Candle Adaar woke to the taste of blood.

It was dark all around her, and sitting up was a struggle. There was a foreign lightness to her head, a strange lack that she wasn't ready to understand. A heavy metal collar was clenched around her neck, nearly tight enough to strangle, and the chains that sprouted from the collar jangled heavily when she moved.

A mask covered her face, obscuring her vision, and it took time for Candle to make sense of what little she could make out through the shadows. She was on the outer edge of a campground, and at its center was a fire that had burned itself down to coals. A number of large figures were arrayed around the fire, slumped over or lying unmoving on the ground, and Candle had an idea that they were dead.

Ben-Hassrath, she remembered. They'd been the ones to do this to her.

She had heard something in the in the night - a strangled roar, filled with fear and confusion, that had abruptly cut off into a low gurgling and then silence again - that had woken Candle. She knew she wasn't alone.

Cole was there. She spotted him, melting in and out of the shadows cast by the dying fire, trying to creep away into the darkness. Candle wanted to shout at him to come back, but her poor aching mouth wouldn't allow it, so she reached down and ran her hand along the ground until she found a stone. Candle stood up and lobbed the rock at him as hard as she could with her wrists chained, and knew that she'd made contact when his hat was knocked from his head.

"Ow!" Cole hissed. He bent to pick up the hat, his other hand rubbing gingerly at the back of his head.

Realizing that he had been caught, Cole turned back to look at her, and though Candle couldn't make out his face she could tell by the furtiveness of his movements that he was still thinking about disappearing. Candle lifted her foot and stomped it against the dirt as hard as she could, insistent, and Cole seemed to give up on the idea of escape. Resigned, he came to her, seeming for the first time to take on a definitive form as he drew closer and the darkness gave him up.

"They're all out looking for you," Cole said. "The Iron Bull and Dorian and Sera and them. Cullen and Cassandra and their soldiers too." Cole was agitated, shifting from foot to foot, unable to hold still. He couldn't seem to decide where he ought to be standing, and every time he moved Candle had to turn her entire body to keep him in her line of sight, as the collar held her neck rigid. "You don't need anymore help from me. I was going to go and -"

Candle couldn't shake her head at him. The collar didn't allow her that range of movement. Instead, she waved him closer impatiently, the chains clinking, and crouched to bring her face down to his level.

When he drew closer, Candle saw with little surprise that there was blood and his hands and on his clothing. Cole slid his dagger from one hand to the other nervously. "I'm scared I'll hurt you," he said.

Candle couldn't answer. If she'd been able, she might have said that she understood that he wanted to help and that she wasn't afraid of him. Instead, she put a hand on his shoulder. It was meant to reassure, but also to insist.

It did hurt when Cole cut through the wire that had been used to stitch her mouth shut, but Candle tried not to flinch. By the time it was all over Cole's hands were shaking. She pushed them down away from her face gently and then pulled the bits of wire free from her skin herself.

Her mouth was bleeding again; the taste made her feel like gagging. She looked back down at Cole and saw that he was offering her a ragged bit of cloth. Even in the darkness she could tell that it was filthy, but no less dirty than she was herself, she supposed, so she took it and pressed it against her bleeding lips anyway.

"Get it off me, please," she said, bending back down to Cole's level. She would have liked to say more - it was good for Cole if you talked to him, and she felt ungrateful ordering him around - but it hurt so badly to talk, and she was desperate to be free of the collar and chains.

Cole got busy with his lockpicks, and a minute later the collar sprung open. Candle lifted it up over her head, shrugging the attached mask off as well, and sat the heavy contraption down on the ground. The shackles came off more easily, and Candle rubbed at her chafed wrists.

"Water?" she asked, embarrassed by the raw desperation in her voice, but the taste of blood in her mouth was so awful and her throat was so parched that she could barely stand it.

Cole nodded sharply and said, "I'll get some," and hurried away into the woods. Candle hoped he knew where he was going. She hoped he'd come back.

A wave of dizziness struck Candle and she closed her eyes, willing it to pass. She was parched and exhausted but she didn't want to sit back down in the dirt, so Candle waited until she felt more steady, and then she stepped carefully toward the fire.

Candle sat down on one of the stones that ringed the fire pit. Alone in the company of half a dozen corpses, she fought the urge to shudder. The sun was coming up, and that combined with the soft glow of the coals gave Candle enough light to work out what had probably happened.

Cole had taken the night sentry by surprise while he was warming his hands by the fire - so much for the renowned Qunari self-discipline, Candle thought. He'd gone down not far from where Candle was sitting now, and his sword had fallen in among the coals.

The others most have woken at that point to the realization that they were in danger, though obviously not quickly enough. One heavy-sleeper's throat had been cut while he was still tangled in his bedroll, and Candle supposed it was the sound of his dying that had woken her. Candle, who had always slept like a log, was now too exhausted to work up much self-disgust over the fact that she had nearly slept through it all.

She wasn't sure how she felt about them.

"Here," Cole said, coming up beside her. Candle startled; he was so quiet, and she hadn't heard him coming. He was holding out a bottle that dripped with water. Candle took it gratefully, thinking despite herself of the potion that the Ben-Hassrath had made her drink the day before. She tilted her head back to drink, conscious with every movement of the strange lightness to her head, the way it felt so off balance.

They'd cut off her horns and burned them in the fire, she knew, the lovely curling horns that had always been her pride and that had always marked most dramatically her difference from nearly everyone else she knew. It hadn't hurt. Very little of what the Ben-Hassrath had done to her had hurt - at least not physically - except when they had stitched her mouth shut. And before that was done a potion had been forced on her which had not really taken away the pain, but that had made it seem unimportant.

She had believed that potion was qamek, and had fought wildly to keep from drinking it, though ultimately with no success. There were more of them than her, and more importantly they were bigger than she was, and the Ben-Hassrath had their own ways of annulling magic.

The potion had dulled her emotions and robbed her of the desire to resist for a time, so she supposed it might in fact have been related to qamek, but the effect had eventually dissipated. Candle had not forgotten her name or lost her sense of herself, as it was said that people who were given qamek did.

The Ben-Hassrath hadn't done any of this to be cruel. She understood that. That was what made it all so difficult.

Cole obviously sensed her ambivalence. A pained and panicked expression flooded his pale face, and he began to shake.

"Sit down here," Candle said gruffly, her mouth still aching. Talking made the bleeding start all over again, and she took a swig of water and washed in around in her mouth before spitting off to the side, hoping to rinse the coppery taste away. It was decidedly ineffectual.

Cole seemed rooted to the spot, locked in an agony of fear. "Look - I'm not mad at you, okay?" Candle said, and after that he sank down beside her on the stone. His breathing was fast and shallow, verging on hyperventilating, and his hands sat tangled in his lap, twitching anxiously. He wouldn't - or rather, couldn't - look at Candle.

"Do you want to be touched?" she asked. Cole nodded unsteadily, his face still turned away from her own. Candle put her hand on his upper back. Fingers spread, her hand was large enough to cover the expanse between his jagged shoulder blades. The back of his shirt was clammy with nervous sweat, despite the chill in the air, but her touch seemed to ground him. Candle was glad of that.

They sat in silence for a while, Candle waiting as Cole's breathing became less ragged. When he seemed to have a better handle on himself, Candle asked, "You're worrying that you did something you shouldn't have done, yeah? Something that was wrong?" Cole nodded without lifting his head, shaggy bangs obscuring his face. "I don't know if you did or not," she told him honestly, "but I'm grateful that you helped me."

Cole lifted his head, suddenly indignant on her behalf. "They wanted to make you disappear. They hid your face so they wouldn't have to see that you're a person."

Candle had stopped being surprised by observations like this a long time ago. Cole didn't miss much, even if he couldn't always articulate what he was thinking or feeling. "Yeah, I guess that's about right," she agreed.

"I thought that they were Vashoth," she continued. "I thought - these are my folks, an' I'll just go and talk with them, and I'll offer them shelter at Skyhold if they need it." The Iron Bull was the only other Qunari at Skyhold, and Candle had no idea what to make of him; it was an open secret that he wasn't really Tal-Vashoth.

There had been too few Qunari in her life for her to exactly be lonely for other people who looked like her, but she supposed she had entertained the idea of not sticking out quite as much. That happy thought had made her careless - she hadn't been careful enough. "I figured we'd help each other, I guess."

"But they hurt you instead," Cole said, and he shuddered.

"I don't think they meant it that way." Candle drank the rest of the water slowly, trying to think it out. "It didn't have anything to do with hurting me. It wasn't at all personal."

She thought about how closely Cullen watched her when he didn't think she'd notice, the measured distance that he always kept between them, and she thought of the way Varric seemed like to jump out of his skin if she so much as sneezed. None of that was personal, either - Candle didn't think they disliked her personality. She thought that Cullen might be prepared to be her friend, and that in his tales Varric would paint her as a kindly and heroic figure - provided they lived long enough for him to write them.

They were only scared, was all. Candle understood that, after all - she was used to it. She supposed the Ben-Hassrath had been scared as well.

But Candle Adaar was entirely sick of being hurt on account of other people's fear. She was tired of being the one who had to accommodate it, fed up with trying to be understanding.

Cole didn't seem to know how to answer that, so Candle filled the silence. "I don't know what would have happened if you hadn't found me," she told him.

"Most of the recruits back at Skyhold never even saw a Qunari before they joined the Inquisition," she said, studying her wrists as she spoke. Bruises were forming where the shackles had been. "If any of them had found this campsite I don't know if they'd have recognized me… the way I was." Masked and dehorned and dressed in strange clothing and chains, Candle suspected that she would have been taken for a stranger. "Guess if things had come to fighting I'd just as likely been killed along with the Ben-Hassrath."

But Cole had recognized her. He'd known somehow that she was in danger and where to find her and had come on his own accord to rescue her. She owed him an incredible debt, and she resolved to find some way to repay it.

She glanced sideways at Cole now, wondering if she should have said any of that out loud, if he'd find her words to be unjustifiably bitter. She wasn't entirely sure herself that she was being fair - they'd gone out in the night to look for her, after all, Cole had told her that. Candle saw that Cole had been listening intently to what she was saying, but he didn't argue or take issue.

"Cole," she asked, "how did you find me out here?" He didn't answer, only shrugged stiffly, and she wondered if he understood how he'd done it himself.

Candle stood, letting the matter drop. She looked over the dead Ben-Hassrath again, trying to think of what ought to be done for them. There were prayers, Candle was pretty sure, but she didn't know them. The swords were important in some way but she wasn't clear on how.

She thought maybe Josephine would know. She'd help to make sure everything was handled in the correct way, Candle had no doubt.

"Let's go home," she said to Cole, and they turned back toward Skyhold.