Archive of Our Own

     Dorain Pavus was a master of many things. It wasn’t arrogance to say such, it was a simple, immutable fact. He had mastered high level magics at an unprecedented age through  -more often than not- his own cleverness and force of will. Children were cruel and the adults around him were lazy; they would rather nurture the mediocre talents than focus on a child who might know enough to question their mastery. Talent was a gift only to a point. When talent came with the need for knowledge, not only about the nature of magic, but the nature of the world, questions about what was just and fair, and why those things only applied to some people and not to others. When a child began to ask questions their teachers couldn’t, or more often wouldn’t,  answer - questions that challenged  “the way of things”- talent was no longer a thing that was desired. Talent became “arrogance”, “upstartedness” and “naivety”.

     Dorian had learned quite young that the only person one could ever truly rely on was oneself. The masters of the Circle rarely protected him, or anyone else, from the bullying of other children and even more rarely their peers. Mother’s would not protect you from your Father nor, father’s from your mother, and neither would shield the taunts or fists of cousin’s who were bigger and older and looking for someone else to be the lowest fruit on the tree in the eyes of their family elders. Friends would be friends only until doing so was no longer beneficial or convenient. Friendship in Tevinter meant understanding that everyone was a stepping stone when the need came, no matter how great your attachment for them. Cruelty was its own test of sorts. To make it in the Magisterium, one must learn not only to survive the games of politics and power but how to engage in them as well. There must be nothing you were not willing to do, no lie you were not willing to tell, no mask you were not willing to wear, no principle you were not willing to sacrifice,  no power you were not willing to reach for. 

     There were exceptions to the rule, of course, as there always were in Tevinter. Maevaris had refused to let herself be bullied into submission and it was from her that young Dorian had learned the value of tenacity and acting as if the world couldn’t hurt you, even when it did. There had been others, drawn into the flame of Mae’s brilliant mind and her utter rejection of the conventional, but in the end, most had bowed to the pressure of more powerful men, mostly their own fathers and grandfathers. The few who hadn’t, had found themselves unable to escape the crushing wheel of Tevinter’s castes anymore than Mae herself. Arianan had been sent off to the Chantry when she refused to have children, and scarred the husband who had meant to force her. Janus was dead, likely murdered by his own cousin’s and his seat in the Magisterium now filled by a much crueler man who believed firmly and louder in a much crueler Tevinter. Mae had spent the last ten years fighting tooth and nail for what was rightfully hers, with nothing to show for it but a martyred father, a dead husband she’d never gotten the chance to actually marry, and a battle for Tevinter’s soul that it seemed she alone was committed to fighting. 

     Dorian would have liked to say she’d always had him on her side, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Even before his exile, he’d been a poor friend to her for sometime. His work with Alexius had allowed him, for the first time, to be both respected and respectable, and damn him, he’d like it. He’d gotten used to it, the respect that came from being a well heeled scion, of being a fully ranked in Enchanter. He’d liked the way they’d looked at him, when he’d stood and spoken to a silent crowd on the lower floors of the Magisterium, all eyes on him, all ears listening. He’d been a person worthy of listening too. One of them, something that, Maevaris, since her very public transition at the tender age of fifteen, had not been. Dorian had distanced himself from her in ways, at the time, he could rationalize as two friends growing apart. But when the hammer had come down, when he’d flung himself out the third story window of his childhood bedroom and prayed he wouldn’t break his neck, it had been Mae who’d given him the chance to escape south and the money to survive in doing so. Mae, of all the people in his life who’d had the right to wash their hands of him, had been the only one who hadn’t. Once again, Mae had proven she was the better person, and the only rules she was interested in playing by were her own. Dorian owed it to her to at least try and be that brave. It would probably get them both killed in the end anyway. 

     After all, it was that very notion-that one could be brave and good and stand up for what was right-  that had been her father’s downfall and would likely be hers as well. It had certainly been Dorian’s. Tevinter society was built on a foundation of rules. Rules about class and caste, rules about lineage and blood line and nationalism. Rules about who mattered and who didn’t and rules about which rules could be broken and by who and how. Dorian had refused, early and often, to play by such rules and it had marked him as a target. When he refused to be silenced, it had marked him a problem. So each head enchanter had found some reason or another to shuffle him off to the next circle and the next after that. 

     Still, the Circles had had their lessons to teach. That a passion for knowledge and an adept skill mattered far less than the lengths you were willing to go to prove yourself.  That demons posed less of a threat to magic than men who desired power. That you could be exceptional or you could be likable, rarely could a person be both. That the principled and the powerful were very rarely the same people. That you could love people but you could never really trust them. That the world was filled with invisible rules, molds that were made thousands of years ago that one must be ready to fit themselves into, even if it meant shaving off pieces of one-self, butchering the body and soul for the privilege of belonging. And if you refused to do so, you would spend your whole life paying for it. Like Janus, like Arianan, like Mae. 

     Alexius, whatever his shortcomings, had taught Dorian how to put those lessons into action. That cleverness was not enough, that being likable was not a worthy goal, that to be a person of substance one must stop worrying so much about the opinions of others and follow the drive of one’s own soul. That if one chose the path of principle, they must be willing and able to stay the course, that strength of body, strength of character, and strength of mind were needed in any kind of fight that was worth having. That the pursuit of change was thankless, a garden you would never live to see bloom, but it remained worth it. That there was room for questions in the great machinations of the universe, and that not every question required an answer. That there were people in the world who believed in something bigger than themselves, who were willing to fight for their right to exist as they were, not as the world demanded they be. That goodness could exist in the powerful, that love could exist in its truest form among the noble families of Teveinter, and above all, that love, when shattered, would destroy everything it had  touched. 

     It was a lesson he had seen played out over and over again, in the lives of the few people he knew brave or foolish enough to open themselves to such folly. It had cost Mae her father and her would-be husband,  and it had cost Alexius his will to live. To love openly, to pursue goodness, to be the person you were meant to be, regardless of others input,  was to endure a world that wanted nothing so much as it wanted your destruction. So much as it wanted you to disappear.

     Dorian Pavus was a master of many things - fashion, magic, charm, debate, ruining a family dinner- but he excelled at nothing so much as he excelled at enduring.

     Oh, he complained about it. Endlessly and with extreme gusto. If he was forced to endure a constant state of discomfort, he was determined to share the wealth. Misery loved company after all. But Dorain was intimately aware of the things he was capable of surviving. Violence enacted on him, body and soul, since childhood, by the world and by himself.  But Maker be damned if he was going to stay silent about it. 

     Being shot though, that was new. 

     He’d seen arrows strike bodies a hundred times by now, shot from the magnificent machine Varric carried, or by the feral elf girl, Sera, as she darted between the trees. The wet thunk of metal through meat and the cries that followed. 

     It was strange though, how different the scenario played out on one's self. Time seemed to slow, as if someone had cast haste on him. A whistle from behind and punch in the back, staggering him, the breath knocked out of him. The blow seemed to move though him, dissipate, as his brain tried to make sense of what had tripped him. He looked down, driven by some instinct he couldn’t explain, and saw it, the shining metal tip of an arrow, poking through his robes, just below his ribs. It was the most garish shade of red, spreading out slowly from the wound, staining the creme colored fabric. Pity, he’d liked these robes. 

     The spell released, as suddenly as it had come upon him, his brain racing to catch up a sensation returned all at once. It hurt . He lost control of his body, his knees bending despite his best efforts to force them not to, his body curling helplessly smaller, trying to protect the wounded place at his core. The world narrowed, the fighting around him seeming to fade, unable to compete with the thunder of his own heart beat, his heavy panting breaths. Every inhale was fire, every exhale torture, as the arrow shifted inside him, pressing against rib and tissue and organ. 

     He knew, logically, that he should be afraid. He heard himself call for help, but the part of him that had kept him alive in those years after he’d fled Quiranis, that had kept his head on his shoulders in back alley’s and brothels, was already running the numbers, calculating the variables of survival. 

     Potions, his brain supplied, he needed potions.

     Potions, which he did not have. Potions, which would do him no good, until the arrow was removed. The  removal he could not do himself, based both on the arrow’s placement, and his sudden inability to unclench his hands from his staff. And there was always the chance of poison, the risk of infection, punctured lung or a sucking chest wound that would suffocate him before the potions could do their work. They had left Solas, hands down their best healer,  back at Skyhold, researching some Fade mystery or another; a luxury he supposed was allowed to the Inquisitor’s favorite Apostate. 

     Dorian had been shocked, when the Inquisitor had told him he needed him in the Hinterlands. Mathalin rarely left the keep without the other elf at his side and they kept far closer council than most. Not surprising, as Dorian had witnessed both of them be mistaken for elven servants more than once. That, and the Inquisitor seemed not to like Dorian all that much. Despite their seeming truce after Dorian’s scuffle with the templar shit,  Ser Lydes, the Inquisitor, had remained cold in Dorian’s company. While he was no longer outwardly aggressive to Dorian’s presence, and while there had been a marked difference in the attitude towards mages in Haven itself, Lavellan had remained distant and cold. He offered Dorian the respectful professionalism of an officer speaking to a subordinate, but none of the warmth he offered to Solas, or Varric, or Sera. So much for friendship. Dorian tried not to take it to heart. Pariahood was like a well worn coat for him by now, and he wasn’t about to be looked down upon by people who didn’t wear shoes in the snow and those who let their dogs eat at the table.

      Still the fact remained that in taking Solas’s place, he might well have doomed himself. 

      Dorian was likely going to die here, he realized, in the mountain scrub grass outside a shit-hole little town at the ass end of nowhere. He would die in the dirt, his blood joining that of thousands of other mages through the ages. His gift for magic would mean nothing, because the earth didn’t care for any part of him but meat and fat and bone. Would the Inquisition bother to send his body home, give his parents something to bury? Would house Pavus accept his remains, even if they did? Or would they burn him in the communal pyre? Maker, would they bother to burn him at all, or would they leave him here, another corpse on the road, as much a part of the Hinterland’s landscape as the trees and rocks and foxes? The panic made his heart beat all the louder, drowning out the voices that closed in close around him. 

     Someone slapped him. Not hard, if the faint sting in his cheek was anything to go by, but enough to pull him back from the spiral of panic that threatened to swallow him up. 

     Long fingered hands cradled his face. It was not a gentle touch, the hands calloused and the fingers crooked. A pale face, too long and pale and narrow to be pretty, too scarred and crooked and sharp to be handsome, but somehow still difficult to look away from, stared back at him. The Inquisitor was pinning him down with those lyrium blue eyes of his.

     He gave Dorian’s chin a small shake, knocking the last of the cobwebs free, pulling him back into the moment. Maker, his chest ached; each breath felt like a new blow.

     “Dorian,” The Inquisitor said, in the tone of a man nearly tired of repeating himself, “Dorian, are you with me?”

     “Buy me dinner first…” Dorian slurred.

     “Maybe if you behave,” Mathalin teased, cracking a small, relieved smile. Under different circumstances. Maker, he did have a lovely smile didn’t he….

     “Eyes open Dorian, look at me,” The Inquisitor told him, in a voice that brokered no argument. All business again. A shame, really. 

     “I still have a few potions but we need to get that arrow out first, do you understand?”

     Dorian nodded. His head was putting up a strong fight against the motion but he managed. He could feel the arrow shift against his ribs, dark spots dancing at the edges of his vision.

     “It’s going to hurt, and I’m sorry for that. I will hold you as still as I can, but I need you to try and keep a hold on your magic. Can you do that for me?”

     Dorian wanted to be insulted, but the ache in his side was gnawing at him like a living thing. 

     “Yes,” he heard himself say, words slurring into each other, “just do it.”

     The Inquisitor's hands left his face, one coming to wrap around his chest, the other cradling the back of his head as he pulled Dorian into his bony shoulder, a brutal and pragmatic mirror to a lover’s embrace. Dorain almost laughed at the thought. Oh how scandalized their stalwart and stoic Inquisitor would likely be at such an accusation…

     The arrow in his back moved, and Dorian screamed, fingers twisting in the Inquisitor's coat, as he pressed his face into the curve of the man’s neck. Mathalin’s arms tightened around him. The hand that cradled his head, pressed him into the bony shoulder, stroked his hair. Dorian twisted, trying to flinch away from the source of the fiery aching, but the wiry muscle held him tight. He could feel the heat of the flames gathering in his fingers as the arrow shifted again. The fire licked at his bones, trying to burn away the source of the pain.  Behind him someone cursed. Cassandra, he thought. Her palm pressed against the wound, turning the fire into an inferno.

     “Easy, it’s nearly done. Just a little more,” Mathalin hushed him, his breath warm against the shell of Dorian’s ear, too intimate for a man who’d all but called Dorian a slaver. His voice, almost always sharp and quiet, like a knife in the dark, was soft and gentle against the shell of Dorian’s ear,  banking the fire of his pain and panic before anyone could get burned. 

     Hand peeled back his robes, digging into the wound. He might have screamed or he might have imagined it. Memory layered itself over reality, stretching over the seconds and looping back into hours. He’s ten years old, a teacher rapping his knuckles for insolence, a word he would come to understand as the act of asking questions of adults who didn’t like the answers. He’s fourteen, watching the boy he'd kissed in the library not a few hours before jeer at him for refusing to kill a kitten, refusing to use a harmless thing’s blood. They had bloodied his nose and broken the little thing's neck anyway.  He’s nineteen and the only love he knows comes from the painted boys he pays for it because at least that is a love he can trust. He’s twenty two and Alexius claps him on the shoulder and tells him he’s proud of him and he realizes oh this is what that’s supposed to feel like. He’s twenty four and Felix is dying and for a brief shining moment, Dorian thinks he can save him. He’s twenty seven dragged from his lover’s house in his night clothes while his lover watches and offers weak apologies, watches in horror as his father’s money being pressed into Dracon Abrexis’s hands.  He’s twenty eight and standing in the remains of the broken window in his childhood bedroom, deciding whether he should try to climb down and survive or jump and cease his problems altogether. He’s thirty and lying, bleeding, a world away from a home he wishes he loved less, dying in the arms of a man he can’t even blame for hating him and everything he must represent in the eyes of a Dalish elf. 

     The arrow shifted, trapping his breath in his lungs. He was a fire going out, all the fuel gone, cut off. Against his ear the Inquisitor hissed, as if he himself were in pain. The arrow shifted a final time, wrenching free, and with it, all the fight Dorian had left in him. Hands press against him, from and back, trying to stem the blood. It hurt, but in a distant way, like the pain no longer belonged to him. Around him the world shifted. Was he falling?

     Hands touched Dorian’s face again. Endless blue, the sky or the Inquisitor's eyes, he can’t tell. He was cradled in the Inquisitor's lap, head held in the crook of Mathalin’s arm.

     Panic swept through him. He didn’t want to die lying down.

      “You’re not going to die Dorian,” Mathalin said, with a soft gentleness Dorian had never heard from him before, and yet it seemed at home in his mouth, this kindness, “You’re going to be alright.”

     His head was shifted, his body lifted, the edge of a glass tipped against his lips. 

     “Drink, lethallan , and then you can rest. I promise.”

     He’d heard that word before, a name the Inquisitor and Solas sometimes used with each other, though he wasn’t certain of the meaning. He liked the way the odd elvish words rolled off the inquisitor's tongue. And being called such a name, one that seemed to denote at least a passing familiarity, Dorian found, oddly, that he believed the Inquisitor. He drank as commanded. The healing potion touched the back of his throat, filling him with the rush of magic. It raced through him, trying to fill up the empty places, trying to stem the bleeding. The relief was not complete, he felt weak and scrapped out, the pain still throbbing where his body tried to heal from the inside out, but the relief was enough to ease the blind panic of his brain and body. The spider silk thread he held on consciousness finally unraveled. 

     Calloused, crooked-fingered hands stroked Dorian’s hair, and the near permanent furrow in the Inquisitor's brow seemed to smooth. He offered Dorian a small smile, a look of relief. Dorian wondered why.

     “It’s alright. Rest now. Just Rest.”

     For once, Dorian didn’t feel the need to argue. 

~*~

     “...waking up..”

     Dorian’s eyelids had been glued shut in his sleep. He was certain of it. It was exactly the kind of prank the boys of the Carates circle loved to play. Why else did it seem impossible for him to open them? 

     “...bleeding…”

      Who was bleeding, Dorian wondered. Such a messy business.

     “..best we can do for now…”

     A hand on his forehead, calloused, not familiar in the way Eliana’s was. She was always the one who cared for Dorian when he was sick. Mother never had time for such trivialities. 

     He shifted, trying to escape the blasted daylight burning behind his eyelids. The shifting pulled something in his side, a deep, burning ache, and the fire of it burned away fog from his tired mind. He cried out, eyes flying open.

     “Shh, Dorian. Look at me,” Lavellan hushed him, stroking his hair, his cheek, keeping Dorian’s head cradled in the crook of his elbow, nowhere to look but into the endless blue Lavellan’s eyes, “That’s all you have to do. Just look at me.”

     His eyelids were so heavy, his body aching. He was cold in a way he’d never been before, like it lived in his bones, weighing him down. 

     “...another potion..”

     “...no more..”

     “... back to camp quickly…”

     A tap on his cheek.

     “Dorian?”

      “‘M here…”

     “Stay with me.”

     “Wouldn’t dream of leaving.”

     “Cheeky,” Mathalin chuckled, “even at a time like this.”

     “Part of my charm.”

     The fog in his mind began to clear and with clarity, came the deep, thrumming pain in his side. Oh that was right, he’d been run through with an arrow. He knew he  should have stayed in Skyhold. 

     To add insult to injury, literally, he was half in the Inquisitor's lap, his shoulders propped on the Inquisitor's thigh, bracketed between his upraised knee and his narrow chest, his head cradled in the crook of Mathalin’s elbow. Like an invalid, like a child. Once again proving he had no business being out here with the rest of them. He’d sauntered himself right into danger for the sake of his own pride…again.  

     Varric knelt beside them, Dorian could see that gaudy velvet tunic of his out of the corner of his eye, breathing in the smell of wood oil and leather and pipe smoke that always heralded the dwarf’s presence.

     “How are you holding up Sparkler?” He asked, situating himself in Dorian’s limited field of vision.

     “Marvelous. Don’t I look it?” Dorian croaked, around the fiery ache in his chest. 

     Varric chuckled. 

     “Yeah yeah, you’re gorgeous.”

     Cassandra knelt by his feet and leaned over to whisper something to the Inquisitor.  She held something out that Dorian couldn’t see at this angle, just the scarred back of Cassandra’s hand. He didn’t miss the way the Inquisitor's expression soured, though.  Ah Varric, always handy with the distraction and the gentle lie.

     “Nothing good then,” Dorian huffed, catching Mathalin’s eye. 

     “The archer had a vial of deathroot extract in his pocket. Probably coated his weapons in it.”

     “Ahh. Of course. Deathroot. Wonderful,” Dorian quipped, his heart kicking at the inside of his ribs like a rabbit in a snare. He didn’t want to die the sort of death a thing like deathroot seemed to promise. 

     “Breathe, Dorian,” Mathalin said, with a gentle firmness that made Dorian wish had the strength to wring the Inquisitor's neck.

     “I’m being poisoned from the inside by something so aptly named deathroot, I’m going to die in this horrible fucking place so tell me to fucking calm down,” he panted, hand pressed against the wound in his side, one fire with the exertion of shouting. 

     The Inquisitor put a long fingers hand over Dorian’s.

     “Despite the name, you’re lucky. Deathroot can kill if it’s ingested in high quantities.  It may cause hallucinations, but…”

     “So it will turn me into a blithering idiot first, wonderful.”

     “... but as a weapon coating though,  it’s favored because it causes weakness and thins the blood. It makes health potions less effective. But, we had enough on hand to slow the bleeding, and lucky for you,  I have a great deal of experience with field dressing wounds, and I’m fine hand with a needle. You’re going to be fine, Dorian. We’ll get you back to camp, and put you back together, right as rain.”

     “Oh.” Dorian sighed, suddenly exhausted, winded, like he’d run a mile, “Apologies for the hysterics then.”

     The Inquisitor's hand stayed where it was, laid over Dorian’s where it pressed against his side. It was warm. This close, the inquisitor smelled alive, like moss and good earth and green growing things.  Like leather, and metal, and sweat. Like a man. Dorian closed his eyes against the thought. Now was certainly no time to be letting those kinds of thoughts wander. There was a time and a place for fantasy and he was fairly sure laying, bleeding in one’s commander’s lap wasn’t actually one of them. That only happened to classic poetry and cheap smut novels. 

     “Well you did get shot,” Mathalin offered, flatly, but there was an edge of something that almost sounded like teasing in his tone, “I feel like mild hysterics are understandable.”

     “Where have you been hiding this sense of humor, Inquisitor,” Dorian wheezed, “you’re skinny enough we would have found it if it had been in any of the obvious places.”

     Mathalin offered Dorian a warm smile, and it transformed his scared, tattooed face from something cold, if oddly intriguing, to something bright and spectacular. He’d never seen the elf smile before. He hadn’t even thought him capable of it, his many scars twisting his face into a permanent scowl. It was the only reason a man could possibly look so dower and severe. He’d never been more glad to be wrong. Mathalin Lavellan’s smile was not a subdued thing, slipping his wide mouth into a toothy, lopsided grin. There was beauty in him after all, and now that Dorian had had a taste of it, he was desperate for more. Maker, he wanted to make this man smile, he wanted to make him laugh . 

     “I was saving it just for you,” Mathalin said, gently with that dazzling smile. 

     Maker, Dorian must have been in very bad shape, to be hallucinating as he was, that the Inquisitor was flirting of all things.

     Dorian took a moment to steel himself, before looking down at the state of his body. Someone had disentangled him from his layers enough to bind the wound, in what appeared to be strips of his own cloak. 

     “Inquisitor,” Cassandra said, her tone less stern than Dorian had expected, “We can not stay here.”

     Mathalin’s gaze turned stormy again and Dorian mourned the loose of their leader’s momentary softness. 

     “You’re right,” he said, like a curse, lifting his head to look around, “We won’t make it back to the Crossroad’s before dark, but there are ruins not far from here that would serve as decent shelter. Open enough to watch the landscape but secure enough I could defend them, if the need arose. Dorian can rest while the rest of you go ahead.” 

     “We can’t leave you out here, alone, with Dorian injured!” Cassandra crowed.

      Mathlin fixed her with a look that Dorian could remember his father making on many occasions, one of exasperated tiredness. 

     “I assure you Cassandra, I survived worse circumstances without a babysitter.”

     Cassandra’s mouth snapped shut, her expression sour. Mathlain sighed, aware of the toes he’d stepped on. 

      “Cassandra, we slowed the bleeding and I patched him enough well enough to get him moving, but I’m a soldier, not a healer. I can get a man on his feet, but I can’t fix him, not in the way he’s going to need,” Mathalin said plainly, “If we try to drag him all the way to Redcliffe Village, he’ll be worse off for it. Not to mention we’ll all have to listen to him complain.”

     “I’m right here you know,” Dorian croaked.

     “Good, then I hope you’re listening,” Mathalin said, not unkindly, before he turned back to Cassandra, “Right now, we need shelter. The ruins are the closest, safest option. I can tend Dorian there until you can return with more help.”

     “He’s right, Seeker,” Varric offered. 

     Dorian took a steadying breath, as deep as he dared. 

     “How far is it, to the ruins?” he asked, dreading the answer.

     “A little less than a mile, if I’m mapped right in my head,” the Inquisitor replied, almost apologetically. 

     Dorian nodded. Maker, he hated the south. 

     “I can make it,” Dorian said, resolutely, half trying to convince himself. 

     The journey to his feet was long and labored. Every movement tugged at the wound, all the muscles of his body seeming to have rearranged themselves to connect to that one spot. He was sweating and shaking by the time he made it up, and the Inquisitor arranged helped him arrange his robes into some semblance of decency. Dorian leaned heavily on his staff, but he was too exhausted and achy to be embarrassed. The Inquisitor's hand at his elbow though, felt like a blow his pride couldn’t handle. 

     “I’m fine,” Dorian snipped, trying to shrug the touch off and failing miserably. The Inquisitor at least did him the service of taking a step back, quirking a brow at him. 

     “You’re really not, Dorian.”

     Dorian scowled at him, reigning in the desire to melt the man’s face off.  

      The Inquisitor, to his credit, did take a step back, but only a step, staying close to Dorian’s side. He let Cassandra take his usually place on point, and Varric kept behind them, but Mathalin stayed shoulder to shoulder with Dorian as he began to hobble his way- slowly, painfully, miserably- through the scrub grass and sparse pine forest. 

     Varric, for his part, seemed unbothered by the slow trudge, and filled the silence with a constantly litany of low stakes teasing with their resident Seeker. Dorian had to put all of his focus on dragging one foot in front of the other, but the dwarf’s cheerful tone and Cassandra’s half hissed, annoyed responses made the whole thing somehow easier to bear. The pain was not so bad as it had been, and he no longer felt the numbness in limbs that had driven him into animal panic, but he wasn’t sure that counted for much. He felt exhausted beyond measure, like something had syphoned the life out of him. His side ached, thrumming in time with his heart, radiating out through his whole body like he was one massive bruise. He could hear himself panting, despite their slow, steady progress. A few times, he swayed, shoulder bumping into Mathalin’s. The Inquisitor caught his elbow, and held him still for a moment, allowing him to find his footing, not letting go until Dorian’s pride pushed him to shake the man off, and continue, clinging to his staff like an old man. 

     Dorian wasn’t sure what caused him to stumble, if it was a rock or a branch or his own useless feet. He only knew that one moment he was moving, trudging along slowly with the same stone nosed tenacity that had allowed him to survive this long, and then something had disrupted the miserable rhythm, and the shallow well of strength he’d been drawing from ran suddenly, inexplicably, dry. His knees folded, sticking the earth with jolt that rocked through his body like a thunder wave, jarring the wound and rattling his teeth in his head. He felt his body sag, clinging to his staff but otherwise out of his control. 

     The Inquisitor was there, catching shoulders before he could tilt face down into the dirt, the other’s crowding around him, blocking out the sun. 

     “M’ fine,” Dorian heard himself slur, his head suddenly so, so heavy. If he could just lie down for a moment, just close his eyes, he’d be fine. 

     Mathalin ignored him, taking Dorian’s face in his hands, lifting it to look in his eyes. Dorian blinked slowly. This close he could see all Mathalin’s scars, and his eyelashes, white, like snow. 

     “ Felasil shemlen*," Mathlain hissed, as he pulled away. 

     The Inquisitor  turned his back to Dorian, taking the mage’s arms and lifting them over his shoulders, before reaching down to grasp Dorian’s thighs. A bawdy joke touched Dorian’s tongue but he was too tired to let it out of his mouth. Then, all at once, the Inquisitor stood, taking Dorian with him. He hoisted the taller man onto his back, in a feat of strength Dorian would not have guessed their lithe elven leader. Dorian clung to Mathalin’s neck, squeezing his thighs like he’d just mounded a skittish horse, his body tight with panic and the responding ache enough to take his breath away. His side and back were sticky, he realized. He was bleeding again. How long had he been bleeding again?

     “Easy Dorian,” Mathalin said, no hint of strain in his voice, just concern, “I have you. We’re nearly there. Rest now.”

     “Inquisitor…”

     “I’ve got him, Cassandra. Lead the way. Varric, can you grab his staff, we’ll never hear the end of it if it’s left.”

     “It’s a good staff,” Dorian mumbled, “expensive.”

     “I’m sure,” he heard the Inquisitor answered, “Now rest.”

     Dorian let his head rest against his bicep, soaking up the warmth of the lithe body pressed against his chest, and the sinking sun at his back. He closed his eyes, lulled by the sound of his heart beat and the sound of Mathalin’s breath. 

~*~  

     Consciousness came and went, flitting away from him like mots of dust the moment he noticed. There was motion, sound, the easy swaying of Mathalin’s body as he carried Dorian. Voices and movement, and soft grass and wood smoke. There had been hands on him, in the dark, and he’d twisted and fought at first. It hurt, but the touch made the pain less, and the blue eyes on him in the dark made him less fearful. Whatever the Inquisitor could do to him in his vulnerable state, whatever dislike he harbored for the mage, Dorian knew, even weak and out of touch as he was, that Mathalin Lavellan would not take advantage. 

     Dorian woke, truly, to the warmth of a fire to his left and the brightness of stars above him. An astringent, earthy smell permeated the air, mixing with the scent of old stone, damp fur, and wood smoke. 

     Someone was singing. 

     Softly, under their breath, in a language he didn’t understand, but the voice was lovely. Deep, and rich, like a lullaby. 

     Dorian let his surroundings slid into focus, his conscious mind taking it in, cataloging. It was night, with a brightest blanket of stars than he’d ever seen. He rested on a bedroll that had been covered with an old fur of some sort, it was soft to the touch, and warm, from the heat of his body. Over him, someone had placed a leather coat as a makeshift blanket. Around him, ancient stone walls rose, latticed with ivy. The fire was warm but not overly large, so as to give away their location. Beside it, Mathalin sat in his shirt sleeves, rolled up to the elbow, showing his forearms, tattooed and scarred as the rest of him. His silver white hair was red in the fire light.  He had several long stalks of elf root laid out across his lap, meticulously de-veining the leaves and putting them into a shallow bowl.

     Dorian cast a glance down at the coat. It was dark, supple bear fur and leather, trimmed in ring velvet. A beautiful thing, really. Without it, Mathalin seemed…not smaller, but somehow more solid. More real. 

     Despite the fire, and the coat, Dorian shivered, waking up the fierce ache under his ribs again. 

    Mathalin looked up from his work. 

     “How are you feeling,” he said, relief clear in his voice.

     “Simply delightful,” Dorian croaked, his throat desert dry.

     Mathalin rose, bringing with him a canteen. Dorian had been propped up against their packs, but the Inquisitor helped him hold the canteen to his lips, after Dorian nearly dropped it, his hand shaking. When Dorian had drunk his fill, Mathalin sat back on his heels, pulling up one side of his coat to examine the wound. 

     Dorian could see now that his robes had been opened neatly to the waist, and the wound packed with a dark green poultice of some sort, the source of the astringent smell. Mathlin checked the wound with a careful, practiced hand. 

     “What is that?” Dorian asked.

     “Spindleweed and honey.”

     “Honey?”

    Mathalin nodded.

     “Creates a seal of sorts over the wound, helps keep out infection.”

     “Where are the others?”

     “They went ahead to camp, to bring help. They should be back soon,” Mathalin,reached up, resting his bare wrist against Dorian’s forehead, before he nodded, seemingly pleased, “Still no fever, so that’s good.”

     Bone tired, exhausted beyond anything he’d ever experienced, feeling more scrapped out than he had since feeling his home, Dorian looked up at the now Inquisitor. His scarred face, his stony expression, his lyrium blue eyes. There had been a moment, in Haven,  when he’d knocked that little templar shit on his ass, where Dorian thought perhaps he and Mathalin Lavellan had kindled something close to friendship. He’d left the Herald’s modest cabin that day and found that it had changed nothing. The so-called Herald Of Andraste was still as distant and chilly as he’d ever been. The only people he seemed to allow himself to be bothered with were Cassandra and Leiliana, the only people he seemed to even passively like were Varric and Solas. 

     Then Haven had fallen and the Herald became the Inquisitor and a new kind of distant coldness had come over him. He’d spent more time in the presence of Madame De Fer of late, helping her recover looted tomes for the southern Circles or some such, so perhaps the new frostiness of his personality was no real surprise. She was a formidable woman that Dorian respected deeply, and she loathed him nearly as much as he disliked her. But it still stung, to look up at the balcony one day, see her point a taloned finger and Dorian, watched the way Mathalin’s gaze had followed it. How quickly he’d looked away when he’d seen Dorian looking back. 

     More quietly hurtful though, was that Mathalin all but ignored Dorian when he passed him in library, hurrying his way between Solas’s council and Leliana’s. Dorian given up everything to come here, and it cost him everything to stay, with Alexius, a man he had loved like a father and who’s opinion he valued more than anyone alive, rotting a cell beneath his feet. 

     It felt so stupid, so endlessly ridiculous to feel so childish hurt for the minor sin of being ignored. It wasn’t as if Mathalin Lavellan didn’t have bigger things to worry about than Dorian’s presence, let alone his feelings. 

     But the truth of it all was, the south itself had made him deeply foolish. He’d never been much of a believer, he’d gone to the Chantry and sang the chant as he was meant to but the institution had always felt archaic and unnecessary. Andraste though, Andraste he had always believed in. Mortal woman or Divine Bride, it hadn’t mattered. There had always been something magical in her, in her story, in her image, that had resonated with Dorian since he was a child. A woman who had dreamed of a greatness beyond comprehension, and followed it, even to her end. Someone who saw the right path, and walked it, no matter the cost. Someone who had loved, deeply, and been betrayed for that love. 

     He hadn’t really believed in all the Herald nonsense when Felix had reached out to him, begged him to help put a stop to his father’s madness. But then he’d watched Mathalin Lavellan cast up a hand to the sky and close a  rift in the Veil itself, with a power he should not have possessed as a non-mage and sheer force of will. He’d watched Mathalin fight his way through a monstrous future, watched the grief and fury of all he stood to lose fuel him. He had watched Mathalin, just a man, put himself between the people of Haven and a monster that was not supposed to exist, without hesitation.

     Dorian had been certain, watching thousands of pounds of snow and rock thunder down the mountainside towards the village of Haven, that he had witnessed something monumentally, historically, awful. Not just loss of a battle, of a town, or all the people who had come to Haven for hope. He had witnessed the death of a martyr, a blood sacrifice to an old god. One of his gods. 

     Lighting refugee fires as they trudged through the snowy mountain, Dorian had questioned what he would do next. He wasn’t sure what the world would look like now that the Inquisition's Herald, its figurehead, was dead. And quietly, in his sad little scap of tent, he grieved. He grieved the man he’d barely known and what he meant to the world. He grieved for the good that always seemed to be lost the minute it found enough sun to blossom, stamped out by the more powerful, by those for whom the cruelty and unjustness of the world suited quite fine. Dorian had, for the first time in a very long time, found hope, real hope, not tainted by the cynicism that had dogged him his whole life. He grieved the loss of that hope and from his grief, for the first time in years, Dorian had prayed. Prayed, and wept. 

     Then, in the shadow of the mountain, another miracle. Mathalin Lavellan, alive, if half frozen half to death. 

     “Dorian?”

     Dorian startled out of his thoughts. Mathalin’s hand was on his cheek, and he was looking at Dorian with open concern. The touch was too warm and too intimate, suffocating in its closeness. Barely speaking to him, and now touching him with such familiarity, caring for him, carrying him. Dorian felt like he was being thrashed about in the mouth of some ugly, block-headed Fereldan hound. He scowled, too tired and too achy to question the sudden, hot, tense anger that boiled up in him.

     “What?” He heard himself snip, turning away from the touch to gaze at the fire. 

     Mathalin sat back on his heels. 

     “I asked how you were feeling?”

     Dorian sighed, embarrassed. He’d let his thoughts get away with him and take his wits along for the ride. A dangerous pastime and not one he was keen to repeat. 

     “Like I’ve been shot,” he quipped.

     “Fair enough,” Mathalin shrugged, hoisting himself to his feet and moving back to the fire, “Let me finish the tea I was working on. It’ll help get your strength back.”

     He busied himself with the long stalks of elfroot again.

     “Awful lot of effort this,” Dorian said, before he could stop himself. His voice was creaky and thin, and held none of the bite he’d hoped. It made him feel small, sniveling. Pitable. Weak. And that weakness only soured his mood further. 

     Mathalin looked up, brows furrowed.

     “What do you mean?”

      “I know I have my uses but I didn’t expect to have you here, personally treating me in my invalidity. You have peons for that now, you know.”

     Mathalin sat back, his expression taking on that distant, hard authority it always did when he sat in judgement. 

     “Did you think I would leave on the road to die?” he said stonily, “Or that use your blood and bones for some elven ritual perhaps? Butcher you like livestock for the meat? Or did some other hateful rumor come to mind?”

     “What?” Dorian huffed, pushing up onto an elbow and instantly regretting it, “No!”

     “Then what did you mean? Enlighten me,” Mathalin barked at him, all teeth.

     “You fucking hate me!” Dorian snapped, “And now, suddenly, you dote on me as if we were dear friends? If you want something of me, just ask for it! Or are you hoping to use all this as some sort of…leverage?”

      Mathalin sat back, as if Dorian had slapped him, his already large eyes somehow impossibly wider, his sharp jaw going slack in surprise. 

     “Dorian…” he said, almost timidly, “what possessed you to believe I hated you?”

     Dorian was truly angry now. 

     “You’ve hardly spoken to me since we arrived in Skyhold, you won’t look me in the eye, you don’t even like being seen with me. I come to the Herald’s Rest, you leave, I walk into a room, you walk out, ” Dorian snapped, ignoring the fire in his side, because he refused to voice his indignation lying down( and blanketed with the Inquisitor's stupid coat, no matter how warm it was or how good it smelled) “You seem content to keep the company of everyone except for me. Even Sera, who I’m not entirely certain is a person but rather some kind of rabid weasel masquerading as a girl.”

     Mathalin blinked at him which, for reasons Dorian couldn’t seem to fathom, just made him angrier. Now the truth was there, roiling at the surface, and in his exhaustion he hadn’t the strength to keep it in nor the wits to make it sound like anything other than it was: naked, honest, hurt. 

     “I know I am a pariah, I have been for a long time and it suits me just fine. I can tolerate the southern Chantry biddies talking about me behind their hands and the servants who probably spit in my food. I know that the southern Mages loathe me  and the Templars are afraid of me, and I know what Madame De Fer says about me because at least she has the decency to say it to me. I know exactly who I am to these people, I know exactly what they see,” he said, shocked at himself when his voice cracked, at the tightness in his own chest, “But I had thought that, after what happened at Redcliffe, what happened at Haven, I might find at least one ally, who understood that a man might not be all the things people say he is. It seems I was wrong.”

     Dorian was panting now, the exertion of his impassioned grousing having sucked what little strength from him that their rest had regained. The arm he leaned on was shaking, and he was sweating. His mustache probably looked abysmal, a thought that only added insult to literal injury. 

     Mathalin didn’t speak, instead he sighed, and stood, crossing the short distance to sit beside Dorian. Carefully, he helped the mage back down against their packs. Dorian wanted to shoot him through with a lightning bolt, but he couldn’t summon the will. 

     “Dorian,” the Inquisitor said after a moment, “I’m sorry. I have been a poor friend to you. And make no mistake, that is what I consider you. A friend.”

      “What?” Dorian asked, taken aback. Of all the things he was certain the Inquisitor thought of him, that wasn’t it. 

      Mathalin scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, and this close, Dorian could see his pale cheeks were flushed. The Inquisitor, stone cold and sharp as ice…was blushing.

     “The truth of it is, it’s been a very long time since I’ve had… friends . Since I’ve had anything but the work. And this….” Mathalin shook his head, “I’m so far out of my depth, Dorian. I’m not like you, I can’t make it up as I go along. I can’t pivot at a moment's notice, I can’t work someone’s words against them and come out on top. The truth is,  I have no fucking idea what I’m doing. People are looking to me to make choices I have no business making, because I am the only one willing to make them.”

     He settled into the grass at Dorian’s side, wrapping his arms loosely around his knees.

     “And I am finding that because I am the only one willing to make those choices, everyone is looking to me to see what I’ll do next. I’ve walked into an adder’s nest and every where I look there's…just more fucking snakes. They are watching who I talk to and about what and why. It’s…”

    “Fucking awful?” Dorian offered.

     Mathalin nodded.

     “Exactly that. I hate it. I know that the mages are cautious of you, and I know that Mother Giselle and Viveinne and any other number of people have made it very clear they don’t want a Tevinter mage in our midst. And I know that the templar’s are afraid of you, not just because you are a Tevinter mage but because you struck one of them and not only did I allow it, I supported you,” Mathalin said, a little breathless, like he was running catch up with his words, “What I did at Haven, it painted a target on your back. I know your position is precarious, I know you’ve made yourself a target of the Venatori, and worse,  just by being with the Inquisition, and I made it worse. You stood up for people who couldn’t stand up for themselves before I had the power to make anyone listen.”

      “You made Lydes listen pretty well when you dragged him through camp by his collar.”

     “Lydes was a stupid, arrogant boy who had never been knocked on his ass before. He’s a problem I know, a problem I can understand,” Mathalin huffed, “One arrogant boy needing taught a lesson I could handle, but an army? A chantry? A world?”

     He ran a hand over his close cropped hair, glowing silver white in the moonlight. 

     “There are so many people already ready to burn the world down at the very idea that their precious Maker would send an elf to rescue them, and sided, publicly, and loudly, with a Tevinter mage in a fight with a Templar, over a tranquil apostate,” he said, shaking his head, tugging at the grass beside him, “You made the right choice, and I know I made the right choice in supporting you. I’d do it again. But it’s not, I’ve been informed “the way things are done”, and while there is a certain amount of grace offered to the herald , that didn’t extend to you and…I told myself I had to protect you from that. It was the least of what I owed you, for stepping in where I couldn’t.”

     Mathalin looked back at Dorian, the expression earnest. 

     “I thought if I put some distance between us, it would make you less of a target.  I tried to squash any cruelty or rumors I encountered, I’m sorry it’s not been enough, and I’m sorry that distance made you think I felt the same way.”

     “I had no idea,” Dorian admitted, surprisingly touched. He hadn’t expected Mathalin to care any more about his reputation than he did. 

     “I know what it’s like to be a stranger in a strange land. To be surrounded by people who, at any other time, in another circumstance, would treat you like you are worse than nothing. But those people, they can’t say those things to me now so they say them about the people around me. I didn’t want that for you, for you to have to deal with more scrutiny because of me. Sera has her Friends, Bull has the Chargers, Blackwall has the Wardens, and Varric has made a career out of making himself a nuisance. They have a protection you don’t. But you sacrificed a great deal to be here, which I respect and appreciate and was trying to find a way to pay back. And in trying to spare you from being targeted I left you feeling all the more an outcast. You are a good man Dorian, and I respect you.” 

     “I…well…hmm,” Dorian mumbled, “It seems I have made a great fool of myself then haven't I?”

     “Well in your defense, I was the fool first,” Mathalin shrugged, “So I can’t really hold it against you.”

     “I have been devastatingly wounded, after all. I’m obviously not in my right mind.”

     Mathalin chuckled at that, a soft breathy sound and god’s Dorian wanted to bottle that sound and drink on a cold southern night. Blood loss and weakness were making him just as stupid as wine ever had. 

     “Oh, obviously,” Mathalin replied, with a hint of a smile.

     They sat in the nighttime quiet for a long while. The fire crackled, and Mathlin’s small kettle bubbled, and somewhere beyond the walls, a night bird called. 

     Dorian sighed, trying to shift into a more comfortable position. The pain had turned into a dull ache and he didn’t feel like he was actively dying, like he had on the road. But he was still too sharply aware of how little the potion had helped, of the weakness in his limbs, and the sheer weight of exhaustion pressing him into the dirt. It felt like lying belly up in front of a hungry beast. Flayed open, exposed, vulnerable.

     “Maker, I hate the south,” he growled, mostly to himself. 

     “You’re in good company then,” Mathalin replied, head tilted back, still looking up at the stars. 

     “I thought you Dalish treasured the lands or some such?”

     Mathlin shrugged. 

     “We do. But I’m not from the south.”

    “You’re not?”

       Mathalin shook his head.

     “My clan lives in the Free Marches. Before the war, I’d only been to the south once, for the Arlathvhen , when I was a boy.”

     “The what?”

     Mathalin smiled, small and somber. 

     “Sorry. A meeting of the clans. They happen every ten years or so.” 

     Dorian shifted, trying to find a more comfortable position. There wasn’t one, but given that Mathalin was sitting on the damp grass with the Dorian between him and the fire, he’d decided it would be poor form to complain at the moment. He’d save it for when the Seeker returned, she was by far the most fun one to needle. 

     “And you only attended the one?” Dorian asked, trying to let his earnest interest show through the tiredness that had crept over him. Everything he’d knew about the Dalish had come either from the wonder tales his nurse had told him as a boy, or the pro slavery propaganda that the slave traders paid good coin to make sure had become the popular notion in the Empirum. Propaganda that Dorian had only now begun to realize he too, had fallen for. 

     “When the second one came, the south was on the verge of Blight, no one was crossing the Waking Sea in those days.”

     “And the third?”

     Mathalin looked away from the stars then, fixing Dorian with a questioning glance.

     “You said, back at Haven, your name had been good enough for thirty odd years. So, what about the third?”

     Mathalin rolled his shoulders, his face suddenly tight. 

     “The circles had started falling by then. What happened it Kirkwall…it sent a shock wave through the Marches. Clan Lavellan wasn’t as welcome in Starkhaven or Ostwick as we had once been. We stuck close the border of Nevarra for a while, Nevarrans tend to be more…open minded about magic outside Chantry control.”

     “Excluding Cassandra,” Dorian chimed in, as cheekily as he could manage.

     He was rewarded with a small, conspiratorial grin.

     “Excluding Cassandra,” Mathalin agreed, “But the Clan needed money, and there was money to be made for a good tracker, which I am.”

     There was something in the way Mathalin said the words, something steely, and dangerous.

     “You hunted mages,” Dorian said. 

     Mathalin nodded, looking back up at the stars.

     “A few, yes, “ he said, before a mean little grin twisted on his lips,  “But  rogue Templar’s were a more favored quarry.”

     Dorian smiled his own, quiet, vindictive smile. He’d heard the stories of southern Templars, and he’d seen the wreckage of Kirkwall during his trek south. The few sparse days he’d spent there were enough to understand why an apostate would blow up a chantry. Tevinter might not be something to aspire to, but what mages were subjected to in the south was the stuff of nightmares. Trusting armed zealots with the power to over power, to sever a mage from their dreams, to have the absolute authority to burn a circle to the ground with all its mages locked inside? Dorian had always been surprised it had taken so long for the circle’s to fall. And, knowing that, it was no surprise that Mathalin had taken to hunting the kind of men who felt that was their maker given right to do so. 

     “That explains a great deal,” Dorian admitted. 

     Mathalin Lavellan fought like no one Dorian had ever seen, silent until he wasn’t, with a speed and a fury that made Dorian constantly thankful they were fighting the same enemies. 

     “Heavily armored men against heavily armored men almost always ends in a blood bath. But a few hunters, quick and quiet? The killing is almost done by the time they realize who’s doing it, if they realize at all.”

     “And who paid for these dead templars?” 

     “The people they were stealing from. Most of them couldn’t even pay us in gold. It was grain, and chickens, cloth sometimes. A man once gave us a pair of druffalo. Getting them home was something, I’m sure.”

     “You don’t know?”

     Mathlain looked at him, with an expression he couldn’t place. 

     “No,” he said after a time, “I didn’t leave my clan on the best of terms and I haven’t been back in many years.” 

     “And still you went to spy on the Conclave?” Dorian asked

      Mathalin simply shrugged.

     “I may not…get on with our Keeper anymore, but she is still our Keeper, and I respect that. We are Dalish, we only have each other. We are all that’s left of what we once were. That means something, something bigger than personal feelings.” 

      “How very generous of you.”

      “No, not generous. Quite the opposite in fact,” Mathalin looked up at the stars again, “If I hadn’t gone, my sister would have, and she’d likely be dead now.”

      “You’re sister?”

      “Younger sister, yes. She’s our Keeper’s second. Even if she had survived, as I did, I can’t imagine a world where the Chantry would have let an elven mage live if she was even suspected of murdering the Divine. The only reason I’m still here is because no one besides Rodrick saw me as a threat. ”

     Mathalin sighed, a deep, heavy sound, like he was setting down a great weight. 

     “There were seven of us, you know?” he said quietly, after a moment, “ That went to the temple of Sacred Ashes. Two inside with me, and four more in the woods surrounding the temple. When my keeper sent word, she said none of them had returned. I said prayers for them, but… I don’t know what happened to their bodies.”

     Bathed, half in moon light, half in firelight, the shadow’s catching in the pitted hollows of his scared face, making the green of his tattoos stand out starkly from the paleness of his skin, Dorian wondered for the first time how horrible it must have been, to walk back through the temple wreckage, and know that while the world wept for a woman you had never known, while the Chantry screamed and cried and wrent at its robes, over her loss, and not be able to grieve your own. The temple was a graveyard with six Dalish souls and dozens of mages, a tomb for whatever life Mathalin Lavellan lived before this and whatever life he might have had after. Had anyone of them thought of that, when they looked to him to save them? Had anyone of them, even once, looked at him, angry, cagey, cold as he was, and wondered if he himself might be grieving? Dorian certainly hadn’t, and faced with that now, he felt like such an idiot for not seeing it, even from a distance.

     Carefully, Dorian reached out, resting a hand on Mathalin’s calf. 

     “I’m sorry,” he said, and found that he meant it.

     Mathalin looked down at his hand, the back up at Dorian, and graced him with a small, sad smile. He rested his own hand over Dorian’s, warm and solid.

     “Thank you, letha’lan. ”

    “That word, what does it mean?”

    “It means friend.”

     Dorian smiled. It had been a long time since someone had called him that. He was almost certain Mathalin meant it.