Archive of Our Own ^beta

“I think I should like to learn to fly,” the Herald of Andraste says suddenly.

Sera stares at the Herald.

Herald of Andraste. Weird, innit. Like she’d stopped having a name of her own once that weird green shit marked up her hand. But no, she had a name. Aelinor Trevelyan, who’d have been a noble shit if she grew  up with her parents, but was a mage so she ended up in a tower and being all freaky-like.

Aelinor—Aeli, sometimes—was already frickin’ weird before she got all marked up, Sera’s sure.

Case in point: wanting to learn to fly.

“You can do that?” she ventures.

Aelinor’s shrug is a sad graceful movement. “I should like to try.” She isn’t looking at Sera. She’s sitting cross-legged on a grassy hill, looking out across Hafter’s Woods, her gaze unfocused. “I always…wanted to know what it’s like. Being outside. Grass between my toes. Sleeping under the stars. And flying. The sky, and all the clouds…”

“Sleeping outside’s cold,” Sera says flatly. “You’d freeze to death. At least in Denerim.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Aeli still isn’t looking at her, but Sera is looking at Aeli. Her hair is so frickin’ weird. It’s bone white and it breaks so easy, unnatural, stark against her sunburnt face. Aeli is pale as all get out and burns brilliantly red whenever they’re out in the sun. And yet she keeps going anyway. It’s weird. Who likes pain that much?

Circle mages, apparently.

“I think if I generated enough lift,” Aelinor continues, her hands fisting into the ground. “Or maybe if I reduced my weight enough and jumped, and then I could control at least how I fell…”

She trails off. There’s a look in those eyes like she’s going away-like, as if she isn’t entirely there anymore. Her hands fall limp and her body loosens.

Sera’s been with Aeli long enough to know what she’s like, when she’s going away, going somewhere else in her head. Sera’d been terrified at first. Thought it was some kind of Fade shit coming to possess Aeli, taking her away and making her a demon.

Turns out it wasn’t. Aeli was just weird.

Sera scoots over and bops Aeli’s shoulder. “Hey. Hey. Aeli, come back to me. Aeli.”

Aelinor doesn’t respond, her eyes still unfocused and gazing out at the woods.

“Aeli. Aeli come on. There’s no one there.” Sera gives her a little shake.

Aeli is skinny under her armor, skinnier than Sera, and Sera knows she’s little even for an elf, even though her archery has given her frickin’ impressive shoulders. But Aeli is skinny-bones-skinny, like some of the kids who hadn’t had enough to eat in Denerim after the Blight and shit. Sera can see Aeli’s bones sticking out beneath her skin.

“Aeli. Aelinor. Come on. Come back. It’s me, it’s Sera. Come on.”

Slowly, ever so slowly, Sera can see Aeli blinking back to herself. Like she’s coming up from a pool. Consciousness returns to those unnaturally purple eyes (magic eyes, probably, who knows with those mages), and Aelinor says, “Sera.”

“Hey, yeah. It’s me.” Sera tugs gently at a curl. Even with the gentleness, some strands fall away. “You went somewhere again.”

“Oh. Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Aelinor takes Sera’s hand, and Sera feels something tight in her chest. Not lust-like, she knows she doesn’t want to sleep with Aeli. Something like…mine.

Like this, sitting side by side, with Aelinor still swimming her way back up from whatever it was that made her go blank sometimes…Sera thinks…

Mine. My sister.

Aelinor Trevelyan was made Tranquil when she was seventeen.

When she was twenty-three, accompanying a senior enchanter at the Conclave, the sky burst open and the sunburst on her forehead burned away and left her with a glowing green hand instead.

“But why? How?” Cassandra had burst out, a few hours after the explosion. “She was Tranquil. Are they—did the Tranquil somehow sabotage the peace talks? What is going on?”

“That is a ridiculous notion,” Cullen said, sniffing. “The Tranquil cannot feel, cannot plot, cannot plan.”

“Perhaps she was an agent of someone else wanting to sabotage the Conclave. A tool instead of a mastermind,” Sister Nightingale had suggested, even as Leliana, deep inside her, had beat at her ribcage and screamed No no no, the Tranquil solution is not right.

(The thought of her love, Neria with that sunburst on her forehead makes Leliana sick. The thought of Neria Surana losing all her glow and laughter and sparkle makes even Sister Nightingale want to weep.)

But then Aelinor Trevelyan woke up, and screamed, and her rage and terror had shaken the foundations of her cell—

—fire burst from her in torrents, in infernal storms, scorching the stone black—lightning smashed and ricocheted around the cell, electrifying the bars and shattering her chains—

And they found out that somehow, Tranquility can be reversed.

“She fought too hard,” Leliana tells Cassandra later, and it is Leliana, not Sister Nightingale. “The Ostwick circle…well. They were not as harsh as Kirkwall, they’ve been called a sedate circle. But they toed the line. They were a model tower. And they would not have become a model tower if they did not hush the outspoken ones.”

“But—what did she fight against?” Cassandra asked.

Leliana closes her eyes. “Having her child taken away from her.”

Aelinor hates Cullen.

She alternates between shying away from him like a terrified animal, to baring her teeth at him like a terrified animal determined to die fighting. She is never in a room with him alone, and she is never within sword’s reach of him. Her staff is always at hand and her magic is constantly roiling beneath her skin.

“It’s all right,” Cassandra had told her, “he won’t hurt you.” But Aelinor, in one of her rare angry moods, had spat, “That’s what my senior enchanter said, and they hurt me anyway.”

Cassandra had reeled back, stricken. Aelinor had caved in on herself, her shoulders hunching, and said, panicking, “No, Seeker, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, forgive me I—”

“No, no, no,” Cassandra had tried to comfort, “it’s all right—”

But it would never be all right, would it? Not when people like Aelinor had been hurt so badly and they, the Seekers of Truth, had never seen.

She sits a little ways away from the recruits training and watches them. Swords clanging, armor clashing, Cullen teaching the recruits to angle their shields down to deflect fire or acid. Aelinor could summon a barrage of fire bolts, but Templars could negate that. Aelinor had exceptional skill with fire, as proven as when she scorched her jail cell black upon getting her feelings back.

It’s just. The Herald of Andraste being this broken terrified thing. The Herald of Andraste being so gifted at the fire that had killed their lady.

“Something up, Seeker?”

Ugh. Varric.

He ambles up to her and, without asking, sits down next to her. “You’re brooding.”

“It’s no business of yours,” she answers, reflexively.

“Probably not,” Varric says wryly. “But call it my writer’s instinct, I just can’t resist poking. You’re thinking about our lovely Herald, aren’t you?”

She sighs.

“It’s just…she simply cannot stand being anywhere near any sort of Templar,” she says finally. “And it’s making war councils very difficult when she either won’t hear Cullen out or can’t hear him at all. There is this thing that she does, when she—”

“Zones out and can’t sense us at all, yes,” Varric finishes for her. He closes his eyes. “I think it’s because she was made Tranquil, and then made un-Tranquil. Human again, so to speak.”

“She was always human,” Cassandra snaps back.

“You wouldn’t think it, the way people in Circles treat the Tranquil,” Varric says, a rare heat in his voice. “You weren’t at Kirkwall. You didn’t see what they did there. Maker’s breath, you…you read the reports, didn’t you. What that captain did so he could…the girls…You can’t blame her for being scared.”

Cassandra lets out a choked breath. “Yes. Yes, I know. But how can we…she is the Herald of Andraste now, she has to move past this or we will never get anywhere.”

“Cassandra, she is seventeen,” Varric says. “Not in body, I’ll grant you that, but she was basically frozen at seventeen and obviously underwent some sort of…traumatic experience beforehand…”

Varric has theories. Cassandra won’t confirm them. No one in the Inquisition but she and Leliana know that Aelinor Trevelyan once had a child, but someone of Varric’s experience with the worst of the Templars can theorize what might have happened to someone as beautiful as Aelinor.

“You want my advice?”

“Maker’s breath, no.”

“Too bad Seeker, you’re getting it. Get her to talk to a mage, a senior enchanter maybe, someone she can trust and has had similar experiences to her. She’s a kid and she’s scared. Get her someone to trust.”

Vivienne de Fer had met Aelinor Trevelyan once, seven years ago.

She had been stunning then, an absolute delight, sixteen and already charming everyone at the gala. Her hair had been raven’s wing black, falling to her waist, and her obvious skill in magic was the toast of every senior enchanter there.

“She’s going to do great things,” the first enchanter of Ostwick had said to Vivienne, sipping his wine as he watched his little protégé demonstrate how to form shapes in flame. A little trick, nothing more, but delightful to watch. A dragon made of flame roared above them, then morphed into a griffon rampant, and then became a couple waltzing in time. “She might even be a knight-enchanter like you, Madame de Fer.”

“Wouldn’t that be lovely,” Vivienne had said, genuinely delighted. She liked teaching, and watching young minds blossom, and of course their gratitude afterward. “Trevelyan, right? Of the—”

“Trevelyans of the Free Marches, yes,” he’d responded. “Second child. Her older brother adores her, and her younger sister writes her every week like clockwork.”

Someone worth cultivating. Vivienne approached the young mage at the end of the gala, genuinely and warmly praising her talent.

Aelinor had lit up like a lantern, soaking up Vivienne’s carefully doled out bits of wisdom on conserving mana, and the gentle suggestion to come join the Great Game if she would like. Her blue eyes had stars in them as she promised Lady Vivienne she would work very hard.

“And, Lady Vivienne, if I might ask—”

“Yes, darling?”

“About Duke Bastien—” She’d flushed brilliantly red. “You love him? That’s—allowed?”

Vivienne had smiled despite herself, and cupped the girl’s face in her own two hands. “Yes, darling. When you are powerful and respected enough, everything is allowed.”

Aelinor had smiled, an excited happy thing, and said, “That is my goal then.”

A year later, Vivienne heard Aelinor Trevelyan had been made Tranquil.

Four years later, chaos erupted across all of Thedas as the Circles dissolved. Vivienne, trying her hardest to gather her Circle to herself and keep them safe, spared at least a thought for Ostwick, and hoped they were caring for their Tranquil as well as she was.

A few months after that, Vivienne heard Aelinor Trevelyan had fallen out of the Fade and woke up herself again.

A few weeks later, she invites Aelinor Trevelyan to a party, wanting to ally with the Inquisition. A missive comes from Josephine Montilyet; Aelinor is ill, she cannot meet with her. Would Vivienne lend her expertise? They would appreciate it deeply.

And so Vivienne makes the trek to Haven (ugh, Ferelden) and then she is staring at Aelinor Trevelyan as she had never seen her before.

The waist-length raven hair was gone, replaced by brittle bone-white locks more appropriate to an old woman. Her once-laughing blue eyes were sunken into their sockets and had somehow, of all things, turned purple. She looked unearthly, ethereal—not quite demonic but obviously magical in some form or another. No one came by those looks by nature.

“Lady Herald,” Vivienne de Fer says, “you have changed quite a bit since we last met.”

There is no laughing sixteen-year-old in Aelinor as she nods. “A bit, yes.”

Awkward silence. No charming girl to smooth things over. Vivienne’s mind puts the pieces together. She is not ill in the physical sense, no—well, other than malnourishment, Vivienne can see that. What ails her is…

Spirit, soul, heart. And Vivienne knows what to do.

“Come, darling,” Vivienne says softly, in the voice she uses as a first enchanter. (As a mother, almost.) “Let us find a private room. We shall talk, just the two of us, Circle mage to Circle mage.”

Aelinor draws in a deep shuddering breath, and her entire body relaxes.

“Yes, First Enchanter,” she whispers, and Vivienne feels a thrill of victory go through her.

Victory, and a searing worry—what has happened to Aelinor Trevelyan?