Chapter Text
The fall of rain is relentless. Surely it must stop some time and allow the sun to come out and shine down upon the drenched landscape. Surely, because how else could everything grow so well? Here where the ground is little more than rock, rock, and more rock greenery still flourishes – a veritable bounty of spindleweed, blood lotus, and elfroot rising among the lush expanse of grasses and towering trees. Plants need sunlight to grow so of course the sun must shine, if only occasionally. It must.
Catheryn, though, has never seen it. Not even once in the many weeks – months – of her life that she has spent hiking the expanse of this coast. It is never anything but a never ending outpouring from the heavens, perpetually stuck between a drizzle and a downpour. Between the skies and the restless, heaving seas against stark cliff faces it is a beautiful place, if a bit dismal. A place full of unyielding strength softened with shadows and life. So much like the man she has journeyed here with.
Blackwall is standing a little ways away, closer to the cliff edge, head and shoulders bent beneath the rain. In his hand is the Warden-Constable’s badge, recently unearthed from several years’ growth of moss and grass. It had been larger than she expected, covering nearly the entire span of her hand. She’d cradled it between her palms for just a moment, wiping its oddly rust free surface clear of dirt with her thumbs before handing it to him. He stares at it now, completely lost in whatever memories its surface holds. Judging by the string of emotions chasing across his handsome features, each one as gray as the sky above them, they are not happy ones.
“This was my life before I met you,” he remarks quietly as she comes to stand beside him. “Crumbling ruins, endless battles…” Blackwall’s voice, normally deep and vibrating – something between a growl and a purr – breaks.
Concerned, she lays a hand on his arm and he shivers beneath her touch, though from the chill in the air or something else she doesn’t know. That he wants her, desires her, cares for her – of that she has no doubt. But he is always hot and then cold with her, kissing her like he means to take her where they stand and then, in the next breath, pushing her away. It’s exhausting and she should just give up. He wants her to, sometimes at least. But she can’t. Not when every touch of his hand makes her heart skip a beat, when the mere rumble of his voice steals her breath and every glance at his face – or form – makes her knees turn to liquid. She can’t leave him. She can’t ignore her feelings for him.
“…Death,” he finishes quietly, staring back at what had once been a watchtower and was now nothing more than a handful of crumbling, moss covered stones half stacked against each other.
“You don’t have to face those things alone,” Catheryn reminds him gently, squeezing his forearm.
His gaze turns to her, the soft blue-green of his eyes latching on to her face as he laughs softly. “Nothing frightens you, does it?” He is amused, his eyes full of wonder as he cups her cheek his hand. Catheryn sighs and turns into the warmth of his caress as he draws his thumb across her lower lip, an action that sends lightning sparking across her skin. She wants him to kiss her. She needs him to kiss her.
So of course he doesn’t.
“That’s not true,” she tells him in all seriousness. “I’m hunting an insane would-be god who is bent on destroying the world. I’d be crazy if I wasn’t afraid.” She covers his hand with her own and lets her eyes flutter shut. Because this is the truth: she is terrified. Terrified that she will fail. Terrified that what she saw in future Redcliff will come to pass. Terrified of everything that could go wrong. Somehow she, Catheryn Trevelyan – formally of Ostwick Circle, has become responsible for the entire world. Maker have mercy on them all. “But I have the Inquisition,” she continues after a pause. “I have my friends.” Her eyes flutter open, instinctively seeking his. Catheryn needs him to know, to understand. “I have you,” she murmurs fiercely, tightening her grip.
Something darkens his face for a moment, something indescribable. “Yes,” he finally whispers, his voice catching, hitching with scarce hidden emotion. “You do.”
And then, thank the Maker, he kisses her.
They are halfway down a narrow ravine when Catheryn stops him with a touch of her hand.
The unexpected caress to the back of his head startles him and Blackwall turns to face her, bracing his feet against the sides of the steep channel to avoid tumbling down the cliff with the sudden movement. “What is it?” he asks quietly, catching sight of her face. She is focused, staring off into the distance like hunting hound with a scent. Reflexively, he curls his hand around the pommel of his sword. He knows that look. He’s seen it more times than he can count. The blinding intensity that overtakes her, the devastating focus as she slips her power from its leash.
Trouble. It means trouble.
And she is so fucking gorgeous.
“Can’t you feel it?” she mouths against his ear, her dark brown eyes unblinking. He can’t. All he can feel is the hum of her magic against his skin and the heat of her presence, his own body angling towards her like a plant to the sun. “Darkspawn,” she breathes, the rush of warm air making parts of him twitch in interest even as he feels his back go ramrod straight, muscles coiling in response to the threat. “Close. I can practically taste them.”
“Of course there’d be darkspawn,” he growls, loosening his sword in its scabbard. Every single fucking time. They’d even spent a week crawling into every dark cave and blighted crevice they could find, killing off darkspawn and sealing up the holes they were climbing out of.
“The Deep Roads run so close to the surface here,” Catheryn murmurs. “I should have Josephine send to Ozammar and see if things are alright. If this many are making it to the surface they may be in trouble.”
Blackwall shakes his head. Here they are, just the two of them, practically standing on top of darkspawn and she worries about potential allies. Maker, this woman. She’s magnificent. Crazy, but magnificent. “Let’s see if we can get a better look,” he whispers and she nods in agreement.
They creep down the hill in practiced silence, easing from the ravine and taking cover behind something that had once been a large pillar and was now little more than a cylinder of battered, jagged rock blocking their path. “I’ll look,” Catheryn tells him before he can speak. “I’m smaller. And quicker.” She smirks at him a little and he resists the urge to pull her into another kiss, to chase the quick peek of her tongue between her lips with his own.
Darkspawn, he reminds himself sternly as he takes a deep breath. You can think with your other head later.
Catheryn wiggles her way into a small crevice, hoisting herself up so that she can peer over the top of the fallen pillar. Blackwall swallows. He’s not a good man. He’s not even a nice one. He knows that, despite how much he tries to the contrary. But this? Ogling the Herald of Andraste’s ass while she’s doing her job? This might be one of the worst things he’s ever done. Morally speaking. It doesn’t quite hit the top ten but it’s getting there.
“Alright,” she whispers, shimmying back down the rock until she lands softly beside him. He reaches out, catching her around the waist to help steady her even though he knows she doesn’t need his assistance. He can’t help himself. Even if she is covered by the thick leather of her coat, hiding the tantalizing sweep of her waist and hips beneath the armor that helps keep her safe. “There are five of them that I can see. Hurlocks. No emissaries but there is an alpha.” His lip curls up in a soundless snarl and he doesn’t need to look to know that his hatred is mirrored in her features. She would have made a fabulous Warden.
But then she might have been on the opposite side of things at Adamant. His stomach clenches at the thought, the horror nearly stopping his heart.
“Can we go around them?” Five darkspawn between the two of them was doable but likely dicey. Especially with an alpha in the mix. And Maker forbid any more crawl out of whatever hole they’d come out of.
She shakes her head, regretfully. “Not really, no. I mean, we can,” she corrects herself, “but to go around them and get back to camp would take at least a day.”
“And by then there would be a whole lot more than five.” He swears under his breath. “Take another look. If we’re going to do this I need to know their general locations.”
Catheryn raises an eyebrow. “Of course,” she replies archly. “I wouldn’t send you into battle blind, Blackwall. I’m far too invested in your wellbeing for that.” Her eyes flicker down to his lips, lingering there meaningfully.
He swallows. Hard.
It seems that he’s not the only one having immoral thoughts at an inappropriate moment.
Maker help him.
“Try and find where they’re coming from,” he adds, his lips brushing against her cheek as she turns into his words.
“Of course,” she repeats, smirking. Purposefully, he doesn’t look as she wiggles back up to get a second look, staring pointedly at the ground until she drops back down beside him. “Okay, so this is us.” She finds a stick and starts drawing in the damp, shallow pack of earth covering the ground. “This is the curve of the larger ravine and the hurlocks are here, here, here, and here.” She marks the ground in four spots with a slash. “It looks like they may have come up from the Deep Roads here,” another point, just beyond the loose line being held by the lower ranking darkspawn. “It looks like a crevice was cleared in a recent mudslide.”
He grunts. Recent indeed. They’d just been through this same ravine a handful of hours earlier and there had been nothing. “And the alpha?” he asks.
“Sonofabitch is right here,” a large, angry mark next to noted crevice. “He’s got a maul that’s probably bigger than I am,” she notes, meeting his gaze. He nods, already wincing.
Maker, this is probably going to hurt.
“I’ll hit them first,” she continues, “fire and lightning and then I’ll try to stick to things that won’t kill you in your armor. I don’t know that I’ll be able to keep a barrier around you the entire time.” She glares at the marks in the mud, clearly displeased at this admittance of weakness.
“But you’ll be able to keep one around yourself?” he asks, worried. If she can’t then they aren’t doing this. He doesn’t care if the whole fucking deep roads explodes an entire army of darkspawn onto the coast. He won’t risk her like that. No way, no-fucking-how.
“Yes,” she dismisses her concern with a wave of her hand and he snorts. Afraid, she’d called herself not more than an hour earlier, but here she was preparing to take on darkspawn like it is nothing.
“If you see a chance, close the crevice. We can’t have any more of the bastards climbing out on top of us.” He flexes his shoulders as he slides his shield from his back and settles it on his arm. She has her staff out already, the polished wood and stone a dark sheen beneath the clutch of her fingers.
“Agreed.”
“And my lady,” he stops her with a gentle touch, staring down into eyes so dark brown they appear nearly black, their beautiful rich color nearly lost against the inkiness of her pupils with only the thin band of gold separating the two colors calling attention to their differences. They’d rendered him speechless the first time he’d seen them up close, staring at him with the intensity she’d just shown the darkspawn. She could have been an archdemon and it wouldn’t have mattered. He would have followed her anywhere. He still would. “Be careful. Don’t let them get behind you.”
“Likewise,” she whispers, brushing her fingertips against the bare skin of his cheek. He feels it like a brand, burning through his skin to mark itself on his soul.
He watches her take the first step as he draws his sword, a silent prayer forming in his head. Maker guide her and keep her safe. Let no harm come to her. He didn’t bother saying such a prayer on his own behalf. He knows better than to pray for mercy that he does not deserve.
Blackwall is only a moment behind her, less than a dozen beats of his heart, but several yards ahead of where they had hidden an inferno rages unhindered by the rain, chains of lightning dancing from body to body. The smell of burning darkspawn flesh fills the air, the rancid bite of it making his stomach curl. His lips curl too, smiling as he moves past Catheryn. “Good girl,” he murmurs under his breath at the telltale blue pooling at her feet. She finishes the sweeping twirl of her staff across her shoulders and plants it in the ground, a dozen or more bolts of lightning bursting from the tip. They race ahead of him, exploding in a riot of purples and silvers as they hit the chest of the nearest darkspawn. Blackwall roars and as one the Darkspawn swivel their head in his direction.
Fucking bastards, he thinks to himself, and then he is on them.
The first sweep of his shield catches the foremost darkspawn square in the chest and it goes down in a sickening crunch of bone and metal. He doesn’t stop, can’t stop, to see if it’s dead. It’ll get up or it won’t. Instead, he follows through with the movement, swinging his body the other way, his sword angling across an unprotected flank.
The heat of blood spraying the air, he can feel it, splashing across the exposed skin on his hands. The quick careful intake of breath – through his nose, not his mouth – and the sweep of his shield. He barely gets it around in time to block the attack he can feel whistling through the air behind him. The fire is hot, but dying, beneath his feet and he can smell the ozone in the air but no more lightning strikes.
Blackwall drops.
He feels himself sink down, retreating to the measured, echoing beats of his heart and hiding amidst the sound of his blood, like wind, rushing through his ears.
This is who he is. This is what he does. Violence and bloodshed; the slam of the shield and the stroke of the sword. He doesn’t need to pay attention to his feet. He can feel the earth beneath him just like he can feel his sword and shield, extensions to his arms. His progress through the monsters the underground has spawned is a dance choreographed to a tune that only he can hear.
Blackwall is good at killing.
It has been a while since he has had to kill so many alone, though, and he can feel it. It changes the way he moves, the way he dances, weaving in and out between their half-charred forms. He charges when he’d normally rest. He must be faster, stronger, more reckless than normal. He must end it sooner, must put them down before he tires and becomes easy prey. He slashes wider, thrusts deeper. His mind sees the swing of sword and axe and calculates which must be met. The axe is blocked by the shield, the slice of his own sword removing an arm. The fountain of blood rivals the rain as it falls around him. Blackwall moves, angling, ducking and takes the edge of the sword to the back of his shoulders. The blade is blocked by the armor there, but he can feel the strike reverberating down through his flesh. He’ll have a bruise there, no doubt about it, the kind that aches even after it’s been healed.
When the bastards are down, and staying down – it’s rather hard to move around without a head after all – Blackwall lets himself pause and suck in a breath. Still through his nose because damned if he’ll get the blight. He’s seen it enough times to know that it is absolutely not the way he wants to go.
The unmistakable clap of lightning striking calls his attention, eyes spinning until they find her. Catheryn has closed in on the alpha while he has dealt with the others, her staff an unending blur as she spins it around her: fire, frost, and lighting. The alpha is close enough that each swing of his maul – and Maker, it really is as big as the Inquisitor – forces her to jump and duck and move or else risk becoming nothing more than a flattened heap on the rocks. But it doesn’t interrupt her casting. Never once does the graceful swing of her staff falter.
The pool of blue light at her feet, however, does.
“No,” he whispers to himself, unaware that he is already moving, his feet eating across the ruin strewn distance between them. Her barrier flickers: once, twice, and then he feels it. The silent boom that fills the air as it shatters, the concussion pushing out and away from the mage. The alpha staggers but doesn’t go down, doesn’t hesitate. “NO!” Blackwall roars.
Then he is there, between them, arm extended and locked because it can get there faster than the rest of him can. His shield bears the entirety of the attack and he can’t stop the huff of pain as he feels his arm shatter beneath the impact. The strength of the blow drives him to his knees and he forces himself to let go, let the shield slip from his useless arm as he grinds his teeth against the pain and surges to his feet.
“Blackwall!”
He’s looking straight into her beautiful eyes when the next blow catches him, a thunderous swipe to his side. He turns into it, welcoming it, welcoming the way he can feel it crush his armor and force the broken metal through his skin. Better him than her. Always. If this is how he dies then at least he’ll have done something worthwhile in all of his miserable life.
Down he goes again, his knees hitting the ground. This time, he knows, he’s not getting up.
Dimly, as if from far away, he can hear Catheryn screaming. The air around him explodes: a mighty concussion of flame that pelts the monster behind him. One, two, three balls of fire slam into the alpha’s chest and it trips, unable to right itself because its feet are encased in ice up to the knee.
Good girl, Blackwall thinks dimly. Blinking back the black that crowds at his vision he searches, tilting his head upward and ignoring how exposed such a position leaves his throat. There. Wincing, he shifts his grip on his sword’s hilt and stabs upward. Take that, you blighted fucker, he snarls as the tip finds the weakness, the gap in the torso of the alpha’s armor and slides up into the darkspawn’s gut. He feels its insides give, feels the jerk of its body around the sharpened steel as its slide finds something critical.
Blackwall releases his sword and watches, his good hand planted on the earth to keep from toppling face first into mud and darkspawn blood, as the alpha goes down. Its body hits the ground with a crash, something he can feel and hear in his teeth as the force of it rattles up his flesh.
“Blackwall! You fucking bastard, why would you do that?” Catheryn’s voice, anguished and angry, reaches through the fog that tugs at him. He doesn’t answer. Can’t answer. Not that he would. It is a stupid question. Cold, he is cold, the blackness crowding more insistently at his vision. “Oh, no you fucking don’t,” she growls. He feels her hands on his face, squeezing at his cheeks until his mouth pops open. Even the smooth glass cylinder feels warm against his lips as she shoves it into his mouth, pouring the contents across his tongue. He swallows reflexively and feels the familiar herbaceous, almost bitter taste of elfroot slide down his throat. “Don’t you dare leave me here. I will murder you if you attempt something so ridiculous,” she vows and distantly he believes her. “I can’t do this without you!”
Silly girl, he thinks. She’ll save the world alright, with or without him. She’s too beautifully stubborn to let it die.
Slowly the world comes back into focus. Her eyes, wide and wild in her pretty heart shaped face are the first thing he sees and it takes what little breath he has away. There are tears there, great jeweled droplets beading out of her eyes and streaming down bloodstained cheeks. “There you are,” she breathes, her relief palpable.
He grunts. “The… crevice?” he asks through gritted teeth.
Catheryn scowls. “Maker’s balls,” she growls in disgust. She doesn’t bother to get to her feet or even to grab her staff. Instead she just flings her hand in the direction of the hole in the ground, grunting as a ball of pure energy fills the space in front of her fingers and then shoots outward. Beyond him he can hear the sound of rock shifting and moving, tumbling and settling into the crack in the earth’s surface, blocking the path for future waves of darkspawn. “Happy?” she snarls, dropping her hands.
Yes, he realizes, surprised. He is.
Maker.
“I can fix this,” she is telling him, pressing a piece of cloth to the blood pulsing from his gut. He recognizes it as a piece of fine linen, soft and breathable, like she would wear beneath her armor. “I can…”
“Your face,” he breathes, interrupting her.
“What about my face?”
He tries to raise a hand to touch and feels his heart stutter to a stop as the shards of bone rub against each other. “Blood,” he tells her instead, biting back the pained cry that rises in his throat. Her face is covered in darkspawn blood.
“Oh, for…” she swears under her breath as she reaches both hands beneath her mail shirt and this time he can hear, faintly, the sound of fabric ripping. She wipes her face carefully, folds the cloth to encase the blood and then tenderly wipes his. “As I was saying,” she glares at him, daring him to interrupt. “I can fix all this. We just need to get you out of your armor.” He nods, giving his consent, knowing that this is what she is after. She hesitates for a moment and then, in a swift, practiced gesture, pulls another potion bottle from her belt and uncorks it with her teeth before pressing it to his lips. “Here.”
He drinks.
“I admit,” she murmurs a few minutes later as her nimble fingers fly over the buckles of his armor, “this is not how I imagined undressing you for the first time.”
Despite the stabbing pain in arm and side he can’t help but let out a shallow bark of laughter. She’ll save him alright. Catheryn Trevelyan is too stubborn to let him die.