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Part One: Exposure
Lavellan wakes up, stiff from pain and cold, to find that he cannot move. He is bound by coarse rope, he can feel that much, but his muscles won’t respond when he tries to adjust his position. He feels limp, and for a moment wonders if he’s still unconscious after all, before a bottle shatters against the cave wall not too far from where he’s lying on his side. He can see now, in the firelight, that one of the Hakkonites is rummaging through his kit. The horns affixed to the brute’s hood look menacing in the dim light.
For the moment, the man does not know that he is awake, and after a passing panic at his inability to move, he decides its for the best. He keeps his eyes open only enough to watch.
“Lowlanders,” the man spits, “everything they own is fragile.” He tries to illustrate his point by snapping a knife that he’s pulled from the bag, but the joke is on him, because it’s one of Dagna’s cursed little inventions, and it stubbornly remains in one unbent piece. In frustration, the man hurls it in the same direction he’d hurled the bottle, and Lavellan listens as it clatters to the stone floor. His focus tears between the threat and the weapon; if he can only just move over to it, he can arm himself.
Something is wrong, though. Not just that his muscles remain unresponsive--though admittedly that’s pretty high on his list of concerns--but the pain that grips him isn’t just bruising. His thigh is white with it, a tearing pain across the front of his upper leg. He chances a look, and finds bandages hastily wrapped around the wound, blood long since soaked through.
Well, shit.
There are three people in the cave besides him. Two men and a woman. The woman is in charge, if the claws and horns affixed to her outfit are any indication of rank. She is sharpening an axe slowly, methodically, the sound of stone grinding against the edge of her blade again and again. But Lavellan can see her watching the other two carefully. There’s tension in the air. The man upends the rest of Lavellan’s kit onto a broad stone table and tosses the empty satchel over his shoulder.
The other man in the room, Lavellan realizes, is watching him, but he isn’t close enough to notice that Lavellan has woken up. He hasn’t moved since Lavellan has come around, leaning against the wall near the entrance of the cave.
“What’s-... this little prick has a jar of bees in his bag,” the first man grunts, holding up his discovery so that it glints in the cold mountain light. “How are they alive?”
“Don’t open it,” the woman advises abruptly, and Lavellan thinks maybe the man was about to. “I told you to look for medicine, not make a mess.”
The man grunts, waves a hand at her dismissively, but does not voice his frustration directly at her. “Why waste it on him? Our own men need the supplies.”
“Gurd wants him alive,” she answers, a sharp edge to her voice, “so we keep him alive.”
This, apparently, is an inarguable fact, and so the man grunts and huffs and Lavellan can see his silhouette turn toward him through his eyelashes. “Pathetic. If he were born among our tribe we would have left such a little thing to die in the woods, and the Lowlanders make him their leader.”
“Do not underestimate him,” the other man says, speaking for the first time. His voice is low and bordering on patronizing, as if the larger man were only a child. “Lowlanders do not like elves. If he is their appointed Inquisitor, he has earned it.”
Lavellan could laugh, or at least huff. Somewhere, his Keeper is rolling her eyes.
“If you believe him so worthy of it, than fix his leg already,” the large man growls, before turning and stalking out of the cave. The other man and the woman exchange some sort of look--Lavellan can only see the impression of their heads turning toward one another--before the man pushes off of the cave wall and approaches. As he passes the table, he picks up a poultice from the pile.
Lavellan closes his eyes and takes care to breathe evenly, though it’s a difficult thing to lie prone and vulnerable before an enemy cult member. The man crouches near his legs and groans at the sight. He curses in a language Lavellan barely recognizes as what the Avvar speak at Strongbear Hold.
“That idiot,” he says, either to himself or to the woman still sharpening her axe. “All he did was wrap cloth around the wound.”
“His talents lie in killing, not the opposite,” the woman answers, and there’s disdain in her voice, but whether its toward the brute who left or the man peeling the bandages back from Lavellan’s leg, he isn’t sure.
What he is sure about is that it fucking hurts .
The man lifts his leg a bit to unravel the binding and in doing so pulls at the torn flesh beneath. Lavellan cannot help but breathe sharply, each inhale quick and each exhale shaking, but the man does not seem to think this is a sign of consciousness.
“He should not have been sent with the party to retrieve the elf. If this wound turns ill and he develops a fever, he won’t live long enough for the sacrifice.”
“It is as if,” the woman says, her words clipped with annoyance, “we have you to prevent that exact thing from happening.”
After that, neither speak. The woman finishes with her axe and, from the sound of her movements, finds another sharp thing to make sharper. The man unravels the last of the blood-sodden bandages and drops them with an audible slap to the cave floor by Lavellan’s feet.
Through the haze of pain, Lavellan tries to follow what the man is doing: cutting away frayed fabric from his pant leg around the wound; rinsing the wound with water, cold and almost shocking enough to startle Lavellan into revealing his consciousness; the application of the poultice, and this time Lavellan does make a noise, but it’s a small thing and the man pays it no attention. The pain has reached a terrible constant now, and Lavellan has found a way to breathe through it, despite himself. There is sweat on his forehead and tension between his shoulder blades so tight he fears it may never unravel.
Wordlessly, the man presses clean cloth to the wound and begins to rewrap his leg. He pulls the bandages too-tight before he lets go, finished, and Lavellan does not know what he is doing, but he does not stand or walk away. He remains crouched beside him. Lavellan tries to keep still despite his agony.
There comes the sound of shifting fabric, and Lavellan cannot tell what the man is doing, but it sounds irregular. He gets the impression that it’s movement for the sake of movement. It continues until the brute from before speaks into the mouth of the cave in that language Lavellan can only barely identify, and the woman replies in the same tongue. He can hear metal being put down--the sword she was working on, perhaps--and then she leaves, and he gets the distinct impression that he is alone with this man in the cave.
“I know you are awake, Lowlander,” the man says, suddenly and privately into the air between them. Lavellan remains very still. “I am to save you so that you might be sacrificed to Hakkon.”
For a moment, Lavellan does not move, but it is quickly apparent that there is no point in continuing the front. Slowly, he opens his eyes and looks up at the man leaning over him, his features obscured to blackness by the bright light behind him.
The man shifts, almost imperceptibly, when Lavellan looks up at him. His shoulders are tense and his posture is rigid, but his eyes--what little of them Lavellan can see through the light--are fixed on his face.
“Have you nothing to say,” the man ventures when silence stretches between them. Lavellan rolls his lips together and finds them dry; when he wets them with his tongue, the man shifts again, more noticeably.
“What’s the point of having me in good health if you’re just going to kill me,” he asks, his voice raspy and quiet. The man takes a deep breath through his nose, his hands balled into fists against his knees.
“It would be dishonorable to give an offering that is of poor quality,” he answers. He sounds distracted. Lavellan’s nerves are beginning to squirm with discomfort at the quality of the man’s gaze.
“Ah,” he tries, aiming for his usual airy humor and falling short somewhere south of quippy, “is that right? You wouldn’t offer a guest spoiled food, I suppose.”
The man does not respond. Slowly, cautiously, as if the act might burn him, the stranger uncurls one fist and reaches forward to trace his fingers along the vallaslin on Lavellan’s left cheek. Lavellan flinches, and then goes very still.
“The number of elves I have seen in my day, I could count on one hand,” the man says. Maybe to Lavellan, maybe to himself. “Do they all look like you?”
Ridiculously, Lavellan is hit by the memory of Dorian asking something similar when they first met. It had been sarcastic, of course, meant to tease and flirt, but this man above him, this Hakkonite, seems entirely sincere in his question. Lavellan doesn’t know how to answer.
Fingers follow the sweeping lines of the tattoo past his hairline where it disappears into the braid he has along the side of his head. The path the fingers made tingles on his cheek; he often forgets that the curving lines of Mythal rest there, and it’s unnerving to have them brought to his attention by unwelcome contact.
“Your hair color, too,” the man says, his voice drifting, distant, and when Lavellan squirms to try and break the contact, the man suddenly snaps out of it and withdraws his hand. There is a beat of silence where they stare at one another. Neither moves, though it is easier for Lavellan, since his body is still limp.
“Regardless. You must drink water,” the man says, his voice a bit louder, a bit more forced. Trying to shake off his own distraction. He rises and crosses to an angle out of Lavellan’s line of sight, and then returns with a full cup. With his free arm, he loops it down behind Lavellan’s neck and shoulders and hoists him up into a sitting position with surprising ease.
With his arms bound behind his back and his muscles unresponsive, Lavellan has no way to balance, and the man seems to know this. He stays close, holds him up, and Lavellan tenses and leans his head away in an attempt at winning himself some personal space. He would have been uncomfortable with the contact even before the bizarre interaction they’d just had.
Still, when the cup is tilted to his lips, he starts drinking before it even occurs to him that it could be laced with something. The first few sips are a shocking relief to a thirst he wasn’t even fully aware he had. By the time he recognizes the faint taste of magebane, half the cup is down his throat.
He stops drinking, regardless.
The man frowns and pulls the cup back when some of it spills down Lavellan’s front. For a moment, he stays there, holding the elf against his chest. Lavellan keeps his head turned away, unnerved by the feel of the stranger’s breath on the side of his neck, before the man relents and lays him back down. To think the cold stone would be welcoming, but it is.
Lavellan’s mind races. He has a dozen questions at the tip of his tongue, but the stranger above him is leering down, unwavering, unnerving. His eyes travel across Lavellan’s face as if he’s memorizing his features. As if he’s looking upon a meal after being starved for weeks. The questions Lavellan wants to ask rise and vanish in his mind, chased away by his sheer discomfort.
With nothing else in his stomach, what little control over his movement he had rapidly begins to fade. Magebane is first and foremost a sedative--it just happens to retard the flow of magic as well, and is apparently remarkably fast-acting. Lavellan is acutely aware of his fading consciousness.
“Your name,” he asks on an exhale, using the breath to get the words out. The sudden weakness surprises and terrifies him.
The man considers him for a moment. He is still too close, even if they are no longer touching. Things are starting to grow soft for him; his vision, his hearing, his sense of consciousness. Before he slips completely into the embrace of the magebane in his system, the man responds,
“I am Elorn,” he answers. It’s the last clear thing to pass through Lavellan’s mind for a while.
-
“Remember when our biggest concern was that ancient Tevinter magister? How quaint compared to this bloody mountain.”
“Your saying Corypheus was better than this,” Iron Bull clarifies, keeping his eyes ahead of them down the riverbank. Behind him, Dorian is gripping and re-gripping his staff impatiently.
“I’m saying at least most of the time, we knew where Lavellan was. Besides, at least we could kill that old bastard, you can’t bloody well kill a mountain.”
“Not with that attitude,” Bull answers, but Dorian iss too far gone with barely-concealed panic to carry on the back-and-forth. “If you want to find him, keep bitching. I’m sure all that noise will bring us exactly what we’re looking for.”
“And your plan,” Dorian continues, almost as if he didn’t hear him, “is to go tromping upstream to find one of these cultists who might actually talk.”
“They will,” Bull says easily.
“Yes, the others were so forthcoming, after all.”
He and Cassandra had found two small Hakkon scouting groups. Neither had expressed any interest in talking, either before or after they fought them, no matter how Dorian threatened them or how many arms Cassandra broke.
But then, Bull had not yet caught up with them. He had gone to get a better look at the obvious sight of the abducting, torn asunder as it was from Lavellan’s magic and Hakkonite hammer falls. Dorian hates to admit it, but having an ex-Ben Hassrath on the team was, at the end of the day, a relief.
“I swear, if he survived all of that just to die here, I’ll never forgive him,” Dorian says, regretting his words immediately. Somehow, speaking them aloud makes it feel as though they’re more likely to come true.
“He will not die here,” Cassandra says, her voice as confident as it is angry. “We will find him.”
Dorian opens his mouth to say something in reply--something unnecessarily mean, no doubt, thanks to his anger--when Bull suddenly hefts his shield, an arrow ricocheting off of it’s surface with a loud twang. Before Dorian can properly process the engagement, Bull is off, charging through the shallow water toward the offender.
With a twist, Dorian brings his staff around and throws up a barrier. There are four of them--two archers and two warriors. Another scouting party sent to disrupt the Inquisition’s supply lines, maybe. Their body paint makes them look like wraiths in the dim light of the basin floor. Dorian imagines them ambusing Lavellan and carrying him off, and his anger renews itself.
They do not last long. There isn’t a member of the Inquisition present that isn’t fueled by panic and anger after discovering the Inquisitor missing that morning. The archers fall first, the warrior’s only lasting as long as it takes for Bull’s raw strength to break their shields. When only one was left breathing, Bull grabs the weapon right out of his hand and throws the man into the middle of the shallow river.
Dorian relaxes his stance and watches the Hakkonite try to claw his way to the shore, where a discarded weapon from his fellow warrior lies. Bull reaches him first, and has the self-control to look over to Dorian and Cassandra.
“If you want an out, now is the time. This is one of those things you can’t unsee.”
Dorian stares down at the man struggling in Bull’s grip. “I advise you tell us where the Inquisitor is,” he says. “It won’t be good for you if you don’t.”
The man spits a venomous curse at all of them. “I will sooner die than submit to Lowlander scum,” he snarls. Just like the rest of them did, Dorian thinks with a heaving sigh. He turns toward the river bank, where a slope will take him up between two boulders and out of sight. He’s seen quite enough trauma to knowingly add more to the list.
He pauses just long enough for Cassandra to join him, but she doesn’t. She stands right where she is, arms crossed over her chest, watching. Ready. Bull gives her a curt nod, and her face hardens in preparation.
Why she wants to watch, Dorian cannot determine. But then behind him comes a crunch, and a howl of pain, and he starts for the boulders with another sigh.
“The location of the Inquisitor,” Bull says, his voice simple, easy, as if this were routine. And for a significant portion of his life, perhaps it was. Dorian climbs the slope up and out of sight, but not before he hears another defiant curse, another crunch, another scream.
The boulders don’t do a good job of muffling it.
-
They’re moving him.
He’s pulled back into consciousness by a sudden spike of pain in his leg, only to find himself being carried over the shoulder of the impossibly large man who had been rummaging through his bag earlier. They’re on the move, making their way along a mountain path. From Lavellan’s angle facing back the way they’d come, a cliff drops off to his right, a sheer and sudden fall. To be so close to the edge, draped over someone’s shoulder, is terrifying.
It’s easy to appear unconscious when he’s being jostled about so much. His bruised body aches with protest, and breathing is a struggle with the pressure of a broad shoulder against his gut, but he doesn’t have to suffer for long. Within minutes of his waking, the narrow mountain path opens to a clearing of flat rock wide enough to build several structures on it. Houses, maybe, though he can hardly get a good look at them before the man turns his back to the basin below, and the drop is all Lavellan can see.
Now, his wrists are tied in front of him so that they hang down toward the ground. More useful, this way.
“They are not here,” the woman says, somewhere out of sight. “They should have been here before us.”
“Inquisition?” the brute holding him asks. He sounds annoyed.
Tucked into the back of the man’s belt is a sheathed knife. It’s too large to hide easily. Lavellan thinks about trying to drive it into a kidney, and foresees a quick and painful death as a result.
“I don’t like it,” the woman says. “We should keep moving.”
“Bah,” the man holding him grunts, “I’m tired. You haven’t been carrying this long ear all day.”
He hears Elorn’s voice, though it takes Lavellan a moment to recognize it. “We can wait for them for a while. Maybe they’ll show.”
There are claws--teeth?--affixed to the belt as well, all about two inches long. Decorative. Serrated. Lavellan manages to hook his fingers around one. Outright tugging won’t work, so he twists, straining the thin leather strips that hold it there. Wriggles it back and forth.
“Fine,” the woman decides, though she doesn’t sound happy about it. “Put him there, and keep him quiet.”
“I will check to see that he has a fever,” Elorn suggests, and the woman doesn’t give him a yes, but she doesn’t give him a no, either. The tooth--claw?--wiggles looser and looser, but not loose enough. Lavellan’s heart is pounding. The brute starts to move; he’ll be seen, awake and up to something, in seconds.
The man below him starts toward one of the structures, but the woman’s voice cuts in again, making him stop mid-turn.
“Not there,” she barks, “ there. He’s not a guest, he’s a prisoner.”
“I know that,” the man snarls back, and turns his back to the drop once more. Lavellan gives the tooth a sharp twist, spiraling it around and around to try and stretch the leather enough to slip it free. The man’s armour is too thick with leather and furs for him to feel it.
Lavellan unravels his work, and the tooth slides free so suddenly that he nearly drops it when the man starts walking in the opposite direction. Dropping his head, he slides the tooth into the ropes between his wrists and lets himself fall limp as quickly and carefully as possible. He’s turned away from the drop, and for a moment, warm sunlight hits his face, flashing red through his eyelids. Blood rushes back into his head. Then the sunlight is gone, and he is upturned roughly and dropped to the floor without ceremony.
It sends a shock of pain through his leg and body and he can’t help but groan. Towering above him, the man finally seems to recognize that he’s awake, and laughs.
A foot presses down against his shoulder and pins him to the floor. Lavellan opens his eyes and glares up at the Hakkonite, his head swimming as blood finally starts to resettle into it’s usual order.
“The little mutt is awake,” the man says, sneering down at him. “Perhaps I will get to kill you, as a reward for bringing you to Gurd.”
“Believe me,” Lavellan rasps, “you’d be achieving something previously thought impossible.”
The man doesn’t know what to make of this statement, and it seems to frustrate him. His face darkens and he leans more weight onto Lavellan’s shoulder until it’s crushingly painful and Lavellan groans again, eyes squeezed tight, and then--
“Kiveal.”
Elorn speaks clearly, a command packed into the name. The man above him--Kiveal, apparently--glares down at Lavellan for a moment before retracting his foot altogether and turning toward the smaller man.
“He is not feverish,” he says, clearly unhappy with being interrupted.
“Go help Anashe keep watch,” Elorn answers, and Kiveal clenches his fists and reluctantly does so, storming out of the hut in a flurry of unsatisfied anger.
The way that Elorn settles his eyes on him, Lavellan isn’t sure if his situation has much improved.
The man crosses the room and crouches beside him, checking first his leg and then, uselessly, his shoulder. Neither speak. When at last Elorn’s hand settles across Lavellan’s forehead, the anticipation of it has made his stomach churn.
“You and I both know you’re not checking for fever,” Lavellan says evenly, leveling him with what he hopes is a ‘back off’ glare. Elorn stares back with knitted eyebrows, his hand remaining firmly on his forehead.
He seems to be weighing the pros and cons of something. After a moment, he settles on a decision, and speaks.
“My people,” Elorn says, after a moment of uncomfortable staring, “are not so numerous, these days. The clans are spread out, and only a few families make up each one. So we must trade among clans to avoid intermarrying. Is the same not true for your people?”
Somewhere beneath the pain and the drugs and the frustration with this whole situation, Lavellan feels a flash of offense at the accusation. “We are not nearly so few as to be incestuous,” he answers, an edge to his voice.
If Elorn takes offense, he does not show it. “There is a ritual to it. A young man should announce his intent, but he must sneak in to another clan’s hold and steal his bride to be.”
Lavellan rolls his head to the side to dislodge the hand, and Elorn retracts it. “Is telling me this meant to make me a better sacrifice?”
He receives no answer. Elorn stands and runs his hands over his head, turning away. Lavellan watches him take a deep breath and pace slowly around the room, trying to calm himself. His posture tightens, twists, the mounting of tension when faced with a terrible choice. Lavellan knows it well.
Elorn stops, facing away from him, his fingers laced together on the top of his head. “I have dreamed of beauty like yours,” he says to the wall of the hut. “That I would find a bride so perfect. And it comes in the form of an elven Lowlander? A man ?”
Well, shit . He’d already known, but Lavellan had been holding out for the sliver of a chance that it could be something else. He takes a careful breath and watches Elorn’s back warily.
In the back of his mind, he can hear his Keeper’s voice. One of those bits of advice she’d give to him in private, because it was a terrible thing to suggest, but it had to be suggested nonetheless. A shemlin’s hunger can be used against him.
Probably, if it wouldn’t earn him trouble, Lavellan would yell in frustration. Always with this shit. Always .
But what time did he have to lose?
“You mean,” he starts, and stops immediately when he hears the frustration in his voice. He only starts again when he thinks he’s conquered it, and hopes that it sounds like a natural realization and not a forced play. “You mean that’s why you’ve… been kind to me?"
He does his best to school his expression to one of confusion. If not for that dreadful training he did in preparation for the Winter Palace, he wouldn’t be able to pull it off.
Elorn turns to look at him, and says nothing. He’s breathing unevenly, but whether its a state of panic or arousal is unclear. He takes a hesitant step forward, stops himself, takes another. Looks toward the door nervously.
“The others,” Lavellan tries, shifting in a suggestive enough way to regain Elorn’s attention, “they wouldn’t understand, would they? The Avvar don’t… understand?”
He’s laying it on too thick, but this is not an area of expertise, only one of past necessity. He managed to seduce a Venatori agent a year ago in the Hissing Wastes with the same voice, fragile and confused and just a little husky. But then he’d been unharmed, unbound, standing, and with his magic at his fingertips. Mistaken for a pawn, rather than the king at the other side of the chess board. This situation was entirely different.
“My old clan, in private,” Elorn answered, his words stunted with hesitation. “But not… Not the way I…”
He stops himself from saying anymore, and after a moment of consideration, crosses back to Lavellan’s side and crouches down. Lavellan tenses and tries to keep the panic off of his face.
A hand cups his cheek. His skin crawls. “Do you understand,” Elorn asks, a sort of hushed desperation in his voice, seeking approval, seeking permission. Lavellan thinks of Dorian, thinks of the lovers he had before the Conclave, and for a moment, he feels a flash of pity for this man, genuine and deep. Nothing ever stopped Lavellan from pursuing a lover, not tradition nor expectation nor rules. Elorn has no such freedom, and if Lavellan was not bound and injured and subjected to this man’s sexual frustration, the sympathy may have lasted longer than a few seconds.
“I do,” he answers, and could absolutely kick himself for the way his voice sounds, breathy and frightened. It’s what he was going for, but he is struck by the absurd thought that he is trapped in one of Varric’s trashy romance novels, and it’s as revolting as it is hilarious.
Elorn leans in a few inches. His pupils are dilated from arousal and panic, and Lavellan flinches and hopes it improves his little performance. How far is he willing to take this? The knife fixed to Elorn’s belt is at his lower back, not his side. Impossible to reach. The tooth isn’t intended to be a weapon. Will Kiveal come back? Does he even want that?
Elorn stops himself only a few inches from Lavellan’s face, his eyelids heavy with anticipation, and Lavellan can’t help but squirm in retreat, if only for a moment. Panic surges and he desperately tries to quell it.
“But you intend to kill me,” he asks, and it breaks whatever spell Elorn was under because the man freezes and takes a deep breath and leans back. The tension in Lavellan’s gut does not unwind.
For a few moments, there is silence. Elorn simply kneels beside where Lavellan lays, looking like he’s fighting a war within himself.
“Is he ill?”
The woman--Anashe--startles both of them from the horrible quiet. She is leaning against the door frame of the hut, watching Elorn with dark eyes.
“Not yet,” he answers, an edge of warning to his voice. Anashe’s face twitches in contained anger, and she stands upright.
“Then drug him and be done with it. The longer he lies there the more of a threat he is.”
“His magic will not return to him for hours still,” Elorn begins, but Anashe interrupts him as if he had not spoken.
“It would be a shame if he had to be grounded again,” she says evenly, and a memory hits Lavellan suddenly, a woman shouting ground him! while his barrier weakened, his staff splintering with each hit he blocked, an axe swinging in a low arc toward his legs, a blinding pain, a body tackling him--
“And spoil the sacrifice further? Delay it longer? I’m sure Gurd would understand.”
Anashe’s expression tightens. She levels a venomous look at Elorn for a moment longer before turning it down to Lavellan, her nose rising with disdain. “It would be a shame for your loyalty to strain over a pretty face,” she says, lip curling. “Being an outsider, I should think you’d want to prove yourself.”
The muscles in Elorn’s shoulders knot, and he takes a step toward her. When he speaks, his voice is low and threatening. “You question my loyalty?”
“You are not of this clan,” she shoots back, quick as it is dangerous. The two of them stare each other down like two predators about to lunge. “Declaring your loyalty to Hakkon does not assure you a place in our ranks.”
“Gurd welcomed me--”
“Gurd misjudged,” the woman said, and spat on the floor between them. “Now drug the long ear and go keep watch.”
For a moment, it feels as if violence is about to break out, but Elorn squares his shoulders and turns back toward Lavellan. He has a waterskin attached to his belt that he unhooks as he kneels, lifting Lavellan’s head with his free hand. Across the room, Anashe watches with her hand lingering near the hilt of her sword.
Elorn brings the mouth of the waterskin to Lavellan’s lips, but the cork is still fixed tightly in place. The elf stares up at the man, and they hold eye contact as a moment passes. Elorn looks at him intensely, trying to tell him something with his eyes, and it's not hard to follow. Lavellan nods once, almost imperceptible, and the man removes the waterskin and sets his head down on the packed dirt floor gently.
Elorn stands and reties the waterskin to his belt. He and Anashe stand there for a tense moment, watching one another, and Lavellan closes his eyes and lets his head lull to the side.
This seems to conclude the standoff. He can hear Anashe turn and leave, and after a few beats of silence, he opens his eyes again. Elorn is staring down at him.
They say nothing. Elorn turns and leaves.
Lavellan lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.
-
“They had him tied up here,” Cassandra says, lifting some recently-cut ropes from the cave floor. Dorian is picking his way through Lavellan’s things, left strewn across an old stone table at the center of the room. A jar of bees sits separately from the other items, clearly having intrigued whoever was doing the rummaging. All of his healing tonics are missing.
“They left recently,” Bull concludes, his palm outstretched over the firepit. “The Avvar are good at covering their tracks, but not good enough.”
“Clearly, with this mess,” Dorian says, pocketing a few items that he knows have more value to Lavellan than the others. “We’ll be moving on, then?”
Bull stands upright and looks slowly around the room. “They made some effort to fix up his wounds,” he says, nodding toward the bloody bandages that Cassandra had first bee-lined toward. “So they want him alive, for now. Any guesses as to why?”
Dorian can think of several immediately, and all of them are alarming. He wonders if his morbid imagination is due to experience or the negative impression that Tevinter has toward elves. He takes a fortifying breath.
“Whatever it is, we must follow after them quickly,” Cassandra says. “Night is falling fast. They will know the area better than us. It will give them even more of an advantage.”
Across the room, a glint catches Dorian’s eye. The blade of a knife is laying near the cave wall, too polished to have been from the Avvar, Hakkonite or not. He crosses the room and stoops to pick it up, turning it slowly in his grip. “Ah. One of Dagna’s little inventions. Good thing they didn’t have the foresight to pocket this.”
His eyes drift up and around the area he is crouched in. Upon a natural stone ledge, a cup sits half-filled with water. He frowns and lifts it, reluctantly tipping it toward his nose.
It smells faintly of something sour and plant-like.
“Bull,” he says, standing and holding it out. “Is this what I think it is?”
The qunari crosses the space in a few easy strides and takes the offered cup from Dorian’s grip. He gives its contents a single inhale and nods. “Magebane.”
Dorian swears in Tevene and starts toward the mouth of the cave. “Right then, on we go. No time to waste."
“If he is injured and without a staff,” Cassandra speaks from somewhere behind him as they emerge into the late afternoon light, “why drug him further? He knows well and good how dangerous magic is without a focus.”
“They don’t know that,” Bull answers. “And also, do you really expect him not to try some shit anyway? He lights fires with his bare hands all the time. Calls it ‘baby magic’.”
“An insufferable habit,” Dorian mutters, and his heart aches with fondness because he cannot stay mad at Lavellan so long as he may be lying somewhere bleeding and unconscious.
Outside, there is little evidence of habitation. To Dorian’s untrained eyes, he cannot begin to guess which direction their targets left in, but Bull finds it easily enough. There is a narrow path winding upward into the trees high above the basin floor. Only a few yards up, Bull crouches and touches his fingers to a spot of dirt. When he lifts them, they’re dark with muddy red.
“Let’s hurry,” he says, his voice edged with something between anger and determination.
Dorian leads the way.
-
Its slow, hand-cramping work, but the tooth--claw?--is serrated in a way Lavellan didn’t expect, and it’s going faster than he anticipated. He’s been lying quietly in the same spot he was left in, staring up at the holes in the old thatched roof, watching the sky turn orange with sunset. No one has come back to check on him, which has been a relief. He can’t shake the feeling that he’s running out of time.
Did they intend to hold him for a while? Does his leg have to be fully healed in order for them to confidently slit his throat on an alter? Or does it just have to close up a bit, so the blood doesn’t smell as fresh?
There’s no way to know for sure. He could ask Elorn, maybe, but he’s having a difficult time thinking up things to say that sound even remotely convincing, and he doesn’t think he can get a straight answer without some manipulating. He’s never been very good at this sort of thing.
For a time he tries to think of what Dorian would do, but imagining the man in this scenario is both frightening and hilarious, so he stops.
The ropes encircle his wrists four times. He’s made his way through one and a half of them. He closes his eyes and tries to stretch out his muscles. They’re numb, sluggish, as if he had fallen asleep on them awkwardly and they’ve lost circulation. But he can feel them slowly answering his demands for movement; he can squirm now rather efficiently, and can move his arms with only slight difficulty. If not for the injury in his leg, he might stand a real chance of standing up.
The second loop of rope splits in two. His stomach flutters with a rush of success as he starts in on the third.
And then what? He’ll flop his arms at them?
He closes his eyes and tries not to talk himself out of what little progress he’s made. It’s difficult to stay optimistic: even if by some miracle he manages to escape these three, he is clearly very high up with the inability to climb. Should he conquer the cliff, he does not know where he is. Should he find his way along, he has no means to defend himself. And he smells like a fresh kill.
Elorn wasn’t wrong about Lavellan’s magic staying subdued for some hours still. But the mark on his hand is not the same as the magic that came to him as a child. Realistically they understood little about it--and Solas, wherever he is, was vague at the best of times--but the one thing they could confirm for certain was that it was a magical source in its own right, nearly independent of Lavellan’s control.
So, a weapon. He is, pun bloody well intended, armed. If he can just get these fucking ropes off.
The third loop snaps.
Outside, voices. They are rising in pitch, but not closeness. An argument. For a moment he thinks of Elorn and Anashe looking murderously at one another, but the man’s voice is deeper, the accent thicker. Kiveal.
“Idiot,” he hears Anashe saying, and then something spoken in a language he cannot understand, and Kiveal snarls something back. There is the sound of footfalls, pacing, weapons being sheathed. Something has happened.
“We move now,” Anashe decides after a moment. “Get the elf.”
“I say we fight ,” Kiveal demands, and something smashes, fist against wood, a punch thrown in anger against the side of the hut. “We have the above-ground advantage, we have the strength, we have a hostage.”
“We move,” Anashe snarls, grinding the words out like they’re made of stone.
“I will not be chased through our own territory by a bunch of Lowlanders!”
“Fine!” Anashe cries, “Then throw yourself on their swords. I will take the long ear back to Gurd and tell him of your cowardice.”
This seems to infuriate and amuse Kiveal at once. “ My cowardice?! You will not fight!”
The fourth loop snaps. Lavellan flexes his arms out and grits his teeth at the stiffness in his muscles. He pushes himself into a seated position with some difficulty. His head is fuzzy for a moment from the effort. When his vision clears, he looks around the hut, properly this time.
There is nothing helpful. Only that the structure is old, the wood rotting, and the roof in danger of collapsing.
Outside, the argument is becoming cyclicle. He can tell both of them see the other’s point, but are unwilling to admit it--a familiar thing to pick up on after so many war table meetings. He doesn’t know where Elorn is, but he can’t worry about it just yet.
For the first time, he can assess the damage of his own leg. The bandages are decent, but need to be changed again. It feels like the whole of his thigh has been ripped into; he cannot move his leg, and trying to causes mind-numbing pain. He struggles to even his breathing and closes his eyes for a moment. It will heal, he tells himself. I cannot lie around, the others will never let me forget it.
Maker.
He doesn’t have time to come up with a plan before he can hear Kiveal storming toward the hut. Improvisation, then. Somehow a strong suit of his, despite everything about his personality that would suggest otherwise.
He rolls onto his back and crosses his wrists over his stomach in some half-assed attempt at looking unconscious and bound, and wouldn’t you know it, Kiveal doesn’t seem to notice. He crosses the room muttering every elven slur he can think of. Some of them Lavellan hasn’t even heard, and thinks maybe Kiveal is more creative than previously assumed.
For a fraction of a second, Lavellan feels bad for what he is about to do. Kiveal is in no way kind or innocent of violence, but to turn the mark toward another life is a cruel thing to do, regardless.
Then Kiveal ends his little tirade with “knife-eared rabbit whore ,” and Lavellan’s pity withers in the space of a breath.
The brute stops beside him and reaches down to grab him by the front of his under armour and haul him up. Lavellan opens his eyes and sees his expression the instant before Kiveal realizes he is awake; it’s angry, hateful, and not all of that is directed toward him.
Just as Kiveal’s eyebrows raise in surprise, Lavellan lifts his left hand, feels the burning spark of green light erupt from his palm, and the Hakkonite is thrown backward by a wave of force.
His back collides with the singular support beam at the center of the hut. The wood splinters upon impact, and heaves into two pieces. The roof ripples with the sounds of cracking wood, and then caves in from the center.
Lavellan throws up his left hand, and a barrier of green light folds around him. Heaps of debris shower down, parted by the dome. Old wood, rotten hay, shingles and reeds. A few beams of wood hit the dome and break in two on impact before falling to either side of where Lavellan lays. When it settles, he has just a moment to calculate what he’s going to do.
He sits up, left arm still extended upward to support the barrier. One wall of the hut is still standing between him and the sunset, casting a long shadow over the mess, and it obscures the aftermath for just a second. Enough for him to see Anashe before she sees him.
He drops the barrier and throws his hand toward her.
Something like rift magic happens.
With a staff, it would have been a decisive blow. Shards of green fadestone pulled from thin air, shaped into a battering ram and launched at their target. With only his open palm--without a channel--it's more like a spray of stone shards. Enough to do damage, but not enough to defeat his target. Anashe, who had clearly armed herself in preparation for either retreat or a battle, draws her shield in time to block most of the shards.
“Fuck me,” Lavellan groans, and rolls to haul himself to his feet, stumbling at the pain in his leg. He presses his palm to a waist-high pile of lumber for balance.
Anashe brandishes her axe and charges. Lavellan throws up his hand, the mark sparking with magic--each moment relying on it is more painful than the last, especially without a staff--and readies another volley.
A hand grabs his wrist. An arm wraps around his upper body, pinning his right arm to his side. A chest presses to his back.
“Stop!” Elorn demands, pulling Lavellan’s left hand down and out of the way as magic arcs off of it into what’s left of the hut. Anashe pulls up short just shy of the ruined structure, but does not lower her axe.
“You question my loyalty,” Elorn says, his grip bruisingly tight on Lavellan’s wrist, his voice too-loud in his ear. “Don’t. You and I will take the sacrifice to Gurd. If Kiveal is so keen to die, let him. I am loyal to Hakkon.”
He sounds like he means it. Lavellan struggles, but his leg is bleeding fresh again and his muscles are shaking. Elorn’s arm is like a metal vice around his chest.
Anashe considers this for a moment, sizing them up before looking to where Kiveal lies prone, half-buried beneath debris. To further prove his point, Elorn twists Lavellan’s arm painfully. He cries out, and the green sparks coming from his palm abruptly stop.
Slowly, cautiously, Anashe lowers her axe. Her face is dark with anger, but there is some shred of respect there too now, reluctant though it may seem. With her shield still at the ready, she steps over the scattered debris between them and comes to a stop only two feet from Lavellan. He glares at her and she glares back.
“You should flee,” he tells her honestly, putting emphasis on the last word. “You’re not strong enough to face the Inquisition.”
It’s a gamble, and he’s not sure she’ll take the bait, but her nostrils flair and her eyes spark. He knows the backhand is coming, but it still startles him when it catches his cheekbone hard. His head snaps around; Elorn’s hold on him is unflinching.
“Wretched little thing,” Anashe growls. “You will not trick me so easily.”
Lavellan tugs uselessly at his left arm and curls his lip at her, but says nothing. If it were Kiveal, he’d have taken the bait.
So they’re all playing a game, he decides. Anashe can only put her trust in a man she does not want to trust; Elorn is torn between his need for acceptance and his fixation on Lavellan; and Lavellan is desperately trying to manipulate the two of them in whatever way he can. Not as tricky as the Winter Palace, he thinks, and at least everyone is being forthright with their plans.
To his right, Kiveal groans and starts to move, disrupting the debris around him. “I’ll kill him,” the man snarls, shoving a piece of sturdy timber from his chest. “I’ll wring his miserable little neck!”
“Stand down,” Anashe tells him, her eyes still assessing the two men before her.
There is more thrashing as Kiveal pushes the last of the lumber off of himself and stands. He starts forward, moving like a druffalo toward Lavellan.
“Stand down,” Anashe repeats, and from the sound of it, there’s every indication that she expects to be obeyed, but Kiveal does not stop. Before the other two Hakkonites can react--and Lavellan unable to dodge--a huge meaty hand shoots out and snares him by the throat.
He is effectively torn from Elorn’s hold by the grip around his neck. Lavellan chokes and reaches desperately up to grab at the fingers strangling him, but the iron grip does not loosen. Kiveal lifts, and Lavellan is pulled to the tips of his toes. The ground drops away. He kicks, flails, eyes wide as he looks up at the man in panic.
He thinks there is shouting, but he cannot hear it. The only sound in his ears is the hammering of his heart. He cannot breathe. The pressure around his neck is unimaginable, unyielding. Animal instinct drives his nails into the skin of Kiveal’s wrist, and the mark on his left hand sparks, burning and bubbling the flesh beneath, but Kiveal is staring him down like an enraged beast, unyielding.
Then Elorn runs him through.
The shock of it registers on Kiveal’s face, but Lavellen can’t make out much more through the black static and spots that are clouding his vision. The grip on his throat is released. He drops painfully to the ground, heaped and coughing and retching. Gasping. Tears stream down his cheeks from the effort.
Kiveal stumbles back. The hilt of a hunting knife protrudes from his abdomen. Elorn is standing his ground between them.
“He was going to kill the sacrifice,” he hears Elorn say. He sounds just a touch desperate, as if he isn’t sure the justification will work. Lavellan cannot hear Anashe say anything. He gulps down air and holds his throat tenderly with his right hand, his left one sparking against the ground.
Kiveal takes another step back, his hand hovering around the handle of the knife. Instinct is telling him to remove it, but he must know better, because even when he grips the handle, he does not extract it. He looks at Elorn dumbly, and then at Anashe, confusion clear on his face.
Anashe, for her part, finally speaks. “Loyalty,” she says, hefting her axe and angling it toward Elorn. “Except for when your pretty elf needs you.”
Elorn draws another blade, this one longer, wickedly arched in the style of the Avvar. He turns at an angle to face both Kiveal and Anashe. None of them move. Lavellan is heaped on the floor between them, forgotten.
He doesn’t have the strength to draw on the mark again, not in any way that would summarily end the conflict. His leg is bleeding readily now. His throat still feels too tight, and swallowing seems impossible. He is also aware that regardless of their intentions to keep him alive--if that is still what they intend to do--he is now more likely to be collateral damage than anything else.
He has to do something.
Right?
Kiveal moves first. He pulls a knife from the holster at his back and lunges at Elorn with a berserker’s strength. Elorn, smaller and more agile, rears back away from Lavellan and Anashe and dodges the blow, made clumsy with rage. They back up toward the trail, and Lavellan watches as Elorn reaches again behind his back, and there it is, a bloody staff . It’s a gnarled thing, shorter than the staffs he’s familiar with, and hooked at the end like a scythe. It’s brimming with blue light, same as the bioluminescent plants that grow in the basin at night. But it’s a staff.
Elorn is a fucking mage. Go figure.
Just as Elorn spins the staff, Anashe’s fist grips the back of Lavellan’s under armour, and she drags him painfully in the opposite direction through the debris.
He struggles, gagging as the front of his collar pushes at his sensitive throat, but he does not have the strength to properly right himself and dig his heels in. Anashe drags him with alarming speed across the clearing toward where a collection of supplies leans against one of the other structures. She drops him and scoops up a bow and arrow in one fluid motion.
The sounds of combat are ricocheting down into the basin. Lavellan rolls painfully into a position where his leg screams at him a little less; there are uneven smears of blood dotting the mossy stone ground where he was just dragged.
Back by the mouth of the mountain path, Kiveal is throwing all of his brute strength into his attacks as if there is no knife in his side. Elorn answers with abrupt dodges and arcs of magic that do little to slow his opponent. They are dangerously close to the ledge.
Lavellan’s ear twitches. To his right, the sound of an unoiled bowstring drawing tight steals his fluttering attention, and he turns his head to see Anashe aiming an arrow at Elorn. Just as she readies to loose it, he reaches out blindly and knocks the bottom of the longbow with his hand, throwing off her aim mid-release. The arrow goes sailing over the combatant’s heads and into the basin below.
He’s not sure why he does it. Maybe because Elorn is now just as much their enemy as Lavellan is.
“Knife ear,” she curses, and turns to drive a kick into Lavellan’s chest, but for all his handicaps--and, frankly, against all odds--he catches it. He takes some of the blow, but the unexpected move surprises her, and gives him a moment to roll and tug her off balance.
She does not fall, but now her attention is fully on him. She is standing over him, straddling him, and she snarls down at her captive. “Wretched little heathen,” she shouts, hoisting the bow over her head as if to smash it down onto him.
He rolls his torso to avoid the first blow. The bow strikes the ground where his head was, and the woman lifts it to strike again. The action--the dodge--pulled tight on Lavellan’s leg, and he cries out in pain, flopping onto his back.
He’s out of improvisation. He lacks the strength to dodge the next blow, and the pain is addling his mind, slowing his reaction time. He sees the woman above him haloed by the last light of the day, her eyes ablaze with anger, the bow held high above her head. He thinks, distantly, that it may be the last thing he ever sees.
And then a bolt of ice blows the bow from her grip, and a second catches her in the back and sends her flying into the side of the structure behind them.
In a haze, Lavellan lifts his head. Elorn is standing across the clearing staring right at him, the blue light of his magic fading from the casting that just saved Lavellan’s life. Then Kiveal grabs the staff with his bear hands and tears it from Elorn’s grip. He flings it over the edge of the cliff, and turns to grab the mage.
Lavellan watches as Kiveal grabs him by the front of his armour and hauls him up. He spins him like he’s winding up to throw a spear, one cycle, two, and then launches Elorn blindly into the ruin of the hut that Lavellan had destroyed only minutes before.
And for a moment, there is only Kiveal, standing there with a knife in his stomach, and Lavellan, propped up on one elbow, which is about the extent of what he can manage. And Lavellan thinks, All things considered, I had a pretty good run .
And then Bull grabs Kiveal by the back of his armour and throws him off the cliff.
Maybe it’s the surprise of it, or the inevitability, but Lavellan laughs. It’s near hysterical and it hurts his abused ribs to do it, but he can’t help himself. He watches as the qunari assesses the situation in the space of a heartbeat before his gaze finally finds Lavellan, and he starts forward toward him. Behind Bull is Cassandra, sword drawn, and then Dorian, already casting a protective spell over the two warriors.
So he laughs, and when he hears Anashe swear and stagger to his feet behind him, he doesn’t bother to look around. He just tips onto his back, exhausted. A bolt of magic, Dorian’s this time, sails over him and finds its target with painful accuracy. Cassandra rushes past him, sword at the ready, and engages, but still Lavellan does not look. For a moment, he simply lays there with his eyes closed.
Then he hears “Amatus,” warm and relieved at his side, and he opens his eyes to find Dorian kneeling beside him. A strong arm slides behind his neck and shoulders and lifts him into a half-seated position, a folded leg tucked beneath him for support. He rolls his forehead against Dorian’s bicep and exhales.
“I was doing fine,” he says.
“Yes, evidently. But it’s nearly suppertime, and you didn’t come at the sound of the bell. Very unlike you.” Dorian is using his free hand to check him over for injuries--which he finds in spades, no doubt, and without question when this is over Lavellan will be accused of being the cause of gray hairs, but for the moment, his lover only holds him closer as if doing so will reduce the damage done to him.
Bull is standing over them both. “Glad you’re in one relative piece, boss,” he says. He’s still scanning the area.
“There are only the three,” Lavellan offers, his voice a raspy mess through his bruised throat.
“Two,” Bull corrects, and then looks over to where Cassandra is fighting Anashe out of sight, and he huffs. “Huh. One, now, I guess. Where’s the third?”
Lavellan looks toward the ruined structure, but before he can speak, Cassandra rejoins them.
“Inquisitor,” she says. She is out of breath, and must pause to collect herself. Anger still lingers in her tone from the fight she just won, but it quickly fades to relief as she speaks. “Are you alright? We were told you were meant to be a sacrifice for the Hakkonite’s god.”
“Oh, I see,” Lavellan says. “So when you hold me against my will in the name of your god, it’s fine, but when they do it--”
“You are not harmed beyond repair, then,” Cassandra confirms, but there is fondness in her voice as she steps to an angle that he can see easier. She is out of breath, and there is blood on her armour, both dried and fresh. She offers him a winded smile, but when her eyes find his leg, it drops to a frown. “We must get you back immediately. You have lost too much blood.”
“Mm. Need that,” he agrees. Now that he is safe--or at least, as safe as he can be given the day he’s been having--the tension is beginning to leave him, and in its place, a trembling is setting in. It starts in his shoulders and spreads to his limbs gradually. Dorian can feel it immediately, but it is rapidly becoming visible to his other two companions.
Dorian helps him sit up better, so as to hold him closer. Lavellan allows himself a moment to lean into it, closing his eyes to the sensation of Dorian’s chin resting atop his messy hair.
Across the clearing, a voice.
“You…”
Elorn stands among the wreckage of the structure. His arm is visibly dislocated, and he’s holding it to his side. He is staring at Lavellan, wrapped securely in Dorian’s arms. Bull hefts his axe, and Cassandra steps forward with her sword at the ready, but Elorn does not move.
Lavellan isn’t sure what the man sees. The Hakkonites must have been staking out the Inquisitions camp for days, waiting for a chance to catch Lavellan alone, but was Elorn with them that whole time? Had he seen Lavellan laughing with Inquisition soldiers, or discussing strategy with Bull and Harding? Had he seen him press a kiss to Dorian’s lips when it was discreet enough to do so? And what did he see now, Lavellan curled into the embrace of his lover, as untouchable as the moon?
Breathing through the pain of his arm, Elorn mouths soundlessly for a minute before finally setting his jaw. He looks betrayed, but unsurprised. “You understand,” he says, and there’s a finality to it, the bone-deep sadness of a man who gave up something important for nothing at all.
Bull steps toward him, and Lavellan interrupts. “Don’t,” he says. There isn’t much force to the word, but Bull stops and glances over his shoulder at him. Lowers his axe. Lavellan stares right at Elorn and says, “He saved my life. Let him go.”
“You sure, boss?” Bull’s voice is steady, cautious. Giving Lavellan a chance to change his mind. He nods once in reply, and Bull lowers his weapon.
“Is that wise,” Cassandra cautions, her weapon still aloft, but she doesn’t move either, only glares across the clearing at the surprised look on Elorn’s face.
Lavellan simply says “Yes.” There is a pause, interrupted by the sound of birds calling for the evening hunt, before Elorn nods once and turns away. He heads toward a path Lavellan has not noticed yet--perhaps the path they were going to use in order to retreat, had Lavellan not foiled that plan. Before he is totally out of sight, Elorn looks over his shoulder one last time, his intense expression unreadable.
Impulse swells in his chest and Lavellan speaks before he has time to properly think about it. “Can you arm him,” he asks, and three sets of eyes swivel to look at him as if he’d gone mad. He watches Elorn carefully, and as the thought settles in his mind, he knows he means it. “He can’t go back to his people because he helped me. He lost his staff and knife. Surely we can give him a chance.”
“Absolutely not,” Cassandra says immediately.
“He’s a hostile agent,” Bull agrees.
“He bloody well kidnapped you!” Dorian concludes, and Lavellan has the nerve to actually smile at that one, but he stands firm.
“And your Inquisitor is breathing because of him, twice over at least,” he says.
His three companions exchange a look. They shoot assessing glares in Elorn’s direction. With his flagging energy momentarily renewed by purpose, Lavellan widens his eyes, tilts his eyebrows, pushes his lower lip out just a tad. Lets it wobble. Tries to look as earnest, as sincere, as hopeless as he can.
It has its usual effect: Dorian noisily scoffs at the absurdity of the expression, but reaches behind his back and withdraws a familiar knife.
Dagna’s.
“No,” Cassandra declares, “not that. It is enchanted with runes, are you mad? We should not be arming him at all!”
“One man with one arm versus the frostbacks? A rune is only fair if all we can give him is a 6-inch blade.” Lavellan takes the knife from Dorian’s hand and holds it up toward Bull. Even lifting his arm is taking energy he hardly has. “Or would you rather let him arm himself with one of those axes?”
“You’re impossible,” Cassandra declares. Bull considers the knife for a moment before taking it.
“If he comes back at us, a knife is preferable to an axe,” Bull reasons, though he gives Lavellan an assessing look as he says it. Whatever puzzle of information Bull has in his mind, he looks as though he’s just placed an important piece. “You sure about this, boss?”
Lavellan glances across the clearing toward Elorn. He stands in the gloaming light, uncertain but unwavering.
Bull turns toward him. He crosses the space with an almost casual quality, confidently and assuredly the stronger party, and Elorn makes no move to advance or retreat. When offered the knife, the Avvar stares at it for almost a beat too long before accepting it carefully from Bull’s hand. He looks again toward Lavellan.
For a moment, they stare at one another. The quality of Elorn’s expression is impossible to read. The sun finally vanishes behind the far hills.
Then Elorn turns, and leaves.
Lavellan stares after him. He is unnerved by the look, unnerved by the strange events of the day. Cassandra kneels beside him and does what she can to rewrap his leg in the fading light--and this time Dorian offers a healing tonic and a hand to hold when the pain makes Lavellan grit his teeth and catch his breath. Bull examines his throat, frowning at what he finds, but announces that it should heal well. Says something about it not being collapsed. Dorian threatens him with violence if he says something so alarming again, and Bull chuckles.
Bull ends up carrying him, when they finally stand to go. Lavellan groans dramatically and goes deliberately limp in Dorian’s arms beforehand. The thought of being carried is humiliating, and what little tolerance he had for it was used up while he was hanging over Kiveal’s shoulder. “Yeah, yeah,” Bull says, scooping him up easily enough while taking care to mind his leg. It hurts anyway; there’s nothing to be done about it. Lavellan remains tense in his arms, more from pain than stubbornness.
After only a few minutes, he is boneless from exhaustion.
“Let’s not do this again,” he says, his voice raspy and weak. “Though I appreciate you coming to get me.”
“Oh,” Dorian says, “I can’t imagine you’ll be kidnapped out of Skyhold.”
“Sky- no, I’m fine, I don’t have to--”
“Straight back to Skyhold,” Cassandra agrees, her tone a challenge, baiting Lavellan to even dare argue against her. He groans, despite how much it hurts his throat.
“Bull, you see how that’s a waste of time--”
“You can’t walk, so yeah, I agree with them,” Bull interrupts. All three of them sound decidedly fed up with Lavellan in that moment. Not an unfamiliar circumstance.
Lavellan groans again, dramatically. “I’m the Inquisitor,” he tries, though his heart clearly isn’t in it.
“You can play that card when you’re up and walking again,” Cassandra replies.
Its like that for the rest of the journey down into the basin and toward the Inquisition’s main stronghold. Lavellan whining half-heartedly until he can make someone laugh, the others replying with frustration ranging from playful to sincere. It keeps him awake, and keeps him focused. Most importantly, it keeps his mind from the events of the day, too fresh to reflect on without anxiety overwhelming him. When they finally arrive back within the walls of the camp, he barely has the strength to speak, and their frustration with him has entirely evaporated.
He is set down in one of the buildings, on an actual bed no less, and Bull stands and stretches out his arms. Dorian crouches beside the bed in the fleeting moments before the healer finishes setting up and comes over.
“Did I do the right thing,” Lavellan whispers, his head lulling to the side to look up at his lover.
Dorian seems to understand--the knife, Elorn’s last look before he vanished--and he reaches up to smooth Lavellan’s hair back. “You did the kind thing,” he answers, “which you always seem to surprise us with.”
“He was… fixated,” Lavellan manages between breaths. “Couldn’t tell if he... was dangerous, or… lost.”
Dorian studies him closely, his eyes as sad as they are concerned. He strokes Lavellan’s hair for a moment before leaning in and pressing a kiss to his forehead.
Lavellan is unconscious before he can even greet the healer.