Pigeons Are Fucking Idiots
In retrospect, sleeping on the roof was both a great idea and a terrible one. It was great because you’re remarkably safe from prying eyes, and with Cole there to watch over you, you sleep pretty solidly through the night. You’re not sure if Solas just didn’t sleep or if he just wandered off in the opposite direction in the Fade or something, but Cole never woke you up like he normally would. Or maybe he tried and you just stayed unconscious, but you prefer not to think about that.
The downside of course, is that you’re hungover and there’s sunlight and also… birds? Yes, there are pigeons that appear to have gathered around you over night, ostensibly for warmth. You’re kind of loathe to move them, seeing as how they appear to have done you the extreme favor of not pooping on you. You also suspect you might have them to thank for the fact that you’re not particularly cold despite sleeping on a roof in late autumn.
Cole is also there; you’re a bit surprised that he appears to have stayed the entire night. He’s sitting nearby, legs tucked up to his chest, watching the birds, or possibly you, with a neutral expression on his face. You consider, briefly, that to anyone else, this would be a deeply upsetting way to wake up in general: on a roof, covered in pigeons, with a young man watching you from about ten feet away with a blank expression. In your life, however, this apparently has just become par for the course.
“How’d I sleep?” you say, voice coming out hoarse and gravely. You clear your throat, and are suddenly aware of how intensely thirsty you are.
“Wrong,” Cole replies.
“…I slept wrong?” you attempt to clarify, and he nods. “…Huh.” You could ask for more details, and probably will later, but your limited focus has turned to the pigeon situation.
You’re not exactly carpeted in them, but there’s a rather peaceful line of nesting birds along the line of your arm, hip, and leg. They’re also nestled up next to your front and, from what you can feel, along your back as well. It’s a shame to have to disturb them, but you can’t just stay on the roof, covered in pigeons. You shift slightly, and there’s a few grumpy coos of displeasure from your arm.
“If I move,” you rasp. “Don’t take that as a sign to shit on me.”
“They know you’re not going to hurt them. A curious spirit, looking and touching but never destroying.”
The shift in your posture is enough to send several birds fluttering off of your arm, and you shift to move the last few so you can sit up. Birds that were nestled around your chest flutter with distaste at the sudden lack of warmth.
“Not never,” you say, scowling.
“Sometimes it can go too far.”
“Maybe that was just me,” you reason, rubbing your eyes and then shaking your head against the shadows of memories, or maybe dreams. “Maybe that’s just who I’ve always been.”
Cole says nothing, and that’s almost as good as confirmation to you, but you don’t want to dwell on it. Finally, Cole startles you out of your depressing, circling thoughts.
“The birds don’t think so.”
You roll your eyes. “Pigeons are fucking idiots, Cole,” and the rest of them take off in a rain of falling feathers.
“There you are!” is starting to become the standard reaction for when you walk into a room, it seems.
“Yes, goodness, it’s almost like she’s always fine,” Dorian mutters vaguely into his mug.
“You never came to the room last night,” the Seeker says, frowning. “And you were gone in the morning, as well! Given your state of inebriation last night, we were concerned.”
“You were concerned,” corrects Dorian. “I told you she was probably out taking advantage of the final bastion of society before it’s nothing but sand as far as the eyes can see.”
“I awoke before dawn! Where in the Maker’s name could she have been shopping at that hour?” the Seeker protests.
“Night market?” Dorian suggests.
“Yes, the famous Montisimmard Night Market,” Solas adds sarcastically. He’s sitting beside Dorian and drinking something from a mug, looking deeply disinterested in the fuss the Seeker is making. Everyone is having breakfast, and therefore hearing all of this, but Pentaghast seems the only one really paying you much mind.
“Where were you?” the Seeker asks, irritatingly concerned eyes landing on you again.
You scowl. Or actually, you think you’ve been scowling this entire time. It’s a default expression when it’s this early and you’re this hungover.
“Last night, I was utterly charmed by a traveling merchant. I spent the evening in his room, engaging in the sort of wild, passionate lovemaking that one hopes only to read about in the pages of well-written erotica. He’s gone now, but I’ll always have the memories of the night we shared,” you deadpan. In the silence that follows, you add, “Don’t worry, I’ll endeavor that my fatigue doesn’t effect my work nor our traveling speed today.”
There’s another pause, and then Dorian snorts with laughter, which breaks the tension somewhat. It’s immediately reinstated by Sera standing up furiously and hurling a dinner roll at your head, which bounces off fairly harmlessly as she turns and storms out of the inn.
“She… knows you were joking, yes?” Dorian wonders as you pick up the roll.
“What in the Maker’s name is going on with you two, anyway?” Blackwall wonders out loud, and something inside of you finishes snapping in two.
“A lot of mistakes neither of us seem willing to stop making,” you mutter, quietly enough that you’re not sure who hears you. Especially given that you’re already turning to storm out the door that Sera didn’t leave through.
You head to the stables, despite the fact that for once you do have actual professionals to take care of the damn horses. You would have liked a warm breakfast, but that’s very clearly not in the cards for you today. You can feel yourself making more and more of a mess, tangled up in ropes and destroying your surroundings more every time you struggle. But you don’t know how to get out without breaking everything.
When have you ever gotten out of anything without breaking everything? It’s your one talent.
You find yourself in the stables, but you’re not even checking on the horses or doing anything to excuse your presence here. You’re actually just sort of standing at the end of a row of stalls, blankly facing the wall and staring at nothing. You feel panic fire lightning violence everything roiling under your skin despite the fact that there should be nothing inside you left to explode. You just want it to stop, you want everything to stop, stop spinning, stop boiling over, stop writhing out of your control. You want to go back in time to the day you met Sera and refuse every advance. You want to never have learned your shared history; you want her to be a stranger you owe nothing. You want to shred out of existence every kiss, every stroke of skin, every skyward scream and whispered prayer.
You want her to forget, but you want to remember. Is it selfishness or masochism, a reward you want—taste of her skin, touch of her hand buried in your hair—or a punishment you deserve?
You’ve buried into her skin like barbed wire, and you think that might just be your nature, so you wish you didn’t exist, because that’s the only way you can see out of this other than tearing yourself out of her and leaving only blood behind. The sensation of her barbed wire under your own skin goes largely disregarded, because you’ve seen your own blood and are much more accustomed to the sight. It’s hers that scares you.
And you’ve tried the alternative, you can see the alternative on the ground in front of you in a pool of shared hearts’ blood, fluids mingling in a perversion of the love you shared and you can’t do that again you can’t you—
“Would you… like to talk about it?”
The voice comes haltingly, awkwardly. You turn to face it, for a moment expecting long hair drained silver-white from too much bleach, judgmental eyes that know too much about you.
You do meet eyes that know, but not too much yet, because they’re nervous and concerned and beautiful stormy blue-grey.
Your face twists into something like rage, a snarling beast, cornered and terrified with nothing to do but bite. Your mouth opens to hiss hate at him, a snake spitting venom: get back, get away. What comes out instead is a wail like a broken spirit escaping between your teeth.
You sink awkwardly onto the ground, legs splayed out to the side, bent at odd angles. You’re a child throwing a tantrum, all raw edges and no control. A sob bubbles out of your chest and tears burst senselessly from your eyes. Hot tears, like each drop holds suspended inside a shard of the fire burning ceaselessly in your chest.
Solas kneels down on the ground next to you, wordlessly, and you fill the silence with a string of stupid, stupid curses and complaints.
“Such a jerk—” “It’s not even my fault even though it is—” “Why can’t she just leave it—” “How hard is it to just take no for an answer—” “All my fault—” “All her fault—” “Why am I like this—”
Solas never interrupts you, never offers an opinion or commentary on the mess you’ve created. You’re glad for it, because that makes it easier, once you’ve mounted up and hit the road, to pretend like it never happened. Cole and Solas might know the truth, but at least to everyone else, it might look like you feel nothing at all.
You know the Inquisitor doesn’t make his decisions based on interpersonal drama. You know that even if he did, your interpersonal drama wouldn’t even make the considerations. Nonetheless, you find yourself wordlessly thankfully when he announces the ahead team for the day will contain Sera. Sera and himself, thank the Maker, thank the Maker, and even the Seeker.
You’re left in blissful solitude, the presence of Blackwall, Dorian, Solas, and Cole barely feeling like a presence at all. You’re still hungover, mind, and all the crying did nothing good for your headache. Only the knowledge that you’d fall off if you laid down keeps you upright in the saddle, your beautiful fat-ass of a hart ignoring you entirely to focus on the road… the first time you’ve been grateful for his presence as opposed to Revas’s, since that upsettingly empathic hart surely can already tell how shredded up you are inside.
Despite that, with every steady sip of the elfroot-infused water Solas had somehow procured and shoved into your hands, you feel numbness sinking into your limbs. Your aura is all but dead inside you, so anemic as to be barely there at all. The fatigue this would normally create is somewhat counteracted by the energy given to you by a good night’s sleep, even one deeply helped along by copious amounts of alcohol. You think you might even be operating at an energy net positive compared to the foggy exhaustion that’s become your baseline since your Solas-related paranoia set in in earnest.
Cole… hovers. Not literally, but probably only because he’s aware of how alarming that would look. Solas hovers as well, to a lesser extent. He seems to be trying to give you distance, but you catch him quickly looking away when you glance his direction. Although that might mean relatively little, since you catch Blackwall doing the same thing a few times. Perhaps you’re just a spectacle today.
Of course, the relatively blissful relative silence—even Blackwall and Dorian stop bickering when you snap at them to just lay them on the table and get it over with—can’t last through lunch. The five of you meet back up with Sera, the Seeker, and the Inquisitor, and things are beyond awkward… You’re excruciatingly aware that you’re the epicenter of the awkward, which only makes things worse.
Inexplicably, Sera doesn’t seem to be actively furious with you anymore. She hands you a cup of campfire tea, but kind of grudgingly and without actually looking at you. There was no actual need for her to hand you tea, though, so you’re left at an absolute loss for how to read the situation. Even moreso when sits on a log next to you while you eat. Despite the close quarters, however, she still doesn’t… actually look at you at any point. She sorts of glares off into space or down at her food, which you’re not used to her doing.
Her conversation is awkward and stiff, and you’re pretty sure yours is too. Her tone says she’s angry, as does her body language, but her actions and words don’t. She’s trying to make small talk but she’s stabbing her sausage with frankly alarming vehemence. It’s extremely confusing. The whole situation isn’t helped by the fact everyone else is clearly desperate to stay far away from whatever bullshit the two of you have going on. You can’t blame them, but between them trying not to look directly at you and Sera refusing to glance your way, you’re starting to feel like you’ve got some kind of weird plague spread by eye contact.
You thought you’d be relieved when lunch was over and Sera went off to the advance team, but instead you’re just more bewildered than ever. Could she just decide whether or not she hates you? You would never begrudge her the loathing, but you’re seriously getting whiplash.
Life, for you, is a sore ass.
You can’t help thinking that as you shift uncomfortably on Revas’s back. He’s bonier than Vhas’durgen, and the extra bouncing is serving you badly. Despite that, the afternoon isn’t too terrible. You’re confused and upset about Sera, and her part in your sore ass is weighing heavily on your mind. But the weather is very nice, and the trees are beautiful, and Cole keeps pointing out butterflies. At one point he tries to chirp back at a bird. It’s impossible for even you to keep a bad mood going under such circumstances. You wind up hitting somewhere around “pensive” instead.
Conversations flicker around you like bird song as you drift in and out of your own thoughts. Solas and Cole are talking about something utterly incomprehensible again.
“Nothing but lies and crooked wings” catches your ear. Are they talking about you again or are you just being paranoid? The phrasing is a bit cruel for Cole, and Solas replies with something that sounds like it’s about religion, one hierarchy full of lies and manipulation you actually haven’t had much use for.
Oh, oh, wings and lies! Must be the Nightingale. It’s kind of a relief to remember you’re not the only one working from a throne of lies and secrets. You wonder if many people begrudge her her’s. It’s somewhat expected for a spymaster, less so for a linguist.
Your musing is interrupted by a bit of escalation in volume from Blackwall, which could mean only one thing. Yes… Dorian. Of course. Blackwall is saying something stiff about noble’s perfumed assholes, which would be funnier due to its accuracy if Blackwall wasn’t actually using it as an insult. You’re just as certain that Dorian said something uniquely ignorant that set him off. Still, you wish Blackwall would go a little easier on him. Dorian’s brand of headassery might be unique due to his Tevinter upbringing, but it’s not like the Inquisitor isn’t a noble! They just get along because they’re both Marchers, as crude and loud as each other. Irritated that your admonition from that morning has already worn off, you steer Revas somewhat closer to Solas.
“I know the Inquisitor doesn’t consider such things, but I can’t help but note he took my only female companionship with him,” you say, making sure your voice carries over the thud of hooves.
Solas glances your way, looking bemused and clearly wondering where you’re going with this. “You have been preferring female company as of late,” he agrees, and you level him with a sour glare. You don’t need him inserting his pointed banter into yours.
“Can you blame me?” you say with an exaggerated sigh. “At least there’s a few of you here who have yet to be completely overtaken by your raging hormones.”
Solas’s eyes flicker towards Dorian and Blackwall, who have paused bickering long enough to listen in. “Ah, I see. It can be quite exhausting to be on a trip with someone trapped in a pit of their own hormonal making,” he agrees, once again completely unnecessarily referencing your own bullshit. You manage to mostly ignore his ‘help.’
“I’m trying to be understanding, you know, it’s getting warmer as we travel west, blood is beginning to flow again, including to certain parts of a man, but it’s just quite tiring. I never thought I’d consider Orlesians straightforward, but they do seem quite in touch with their desires compared to some other people.”
“Some people can never quite admit what they want,” Solas suggests, and you nod sagely.
“Quite a sad thing, I suppose.”
By this point, Dorian and Blackwall’s horses have somehow moved themselves to completely opposite sides of the road, and you feel satisfied that you’ll be getting some degree of peace for the rest of the afternoon.
You spend dinner with the horses. You can grab whatever food is left after the others are done, and even that you’re doing mostly to convince everyone that you’re not an inconvenience. You simply don’t want an awkward repeat of lunch; you have no idea what’s going on with Sera—does she feel bad for yelling at you? You yelled first… And you’d definitely been provoking her at breakfast.
You don’t feel like dealing with the Seeker and the Inquisitor, either, particularly not after they start sparring. The last thing you need to do is get dragged into that. It’s enough of a pain trying to squeeze in stance practice between everything else, and you’re sore enough without swinging that damned sword around some more.
Ergo, horses.
It’s been a good tenday since you left Skyhold—it doesn’t feel like that long—and the horses seem to have finally adjusted to your presence. You’ve certainly gotten a good feel for their personalities, and even the largest of them don’t spook you anymore. Of course, you still string them up every night. It’s a lot of horses and you don’t trust them not to wander off or get startled and run, and then you’re the asshole who didn’t tie up the horses.
The harts, however, you don’t bother with. You know that even if they wander off, they’ll come back, and they won’t go far to begin with. You weren’t sure about Derreck at first… with a name like that and a rider like the Seeker, you’d been a bit worried he was a fluke and not even a proper hart at all. But to your surprise, he’d immediately fallen into the same comfortable affection as Revas, Ashi’lana, and now Vhas’durgen.
You’ve already tended to every single mount, and now you’re just killing time, wandering amongst the horses, checking for ticks in places you might have missed, patting noses and just generally doing anything to avoid heading back into camp proper before most everyone has gone to bed. As a result, you wind up wandering even further away from the horses, idly and slowly, and eventually find yourself at the furthest point that could still be considered the edge of camp, the crest of a slight hill. Any further and you’d be out of sight of the campfire and officially into “wandering off into the night” territory.
You sit down in the grass after a while. It’s cool, but the earth is still slightly warm with the remnants of daytime, and you’re somewhat out of the wind while laying down. You stare up at the stars, mind drifting listlessly from thought to thought. It’s probably as close as you ever get to empty, and you feel like you could let not only the whole night, but the whole winter pass you by just lying on that hill, growing into the ground like a tree taking root.
Horns drift into and out of your vision of the night sky; at one point someone’s soft, furry nose nuzzles at your hand for an idle pat. Beyond that, you simply exist for a little, trying and for once managing not to think on any of the thousand dire, depressing things in your present or immediate past. You find yourself idly daydreaming instead, a half-dream where you, your mother, and Leah ride through the Dales on harts. Free of Templars and Wardens and Legionaries… simply existing. Together.
Three of the harts laid down at some point, an adorable habit that separates them from the horses, which sleep standing up with an efficiency you can only admire. Harts, however, tend to lie down when they’re comfortable and want a power nap. You shift enough to lean up against Revas’s side, knowing that he, of all of them, certainly won’t mind. He’s very warm, and the night isn’t that cold, and you’re pretty sure you could and possibly will sleep out here unless someone drags you back to your damn tent. Maybe you sleep better under the stars? You’d never particularly noticed that about yourself, but then again, you’ve never been safe under the stars before.
You’re not asleep when Solas approaches, which is probably for the best. You’re just sort of staring out at the Imperial Highway, which winds from one forest, through the valley you’re camped along the side of, and into yet another forest further down. It’s very rare for you to be this far west, and the sensation of unfamiliar territory is probably only going to get stronger as you near the Approach.
Solas stands wordlessly nearby for a few moments, staring out that way as well. The two of you must cut an interesting silhouette against the rising moons. The way he stands, back straight and arms comfortably tucked behind him would look formal if you weren’t used to the way his posture gets when he’s thinking. You, on the other hand, are tucked comfortably in the grass, back warm against thick hart fur, arms wrapped around your knees as you rest your chin between them and watch time drift slowly by.
He looks down and quirks and eyebrow at you, gaze drifting to the myriad harts that have settled in around you, as well as Vhas’durgen, who stands as a lone sentinel against the steadily growing darkness as the very last rays of daylight fade away. “Finally found your people, I see,” he observes.
You snort. “Yeah, only ones who don’t ask me invasive questions, elect to kiss me, or think it’s deeply unusual for a lone elven woman in a war zone to have picked up the instinct to stab things trying to kill her,” you say sarcastically. “I’m finally at home.”
“To be fair, I think it’s more that Revas hasn’t yet discovered how to kiss you,” he says, and you laugh again. “On multiple occasions, I have seen him attempt to remove your trousers,” Solas continues as your laughter crescendos.
“I keep treats in my pockets sometimes!” you protest between giggles.
“I’ve heard that exact excuse from many a man, and it has rung false every time.”
Still laughing, you throw a clump of grass at him. It doesn’t get very far before it falls apart, but it’s the thought that counts. “Idiot. Did you come over here just to harass me and my boyfriend?”
“Boyfriends, at this rate. But no. It simply seemed more peaceful here.”
“So you decided to ruin it for me?” you joke.
“If I’m truly bothering you,” he begins, but you wave him off before you can even determine whether or not he’s being sarcastic.
“No, I understand. The Seeker and Inquisitor are playing with their swords, Dorian and Blackwall are steadfastly refusing to play with theirs, it’s all very noisy.” Frankly, in retrospect, you’re fairly certain the only reason Sera isn’t the one out here bothering you is because either she’s decided she hates you again or, more likely, it’s because you’re hanging out on top of a hill with four harts like some kind of Dalish racial stereotype.
“You must be coming to enjoy my company,” you find yourself saying.
“Was that in significant doubt?” he asks dryly. “It was my reasoning for teaching you Elvhen, after all.”
You flush a bit at the memory, but push onwards. “To be honest, I figured you were up to something.”
“Not everyone is up to something at all times.”
“Now that I’m living outside of Orlais, maybe that’s actually true,” you say with a laugh, to avoid calling him a liar or an idiot right to his face.
“If you’re such a firm believer in the duplicity of man, what convinced you otherwise?”
“You’ve been covering for me,” you say, pointing at him with a smirk. “The demon attack, and before that, even.”
“You’ve made it quite clear that you wish your past to remain there.”
“And you’ve made it a priority to keep it there.”
“Are you not accustomed to people keeping your secrets?”
Your mind flits briefly back through the list of people who’ve had one of your secrets to keep. It’s a long list of corpses with very few exceptions.
“You did sell me out to Iron Bull in a hot second the day we met,” you point out. “You’ve come a long way from ‘she’s under the desk, angry Qunari who wants her for unknown purposes.'”
“I would say you’ve come a long way from hiding under my desk, but you have not,” he replies, and you snort. “I feel you’re essentially the exact same as the woman who burst into my study, got in a loud fight with a Qunari—”
“That wouldn’t have happened if you’d just let me hide,”
“And then proceeded to declare her intent to seduce my knowledge out of me, all within the span of about ten minutes.”
You flush at the memory. You hadn’t guessed for a second then that you would have ever taken an interest in recreational seducing… of Solas or anyone at Skyhold, frankly. It made business-seduction, frankly, out of the question. Still, you can’t help the bit of smugness that creeps into your smile. “I absolutely did, though,” you point out.
“Oh yes,” Solas says dryly. “I am thoroughly seduced.”
“Clearly not,” you say with a snort. “Because regardless of your personal stance on human transparency, there’s still an awful lot of things you’re not sharing with me.”
“Perhaps you’re simply not as good at it as you thought?” Solas suggests mildly. Your eyes snap over to fix him with a narrow-eyed glare.
“Not as good at seducing you?” you demand, mildly offended.
“You’re the one who chose to use that phrasing originally, not I,” he defends, but he can’t hide the slight upwards curve of his lips from your eyes.
This is a trap. A trap in which you loudly defend your ability to seduce him. You are aware that it’s a trap, which probably shows in the narrowing of your eyes. Knowing that it’s a trap doesn’t make it stop working, however, and it’s very difficult to remind yourself that this exact kind of tomfoolery is actively and currently getting you in a lot of trouble.
It’s hard to chase the thought from your mind that evening, however, even after you’ve returned to the camp and crawled into your tent with Cole. Sera has blown your doors wide open, and it’s getting very, very hard to pull them shut.
“What do you want out of life, Emma? Not this, surely.”
You’re aware of being asleep. Your mind is hazy in the Fade, dizzy and tenuous, your surroundings spinning and fading in and out of reality. The sensation is just familiar enough to not alarm you.
“What about you? Do you even want?”
“I want what I’ve always been.”
“That must be nice.”
“Are you any different?”
You look down at your hand, hazy and half-transparent. “I must be.”
“I don’t know about that. I think we’re the same. Don’t we want the same thing?”
“Some days, I don’t even know what I want.”
“But not this, surely.”
“Yeah… not this.”
“Anything but this.”
“Please, Maker, help me, anything but this—”
“No, stop, please, no, it wasn’t me,
“I didn’t do it, you’re wrong, it’s not me, don’t do this,
“Maker, no, help, someone help me, please, anyone,
“Don’t do this, you don’t have to do this,
“No, please, someone help me, help me help me HELP ME HELP—“
Your eyes tear open, already flooded with water and burning with fire. A face is inches above yours, and you shove at it with a bloody snarl. “NO DON’T!” Your arms hit nothing and you wrench violently upwards with the force of your shove, sitting most of the way up, still tangled in your bedroll.
The figure you shoved at wasn’t a wisp of your nightmare or a demon here to kill you, just Cole, who’d teleported out of the way of your violence, thank the Maker. He’s crouched in the corner of your tent, an alarming sight with his gaunt face and oversized hat, but you’re starting to get your head on now. Nightmare, you’d just been having a nightmare.
Just as you have this realization, the front door of your tent bursts open, treating you to the sight of the absolute last person you want to see:
Seeker Pentaghast, sword already drawn.