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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 7 days ago

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sol ass

He could hear her Dalish lilt in his mind rebuking him with mirth and biting levity, softening even as she mocked him, or challenged him, or cut him off with something entirely unexpected. The memories came then-- not just the sound of her voice, but the rhythm of it: the rise and fall of words shaped by woods and sky filtered through latticework leaves. It was the sharp scent of wet earth, the cool weight of water on his shoulders, and the run of droplets down his collar. She had conjured a small flame between her palms, cupping it like a falling star. “Are you listening?” she asked, arching a brow. He shook his head to attention, summoning a barrier overhead. “My apologies, Inquisitor. The Fade presses close in places where so much blood has been spilled. The veil is--” “--thin here?” She interrupted with a skeptical expression. Her hair clung to her face, robes sodden, but her eyes sparkled in the dark.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62038768/chapters/158659021

It was fitting, actually, that he found himself hemmed in by the echoes of his regrets-- his cage after that idiot Rook had interfered, and shattered the delicate balance of his ritual. In its wake, Elgar'nan and Ghilan'nain were freed, and the Dread Wolf ensnared in his own trap.

His surroundings were a formless, endless expanse of muted grays where time stretched and warped. A faint chill clung to him, seeping into his bones. Suspended in a dim pocket between waking and dreaming, the edges of the world blurred as soft as breath against a mirror. Solas folded his hands behind his back in a familiar gesture, sensing ripples of change across the realms while the tremor of events begun elsewhere.

A rueful wonder that she should be the one to end him. To destroy his plans for good. There was symmetry to it. Her agents had undone the final turn of the lock. The ones who trailed him as quiet archivists, collecting fragments, whispers, meanings he’d buried beneath years of careful misdirection. They had followed the thread, knotted, and pulled. But it was her hand, indirect and unmistakable, reaching through the distance to sever his ambition with the same care she once reserved for braiding her hair.

In moments of silence, her name brushed against him like a balm and a blade; for, despite the intervening years, she was never far from his thoughts. The Fade, ever obliging, conjured her image bent low over some forgotten table in a room thick with shadows. Ellana, ever the cartographer of consequence, mapping his descent with the same consideration she had once given to the lines of his face. Tracing the long path he had taken with the fingers she still bore, he imagined the faint stain of ink and blood upon them.

Ten years was a breath to him, but to her it was an age. A life she had lived with one eye always turned toward the vanishing point where his shadow fell. He had kept his own tabs, of course. A hundred little measures enough to guide her; enough to guard against her. He would tell her how formidable she was if he could see her again, just once. For the time being, her shade would have to suffice. He wondered, and wounded, if she had ever paused amid her clever, calculated campaign to think of him as Solas. If, in quiet moments, the old name stirred any feeling at all.

He should have known. He had known, somewhere in the murk of foresight, only he never imagined her people would arrive before the Evanuris had been dealt with. He had planned for them to intercept after, when--

“You look like a wet cat,” she teased, nose crinkling and lips curving into a smile that made his chest ache.

He could hear her Dalish lilt in his mind as clearly as if she stood beside him, rebuking him with mirth and biting levity. It would soften even as she mocked him, or challenged him, or cut him off with something entirely unexpected. Solas leaned back against the false solidity of a pillar and closed his eyes. The memories came then-- not just the sound of her voice, but the rhythm of it: the rise and fall of words shaped by woods and sky filtered through latticework leaves. It was the sharp scent of wet earth, the cool weight of water on his shoulders, and the run of droplets down his collar. The forest had opened above them in a sudden deluge, forcing them to seek shelter beneath the stone flank of a moss-slick Guardian. The sound of her laughter carried over the downpour.

She had conjured a small flame between her palms, cupping it like a falling star. “Are you listening?” she asked, arching a brow.

He shook his head to attention, summoning a barrier overhead. “My apologies, Inquisitor. The Fade presses close in places where so much blood has been spilled. The veil is--”

“--thin here?” She interrupted with a skeptical expression. Her hair clung to her face, robes sodden, but her eyes sparkled in the dark.

“Naturally,” he snapped, “Furthermore, composure is hardly necessary under these conditions,” though her grin pulled him from his brooding. Despite himself, he smiled back. Then, he had been completely and only Solas: a wandering apostate taking shelter beneath the stone likeness of a rebel god, and the rain had been nothing more than rain.

Or a campfire flickering softly against the night, its glow painting her face in warm light. She sat across from him, lost in her own thoughts as the day’s tension rested heavy on her shoulders. How he would like to put his hands on those shoulders, he thought, feigning interest in a tome. His eyes, however, kept betraying him, drifting back to her. She was focused, perhaps carving a rune or sketching an idea. And when she noticed, her eyes, luminous, lifted to meet his, and a flush bloomed along her cheeks. Ah. He felt absurdly victorious.

“Did you lose your place, lethallan?” he asked, his voice low and teasing. Her lips pressed into a poorly concealed pout, though the corners twitched upward. Power, so gentle, lay in the curl of her mouth and the hesitation before she replied, rolling her eyes.

The great irony of memory was that such trifling, fleeting instances should endure most perversely, and in the briefest encounters; for what was swiftest to pass was also swiftest to return. The slight inclination of her head when deep in thought. The sound of her voice when she spoke of home. The manner of her step, which bore none of the affectation so common among the self-important, rather a quiet confidence that seemed native to her character, and which never failed to command his attention. And yes, he remembered with no small measure of appreciation the way her body was rendered no less arresting by modesty or practicality. There was a certain grace in the set of her shoulders, the slender line of her waist, and the particular sway with which she walked that had, on more than one occasion, robbed him of coherent thought. But it was her spirit that delighted him; her courage, her compassion, her singular exasperating charm that had, despite his best efforts, held him in such thrall.

He whispered her name into the stillness. The prison offered only oppressive silence. He imagined her with arms crossed, a brow raised, lips pursed in half a smirk, and the suggestions of mischief dancing behind her eyes. She would laugh at him here especially, sulking in a prison of his own construction. “You look pensive,” she’d quip. “Shall I fetch you a lyre?”

It was her voice that had ordered his end, however gently. Hair mussed from the wind, a fur-lined cloak falling askance from one shoulder, some tattered journal open in her lap, ink drying mid-thought as she considered what came next. It would not have been easy for her. And the agents she’d sent, her clever faithful, moving as she could not. Yet even as he ached, he cherished fragments of a life he had glimpsed but could never truly accomplish. The shimmering image of her face formed in the void. Light caught in her lashes, the furrow between her brows when reading, her mouth half-formed around unspoken words. When he reached for her, his hand passed through light as the effigy faded. It was gone, as she would be, as they all would be should he fail to stop the Evanuris.

It was not an option. The path to escape was already drawn and Rook a regrettable casualty, assuming they lived long enough to deliver him. But afterward?

The thought drifted in and out of itself, neither question nor statement but a kind of thin echo. It passed through him in sensation, in that strange mingling of dread and desire which he long since ceased to untangle. Rage was too simple, so it was he settled on imagining her with the certain weight of one who has already grieved what she is about to do. And if she looked at him, truly looked, what then? Would she see the great adversary of her people, or the man who once, for a flickering hour, nearly lay down his burden for her?

Hope was a thing with teeth. But still, in unlit corridors, where time eddied and folded like cloth, the question persisted. Would she come? The world, in its unraveling, would allow her no other course. Others had names for it: justice, duty, salvation, but none seemed to fit her resolve, which was neither wholly merciful nor wholly cruel.

“One day, I hope you will come to understand,” he murmured, his voice a hollow, miserable sound. He remained half-shadow, half-memory, folded in the cradle of his own failure, and haunted most cruelly not by her conviction, but by her precision. How very much like poetry it was. And how like tragedy, that no one remained to hear it.

#solavellan #solas #veilguard spoilers #sad little solas #sollavellan #solas x lavellan

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 10 days ago

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this one for the freaks

To look upon her is to cast the line, a baited hook to ensnare the wolf. It is also a study in perilous indulgence. I know her. Not from war or memory, but the trembling hand of a lesser god who dared imagine himself my equal. I have seen her rendered in pigment and pathetic imprecision, hoarded like a starving thing might guard crumbs, in margins and half-finished murals. Tentative, as though the depiction demanded apology, and rendered with such trembling excess it was soft to the point of obscenity. Not obscene in flesh, but in intention. A thousand variations on a single face: wistful in one, wounded in another. His was not the admiration of an artist for his subject, but the sickly devotion of a penitent to the altar.

(im rewritting this whole silly little thing before I finish it bc I didnt actually have a plan when I started haaahaha)

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62038768/chapters/158658673

She trembles, though she does not yet bow. The Inquisitor is a stubborn creature, refusing to extinguish. I could admire it. Once, I might have. But admiration has no place in purpose.

And how apt, how exquisitely just. The world rights itself by degrees, or course, turning steady and sure through the decay of ages; always meant to be thus. For what is a god, if not the fulcrum upon which the lesser must bow? She trembles, yes, and struggles against it, still-- that flickering mortal insistence a tiresome echo of self-importance. Resist as they may, even as their bones break beneath the weight of my will.

I have seen stars weep their last in silence beyond the Veil, and even they endured longer than the trembling spark of a mortal soul. They do not know they are dying as they move, weaving themselves into moments that vanish the instant they are lived. Each gesture is a hymnal to impermanence. Fragile creatures, yes. Soft, flickering shadows. How radiant, just so. Avant garde, even.

“Do you know why you are here?” The question is less inquiry than ritual. It feels odd and hollow in my mouth. I am not partial to asking.

Her face rises, incandescent, forged in fury not yet doused. No matter. Eyes like a tempest find mine, and I see only him. The Wolf. Fen’Harel. Always, the rot begins at the root. Disdain blooms like a rose across her face, or a bruise. A small, exquisite violence. How swiftly the flesh reveals what Pride would disrupt. Her lip curls. Her posture shifts.

"I know enough."

A vessel steeped in borrowed purpose, the wench bearing features of the Elvhen with his heresies and sighting gaze, forever touched by his power. She carries the mark of my betrayer, maligned and deformed as she is now. And still, she dares raise her voice to me. I am nearly amused, for there is a sweetness in wrath, sometimes. In redirection. To wound what he still may covet? It would be justice. The restoration of order, at the very least. The correction of an offense.

And I smile, my voice coiling through the air like a serpent beneath still waters. “You know nothing,” I say, almost gently. “But you will learn.”

Her defiance is expected-- predictable, even. Delicious.

She frowns as the chains around her pulse. Those instruments of perfect design thrum faintly with light as they tighten their hold, and I am the tide advancing upon the shore. My footfalls echo, resounding and swallowed in the breath of the chamber. To look upon her is to cast the line, a baited hook to ensnare the wolf. It is also a study in perilous indulgence.

I know her.

Not from war or memory, but the trembling hand of a lesser god who dared imagine himself my equal. I have seen her rendered in pigment and pathetic imprecision, hoarded like a starving thing might guard crumbs, in margins and half-finished murals. Tentative, as though the depiction demanded apology, and rendered with such trembling excess it was soft to the point of obscenity. Not obscene in flesh, but in intention. A thousand variations on a single face: wistful in one, wounded in another. His was not the admiration of an artist for his subject, but the sickly devotion of a penitent to the altar.

How repugnant-- the slinking wolf, so swollen with grief he mistakes it for wisdom. Pathetic.

My gaze devours, tracing the dip of her neck down to her clavicle. Here, he would lose direction, where shadow pools like spilled ink. The mouth is full; too ripe, too soft. A gaze, yes, sharpened to a blade’s edge. The eyes, worse still, were always left unfinished so the dog did not bear to meet them, even in ink. For beauty, left ungoverned, breeds chaos. And I, who fashioned the first edict from the screams of titans, know this truth as marrow.

Until now, she existed in brushstrokes and stories. Half-formed impressions, crude reports from my agents. They did her no justice.

“I have heard much of you, Inquisitor,” I hear myself say, “the people call you a herald. They look to you for hope.”

“I claim no such authority.”

"Your humility is refreshing." Rolling my eyes, "I have heard tales of your Inquisition. Whispers that crawled their way up from the mud."

"They say a hole tore itself open in the sky,” tilting my head, “and from the wreckage, a single survivor stumbled out of the Fade itself: a Dalish heretic, spat from the jaws of fate.”

I cannot help but laugh because it is all so delightfully theatrical. Admittedly, I was known for a love of drama in the old empire, though to a far lesser extent than such virtues as vengence and order. Alas, much is lost on this age.

“A lone soul anointed to mend the seams of a sundered world. Savior to the humans. The unlikeliest of saints.” I pace, I circle, each step a verdict cast in stone. "How the broken bent their knees and the powerful clutched at your coattails.”

I stop. Turn. Let the hush fester until it presses against her chest and constricts the lungs.

Sighing, “It was all very tragic, I understand.”

Her brow creases. I pause. She remains silent in paltry rebellion, void of poetry, void of purpose. I have suffered creatures more eloquent than this mute opposition. And soon, I shall exhaust even the curiosity that stays my hand.

"But you were not without council." I peek at her from the corner of my eye, still intolerable. "A confidant, one who appealed to your common 'heritage,' sharing much about the People. The humble wanderer, the sulking shade who steered your rise to power."

"Masquerading as a shepherd to the hallowed, the Dread Wolf bares his fangs again." I shook my head then. "You poor child."

The fragile seam of her lips pressed tight. “You think you can use me against him.” Her eyes found mine with the brittle courage of one who does not yet understand that she speaks from the mouth of the pyre. "It will not work. He won’t come for me.”

Ah, how they cling to the fictions that sustain them.

“The Dread Wolf has evaded justice for too long. He has defied the natural order, betrayed his kin, and warped the very fabric of existence. But you--” I pause, allowing the weight of the moment to settle. “You will bring him to me.”

"You're wrong," she denies me, with the brittle conviction of those who still believe themselves sovereign over their fates.

I move without needing; the air bending first, then distance haste. I do not raise my voice; the stars themselves are quiet to listen: “Careful,” I warn. “You are in no position to provoke me.”

Burning brighter in the belly of my shadow, “I am not afraid of you,” she hisses.

The lie is beautiful. Exquisite. And for a fleeting moment, I am captivated by it.

I grin.

“He will come," I assure her, "But not for you. He will come because I will leave him no choice.”

Her gaze meets mine and stutters there. I see it then, as a god might grieve the last blossom before a frost. Leaning closer, I find the air between us is charged. “You are a tool, Inquisitor,” I say, cutting and slow. “Even to him. And when Fen’Harel stands before me, I will show him the ledger of his sins. And in death--” Whispering now, threading like smoke into her ear: “--I will release you.”

She does not cower. How strange. She looks at me, and there is no terror there, no plea, only comprehension.

Understanding.

I turn away. I do not look back.

#solavellan #lavellan #elgarnan #datv spoilers #lavellan x elgarnan #elgar'nan #solas x lavellan #sollavellan #veilguard spoilers #solas

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 10 days ago

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I adore the letters between these two.

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 11 days ago

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anyway i think i got more followers since the last time i mentioned this! and it is one of the funniest parts of dai, to me. everyone needs to know about the temple(?) jail(?) where solas pretends to be illiterate

"indecipherable" yeah. i'm sure.

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 14 days ago

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you know what? fuck you (marries your leitmotifs together so that you might be redeemed by love)

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 15 days ago

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These panels are mere hours apart. Cassandra is on to them almost certainly, her "rivals to lovers" romance novel radar is too strong.

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 20 days ago

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one thing i was thinking about with solas is: his actions, as compared to his actual stated goals, are often really unhinged and impulsive. and he's presumably self-aware enough to know that it's happening, and trying to compensate whenever he can?

like ok. going through his timeline, he's introduced when he kills felassan. given how he's not otherwise prone to killing people mid-explanation, and felassan is his Beloved Rebellion Era Bestie, i would assume it was a "i need to get this over with now, or i'll lose my nerve and not be able to do it at all" type of situation. but that's my personal headcanon on how to make it fit with his personality later, it may also have been a "the writers didn't actually decide on what his vibes were yet" situation.

regardless, he wakes up slightly before dai. his entire plan is: step one, don't waste time messing around and getting attached to cringe fail mortals like felassan did. step two, get the orb unlocked, tear the veil and reset everything.

after about a year, even before making friends with anyone, he's wandering off in the hinterlands to go help out refugees, for absolutely no benefit to him or his mission. step one of his plan has immediately failed! even on low approval, when he ends up perhaps not seeing them as real "people", he STILL does this.

then, he's presumably pining over a romanced lavellan for [some indeterminate amount of time]. bc by the time they make any attempt to kiss him, he's already on the "this person has changed my entire life and worldview" mindset, and impulsively starts making out with them. this dude is technically a millennia-old, seasoned military/insurgency/fade expert, in his home realm of the fade. he's been lying by omission 24/7 for the entire time he's been awake, caused the breach and corypheus to be a problem, and believes he's on a mission that has to be done to save the world, and that he'll have to eventually kill everyone that he's spoken to since waking up. and he got so blindsided by a overture of affection that he straight up forgot what he was supposed to be doing.

then, the wisdom spirit dies, and he has a strong enough grief-stricken reaction that he admits to almost quitting the entire inquisition. which is fine if he was actually just a normal apostate who got sad and wanted to leave! but as far as solas knows, leaving would mean giving up on getting his orb back, and thus... dooming the whole world. so even considering doing that indicates that his decision making is in Complete Shambles.

then, he kisses lavellan 1 (one) more time, and declares that he's fallen in love. with one of the cringe fail mortals that he did not see as people a year ago, and killed felassan for being too optimistic about. eventually, decides to tell them the truth, gets cold feet, then considers Giving Up On Everything just to be with them - again, risking dooming the whole world for this, as far as he knows, which is wild? he panics, corrects the lapse in judgement, dumps them halfway through his own explanation of the truth that he initiated, and then... still can't actually do the logical thing of just going "yeah it's over. i never cared. get over it," which would arguably be less confusing and painful for them. instead he keeps going "ough... you saw more than most... what we had WAS real 🥺" up to the last moment. which is also very cruel, from lavellan's perspective! and presumably solas is aware of how miserable this makes both of them, but is still unable to summon the willpower to just lie to cut things off more cleanly.

then, regardless of relationship, he goes out of his way to rescue the inquisitor from the anchor, and gives them an overview of his plans and lets them live. which makes sense, if it's a high approval/romanced inquisitor and he genuinely cares about them/thinks they can prove him wrong.

but, on a low approval, he's just... accepting a chance that they come back later and kill him? while he's on a mission that he thinks only he can do, and considers to be vital to the survival of his people? he killed felassan mid-sentence for mild disagreement, but is like "oh well... i'll just accept the risk of this annoying, barely-sapient chantry stooge assassinating me and stopping my plans 😌" a few years later? that's unhinged? whether it's out of guilt for lying, or just disliking his own plan and kind of wanting to be stopped, this is a BIZARRE thing to do when he believes the stakes are that high.

in conclusion, i think solas is technically a competent schemer, but at heart, he is very cringe fail. and that's important.

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 21 days ago

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WIP Wednesday!

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1800i-dont-write-fanfiction · 25 days ago

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22- fade tongue

A silence passed between them; not peaceful, but fragile. Then, hesitant. Tentatively: “You knew me once,” he said, “Not as I am cast in your legends, but as a man all too acquainted with his own failures.” He took a single step closer. Measured and careful, afraid to trespass beyond the boundaries the shared dream might permit. “You must know: that night, in Crestwood, I…” faltering, “I could have shared the truth, or even put my plans aside and simply stayed with you as Solas. As I wanted.”

“Did you imagine,” she said at last, “this would console me?”

He said nothing.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62038768/chapters/170296870

When the former Inquisitor passed beneath the archway, she was struck by the strangest impression she had arrived somewhere wholly unfamiliar. Uncanny, even, as dust clung to lifeless banners in Skyhold’s courtyard. The fire had gone out in the great hall. Her throne sat bereft of some verdict long deferred. Ellana had returned only once after the Exalted Council, to collect what few possessions she might reasonably call her own. She’d wanted to leave after Crestwood, actually, with her dignity if not her satisfaction. The machinations of a certain darkspawn magister derailed those intentions, leaving her pride a somewhat secondary concern.

In time, Skyhold had become less a home and more a monument; an edifice consecrated to burdens she no longer had the strength or inclination to shoulder. It was a relief, then, to surrender it to those who wished to preserve the Inquisition’s legacy. For eight years she managed to evade the place, convinced that whatever comfort it once held would be spoiled by her return. The moments of warmth and clarity that had unfolded within its walls would curdle with time– she even believed it, too. But when the Veil thinned and the world cracked open again , the South began to burn, and there was nowhere left to stand but Skyhold.

The first refugees had arrived in a trickle, their numbers scarcely a dozen. They soon grew to fifty, then a hundred, and by the third week she no longer bothered to count. There had been little use in measuring sorrow when it arrived daily. Yet amid the mumbled comforts and linens drawn over fevered limbs, purpose found her willing; that which had been set aside with equal parts relief and reluctance still bore a familiar weight.

The knowledge of Varric’s absence was painfully obvious, however. Cullen’s quarters had caved in entirely. And though she knew she would find Josephine’s office empty and the undercroft dormant, naive expectation did little to blunt the sting of lost friends and shared purpose. A subtle sense of dread soon settled into something patient, stirring in the early morning before the day truly began, and again at night when the silence stung too keenly. Avoiding the rotunda had been a particularly helpful strategy, one of several quiet evasions that formed the pattern of her return. Indeed, she relied on avoiding those places she had frequented before, as to retrace those steps might invite the past to nip at her heels.

Her new office had been established in a dusty antechamber tucked below the western wing, a neglected library of dubious cataloging. She found it suited her; the solitude, the scent of aged parchment, the complete absence of light. From there, the world remained at a polite distance. At night, she slept beneath a crumbling statue of Andraste, who offered neither comfort nor condemnation. Yet for all its renewed occupancy, Skyhold had remained a hollow place.

Perhaps that was why her mind so often turned to Haven. More and more, Ellana found herself returning, though whether she was dreaming of the village or remembering it had become increasingly difficult to parse; memory had been so thoroughly blurred that recollection now mirrored reverie. Was she watching herself return, or making the steps of her own accord?

Regardless, it was a plesant, hazy sort of stupor. A gentle detachment that dulled any sharper sting. The effect was not displeasing. Then, the transition was seamless as great stone walls dissolved into the modest slope of snow-dusted cabins. She knew this trick well, and what a cruel one it was: that after a decade, after all they had fought to preserve and all they had lost, she found herself back at the beginning.

So it was a dream, then. And worse still, the Fade no longer troubled to disguise itself– even the illusion of home had worn away, having grown threadbare with repetition.

Haven appeared as it had before. The snow fell gently, in the polite, unhurried manner of dreams. It softened rooftops and gathered in neat drifts along the walkways without clinging to her cloak or melting on her cheeks. The scene had all the trappings of warmth, yet Ellana could not shake the impression that it had been arranged for her benefit alone. She might have admired the courtesy, had it not felt so bereft.

The hush commenced gradually, the way silence often does in dreams. A shift, a subtle quickening as the spirits rousing the illusion took notice. They felt her awareness stirring, blooming like a drop of ink in water. And more than that; something else, as well. Ellana quickened her pace, having familiarized herself with a particular presence in the way one might feel warmth before a fire came into view, or the way a scent might summon feeling before the memory formed.

Standing before the same cabin with hands clasped behind his back the same way, his gaze was fixed on some middle distance when she approached. When her essence stirred the Fade, calling to him like a half-forgotten melody, he followed, helplessly. Upon seeing her again, lovely still, he thought: I am unprepared for this. He should turn back, or be kind in his absence, at the very least. Then slowly, reluctantly, still , he faced her. He looked, in every respect, as though he had intended to vanish before she noticed.

His eyes dipped, briefly, to the snow.

“Don’t you dare walk away from me now.”

Emotion flickered across his features; shame, yes, but too something steadier. Familiar, and unsettling. Ellana took another step, stiff with the sort of restraint that masks sorrow in civility. To his credit, he did not look away again. If he possessed presence of mind, he might have spoken. Her name, perhaps. A word meant to soothe. But he did not think, and moved in kind. One step, then a second, and in the space between the second and the third, she reached for the fabric at his neck. In the Fade, he was always vanishing; she was right to fear he would turn into mist.

Some fragile current passed between them, then. Whether it was the ache of recognition or the ghost of some memory long starved, neither would admit. But for the briefest instant, the space between them stoked something that might have been tenderness. And then, softness withdrew like the tide to be replaced with a sharp and shrewd thing; honed by absence, and pain, and too many imagined apologies that never arrived. Her palm met his cheek with a crack. Solas received it with silence and a long-suffering kind of dignity that was neither defense nor remorse. His face remained composed as a ruddy flush bloomed on his cheek. He had anticipated her hatred.

“You killed Varric.” She spat, fury rising fast and bitter in her throat. “He was our friend . He believed in you, in your goodness, and you let him die like a stranger.”

“I did only what I believed was necessary.” He replied, with the kind of precision one could easily attribute to callousness.

Her eyes narrowed. “Your smug aura mocks me,” she hissed, “And you are still insufferable.” The words cut, precisely, as truth so often does. She took a step back then, as if the sight of his pride were suddenly too much. And yet, for all his careful anticipation, nothing he imagined could quite match the devastation in her voice, and that she had once loved him enough to hurt like this.

“You believe I drew the blade with ease, I did not.” A pause. “It was never a question of cruelty. Only consequence.”

“You speak of necessity as though it were a virtue,” she bit out the words. ”For all your insistence that you are no god, you are keen to decide who is worthy to live and die.”

“I had hoped–” He opened his mouth, but found the words ill-fitting and useless in the face of her condemnation.

“That mission; I was meant to lead it. Would you have slain me,” frustration only mounting with each new word, “if Varric hadn’t convinced me to remain in the South?”

Silence fell. The kind that stretches out not for lack of speech, but because there is too much that cannot be spoken plainly. She felt it gather at her throat and behind her eyes, a pressure with no outlet.

“You have nothing to say. Nothing at all?”

He flinched enough to betray that he indeed had something to say, and still did not speak it. His expression grew intolerably quieter; not absent, but decidedly still. He would not cloak himself in rationale, nor insult her by pleading for mercy. Standing steadfast, maddening, unreachable, her fury rose to meet him.

“Say it!” she shouted, “Say anything . Wound me, curse me, but do not stand here and deny me the truth again.”

“I do not know,” he admitted, and that was no lie. “I would have taken no satisfaction in it.”

The words shot through her like ice. “You would have killed me ,” she hissed.

Solas closed his eyes, only briefly. “No part of me would have been untouched by your death.”

Once, it would have moved her. Then, a realization : “I am nothing to you.” It was laughed rather than shouted, and worse for it.

“I did not want to kill Varric,” His voice was hoarse as the words sunk without careful tempering, growing softer still. “What is necessary is not always just. Desire can hold no power against duty.” All the while, his eyes remained elsewhere.

Ellana thought of Elgar’nan’s fury, of the blind and brutal force of it, and how she had placed herself squarely in its path to grant Solas the time he needed to flee. Not because she believed in his cause, nor even because she believed in him . But because, in some stubborn, stupid way, she loved him.

A harsh laugh tore from her throat. And, turning from him a second time, refusing to let her anger, or her grief, for that matter, make a supplicant of her, “I should not be surprised,” she continued, “I suppose I thought, in some dim, pitiable way, I might be spared the humiliation of watching you leave.” It was an accusation, yes, but something wearier still was the sullen familiarity of a pattern well-rehearsed. For his vanishings had long become his only constancy.

Ellana spoke into the charged nothingness between them, “Why are you here? You, of all beings, are not bound by dreams.” She caught the line of his face, half-shadowed and unreadable. Her mouth curled into something like a smile, only mirthless and keen as frost. “Is this mercy? Guilt? Perhaps some final indulgence before you destroy the world?”

“I feared for you,” he replied too quietly.

“How noble.”

“On the island. Elgar’nan–” He faltered then, and she glared, unwilling to help him find the words. “You should not have been there, vhenan .”

Ellana let out a huff, “Tell me, which part frightened you more; that I might die, or that you might be the one to deliver it? Was it self-pity, or grief speaking?

Wounded pride, she guessed, flickered in his eyes; a dangerous expression if not thoroughly compelling. Anger surged there then, a shift in his face so sudden, stricken, it served only to stoke her acrid amusement. His gaze dropped below her eyes, to some point on her cheek.

“The vallaslin,” he uttered through clenched teeth, “You are not ignorant to their true meaning.”

“Correct.”

“And still, you have made yourself Elgar’nan’s slave.”

A laugh, “I did not–”

“You did not what?” His voice took on the sort of mocking lilt he reserved for the willfully blind.“Did not remember? Did not care?” Violet eyes pinning her in place, “You bear his mark on your face. Was the first desecration insufficient?”

“How dare you,” she hissed, warping composure further into offense, “Speak plainly, Solas, if you ever cared for me at all.”

“You wear them!” He shrilled; unable, or perhaps unwilling, to hide the bitterness in his voice. He had meant only to warn her. Not coldly, as he had done with gods and tyrants, but wretchedly. Personally . “You let Elgar’nan carve them into your face. You– you allowed it! ”

“I do not wear the vallaslin,” she shouted, “I would never agree to that.”

“No?” The word held no gentleness. “Tell me, what do you see when you gaze upon your reflection?”

The Fade answered him with glass like ice upon stone. His voice echoed strangely in the space; new, but seemingly unchanged, as though they had been there already. Mirrors in an endless sequence; circling impossible symmetry. In every one, her face was not her own. She stepped forward, her breath hitched, her reflection caught from every angle; a dozen, no– a hundred faces bearing the same brand. She felt intolerably small. Her stomach turned, confusion laying way to panic, and then–

Enraged, she turned to him, “I am not so easily persuaded by gods with silver tongues and parlor tricks.” Her voice cracked furiously as magic danced across her fingertips. “How can I trust you, after all you’ve done?”

Solas laughed. “Did you not aid me at Tearstorne Island? Surely you trust me enough to conspire against your god.”

“ Elgar’nan is not my god !” she shouted, casting light across the mirrored walls. The chamber, so carefully ordered, seemed to tilt. Ellana blinked, her anger caught somewhere behind her ribs, bewildered by what exactly had just torn free of her throat. Her chest heaved in exertion, or panic, and the sound of her voice retreated into some scared, meek thing. Then gravely, “I had never seen it before this. I do not know where it came from, or how it got there.”

Solas had, it seemed, made the worst of all errors: not in trusting too freely, but in doubting too soon. He had taken her silence for betrayal, and her survival for submission– a dreadful misjudgment that now turned to ash on his tongue. The truth revealed proved both unremarkable and unbearably cruel; simpler than he anticipated yet evermore brutal. He might have laughed at his own foolishness, had the moment permitted even that small reprieve.

How proud he had been. How certain, and how completely wrong .

His eyes dropped again to her cheek. “You did not know,” he mumbled against the fragmented remains of his own assumptions, his certainty, emerging raw and stripped of pretense.

She said something he couldn’t hear. He found his hands had curled into fists.

“You do not remember,” with conviction, as if saying it aloud might protect her from further subjectation. “Elgar’nan has taken the memory from you.”

Her eyes continued to chart the mark in the glass. “He took many things,” she said, “Even so, you looked at me and saw complicity. You would believe I chose this?”

It was not an accusation, exactly, but required no emphasis to wound.

The feeling was a steady, expanding emptiness that flowered in his chest. For all it shadowed, guilt did not always arrive with spectacle. More often it settled in quietly, like dusk. Pride had feared many things in his long and weary life. And in hubris, looked upon her in doubt, lashing out, like a wounded animal toward the only creature that had ever seen him as more, and simultaneously less, than Fen’Harel.

“I did not know,” he whispered. It was the only defense he could offer, and a poor one at that. He had looked at her and chosen a pain he could bear, preferring that of her betrayal to the knowledge of her violation. Better , he had thought, to think she had chosen freely than consider the alternative . “I would undo it,” he added softly.

“Then do it !” She snapped.

“Ir abelas ,” he looked at her sadly, “But I cannot. We are not here physically, or I could–”

“Would you?” she spat, “Or would you retreat again to serve your own ends?”

“No,” he replied, bereft of hesitation. Unquestionable in its finality. “I would not leave you in chains.”

The two regarded one another, guarded and still. It was not affection that lingered between them then, nor reconciliation. The recognition of old injuries, of former selves, and trust broken. Each studied the other as though meeting again for the first time. Not as lovers. Not as adversaries. Perhaps, then, as something like equals. Her hand drifted again to her cheek.

“You must tell me what happened,” Solas said, urgency threading through the careful evenness of his voice, reigning himself in visibly as comprehension were a thing lying just beyond his grasp. “Whatever stands between us must wait. I need to know what Elgar’nan has done . ”

Ellana stared, the words ready to fall yet uncertain where to land. Her heart raced from the terrible dread of being asked to bear herself to someone who had wounded her. It would be simple to say nothing and let silence protect what self-regard remained. Looking past the trickster god and ancient rebel, she might still find the same wise, quiet man who dispensed wisdom freely, who had valued her mind as much as her magic, and once looked at her like she mattered more than anything else around them . For all that had transpired, she wished to believe that some part of him remained in the place where grace extended as risk, not reward. And in the willingness to be known again, setting aside her anger had become more necessary than her censure.

“I do not know. So much is… incomplete.” Her brow contracted with the effort of recollection. “There was a cage, I think. And before that,” a pause, “Darkspawn? They had breached our line.” She hesitated, speaking slowly at first and halting in the details. But once begun, the account unfolded in fragments and impressions that proved immune to the logical nature of time.

“And before that. What do you remember?”

“I was holding the South together,” she replied evenly. “Fighting the monsters your ritual unleashed.”

“I was trapped ,” he snapped, “By that fool, Rook. One of your agents.”

Humorlessly, “How convenient.”

There was a pause. His jaw tightened as indignation flared– the instinct to correct her, for it would be entirely to easy to remind her of the burden he bore and the necessity that framed his actions. But he stopped himself, realizing that too would be a failure. He had come seeking truth, not victory. Reluctantly, his posture shifted. Not defeated, but softened. “…Please,” he said at last, resigned. “Continue.”

When she did, it was not a question so much as a prayer denied. What she remembered. What she did not . The gaps where her voice bent strangely, of where her limbs moved without thought, where her thoughts fogged like breath against glass. How her mind dulled after that, and the heat that followed Elgar’nan into a room. Weight that fell over her shoulders like a hand pressing her into place, or a child arranging a doll.

He had saved the most delicate inquiry for last; lingering at the edge of his tongue, as naming it might confirm some private horror. He cleared his throat once, quietly, without meeting her eyes. “There was mention–” he began, the words catching like thorns, “of a child.”

Her arms folded across her chest to ward off some lingering embarrassment. “There is no child,” she snapped, like a blade drawn in reflex. Of course not. He raised a brow. Just slightly. A flush rose to her cheeks, “I had no time to– to think. I said it only to stay his hand,” she frowned. “He found the idea… utilitarian, or so I suspect.”

The lie, such as it was, had merit. It might have bought her time. It might have appealed to Elgar’nan’s appetite for dominance, or his hunger for leverage. But Solas knew that alone, it would not have sufficed. For all his titles and thunder, the All-Father would not have spared her out of some sacred awe for his enemy’s bastard. That was not his way. What haunted Solas more deeply than the lie was what it concealed; not why Elgar’nan had spared her, but how he had chosen to keep her alive.

“I see,” he said, and asked nothing more. Her path to survival was already plain to him, and the cost she paid to keep breathing. Worse still, what he suspected but would not name. There were questions he did not have the right to ask.

She fixed him with a sharp glance. “And you? How did you escape?”

He drew a breath, steeling himself before beginning. His account unfolded in hushed detail: of the ritual disrupted, the god’s prison in the Fade, of Rook’s progress in his absence, and lastly, his escape.

“You trapped Rook?” She was not, by any measure, pleased, “In the Fade. Really , Solas?”

“I did,” he replied plainly. “I could not allow them to interfere. There is no gentler truth.” Ellana frowned.

“And the Veil?” Her voice was lower now, tight with restraint, though not devoid of hope entirely.

A pause. Then, grimly: “My plans have not changed.”

“Of course not.”

“You are right to be angry,” he offered. Her disappointment was a lash he had long expected.

“You deserve considerably worse than my anger,” she replied coolly. And then, with a weariness that robbed the words of malice: “But I haven’t the energy.”

“Were it within my power to ensure your safety, I would–”

She arched a brow. “How very comforting,” she said dryly. “You do possess such a stirring history of coming to my aid.”

“Fair,” he admitted, the corner of his mouth quirking in some morbid form of amusement. “Should I live to see Elgar’nan slain, I will do what I can to preserve your life. That, at least, I can offer.”

“Ah. After you destroy the Veil, of course.”

Exasperated, “Vhenan, please .”

“I neither expect nor desire your rescue,” she returned, quite plainly. “If I am freed, it will be by my own hand. I have long since ceased to count on yours.”

“I would not deprive you that,” he said. “Even if it were within my power to do so.”

“Can you?”

“No.” The word was a bitter draught, quiet and final. “I can offer no more now than I could before. So long as you are bound to Elgar’nan, your will is not wholly your own. I cannot ask you to act in defiance of it– not without risking more than either of us can afford to lose.”

Her jaw tensed, indignation flaring behind her eyes. “You’re afraid I’ll turn on you,” she replied coolly. “How very ironic.”

“I fear what he has done ,” Solas replied gravely. “Not who you are .”

“Did you imagine,” she said at last, “this would console me?”

He said nothing.

“That you might wound me beyond measure, then soothe the injury with the memory of what might have been?” Ellana turned, the weight of looking at him directly having become too much to bear.

“I do not ask for your forgiveness, nor do I offer this as recompense.”

She let out an aggravated growl. “I knew you were hiding something,” she hissed, biting back tears. “And I did not care. I would have followed you anywhere .”

And I nearly asked you to. “I know, vhenan .” The breath she held escaped her like steam from a kettle. "I feared I would ruin what little good you might still think of me."

Her shoulders rose slightly. One hand came to cover her mouth in an instinctive attempt to contain what was swiftly slipping past her guard: a soft, strangled breath, too quick, too close to a sob.

“Ellana,” he said, low, hoarse, barely more than a breath. His hand moved nearly of its own accord, uncertain at first and trembling slightly as it hovered above her shoulder. For a moment he hesitated, fearful the slightest presumption might shatter what little understanding remained between them. Emotion long held at bay rushed forward all at once, though by choice or exhaustion, she allowed the contact to remain. “If there is one truth I may leave with you, let it be this: loving you was never a mistake.”

“You should not say that!”

“I am aware.”

“Then why do you?” She demanded.

“Because I do not believe I will have the chance to say it again.”

That caught her. “What do you mean?” she asked, spoken too quickly to be measured.

Solas did not answer at once. It seemed he might not answer at all. Then, “I walk the dinanshiral . That journey is not merely metaphorical.” Looking away, the words he meant to offer required their own distance. “There is no certainty I will survive the Veil’s collapse. In truth, I think it unlikely.”

“You believe you’re going to die.”

He did not deny it.

“Yet you speak of it so plainly,” she continued, hiding the offense behind her hand. “You would leave me with a confession, and not even grant me the dignity of a reply.”

“If I could choose another path– one that led me back to you– I would take it without hesitation.”

There was a pause, pregnant and uncertain. She said nothing at first, the stillness between them brittle and liable to crack if touched. And then, without much forewarning, her hand rose and came to rest against his cheek. The gesture was neither bold nor assured, not yet ; rather, it shuddered with a kind of intimate uncertainty. He startled, naturally, but did not retreat. At last, her voice emerged, “Then stay with me,” she said. “As long as this dream allows.”

He blinked, bewildered, before steeling his expression. “We shouldn’t.”

“I know this for what it is,” she continued, more firmly, “And I know who you are. If this is all we are allowed, I will still choose you.” Ellana stepped closer, her hand slipping from his cheek to rest lightly at the nape of his neck. She seemed to seek something in the touch itself, some echo of truth that might live in the body. As though her fingers might read what his lips refused to tell: the weight of regret, and of tenderness buried beneath pride.

“Even knowing what you do, you would still–?” Solas did not have to complete the question.

“Yes.”

“This cannot change anything,” he warned, though his voice shook with something like bliss having crept in despite him. But it felt like penance or reprieve, and he was very tired of pretending he needed neither. The part of him that stayed cold and dutiful for a decade cracked like ice meeting spring. That she could choose him even now was a mercy he could not understand. And still, he wanted quite terribly, to believe he could be just a man, trembling beneath her hands.

Solas closed his eyes, nearly weeping, “ Ir abelas .”

A faint laugh escaped her, begrudging and scarcely voiced. “I do not forgive you.”

“I know.”

A pause. Then, quieter: “But I have missed you.”

He had not intended to touch her, nor surrender himself to sentiment; then again, he had always wanted things he never expected to receive. So when she raised her eyes to his and placed her hand upon his flesh, it became clear that the notion of preserving his composure was entirely laughable.

The first kiss was hesitant and exploratory, like strangers fumbling through the script of a play they had once known by heart. Yet memory is not easily governed, and it is rarely kind. What began with caution soon gave way to fervour: a soft sound escaping her lips, scarcely more than a sigh, and he, in turn, replying with a noise more instinct than reason. The better part of him, such as it remained, hoped the restraint lingering at the back of his mind might yet anchor him to what sense he still possessed. And then he was speaking against her neck, whispering that this was a terrible idea, all while his lips refused to leave her skin.

“This is not wise,” he murmured.

“Probably not,” she replied, tilting her head slightly. The invitation did not go unnoticed.

His mouth traced a slow path downward. His lips parted, trembling between a laugh, pitiful at that, and a prayer as he confessed he had dreamed of her for ten long years. It was all too familiar, this effortless convergence of tension and tenderness, or teasing and truth. Ellana laughed again, only this time the sound carried a startling tenderness. “You mentioned caution,” she teased; her own restraint had collapsed like parchment in rain.

“You are making that increasingly difficult.”

“Do you suppose I am impervious to you?” she asked; not in jest, but with the kind of sincere inquiry she reserved for things that mattered. “That I have ever been?"

Her gaze did not wave, it burned. The expression was earnest, unadorned, so much that whatever breath he had intended to draw fell midway, caught between anticipation and rapture. A low laugh escaped him then, the chamber forgotten, as was the circumstance that had brought them. Only that she was near, and he was, quite unexpectedly, at peace. “No,” he whispered. “nor would I ever wish you to be.”

She kissed him then with such gentleness, such quiet assurance and no urgency at all, that it proved a far greater undoing than any provocation. “Solas,” Stealing away to the space below his ear, “Come to me.”

It was not a demand, nor a plea, but something far more devastating: permission. For a moment, he did not move. Had he heard her correctly? He made a muted sound– half breath, half gasp– before something within him surged all at once. And then he was on her, pressing her against the nearest wall, a gleaming pane of mirrored glass. He took her into his arms with a care that belied the urgency of his longing, and undressed her with hands that shook only slightly. The Fade, ever attuned to the will of dreamers, altered in accordance with desire. Ellana found herself reclined beneath him, catching a glimpse of them in the looking-glass: the flush on her cheek, and the pale slope of her throat resting against his shoulder. “We appear to be surrounded.”

Solas laughed with an expression both wicked and content, and wholly devoid of apology. “I find it…” he began, his fingers trailing up her side, his palm curved over her breast, lingering there, “exquisite.” Then he bent, mouth closing over her nipple; his tongue traced languid circles first, parting her thighs beneath him. He bit down enough to make her breath catch, to remind her that softness was not the only language he knew. Things had always been easier for him in the Fade, after all.

“I thought you preferred shadows to spectacle,” she managed. “This feels dangerously close to the latter.”

He did not smile. Not quite.

“If this is to be the last dream we share, I would have you remember it.” His fingers moved again slower and coaxing.

She blinked at him, perhaps in bemusement, or adoration, or something nearer to sorrow. Her fingers brushed his cheek, and though the mischief was not wholly vanished, it tempered at least. Her voice arrived as little more than a sigh, “Do not speak of it, then. Only, do not stop, either.”

The words became an invocation. Drawn forward by the promise in her voice, Solas lowered his head, his lips brushing the curve of her ear, then trailing lower toward the line of her neck. His teeth followed, grazing skin until she squirmed and arched toward him. A whimper, then a moan, spilled from her lips. He heard it– he felt it . And he answered, not with speech, but with a low, shuddering sound that vibrated against her throat. Tangled in breath and heat, she felt the distinct weight of him pressing firmly against her thigh. Warn and wanting and familiar , her hand slid between their bodies, searching, fingers curling around him in a gesture newly startling in its intent. His breath stuttered against her skin.

“ Vhenan ,” he murmured, like it was prayer and warning both. But he did not design to stop her.

Ellana moved her hand slowly, brushing her thumb over the head, spreading the liquid beading there. Heat pulsed beneath the touch. Humming contently, Solas bowed his head into her shoulder, allowing his mouth to drag open along her collarbone. She felt the effort it took for him to remain mostly still, and the trembling tension he answered with every stroke of her hand.

His hand found hers, and stilled it. He kissed her shoulder, then the hollow just above her heart. Then lower, each press of his lips a wordless prayer. When he reached her hips, he lingered. “Look at me,” he said, low and coaxing. Awed almost, and wrapped in a tenderness more commanding than desire. And at his urging, her lashes lifted, and their eyes met as he entered her with a single, slow thrust. Her name slipped from his lips, more breath than language, and she responded with a low noise that echoed off the mirrored walls. Stilling, a moment held between breaths where his forehead rested against hers. For a moment, he simply breathed her in. Then, he began to move in deep, languid strokes. A sob caught in her throat as she rose to meet him, her mouth finding his all desperate and consuming. The kiss broke and returned, again and again, as though every lost year came rushing back to be spent in a single dream.

“I have missed you,” She admitted, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, “Terribly.”

He pressed his forehead to hers as they moved together, eyes fluttering closed, voice catching as he whispered, “No hour passed that I did not ache for you.” He moved with the patience of a man who had known only pining and had fed upon dreams for too long. There was no haste in him; he was all depth, and constancy, and a kind of devastating stillness. And through it all, he held her gaze, as if the union of their bodies meant little without the meeting of their eyes.

And now I tremble to be made whole .

His movements slowed, not for lack of want, but because each thrust left him more breathless than the one before. When he stilled at last, she kissed his temple, then his cheek, and his mouth. With a glint of something wicked in her eyes, she shifted, pressing her palms to his chest to ease him back. Hands falling away like they no longer belonged, eyes never leaving her face as she moved above him, rising over him like a tide returning to shore.

Ellana braced her thighs around his hips, lowering onto him in a motion that made them both shudder. She moved slowly at first, setting a deep and rolling rhythm like waves smoothing stone. Her hands braced upon his chest as he lay beneath her, practically senseless. His fingers traced her thighs, her waist, the curve of her belly with something more than desire. It was grief and gratitude braided together, the joy of being remembered, and of being welcomed.

The muscles in his jaw tightened each time she sank down. And when she leaned forward to kiss him, the rhythm of her body never faltering, his hands came up at last simply to hold her. His voice broke around her name. And when her pace quickened, he answered with a low groan in his throat. She rode him like she remembered every place they had ever touched, and sought to remind him of all they had missed. And he let her, for he had nothing left to give but this: his awe, and his body, and the unspeakable ache that had haunted him for ten years. And here, she took him as if she meant to keep him. If only for a while .

“You are so beautiful,” he said softly.

She leaned forward, capturing his mouth with her own; unhurried, intent. The kiss was not frenzied but filled with feeling, a slow exchange of breath and memory. As she began to move, her hips described a lazy rhythm, determined to draw out every moment they had been denied. When she rose again, he watched her entranced and wordless. His hands glided along her thighs, reverent in their path, until they came to rest lightly at her waist.

Her body gave a violent little tremor, thighs trembling as the wave overtook her. The sound she made was soft, strained, and wholly involuntary, one of surprise as much as surrender. She folded forward into him, spent and shaking. Solas caught her; cradled her, even. There was nothing of pride in his expression. Then he turned them gently onto their sides, one arm looped around her middle, his hand resting low on her stomach. With the other, he found her fingers and laced them with his.

Kissing the length of her spine, each press of his lips was quieter than the last. And slowly, he began to move once more. Her body sang with oversensitivity, each stroke both unbearable and sublime. Solas buried his face in her neck as the tension in him began to build anew, and with a strangled groan against her shoulder, his hips stuttered, and he spilled into her with a sound that hovered on the edge of a sob; one final, desperate thrust before stillness. They lay that way for a long time, bodies tangled and limbs slack under the weight of exertion. Solas murmured soft words against her skin, words she could almost grasp, their meaning just beyond reach. But her mind was too dazed, too full of him to translate.

The stillness between them was no hesitation, but sanctity. His body trembled, his breath faltering against her skin as he tried to commit each detail to memory: the hitch in her throat, the press of her fingertips against his spine. He kissed her temple, her jaw, the corner of her mouth. Whispers spilled against her skin; Elven, broken, soft. The desire to linger was not strategic. It was not wise or kind. And when the Fade began to soften, neither of them spoke of endings. They did not need to.

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