The wind howling through the empty streets of Skyhold woke her. She rolled over in her bed, it creaked with her movement and looked at the sputtering candle. She had again fallen asleep during her work. She had been reading reports sent by Leliana. She sat up and glanced at the topmost one and she saw his name. The meaningless scribbles around it that she on some level of her consciousness knew were important, just blurred out. She could only see his name, then she saw his face, heard his voice, smelled his skin, felt his touch, tasted his lips. Like honeysuckle on the first day of Spring.

The candle winked out and she was left in the dark. The report was in her hands but she no longer saw it, she was lost in her memories. She remembered speaking to him of things he had learned in the Fade, he whispered to her of memories he had uncovered and spirits he had befriended. He spoke of battles he watched unfold while he sat in the crumbling stones of the ruins.

She heard a shout and a scuffle echo from the common room of the tavern downstairs. She had stopped returning to the keep. She looked out her window to see the keep silhouetted in the moonlight. She could go to some places in the keep, the war room, the garden.

She refused to go into the room of murals though, his presence engulfed that place. Sometimes she felt she could almost see him again. Lounging on the couch, a book in his lap or carefully tracing his paintings across the walls.

She avoided her quarters whenever was possible, his presence lingered there as well. She traced her lips as she remembered when he had brought her there. He had simply wanted to see if she was the way she was because of the Anchor or because of the Dalish. He was there though, so real and so close. He remembered when he kissed her in the Fade. He said so. Tears fell as she remembered him turning away but she felt the ghost of a smile when she remembered how he held her as he kissed her passionately. "Ar lath, ma vhenan" he had whispered before he walked out.

"I love you, my heart" she whispered in a broken voice as tears fell. "But where are you now? Do you still love me?" She buried her head in her hands.

She heard someone from the street yell with delight. Lovers reunited from the evacuation of the village in Crestwall from what she could gather before she again saw him in her minds eye. He had taken her to Crestwood, to a glade where the Veil was so thin she felt it tingling on her skin. "You have become important to me, more important than I could have imagined…" She felt her face, where the vallaslin had once been and heard him whisper that she was so beautiful and felt his lips pressed to hers in a tender kiss.

He pulled away, so far away.

"Solas..."

"Please, Vhenan."

"Solas… Don't leave me. Not now. I love you."

Her tears fell faster when she heard him whisper his apology. She heard a scream as she saw him walk away and it took her a few minutes to realize it was her. She had lost herself that night because it had walked away. She collapsed to the ground shaking in her grief and screaming out her denial.

Her door burst open but she couldn't bear to lift her head to see which of her friends had come to check on her, the only one she wanted, the one she needed was gone.

"Shy…" she heard the person say

"Varric." She whispered, remembering the name connected with that voice.

"Yea, hun." He picked his way over the strewn bottles of beer and ale. His friend had fallen so far from the Inquisitor she had been. Her once vibrant red hair set in elaborate curls hung lank and neglected around her haunted face. Her robes barely held onto her emaciated frame. Her fiery golden eyes had lost their luster and dulled to a muddy brown. He placed his hand on her shoulder and could easily trace the pattern the bone made on her skin. "Hun, you have to eat something. It's been two weeks since I've see you eat anything." He said.

"I'm not hungry, Varric. Thank you for thinking of me." He saw a hint of his old Shiloh but he knew it was an act.

"I wasn't asking." He said simply.

Shiloh turned away willing her tears to dry. "Varric, what is wrong with me?"

"For starters, you're starving yourself and that's never a good sign." Varric said trying to elicit a smile.

She simply glared at him, or tried to but she couldn't manage it.

"Hun, have you been…" He didn't finish the sentence as she shook her head.

"No." She pulled her sleeves up to prove to him that there were no fresh cuts. "I just remembered."

He looked down at the report and recognized it as one of Leliana's reports on Solas.

"Damn it, I'm going to kill that guard." He growled. He grabbed the report and put it in his jacket before turning back to his friend. "Shy…" his sentence trailed off, he really had no clue what he could say that could even begin to help. "I'm going to find the kid." he said and left the room.

Shiloh felt the darkness close in around her, she didn't have the strength to light any of the candles and she found she wouldn't want to even if she could. Tears leaked from her eyes again and she rolled over and curled in on herself. Sobs wracked her body as she tried to forget him. Forgetting was just as painful as remembering and twice as difficult.

She heard the door open but she didn't even roll over. She recognized Leliana's perfume as soon as she walked in.

"Varric told me you were…" Leliana felt her words fade away as well.

"One of the reports your runner gave me…"

"Maker...you weren't supposed to get that one. I specifically told him to give that one to Cullen." Leliana said, and scratched the back of her head. "That does explain why Varric was so angry." Leliana said with a laugh but the sound rang out hollow and shrill and she stifled it quickly.

Shiloh didn't move, she didn't even react.

"Was it something I did? Something I didn't do?" Shiloh asked in a broken voice.

"No! you did nothing but give him everything. It was all him. That bastard is the one who left." Leliana said in certainty.

Shiloh was shaking her head long before Leliana finished the sentence. "If I had done something, said something. If I had tried a little harder maybe he'd still be here." She whispered tears fell on the already soaked mattress.

Leliana moved over the refuse in the room and she pulled her friend up so she was sitting and looked straight into her eyes, shimmering with tears in the starlight that leaked through the window.

"You are not responsible to what happened. Solas is the one who left you. He alone knows the reason that he left. It was not your fault. Are you listening to me, Shy? It. Was. Not. Your. Fault." Leliana said the last four words one at a time.

Shiloh didn't even look into Leliana's eyes, she stared at the floor.

"Look at me, Shy, look into my eyes." Leliana shook Shiloh's shoulder gently.

Shiloh forced herself to obey her command. She traveled her eyes from the trash on the floor to Leliana's boot and followed that up her legs and eventually looked at her eyes. They were grey, the same color that Solas had and she felt tears fall from her eyes again but managed to hold Leliana's gaze.

"Now repeat after me: It was not my fault." Leliana said.

"But it was." Shiloh whispered as her gaze fell to the floor again.

Leliana released her shoulders with a frustrated sigh and she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Maker, how will I get her to understand?" Leliana whispered.

The door opened again and Varric walked in with Cole.

"Kid, can you please do something to get our Inquisitor back?"

Cole looked at Varric and said "Yes."

Cole looked at Shiloh sitting on the bed.

"Bare faced and embarrassed. I don't understand. What did I do? It should have worked."

Leliana turned to face Cole. "What do you mean, Cole?" but Cole kept his gaze on Shiloh.

"Broken inside. Too many pieces to put back together. The wound raw and red, the pain is deeper than they know. They care but they can't understand. How could they? Varric trying to get me to laugh. Leliana trying to convince me it wasn't my fault. Cullen trying to distract me by keeping me busy. The rest have given up on me. He didn't even say goodbye. It should have worked. He took me there, it was so pretty like a glade that I found when I was young and my magic was blossoming. He held my hand, called me important. More important than I could have imagined. Where is that importance now? He kissed me, called me beautiful but then he turned away. Why? Solas, I love you. It was supposed to work. It should have worked."

Shiloh buried her face in her hands again trying in vain to hide the tears that seem to constantly leak from her eyes.

"Cole, is there something you can do for her?" Leliana asked.

"Yes." He said simply.

"Why don't you do it?" She asked.

"I need her permission." Cole stated.

"Wait, what can you do for her?"

"I can make her forget."

"Wait. You can make her forget she ever met him?"

"Yes."

"Do it." Varric said from the corner of the room.

"We should discuss this, Varric, how can we just let her lose a part of her life? You know as well as I how close they were. Will we really be doing her a favor stealing that from her?" Leliana said

"Sister, what good is she to anyone right now? It's been six months and all we've seen is her sink further into depression."

"What good are we if we just let this happen? She needs to heal, she needs to-"

"She needs to be the leader that your Inquisition needs." Varric interrupted.

"Varric, aren't you the one that says we need to deal with things as humans would?"

"Yes, when it helps but right now it's helping. We've tried everything and anything since that bastard left and nothing has worked."

"He isn't a bastard." Shiloh whispered. "He isn't a bastard." She repeated.

"If that doesn't convince you, Sister, just look around. You see the empty bottles all over the floor, you see the blood stained knife on her table. How can you continue to believe she'll get better. All she had to do was see his name written in your report and she was screaming and crying. If we don't do something now, we might just find her corpse hanging from one of these rafters or her blood spreading from lethal cuts on her wrists. Is that what you want?"

"The Maker teaches-"

"She doesn't believe in your Maker and she certainly won't follow his teachings. You sleep up in the keep that she won't even set foot in simply because of her memories of him there. You don't hear her scream every night. You don't come running in here to calm her and ease away her nightmares and they all involve him leaving."

"Varric...I - What if he returns? What if he-"

"After six months you still think he's going to come back? Even if he does I'm damn sure that between Cullen and I that bastard won't make it to the gates."

Leliana sighed. "Do what you want Varric but I still think you are making a grave mistake." She turned and walked out of the room.

"Cole, make her forget. Please." Varric said as he turned to Cole.

Cole nodded and stepped forward.

"Shiloh, you have helped me. I can help you too. I can make you forget." Cole said.

Shiloh didn't even lift her head. She was quiet at first then solemnly she nodded a few more tears travelled down her cheek.

Cole touched her forehead. "Forget." He commanded.

A/N Gosh it nearly killed me to do this to her. I tried to keep Leliana, Varric and Cole in character but sometimes I don't quite hit the nail on the mark. I hope I at least succeeded in keeping Cole in character.

By the way, bit of advice: don't use Youtube for a playlist when writing a story. Those damn ads will really spoil the mood. One minute it's "I know I can love you much better than this" then next minute it's an ad for hoodies or some shit like that and then I have to skip to the song and get myself recentered on the sad theme of the story.