Andraste, did you really snatch me back before I entered the Black City? Did you really renew my body and mind, to set me on this path with this mark on my hand? I've never been anything but a blasphemous drunkard, dangerous with knives and quick tempered. I am the epitome of failure to my father, but the Maker bid you to assign this task to me? I pray for the answer, for I cannot remember. I don't remember anything before waking to swords trained on me from all sides, and a rabid Seeker of Truth snarling in my face that I am a murderer. I am a murderer, that much is true, but Andraste, please tell them I did not commit this one murder, that the Divine was not my target. She was not the reason I was there… I don't know if they really believe me, yet.

Evelyn Trevelyan closed her left fist and opened it, gazing down at the mark that bore it's presence in a glow of electrically charged green light beneath the skin of the palm of her hand. It no longer hurt, nor was it spreading after closing the rift above where she had fallen from the Heavens. The Herald of Andraste they were calling her, giving her the same fervent and zealous looks once saved for the Most Holy, when the woman walked the mortal coil. Where Evelyn had survived, no one else had. No one else remained breathing after the explosion at Divine Justinia's conclave, mage nor templar, noble nor commoner, Andrastian or no.

We all know too well how Thedas keeps its "peace". Thedas and its fool nations only know the cost of blood and gold, all the way back to Tevinter and Arlathan. These people will never change.

The heat of campfire was soothing in the cold night, and the dark and (mostly) quiet forest around them was a boon for her. She enjoyed finery and cities, but Trevelyan never shirked away from a camping trip, never one to be afraid of the dark, and camping had become a part of her traveling lifestyle since leaving Ostwick three years before, when the Circles fell. The trip back to Haven from Val Royeaux was proving to be longer than the trip to the capital of Orlais, presumably at the weight of two new recruits for the Inquisition's forces in the form of a Circle mage that was also an influential fixture in Empress Celene's court; the other in the form of a slight elf with an excellent sense of humor and an eye for arrow marks. Evelyn could honestly say now that she had faced a noble's entire guard, and not a single one of them in pants. Sera had taken every single pair out of their barracks before setting up the meeting with the Inquisition agents, leaving them no choice but to attack in their smalls while Sera and Evelyn both cackled at the sight. Trevelyan had found a fast friend in the elf, and something in her wanted to see more come of it.

She's the first person to make me laugh like that in a year or more, and it was only our first meeting. There's something about that grin of hers that I like.

Madame Vivienne De Fer, former First Enchanter of the Montismmard Circle of Magi and the Enchantress of the Imperial Court, was situated in her personal carriage for the evening, having brought her own house entourage with her. Evelyn had a feeling she and this woman would rarely see eye to eye on anything, as she had a distaste for politics thanks to her father, and the mage seemed to ooze the Game from her very pores. Sera had retired to the tent the other three women shared when Evelyn volunteered to have first watch of the evening with the Seeker. Her once captor, now tentative ally Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast, Right Hand of the Divine and Hero of Orlais, sat across from her on the flames' other side. The woman's severe but beautiful features were drawn into a tight crease of her brow and pucker of her fairly attractive mouth, obviously deep in thought and not anywhere near the campsite that slept so soundly around them, aside from the deep snores rumbling the air behind her from Varric and Solas' tent. The serious expression accentuated the long scar on the woman's cheek, a scar that Evelyn had to stop herself from staring overlong, as she found it incredibly attractive.

"Do you think I've done the right thing?"

A heavy accent mixed with Nevarran bluntness and Orlesian vowels speaking the King's Tongue brought Evelyn back from her inner musings, making her look up at the Seeker to find the older woman looking at her with that pensive expression in her cinnamon colored eyes.

"Which part, Seeker?" Evelyn asked earnestly with an airy chuckle that Cassandra echoed from her place in front of her.

"Leaving the only real family I have ever known, declaring the Inquisition. After seeing the Lord Seeker in Val Royeaux and the things he said and did, I don't know if I am extremely right, or a heretical madwoman."

Evelyn didn't answer right away, weighing the actions in her mind. She had never been the religious sort. She called herself Andrastian, but could not recite a chant if someone paid her. She shied away from the Chantry as soon as she was old enough to have her first blood because her father planned to have her be a Sister or a templar, the exact opposite from the imposing figure speaking to her now. Cassandra had always been devout, could probably recite Transfigurations forwards and backwards, and possibly in four languages. She knew from their brief conversations in Haven and their longer ones on their travels to the Hinterlands and Val Royeaux over the past three and a half weeks that the woman had trained from a young age to be the hero that sat before her now, having saved the life of a Divine, and served as Right Hand for not one, but two successive Divines in Beatrice and Justinia. This was a heavy question coming from a woman such as Cassandra Pentaghast.

"I don't believe you to be the sort to do something so significant without a sound purpose," Evelyn said slowly, mindful that she did not know the warrior well and not wanting to upset the tenuous friendship forming between the two.

"My trainers always told me, 'Cassandra, you are too brash, you must think before you act'. I simply wonder if this counts among those brash decisions."

"This wasn't your decision. You and Leliana were acting on the orders of the Most Holy. The reinstatement of the Inquisition came from the Divine. You are merely doing your job, Seeker. The Chantry is in shambles, the mages and templars are ripping the world asunder, and here we are in the middle of it… flailing."

The Seeker didn't reply right away, and for a moment Evelyn wondered if she had spoken wrongly. The Seeker's expression had not changed, though her gaze was once again trained on the dancing flames before them, shadows playing across her olive skin in the firelight while it's reflection swirled in the liquid of her eyes, the frigid breeze ruffling her short raven hair.

"Flailing," the Seeker murmured a minute later, not looking up at Evelyn. "Apt description, Herald. Tell me, do you feel this is divine providence? I know from your history that you aren't… well, you're not what one would expect in an envoy from the Maker. Do you feel like this is what you are meant for?"

Evelyn shifted in her spot, reaching over to grab a log for the fire. The leather beneath her plate mail armor creaked audibly under the effort, the hilt of the dagger in her rib sheath on her right side digging into the flesh under her arm a bit. The feel of her weapon pressed into her made her feel more mortal than before Cassandra had asked the question, a reality of what her life had become since she made the trip to the Temple of Sacred Ashes. Other than the heavy weight of the task of sealing the breach, Evelyn did not feel any different at that moment than she ever had. She was still the black sheep of a devout family, a stain on the good name of Trevelyan in her father's eyes, half of a whole of his biggest mistake.

"I should have stopped having children after Maxwell was born! You and your sister were a blight in my life the moment you took your first breath and your mother took her last!"

She still drank whiskey, she still would bed a whore. She was quick to slip her dagger beneath a man's ribs or slide it across his throat if the cause or coin were right. She was still foul mouthed and dirty-minded. She had no intentions of learning the Chant of Light, nor attending services in any Chantry. She still believed mages were people and deserved the choice of freedom, she still believed the world was hopeless. She didn't feel enlightened or blessed, this mark on her hand was a fucking curse, something unknown that bound her to a place and an organization full of the faithful who were all looking at her like she was Andraste come back to lead them into righteousness. She fucking hated it, it made her feel like she had to be what they saw, she had to perform miracles for them like a trained animal. Sealing the breach had become the point of no return, and a large piece of Evelyn hoped she would not survive the task.

"No," she said in barely more than a whisper. The answer twisted in her gut more than she would have liked. She wished she could be something like everyone wanted her to be. But she was just a common thug, noble in nothing but name. "It was a mistake that I survived. I should have died in the temple with everyone else. I don't know what the mark is, but I doubt the Maker or his Bride would have chosen me over the hundreds of faithful gathered there. I was probably the most worldly person to cross the threshold."

The only sound between them was Varric's snores and the crackle of the flames licking at the new log, and Evelyn felt her heart sink that she may have just dashed whatever hope the Seeker still held despite the gaping green hole in the sky above them. But then Cassandra spoke.

"I was bringing Varric to the Conclave to tell his story to the Divine firsthand. I spent nearly two weeks with him in Kirkwall three years ago, having him spin his tale of the Champion of Kirkwall to me. I was trying to get to the bottom of who murdered the Grand Cleric, I went in with the idea that Marian Hawke was somehow to blame, that she was the driving force behind the way Kirkwall crumbled. As he explained the truth… his version of it, as it was, the Champion transformed in my eyes as just the person we needed to lead the Inquisition, the only person that could make the mages see reason, and it became imperative that he tell me of her location. He did not know where she is; as her companion is the captain of a ship, they could be anywhere. He is right." She paused, readjusting so that she was leaning towards Evelyn as she spoke. "I prayed for the Maker to help us, send us someone, someone that could be what I needed Kallian Tabris or Marian Hawke to be, as I could locate neither one."

"Is Leliana not Tabris's lover? Has she not heard anything from the Hero of Ferelden?" Evelyn was no stranger to the story of the Grey Warden and her bard, the latter a flesh and blood presence in Evelyn's life now as the spymaster of the Inquisition. The women were legends as sure as Marian Hawke and her Isabela, the Champion and her Captain.

"It has been over four years. Well before the rebellion began. But my point is that I had no one else. If I could not locate Hawke, then all was lost to me. So I prayed. I asked the Maker and Andraste for a guide, a beacon, a light in this darkness. Then you came."

"With my brightly lit hand," Evelyn added wryly with a crooked grin, and the Seeker gave her a small nod in acknowledgment of the irony.

"With your brightly lit hand," Cassandra echoed agreeably. "My first reaction was in anger and grief, but when the shock of losing Most Holy had passed, when I saw you close that rift, hope began to fill my soul again. You are exactly what I prayed for, who I prayed for."

Evelyn felt that weight of responsibility settle on her shoulders once more, her body physically sagging under the weight of Thedas depending on her and this mark on her hand. "I hope you're right. I promise I'll do my best to fix this when the time comes, but I cannot promise you the result we seek."

"There is more to you than just the mark, Herald. I see your expression when it is brought into conversation, that you feel like a tool rather than a person."

"Like a mage feels every day, I'd imagine," Evelyn said absently, not seeing the frown that opinion gave the Seeker. "I do not envy the magic in their veins, this experience has been enough for me."

"I would say that depends on the mage," a new voice said, and both the women at the fire looked up to see Solas emerging from his shared tent with Varric. He came to the fire and seated himself near the Seeker, his staff lying across his lap, crossing his ankles casually. "You'll forgive me if I have eavesdropped, but it is difficult for even I to dream when the mountains crumble around my head while the dwarf sleeps."

Evelyn gave a snort of laughter, sad that Varric had missed the rare joke slipping past the elven apostate's thin lips. Solas was so inherently serious that Varric had ironically dubbed him "Chuckles" instead of calling him by his given name.

"His baritone is impressive, isn't it?" Evelyn said lightly, glancing back at the tent where Varric snoozed on, oblivious to everyone else losing sleep because of his snoring.

"His nasal congestion is the lesser of two evils sharing a space with him, trust me. His odor is reprehensible if his stomach does not agree with his dinner, and the Orlesian cuisine from Madame De Fer's salon last week seemed to be too rich for him."

Evelyn's head went back with the force of her full throated laugh, while Cassandra scoffed in disgust at the thought. Solas gave a smile to the Herald in return, but it faded as yet another voice joined the three.

"Wha's goin' on?" A sleepy sounding Sera poked her messy blonde head out from beneath the canvas of their shared tent, a fist rubbing at her eyes. "Somethin' funny?"

"Solas is a jester tonight," Evelyn replied, her grin growing noticeably at the sight of the newest addition to the team. "I'm sorry if I woke you, because you won't be getting back to sleep with that noise over there." She jerked her head in the direction of Varric's tent beside theirs.

"Ugh," Sera groaned, pulling herself out of the tent from beneath the canvas rather than the door. She pulled a bear pelt out with her, wrapping it around herself as she stumbled to the fire with the others. "'S cold," she mumbled, plunking down directly beside Evelyn, their outer thighs touching, and slinging the pelt across them both.

I've known her for two weeks, and already it is comfortable like this?

Evelyn's heart beat picked up just enough for her to notice the growing heat in her face as she looked at the adorable elf, and she quickly averted her gaze when Sera turned to meet it. The thief invoked a shy side to Evelyn she hadn't felt since she was a teenager and she bedded her first woman, the daughter of a friend of her father's. The sensation rankled her nerves, and confused her.

Sera was shorter than she by a few inches, as were most elves in comparison to humans, and was smaller framed with sinewy muscles, built for speed and stealth, much like Evelyn herself. Her face wasn't remarkably beautiful, with a squat, button nose dusted in freckles and lips slightly too large for her face, but the glint of laughter in her eyes and the constant smirk pulling at the corners of her mouth were too cute for words. The girl's eyes reminded Evelyn of the Waking Sea in the winter, a stormy gray with green undertones. Evelyn could very nearly hear the waves crashing on the rocky shores of Ostwick when she looked at her, and she felt a bit of her homesick that always lurked just under her consciousness ebb away. She had blonde hair that was choppy and short, like she had taken a knife to it in lieu of scissors, but it fit her demeanor so well that it was also an attractive trait that Evelyn found endearing. Something about the very way she carried herself promised spontaneity, havoc, and shenanigans, and it drew Evelyn in like a moth to a candle flame.

"Um, well, if you're both awake, then surely we should attempt to get some sleep before daybreak, Seeker?" Evelyn tried the most obvious way out, but Cassandra was ever clueless about Evelyn's predicament, being too close to the elf for her own good.

"I'm all right, for now," Cassandra disagreed, with a tiny shake of the head. "You may go and rest, however. I'm sure we three can handle it from here."

"Pffft," Sera said, getting up and hauling Evelyn to her feet in a remarkable show of strength. "I'm not sittin' out here with the weird one and the scary one. Come on, Herald, I'll go back with you."

Solas gave her a sympathetic smile, but she had a feeling that the mage had misconstrued her reasoning for that she didn't like Sera, which couldn't have been further from the truth that she wanted away from her because she liked her. Evelyn made a dismissive gesture with her hand that only he saw, and he gave her a nod as she followed the city elf back to their tent.

There were three bedrolls on the ground, one for each herself, Sera, and Cassandra, but Evelyn watched Sera pull hers closer to the one in the middle of the three. "It's friggin' freezing, an' two bodies are better than one, innit?" she asked Evelyn, who could do nothing but give a jerky nod, shrugging her way out of the long leather coat she wore over her plate mail.

Why am I freaking out? I've been knee deep in demons for three and a half weeks and I'm scared to sleep beside a cute girl? Snap out of it, Trevelyan.

She loosened the clasps on her plate mail and hardened jerkin, taking care to remove her daggers first so the entire thing didn't just fall to the ground and make a huge noise. She took off her hip sheaths, too, and her ankle strap, before removing the jerkin and her boots, coming to the bedroll in nothing but her tunic and trousers. Sera was giving her an amused grin, settling down and pulling the pelt up over her shoulder.

"Just how many knives do you carry?" she asked her, and Evelyn chuckled as she scooted beneath the pelt with Sera.

"Enough," Evelyn answered honestly, and Sera giggled at the evasion.

She was acutely aware of the other woman beneath the pelt, the heat signature on her left side immensely warmer than just a pelt alone. It was cold outside, and even more so away from the friendly glow of the fire just outside the tent, so Evelyn did appreciate the idea the strange girl had. She just wished like hell the urge to touch her would fade, and then all would be well.

"So, are you and the Seeker…?"

The abrupt question threw Evelyn for a loop, and at first she didn't understand what Sera meant by it, but when the intention of the question sunk in, Evelyn couldn't help but laugh. A lot. As quietly as she could.

"No!" Evelyn couldn't believe someone had asked that of Cassandra Pentaghast, too pious to ever sleep with a woman. "Why the hell would you think so?"

Sera gave Evelyn a small shove for laughing at what she meant to be a serious question. "You just asked her to come to bed with you, how was I supposed to know what you meant by it?" she whispered fiercely, embarrassed at her false assumption. "You both come off as lady lovers, just thought it might be together, I don't know."

"Only one of us is a 'lady lover', as you say," Evelyn said with a smirk, rolling over to face away from the thief, laying her bait in her trap carefully, the first bold flirt she had given the girl since they'd met twelve days before. "I'll let you figure out for yourself which it is."

"I know which I hope it is." The husky response caught Evelyn off guard, making her stiffen despite herself. She wasn't used to being flirted with so directly by anyone other than whores that are paid to flirt back, so Sera's admission was a very new thing to her. All the women that Evelyn had bedded outside of brothels were so paranoid about being caught with the infamous Trevelyan that they basically wore masks in and out of her rooms, forget brazenly flinging flirtatious invitations.

"I'm sure she is quite the sight outside that armor, too," Evelyn bluffed, not daring to roll over for Sera to see the hopeful glint in her eyes that the elf indeed meant what she thought she meant.

"I wouldn't know, she wears her clothes to bed," Sera returned pointedly, and Evelyn didn't try to hold back her grin.

Well met, Sera. Well met.

"Stick around long enough, she may change her mind eventually," Evelyn yawned, feeling the relaxation stealing over her body as the elf pressed closer, a tentative arm slipping around Evelyn's waist.

"Is this okay, Herald? You're warm," Sera whispered, snuggling as close to Evelyn as possible.

Evelyn didn't answer her, just reached down and threaded her fingers through Sera's loosely, enjoying the tiny squeeze the girl gave her in response. They didn't speak again, just laid there just like that, listening to Varric snore until the comfort of each other took them off to sleep.

Author's Notes.

Welcome to my madness. The biggest thank you I can give to Sister Magpie for a solid week of encouragement and reading my haphazard chapters and giving me invaluable input. Kudos to her on the title, too, it's the result of two minds pit against the goal, haha.

Some things you will see in this story will make you scratch your head, but bear with me and I'll answer all the questions you pose at some point in the story or another.

I hope you enjoy my take on this universe. I promise I will try to do it well.