Title: Green
Rating: G
Pairing: Blink and you’ll miss is Cadash/Josephine
Summary: The Inquisitor is colour blind and doesn’t know there is a cure until she mentions it in the tavern one night.
Notes: Kinkmeme prompt. I took some liberties with the Dwarven Inquisitor – making her from Ozammar. Figured it made more sense that she didn’t know there was a cure.
They haven’t been in Skyhold long and it was the first chance they’d had to grab a drink as a group of budding friends. She’s been waiting for this though, a chance to relax since Haven. Void, since the the Conclave. She’s on her second ale when her world changes for the third time in as many months.
Bull slammed down his tankard and looked at the line of bottles that were lined up on the bar; already; paid for and waiting to be drunk.
“Hey boss, pass me the Dragons Piss,” he said.
Malika turns around and looks at the drinks but not all of them have labels, and she doesn’t see on that says Dragon’s Piss.
“Which one is that?” she asks turning back. She likes Bull, he’s ten times her size but treats her like she’s as big as he is. Bigger even.
“The red one,” he says.
She turns again and frowns.
“They’re all the same to me.”
She shrugs and Varric gets up to grab the right bottle and hand it to Bull. Before he does though, Dorian grabs the bottle and waves it in front of her.
“Red see?” he says and she simply shrugs.
“I’m colour blind. They’re all green. Oh except the yellow one on the end.”
“You’re colour blind?”
They look at her dumbfounded and she wonders if maybe it’s a dwarf thing, maybe she shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe she should have months ago but it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t need to see what colour the demons are to kick their asses.
“Well, yeah.”
“In this day and age? And no one’s ever healed you? Fixed your eyes?” Dorian asks.
“I…I didn’t know you could fix it.”
“It’s easy,” he continues, “I could do it now.”
“How?”
“With magic of course,” he says and Malika looks around at her new friends. Josephine is nodding and Cullen smiling and over in the corner Krem is giving her a thumbs up.
“How is it possible you’ve never had it fixed?” Sera yells from somewhere. “I mean, I ‘ad mine eyes fixed before I could walk.”
“No magic in Ozammar,” Varric answers for her. “The only mage that’s set foot in that place was the Hero Of Ferelden over a decade ago.”
Malika is quiet, not sure she can handle what she’s hearing right now. The others are discussing her home, a place she’ll never see again in its green and sand hues and they’re telling her she could’ve seen it, as it is, it really is. All colour and life and home?
It doesn’t seem fair.
“You can fix it?” she asks finally, looking at Dorian.
“Right now if you want. It’s quite simple.”
She takes a long drag of her ale, and then another of the Dragon’s Piss, coughing up what feels like her lungs after she swallows.
“Okay,” she says, “do it.”
They take her outside, eyes closed and lead her up the steps to the battlement. Bull wants to carry her but the others dissuade him and she agrees. She doesn’t want to be carried. By anyone.
At the top, or what she thinks is the top, the push her forward and settle her against the ramparts. She wonders if they’re going to push her off for the moment then Dorian is murmuring something and she can feel the now familiar tingle of magic through her system.
“Go on then,” Bull says nudging her too hard as always. “Open your eyes.”
A million things could go wrong, she thinks, she could be blind. It could be worse. They could be naked.
She could be naked.
She shifts slightly and feels the material of her beige clothes on her. She takes a deep breath of cold mountain air before finally, finally opening her eyes.
“By the stone,” she breathes out.
The sun is setting, almost gone and just a red and orange streak colours the sky now but it’s the brightest thing Malika has ever seen. She stumbles back a little, but Dorian and Varric are there to steady her.
Red. Orange. They exist and she can see them. The glory of it is not something she can really completely comprehend.
The sunset had always been what people called green before, but as she looks over the mountains even that had been wrong all these years. Grass is not green, it’s verdant, vibrant, dotted with white the higher it gets.
“Pretty ain’t it,” Sera says before Varric pulls her to one side.
“I think I need another ale.”
A tanker appears in front of her and even that is wrong, brighter than before so she drinks it down quickly to make it go away, unsure she’s ready for much more.
She turns around and sees Josephine in her gold and purple brocade and almost passes out from the beauty of it. Or her. Then she looks up at her face, into her eyes and they are bright and clear with flecks of golden brown in the light grey.
She falls then, down onto the cold stone just staring up at the ambassador dumbfounded.
“Let’s get you back to the tavern boss,” Bull says, hauling her back to her feet. “We’ll drink the colours of the rainbow.”
“I’ll go get that purple conscription ale we found,” Varric says heading down the steps before them. Josephine, a red blush on her brown cheeks, smiles at Malika and heads down after him, Bull following and Sera leaps over the wall and bounds down the stone.
“Dorian,” Malika manages to say, grabbing hold of the mage’s arm and pulling him back. She urges him to bend close to her face so she can speak quietly and be heard of the wind and the bright, bright world. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure,” he says, with his usual dismissive wave but she doesn’t accept that and as he pulls away she leans up on her tiptoes and kisses him on the cheek. He looks at her then and smiles.
“You’re welcome,” he says and she nods, satisfied. “Back to the tavern?” he asks.
She wants to run down the stairs out into the world and see every colour, every shade, every sparkle. Instead, she smiles and heads down into the courtyard. Skyhold is colourful enough.
For now.
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