#janewrites

He could not go in the chapel, though he was welcome.

Mother Giselle had once bid him enter, but he could not. Invisible reins pulled at his heart and made his feet feel mortared to the ground. At first he thought it stubborn pride, but fear and hate stayed his feet in equal measure.

He had pulled away from the chapel that day like an animal frightened of the harness and the lead. But as he turned around, he caught his handler watching him. Clad in plain linen trousers with her hands stuffed in her pockets, there was a boyish, youthful air to the way she stood, but against this stance was set her imperturbable face and eyes, which seemed to be studying him. He met her gaze pointedly with pursed lips and steeled eyes to hide his shame before continuing on his way. Bree simply watched him go. To his relief, she never spoke of it.

He soon learned, however, that that didn’t mean the moment wasn’t on her mind. It took him a while to realise the shapes she habitually traced on his back as he lay between her legs at night were rayed suns.

1… 2… 3… 4… 5… 6… 7… 8…

Eight rays on a sun, eight rayed suns drawn upon his back with the light, unhurried caresses of her nimble fingers. Eight for the Disciples of Andraste. One for the Mother. One for the Commander. One for the Avvar. One for the Guardian of the Ashes. One for the Defender. One for the Rebel. One for the Slave. One for the Archon, the Redeemed.

One for the Archon, the Redeemed.

Bree’s hands had moved to his face, where the weight of his conscience sat on his furrowed brow. Hessarian had killed Andraste, believing it a mercy. He had killed his Templars, believing that a mercy. But he had done more than Hessarian and he knew his crimes were great in any ecclesiastical court: false idols, the slaughter of innocents to feed the poison, which he in turn fed to himself and to his own men. All that was holy he had desecrated—Human, Elvish, Dwarven, it didn’t matter. He had served the Elder One, the one who would be God. Hessarian had been easy to forgive; the blame for the pyre had fallen upon the shoulders of his wife and Hessarian’s conversion sealed his atonement. No such option was available for Samson, no such redemption. He was too late, too far gone.

‘Samson?’

‘Mmh?’

‘Something wrong?’

‘No,’ came the sardonic reply. ‘Everything’s just peachy.’

The back of her fingers traced down his cheeks and around the outline of his jaw. Bree changed her approach.

‘Then what’s on your mind?’

He could feel his jaw tighten, but what had he to lose? Pride, dignity, Maddox, his Templars, fuck, even his lyrium, all were gone.

‘Do you think the Maker will forgive me for what I’ve done?’

‘Of course. Why wouldn’t He?’

His frown seemed to deepen, but out of confusion rather than anger. Bree tried to clarify:

‘He loves best His lost sheep.’

This “clarification” only seemed to add to Samson’s confusion. He rolled onto his side, propping himself up with his elbow.

‘What have sheep got to do with anything?’

‘The Maker is a shepherd—‘

‘—Never heard that one when I was in the Order—‘

‘—of sorts. The lost sheep is the lost son.’

He snorted at this and was lifted, momentarily, from his melancholy. The small curl at the corners of his lips told of his amusement.

‘Bree, are you trying to tell me that the Maker has a sheep for a son?’

‘What? No! Maybe? Look, forget the sheep! Let me start over!’

He shifted onto his back with a sigh, staring at the ceiling. He’d almost wished he had asked Mother Giselle… almost.

‘Alright, go on.’

‘Once upon a time, there was a father who had two sons. The younger son wanted his inheritance right away and so the father divided up his estate. The oldest son stayed at home with his father, but the youngest son used his new-found wealth to go on adventures and to travel to far off places. There he spent his money recklessly and shamefully until he had not a copper to his name. The son was so starved, so destitute that he went home to beg his father to disown him and to hire him as a servant instead, but the father welcomed home his son and threw a celebration for his return. This made the older son very cross, for he had always been very obedient and yet no celebrations had ever been thrown for him. But the father reminded him that all the money he had left to give belonged to the eldest son. The greatest gift he had to give to his poor youngest son was his love and his mercy.’

‘Bree, I think my sins were a little more serious than world travel and a bit of whoring.’

(He did not here admit that those two would very likely be included in his list of sins.)

‘It means that no matter how far you stray or how far away your life’s journey takes you, the Maker will always celebrate your return and welcome you home with open arms. You have nothing to fear from those that love you.’

He heard her frustration with him in the cadence of her voice. He should have been ashamed at the small joy it brought him to upset her usually content countenance, but he added it to the growing list of sins instead. He grinned in the dark.

‘And he loves me because I’m a sheep?’

There was a scoff from her side of the bed.

‘He loves you because we are His children.’ She moved to lay herself on his chest, where she continued unabated, ‘But where we see only the present in each other and remember the past, He sees you as you once were, as you are now, and as you will be all together at once. He sees not only what is, but what could be. He knows everything there is to know about you—‘ (This did not come as a comfort to Samson.) ‘—and that knowledge makes him wise and compassionate.’

He looked at her sceptically, ‘And how do you know all this?’

‘I don’t know. I believe.’

Now it was his turn to scoff, ‘Empty promises. Just like the Chantry.’

This seemed to hurt her and she returned to her side of the bed. She hunkered down under the covers before she retorted crossly, ‘Belief is more powerful than you think. Knowledge is information about real things, but belief makes things real.’

‘Oh? How’s that then?’

‘I’m a mage. I make things real through belief all the time.’

‘You trying to tell me you’re going to make a Maker, Bree?’

‘Wh-? No!’

‘Huh, because it sounded to me like you were trying to make a god out of your belief. Corypheus might have a thing or two to say about that.’

There was a muffled, frustrated scream from under the covers. Samson felt inordinately smug.

‘I believe the Maker is kind and compassionate. I believe that He cares. Too much. Like you.’

‘Well, you know what they say: like Father, like son.’

‘You’re a shit son, Samson.’

‘I do not see you here often,’ observed Mother Giselle as she walked up the aisle towards the lone figure sitting on one of the pews in the dusk of the empty chapel.

‘No,’ Morowa replied in a slow drawl.  She didn’t need to turn her head to know who was speaking to her—she’d recognise that Orlesian accent anywhere.  ‘I don’t reckon you do.’

‘”From the Fade I crafted you, / And to the Fade you shall return / Each night in dreams / That you may always remember me.” I am glad you have returned to us from the Fade once more.’

In the dim light she thought she heard the Inquisitor’s breath hitch.  Ever since the woman, with eyes dark and flashing like a summer thunderstorm, had proudly barrelled her way to her camp outside Redcliffe, Mother Giselle had not once seen her buckle, not once seen her bend, not once seen her break.  She bore the weight of the world like a colossus and with a face just as stony, set immutably into a stern frown as if to say, “Your ways and your deeds have brought these things to you. This is your evil.”

As she sat herself down beside the Inquisitor, the Revered Mother did not let her eyes linger too long upon Morowa’s face, but a mere glance told her all that she needed to know. Morowa’s narrowed eyes were riveted straight ahead, as if to stare down the statue of Andraste to its knees, and her jaw was set.

Mother Giselle likewise faced straight ahead to afford Morowa greater privacy.  ‘This path the Maker has put you on is not an easy one, Inquisitor.’

‘The Maker,’ rang Morowa’s brusque voice, impassioned, ‘does not exist.’

Mother Giselle would have thought her eyes cold and unfeeling had she not known how hurt the beaten heart beat beneath.

‘That woman that people claim pulled me out of the Fade? Not Andraste. Not Justinia, even. Just a spirit. A plain, ole spirit. Put on Justinia’s face like one of your Orlesian masks, then took it off again, easy as that.’

And then Morowa turned her face sharply to Mother Giselle and her words had a knife’s edge to them:

‘”Violently were they cast down, / For no mortal may walk bodily / In the realm of dreams”—now init that a daisy? ‘Cause I could have sworn I saw not one, not two, but a grand total of six lowly mortals trot on through the Fade.  The Chant of Light is a chant of lies we tell ourselves.  Just like the lies you let people tell themselves on that mountainside.’

All this Mother Giselle patiently endured and after Morowa turned her face back towards the statue, she spoke softly. ‘”And then the Maker sealed the gates / Of the Golden City / And there, He dwelled, waiting / To see the wonders / His children would create.” The Chantry is our creation, Inquisitor, and it has many flaws. It is not monolithic; it is a patchwork quilt, made of many pieces. We repair the work done by those who have come before us, and sometimes, we lose threads to time and age. That a spirit gave you no straight answers does not tear this quilt apart nor does the absence of the Maker, for the Chant of Light tells us that He turned from us long ago.’

It was a while before Morowa responded, her tone changed:

‘It would have been nice if he were real.  It would have been nice knowing that there was someone out there, watching over us. He’s supposed to be a father, ain’t He?  But what kind of father abandons their child?  I wish He were real, just so I could really hate Him.’  Her lips curled to bare teeth, but the anger in her mouth was belied by the hurt in her eyes.  ‘And I do hate Him.’

‘It is easy to hate what we do not know, what we do not completely understand. But know that you are precious to Him, even if He is invisible to your eyes. You have safely walked the paths of this world and the next; the Veil holds no uncertainty for you; you know no fear of death; there has been a light for you in the darkness. This is the benediction of the Maker, though you may call it by another name. Fate, perhaps, or maybe Luck.’

Morowa was silent in her grief and Mother Giselle reached out to pat her hand, ‘I will leave you to your thoughts. Your doubts are those that we all must face, each in our own way in our own time.’

She got up and turned to leave.

‘Mother Giselle?’

‘Yes, Morowa?’

‘Do not speak of this to anyone. Not to Leliana. Not to Bree. Especially not to Bree,’ her glaring eyes looked out as fingers brushed away the tears below, ‘They’d only want to help. And I’d hate them all the more for it. I’d hate them more than I hate the Maker.’

When Alistair first walked through Skyhold’s gates, he mistook the tightness in Bree’s throat for pangs of grief at seeing him again after all these years.  He had held out his hand in awkward camaraderie—(for what other touch could there be between former lovers?)—but she had flung herself upon his chest and had clung to him tightly.  Yet even as she greeted him with such warmth of feeling, embracing him with such affection as if they had been apart only moments and picking up the threads of an older life with the nimble ease of a seamstress, he could not shake the gut feeling that she was holding something back.

And as he passed his days in Skyhold with her for company, the realisation dawned when he saw her try to light a fire with a fire striker instead of with the tip of her finger.  Bree had stopped using magic.

She had not been choking back tears that day.  She had been reining herself in like an eager horse on the bit.  It was as if she had built a tower within herself and something there lay chained.  It had struggled against its chains that day, but Bree’s will had won.

If he focused on her throat, he could see the tension there, as if she had words trapped like caged birds eager to take flight, seeking escape but unable—words that were brimming, bright, and burning.

She was trying to lead a normal, non-magical life, but that's not how it worked.  Mages are mages even if they swear off the spells.  Magic seeps out.  Magic finds a way.  Templars know that all too well and as a former one he recognised the signs.  

She wasn’t using magic, so magic was using her.

She was too finite a vessel, of course.  Magic overflowed, radiating from every pore, glimmering in her eyes, escaping with every sigh of breath.  It made sense now, the singing, the dancing, the heightened emotions, and the struggle to sit still unless she was spellbound by other words of power, words like the ones in her fictions, her fantasies, and her fairy tales.  It explained why Bree now constantly looked like she was ready to burst… into peals of laughter, into tears, into flames, one just didn’t know.  Magic needed expression.  Magic would find a way.

And tonight, as he limped away from the Inquisitor, her companions, and his fellow Wardens, he was worried that magic would find its way through him, like lightning through a grounding rod.  He could sense the magic building—Bree advertised herself as a Spirit Healer, but she was a primal mage of the old Circle and her magic read like it.  He knew Bree was about to use magic in the same way one knows when a thunderstorm was about to descend: you could smell it in the air, feel it in the very wind that gusted over the land and through the trees, taste it on the tongue.  Something had changed, but whether it was earth or sky he could not tell.

‘Bree…,’ he cautioned, holding up his hands.  A mage who didn’t use their power was often just as much of a disaster as any mage who clawed for power from demons themselves.  And Bree was a natural disaster even without the help of magic.

But he didn’t allow his mind and body to panic.  He had been a skilled enough Templar and he mentally dug in his heels now.

He had to physically dig in his heels when she embraced him bodily, full suit of armour and all.

‘Oh, Alistair!’

His sword fell heavy on the ground as he yielded to her and wrapped his arms around her in a fond embrace.

He smiled.  It was melancholy at first, but it grew warmer as Bree continued to babble in his ear about what she had seen (them fall), and what she had feared (the worst).  His head found sanctuary in the crook between her neck and her uplifted shoulders, cloaking his face in darkness and blocking out the light.

It was when all was dark that he realised the song was gone.

No, not gone, he could still hear its unending thrum, but it took effort to focus in on it.  It was being drowned out by a rising crescendo, poco a poco.  It was a chorus of voices, a song like water, golden in sunlight, which coursed through his veins and washed over his heart.

And for a time he basked in it.

He felt like a hero of old on the broad and bloody field of battle.  The ache of the wound across his middle yielded to the still keener ache of renewed resolve—the time was now; he had to act, had to Do Good.  He felt like charging back into the Fade and getting his bare hands around whatever that nightmare demon used for a neck.  He felt like he could take on an army of demons on his lonesome and win.  He felt invincible.  He felt brimming, bright, and burning.  He felt—

—like a grounding rod.

‘No!’ he hissed and pulled away sharply.

With the embrace broken, the one song faded like a ghost and the other song—that damned nuisance—claimed him once more.

Bree looked at him sadly, but her eyes were calm and quiet, and in them he saw the Bree he knew from all those years ago.  Her mana was drained, her magic spent, and his wound healed.  The magic would rise again within her like a spring, but for now it was just Bree, her will, and no more.

‘I love you still,’ she said simply, and he allowed her to grasp his hand when she reached for it.