Fight Me™

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Dorian breezes into the bedchamber she's rented at a rather high class establishment in Hightown. It's not that she doesn't like the estate from Varric, it's just that she isn't keen on bringing bed partners back to the house of a comtesse. Still, Dorian fits better in this inn than she does, with his meticulously tailored robes and coiffed hair and mustache and boots polished to shine. Where had he stayed last night, to be here so early, looking like that?

"Could barely be bothered with a dressing gown I see." He scrunches his nose as he takes in the room. "Maker, what a mess."

Last night wasn't uniquely harried, but she supposes this is the first time Dorian has seen the state of a room after one of her... nighttime encounters. Well, the smalls on the tea table aren't a regular occurrence—more often they end up on the floor by the bed or in the washroom. And these are not hers.

Wincing, Kiara hurries over to pluck them up.

"Oh, those are pretty."

"They're not mine," Kiara bites out, and tosses them into the hamper. No idea what she'll do with them, given the unlikelihood of her ever seeing the woman from last night again. She'll decide after she gets the laundry back.

"So you do still have a voice. What a relief. I was beginning to wonder if it was as lost as the rest of you," Dorian says with a melodramatic sigh.

"Ouch." She tosses each scattered item of clothing into the hamper or over the armchair to be put away—thankfully, they're all her own.

"Shall I send for tea? Some breakfast?"

"If you like," Kiara says absently as she catches sight of the open envelope on top of the dresser.

"Is there a bell or do I have to go down there? A place like this should have a bell. Ah, there."

Trying to be as subtle as possible, she makes her way over to the dresser while Dorian speaks and rings the little service bell. She stashes the letter up her sleeve and turns back to her friend. Aaaand her sleight of hand was not so sleight because his neatly threaded eyebrow is raised and his grey eyes are fixed on her hand, curled to keep the parchment from falling out of the sleeve of her loose-fitting dressing gown.

"Surely we're past hiding things from one another, darling," Dorian chides.

Kiara shakes her head. "It's not important."

Maybe if she says it enough times, it will actually feel true. Maybe if she says it enough times she can just... forget she ever read it.

Dorian isn't convinced. And neither is she. But they've both become adept at staring each other down. She's not sure who gives in more often. Her, probably, if their sending stone conversations, where he will simply remain silent until she gives him the answer he desires, are anything to go off of.

She breaks first, too tired to fend him off. "Fine! Read it. I don't care!" She tries to pull out the letter, but with only one hand, she fumbles it, and it flutters to the floor. Her eyes sting with frustrated tears before she retreats to the bed to hide, unwilling to see Dorian's face as he reads the coded message.

The rustle of parchment on parchment makes her ears twitch. A long moment passes in silence, then the parchment crinkles, and she can only assume he's flipped the page to read the other side.

Eventually, Dorian sighs. Heavily. And tucks the letter back in its envelope before approaching the bed. The edge dips under his weight.

"It's a lead."

She turns her head, looking at him for a moment until the angle strains her eyes. "One you think I have no business following."

"Charter seems to think you have some business following it."

Rolling onto her side to face her friend, Kiara says, "That's because I abused my Inquisitorial power and ordered her to inform me of any information she acquired about him. She's just doing her job."

Dorian purses his lips. "I was trying to be nice. Of course I don't think that would be a good idea."

"But they're poking around here, Dorian. In Kirkwall. I wouldn't be running off—"

"And what happens when the next clue leads to Nevarra, or the Anderfels, or the Imperium? It won't end here."

She balls her hand into a fist and drops her gaze to the envelope in his hands. "It could. This is where the Magisters Sidereal punched a hole in the Veil. It's—it's incredibly weak here. What if—"

"They're looking for the red lyrium idol that drove that templar woman mad, not a ritual site, Kiara."

"That doesn't mean he won't be here," she argues in vain.

"He won't. You know it. Varric is here. Solas will know you're here. He probably has someone watching you, maybe multiple someones." He won't chance an interaction with her, is what Dorian doesn't need to say. He gave away so much, yet so little, when she saw him at the Exalted Council. Who knows what he might reveal if he allowed her to find him again?

"Then I follow his agents. Ingratiate myself." She's done a fine job of ingratiating herself in the taverns nigh every night. It isn't lost on her that doing so is a great way for spies to get information on her and what remains of the Inquisition, but part of her hopes… part of her wants to believe that if she does take an Agent of Fen'Harel into her bed, that learning of it will make him feel even the slightest bit of pain. That it might bring him to her dreams at night. Truly him, not whatever spirits wear his face time and again.

"They know your physical description. You're hard to miss, my friend." That snaps her back to reality. No agent of Solas's would bed her without facing consequences. He's too prideful to allow that.

"Then no ingratiating, I just follow stealthily until they lead me back to him."

"And when you trip their wards trying to watch their camp?"

She scowls. She's never been good with wards, and always made him or Solas set them up around their camps. Solas always maintained a barrier around her in combat—even after he'd helped her improve her own: for when I can't be there, he insisted. Surely his agents are instructed to always ward their campsites and safehouses and whatever other sort of locations they occupy. She'll just have to get better at tampering wards without triggering alarms.

But how many times have she and Dorian had a similar conversation over the last year? That he's here in the flesh must mean she said something in a sending stone chat that set him off, worried him. Or Varric asked him to come, when his own attempts failed to extricate her from her grief. Or perhaps a combination of both. Bastards.

"What do you want me to do, then?"

Before he can answer, there's a knock on the door. Dorian calls for them to enter as she continues staring at him, waiting for an answer, waiting for a solution. The servant lays a small breakfast spread and the fixings for tea on the table. Dorian thanks her, and then she's gone, as quickly as she arrived.

"We could start by burning the letter," Dorian suggests, getting to his feet and strolling towards the breakfast table.

She bolts upright. "No!" A look of suspicion cast over his shoulder. She swallows. "No. It might be useful, even if I'm being barred from engaging."

Dorian takes a seat and pours himself a cup of tea. "Charter will have told Varric, no? Or his own spies will have. You don't need to hold onto this." He holds up the letter between his index and middle finger. He could light it on fire in an instant if he wanted, no hearth needed.

"I—I need to tell her how to proceed." She balls her hand into a fist to keep it from shaking.

He purses his lips again, stirring milk into his steaming cup before tucking the envelope into one of his pockets. "Come eat."

Kiara eyes the food suspiciously. Not because it might be poisoned, but because she doesn't want to end up crying. She's missed Dorian terribly, and sitting down to eat with him might just be the thing that breaks her newly-cold exterior. New relative to the length of her life so far. A nagging voice in her head that sounds concerningly like Clan Lavellan's First tells her she's being foolish, and she clambers out of bed and over to the table.

Her dressing gown slips from her narrow shoulders as she takes a seat.

Dorian narrows his eyes at her. "What are your eating habits like?"

"What? No. I'm just…" she tugs her sleeves back up as best she can, cursing her missing limb… "not as active as I was… before. The muscles are all weakening." And maybe she's been eating less. But she honestly can't tell. Her appetite isn't what it was, she won't deny that. Dorian hums, but says nothing—a rather infuriating habit of his. Then again, she can usually tell what he's not saying anyway.

He thinks she should get active, that it would keep her busy and keep her mind off of everything else for a little while each day. He's expressed as much before. As has Varric. And Josephine would too, if she knew the truth of Kiara's state of living, which she doesn't, last Kiara checked. She also wouldn't put it past either man to tell Josie themselves. In fact, for all Kiara knows, there's a letter in Josie's elegant script waiting for her back at the manor.

Kiara makes a show of breaking a scone in half with her hand and using a knife to spread jam on both sides. She's lucky the scone isn't keen on sliding about, otherwise she would've had to move the halves to a napkin to keep them still which was a whole other step she hates having to do.

"Well, you've certainly improved," Dorian says as he sits back in his seat, content with naught but his tea. They only brought food enough for one, but that doesn't mean she'll be able to finish it on her own, and he can't make her.

"Thanks," she says, the single word full of as much sarcasm as possible. Dagna's supposedly making progress with her prosthetic. If she and Sera are to be believed, there'll be a prototype on her doorstep within the next couple of months. Using magic for everyday tasks was never her thing, and she hasn't bothered to learn since losing most of her left arm.

If she stayed with her clan, Cordelia likely would've insisted on teaching her a bunch of little spells to make her life easier. And Kiara would've found the whole thing tedious and they would've bickered about it and Deshanna would've told them to settle it in a spar and Kiara likely would've won because she's always been better in combat and then Cordy would give up on teaching her and return to her teenage apprentice. Or her… ugh. Or to Cullen.

The only reason she knows anything at all is through Dorian and Leliana, both of whom Cullen has apparently confided in. Nothing from her lifelong friend or the former Commander. Which is her own fault, given how she left things, running off to Kirkwall after laying out everything she learned at the Exalted Council.

"Fasta vass, what's got that look on your face?" Dorian says as he pours himself another cup of tea.

"Our mutual friend." She takes another bite of scone, hoping her chewing will mean he won't ask a follow-up question. She has a habit of talking with her mouth full and it drives him up a wall.

"Which one? We have quite a few."

Kiara sighs. "Cullen."

"Ah, and Cordelia, then?" Dorian's heard plenty about Cordelia over the years. From childhood stories around campfires across Ferelden and Orlais, to pondering what Cordelia would do about some situation or another, to crying on her bedroom floor after returning from Crestwood and wishing Cordelia was there at the same time she felt sick at the thought of her friend seeing her bare face.

She nods, rubbing her inkless forehead—a habit she's picked up since that night.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"You know I don't," she says, "but if you think I should…"

"You know I do."

On that note, she finishes her scone quickly and casts a glance around the room. "Have you seen my pipe?" And her jasmine, for that matter. Had the woman from last night... No, there they are. She pushes to her feet and crosses to the pretty cushioned window seat where her long pipe and her wooden jar of ground jasmine are perched on the sill.

"Jasmine with breakfast?"

She rolls her eyes as she folds her legs under her. "As though you haven't drank over breakfast." Sparkling wine mixed with some kind of juice, usually. It isn't a common occurrence, to be sure, but that's not the point.

"Hmph."

The process of cleaning out the pipe of last night's ash and packing in fresh flower is a routine she's taken comfort in for years, since her father first offered her the pipe, on one of their annual trips to her mother's tree. It's not as easy with only one hand, but she manages.

When she was little, her parents used to smoke jasmine in the evenings, and she'd sit in between them or in one of their laps, and her mother would take out the braid she'd woven in the morning. Her hair was perpetually wavy from being constantly in a braid or two. Now, it's mostly straight. She can't even do the little braid in front anymore, like she used to do after her mother died.

Dorian brings the pot of tea closer and sets the tray in front of her on the window seat as she uncorks the jar. The fragrant smell greets her nose, immediately having a calming effect. She sighs and begins packing the flower into the newly-cleaned pipe.

"She doesn't get letters from spymasters about whatever fucked up games her lover is playing," Kiara says, expression twisting with bitterness she won't call jealousy. They get to be happy and not alone.

"Ah." Without her having to ask, Dorian lights her pipe for her with a snap of his fingers and props open one of the windows. She inhales deeply, then exhales and drops her head against the glass. The smoke curls up out of the window and into the brisk morning air.

"And I know they talk about me, but neither of them bother to talk to me." Cordelia has sent all of a single letter. Kiara wishes they would just be… normal. Cordelia used to be so chatty in her letters, but the one she sent was stilted and strange. Kiara would almost rather she didn't send it at all, that's how heavy and wrong it felt to read.

"You did leave after sharing life-changing information and haven't left this wretched place since then."

"It's not so wretched."

"Kiara, the Veil is so thin you can feel magic prickling on your skin no matter where you are in the city."

Tears spring to her eyes, and she closes them with a shiver, even though the memory flashes behind her eyelids like painted pictures.

The Veil is thin here. Can you feel it on your skin, tingling?

Over three years have passed since that night in Crestwood, but Solas's words still ring in her head, day after day. It isn't even the last time she saw him, but it's the last intimate moment they shared. And the first time he broke her heart. Their kiss as he removed the Anchor was… intimate, certainly. However, he was saving her life; she couldn't exactly enjoy it, not to mention how angry she was with him, how devastated she felt.

She rubs her forehead again, then her cheekbone, as she takes another drag. Her mother had the same vallaslin. She died never knowing the truth. What would proud Lindiranae have thought of Mythal's connection to the Dread Wolf? Kiara has pondered that question countless times. On her way from Wycome to Kirkwall nearly a year ago, she stopped at her mother's tree and explained everything. More, even, than she told the clan, or her father—though her father got more than the rest of them, he still heard less than her dead mother, who couldn't be more than bones by now.

The next time she inhales, it's with a sniffle.

"Fenedhis," she groans and swipes the back of her hand under her nose. This is what she was afraid of.

"I'm sorry, I hate making you cry, dearest," Dorian says, hand squeezing her knee.

"I'm not crying," she says, with tears actively rolling over her cheeks.

Dorian sighs, long-suffering but affectionate. "… Did you come here in the hopes he would be looking for places the Veil is thin?" Kiara sniffles again and wipes her face on her shoulders as she curls up against the glass. The answer is, of course, yes, though it's not the only reason.

"And 'cause Varric offered me a house." When Varric first told her about the Comtesse title at the Exalted Council, she'd laughed and thanked him, but said she would likely never utilize it. Then she went home, and couldn't stay, and couldn't return to Skyhold… the estate in Kirkwall was the only place she had.

Out the window below, various wealthy individuals stroll down the streets of Hightown, wholly unaware of the pair of mages up above. The people of Kirkwall don't exactly look favourably upon mages, but if you're inconspicuous enough, you'll have no trouble. She has a pretty clear picture of what it must have been like when the Circle was still active. Hawke's told enough stories around tavern tables to paint one.

"But you aren't using it."

"I use it sometimes. Charter's agent delivered that letter to the estate," she says, gesturing to the pocket he stowed it in. She takes another puff to stop herself from reaching for it.

"So you brought it with you on your night out. While you were seducing… whoever you seducing."

Her cheeks start to burn, but she presses on, letting the jasmine soothe the hard edges of her grief and embarrassment. "I brought it when I checked in yesterday, and it stayed here, right where I found it this morning."

Dorian purses his lips, obviously not finding this any less egregious.

"I haven't done anything yet. I've just been holding onto it."

"You should ask Charter to handle it. She knows him. She knows how important this is. For you, for the world." He says it like giving up control is such an easy thing to do. It's not like she's ever been the greatest leader; she has no trouble ceding tasks to the people under her command when it comes to most things. But this?

She was near relentless in the years between defeating Corypheus and the Exalted Council. Poor Charter stepped into Leliana's role and was hounded nigh every day for information about Solas. They never found anything, but Kiara kept asking anyway. It's better now, though that likely has to do with the Inquisition's disbanding and its agents being scattered across Thedas. She doesn't even know where Charter is holed up these days, maybe she's not holed up at all, but rather still moving around. That's more likely, actually.

"It's dangerous."

"It is her job."

"And if he kills her?" There aren't many people she trusts personally. It's a fickle thing, after all. Solas hadn't trusted her enough to tell her the truth. She and Charter have never exactly been friends, but the spymaster is… more patient than many people give her credit for. Kiara doesn't know the vast majority of the people who make up the Inquisition's spy network, but Charter does. Charter knows and trusts dozens of people and the intel they gather. Kiara only knows Charter—not her past names or her history, just the person she is today, and she likes that person, trusts that person.

If Kiara asked her to do this herself, and she ended up dead… there's only so much loss a person can take.

"She's too smart to allow that. She'll bring you up if she has to."

Kiara's frown deepens, and she brings the pipe back to her lips. She doesn't like the thought of… the idea of her being used as a shield. But then, she'd rather be used as a shield than discarded as no longer important or necessary or useful.

"Don't give me that look," Dorian chides. "I'm right, and it would save all of us a lot of time if you remembered that."

"Who is "all of us"?"

"All of the people who care about you. Or the world at large. Whichever is more influential. Need I give you a list?"

She shakes her head. "Oh, spare me. I'll write to Charter later today."

Dorian nods his satisfaction and nudges slices of apple around on the tray before plucking one up and taking a bite. "And your cheery clan mate?"

"What does—fine. I'll write to Cordelia too."

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@inquisiorastoria @loreofthedasposts @opheliatrevelyan @priya-san @theluckywizard