#fendruil

The Inquisitor felt her tongue growing thick and dry as she bent over in silent agony and drew panicked breaths. The feeling of sinking into the depths of morals, the guilt from every evil thought and act, the fierce, defiant love; bitter betrayal. It crushed her.

Remorse filled her lungs to the point where air didn't fit in. It twisted her stomach; she gagged, but nothing came out – only acid burned in her throat. After a few ragged gasps cried into the ground, her fingertips burying into the blighted gravel, she finally sobbed, her words an uncoherent litany:

“You were right. About them... about Ghilan'nain -- and everything -- I did it; as much as he. It's my fault. All of them… even Mythal. I didn't know. I didn't know Solas would do it. Not like that.”

Morrigan’s eyes mirrored her agony. For a moment, she hesitated before pulling the elf into a hug, pressing a hasty kiss over her temple. She melted into it, yearning for the anchoring comfort of her friend. But there was no safety, no escape for the living sin. It tormented her.

“Why? Why was I so terribly blind? Why didn't he tell me?”

“He thought he did the right thing. And so did you... so did Mythal.”

Indeed, Morrigan’s smoky scent felt more familiar than before, it lived in her memories, next to the consuming regret. Feathers. Scales. Ice.

“For all the good it did. I brought this upon the world. We did. I let him. And then he dragged me along while we pretended to be its saviours. The Inquisition… Varric… the mark-- It was all because of what we did. Over and over again. So many unnecessary deaths."

“The world may be broken, many of us are gone, but we are still here. ‘Tis all we have. You cannot rewrite those things, no matter how much you may want to..”

“What do I do now?” they asked, voice shattering. “How can I deserve to decide the fate of the world again? I have wrought doom upon us since the beginning. I let him burn down our empire."

"He loves you. This might just be the moment it changes everything."

“Does he? Our love for him was never enough, why would it be now? And if I could change his heart, what right do I have that is above his?”

Morrigan sighed, pulling away from the hug and cupping Lavellan’s teary cheeks. She smiled upon her friend, her beautiful, broken friend, who had to pull off the impossible yet again. Mythal’s lost daughter who never was.

“We have to try. We owe it to the people that are here now. The lives we can save. Remember, what you feel now, ‘tis who you were when you lost everything. That's Andruil. Beautiful, fierce huntress who shouldered a weight she never should have had to bear.”

Morrigan helped the elf up to their feet gently, with gentleness that mocked the horrific apocalypse all around them. Then, a set of faint footsteps echoed from the shadows, and a soft voice added:

“Now take those ten years of ours and add them to it. Inquisitor Lavellan, who did the very same. Because that's who you are, too. Your soul is still the same. And your heart is still the same, whatever name you bear.”

The mage stood in front of his friend, now in turn pressing soothing palms upon her cheekbones. Suddenly the Inquisitor looked even smaller, more weary. Her eyes met Dorian’s, and the mage flinched at their intensity. In a matter of moments, the familiar weight of immeasurable regret tinted her expression. The same desperation that fuelled Solas’ neverending crusade now darkened Andruil’s gaze, undirected, consuming.

It was a perilous force, but he was not afraid. Later he’d come to realise that he got to grasp a glimpse of that passion to forgive and heal someone that others deemed too far gone; a fragment of the devotion Lavellan harboured for the Dread Wolf.

“Dorian-” she whispered, tears flooding her eyes as soon as he pulled her into a hug. “What are you doing here?”

“Finding out what you are up to. I knew you were even more than you led on but, another elven god? I would never have believed that not every single one was an insufferable know-it-all or a tyrant.”

“I am worse”, she sniffled, sobbing into his shoulder like a little child. “You should not have come here. I don't want you to remember me like a monster.”

“Whatever are you going on about?”

As his hand gently cradled the back of her head, her shivering shoulders dropped.

“I… I have done horrible things, Dorian. Maybe I am not a tyrant, but I have so much blood on my hands.”

“I am sorry, love, but I don't give a single damn about that. Do you think I am pure like a dove? Tevinter Magisters who have lived for mere decades? Or even that puppy-eyed Grey Warden? No one who lives is not without sin; I can never even begin to fathom the burdens you bear, but whatever it is, it won't change a thing between us."

Lavellan could not reply, for the sobs stole the words from her mouth. The Magister held her for a long while, trying his best to remain calm and composed, but as Morrigan gestured to him and he lifted a defiant hand to stop her from interrupting, his voice dipped. He gently took her hands to his, prying them off his robes, and looked at her with softness only bestowed upon the heartbroken.

“Now, dear. I understand that you are being asked the impossible, again. With all my heart I wish it was not the case. I may not know about your pain, but what I do know is what a man in love looks like. And I finally have an explanation as to why Solas looked like someone who had been yearning for you for centuries."

Lavellan let out a pained laugh. "You're a hopeless romantic, did you know that?"

"Don't try to deny it. That bastard would throw a backflip into the Waking Sea if you asked him to. Perhaps you should do that? For me?" he tried so hard to smile bravely, but as he wiped a tear off her face, his own started falling.

"At any rate, please make him end this nonsense. Then perhaps he can finally start to try to be deserving of all of this world-saving love. If he doesn't, he'll hear from me. Nothing will save him then."

“Dorian…”