"Another one of the Inquisition's agents broke through the maze of eluvians, Fen'Harel."

"Another?"

"Yes, ser."

Solas sighed heartily, planting his hands on his desk with his head down in exasperation.
"Is the agent dead?"

"No, ser. We thought you would want to interrogate her."

Solas weighed his options. He could interrogate the agent, as his guards thought he would, prove he was as merciless with interlopers as they believed. He could imprison the agent, spare her life and what little information she likely possessed. Or he could let her go, sparing her but sentencing himself to questioning from his own agents. That could end in an uprising.

"Impound her," he finally answered. "No questioning. Not yet."

"Yes, ser." The guard began to turn away to leave.

"Wait."

The young elf turned around at Fen'Harel's command. "Yes?"

"Is there . . . is there any news––"

"Nothing since you asked me last." His eyes narrowed worriedly at Solas. "We have a mission to complete. You told us yourself when you first summoned us that we must set aside our hearts if we are to win this war. No one will continue to follow you if you are a hypocrite."

"I-I know, Brennon. It's just . . ."

"I left my wife and unborn child for this cause," Brennon grated. "It won't matter if you are our leader when someone decides to slip a knife in your back. 'There is no room for hesitation. There is no room for love, here.'"

"You need not quote me." Solas raised his head, opening his eyes. "I will end the trespassing. Neither need you worry." With that, Solas strode out of his chambers, the bottom of his dark green cloak waving farewell to Brennon behind him.

…

Aylanea Lavellan marched forward in her path of destruction, stave crackling with lightning in her remaining hand. Corpses of elves who would not surrender lay burning, freezing, bleeding, or simply dying from blood loss behind her and her troupe. Varric, Iron Bull, and Commander Cullen accompanied the Inquisitor through Fen'Harel's maze of eluvians leading to the base of operations the Inquisition had been searching for since it was discovered that Solas was the Wolf. Varric stepped over the bodies with concern etched on his face, for both the Inquisitor and the victims of her wrath. Iron Bull followed her without a second glace, undying loyalty his shield, physically and emotionally. Cullen fought those elven agents only to protect Aylanea and to exact revenge on that egg who shattered her heart. Cullen grimaced. I will shatter that egg's shiny bald head, the little–– He ended his inner monologue, glanced around to see if anyone had somehow noticed what was going on inside his head, and then sighed a breath of relief.

Aylanea's hand hurt from her harsh grip on her stave. That was the only action keeping her from blasting apart the miniature trees with pretty pink flowers poking out of their little branches. The Crossroads was meant to be a beautiful place for elves. For her, it was only pain, regret, longing embodied. She had lost too many people to Fen'Harel. Too much time. Too much of her heart. Of her soul. Of her ability to care. It has to end, she told herself again, just as she had told herself every day, every hour. She had to tell herself, or else she would turn back. Her mind was a battleground. One side fought for love, the other for duty. As the sayings went, "Love is the death of duty" and "duty is the death of love." She wished she could decide which applied to her. Why do I still love him? He betrayed me! He lied to me! What am I thinking? The last year had been a muddled mess of depression, anger, and anxiety with her friends offering her support throughout it all. She could not stand to think of herself at her weakest. She was strong. She was the Inquisitor, hero of Thedas! She would not let some past lover interfere with the future of her world. Flashes of his gray-green eyes slipped into her mind. The passion that crinkled the edges of his eyes when he spoke of the Fade, elves, . . . or her. His perfect smile shone brilliantly in her mind's eye. His lips brushing hers with the utmost care, as if afraid she would disappear like everything else had in his life. A shudder ran through her body when she realized that she, too, had abandoned him and was about to––about to what? Kill him? Capture? Release? Remain with him? Ugh. I've been over this already! She thought when she had entered the eluvians that her mind was set on his elimination. She thought she was capable. She had defeated an ancient Tevinter "god." Why not an elven one? Maybe she could leave with him, convince the Inquisition that she had been captured––

"Stop!" The party halted. "I . . ." She shook her head and spoke sidelong. "Continue." Iron Bull shrugged and continued after her. Varric and Cullen exchanged concerned glances.

They trudged on through the Crossroads. The lack of agents of Fen'Harel as they progressed was unsettling, but the group was glad. It was an unforgiving environment for all but elves. Everyone except Aylanea had been wiping away sweat from their brow simply from the exertion of walking. Their limbs ached as though they had been tramping through muck up to their waists.

"Don't you think it's odd we haven't seen more of Chuckles's goonies?" Varric inquired after a long stretch between eluvians. "Bianca's getting hungry," he added with a smirk.

Cullen replied, "There's nothing we can do but go on. Just be glad we don't have to fight at the moment."

"You jinxed us. Enemies approaching. They're coming in through the back." Iron Bull gripped his axe and smiled with a mischievous glint in his eye.

The other three whirled about, weapons in hand and waiting for the enemies to come closer. There were five of them. Oddly shaped heads crested the rise of rock, one of them appearing to be a petite qunari, the other a farmer based off the wide-brimmed hat only one such would wear. Two looked to be mages with staves already out. The other three were rogues, two of whom wielded bows, the other a pair of wickedly jagged daggers. Aylanea dropped her weapon.

"What are you doing, Boss?" Iron Bull shouted, even though he had no din of battle to shout over.

"Her elven eyes must be able to see who it is," Varric remarked as he hooked Bianca in her harness on his back.

Cullen watched Varric put away his weapon with wide eyes. "What are you doing, Varric?"

"If Aylanea is putting down her weapon, there must be a good reason." He inhaled sharply in surprise. "It is a good reason," he added in a whisper before holding his arms out welcomingly.

Cullen squinted, his human eyes barely making out the details of the characters in the strange light of the Crossroads. What he thought was a small qunari was actually a human wearing a ridiculously pointed hennin, and what could have been a farmer was, well, he still looked like he could be a farmer. The details became sharper several seconds later. His eyebrows shot up. It was Vivienne wearing her hennin, Cole wearing his wide-brimmed hat, and Sera, Dorian, and Leliana joining them. Vivienne's hips swayed as seductively as if she was still in Orlais. Sera and Dorian waved before running up to the Inquisitor. Leliana approached Cullen. Cole stopped nearly fifteen feet away from the groups reuniting. He stared, wide-eyed, at the Inquisitor, his hands gripping the daggers on his belt until his knuckles turned white, just as Aylanea's hand had been while holding her staff previously. Cullen was no longer able to observe the reunions when Leliana moved alongside him, somehow making both of them walk away from the group without a word.

"How is she?"

Cullen had known Leliana long enough to know who and what she was talking about without the words being spoken. "Anxious. Split, I think."

She nodded as if she already knew what words would come from his mouth. "Do you think she will turn?"

"What? No, she would never––" Her straight face was all he needed. "Maybe." He blurted out, "But I'm not sure." His eyes darted to Aylanea. She was still so gorgeous, even in the midst of the storm that was her life. Her long black hair, shaved on one side in patterns resembling lightning, fell just over the opposite shoulder. Her face, scarred by so many battles yet still so fair, reminded him that was too perfect for this world. Her shapely body––

Leliana stared at him. He cleared his throat as blush rose to his cheeks. "Duty will not wait on her love. We must act now if we are to defeat Fen'Harel."

"I know," he spoke softly. "Just don't do anything until we're sure she has defected."

"We will be sure when it is too late. Like I said, we must act now."

"Curly! Get over here!" Varric's voice echoed against the many rock walls of the pathways.

Cullen gave Leliana a final look that he hoped communicated "wait."

He saw as he joined the group that Aylanea was in the center of everyone with the buzz of everyone catching up to current times drifting over the landscape. Iron Bull, Sera, and Dorian stood in a cluster. Vivienne eyed Aylanea's clothing with mild disgust from the opposite side of the cluster. Varric stood slightly behind the Inquisitor. He watched her placid face with concern. She did not seem to realize the effort of everyone leaving their lives behind momentarily for her. Many of them lived far away from Skyhold.

Cullen noticed one warrior was missing from the party. "Where's Thom?"

"Too busy teaching washups to kick arse again," Sera replied with only half her attention on Cullen, if that.

"Ah."

"We didn't want to miss out on all the fun," Dorian spoke up. "Oh, and I thought the Inquisitor should see this glorious face one last time before I headed back up to Tevinter." He pointed at his mustache which curled more than usual with a grin. "I was in town."

Remembering Cole, Cullen turned to check if he was still standing there. He was. Cole stood exactly as before. Cullen looked back at the Inquisitor and saw that she was staring at Cole with tears gathering in her eyes. A drop fell just as he moved to her side. "Aylanea." Varric looked back at her, now distracted from his conversation, and also called her name. She did not seem to notice. "Aylanea!"

"The Wolf deceived, stole, ravaged it all. The past is gone, destroyed, torn apart. The future must come, but why must it come now? Does death come for immortals? Can he make me immortal? Will I rule immortally through song or flesh and blood? Will I rule beside him or beside his grave? Why is his plan wrong? Why," her voice broke, "why is he wrong?" By then the dialog of the party had ceased entirely. Aylanea shook herself fiercely and surveyed her surroundings with crazed eyes. "What just happened?" No one answered her. They simply stared with mixed gazes of concern, apprehension, and pity.

Cole seemingly appeared out of nowhere. "Things are different in the Crossroads. I searched your mind, but it came out your mouth. That was . . . odd."

"Cole!" She seethed, seizing his shoulders. "What did you do? What did you just do to me?" Her voice was only a tad below a shout. He watched her with eyes as round as disks.

Cullen touched her shoulder. "Aylanea." His voice was a verbal caress. She released Cole and stepped back in horror.

"I'm-I'm so sorry. I––" She shook her head. She hesitated for a moment before grabbing her stave and sprinting to the next eluvian. Leliana glided beside him as the rest of the Inquisitor's companions tried to stop her.

"There is the confirmation I needed. Her time as Inquisitor has come to an end."

"Please," he turned to the spymaster. His voice took on a tone of begging he could not stand, but he needed to use it. For Aylanea. Aylanea. "Please don't."

"One arrow will suffice. I will make it painless. One death for thousands more. You will not sway me."

"How could you even think of killing the Inqui––" His sentence ended when her fist met his jaw. He stumbled back. His hand already worked to inspect the damage.

"Do not think this is an easy choice for me! I have worked for her for years now. I have killed for her! Trust me when I say her death would protect, not destroy."

Her words conjured the thought of the sky tearing open, demons and spirits and elven gods pouring out, devouring Ferelden and Orlais and Tevinter, the hole spreading over the world with Solas and Aylanea at the center of it, grinning madly all the while. He shut his eyes, yelled at himself to stop thinking of that. Aylanea was not capable of that, was she? She was beautiful, gentle . . . He could think of examples, but those would all be from at least a year ago. She was not the same Aylanea he thought he loved. Worst of all, the image in his mind was plausible. The scent of burning corpses presided in his mind, corpses of her own people that she had slaughtered out of sheer anger. If she did that for hatred, what would she do for love?

He returned to reality to find that tears had gathered in his eyes and that he had decided what to do. He nodded. Leliana nodded in return and stalked after the Inquisitor.

…

Solas stood outside the eluvian leading to his secluded hold. It was deep in the mountains. Which mountains he could not say, for geography of Thedas had changed much since his time, and the only way to reach it was via eluvians. He ran a hand over the weathered stones, some of the last remnants of his people's work. Fissures ran through its surface. Moss and ivy weaved their way through the rock. He turned to inspect a statue of a wolf and halla intertwined in a sort of. The wolf, carved from onyx, snarled at the halla. The halla, carved from the purest ivory, chased the wolf. The forms together made a circle with a sinuous line in the middle separating the opposites that chased one another. When he had first seen the carving, he thought it was a representation of Ghilan'nain and himself, Fen'Harel. He had recalled some elven people thought the two of them would be the perfect match. How they had come to that conclusion continued to baffle him. He now saw the carving as he and Ayla, he, of course, the wolf, and she the halla. She had been innocent before she met him. Innocent! He punched the stone laced with moss and ivy. Why had he let his self-control slip? Why did he allow himself to love her? Love was his weakness. It always had been. First with Mythal, now with Ayla. His knuckles bled, but he did not notice. He did not notice much, these days. He looked back at the eluvian. He said he would close it. He had told himself he would do it. He raised his hand to do so and . . . stopped. His hand fell back to his side like a boulder. For a minute he watched the magical mists of the eluvian swirl, the blues and purples cavorting on its rippling surface. He could feel the magic of the eluvian waiting for him to seal it, for him to apply a spell that would render it closed unless he reopened it which would once again endanger his agents and sentence trespassers to death. Part of him––no––all of him wished Ayla would stride through that eluvian. His heart thudded heavily in his cage of ribs that imprisoned that dangerous organ. Ayla, his heart whispered while his mind told him, "No. You have a duty to your people." He couldn't just give up a plan thousands of years in the making for one woman, could he? Could the elven condition be improved with the Veil remaining to impede that ancient, glorious magic? That magic called to him, just out of reach, a temptation that was only outweighed by the temptation of Ayla.

He leaned over the balcony overlooking another below him and saw one of the few families that had been brave enough to join his cause together. The mother tucked her daughter's hair behind her ear. "In another time. Another place, my dear. Maybe one day you'll find an elf like that human. Then, you can have beautiful elven babies that will be accepted among their own people. You would be accepted among your own people. Fen'Harel knows what he is doing. We will have peace."

He sighed in despair and frustration. Of course, he eavesdropped on a conversation that directly related to what he was thinking about that might sway his opinion. It was just his luck that––

"Why do we have to be like the old elves, mother? I love him! I don't care that he's human or that our children would be human. I just want to be with him!"

Agh! Even others' conversations mimicked the war within himself.

He turned away before anything else could confuse him more. He looked back at the eluvian and raised his hand once more. The surface began to harden. His eyes leaked.

Someone fell out of the eluvian and landed on the ground. She stood, her black hair cascading over a shoulder and part of her back. The shaved bit reminded him of lightning, fitting for her personality. Sudden, unmerciful, and . . . beautiful. As always. Her lips parted when she saw him. Her fingers tightened on a staff of metal worked to look like wood crackling with lighting. "Ayla," he whispered just as she whispered, "Solas."

He waited for an action, any action, in those breathless moments of disbelief. After so many imaginings of this moment, nothing compared to the joy of seeing her face. She could kill him that very second, and he would smile through it all because she was there. She struggled with her words, so he moved forward. "Ar lath ma, vhenan," he whispered as he gingerly took her hands in his. They were rough hands that had weathered many battles, many hardships. Her nails, jagged and cracked and broken, bit into his palm, but he did not notice that either. He waited for her to repeat it. Needed her to repeat it.

"Ar lath ma, vhenan," she uttered, peering into his eyes. Tears gathered in both pairs. The two embraced, hands sliding over faces and shoulders and backs. Lips glided over lips and cheeks. Tears ran down the lovers' faces. They knew this love was doomed. They knew the only way this could end, but they forgot it for a moment in favor of the greatest peace in the world. Love. Simple. Delicate. Dangerous. As simple as an arrow that flew from a bow unable to be stopped. As delicate as the chest it punctured in a second. As dangerous as a wounded wolf. That arrow flew from Leliana's bow. It struck Ayla in the back, peeking through the front. Blood oozed down her mage robes, nearly invisible in the navy blue fabric. Solas's eyes widened. He dropped to the ground with her. Her breaths became shorter, labored, shallow. Her eyes glazed over. Her last thought-of words remained unsaid on her parted lips, the rosiness departing. Her pulse ended. It couldn't be this fast, he tried to assure himself. She can't possibly be dead. Worst of all, he sensed the departing of her spirit, the ebbing of her magic, and it felt like a part of him died with her. No. It didn't feel like it. It did. He howled in agony. Like a wolf, he howled at the sky, rebuked the elven gods, rebuked the humans, dwarves, and qunari, rebuked who had wrought this upon her. Finally, he rebuked himself, for he had flirted with the possibility of a relationship and had doomed this innocent woman to die for a love she could not have. He removed a dagger he knew she kept on her hip. The blade sang. The pounding of guards' feet assaulted his ears. He plunged the dagger into his ribs. It did not hurt as much as he thought it would, not nearly as much as losing Ayla. He lay down beside her, his hand entwined in hers, his chest against her back. Like the carving, the wolf chased the halla as the halla chased the wolf, neither successful, neither satisfied until their hunt would come to an end.

Everyone then spilled out of the eluvian. Varric, Sera, Dorian, and Iron Bull were the first out with Varric leading them. Cole, Vivienne, Cullen, and Leliana took up the rear. Varric knelt beside the entwined pair on the ground. His hands hovered over them, tears rising to his eyes. Sera bit her lip, anger reddening her cheeks. Dorian stood next to Iron Bull. Both faces showed a simultaneous sympathy and stoicism. Vivienne's only expression was a slight crinkle at her eyes and a nearly indistinguishable quiver at her lip. Cole stood solemnly and whispered, "It was always going to end this way. This is what they could have of what they wanted." Cullen could not bring himself to look at the couple, at what he could have prevented. He could not bear to think of what could have been, good or bad. He turned away before anyone could see the streams of tears staining his cheeks. Leliana stood afar from them, watching the scene with no expression.

Varric turned around to face his companions, Leliana especially. "See what your hatred has done?" His voice rose to a shout. "Do you all see what your hatred has done?" Heads turned from guards of Fen'Harel, elven citizens, and the former companions to the Inquisitor alike. "Elves, humans, dwarves, qunari. We have souls! We live, love, and die! What is so different that each must die for it? Look at this love you have ruined! Let this never happen again! Why hate when you can love? This ordeal, thousands of years in the making, has managed to kill what was immortal, to break what was unbreakable! Here lie the savior of the elven people and the savior of Thedas, unable to save themselves! Look at them," he pointed at the halla and wolf statue behind him. "Look at this and be reminded of what your lack of empathy for one who looks different has caused you. You are now without a savior, without a hero. Maker, or whatever god you have left to worship, have mercy on you all." Varric once again knelt beside the lovers and whispered, "You will remain immortal through my stories. I'll tell them right, and I'll do my best to make sure this never happens again."

With that, Varric took a final glance at those surrounding the eluvian and left without another word, the words of this tale of ill-fated love already winding their way into a story:

"Two races, both alike in bygone hopes,

In the bleak Crossroads, where we lay our scene . . ."