#midnightprelude

"You cannot do this!" Cassandra held her sword out to block the door. "I won't allow it."

"Let me through, Cassandra. I need to see him."

Behind the door were the cells of Skyhold. Not many would stop the Inquisitor from going through, but Cassandra was one of a few who had the privilege.

She steeled herself against his intense gaze. "We both know he is not the man you once knew. I will not allow you to be swayed by someone who was willing to destroy you."

"He's my brother, and I have a right to see him. You have no right to stop me."

"This is for your own protection, Inquisitor." Cassandra planted herself in the center of the doorway, sword tip jammed into the ground before her.

"You won't even call me my name when we're alone?" If the look of hurt on his face was genuine, then Cassandra's own heart was in danger. "At least have the decency to face me."

"Kenton," Cassandra said, trying to plead her case, "He was responsible for the destruction of the Ostwick Circle, and he attempted to break our defenses here. He is a terrorist apostate, and he will not hesitate to behead the Inquisition."

"He's my brother. I've known him longer than I've known anyone in this world." Kenton stepped closer to her, and he reached out to touch her cheek with one hand. She could not permit herself to recoil.

"You will regret this."

"You will be there to protect me, won't you?"

And, despite everything, Kenton pulled her in and kissed her forehead. Then, without even seeming to try, he shifted her to the side, and entered the dungeon.

The front door had been shattered. One of the great wooden doors had been blasted off its hinges - from the inside; the other was damaged, and lolled half-way open. Years of varnish had protected the outside from the elements but not the inside, and the wood was already swollen and scuffed.

Hawke came to stand beside him. He didn't say anything, but he didn't need to; his eyes were sharp and watchful, and he angled his shoulders towards Anders in a manner both protective and dangerous. "It's been a while," Anders said.

"You alright?"

"Almost." Anders flashed him a smile. "I'll be better once we get what we came here for."

Hawke fished the ward stone out of his pocket. The little rune - carved from a block of solid silverite, inlaid with lyrium-infused gold - glowed faintly, this close to the cache the Mages' Collective had told them it was designed to unlock. "It'll be in his office, you think?"

"Second floor," said Anders, taking it. "First floor's the library and apprentice dorms. Second floor's for the mages and enchanters. Third floor's for meetings."

"And the rest?" Hawke craned his head back, but you couldn't see the top of the tower from this close to the base. Anders knew. How many times had he stood here, shackled, his templar escorts pounding on those grand (broken) doors and demanding admittance?

"Templars are - ... were on the fourth floor. Top's for the Harrowing."

Hawke snorted. Anders chanced a glance at him - his companion, his lover, his freeborn mage partner who had never seen the inside of this terrible, cold building - and said, "Most of us kept to the third floor down. Not much call for a mage to go beyond that."

"It's a tall tower," Hawke allowed. He turned, to look back over his shoulder at the inky black waters of Lake Calenhad, and his scowl deepened.

"Hey," Anders nudged him, "What're you thinking?" He could normally follow Hawke's train of thought, but this was... this was Kinloch. Anders had lived it, and survived. Hawke and his sister and his father had all lived in fear of it.

In response Hawke turned away from him and made his way back to the dock. Their boat floated gently below them; Calenhad was too small to have waves, and its inky blackness stretched out in all directions disturbed only by the ice floating across it this late in winter. From here you could barely make out the haze of lights that was Redcliffe village, far to the south. "Fuck me," said Hawke, "Can't believe you fucking swam this."

"It was spring," Anders allowed, and didn't say: drowning in the lake in the pursuit of freedom was infinitely better than living without it.

He didn't need to. He hadn't died. He'd kept swimming, for spite, for a life without oversight, because the templars would have been glad if he'd stopped and Anders wouldn't give them an inch when they expected a mile, and he was so fucking glad he had when Hawke turned, and looked at him, and smiled one of his rare wolf's smiles even as he said, "You're incredible."

"I was desperate."

"Same thing." Hawke had a wolfskin draped over his shoulders that looked something like a larger, bulkier, warmer version of the armour he'd worn as Kirkwall's Champion. He rolled a shoulder idly and huffed out a breath that fogged in the winter air, and said, "Every day you amaze me more and more. Come on. Let's find what we came for."

He went first, and hesitated only slightly at the threshold of the shattered doors. For a moment Anders watched him - his smooth, easy gait; the the solid figure of his build; the focused, predatory cast to his golden eyes; the greys in his hair and his beard and the scar cutting through his eyebrow; the staff he carried like a spear and used like one, too - and tried to imagine taking something so powerful and free and wild and shrinking it, maiming it, forcing it to live stifled within Kinloch's austere stone walls, and couldn't.

The apprentices' dormitories were on the right as they entered, and in disarray. The fleeing mages had stolen everything that wasn’t nailed down as they fled, even the bedding; crows warked at them irritably from nests built in the high stone windowsills. Anders couldn’t resist poking his head into the older kids’ dormitory. He’d only known this one - the other was reserved for the real babies of the tower, the children of ten years and under, not that there was any difference in furnishing.

His old bunk had been the third row from the left, top middle. He didn’t know what he expected to feel when he saw it. Rage, perhaps, or disgust. How many nights had he curled under the blankets there, sobbing into a pillow whose embroidered colours had never been designed for that level of grief? It had faded by the end of his first year, but now…

He’d fucked Karl in this bunk for the first time. They’d bribed the rest of the dorm to pretend they didn’t hear, but even so he was acutely aware with every thrust, every grunt, every sharp intake of breath of the whispering in the dark, the giggling. That wasn’t normal, he knew now, but at the time it had been what he’d known - what they’d all known. He ran a hand over the wooden post at the end of the bed, feeling its unevenness under his palm, generations of graffiti and none of it familiar, and let the fire bloom into being.

Hawke said nothing when Anders rejoined him at the dorm entrance. He jerked his chin at the burning bunk and lifted his eyebrows, and when Anders shrugged at him, nodded. He didn’t share, Leo. He’d bitten Varric’s head off for asking questions. He’d had experience in bed, at least - Anders was far from his first - but neither of them had ever expected how precious they were concerning something that was new to them both. To be loved, as well as lovers.

The tower had never been this quiet. It had eaten many of the sounds of its inhabitants - the rustle of finely woven circle robes, the tread of soft circle slippers, the rustling of paper, the susurration of hushed conversations in its variable common areas - but had rejected others. The clanking of plate armour. The sounds of enchanters drilling people in the practice areas. The sobbing in the night. Anders glanced down at his boots - cracked, scuffed leather like something these floors had seldom known - and smiled in grim triumph.

The library door was still closed, and when Anders pushed the door open it still smelled the same. The shelves had been depleted but not emptied - plenty of almanacs and tedious histories left behind, but the mages had taken all the herb compendiums, and the entirety of Brother Genetivi’s travelogues were gone, as were most of the books on practical spellcrafting. Anders touched the empty shelves where the books on the conjuration of potable water had been kept and smiled despite himself. Beside him Hawke had pulled out a tome on the lives and wives of Antiva’s assassin-queens.

“I had so much sex in this library,” Anders said.

Hawke barked a laugh, which he quickly smothered with his sleeve. “I’m sure.”

“In fact - here, come on.” He gestured for Hawke to follow him, and Leo did, with a curious expression. He slid his hands up over Hawke’s broad shoulders and turned him, gently, so that his back was to the Lucrosian section; the Anecdotes of the Great Accountants had rich, buttery leather bindings and had always been a faithful cushion to an apprentice in a hurry. Leo let himself be positioned with a trust Anders still wasn’t sure how he’d earned, watching Anders with that same intensity he’d always loved.

He leaned against Leo, so they were flush, chest to chest. “If we were both trapped here,” he said, “And if the librarian was in our favour, they’d stack the bookshelf at the end with books slightly larger than usual. That would give you just enough space to hoist up your robes, and for me to reach… what needed reaching.”

Hawke glanced around - at the ceiling, all the way above them; at the end bookshelf, now filled with gaps like missing teeth - at Anders’ face. His mouth was tight. Angry, but not with Anders. On some level that was heartening, to know that what he had thought normal was not. “No templars in the library?”.

“At the doors.” Anders nudged at the corner of his jaw with his nose. This close Leo smelled like sweat and snowmelt, and that odd, slightly electric smell all mages had, like lyrium in the blood. “If you were lucky, you’d get a couple of old, run-down bucketheads too bored or lyrium-addled to patrol. The young ones would, though. They had more to prove by interrupting… “

“Interrupting what?” Hawke reached up and gently caught one of Anders’ wrists, tugging it from his broad chest. “Two mages having a talk? You couldn’t spin this any other way, surely.”

Many mages had been beaten for it. Anders had been beaten for it. Twice in one day, even. But Anders didn’t know how to explain to Hawke that this was what they had, and on some level, the mages of Kinloch Hold had known it was worth a beating to be close to someone when this closeness was all you got. Karl had been his first; there had been hundreds between him and Hawke, and not a one of them had ever come close to what he had with Hawke. He drew back, shrugged, and said, “We said whatever we needed to say.”

“To survive,” said Leo. He was scowling again. Anders pressed a gentle knuckle to the furrow of his brow, and smiled when it smoothed under his touch. Hawke stooped forward and bumped their foreheads together, which Anders knew from long experience was one of the most surefire ways he had of expressing affection; his breath was warm on Anders’ face. They were fully clothed, and it still felt more intimate than all the times Anders had wanked someone off right here, in this spot.

“I escaped this place,” Anders said, into the quiet space between them. “Hawke, it doesn’t hold any power over me. It hasn’t for a while. Especially not now.”

It was just a library. There were no templars at the doors, and the mages had picked it clean of things they thought would help them survive, because they were gone and free and he had helped make it happen. He had been the chisel and this building, this empty shell of a building with the shattered doors and the crows in the windowsills and the bunks burning behind him, this was just part of the crack.

“Too bad you don’t have any more of those explosives,” Hawke said. His lips quirked again, such a small sign it might have been missed had Anders not been so adept at reading him. “Would’ve been nice to bring the whole thing down.” He leaned back. “We lived in Redcliffe, you know. Six months or so. I was twelve, I think - don’t really remember, just remember this fucking tower on the horizon. Father signed onto the Crimson Oars to help some bann in Orlais take over his neighbour’s land, so we stopped to wait for him to return from the fighting.” He paused. “Or if he didn’t, to decide what to do next.”

Anders caught Hawke’s hand, turned it over. “I’ve only been to Redcliffe once. My first escape. They dragged me through it after they caught me… the townsfolk hated me. It took an hour of arguing for the templars to convince the innkeeper to let them stay the night, and he made them chain me to the bed while they did. He charged them extra for the chains, too, which I thought was very funny.” He rubbed soothingly at Hawke’s wrist. “The Collective say that most of the escaped mages headed to Redcliffe. The Arl invited them in, for whatever that’s worth.”

“Whatever it has to be,” Hawke said.

“There’s no place safe for mages,” Anders agreed. “They’re feared throughout Thedas. But that is because they are not known. Hopefully they can show the people that they’re people too.”

“Yeah.” Hawke’s eyes were on him. “They are. Anders, whatever happened to you here...”

“Happened,” Anders said, and shrugged. “I didn’t have it the worst. I didn’t have it the best, either, but it doesn’t <i>matter</i>. Love, it’s… it’s a thing that happened, and it won’t happen again, not if we can help it.”

Leo glanced around at the library. “It never should have,” he said, and placed his other hand over the back of Anders’, trapping it between them. His mouth was a flat, unhappy line; Anders leaned in and kissed him, slow and careful until he felt some of the tension bleed out of Leo’s shoulders and into the boring books he leaned up against it, and smiled a little as he did so. Another victory for the accountants.

“Let’s get what we came for, love,” he said. “Then, if you like, we can look and see if there’s anything left in the alchemical storeroom. I can’t make what I used in Kirkwall, but I might be able to whip up something satisfyingly ruinous.”

“Threatening me with a good time,” Hawke said, but he smiled - really smiled, in that way that transformed his face from the near-perpetual scowl to the man Anders had fallen in love with, who had stood over Ser Karras’ bloody corpse on the Wounded Coast and dragged a hand through the gore on his face with the simple satisfaction of a job well done.

Maker’s breath. Anders didn’t know what it was like to grow up outside - to see the tower on the horizon, and never know what happened inside it - but it didn’t matter. Inside or outside, this place had touched them both the same; and so he leaned forward - bracketing Leo with his arms, kissing him slow and sweet and unhurried in a way he’d never kissed anyone, not in these high cold walls, and said, “I’ll do more than that when we get back to Denerim, my love.”

It was just a building. They didn’t have the tools to burn it down, but maybe they didn’t need to. Perhaps it was enough to forget it - to let the ivy creep up the walls, swallowing the memory of the things that had gone on here; to let the crows creep down from the windowsills, building their nests on the bunks and the vanities and in the washtubs; to let the enchantments holding this impossibly huge building together fail, long after he and Hawke were gone, to let the windows cave in and the rains wash through these halls and cleanse away all the ghosts left behind, in every library crook and secretly shared bunk and all the other little places the mages had built here.

They weren’t necessary. Not any more. Mages were right now walking the docks in Redcliffe; waking to their own rooms, perhaps even learning the luxury of taking time with a lover. The Circle had fallen. The building was all that remained, and in time, that too would pass.

And in the meantime, he had Hawke, and Hawke had him, and together they had work to do. For the Collective. For the mages. For their love of each other.

The invitation was more appealing than she could know. But still, he shook his head.

“It is too much of a risk. For all the reasons I’ve already stated.”

“You know Skyhold better than I do - better than any of us,” she countered. “You must be able to think of a dozen places where we could find some privacy.”

And, fenedhis, but he could.

There was an alcove at the tip of the rotunda, deserted at this time of night, when even the Spymaster had finally retired for the few hours she allowed herself to leave her desk each day. Then there was the room below the kitchens, warmed by its hearth and yet far too secluded to attract attention after dark. The loft of the stables, if the Warden could be distracted to a game of Wicked Grace in the tavern. Any of the three currently unoccupied rooms in the guest quarters where foreign dignitaries slept. Pressed against a wall beneath the stairs at the edge of the gardens, he considered with agonizing clarity.

And if - if only - he could shape this place with a thought the way he used to, Solas would sculpt a room just for her. Hidden behind a stone wall that would give way only for them, he would carve a balcony that overlooked the frozen lake and seal it with a spell to keep the cold at bay while allowing the snow to swirl into the room for a brief moment of fragile beauty before it melted away. The hearth would be ornate and enormous, large enough to hold a fire that would warm them all night long, even after it crumbled to embers. He would build the fire himself, with his own hands, choosing the branches from the nearby woods and finding the herbs to scent it.

He would craft her a bed made from the twisting branches of the white-barked trees that grew only in Arlathan Forest, and weave them into an intricate knot that conjured protection and devotion with each twist. The bedclothes would be Fade-touched silk - the only material that could come close to matching the softness of her lips. Time would pass slowly, if at all. He would steal each minute that he could and savor her touch, her taste, her voice. He would forget himself in the press of her body against his, and hide from the duty that lurked just beyond the door, threatening to drag him back out into the cold.

Solas had built such a place in his mind a hundred - a thousand - times. So he did, again. But this was not a world that could be shaped to his whims. And so he dismissed it, again. He chased the thought of it away, because he knew what must come first.

He could not ask such a thing of her without first telling her the truth. And he could not tell her the truth.

Candles and moonlight lied. Desire lied, most of all. It tempted one to believe that it alone was enough.

Solas knew that if he viewed the situation in the harsh light of day, his choice was really no choice at all.

He had been silent too long. Lavellan stared at him with eyes that saw too much.

“It is impossible,” Solas said.

“Only because you’ve decided it’s so.”

Her rebuke was not gentle, and he could offer no response that could adequately counter it. So he said nothing.

She shook her head at him and let out an angry breath. She was halfway to the door when Solas caught up to her, his hand tight upon her elbow.