The news had reached her earlier that day. The war room had been oddly silent when she entered for her debriefing on the mission results of her advisors. A chill had run down her spine. They had looked at each other, silently vying to be free of the burden of telling her. Fortunately for them, she already knew.
Leliana eventually spoke up, seeing as this grave error was her own, she felt it her duty. "Inquisitor," she began, "I am very sorry to say that the assassination of the Duke of Wycome had… unexpected consequences." She took a breath. Mirana's heart sank into her stomach. "Devastating consequences, your worship." She handed her the letter written by Clan Lavellan's keeper, her eyes cast downward in shame.
Mirana merely glanced at the letter, pale green eyes ghosting over it as if it were a receipt for shipments of nugskin. She didn't need to read it; she could feel the loneliness seeping into her like cold water. "They're all dead, aren't they?" The deafening silence was answer enough. She thought she should be angrier; why wasn't she screaming at them? Blaming them for the genocide of her clan? She should be pounding her fists on the table, scattering their little pawns to the corners of the room because why did it matter? How could she save the world if she could not even save her own family?
She merely nodded her head in grim acknowledgement, her jaw set despite the droplets that lingered on her eyelashes. Rather than morph into a fist, her fingers gripped the table with a surprising amount of force. Her small knuckles shone white against the weathered parchment of the map as she willed herself to numbness. Not here. She was the Inquisitor, their precious "Herald." They would not see her succumb to the hysteria that was fighting its way from her stomach to her throat, threatening to choke her. The people certainly would not care to see her weep over a pack of Dalish elves, not after so many humans had already died. They were inferior. Stupid, she had been told, by an elf of all people.
"Where else needs our attention?" she had asked, her voice rigid and cold.
Now, along in her quarters, she stared at herself in her small mirror. Blank, she decided, blank was the word she was looking for when she examined her face. He has made me blank. She ghosted over the places where her markings, her vallaslin, had branched across her cheek in gentle green. They had been the sign of Dirthamen, the god of secrets, of knowledge. Two things she had thought were important, two things she constantly sought out, fascinated by the history of her people as she was. But it was this thirst for truth that had cost her the last remnant she had of her people. She no longer felt Dalish. The only sensation she could comprehend was cold. Cold and empty.
She wept at how easily she had given them up, her people. A fool. She was a fool for loving him as well. She had fallen for his sweet words, his intrigue, and the naïve feeling that he understood her. She had felt alone ever since she had left her clan, ever since the events at the Conclave had stranded her in this place of humans with nothing but the Mark on her hand. She had clung to her heritage desperately, for even the few elves which kept her company saw the Dalish as simple savages grasping at wisps of an irrelevant history. He had made her think she was of value, even if her culture was not. And, at the time, her love for him outweighed the love she bore for her traditions. Slave markings, he had revealed her vallaslin to be before he removed it with fingers glowing like blue fire. She had watched him while he did it, observed the normally stoic elf melt with happiness at the sight of her naked face. Then was when she realized she loved him. Shortly after, they were over.
Only in the aftermath, she realized that she was irrevocably alone. She neither had her vhenan nor her clan. She didn't know who she was anymore. She had betrayed and been betrayed all at once, it seemed. She had let her family die while she sat back, staring at the pawns on her Thedas chessboard, playing god. She had been careless, forgetting that beneath those letters were real people with real lives to be taken. Her role as Inquisitor had made her forget, she feared, what it meant to be real. She hardly felt real now.
Sharp nails dug into her skull, her neat braids becoming unruly as more sobs wracked her small body. Unable to stop herself, she let out a scream of rage, fists slamming against the mirror until bloodied shards lay embedded both in the carpet and in her knuckles. Pausing to catch her breath, she caught sight once more of her blank face, now red and splotchy with emotion. "Mala suledin nadas," she whispered to herself as she picked up a particular shard and held it to her forehead. Now you must endure.
She stayed within her chambers for days, hardly leaving her bed except to piss or walk out onto the balcony and watch the birds over the mountaintops. The entirety of Skyhold fretted over the health of its beloved Herald. Mirana received frequent visits from healers, one even Dalish, per Josephine's request, but no one was allowed in with the exception of the one cook she allowed to bring her food. When the woman came in, however, she buried the scabbed mess of her face within her pillow, threatening to suffocate herself if not left alone. She kept this up for nearly two weeks, until one day the voice at her door was one she had had yet to hear.
"Mirana?" it had inquired, uncharacteristically uncertain. She had been lounging on her sofa, skimming through a copy of Swords and Shields Cassandra had left in hopes to raise her spirits (it hadn't worked), when Solas opened her door, unbidden. Letting out a yelp of surprise she stood up and quickly turned away, embarrassed that he of all people should see her face, see what he did to her. "Please end this unnecessary suffering; it will do nothing to bring them back. All it is doing is harming both you and your cause."
She walked over to stand on her balcony, the strain in her shoulders the only sign of her agony. "You think I don't know that?" she retorted, praying her words sounded more menacing than they felt on her tongue. "Why are you here, Solas?"
He moved to stand behind her, leaning against the frame of the open window. His eyes unwilling admiring the shape of her form from behind. How he yearned to brush his fingers through her pale blond locks, to feel her small warmth pressed up against him as she slept, admiring the beauty of her serenity in the darkness before he joined her in the Fade. He hoped he had not caused the light that so graced her features to dim, but he knew it to be true. And it killed him, for the choice had not been his to make; it was Fen'harel rather than Solas that had ended their entanglement.
Struck by the despondence of her voice, he remained silent for a moment as he tried to recall what he was going to say. Finally, he gave up on the clever excuse for coming he had been planning on the walk here and instead spoke the truth. "I came to make sure that you were alright. Your sudden disappearance was rather unsettling, especially when it became prolonged." I miss you, vhenan.
"Well I'm afraid to say that I'm a bit unsettled myself." She chuckled dryly at the understatement, grip tight on the stone rail. "I was dumped out of the blue and then my entire clan was murdered. Everything that mattered, gone before I could even realize it. So, in the eyes of many, I think my prolonged disappearance is perfectly understandable."
"Yes," he said quietly, shoulders drooping with regret, "I suppose it is." He stared off into the distance, contemplating, before he suddenly inquired, "Are you ashamed of your face, Inquisitor?" He was caught off-guard when she jumped in surprise.
"What do you mean?"
He could sense her anxiety and inwardly cursed himself for bringing her more misery. Hadn't he done enough already? "You feel as if you have offered your people one final disgrace by having your vallaslin removed. You regret it, because now you are no longer Dalish in their eyes. You feel as if you have betrayed them and whatever remained of their culture," he predicted, his tone matter-of-fact to hide the deep pangs of regret underneath.
"Thank you for putting my innermost feelings so eloquently." She shook her head. "I know you think little of my culture," she spat, "but now is not the time to reiterate. I thought you were doing me a favor; I was too smitten to have known otherwise. But you… you severed my ties to everything, didn't you? And you knew it too. You knew you were erasing this part of me that I was proud of and you didn't care. In some sick, twisted way you were making me yours, only to leave me. You made me lose everything!" She whirled around to face him then, the blood pounding in her ears causing her head to ache. He could see what he had done to her; what did it matter now what he thought? She just wanted him to hurt.
With each fiery word she breathed, roaring like a dragon off into the peaks of the Frostbacks, Solas felt his blood grow colder and colder until he imagined himself completely frozen, rooted both to the ground and his previous choices. The shame was maddening. He had loved her, he did love her, truly. He had wanted to help her, to remove that ugly brand of slavery from her beautiful face as he did to his kin so many years ago. He had thought it to be a gift, her liberation. But now she wouldn't see it that way, of course, not after he had filled her eyes with tears. His own grew blurry as he watched her shake with an impossible sadness wearing the guise of fury. So normally full of light, of hope, it broke him to witness her this way. Then she turned to face him and suddenly his knees threatened to crumple beneath him.
Where her vallaslin once was were hideous cuts, crudely marring her skin in the shape of her previous markings. On her cheeks, normally flushed with life, were several lines curling upwards into her temples. They were black and crusted over with yellow-white pus that contrasted greatly with the dark circles beneath her eyes. Upon her forehead sat the distinctive U shape of Dirthamen's sigil, the only other telltale sign being the jagged lines that ran down her nose. Beneath her bottom lip, her chin was nothing but a collection of scabs; she must have given up there. Solas gaped at her, unable to speak. For once, his thoughts refused to form coherent sentences and he waited for her to speak, dumbfounded and utterly destroyed with the knowledge that he had caused this. How much pain would he bring unto this world before he wiped it from existence?
"Why?" she whispered, tears rolling down her disfigured cheeks as she glared up at him, her anger fading into defeat.
"Please," he spoke earnestly as he moved towards her, "allow me to heal it; you don't deserve this agony, vhe-" He caught himself, barely. "Mirana."
She pushed his outstretched hands aside, her own shaking as she brought them up to brush hair from her face. This is why she always wore it up; its length was dreadfully annoying when trying to have an argument. "No, I want it to scar. And you didn't answer my question." She had heard his slip and it stung her like the glass she had dug into her face.
"It was for the best," he said curtly.
"Was it?"
He dropped his gaze, trying to find the words to say what was needed though not wanted. What he wanted was to pull her close and beg her forgiveness, tell her what lay in his heart, unhindered by the necessity of secrecy. He wanted to put his hands to her face and mend her, body and mind, because what was he without her? She had changed him, try as he might to resist, she had softened him with her words and her touches. For a moment, just a moment, she had made him doubt, something he hadn't done in a long time. Doubt his plans, his rightness, and his certainty that he would die alone. But now he knew his plans must be carried through because he must atone, he must right the wrongs of his past, the wrongs that cost him everything. Cost him her.
"I believe it was." I had no choice. "Sometimes we must make difficult choices in order to better ourselves in the long run." I love you more than I thought I was capable of loving anyone. "I have made mine, just as you made yours in removing your slave markings. You just have to trust that my intentions were kind in sharing the truth with you. I did not want you living in ignorance as did your people." I never wanted to hurt you, vhenan, nor did I wish to break all your familial ties. I couldn't bear to see you wearing the hideous marks of our past, marks I cleansed to set so many free. I could think of no better way to set you free.
"You're lying!" she cried out.
"I understand that you grieve their loss, and rightly so. They did not deserve such a fate. But I must implore you to move on. So many rely on you for you to cast your life away, not when there is so much left of it. You must learn to steel yourself; so many things will succeed in hurting you if not." If I could take away your pain, I would. I would make you forget me if only it would make you whole again.
"If you're going to chastise me, I would prefer it if you'd just leave," she snarled before returning to glare at the mountains. She remembered when he had brought her here, to Skyhold. She remembered the long journey on foot through the snow, the relief at the distant sight of the castle, outline in the light of the sun like some heavenly visage. He had stood beside her then, watching her own visage glow with excitement. He had thought her beautiful, intriguing even from the moment he laid eyes on her, sleeping in the dungeon cell as he studied her Mark. But then, seeing her there, cold wind tossing her hair and bringing a pink flush to her cheeks, he had become scared. For he knew that whatever he was feeling would bring ruin to them both. From there his dread would only grow, soon becoming the only emotion stronger than his love for her.
"Forgive me, I should not have come. This was foolish." He started to leave when he felt a hand on his wrist, tugging him back. His mind flashed to a previous incident on a balcony with disconcertingly similar motions. He hadn't wanted to lose her then, so why now?
"Did I ever mean anything to you? Or was I just another stupid elf for you to enlighten?"
He frowned to himself before turning back around to smile sadly at her. "I never thought you were stupid, Mirana. Quite the opposite, in fact." His hand itched to grasp hers, but it remained clamped firmly on his arm. Her strength surprised him, but he should be used to surprises with her, by now.
"Did you love me?" she pressed him, watery eyes possessing that quiet determination he so admired.
Yes. Every day, with all my being, he yearned to say as he would wrap his arms around her. I have never loved another as I have loved you. As I still do. But all he did was stand there, blinking like an idiot as he watched her face grow crestfallen.
"I see." Her words were barely a whisper.
"I'm sorry."
"It's better that I know, than to go on thinking otherwise. It'll make it easier, eventually." They watched the sun set over the white peaks before she headed back into her room. She walked him to the door and opened it. "Have a good night, Solas."
He felt numb as he exited, as if he were in some sort of nightmare. How could he let her think that? Would it be better to believe a lie or have to live with the truth? He stared at her, absorbing her defeated expression as his own. How could he look at that face, which was once so lovely, and let it continue to weep for him? He had never thought himself a monster before, and he had done much worse things than break a young girl's heart. He was overcome with the urge to pull her into him, feel the soft curves of her breasts against him, smell the earthy scent of her hair and taste the sweetness of her mouth. He wanted to beg her forgiveness on his knees, kiss every inch of her until she knew how much he cherished her. He wanted to watch the scabs fall off her face, leaving her beautiful skin unharmed and radiant beneath his touch. He wanted to badly for her, all of her, but rather than a profession he blurted, "Do you wish to return home?"
She thought about it for a moment before replying, "Yes." Then she closed the door with a bang of finality.
