Dragon Age: Inquisition fic -- Dancing on the Edge
I was tempted to call this one Devil's Backbone, after the song, because that's sure what it is.
Blackwall/Elleth Lavellan with spoilers for Revelations.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!
Elleth storms up the prison steps in Val Royaux, almost running into Cullen who seems to be lurking like a large, concerned bear at the top.
“We can get him out, you know,” Cullen says. “We have resources.”
If she has to talk to Cullen or anyone else right now there is going to be a scene that should not happen in Val Royaux, something that will be absolutely detrimental to the interests of the Inquisition. “I can’t decide now,” she says.
She doesn’t say anything to anyone else until the city is behind them, vanishing into twilight distance and the wake of a sailing ship making good time from the shores of Orlais. The stars are rising on a cold but clear night near the end of autumn. She stands at the rail, her face into the wind. Cassandra walks out on deck for a few minutes, but thinks better of making conversation, and then she goes away again. Dorian doesn’t even come above decks. Dinner is being served in the captain’s day cabin for the distinguished passengers of the Navarran captain, and Cassandra is carrying the honors. Elleth stands on deck long after it’s full night. She’s not hungry.
It’s two days to Jader, where rain meets them, and then a messy four day slog up the Frostbacks to Skyhold. Elleth supposes she eats and drinks and she’s quite certain at one point she plays darts with Varric in a tavern. She’s sure she says some entirely appropriate things.
Skyhold is glittering with ice. Every pinnacle, every banner, every battlement is limned with glass glittering in the bright afternoon sun, as though Skyhold were a spun-sugar confection, a child’s dream of delight and beauty. “Home,” she says, and regrets it. It’s foolish to make a home.
“Home,” Cassandra says at her side. She shrugs a little awkwardly. “There are some things it is best to put behind us….”
Elleth steps ahead vigorously, hurrying forward to enter Skyhold at the front, beside Cullen.
That night she dines with Josephine over a stack of papers, everything that has piled up in the last two weeks. They do not speak of her trip to Val Royaux.
She sleeps alone in her red velvet bed behind its embroidered curtains. It’s very quiet.
The next day Varric stops her in the hall. He tells her a long story about Hawke and nearly cries. She embraces him, feeling the soft wool of his tunic under her hands, and tells him that she is certain that Hawke’s memory will live on, and that she is so very, very sorry that Hawke didn’t make it. Varric wipes his eyes and thanks her, but when he starts to ask how she is, she explains that the War Council is waiting.
They are. She comes down the hall quietly enough that they don’t hear her.
“…I am the one who should have known,” Cassandra is saying. “It is my fault that we let this person deceive us.” Her voice is snapping with anger.
“I don’t think….” Josephine begins. She breaks off when she sees Elleth in the doorway. Whatever expression is on her face, it stills the room.
“I was just going to check on the mutton supplies,” Cassandra says awkwardly, and slips past her as she goes.
Cullen frowns. Leliana looks serene, as always.
Josephine takes a deep breath as the door closes behind Cassandra. “In the matter of Thom Rainier….”
“We don’t need to discuss….” She can’t quite manage either name.
“Actually, we do,” Cullen says stubbornly. “He’s supposed to be hanged in a few weeks. If we’re going to do something, we need to do it.”
“I have an idea,” Leliana says, spreading her hands. “It’s quite simple. We locate a different prisoner of his height and build, have my agents swap them, and then they hang the wrong man while we bring the other one back.”
Cullen and Josephine both turn to stare at her. “That’s probably the most amoral thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Cullen says. “We kill some random other guy?”
Leliana looks defensive. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Actually, I do,” Cullen says, sticking his chin out. “We just attack the prison and grab him.”
This time it’s Josephine who all but yelps. “We attack Orlais? The Kingdom of Orlais? The one we just achieved diplomatic ties with? An unprovoked attack on the Kingdom of Orlais? That’s your idea?”
“We can’t attack Orlais,” Elleth manages. Cullen has a tendency to think everything is a nail and light cavalry is a hammer, but this is skating into ridiculous.
“We could simply pay them off,” Josephine says. “We bribe somebody. How hard can it be?” She looks at Elleth. “If we are doing anything at all, and not leaving Thom Rainier to Orlesian justice.” Her voice only stumbles over his name a little bit.
“I haven’t decided,” Elleth says.
Cullen’s voice is kind. “You have to decide soon or not deciding is a decision.”
“I know.” She is proud that her voice and demeanor are perfectly even and reasonable. “I will let you know my decision tomorrow. Will that suffice?”
“Perfectly, Inquisitor,” Josephine says, exchanging some sort of knowing look with Leliana.
That night sleep eludes her. The moon is already setting behind Skyhold when she gives up. She’s sleeping in an old shirt rather than anything newer, but she does put on the warm gray velvet dressing gown with its collar of gray fur when she goes to the balcony doors and steps outside.
It’s freezing cold. The railing is crusted with ice. The bluish snowlight is bright enough to cast shadows. For a moment she considers getting up on the railing and standing there, arms outstretched as though she could freeze that way, a statue to ornament this fortress forever. More likely she’d slip. He never likes it when she dances on the edge like that, daring death to take her. He never likes it.
The urge to do it is too strong. Instead she goes back inside, closing the doors firmly behind her and shutting the curtains.
She stands for a moment before the dying fire and then sinks down on the rug in front of it, postulant as she had learned as a child, her knees tucked against her chest, her arms outstretched in front of her in supplication, her face almost touching the floor. Moonlight still comes in through the upper windows, making a path across the patterned carpet.
“Mother Mythal,” she whispers. She has not prayed in years, not since she came in sight of the pyres of Markham and knew that prayer was useless. “Mother Mythal, I know what I should do. And I know what I want to do.”
There is no answer, of course, but saying the words aloud to the empty room helps. “I should let justice take its course. That is right and fair. It is reasonable. It is good for the Inquisition and for those who serve and whose trust I keep. It is what a good leader would do. It is what a just ruler would do. It is what he would have me do.” Her voice chokes. But Mother Mythal won’t mind, if she hears and is not simply a statue standing in the snow far away. “But Mother I cannot bear it if I do!” She lifts her head, her throat taut with tears and screams unshed.
Elleth rocks back on her heels, her face to the silent moonbeams. “I have done everything. I have done everything that everyone asked of me. I have been their symbol and their savior. I have fought their battles and I have staunched their blood and I have found their wretched missing livestock! I have killed their enemies. I have danced with my enemies, with the people who oppress and slaughter my people and yours for the sake of peace in Thedas. And all I have asked is this. All I have asked is the life of this one man. I know he doesn’t deserve it. I know I don’t.” Her voice is rising to a scream. “Mother Mythal, listen to me! I am not a selfless holy prophet. I am not their Herald of Andraste. I cannot do this. I cannot be this.”
Her breath is loud in the room, coming rough in the crystal half-light.
Not the Herald of Andraste, but something far older, or at least something Andraste would have understood, a dragon uncoiling within her, mother and lover and vengeful goddess, talons that rend and caress with silvered claws.
“Mother Mythal, I am going to save him because I want him.” She bites down on her lip until she tastes the iron and salt of her own blood. “He belongs to me and he will answer to me. I am going to do this knowing it is wrong and that it violates your justice. I am willing to pay the price.” She takes a deep breath. “I make no excuses. I offer no justifications. I am going to do what I know is wrong because I want to. Mother, I do not ask you to forgive me. But I can only be what I am.”
Having said it, a strange peace comes over her. It’s not grace, at least not what Cassandra means by grace. It’s just knowing. She has made her decision, and for better or worse it is what will be. The cobwebs have cleared. She is fine and bright, like a dragon upon the wing seeing the land from above. She knows the tools and she knows the way. And so she will dress and begin the day.
Josephine is startled to find her waiting in Josephine’s office when she comes down half an hour after dawn, an elaborate Antivan coffee service waiting for them. “Inquisitor?”
“I need to discuss a political matter with you,” Elleth says in a businesslike manner. “Will you take coffee?”
“Yes, thank you.” Josephine looks bemused.
“The matter of Robert Chapuis,” Elleth says. “I understand that he undertook the murder of General Victor Callier in hopes of pleasing Grand Duke Gaspard, now King Gaspard, and it was to that end that he hired Thom Rainier and his company.”
“That is my understanding, yes,” Josephine says. “However, Chapuis drank poison when his involvement became known. He was never questioned. It was clear from his papers that he hired Rainier, but it is merely hearsay that he did so at Gaspard’s behest. We might reasonably think so, but there is no proof.”
“Except the confession of Thom Rainier,” Elleth says, crossing her legs and taking a sip of her coffee. “Stating in writing, under holy oath as he prepares to die, his confession and the facts of the case. King Gaspard, then Grand Duke Gaspard, asked Chapuis to arrange the murder of Callier and his family.”
Josephine looks astonished. “That would be…. Who would have such a document?”
“I do,” Elleth says. “Left for me by Thom Rainier himself when he left Skyhold.”
It only takes Josephine a second. She knows what Elleth said when he disappeared and what she said when she left for Val Royaux and when she returned. “There is no such document.”
“Do you think Gaspard knows that?” Elleth asks smugly.
Josephine’s face changes, a slow smile spreading across it. “He cannot possibly be certain that there is not. Especially considering the rumors of…your acquaintance with Rainier. It is entirely plausible that Rainier left such a document with you.”
“It is indeed.” She takes another sip of the strong black coffee. “And what do you suppose it would be worth to him for such a document to be destroyed? The life of one very minor thug? A pawn in the Game?” She looks at Josephine across the gold rim of the cup. “We put him on his throne. We can take him back off it.”
“Or at least make it quite uncomfortable,” Josephine says thoughtfully. “I think we present it to him as an opportunity. We have this awkward bit of evidence which we would be delighted to make go away, thereby smoothing his acquisition of power. In return, we would like one minor favor. We would like the governor of the prison to accept a small honorarium in return for releasing Rainier to our agents.”
“A very minor favor indeed. Especially since we are delighted to be of service to him by making this uncomfortable document vanish.”
“And should Rainier vanish, unfortunately we would have to make the document public,” Josephine says. She looks inordinately pleased. “Nicely done, Your Worship.”
“Josephine, I am asking you to lie.”
“To the King of Orlais.” She looks positively cheerful. “It is the Game. I had not imagined….”
“That I was capable of playing it? Oh Josephine, I’ve lied a great deal in my time when my life depended on it and sometimes when it didn’t.” She glances down at the porcelain service. “I was trying to be better than this.”
Josephine leans forward, putting her hand on Elleth’s knee, the first time she can remember such a touch. “My dear friend, if I may call you that, you have never disappointed me. I believe I speak for more than one of us when I say that his execution does not sit well. So many of us have had reason to respect and like Warden Blackwall.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him when he’s released to us,” Elleth murmurs. “I may execute him myself.”
“I doubt that,” Josephine replies.
“Cassandra…”
“Cassandra would cut off her own foot if it offended her,” Josephine says. “But you may rely on me. I will make this lie seem entirely plausible and our desire to simply make a mutually positive exchange credible. You can trust that it will be done.”
“I trust you completely,” Elleth says. It’s a weight she hadn’t known she was carrying that lifts, laying this on Josephine.
That afternoon she stands on the battlements watching two of Leliana’s best agents depart, walking their horses on the packed snow, the first leg of their cold passage back to Val Royaux. Their hooded forms seem very small against the great vista of the mountains.
“Go,” she whispers. “And bring him home.” There is no one near to hear her.
Blackwall/Elleth Lavellan with spoilers for Revelations.
I'd love to hear what you guys think!
Elleth storms up the prison steps in Val Royaux, almost running into Cullen who seems to be lurking like a large, concerned bear at the top.
“We can get him out, you know,” Cullen says. “We have resources.”
If she has to talk to Cullen or anyone else right now there is going to be a scene that should not happen in Val Royaux, something that will be absolutely detrimental to the interests of the Inquisition. “I can’t decide now,” she says.
She doesn’t say anything to anyone else until the city is behind them, vanishing into twilight distance and the wake of a sailing ship making good time from the shores of Orlais. The stars are rising on a cold but clear night near the end of autumn. She stands at the rail, her face into the wind. Cassandra walks out on deck for a few minutes, but thinks better of making conversation, and then she goes away again. Dorian doesn’t even come above decks. Dinner is being served in the captain’s day cabin for the distinguished passengers of the Navarran captain, and Cassandra is carrying the honors. Elleth stands on deck long after it’s full night. She’s not hungry.
It’s two days to Jader, where rain meets them, and then a messy four day slog up the Frostbacks to Skyhold. Elleth supposes she eats and drinks and she’s quite certain at one point she plays darts with Varric in a tavern. She’s sure she says some entirely appropriate things.
Skyhold is glittering with ice. Every pinnacle, every banner, every battlement is limned with glass glittering in the bright afternoon sun, as though Skyhold were a spun-sugar confection, a child’s dream of delight and beauty. “Home,” she says, and regrets it. It’s foolish to make a home.
“Home,” Cassandra says at her side. She shrugs a little awkwardly. “There are some things it is best to put behind us….”
Elleth steps ahead vigorously, hurrying forward to enter Skyhold at the front, beside Cullen.
That night she dines with Josephine over a stack of papers, everything that has piled up in the last two weeks. They do not speak of her trip to Val Royaux.
She sleeps alone in her red velvet bed behind its embroidered curtains. It’s very quiet.
The next day Varric stops her in the hall. He tells her a long story about Hawke and nearly cries. She embraces him, feeling the soft wool of his tunic under her hands, and tells him that she is certain that Hawke’s memory will live on, and that she is so very, very sorry that Hawke didn’t make it. Varric wipes his eyes and thanks her, but when he starts to ask how she is, she explains that the War Council is waiting.
They are. She comes down the hall quietly enough that they don’t hear her.
“…I am the one who should have known,” Cassandra is saying. “It is my fault that we let this person deceive us.” Her voice is snapping with anger.
“I don’t think….” Josephine begins. She breaks off when she sees Elleth in the doorway. Whatever expression is on her face, it stills the room.
“I was just going to check on the mutton supplies,” Cassandra says awkwardly, and slips past her as she goes.
Cullen frowns. Leliana looks serene, as always.
Josephine takes a deep breath as the door closes behind Cassandra. “In the matter of Thom Rainier….”
“We don’t need to discuss….” She can’t quite manage either name.
“Actually, we do,” Cullen says stubbornly. “He’s supposed to be hanged in a few weeks. If we’re going to do something, we need to do it.”
“I have an idea,” Leliana says, spreading her hands. “It’s quite simple. We locate a different prisoner of his height and build, have my agents swap them, and then they hang the wrong man while we bring the other one back.”
Cullen and Josephine both turn to stare at her. “That’s probably the most amoral thing I’ve ever heard you say,” Cullen says. “We kill some random other guy?”
Leliana looks defensive. “Do you have a better idea?”
“Actually, I do,” Cullen says, sticking his chin out. “We just attack the prison and grab him.”
This time it’s Josephine who all but yelps. “We attack Orlais? The Kingdom of Orlais? The one we just achieved diplomatic ties with? An unprovoked attack on the Kingdom of Orlais? That’s your idea?”
“We can’t attack Orlais,” Elleth manages. Cullen has a tendency to think everything is a nail and light cavalry is a hammer, but this is skating into ridiculous.
“We could simply pay them off,” Josephine says. “We bribe somebody. How hard can it be?” She looks at Elleth. “If we are doing anything at all, and not leaving Thom Rainier to Orlesian justice.” Her voice only stumbles over his name a little bit.
“I haven’t decided,” Elleth says.
Cullen’s voice is kind. “You have to decide soon or not deciding is a decision.”
“I know.” She is proud that her voice and demeanor are perfectly even and reasonable. “I will let you know my decision tomorrow. Will that suffice?”
“Perfectly, Inquisitor,” Josephine says, exchanging some sort of knowing look with Leliana.
That night sleep eludes her. The moon is already setting behind Skyhold when she gives up. She’s sleeping in an old shirt rather than anything newer, but she does put on the warm gray velvet dressing gown with its collar of gray fur when she goes to the balcony doors and steps outside.
It’s freezing cold. The railing is crusted with ice. The bluish snowlight is bright enough to cast shadows. For a moment she considers getting up on the railing and standing there, arms outstretched as though she could freeze that way, a statue to ornament this fortress forever. More likely she’d slip. He never likes it when she dances on the edge like that, daring death to take her. He never likes it.
The urge to do it is too strong. Instead she goes back inside, closing the doors firmly behind her and shutting the curtains.
She stands for a moment before the dying fire and then sinks down on the rug in front of it, postulant as she had learned as a child, her knees tucked against her chest, her arms outstretched in front of her in supplication, her face almost touching the floor. Moonlight still comes in through the upper windows, making a path across the patterned carpet.
“Mother Mythal,” she whispers. She has not prayed in years, not since she came in sight of the pyres of Markham and knew that prayer was useless. “Mother Mythal, I know what I should do. And I know what I want to do.”
There is no answer, of course, but saying the words aloud to the empty room helps. “I should let justice take its course. That is right and fair. It is reasonable. It is good for the Inquisition and for those who serve and whose trust I keep. It is what a good leader would do. It is what a just ruler would do. It is what he would have me do.” Her voice chokes. But Mother Mythal won’t mind, if she hears and is not simply a statue standing in the snow far away. “But Mother I cannot bear it if I do!” She lifts her head, her throat taut with tears and screams unshed.
Elleth rocks back on her heels, her face to the silent moonbeams. “I have done everything. I have done everything that everyone asked of me. I have been their symbol and their savior. I have fought their battles and I have staunched their blood and I have found their wretched missing livestock! I have killed their enemies. I have danced with my enemies, with the people who oppress and slaughter my people and yours for the sake of peace in Thedas. And all I have asked is this. All I have asked is the life of this one man. I know he doesn’t deserve it. I know I don’t.” Her voice is rising to a scream. “Mother Mythal, listen to me! I am not a selfless holy prophet. I am not their Herald of Andraste. I cannot do this. I cannot be this.”
Her breath is loud in the room, coming rough in the crystal half-light.
Not the Herald of Andraste, but something far older, or at least something Andraste would have understood, a dragon uncoiling within her, mother and lover and vengeful goddess, talons that rend and caress with silvered claws.
“Mother Mythal, I am going to save him because I want him.” She bites down on her lip until she tastes the iron and salt of her own blood. “He belongs to me and he will answer to me. I am going to do this knowing it is wrong and that it violates your justice. I am willing to pay the price.” She takes a deep breath. “I make no excuses. I offer no justifications. I am going to do what I know is wrong because I want to. Mother, I do not ask you to forgive me. But I can only be what I am.”
Having said it, a strange peace comes over her. It’s not grace, at least not what Cassandra means by grace. It’s just knowing. She has made her decision, and for better or worse it is what will be. The cobwebs have cleared. She is fine and bright, like a dragon upon the wing seeing the land from above. She knows the tools and she knows the way. And so she will dress and begin the day.
Josephine is startled to find her waiting in Josephine’s office when she comes down half an hour after dawn, an elaborate Antivan coffee service waiting for them. “Inquisitor?”
“I need to discuss a political matter with you,” Elleth says in a businesslike manner. “Will you take coffee?”
“Yes, thank you.” Josephine looks bemused.
“The matter of Robert Chapuis,” Elleth says. “I understand that he undertook the murder of General Victor Callier in hopes of pleasing Grand Duke Gaspard, now King Gaspard, and it was to that end that he hired Thom Rainier and his company.”
“That is my understanding, yes,” Josephine says. “However, Chapuis drank poison when his involvement became known. He was never questioned. It was clear from his papers that he hired Rainier, but it is merely hearsay that he did so at Gaspard’s behest. We might reasonably think so, but there is no proof.”
“Except the confession of Thom Rainier,” Elleth says, crossing her legs and taking a sip of her coffee. “Stating in writing, under holy oath as he prepares to die, his confession and the facts of the case. King Gaspard, then Grand Duke Gaspard, asked Chapuis to arrange the murder of Callier and his family.”
Josephine looks astonished. “That would be…. Who would have such a document?”
“I do,” Elleth says. “Left for me by Thom Rainier himself when he left Skyhold.”
It only takes Josephine a second. She knows what Elleth said when he disappeared and what she said when she left for Val Royaux and when she returned. “There is no such document.”
“Do you think Gaspard knows that?” Elleth asks smugly.
Josephine’s face changes, a slow smile spreading across it. “He cannot possibly be certain that there is not. Especially considering the rumors of…your acquaintance with Rainier. It is entirely plausible that Rainier left such a document with you.”
“It is indeed.” She takes another sip of the strong black coffee. “And what do you suppose it would be worth to him for such a document to be destroyed? The life of one very minor thug? A pawn in the Game?” She looks at Josephine across the gold rim of the cup. “We put him on his throne. We can take him back off it.”
“Or at least make it quite uncomfortable,” Josephine says thoughtfully. “I think we present it to him as an opportunity. We have this awkward bit of evidence which we would be delighted to make go away, thereby smoothing his acquisition of power. In return, we would like one minor favor. We would like the governor of the prison to accept a small honorarium in return for releasing Rainier to our agents.”
“A very minor favor indeed. Especially since we are delighted to be of service to him by making this uncomfortable document vanish.”
“And should Rainier vanish, unfortunately we would have to make the document public,” Josephine says. She looks inordinately pleased. “Nicely done, Your Worship.”
“Josephine, I am asking you to lie.”
“To the King of Orlais.” She looks positively cheerful. “It is the Game. I had not imagined….”
“That I was capable of playing it? Oh Josephine, I’ve lied a great deal in my time when my life depended on it and sometimes when it didn’t.” She glances down at the porcelain service. “I was trying to be better than this.”
Josephine leans forward, putting her hand on Elleth’s knee, the first time she can remember such a touch. “My dear friend, if I may call you that, you have never disappointed me. I believe I speak for more than one of us when I say that his execution does not sit well. So many of us have had reason to respect and like Warden Blackwall.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with him when he’s released to us,” Elleth murmurs. “I may execute him myself.”
“I doubt that,” Josephine replies.
“Cassandra…”
“Cassandra would cut off her own foot if it offended her,” Josephine says. “But you may rely on me. I will make this lie seem entirely plausible and our desire to simply make a mutually positive exchange credible. You can trust that it will be done.”
“I trust you completely,” Elleth says. It’s a weight she hadn’t known she was carrying that lifts, laying this on Josephine.
That afternoon she stands on the battlements watching two of Leliana’s best agents depart, walking their horses on the packed snow, the first leg of their cold passage back to Val Royaux. Their hooded forms seem very small against the great vista of the mountains.
“Go,” she whispers. “And bring him home.” There is no one near to hear her.