Can you do reactions of the dai companions for an elven Inquisitor who likes to climb to the highest point they can to watch the sky when they're upset or overwhelmed because it reminds them of the mountains they grew up in?
I can definitely do that! What a sweet idea, different from the usual forest-dwelling Dalish. (Also, infinitely sorry to whoever doesn’t want to see these but they show up on your dash and you have to spend ages scrolling past.) This is some time during Inquisition, not when the romances have entirely finished up. Also went off topic at times! Sorry!
He’d very much prefer that the Inquisitor, their saviour, the only person with the magical glowing green hand, didn’t climb to absurd heights and endanger themselves more than already necessary.
He understands they’re a person before they’re a leader, and he wishes that could be acknowledged more. But still. Couldn’t they get a nice painting of some mountains instead?
“Too much?” He asks, careful to make his footsteps heavier.
He’s seen her up here many times on her balcony, legs swinging off the side and eyes looking out somewhere further than the mountains. Yet still he gets flashes of her startling at his voice and slipping off of the edge. The thought of it sends his heart beating hard.
He prefers to avoid the possibility.
“Too much,” she agrees quietly, not looking away from that distance he can’t see.
It pains him still that she is the one who has to sit in judgement of all the criminals and prisoners that end up in the Inquisition’s hands. Josephine tries to make it easier, he knows, but still. She already has too many lives resting on her.
He walks over to her slowly, almost reaching out to touch but stops himself. He sits facing inwards, knowing it’s so he could catch her easier and berating himself for the worry.
Cullen rests his hand, hesitantly, near her thigh. I’m here if you need me, he hopes it says. And not, I’m stealing your time whether you like it or not. He fears intruding on these private moments. He should be satisfied to simply watch- he is satisfied to simply watch. Following the lines of her profile with the white winter sun behind it. The curve of her nose, the sharp jut of her pointed ear.
Still, something warm and sweet seeps into his lungs when he feels her shaking hand rest gently on top of his. He leans across to press a kiss to her temple, and when she’s ready to come back, she does so tucked under his arm.
He wants to see how far they can climb, and promptly regrets it when he does. Them stood there, wobbling on one leg, arms stretched out for the balance on a rocky outcrop who-knows-how-far-from-the-ground would be impressive. If he wasn’t near soiling himself from fear.
He begs them to come down.
He wakes up to the cold and groans into the pillow. Cold because the furs have fallen off, cold because she’s not there, cold because of where she’s gone. Cold because she always leaves those bloody doors open.
He stands with a sigh, dresses with the practised precision of a man who’s spent plenty of the time on the road. Time still feels like a luxury. Time is a luxury, he knows, though he wishes it wasn’t.
He looks at her as he tugs a loose shirt over his head. She’s still in her bedclothes, thin and translucent. He can see the lines of her figure beneath it. His annoyance melts like honey in tea; he pads softly across the room and to the balcony with a blanket in hand.
She must feel his presence before she sees him, because when he’s a step behind her she turns. Her face is streaked with tears, eyes red, mouth in a wobbling line that makes his heart twist. He opens his arms and she falls into them, her entire body shaking with sobs that become harder when her wraps the blanket around her.
Blackwall can hear it in the loud, broken sounds she makes. Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.
He allows them to sink to the ground slowly, pulls her legs over his lap and tucks her against his chest like a child. Drags his fingers through her hair, across her scalp, feels the hotness of her tears through his shirt.
Despite himself, staring at the mountains that meant so much to her, the cool greys and blues and biting air, he cries quietly with her.
His plans are going to unravel because they’ll fall from a cliff and their hand will be far too broken and splattered to close any more rifts.
He makes peace with it. He’ll call it fate.
The quiet of the Emerald Graves at dawn is a relaxing one. Solas doesn’t often rise first, but he finds some appreciation for the ethereal peace that lives in a waking forest.
The fire is already going, a decent lot of porridge bubbling at the side of it. Their clothes are washed and dry. He wonders, in the back of his mind, whether these were her duties while she was with her clan or if she simply did them because they needed to be done. Either way, she was up and had wandered.
He shrugs off the last aching dredges of sleep, eyes scanning until- ah. Yes.
The rocky outcrop is close enough to the camp to be his best best, and it proves to be the right one. When he reaches the top, panting a little from early morning exertion, it’s to the sight of her watching him.
“You could have just asked me to climb down, Solas,” she says, the edge of a smile gracing her face.
He huffs, brushing himself down and furrowing his eyebrows. “Do not even joke.”
“Is everyone up? Am I needed? Because if not, I’d like to just rest for a-”
“Everyone’s still asleep, vhenan,” he says, feeling heavy and clumsy at the way the word trips over his lips. Her head ducks downward at the acknowledgement. Adorable, he thinks, admonishes himself for it as she lies back down into the grass. He follows suit beside her.
“I feel claustrophobic, in here,” she says eventually, and he can hear the slight shortness of her breath. “Not able to see the sky past the canopy, not really. I don’t understand how… Why, some of the clans adore forests so much.”
He reaches out and holds her hand, gently.
“Close your eyes,” he orders, squeezing her fingers. When she does, he tells her every story of mountains and sky he knows.
A Dalish, elven, heights-loving Inquisitor who seemed entirely unaware of anyone’s concern or suggestions about perhaps not hopping the battlements like stepping stones in a duck pond.
She is going to die from stress. She knows it.
“No,” Josephine gasps, eyes bright with mirth.
“I’m being honest, I swear,” the Inquisitor says, hands and face animated as they tell the story excitedly. “So there I am, six years old and fighting off an eagle large enough to carry me because, of course, wanted some of its eggs for breakfast.”
“Of course,” she interjects, pressing her eyes with the bottom of her palms, delighted.
“I managed to hit it with a rock, which appeared to stun it for around ten seconds. I grab two eggs as trophies and absolutely leg it until I reach a cave small enough I can hide in and it can’t reach me.”
“Oh, no, never. I was there for two days. An egg for each, I suppose. I still can’t hear large birds without having a nervous breakdown,” they say, their eyes becoming light as they look around. Josephine had searched for days for this spot, just a little out of Skyhold. Warmed by the sun with hardy winter wildflowers.
Softness in the strangest places, she thinks absently, staring at her love in silence.
“Caw,” she finally says, grinning, and giggles as they kneel over her, giving warm kisses that tasted of bread and jam between fits of laughter.
“Higher! The higher you go, the better you’ll feel!”
“Oi, mountain goat,” she calls, eyes bright when she sets sight on the Inquisitor sat with her legs hanging through the gaps on the railings. She always manages to get to the weirdest places - especially in Skyhold - so finding her on the balcony is a bit of a relief.
Climbing up to the roof of the keep takes way too long.
The Inquisitor turns, an eyebrow raised at the nickname.
“Does that make you just a goat?”
Sera snorts, flouncing down beside her with an exaggerated grunt and sliding her legs through the gaps next to her. They sit in quiet for a while, playing footsie over the drop below them before Sera lays flat on the rocky floor.
She likes it here. Even though it’s fucking freezing. Quizzy’s got a lot of stories, and even if some are a bit too elfy for her to like, a lot are funny. She loves picturing a little version of Inky running around the mountains getting into shit. Makes her think of the funny stuff she did when she was that little.
Would they have been friends? Part of her can imagine two raggedy kids becoming best friends, yeah, but another can imagine them trying to tear at each other’s throats. She’s glad they met when they did, at least.
“So, why are we up here today?” Sera asks when the Inquisitor lowers herself so she’s laid down too. Her chest inflates and deflates shakily, and she looks away for a moment before turning back with a little smile. Her hand reaches out and fusses with Sera’s hair until they’re both laughing.
“More stuff with my clan, that’s all.”
The for now hangs in the air, and Sera wants to shove an arrow through it. Watching the Inquisitor hurt is like feeling herself hurt, and she really frigging hates it.
She can’t think of anything to do but pull the Inquisitor closer, kissing her forehead, her cheek, her lips. Making her giggle when it tickles and… Other things, too, and making her forget. Just for now. Don’t need any mountains for that.
They’re like a cat with hands and a title that can get them most places.
Unstoppable, to say the least. He’d find it endearing, if he wasn’t feeling dizzy just from watching.
“Did it take you long to figure out where I was?” The Inquisitor asks jokingly, looking over his shoulder at Dorian. The tired circles under his eyes make him wince. As much as the Tevinter mage might encourage him to sleep and rest, it will never be enough as long as his duties are so heavy and cruel.
“If you want more alone time, perhaps you should find a new hiding spot.”
The Inquisitor laughed at him, gently. “As if I want time away from you, vhenan.”
The endearment is as sweet and strange as when he first used it, almost makes his steady steps hiccup as he walks to stand beside him. They’re quiet for a long time, staring out at the massive rocks landscape.
“You’ve worked yourself thin,” Dorian says, eyes dragging over to the comforting constant lines of his love’s vallaslin.
The Inquisitor reaches out, a tired smile on his face, and brushes a loose hair away from Dorian’s forehead. It hovers there for a moment as if he’s uncertain whether he wants to touch his jaw too before the arm joins his other folded on the railing.
“Find me an alternative and I’ll gladly take it.”
The words sound so bitter that Dorian almost flinches. Honesty. Finally. If only I had one.
“Run away, perhaps? Somewhere no one will expect us. Somewhere horrid.”
“Somehow that makes this look ideal,” he groans. The Inquisitor’s laugh makes everything seem brighter, before he turns solemn again.
“It is ideal. I like it here. The work has it’s moments. And I… I like you here, Dorian,” he confesses, “I just… Need a little more of the latter.”
She feels like a mother to a very small, very capable, very quick child. It is making her grey, she feels fairly certain of it.
“GET DOWN,” is now her most commonly yelled phrase.
“He caged her with his arms, his gaze smouldering and dark upon her own. She could feel his body pressed against her. ‘We shouldn’t,’ she whispers, ‘we cannot d-’”
Cassandra propped herself up with one arm, eyes narrowed.
“It takes me entirely out of the moment when you do that high pitched voice for the women,” she complained. The Inquisitor was propped up against a tree, the only one that rested at the crest of the hill they had climbed. He laughed brightly at her.
“But it’s what makes it fun.”
“We are not doing it for fun,” she interjects, smiling despite herself. She does that now, she finds- smiles simply because he is there. “We are doing it so you feel better.”
His face straightened, mock serious.
“Ah, yes. I forgot this is entirely for my benefit.”
“Good literature can soothe most ills.”
Not that this counts as particularly sophisticated, she admitted to herself, solidified when he lifted the book to show off the spectacularly smutty cover. But it was so he felt better, though she hoped her company was doing that more than the smut.
She had found him atop the hill that morning. The day before had been… Poor. Death. Caves. It had been alarming, watching the colour and life drain from his face every moment. It glowed with colour now. A book, some food, warm sun, company- and their height, of course, helped. Anything with a view, she had found.
“I know what would make me feel better,” he says, rolling over her, caging her with his arms. She pressed her lips together, cheeks reddening.
He’s entirely encouraging of whatever helps the Inquisitor cope. He’s a little too heavy to get to where they do, though, so he’s pretty fine with staying on the ground.
The Iron Bull (romanced):
He finds their lithe frame, their strong arms, their ability to scale a cliff face and leap ravines like he walks a path… Hot, obviously. Burning, scalding, white hot.
And heartbreaking, sometimes.
The dragon corpse behind them was steaming, smoking, half buried under the approaching tide, and when he turned to call out something to the Inquisitor -probably about what he wanted to do with them later- they hadn’t been there.
They’d been scaling the rocks beside the fight, blindly, slipping and nearly falling from the wetness of the surface. It was slick with seaweed and limpets, breaking apart and shifting, packed with seagull nests.
Impossible to climb really, but even as he yelled it up to them, they ignored it. In the end, he has to climb as high as he has to before he can grip their waist and drag them off like some stubborn cat that had dug its claws in. They thrash wildly, and he loses grip and ends up breaking their fall with his body.
“Kadan- Kadan, what the fuck are you doing-” They don’t seem particularly interested in listening, still trying to pull away from him. Then he sees it, the tears, the glazed eyes, the broken doll fighting. He knows it. “Kadan!”
He says it sharply, digging his nails into their waist until the shock of pain seems to drag them back. Their breathing is hysteric, their eyes are wild, but they’re there.
“What were you seeing?” He asks, bluntly but kindly, a hand brushing their cold, seawater crusted cheek. Holding their head still, so they had to look into his eyes.
“The dragon. Corypheus’ dragon. Him. Haven- everything was on fire, I just wanted to be up there- I wanted to get away from the smoke, be in the sky, Bull, I-” they heave in a breath, tears flowing unbidden, sobs racking them and he pulls them gently to his chest.
“I know,” he says roughly against the top of their head, holding them both steady with his arms. “I’m here. I know.”
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