The old wolf roamed across the Exalted plains and a trembling silence followed, broken only by the sound of dry grass beneath weary feet. The land had changed in the few years since he had last been here, they had torn down the battlements and dilapidated houses, dragged the bodies from their pits and gibbets and began to rebuild, but the land still held its scars and the when the wind was blowing right, the undertone of old blood still lived in the air. Like the rest of Thedas, they were slowly rebuilding, burying the memory of corypheus brick by brick, it was hard not to see it all as a dreadful waste, and yet ignorance was their gift, better they never know until the very last second. Pity on the eve of war was a dangerous thing under most circumstances, but his is distant, a perfunctory sorrow that will not outweigh the importance of what is to come.
What is not perfunctory is the way he occasionally glances at the empty spaces beside him, last time he was here those spaces had been occupied by those he had called friends, despite his best intentions. Now he walked alone with the early evening sun setting behind him, unable to shake the feeling that he should be hearing more than one set of steps whispering over the yellowed grass. Those that he would call friends are now reluctant enemies, and those that serve him live in too much idolized fear to presume. It is remarkable to think that he could walk anywhere on Thedas unremarked, but it has always been a natural gift to go unnoticed when he wished and the people here were far too busy to bother noticing a nameless elf travelled the wilds.
The entrance to Ghilan'Nain's grove was deserted, the Inquisition presence long since moving on to more desperate matters, now that the plains were free of rifts and freemen alike. He found himself relieved, a confrontation with the Inquisition sat just upon the horizon, but he had no desire to decimate a few of it's scouts simply in order to pass by. Beneath the cool and crumbling arches there was a more natural silence, one that he remembered quite clearly from the last time they had approached this place. The crackling and spitting of the open rift had been neutralized and the silence had descended, soft and thick as fallen snow, a notable contrast to the sounds of war in the plains beyond.
Water and mud sucked at his feet as the swampland began to take over the path. With eyes dead ahead he tread carefully, not for fear of losing his footing, but because there was more than the usual assortment of small, many eyed creatures beneath this water. Down there lay memories upon which he could ill afford to tread. A liquid growl behind him offered much in the way of distraction however, a pair of wyverns having crept up to this lone wanderer in search of an easy meal. He regarded them with a slow eyed impatience before slamming the blade of his staff into the swamp bed between his feet, flinging a rippling shockwave across the water, the flames erupting in its wake to envelope the first creature who bucked and screamed in agony and panic. The second Wyvern was older and battle scarred, cunning enough to leap aside and charge him, veering away from the first swipe of the staff's blade before lunging in again to snap at the ironwood weapon. He feel's a little of his old self rise along with his blood as the Wyvern snarled and tugged at the staff, trying to snap the ancient wood with little success.
His magic gathered into one point and drove down in an ethereal fist, a force comprised of will that slammed into the Wyverns back, snapping it's spine, sending it into shrieking convulsions. He ended its pain with his blade through the creature's eye, trying not to think of the automatic gesture of skinning the creature for its added value to their armourer. Such small memories had the capacity to bloom into larger and complicated thoughts, but the years of enforced solitude had presented him with the time to learn, and he stepped over this particular trap with only the faintest of pangs before he was moving on. So many memories leading to so many paths, but all those paths lead to the same place and as long as he could turn his mind aside before he reached that place, he would be able to continue without feeling the pain of it's thorny trail.
The stone hand still lay like some great pale spider in the grass as the water gave way to viscous mud and then finally dry land. The stone was warm beneath his hand, and rough with years of weathering. Yet he can still see then, what he could see now, the towering form of the statue to whom this last piece once belonged. He remembers the faint panic that had touched him when they first descended into this place, the fear of what they might find if enough clues had remained in tact. Yet the years had encroached upon those secrets and hidden their meaning from the rest of them, giving up only the meanest of it's treasures, keeping the rest for itself.
He peered down into the ragged hole beside the stone hand, and frowned at the wooden steps that had finally rotted away enough to make climbing down less easy than previously, an irritation to say the least, but certainly nothing to make him turn back now. There were easier ways to descend into the chambers below, but there was something to be said for feeling the exertion of his own body after so much time closeted away with his plans and the ever growing sorrow that followed them. Here and now there was only the dying sun on his upturned face and the rough feel of rope in passing through his hands as he first anchored then lowered himself into the waiting gloom below.
Grit and loose rubble crunched beneath his feet once he found himself on more or less solid ground, and the silence here was thick and expectant, as if long ago something here had held its breath and never exhaled. When he had been here as part of the Inquisition, he'd felt the years of this place weighing down upon him, and he'd never wanted so badly to be apart from all of them, to curl up amongst this ancient stone and seek its dreams. But there had not been time, only the growing tension as his companions had scratched the surface of the secrets in the place, and relieved when they had left with only a few minor bruises and trinkets.
He stepped around the splintered and jagged remains of the staircase, glancing at the device that had opened the first set of gates for them, particles of magic still hovered in the air like weak fireflies and as he moved on, he met the imperious stare of his own avatar, but only for long enough to feel another of those pangs, sharper this time because that stone wolf lived unnervingly too close to thoughts that will do him no service here. Yet he kneels before the pedestal, fingers tracing the barest outlines of his old language, seeking the wards within and bringing them to life with but the lightest touches of his magic. The statue's pedestal coughed dust from its seams as stone ground along with ancient gears and slid forward to unveil the stairs beneath.
For all their towering spires and grand halls, his people were not above burying their secrets like the children of stone. He is but three steps down before the mechanism was tripped again and the pedestal slid back into place, leaving him in temporary darkness. Another four cautious steps and he was closing his eyes against a sudden blueish green flare that eventually died to the calmer, ethereal light of veilfire torches that appeared to line the descending walls. That such old mechanisms and magic could still work after all this time fascinated him, and given the appropriate time he might have lingered, but he could no more indulge upon old history than he could in memory. His singular purpose here made it easy to close doors that creaked open when memory or old habits tried to grasp him, all the better to steady the hand that would soon bring all out war to bloody then scorch the land. The scope of all that had come to pass since he had decided to rebel was immense enough to crush him if he let it, to accept all the death that it would culminate to, he needed to be distant from them and from himself.
The bottom of the stairs opened up into a circular room, its surrounding archways dark and about as inviting as an open mouth. The glittering tiles that had decorated this stone have long since fallen away, some glimmered weakly in the dirt after another rush of veilfire, the torches behind him dying, as if the flames only followed his steps. He doesn't require a map to choose a path, though he stops only two steps into his chosen corridor. The veilfire did not follow him here, now he trained his senses to feel for that touch of old magic, his feet stepping out onto the tiled surface only when he is absolutely sure of their placement. It had been a while since he'd felt the slow trickle of adrenaline, then again it has been some time since anything has been able to pose itself as a threat to him, this impending war would be much fairer and less like slaughter than it was going to be. For the first time since he'd set out on this journey, a memory slipped its way past his defences, the faint scent of pine assaulting his olfactory nerve, causing pupils to suddenly dilate and his foot to skip an integral stone.
His own subconscious self preservation pivoted his body to bring both feet upon the same safe stone just as he heard the click and felt the rush of something heavy passing before it embedded into the wall, barely missing his sidelong body. Solas let all the air out of his lungs in one slow exhale, dimly aware of his heart rate increasing, wiping his palm carefully over his brow where beads of sweat had gathered. He risked the dim glow of fire in his cupped hand and raised a lone brow at the spear that slowly but smoothly retracted back into the wall. Old or not, some of these mechanisms were still as deadly as the day they were made and now his feet move with exaggerated care while he forcibly pressed his back to another door in his mind.
The veilfire returned once he reached another set of descending stairs, and he felt the close heat curling against his face even before he reached the bottom where a vast lake of clear water bubbled and hissed, steam pouring from it's surface to paint ghosts in the air. The smell here was flat and mineral and the pulse of old, powerful words pulled him to a crumbling epitaph carved upon the damp stone of a pillar. His voice was low while he whispered the words of supplication, yet he still felt the ripples of its echoes which seemed to translate upon the surface of the clear water that now boiled and thrashed as several stones rose to the surface.
It was easy to be all too aware of what might happen if another 'casual' step caused him to slip here, the heat emanating around him enough to keep his eyes upon the far bank and his feet carefully placed.
He was beginning to feel the press of the land above him now, he could not quite shrug away the idea of it swallowing him whole in the world's last defence against his plans. But it was hard to feel much fear in a place that was his own long ago, the memory of this place is all but lost now, yet he senses what it was, like a picture hovering transparently over the reality that was now. He wanders for another hour, slipping through barriers and remembering old traps that still had their teeth, the stone feeling more and more like it encased a tomb the deeper he went.
This place had been built in the prime of his youth while the cusp of his power still made him burn fiercely with the pride for which he was named. As he dodged several gouts of flame spat from the open mouths of stone dragons, he had to wonder what in the void he was thinking at the time. Likely he was trying to produce the architectural equivalent of pounding his chest he thought sourly as he stopped just short of another spear that sharply barred his path.
He found himself in another circular room made of huge stone slabs, seemingly faceless until he stepped slowly around the walls, touching upon random spots that became less random once their runes came to life. When one of the runes flared with red light, he barely has time to realise he has made a mistake before the floor began to rumble and shift beneath his feet and hands came up to cover his ears as the the sound of grinding stone shook it. The blocks began to shift, moving to find new configurations, revealing gaps beyond that were being swiftly covered as each slab found a new home. His eyes settled upon one spot in particular, seeing past the moving stone to the weak veilfire glow beyond, the tension in his muscles released like a slingshot and he dove through the opening gap with little finesse, mentally cursing his younger self as he tumbled through the other side, the stone finally covering the opening with a solid sound.
Panting just a little, he picked himself up from the dusty floor and turned a full circle, squinting into the cavern beyond, presumably the only means of escape for one foolish enough to make a wrong move. His fingers moved over the seam of the newly placed slab, though he knew that for now at least they would not move again. He felt no panic however, every secret place had its ways in and out and if he became desperate, sheer force would be enough to take him to the centre of this absurdly conceited maze, for now however, he was trapped, at least a mile underground at his estimate.
"Hmmm yes, that one got me too. It seemed like you were posing a riddle about wolves, I only realised you actually meant hunters after I activated the wrong rune"
Now he did panic, very quietly and with perfect outward calm, yet his heart still squeezed sharply in his chest before dropping swiftly into his gut where it pulsed mercilessly fast. He wasn't prone to hallucinations, nor had his imagination been allowed the freedom to construct such an accurate auditory phantom. He swallowed thickly and turned to the figure sitting on a flattened rock before a small fire, one foot resting on her knee while she casually brushed the dust from its sole. For a fleeting second his mind is unaccountably blank, he couldn't even begin to fathom what she was doing here, let alone how she came to find this place, he is having far more trouble coming to terms with her actual existence in this place, at this time.
The low, sweet tone of her voice touched upon him like a hand long forgotten and for a moment, while he watched her gaze lift and her eyes find his, he suddenly found it hard to remember what it felt to be a god,
"Hello Solas, how have you been?"
~~o0O0o~~
"So, does he?"
Sera's brash demand hangs in the crisp air between them as they lean upon the battlements and look down onto the courtyard below where those that woke at dawn began to start their daily chores. Varric likened the workings of skyhold as a machine with many moving parts, Talitha thinks it looks very much like an anthill with its people scurrying back and forth, which is why she spent quite a lot of time trying not to politically step on it. Now she turns away from watching Blackwall step out of the stables with an axe in his hands, tilting her head at the gutter snipe elf with a feigned expression of confusion.
"Does he what?"
Sera snorts and rolls her eyes, well aware that she's about to drawn into another game of 'lost in translation', but she shakes the snow from her hair and drops her voice to the loudest whisper possible.
"Does he yell Elven Glory when he does it?"
The urge to laugh here is of course suppressed in favour of keeping up the false confusion that so exasperated the archer.
"Does what?"
"Oh you know, I'm not explaining the birds and the friggen bees to someone who lived up a tree!"
"I lived in an aravel dear. Does what?"
Sera sighs and presses her back to the freezing stone with a shivered curse before she began to count off her fingers one by one.
"Does he yell Elven Glory when he 'humps the halla' or 'swishes his staff', 'angles his dangle', no wait, his heads so stuck up the fade it'd probably be something like 'summons the spirit"
She doesn't have the heart to tell Sera that no such euphemisms have come anywhere close to accurate, mostly because she knows the sly elf would spend at least half a day discussing the possibility of the elven apostates inability to perform with Blackwall and Bull, and the other half relentlessly interrogating him about it. Best to keep looking confused and smiling blankly, as if she couldn't have thrown a few examples of her own onto Sera's growing list.
"I haven't the faintest of clues what you're talking about Sera, weren't we up here for something else anyway?"
Sera swings herself precariously onto the ledge and joins her in looking down at the moving people below.
"Don't change the subject, are you telling me you two haven't lured the snake into the cave yet?"
A heavy clang and a muttered swear heralds Cullen's journey to the training grounds as usual, and Talitha doesn't have to wonder if the timing of that last sentence hadn't been perfect in Sera's opinion.
"He has never shouted Elven Glory in all the time i have known him, or whispered it for that matter"
"That's not a proper answer your Inquisitorialness"
"No it isn't. Oh look! Get ready"
The conversation is laid aside now in preference for the action in the courtyard. There is the heavy sound of steel impacting wood, a strained moment of silence, and then the world is filled with angry buzzing and far less mumbled curses before Sera grabs her hand and begins tugging her towards one of the battlement towers, her steps impeded by the fact that they are both doubled over laughing.
"You used bees?! You said it would be custard!"
~~o0O0o~~
His initial shock seemed to last a little too long, long enough for him to note that she wore the faintest of grins, and that old look of barely suppressed triumph at so effectively finding a crack in his facade. He would have applauded if he were prone to Varric's brand of theatrics, instead he let his body un-tense even as his gaze swept the rest of the cavern, seeking the deeper shadows for the slightest indication of another's presence. She folded her arms and crossed her legs in a show of polite patience while he did this, happy to let him seek out hidden threats, as if any of them could be as dangerous as her. Part of him already knows she is here alone, she would have considered the research and finding of this place her own, but the fruitless searching gave him time to compose himself, to pick up the loosened pieces of his mask and put them back into place. It wasn't easy, her presence has undeniably shaken him, and not only for the implications of what she too might seek in this place. Staying away from her had been necessary, even vital to his resolve, pushing the memories of her out of his mind had been brutal in its execution, but it had been enough, and every day that resolve grew stronger, her memory not distant, merely shrouded beneath duty. Of course this leaves him ill prepared for a confrontation when and where he least expected it, and it took more than just a little of his will to pull himself together again and face her.
"Satisfied? You could look under a few rocks if it will make you feel any better, personally I'd worry more about the fact that we're trapped in here until that puzzle of yours goes through its daily reset phase"
He approached the small fire, trying not to let his brow draw into a frown as he wondered at the audacity of her intellect. She had surprised him with the sharpness of her wit long ago, and that of course had been the first nail in the coffin, but to find this place should have been even beyond her scope of tireless research, she should not have been there, but she was, and now she was watching him with open interest, as if she knew that the next few moves would be his while she was still clearly several moves ahead. As he neared that almost self satisfied expression of softened amusement he felt her gall both prick at his pride and nudge awake that wonder he had felt upon meeting a mortal with a mind that could challenge his own.
Now that he was closer, he could see that her posture trembled slightly, and the lines on her brow that warred with the vague smug tilt of her mouth, yet she was adamant with her gaze and he was now far too proud to look away. Pride couldn't blunt the sting when flame and shadow shifted over her face to turn the black of her eyes to that deep blue, but it could impede the desire to reach out and touch the face that framed them.
"Your timing is both ill advised and...challenging Inquisitor"
She hissed through her teeth as though burnt, but did so behind a bladed smile, her eyes dimming to black in the shadows once again as she shifted and finally revealed that she hadn't entirely escaped his traps unscathed. She prodded the stitched line from hip to navel, a wound from one of the spears no doubt, hissing for real this time before she sighed and cocked a glance up to his again.
"So we're back to 'Inquisitor' again I see, does this mean I must address you as Fen'Harel while monologuing about how i outsmarted your secrets and how you'll never get away with this? Because if that's the case I'd rather we just skip that part, I wouldn't be able to keep a straight face"
"You are still bleeding"
"You are stating the obvious"
He turned away from her then, beginning to pace in a tight circle around the rock upon which she now sat, stubbornly ignoring the thin line of blood exacerbated by her inexpert prodding.
"Why are you here?"
"That's a stupid question for an intelligent man, try again"
"It's a perfectly valid question, one that would answer the question of whether I should be arming myself or not"
"Oh I would have done that the minute I said hello, mostly on principle, I am the reviled 'Inquisitor' after all. Shouldn't you have crushed me by now? I'm only asking on the basis of someone currently unarmed and wondering whether she should bother remedying that or just let the rocks fall"
Oh she was anything but unarmed and part of him knew it, she didn't have to use wiles or even wit to draw him in and tug gently on the locks to all those closed doors. Talitha would always rebel in her own way, and it was never with a roar or a beating of the chest, but in the soothing lull of her humour and bald manner of speaking. She would never bend a knee in anything but respect or comfort, and she had never been afraid of him. Now he wonders if he should not feel afraid or relieved by her lack of fear. His name had been woven into half the prayers to the maker now, they had shaped him into the next shadow to be overcome by the righteous flame. But here her branded Inquisitor's armour has been exchanged for the nostalgia of loose Dalish fabrics cinched at the waist by an old, thick belt, she carries no righteous fire to burn him with, only a razor like smile to slice at his well rehearsed calm.
"Your being here is unlikely to be a coincidence"
"Oh it isn't, I headed down here the minute you were seen crossing into the plains"
He doesn't fall into the trap of asking how she knew, or even where her scouts had been, he finds himself too occupied with dismay at the growing feeling of frustration that was familiar, yet tools he once used to verbally spar with this woman are ill used and rusted with age, trying to forget had its downside. In a world inhabited by those who wished to either bow or bestow him with cringe worthy titles, it was difficult to now face someone who had no regard for what the mantel of Fen'Harel meant.
He spun and planted his fists either side of her on the rock, eyes narrowed and inches from his own. The touch of his magic once ghosted cautiously over hers in private moments, now he let it roar over her like a heated wind that would nip and pull at her skin. It was an overstated gesture, but he wanted to surprise that smile from her face for just a moment, it would make him feel less off gaurd, less like he was gently being made a fool of.
She blinked once and then very carefully tilted her face up just a fraction to make the distance between them suddenly perilous. He held his breath as she spoke quietly and carefully, as if she didn't dare disturb the scant space of air suddenly warming between them.
"Solas, I have seen you engage in an hour long discussion with a spirit about the mating dance of a beetle, I have seen you naked, and I have seen you dance while wearing the champion of bad hats on your noble head. What in the void makes you think you can possibly scare me, more than I'm scaring you right now?"
He clenched his jaw against the instinct to recoil from her, slowly drawing back and composing his expression of ambivalence, suddenly very aware of how well she's been able to read him thus far. With her personal space returned he now watched her stand and daintily step out of his line of fire. It was an exaggeration, they both knew the difference between his bark and her bite by now. She was laughing at him behind her eyes and yet further back is a deep reproach she was trying to be too mature to show.
"In answer to your question, I came here in some last and terribly desperate bid to stop you from letting this happen, and maybe persuade you to let us help you find another way. I admit, I sort of imagined a more heroic scene, with less stitches but last time I became a hero because I fell out of a hole so I suppose i considered it worth a shot"
She shrugged and the gesture was so absurdly normal that only now was it allowed to dawn upon him, how much he had missed her. She had a gift for condensing all the horror and the unspoken things into small and far more manageable bites of her humor. Her grief and heartache were no less severe for it, she wore their lines on her face, but she would refuse to let them crush her until the very last moment. It was still admirable and it was still painful to witness that she hadn't changed, not all the way, not where it mattered.
"Talitha, we both know you will not stop me, I would rather you didn't try"
It wasn't pride that guided his tone now, more the weary weight of knowing that he spoke the truth. In a test of magical skill he outmatched her by several thousand years, and he has never desired to come face to face with her in battle, he abhorred the idea that sat alongside the rest of the few terrors that still remained to a man like him. But he didn't think she had come all this way just to fall upon her own sword for the sake of it, she was too smart for her own good, intelligent enough to know that violence wasn't where her strength lay"
"Why did you draw me to the crossroads?"
The question surprised him, even when he had been half expecting it the moment he saw her, a question he once believed he'd never be called upon to answer, he didn't think he had it in him to answer her while keeping the prideful mask in place and shook his head as if her question were some source of physical irritation.
"We are but days away from war Talitha, do you believe now is the time for-"
She was suddenly there in front of him, a finger digging into his chest as she narrowed her eyes, her mouth curving into a smile as sharp and full of deadly intent as a scythe.
"Oh I think it's the perfect time. I had a very well composed speech designed to appeal to the parts of you i still remembered before the dread wolf became a name to frighten even the Andrastian children. Because I know the worst of you now, there is nothing left that's worth hiding because our armies have gone way past the point of no return. But mostly because we're trapped here for a number of hours and there is no eluvian for you to hide behind now"
He stared down at the finger still digging into his chest just above the jawbone still threaded on leather about his neck, his eyes slowly moving up to that determined expression that gave her eyes a cat like tilt. The problem was, she had something of a point, there was nothing left to hide, nothing that would change the nature of their relationship in the time they had left. The time she had left, because he knew that he was going to win, just as he knew she would be there on that final battlefield, because they needed her.
"Is that what you truly want, for me to hurt you again?"
His voice was grave and hoarse, he didn't want to revisit those old, hurt places he'd spent long enough covering up over the years, he both misses and despises the man he was back then, he was glad not to have to hide behind his face any longer, while he envied the freedom he'd had to be with her. He knew the parts she sought to see in him, they were not false, not products of an idealized imagination, they were simply parts of a whole that she never truly knew, and those parts had become dangerous to him because they remembered her the best.
"How can it hurt more than what we have already done to each other Solas?"
She backed away from him now, sitting back upon the rock with a weary hiss of pain, and he could tolerate it no longer. He pushed his sleeves up his forearms and seated himself on the rock beside her, ignoring her suspicious glare.
"Very well, i shall give you the truth of it, but on the condition that you let me do something about that wound"
"Isn't that counterproductive to your recent plans?"
"I never thought you the type to cut off your nose to spite your face"
She seemed satisfied by the swiftness of his answer and for a moment he didn't understand until he realised he had been tricked and lapsed into the forgotten rhythm of that rapid back and forth that they had often shared. Losing control unnerved him badly enough, to do so around her was like walking through a field of bones while trying not to snap one beneath your feet, one wrong move and it would all come tumbling down. He lowered his eyes to the stitched wound and found he was sufficiently too distracted by wondering where to start to even question this intimate proximity.
"I drew you to the Crossroads for many reasons, to save your life, to stop the qunari….and because I had to know whether I could truly walk away again"
He paused for her reply but heard nothing in return, he only notes that the rise and fall of her breath has become temporarily held, she knew there was more. Drawing out a slim, gilded knife from his belt he began to unpick the stitches with tiny, precise movements, her silence even negating any sounds of the pain that made her flat belly pull inwards and tense in reaction.
"There was still doubt within me and you had almost undone me once before, if I could see past my desire to be with you again, I could move on and finally commit myself. It was cruel and undoubtedly selfish test. But it worked"
His hands passed over the newly opened wound, the magic catching on torn flesh, working slowly to reknit and replace. He stared at this small miracle of magic rather than face the hot gaze he could now feel boring into the back of his neck. He deserved her anger, he knew that, but it made facing it no easier knowing that, and he wouldn't falter from calling himself a coward at this point.
"You know I'd like to say I'm not angry just disappointed right now, but that would be something of a lie. Still, I demanded and answer"
He would have much preferred it if she were not so calm, so reasonable, even amidst her own professed anger, it was more than he deserved, or perhaps it was simply a well designed tool of retribution. Swords and arrows might pain him, but her dismay of him, the shattering of that image she had held onto, facing that was a different kind of pain that pierced deeper and its wounds itched for far longer. Still she did ask, and denying her any truth now was pointless and unworthy of what had been between them, he would still honor that bond in the smallest ways he could.
"I suppose I was still hoping you were a monster all along and it was all part of your plan, It rather takes the wind out of my sails to find out you were no happier than I was. It does not bring me peace to know you tortured yourself while you broke me"
Her tone has become light, forcibly conversational in order to almost disregard the aftermath of the Crossroads and what he saw on the other side of the eluvian just moments before her companions found her still kneeling there.
"It was a test of my resolve, it was not designed to be painless"
"Did the agony make your cause seem any more justified?"
Just when he had started to feel the weight of old guilt beginning to find its way in, she roused his temper just enough to narrow his eyes and thin his lips. She was mocking him again, her voice still low and sweet but still those lips made a fool of his confession and he found he could take this only so long before that same old pride reared his head and opened his mouth for him.
"Does your self sacrifice lend your armies any more power?"
The smile did not fall from her face but something in her eyes turned hard as flint and he regretted his own rash inner ego almost as soon as the words left him, though they both knew he was too stubborn to take them back now.
"Maybe I did want you to hurt me again, maybe i thought if you did it one last time I might finally see you for the bastard they all say you are. Perhaps I already knew I'd never beat you to the other orb and this was all just an excuse to rub salt in an old wound and finally call it a day"
He found his patience dwindling fast, and with it, just a little more of that control, enough to grasp her chin and force her gaze onto his, the weight of his years boring down on her, his magic once again pushing at her boundaries, forcing a harsh gasp from her throat before her eyes narrowed back at him and her own power swelled against him.
"Enough, I will not sit here and engage in mutual torture. You wished to talk, so tell me. Why are you really here?"
She has not lied to him, she's merely buried the larger truth under many smaller ones, and he suddenly found himself tired of the web they had woven between them, of the careful lies and tactfully told truths. They are too late in the game to change things now, their actions were committed and nothing either of them could say, would change what was to happen. For once it was her turn to look uncertain. He saw words trembling behind her lips and the strain it took to hold them back while pinned under his gaze. He showed her no mercy, playing upon the way she loathed to back down when he challenged her. It had once been the source of their mutual respect.
"I came...because I had to see you again. I'm going to have to step out on the front lines of a battle i did not ask for, a battle I know I won't win. All my friends are going to die. I'm going to die. Your armies are just large enough to make it a slaughter, or a valiant last stand depending on the way you want to look at it"
He held her there in place while she spoke, but he barely felt his fingers now as she finally reached the core of the truth, stripped of her defensive humor and naked before his eyes. She didn't cry, but he got the impression this was only because a person had only so many tears in them. The weight of her wretched sadness was no less than his own. His spanned across centuries, but what she lacked in years she made up for in feeling far too keenly than was fair.
"Everyone I know is trying to fill their days as much as exhaustion will allow. Josephine is arranging banquets every other night, my soldiers are copulating like blasted rabbits and Varric is determined to win every scrap of gold in skyhold before the end comes. And I am here, in a dark and filthy cave, with you. So maybe it's me who turned out to be a monster"
It told him exactly how far he had withdrawn from the less complicated mortal thoughts when he realised how this had never occurred to him. Her world was going to come to an end, and some of her last days were being spent here, in a place and time when she knew she had no real power to stop him. The thought of her determination to salvage what she could from her pain began to paint larger cracks in his mask and his fingers loosened at her jaw, the hard expression in his eyes melting, which only seemed to irritate her. She pulled away with an impatient expression and pushed off the stone to stand and take up his position of pacing.
"Don't look at me like that, neither one of us has time for pity anymore, I have graves to dig and you have to go on trying to forget"
She faced the blocked puzzle wall and sighed.
"That would have sounded a lot more profound were i not trapped and unable to walk away from you right now"
"You asked a question, demanded an answer. It was never going to be one you would enjoy"
"Yes thank you smart-arse I'm well aware"
"You are being childish"
"Of course I am, love goes hand in hand with terminal idiocy, sweaty palms and a tendency for mutual masochism apparently"
He actually bit down on his tongue against the instinct to laugh here, the way she painted her thoughts had often surprised him like this, and it hurts to laugh that way again, moreso when she does not look to bask within this small victory she'd conjured. She still loved him, it didn't surprise him but knowing didn't ease the lurch of his heart or dampen the knowledge that he still loved her too, it fixed nothing and explained everything about the tangled mess of hurt and regret between them. She was already a ghost in the making, much like the rest of this world that had grown around him while he'd slept, and she would continue to be a ghost whose memory would haunt every weak moment that remained to him.
"If i could change the way things were…"
"There is no change for people like us Solas, haven't you been paying attention?"
She did turn back to him now, sweetly sad for the obvious point that he has apparently missed.
"People like us are burned at the stake, we die on the battlefields in one last glorious rush, we fight the monsters knowing another one will rise up in its place and we swallow the roles given to us because we always believe it's the right thing to do. But looking at us now….god's we are almost parodies of ourselves, swiping at each other with invisible knives because even when it hurts, we're connected in some way. We're just another of a long line of stories, and everybody loves a tragic ending"
Watching her slowly torture herself did nothing for the strength of his resolve or his ability to remain neutral, how had he allowed this to go so badly. Why could he not have listened the first time his instinct clearly warned him that he would only bring the pain down upon both of them? He strove to be a beacon of hope, something good that would guide his people back to their former selves, but it was hard not to see every foul thing he'd had to do to achieve his goal, hard not to see it's mark stamped all over her, no matter how hard she tried to be her old self, for him.
"If i could have found another way.."
She knelt before him now, the sadness even heavier in her eyes than before, and it is for him, the man who least deserved it. He doesn't know how he knows, perhaps he has simply seen too many facets of her sadness to be mistaken now.
"Solas, there isn't another way. You are theirs now. Their gods have been taken away and whether you like it or not, they will see you as the next man to bow to, to pray to. You'll hate it, I know you enough to know that, but when you realise it's not as simple as tearing down the veil, everything will change, just so it can stay the same"
It had occurred to him, of course it had. With so man of his people already succumbing to supplication and even outright adoration, he'd already seen the signs of what was to come. The role of godhood was never one he wanted to wear, but with the momentum of his people gathering, it was starting to dawn upon him that he likely wouldn't have a choice, they would affix that duty to him themselves. Perhaps he might have been able to bear it had she been at his side, but he'd known from the very beginning that she'd never be able to watch her friends die, freedom had been taken away from her and replaced by honour, and honour had its price, one that demanded she stand upon that battlefield with the rest of them. It demanded her life in payment and that was beyond unfair after all that she had given.
"How is it that you can still love me? Continuing to love you has always been painfully easy, you never change who you are, even when the end is close enough to touch. But I have become a monster who must do monstrous things, why has your hate not clouded any love you have for me?"
That weary sadness partly slipped away when she smiled with a slow shake of her head, a few more ashen strands escaping the loose knot at the back, and he was vividly reminded of how it looked to see all that hair tumble from its bindings.
"Because of Solas. Because the man I love grew over time, and though he's put on a mask and strengthened his will, he's still Solas. Because love doesn't give a flying nug about morality, and because I think that knowing somebody loves you as insanely as you love them, is the only thing keeping you from truly cutting all ties between the rest of the world and Fen'Harel"
She was right. He could have argued that he his much of himself had been buried under lies when they had met, he could have asked how she thought she could possibly know him under those circumstances. But over time she had drawn out more and more of him from those many secret places in his head. Not enough to tell the truth, though she had come close, just enough to bind herself to his soul, to be that part of him that was keeping him from taking the final step into losing himself forever. He had spent the intervening years believing she was his weakness, and in some very simple ways she was, but only now does he realise how close he is to stepping into old shoes. He had spent a large portion of his life separating himself from the Evanuris, now in order to set things right he was stepping very close to becoming one of them. But she was in his head now, and with every cruel move he had to make, her reaction was always there, making each and every hard decision almost soul destroying, as it should be. None of what he had to do was righteous, every move he made now stole lives and ruined thousands more, nothing about that should be easy or negligible, the memory of her has always kept him from ever thinking he had a right to do what he has done in the past few years.
It would have been easy for him to see the lives of the men and women who fought against him as mere numbers. He rarely presided over the battles, and a hundred men could easily become just a single moving entity when placed upon a war map. Numbers were not sentient, they didn't love and work and fight, they wouldn't mourn or starve or die screaming and afraid, numbers narrowed the world down to themselves. They were mortal lives, and as fragile, mean and often selfish as they were, they could not be forgotten as a series of calculated losses in some dusty ledger. It was sometimes hard to see them as individuals, but that was always how the downslide into seeing even his own people as things. Any time the desire to pity them began to waver or become jaded, her face had come to his mind, those angular features cast down in misery for what he was about to do. In those moments he has always been reminded of the more extraordinary mortals that lived among them, he would remember that he was snuffing out the light as well as the dark.
"You are….an impossible creature. I sometimes wonder what would have happened had you never been there to interrupt the ritual, but mostly I think you are as inevitable as the end before us"
He pushed away from the rock ledge and slid to his knees beside her, now moving without consulting anything but his first instincts. It was like walking a tight rope, if he thought beyond what was in front of him he would fall into his own self recriminations. He reached up behind her, trying not to laugh when her eyes tried to follow that hand to the back of her head.
"You are ridiculous, and inappropriate. Your ability to take absolutely nothing seriously astounds me, as does your attachment to that awful song about the bear"
He touched a single carved stick, the only thing keeping her unruly hair in place.
"Your proclivity for falling into bad company is almost historic, the habit of emulating them is quite often barbaric, and the way you change their lives for the better is, amazing"
Pulling the stick free with a single tug, he watched the slow uncurl and tumble of that ashen mass, the long strands instantly softening the sharper lines of her features. She was watching him as both hunter and prey now, her eyes narrowed and quick to track his movements and expressions, yet one hand shook slightly where it rested loosely on her knee.
"You find the best of yourself in the worst possible times, after almost six years you have refused to let the horror change you where it truly matters, you are an impossible woman at an impossible time, and though what we have is cruel as well as highly unfair, you were meant for me"
She was staring at him now, and for one frightening moment he is given a preview of what it was like to see someone you loved wearing that neutral mask. Yet something changed in her eyes, it would be subtle if he were not suddenly and desperately seeking it before his own good sense and rules could find him. That smile, that slow, sweet and often mocking smile, it touched the corner of her mouth, pulling her lips into that grinning curve.
"Couldn't you have worked that out about three years earlier?"
"Hah!"
He couldn't stop it this time, it was her gift and she used it well, there was sometimes pleasure to be found when he occasionally wondered how she would have behaved had she ever met the Evanuris. He bowed his forehead to her shoulder with quiet laughter and she patted him on the back of his neck as commiseration for his enforced lack of control.
"I mean I'm aware that being Fen'Harel is serious business, but at this point we could have been discovering shipwrecks in Antiva. Instead we're in a dark cave, miles under the earth, it's almost like you're trying to repel me at this point. Didn't they have girls back when you should have been taught the finer points of romance?"
The laughter caught again, and he found it hard to stop. It wasn't particularly funny unless your sense of humour happened to be slightly warped over the years, yet the laughter felt so...normal. The laughter seemed to strip away the layers he had put on as his shield between himself and what had to be done. When he laughed, it was almost enough for him to believe that he was just Solas, about to be reduced to hysteria by a wicked Dalish woman whom he loved. For just a moment it was simple.
"I have been meaning to ask…" He lifted his head and forced a stern look to cover his his humour, "Exactly when have you ever seen me naked?"
She snorted, it was not a ladylike sound at all and that just made her laugh all the harder. The kind of laughter that practically advertised the fact that its owner's mind had just dropped into the gutter.
"That night you rolled out of your tent pulling little green lizards off you"
"You were not there, I remember being particularly relieved about that at the time"
"Nope, but Sera made sketches, she assured me they were accurate. It's a trust thing apparently"
He laughed again, dropping his head back to her shoulder in defeat and dared to slip his hands about her waist, fingers immediately reuniting with the tactile sensation of the leather belt around it. There was so much ahead of him, and all of it would be hard, right to the very end. If this was all he had, if this moment here was all he would be allowed, he would take it and not squander it on wondering if he should or could.
Solas felt her slowly tilt, a careful hand on the back of his neck drawing him with her as she lay back beside the fire. He moved just enough to have his head rest upon her hip, her warmth comforting, the lack of any other thought...freeing. He felt her moving in her prone position as her hand left him to throw more wood onto the fire beside them.
"Solas?"
"Yes vhenan?"
It was hard not to tense when the word left his mouth with no real input from his brain, and he all but expected her to tense too. But there was only a moment of held breath before she spoke again and he relaxed.
"Take us somewhere else"
He doesn't ask her what she means, the request is a simple one. Turning his cheek against the warmth of her hip and the soft worn feel of Dalish cloth, he closed his eyes. He could take her away, if only for a little while, steal her from this world to live in one of his own making.
For just a while she could be more real than the world he was trying to bring back to life.