Bellum domesticum – strife/war among family members

She awakens slowly to the distant roar of water and whispers in the back of her skull.

If she tries to focus on them they go silent and it is unsettling. As if something lingers within her where it should not. There is an ache in her stomach, and her skin tingles. She cannot shake off the tingling. It is like that time she'd sat on the floor for too long in Skyhold and she'd tried to stand, only to find her leg had fallen asleep. It is not painful, but it is not pleasant either. And it settles under her skin like it is meant to be there, tiny pinpricks of something dancing in her veins.

All her senses seem stronger. Her eyesight is clear and sharp, magnified, and there are odd sparkles of something that seem to dance at the edge of her vision. It makes her feel twitchy. When she inhales, she finds she can smell more than she should. Layers of scents that are subtle and not something she has ever noticed before.

The air is cool, and she wonders if that is because she is currently devoid of any clothing. She glances down to where her bare skin disappears beneath the heavy furs that cover the bed. They are soft and warm and comforting. They smell like rain-soaked earth. She reaches down and presses them to her face and breathes it in, if only because she must do something.

Her mind is trying to make sense of everything, to explain where she is and why. This is not her room in Fortitude, with its thick Orlesian drapes and dark-stained furniture. This is no Fade dream of her bedroom in Skyhold, or her small room in the Hanged Man. She has never seen this place before.

The room is cavernous, with a high arched ceiling covered in detailed stone carvings. She does not know the story they tell, and she does not linger on it. It is something that involves wolves, and a forest, and she does not want to think of wolves at the moment.

There is a low table at the foot of her bed and a set of clothing is folded neatly atop it. It is not her clothing, she notices immediately, and as she glances around she cannot see her armor anywhere. The clothes are undeniably elvhen, and her lips curls a bit.

She has spent most of her life rejecting anything that reminds her of her father, and that meant wearing anything that even hinted at being elvhen. Her mother had protested when she'd refused even Dalish dress, but she had remained stubborn on that front.

If she weren't in an unknown location with no idea of what danger she was in, she would likely chance going nude, if only to prove a point.

But where is she? She presses the heel of her palms over her eyes so hard she sees stars, cursing as she tries to remember. The last thing she remembers…she just needs to focus on that. A battle of some sort. Yes. Outside of Val Royeaux.

Her hands drop uselessly to her lap.

Oh. She presses her fingers to the skin of her stomach. It is unmarred, merely tender. Snapshots of memory flicker in her mind. The feeling of her father's armor against her cheek. Ancient elvhen words whispered above her. Burning hot with fever. A cool hand on her forehead, an anchor in a world made of flames.

Her father has taken her somewhere and healed her. She is angry and more than a little afraid. She does not know where she is or why he has brought her here. Daughter? He may have called her that, but she knows that means nothing.

He called her mother his heart and still he killed her.

She does not know why he has kept her alive but she must find some way of returning to her people. How had the battle gone after she had fallen unconscious? Had they retreated? Were they alright? Had he killed Cullen while she had lain there, unconscious? No, she cannot think along those lines. Cannot allow grief to take her yet.

She must be calm and think.

The first thing she needs to do is get dressed. The clothing consists of a pair of silken cream tights and a long, high-collared tunic the color of spring roses embroidered with golden thread.

She hates pink.

She pulls it on anyway, buttoning the small clasps that run the length of the chest; they are shaped like small leaves, and here is a pair of slippers in the same bright gold. Altogether the outfit is garish. The clothes even smell like roses.

It allows her to move freely but offers little protection, and the shoes are not made for travel. Useless.

She will need a weapon.

Her magic is still buzzing, stronger and more acute than she's ever felt it. She supposes this must be a side-effect of the rending of the veil. The magic in the air is heavy, like walking through syrup, and her own is sharper and there is still that other something inside of her that she cannot explain.

She will use her magic if she must but she will feel far safer and in control with a blade in hand. She heads toward the bookcases alongside the far wall and the small writer's desk in front of them. After shuffling through the drawers she finds a small penknife next to a box of goose feathers. It is thin and is of no use if she can't hit an artery, but she feels better with the weight in her hand.

She tucks it into her sleeve, the handle pressed against her pulse, as she continues her perusal. There is a pair of heavy wooden doors directly across from her bed, and when she pushes them open they swing open easily on well-oiled hinges.

She finds herself on a large balcony overlooking a mountain valley. The view is breathtaking. The keep is made of gray stone the color of dull iron and built into the side of a mountain. A monstrous stone causeway crosses over the waterfall to the keep's left and disappears into the forest beyond. She is situated in a large tower at the far end. She leans out over the edge and her hand brushes cold granite.

Below her she sees elvhen walking across battlements and courtyards, as tiny as ants from her perch. Yet somehow her heightened sight allows her to see every small detail. The alpine air is crisp and clean and cold and she shivers. This is definitely not Arlathan.

It reminds her of Skyhold, in a way. As if someone has described its general shape to the builder and told them to make it larger.

Nostalgia settles in the pit of her stomach, and it does not settle well.

She is too high up to jump, and the rock wall to her left is bare of handholds. There is no way she can climb it without assistance. Before she begins her search for another escape route the door at the far end of the chamber opens. She stiffens and steps away from the open door and back into the room.

An elf enters, carrying a delicately woven basket. She is short and plump, with brown eyes and copper hair braided in a crown atop her head and she is dressed in a gown far less ostentatious than Spero's own clothing. The vallaslin of Sylaise covers her face in dark blue against her pale skin. She stops a few feet away when she realizes that Spero is awake.

Her expression is guarded but gentle as she speaks.

Spero's eyes narrow. "I do not speak your tongue." She manages. It is a lie, a bit. She knows words, a few phrases, but she hates the language all the same and refuses to give in on that front. Besides, it is not enough to understand what the woman says. The other woman watches her for a few more moments before she nods, says something else, and places the basket on the ground next to a large chair.

The elf then gestures in the air to her right and something flickers, taking form. A butterfly lands on her finger and she speaks to it—Spero hears "Fen'Harel"—and the butterfly flutters out of the room and out of sight.

The elf woman then settles herself down in the chair and pulls out handful of herbs from the basket and begins to calmly weave them together into a braided knot.

Spero bites the inside of her cheek. She knows this woman must work for her father, which makes her dislike her on principle. But she tries her hardest not to dislike people without getting to know them, and to be polite to them even if she isn't fond of them. Josephine would never let her hear the end of it if she was rude simply because the other woman was an elf.

She wonders why someone wearing Sylaise' vallaslin is serving her father. Why does the woman have vallaslin in the first place? They were slave markings, and that was what her father had presumably been against. Had he had a change or heart? Or perhaps she was not in his holdings at all. Though she does not understand why Sylaise of all the evanuris would find any reason to house her, Sylaise being the supposed goddess of all things domestic notwithstanding.

It seems so odd, to see this elf woman doing something as mundane as making herb sachets. With all of their magic, she had figured they had created spells to do that kind of work for them. But the woman continues braiding the thin leaves of a plant that Spero does not recognize, humming softly to herself. Every once and a while she glances up at Spero to keep track of her movements.

Perhaps to see if she will try and escape? Spero isn't foolish. This room has one exit, which makes it far more defensible if she needs to barricade it than any room she's likely to find in her mad dash toward freedom.

Perhaps it would be best to hurl herself out the window. She would die instantly from the impact. Clean and quick. It is a far kinder alternative to the torture and possible execution she knows she will find at the hands of these elvhen.

She is alone and more than a little afraid. It is hard to feel brave when there is nothing standing between you and the thing you fear most but a few swaths of silk and a penknife. She should go into the room to the far side of the chambers. It is smaller. But there are no windows, and there is no way she would make it to the balcony in time if she needs to end it.

That is what Leliana would do, if the situation looked inescapable.

She feels like pacing, but she does not want to appear nervous to the woman humming in the chair next to the fireplace. She needs to look in control, even if she is not.

She will not show them how afraid she is.

The door to the main chamber opens for a second time and the man who shares her eyes crosses the threshold.

Her father walks into the room and she has to physically keep herself from attacking him. It has been so long since she's felt such all-consuming hatred. Ever since the war began her emotions have become muffled. They are still there but pushed far, far down where they can't interfere with what she needs to do. When her mother died, she'd realized she couldn't let herself feel strongly, not when the chances were that everyone she loved would soon follow.

It had helped her cope with Bull's death, and Josephine's slow withering away from the sickness that had entered her lungs and refused to leave, making it impossible for her to walk across a room without coughing blood into a handkerchief. So she is surprised and thrown off-kilter when she sight of her father's face stokes the flowing embers of her rage into a wildfire.

The slow burn of her hatred has lived in her for as long as she can remember, since she'd learned of the wolf who shared her eyes; she has carefully tended it over the years, a promise made to herself to feel all the righteous fury she could, the anger her mother refused to feel. It had been a self-imposed burden.

He sees the look on her face—she is not trying to hide it—and his own mouth tilts, brow furrowed in pain. He is hurt by her hatred. Good, she thinks. Good. Let him feel pain. He turns and speaks to the female elf and she says something back, slipping out of the room with her basket.

You promised her you wouldn't hate him, Spero reminds herself, but she pushes it aside. She has no use for those words now. Not when he is real and standing before her. Besides, in all likelihood he is here to kill her. To use her for something. He only knows how to use and deceive and destroy.

"Are you well?" He finally asks, and she can see the uncertainty in his stance.

What to say to that? So simple a question. Polite. Aloof. And she wonders if he means physically or emotionally. No, she wants to say. I will never be well. You have destroyed everything I love and you do not care because you think it is worth it. And I don't know why you have brought me here.

"I will live." She says at last, looking down at her stomach. She should have died, she knows. But she doesn't feel particularly thankful. There was always a reason behind her father's decisions. He spared people only to further his own agenda.

He nods stiltedly. "I know." He glances at the open door leading out to the balcony. "Is there anything you require?"

What does he want? Does he think he can make her comfortable and gain information about the Inquisition and its allies from her? Of course. That must be it. "Did you kill him?"

He blinks. "Who?"

"Cullen." She snaps. "You were trying to kill him." How he answers now will decide what she does with the penknife in her sleeve, she thinks.

"No." He clasps his hands behind his back and she swallows. It is an action she does often when she is thinking. "I did not kill him." He turns away from the balcony to face her again. "He raised you?" He says it nonchalantly, as if he is commenting on the weather.

"If you kill him, I will crush you." She promises darkly. It is foolhardy to threaten him, she knows. He is too powerful for her to be saying such things to. When she had been younger she had imagined this moment a thousand times over. Her righteous anger, shouting at him, telling him about all the things he has done that she has hated him for. But she is older now, and not stupid. He is not someone who will change because of a child's tears.

He seems prepared for her anger but no less affected by it. He winces at her tone. He does not promise he will spare Cullen. Well, at least he refuses to lie about his cruelty.

"I will tell you nothing." She continues, because she has threatened him and there is little else that can make this worse on her end. "You will gain no useable information from me about troop movements, or tactics. I would suggest you rid yourself of me now and save us both the trouble. I have been trained to withstand torture, both magical and mundane, so there is little chance such tactics will work." It is bravado. She is scared, scared of what he intends for her because she has heard the stories, knows how single-minded he is in accomplishing his goals, and she is certain that he will crush her with little effort. She is a fly again, waiting to be swatted.

If they try to apprehend her, she can at least end her own life before the evanuris can learn anything from her.

He looks horrified at her words. As if she has broken his heart, somehow. But he does not have a heart, so she is a bit confused.

"You believe…" He begins, pauses, then tries again. "You believe I mean to kill you."

"It is what you do." She can't help the scorn there, even if she is still afraid.

The words seem to strike him like a physical blow and he almost looks ashamed. Almost. He is too arrogant for shame. Too proud. "I will not harm you." He states, and it sounds like a vow. "I will not."

She scoffs. You already have. But there is no reason to argue with him. She does not know why he cares about her safety at all. He has never met her and therefore cannot love her. He has only ever loved—ah. That is it then. She has been told she looks a bit like her mother, though she has never seen it. She has only ever seen the wolf looking back at her in her mirror.

"I am not my mother." She begins awkwardly. "So there is no need to feel…" she stops, snorts, mouth twisting in a sneer. "No, not even for her, it never mattered. Love means nothing to you. Keep your empty promises, Dread Wolf."

He closes his eyes briefly, takes a deep breath. "Ask for anything within reason and it will be granted to you. You may move freely throughout the keep."

It is her turn to blink. She does not know what reasoning he has for this kindness. Possibly another ploy to lower her guard. "I wish to leave."

There, a pained smile flickers across his lips. Gone in the next moment. "Within reason, ma' ashalan."

She hates those words coming from his mouth. How dare he use them? He is not her father. She has had many fathers but there are no wolves among them. He is not her father. The hot anger rises again, replacing the fear for the moment. He will never harm her? His very existence is an open wound in her chest.

He must see it on her face, her seething hatred. He nods at her, "I will leave you for now." He turns toward the door and pauses one final time. "What shall I call you?"

She vaguely remembers him calling her name in a fevered moment of consciousness. She does not know how he knows it, but she is grateful he does not use it now. Only her mother has called her by that name. She is the only one who is allowed and she is dead.

Spero is quiet for several moments, trying to decide what to tell him. She could give him a fake name, something irrelevant that has no meaning to her. That would be the best course of action. She could say nothing. That would be easiest. "Spero," she murmurs finally. "They call me Spero." There is no need to explain who "they" are.

He nods again, searching her face for something. She wonders if he knows Arcanum. If he knows what her name means. "I will speak with you again, Spero."

She jumps a bit at the sound of it coming from him. So familiar a word from foreign lips. She does not like it, the way he says it like it is some treasure or secret he has obtained. She does not like how nice it sounds in the silence between them.

Then he is gone, and she stares at the closed door of her chambers, more unsettled then she has ever been in her entire life.

Over the next couple of hours she searches her rooms from top to bottom for anything useful and finds that it is all decorative and superfluous. She supposes that makes sense. They know she is dangerous and will try and escape. They will not give her anything that will aid her in that regard.

She goes back to the balcony and watches the elves go about their business below her and contemplates attempting to scale the side anyway, despite there being no visible handholds. All of her escape plans end with her dead, somehow, so she decides she will need to wait until she has more knowledge of the layout before she attempts it.

And rope. She will need rope.

In her hunt for weapons she finds a bathing room attached to her chambers. A rectangular pool carved into the stone runs the length of it, and tendrils of steam rise from its surface. Magic, she assumes, because it does not have the sulfur smell of a natural hot spring. In fact, it smells like flowers. She does not know what kind, but the floral scent permeates the room.

One wall is covered completely in glass and stone shelves lined with bottes of all sizes and colors. Their labels are written in elvhen so she can only assume they are scented oils and soaps. A small bench along the far wall is stacked with towels.

She does not need a bath, she knows, but she undresses and enters the water anyway. She loves baths. She takes far too many of them, really. It is the only time she has ever allowed herself to indulge in something. Leliana and Josephine had surprised her on her seventeenth birthday with an ornate Orlesian tub big enough for three people and she'd spent four hours soaking in it that night until she'd been nothing but water-logged wrinkles.

The only thing she loves more than baths are swords, and she doubts her father will give her one despite his odd request that she ask for anything she wants. Within reason, she grimaces as she slides down into the water until it brushes against her chin.

It is pleasantly warm but Spero has always loved her water scalding. She trails her fingers beneath the surface, calling fire to her palm. It does not take long for the water to heat and her skin takes on the color of a cooked lobster. She leans her head against the rim of the pool and closes her eyes.

She breathes in once, twice, and feels tears prick at the corners of her eyes.

She is still afraid. Afraid this is all a cruel joke and any moment now he will send in more elvhen to question her, or kill her, or do any number of cruel things her mind begins to conjure up.

This is absurd. Her family could be dying—could be dead, just because her father says he did not kill Cullen does not mean he has not ordered someone else to—and she is safe and sound. This is not right.

They must be worried. Cassandra will blame herself. She always does. She will say she was not fast enough and take it all onto herself. Leliana will be the steady anchor. She will send out her spies, perhaps some of the Dalish to cross the barrier to see what they can learn. She will explain that Solas has not killed her yet, that he has kept her alive for some reason so they cannot give in to grief yet.

Josephine's health cannot take this kind of strain. She is too weak to worry. She needs to know that Spero is alive. Josephine will die if she doesn't get word to her. Varric will come back from Kirkwall to learn she is gone and think it is somehow his fault for not being there when it happened.

And Cullen—Cullen is probably dead already. The allied forces of the Inquisition, Qunari, Tevinter Imperium, and the Free Marches will suffer with the loss of their forward commander. Cullen is probably lying cold and still on some faraway battlefield beside Blackwall's sword and it is her fault.

She is sobbing, tears coursing down her cheeks somehow hotter than the water around her. They will all be so worried and she is sitting in a fucking bath. She curses at herself, pushes out of the water and furiously rubs one of the towels over her arms until the skin begins to chafe.

She hears a soft sigh and turns to see the plump elf from before. She wonders at how she must look: a tall, naked woman sobbing into a towel. Her hair is a sopping wet mess pulled over one shoulder, dripping onto the stone at her feet. She is not a pretty crier. Her eyes get puffy and her nose runs. She is a mess and she doesn't care, or shouldn't because this woman and her opinion means nothing to her.

The woman pads over to her and gathers her into her arms. Spero stiffens, but the woman begins to murmur to her in ancient elvhen and she finds herself sobbing into her shoulder as the woman runs a hand up and down Spero's back. She smells like lemongrass and she's soft and comforting and Spero can't understand a word she says and hates everything this woman stands for and yet she clutches at her like she's the only thing holding her upright.

Spero forgets, sometimes, that she's still a child who was forced to grow up too quickly. She wants to be an adult so that she can be in control, like everyone else seems to be. But she isn't. She's an emotional wreck and she's so so scared.

She doesn't want to die.

They stay that way for several minutes, until Spero collects herself and realizes that she's soaked the front of the other woman's dress with her hair. She swallows, opens her mouth to apologize, but does not know what to say. She knows the words, but she hates them. Has always hated them. They only bring pain.

Perhaps the other elf understands. She grabs the towel from where it has fallen into Spero's lap and begins to pat her hair dry, humming. Spero watches her. Where is the proud, elitist elf she expected? She is supposed to hate the elvhen simply for existing. She cannot stand this comforting woman who smells like a chantry garden and treats her like a fragile object she fears will shatter.

There is food on the small table beside the fire, she notices, when she allows the woman to lead her from the bathing chambers. She slumps into it and stares for a few minutes, trying to decide if it is worth it or not to attempt to eat. It could be poison, she supposes, or laced with something to make her tongue loose and her mind wander.

But if that is so, the only person to hear her words is an elf who can't understand them. Or perhaps that is also a lie. Perhaps she speaks the trade tongue fluently and is merely waiting to see if Spero will say something she thinks no one else will understand.

Her stomach growls.

Paranoia and distrust are tiring, but necessary, she knows. Sometimes it is best to accept that there is nothing that can be done with a situation. She is hungry and weak so she needs to eat. If they mean to poison her then so be it. She hopes it is quick, but she doubts it will be. And if they wish to question her and have used something to make her talk, she can only pray that no one understands her words or that she says nothing important.

She eats absently, but the food tastes like ash and her stomach roils with each mouthful. Still, she manages to finish everything that was set before her, even a glass of wine too rich and sweet for her liking. It is something Fenris would like, she supposes. He and Dorian had often argued about wines, when Fenris wasn't throwing barbed insults and threats at him for being a Tevinter magister.

She prefers ale. Cheap, disgusting, melt-paint-off-the-walls ale that Bull had shipped in special. She likes the burn down her throat.

But she has no ale. Only sickeningly sweet wine that clings to her mouth and down her throat. She can't seem to get rid of the taste no matter how hard she swallows. The elf with Sylaise' vallaslin has left after braiding her hair, and the room is too large for one person as night begins to fall.

The shadows become large and deafening as she slips beneath the furs with nothing but a penknife tucked under her pillow.

She is afraid to sleep. What will the Fade be like here, on this side of the barrier? Does it exist at all? How does one dream without a place to dream in?

And what if she wakes up to find herself not in a warm bed but chained to a wall in some cold dungeon? What is she supposed to do here, now that she is trapped? All she has are questions and no one to answer them.

It is frustrating and more than a little terrifying. She covers herself in fur pelts not to keep out the chilling cold—the fireplace exudes an almost blistering heat—but to protect herself from the crushing emotions that threaten to engulf her and to keep out the images of wolves that flicker on the ceiling in the firelight.

She does not sleep well.

She wakes up three times in the middle of the night to phantom demons clinging to her ankles. The whispers in her skull hiss cruel things to her, urging her to get up, to take, to bite and rend and force submission to all in her path. And when she refuses they show her images of her family. Cullen's body lying in a battlefield, eyes gouged out by the crow sitting atop his lion helmet. Leliana chained up to a wall in an unknown dungeon like in the story Varric had told her of Redcliff. Josephine coughing, and coughing, and coughing, her handkerchief dripping crimson now, shoulders shaking because she cannot stop. Sera impaled on the claws of a Pride demon as she shoves Merrill through the eluvian. Blackwall's head rolling across the courtyard away from his body, eyes open and unseeing. Dorian and her mother being torn apart by whatever magic they'd unleashed to create the barrier. Her mother catches her eye and opens her mouth and screams—

The third time she leans over the side of the bed and vomits onto the flagstones.