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Plugging the Sky-Hole Rubbish	By : Ghost-of-a-Chance Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 39 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Dragon Age Inquisition or any of its related characters or devices I'm not making any money from this.

Chapter List
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A few quick notes. You’re going to see several pairings here with varying amounts of emphasis and importance, but the main ones will include Solas, Cole, Cullen, and Blackwall; primary pairing is Solas/Lavellan, largely revealed through third party perspective, with Cole/OC as a close second. Important non-canon characters to watch for are my Lavellan, Félice, Sasha, and Sialia, the latter of which are my current rogue inquisitors. Notes will be shared at the end as needed, and I'll include warnings as needed; I'm not tagging anything that's canon, such as racism and character death. Chapters with music have lists to identify what was used. There will be spoilers to the end of Inquisition, including all the DLCs, but I'm not sure about Veilguard spoilers yet. There will also be deviations from Canon and speculative interpretation of canon.
That said...Solas. Some of the things he says and does herein may strike some of y’all as off, but I promise, there are reasons and character dynamic causes. I’m trying to strike a balance between “Solas is an old soul, worn down by time, and just needs a hug,” and “Solas is that one grumpy old man who always winds up babysitting idiots and just wants people to stay off his lawn.” Also, I’m playing up on the supposed “creepiness” of one of my favorite characters by using an unreliable narrator. This isn’t bashing. Cole is the reason I started playing the game to begin with, and I love his awkwardness.
Lastly, we may eventually see smut because I have no restraint. This is currently being cross-posted from another site and chapter four is incoming soon.
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1: Introducing: Inquisitor Idjit
The best stories don't begin with once upon a time or end with happily ever after. Some stories begin with demons belching from holes in the very fabric of time and space, progress with the stench of bile and blood, and encompass years of heartache, hope, and hilarity. This story—the story of Inquisitor Iaspis and her band of misplaced morons—was one such story.
But this wasn't the beginning of the story, now was it? Félice Hafter would know. The story began out of her sight, but she watched it play out with voyeuristic interest. The story began in Haven, according to Varric's tales, but Haven itself was only another step in another story—the story of mages and Templars, and a possibility for peace. Where did the story begin?
"Cold, calculating, cut-throat and callous." Félice stiffened and ducked to hide her face behind her ash-white curls. After all this time, the spirit-turned-man could still sneak up on her with alarming ease. "A sneeze and a stumble," Cole continued beneath his wide-brimmed hat, hands dangling between his bent knees. "Blood spills, spreads, stains the floor. She left no one behind, so she came to us; she had no savior and came to save herself."
Sometimes Félice wondered if Cole made sense to anyone but Cole.
"Are you paying attention?" Félice jumped to acknowledge the second speaker with guilty grey eyes. Interacting with Solas always made her wonder if his foot-wraps were too loose or his leggings too tight; it might explain the pinched irritation between his eyes.
"I—yes." Félice scrambled for the last item she added to the requisition list. Who ever knew fresco-painting could be so much work for anyone but the artist? "Everite, dawnstone, and—"
"Drakestone," Solas corrected with a long-suffering moue. "Dawnstone imparts a notably rose color to lime water and dries lavender unless blended with an inert stabilizer. Drakestone mellows to a deep mahogany, and when blended with a powder of veridium—"
…and Félice lost any and all interest in the lecture. It was all mineral composition this and color theory that, and a few borderline racist remarks regarding humans' lack of appreciation for the finer arts. If she'd had any idea what she was getting herself into as camp assistant, she would—she—well, she would have thought twice and done it, regardless. A glutton for punishment she may be, but this Inquisition was creating a new world, and she wanted to be part of it.
"Come to the Inquisition-side!" someone cheered across the courtyard. "We! Have! Cookies!" In response, a familiar cackle rang out. Something about Inquisition cookies are the shite? Why would anyone want shite cookies?
Solas froze, eyes darting left and right in search of the speaker; he found her up on the tavern's low roof with Sera, a burnt cookie uplifted like a holy relic, grinning as if the world wasn't falling apart at the seams.
Someday, Félice hoped someone would look at her the way the grumpy Elven apostate looked at Inquisitor Lavellan: contemplative and calm, admiring and awed. His violet eyes softened and his stiff shoulders lowered, and a soft crease played around the corners of his mouth which might, on any other man, pass for a smile. Instead?
Félice glanced over her shoulder at the young man perched on the sparring ring's top rail like a hungry raven waiting for a wounded animal to cease twitching.
"Why is a raven like a writing desk? The stories never say."
…instead, she had Cole…who only made sense to Cole…and stranger still, she didn't mind. Much.
On the roof, Iaspis Lavellan jammed another charred cookie in her mouth whole and scrubbed the blackened crumbs off her face with her right forearm. Hours after their return, she still wore her warm-weather armor—a pale leather mishmash which spanned neck to knuckles on the left but left her right arm bare. Her short, messy brown hair—would Solas call that mahogany, or perhaps umber?—resembled a tumbleweed on a good day. Today was not a good day; today it resembled the nest of a rat with clinical depression and a case of existential paralysis. Her laughing lichen green eyes left Sera's to scan the courtyard, and when they locked on Solas, she stilled.
Félice hoped someone, someday, might look at her the way the Inquisitor looked at Solas: hesitant, hopeful, tremulous and tender, and all at once. When their eyes met, the entire world could fall away around them without notice—nothing existed beyond that moment, neither breath nor death. Félice didn't have a Solas or an Iaspis; instead, she had Cole, who looked at her like he was waiting to eat her.
Without ever tearing her eyes away, Iaspis bid goodbye to Sera as she stuffed several cookies into her pockets and clambered to her feet. Solas recognized her intent before she even finished dusting off her rump, and reached out with a shouted, "Don't—"
Iaspis leapt from the low roof and landed in a crouch, but the momentum carried her forward onto her face in the dirt. After a moment's dizziness, she rolled onto her backside, shook her head like an animal, and blinked away the stinging in her eyes. With a huff, Solas stalked over to her side, fingers white-knuckled around his staff, and glared down his nose at her. "And what have you to say for yourself?"
A veritable river of blood poured from Iaspis' nose, further staining her armor. Félice wasn't acquainted with many elves, but Inquisitor Lavellan was the strangest she'd ever met; only Iaspis would jump from a roof, land on her feet, and suffer nothing more degrading than a nosebleed. Iaspis dug around in her pocket and held aloft a single fractured, blackened cookie as one might brandish a tourney prize; the left half came loose and fell to the ground, shattering on impact. She never stopped grinning.
Solas, from all appearances, was risking a brain bleed.
Iaspis shrugged and pinched her nose to stem the blood. "Jyoldo?" …was that even a word?
"Sorrow to stillness, weary to wondering, worry to wishful." This time, Cole's voice was right behind Félice, so close his breath unsettled the tight curls at her neck; onlookers would attribute her shudder to Solas' ongoing tirade about jumping off things like a nincompoop instead of taking the stairs. "They are happy."
Seething, Solas grabbed Iaspis by her bare shoulder, winced at the skin-to-skin contact, then hauled her to her feet. Lecturing every step of the way, he dragged her toward the stone steps into the keep. Their marked height difference made the entire scene even more absurd. Should the established pattern hold, he would heal her in the privacy of her tower and they'd both be unreachable for several hours; later, they'd resurface at opposite ends of Skyhold with no sign anything untoward occurred, calmer and collected. Fooled—they thought they had the entire Inquisition fooled, but a blind man could see through them.
Finally, Solas gave up on his ranting and outright bonked Iaspis on the head with the gleaming end of his staff. That was happiness?
"They're touched in the head," Félice told Cole, "the both of them."
The story of the Inquisition began with civil war and a gaping tear into the world of demons, a ragtag team of strangers, and an amnesiac elf with the world in her hand. It progressed with new friends and old foes, mysteries and magic, and all manner of mayhem. That story would be one for the history books once Varric Tethras spun it to his satisfaction. The truth was stranger than fiction and decidedly messy.
It all began on a frigid Wintermarch day in Hafter's Woods.

Up next: our heroes discover a cave-girl in Simeon...and Somebody Else?

Notes
- Iaspis—iaspis is the Latin word for jasper, which is the Inquisitor’s former self’s surname. The pronunciation is—I shit you not—ee-yass-piss. Of course, if that makes you cringe too hard, you can always modernize with yasspiss in the way of Iason -> Yason -> Jason. Her name being Latin—the language Tevene was based on—will make things all kinds of awkward.
- Yes, she definitely said "yolo" about jumping off a roof, landing on her face, and getting a nosebleed. This should give you an idea of the kind of screwy we're dealing with here.
- There are two main playlists for this story on Spotify. 1: "Sky-Hole Rubbish" Folk is mostly folk, celtic, and New Age—lots by Steeleye Span, Celtic Thunder, and more. 2: "Plugging the Sky-Hole" Rubbish has mood music, songs in the story, etc. It don't need no stinkin' genres.
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Plugging the Sky-Hole Rubbish