Dragon Age: Inquisition fic -- The Fire Behind
Haven has been destroyed, but Blackwall goes on.
Gen, hint of future Blackwall/Lavellan
Blood and fire behind them, they walk into the snow. Blackwall is pulling a gig, a two-wheeled cart meant for a pony. There’s a burned man, a woman who is heavily pregnant, and two children who look to be less than four years old huddled into it. There’s no pony, but there’s him. He trudges through the snow amid the other refugees on the Pilgrim Road, his head down like a draft animal, his promises as heavy as a collar.
It might be hours before someone calls the first stop, over a pass and in the lee of the pass they just traversed. They’re out of the wind. It’s full dark. It might be ages until dawn.
“What’s going on?” the woman asks as the gig lurches as he puts the side bars down.
“We’re stopping to rest for a few minutes,” Blackwall says, working his arms. “Don’t worry. You and your children will be safe here.”
“They’re not my children,” she says, glancing down at the little ones folded into the blanket around her and them. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“Oh.” One of them has gone to sleep, while the little girl looks at him silently with wide eyes from the skirts of a woman she doesn’t know.
“It’s all right,” the woman says, tucking her closer. “We’ve a Grey Warden looking after us. We’ll be safe.”
There’s a call coming down the line. “Make camp! There’s the word to make camp here and in the shelter of the trees.”
That’s sensible. There’s a fir wood on the downslope. That means shelter and a windbreak, and also fallen branches to make fires.
“I’ll pull you a bit further on,” Blackwall says, taking up the traces again. “And then let’s see if you and I can rig something as cover. Make the gig into a hut for a bit.”
The pregnant woman nods, bracing the burned man as the gig tilts up again. He makes no sound. If he moaned, he might make it. Silence suggests he’s too far gone. Blackwall trudges through the snow. It’s just a couple of hundred feet. He can make it another couple of hundred feet.
There’s no food, but there’s snowmelt water soon enough. The night closes in. He stamps to warm his feet, walking around the fire someone’s built. No one talks.
The light from burning Haven is a stain on the eastern horizon, like a premature dawn.
Cullen is by the other fire now, and Blackwall can see that Leliana is with him. Her head is down, her cloak pulled up. Cullen looks fine. Lyrium can do anything. Blackwall shakes his head. And a good thing too. He could use some of that high right now. He’s afraid to sit down. If he does, he’ll go to sleep.
He walks another turn, loosening cramped muscles, takes a little more water from the snow melting over a sullen fire. Cassandra’s talking to Cullen now, waving her arms while he crosses his doggedly.
A question comes to Blackwall’s mind, fast and bright as a signal flare rising, and he makes his way through the silent crowd around the fire to them. “Where is the Herald?”
The look on Cullen’s face answers the question before he even speaks. “She stayed behind to distract Corypheus.”
“She set off the trebuchet that caused the avalanche,” Cassandra says heatedly. “So she was still alive that long.”
“She couldn’t have survived.” Cullen shakes his head.
“You knew.” Blackwall says.
“Yes.” Cullen’s gaze is direct. “We planned it. I sent up the flare when we were far enough away. It was….”
It was her duty. It was her choice. It was what Andraste chose her for. All those answers hang in the air. Cassandra closes her eyes.
They were her friends. They knew her well. He’s only been with the Inquisition a few weeks, only fought beside the Herald a few times, including tonight. She trusted him. She turned her back on the Red Templars attacking the trebuchet, aiming it and firing it, trusting that he would keep her back clean, that he would stop anyone who came up the stairs. He had. She had not even looked to see what he was doing, and he had not looked to see if she was done. He did his job and she did hers. Now she was dead.
They all piled up, didn’t they? All the bodies of a lifetime. That rugged little elf woman in her showy armor, her scarred face and her eyes that had seen too much - one more body in the snow. One more bit of crumpled meat roasting in the embers of Haven.
“We don’t know she’s dead,” Cassandra says stubbornly.
“There is no way she could have survived,” Cullen says. He’s angry. He’s angry at things he can’t fix.
“I am going to find out,” Cassandra says. “You can help or not. But I am going to backtrack and see.”
“You know I….”
“I know you must lead. So do it. I will be behind.” Cassandra turns and stalks off into the darkness, back up the path they descended.
His long stride takes him after her quickly, and the cold hits him as soon as he’s away from the fire. “Cassandra!” She stops, turns. “I’m coming with you.”
She simply nods. “Your help would be welcome, Warden Blackwall.”
They walk. The snow comes down in great, turning clumps, sticking damply on his shoulders. After a while it doesn’t melt on his sleeves, just crusts. The path is clear, the footprints and wheel ruts of everyone fleeing Haven.
Until it isn’t. They crossed this snowfield, this endless blowing wasteland. It’s probably simply a pretty mountain meadow in summer. But now, at night, in this storm, it’s nowhere. It’s the end of the world. The snow has covered their tracks.
“There were trees on the other side,” Blackwall says.
Cassandra nods. “I think we came up through the trees and then across the meadow. There’s probably a path most of the year.”
A path across a field of wildflowers under the snow tipped mountain peaks, a perfect pilgrim path to contemplate the glory of Andraste and the beauty of the world. Only now there is no indication where to go and the other side of the meadow can’t be seen. He’s shivering. The sweat crawling under his shirt is turning to ice.
“Let’s go a little further,” Cassandra says.
“Bear left. That’s where the path ran.” He thinks so. It’s hard to recognize anything.
The wind cuts. There is nothing but snow. Soon they’ll have to turn back. He’ll have to turn back. The tireless Seeker may not, but he’s just a mortal man. He’s got no magic and no lyrium, just the strength of his body, and that has its limits.
There’s a shadow, a movement ahead in the snow. “There she is!” Cassandra shouts. “Thank the Maker!” as the Herald’s knees give way and she kneels in the snow.
There are no dry clothes back in camp, but Blackwall sits by the fire long enough to stop shivering, long enough for his quilted coat to dry on his back, the icicles drip from his beard. There are more fires of fallen wood as the snow has abated. The stars are out. Some people have managed to put up tents. He’s checked on the gig. The pregnant woman and the kids are asleep, a couple of hides hung over the top of the gig to keep the body warmth in. The burned man has died. Blackwall carries him out without waking the kids. The sky hasn’t lightened at all. This night seems endless. Was it just after sundown that Corypheus attacked?
Cassandra and Cullen and Leliana and Josephine are arguing. He’s too tired for all that. He wanders into the medical tent, a Chantry sister standing up as he approaches. “Are you in need of healing, my son?”
“I’m not hurt, sister,” he says. She looks at him like she doesn’t believe him. “I just need to sit down a while.”
“You can sit here,” she says, and leaves him a box beside a pallet, going off to check on someone else.
The Herald lies sleeping. The healer-mage has come, or she’s made of stern stuff, because beneath the blanket her chest rises and falls regularly, as though she simply sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. The lines of the Elvhen valleslim are stark against her pale skin, a half mask of whorls like leaves or scales. They accentuate rather than hide the lines at the corners of her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, the laugh lines and crows’ feet and damage of sun and wind. She must be his age, and the years haven’t treated her kindly. Her hair is that true-gold you only see on elves, cut to her shoulders and currently matted and dark with sweat. The ice has melted out of her hair too. She sleeps like a statue in repose, a monument already.
Blackwall sits down on the box. He’s got some idea about guarding her sleep. He puts his head down on the edge of the pallet, face on crossed arms. He’s just going to rest for a minute.
“Blackwall?” The voice comes from a long way away. “Blackwall?” He digs his way up from a long way away, from a long, cold fall into darkness.
“Yes?” He raises his head.
The Herald is awake. She’s turned on her side, looking at him. “Where are we?”
“In camp,” he hastens to reassure her. “There’s no sign of pursuit. If Corypheus has anything left, they can’t attack us in the storm, and the snow has covered our tracks.”
“I found you.”
“You did.” He doesn’t say that he and Cassandra looked for her after she was given up for dead. They didn’t rescue her. She rescued herself. People are already saying it’s a miracle.
She lifts a hand, untangling it from the blanket. It’s the right hand. There’s no mark on it. “Where are we?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
She smiles. When she does those pale eyes are as warm as a summer sky. She grips his hand and squeezes tight.
He squeezes back. She needs to know this is real. Of course it is.
“That’s an honest answer.”
“My lady.”
The Sister is back. “Andraste be praised! You are awake!”
A murmur spreads through the tent. A healer-mage is coming and a Revered Mother. He can hear the sense of it, Andraste be praised, Maker be praised, it’s a miracle, she is chosen, she is spared.
Blackwall stands up, courteously giving the seat to the Revered Mother. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
She doesn’t let go of his hand for a moment. “Thank you,” she says, and squeezes his fingers again.
He bends over her hand with his most courtly bow. “I’m glad to be of service, My Lady.”,/lj-cut>
Gen, hint of future Blackwall/Lavellan
Blood and fire behind them, they walk into the snow. Blackwall is pulling a gig, a two-wheeled cart meant for a pony. There’s a burned man, a woman who is heavily pregnant, and two children who look to be less than four years old huddled into it. There’s no pony, but there’s him. He trudges through the snow amid the other refugees on the Pilgrim Road, his head down like a draft animal, his promises as heavy as a collar.
It might be hours before someone calls the first stop, over a pass and in the lee of the pass they just traversed. They’re out of the wind. It’s full dark. It might be ages until dawn.
“What’s going on?” the woman asks as the gig lurches as he puts the side bars down.
“We’re stopping to rest for a few minutes,” Blackwall says, working his arms. “Don’t worry. You and your children will be safe here.”
“They’re not my children,” she says, glancing down at the little ones folded into the blanket around her and them. “I’ve never seen them before.”
“Oh.” One of them has gone to sleep, while the little girl looks at him silently with wide eyes from the skirts of a woman she doesn’t know.
“It’s all right,” the woman says, tucking her closer. “We’ve a Grey Warden looking after us. We’ll be safe.”
There’s a call coming down the line. “Make camp! There’s the word to make camp here and in the shelter of the trees.”
That’s sensible. There’s a fir wood on the downslope. That means shelter and a windbreak, and also fallen branches to make fires.
“I’ll pull you a bit further on,” Blackwall says, taking up the traces again. “And then let’s see if you and I can rig something as cover. Make the gig into a hut for a bit.”
The pregnant woman nods, bracing the burned man as the gig tilts up again. He makes no sound. If he moaned, he might make it. Silence suggests he’s too far gone. Blackwall trudges through the snow. It’s just a couple of hundred feet. He can make it another couple of hundred feet.
There’s no food, but there’s snowmelt water soon enough. The night closes in. He stamps to warm his feet, walking around the fire someone’s built. No one talks.
The light from burning Haven is a stain on the eastern horizon, like a premature dawn.
Cullen is by the other fire now, and Blackwall can see that Leliana is with him. Her head is down, her cloak pulled up. Cullen looks fine. Lyrium can do anything. Blackwall shakes his head. And a good thing too. He could use some of that high right now. He’s afraid to sit down. If he does, he’ll go to sleep.
He walks another turn, loosening cramped muscles, takes a little more water from the snow melting over a sullen fire. Cassandra’s talking to Cullen now, waving her arms while he crosses his doggedly.
A question comes to Blackwall’s mind, fast and bright as a signal flare rising, and he makes his way through the silent crowd around the fire to them. “Where is the Herald?”
The look on Cullen’s face answers the question before he even speaks. “She stayed behind to distract Corypheus.”
“She set off the trebuchet that caused the avalanche,” Cassandra says heatedly. “So she was still alive that long.”
“She couldn’t have survived.” Cullen shakes his head.
“You knew.” Blackwall says.
“Yes.” Cullen’s gaze is direct. “We planned it. I sent up the flare when we were far enough away. It was….”
It was her duty. It was her choice. It was what Andraste chose her for. All those answers hang in the air. Cassandra closes her eyes.
They were her friends. They knew her well. He’s only been with the Inquisition a few weeks, only fought beside the Herald a few times, including tonight. She trusted him. She turned her back on the Red Templars attacking the trebuchet, aiming it and firing it, trusting that he would keep her back clean, that he would stop anyone who came up the stairs. He had. She had not even looked to see what he was doing, and he had not looked to see if she was done. He did his job and she did hers. Now she was dead.
They all piled up, didn’t they? All the bodies of a lifetime. That rugged little elf woman in her showy armor, her scarred face and her eyes that had seen too much - one more body in the snow. One more bit of crumpled meat roasting in the embers of Haven.
“We don’t know she’s dead,” Cassandra says stubbornly.
“There is no way she could have survived,” Cullen says. He’s angry. He’s angry at things he can’t fix.
“I am going to find out,” Cassandra says. “You can help or not. But I am going to backtrack and see.”
“You know I….”
“I know you must lead. So do it. I will be behind.” Cassandra turns and stalks off into the darkness, back up the path they descended.
His long stride takes him after her quickly, and the cold hits him as soon as he’s away from the fire. “Cassandra!” She stops, turns. “I’m coming with you.”
She simply nods. “Your help would be welcome, Warden Blackwall.”
They walk. The snow comes down in great, turning clumps, sticking damply on his shoulders. After a while it doesn’t melt on his sleeves, just crusts. The path is clear, the footprints and wheel ruts of everyone fleeing Haven.
Until it isn’t. They crossed this snowfield, this endless blowing wasteland. It’s probably simply a pretty mountain meadow in summer. But now, at night, in this storm, it’s nowhere. It’s the end of the world. The snow has covered their tracks.
“There were trees on the other side,” Blackwall says.
Cassandra nods. “I think we came up through the trees and then across the meadow. There’s probably a path most of the year.”
A path across a field of wildflowers under the snow tipped mountain peaks, a perfect pilgrim path to contemplate the glory of Andraste and the beauty of the world. Only now there is no indication where to go and the other side of the meadow can’t be seen. He’s shivering. The sweat crawling under his shirt is turning to ice.
“Let’s go a little further,” Cassandra says.
“Bear left. That’s where the path ran.” He thinks so. It’s hard to recognize anything.
The wind cuts. There is nothing but snow. Soon they’ll have to turn back. He’ll have to turn back. The tireless Seeker may not, but he’s just a mortal man. He’s got no magic and no lyrium, just the strength of his body, and that has its limits.
There’s a shadow, a movement ahead in the snow. “There she is!” Cassandra shouts. “Thank the Maker!” as the Herald’s knees give way and she kneels in the snow.
There are no dry clothes back in camp, but Blackwall sits by the fire long enough to stop shivering, long enough for his quilted coat to dry on his back, the icicles drip from his beard. There are more fires of fallen wood as the snow has abated. The stars are out. Some people have managed to put up tents. He’s checked on the gig. The pregnant woman and the kids are asleep, a couple of hides hung over the top of the gig to keep the body warmth in. The burned man has died. Blackwall carries him out without waking the kids. The sky hasn’t lightened at all. This night seems endless. Was it just after sundown that Corypheus attacked?
Cassandra and Cullen and Leliana and Josephine are arguing. He’s too tired for all that. He wanders into the medical tent, a Chantry sister standing up as he approaches. “Are you in need of healing, my son?”
“I’m not hurt, sister,” he says. She looks at him like she doesn’t believe him. “I just need to sit down a while.”
“You can sit here,” she says, and leaves him a box beside a pallet, going off to check on someone else.
The Herald lies sleeping. The healer-mage has come, or she’s made of stern stuff, because beneath the blanket her chest rises and falls regularly, as though she simply sleeps the sleep of exhaustion. The lines of the Elvhen valleslim are stark against her pale skin, a half mask of whorls like leaves or scales. They accentuate rather than hide the lines at the corners of her mouth, at the corners of her eyes, the laugh lines and crows’ feet and damage of sun and wind. She must be his age, and the years haven’t treated her kindly. Her hair is that true-gold you only see on elves, cut to her shoulders and currently matted and dark with sweat. The ice has melted out of her hair too. She sleeps like a statue in repose, a monument already.
Blackwall sits down on the box. He’s got some idea about guarding her sleep. He puts his head down on the edge of the pallet, face on crossed arms. He’s just going to rest for a minute.
“Blackwall?” The voice comes from a long way away. “Blackwall?” He digs his way up from a long way away, from a long, cold fall into darkness.
“Yes?” He raises his head.
The Herald is awake. She’s turned on her side, looking at him. “Where are we?”
“In camp,” he hastens to reassure her. “There’s no sign of pursuit. If Corypheus has anything left, they can’t attack us in the storm, and the snow has covered our tracks.”
“I found you.”
“You did.” He doesn’t say that he and Cassandra looked for her after she was given up for dead. They didn’t rescue her. She rescued herself. People are already saying it’s a miracle.
She lifts a hand, untangling it from the blanket. It’s the right hand. There’s no mark on it. “Where are we?”
“I don’t have any idea.”
She smiles. When she does those pale eyes are as warm as a summer sky. She grips his hand and squeezes tight.
He squeezes back. She needs to know this is real. Of course it is.
“That’s an honest answer.”
“My lady.”
The Sister is back. “Andraste be praised! You are awake!”
A murmur spreads through the tent. A healer-mage is coming and a Revered Mother. He can hear the sense of it, Andraste be praised, Maker be praised, it’s a miracle, she is chosen, she is spared.
Blackwall stands up, courteously giving the seat to the Revered Mother. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
She doesn’t let go of his hand for a moment. “Thank you,” she says, and squeezes his fingers again.
He bends over her hand with his most courtly bow. “I’m glad to be of service, My Lady.”,/lj-cut>