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Tonight, the bar was dark and empty. Gethrael sat alone, no drink in front of him, and traced patterns on the table with his fingertip. He’d really been hoping someone would be here.
He’d really been counting on someone being here.
It’d been so long since he’d seen any of them. He didn’t really get to choose if he was coming, and it seemed like regardless, something about how busy he’d been - with the preparations for Halamshiral, the journey, the many parties, and his recovery - hadn’t allowed him the relief of going to this place out of time. And now that it did, he was still alone.
White light spilled in as the door opened. Once, he would’ve been up in an instant to greet and embrace whoever it was. Now, it… took him a moment. He thought about not doing it at all, but then he looked over his shoulder and saw Ixchel, and he couldn’t help but smile.
“Geth?” She said it like a question, like she’d already noticed something was different. He got off the stool and held out his arms for her, and she wrapped her strong arms around his waist and gave him a squeeze. He buried his face in her hair and breathed deep. She smelled like honey and ardent blossoms, and he held onto her tightly.
“Lethallan,” he said, like a sigh. She stepped back from him, held him at arms’ length, met his eyes with a hard and searching gaze; more intense and blatant than Iron Bull’s had ever been.
After all, she knew everything. She always had. She was trying to figure out what had happened without asking, without breaking the code they’d made themselves. They weren’t supposed to talk about it, and Gethrael knew that too, but it burned on his tongue. No one in the Inquisition understood what it’d been like for him, not like she would. Ixchel would understand it exactly, because she’d been there too; the only Dalish elf in a court of staring Orlesians who asked if she was a servant - or perhaps an imported slave with those ugly brands on her face - while giggling behind their hands.
“I need to talk about it,” he said suddenly, then realized how much he sounded like Dorian and laughed nervously at himself.
Ixchel didn’t question him. She took him by the hands, pressed her thumbs into his palms to comfort him. “I won’t tell,” she gave him a gentle smile, like a mother’s. He resisted hugging her again. “Need a drink, first?”
Gethrael shook his head sadly. “I… shouldn’t. Gaspard had me poisoned and, well, everything makes my stomach hurt now.” He gave another humorless laugh.
A number of emotions flickered across her face, but most of all; he saw that blessed understanding. He leaned back on the stool, which ended up being further away than he thought, so he ended up sitting on it quite heavily. She hopped up on the one beside him, never releasing his hand, and it was hard to explain just how thankful of that he was. She said nothing, but he could feel her amber eyes on him. He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, puffing out his cheeks.
“How did you do it?” he muttered finally, defeated. “How could you stand it, Chel? It’s, they’re so… disgusting,” the word itself felt wrong on Gethrael’s tongue. He couldn’t remember when he’d ever described anything that way.
“I don’t,” she said, solemnly, and added her other hand to cradle his with both. “I just swallow it like bile.” She looked towards the door, and at first Gethrael thought someone else might be coming - but she just wanted to avoid his eyes, he thought. “… and it doesn’t get better, Geth. It doesn’t go away.” Another long pause, and she finally turned her gaze back. They looked at each other, both of them laid bare with a deep and raw sadness. “I’m sorry,” she said, and the weight of those two words would’ve been enough to make him too heavy to stand.
Gethrael bit the inside of his lip. There was an ache behind his eyes, a burning in his chest. He thought for a moment he might be sick. That was still a normal thing to think, and none of the healers were sure if it would improve. Instead, he spat out words that sounded like they were said by someone else. “… what if we took back Orlais. It’s what they deserve, what they’d… what they did do to us.” They shocked even him as he spoke them, and part of him immediately wished to take them back. There was something else, though, something he didn’t entirely understand - something that he’d felt before looking up at Celene and *knowing what she’d done* - that agreed, and made him stay silent.
The look Ixchel gave him was so profoundly sad that he actually closed his eyes. He couldn’t take this. He just wanted to lie down and make everything stop. Then he felt her body heat against his side, and she pulled him firmly against her shorter frame. It almost made him slide off of the stool, but she held up his weight with ease and guided his head to her shoulder. “Lethallin,” she said, and he felt the vibration of it in her chest, “we all think that. But you - out of everyone, you - know it’s not true.” She could’ve said it to shame him, but she didn’t. Her tone had a warmth and confidence to it that was like a second embrace.
“It never could be,” she continued, “Maybe we take Orlais and make it our own, and things would be different. Maybe we'd be kinder to each other than they are to their own people. Maybe we could stop fighting and follow the old ways in peace. But what happens to the rest of the world when we do - when we give up?” She spoke so smoothly, so effortlessly, so obviously the brilliant leader and tactician the Inquisitor should be. “We leave them to be terrible to each other? We wait for them to strike back, again, at us? Or do we become Orlais, and try and change the rest of the world by force, too?” She gave a heavy sigh, and squeezed him so tightly that it almost hurt. He wished she didn’t loosen her grip again. “No, we don't. Because that would be giving up on people, and we can't. You know that.”
“Because Geth… you are hope,” she rested her cheek on his, and it wrung the life out of him.
“I just don’t know about that,” it was such a poorly attempted and nonexistent joke that even Gethrael was aware of how stupid he sounded. He opened his eyes, even though he only saw the crook of Ixchel’s neck, and a dark fall of her hair. Probably *because* that was all he saw, actually.
“I do,” she squeezed him again, and this tiny woman could easily break him in half. “I know that’s not what you believe - and the world needs more people like you in it.”
“But you can’t teach someone like that!” he sat upright all at once, the wretched anger uncoiling and lashing out again like its own sickness. “They don’t learn, they don’t want to, they’re… they just want to be full of hate. They can’t see what’s right in front of them!”
Ixchel nodded at him. “Yes. You’re right.” She reached up instead to cup his face, forcing him to look at her. He couldn’t help but wonder if she’d learned that one from her own Iron Bull, and relented quickly. She pitied him, he could see that, and that was something he hated. But she felt his sadness with him, like she reached deep down inside and held it too.
She’d been there. She knew.
“For every Orlesian cow that spits at you there’s someone like Dorian,” she said, and her lips quirked a little as she said it. “Someone who’s just never met a free elf, has heard tales we eat babies. They meet you and they see and they understand - and you know that, Geth. I know you do. You knew it before anyone else did.”
Gethrael did not know what to say. He heard her words, he knew she was right, but the anger wouldn’t leave. It burned hot in his chest, an insidious smoulder he couldn’t put out. He wanted to give into it just so it’d go away, but he already knew the more he gave in the worse he felt.
“This isn’t who I am,” he said, and it sounded like he was pleading - with her, with himself, with the Creators? He didn’t know.
“It’s not,” she agreed, gently. “But you’re allowed to be angry.”
“I don’t want it!” Geth said emphatically, feeling like a child.
Ixchel gave his hand a sympathetic squeeze. “I know, Geth. You just need to burn it off - everyone does.” She hitched up the world’s most awkward little smile. “I don’t think sparring is quite the same for a mage, but I’m sure you can… sex makes you feel better, doesn’t it?” She said, with that touch of hesitance she had mentioning the subject.
“They say I’m not well,” he said ruefully. And he wasn’t, a lot of the time - he could just fast until afterwards, perhaps?
She bumped her head against his. “If you tell Bull you need something, I think he’ll find a way to make it work… assuming he’s like the Bull I know,” she teased; if you could call it that.
Gethrael sighed, closed his eyes again, tried to relax. His heart hurt.
“Chel,” he muttered, “there is… a point to all this, right?”
Ixchel paused. At first it was only for a moment, but the silence stretched on. He could almost feel her thinking, the way he could with Dorian when the man got in his head and was suddenly very sad. He hoped Ixchel wasn’t going to do that too. Surely she was only thinking about their rule, right? The rule they’d already broken?
“Yes,” when she finally said it her voice was full of conviction. “I can’t lie to you, lethallin… it does not get any easier. But I know you’re strong enough - and I would know, right?”
Gethrael very much hoped that she was right.