healers said about your eye. “And now the worst problem I have is a sunburn.”
“Is that the worst problem you have right now?” he asks, concern breaking to show a bit of amusement. “Is it really?”
“Unless you want me to begin listing grievances against the sand and all of womankind including myself, I suggest you just finish up applying the damn cream.”
And he continues, and you’re fine—until one part you hadn’t considered. After he’s finished with your whole face and you’re certain that you’re about to be set free, finally, he runs ointment-covered fingers along your ear. Your whole body spasms at the unexpected punch of pleasure right to your core, and you almost kick him in the damn chest.
“I can do that part,” you almost hiss, snatching the jar out of his hands.
Solas frowns. “Are you sure? It’s very easy to miss a spot if you’re applying it yourself, and your ears are very—”
“They are the normal amount of sensitive!” you snap.
“…I was going to say long.”
“They’re the normal amount of that too!” you say, feeling like you’re burning up under the desert sun despite the cooling salve on your skin. That’s a blatant lie, your ears are long, but Solas doesn’t call you out on it. You apply the cream to your own damn ears, and when you miss a spot and he reaches out to wipe a bit more onto the back of your ear, you manage not to deck him or to make any inappropriate noises.
“There!” you say finally, shoving the jar back into his hands. “It’s done. Now I can… Oh!” You look down at your extended arm, blinking. “You weren’t kidding about the staining.” Your skin is a shade of brown you’re not sure you’ve ever seen on yourself. It would probably look patently absurd if you took your shirt off. Turning your arm this way and that, you can’t see a single spot Solas missed, at least.
“Indeed,” Solas says. “I hope you’re prepared to look as though you have the world’s most unfortunate tan for the next few days.”
“I’ll say. Maker have mercy.”
“It is particularly dramatic on you.” He sounds amused, but you can hardly blame him. You probably look ridiculous. “It will even out given time. You’ll just look a bit like… an inverse raccoon.”
“Oh joy.”
“It will fade, however, in a few days, unless we reapply. And it will keep you from burning.”
“Eventually, my skin will get nearly this dark on its own,” you say with a sigh. “I suppose until then I’ll just be sporting the inverse raccoon look. I’ll certainly look peculiar when we get back to Skyhold. Nothing says winter in the mountains like the tan of baking a pale elf in the desert sun.”
“If you prefer, we can let you burn,” Solas suggests. “Perhaps we can get you a bright enough shade of red to stand in for the sun during those long evenings and slow mornings.”
“Har har,” you say flatly. “No, this is fine.” Honestly, dye your hair black again and you’d be a completely different person. Perhaps you should get your hands on Solas’ recipe, or at least figure out what it is that stains your skin so. It could come in handy for more than just healing sunburn.
The afternoon isn’t any cooler than the morning was. If anything, it’s worse. But now that you’re dressed more appropriately and your skin isn’t actively sizzling, it isn’t too bad. The air is dry, and when you’re galloping there’s a decent breeze. You have to slow more regularly to keep the mounts from overheating in the sun, though, so that’s only periodically helpful.
You still have no idea how the Inquisitor is figuring out which direction you go, but he at least has a map that he’s examining regularly now. You suppose that’s how he finds the oasis you stop at a few hours after lunch, to rest the mounts and let them drink. While everyone else is rinsing off and refilling the group’s supply of water, you pull your foot wraps out of a saddlebag, intending to replace your leather boots—hot and heavy and not much use in sand. However, you pause to rinse yourself off as well. The mounts kick up an obscene amount of sand when they run, and you’re basically coated. You want to at least rinse your face off. It fucking stings when that sand hits your face and sticks.
Which is when you get any idea. You’re figuring out the desert thing fairly quickly, to your credit. Something about the heat—or possibly being stained clay-brown and wearing an undershirt and no shoes—has really stripped away your self-consciousness. So, not even considering the possibility of being heavily mocked, you curiously dip the foot wraps into the cool oasis water. Experimentally, you wrap the soaked cloth around your arm.
Holy shit that feels amazing.
Thinking of diagrams you’ve seen in books, you try wrapping it around your neck. The head and neck, those are the most temperature sensitive parts of the body, right? When they used to treat heat stroke in Seheron, they would wrap cloths soaked in cold water around the neck and head of the afflicted person. Clumsily at first, and then figuring it out, you wrap one of the foot wraps around your neck and bottom half of your face.
Yep, that feels fucking incredible. And it should keep the sun and sand off of your poor, suffering nose and mouth. You leave your nostrils uncovered, obviously, so you can breathe, but past that, you’re protected. You don’t care how dumb it probably looks. If it keeps you from suffering from painfully split lips this entire trip, you’ll look as stupid as you need to.
Which is a helpful attitude, considering you’re barefoot in leggings, an undershirt, and a loose linen tunic, your hat tied around your neck and resting on your back because it keeps falling off of your head, and, one can’t forget, elven footwraps abruptly turned into a mask to keep sand off your face. No one says anything to you about it, though. Probably because half of them are wearing chainmail, and aren’t in a state to be judging anyone. They might even envy you for getting your armor mauled to scraps. You definitely understand why they brought that instead of the plate you’ve seen them wear in the past.
That map of the Inquisitor’s appears to be a map of every single oasis in the entire desert, as you’re zigzagging in a frankly bewildering pattern, but coming across an oasis every few hours. Every single time, you pause to rest the mounts and let them drink, as well as refill your own water supplies. It’s slower going, but you’re not going to complain, and you doubt the horses will either.
You’re not necessarily getting used to the heat, but you’re figuring it out. Maybe you can do this after all. Mind, you’re pretty sure it’s been getting hotter all day, and sandier, were that even possible. You’re not sure when you’re going to cap out in terms of heat; if it just keeps getting hotter at a steady pace as you travel, you’re absolutely going to keel over dead before you reach your destination.
Which you’re… still somewhat unclear on, you realize as your group—finally—stops for the night at one of the Inquisitor’s many oases. You have a general gist, but that’s about it. Maps of the Western Approach, that you saw, aren’t exactly rife with detail, and you don’t know where this fort the Inquisition dug out of the sand even is.
You try to delicately probe for details while you and Blackwall care for the mounts together, but you don’t really get much that you didn’t already know. You’re going near the Abyssal Reach but that’s huge. So you’re unclear on where you’re going past “west” and you’re not the one with the map of the oases.
This is, you decide grimly, your last day to jump ship if you want to.
The idea has its merits, so you consider it at length instead of dismissing it out of fear like you’ve gotten into the habit of doing. You would have to abandon Alix, but weren’t you already flirting with that before this all started? You could go anywhere. If nothing else, you know you can always adapt. Frankly, nothing the world has to offer could be as strenuous as the circumstances around keeping your secrets here. You’re practically losing your damned mind to Solas alone, and you had just recovered from getting pummeled into the ground… although to be fair, that had been your idea.
But on the other hand, even putting aside your more emotional attachments for the moment, there’s still the matter of rifts and red Templars. The actual Templars themselves have been almost entirely brought under heel by the Inquisition, so they’re at least not out there tearing up the countryside. The mage rebellion is technically ongoing but with the majority of them escaped into Tevinter—poor idiots—the fighting isn’t really what it used to be. The rifts, however… you’ve just learned how dangerous those are first hand. And Red Templars, well, you already knew.
You don’t feel any real sense of loyalty to the Inquisition. You suspect you haven’t seen enough of the effect they’re having on the world, locked inside their walls as you have been. You’ve never seen the Inquisitor close a rift. You weren’t at Haven; you don’t comprehend what this Corypheus fellow is or how severe of a problem you should consider him. Moreover, you’ve never been one to try and save the world.
…Well. Not from monsters, anyway.
This is not an easy decision to make, which is probably why you’d been putting off making it for as long as possible. It’s also hard to be objective when your heart is so tangled up in Sera… both in the sense that you’d like to stick around for more sex, and that your every better instinct is screeching at you to run for the hills. Betray her, you think sourly to yourself, before she gets the chance to betray you.
Now that the sun is setting, there’s a definite chill in the air. After the heat of the day, it’s frankly kind of nice… even though you’re not generally one for cold air under any circumstances. But it’s not so cold that you’ve forgotten the heat of the day, and you’re sticky from sweat and sand and Maker knows what else. After everyone has filled up your water supplies one last time, you decide to rinse off in the oasis, clothes and all. It’s much easier to carelessly soak yourself now that you’re aware that Dorian is in possession of a magic drying spell.
You enjoy a bit of good-natured splashing around, even though the oasis is only up to your waist at the deepest point. It’s a relief to work all the sand off of your skin, and you even sit down in the water, let your hair down, and brush through it until you’ve worked out tangles and sand both.
You’re also, if you’re being perfectly honest, taking this as more time to consider whether or not to slip away. It’s not really privacy, but no one bothers you while you’re bathing. Not even Sera, who would have to be reaching alarming levels of bold to accost you when you’re in the middle of camp.
Your hair needs to dry; you don’t want to see what wet hair feels like in desert heat. But fortunately, you doubt it will take long. You leave it down, and then dodge people and mounts until you find yourself on what is arguably the outskirts of camp. You settle in up on what you’re going to suppose is called a sand dune or something; you’re not one hundred percent clear on the terminology for hills when they’re sand instead of dirt. A ridge that means you’re still within easy sight of camp, but which is far enough from the trees of the oasis to give you a bit of privacy and quiet.
It’s so flat out here that you can see a sliver of Satina on the horizon. …Satina? Is it Harvestmere already? You’ve more than lost track of the days while traveling… frankly you tend to lose track of days even while sitting next to a calendar day in and day out, just like how you lose track of hours sitting next to a time-keeping candle. But it must be Harvestmere, because that little sliver of light could be nothing but Satina. You’ll certainly have a splendid view of it out here in the desert. Surely you won’t still be here for Satinalia? You’ll probably be traveling back during the holiday… Or if you’re very lucky, you’ll have just arrived in Skyhold in time for whatever celebrations a military stronghold can throw together.
If you stay, you remind yourself. If you don’t slip off into the night with Revas tonight. You would have to head east as fast as possible, to minimize your time stuck in a desert without any idea of where to find water. You could steal a second hart, probably Ashi’lana, to carry some water and supplies, but traveling with two harts would make you stick out… and increase the chances that the Inquisition would waste resources hunting you down.
From there, you’d need to head… northeast, above the lake. Val Royeaux would be too obvious, but you have resources in Val Foret. From there, it would be easy to lay low somewhere safe, as safe as you’d thought the Inquisition would be for a scribe. You’d been certain that a scribe would be too valuable to ever risk sending into the field. Idiot… But you probably wouldn’t have been any safer as a menial worker. An army is always in need of dragging some of them along. No, the Inquisition had been a mistake from the beginning. You’d underestimated them entirely, or perhaps overestimated them. You thought they’d be just like the Chantry they broke off from.
But you’re here now, and it hasn’t been all negatives. Your cover is miraculously intact, which is frankly doing wonders for your confidence. If you can fool a Seeker and a Somniari, who can’t you fool? How miraculous is the power under your skin? Is there something special about you, or are you just the smartest of all the mages you’ve met? Smarter than Solas, who clearly doesn’t know that what you can do even can be done at all? The thought makes you smile.
Aside from all you’re learning about yourself, you also have excellent connections and resources through the Inquisition, ones that you’re growing every day. Who knows when the Chargers will come in handy? You’re willing to bet the Iron Bull would offer you a steep discount on something as easy as accompanying you into some particularly dangerous ruins. You even have some in mind. Plus, if you stick around, you could use Celia and the farm elves to dig fingers deep into the Inquisition, fingers you could keep even after you leave later. Then there’s mages like Solas and Dorian and all the resources they offer.
Frankly, Solas is his own category. The thought of leaving him without saying a word, without a whisper of explanation… hurts. More than it should. But it’s an old, dull hurt, one you know you could live with. But should you? He’s dangerous, but you’re learning so much. And Dorian might be exiled—if he’s not now you’ve no doubt he will be once word of what he’s getting up to spreads—but he’s still a Tevinter altus with all the learning and skill that implies. Your mind practically writhes with the things the two of you could get up to, undercover in Tevinter.
And there’s Cole. You’d be loathe to leave him behind, when the state of him being in this world makes him so uniquely safe to befriend. When are you ever going to have a chance to be friends with a spirit like him? He’s as one-of-a-kind as you or Solas. Utterly priceless. He’ll stay with the Inquisition until this task is done, but once it’s over, perhaps you could convince him that coming with you is the best way to help hurts. Maker above, the things you could do in Orlais with him by your side.
Somewhere through your list of pros, your cons had been utterly trounced. You’re staying. You’re seeing this idiotic mission through. You’ll do your job well and impress your friends and at the end of the day, you’re going to be the one who climbs out of this hibernaculum intact and ready to take on spring.