Warning: Spoilers for all of Inquisition.
DISCORD
She had come to like, even love, the room in the castle; from the Serrault glass that painted art out of light, to the sturdy desk with the ever growing piles of books and trinkets, the bed she had chosen (chosen) and the Grey Warden banner on the far wall. No one had asked. No one had asked much, because while she was the Herald of Andraste, the Herald of Andraste wasn't her, only what they wished her to be; there was no space left for anything else. She had made her peace with it, but then again, she had also made her peace with death.
If she was to be truthful, at least in the privacy of her thoughts, it had been the case since Haven. She had gazed upon Corypheus' deformity and almost tasted the madness and despair in the tilt of his mouth, and then she had known: it was always going to end like this.
She wondered what he would have thought of her current predicament, of her intentions, had he been still alive; maybe he was watching her from beyond the Veil, relishing in it all, or, more likely, cursing at the wasted potential—he had talked of determining who was more worthy of godhood, she remembered, and she had answered that she didn't believe in gods. She never had faith; it was as foreign to her as breathing underwater, and he only had faith, until he didn't, only not really, because she had heard him call to his god, one last time before the end. Her eyes prickled.
His scales are sickly and mottled, his form twisted and corrupt, like the darkspawn themselves. He opens his great maw, and fire billows forth, igniting the market. The flames rush toward me.
What did we do wrong?
To see the ones who have protected and guided you, in whom your put your trust and faith, the ones you loved above all, fall, how does it feel? And to have to battle them, to fight, to struggle against what they have become, to have to kill them so that you alone may survive, how does it feel? It is what had happened to the ancient Tevenes when Dumat had arisen corrupted, and while it was not something she could imagine, it made her throat close up and a dark, deep thing settle just under her lungs. Corypheus had only ever said that the City was already black, and empty, but he had never denied the Blight itself. He, too, must have known.
Behind her, Cullen stirs, embraces her a little tighter; nuzzles her neck and smells her hair, kisses her shoulder and then, finally, settles. If she does not move, he will fall asleep again in a minute, and so she stays still, and waits, relaxing gradually until she is sure that he has fallen back to the realm of dreams. Cullen—at once everything and nothing, at once happiness and misery, not her greatest mistake but a mistake nonetheless, because she loves him, but, and it sounds trite to her ears but doesn't make it less true, sometimes, love cannot be enough. Should be, but isn't.
And how he loves her. She had tried to tell him, just once—"Cullen, what if I can't?"—but he hadn't listened, couldn't have listened, and she had known and always knew and did it anyway; had given something that wasn't hers to give anymore, something that she would have to take back, because she never was whole and unbroken in the first place, because she chipped pieces of herself along the way and then pledged what was left to another. But Morrigan had a son, and it was always going to end like this, and so she had taken the Vir'abelasan.
She has made herself a god who is also a slave—both a key and a lock, though not to the same thing. The Fade had always called to her nature, but now she could also hear them at the edge of her consciousness; rumbles and murmurs and she had been so convinced that they would fight this, fight her; but they too were weary, left behind only to regret and remember when there was nobody left to remember them. Sacrifices, and they had found a kinship, and it was always going to end like this.
She slips into unconsciousness hearing a soft spoken "dar'eth shiral".
Demons and spirits alike flee from her; it has been a long time since there was anyone in her dreams, and so she has taken to explore. It always makes her think of Solas, but it still surprises her when she stumbles upon him in the place where the Altar to Mythal stands in the Fade—they like it here, and so she does them this kindness often. He does not seem changed until she feels it right in her bones, a pull, and that's how she knows. She wants to ask, but first she goes toward him, strands of green floating around her ankles as she does; "it" likes her.
He starts badly when she sits on the ground next to him, with not even a foot of distance between them. She has less than a second to see a desperate, anguished look on his face, twisted lips and a furrow between his brow, before it's taken over by surprise.
— "Fen'Harel."
He recoils, as if struck, and weeks, months of companionship tell her that he's searching for words, for an answer to give her, something; she can feel the tension in his body, because apparently he's more honest here, in the Fade, than he ever was on the worldly plane.
— "It was always going to end like this," she says as her eyes roam over their surroundings. How much time since someone made an offering?
She had never said it out loud before; it does not feel as sad as she thought, is in truth more liberating than anything else, even if Solas himself doesn't realise that she's talking about two or three different things in that same breath.
— "What did you do? What did you do?!"
His hands are on her shoulders, his eyes searching her face, and she can't help but look at him in return; on his knees in front of her, his grip strong on the wrong side on painful at first. Little by little, he lets go; of the anger, too.
— "I was never going to let the key between the realms fall into the hands of another. I was never going to live, Solas. I just had to survive long enough, and now it is done. Time was once a blessing, but I will not dwell in lands no longer mine," she finally says, and the spark of recognition is here, in the way his entire body sags, in the abject hopelessness of his posture, in how he still hasn't let go. She feels how his fingers tremble on her skin, startlingly real despite the Fade, and that is one reason more.
— "Whatever you did to yourself…" he starts, but his voice breaks, and then, louder: "I command you—"
— "Emma souveri. Emma halam. Emma atisha. Ir melana sahlin, halam sahlin." ("I am tired. I am done. I am at peace. My time has come, and now it ends.")
She cannot see his eyes, and she will not be here to watch the tears being shed. She should hate him, despise him, want to rend his flesh and bones for all that he has done, but she doesn't have it in her, like she didn't for Alexius or Samson or even Corypheus, not really; she had been angry and then she had pitied them, and now she pities him, too. It's half the reason why she puts her hands on his wrists, and as he raises his head and finds her eyes, she wonders if an imperfect god is better than none at all, but does not dwell on it further; she never had faith, after all.
— "I can take the Vir'abelasan from you, I can—free you from the geas, you could live, Trevelyan, please—"
He would have left it, if not for the imminent threat on her life, she realises because it is one thing to know and another to acknowledge; the Inquisitor, commander of thousands, bringer of hope and change across Thedas, means and resources unrivalled, and she could laugh but doesn't. A powerful pawn, maybe the most powerful of all, and he would have helped and protected her like he did during the war against Corypheus, but a pawn all the same; a pawn, always and forever bound to the will of another.
— "You can no more take my sorrows than you can take the Anchor, Solas, for I changed it and it has changed me," she says as the colours start to change around them, brighter and brighter with a hint of reality, and she watches how the realisation hits him, how he seems to fall back on himself even further.
— "You are here," he whispers, taking her hands in his, and she lets him.
— "Death would not have been enough," she answers as a light breeze starts to blow around them, heavy with the scent of forest and purity, a garden in Ostwick, not a memory but more.
— "You don't know what will happen to your soul if you die here!"
Others had not seen it, hidden as it was, but once upon a time, knowing how to disguise her own rage had been all that stood between a Templar's blade and her neck, or, even worse, her mind and Tranquility; and so she had never truly believed in his composed facade, had more than one time wondered as to why he seemed so full of fire only to see the expression disappear from his face in the next second. She had not asked.
— "Will you lecture me on necessity, harellan?"
The elven words roll on her tongue as if she has spoken them for a thousand years and more; she has tested them again and again, tried to find the strangeness that should have been here, and failed—and she would call him worse than trickster, worse than traitor; thrice betrayer, that is what he is, but she will not linger any longer. All things must end eventually, starting with her.
— "Ma vhenan'ara," he murmurs; ("my heart's desire,") low and wretched, and she reads despair and desire both in the play of his throat and how he has bowed his head.
— "You are a fool," she says, before freeing her hands from his grip and getting to her feet.
Her back as she walks away from him is the last thing he sees before her whole being scatters, wisps of green and grey and blue before his eyes, and then he is alone.