#and that thalon is there to give her the extra kick in the pants she needs to actually do it lol

[leothelionsaysgrrrr]

Relativity (f. Oliver Pentaghast)

Emma Sparrow pays a visit to a friend during a difficult time, and he is not the only one surprised to learn the extent to which another can know and understand what troubles him.  Oliver Pentaghast and Thalon Lavellan belong to @ourinquisitorialness.  ~3300 words.  TW for past trauma and emotional difficulty/breakdown.

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Once, Emma handed Cassandra Pentaghast a sack of skulls, and received a promise in return.  Now, the Inquisitor saw to it the Seeker kept her word.  

The letter sat heavy in Emma’s pocket, threatening to burn right through it as she stepped out of the carriage.  Just as those skulls, the skulls of murdered Tranquil mages collected from dismantled Venatori constructs across southern Thedas, sat heavy in that sack as she thrust that burden, that responsibility on a woman whose order could’ve prevented it - and, for centuries, had chosen not to.  A request from the Inquisitor himself, asking for her help in bearing that responsibility, as though she had anything to offer in that regard.  Or any obligation beyond what she’d done already.  Nevertheless, she’d answered that request, and she’d come.  Following several practiced breaths braced against the closed carriage door - two short inhales through her nose, one long exhale through her mouth - to quell the sick in her stomach, she finally turned to face the looming Seeker fortress.  

Thalon Lavellan stood in front of the large wooden doors, wearing a kind, welcoming smile and ready to offer kind, welcoming words as she approached.  A momentary twitch at the corners of her mouth was all the reciprocation she offered, and she followed him inside without a word.

“You should be speaking to Sala.”

She did not look at the Inquisitor directly when she finally spoke, walking the fortress’s dark stone halls, but she felt the furrow of his brow and the stare out of the corner of his eye long before she bothered to return it.  

“And when, exactly, was the last time you saw him?” 

She didn’t answer.  Thalon cracked a tiny smile, the smugness of which told her unequivocally that he already knew what she would say.  “I seem to remember being told that ‘there is no finding that man if he does not wish to be found’.”  His face turned slightly towards her, gentleness returning to the way he looked at her alongside a strong sense of confidence that he did, indeed, know what he was doing.  “In any case, our purpose here today requires skills and knowledge you possess, not him.  That’s why I asked you to come.”

Thalon’s next step brought his feet to rest beside each other.  He turned to face the window beside him, gesturing pointedly with a nod for her to look out into the open courtyard.  Flowers and herbs grew in abundance on either side of a winding stone path, along with some small trees.  A dark-haired man in simple robes tended to them.  Or, rather, stood on the path in front of them, and every so often crouched down and held out his hand to cradle the petals and leaves with the kind of appreciation - no, the reverence one has for something precious and new.

She recognized him the moment he stood, with a wayward glance in their direction.  

“Oliver…”

Thalon glanced over at her, a half smile spreading across his face.

“Ah, good.  You do remember him.”

“Of course, he...we spoke often, in the library where he studied.”  

As often as she could spare the time, at least.  Where others found the Tranquil strange and unnerving, Emma found their calm and objective focus intensely soothing.  Oliver spoke to her of things that made sense, and asked questions with definitive answers.  Truthfully, since the fall of Corypheus sent most of the Inquisition on new paths, she’d missed their conversations a great deal.  That was where she’d expected him to be now: a library, studying, finding purpose and fulfilling it, not...watching over plants as though he’d never seen them before.  

Puzzled, she turned squarely to face the Inquisitor.  “You asked me here to assist Seeker Pentaghast.  Oliver was meant to return to the university once his service with the Inquisition was complete.  He should not be here unless…”

Emma drew in a shallow gasp, and her eyes widened with the realization.  Thankfully, Thalon confirmed her suspicions before she needed to say it.

“Yes,” he replied, noticeably more somber now.  “Oliver volunteered to be the first to undergo the reversal process, which...has been more difficult for him than we expected.”

Sala coalesced in her mind, his gentle, clouded eyes and old hands offering soft reassurance that he’d be right there with her, the whole time, he’d be there to help, and everything would be better when it was done...she would know the reasons behind other people’s smiles, she herself could be happy...and then her heart had raced, forcing her to draw more, faster breaths that never seemed enough to rid herself of the sensation that something was wrong...terribly, utterly wrong, feeling for the first time in her life that intense fear of things she neither knew nor understood.  That first, petrifying loss of control she’d been struggling to remedy ever since.

Like learning to walk, but on legs that have never worked before.

It wasn’t the same.  Not exactly, not for him.  Once, Oliver had been able to use his.  He knew what he’d been missing.

Staring blankly into the courtyard, the memory manifested in little more than a simple analogy, and a steady, rhythmic tapping of her fingers against the outside of her thigh.  

“Would you not find it difficult to walk after a decade with broken legs?”

Thalon offered a sympathetic nod.

“True enough.  I don’t imagine there is much about Tranquility or its reversal that could be considered otherwise.”  He gestured to the far side of the window, where an open door led outside, to a path that would take her to Oliver’s side.  “Given his familiarity with you and your own...experience with such things, I thought you might be our best chance of helping him.”

Shit.  It seemed she could tell Lavellan nothing about herself without coming to regret it later.  

Noting her hesitation, Thalon took a step backwards, nodding towards the door with a stern curtness that contrasted with the warm smile on his face.  Both encouraging and demanding.

Go on.

Slowly, she moved the few steps in front of him to the door, but stopped in front of it for a moment.  Her eyes dropped to her feet.  He was right, after all, loathe as she was to admit it.  Though certain she was anything but the right person for this, who would do for him what he truly needed if not her?  Who else would bring the same comfort now that he could actually feel such a thing, without also understanding the way it felt to have not had the luxury? With a gentle nudge from Lavellan at her back, Emma drew in a long breath, and lifted her eyes as she stepped forward.

Thankfully, Oliver heard it latch behind her, and was already watching from across the courtyard.  At Skyhold, Emma would approach Oliver with the knowledge that she would not easily sway his focus from his task, and simply wait patiently beside him until he was ready to acknowledge her presence with a polite nod and a trained smile she knew very well.  The sort built into routine because it is expected.  

The sort she gave him as he drew close enough to resolve details on her face.

To think, this time the smile that spread widely across his was the genuine one between them.

“Oh, Agent Harper!  It’s you!” he called out, and offered her his hand.

She hesitated to return his greeting, as earnest in its cheerful tone as it was, unable to tell him he looked well with a straight face.  The sunburst emblazoned on his forehead struck her differently now.  He wore a genuine smile now, yes, but where his old smile lay flat over placid contentment, this one masked nerves like old ropes left slack for too long, frayed and straining now that something - anything - pulled on the other ends again.  

“Oliver,” she finally said, quietly, nodding as she took his hand, “I am glad to see you.”

His smile brightened for a moment, and he broke the handshake to usher her towards a carved stone bench nearby.  “Yes, it’s been quite a while, hasn’t it?”

She nodded again, a fond smile hiding the debate raging in her mind.  For all her previous conversations with him, this one presented an entirely new factor she’d not considered before: subjectivity.  The simplest of pleasantries were no longer so simple.  No definitive answers.  Additionally, in all likelihood no one had performed this ritual to purposely cure a Tranquil in ages, if anyone ever had.  She’d not been there when it happened, nor had she seen it done to know what to expect from it.  Whether or not it would be appropriate to ask.  You are certain of this, Sala?

Not at all.  Never tried before.  Can’t be certain if I never do, though, can I?

In memory, her father’s smile was not as reassuring as he’d wanted it to be.

“Will you be here long?” Oliver asked, breaking the silence before she could. From the look on his face, it wasn’t the first question he’d asked her, either.  “This place can seem somewhat dreary at times, but...this courtyard is nice, and there is a library here, if you’d like me to show you.  Not so extensive as the one at Skyhold, but it’s quiet, and they care for the books well.”

Emma smiled, and Oliver quickly returned it.  “I would, but there is no hurry.  As you say, it is nice here, too.”  

He nodded in agreement, over and over, and turned his head to look out over the courtyard, as if to reinforce his own belief of that statement.  His smile had faltered by the time he looked back.

“I...do not read as often as I did at Skyhold, I’m afraid,” he muttered.  “I try to, of course, but...anymore, the words are so...I lose track so easily…”

Oliver’s hands wrung in his lap, as if with a mind of their own, and it sent gooseflesh cascading up her arms.  Words seeming to lift and float across pages, glancing away for a moment only to find herself completely lost when she turned her attention back to her books again, and the unfamiliar tightness in her chest and flush in her cheeks at the fact that this shouldn’t be happening, it never happened to her before...

“It seems...every little thing is a distraction, anymore.  Which is...frankly, ridiculous…”  He glanced up at her with a look she supposed was meant to be reassuring, though whether to her or to him was anyone’s guess.  It was anything but.  “I was never, even before…”  

Knowing full well where that statement would lead, Emma attempted a reassuring look of her own.

“Oliver, it...”

He stood abruptly, without warning and notably without anything resembling any kind of smile.  

“No, no, it is not!  I am so tired of people telling me that when it is not ‘all right’.”  Frantic, he paced back and forth along the path, one hand clenched into a fist at his chin and the other arm pressed tightly across his body, breath seething out of him in rushed hisses.  “I thought I wanted this.  I thought this would fix everything, that if I could just be whole again it would all be...but there’s just so much...it’s too much, too much everywhere all at once and I can’t...I can’t…”

Oliver trailed off, silent for a haunting split second before he collapsed to his knees, sobbing into his hands.  Petrified, Emma could only watch.  The familiarity of it stung in a way she hadn’t expected.  His words may as well have been hers, and she may as well have been watching herself, all those years ago.  Her fingers tapped again at the outside of her thigh, harder and faster now in cadence with her heartbeat, and she silently cursed the Inquisitor for this.  For asking her here to watch as her dear friend fell to pieces while the world crumbled around him, and herself for coming to him with nothing - no empty assurances he would be all right, no insistence he was making more of a simple frustration than he needed to be.  Just...nothing.  Nothing to say, nothing to do but tap out her own heartbeat on her leg while she, too, cried out inside her mind, it’s too much, too much everywhere all at once.  I can’t…  

You can.  Let me show you.  

Another moment, and a long exhale.  

She could.  She knew how to help him.

Emma rose to her feet, knelt on the ground in front of him and reached out, waiting to see if he recoiled before laying her hand softly on his shoulder.  The other cradled his jaw a moment later, as she quietly coaxed him to look at her, then let her hand settle over his wrist.

“Here.  Focus here,” she cooed, gently guiding his clenched fist down over his chest, and stopped when she felt the pulsing artery there.  “Can you feel it?”  

Oliver blinked hard a few times.  Ragged breath still spewed out of him at a steady, brisk pace, but his eyes began aimlessly trailing around the courtyard, following some invisible thing, the outward manifestation of him searching for what she wanted him to find.  After a few moments, they fell shut, and he whispered a shaky but quite certain “yes”.  

Good.  

Emma gave a quick smile and a nod he wouldn’t see, and gently pried his hand open; not forcing his fingers apart, but gently nudging, waiting patiently for him to allow her to move them.  Trembling, he acquiesced enough for her to press his hand flat against his shirt, and laid her own over it.  Two fingers tapped along with the rhythm of his blood pumping beneath it - t-tap, t-tap, t-tap - in quick, strong strikes of the pads of her fingers against his knuckles.  

Listen, ma’eha.  Listen.

Listen.

“Listen, Oliver,” Emma continued, Sala’s words returning in her voice over the dull, muted sound of t-tap, t-tap, t-tap.  “It feels louder on the outside.  Like despair feels louder on the outside.  That is how it will help.  This means something very simple.  This…” 

She paused, pressing her palm against the back of his hand, drawing his focus.  Making it louder.  

“...means you are alive.”

After a few moments, she began to slow the pace and soften her strikes, only just, and Oliver, although he barely recalled deciding to do so, relayed them onto his chest.  “And this,” she explained, as their fingers fell over and over in time with each other, “is something you have always been able to feel.” 

With each minute decrease in pace and intensity, so too did the heaving in his chest slow, and his breath began to steady once more.  She found hers steadying with it, both in that moment and in memory.  

“You will always be able to feel this.  It is there through any pain, any sorrow, any joy, any despair, any anger...and it will be there still when all of that has passed.  Nothing else you will ever feel can be anything at all without this.  That means any time you feel something you don’t want to feel, you can feel this instead.  All you have to do…”

She lifted her hand from his, letting his hand tap out his heartbeat on its own now, and leaned forward to rest her forehead on his. 

“Is make it louder.”

Oliver breathed a heavy, but quite a bit closer to contented sigh, and his eyes flitted open.  Emma sat back on her heels, and offered him a small smile as she helped him to his feet.

“Better?”

“I...apologize, that...was terribly embarrassing,” he said, and breathed deeply once more while scanning the courtyard for anyone else who might’ve seen before returning to his seat on the bench.  When he circled back to Emma, he forced himself to smile.  “Though, I suppose I ought to be pleased that I can be embarrassed at all.”

“I know.  I know how you must feel.”

It only just occurred to her, seeing the confused and almost insulted way he watched her as she sat next to him, that he didn’t know.  That of all the times she’d spoken to him before, she’d never told him she’d once been like him.  Why would she?  The Tranquil did not speak of their conditions beyond confirming their status as Tranquil, so it had never come up, and it never would have were he not here, now, like this.  The idea that this would have been easier for him if she had dug hard into her skin.

“How?” he spat.  “How could someone like you possibly...”  His eyes widened, and he shrunk away.  He pulled his arms tightly around himself, and shook his head, quietly tutting at himself.  “Ah, that was rude of me, wasn’t it?  Forgive me, Harper.  Regardless, I should not discount your capacity for empathy; I am terribly glad to see you and you have always been...so kind.”

 Emma turned her head, moving her hair away from behind her ear.  A small, old and long scarred-over oval, like a thumbprint, rather than a prominent sunburst, but a lyrium burn was a lyrium burn, and it meant the same thing regardless of the shape of scar it left.  

From the look on Oliver’s face when she turned her head back, he knew.  He understood.

“How long?”

“A long time,” she said.  “Years ago, now.”

Hope lit up his face.  “Then you were cured, as well?  Was it...was it like this for you?”

“Not exactly.  My condition was...somewhat different, but...it did hurt.  A great deal.”  She stopped herself there, both unwilling and unsure how to say more, and well aware her purpose here was not her own comfort.  Realizing that may help less than she wanted to, however, she continued.  “I know it hurts you, now.  But...that hurt is part of what it means to be whole.  The headaches that came with my reversal still remain, but...so do a great many things I have gained since then.  Things I know now I would not give up to be rid of the pain.”  

Oliver scoffed.  Dismissively, she thought at first, but a bit of a smile found its way through shortly after.  

“Is that your way of telling me it will get easier?”

“No.  Not without effort.  Like...standing on once broken legs.”  She shifted on the bench to sit squarely towards him, one leg folded across the bench between them.  “I do not know exactly what pains you, but...I do know I would not walk so well now if I had not had help.”  Her head tilted, and she shifted again, slightly closer this time.  “I am here, Oliver, and I am willing to listen.  If you are willing to speak.”  She reached towards his hands in his lap, and curled her fingers around the one nearest to her.   “When you are ready to speak.  I will be here.”

Perhaps, the longer she had to consider it, she would soon be ready to speak, too.

After a long pause, staring at their clasped hands in his lap longer than anyone but the two of them would have been able to remain comfortable, longer than Thalon Lavellan had to spend watching through the window across the courtyard with that pleased little smile on his face before duty called him elsewhere, Oliver’s lips parted. He drew in a long breath, and held her hand tighter as he lifted his eyes.

#i am SORRY it took me literal years to do this #BUT #IT IS FINALLY DONE #anyway these two and their friendship and understanding is so important to me #emma has lots of support but no one who really GETS what she's felt and thought the way ollie does #and they both need that so much #and i am glad they are there for each other to help each other heal :) #and that thalon is there to give her the extra kick in the pants she needs to actually do it lol #thanks for letting me borrow your boys i love them so very much :') #oc: emma sparrow #oliver pentaghast #thalon lavellan #ourinquisitorialness #leo the lion writes words