You used to call me Vhenan
"You were the one who said it first – that it was easier, here, in the Fade."
His eyes narrow, the ghost of a smile wipes clean from his lips; and his face smoothens, returning to a careful neutrality. With each disappearing emotion, with each change, the burden on her heart worsens, bearing down like a weight within her.
"You're not wrong," he responds, almost conversationally. Once, it may have fooled her too. Too long has she listened to him speak with fascination as he spun tales about everything he cherished. How his eyes would light, how his voice would brighten, how passion would flood his very being – and for a long while, a long while she would've been happy to call forever, she was included as one of them.
But that is no longer.
He strides past her, resting his arms against cold, stone bannisters. A busy Skyhold bustles, but there are no distinguishable features, nothing recognisable in the crowd. Conversations swell but no word is discernable; instead reduced to nothing but a pleasant buzzing, a buzzing that fills the silence stretched before them.
"You're not going to tell me where you went?"
Her question is quiet, meek – for once, and she knows it. She know that beyond the layers of toughness and sarcastic wit, beneath the hardening that war had brought, she's still hurt. Too many times she'd caught herself touching the remnants of vallaslin, only to remember there were no remnants. Magically removed – and if only the pain in her heart was so easily remedied.
He must have been thinking similarly, for his eyes stare into hers, in such a way that she could not describe. She can only hold his gaze, trying to convey her emotions, trying to scream.
He blinks once.
"You know I can't, Lavellan, or I would have a long time ago."
"You left me," she accuses, her voice growing stronger now. "You left me, and yet you find me here."
"You find me here. It works both ways, Lavellan," he responds easily, factually, as if they had nothing between them – and he but a mentor to a pupil explaining simple physics of the world. Perhaps that was all it is to him now – trivialized.
Her hands ball into fists.
"I wish I didn't dream."
His face changes, only for a second – pain, like a flash of lightning, across his features. And as quickly as it came, it disappears. "Don't say that." As if he can't help himself, he pushes himself off the railing, walking around her before settling on her other side. "Dreaming is a luxury of this world. Pity those who cannot dream; pity those who cannot experience a life outside their reality."
"But you are real."
Eye meets eye, and for once, he is silent. Her lips tighten to a line, and it takes every nerve of her body to prevent herself from touching him – to prove her point, to indulge in a luxury she hadn't been able to indulge in for too long.
He doesn't move. He's like stone, his limbs cold and stiff, and if she was to touch him, perhaps he wouldn't have responded, anyway. But his eyes, they dance with fire – with emotion that blends together in the lick of flame, that speak stories and thoughts so fast that they blur together.
And then he smiles, just a little, if only to break the tension by a fraction. "How do you know?"
She takes a slow breath in.
"The fake Solas still calls me vhenan."
She bolts upright – light filtering into her vision, the grogginess of sleep slowly filling her brain. Her blankets askew, she pulls them back over her suddenly-cold torso, her mind slowly numbing. And as the cold sets in, despite the buzz of activity around her – the promise of spring on its heels – she's never felt more alone.
The last thing she remembers is the sad smile on his face.