Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was a challenging course to be faced with your own limitations. Explosions, emotions, fade magic, time magic, magic magic. Diarmuid Trevelyan’s forehead itches, his scars pulling against each other, drawing his brows tight and giving him a headache. His hand buzzes with fade discharge, aching with disuse and uncertain of how to dispel the charge properly. It reacts poorly with the rest of his mana, which pulls from the fade source near-constantly. 

His boots leave frosted footprints wherever he steps, uncontrollable in its very nature. He imagines the Chantry Sister’s following his every move with brooms to wipe away the ice particles he leaves behind in the hall, lest the visiting dignitaries slip and hurt their pride. The chill of his room, up to the top of the stairs in Stronghold, is in a constant battle for dominance with the roaring heat of the fireplace. At least in Haven it was less noticeable.

The magic at his fingertips had never felt so dangerous. 

He shivers, shrugging snow off of his shoulders because he was unable to do much else. Unable to do much of anything at all - and yet here he was, the entire world trembling at his feet. His newfound friends think he is dangerous and, on that, they and Diarmuid could agree. To the circle mage scrutinizing his unpracticed magics and abominable nature, the elves’ visible unease for one reason or another, and the warrior entourage eyeing him at every odd move he made were enough to make him feel transported into childhood. The dwarf, Varric , he reminded himself, was okay. He had seen enough weird shit and had weird enough friends in Kirkwall to be fine with what seemed to be anything. 

Except, Varric also liked Cole.

Unease stirs at the pit of his gut and he thinks about the grey, lukewarm bowl of stew he’d had at the tavern earlier. 

Challenging. That’s what Cole had called him. Challenging to read. Diarmuid feels a tad grateful for it, shuddering to even think about what Cole might say to the others if he could hear what went on in his head. Diarmuid couldn’t even make heads or tails of it. Having anyone else even try to…

Chill the fuck out, he thinks.

Inhale. Exhale. His hands grip the low-hanging branch of a snow-covered tree, which supports him as he bends his knees and hangs there by his arms. 

Inhale. Exhale. The forest is beautiful. It is quiet outside of Skyhold today. The air is clear. His bag is filled with herbs he has foraged. Herbs that he has foraged to get a little high. 

Elfroot, mainly. To calm the nerves. But the rest are simple root plants that will need to be boiled and then cracked to release their properties. One of which is a minor aphrodisiac, but that was easy enough to ignore because it also helps his temperature regulation. In simpler terms, it made him feel warm. Sleepy. It makes his dreams simple.

A pint of ale would do just as well, but Diarmuid isn’t much of a drinker! It wasn’t a crime to be slightly horny, anyway.

He breathes in again and holds it, the tightness in his body loosening at the effort as he tries, tries very hard, to be calm. All he needed to do was think. If he could think, he could plan. If he could plan, he could act. There would be progress, and everybody would be very happy. Disregarding Cullen, who never seemed very happy at all.

None of the templars ever do. When he walked the halls of the circle as a boy, they would watch him like everybody else. Diarmuid was always told you weren’t supposed to show emotion towards your charges as a Templar. But he could see it in their eyes. The fear. The dread. That one day, they might have to cut the boy down. That Diarmuid might kill them, one by one. That he might be set loose upon the world as not a boy, but an abomination. 

Diarmuid could see that in Cullen. After such a long time of living in a circle, it was hard not to see that in his friends, too. 

This wasn’t working. He lets go of the branch and heads back to the trail to Skyhold. He would make his concoction, light a long candle, and meditate for as long as the candle was lit. 

He stumbles from the bushes and trees, onto the path, only to hear a startled -

“Inquisitor!” Looking up, he sees the elegantly, but purposefully, robed and meticulously coiffed Dorian Pavus, arms wrapped about his person, shivering, “Decided to run off, have you? Fat lot of good it’ll do, Leliana’s sent her best birds to keep an eye on you.”

“I wasn’t running off.” Diarmuid tries to explain, holding up his bag but Dorian waves him off.

“Oh I know, I am the bird in this scenario and Leliana is the placeholder for my curiosity.” He places his hands to his mouth and breathes hard, steam billowing from his hands in a cupped stream while life returns to Dorian cheeks and the shivers cease, “I was simply going for a walk.”

He puts his bag back down, more at ease now that he didn’t feel looked for, “You, a walk in the snow?”

“A likely story, yes.” He beckons him back towards the keep, and they walk along the path together, “What, unbelievable?”

“Maybe a bit. If I didn’t hear you complain of the weather everywhere we went, maybe I would think differently.”

“Perhaps a little commiseration is in order, then.” Dorian pulls at Diarmuid’s bag, lifting it from his shoulder and rifles through the contents, “quite the collection! We do not have many of these herbs in Tevinter.”

“Surely you have Elfroot.”

“Does a nug make fine leather?”

Diarmuid feels his cheeks burn and he looks just about anywhere but at Dorian directly, who still has him practically leashed by his bag and he rummages through the forage.

“The answer is yes, and, ah-!” He pulls the flower pod free from the bag and holds it aloft, “now, this is exciting.”

Ah, that flower pod. His cheeks heat more, and he tries to reach for it.

“Not something you have in Tevinter, then?”

Dorian pulls it away, studying it close to his face, “No. Imported, given a name you wouldn’t be able to pronounce. Quite the amorous thing.” He turns the thing over in his hands, “Like a lady’s parts. The shape of it. Or so I’ve seen in paintings.”

Inhale.

“Flowers can be like that.” Diarmuid says, finally snatching it from Dorian’s grasp, “Why are you here, Dorian?”

He stuffs the pod into his bag, exasperated and maybe a little ticked off. Embarrassed, definitely.

“Cole sent me, I think.”

Exhale!

“Oh, Maker.” Diarmuid stops in his tracks and stares at his feet. If he felt embarrassed before, he wishes his hand would open up the fade and swallow him whole now.

“Not that he said so in so many words, but it’s all the same with the little creature.” 

“I’m fine, Dorian.” He tries, voice weak to his own ears, “I am.” He tries again.

“You are fine.” Dorian muses, stroking the end of his moustache while looking up and down his face only once, “But you wouldn’t mind some handsome company for a bit, would you? Solas has mentioned that I might be able to help you.”

“I have a headache today.”

“Oh, brilliant! I have the cure. So, you go upstairs to your room, brew your little concoction there, and I’ll bring my herb that’ll help ease that headache of yours. And you know what, if you make enough for two I’ll dazzle you with my company on top of it all.”

Diarmuid can’t help it, the corner of his mouth lifts, “Dorian…”

“It’s not that often that I have to convince people I’m worth their time. You might have to stroke my ego a bit so I can get over it.”

“Stroke your ego, huh? Maker.” He rubs his forehead and looks away, “I mean- okay, just bring the herbs.” He buries his face, trying to hide the furious blush that seems to spread to his whole body, “Now leave me alone, Dorian.”

“By your order, Inquisitor!” Dorian says, mockingly like a good little soldier as he walks off, laughing in that charming way of his. 

Diarmuid’s fingers begin to freeze to his face, so he quickly pulls them away and stuffs them into his leather pockets, curling them as deep as they can to hopefully gather warmth. He waits a long time for Dorian to walk far enough away so he could follow.

–

“Inquisitor.”

Josephine has him as soon as he walks through the gates, bag in hand and the purposeful strides to his room halted.

“Ah, Ambassador.” He says properly, spine stiffening as he moves the bag to hide behind his backside, “Do you have something for me?”

Her gold dress was particularly pleasant to look at today, with the way that it folds into itself and matches her clipboard with the dripping candle spilling all over it’s pages. She sticks her face close to the front of the board and clears her throat, clearly nervous in a way that is unlike her most of the time. Was she hiding? She came up to him!

“Oh.” He mumbles awkwardly and shifts around so he can peer at the board. On it lay a simple letter, wax dripping and threatening the paper of it. On it, the seal of the Trevelyans. 

He rears back, trying to stifle the affront that he feels burning below his breast. 

“ Oh. ” He says, much more sharply this time, “Leliana has read it, then?”

Not one for being meek, at least not for long, Josephine nods and finally holds it out to him, “Yes, Inquisitor. The contents of which are not outwardly suspicious. Just, simply, out of place.” Diarmuid raises a solitary brow at her, “Out of line.” She clarifies.

And suddenly he remembers, with a burgeoning shame, that they are out in public.

“Ah.” He clears his throat, much like her. Placing his hands behind his back, he looks much like the proper lord he was to appear to be, “Onward, then?”

“Yes, Inquisitor.” She ushers him along, her many ruffles nearly soundless due to being made of silk. Through the courtyard and up the stairs, past a million banners and faceless nobles clad in ‘tasteless’ plaidweave and masks, up more stairs and then, finally, he is in her office. Leliana and Cullen wait there on opposite sides of her desk, and the three of them look imposing when Leliana finally sits down.

“We could also hold this meeting in the war room, should the mood require.” Cassandra calls as she enters the room, hand resting at the sword on her hip, breast proudly displaying the Seeker’s emblem. Diarmuid looks away from her quickly, skating his eyes over Cullen just the same, and avoids Leliana’s knowing gaze to simply stare at the friendly face of the Ambassador. 

“Josephine.” He prompts, heart pounding in his stomach and wishing for what seemed to be the millionth time that day that he could just be calm .

“They have refused our call for their support.”

“Hah.” The breath escapes him almost like a relief. He thumbs the wax seal off and pulls free the letter, “That simple, hm?” He only needs to scan the first few lines to deepen his frown, “Hm. Well, as is expected.”

He begins to fold the letter shut when Cassandra, now at his side, places her hand on his to prevent it.

“There is more.” She warns. With a finger, she lifts the page again for him to read.

So he reads.

“Ah.” 

Cassandra has removed her hand and, oddly, Dairmuid misses the touch. It had reminded him of something, of comfort and the warmth of it. Now, he felt just as always. Cold. Worried. Angry. Shame. Frost gathers on his fingertips, so he rubs them together.

He straightens his spine, casting his gaze to Cullen who watches him carefully. There’s something in his eyes. Remorse? Sympathy?

“Are there any Trevelyans that have requested to join the service?”

“A few.”

“Deny them.” He looks to Leliana, “Or, let them in. But have them watched. Cousins no doubt. It would implicate my family in would-be assassination plots, more than likely. Whatever would give us the best leverage here, go for it.” 

He looks to Josephine, whose attention was enraptured on him, watching every move he made.

To have been initiated as a brother into the Circle for the reason of his dangerous nature. To find a positive purpose, and a rewarding life benefiting someone of his particular affliction -

Inhale.

We will say, do anything we have to. To prevent -

If someone grabbed his hand too harshly, surely it would break off from the cold by now. “Do what you can, Josephine. Anything, I mean it.” He says aside to his Spymaster.

“I do not believe it will come to that, Inquisitor Trevelyan.” She thumbs at her board, licking her fingers and stuffing out the candle at the top, “What they’ve said, what they’ve accused and threatened -”

As his family, who has carried the burden of his birth for thirty-odd years, we beseech you to reconsider your appointment. To abandon his persuasiveness and try again to restrict -

Exhale.

“It doesn’t matter.” Diarmuid says, trying to convince himself, but his skin has paled considerably and they can all see it.

“I agree. They are unimportant.” Cassandra grips her sword, clearly protective over Diarmuid. That was something he wasn’t used to seeing, no less from the Seeker.

A danger to himself and others. To the Trevelyan name. To your organization. The world. My son-

The floor feels light beneath his feet and the magic, usually so grounding, threatens to pull him beneath it as if gravity and physics didn’t matter. He puts his hands under his ribs, trying to breathe slowly and collect himself. Inhale. Exhale.

Cassandra places a hand on his shoulder, standing at his side like a stalwart sentinel. She squeezes him.

“We have come too far, you have come too far, to be stopped by their immaterial games.”

“Yes.” He breathes out. With the five of them standing at Josephine’s desk, he’s reminded that he is not alone. That he is the head of an organization just as dedicated to doing what needed to be done as he. The most dedicated people in the world are at his beck and call. Dedicated to something far more important than any of their personal troubles.

That ugly feeling feels good. The power of it. The justification of it. It makes him sick, and it makes him self-destructive.

A risk of blight, of abomination to the world -

“Let me know as soon as any of you hear more.” He says, but doesn’t feel himself saying it.

“Yes, Inquisitor.” They all say.

With a flick of his hand, the fire on Josephine’s candle roars to life. He tips the letter into it, and the five of them watch it burn to ash. He grinds down hard on his molars, to prevent his teeth from chattering.

“Dismissed.”

–

By the time he makes it to his room, the shock has begun to simmer into a panic. At the fire, he sits on his knees and organizes the herbs from his bag onto the floor. He separates heads from the stems, the stems from the roots, and busts pods open with a whack of the pommel on his dagger and throws them into the now boiling pot suspended over the fire. 

In the mortar and pestle, which he had borrowed months ago from Solas and is now presumably properly stolen, he grinds the heads into fine remains. A sweet aroma fills the air from the pot and it makes his head feel swollen with cotton. His headache, which he had forgotten before, rages and thrums across his scars to pound in his ears.

He is surrounded by furs that have been basking in the warmth of the fire, trying to warm his toes in the toasty fur. Frost dusts his limbs, making his leather creak as he moves his arms.

A danger to -

Diarmuid closes his eyes, grinding the heads and trying to lose himself in it. Trying to feel the warmth of the fire.

Lost himself too much into it apparently, as the sudden presence of another in the room announced with a polite cough was enough to startle the damn thing from his hands with a surprised yelp.

He whips around, staring at Dorian sheepishly holding up an Arbor Blessing in apology.

“Bad day?”

“You… could say that, yes.” He sighs, deeply, and pulls the fallen herbs back into his bowl, “Where did you even find the Arbor Blessing? I haven’t found any on our travels.”

“Bought it off of one of the scout herbalists from the Emprise du Lion. He said comfort follows wherever the Arbor Blessing goes, but then again he also got it in the Emprise du Lion. So take that saying with a grain of salt, will you?”

Dorian makes himself comfortable in Diarmuid’s space, cozying up to him and removing the leaves from the vine to be pulverized. His robes, far more intricate than Ferelden Circle’s or the Free Marches’, are bulky but they look quite warm. Warm, except for the shoulder, exposed for some fashionable reason or another no doubt.

The burden of -

“Do you have something against proper mage robes?” Dorian muses, catching him in the act.

“What? No! Not Tevinter’s. Assuming they all look like you. Though, the Venatori leave a lot to be desired.”

“Well, the same could be said for a lot of their attributes, yes? But what of your own robes? I’ve not seen hide nor hair of the frumpy things about your person.”

Dorian takes the bowl from his hands and adds the ingredients together, dumping them into the small pot that has been simmering the now-oily pod for ten minutes. 

“They are suffocating,” Diarmuid admits, thinking of the last time he had worn such a thing. As soon as he could afford it, he had ditched his robes for the first pair of Inquisition mage armor he could get his hands on from the armorer.

“Earlier this year. Before I met you. I needed something I could wear out in the field. I needed something new. Something… less identifiable. I-” He grunts, rubbing his forehead as he remembers how embarrassing he must have looked, “I was not used to clothes like this, like protective armor. I had problems in the field, with getting hit. I kept ripping my robes up the thigh. To jump.”

He laughs a little, feeling silly. Maybe it was just the fumes, but Dorian was smiling too. Maybe he was imagining it, Diarmuid in his pretty, useless robes. Fumbling around, knowing less than nothing.

“You can have some if you want. But, you know what it does. Solas will be by soon, too.”

“Well, I assume the aphrodisiac will be mild and, if anything, the rest of this little concoction will put me right to sleep soon enough. With any luck, I’ll save Solas the embarrassment and pass out early.” Dorian stirs the tea together absentmindedly, eyes distant. 

His particular affliction -

After a while, he says, “Thank you for telling me. About my father.”

“Hm.” Diarmuid acknowledges, pouring them each a cup. He sips his to test the temperature, brow furrowed at the tenseness in his forehead. His nose is cold, but his ears are colder. His scar itches, too. Aches. Even if the tea is too hot, he takes a deeper sip to at least warm his face. It hardly works. He sighs.

A hand comes up to him and Diarmuid leans back out of its way, staring at Dorian curiously.

“Ah, apologies. May I? The Tevinter doesn’t bite.” He motions towards Diarmuid’s forehead. 

Instead of immediately answering, Diarmuid takes a long, slow sip from the tea that was too hot to really enjoy. It was thick like a syrup, thanks to the pod and, he assumes, the Arbor Blessing. His heart beats a little harder than normal. 

He sets the cup aside, and tilts his head forward in an invitation, “Okay. But if you bite me, I’ve been told my friends can be mean.”

“Are they? Your friends are practically all puppies compared to you.”

Diarmuid closes his eyes as a hand pushes his dark hair away from his forehead. The hand is warm. Very warm. It makes his toes tingle with the shock of it. He nuzzles his head forward again, into the hand, and sighs deeply. Contently, this time.

“Puppies, huh? I can be that mean?”

Abomination to the world -

“Intimidating, maybe.” Another hand caresses the side of his face, “Like a massive, drooling guard-Mabari. For your friends. For me.”

Heat settles in his stomach and, for the first time in a long while he feels warmer than should be possible. Diarmuid’s eyes open, half lidded, and he looks at Dorian. Dorian, who has leaned into his space thoroughly enough to be deemed just past appropriate, caressing his face like it was an art form that he had mastered. Heat radiated off of him and it was very pleasant.

“I don’t drool, do I?”

“Hm. I don’t know. I have a feeling I’m about to find out though.” 

“What do you mean?”

“Inquisitor, you can hardly keep yourself up!” Dorian laughs, and Diarmuid finally notices that Dorian had been helping him lay down on his very warm animal skins for the past minute or so. 

“Oh.” He blinks, sleepily, chest feeling hot. His head feels much better, “Thank you, Dorian.”

My son -

“Far be it from me to deny you your beauty sleep, Inquisitor.”

Horizontally, his body relaxes into the furs. The cotton in his head thickens, the firewood pops blend into the ambiance of his room, and anything Dorian says to him is lost. Sleep enraptured him completely in seconds, leaving his mouth slightly open. Apparently, he was prone to drooling.

Dorian moves his hand from Diarmuid’s forehead, gently wiping away either the sweat or condensation that has built up there with a cloth. He examines the scars affixed to the frontal plane of his head, it’s perfect Sunburst brand that has healed over time and magical effort. Faded, unusually so, but present. Burned and aged.

The door opens, and Dorian sees Solas’ bald head emerge from the stairway, nose deep in some book. He looks up and snaps the book shut.

“Ah. Asleep already?”

Chapter Text

“Inquisitor,” Cole whispers, sitting idly by his bedside with his hands on his knees and leaning towards Diarmuid’s exposed ear.

He curls in towards his pillow, away from the noise, digging his nose into the mass of down feathers. Cole reaches forward.

“Cole.”

He hesitates, an inch away from touching Diarmuid’s cheekbone.

“He is upset. I can feel it.” Cole explains.

“I know, Cole. We must leave him to it. It is important.”

As always, Solas tries to appeal to Cole’s nature. In fact, he pours his understanding into the emotional fabric of the universe. It makes Cole’s fingers twitch, and he draws away fully, casting his eyes instead over the sleeping and still form of Solas himself.

“Your presence would only confuse him.”

“Father’s touch. Touching, firm against my cheek, tilting my head up, ‘Listen, listen to me. Only me.’. I think I understand him. My father.” He nods to Solas’ form and disappears from the room as if he was never there.

Dorian nudges Solas’ elbow, breaking him from his contemplative look off into the fade.

Now, his mind is collected, and undivided. Solas nods to Dorian, electing to say very little except to acknowledge that everything was as it should be.

The fade buzzes around them, green in the way it has always been. Green like the color against Trevelyan’s palm, the anchor, tying him to the fabric of the world. Solas tightens his grip against his staff.

“Solas?”

Embarrassing, really. To be distracted like so in front of an Altus.

Dorian stands at his side, head tilted in curiosity and eyes filled with a greedy want for knowledge. Let him want. Solas was far more physical, in the literal sense, in the Fade. Should he confuse the human too much with any answers he could provide, he would snap back into the waking world in between one breath and the next.

“You show a remarkable aptitude of focus here, Dorian.” He comments, filling the empty air with empty words.

“Of course. In the game of talent versus skill, I have a constitution that carries me in both.” Dorian muses, pleased, and no doubt amused, with himself.

“Indeed.” Solas hums offhandedly, dialing his focus in on the Fade around them. It was thicker here, filled with magic that made it hard to ignore.

Dorian felt it too, he was brimming with the energy from it. He sways this way and that, thinking of a thousand different things and yet is at a loss for whatever it was he was to do. The material that makes up this world is wet and ever-changing. Things shift around his perceptions in a way that is fantastic and somehow forgettable, cycling through so abstractly and quickly that by the time his brain has processed one thing it has been changed entirely.

It was a fog, harder still to process what he was exactly seeing in front of him.

Solas, as still as a hunter stalking his prey, has clearly had practice at being aware in the Fade.

“Solas.” Dorian starts, again.

“I am not here to answer all of your questions, Dorian.” He snaps, grabbing Dorian firmly by the elbow as if trying to make him understand.

Dorian opens his mouth.

“Be silent.” Solas admonishes, holding up a hand just as the air thickens around them, cloying in their chests and making their ears throb.

“Maker, it’s like being sick,” Dorian complains, though is no less fascinated with this development.

The fog clears, and the Fade seems to settle and decide all at once that it has a setting in mind. The soggy sludge at their feet solidifies into cracked, old cobblestone and the shapes around them form into something resembling walls.

Light is everywhere. Spilling through glorious stained glass windows, spouting from tall red candles, reflecting through blood-red wine, and glinting off of golden gilded place settings at one long, luxurious table. All of that light, green. It pulsed with a power that pushed through Solas’ veins, thrumming through his staff so suddenly that he ached fiercely with its familiarity.

And in it, the Fade casts Solas’ bald head in a green hue - quite fluorescently.

At this table sits something toward ten Shades. At its middle, sits Trevelyan, who sits with his chin resting on one hand listening to the shades prattle on and on about something Dorian cannot hear.

“Quite the show.” Hums Dorian, ever so helpful. Diarmuid looks up, brow quirked and a smile slowly drawing across his face.

“Dorian.” He says, sweetly, as if he was the last person he expected to see and yet was all the more glad for him to be here, “Solas.” He nods in greeting before his eyes drift back to those at his table.

He looked out of place, as much as one can in a place like the fade. Trevelyan was in what Dorian assumed were his circle robes. They were dark in color, much in the way that his usual attire was as Inquisitor. Black, on silver. Like his hair, graying slightly from stress or perhaps genetics at his temples.

The robes looked rather quaint. Like a part of himself that he had long since transcended. And, if Dorian were being honest, Diarmuid didn’t look half bad in them.

“I would say you could take a seat, but as you can see… they are all occupied today.”

“I’ve never seen two shades even talk to each other.” Remarks Dorian, stepping close to the largest one at the head of the table, craning his ear close enough to try and make out the whispers.

When Trevelyan chuckles, Dorian looks up at him.

“Oh, they are not shades.”

With a flick of his wrist, the muffled nature of the room snaps in two. The shades, mostly mute and dull, roar to life in boisterous bravado. Their being is replaced with skin and hair and armor and muscles as big as Dorian’s head. Food fills the plates along with the table and on the outskirts of the room, a bard plays riveting, ambient music that stirs the emotions in the now warm-blooded occupants of the room.

A booming laugh threatens to blow Dorian’s eardrums and he rears back from the old warrior that was once a Shade, laughing so hard that bread and spittle fly from his lips and his wine spills from his cup onto the floor.

“In fact, they are more human than you or I, Dorian!”

Diarmuid is amused it seems, given the way he leans all the more into his hand and looks at Dorian like he was candy. Bold, as it were. And unlike him.

A firm grip at his elbow snaps him back to his reality, his being here in the fade temporarily at Solas’ discretion. His warning is clearer than can be.

Diarmuid notices this and sighs with abject boredom.

“Solas,” He chides, “Let me have my fun.”

Dorian strains to be present in their moment, torn between watching the bulky warrior, scarred face, and massive beard to match massive muscles, once mute and Shade-like, now juggling his cups as if he weren’t lost in them. His armor was loud, in full dress, hair as red as the wine, teeth crooked and white, donning a flaming sword upon his cuirass that was stark in the contrast to his plating.

Across from the table, at the head, was a man wholly unlike the other. Thin, hairy, but well-kept, angular, and a posture that is so intimidating and is so completely Trevelyan that it gives Dorian whiplash. Even a penchant for black attire. Handsome, in a way that snakes were. In a way that reminded him of Tevinter.

Solas hums, knocking his knuckles against Dorian’s arm to ground him. It was something far more practical than familiar between the two, as it seemed Dorian would blink out of their Fade existence at any moment.

“Is that -” Dorian starts, stating the obvious as the very shape of this man is clearly a near carbon-copy of Diarmuid.

“My father. We’re having a bit of a theme today, aren’t we, Dorian?” He’s quickly amused again, but looks to Solas, “Now all we need is yours.”

“I have never had one at all. To my knowledge.”

“Birthed from an egg. A singularity.” Diarmuid notes, staring at Solas’ shiny head.

“As it were.”

“As it were!” Diarmuid laughs, mirth abundant in his tone. Radiant, and satisfying. Until the warrior at one end of the table chokes on his wine, laughing all the same as if part of their conversation.

“Brother!” He cries across the table, gripping his cup with a bear-like fist. He sloshes it around, forces some of it down his throat, and groans into the air, “It is but a joyous night, yes?”

“For any particular reason? Or is it the fact that it is a Tuesday?”

From what Dorian had known of Diarmuid’s father, a devout noble by the name of Antioch Trevelyan, he has always had a simmering annoyance for his seemingly-immortal brother, a robust templar by the lengthy name of Cadwallader Leofrith Trevelyan III, named for their father’s father’s father, the apple of the family’s eye – who was also incidentally their mother’s absolute favorite of the seven of her children.

The two, a brute and a politician, who so wholly complete each other that, as much as Antioch could not stand to be in the same room as Cadwallader for more than fifteen minutes, he could not also be without him for more than twenty.

Or so went the rumors.

“Karenina is pregnant! It is the most joyous of Tuesdays, brother!”

The table erupts with cheer and applause, reminding Dorian that eight other people were present at the table. They all looked to be various shades of Trevelyan, as far as he could tell - red hair was rampant among the lot. There was no discerning who was whom. If his mother or siblings had been present, Diarmuid makes no comment towards it.

In fact, Diarmuid scoffs into his hand and rolls his head back to stare at the ceiling, “Of course.” he mutters to himself, kicking his feet up onto the table and knocking food and drinks to the side, “Karenina has been dead for over ten years, Cadwallader! It’s time to get over it!” Diarmuid shouts, lifting his goblet of wine and tossing it through his uncle, more shade-like than it seemed.

Cadwallader seems confused for a moment but does not react to Diarmuid. Instead, he looks off to the side, haunted, and drinks the rest of his cup. He looks back to Antioch, “Right? The most joyous?”

“Yes, brother. The most joyous.” Antioch repeats, like a rote script.

“Maker, that’s pathetic.” Another cup is summoned into Diarmuid’s hand, who takes a long, slow drink.

“Diarmuid, by now you’ve usually passed this part.”

“I’m on my best behavior tonight, Solas.” he mutters into his cup, looking pointedly at Dorian, “I believe the herbs have helped."

"The Arbor blessing?" Dorian queries, curious.

The edge of Diarmuid's mouth turns upwards, "in a way." He says, cryptically.

"How cryptic of you." Dorian replies, "but very well, I can catch a hint when I'm out of my depth. Solas?"

"The herbs gathered have a calming effect on the Inquisitor. It regulates many things, most importantly it regulates his emotions."

"Poppycock!" Shouts Cadwallader, loud enough to startle Diarmuid's feet from the table.

"Be silent!" Any warmth that may have been in the room was sapped, candles extinguished, fire doused, the sun shut out its own light, and even the warm breath of the bard was strangled out in a sudden, single croak.

All occupants of the table freeze where they sit, Cadwallader mid-drink, eyes darting back and forth with frantic anxiety.

Solas has crossed the room to Diarmuid's side in two swift steps, hands up placatingly. His breath whistles from his lungs, "Inquisitor."

Dorian stares down at his hand, frozen to the table. If he tried to talk he was certain his mustache would shatter.

Everything was always a little wet in the fade, but he would prefer a little more dampness to any cosmetic damage.

He fills his lungs and moves his free hand to his face. He sticks his thumb and forefinger to his lips, and with a long whistle, he exhales steam. The frost covering his body melts, and he pulls his hand away to run it through his hair in a cavalier way.

"Well! Regulates emotions effectively, you say?" Dorian glances about the room and its frozen occupants, then back to the Inquisitor. Like this, he looked quite like his father.

But that was something he would be keeping to himself.

"Perhaps we should be taking notes."

"Inquisitor, I believe this is where I stress that you resist any more temptations to do further damage to your Uncle." Solas begins to defrost Cadwallader, rapidly increasing the temperature in the room.

"Not even a little damage? A pinky? A toe?" Dorian quickly realizes the mistake he has just made, judging how Solas looks about ready to eviscerate him, "Solas I am kidding. Diarmuid, do not remove any extra appendages, please."

"A pity. All you would need from me is to ask, Dorian. And I would."

While the rest of the room defrosts, it does nothing for Diarmuid's posture, frigid and severe. It looked like it hurt.

"Brother! Dear Antioch, do you see Karenina? Have you seen her? Brother, have you seen my dear Karenina?"

Diarmuid's fingers grip the table mercilessly. His uncle moans with growing despair, an urgent plea.

"My uncle has always been a fool. Even his dreams, they're so simple. Small. A shade of who he thinks he is, who he thinks his people are. A man who loves his dead wife. Simple! Simple.”

“Antioch? Has she seemed well to you? She was quiet yesterday.” Cadwallader presses on, evermore persistent to receive an answer from Antioch. Antioch remains still in his chair, eyes blank on the food before him.

He was nothing more than a puppet, Dorian realizes. A facade. A reflection of the Antioch Cadwallader knows.

The Fade made everything so real, he had almost forgotten. Dorian’s lips turn downwards, watching as Cadwallader begins to sweat.

“Do you want to see what my uncle is like, Dorian? Do you want to see who my uncle truly is?" He grips the headdress of his mage robes, pushes it back to expose the thick scars on his head. The sunburst.

In the fade, it is green, oozing with power. Weeping in its obtuse instability.

"He changed me, irrevocably."

His hands press hard to the scarred flesh, pull at it, and he whines with abject dismay.

"Irreversibly." He puts his face in his hands, frost climbing up his cheeks, "pick any synonym you'd like, Dorian." His hand begins to crush the table, splintering the wood beneath his fingertips, “And the worst thing?”

Cadwallader stands from his chair, and grabs his sword.

“Karenina?!”

“Is that he failed,” Diarmuid says quietly, but the effect it has on the room is palpable. His shoulders slump, and his fingers begin to shake. He brings them up to his chest and plucks at his cuticles.

"Synonyms are unnecessary, for you speak the truth. He had done great harm to you." Solas says, placing his hand on Diarmuid’s shoulder, who shrugs it off.

The noise around them muffles, and Dorian finds it very hard to see through this new fog. The once-imposing form of Cadwallader is less present in his mind (thank the Maker, he had become a tad disturbing).

"Why are you here?" Diarmuid asks Dorian.

"Leliana had hoped I could ground you. In times of stress."

"Why, because we've had sex?"

"Well, I certainly wouldn't write it off as just such but yes I do believe so." He glances off to Solas, who remains unmoved, preoccupied with something Dorian could not see, "if Leliana and your advisors believe that I will be the sole barrier to you retaining your mind in the fade and, er, elsewhere, then fine. I can distract you. As much as you need it."

"By having sex with me."

"Not that Solas would be invited, but I do have numerous other talents that lend towards distraction, Inquisitor. I am not flesh attached to one important appendage."

"No, you're… of course not. Of course not. You've many more important qualities."

The atmosphere becomes thick once more as Dorian sits beside Diarmuid in a now empty chair.

"My mustache."

"Yes, thus."

"And my personality."

"Ah, yes, of course."

"What, were you thinking otherwise?"

"No, third on the list was simply the beauty mark. Then personality."

"Where does sex fall on the list?"

"Oh. Ah."

"Inquisitor."

"Well, we've only had it the once. Data collection requires more variables to make a concrete decision."

"And from one data point?"

"Number five."

"And thereafter?"

"Your tongue."

"And its use?"

"Many different uses."

It had taken Dorian until this moment to notice they were the only two in the room, huddled around a candle and leaned into each other's space. The room is smaller, there are furs around them. It is warm, much like when they were awake. Dorian smiles, and Diarmuid smiles in return. He supposes they are now completely alone.

The willful mind of a Dreamer was an astute one.

“I do also know how to play a mean hand of Wicked Grace. That’s number seven, Diarmuid.”

-

Dorian is effective, Solas supplies while pacing the room and fielding Cole's nervous energy.

The pair lay asleep on down feathers, sweet in a way that makes Solas avert his eyes but lends Cole to his human curiosities.

"You have been kicked out." Cole helpfully surmises.

"Yes, indeed. The Inquisitor has found it in himself to accept help from another. For now."

"This annoys you."

It makes Solas' nose scrunch, and he pulls away to add more logs to the fire in an effort to keep the room warm.

“Leliana had the correct assumption of Dorian’s effectiveness.”

"A Dreamer who dreams of summer needs a firm hand, a pacifier, heat..”

Cole scratches at his own ear and tilts his head while he looks at the two humans.

"This bothers you. It shouldn’t." He speaks, plainly, and then is gone.

The space that Cole had once occupied is burning with its emptiness. Whatever company Cole supplied sometimes had felt so human that it unnerved him and it takes an axe to Solas’ perception of spirits. Friendly isn’t a word he would willingly use, but it lingered in his head all the same. Blunt, maybe.

It would be easy, Solas thinks, to confide in something like Cole.

The Inquisitor’s advisors will want his report by first light. Solas throws another log onto the fire, and leaves without another thought.

-

“I’ve a thought.”

“Just the one?” Dorian asks, opening his eyes in the light of a new day.

“If we were to meet Cadwallader on the battlefield…”

“...Yes?”

“If you were to meet Cadwallader on the battlefield… do not engage him. Stay far, far away from him.”

“I have a hunch I may not have a choice in the matter, Diarmuid.”

“Yes, I know, I just…” His body chills and his teeth chatter fiercely before he sits up and casts fire anew in his fireplace from the bed, “We should talk with Cullen. There is training you need.”

“Inquisitor, the sun is barely in the sky. Must we, now? Let us enjoy our slow morning together, our last night was a success to be enjoyed. Eggs?”

Dorian rises from the bed, adjusting his clothes that had twisted uncomfortably around his body as he had slept. A few of his buckles had poked and prodded against his waist, and he drags his fingers under the buckles and against his skin to soothe the ache.

“Maybe tea,” he mutters to himself, imagining an herbal concoction, steaming dried flower water, with drops of honey. Diarmuid would enjoy that.

He glances back at him, and notes the tenseness of his forehead. A headache, surely.

“Cadwallader-”

Dorian looks away again, “-seems rather tame. A shock, really.”

“Do not let the dream fool you, Dorian. Please.”

Hands wrap around him from behind, pulling him close. Fingertips brush where his own had been moments prior, and Dorian sighs with the intimacy of it.

“This is important to you?”

“Yes.”

“Then I will speak with Cullen. No fear, Inquisitor. What would Solas say? ‘Fear is the mind killer’? Hah, I don’t know where he comes up with this stuff. Backwater romance novellas I'm sure.”

The Inquisitor lets out a puff of air that resembles a laugh, nosing along the back of his ear and smelling his hair. His fingers press into the grooves left behind from a hard sleep.

He turns in Diarmuid’s arms, and pushes him back against the edge of the bed, barely able to hide his smirk when the Inquisitor obeys and sits, “Now enough with this heavy talk. yes?”

He stalks forward, watching Trevelyan’s shoulders rise and his cheeks heat up with a deep red color. His legs, covered only in simple linen, spread slightly. Well.

“It’s not often I can celebrate successes these days, Inquisitor. I intend to do so today. Though, if your advisors are approving an Inquisition-sanctioned honey-potting, perhaps we should take our time with discussing emotional-”

“Stop talking.” Trevelyan pleads, reaching forward to grab Dorian by his belts.

Dorian grabs his hand, and holds it flat against the buckle. Smirks.

“Say please.”

–

Across the Waking Sea, deep within the rolling hills of the Free Marches, surrounded by various creatures that produce dairy goods, sits the twice-walled and proud city of Ostwick.

Bursting through the thick walls of the fortress and into the valley below is a group of ten. In the mix stood proud brothers of the Chantry, soldiers, and politicians and the like. Once-Templars wear long crosses on the edges of their uniforms.

A horse gallops from the back, a woman wearing iron plating and a thick, red, wool doublet. She catches up to the front horses, calling, "Uncle!"

Her uncle and eldest cousin, who was only ten years younger than Cadwallader, moved to let her horse fall in line beside them. Gabriel, her cousin, fusses with his hunting bow, taking up room beside his war bow attached to the saddle of his horse.

“Hortense,” Gabriel mutters in greeting, not looking at her as he instead decides whether to move a specific bow up in order to spare his leg from any chafing.

“A beautiful day for a hunt, yes niece?” Cadwallader says dismissively, also not looking at her. His eyes are worrying on the sky ahead of them where, off in the distance, a green light looms over the Free Marches.

Hortense wears her bow strapped to her back, as she always does. She, unlike the others, looks at everyone. Her eyes spread over their faces, their shoulders, their equipment - counts them all, surmises how they are feeling.

“Troublesome night?”

“Strange dreams.” Cadwallader admits, tilting his head to finally look at her underneath his bushy brows, “Not much I can remember I’m afraid.”

“Hm,” She reaches over to pat him on the meaty shoulder in sympathy. Clearly, he has unjustly been turned out to pasture in his old age.

“Still. A beautiful day for a hunt.”

“And glad I am to be here for it.” Hortense agrees, and they all ignore Gabriel’s dramatic eye roll when he finally unlatches his hunting bow to wear it across his back like his cousin.

“Indeed,” Gabriel says, mouth a thin, grim line. He looked much like Antioch, at times.

“Have you had chances to hunt demons that come from these Fade rifts, Hortense?”

She smiles.

“Indeed.”