Distractions
Iron Bull puts his hand on your shoulder, something you don’t quite understand until you come around the corner of a divider and see Krem. When you jolt, Iron Bull’s hand holds you steady, and when your legs go weak, it shifts to your back to keep you from falling.
He looks bad.
Krem’s bandaged from collarbone to just above his navel, but what really bothers you is the sunken look of his eyes, the smattering of sickeningly dark bruises along what flesh you can see. You bet he looks infinitely worse just under those bandages.
A strangled sound escapes your throat, and that seems to be enough for Krem to open his eyes. It’s a slow process, and his eyes are slightly glazed over, reminding you of too many other times. Memories cascade through your mind, threatening to overtake you. But despite the frantic thudding of your heart against your ribcage, you swallow the panic down. You can freak out later.
Krem’s mouth splits open in a weak grin, and for an instant, he looks far more himself. “Knew they couldn’t keep you out for long, boss.”
“They would’ve kept me out for a lot longer if Emma didn’t have the most damn convincing puppy-dog eyes I’ve ever seen,” Bull says with a chuckle. He gives you the gentlest nudge with his hand against your back, and you take a few steps forward before kneeling down by the side of the lifted cot Krem is laying on.
“Oh, you’re back from Val Royeaux,” Krem says, his voice slightly hoarse, but cheerful. “Bet you had a nicer time there than I did in Ferelden,” he adds with a weak chuckle.
“She nearly ran into the same problem,” Bull says when your voice fails you. “Bandit attacks, twice.”
Krem frowns. “Really? You okay?”
You snort. It’s the first sound you make, and it’s not a very useful one, but you can’t help it. “Am I… Yeah, Krem, I’m fine. I’ve still got both lungs and everything.”
“Did the soldiers manage to keep you out of the fight?” he asks.
“No, they were terrible,” you say with a grin. “They don’t make soldiers like they used to. Fortunately, some strapping young mercenary let me kick the crap out of him a couple of times, so I managed to handle the situation myself.”
Krem chuckles, and you mirror his smile with your own equally weak one. It’s a good thing you’re kneeling; you’re not sure you could stand. When was the last time you felt this? Back in Seheron? You’ve been keeping yourself arm’s length from everyone for a very long time… and it’s still there, that urge to hide yourself away and shut everyone out until you stop caring. But the weight of your bag against your back reminds you of something.
“Hey, Krem… I got you something while I was in Val Royeaux,” you say, and he really does look shocked. What’s the protocol here, seeing as how he’d had a bit of a crush on you? Ah, well… He’s hurt. He deserves something nice right now. You shift your bag around in front of you. You barely have to rummage through it; there’s not much left in there now, and his is one of the larger things. You pull it out and unwrap it for him.
“A… box?” he says, curiously.
“Yep, a box,” you reply. “Here, give me your hand.” You set the box on the corner of his cot and take his hand with yours, wincing at how light it feels, how it shakes as you put his fingers on the little knob on the side of the box. You help him twist it, then open up the top. A dragon statuette spins slowly in place, posed as if flying around in circles, and the quiet, tinny sounds of a music box fill the healer’s tent.
“This is… is this from Tevinter? How did you…?”
“It was in a second hand shop. I have no idea how authentic it is, but it’s certainly in the Tevinter style. If it’s authentic, it was woefully underpriced. If it’s not, I may have been ripped off,” you say with a chuckle. “I thought you might like it, though. I don’t know if you ever get homesick, but… I do, so I thought…”
“It’s beautiful,” he says hoarsely. “Can you leave it here?” he glances up towards the healer, who is standing somewhat awkwardly in the corner. The woman hesitates, then nods.
“I don’t see the harm in it. Some people even say music helps the humors,” she says, and he smiles, not a goofy grin, but a genuine sort of smile that makes you smile in return, unbidden.
“Thanks, Emma.”
The visit doesn’t last long after that, and is slightly less emotionally fraught. You mostly just stay there, kneeling next to Krem while he and Bull joke and catch up. You’re glad you were able to get Bull in to see him, even if it was a happy accident. He may have liked your present, but it’s obvious seeing the Iron Bull is what really made him feel better.
You take a moment to compose yourself outside of the tent.
“Not used to seeing the injured, huh?” Bull asks, and you shudder.
“For the most part, no. If I ever saw someone who looked that bad, they were already dead. I’m glad I couldn’t see under the bandages,” you admit. There’s no chance of you eating breakfast now… one more lie to Solas. To Iron Bull, too, since he’ll want you to eat. “Before I forget, let me finish emptying out my bag.” You twist it around. “I’m going to be so glad to be rid of all this stuff. I’ve been lugging it around, waiting for you arses to get back.”
You pull what may be the heaviest thing out of your bag, save perhaps—perhaps—for your gift for Solas, which still lays in the bottom of the pack. The present is simply wrapped up in trash parchment; you didn’t bother to wrap it nicely. Bull looks as surprised as Krem had, despite having just witnessed you give a present.
“What? Did you think I’d go all the way to Val Royeaux and not get presents?” you say with a scowl. “C’mon, take it, it’s heavy.”
Iron Bull takes the bundle from you and unwraps it quickly but curiously, then stares at the item inside. It’s a goblet… or maybe a mug, you’re not entirely sure what the difference is… but a big one, carved in the shape of a dragon’s head. “It’s huge,” you offer. “And I know you Qunari are weird about dragons, so I thought you might like it. If it’s a little too Tevinter-y, though, I ge—”
“It’s perfect,” he says firmly. “I bet you’re gonna say it’s too early in the morning to break it in, though, right?”
You snort. “Yeah, of course it is! It’s barely sunrise!” You glance around the courtyard, which is slowly starting to fill with more people as the sun rises. “I’ll need a bath and a change of clothes… but before I go, there’s one more thing. This is for the Chargers in general, but I’m going to let you handle distribution.” This time, you pull out a sack. Only two more hefty presents in your back. So close to being done.
You toss it gently to Bull, who catches the large bag in one hand, then bounces it up and down, listening to the rattling chinks of metal against metal. “A bag of silver? You shouldn’t have.”
You snort. “Try again.”
He hooks the mug onto his belt–of course he would–and then opens up the bag. His eyebrows raise yet again, and for an instant you can see his one good eye growing a little soft. Maybe he likes this even more than the mug. He pulls out one of the dozens of matching pins. “Bulls,” he says with a grin. “Little metal bull pins. Where the fuck did you even find these?”
“Being sold for three coppers a piece in a store,” you say with a snort. “You should’ve seen the look on the guy’s face when I said I would take them all. I’d bet anything that they’re off of corpses, but they were just way too perfect for me to pass up. Those little bastards started my little gift-buying spree in Val Royeaux. Once I’d gotten presents for an entire mercenary company, the rest just unfolded from there.”
“It’s perfect,” Bull says. “Oh man, the guys are gonna love these.”
“What is it you guys say? Horns pointing up?” you say with a snort. “Well, now it can be a bit more literal. Glad you like it, Bull.”
Bull startles you then, by wrapping you in a one armed hug and jerking you against him. You’re shocked, then shocked again by the lack of panic, especially given your state of mind. Actually, the physical contact feels… nice. It’s short, the quick, jostling hug that you’ve seen soldiers and mercenaries giving each other frequently. A sign of brotherhood, if anything. When he releases you, you sort of wish it had lasted longer.
How strained for contact are you? You can’t help but scold yourself. This is a damn Qunari! You can’t afford to be as weak as you’ve gotten.
“I need to go change,” you inform the Iron Bull again. “I’ll see you at practice tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Bull reminds you. You blink. So it is.
“Then Monday.”
You get a change of clothes from your room and you do get that bath… in the human baths again, because you’re nothing if not a rabble-rousing knife-eared little shit. You skip breakfast; your appetite is gone and besides, you’d like to get to work as quickly as possible considering tomorrow is your “day off.”
You change into fresh clothes and head to the rotunda. Solas is already there and more than willing to give you your morning enchantment so you can get to work. Fortunately, he never asks if you’ve eaten, though he sometimes asks if you slept well. You don’t feel comfortable lying to him about taking care of yourself, not now, not after he’s practically bribing you to do it. Better that he doesn’t ask, so you don’t have to lie.
You’re almost surprised to find your desk exactly as you left it, with no missive in sight. No missive in two days, no word from Leliana or Argent, no fallout for skipping out on your “morning training.” It’s too good to be true. Perhaps you’ve been fired, or are about to be? You can barely even bring yourself to care. The Qunlat missives were interesting, but delivering them was an annoyance that kept you in the eye of dangerous people like Commander Rutherford and Seeker Pentaghast. So long as you can finish your tome, you don’t care about the rest. Your position here in Skyhold is secure, and you’d rather it not be in service to the Spymaster anyway, if you had the choice. Even if you got fired, you’re willing to bet that Solas would be willing to hire you as some sort of personal assistant. You’re not worried.
With your enchantment in place, it’s nothing for you to smoothly speed through page after page. Not to say you rush. No, you take your time and ensure there are no mistakes. It’s simply that you’re excellent at your job, and with the added benefit of magic, you’re practically godlike in terms of speed and competence.
While you work, you puzzle over something you hadn’t had much time to think about, what with the Chargers’ sudden return and Krem’s injuries… Solas’s notes, his interesting and possibly unique runic shorthand. He’s not working on them again today—you looked, and didn’t see them on his desk while he was enchanting your wrist—so you can’t even grab them for a closer look. What had it reminded you of…? You call the images to mind, wishing you’d had more time to study them. They sort of remind you of some of the ancient Tevinter tomes of magic, particularly personal journals turned priceless relics by the passage of time. If only you had your books! If only you hadn’t lost everything in that blasted fire. It will take you a long time and a lot of sucking up to Banal’ras and others to get copies, even of your own works.
Off the top of your head, a particular mage’s journal you once translated, pre-Blight and absolutely priceless… seems sort of similar. You’d kill to be able to compare them side by side, but seeing as how you have access to neither at the moment… But why would Solas’s shorthand by similar to an ancient Tevene one, anyway? It’s possible it’s a coincidence… He claims to be self-taught, so it would make more sense if his shorthand were utterly alien and bizarre. Or maybe, like you, he had learned from old scrolls and books. You would say you are self taught as well, after all, for the most part, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t learn from books. Just that you had no formal education, no one group or person who taught you.
Though how would a self-taught Somniari avoid harm? Kidnapping, death, Tranquility, demons, possession? Or had he not avoided all of those things? You had wondered before that he might be an abomination. Given some privacy and a lack of fear of his knowledge or power, you could find out, but given as you have none of those things, there’s no real way for you to know. Even if you could rummage through him the way he rummaged through you… if he was aware of your doing so, he could hide it, or retaliate. And having seen him in combat, and knowing him now as a Somniari, you have no doubt he could crush you—abomination or no.
Terror of that situation aside, it doesn’t actually matter to you if he’s an abomination. He’s not actively trying to stick a demon in you, so it’s whatever. It doesn’t matter. Live and let live and all that. No, you’re more curious about where he got all that power and knowledge. Out of sheer desire to know, and also, well… you’re not above playing copycat. If it works, it works.
But honestly, how else could he have possibly gained the knowledge he possessed and avoided contact with Templars to the point that—
…
“Solas?” you say out loud, deciding to give some voice to your musings.
“Yes?” he replies, and you slow slightly in your writing to focus on what you’re saying.
“Your techniques, your magic… Did you learn from Tevinter sources?”
The pause is long, so long that you actually hesitate in writing and glance over your shoulder. Have you hit the nail on the head, or just offended him? Asking an elf if they were from Tevinter was a loaded question in any context, really.
“Why do you ask?” he says, a guarded voice betraying him despite his neutral expression.
Honesty, then. “There was something familiar about your runic shorthand,” you explain. “It’s been driving me crazy. I was wondering if it might be similar to something I saw in Tevinter.”
“I have learned none of my techniques from Tevinter,” he says, just a little stiffly. “I suspect any similarity is mere coincidence.”
Coincidence? Really? Not that you can really argue otherwise without a side by side comparison. “Maybe you’re right. The ones they remind me of are in a pre-Blight journal I used to own,” you add, face just as carefully neutral as his. “And you could hardly have learned things from old tomes and ancient scrolls… What sort of strange person does that?”
To your relief, Solas laughs, seeing your jest. It lightens the tenseness in his shoulders somewhat, relaxes the atmosphere slightly. “Who indeed. However, this is not something I learned from a book. It is my own shorthand, hobbled together and altered throughout the years, picked through from memories in the Fade and then modified to suit my own needs.”
You hum, lightly. “Memories in the Fade… Maybe they were memories of the ancient Tevinters, and that’s why…” you murmur, mostly to yourself. It’s as good an excuse as any, though Solas looks significantly irritated. Although “from the Fade” seems to be his default excuse for his oddities, it may in fact be true. He is a somniari… though if he’s trying to hide that fact, he’s doing a terrible job of it. A mage might know such things would be impossible for a normal mage… But you also lack knowledge of what is and is not a dead giveaway when it comes to these things, due to your own situation.
You find yourself suddenly slightly tired of the inescapable maze of lies you and Solas seem trapped in. How much is he lying? How much are you lying? Neither of you know, and yet both of you know the other is certainly hiding things. It’s an endless, exhausting dance of deceit and… frankly, you could use a break.
But there’s never a break, not if you want to stay alive long. You know that. Solas probably knows that, too. You let out a long, tired sigh.
“I’m hungry,” you decide. “Is it alright with you if I get lunch a bit early today?”
Solas blinks, as if momentarily uncertain why you’re asking him. “Feel free.”
You clean your quill and cap your inks and you’re out the door while an idea still formulates in your head.
Rather than heading straight to the kitchens–though you are quite hungry–you head to the little side-library where Servis so often lurks. As luck would have it, he’s there… although you’re not too lucky, since his creepy Templar “friend” is there too. Shame you didn’t see Solas’ rune crafting a few days earlier–this whole thing would be more convenient and less suspect if you could do it without the Templar there. Ah well. You lived in Val Royeaux for years, worked in and out of Circles. You know how to operate around Templars.
“Ah, my dear Emma!” Servis says grandly, making a show of marking his place in the book he’s reading with the snakeskin bookmark you gave him. Ugh, what a dramatic fellow. And Dorian is the one named “peacock?” They both strut. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Hello, serah,” you say with a polite smile. “I was asked to pass this note your way, and thought I might avail myself of this library while I was here.” You slip the folded note onto his table, then turn to peruse one of the shelves as he opens it, curiosity plain on his face. He blinks, smiles briefly, and sets it aside. You see the Templar twist his neck slightly to look at it, but he’ll have no luck; it’s written in Tevene, and you sincerely doubt they’re teaching that at the Chantry these days.
“Looking for anything in particular? I may be able to help.”
You hum thoughtfully. “You have been here a while now… Do you have anything here on long-term runecrafting? Serah Solas has me hunting down resources for him…” The Templar is certainly listening now, if he’s any good at his job. Hard to tell in actuality. he’s wearing one of those shitty Templar helmets; you can barely see his eyes at any given time.
“As a matter-of-fact, yes,” Servis says. The legs of his chair screech and groan against the stone floor as he pushes it backwards and stands. He comes over behind you—stands a little too close for your personal taste, but you’re used to this sort of behavior. He’s testing to see how you’ll react. “Aaah… here.” He snags a book and pulls it out. “I suppose serving mages is a second instinct to you by now.”
That was a low blow. “Unlike most mages, Solas is helpful to me as well,” you reply blithely. “Reciprocation is not something understood by most, it seems.”
“Oh? Does he ‘reciprocate’ with all his servants?”
“Make no mistake, serah, I assist him, but I am not his servant. You do understand how that works, don’t you? Don’t tell me you think that because I fetched a single book for you, that makes me your servant?”
“Ah, hardly. If anything, perhaps I should be serving you out of gratitude. It’s been extremely useful to my own work.”
“Oh, I’m glad to hear it,” you say, wandering over to the desk where he was sitting moments earlier and plopping yourself down into the chair—the only chair. His. You move his things slightly to the side to set down the tome he’d just handed you, and open it. You relish the clear irritation on his face to no small extent. You always wanted to do that to a Magister. You suppose he’ll have to do.
“I doubt you’ll be able to understand that,” he says, loftiness in his voice ruined by the twinge of annoyance. “It is a magical tome, after all. Best just run it off to your mage and see if he can get some use from it.”
“What sort of assistant would I be if I couldn’t at least do this much?” you reply. “Although it’s true I don’t really understand most of it,” you lie. “I tried reading the tome I got for you, as well, but I couldn’t really make heads or tails of it.”
“I’m not surprised,” Servis replies sourly, walking around the desk to stand beside ‘your’ chair. “It’s hardly an advanced tome, but some knowledge is required.”
“I’m attempting to learn the basics of runic shorthand, at the very least, but…” You let your eyes fall to Servis’s papers, very carefully “accidentally” splayed out when you shifted his things. You pick one of the pages idly. “Serah, did you perhaps attend the Circle in Minrathous?”
“Of course,” Servis replies blithely. You’re willing to bet he knows you’re up to something. But so long as he plays along—and he will—you should be able to do this without making the Templar think anything odd of it.
“I thought so. Your shorthand reminds me of my old master’s,” you say, picking up a few more pages of notes and thumbing through them. “It’s much familiar than the bizarre scribbles that Solas uses… Ah, I know this one!” You point at the most basic rune of the lot, an absolute base fire rune. No one would actually use it for anything but practice. Servis, of course, chuckles at your seeming ignorance.
“I suppose that’s something, though if that’s all you know, your Magister neglected your education somewhat.”
“I was a child, and magical assistance wasn’t my main job,” you say with a shrug. “Not at that time, anyway.”
“You really must tell me how you got away some day—”
“Say…” you interrupt, running your fingers gently over one of the runes curiously. “I’ve seen Solas draw this same rune, I think. But I could barely make sense of it. Perhaps…” You glance over your shoulder at Servis, all servant’s politeness and doe eyes. “Might I borrow some of your notes? I could compare them to his, perhaps finally figure out that baseless scribble he calls shorthand…”
Servis hesitates, then smiles, certain at least of what you’re doing, if not why. Besides, it would be rude to turn you down after what you wrote on that note. “I don’t see why not. I don’t really even need them anymore. Most of those are from before you got me this tome. I was attempting to figure out the techniques I needed on my own. You scratched my back–I should scratch yours, yes? Reciprocation.”
You grin, more honestly than you perhaps should–but your back is to the Templar. “Thank you, serah. I believe this book is what Solas was looking for. I’ll hand it off to him with his lunch. Thank you again for your assistance.”
“Not at all,” he says demurely, with a slight little bow of the head.
Ah. Tevinter mages. It’s like slipping on a warm, familiar, comfortingly disgusting pair of socks. Dirty, maybe, but worn in all the right places.