#twinquisitor

Cass walks alongside him-- she’d been the one to tell him the plan, and it must have pissed her off because she’s said nothing to him the entire way up the mountain, stewing in angry silence at his brother’s fool plans, probably. Behind them both is the strange boy with the wide-brimmed hat, supporting Grand Chancellor Roderick. The older man’s breaths are labored, but resolute. And behind him, an endless stream of people, a chain stretching all the way back into the valley. Horses, wagons, sleds-- if it walked or rolled, it was coming along. In the distance, Haven burned.

Dex pauses a step to look back. The dragon circles the town, its massive head swinging side to side, looking for survivors. Dex shudders and turns back to walking.

Nero will hate this, he thinks again, more forcefully. He hates snow. He can picture his brother’s look of distaste perfectly. Nero is at the back of the line, bringing up the rear with the others. Dex can’t see him at this distance, and he doesn’t much care to try in the meantime.

In time, the call comes up the line-- clear, the last of the evacuees have made it out. Dex hears the words echoing over the snow, wondering if even the dragon itself can hear it.

Cass, beside him, heaves a sigh. She does not look at Dex, and Dex at the moment is too tired to wonder why. “Sera,” she says, and nothing else.

Dex hadn’t noticed the elf, a few people down the line. Without torches, it’s impossible to distinguish faces. But there she was, taking out her bow and nocking.

“Fire first,” someone says, and then Vivienne is there, her snowy-white silks mottled from the hasty escape. She holds a hand to the arrowhead, and it explodes in flame, illuminating all of their faces. Sera arches back and fires, the arrow a tiny beacon of light against the starry backdrop, higher and higher.

Cass resumes walking, and all the people behind follow after her. They’re taught to-- she’s a Seeker, the Right Hand of the Divine. She is meant to be followed after. But Dex remains where he is, staring upward. The arrow goes out before it reaches its zenith, and falls somewhere unseen. But still he stares.

And then he looks back to Haven.

Later, he would remember it only in a series of flashes, him standing there like ice, frozen, as it transpired. He remembers seeing the trebuchet fire, he remembers the avalanche, he remembers hearing the evacuee’s shouts of dismay, the hurried pace they adopted to put more distance between them and the doomed town. He remembers seeing Haven buried in snow, wiped off the face of the mountainside.

Who was it? some of them ask as they rush past. Who was there? Who fired?

And Dex knows, sickeningly certain.

He thinks nothing at all. To think would be to invite a terrible truth.

Dex remains where he is until the last of the line passes him. Solas and Blackwall bring up the end, alone. They look to him, then continue on, Blackwall taking the time to rest his hand on Dex’s shoulder as he passes. And still Dex waits, waits until the very last have come-- three of them, three shadows coming up the mountainside. The Qunari, the dwarf, and the Vint.

No one else.

He lied to me, Dex thinks when it all, unable to be denied, bursts free. He lied, he lied, they all did.

He wavers on his feet, the lure of grief, shattering, collapse almost too overpowering to overcome. But he seizes control in both hands and starts down the slope, painfully resolved.

“Kid,” Varric starts, reaching out a hand.

“Don’t touch me,” Dex weaves past him, eyes fixed on Haven. But--

“Dex,” Bull says, and his big hand closes on Dex’s forearm, pulling him to a stop. “Where are you going?”

Dex tries and fails to shrug out of his grip. “To get my brother.”

“What are you going to do? Dig in the snow? Wait until the dragon finds you?”

Dex turns to face him, angry now. “You were supposed to watch him. You all were. You said--” he wrenches his hand free. “You said you could keep him safe.”

“I did,” Bull insists, his remaining eye just barely visible in the starlight. “I did, right up until he told me to leave. He’d tell you the same. Don’t waste your life, not now.”

“He’s my brother,” Dex replies, an edge of something-- pleading, perhaps-- in his tone. “He’s my brother, and you--” he looks at them all, the three of them, one at a time. Strangers, all of them, in this light. Even Varric. He doesn’t want them. He wants--

He looks back to Haven. Only memory tells him where the town was, an hour prior. The rest is gone, buried under tons and tons of snow.

Gone, he thinks, the simple word. It echoes in his head, gone gone gone.

“I--” he can’t, anymore. It’s too difficult to stand. Someone grasps him by the shoulder and he doesn’t fall, and somebody else has his other arm, and someone’s hand is on his back, and Dex can’t see anything but the snow, white and fresh and new, and he can’t feel anything but the heaving gasps from his lungs, too loud, he can’t hear anything else.

“I--” he says. “It’s not--” but he cannot say anything more. He thinks of things burning, Haven and the Gallows and the Chantry and the houses of Lowtown, and mother’s, so long ago, he’d been so small, the fire had seemed so immense, terrifying, the flames climbing so much taller than him.

His faculties return by pieces. He straightens-- at some point he had sunk to his knees in the snow. He sees the long trail of footprints stretching all the way back to the tunnels, to Haven.

To Nero.

My brother.

He knows then, what to do.

Dex unwinds his scarf and draws one of his daggers. An old one, all the way from Kirkwall, all the way from Athenril’s company. He winds the fabric around the grip and sinks the blade into the snow. A weak gust of mountain wind tugs the scarf out like a banner, unfurling.

Dex stands. “We have to move,” he says, too loudly.

The others look at him-- sympathy in Varric’s eyes, resolve in Bull’s, and something less certain in Dorian’s. He knows grief, Dex knows immediately. He would recognize it, if he saw it. He does not see it, now. But his eyes dart away, and he makes no mention of it.

The four of them go back up the mountain.