Chapter Text
Solas holds his breath as he follows the Seeker into the survivor's cell. His eyes are drawn first to the Anchor inside her hand, the green mark stretching across her palm. It sparks violently, a tiny mirror of the Breach that churns overhead. He looks next at her face, covered by pale, twining marks, that bring to mind crawling vines: the vallaslin that declare her property of Elgar'nan. One of the Dalish, then. Kneeling beside the prisoner on the cold flagstones, Solas reaches out to touch her cheek.
"Can you wake her?" Lady Cassandra Pentaghast's voice is not kind, and it draws Solas back to reality. Quickly, he takes the prisoner's hand instead, examining the Anchor.
"I shall try."
The prisoner is no longer a prisoner when Solas sees her next. She is awake and unshackled, eyes a paler green than her vallaslin and glittering with fear. She holds a staff—she is a mage, and yet the Seeker allowed her a weapon, freed her hands, and this means something that Solas will not, must not think about. He grabs her hand, instead, and helps her seal the rift.
Then the prisoner is Risa of the Lavellan clan, being snapped at by a blustering nobody of the Andrastian Chantry, and with every harsh word of his, she shrinks back a little further towards the Seeker. The Seeker, to Solas's surprise, rallies to the prisoner's defense like a mother bear, insisting that she came willingly.
When they all turn to this lost little Lavellan girl to set their course, her jaw drops. "Me?" she asks, incredulous. "Now you want me to decide?" She looks like a small, fragile child as she stands in a beam of sunlight on the bridge, like a plant afraid to reach for the sun for fear of getting burned. A thought comes to him: as an elf, as a mage, in this uncomfortable, backwards world, no one has ever trusted her with a decision like this.
"You bear the mark," responds the Seeker with such finality that even the Grand Nobody of the Chantry shuts up.
The prisoner surprises him, then. She straightens her shoulders; raises her head high. "I'd like to save your people, but I'm not very familiar with this area," she says, voice soft but no longer afraid. "Varric? Solas? What do you think?" She turns to them; looks down at the dwarf and then up at Solas.
Solas meets her gaze and thinks that Elgar'nan's markings don't suit her at all.
They begin calling the girl the Herald of Andraste while she sleeps. Solas goes in to check on her several times, but again, he is not there when she wakes. He hears the residents of Haven whispering about it, however, and when he runs into her next, she is coming out of the apothecary's house.
To be more accurate, she runs into him.
She is a slight little thing, all skin and bones, and the impact doesn't hurt. The Lavellan girl stammers out an apology, her fingers twisting together. Then: "I wanted to thank you. Lady Cassandra tells me you helped with the mark while I was asleep."
It's so simple for him to think of her as a child. Da'len, he takes to calling her. She comes to speak with him often; asks questions and then listens as intently as if he actually were one of the elders in her clan. He learns from her, indirectly, just how many things the Dalish have managed to get wrong. She is First to her clan's Keeper, and the vallaslin on her face means that she has come of age. The Sylvanwood ring she wears, little Lavellan tells him, is a symbol of her responsibilities to her clan. He asks her how her clan tells the story of the Dread Wolf, because, despite himself, he wants to know. He needs to know.
The story is not a kind one.
They are cruel to the girl in Val Royeaux, but she holds her ground in front of the crowd. She makes no claim to have been chosen by Andraste, but the Breach must be sealed, she insists. "They're just frightened," she tells the Seeker. "They want someone to blame." So they blame the elf, she does not say. She accepts Grand Enchanter Fiona's invitation with utmost courtesy. She leads him, the Seeker, and the dwarf around Val Royeaux on a fool's errand, following a trail of red scraps of fabric. The elf they lead to, this Red Jenny, makes such a spectacularly terrible first impression that Solas revises his opinion of the Lavellan girl on the spot. Placed beside Sera, the difference is startling.
This is what his people have come to, Solas thinks. At least the Dalish are trying. Sera, it seems, couldn't care less. And yet the Lavellan girl welcomes her into the Inquisition with open arms.
The Lavellan girl goes to attend a party and returns with a woman Solas immediately cannot stand. Madame de Fer is a Circle mage to the bone, and so it astonishes Solas that the Lavellan girl manages to find any common ground between them—but somehow she does. Madame de Fer is a Knight-Enchanter, and when Solas catches her demonstrating a staff technique to the Lavellan girl in the training yard, there is a strange, wavering moment where he feels... envious? That can't be right.
The more Solas learns of the Qun, the more angry it makes him. The Iron Bull is Qunari to the core. Hissrad, he is called. Liar. And yet the Lavellan girl welcomes the Qunari spy into the Inquisition, along with his Chargers, and Solas supposes he will just have to get used to this.
Something about the Qunari spy unnerves him, and it takes Solas some time to place it: Hissrad is good at what he does, and even Solas has trouble reading him.
"Where were you, elf?" The soldier's tone draws Solas closer. The man stands near Haven's siege equipment, dressed in the battered uniform of the Inquisition, looming over a slender figure. Solas can see the tips of her ears through her brown hair. The soldier continues: "I sent for lunch an hour ago! Have you been lazing about all this time?" The elven servant is shaking. Solas storms forward.
"Do you know who I am?" the servant asks. Her voice is gentle, and Solas recognizes her at the same time as the soldier does.
"My lady Herald, forgive me, I didn't mean," he begins, off-balance.
"My name is Risa, but that shouldn't matter." Risa Lavellan has stopped trembling; her voice is kind and calm. Seeing that she has the situation under control, Solas backs off before he is seen, slipping behind a tree to listen.
"If I'd known it was you," the soldier starts, then falls silent as Risa smoothly interrupts him.
"Perhaps, if you treated everyone with equal respect, you would never find yourself in a situation like this. Come."
"My lady Herald?"
"You've been waiting to eat, haven't you? I'll come with you. Shall we?"
Solas presses his back against the tree, holding his breath as the two of them pass by him. Risa has taken the soldier's arm, and Solas wonders how he ever could have thought of her as a child.