#but like my intellectual qualms are separate from the fact that i have a fucked up brain

[pikapeppa]

Felassan/f!Lavellan: Questions

Chapter 12 of The Love That Grows From Violence (Felassan x Tamaris Lavellan) is posted!

As the title implies, in which I dip my toe into lore. Just one toe, though. 😭

~4060 words; read on AO3 instead.

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Over the course of the next few days, Tamaris and Felassan settled back into their routine of mana retraining, overhauling the house, smoking on the roof and eating the delicious food that Felassan prepared for them both. They played cards together and chatted idly about their lives, and they kept ripping on each other for fun just as they had done before. 

There was one very significant difference, however: Tamaris felt much more at ease now that she’s spoken more openly to Felassan about her relationship with Solas. She wasn’t thrilled that he’d witnessed her falling apart like she had, but the benefit of no longer feeling guilty or wary or just plain fucking uncomfortable was so much of a relief that she almost wished they’d talked about it earlier.

That wasn’t to say her emotional landscape was by any means perfectly repaired. Explaining her qualms to Felassan was only the first step to getting her mind around the wound of mistrust that Solas had unwittingly left behind. But for the first time since Solas’s departure, Tamaris was starting to believe that the wound might actually heal. She still felt uneasy at times when Felassan touched her tenderly or when his soft gaze lingered on her for too long, but mild unease was better than panic. 

Felassan occasionally asked more questions about her relationship with Solas, and although her immediate response was to put up a wall and block him out, she forced herself to reply. She would never have imagined that talking candidly about her ex-lover with her current lover would be helpful instead of terribly awkward, but the truth was that it really seemed to help. In fact, as the days went by, Tamaris started to feel the way that Cole had described easing people’s pain: like something tangled inside of her had been loosened and was slowly being smoothed out with every day she spent in Felassan’s company. 

With Tamaris’s greater comfort came another very enjoyable consequence: she and Felassan spent considerably more time indulging in their sexual appetites, which were just as great as their appetites for the scrumptious food that Felassan made. By the fourth day after their talk, however, they still hadn’t had sex again yet, or even done anything more than kiss and touch as much as they could through the barriers of their clothing. Their mana-training sessions now ended every time in a torrid clinch that left both of them breathless, and Felassan joked that the promise of Tamaris’s lips was the main driving force for his magical progress. They continued to sleep in their separate bedrooms, but Felassan kissed her every night before they retired to their rooms — that is, if ‘a kiss’ was what one could call it when Felassan pinned her against her bedroom door and ground himself into the cradle of her hips while she hungrily licked his tongue. Every night when he stepped away from her, she would stare at the blazing glow of his eyes and the rise and fall of his collarbones as he panted for breath, and an invitation for him to join her in her bed crept closer and closer to the tip of her tongue.

But she kept the words to herself, and Felassan didn’t push. And so they continued to fall together into increasingly ravenous embraces as the days went on, embraces which always ended in them breaking apart and grinning stupidly at each other while they tried to breathe through the lust that was swelling over them with all the delicious weight of a summer thunderhead.

Tamaris wasn’t sure what exactly had made them both decide not to push their physical relationship back into sex just yet. They hadn’t explicitly talked about waiting, yet both she and Felassan would stop themselves when her grinding against his lap got right to the point where one or both of them was nearly ready to burst, or when his fingers started playing over the laces of her bra or her breeches. Maybe Felassan could sense that she wanted to hold off for a bit before launching back into the sex that they both so clearly wanted. Or maybe Tamaris could see that he was trying to gain more control over his urges. Either way, the tension between them continued to grow — in a delicious, mutual way that was not at all like the demon that Felassan had so colourfully described —  and it wasn’t long before Tamaris became convinced that what was really happening was an unspoken game of who-gives-in-first. Was Tamaris going to give in and tell Felassan to fuck her again? Or was Felassan going to be the one to turn those delicious pleasured moans of his into an actual plea for her to join him in his room?

Neither of them could say, and neither of them was ready to cave. And yet, without speaking about it, Tamaris knew without a doubt that Felassan was enjoying – and cursing – the torturous pleasure of their fully-clothed trysts as much as she was. 

Aside from their more physical pursuits, a more intellectual one also came back into play; Felassan started reading This Shit Is Weird with more focus, as he seemed determined to get to the part of the book that mentioned the Inquisition’s encounter with the Titan. When he finished reading about their ordeal at Adamant Fortress and their tumble into the Fade, however, the resulting discussion took most of an afternoon. 

Felassan wanted to hear as much from Tamaris’s perspective about what had happened and how Solas reacted. When Tamaris explained how the Nightmare had tried to unnerve everyone by picking away at their greatest fears, Felassan raised his eyebrows. 

“I don’t suppose you remember what this Nightmare demon said to Fen’Harel?” he asked.

“It was something in Elvhen, so I don’t really know,” she said. “It said it knew him, though, which I just chalked up to Solas making weird friends in the Fade. But Solas did also say he’d never been to that sector of the Fade before…” She rubbed her forehead. “Fuck, I wish I remembered.”

“Shame,” Felassan said. “I would have liked to know what a demon would use against him to unnerve him during the time that he was with you.”

“I can tell you the three main things that unnerved him,” Tamaris said dryly. “Killing archdemons, Morrigan getting stuff wrong at the Temple of Mythal, and tea.”

Felassan’s face went slack with surprise. Then he barked out a laugh. “I may fall over from that onslaught. Morrigan — she was with the Inquisition? You were at the Temple of Mythal?”

“Yeah, we — oh, you haven’t gotten to the Halamshiral part of the book yet,” she said. “Morrigan joined the Inquisition after the whole shitshow at Halamshiral. Solas was less than thrilled with her, especially when we got to the Temple of Mythal. They were like cats and dogs.”

Felassan stared at her, then snorted a laugh. “You were at the Temple of Mythal with–” Another little snort cut him off. “–with Mythal’s alleged daughter and Fen’Harel who was trying to pass as a simple apostate…” He guffawed.

Tamaris couldn’t help but smile. “When you put it that way, it is pretty funny.”

“Funny!” Felassan exclaimed. “It’s the makings of a farce!” Another burst of laughter spilled from his lips. He dragged in a breath and patted his belly. “I can only imagine the steam that must have been coming out of his ears.” 

Tamaris chuckled. “Yeah. You should have seen him when that Sentinel guy Abelas came out. He almost lost it.”

Felassan’s face went slack once more. “Abelas? Abelas?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tamaris said with a roll of her eyes. “Don’t tell me you knew him.”

“Huge tall warrior, gold eyes, white hair, very stern?”

She raised her eyebrows. “He was wearing a hood so I don’t know about the hair, but the rest, yeah.”

A grin lit Felassan’s face, and he let out another rolling belly laugh. “Fen’Harel faced Abelas and lost his composure. He… fenedhis. It’s…” He slapped his palm on the table and continued to laugh. Tears of mirth were leaking from the corners of his eyes now, and his laughter was becoming loud and uncontrolled. 

She shifted closer to him. “Hey, take it easy. You need to breathe or you’re going to pass out.” She held out her hand.

He grabbed her hand and dragged in a breath, then let it out in an explosion of hysteria. Tamaris squeezed his hand. “Come on, brat, look at me.”

He chuckled wheezily and met her eyes, and Tamaris smiled at him. “Okay, let’s breathe. Come on.”

He exhaled another chuckle, then breathed in hard through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. “I need to read more of this book,” he said. “I can’t wait to devour that chapter.”

“No kidding,” she said dryly. “Should we go back to talking about the Nightmare then? Save the Solas-bitching-at-Morrigan stories for when that part of the book comes up?”

Felassan nodded and exhaled another slow breath. “Yes, let’s.”

“Okay,” she said. She released his hand. “What did you want to know next?”

“I have a question for you, in fact,” he said. “What did the Nightmare use to unnerve you?”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, that’s a personal question.”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “ And I believe you still owe me a secret.”

His smirk was mischievous but somehow also soft. Tamaris scoffed. “That’s how it is, huh?”

“It certainly is,” he said pleasantly. 

She gave him a chiding look, then sighed. “Fine. It…” She looked down and rubbed at the tiny dent in her prosthetic arm. “It mocked me about breaking promises.”

“Breaking promises?” he asked. 

“Promises to… protect people who need help protecting themselves,” she muttered.

Marin being dragged away screaming by the Templars. The memory flashed across her mind, and she looked away from Felassan and shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. The Nightmare’s sealed away, so fuck it.”

“You’re thinking of Marin,” he said quietly. 

She clenched her jaw, then forced herself to look him in the eye. “Yes. So what?”

Felassan tilted his head. “She who dances with fire,” he said quietly.

She snorted and looked down at her metal fingers. “For whatever good that does.”

“An entire novel’s worth, at least,” he said. He gestured at This Shit Is Weird. “I’m certainly compelled by the heroine of this novel. I imagine I would throw myself at her feet if ever we were to meet.”

She rolled her eyes at his irreverent tone. “Shut the fuck up.”

He chuckled, then leaned back in his chair and lifted his feet onto the table. “I have to ask: did  Fen’Harel comment on the Black City at all?”

“He pointed it out,” she said. “He seemed excited to see it. Well, he was excited about everything, even though we were in a really gross weird part of the Fade.”

Felassan nodded slowly, and Tamaris frowned. “Felassan, tell me something. What is the Black City?”

“What do you think the Black City is?” he asked.

She gave him a flat look. “I’m sure you already know what most Dalish think. It’s where the Creators were trapped by Fen’Harel. I didn’t really have any reason to question that before the Breach happened. But… I don’t know. It’s strange. Corypheus said the Black City was empty and tainted already when he and his evil magister buddies got there, which is counter to the Chantry story about those magisters turning it black and creating the Blight.” She narrowed her eyes. “But here’s the thing. The Black City is in the Fade and only in the Fade, which seems to imply that it’s not a so-called ‘real’ place, right? At least not if things in the Fade are just a reflection of dreamers’ minds or what spirits build from the things they see. But after visiting the Vir Dirthara, knowing that some places could be made from the real world and the Fade, it stands to reason that some places could also be made from just the Fade.” She looked askance at him, and her belly did a pleasant flip; he was smiling broadly at her. 

“Go on,” he said.

She took a deep breath. “The Black City is actually Arlathan, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it is,” he said. “What the Chantry calls the Black City is the remains of ancient Arlathan.”

Tamaris’s eyes widened at the confirmation. “Holy fuck. So… so wait. Wait.” A buzz of unreality was starting to raise her pulse. “If the Black City is Arlathan, then it can’t be the kingdom of the Maker if Arlathan is Elvhen and the Maker is Chantry bullshit.”

If possible, his smile grew even wider, and Tamaris’s belly swooped with amazement. “Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Felassan.”

“Yes, Tamaris?” he said cheerfully.

“There is no Maker, is there?” she breathed.

He casually linked his fingers behind his head. “There isn’t, no. The Maker is a figment of human imagination and nothing more.”

She gaped at him. The sense of vertigo in her head was growing as the enormity of this fact thudded in her ears. The Maker isn’t real. The Maker doesn’t exist. The humans were wrong. 

She burst out a laugh. “Oh shit. Oh fuck.” She dragged a hand through her hair. “This is amazing. And horrible. I can’t decide whether to laugh because I fucking knew it, or — I mean, I knew it but I couldn’t prove it.” She laughed again and shook her head. “Can you imagine the fucking mess it’ll make if this becomes common knowledge?”

“It would, wouldn’t it?” Felassan said pleasantly. “The irony is nearly funny, until one remembers that the progeny of our people were crushed under the heels of humans in the name of a being who doesn’t exist.”

Tamaris sobered. “Fuck.” 

He smile faded slightly, and he gave her an apologetic look. “I regret to point out as well that you don’t actually have proof that what I’ve said is true. So this is probably not something that you should go running through the streets of Val Royeaux to advertise.”

She wilted. “Ugh. Yeah, you’re right.”

“An unfortunate curse of being so old and clever,” he said complacently. “But you can continue to bask in the satisfaction of being correct, if you like.”

She huffed. “Feels kind of macabre to gloat about it now, but thanks for the offer.”

Felassan nodded graciously, and Tamaris sighed and propped her elbows on the table. “So everyone’s religion is a bunch of incorrect bullshit. We’re all together in that, at least.”

He raised his eyebrows. “That’s an optimistic outlook for you. Sort of.” He smirked. “In a charmingly cynical sort of way.” 

“It kind of is, isn’t it?” she said wryly. “How nice to have something all in common. We can all swim in bullshit together.”

He smiled at her without speaking, and she lifted an eyebrow. “What?”

“It’s at moments like this that I can imagine why your followers literally sang your praises,” he said.

She couldn’t quite decide if he was being sarcastic or not, but she rolled her eyes regardless. “And the rest of the time they probably wondered how the fuck they got saddled with such a ham-fisted bitch as a leader, right?”

“No,” Felassan said seriously. “I am certain that the rest of the time, they found you formidable and fearsome.”

Her ears started feeling hot. She looked away from him. “Uh-huh.”

He chuckled and idly waved one of his bare feet. After a brief pause, Tamaris glanced at him thoughtfully. “You don’t have any other questions about our little trip to the Fade, then?”

“Nothing more at this moment,” he said.

She nodded slowly. “I have another question for you, then. Why was Solas so angry about the Grey Wardens trying to seek out the archdemons and kill them? He would never explain that to me. He always just… talked his way around it.” 

Felassan’s pleasant expression instantly sobered and sharpened, and her heart skipped a beat in alarm. When he shifted his feet to the floor and turned to face her, her pulse kicked into an anxious trot. 

“That is probably the most important question you have asked me,” he said. “And I’ll tell you now if you want — as much as I know, at least, which I regret to admit is actually not everything.” He tapped This Shit Is Weird. “But I would prefer to finish reading this book first.”

“Why?” she said nervously.

“The answer will be easier to explain if I know first what you know.”

She frowned more deeply, and Felassan leaned toward her. “I am not trying to dodge your question, Tamaris. This is not an attempt to deceive you. I will tell you now if that’s what you want.”

He had that look on his face again: the look of ineffable weariness and melancholy that she now associated solely with elves from ancient Elvhenan. Tamaris studied him with a growing writhing of worry in her gut while she mulled over his words, then finally shook her head. “It’s okay. I can wait.”

His eyebrows lifted slightly. “Are you certain?”

A pang of fondness poked at her heart. He was clearly making an active effort not to prevaricate like Solas had always done. “I’m certain,” she assured him. “It’s just… now I’m scared of what you’re going to say.”

He smiled faintly, but somehow the smile only made his face more serious. “When the world looks the way it does, being afraid is the only intelligent response,” he said. “Only fools will tread through these days without caution.” 

His words made her gut twist a little more, and she wrinkled her nose. “Well, that’s grim of you. Someone needs to cheer the fuck up.”

His sad little smile warmed to something more genuine and Felassan-like. “Not grim. Just realistic. And that was unusually optimistic of you, for the second time today. Have you been nipping into the deep mushroom without me?”

She huffed in amusement. “No. The felandaris, on the other hand…”

He laughed heartily. “Nice try, but you’d be frothing at the mouth if you were nipping into that without my help.”

“Good to know,” she said. “I’ll keep that in mind for the next time you wake me up at the crack of dawn.”

His smile curled with mischief. “Then I’ll be sure not to drink anything you prepare for me anytime soon.”

She returned his smile, then eyed him speculatively. Something strange had just occurred to her — something that she had just assumed, but had never actually asked him.

He leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet up on the table again. “Ask, avise,” he said warmly. “I can practically see the questions flitting through that lovely ebony-haired head of yours.”

“I was just wondering,” she said. “Do you miss it?”

“Do I miss what?” he asked.

“Arlathan,” she said. “Your time. All of it.”

His smile faded, but this time in a pensive way. He was quiet for a moment, and when he finally spoke again, his tone was somber. “The time when I was born was both more and less than the Dalish could ever imagine,” he said. “Spirits did not just walk alongside us; they were us. Magic infused every structure that we built and every footstep that we walked, potent and tangible as the blood that flows through your veins.” He let out a wistful little laugh. “We had these gardens: beautiful wild gardens bursting with flowers of every size, in shapes and colours that have no words in this language. And yet, despite the beauty, it was rotting from the inside out. The equality and cooperation that the Dalish imagine did not exist. We could be petty and power-hungry and short-sighted. We had great capacity for creativity, and we squandered it on competitions and power struggles like any human nobles from this time.”

“You’ve mentioned this before,” she said gently. “But that’s not what I asked you. Do you miss it?”

His expression blanked with surprise for a brief moment, just the way it did every time she asked him specifically about his feelings or his thoughts. A sudden rush of affection filled her chest, followed by the usual instinctive feeling of vulnerability at how much affection she bore for him already.

She swallowed hard to try and relax. Felassan, meanwhile, was frowning thoughtfully at his feet. “There are things I miss,” he said slowly. “Those gardens I mentioned, for one. The food, for another; some ingredients are just impossible to find in this time. But I think what I miss the most is… knowing who I was. Knowing my purpose, and knowing that everything I did was a step toward that purpose, even if my steps seemed convoluted or indirect. Always intentionally, of course, in keeping with a slow arrow,” he added with a sly little smile. 

Tamaris nodded silently. Then Felassan sighed. “If there is anything I truly miss, it is knowing who I was. I was the slow arrow of Fen’Harel. I was the silent strike that they failed to notice until it was too late.” He met her eyes. “I am not sure who I am now.”

“You can still be a slow arrow, if that’s what you want,” she said. “You just need a new target.”

He gazed at her silently for a moment, and Tamaris watched with an increasingly erratic pulse as his pensive frown morphed into something undeniably tender. 

He slowly lowered his feet to the floor and leaned toward her, and when his hand rose to carefully cradle her neck, her breath hitched with excitement and just a hint of fear. 

He brushed her jawline with his thumb. “I want to kiss you,” he murmured. 

She nodded dumbly, and Felassan smiled before lowering his lips to hers. He kissed her carefully, his lips pulling at hers in a series of slow and infinitely gentle kisses that kicked her pulse into a faster beat while also lulling her into a sense of dreamlike contentment. It was a clear contrast from the scorchingly passionate kisses they usually shared, and by the time Felassan pulled away, her heart was pounding her ears and her throat, and she couldn’t quite decide whether it was panic or pleasure or something more tender — and far more terrifying — that was kicking her heart into such a rapid beat. 

His smile was so warm and his eyes so meltingly soft, and she wasn’t ready yet to accept everything that they implied. She took a tremulous breath and dropped his gaze. “Felassan, I’m — this is…”

“I know,” he said gently, and he released her neck and leaned back. “But it was a good kiss, wasn’t it?” 

She smirked at him despite her nerves. He was such a smug brat. “It was passable,” she said dismissively. 

He barked out a laugh. “Passable! You cut me deeply, avise. Fortunately for you, I don’t hold grudges.” Then he stood up and chivalrously offered her his hand. “Come. We have so much wallpaper to strip from the study and so little time to do it.”

She playfully smacked his hand away and rose to her feet, and they continued to tease each other good-naturedly as they made their way to the study. But as Tamaris carefully peeled long strips of ugly gold-striped paper from the walls, she couldn’t help but worry about the question she’d asked Felassan about Solas and the archdemons. 

She couldn’t help but wonder how much trouble the answer would bring – not just to the cocoon of peace she and Felassan were building around themselves, but to the entire world at large.

She forced herself to put the worries aside for now. For now, she had a mansion to strip of all its gaudy gold trappings, and she had a handsome companion by her side to strip it with.

And maybe soon, when the time was ripe, some stripping of a more pleasurable kind would happen as well.