Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He had been struck. Arvaarad had fallen. 

She kneeled over him, her hands trembling, inches from his body. She knew she held mana in her fingertips — always just a whisper away, trembling under her skin — and his breath guttered like a candle at an open window. She could heal him, perhaps even bring him back from the brink…

But before she could bring her magic flowing forth over his torn, bleeding skin, his fingers tightened on the rod in his hand. Arcs of blue jolted from it, jolted through her collar, through her, and her teeth clattered shut. Every bone in her body rattled under the force of it. Her mouth filled with blood from her bitten tongue.

“No, Saarebas,” he choked. The whites of his eyes showed his fear. “You’ll not harm me.”

She wanted to scream — that she could help, that she wanted to help, that with him dead she must die as well, she would be expected to die, duty-bound to die — but her vocal chords held rigid and silent in her throat. 

And so she was trapped, helpless, voiceless, as the battle raged on around her and the light died from Arvaarad’s terrified eyes. She could see nothing but the saliva frothing pink at his mouth, the blood standing in the divots of his collarbones and throat, and the strain turning the whites of his eyes red. Her useless tears dropped through the shattered shield of her mask onto his face. 

She didn’t know how long she knelt, frozen, over his body. It was long enough that the grunts and clangs and screams of combat moved eastward, until it was only the groaning of those still alive on the ground in the battle’s wake. The light of the sun began to die — its fading light turned Arvaarad’s bronze skin grey — and the fires set by the bas saarebas in the desert grass began to die as well. Only the scent of smoke remained. 

Her knees cramped. Blood ran down her chin from her bitten tongue, crusting on the linen threads used to sew her lips shut. She could no longer feel her fingers, hovering as they were just above Arvaarad’s now-stiff body. The noise of her tortured mind had moved to the base of her skull — now, she was numb. She took peace in the thought that soon the enemy throatcutters would make short work of whoever remained alive on the battlefield. She wouldn’t be frozen like this forever. 

She couldn’t. The thought of it sent blood rushing through her limbs, terror spiking through her brain, until she took one breath, two breaths, three breaths to calm her pounding heart. One way or another, she would die. Whether it was tonight, or weeks from now when she finally succumbed to thirst, she would.

She must. The Qun demanded it.

Once the sun had fallen beyond the horizon, she heard it. Footsteps. 

She turned her eyes from side to side, straining at the limits of her peripheral vision, but Arvaarad’s slack, dead face was all she could see. His eyes had begun to mist over as they dried. 

A murmur. A soft, mournful sound, then a flash of blue. She registered the timbre of the voice as it approached — masculine, low — and dared to think it sounded kind. Perhaps he would end her quickly. 

Despite her terror of being killed, or worse being abandoned to die, she still felt her heart revv as the footsteps drew near. She knew her duty, she knew the burden she carried, that she couldn’t risk possession, she could be possessed right now and not even know, I should die, I should end, there is no hope for me, please kill me please kill me please please please don’t I’m so scared — 

“Kost. Maraas shokra, imekari.”

If she could’ve moved, she would have fallen forward to weep her thanks into the sand. But she could only kneel, rigid and sore and sobbing, as a pair of bare feet appeared beside Arvaarad’s head. The figure must have stooped, for a pale hand snatched up the crackling command rod from Arvaarad’s dead grip. 

She held her breath, her heartbeat sounding in her ears, as she waited for a blow that never came. Instead, the blue energy surrounding her snapped, cracked, then gave like the shell of an egg. She collapsed, gagging, onto her dead caretaker’s chest. 

“Ebasit kata,” she whispered, hoarse. The threads in her lips pulled as she spoke.

The control rod fell to the ground with a thud. The hand fell on her shoulder, harsh, as if to hold her back. “Maraas kata!” the voice hissed. 

Then that hand hauled her to the side to tip her off of Arvaarad’s body. She sprawled in the dust and took in the sky for the first time in hours, blinking slowly and disbelievingly. As she focused, the small, slim figure of her rescuer — executor? — came into view.

He was a bas. Her first impression through bleary eyes was of pale baldness and pointed ears — then, as she focused, the stern yet kind set of his eyes beneath furrowed brows. An elf, then, if that mattered. He could kill her just as well as anything else. 

But all she could think about was how thirsty she was. 

“Please,” she said, attempting to speak his tongue as he had hers. “Water?”

A low hum, then a nod of his head. He knelt at her side and offered a waterskin from within the folds of his dark coat. She drank greedily until he tipped it back from her sewn mouth. 

“Not too much, nor too fast,” he warned gently. “You have been here for some time. Let us not shock your empty stomach.”

She wiped her mouth, wincing at the blood that came away on her hand. 

“Thank you,” she muttered. “But… I will not live long enough for an upset stomach to matter.”

“Nonsense,” he snapped.

She propped herself up on one elbow, then glanced aside at Arvaarad. She closed her eyes again with a wince at the sight of him. “Without my guide, my conscience, my eyes, I cannot be trusted. Such is my fate. I wouldn’t expect a bas to understand.”

He was silent, seething, beside her for a moment. Then the anger drained away from him into the ground, and he murmured. “Do you want to die?”

Her heart thudded, caught between terror and hope. “I want to do what is right. I must end. The Qun demands it, and I am Qunari.”

He was silent again. When she looked at him, it looked as if he was internally warring with himself. He finally spoke as if he had rocks between his teeth. “You were hoping I would end you? Otherwise you would have done so yourself.”

Fear struck through her, but she closed her eyes against it. “Please? You are not one of the Arishok’s. But you speak the tongue, so you must know our scripture. You know why I must die.”

“I do,” he said evenly. “And I disagree.”

With a deep, sharp inhalation, he rose to his feet. He seemed tall from her position on the ground. He extended his hand to her.

“Come,” he commanded. “Live for a while longer. I will show you that you have nothing to fear from your own mind.”

She hesitated, heart pounding, then took his hand and let him haul her to her feet. He stared up at her from within the darkened sockets of his eyes. 

In the face of his assuredness, she felt her own uncertainty and fear begin to leech away. She shrugged under the weight of her massive collar, its chains clinking, until he fixed his eyes on it with an expression darker than any she’d seen. He snapped his fingers, and with a flare of blue the collar split, broke, and fell in two halves from her shoulders. 

Without its weight, she felt as if she’d float away. Her gut lurched — bas saarebas, bas saarebas, bas saarebas! — but she did not step away. 

“Come,” he said, voice soft but eyes still hard. 

He gestured her nearer to him until she stepped forward, as if compelled by his words. The command rod lay, forgotten and cracked, in the dirt beside him — she knew he used no magic to control her. She approached under her own power. And she did not flinch when the soft, stern man raised his right index finger to hover over her mouth.

He passed his finger, slowly, over her lips, and the acrid scent of burning fibers filled her nostrils. The linen threads binding her lips fell to ash. With another pass of his hand, cool, healing magic balmed the puncture wounds left behind. 

“You may remove your mask,” he said.

She obeyed. As it fell away, dropped from her hand onto the ground, she blinked at the new scope of sight offered to her. She saw unbroken sky, unbroken ground, body after broken body spread before them, and then the elf — the bas saarebas — standing in front of her. She blinked slowly.

A slow, unexpected smile began to spread over his features, softening them further until he seemed almost approachable. “There you are. What is your name?”

She cocked her head. “Saarebas.”

“No,” he said with an emphatic shake of his head. “You are no dangerous thing, nameless and bound. You are…” He deliberated, finger tapping his lip. 

She watched him, curious, until he inclined his head and let that smile return. 

“You are Panasaam,” he said with finality. “And I am Solas, if there are to be introductions.”

She sat with the weight of the name, wondering if she would live long enough to let it become her. “Thank you, Solas,” she said. “What would you have me do?”

He nodded and turned, gesturing for her to follow. “I would have you become your own. But, until then, feel free to accompany me. There is much to do.”

And so the two of them — bas and saarebas — quit the field of battle and entered the dark expanse of forest at the edge of the desert. With a flash of blue, the two figures disappeared into nothingness.

Chapter Text

Saarebas — no, Panasaam, she reminded herself — picked at the fragrant vegetables on her plate. The elf across the table from her cocked her head and gestured at her food.

“Eat up, da’len,” the elf said, her wrinkled face lifting in an encouraging smile. She had those funny tattoos some of the other elves wore — hers were dark red, faded with time, and twisted all over her face like a tree. Solas had told Panasaam they were called valla-something. 

“Come now,” the woman continued, still smiling. “Or I’ll have to tell him. You know how he worries.”

Panasaam frowned. “I wish he wouldn’t.”

The woman — Eris, Panasaam remembered — chuckled. “As do we all! The man is made of worries, even if he lets few of us see them.”

Panasaam continued to pick at her food, then finally raised the fork to her mouth and winced at the strong, garlicky taste. She wasn’t used to solid food yet. Arvaarad had kept her lips sewn tight, and the bindings only allowed for mushy foods like porridge and broth to pass through them. These leaves and things? She had to chew them. 

“There you are,” Eris murmured. “I know, you’re not used to it. But it gets better. Wait until you try the little cakes Lunette makes.”

Panasaam cocked her head, then jumped slightly when her horn bumped the low chandelier over the table. Her horns had grown in the last few weeks, since she now had access to proper food and they were no longer being trimmed back and capped. She had to remember to move her head carefully in these little rooms the elves built. 

“Lunette?” she asked. “That doesn’t sound…”

“Elfy?” Eris said with a sharp laugh. “No, she’s Orlesian. From that horrible little alienage in Halamshiral. She’s got plenty of stories about how terrible that empress and her little assassin-maid are. Not sure how many of them are true, but I don’t care, so long as she keeps making those sweet frilly things now and again.”

Panasaam took another bite. “Cakes. Frilly things. What are these?”

Eris looked surprised, but she quickly schooled her expression behind a calm, fond smile. She reminded Panasaam dimly of her tamassran — or, rather, what she could remember, before she got her magic and Arvaarad had taken her away. 

“If you finish your dinner,” Eris said sweetly, “then I’ll show you.”

Lunette’s accent was strange. Panasaam thought it sounded like she had a little bird warbling in her throat when she spoke — and she spoke a lot. She fluttered around the kitchen, directing other elves with imperious distaste, and pointedly did not look at Panasaam at all. She wondered if she was just standing too still for Lunette to notice her. 

“Lunette,” Eris cooed. “Do you have any —”

“Non!” the elf huffed, irritated. “I am saving them! Curse you and your sweet tooth, madame. You and him both rid my kitchen of sugar.”

Eris raised her hands and dropped them plaintively, paired with a dramatic sigh. “But the little one has never had a sweet in her life. Let her try, please?”

Lunette stopped in her tracks. She had a bit of flour streaked on her cheek, and her dark hair fell in her wide eyes as she glanced up — almost fearfully — at the giant in the room. Panasaam shuffled her feet, trying her best to appear, as Eris put it, small. 

The little cook shook her head, cursing in her funny language under her breath, then disappeared into a cupboard. She emerged, sourfaced, with a pair of little white things in her hands, sitting pretty on a napkin. She placed them in Eris’s outstretched palm. 

“Take them outside,” Lunette snapped, “before one of the boys sees them and comes hunting for the rest.”

Eris smiled fondly. “Ma serannas, da’len,” she hummed. 

Lunette just scoffed, then shooed them out of her bustling kitchen. Panasaam bumped her horns on the doorframe on her way out — she reminded herself to try ducking in sideways next time. 

She hurried after Eris — how was such an old woman so fast? — and finally settled in with her on the battlements of the keep after what felt like miles of hallways and stairs. The air was cold there, and the wind was strong. She smoothed her scarf down before it hit her in the face. 

“Here,” Eris said, placing one of the white things in Panasaam's hand. “Sit.”

She did, beside Eris on the stone stairs that led down the inside of the great wall. Her height let her peek over the top of the wall, however, out over a vast, green expanse of world. It looked like this keep sat at the center of a great valley, ringed by mountains she’d never seen on any map. She wondered, not for the first time, where Solas had taken her. 

“Try it!” Eris reminded her. 

Panasaam regarded the soft little treat in her palm. “You said they were… frilly?”

Eris snorted. “That’s what he calls them. Some joke from an old friend. He never would explain it — and he always looks so sad when I ask — so I left it alone. The moniker stuck, though, and Lunette has given up trying to get people to call them petit fours.”

Panasaam frowned. “Pettee furs?”

Eris smiled, then took a big bite of her treat. “Don’t bother, da’len,” she mumbled, crumbs falling from her wrinkled lips.

Panasaam regarded her treat again — a cake, she reminded herself — then took an experimental nibble. Sweetness burst across her tongue, almost too sweet, and she loosed a surprised little grunt. 

Eris laughed. “Good, hmm?”

Panasaam took another bite. Past the sweetness was softness, something that tasted tart and then warm, like fruit or sunlight. It reminded her of juice on a hot day. The sugary coating on the cake was thick on her tongue. 

“They’re lemon-flavored,” Eris informed her, finishing off her cake with gusto. “My favorite. Sometimes Lunette gets too creative with her flavors, like putting deep mushroom and chocolate together. Blegh.”

Panasaam finished the little thing with a final bite, wondering that something could taste so delicious. “Thank you, Eris,” she mumbled.

The woman beamed. “You’re welcome! Now, let’s get you back inside. Time to practice a little before he comes home.”

Panasaam perked up. “Solas is coming back?”

“He should be! He told me he would, anyway. We’ll let him rest for a little while and then we’ll say hello.”

She followed Eris back inside the keep, ducking through doorways and turning sideways when the passages became too narrow for her shoulders. She felt both excited and nervous at the prospect of Solas returning — she’d seen him so little in the weeks she’d been here, but every time had been like a shining moment in her mind. Despite everything he worried about, everything he had yet to explain, he still found the time to sit with her and talk. 

As far as she could tell, she hadn’t been possessed yet, and she hadn’t blown anything up. She hoped he’d be proud. 

“Tell me,” Eris said, interrupting her train of thought, “do they have birthdays under the Qun?”

Panasaam frowned. “Why? It’s a day.”

Eris scoffed. “To celebrate being alive, of course! Here we celebrate a little with a meal and cake, sometimes even gifts if there’s time. When is your birthday?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

Panasaam shrugged, then followed Eris through the last doorway into the training yard. “Arvaarad made me forget. I think I… I think it was summertime.”

Eris looked back over her shoulder — her grey braid frayed and glowed in the sun — and regarded her with something soft and pitying in her eyes. Panasaam wished she’d stop. “And how old are you, da’len?”

Panasaam thought about it. “One of my earliest memories is hearing about the Blight in Ferelden. The tamassrans were worried. The Beresaad had been sent to investigate. I remember the sound of their boots on the quay when they boarded the boats. Tama made me look away and eat my supper.”

Eris’s eyebrows shot up, nearly into her hair. “Oh, you’re young, my sweet one.”

Panasaam nodded. “I’ve only had my magic for six years. Everything before that is fuzzy.”

Eris turned and continued across the yard. The line of her back seemed unusually stiff. “Well. Well then.”

They took up their customary positions in the yard — Panasaam fell into the comfortable motions of retrieving her staff from its stand, walking to her training point at the center of the yard, and sinking into her first of many meditative poses, while Eris crossed to the crate by the retaining wall, sat upon it, and crossed her legs with her hands in her lap. The gravel crunched and twisted under Panasaam's feet as she sank into a deep, flexed pose, breathing evenly, and braced her staff on the ground before her. She closed her eyes.

“Good,” Eris said, her voice taking on the edge it always had during these sessions. Panasaam thought she must have used such a voice with many apprentices before her. “Breathe, da’len. Feel the breeze on your skin. Taste the sugar still on your tongue. Sense this world before reaching beyond it.”

Panasaam obeyed. It was easy to lean into commands when Eris saw fit to give them — they were familiar, comforting. They left no room for her to push back, even if she wished to. It was calming to have no room for argument or misunderstanding. It left her world simple and concrete, whether Eris meant it that way or not — there was herself, and her assigned task, and that was all. 

“Now,” Eris murmured, “reach through the Veil and grasp the Fade in your left hand.”

Panasaam balked. Up until now, training had consisted of meditations and lessons on magical theory. She had not been permitted to use magic. But she was too afraid to challenge Eris’s command, even to ask for clarification. The soft animal of her mind panicked, shying away from the punishing jolt it was sure she would receive if she did not obey immediately. She forgot, in that dizzying moment, that she wore no collar that could shock her.

“It’s alright, da’len,” Eris said, as if sensing her discomfort. “I know this is new. But you’re ready. Just try. Concentrate until you form a flame in your left hand.”

Her heart pounded in her throat, but Panasaam was determined to obey. She stood from her meditative pose, passing her staff to her right hand, and held her left in front of her. She stared down at it, as if expecting it to melt away to nothing. 

She reached, tentatively, to access the pool of mana she knew lay just at the edge of her consciousness, like a vein waiting to be tapped. It pulsed and vibrated, powerful and enormous and terrifying, and she hesitated — it felt as if she dared break through to it, it would pour into her until she was full to bursting. Her pulse thundered at the thought of something waiting on the other side, biding its time until she quested across to its side once more.

The last time Panasaam had accessed the Fade purposefully, it had been to try and heal Arvaarad. She could still hear the gurgling of his breath, smell the stench of his blood and piss, see the drying surface of his eyes. She could hear the raging battle around her now, as if she was there, and the sight of her own grey-skinned hand faded into a formless blur as her breathing hitched and quickened. 

Eris was speaking, but she couldn’t register her words. There was a sound of surprise — of hushed whispers, of accusations. Another voice joined Eris’s — deeper, more melodic, and it blended with the voice Panasaam remembered from that fateful day on the field until they were one and the same in her mind. Footsteps, soft and hurried, ground across the gravel towards her.

A hand — broad and firm and grounding — gripped her upper arm and turned her until she faced its owner. He slowly swam into view.

“Kost,” Solas said, firm and low. “Ebasit hedan.”

Panasaam's lip trembled. She was still breathing too quickly to feel embarrassed, but she could feel the shame creeping in on the edges of her consciousness as she came back into herself. She offered Solas a shy, sheepish smile.

“You are back,” she said simply. 

She gasped in an involuntary breath, and he smoothed his hand comfortingly down her arm. He peered up into her face. “Yes. I came to say hello.”

“Well you could have sent word that you were here already,” Eris grumbled, close by. She laid her gnarled hand on Panasaam's other arm and came into view on that side. She gently pried the staff from Panasaam's grip. “Let’s go inside, then, hmm? We can talk there.”

Panasaam focused, breathing deeply, and felt her heart incrementally slow until it no longer pounded in her ears. She raised a hand to her cheek and found it wet. 

“Oh,” she sighed. “I’m sorry.”

“No need,” Solas said. She looked at him, and there was only kindness on his tired face. “Come inside, as Eris said. I have much to tell you.”

Chapter Text

Solas moved ahead of Panasaam with sharp, self-assured grace — not like a dancer is graceful, but how one wielding a knife is graceful. She tracked his movements with wide eyes as he pulled a chair out for her in his office. He shut the door behind her and Eris and swept off the dark cloak he’d traveled in — it was spattered with mud at the hem. The keeper puttered about the room, wringing her hands. 

Solas rolled up his sleeves and approached the table. He leaned forward over it, gazing down at the map upon it with narrowed eyes. Panasaam thought he looked very tired — he had new scars on his forearms and wrists, silvery ones that caught the light like they’d been healed with magic. 

“Is something wrong?” she asked. She hated how small her voice sounded.

Eris sighed behind her, then looped around to touch her arm. “Da’len, we’d hoped not to have to tell you so soon, but —”

“I will tell her, Keeper,” Solas said, firmly but not unkindly. He spared her an apologetic glance. “It is time you knew. I have not taken you for ransom, but you must know that your people and mine stand opposed.”

She took in a ragged breath. Her chest felt tight. “They would not have me back. I am dead to the Qun, whether I take my life or not.”

“And yet you must feel some kinship? Some concern?”

His back was turned to her now, but the muscles of it were tense. Eris drew close to him and put up a hand spotted with age, but her fingers curled in towards her palm before they made contact with his shoulder. She dropped her hand to her side. Panasaam looked between them with wide eyes, her eyelashes flickering as she held back unexpected tears. 

“They… they will die?”

Solas’s hand clenched on the tabletop. “Those who target our supply lines and kidnap my messengers will. Those who are dispatched to kill my agents in the field will.”

Her next breath guttered in her throat. “Oh.”

There was silence for a beat of time while Solas deliberated, then moved about a few paperweights. He could be planning his next moves. He could be buying time. Finally, he sighed and straightened, then turned to look Panasaam in the eye. He folded his arms over his thin chest and let his proud shoulders drop. 

“What do you know of the Viddasala, Panasaam?” he said, so gently she had to strain to hear him.

Her ear twitched. “A little. Arvaarad said she would take my tongue if I lost control of my magic again.”

Solas’s eyes darkened, and a tendon leapt in his jaw. She cast her eyes down, her heart pounding in the face of his displeasure, and worried at the inner scars of her lip-stitches with the tongue she might have lost in another life. 

“She threatens the south,” Solas said, more firmly this time. Eris pressed closer to Panasaam on her right side, her body providing comfortable warmth and pressure. “There is something shifting, something I have not yet discovered. I hope to divert war.”

Panasaam grunted with surprise. “Don’t you want to fight? Arvaarad always said the bas of the south would not accept us without much death.”

Solas shook his head. “I wish to extend the peace afforded to us by the Inquisitor for as long as possible. The Qunari would disrupt that. Or, more specifically, this branch of the Ben-Hassrath would disrupt that. I believe the Viddasala moves on her own accord.”

Panasaam nodded. Eris grasped her forearm and held it tight, but she ignored her. “She does what’s deemed necessary to root out magic. It is dangerous, uncontrolled, like a fire beside too much kindling —”

“Panasaam, what did we discuss?” he said firmly, holding out a pale hand. She stared at it. 

“M-magic is part of me, like my hands are part of me,” she murmured.

“It is nothing to fear.” He folded his arms again. “Now, please continue.”

She nodded, glancing up at Eris — the Keeper’s faded vallaslin twisted at the corners of her eyes when she smiled. “She is afforded any need. The Qun demands it.”

Solas and Eris sighed in tandem. “Then she must be stopped,” Eris mumbled. “Rather than just watched.”

Solas looked at the two of them for just a moment longer, the line of his jaw tensing and relaxing as he thought — finally he let out a groan and dropped his face into his hands. “I do not wish to ask this of you, little one,” he rumbled through his fingers. “You have not yet had time to heal.”

Panasaam shifted in her seat. Her knee began to bob up and down with agitation. “I can help. I want to help.”

The fire popped on the hearth, now suddenly the only sound in the room. Panasaam waited, conscious of her heart pounding in her ears, and looked between Solas and Eris with wide eyes. Eris chewed her lip and stared at Solas — Solas’s face remained in his hands. 

FInally, Solas took a deep breath and stood up straight, letting his hands fall away. He fixed Panasaam with a cool stare. “The Viddasala will move on the Exalted Council in Orlais in two weeks’ time. We cannot allow her plan to succeed, but to divert it requires us to understand her goals. I have taken no prisoners, and former adherents of the Qun have not joined my ranks. My best and most immediate understanding of her is you, Panasaam.”

Panasaam nodded, shifting forward in her seat. “Please let me help. I don’t want them to fight.”

Solas’s gaze was intense — full of anguish and flickering hope in equal amounts. It was strange to watch. “Thank you. I intend to avoid the worst of conflicts. In any case, no matter the direction we ultimately take, our hope lies with the Inquisitor. We must prompt her to act where we cannot.”

Eris glanced at him with a sharp sound of surprise. “I thought we were leaving her out of this.”

“I had hoped to,” Solas sighed. He sounded immeasurably old. “She has earned her peace. But only she is uniquely placed to have any influence or freedom of movement while at the Council. I trust in her effectiveness. She will succeed once given the tools and information — we must merely discover them ourselves, then determine which she needs.”

“You will still leave her in the dark?” Eris snapped. “Has she not earned the right to know?”

Solas shook his head — one sharp, abrupt jab of his chin — and turned away. The line of his back curved as he bent over the table again. “She does nothing if she does not believe it is her own idea.”

Panasaam watched him, confusion threatening to choke her. “Who? Who am I helping?”

“Us, da’len,” Eris said gently, stroking her forearm. “Nevermind all that.”

Solas’s back tensed, but he said nothing. “Virelan is most effective when she does not allow emotion to cloud her judgement. I shall not stand in the way of her success, not when it also spells our own. But that is to come. For now” — He glanced over his shoulder, lips parted around a request, regret bright in his eyes — “I must simply ask you, Panasaam, to tell me everything you know about the Viddasala and her motivations.”

Panasaam nodded, relief flooding her limbs and slowing her racing heartbeat. This she knew. This she could answer. She had direction, and she grasped it with both hands — she took a deep breath, ready to pass on all she knew of the figure who had once stood between her and a lifetime of muteness. 

When she spoke, Panasaam’s voice was steady.

Chapter Text

Sometimes, looking up into the sky felt like falling.

“It is alright,” Solas said the night before he left again, “you can open your eyes.”

“But –“

A gentle hand fell on her elbow. “It is alright.”

Panasaam chanced it, squinting up through cracked lids. It still made her stomach swoop, that vision of deep black pierced by faraway stars, but with Solas’s hand on her she felt less likely to fall. His other hand pointed, pale and thin-fingered, towards the east.

“See that?”

Her eyes followed the gesture, curiously widening them until they were no longer veiled by lashes.

“What am I looking for?”

Solas’s finger traced a vague outline. “Here, there are six bright stars. My people named them Or’Tunan, the scales of justice. I believe the humans named them Silentir, and saw in them a dragon. What do you see?”

Panasaam peered up at the sky, trying to piece together the picture he painted with his words. She tilted her head to the side, trying harder to understand, but — 

“Ow.”

“Oh!” she gasped, glancing over. Solas rubbed the top of his head, wincing slightly. “Oh I’m so sorry.”

He squinted an eye sideways at her, then leaned forward on the battlements. “No need. You are growing, it is to be expected.”

She braced one hand on the stone, clinging slightly to it as she turned her gaze back up to the sky. With her free hand, she felt the curve of her left horn — it was still blunt on the end, where it had once been shorn, but it had grown considerably and had begun to twirl back from her skull, sort of like —

“They are pretty,” Solas’s quiet voice assured her. “Like a halla’s.”

Panasaam snorted. “More like a goat.”

“Or a dragon.”

She looked at him again — he was smiling fondly, not at her but out across the land in the valley.

“I had a friend,” he said, slowly, “who named himself after an animal, when really he identified most with dragons. Ataashi, he called them. Among other things.”

Panasaam surprised herself with a little laugh. “‘Glorious thing.’ He was like me?”

The fond smile grew thoughtful, then fell into the flat, melancholy mask she knew best. He looked down at his hands where they rested on the battlements, then began fiddling with his sleeve. He wore a cream-coloured sweater she’d never seen him in before — it looked threadbare and worn, and even had a little hole at the elbow. 

“In his way,” he murmured, as if to himself, “I hope wherever he is, he is not alone.”

Panasaam was awoken the morning Solas left again by Eris whispering loudly in the next room. 

“There is more at stake than the Inquisitor’s life and you know it.”

Panasaam did not shift — she held very still under her blankets, her legs curled up on her too-short bed. In the Refuge, there were not many places to stow away and remain unheard, and this corner of the fortress was as close as Solas and Eris could get to privacy without casting a spell of silence. Panasaam lay on the bottom of a pair of bunks, given her own space by virtue only of a curtain over the door. Veilfire flickered beyond, and figures moved back and forth between what Panasaam knew was a desk and a large chest. The upper bunk, where Eris usually slept, had no small dip above Panasaam’s head. The Dalish Keeper’s voice hissed again beyond the curtain. 

“I know, I know, but —“

“Do not question me, Keeper,” Solas murmured, his voice low and foreboding. “I know you mean well, but now is not the time.”

“There is no other time!”

The shadow flickered as Solas gestured angrily. “I go to divert a war. All will continue as I say.”

Eris huffed. As Panasaam listened closely, she heard the soft padding of pacing footsteps. “Send someone, anyone, else. She can be nudged into action without your direct interference.”

“And what of her mark? Her death? It will send Thedas into chaos, which we can ill afford.”

There was the sound of more pacing, more huffing. Solas’s figure on the other side of the curtain was very still, while the Keeper seemed to pace around him.

“It is unwise,” she finally spluttered. “The Inquisition is poised to dissolve. The Inquisitor will have her final mission, and will be remembered as a hero. If you reveal yourself now, we stand to lose everything. Allowing the Inquisitor to die would be the most reasonable approach, no matter your feelings—”

“Do not presume,” Solas snapped, “to tell me what my feelings should be.”

Panasaam pulled her covers tighter around her shoulders. She had never heard his voice so cold, so low, so full of crackling magic — if she had been in Eris’s place, she would have cast her eyes to the ground, maybe backed away, or cried. But she was not Eris. Eris continued, audacious in her conviction. 

“Then draw her into places of your power,” the Keeper insisted, her elderly voice unwavering. “She is compelled to obey you, yes? What better time, or more worthy reason, is there?”

Frost crackled around the edges of the curtain. The Veilfire ebbed. Solas’s shadow seemed to grow. Panasaam raised the blanket to cover her face in fear. 

His voice remained very quiet, very careful, as he said, “I refuse.”

Eris huffed — she seemed utterly unimpressed, and Panasaam wondered how she dared speak to him this way. “You refuse to compel her even to save her life! Or to save your plans! Then why are we doing this?”

Panasaam heard only silence for a moment, then a sigh and rapid footsteps. When she peeked back over the hem of her blanket, only Eris’s shadow remained. She ran one hand over her face, then turned towards the room and pulled back what covered the door. 

“Oh,” the Keeper sighed, “da’len, I’m… sorry you heard that.”

Panasaam sat up, bending at the last moment to prevent bumping her horns on the bed. “The Inquisitor. He’s going to stop her?”

“He’ll try,” Eris sighed. With grace that belied her years, she scaled the bed and settled into the upper bunk — it creaked until she had made herself comfortable. “I think he’s more worried about stopping her from destroying herself.”

“But why?” Panasaam asked. “I thought Solas wanted to stop the Viddasala.”

Eris chuckled drily. “That too. But you see, he was… close to the Inquisitor. They were friends. He doesn’t want her to come to harm, even if he needs her help again.”

“Can’t he just ask?”

“It’s not so simple.”

Panasaam laid back down and stared up at the bottom of the upper bunk, where Eris’s body formed a little bulge. “You asked him why he wouldn’t compel her. What do you mean?”

Eris was quiet for a good long while. Panasaam almost wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but then she spoke — and when she did, she spoke very carefully. 

“When you came to me,” she said, “you had scars and burns from your collar and cuffs and puncture scars in your lips from thread. He told me that your keeper had controlled you with a rod?”

Panasaam could feel her breaths quickening. She inhaled through her nose and exhaled through her mouth, counting each one as she’d been taught. “Yes. It was all supposed to protect the people around me.”

Eris hummed. “In a similar way, I suppose, Solas could use a sort of control he has over the Inquisitor, to make her obey him. He could use it to save her life, but instead he is determined to throw himself into danger to help her see the threat to her organisation.”

Panasaam’s heartbeat thudded in her ears, as loud as the surf on a beach. She could remember how the control rod had looked in Solas’s hand. She remembered how she had hoped for a quick death at his hands, and how terrified she’d been that he’d use the rod for some other purpose. 

“If he has that control over the Inquisitor,” Panasaam gasped, “he should throw it away.”

Eris hummed. “He wishes to, da’len. But is that wise?”

“He would never use it,” she hissed. Breath finally returned to her lungs. “He could never.”

Eris’s hand appeared over the edge of the bed. After a brief hesitation, Pansaam reached up and took it. 

“I know, da’len,” Eris sighed. “He would never, and I am a fool to hope so. I simply… worry.”