
Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/10774857.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Rape/Non-Con, Underage
  Category:
      F/F, F/M, M/M
  Fandom:
      Dragon_Age:_Inquisition, Dragon_Age_(Video_Games), Dragon_Age_-_All_Media
      Types
  Relationship:
      Female_Adaar/Sera, Female_Adaar/Merrill, Cassandra_Pentaghast/Varric
      Tethras, Josephine_Montilyet/Cullen_Rutherford, Female_Adaar_&_Female
      Adaar, Female_Adaar_&_Varric_Tethras, Sera_&_Varric_Tethras, Female
      Inquisitor_&_Varric_Tethras
  Character:
      Female_Adaar, Sera_(Dragon_Age), Anders_(Dragon_Age), Mother_Giselle,
      Cole_(Dragon_Age), Cremisius_"Krem"_Aclassi, Grim_(Dragon_Age), Dalish_
      (Dragon_Age:_Inquisition), Skinner_(Dragon_Age), Rocky_(Dragon_Age),
      Stitches_(Dragon_Age), Merrill_(Dragon_Age), Leliana_(Dragon_Age), Varric
      Tethras
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Modern_Setting, Alternate_Universe_-_Human,
      Alternate_Universe_-_Non-Magical, Alternate_Universe_-_Mental
      Institution, Mental_Health_Issues, Mental_Instability, Mental_Breakdown,
      Depression, Schizophrenia, Bipolar_Disorder, Angst_and_Tragedy, First
      Kiss, First_Time, Falling_In_Love, Girls_in_Love, Heavy_Angst, Some
      Humor, Oral_Sex, Implied/Referenced_Suicide, Implied/Referenced_Self-
      Harm, Sibling_Rivalry, Adopted_Sibling_Relationship, Alternate_Universe_-
      Twins, Pyromania, Sneaking_Around, Past_Sexual_Abuse, Implied_Childhood
      Sexual_Abuse, Implied/Referenced_Underage_Sex, Implied/Referenced_Rape/
      Non-con
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-04-30 Updated: 2017-05-08 Chapters: 5/21 Words: 17179
****** The Moth and the Flame ******
by beetle
Summary
     Melitha Adaar recently landed in a mental health facility after a
     long downward-spiral that left her a danger to herself and others. On
     her second full day there, after being allowed out of her restraints,
     she’s confronted in the midst of severe dissociation by another
     patient: a chatty, crazy, boundary-lacking girl who gives new meaning
     to the words random . . . and empathy.
Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, implied child
     sexual abuse, mentions of murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and
     warnings to be added as we go.
See the end of the work for more notes
***** One *****
Chapter Summary
     On Melitha's second day at Eight Winds, she makes an acquaintance.
     Rather, an acquaintance makes her.
Chapter Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, mentions of
     murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and warnings to be added as we go.
[Moth and Flame] 
===============================================================================
                                        
 
“Don’t you look like the cat who drank the piss!”
 
The playful, lively voice and thick, Manchester burr—so like and unlike family
and home—caused the shaken, shocked, and rapidly dissociating young patient to
stop rocking. She slowed to a tense, still hunch, knees still pulled up to her
chest with long, strong arms wrapped around them. Her toes curled a little, in
the paper slippers she’d been allowed—certainly not real shoes, with real laces
to provide the only form of escape available to her, anymore—and she lifted her
head, also slowly, turning toward the source of the voice, peering through a
messy, frizzy curtain of near-black hair. Wide, bloodshot hazel eyes with
pinprick pupils met another pair of wide, deep-set eyes—these, steely blue-
grey, fringed by pale lashes, and surrounded by faint, grey-brown-circles in a
pallid-under-its-peachy-complexion face—that were as playful as the voice . . .
and mad, too boot. But flat and watchful, too, in a way that belied the
carefree voice . . . and curious, also. In a wary sort of way.
 
Unkempt, uneven cornsilk-hair that looked as if it’d been chopped with a dull
and rusty hand-ax framed that pretty-loony face in a pixie-ish shape.
Similarly-colored brows, fine and obliquely slanted, crowned those pretty-loony
eyes. A pug, high-bridged nose, wide cheekbones, and full, pale-pink lips
completed this new face.
 
That rosy, lovely mouth curved in a small, tense smile. “Whatsamatta, then? Nug
got ya tongue?”
 
Nug? What in the bloody hell is anug?
 
Blinking up at the strange girl blocking her view from the southeast corner of
the Eight Winds Therapeutic Facility’s first floor community-room, Melitha
Adaar licked her own lips, dry and chapped, and almost answered . . . almost,
but didn’t. She simply shifted and unfocused her gaze, and started to rock
again, hastening what she knew was her own dissociation. Anything was better
than being present in her own life.
 
The dappled sunlight shining through the barred windows made such hypnotic
grey-gold shadow-patterns on the ugly, anemic-white walls. Shadows that one
could sink into and lose oneself in for hours, perhaps. Or even days.
 
Maker knew Melitha meant to try, anyway.
 
“Now, now, none of that, Shiny!” the girl said, playful, still, but sharp, as
well. She stepped into Melitha’s line-of-sight, blocking the dappled light and
shadow, her face gone grim and solemn, but somehow . . . commanding. “No goin’
so far out y’ stuff y’self down-deep inside!” The girl paused, brow furrowing
in thought before she smiled and snorted, loud and not terribly lady-like, then
giggled like a drunken toddler. “Get it? I said deep inside. It’s funny, yeah?
What with you bein’ all female and ROAWRR! Y’know?”
 
Frowning and blinking some more, irritation and confusion dragging her by the
ankles, kicking and screaming, back out of her own detachment. She focused her
pale, blank, semi-accusing gaze on the girl—the closest she could summon to her
old glare, the one that’d used to cow the littles and get Talitha to pull her
head out of her arse for long enough to consider the feelings of others before
she acted.
 
“Oooh!” the girl before Melitha said, grinning and fake shuddering. “’S’at
supposed to make me all chastened and respectful of your despair? Make me get
up outta y’personal bubble and let you drift away in peace?” Another loud
snort. “Ha! Fat chance!”
 
For a few moments, Melitha’s glare regained some of its old intensity, her eyes
narrowing and mouth tightening in her keen, hawkish face. The girl giggled
again, seeming delighted, that wariness leaving her entirely as she dropped
gracefully into tailor-style, her knees just a hair’s-breadth away from
brushing Melitha’s. She leaned forward, staring into Melitha’s eyes with that
merry-mad, steel-blue gaze, her eyes seeming to whirl with the shift of light
and shadow, thought and mood.
 
“Can’t really tell how ROAWRR ya are behind the hair, of course. It’s really
nice hair, after all, and it might just be that the hair’s makin’ ya look all
regal and mysterious and tragic-like,” the girl mused propping her head up on
her hand and her elbow on her bony right knee. “But I very-much-like what I can
see. Got a face like a lost and wounded falcon, you have, well-regal and
strong.”
 
Melitha’s mouth dropped open and again, nothing came out. Except for an
exasperated huff.
 
Wedging herself as deep into the corner as she could, she leaned her head back
and regarded the girl with suspicious eyes that grew blurry with tears even as
she did. She estimated the girl’s age to be somewhere between nineteen and
twenty-two. Which would put her in Cassandra’s age range.
 
Well . . . the age range Cassandra had been in, when the fire had happened . .
.  when the older girl had gone back into the burning house, doing what Melitha
had been too weak and scared to do. . . .
 
Melitha didn’t realize she was absently rubbing the long, ugly swath of burn-
scars that covered her left hand and arm up to the elbow, until the girl’s
dancing, hectic gaze drifted to Melitha’s arm, too, lingering there.
 
Her own gaze following the girl’s, Melitha stopped rubbing her forearm, letting
her hand slide up to her bicep and scratching as if she had an itch. She knew,
of course, that she was fooling no one, least of all the crazy girl with the
canny eyes, who was smirking as if she could read Melitha’s every intention.
But it was habit to draw attention away from the tight, twisting scar tissue
she’d lived with for almost six years, as a badge of shame and a reminder of
the fate she should have suffered and would have suffered if life and the
universe were remotely fair.
 
The loony-girl was still watching her intently.
 
“What’re you staring at, loony?” Melitha demanded in a harsh croak, her low,
slightly rasping voice gone even raspier from lack of use—or perhaps because
the last time she’d used it, a day ago, had been to scream her head off as she
fought her captors: the security staff at Eight Winds. All under the cruelly
benevolent gazes of Chief of Security Greag Templar, and the co-directors of
the facility, Drs. Anders and Giselle.
 
The girl sitting far too close to Melitha made a weird face—scrunched up and
amused—before actually laughing. “Starin’ at y’scars. And y’guns—you’re all
muscle-y and strong-lookin’ . . . bet you could carry me on y’shoulders!”
 
“That will never happen.” Melitha made her voice as forbidding as she could,
her eyes as cold and mean as she ever had. But the girl merely waved a
dismissive, fine-boned hand which looked strong, nonetheless. And precise.
 
“Never is a promise the universe’ll always make ya break,” she said solemnly,
regretfully. “Old bat trots that out so often, you’d think she was gettin’ a
kick-back every time she said it.”
 
“Riiiight,” Melitha drawled in the deadest of dead-pans. “Fascinating and good
to know.”
 
“Ah, shut it, Shiny,” the other girl muttered, scowling down at the collar of
Melitha’s shirt—which was just a standard-issue grey t-shirt that stretched
across her broad shoulders, muscular arms, wide and tapering torso, and bra-
less breasts.
 
The bra-less breasts which the crazy-girl was staring at with wistful, almost
glazed eyes.
 
Melitha cleared her throat and those whirling eyes met hers, enhanced by a
madcap grin with sharp, small teeth. “What? I was just—it’s not what ya
thinkin’!”
 
“Right.”
 
“I was just starin’ at y’tits!” the girl said earnestly, making the sign of the
cross for some reason, her loony eyes gone wide and sincere. “Honest! That’s
all!”
 
Melitha’s mouth dropped open. Closed, then fell open again. But at least this
time, words managed to tumble out. “If—wait—if that’s what you’re admitting to,
then what in the bloody hell did you think I thought you were doing?”
 
The girl was the one to blink this time, seeming nonplussed . . . and her face
went bright pink. “I . . . em. Flowerpot?”
 
“What?!” Talking with this girl was making Melitha feel even crazier than she
felt most days, and that was saying something. The girl laughed, throaty and
wicked.
 
“Oh, you’re fun, you! All . . . tryin’ t’act proper, even though you’re as
barkin’ as me!”
 
“I doubt anyone in this place is as . . . barkin’ as you.” Melitha sniffed.
 
“Awww . . . don’t you know how to turn a girl’s head with compliments and
such?” Those pretty-daffy eyes scanned Melitha openly, lingering again at
breasts before resettling on her face. Then that grin turned into a smirk.
“‘Ppears you’re more than just a double handful and a face I’d like to sit on.
Wink-wink.”
 
Gaping again, Melitha blushed and sputtered. “You’re—this conversation is sheer
madness! And I speak in full cognizance of where I am and what company I’m
forced to keep!” She braced her hands against the wall and stood up shakily—how
long she’d been in the corner, she had no idea, only that the sky had been dark
when she’d first wandered in and was now on the way to being dark again. Sunset
was about to set the sky afire. . . .
 
Wincing, Melitha looked away, her arm and soul burning at the suggestion and
memory of fire that’d seemed to lick and scorch the sky. She found herself
staring down into those crazy, steely eyes as they gazed up at her admiringly.
 
“You’re a tall pint o’ bitter,” the girl noted with wry approval. Melitha was
the one to snort, now.
 
“Truer words were never spoken. Now, get out of my way.”
 
The girl leaned both elbows on both knees and her head in both hands, staring
up at Melitha like she was telly: enrapt and mesmerized.
 
“Don’ want to, do I? Kinda enjoyin’ the view.” Tilting her head a little to the
left and biting her lip, the girl eyed Melitha’s chest again. “‘S a bit chilly
in here for you, I take it?”
 
For a few moments, Melitha could only continue to scowl in utter confusion at
the unprompted change of subject. Then, she followed the girl’s gaze, turned
scarlet, and crossed her arms over her chest.
 
“Look, get out of my way before I step on you!” she threatened, lifting her
right foot. The girl didn’t so much as shift, her amused eyes twinkling and
almost fond.
 
“‘M not that small!”
 
“That’s your take-away from me threatening to step on you?”
 
“Eh.” Another dismissive wave, and the girl unfolded to her feet, graceful as
origami and just as delicate-looking. She was slender—bordering on skin and
bones, but for her own chest, and what Varric would’ve called ‘child-bearing
hips’—and barely came up to Melitha’s arm-covered breasts. “I can tell when
it’s real threats, and when it’s just bullshite bluffs. You’re easy to read: I
reckon if y’ever wanted to step on me for-real, Tadwinks, y’wouldn’t warn me,
yeah? It’d just be me goin’: blah-blah-blah, then splat!” Another raucous laugh
then the girl eyed Melitha with serious consideration. “How tall’re you,
anyway? I’m five-feet, even. You must be—what? Eight-and-a-half?”
 
“I’m not a bloody lamppost!” Melitha scoffed, somewhat offended. “I’m only six-
three.”
 
“Only, she says. Oh, Shiny,” the girl murmured off to her left at first, at
someone Melitha couldn’t see. Then she was turning her weirdly fond gaze back
to Melitha. “How pretty are you that so much up-your-own-arse-ness is less
annoying and more . . . adorable?”
 
Rendered speechless again, Melitha could only watch as the girl tilted her head
to her left again, at a listening angle, then nodded in thoughtful agreement,
her eyes never leaving Melitha. “You’re right, of course. Can’t lie for shite,
you. Dunno what it says about me, I believed you all those years.” Then the
girl was reaching up hesitantly, coming up on her tiptoes just as slowly. As
that pale, slim hand neared Melitha, she leaned back till she was pressed
against the wall again. The girl tsked. “Lookit you . . . like some poor,
scared, wild-thing, backed into your corner, all feral and lashin’ out at the
hand tryin’ t’ be kind. . . .”
 
“There—” Melitha had to resist the urge to bare her teeth and snarl. She
couldn’t look away from that fine hand with its incongruously bitten-down
nails. “There are no kind hands. Not for me. Not anymore.”
 
“You’re a nutter, if you believe that. Right-mental,” the girl said reasonably
as her fingertips brushed a mussy hank of Melitha’s cavewoman-hair and . . .
brushed it out of Melitha’s face. Then she leaned forward a bit as if to get a
closer look, smiling a pleased and approving smile. “I suppose that’s how
pretty you are. Ten out of ten: would gaze five-ever.”
 
“What? You’re—exasperatingly random and almost ragingly incoherent!” Melitha
declared, more confused and rattled than angry. Which only made her sound all
the angrier. She flapped the girl’s hand away, resisting the brief, but easily-
overridden urge to swat it hard enough to sting. “Why don’t you go be
completely batshit someplace where I’m not?”
 
The girl’s eyes flickered for a moment, the hurt there as easy to read as a
large-print novel. Then those eyes narrowed and the girl smirked, hard and
defensive.
 
“Thaaaaat’s it, Buckles . . . open arse, insert head. There’s the way of it!”
 
And with that, the infuriating and insane girl turned on her heel and marched
off, narrow shoulders drawn up, spine ramrod-straight. Despite herself, Melitha
couldn’t help but note that, slimness aside, the girl’s arse was delightfully
ample, neither too big nor too small—at least not according to Melitha’s
tastes—and helped make the girl’s shape officially an hourglass one.
 
“And quit starin’ at my arse, you ass!” the girl snapped as she strode toward
the doorless archway that led out of the otherwise empty community-room.
 
Chastened and blushing, Melitha’s eyes widened before her gaze darted away—to
the comfort of dappled light and shadow she’d been losing herself in before. .
. .
 
And, unwillingly, her eyes skittered, guilty and reluctant, back to the girl’s
retreating figure just before it turned left past the archway. This time, her
staring wasn’t just at the crazy girl’s crazy-perfect arse. And that wasn’t
where her absent musing was wandering, either.
 
Instead, Melitha was thinking of the gentle way the girl had brushed her hair
back out of her face . . . then looked up into her eyes as if seeing a long-
lost and missed friend: all warm and welcoming and happy. . . .
 
No one (except for Merrill, briefly) had looked that way at Melitha ever. Not
even Talitha. In fact, Tali had never looked at anyone that way . . . she was
the one everyone else was always happy to see. Including and especially
Melitha.
 
It had been easy living in her identical twin’s shadow when that twin had cast
such a very bright and alluring light. Melitha had never once known a jealous
moment where Tali was concerned. Never once envied that her younger—by thirty-
seven minutes—sister had always garnered the love and attention of everyone
around them. Had never resented being little more than an afterthought in the
minds and hearts of all who’d known them.
 
And then Merrill had happened, and Melitha had finally had her own moment to
shine . . . to be first in someone’s mind and heart. It had been beautiful and
intoxicating and . . . ultimately Melitha was the only one to blame for the way
it’d all ended. Was the only one with whom the responsibility had always
fallen. And it had been stepping out of her lifelong role that had upset
everyone’s lives so disastrously. It had been thinking she could for once be
the star of her own life . . . and maybe even someone else’s . . . that had led
to the wreck and ruin of the past five years.
 
All Melitha’s fault. All of it.
 
And she would do well to remember that, and not go making calf eyes at pretty,
loony girls with more compassion than common-goddamned-sense, just because they
didn’t have the preservation-instinct’s the Maker gave a goose. It hadn’t ended
well with Merrill and wouldn’t end well with this one, either.
 
Best to have nipped it in the bud before it even gave a suggestion of becoming
an occurrence.
 
Sighing, and alone, once more—the third-floor community room wasn’t, she’d been
told yesterday evening, by an at-turns cryptic and friendly young lunatic known
as “Cole” while she had laid drugged and restrained in her bed, the most
popular gathering space in the facility—Melitha backed into her corner again.
And though it was no longer as comfortable as it had been—nor was the rocking
as satisfying as it had been—mere minutes ago, and had been for hours, she
resumed her previous activity with all the relief of a former smoker picking up
the habit again.
 
Focusing on the dappled light and shadow, then unfocusing—letting the
flickering play and dance of contrasts, like the flames of a fire, unfocus
her—she drifted off again, to the place where none of it—least of all Talitha,
the fire, the screams of the littles and the silence of the dead (Merrill
included), and finally, her own cowardice—mattered at all.
 
                                      TBC
***** Two *****
Chapter Summary
     Melitha returns from "the Fade" to find dinner, companionship, and
     confusing advice.
Chapter Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, mentions of
     murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and warnings to be added as we go.
That evening, when the dinner-chime rang discreetly over the PA system, Melitha
had not moved from the corner—had, in fact, lost herself so deeply in herself
that by the time she was roused from her dissociative stupor somewhat, the
community-room was dark, but for a tall lamp near a table on which there were
decks of cards and an unfinished jigsaw puzzle.
 
The lamp hadn’t been on when Melitha had checked out of reality, however long
ago.
 
Nor had there been what appeared to be a half-sandwich wrapped in a napkin—with
a MacIntosh apple sitting on top of it—waiting patiently at Melitha’s long,
narrow feet.
 
Blinking blearily, Melitha lifted a heavy hand, and absently wiped a trailer of
drool from the corner of her mouth and from her chin and looked slowly around
the room. It was, as usual, empty.
 
Uncoiling her right arm and scratching absently at the scar-marred skin on her
left bicep, Melitha straightened one leg slowly, judderingly, nearly kicking
sandwich and apple across the room. The muscles in her thigh and calf
complained sluggishly, but soon fell silent. One thing Melitha had always been
blessed with had been a yak-like constitution. Her body was rarely ill, rarely
unwell, rarely anything less than ox-strong, bull-stubborn, and prepared.
 
Reaching out automatically to retrieve the triangle of napkin-wrapped sandwich-
half and the apple, she transferred the apple to her left hand then grabbed the
sandwich, instinctively unwrapping it to take a sniff.
 
Turkey and cheddar on pumpernickel. No mustard or mayo, but a slice of tomato,
from the smell.
 
The first bite was a memory and the second was in the works before Melitha was
cogent enough to ponder the deeper meaning of the appearance of the sandwich.
Aside from the fact that she’d dissociated more successfully than she had in
years, was the fact that she’d gone so deep into that place inside herself
where nothing mattered and all was hazy dreaming or utter nothingness—Tali had
always mockingly called Melitha’s occasional dissociation “crossing the Veil”
or “going into the Fade” because, she’d claimed, that her twin seemed to cross
a barrier no one could reach across and would sometimes fade from notice while
doing so—that she hadn’t noticed someone enter the room even peripherally, and
leave food right in front of her.
 
It was a bit disturbing . . . or would have been, if Melitha wasn’t still numb.
 
The sandwich-half was gone and the apple being methodically devoured before it
occurred to her to wonder who’d left it.
 
Certainly, not the staff, she supposed rustily, the gears in her brain turning
snailishly after nearly two days of no food and many different sedatives and
other drugs. I doubt theyreallygive a flying fart in space whether I famine or
feast. Dr. Giselle is far too nice to be for real and Dr. Anders is fartoobusy
to notice anything that isn’t a catastrophe. And the people below them don’t
get paid enough to care if I go hungry for another night.
 
Belching silently as she nibbled at the apple core with more appetite than she
would have expected, Melitha couldn’t imagine who’d bothered to keep track of
her, let alone bring her something to eat. Even putting her entire, cloudy mind
to the issue didn’t resolve it.
 
It wasn’t that she cared, per se . . . just that the mystery of it . . .
niggled.
 
When the core was little more than seeds and stem, she wrapped it in the
crinkled napkin and placed it next to her outstretched leg. Though she was
reluctant to, she stretched the other one out, too, weathering its sullen
protests until her stomach rumbled and grumbled around the food it was no
longer used to. She leaned back into the corner, wedging her back in good, and
closed her eyes. After a few minutes of velvet red-black dark, that darkness
lifted to present a pale oval, blurry and small, but going clearer and larger
as it seemed to move closer. It wasn’t long before the oval resolved into a
pretty face, as wary and weary as it was mischievous and playful. Steel-blue
eyes set deep in faint grey-brown circles twinkled at her, framed by an
indifferently and poorly done pixie-cut, and slightly slanting pale brows and
paler lashes. A mouth like a pink rosebud quirked in a sweetly wicked half-
smirk that didn’t quite touch the tired, watchful eyes set above them. . . .
 
“I told her you would be hungry when you came out of the Fade,” a soft,
uncertain tenor said, startling Melitha into opening her eyes. Sitting in front
of her, a pale, small young man sat zazen, straw-like yellow fringe obscuring
huge, ordinary-blue eyes that managed to take in Melitha candidly, curiously,
without meeting her own gaze.
 
The patient known as Cole tugged absently on his collar, worrying at a small
hole on the right side, and smiled a little. Melitha frowned.
 
“What are you doing here, Cole? Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Melitha cleared her
throat, aware of the hoarse croak that’d worsened with more hours of not
speaking or drinking anything. “Did you bring me that san—wait.” Eyes narrowing
in realization and suspicion, she leaned forward, suddenly more present in
objective reality than she’d been in perhaps years. “Wait just a sodding
minute—how do you know about my—the Fade?”
 
Cole tilted his head as if thinking. Or listening. Then he spoke, his soft
voice slightly apologetic. “We should both be in bed. So Dr. Giselle would say.
Poor sleep is both symptom and cause of many mental hiccups. But I don’t sleep.
I never sleep. Sometimes . . . when I need to, I cross the Veil, into the Fade,
like you do. It’s restful to me. And I have friends there.” That eerie,
innocent smile widened. “Sometimes, they come back with me. But they don’t stay
long. This place is too static and stagnant . . . hard and human. They miss the
Fade and the other worlds which are reflected in it.”
 
Melitha blinked. “Er . . .  right,” she agreed hesitantly.
 
“But I quite like this human world,” Cole went on almost shyly, as if
confessing some failing. “I may miss the dwarves and Qunari. And the elves. But
not the magic. That just made everything complicated and unhappy. This
world—this Earth—is unhappy, too, but far less complicated about it.”
 
“I’m certain you hear this a lot, Cole, but I have no bloody idea what you’re
on about,” Melitha told him gently, not quite smiling. Despite being a bit
creepy, Cole reminded her of one of the littles she and Tali and Cassandra had
looked after before the fire. The ones who’d trusted the bigs with the entirety
of their beings. . . .
 
Closing her eyes, and willing away the memories and pain, Melitha started when
a cold, dry hand landed on her left knee.
 
“It’s not your fault, you know?” Cole said with a depth of compassion and
kindness that surprised her. She opened stinging eyes, not bothering to catch
or cover the tears that welled up and rolled down her cheeks. Cole’s gaze was
almost meeting hers . . . resting somewhere between her eyebrows and hairline.
“You didn’t set the fire. You didn’t harm the littles.”
 
Drawing in a breath that shook and shuddered, Melitha smiled bitterly. “But I
didn’t help them, either, did I? Didn’t save them, didn’t protect them. I let
them all die.” Merrill and Cassandra, Krem and Grim, Stitches and Rocky, Dalish
and Skinner . . . and Talitha. All dead because I let the mission slip. Because
I let myself forget howshecould be and put my selfish desires ahead of
myresponsibilities. . . .
 
Cole’s naturally downturned mouth slipped into more of a frown, as if he could
hear Melitha’s thoughts. “You were, yourself, only a child. A child’s only
responsibility is to learn and grow and become.”
 
Melitha scoffed angrily. “I wasn’t a child, I was a big!”
 
“You weren’t a little, true. But neither were you a big, yet. You were only
sixteen.”
 
“I was old enough to look into myself and find a craven coward. One who let the
people supposedly under her aegis die without even attempting to save them.”
Melitha shook her head slowly, the tears falling faster and faster. “I claimed
to love them. I liked to play the protector . . . especially with the littles .
. . and then with Merrill, too. But where was I when it really counted? Hmm?”
Laughing a quietly, she finally wiped her face, leaning her head back against
the wall. “Cowering in fear on the Vincents’ lawn while Cassandra ran into a
burning building to save the people I’d sworn to protect.”
 
“You were injured and in shock. Young and scared.” Cole’s hand left her knee
and when Melitha looked down at him, he’d spread his hands as if trying to
prove himself nonthreatening. “Cassandra wasn’t any of those things, except
young. But still, older than you.”
 
Melitha shook her head again, closing her blurring eyes. “You don’t understand.
. . .”
 
“Perhaps I don’t,” Cole said with more than a touch of uncertainty and sadness.
“I’m not very good at being human, yet. At least not in this world. Not that I
was good at it in Thedas, but I was better, there. I think. My strangeness was
less strange in a place where every normal thing was strange in some way, and
so every strange thing was in some way normal.”
 
Melitha gaped at Cole for nearly a minute before sighing. “Alright, then.
That’s . . . good to know. Thank you for the sandwich. And the apple.”
 
Cole blinked then smiled, wide and pleased. “Oh! You’re very welcome. But I
didn’t bring them. Sera did.”
 
“Who’s Sera?” Melitha asked a moment before the face of the pretty-loony girl
popped into her mind’s eye once more, adorable and wicked, crazy and weary.
 
Cole’s smile widened and, with a sudden and uncanny resemblance to the girl in
question, he scrunched up his face and said: “Shut it, Shiny!”
 
Once more, Melitha’s mouth dropped open, and Cole laughed briefly, small and
blameless, sweet and carefree, all hints of Manchester gone.
 
“It’s all so exciting! And comforting to know that even in a world so lacking
in the magic others are filled with to bursting, that some magic—the best
magic—manages to find its way even here.” Cole nodded and got to his feet with
only a slight stumble. Melitha looked up at him and didn’t have to look
far—even with her sitting, Cole was small enough that she was still not much
shorter than him—a million questions on the tip of her tongue. But none of them
made any sense so, in the end, she just stayed silent. Cole laughed again.
“Don’t worry, Melitha . . . Sera may be as prickly as she is pretty. Like a
hedge of wild roses—all soft, pink sweetness and fierce thorns in dizzying
profusion—but to know her is to love her, and to love her to is to bleed. Yet
she’s worth every red drop. You knew it in Thedas and you’ll soon know it here,
too. If, that is, you don’t let the Fade claim your spirit before Sera redeems
it.”
 
And with that, Cole shrugged, smiled, and turned to leave. He was, in fact,
halfway across the room when he paused and turned back, his face set in a
thoughtful frown.
 
“But even True Love can sometimes be helped along with a well-timed thank you.
You know. For sandwiches and apples given,” he said solemnly, before adding in
a chipper tone. “Tomorrow is Thursday! We’re having cookies with lunch! They’re
quite good!”
 
“I don’t like cookies,” Melitha said automatically. Cole shrugged again.
 
“Sera likes them, though. Except when they have raisins.” He started to turn
away once more, then turned right back, grinning. “And the roof here is fenced-
in, and not as high as the ones at Skyhold, but acceptable substitutes will
resonate with you both, if your hearts are open. You each have one foot beyond
the Veil, and even if you don’t remember the selves you once were, the Fade
remembers. The resonances and echoes of the Melitha Adaar and Sera Emmald who
once were will inform the women you are now, and the women you will be.”
 
Nodding once, seeming both satisfied and hopeful, Cole drifted out of the room,
humming the theme from the old Batman series, leaving Melitha to stare after
him for long minutes, mouth still agape and mind still awhirl.
 
                                       #
 
Eventually, grown bored of the empty community-room and unable to slip into the
Fade again, Melitha levered herself to her feet and shuffled to the exit,
binning the napkin and bits of apple core in the big rubbish container near the
archway.
 
The third-floor hallway was dim, but lit well enough to navigate. Her tired
legs and feet carried her to the east end of the corridor and the last room,
therein.
 
It was small, but private—an expense Varric hadn’t spared in paying for her
care, on top of shelling out for her stay at Eight Winds, at all—with a large,
barred window that overlooked the front lawn and drive. Moonlight shone on the
tranquil landscape and illuminated the Spartan room with gentle silver light.
Melitha had never had much in the way of personal affects, beyond some books,
her clothes, and random knick-knacks that’d caught her eye over the years. Most
of the belongings she’d accumulated in the seven-plus years since the fire were
stored in the live-in garage on Varric’s property, where she’d dossed on and
off since right after she’d turned eighteen.
 
Here, in the posh funny-farm where he’d had her stashed—after years of
vacillating and arguing and occasionally threatening to do so—she only had some
clothing, a few of her books (three of which had been penned by none other than
Varric), and the best gift she’d ever been given: a group photo from a few
weeks before the fire, in which all the people she’d ever loved were present
and accounted for, alive and well.
 
The littles were in front, Krem in his dirty and torn yard-clothes—the bigs
knew to never let Krem out to play in anything nice or worth wearing to
school—with a grim-looking Grim in an enthusiastic headlock. Dalish and Skinner
had their arms slung around each other, the former looking smug and impeccable
in her little dress and bows, the latter grinning her fierce, toothy grin, neat
and sedately-dressed in her overalls and blue blouse. Rocky, the smallest of
the littles was in the center, arms akimbo and smiling up at the sky, while to
his left, Stitches leaned solemnly on his crutches, his poor, broken left leg
in its huge, signed and decorated cast.
 
Behind the littles, were the bigs: in the center were the tallest, Talitha and
Melitha at a matching six-two. They also stood with arms slung around each
other, the latter, for once, grinning, the former making a weird, unhappy face
and caught mid-blink. To their right, next to Talitha, were Cassandra and her
not-quite-boyfriend, Varric (though decidedly short, he was no little—nor a
big, either. Not anymore, anyway. He’d reached the age of majority the year
prior along with Hawke, Aveline, and Isabela). To their right, next to Melitha,
were Merrill, Cullen, and Cullen’s girlfriend, Josie.
 
The expressions on the Adaar-sisters’ faces were unusually swapped: normally,
Talitha was the one grinning and happy, and Melitha was the one making the
weird, awkward face. But at the time of this picture, Melitha had had ample
reason to smile, as evidenced by the way her hand was holding Merrill’s in the
picture, linked tight like a promise. . . .
 
Melitha blinked and when she opened her eyes, dawn was shining in through the
window, rose-gold near the horizon, indigo-blue near the apogee of Heaven’s
vault. She was sitting on her narrow single bed, holding the framed picture of
happier times in both her large hands—tight enough that those hands were white-
knuckled. Tears were dripping on the glass of the frame, fallen from her chin
and the tip of her nose.
 
She’d lost even more time . . . wandering down Memory Lane, rather than
dissociating. But Melitha wasn’t picky at all. Anything that hastened the end
of her stay at Eight Winds and the end of . . . of everything, especially the
pain of just existing, well . . . that was to be encouraged.
 
Sniffling through a foggy, stuffy nose that was running a bit, Melitha put the
photo back on her small night-table, next to her empty water glass, a few of
the generic toiletries she’d been given upon her admittance to the facility,
and the small lamp she had yet to turn on.
 
For a few minutes—or what felt like it—Melitha thought of nothing and simply
watched the sun rise higher in the sky. Then she blinked again, lingering in
the dark of her own inner-space as she began to cross the Veil . . . to Fade. .
. .
 
Maybe . . . maybe for keeps, this time. . . .
 
A sudden, frustrated shriek from down the hall, followed by a woman’s
distraught sobs, yanked Melitha back from her escape. Her eyes flew open to a
much brighter room. The sun was fully up, the sky bright and blue, no remnants
of night left to color the Heavens.
 
Judging by the scents drifting up from the first floor, breakfast was in full-
swing. Melitha’s stomach rumbled angrily, tired of the now three-days fast. The
homey scent of flapjacks, sausage, eggs, and porridge tempted and drew her
physically, if in no other way. She was standing up before her brain could
think of reasons not to, the Fade forgotten for the next little while as her
body focused on acquiring fuel. That half-sandwich and apple had been at least
eight hours ago.
 
As Melitha shuffled to the slightly ajar door to her room, she paused at the
door catty-corner to it: the bathroom. Stepping into the doorway, she flicked
on the light and winced at its fluorescent brightness. When her eyes adjusted,
she was gazing at her reflection in the mirror bolted to the wall above the
sink.
 
Her hawkish, strong-featured face was pallid, the last of her summer-tan fading
to a pale-olive it’d rarely ever been, outdoors-person that she’d always
been—some of her fondest memories were of tromping through the small, wooded
acreage behind the Chantry Home for Children with Krem and Skinner, exploring
and getting all mucky and manky . . . catching frogs at the tiny pond or
chasing the rare and skinny rabbits—her eyes in dark circles and more bloodshot
than ever. Her hair was a frizzy-flyaway mess, though not in her face, anymore.
Not since the loony girl—since Sera—had brushed it back for her. . . .
 
Shaking her head and ignoring the way the loony girl’s name struck a
chord—echoed and resonated—within her, both exciting and somehow familiar,
Melitha’s reflection repressed a small, unsure smile. Then it ran a hand
through dark, rat’s-nest hair, without getting very far before tangles forced
it to give up. With a sigh, the reflection reached for the light switch and a
second later, Melitha was stepping into the third-floor corridor—not once had
Melitha or her reflection made eye-contact while they were primping—pasting a
mostly blank, but vaguely hostile and sullen expression on her face.
 
(She’d heard once that the nut-hatch was rather like prison: Someone who was
new would do well to either look as big and unfriendly, and mean and crazy as
possible, or try to kill the first person who messed with them. Melitha had no
intention of murdering anyone, and going to a real prison for the rest of her
life. And she certainly knew she wasn’t the craziest person in Eight Winds, so
she simply focused on looking mean and unfriendly. As for looking big, well . .
. nature had already handled that for her quite nicely.)
 
On her way to the stairs, Melitha passed a room near the main staircase, with a
closed door and from behind which could be heard soft sobs and even softer
speaking: Dr. Giselle’s patient, thickly-accented voice, comforting the woman
who’d been screaming just a few minutes ago. Melitha knew nothing about that
woman, only that she was pretty and sad, with old-soul blue-green eyes and
chin-length ginger hair. And sometimes . . . sometimes, in the evening, she
sang sad songs to herself in French.
 
Putting aside a momentary pang of empathy and curiosity—understanding and
solidarity—Melitha set her face in a scowl and made her way down to breakfast:
a tall wall of solid muscle, heavy bone, and shit attitude . . . with a core as
weak and crumbling as that of the sobbing woman behind the closed door.
 
                                      TBC
***** Three *****
Chapter Summary
     Melitha makes a friend, has a visitor, and gets a stern talking-to .
     . . or something like that.
Chapter Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, mentions of
     murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and warnings to be added as we go.
Melitha lingered over her breakfast—well, her third plate of flapjacks,
sausage, and eggs, though she was still on her first bowl of the overly-
sweetened porridge—well after most of the other patients had abandoned the
relatively cozy meals-room.
 
Chewing methodically, barely tasting what she was eating, Melitha had plowed
through her first two plates and the first third of the porridge. Now, finally
feeling almost human and fuller than she had in what seemed like eons, she had
slowed down and tried to taste what she was eating. The flapjacks were a bit
dry as she loathed syrup, the sausages a bit more done than she preferred, the
eggs slightly runny, and the porridge lumpy as well as too sweet, but it all
tasted like manna from Heaven.
 
By the time Melitha, at her lonely corner table—at which she sat facing the
door, as always—had cleaned her plate and was lazily stirring the porridge
while staring into it, as if searching for signs and portents, when the only
other chair at the table scraped back quietly and someone sat. Surprised,
Melitha nonetheless resolved to ignore the newcomer who’d bypassed all the
other, emptier tables in the room, to sit at hers. She didn’t look up or in any
way acknowledge this audacious nuisance.
 
“I hope you don’t mind if I join you,” a soft, musical, accented voice said
rather shyly as the other person placed a bowl of porridge and a glass of milk
on the table across from Melitha. A slim, graceful hand took a napkin from a
small dispenser in the center of the table. “But I do, so, hate to dine alone,
when it can be avoided.”
 
Melitha grunted, reluctant and resentful in equal measures, at this intrusion
into her solitude, however polite and charming.
 
“My name is Leliana,” the newcomer said, holding out her hand. Melitha scowled
at it for a few moments before darting a glance up at the woman.
 
It was the woman who slept in the single room near the third-floor landing. The
one whom Dr. Giselle had been trying to comfort earlier, and to limited
success. Indeed, despite the woman’s composed face, her eyes were puffy and
red, her gaze distracted and sad.
 
Not my problem, Melitha told the pang she felt, and looked back down into the
depths of her porridge.
 
“And you are?” Leliana pressed gently when, a couple of silent minutes had
passed without Melitha sharing her name or anything else.
 
Darting another glance up at the woman, Melitha caught a small, absent smile on
her pretty, melancholy face. Those blue-green eyes were curious, now, more than
they were sad. Staring into them, Melitha felt a frisson of déjà vu take her.
 
She had the distinct impression that she’d met this woman, this . . . Leliana .
. . before. And this, despite knowing that she never had.
 
(Melitha had only ever felt that way a relative few times in her twenty-three
years: when she’d met some of her other year-mates at Chantry Home . . .
Cassandra and Varric and Cullen—and even Cullen’s pretty, privileged
girlfriend, Josie—as well as the littles that had come in over the few years
before the fire. Starting with Dalish and ending with Krem.)
 
“Melitha,” she found herself saying breathlessly. That feeling of familiarity
increased when the other woman smiled, bright and lovely.
 
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Melitha. Though the circumstances leave a lot to
be desired,” she acknowledged in her modulated—trained—voice and French accent.
“How are you getting on here, so far?”
 
Snorting, Melitha finally looked away from those curious eyes and that creeping
sense of familiarity. “I’m . . . adjusting,” she allowed tersely, shoveling a
spoonful of porridge into her mouth, so as to have an excuse not to answer any
more questions.
 
“Aren’t we all?” Leliana snorted delicately, as different from Sera’s loud,
scoffing snorts as could be. “At any rate, I have been here for a while, so if
you have any questions you don’t wish to ask the staff for whatever reason,
feel free to ask me.”
 
Managing to nod once, brusquely, but not ungraciously at this kind offer,
Melitha continued to fiddle with the last of her porridge, wondering almost
idly where the pretty-loony young woman was and if she’d bothered with
breakfast. She hadn’t been the meals-room when Melitha arrived, but then, quite
a few patients had already eaten and gone well before Melitha had stepped foot
out of her room. Sera may have been among them.
 
Though, Melitha rather doubted it, as the girl was, tits, hips, and arse aside,
rather bony. . . .
 
Frowning, Melitha purposely winnowed her mind away from the pretty-loony girl .
. . unsuccessfully, as it turned out, for the very next, porridge-flecked words
from her mouth were:
 
“Sera Emmald.” When Leliana quirked one elegant, auburn brow, Melitha fought a
blush and looked away. “What can you tell me about her?”
 
                                       #
 
“So . . . how ya doin’, kid? They treatin’ ya okay? Need me to sneak ya in a
file inside a pie?”
 
Melitha huffed, glaring coolly at her only friend in the world—more like a
brother, really.
 
That inconvenient truth didn’t change the fact that she was right brassed-off
at him for having her stashed in the loony-bin, however.
 
When Melitha didn’t answer Varric Tethras’s joke, the outrageously successful
young author—head of several Top Ten to Watch aspiring authors’ lists—let his
charming smile slip, his rugged face going unexpectedly solemn. He leaned on
the table between them with a sigh.
 
“I take it, then, that you’re still mad at me,” he noted dryly, but seriously,
too. Melitha, arms crossed over her chest, merely continued to slouch back in
her chair and stare holes into Varric until he sighed again, running a hand
over his fashionably shaggy blond hair and leaning back, himself. “Right. The
ol’ silent-treatment. Classic.”
 
Melitha rolled her eyes and looked away, around the visiting-room at the back
of the first-floor of the facility. It was spacious, yet cozy and comfortable.
Welcoming. Like being in someone’s—large—living room, rather than the visiting
area of a funny-farm.
 
There were big, squashy couches and chairs against the walls, and at least
fifteen round tables that could comfortably seat three, perhaps four if they
were especially fond of each other. And a dozen of those tables were occupied.
 
According to Leliana, there were even more visitors for the patients of Eight
Winds in the afternoon session than in the morning. The facility held visiting
hours from eleven to twelve-thirty, then again from four-thirty until six, with
dinner at a prompt quarter-of.
 
Nonetheless, hearing her name called from the visitation roster had surprised
Melitha greatly. Though she had known whom it would be waiting to see her.
There was no one else in Melitha’s life who cared enough to visit her in a
fancy lunatic asylum—let alone spend the money to put her there.
 
Most of the other loonies seemed happy, or at least relieved to have visitors.
Melitha was torn between relief and rage. Perhaps, she thought wearily,
Iamloony, after all. My mood fluctuates so from moment to moment, I don’t know
whether I’m coming or going, anymore. No wonder Varric thinks I’ve gone mad. .
. .
 
Sighing, herself, Melitha took one last look around the homey room, with its
papered walls, eclectically-mismatched wooden furniture, and wall-to-wall deep-
pile carpeting. The paintings on the walls were all peaceful landscapes:
seasides, fields of flowers, gazebos in gardens, and the like. It was all so
tranquil and anodyne, it made Melitha want to spit.
 
So, she turned back to Varric, who was watching her with concern and guilt. It
was the guilt that finally decided Melitha’s shifting mood—tamped-down the rage
in favor of stoking her own relief. And worry.
 
“The silent-treatment is no more than you deserve, little man,” she muttered
waspishly, only for Varric’s big, bright, toothy grin to shine out again, the
crow’s feet around his light-brown eyes crinkling merrily.
 
“Not little where it counts, Inquisitor,” he said, winking and chuckling.
Melitha rolled her eyes again.
 
“Ugh. You mean your ego? Yes, I’m afraid I would have to agree. It’s bloody
massive,” she retorted sharply, scowling. She seemed to do so quite often,
lately. “And I told you to stop calling me that. It was old when I was nine,
and now, it’s practically senile.”
 
Varric laughed. “I’ll stop calling you Inquisitor when you quit getting all
bent outta shape over it.” Pausing thoughtfully, he rubbed his fashionably
stubbled chin. “So, probably never, then?”
 
Melitha huffed and recrossed her arms. “I’m still white-hot angry at you.”
 
Varric nodded, gone instantly solemn once again. “As well you should be, Meli.
But I hope that even now, some part of you can understand why I had to do it.
Or will understand at some point down the line. When Docs Anders and Giselle
get you . . . sorted out.”
 
“I don’t need sorting out!” Melitha declared in a hissing whisper. Varric gave
her such an incredulous look, she flushed and looked away once more. “I don’t
need sorting out,” she repeated sullenly, under her breath.
 
Leaning forward a bit more, Varric attempted to catching her gaze. He finally
did when she relented with another huff, this one even more offended and
truculent.
 
“Kiddo,” he began gently, and Melitha gave him a two-fingered salute.
 
“I’m only three years younger than you, Varric Tethras.”
 
“Three and a half,” he corrected almost primly. This time, Melitha just gave
him one finger. “Anyway,” he went on with labored patience. “This’s been a long
time comin’, Meli. A long time. I mean . . . you’d’ve died three days ago if
Cullen hadn’t gotten worried about you after the cemetary.”
 
“Cullen? Worried about me?” Melitha snorted in disbelief. “Right. I’ll have you
know I expect to see pigs go flying past the windows at any second!”
 
“Listen, kid—”
 
“Cullen Rutherford hates me, Varric. With good reason. It’s my fault he and his
future wife nearly died in a fire I should’ve prevented.”
 
“It’s not your fault, Melitha. Why can’t you understand that?” Varric asked,
sounding more wounded than he had since he’d visited her in hospital after the
fire. “Why can’t you believe that? You’re not responsible for what she did in a
fit of—jealousy or insanity or rage or what-the-fuck-ever possessed her that
night! You didn’t fall asleep on the job or let the mission slip—you were not
your sister’s keeper!”
 
“Clearly.”
 
“I mean you never were!” Varric’s large, rough hands clenched around nothing,
balled into fists on the table . . . before he released the fists and linked
his fingers calmly, belying his previous tone. “I know that. Cullen and
Josephine know that. The only one who doesn’t know that is you.”
 
Melitha lapsed into a sulky, recalcitrant silence once more, staring Varric
down. But he gave as good as he got—better, even, for Melitha was the first to
look away. Varric heaved another sigh, tired and almost . . . hopeless.
 
“Maybe . . . maybe it was selfish of me to fight so hard to keep you here, when
it’s obvious you want nothing more than to go,” he said quietly, staring down
at his hands. Then he looked up at Melitha again, his eyes swimming with unshed
tears. “But ya gotta understand, kid. Ya just gotta . . . you’re all I have
left.”
 
Melitha winced and Varric spread his hands as if laying all his cards on the
table. “I love ya. More than you’ll ever know. And I don’t wanna lose you like
I lost Cassie and the others.”
 
Shaking her head and fighting tears of her own, Melitha licked her chapped
lips. “I . . . Varric, I . . . there’s still Cullen and Josie? Surely they
don’t blame you for anything that happened. . . .”
 
“Ahh,” Varric dismissed, waving his hand. His expression was rueful and hurt.
“Josie’s a sweetheart, like she’s always been. But Cullen . . . you’re not
entirely wrong about him. He doesn’t hate you or me, but . . . we remind him of
a painful time in his life. He lost as much as we did and nearly lost the woman
he loves, to boot. So, it’s easier for him to love us from afar. To put
anything that reminds him of what was lost behind him.” Varric shrugged. “If
that’s what gets him through the days and nights, then more power to him.”
 
“No,” Melitha protested, looking down at her own hands, which were large—though
not as large as Varric’s—with square palms and long, blunt fingers. “You’re
wrong. Maybe not regarding how Cullen feels about you, but definitely about how
he feels for me. He can’t stand the sight of me, and I can’t say that I blame
him. In fact, most days, I’m right there with him.” One traitor-tear rolled
down Melitha’s left cheek and even though she dashed it away impatiently,
another followed. And another. And another. “You know, I hadn’t been to see
their graves in years? Not Cassandra’s or Merrill’s, or any of the littles?”
 
“Meli . . .you can’t wear a hair-shirt forever. . . .”
 
“Not because I didn’t want to,” she hurried to say, eyes widening as more tears
fell. “I just . .  . I knew I didn’t deserve the comfort of seeing them at
rest. Of knowing that they were probably in a better place. I didn’t do
anything to save them in life, so I don’t deserve any comfort now that they’re
gone.” Wiping her face again with absent, but ultimately futile swipes, she
laughed, mirthless and waterlogged. “So, of course, on the day I somehow
managed to convince myself that . . . maybe I could accept at least that
comfort, at last, who should I find at Cassandra’s graveside? Cullen-fucking-
Rutherford!”
 
“Ahhh, kiddo,” Varric breathed, covering her stationary right hand with his own
warm one. The temperature difference was marked and startling. “Cullen can be .
. . an asshole. Even unintentionally, sometimes. But whatever he may have said,
however . . . insensitive it may have been, I can assure you that he didn’t
mean for you to go home and swallow a handful of powerful sedatives.”
 
“What a man means and what he wants can be two different things.”
 
Varric squeezed her hand tight. “You’re all I got, kid. All the family I have
left in the world. And if I’d gotten home even ten minutes later, you’d’ve been
beyond help.”
 
“Can you honestly say that wouldn’t have been best for all involved?” Melitha
asked.
 
“I can. But you’re not gonna believe the truth no matter how many times I tell
you.” Varric sounded so sad and downcast, Melitha felt even more guilty and
miserable than she’d been feeling.
 
“I’m . . . sorry, Varric,” she whispered shakily, looking down at her hands
once more. They’d always been capable and clever, despite their size. Even Tali
had used to say there was magic in Melitha’s hands. Nothing would ever stay
broken if Melitha could get her hands on it and a few minutes to figure out how
it was supposed to be working. She’d fixed everything from broken toys—Krem had
been a cruel little beast to his action figures and cars . . . so had Rocky,
though in a different way than Krem; Rocky’s destruction had come from over-
curiosity and experimentation—to the industrial stove that’d fed children in
the Chantry Home for decades.
 
If not for the fire, it’d probably still be chugging along.
 
“I’m sorry for . . . everything,” she added in a voice as tiny as it was
wrecked. Varric took her hand again, squeezing it so gently, but with a fierce
tenderness.
 
“I know ya are, Melitha. I know. Thing is,” he said softly. “You have nothing
to be sorry about. Things to regret? Yes. Your life and Tali’s—all of our
lives, from Hawke’s to little Krem’s, were fucked from the start. We’ve got
regrets that go back to the moment we were born, I suspect. But guilt?” Shaking
his head, Varric pulled her hand up to his face and kissed it, lingering for a
few moments with closed eyes. “You’ve never hurt anyone in your life, kid. And
certainly, not on purpose.”
 
Sniffling, Melitha let out a shuddering breath. “I hurt Tali, didn’t I? So bad,
that she felt she had no other recourse than. . . .”
 
“If your happiness hurt Tali, then that was her problem. She just chose to be
an asshole, and make it everyone else’s, too.”
 
For a few moments, Varric both looked and sounded bitter and angry.  Then he
met Melitha’s gaze and let go of her hand with a sad sigh. Her freed hand made
a tight fist, clenching and almost painful, before relaxing.
 
“I stole what should’ve been hers.” It was the first time Melitha had said it
aloud in any way since right after the fire . . . those first numb, aching,
horrified days in hospital, drifting in and out of drugged unconsciousness,
answering the questions of police officers and counselors. . . .
 
Now, Melitha scratched her scarred arm reflexively: a nervous tell Varric
noticed and always had.
 
“You can’t steal what’s already yours, kiddo. And Merrill was always yours . .
. heart and soul. Anyone with eyes could see it. Even Tali.” Leaning in even
closer, Varric held her gaze steadily, his own steely and hard. “You believing
otherwise—that you somehow conned or tricked her into loving you over
Talitha—is both unworthy of you and disrespectful to Merrill’s memory.”
 
For more than a minute, Melitha could only gape at Varric. The whole time, he
merely held her gaze, his own never wavering.
 
“I knew from the that first hospital visit after the fire that I couldn’t save
you from yourself, Little Meli, much as I wished I could. Redemption is a self-
serve sort of verb.” Varric shrugged casually, but seemed tense under that
relaxed façade. “But that doesn’t mean there isn’t something out there or
someone who can inspire you to save yourself. A friend or lover, project or
cause. Something. You have to look for it and when you find it, grab onto it.”
 
Grimacing a pained smile, Melitha squeezed Varric’s hand back, then freed hers.
“There’s nothing like that for me, Varric. I have no other friends, and there
hasn’t been anyone since Merrill . . . I have no causes, talents, or hobbies.
No anything. All I ever had was Tali and Merrill, and the other Chantry kids.”
 
“You have your hands and your heart,” Varric corrected her firmly. “They’re big
and strong and capable . . . good at fixing broken things. That’s more than a
lotta people have goin’ for ‘em.”
 
“Are you saying I should become a mechanic, perhaps? Tinker with and rebuild
old cars and lorries, and such?”
 
“If that’s where your bliss takes you, sure.” Varric grinned again and, despite
her determination to wallow in despair, Melitha’s spirits lifted, slightly.
Lifting spirits and touching hearts had always been two of Varric’s strongest
gifts. It was those talents that had always made him such a popular writer and
storyteller. “But what I was getting at was . . . fixer, fix thyself. Make
yourself your project and go to town.”
 
“What if I don’t care to fix myself? What if . . . what if I don’t deserve to
be fixed?” Melitha asked quietly. Varric’s grin turned into a crooked half-
smile.
 
“Then, my dear Inquisitor, you fix someone else.”
 
Frowning thoughtfully, Melitha opened her mouth to say . . . something. She had
no idea what. But before she could find out, a motion near the entryway to the
visiting room caught her eye. She looked beyond Varric’s brawny, wide shoulder
and found herself staring past the other tables between them and the entrance,
at the pretty-loony girl from yesterday. . . .
 
Sera Emmald.
 
The girl’s steely, mad eyes scanned the room, narrowing as they searched and
searched . . . and then finally landed on Melitha.
 
“Oi! Tadwinks!” she called, lowering her head angrily and squaring her slim
shoulders. She was wearing a long, red-orange-and-pink tie-dyed shirt that went
down almost to her knobby knees, and under that, yellow and black stretch-pants
that ended mid-calf. On her feet were broken-in, off-white ballet shoes.
 
At her angry, loud hail, everyone’s head turned, including Varric’s. Melitha
flushed and half-stood as Sera stalked toward her, half-prowl and half-swagger,
her face scrinched-up and intense.
 
“Friend of yours?” Varric asked laconically, glancing at Melitha, then back at
a fast approaching Sera. Then, Varric did a double-take back at Melitha, eyeing
her far too keenly. “Maker be praised, Meli, are . . . are you blushing?”
 
“No, I’m not.” She straightened, and glowered briefly, but thunderously down at
her oldest friend then squared her own shoulders as Sera skirted one final
table to get to theirs. “Perhaps I have a fever.”
 
“Perhaps you do.” She could see the corner of Varric’s mouth twitch in the
periphery of her vision. Then all she was seeing was Sera Emmald’s pretty-
loony—angry—face. The other young woman didn’t stop until she was in Melitha’s
personal bubble, smelling of herbs and mint, and glaring up at her. She started
to speak, blinked, then gave Melitha an assessing once-over.
 
“Wuff! You’re well-taller than I thought,” she said with surprise and
appreciation, then bit her lip with fetching uncertainty. “All broad shoulders
I wanna hold onto while I climb you like a tree—an’ I hate trees. Except apple
trees. And palm trees. Never been to California, me. But I will go, someday. I
fancy the seaside. It smells all salty, like fish and chips.”
 
Melitha’s eyebrows shot up. Then she shook her head and sighed. “Right, then.
That made all the sense.”
 
“Aren’tcha gonna introduce us, Inquisitor?” Varric asked with barely-disguised
amusement. Melitha flushed even deeper, but brazened it out.
 
“No, I’m not. Was there something I could help you with, Miss Emmald?”
 
Sera’s eyes widened, then narrowed again, the blatant admiration in her
whirling eyes turning back to fury. “Oh, yeah. Nosy arse-biscuit!”
 
Then Melitha just barely had a moment to dance back out of the way of a speedy
haymaker. Unfortunately, she didn’t take into account the chair that was
directly behind her, and went tumbling backwards with a startled yelp. A moment
after that, Sera’s bony, surprisingly solid weight dropped onto Melitha’s hips
and pelvis, in a fluid straddle.
 
“What on Earth—” Melitha began breathlessly, trying to sit up. But Sera growled
and shoved her shoulders to the floor once more.
 
“Shut it, Shiny!” she gritted out, leaning down until the tip of her high-
bridged nose bumped Melitha’s. Her eyes were a blur of steel-blue iris and ink-
black pupil. “You don’t get to talk ‘til I’ve said m’piece, yeah?”
 
And then—before Melitha could process that, let alone respond to it—Sera’s
breath, redolent of raspberries and sugar, puffed on her mouth . . . into it,
just as Sera’s parted lips crashed against her own with a clack of teeth then
an aggressive, sweet-tart swirl of tongue.
 
                                      TBC
***** Four *****
Chapter Summary
     In which agreements are reached and everyone puts their foot in it,
     at least once.
Chapter Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, mentions of
     murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and warnings to be added as we go.
After a shocked few moments of utter submission, Melitha gasped, then moaned as
that wild-raspberries sweetness exploded across her tongue and throughout her
consciousness. She brought her hands up, vacillating between doing what she
should do—place them on Sera’s shoulders to push her away—or . . . doing what
she wanted to do: reverse their positions, pin the pretty-loony girl’s body
with her own, and give as good as she was getting.
 
The matter was decided for her before her hands could do more than tentatively
settle on Sera’s waist. The other girl made a soft, wanting, whimpering sound,
leaning harder and more intently into the kiss for a few intense seconds . . .
before sitting back and up with a muffled huff.
 
Melitha instinctively tried to follow those raspberry-tasting lips and got
punched hard in the right shoulder, for her trouble.
 
“Ow!” she bellowed, glaring up at the lovely, sulky face scowling back down at
her. Sera’s plush, pink lips were kiss-swollen and pouty, her eyes wide and a
slightly dazed, with dilated pupils. And she was breathing fast and heavy.
“What was that for?”
 
Those angry-horny eyes narrowed. “Which? The kiss or the punch?”
 
“Either! Both!” Melitha rubbed her right shoulder—those bony, tiny fists packed
a wallop—then attempted to sit up. Surprisingly, Sera let her, hands drifting
lightly down Melitha’s sternum—over collar bone, breasts and the top of
Melitha’s ribcage—before the other girl crossed her arms defensively. Letting
go of Sera’s waist, Melitha braced her hands on the carpeted floor and sat up a
bit, careful to leave a relatively respectable space between them, considering
that Sera was straddling her thighs. “What’re you—mental?”
 
“Well, duh!” Sera snorted and laughed. “We’re in a mental hospital! I’m mental,
you’re mental, this whole bloody place is mental!”
 
“No, no, I meant—I meant—” Melitha stammered in frustration and Sera stuck her
tongue out.
 
“You dunno what you meant, Shiny, admit it.” She smirked, triumphant and smug.
“I just kissed some of that uptight, pucker-clench right out of you!”
 
Melitha’s face scrunched up. “I admit no such thing!”
 
“Lookit you—can’t even manage that resting bitch-face you’ve had goin’ since
you got here!” Sera guffawed and giggled hysterically. “Oh, he was right, he
was! You’re gonna be loads of fun!”
 
Melitha could feel her face settling into a not uncommon, disapproving scowl.
“Who, pray tell, is he?”
 
Sera rolled her eyes. “Cole, innit? And, anyway, shut it, Honey-Tongue, I’m the
one askin’ the tough questions, ‘round here!”
 
“Well, she’s got ya there, Inquisitor,” Varric noted, startling both young
women into remembering his presence. Sera glanced back at him warily.
 
“Right. Dunno who you are, Mr. Highlights-and-Stubble, but this’s an A-and-
B convo. Maybe C y’self out of it, yeah?”
 
Varric, eyes twinkling with undisguised mirth, held up his hands in surrender,
then mimed zipping his lips shut, ignoring Melitha’s pleadingly mouthed: A
little help, here, Varric!
 
Then Sera was turning back to Melitha, her face grim and suspicious. “Now,
since we’ve got the preliminaries done—found out if there’s any PHWOAR! between
you and me . . . and there well-is, no problem on that count—it’s time to find
out whether I can trust you, yeah?”
 
Melitha blinked. Then scoffed defensively. “I’m plenty trustworthy—not that
that’s either here or there!”
 
“Oh, I’d say it’s here, there, and everywhere, Shiny, since you’ve been playin’
‘dozer and diggin’ up my dirt.”
 
Another blink, this one confused. “What?” Melitha asked. Sera rolled her eyes
again.
 
“Is there some reason you’re talkin’ to the other loonies about me? Cole and
Leliana, and them?” Sera questioned with strained patience, as if speaking to a
dense child. Melitha blanched, caught out.
 
“I—I—” she started to say. Sera huffed and crossed her arms.
 
“Not off to a runnin’ start, are you, Tadwinks?”
 
“I—”
 
“Already said that, like, a bunch of times.”
 
“You—”
 
“I’ll bite: that’s a new one.”
 
“Damnit, Sera, just—be quiet a moment, and let me think!” Melitha blurted out,
bobbing up a bit more to place her hands on Sera’s arms with a gentleness that
seemed to surprise them both. After a few startled seconds, she was rubbing
Sera’s wiry biceps with her thumbs, slow and soothing. Sera’s angry gaze even
flickered uncertainly, the slight sneer curving the left side of her mouth
slipping down into a frown . . . the deep furrow of her brow relaxing a bit.
“Or do you not care about an answer to your question?”
 
“I . . . of course, I care. Care too much, me,” Sera admitted in a low,
somewhat miserable voice, her gaze dropping to the empty space between them.
Then she made a frustrated sound and glared up at Melitha again, shrugging her
arms free of Melitha’s light grasp. “But it’s not rocket-science, is it? No
need to think about an answer, is there? At least not if you’re honest.
Thinkin’ about answers is for liars. And I don’t like liars.”
 
Sighing, Melitha once more braced her hands on the carpet, just behind and to
either side of her body. “Thinking about answers isn’t always about lying.
Sometimes, it’s about tact. Or merely collecting one’s thoughts, if one has
been . . . startled by a question.”
 
Sera glared some more . . . then rolled her eyes and pouted. “Alright. We’ll go
with that. For now. So, which is it? You bein’ tactful—which is just a prettier
kind of lie, innit?—or startled?”
 
“Some from Column A and a lot from Column B,” Melitha said dryly, shooting a
quelling glance at Varric when he covered a laugh with a cough. “You’ve
startled me several times in the past few minutes, alone.”
 
“Mm, yeah,” Sera agreed wistfully, her pout softening into a tiny smile, her
eyes warming. “PHWOAR!”
 
Fighting a fierce blush and a big grin, Melitha cleared her throat. “Quite. So,
to answer your question as tactfully as I may . . . Cole was the one who
brought you up when I tried to thank him for leaving dinner for me. He told me
it was actually your doing, so, thank you for that.”
 
“No skin off my butt,” Sera said warily, biting her lower lip. Then she snorted
and giggled. “Ha! Butt-skin!”
 
“And as for Leliana . . . she offered to answer any questions I had that I
might not feel comfortable asking the doctors or staff. The first thing that
popped into my head was, appropriate or not, you.”
 
Her brow furrowing again, Sera leaned in a bit. “And why’s that?”
 
Melitha shrugged. “Because you’d been on my mind since Cole told me it was you
who’d brought me dinner while I was . . . indisposed.”
 
“You mean while you were busy checkin’-in to the La-La-Land Hotel?”
 
“Yes,” Melitha sighed, speaking plainly as she truly accepted that tact, for
all that she’d spent her life cultivating it, would do her less than no good
with Sera. It would either go over the other girl’s head, or come across as
lies or prevarication. “I believe the clinical term is dissociating.”
 
“Po-tay-to, to-may-to,” Sera dismissed loftily. Melitha almost smiled.
 
“Anyway, you . . . were kind to me. Thoughtful and concerned. Even after I was
less than pleasant to you earlier. I wanted to understand why.”
 
Sera gave her a blank look. “Why I did a nice thing for you?”
 
“Yes.”
 
Sera frowned, but not angrily, just pensively. “‘S’ere have to be a reason
behind doin’ a nice thing for someone who maybe needs some nice things in their
life?” she asked, her eyes flickering and her face gentling into a look of
understanding and compassion that took Melitha’s breath away.
 
“Yes,” she answered without thinking or searching for a tactful way to say it.
Then, realizing how it sounded, she flushed and looked down. “I mean . . . it’s
been my experience that few people do kindnesses for those they don’t know. Or
even for those they do know. Which, I suppose, makes me all the more curious
about those rare exceptions who prove the rule.”
 
Sera didn’t reply for a minute, the weight of her measuring look heavy, indeed,
on Melitha’s head. Then she reached out to brush cool, light fingers down
Melitha’s cheek, to her jaw and chin. Finally, she tilted Melitha’s face up.
When Melitha had no choice but to meet Sera’s steely eyes, she found a
startling empathy and warmth there . . . kindness that seemed as boundless as
it was deep.
 
“So, you’re sayin’ that . . . I do somethin’ nice for you and your first
reaction is to ferret out a reason for me bein’ nice at all?”
 
Melitha’s brow furrowed in consternation. “Well, when you put it like that. . .
.”
 
“Makes you sound a right tit, dunnit?” Sera said sharply, then sighed, her
fingers dropping away from Melitha’s chin. “Is do unto others such a foreign
concept, where you’re from, then?”
 
Closing her eyes and thinking of the first eight years of hers and Tali’s
lives, living hand to mouth with their mother and older brother—and then just
their older brother after their mother didn’t come home from a job—Melitha
shrugged jerkily, her mouth tightening. “I’d . . . rather not talk about it.”
 
“Oh, so it’s alright diggin’ when it’s my dirt, but when it’s yours, suddenly
we’re all backin’ away and bein’ tactful?” Sera mocked. Melitha shook her head,
fighting not to let memories from two lives ago swamp her and drag her under.
 
“I . . . apologize for asking Leliana about you,” Melitha said breathlessly,
eyes squeezed shut, one hand come up to pinch the bridge of her nose. That did
nothing to stave off the memories of life before the Chantry Home took her and
Tali in, so she removed her hand and opened her eyes, blinking away tears of
frustration and sadness. Sera was watching her with awkward concern. But
focusing on the other girl’s face seemed to drown out other issues clamoring
for Melitha’s besieged attention, so focus, she did. “I really only wanted her
general impressions of you. And you have my word that she told me nothing,
other than if I had questions about you, then I should ask them of you
directly, and form my own opinions.”
 
“Damn right, you should. Yeah. Um.” Sera’s brow furrowed again, this time in
confusion. “Um. Right, so, I’m not used to people admitting they’re wrong to me
or makin’ such pretty apologies for behaving like an arse. So, gimme a moment
to process, yeah? Doc Anders is always goin’ on about how a body needs time to
process the surprisin’ shit.” A nervous laugh followed this admission and Sera
cleared her throat, swinging her right leg over Melitha’s thighs, kneeling to
Melitha’s left and sitting back on her heels to regard the other woman
curiously. “That Leliana’s a bit of alright, though. Listens more than she
talks and knows more than she lets on. And she’s easy on the eyes, too. Like
she stepped out of a magazine. An’ I don’t necessarily mean one of the naughty
ones, perv, so shut it.”
 
“I said nothing.” Varric held up his hands peaceably once more when Sera shot
him a stern, disapproving look.
 
“But you we’re thinkin’ it real loud, and talkin’ shit with your eyes.”
 
“I . . . was talking shit with my eyes?” Varric’s thick, blond brows shot up,
amused and charmed. Sera made a rude sound and turned back to Melitha, her eyes
instantly softening again, going curious and almost fond.
 
“Anyway. I do like you, even though you can be an arse sometimes. I reckon it’s
one of them . . . whaddaya call ‘ems Doc Giselle’s always on about. Defense-
mechanisms! Yeah! Don’t like people getting’ too close, I can tell. Don’t trust
‘em not to do ya dirty at the first opportunity. I c’n relate. Don’t agree, but
I c’n relate.”
 
And with that pronouncement, Sera held out her small, slim hand to Melitha. The
latter eyed the offered hand suspiciously before looking back into Sera’s eyes,
her own still burning and swimming with the tears that she hadn’t successfully
suppressed before.
 
“I don’t need or want your pity, Sera,” she said softly, her voice cracking and
creaking with strain. That soft-kind flicker moved through Sera’s gaze and
across her features, before a more wry and companionable expression took its
place.
 
“Trust me,” she said, giving Melitha a once-over that lingered at several
places—some of them twice. “When I look at you or think about you, there’s a
bloody laundry-list of things I feel and think. And none of them are pity. I
mean . . . look at you, yeah? You’re all . . . you, y’know? Tall and strong and
WUFF! And when you’re not being all defensive-mechanism-y, you’re not bad to
talk to. Though I’m more of an action-type, myself. As in gettin’ some. Get it?
Gettin’ some action? Because, y’know . . . it means bumpin’ bits, an’ that.”
 
Eyes gone wide in the face of this cheery, sincere blurt of word-salad, Melitha
glanced at Sera’s hand again before reaching out to take it with wondering
trust. A few seconds later, she was being tugged upward and rolling with
it—rolling to her feet and somehow managing not to overbalance and crush Sera,
and possibly Varric, too.
 
With them both standing, Sera was more than a foot shorter than Melitha.  It
put her at about eye-to-breast-level to Melitha, a fact which did not go
unnoticed or un-commented-on.
 
“WHOA! So, I’m on-board with dramatic height-differences, now! Didn’t get it,
before, but I’m seein’ two huge perks as we speak,” Sera noted, then: “Really,
though, if it’s that cold in here, have Mr. Shit-Talker bring you a cardigan,
or some’at. ‘S well-distractin when they’re right in my face, y’know?”
 
Resisting the instinct to cover her chest—but unable to resist blushing—Melitha
sighed. “Perhaps if you wouldn’t stare at my chest so much, you wouldn’t be so
distracted.”
 
Sera smirked. “Well, perhaps if you didn’t stare at my arse so much, you
wouldn’t be so distracted, either, Old Lady Smarty-Pants.”
 
Melitha started to make a grand denial, but quickly shut her mouth as she
remembered that Sera didn’t like liars. They’d already gotten off on the wrong
foot, as it were.
 
“Fine,” she agreed with equanimity. “I won’t stare at your arse and you won’t
stare at my breasts. We’ll make a point of respectful eye-contact from here on
out.”
 
Blonde brows shooting up, Sera stared at the hand Melitha held out for shaking
and snorted once more. “I’m not in the habit of makin’ promises. ‘Specially
ones I don’t intend to keep.” When Melitha rolled her eyes and withdrew her
hand, Sera grumbled and made a grab for the hand, shaking it fast and
earnestly. “Alright, fine! I promise I’ll try not to stare at your tits. Or
your nips. Or your hips. Or your arse. Or your shoulders. Or the way your right
cheek dimples when you’re fightin’ a smile. Nope. From here on, it’s nothin’
but eye-to-eye. Which, yeah, in’t exactly a chore, since you’ve got such pretty
eyes—like, all weird and changin’ colors with the way light hits ‘em. Ha! Girl
with kaleidoscope eyes!”
 
Melitha blushed, even as her mind reeled under that onslaught of non-sequiturs.
“I’m a fan of their earlier work. The psychedelic stuff just confuses me.”
 
“But that’s their best stuff! Not confusin’ at all—it’s lyrics that mean
somethin’, yeah? Not just tripe and bollocks about holdin’ hands and Eleanor
Roosevelt.”
 
Melitha chuckled and Varric, just behind Sera, opened his mouth to correct her,
then promptly shut it before Sera could tell him to, heaving a silent, put-upon
sigh.
 
Then Melitha was meeting Sera’s gaze once more, her smile widening as Sera’s
deepened and she swayed a bit closer.
 
“So . . . you formin’ any opinions, yet?” she asked slyly. Melitha turned
crimson.
 
“I . . . will admit to not being indifferent to your attractiveness . . . and
your rather strident brand of charm.”
 
“Erm . . . yeah.” Sera looked less than impressed and behind her, Varric was
wincing and mouthing: “A SWING AND A MISS.”
 
“By which I mean I find you captivating and lovely,” Melitha added smoothly,
executing a slight bow over Sera’s hand, which she was still holding. The other
girl’s brows lifted again and she turned a pretty shade of pink. From behind
her, Varric grinned, nodded, and gave Melitha a thumbs-up, mouthing: “NICE
RECOVERY.”
 
Melitha repressed an eye-roll and focused on Sera again. The other girl was
giggling nervously and biting her full lower lip.
 
“Well-well . . . listen to you turnin’ rubbish into butter. . . .” another
giggle and wide-eyed, guilelessly sensual look. Melitha swallowed around a
suddenly dry throat.
 
“More like butter into rubbish—my words are clumsy and inadequate, as always. I
never was the charming twin,” Melitha said bemusedly . . . then her face
blanched, and lost all expression as she realized that she’d slipped and, for
the first time in years, mentioned Tali to someone who wasn’t Varric.
 
Her blood couldn’t have run colder if it was composed of nitrogen.
 
Meanwhile, Sera blinked at Melitha with keen curiosity. “You’re a twin? Get
out! You mean there’s two of you, walkin’ around, all PHWOAR- and WUFF-like?
With the eyes and the shoulders and the dimples? Brilliant! Is she mental,
too?”
 
“Ah . . . Sera, is it? Yeah, that’s kind of a no-fly zone for Meli,” Varric
began just a touch nervously. “So, just ix-nay on the in-tway uestions-quay,
‘kay?”
 
“No, it’s not ‘kay, Mr. It-shay-alker-Tay,” Sera said with distracted
irritation, her assessing eyes never leaving Melitha’s ashen face. “If she
don’t wanna talk about it, she c’n tell me herself. She’s a grown woman—or so I
assume from all the—” she gestured at Melitha’s tall, sturdy, stock-still form.
“Don’t need anyone speakin’ for her. Not you, and not me, either. In’t that
right, Shiny? Shiny? Where y’goin’?”
 
“Ah, jeez—Melitha—” Varric called after her, but Melitha didn’t answer. She was
too busy making a mad-dash for the relative safety, silence, and seclusion of
her room, dodging around tables and furniture, and patients saying tearful
good-byes to their visiting loved ones.
 
                                      TBC
***** Five *****
Chapter Summary
     Melitha takes an unexpected trip down Memory Lane . . . and another
     jaunt into the Fade.
Chapter Notes
     Notes/Warnings: Modern AU. TRIGGER: Mental illness, implied child
     sexual abuse, mentions of murder-suicide, pyromania. Tags and
     warnings to be added as we go.
Numb, but with stark panic nibbling the edges of that numbness, Melitha shut
the door to her room and leaned against it, breathing hard despite not being
winded even a little from her dash up to the third floor. She would’ve locked
the door behind her, but none of the patient’s doors had locks. So, she paced
to her barred window, then back to the door. Window. Door. Sat on her bed.
Bounced to feet again. Door. Window. . . .
 
Finally, as Melitha was staring blankly out the window, emptying her mind for a
trip beyond the Veil—maybe for keeps, this time—there was a knock on her door,
gentle and brief.
 
“Melitha?” a kind, thickly-accented voice called from beyond the door. “Are you
in there? Your friend, Mr. Tethras is worried about you. As am I. . . .”
 
A few moments later the door to Melitha’s private room opened silently. Dr.
Giselle entered, her low, burgundy heels clicking quietly on the tiled floor.
They were good quality, though not the best, Melitha knew as she watched them
pass her bed—under which she was hidden—on the way to her closet.
 
The closet door opened and shut quickly—Melitha wasn’t in there, and Dr.
Giselle clearly wasn’t interested in snooping—and the doctor heaved a soft
sigh.
 
“Oh, Melitha,” she murmured heavily, her sensible shoes clicking back toward
the door to the room. “Poor child.”
 
The door to Melitha’s room shut gently and Melitha was once again alone. Not
that, in the safe, stuffy-dark of under-bed and the twitchy, fetid-dark of the
locked cellar where she kept her bad memories. The ones even Varric had no idea
about. The ones she told herself that she had no idea about.
 
The ones that’d started . . . everything.
 
And by the time the door opened then shut again—off-white ballet shoes padding
past the bed, toward the closet . . . then back to the bed, where they paused,
the left one tapping—Melitha was gone. Through the Veil and deep, deep into the
Fade.
 
                                       #
 
“Meli?”
 
Meli Anne Adaar shuddered and shrunk in on herself even more. The attic of
their small home was cluttered and junky with tons of old rubbish, most of
which had already been there when the Adaar family had moved in, two years
prior. Everything was slip-covered and drop-clothed, dusty and webbed, rusted
and corroded.
 
Yet Meli had never felt safer anywhere else in the New House, as she always
thought of it. Especially since Mum’d started bringing home new “uncles” every
other month.
 
Usually, those uncles were big and brawny men, much like Da had been. But
unlike Da, they were always onlysuperficiallynice to Herah Adaar’s children—at
least at first. Then, a few weeks in, those façades would start to slip more
and more, until they’d start screaming, or laying hands, or—as one angry
“uncle” had done to Meli and Tali’s older brother, Tannim—throwing punches.
 
And Tannim, lean, but already nearly as tall as their Da had been, and equally
broad of shoulder and large of fists, had defended himself with a brutal,
efficient confidence that’d sent the uncle running—staggering—off into the
night, bloody and spitting teeth.
 
Their mother had raged at Tannim, who’d stood as still as a monolith, Tali
hugging his leg and sobbing, Meli huddled in a corner of the kitchen and
watching everything with big eyes. Raged and wept and eventually stormed out,
leaving Tannim to silently make supper for his seven-years-old sisters and
himself. He’d burnt both the beans and the toast, and then covered it all in
runny catsup and marmite, for Tali and Meli, respectively. His own, he ate
bare, his jaw tight and a vein in his temple throbbing in time with his
chewing.
 
Tali, soothed by the familiarity of beans on toast with loads of catsup, hadn’t
noticed. But Meli, always watchful, and as silent as Tannim could be, had kept
an eye on her kind and loyal, but mercurial brother.
 
After that, Herah Adaar had started bringing home aslightlybetter class of
“uncle.” Uncles with gainful employment and controllable tempers. Uncles who
didn’t yell or hit or condescend. Uncles who also never held their mother’s
fickle interest like the rotten ones had.
 
For almost a year, things had gone relatively well, since the incident when
Uncle Tommy had struck Tannim and blacked his eye. The few uncles since then
had been blessedly dull and fearful of the large, seething young man with
coldly burning eyes and the unmistakable looks of his late father.
 
And then . . . there’d been Uncle Alrik.
 
Alrik Templar had never once, in the four months he’d been coming around the
New House, laid a hand on Herah’s three children. But then, he’d hardly had to.
He was, Tannim had said of him darkly, the sort of man who could cut without
knives and hit without fists. That his words were worse than poison, and had a
way of burrowing into the brain like earwigs or some other crawly, slimy
things.
 
It went without saying that Tannim hadn’t liked Uncle Alrik from the moment
Herah had brought him home, in his Armani suit, with his fancy, foreign car,
and proper, northern accent. Meli hadn’t liked him, either, despite his posh
manners and courtly behavior to their mother. His gaze was as icy and pale a
blue as a winter sky, cruel and acquisitive and flat. His smile was a chill
thing that never touched his chill eyes. And those eyes had a way of lingering
on Meli that neither she nor Tannim cared for.
 
Tali, of course, noticed none of this. She was and had always been self-
centered and easily charmed, like their mother. And Uncle Alrik tended to
flatter and cozen, and to bring little gifts for his girlfriend’s twin
daughters that Tali would lose her magpie-mind over. Meli would accept hers
politely, then later give them to Tali, who would look at her as if she’d gone
mental, then snatch the trinket and squirrel it away somewhere.
 
“Don’t let him take youanywherealone,” Tannim soon took to warning them both,
though he was really warning Tali, since Meli’s wariness around all of the
uncles, but especially this one, was even higher than Tannim’s. “Don’t let him
. . . if heevertouches you inany way, you tell me, right? Not Mum, or a teacher
or any of that shite.Me. And I’ll take care of him,” their brother—only
fifteen, and already built like a man, with a man’s strength and rage—had
commanded darkly, his heavy brow furrowed and his light-brown eyes snapping
with anger. “I’ll make sure you’re thelast thingheevertouches.”
 
Tali, not really listening, would nod and continue admiring whatever latest
trinkets Uncle Alrik had brought them. Meli, meeting Tannim’s frustrated, angry
eyes would nod solemnly, and shudder at the thought of Uncle Alrik punching her
in the eye, like Uncle Tommy had punched Tannim last year.
 
It wasthe worstthing she could possibly imagine. But then, no one had ever
accused Meli Adaar of being long on imagination. No,thatwas Tali’s job.
 
This lack of creativity where cruelty was concerned was what had led to Meli
being crammed into the attic crawl-space, watching as Tali made a face and
poked her head up into the tight, fusty little room.
 
Her big, hazel eyes widened when they fell on Meli. “What’s wrong with
you?You’reusually all smiles when you’re hiding in this manky old dungeon!”
 
Meli shook her head and closed her eyes, burying her face in the arms wrapped
around the tops of her scarred, knobby knees.
 
After a minute—and many sulky grumbles—Tali was kneeling in front of her, one
hand on Meli’s long, dusty, messy hair.
 
“What’s wrong, Meli?” she asked again, sounding genuinely worried this time.
Meli sniffled, but didn’t answer. She wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, and would
never risk telling big-mout Tali. “Is it that big boy from fifth form? The one
with the lazy eye who’s always shoving you?”
 
Meli shook her head. “No.”
 
“I think itis,” Tali persisted, scowling. “I think I should tell Tannim about
him.He’llmake that tosser stop.”
 
“No!” Meli looked up, panicked, and clamped a hand over her sister’s mouth.
Tali’s eyes widened more and she huffed, then licked Meli’s palm, knowing it’d
cause Meli to instantly pull her hand away. Which it did.
 
“Why not?” Tali demanded, crossing her arms and tilting her head suspiciously.
 
“Just—don’t. Please, don’t, Tali.”
 
“Give me one good reason,” Tali said snootily, cruelly, and Meli sighed.
 
“Because . . . Tannim’d do somethingawfulto Bevain, and Bevain . . . is a
plank, but no more than usual. He doesn’t deserve to be put into hospital for
something he didn’t do.”
 
“It’d be comeuppance for all the things he’s done to youbefore. Not to mention
all the other kids in our form.” Tali shrugged dismissively, completely
uninterested in Bevain’s guilt or innocence. “Anyways, if it’s not Bevain
McPike, then who is it? And what’ve they done?”
 
“No one. No one’s done nothing,” Meli insisted stonily, meeting Tali’s gaze
until, for once, the other girl backed down and looked away, frowning
uncertainly.
 
“Well . . . alright, then. If you say so.” Turning on her now-dusty knees to
crawl back to the narrow ladder leading down to the third floor, Tali paused a
moment to say: “Oh, Mum says Uncle Alrik’s going to be watching us again this
afternoon! That’s what I came up here to tell you!”
 
Meli went cold in the face of her sister’s glee. “B-but . . . why? Isn’t Mum—”
 
“Mum’s got a last-minute call. She won’t be home till tomorrow morning, again.
And Tannim is off at Benny Hazlett’s till curfew. They’re probably nicking
vodka from Benny’s Mum’s liquor cabinet.” Another unconcerned, Tali-shrug as
she climbed down the ladder. “Whatever. Tuesday, Uncle Alrik said the next time
he saw us, he’d ring us matching lockets, remember? I’ll bet they’re real gold,
too!”
 
Listening to her sister’s bold, loud footsteps till they disappeared from ear-
shot—which meant not till Tali had reached the kitchen, which was at the back
of the ground-floor—Meli closed her eyes once more. But that didn’t stop tears
from leaking out. She remembered well the last time Uncle Alrik had babysat
her—only for a few hours, during which Tannim had been at his job and Mum’d had
to take Tali to see her psychiatrist—and wanted nothing less than she wanted a
repeat oflast time. . . .
 
Of Uncle Alrik’s voice and hot breath in her ear, his scent in her nostrils . .
. his kisses on her forehead—a mockery of the way Da used to kiss her and Tali
every night before . . . before he died—and hishands: everywhere they shouldn’t
be. . . .
 
No. Best not to think about it. Thinking about it only made her sad and scared,
angry and weepy—made her feel as if she was coming apart at the seams both
physically and mentally. Like she was goingmad.
 
And if she went madenough, what if she . . . let slip what had happened? What
ifTannimheard, and . . .did something?
 
Uncle Alrik had told her in detail, in hushed, heated whispers as he held her
on his lap, what happened to boys like Tannim when they went to grown-up jail.
And no one, looking at six-foot-four, two-hundred twelve pounds Tannim, would
fail to send him to grown-up jail should he evenblinkwrong at Uncle Alrik.
 
So, Meli forced it all down, as she had been for weeks since the first
incident. Forced it down, and did not think of all thesmallerincidents since
then: the knowing, mocking looks and touches when no one was looking. The
threats to keep what was going on a secret lest Tannim do something . . .
precipitous, and wind up in grown-up jail for his whole life.
 
The promise of more and worse to come, lighting Uncle Alrik’s merciless eyes. .
. .
 
But, honestly, nothing could be worse than what had already happened, right?
Even if Uncle Alrik punched her right in the eye, like Uncle Tommy had done
Tannim? Right?
 
Despite Meli’s best efforts to remain in the attic that afternoon, and
hopefully never find out, the universe conspired to prove her wrong in the most
awful way.
 
                                       #
 
The first time Meli everFaded, she was gone for most of a night that felt like
a brief, but blessed eternity.
 
One moment, she was laying, half-naked, on her mother’s bed, trying not to cry
and scream as bad things happened to her. The next, she was in a place where
nothing was quite real andeverythingwas always shifting . . . a place where she
could bewhatevershe wanted, and talk to people who’d once existed, but didn’t
anymore, or people who’d never existed in thefirst place. All was thought and
feeling andwill.
 
And, ever in the distance of whatever vistas and wonders she found or conjured,
conquered or explored, was a tall, black city . . . both intimidatingly
frightening and ineffably sad. Just looking at it made her heart hurt for
something lost that could perhaps never be regained. And yet, to look in any
direction was to see the Black City in the distant periphery.
 
Mostly, Meli just tried to ignore it, the way she ignored the echoes and
whispers of pain and disgust coming from that Bad Place . . . the place beyond
the Fade, where Mums turned their backs and let Uncles do terrible things, and
even thebestBrothers in the world were powerless to stop any of it.
 
In theFade, she was a powerful warrior. A horned and dangerous sword-swinger
for something called theValo-kas. And there were others there, too. Like her,
but not. Smaller, not horned, but dangerous, too: archers and sappers, medics
and mages, scouts and spies.
 
Together, they were a powerful, proud mercenary band who took jobs fighting the
desperate fights no one else could.
 
Together . . . they were afamily. . . something Meli hadn’t really had since
Da’d died. . . .
 
But Meli tried never to think about him. Not when in the Fade. Thoughts of the
dead always seemed to bring the Black City closer than she liked it. . . .
 
But even so, even with the Black City looming so near, the Fade wasfarbetter
than thatotherPlace . . . the Place she’d come from. The Place where her form
was static, malleable, and vulnerable. The Place where she wasweakand small
and—
 
It was sudden, sharp pain that brought Meli back from the Fade. Brought her
back to the Place where all Uncles were bad and all Mums loved them,anyway. One
moment, she was eyeing the Black City, which seemed to creep closer with every
blink . . . the next, she was unable to hold back blinking anymore. Her eyes
flew immediately back open to see light-brown ones over her own, wide and
worried and scared.
 
“Meli?” a soft, low voice rumbled and she smiled, her spirits instantly soaring
despite the dull pain radiating fromdown there, and from her stinging cheek.
 
“Da?” she asked, and the familiar, worried gaze was shuttered by a blink. The
heavy brow above those eyes furrowed. “No, Da’s . . . Da’sdead. Tannim?”
 
The eyes drew back a bit, just enough for Meli to make out the rest of the
face. Not as craggy as Da’s or as strong—finer, more like Mum’s—but the same
smile, big and warm. Or it would’ve been if not for the concern that leavened
it.
 
“‘S right, kiddo.” Tannim’s fingers brushed Meli’s stinging cheek—Tannim had,
it turned out, been trying for several minutes to snap Meli out of her Fade,
resorting, finally, to slapping her across the face hard. She’d have a hand-
shaped bruise for some days to come—tenderly, attempting to soothe her. “Had me
scared, you did. You went walk-about and wouldn’t come back.”
 
“Sorry,” Meli apologized quietly, her voice scratchy and hoarse, her throat dry
as a desert and clicking like a grandfather clock. “What’s—what’s happening?
Where’s Tali? Where’s—” closing her mouth around his name, Meli looked away.
“Why’re you home, Tannim?”
 
Meli’s brother sighed, his fingers still brushing her cheek as he blushed.
“Benny was drunk an’ bein a plank, innit? I was about to leave, anyway, when
Tali called and said I should come home. Said your eyes were open but she
couldn’t wake you up. When I got home, I thought no one was here ‘till I walked
past Mum’s room, and saw you and Tali on Mum’s bed. . . .” Tannim trailed off
unhappily, and Meli turned red with guilt and shame, hot, stinging tears
leaking out of her eyes. As memory threatened to swamp her conscious mind, she
stuffed it down with ruthless, brutal force.
 
She tried to roll away onto her side and could barely move for the hot,
lightning-bolt pain that shot through her gut and places decidedly lower,
drawing a whimper from her. She felt achy andwrongall over . . . heavy and
tired.
 
“Meli?” Tannim asked in a tiny, meek voice, tugging up a little on the quilt
which covered Meli from shoulders to feet. Meli kept her face turned away, more
tears running down her cheeks and nose as she realized that Tannim must have
covered her over when he found her. Which meant he’d seen her half-naked and
sprawled on the bed, just as Uncle Alrik had arranged her before—
 
Even though she’d cut off the memory at the knees, Meli wept all the harder.
 
“Mum didn’t tell me she’d got a last-minute job, and that she was leaving you
with him, or I’d have come home straight-away!” Tannim swore roughly.
“Bloodyhell. . . how long has this been going on, Meli? Why didn’t youtellme?”
 
“Because I . . . I didn’t want you to get mad andhurthim!”
 
“Why-ever not?!” Tannim growled, his pale eyes flashing. A soft sob escaped
Meli’s mouth and she trapped several more behind her teeth before they, too,
could escape. It was a near thing, though.
 
“I didn’t want you to go togrown-upjail! They’d hurt youbad, in there, and it’d
beall my fault! Uncle Alriksaid!”
 
Tannim was silent for long minutes as Meli fought sobs and sniffles alike,
tears blurring her eyes beyond usefulness while everything ached and felt so,
sowrong. She didn’t know what’d happened and didn’t want to know. She dreaded
the moment she had to move. To get out of the bed that still smelled like her
mother (somewhere under the scent of Uncle Alrik). To see herself in the
bathroom mirror. . . .
 
“I’m so sorry, Meli,” Tannim whispered, climbing onto the bed with her and
pulling her close, rocking her and kissing her hair like Da might’ve done. “How
long has he . . . I shouldneverhave . . . fuck! I was supposed toprotectyou!
IpromisedDa I would always look after you and Tali and Mum! And I’vefailedyou,
and I’ve failedMum. . . .” his voice cracked, like it hadn’t since he was
thirteen. “But don’t you worry, Meli. He’ll never hurt you or anyone else
again.”
 
The cold, hard, flat tone caught Meli’s attention and she rolled slowly,
gingerly toward her brother, blinking up at his angry face. “Tannim?”
 
“Trust me, Meli. He’ll be taken care of. He’ll never hurt another little girl,
ever again,” he repeated, a promise as red as heart’s blood and Meli, for the
first time ever—but not the last—was as afraid of her oneofher siblings as she
wasforthem.
 
                                       #
 
If I fell in love with you,/ Would you promise to be true?/ And help me
understand?/ ‘Cuz I’ve been in love before,/ And I’ve found that love was more/
Than just holding hands. . . ./ If I give my heart to you,/ I must be sure/
From the very start that you/ Would love me more than her. . . .
 
The worried, creaking voice had been singing for a while.
 
It’d dogged her steps, acting as both wings and anchor, while she and her
current companion ran the gamut of twisted hills and sunken dales of the Fade,
hunting demons made of greed and rage and sloth, the Black City lumbering ever
to her right, just in the outer ranges of her periphery, moving incrementally
nearer while never getting any closer.
 
Until, finally, she stopped, ichor-dripping sword smoking and singing in her
hands. Her companion of the moment—a rat that called itself “Mouse”—looked up
at her impatiently.
 
“These demons,” it said—or thought at her, since the Fade was ever-silent.
“They won’t kill themselves, y’know?”
 
“I know,” Melitha thought back wearily, turning her head just slightly—away
from the looming Black City to her right and toward the direction from which
the worried singing came. “I know, Mouse, it’s just . . . can you hear it?”
 
“Hear what?”
 
Melitha meant to answer, but suddenly felt that she shouldn’t. It wasn’t that
she didn’t trust Mouse, just that . . . well . . . she didn’t trust Mouse. Even
in the Fade, a talking tube-rat seemed more than a tad sketchy. “How many more
demons must we kill, here? This place is full of more demons than anyone can
slay in a good eternity. What’s the point in bothering any that aren’t trying
to kill me?”
 
The rat named Mouse sighed, its whiskers twitching. Melitha blinked and the rat
was gone. In its place stood a pale man of average height and build, with
sharp, clever features and slightly beady dark eyes. He was wearing arcane and
archaic robes with strange alchemical symbols on them.
 
“We need to get to a specific demon—the Kagyath—and kill it before it can have
us killed,” the man said simply, shrugging. “And it will send other minions
after us. Especially once it realizes its chief lieutenant is dead at your
hand.”
 
Looking at the smoking remains of the fallen demon she’d just slaughtered—just
wisps that were already transparent and insubstantial—Melitha frowned. That
worried voice on the wind was still singing to her, but more softly. She could
only just make out words:
 
. . . say ya don’t need no diamond rings,/ And I’ll be satisfied./ Tell me that
ya want the kinda things/ Money just can’t buy. . . .
 
Distracted, she shook her head and carefully pinched the bridge of her nose
with the fingers of one gauntleted hand. “Why us?” she murmured absently,
cudgeling her cloudy mind to spit out the other obvious questions she
nonetheless couldn’t think of. In the Fade, the only part of her brain that was
still worth a damn was the part that controlled her instincts for fighting and
stealth. “Why . . . me?”
 
“The great existential question! To which I reply, as ever: Why not?” the rat-
man countered, spreading his hands. When Melitha blinked, a rat was scurrying
away from her, fast and undulating, leading her deeper into the Fade than she’d
ever dared—far beyond where she’d come with the Valo-kas companions of her
childhood. “Come! The Kagyath draws no nearer! And I mislike staying still in
the open for so long!”
 
Tired, but ready to follow-through—follow the rat-man over hill and through
dale, until they faced the Kagyath—Melitha loped onward across the shifting
landscape, ignoring the increasing sense of disorientation that dogged her.
Weary, though she was, she chased after Mouse with great, stalking strides . .
. until the ever-blowing zephyr that carried dust and particles across the
scoured, demon-haunted panorama, carried something else to Melitha: that voice,
once more . . . and, briefly, stronger than it’d been before.
 
. . . in the way she moves. . . ./ Attracts me like no other lover. . . ./
Something in the way she wooooooos me./ Don’t wanna leave her now/ . . . Ya
know I believe her now. . . .
 
Without a second thought, or a first, Melitha stopped running. She listened.
She smiled. She. . . .
 
. . . sheathed her sword—only, it was a staff, sometimes, too, wasn’t it? A
proper mage’s staff? And had been, increasingly, since Tali’d died? Thick as
Melitha’s wrist and as tall as she was, almost, with a glowing crystal at the
tip that crackled with lightning or fire—and broke into a stumbling, then
fleet-footed run back the way they’d come: toward that voice, before Mouse, the
sketchy rat-man, could talk her out of it.
 
Like a silent guardian or warden, the Black City—ancient, towering, and always
to one’s right—kept up with her. But she didn’t notice, for once. All her mind
and heart—all her being—was bent on that sweetly manic, slightly off-key voice
singing about taking sad songs and making them better.
 
Singing—in-between the lyrics and some occasional swearing—about coming home. .
. .
 
                                      TBC
End Notes
     HMU on The_Tumbles!
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