exitus acta probat – the result validates the deeds
Crossroads.
He does not change the wards for the eluvians immediately. He knows he should, and he understands why he doesn't. He is weak and he is lonely and he is broken.
He finds her in the Crossroads several months later. She stands there, as if she has been waiting for him. She has, he supposes. She knows he will come if the eluvians are activated. She watches him as he approaches, and he sees her gaze follow the curve of his armor.
"It doesn't suit you." She comments with a small smile. "I miss my humble apostate."
"He never existed." Solas shakes his head. This is a mistake. It hurts to see her, so hopeful and bright and beautiful. And it hurts even more to see the rolled sleeve of her right arm, the knowledge that it is his doing. He has caused her nothing but pain since the beginning and still she hopes. Still she loves.
"He is there." She states with a certainty that he cannot fathom. She reaches for him, and he cannot find the strength to pull away. "Ar lath ma."
Let me give her one last beautiful memory, he thinks, and he knows it for a lie as her fingers ghost over his cheek. This is for himself. He has always been selfish. His own hand reaches out, cups the back of her head, fingers tangled in her thick curls as he pulls her forward to meet him.
She tastes like winter berries. Crisp and tart and jarring. Her lashes flutter, but she keeps her eyes open. As if she wishes to look at him for as long as possible. Perhaps she is memorizing this moment as he is, knowing it will be their last.
Her skin is warm; sun-kissed and flushed as he lowers her to the ground. He wants it to be slow and sweet and gentle. It is the parting gift she deserves. But his fingers clutch her bare hips desperately as he realizes that this is the last time. This is the last time he will see her so alive and so bright and still in love with him.
He does not deserve her but he cannot let her go. Not now, when he tastes winter on her lips and the air is filled with the scent of crushed grass as he presses into her and she arcs off the ground. Her discarded armor reflects the glow of the eluvians in an eerie mosaic, and it flickers across her skin as she grabs fistfuls of his tunic and lifts herself up to meet him.
He buries his face in her neck and whispers litanies of ancient elvhen against her skin. He does not know what he says, because heat is dancing in the pit of his stomach and her hands are on his shoulders now, fingernails digging into bare skin. The words spill from his lips and sink into her skin like the prayers of a devout before the altar.
He does not realize he is crying until afterwards, as she brushes her thumb along his cheekbones, his face cradled between her hands. She smiles at him, but it is a tired smile that barely reaches her eyes. He has hurt her again. This was a mistake. Just another mistake. "Ir abelas, emma lath." He chokes, a shaky inhalation escaping past his lips and he trembles. She holds him, and he collapses against her.
"I will find a way." She whispers fervently as she presses her flushed cheek against his own. "I will convince you we are worth saving." Her breath his hot against his skin and he shivers.
He closes his eyes. She has always been worth saving. There was never a moment he doubted that. But his duties and his mistakes are bigger than the two of them. He must put the world he tore apart back together.
He changes the wards on the eluvians.
Fade.
She does not visit him in the Fade anymore.
She had, for a while, after he revealed his plans to destroy the veil and they had made love at the Crossroads and he had left her once more, shattered and defeated. To plead with him. To reason and cajole and convince. It leaves them both weary and disappointed each time.
The last time she comes she looks so defeated he nearly walks away. Does she not know how much it pains him to see her like this? It is torture. He deserves it, yes, but she has never been so cruel as to intentionally hurt him.
But he does not run. He slowly sits down on the grass beside her. They are in the clearing in Crestwood, or the Fade's interpretation of the place. It is where he had told her the truth of the vallaslin. Where he had removed it from her skin and freed her. One of the last instances of kindness he had given her. Or was it?
Everything he tries to fix somehow becomes twisted with his intentions into regret.
"Are we so far gone that you do not believe we deserve to live?"
"It is not about that." It is, in a way. This world is no better than his own. It is worse. Magic has all but disappeared. In freeing the People he damned them. It is a mistake. "I must right this wrong."
"Why?" She demands brokenly. "Why do you think it is the only way?"
"All I have ever created is death and pain." Solas shudders, presses his face into his hands so that he does not have to look at her. "No matter what I try, I can only destroy."
"Then what makes you think you will succeed with this plan?"
"Because it is not about creating something new, ma vhenan. I am reversing my mistakes, not adding to them."
"What if I could show you that you can make life?" She asks softly, hesitantly.
He lifts his head and gives her a rueful smile. "You cannot change my mind. I must do this. Ir abelas." It is not possible for me to do anything but destroy.
"Do not apologize." She shakes her head, and it is the first time he sees her anger directed at him. "Do not apologize if you are going to do it anyway." She stands, takes two steps away from him, and then turns back. He wishes she hadn't. Tears slide down her cheeks in silent lines of quicksilver. She looks like she wants to say something else. She opens her mouth to speak and then stops herself. It is best that way, he knows. He will only disappoint her further.
It is the first time she leaves the Fade before he does.
Quiet.
It has been quiet lately. His spies are all gone from the Inquisition. They have been very thorough in that regard. But he knows that they will not simply wait for death. They are plotting something, he just doesn't know what it is.
It is the quiet before a storm, and he finds himself unsettled by the stillness. If the Inquisition's plan of attack is being treated with such secrecy, then that means they think it is likely to work. He shakes his head. There is nothing they can do by this point. Once he finishes placing the runes on the eluvians he will be ready to march on Skyhold and finish this.
Skyhold is the key. He must enter the void between this world and the Fade there, where his power is imbued in the stones. It is a foci in and of itself, the central stonework beneath it build in the formation of a seal of power he needs to shatter in order to rend the veil.
He does not like the silence. It gives him too much time to think. To doubt.
There is no turning back now.
Regret.
The siege of Skyhold lasts ten days. He tries not to look at the faces of those he kills. He does not wish to remember them as people who he once fought alongside. Some of these people had trusted him, once. Had seen him as an ally.
If he looks into their eyes now there will be only scorn and anger.
He remembers the scorn on Vivienne's face when her shield had shattered. The scathing twist of her lips as she'd looked him straight in the eye as if even her death she had outsmarted him somehow, knew something he did not.
Blackwall's gaze was angry. He will not forget that look on his face as the man fell to his knees, sword in hand, shield slipping from his broken right arm. Blackwall had not broken eye contact until Abelas beheaded him. Even then as Solas had left, he had felt his eyes upon him. Judging and filled with hate.
He does not look into their eyes anymore.
He will not look at her. That is what he tells himself as he walks through Skyhold's great hall, blood dripping from his armor and magic crackling in the air around him. He passes through the antechamber and pauses as he spots the eluvian there. How had she found it and repaired it? Where did it go?
No. It does not matter. There is nothing on the other side of that mirror that will stop him.
He heads into the dungeons, to the foundation stones he had set here thousands of years ago.
She is standing at the center of the room, surrounded be the corpses of Tevinter mages, Dorian bleeding out, slouched against the pillar to her right. He looks up as Solas enters, but Solas focuses instead on the seal he must shatter. He can feel no magic between them. Whatever the Tevinter mages had done had failed, then.
He should feel relieved, but he feels nothing but sorrow.
She sighs. He looks up. Their eyes meet. She smiles. He regrets.
"Ir abelas." He says one last time, before slamming his staff down into the stones at his feat, activating the spell he'd spent months perfecting. He feels it travel out of him and into Skyhold and into the air around them, thick and heavy.
She says something, amidst the roaring of magic and wind, as the veil shatters around them and he watches her begin to shatter along with it. He should not be able to hear her words, so softly she whispers them. But he does.
Lath 'el Da'ean. Love our little bird.
What does it mean, he wonders? What does she mean? But the words are whipped away in the next moment. The shattering pauses, reality frozen in tiny glass fragments piercing the void, before it all begins to converge on a single point.
Solas' eyes widen as he sees where the magic is flowing. Straight into his heart, her eyes alight with the Fade as it all comes slamming down as the veil ruptures. The ground shakes violently and he falls to his knees as the light surrounding her becomes blinding.
The wind shrieks, and he feels blood drip from his ears and onto his collar, and he realizes it is not the wind it is her—she is screaming, in agony, it is breaking her apart from the inside out and he did not mean for this, she is not supposed to feel this pain.
It ends suddenly. The world goes quiet, like a door has been shut somewhere, muffling the sounds from outside. He breathes in slowly, and shudders as he feels magic thrum in his veins, joyful and familiar. The veil is gone. The world is as it should be.
He is alone in the dungeons. The bodies are gone, but their outlines remain on the ground, ringed in black, burned into the flagstones. There is Dorian's against the wall, the crystal from his staff melted into the stone beside where his head had rested.
There is no sign of his heart. Nothing but an ache in his chest. Now. Now it is time to weep. Now he can allow himself to grieve.
"Solas."
He looks up to see Abelas standing at the top of the stairs, his face unreadable. Abelas merely motions for him to follow. Solas finds himself moving. He pushes the grief aside again. Just a bit longer. Just a bit longer. He will finish setting the world to rights and then he will join her.
As he steps out into the open air it takes him several moments before he sees what has caught Abelas' attention. What all of the other elvhen are staring at. In the distance he can see a green ribbon, the color reminiscent of fade rifts. The glow stretches from the ground up into the clouds.
Solas swallows.
Evanuris.
They are not supposed to awaken on their own. The spells and wards he placed upon them in slumber should prevent it until he chooses to release them himself. He should have known better. He is but one, and they are many. He is not the only one with magic and knowledge of the Fade. How foolish to think he knew everything and that they are ignorant.
They chip away at the sleep slowly in their dreaming, unraveling seals and chains of spellwork as they slumber. He does not notice because he is too busy amassing the power needed to destroy the veil. By the time he realizes it, it is too late.
He is too weak from his work to put them to sleep again.
But they are also too weak to kill him, and it is a small blessing. He slinks away to a place where he can rest and regain his strength and try to find some way to fix this.
The evanuris go to war.
This is not the world he meant to build. This is not how this was supposed to happen. He wants to restore the glory of what was lost, not the corruption that led him to seal it away in the first place.
Another miscalculation. Another mistake. Another regret.
Mythal.
Mythal's people look to him and he does not understand their blind loyalty or want it.
They remember him as Mythal's ally, and avenger, and they see Abelas standing at his side and so they follow. This is not what he wants. The People are supposed to be free, not tethered to those who call themselves gods.
But they will not be safe from the rest of the evanuris without him.
The evanuris regard him with open hostility, but they make no move against him. They do not know how he put them to sleep in the first place and they do not know if he is still allied with the Forgotten Ones. He is a dangerous unknown.
And not all the evanuris are awake.
He had been cautious in his sealing. Some of them are locked still in the fade on the other side of the barrier. They cannot be reached through the dreaming world. It is the reason, he knows, for their desperation.
Mythal's people regard him as Mythal's heir in the evanuris.
The evanuris see this and say that if he is truly a member of their council now, he must join their war. They demand his forces to fight alongside their own. He will not order others to die for a cause he does not believe in.
But he cannot deny the evanuris his alliance.
He goes to war in their place.
Foci.
It takes him years to deduce what the Tevinter mages have done. Even in understanding it, he does not know the spell work itself that was used, or how he would possible unravel it. And he does not believe that unraveling it will fix anything at the moment. He cannot be too hasty, not when there are enemies on all sides.
It is brilliant, truly. The new barrier spread across Thedas that keeps the Elvhenan separate from the rest. He was a fool to think that they were not planning something. But this…this was something he had not imagined.
All it had taken was a shattered eluvian and a sacrifice. She had become the foci for the work, she, who was so interwoven into the existence of the fade already, for even taking back the mark from her had not severed her connection fully.
He remembers her screams, and they haunt him still. Sometimes he hears them on the wind, as if to remind him of what he has wrought. He had wished her no pain and now he knows not if she rests peacefully.
There are nights when the wind howls and he finds himself lost in his grief. And he knows that until he has established a peace of sorts with the world he cannot follow her to oblivion. He must remain. He must endure.
The nights are long.
Gathering.
Only four of the evanuris have awoken from their slumber. Andruil, Ghilan'nain, Falon'din, and Dirthamen. The most dangerous, he thinks, and he curses that they were the four whose prisons in the Fade had been here rather than on the other side of the barrier. Sylaise and June, he believes, would not have jumped at the chance for bloodshed.
Falon'din and Dirthamen had always been wary of him, never fully accepting him into their fold despite Mythal's welcome. He does not know the extent of their thoughts, and that makes them dangerous.
Andruil desires bloodshed and dominion, and Ghilan'nain follows her lover's will more often than not. She is not the gentle mother of Halla that the Dalish painted her, and he wonders how the image had been formed in the first place.
The four evanuris themselves are not his current headache, however. They are content to watch him and bide their time.
The followers of Sylaise, June, and Elgar'nan have no one to protect them. Some of them join the ranks of the four remaining evanuris, but the bulk of them join Mythal's people under his banner. They remembered a time when he stood for those mistreated by the evanuris. When his name did not mean Dread Wolf.
He finds himself with a responsibility that he does not want. But this may be the only way to keep the other evanuris in check until he is able to put them to sleep once more.
His rank increases with his followers. He is now equal to the four combined in that regard, though his powers are still returning.
He fears that the other evanuris are searching for the last three, and not to wake them.
Her mother's daughter.
He joins the fight so that he can end it as quickly as possible. He needs to find a way to undo whatever spell she has cast. How could she not see this inevitable outcome? Instead of the peace he wished to bring she has set the stage for more bloodshed. Now they will die slowly and painfully or be broken beneath the heel of the evanuris. But the evanuris were already breaking free of their prisons…if he had finished what he had started there would have been no difference. The People would still be enslaved.
She was right once again. He has not fixed anything. He has only added to the world's problems in his endeavor to fix them. He is a fool.
Yet all he can do is continue onward. Resolve and regret are his only constant allies in this world.
He sees Cullen and sighs. Of course the Inquisition would not stop their fight. They will never stop protecting those they believe need it. He cannot say he does not understand him or respect his drive, but Solas must protect the People, and to do so, he must end this war as quickly as he can.
The easiest way to do so is to kill their leaders. If Cullen falls, their forces will be severely hampered. They will not be utterly destroyed, he knows, but it will be a blow. He makes his way toward him. Something collides with his barrier, and he pauses for a moment, surprised that someone has managed to cause an impact at all, but not enough to turn.
And then lightning strikes, bright and hot and fierce, and something in him jolts to awareness. It is the magic of the Elvhen that meets his barriers then in unrelenting fury. His brow furrows and he turns to the prone figure lying a few yards away.
For a moment he cannot tell if he is looking into a mirror or at his heart. She seems both, and then a cold hand reaches inside his chest. It grasps and clutches and squeezes and he nearly doubles over in pain.
No. No it is not possible.
It is not possible.
"What if I could show you that you can make life?"
Her eyes, so very like his own, feral and slender and glittering, are filled with so much anger it chokes him. Her mouth twists in a grimace as one slender hand presses to a wound on her stomach.
Protect our little bird. He falls to his knees before her. Ma vhenan, why did you not tell me? He asks silently, but there is no answer. There is only the distant sound of battle and his daughter's harsh breathing. "No," He chokes out as he presses a healing hand to the wound. She flinches at his touch but she is too weak to fight back. The blue light flickers, flames licking at tender flesh, but the bleeding does not stop. He does not have enough strength for this.
Her outstretched hand is so close, fingers brushing the edge of his armor before her arm falls uselessly to her side. There is so much blood. She is so pale. Her eyes drift shut, as her anger and strength leave her and she begins to slump to the side.
He gathers her close, hears her let out a choked cough, and something warm hits his cheek.
"Ma' ashalan," He whispers, a plea. The words are foreign on his tongue, words he has never thought to speak. They come out stilted and broken, and his mind goes numb with fear. Fear for one he has never met before but who is dearest to his heart.
He lifts her in his arms, limp and pale and surrounded by lightning. He ignores the sparks that leap from her skin to his own, currents of magic that fizzle just beneath the surface. He is holding a storm in his arms and he does not know if he can weather it.
"NO!"
He recognizes the voice. Cassandra, her eyes wide as she takes in the sight of him and his daughter bleeding out. She knows. She knows who this girl is—of course she knows. He has been a fool.
He does not have time for this. He must go.
"Let her go!" Cassandra continues, panic written all over her face as she tries to get to them. But she is on the other side of the battlefield and there are too many enemies between them. She knows it too, and her eyes search before they land on someone else, "Cullen! He is taking her away!"
It does not take Cullen long to reach him, his shield and sword equally bloody, his face savage. There is no gentle man left in him. "You will not have her." Cullen growls.
"She will die." Solas trembles. "If I do not take her, she will die."
He sees Cullen's face fall, knows that he understands that Solas is right and that if he delays him, she will die. "We will come for her." Cullen announces, and it is not an empty threat. Solas sees the resolve in the man's gaze. They love her, he realizes, and it hurts far more than it should. They love her and I knew nothing. "The Inquisition will march on Arlathan and tear your city to the ground to get her back."
He does not doubt it.
But she is his daughter, and while his mind cannot comprehend all that he is feeling at the moment, he knows that he will not give her back willingly.
She is his heart's final gift to him. This one he will not cast aside.
She is all that is left that was once good in him.
Fever.
There is more than magic coating the blade that nearly kills her. Some kind of poison he does not know or recognize. Her blood takes on the consistency and color of tar and when he tries to seal the wound, the flesh blackens and dies and corrodes like acid eating through stone.
The healers shake their heads. This poison is new to them as well. They look apologetic and afraid, and he wonders at his own visage, if it can instill fear in them when they have never regarded him with anything else but acceptance.
She is the only life he has ever brought into this world. He cannot let her die. He cannot.
He is standing on a precipice and the end result of this will change him forever. There will be no turning back from this juncture. If she dies, he will die with her, become an empty shell that truly brings nothing but destruction.
If he must beg the other evanuris for the antidote he shall. He tries to remember the face of the elf that had cut her. He had been too panicked to look closely, to think of picking up the sword and investigating. She was so pale and bleeding and she is his daughter.
The man's face is a blur. He remembers nothing.
Da 'ean.
He calls her by her name once, when she awakens in a fit of fevered chills. It is a mistake. She is still too weak to fight him, but he believes she would have hit him if she could. Instead she gives him the coldest glare she can muster, eyes unfocused in her fever.
"Do not call me by that name." She rasps, "Do not…" She falls unconscious before she can say more.
He brushes a lock of hair from her forehead and wonders if it is the name she hates, or the one who called it.
Souls.
She is not going to survive. The healers look at him wearily. It has been days now. The most they can do is keep her asleep, keep the pain at bay. Her small fits of lucidity are always accompanied by pain. Sometimes she calls out, says names he knows and wishes he did not. It is nearly all he can stand when he hears her whisper, "Do not leave me." And he knows that the words are not meant for him, but he stays by her side nonetheless, as she seems to wither away.
"Her being is Elvhen, but her body is mortal." One of the them shakes her head. "The body can't purge the poisons, even with healing."
He had thought that being in the lands of Elvhenan would have caused her to change. Would have given her the immortality that should have been her birthright. How cruel, that the one being he does not wish to see perish once again cannot be saved.
"Perhaps we could create a new body for her." One of the others suggests, and they speak in low voices. No, he thinks, her soul will not make it to a new body if this one fails. It is too weak. Too mortal. She needs more power.
He stills.
"Leave us." He orders, and they do so readily, casting furtive glances back between Fen'Harel and the dying mortal elf that shares his eyes.
He will not let her die.
It is an easy thing to do, to pull the power from his chest. The remnants of Mythal bear her little resemblance now. They are a watered down essence, but they are enough to do what must be done. And he can lock them away, keep the shattered mind that resides there away from his daughter so that she remains herself.
He has no more need for this power, not if giving it to her can save her.
He presses the small ball of light to her chest, just below her heart. He watches it sink into her skin and he waits, breathless, for several moments. Time seems to stretch, and he is clutching her hand though he does not remember taking it.
Her breath hitches, and her chest stills. His heart sinks, and he feels something black and cold begin to seep through him and he recognizes it as despair. He has failed again. "You were wrong, ma vhenan, I cannot give life. I can only destroy. I have destroyed our child. I have destroyed it all."
He is met with only silence. His heart is not there to comfort him because he has failed her for the last time. She is dead and the one he has left to his protection has fallen as well because he cannot touch something without it withering.
Then a shuttering breath, and a second, and he watches as the skin begins to knit itself back together across her stomach.
"What if I could show you that you can make life?"
He has done it. He has preserved instead of destroyed. Fixed something that was a mistake of his own making.
He does not regret, and it is a wondrous thing.
Part II of Pride's Folly
Notes:
Da'ean - little bird. This is Spero's actual name, but she prefers Spero because it isn't Elvish and it was given to her by the men she considers to be her real fathers. And so she's ok if it means pride, at least a little.
Well, here is Solas' POV of roughly the same timeline as Ultima Ratio. Now that all the angst has been dealt with on both sides, perhaps the two will be able to heal...or maybe this will all end in disaster. One can never tell with these two.