Unlearning Fear

Dalton Hawke can’t decide whether it’s a beautiful morning or not.

The arguments for yes: the sky is vast and open, barely a single wisp of cloud breaking up the swathe of pale blue-grey. The high walls of Skyhold keep out the worst of the wind, and the air is fresh from the dawn, cool and bracing in Dalton’s throat. The fortress is alive with life, the sun making the green and russet leaves translucent, the courtyards thrumming with activity and chatter.

The arguments for no: he slept badly, his dreams a nonsensical and really rather unpleasant blur of Templars and darkspawn and multiple raging Arishoks. And more importantly, every face here is unfamiliar, and they’ll stay unfamiliar until he can find Varric, which doesn’t seem likely to happen any time soon. Perhaps he’ll be better at navigating the keep after a week or two here, but for now, the place is worse than a maze. Standing in the courtyard, surrounded by strangers, with no idea which way it is to the tavern where he agreed to meet Varric… it’s hard not to feel lost, and apart, and alone.

He sighs, turning in a slow circle in an attempt to get his bearings. He’s  in the lower courtyard, he’s sure of that, and he’s standing near one of the stairways that leads up to the walltops. Is the tavern in the upper courtyard, and did he simply walk right past it? He’s been called dreamer and cloudcuckoolander enough times in his life to know it’s certainly possible.

Really, he should just ask for directions, but… well, he’s always been bad at approaching strangers. The very thought makes his insides knot into a ball of tension and reluctance, and yes, it’s ridiculous for the man who faced down the Arishok and Knight-Commander Meredith to be defeated by shyness, but there it is. And it doesn’t help that he’s spent the last few years on the run. Anders has been his only constant company, and they’ve never been far from each other’s sides. He’s become used to it being just the two of them. Partners, allies, comrades, lovers – two apostate mages, covering each other’s backs, each of them all the other had. To suddenly be thrust back into a world filled with people after years in the wilderness, and to be there without the man he loves, the man who’s rarely been more than a few metres away from him for so long… it’s unnerving. And worrying. Not just because of how lonely it feels, but because -

‘You’re afraid for him.’

The voice is a man’s – a young man’s - and it’s soft, with a strange, almost fragile element to it. Dalton feels the hairs on his arms prick, and he knows that it isn’t from the cold. Whoever spoke to him echoed his thoughts, as surely as if they had opened his mind and peered inside, and that… that isn’t normal.

He turns, slowly, to see a man leaning against the wall a little way away from him. A man – or a boy? It’s hard to be sure; Dalton can’t see much of the face behind the overlarge hat and the mop of pale hair.

‘You’re afraid that they’ll find him – or that he’ll find them,’ the stranger says,  in the same quiet, light voice. ‘You made him a promise. I’ll stand beside you. You’ll never be alone. But now he is alone, except he’s never alone, because he’s two people and the two are one, and they’ve hurt people together.’ A frown furrows the boy’s brow. ‘Duty has hands, one on every limb. Tugging, twisting, tearing the tendons. Pulling in too many directions, pulling to tear everything apart. His absence is a presence, aching like an old wound.’

‘Well… yes.’ Dalton finds himself nodding; there doesn’t seem to be any other sensible response he can give. ‘Yes, that’s how I feel. That’s it exactly.’

The boy pushes himself away from the wall and moves forward, squinting up at Dalton from under the brim of his hat. ‘Anders understands. You know he does, and you know…’ His brow furrows in concentration. ‘You know Justice will keep him safe. It’s easy to remember the bad things  - blue fire bleeding through the skin, bellowing against the world’s deafness, flames on the horizon as the city burns. But justice protects as much as it punishes.’

The strange boy is right, Dalton realises. He had to choose – stay with Anders and keep him safe, or answer Varric’s message and help to keep the world safe. Coming here was the right thing to do, hard as it is. And Justice… yes, he can cause so much harm, but if the Templars come, he will defend Anders to the death of them both. There’s no use in worrying. All he can do is to stay here and help however he can.

Dalton looks more closely at the boy, and feels a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. ‘And what are you, my friend? Only a spirit could know my thoughts like that. But you’re very different from the other spirit I know.’

The boy nods vigorously. ‘Justice is hard. I’m not like hard things. I’m Cole. I… I help. I hear the thoughts that hurt, and I try to stop them screaming. I like it when people forget why they wanted to scream.’

‘Mercy, then.’ Very different from Justice, indeed. ‘Or… compassion.’

‘Yes. I’m compassion.’ A pause. ‘I try to be compassion.’

‘It’s an admirable thing to be.’

‘So are you. The eyes are always on you or looking for you, and you want to hide, but you don’t. You always remember – grey hand closing around her, blood on the stones. Stitches in the neck and wrong eyes in the face. Back turned to you, head bowed, he thought you’d kill him for weeks and weeks and he didn’t say.’ The boy - Cole - shakes his head slightly. ‘It hurts when you wear it on the outside, so you pull it in and keep it quiet, but it doesn’t go away. It would be easier if you ran away from it all, but you didn’t.’

‘How could I?’ There’s a painful lump in Dalton’s throat, and he tries to swallow it down. ‘The world’s burning. I have to help.’

‘Like me!’ Cole’s face is lit with eagerness for a second before suddenly flashing into a look of concern. ‘I made you remember. I made it all hurt again. I didn’t mean to. I can make you forget –’

‘No, it’s all right. It’s nothing I can’t live with.’ Dalton does his best to smile. ‘You can’t do anything else with these things, can you?’

The grey eyes are wide and serious. ‘You help yourself by helping, because you like it when they stop hurting, even when it hurts you. You’d set yourself on fire if it meant you could be a beacon. The hawk is really a nightingale, but so few see.’

The spirit boy turns on the spot, craning his neck back to look up at the battlements. ‘She needs to hear you sing.’

‘She?’

‘They tried to take her smile,’ he whispers. ‘Horns showing through, little black jewels under the skin. Father’s hand in her hair, ruffling, voice smiling, you’re a big girl now. Laughing, light in her eyes, I always was! But they come, grey bodies against grey dawn light, mother screams like no one should scream and then she’s not screaming, and the silence is worse. And then there’s a saw, cutting off her hope with her horns. Iron threads through her lips, caging the songs and the screams.’

Dalton shivers, and he has a feeling it isn’t from the cold. ‘Oh. You mean… the Inquisitor’s sister?’

‘Meraad.’ Cole breathes out the name. ‘They named her for the sea. She used to like it, but now she thinks it’s all wrong. She doesn’t feel like the waves, because the waves are strong and the waves tear down the rocks. She feels like the drop of water that falls into the ocean and gets lost.’

‘The Inquisitor told me about her. He said to stay quiet around her and not disturb her. He said… the Qunari took her, when she was a child. She lived with them for years. A saarebas.’

Cole nods. ‘Dangerous thing. Place for a demon to use as a home, like a crab that creeps inside a shell and carries it off. Not a person. Mask over her eyes, collar at her neck, chains on her hands, rubbing the skin raw. Always eyes watching. They tell her she’ll hurt people, and she believes it.’

‘Yes,’ Dalton says stiffly. ‘Mages tend to get that rather a lot.’

He thinks of the saarebas he saw in Kirkwall, the one Petrice told him to escort, the one he tried so hard to save and couldn’t. He watched with wide, horrified eyes as the Qunari stood on the sand and sent flame running through his own body. Another pointless death, on top of all the men he and his friends had just killed in an attempt to protect this man. Soft-hearted thing that he was, he’d had to drop to the back of the party so that no one would see him crying as they walked back. Anders seemed to notice anyway, though, because he fell back too and walked alongside him. They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to.

Cole turns back to him. ‘She read the book. Her brother gave it to her. Every night, breathless eyes on the pages. The words sink in and stay, words about a man who fought the Arishok with spells.’

A smile flickers across Dalton’s face. ‘She read The Tale of the Champion?’

This is met by another nod, and suddenly the spirit is speaking words Dalton recognises, words penned by Varric’s hand. ‘Wasn’t your own mother killed by a mage?’ Hawke closed his eyes, forced his fists to uncurl and drew in a breath. ‘I’d appreciate it if you left my mother out of this, Knight-Commander,’ he said, and he was vaguely worried by the fact that there was a slight tremor to his voice. ‘Magic didn’t kill her – a man did that. Magic on its own is not evil or wrong. I hate that murderer’s actions, but not his magic. How could I, without hating my own? And I… I refuse to hate my own magic, Knight-Commander. It’s part of who I am, part of how the Maker created me, and I trust in his plan.’’

Cole is silent for a moment. ‘Varric writes you.’

‘Varric manages to get everyone right, somehow.’ A snort escapes him. ‘That’s when he’s not exaggerating, that is.’

‘She read those words and her mind drank them in. Hugging the book to her chest, crying and smiling, suddenly hoping. Hawke is brave and kind and he isn’t ashamed of what he is. He isn’t afraid. He fights back the demons, he doesn’t let him take him. And he frees the mages! He fights to free them like Talan fought to free me. Brother’s hands deft and practiced, opening the locks. Father’s blood buys us time to run. Freed from the chains, but not from the fear.’

 ‘The Inquisitor rescued her himself?’ Dalton’s eyebrows shoot up his forehead. ‘I don’t know that. Maker’s breath, to sneak into Qunari lands and free one of their Saarebas…’

And, apparently, to lose your father while doing it, he adds silently. Talan Adaar is a man who commands respect, with his quiet, confident manner and imposing figure, and Dalton knew from the moment he saw him that this was someone he’d be glad to fight alongside. To know that the Inquisitor lost a family too, that he risked everything to save his sister…

Suddenly, Adaar feels less like an example of the shining hero Dalton could never be no matter how hard he tried, and more like a kindred spirit. Someone who fought and hurt and bled and, sometimes, lost.

‘She needs to unlearn the fear.’ The spirit’s voice is almost fierce now. Insistent. ‘I’ve tried to help her. Listening to the pain and drawing it out, telling her the things she needs to hear and making her forget that I told her. I’ve made her ready to stop being afraid, but I can’t teach her how to control what scares her.’

Dalton has to run this statement through his mind a few times before he understands. ‘Her magic is what scares her. And you can’t teach her to control it, because you’re not a mage.’

‘Yes. She’s afraid, and you can help her. Like Bethany after father died. Huddled in the corner, afraid to sleep, because how can she keep the demons away without him to tell her how? Holding her close, her tears on your shoulder. You’re stronger than they are.’

Yes, Bethany was so very scared. But at least she’d had years learning how to keep herself safe. It’s a miracle, really, that the poor Qunari girl’s lasted this long. None of her family were mages; the Inquisitor’s weapons are a pair of daggers and an array of grenades, not a staff and a fireball. Her parents couldn’t teach her how to resist demons and keep her spells under control, the way Dalton’s father taught him and Bethany. Even her time as a Saarebas would have taught her little; Qunari  mages aren’t taught, as Circle mages are.

‘She resists because she hides,’ Cole says. ‘The demons come in dreams and offer things, but she’s always too afraid to listen. She should fight from strength, not fear. I can’t help her to do that. I don’t know how.’

‘I do.’ Dalton adjusts his fur collar, looking up at the walltops. ‘I’ll talk to her. See if I can help.’

Cole gives him a fleeting smile. ‘Good. You should forget this now. You’ll be happier about it that way. If you remember I told you to help, you’ll tell yourself that I was the one who did it, not you, and you shouldn’t, because you were the one who did the helping.’

Dalton frowns. ‘No, wait. There’s no need to – ’

The spirit raises his hand, and there’s a burst of something smoky, like fog, and Dalton blinks and shudders –

And it’s a beautiful morning, really, and there’s no need to worry. Anders will be all right; he knows he has to lie low until Dalton comes back. He won’t go getting himself into his normal trouble. For now, this is where Dalton needs to be, helping Varric and the Inquisition deal with Corypheus. This is the right thing to do.

He lets out a long breath, smiling at how it crystallises into mist, and glances up at the battlements. He’d like to walk there, he decides. More than that, he feels like he should walk there. Like he needs to, for… for some reason he can’t remember. He feels that maybe someone told him to, though he can’t recall who it might have been. Well, it hardly matters – it’s a lovely clear day, and the view will be beautiful from the ramparts, and it’ll be calming, taking a walk along them.

So he hurries up the steps, keeping his pace brisk to ward off the cold, occasionally huffing out a long breath to watch how it turns to steam (even all these years later, he still thinks the best thing about winter is that you can pretend to be a dragon.) On reaching the top of the walls, he turns left, because he read somewhere once that most people turn right when given the choice, and he likes to be different.

For perhaps a minute, Dalton strolls along the ramparts, admiring the fierce beauty of the jagged mountain slopes that ring the fortress. And then, as he rounds a corner, he hears the unmistakable sound of a sob.

It’s a woman’s voice, and, turning on the spot, Dalton can see where it came from. Sitting at the base of the wall, hugging her knees against her chest, is a young Qunari. It’s the first time he’s seen a female Qunari; all the troops the Arishok brought with him to Kirkwall were soldiers, and thus male. She’s still a head taller than he is, but she’s nowhere near as bulky as the other Qunari he’s seen. There’s some fragile about her – not about her figure, exactly. It’s something in the way her head is pressed against her legs, her face hidden.

In a broad circle around her, the battlements are covered in frost. And though the morning is cold, and much of the stone is iced over, this frost is different. Unnatural. It’s thick and jagged, tinted slightly blue. It was made by magic, not by nature.

Dalton looks back down at the Qunari girl, and understands. This is the Inquisitor’s sister, the mage. The one who was captured in her youth by the Qunari, and imprisoned, kept as a saarebaas, rescued by her brother. Her name is… Meraad. He feels like someone reminded him of it recently, though he can’t for the life of him remember who.

She’s trembling. Dalton can just hear the ragged, gulping sounds she’s making, sounds halfway between gasps and sobs. It’s a sound he’s heard before. It’s the sound that Bethany used to make, when she woke up after a dream where demons came to haunt her, holding out temptations she barely managed to resist. He could never hear it without running to her and putting an arm around her shoulder. And now, as then, he finds it impossible to ignore.

He doesn’t like talking to strangers. But when the strangers need his help, then suddenly it becomes easy.

So he draws in a breath and walks over to her, making sure that she can hear the sound of his footfalls. Her shoulders tense, but she doesn’t lift her head. Dalton crouches beside her, a short distance away so that she doesn’t feel threatened, and smiles gently.

‘It’s scary, isn’t it?’ he murmurs. ‘When your magic bursts out like that. Used to happen to me all the time.’

And still does, sometimes, he adds silently, thinking of the moment that his mother’s body – if it could even be called her body after what that madman did to her – went still in his arms. He remembers how he pressed his face into his hands and screamed, brokenly and desperately, and fire burst from him, a thin sheet of flame that rushed out from him, scorched his companions’ boots, and blackened every wooden floorboard.

Yes, even the best of mages lose control from time to time.

Meraad raises her head at last and turns to face him. She’s very like her brother to look at – same iron-grey skin, same sea-blue eyes, same white hair, though hers is worn long and loose, falling over her neck and shoulders. The great glaring difference is that her horns are perhaps only a hand-length long, ending in knotty lumps where they were sawn off years ago. And then there’s the ring of scars around her mouth, where the Qunari sewed her lips shut. Vaguely, Dalton wonders how saarebas even eat, but he pushes the thought aside. It’s hardly the most pressing issue right now.

The blue eyes fix onto his, and widen. Her lips part. She knows who he is, then.

‘I’m Dalton, Dalton Hawke. I… I expect you’ve heard of me, most people have read Varric’s book by now.’ He smiles at her. ‘It’s Meraad Adaar, isn’t it?’

She swallows, stares at him for a moment, then nods.

‘A pleasure to meet you.’ Dalton decides not to hold out his hand – from the way she’s still shrinking into herself, he doubts she’d take it. ‘You know, I still have trouble with my magic sometimes. A few weeks ago, I was out collecting water when a deer broke cover a little way away from me. Loudly, lots of crashing and snorting. I panicked and, um, accidentally froze the river. Anders and I had to spend about ten minutes melting it with fire magic before we could get a drink. He hit me with his staff and called me a donkey.’

The faintest of smiles flickers across Meraad’s scarred mouth.

‘When I was little, my father made me do little exercises every day, so that I could keep it all in control.’ Dalton settles himself down, crossing his legs and leaning his back against the wall – which is nightmarishly cold, but it’ll soon warm up. ‘He’d put a pinecone on the table and tell me to burn it without burning the table. My mother hated it – you should have heard her arguing with Father. ‘Malcolm, you moron, we live in a wooden house!’ I never did burn the house down, but the table did end up with quite a few scorch marks. And I once almost killed the dog, but other than that, I’d call my training a success.’

At this, Meraad makes a small, stifled sound that might just be the beginnings of a laugh.

‘I suppose no one ever taught you exercises like that, did they?’ Dalton says. ‘Your parents weren’t mages, and the Qunari –’

He stops, because as soon as he says the word Qunari, she ducks her head, drawing it closer to her body.

Dalton bites his lip – this will be the hard part. ‘I know it doesn’t change anything, Meraad, but I’m sorry for what they put you through. I’m sorry that they taught you nothing but fear. But believe me, they were wrong about you. Whatever they told you about yourself, they were wrong.’

There’s a long silence, broken only by faint sounds of voices from the courtyard. Meraad’s eyes slip shut.

‘You met a saarebas.’ Her voice is so quiet that Dalton has to inch closer in order to hear her. ‘In Kirkwall. You tried to save him.’

Her speech is ever so slightly stilted, as if the words are foreign and strange in her mouth – Dalton has a suspicion that she’s unused to speaking any language other than Qunlat, or, indeed, to speaking at all. But he still understands, so he nods. ‘Yes. I did.’

‘But he killed himself.’ Her arms wrap around her chest, and grip tight. ‘They told us, you are… saar. If you are let free, you will hurt people. That’s why he set himself on fire. Because if you are Qunari and a mage, you are taught to be afraid of yourself.’

‘I know,’ Dalton says. ‘And it’s wrong.’

‘Are you afraid?’

Dalton frowns, turning the question over in his mind. ‘No, I don’t think I am. Not of myself, and not of my magic. I can be afraid of what it might cause. I’m afraid of hurting people, but not very much, because I’ve been taught how to control my magic so it never happens. I’m afraid of demons, but I was taught how to resist them. You see… being unafraid doesn’t just come to you. It’s something you have to learn.’

A shudder runs thought Meraad’s frame. ‘Why didn’t they teach me?’

‘Because…’ Dalton bites his lip. ‘Because they’re not mages, Meraad. That’s why the Qunari and the Circles keep getting it wrong, because the people who decide what mages are taught aren’t mages themselves, and they don’t know what it’s like to be us. They’re afraid of us. So they teach us to be afraid, so we are, and then… then we’re not as strong, because we find it harder to keep everything in control. And when we’re afraid, demons can tempt us more easily, because we think it’s a way out.’

‘Do you dream demons?’

‘I dream of demons a lot, yes. Sloth demons, mostly. They offer me a vision of a safe home, with all of my family alive. I’m cooking dinner and my mother’s watching to make sure I’m doing it right, and Carver’s playing with the dog and Bethany and Father are reading books, and Anders is there with me and no one has a problem with it, and there are no Templars and everything’s perfect. It’s very tempting to stay, to just not question anything and be… slothful, I suppose. Desire demons like to offer me the same thing. But after a while, you get used to questioning everything, and it doesn’t take much to remember that everyone I’m seeing is dead but for Carver and Anders, and Carver’s with the Wardens, and Anders and I aren’t safe, not yet. Once you remember it’s not real, you can escape.’

Her eyes widen slightly. ‘I see that too, but, different. They show me home. With mother and father and my brother. Everything is as it was, except… I have no magic.’

Dalton nods slowly, and lets out a sigh. ‘You know, Bethany used to be scared of her magic, too.’

‘Did she stop?’

‘Being afraid? No, but she got better over time. It just took a lot of practice. A lot of learning.’

Meraad turns her head away. ‘I don’t know what to learn.’

‘And how can you, if no one teaches you?’ Dalton clambers to his feet. ‘Let me show you something I used to do with Bethany.’

For a moment, Meraad remains still, and he wonders if she’s not going to move. But then she breathes in deeply, grasps the edge of the battlements, and pulls herself to her feet.

‘This was always most fun on days when it snowed,’ Dalton tells her. ‘But we can do it with ice magic, too. Here, I’ll show you.’

He raises his hands, spreading his fingers out into the cool air, and reaching within himself for that ever-present spark of power. It’s the power that made a Qunari raiding party decide that a mage Vashoth couldn’t live near their territory, and made them wrench her away from her family and clap her in chains. It’s the power that made his family live on the run, and almost destroyed Dalton’s friendship with his own brother. It’s the power that made a war ignite in Kirkwall and spread out across all of northern Thedas, the power that so, so many are afraid of.

But all Dalton does with that power is to create a shower of snowflakes.

He throws the ice magic upwards, so that it hovers in the air for a moment before spiralling down around him and his Qunari companion, white flakes settling on his fur collar and her dark cloth jacket. Glancing at her, he sees that her eyes are round, and her mouth slightly open. One tentative hand reaches up, dabbing one of the snowflakes from the air.

She can’t have seen much snow in her life, Dalton thinks, growing up in Rivain, near the Qunari lands. And here in Ferelden, she’ll only have seen the bad side of it – the wet and cold and uncomfortable side, not the beautiful side.

But now there’s a definite smile on Meraad’s face, and the look in her eyes is one of wonder.

‘This is what Bethany and I used to do,’ Dalton says quietly, and curls his fingers around a flame spell. Fire magic always did seem to come naturally to him, and he barely even needs to concentrate to direct it where he wants. It leaps upwards, shattering into a shower of red-hot sparks, each one colliding with a snowflake and melting it into a raindrop with a hiss and a tiny cloud of steam.

‘The idea,’ Dalton explains, casting another cloud of snow, ‘is to get the fire spell precise enough to melt the snowflakes before they hit the ground.’

Meraad gives a single, slow nod, and turns her hand so that her palm faces upward. Her brow furrows with focus, and slowly, a single tongue of fire twists into being in her hand. With slow, cautious movements, she lifts it upwards, touching the tip of the flame to a single snowflake.

‘It’s not really about control. It’s about learning to be comfortable.’ Dalton stands back, watching as Meraad’s spell grows brighter and stronger with every flake she melts. ‘The worst thing you can do when you have magic is to not use it. If it isn’t natural to you, you forget how to make it work, and then you become afraid of it and maybe people get hurt. But it’s so easy to stop that from happening. By letting it all come naturally, and… by not being afraid.’

Frowning, Meraad raises her other hand and throws a handful of ice magic into the air. It’s not as refined as Dalton’s spell – instead of myriad tiny flakes, she creates a score of little snowballs, each about the size of a thumbnail, which don’t float to the ground so much as plummet. A few smack into Dalton’s face, and he stumbles back with a laugh, brushing them away.

‘Sorry,’ Meraad whispers.

‘Oh, no need to be sorry. We all need to start somewhere, and I wouldn’t be Fereldan if I couldn’t put up with being cold and wet.’ Dalton smiles at her. ‘Try it again.’

She does so, and this time the snowballs are a little smaller. A few more tries, and finally she casts a plume of snowflakes, moving her hand with lightning speed to touch them all with her little flame before they fall to the ground.

‘I tend to find,’ Dalton says, ‘that it’s harder to be afraid of something when it’s beautiful. And magic really is beautiful, don’t you think?’

Meraad gazes up at her little cloud of snow, then down at the bright amber light dancing in her palm.

‘Yes,’ she murmurs. ‘It is.’

~

Talan Adaar has been told by his advisors, multiple times, that he is the face of the Inquisition. He’s still not sure they made a great choice, having that face be the broad, grey-skinned one of a Qunari, but here he is, leader of the Inquisition, and trying his best to live up to the title. Which means, according to Cullen, Josephine and Leliana, never panicking. And if he really, truly has to panic, he’s not to do it where people can see him.

This morning, however, he's resigned to the fact that he's going to let his advisors down for once, because he’s tearing through the courtyard, panicking. He’s not a man prone to panic, but he makes exceptions to a lot of rules for Meraad’s sake.

No one has seen Meraad since she left her room an hour ago, apparently to go for a walk around the keep. It’s only about a week since she arrived here in Skyhold, and she's yet to do much exploring. She could be lost, or stuck somewhere or… well, she could just be feeling a little lonely, among so many strangers. Whatever’s happened to her, Talan knows he won’t be able to eat or sleep until he’s seen her.

The one problem is that no matter how many people he stops to ask if they’ve seen her, the answer is always no. So when he catches sight of a familiar enormous hat, he feels a heavy burst of relief. If there’s one person in all Skyhold who’s likely to know where Meraad is, it will be Cole.

The spirit boy is standing near the wall surrounding the keep, his head tilted back, gazing up at the battlements. Talan coughs loudly so that Cole knows he’s there, then hurries over to him. ‘Cole, have you seen my sister?’

A moment of silence, in which Talan bites his lip and winds his fingers together, and Cole continues staring upwards, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet. Then, slowly, the pale face turns towards him.

‘I can’t hear her so much now,’ he says. ‘She isn’t screaming anymore.’

Talan’s eyes widen. ‘Screaming? Where – where is she? What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing’s wrong. Everything’s been wrong, but now it’s not. She thought she was wrong, but he’s showing her that she’s right.’

‘He? Who’s he?’ Talan drops down onto one knee, so that Cole no longer has to crane his neck to look at him. ‘What’s going on, Cole?’

For answer, Cole points up at the walltops.

Talan turns his head, his eyes following the direction Cole points in, and coming to rest on two figures standing silhouetted against the pale sky. One, he knows instantly from the height and the shorn-off horns – there, at last, is Meraad. Talan lets out a heavy huff of relief. Thank all and any gods there might be, she’s all right.

It takes him a moment to recognise the second figure. In the end, it’s the clouds parting to let the sunlight illuminate the long chestnut hair that does it. Talan frowns, looks again to make sure, and glances back down at Cole. ‘Is that Hawke?’

‘He’s not a hawk,’ Cole says firmly. ‘He sounds like one, but he isn’t.’

Talan can’t stop himself from grinning. ‘Meraad won’t be able to believe her luck. He’s her hero, you know. She practically had stars in her eyes when I told her he was visiting Skyhold.’

Cole dips his head. ‘He’s helping. I was helping too, stopping the hurt and making her ready to learn, but she needed him to teach her.’

‘To teach her what?’

‘To not be afraid.’

Talan lets out a breath. ‘Yeah. I tried that a lot, but I guess there’s only so much I can do, right? I’m not a mage. I don’t know how to control magic. All I could do was be there for her, tell her she was loved, but sometimes... that's not enough.'

He looks back up at the figures on the battlements, and his lips part in amazement as he realises what they’re doing. A small shower of snow is floating around them, and Meraad is holding a single flame in one hand, using it to melt the dancing flakes. It’s the first time since the Qunari took her that Talan has seen her use magic on purpose.

‘I don’t believe it,’ he murmurs.

Then he looks down at Cole, and realises that it is, in fact, rather easy to believe.

‘You told him to find her, didn’t you? You knew that if she was going to trust anyone to teach her, anyone she'd be comfortable using her magic around, it’d be Hawke.’

The spirit boy’s hat bobs up and down as he nods.

Talan shakes his head slowly. ‘Cole,’ he says, ‘you are really rather wonderful.’

The only response is a rather mystified tilting of Cole’s head. Praise like this does tend to bounce off him. But Talan knows that Cole understands what an incredible thing he's done, because Cole has been able to sense every last second of her pain. And now, after years of watching his sister flinch whenever she sees another Qunari or even hears the name spoken aloud, of night after night of holding her as she cries against his shoulder after a demon-filled dream, after a million times of telling her that she is not a dangerous thing, that she is a person and that she is brave and kind and worthy of love... now, finally, Cole and Hawke are helping her move on in a way that Talan never could.

He isn't angry, that they could make a difference when he couldn't. He's too grateful to be angry - and besides, the simple fact is that he can't teach her about magic, because he knows nothing about it. And vashedan, but Meraad is going to be ecstatic over finally meeting her hero.

‘So what did he make of you?' he asks. 'Hawke, I mean.’

‘He liked me. But I made him forget.’

Talan sighs heavily and presses a hand to his face. ‘Cole, you don’t need to keep doing that. I’m sure Hawke would like to get to know you properly - I mean, considering who his boyfriend is, I kind of doubt that he has anything against spirits. Did you at least let Meraad remember you?’

‘No?’

With a huff, Talan kneels down again so that he can meet the boy’s eyes. ‘Meraad would love you, Cole. She needs more people she can trust apart from her own brother. Go and talk to her. Be her friend. I reckon it’ll be good for both of you.’

Cole frowns. 'Torn up at the root, now she grows again. Truth tends the earth, making soft soil for a sister’s strength to take seed, but a flower isn't meant to blossom alone.' He adjusts his hat and nods. ‘All right. I'll... talk. Try. Try to talk.'

‘Good man.’ Talan gives Cole’s shoulder a quick, affectionate pat, and gets to his feet. ‘Right, well, now I know she’s all right, I’m not going to interrupt the magic lesson. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the tavern, getting something to eat. And, Cole…’

‘Yes?’

‘Thanks. Thanks for helping my sister. Thanks for getting Hawke to help her too. I’ve done my best to look out for her, all these years, but… there’s some things I just can’t help her with.’

Behind the hat and the mop of hair, Cole’s eyes are bright. ‘It’ll stop hurting. She just needs to unlearn the fear.’

Talan finds himself grinning. ‘Well, it’s good to know she’s got you looking out for her. I’ll talk to her later, see how it’s going. Anything else happening around here that I should know about?’

Cole frowns for a moment. ‘It always had a soul. The question is the answer.’

Back to the incomprehensible ramblings, Talan thinks fondly, and his grin widens. ‘I’ll take your word for it, and leave you to your thoughts. See you around, Cole.'

‘And,’ the spirit says suddenly, ‘Cassandra thinks it’s... sweet.’

Talan spins around. ‘Cassandra used the word sweet? What does she think's sweet?'

‘The way you look after Meraad.’

Talan feels a warm feeling of pleasure spread through him. ‘Does she now? How do you know that?’

‘She told me.' Cole calls the words over his shoulder as he wanders off in the direction of the stairs to the battelements. 'But I made her forget, because she went red, and people don't like it when they go red.'

Chuckling, Talan lifts one hand in farewell to his unusual spirit friend, and heads off towards the tavern through the frost-coated grass.

It’s bitterly cold, and the walls of Skyhold are covered in ice. And yet it is a truly beautiful morning.