The numb shock that had been inflicted upon him by a mere piece of parchment had not abated. Given the previous need to entrap all thoughts of her in a safe place, he had not been prone to fits of imagination that allowed him to think upon what he would do if such an impossible situation occurred. His faculties had been far too occupied in mourning her death to ever taunt himself with waking dreams of a resurrection that would never happen. But if he had, if he had been free to sketch such a story in his own mind, even he would not be so modest as to think that he wouldn't immediately seek out his lost love should she ever be mysteriously returned to this world. The truth was often vastly estranged from what reality provided. His penchant for solitude hid the long term mental fugue in which he had found himself, none of them considering the silence in the main tower anything to comment upon. There was nobody to witness the almost catatonic state that held him for almost a week as he moved around his own tower like a ghost.
His mind had been struck still, caught upon a single thought like a scrap of cloth hanging from a nail. Her face, captured in a constant shift between life and death, unable to settle upon the truth, or perhaps unwilling to come to full terms with the fact that she may have tricked him after all this time. If he were to fathom a deeper truth it would be that he could never consider her capable of such a thing, it was too cruel, and she had never been cruel, it was all but impossible for him to see her hand composing such a brutal solution.
On the other hand, the letter and the parchment made the truth irrefutable, no matter how much his mind struggled with the idea. Yet he had felt her absence, the part of him that had been made for her had been scooped out piece by piece until that hollowness became a physical thing, a sensation of emptiness that he carried with him. How was he to fill that empty space now, even given the very real possibility that she was still alive? He had lived with it for so long.
Every time he even attempted to come to terms with what those two pieces of paper told him, he would then be lost again when he tried to imagine how and why she would do such a thing as fake her own death. She had been resigned and determined to meet him on the field of battle, to stand beside her friends in one last glorious march, her unchangeable loyalty had demanded that much of her. His memory was vast enough that he could construct her into any scenario if he chose to do so, but even his prolific mental photography couldn't compose any picture in which she would choose to turn her back upon the Inquisition.
There were too many questions and not enough believable answers.
When he tried to sleep his thoughts would drift to the moment when he had seen her cut down. He had watched in masked horror as they held her head aloft by its bloodied hair and howled their victory. After he'd hung the men who dared to decorate Skyholds walls with butchery, he had buried her along with the rest of them, in a small garden long overgrown, hidden behind a reflection. He had felt the weight of that body in his arms, the reality of it right there in the cold stiffness of her flesh. He'd briefly considered digging up the grave again, but the idea that she had somehow crawled from her grave in some unmanned garden at the crossroads was ludicrous, and the idea of standing over her bones while covered in her grave dirt repelled him.
And so he remained in a state of perpetual limbo, his thoughts charging from one horizon of the mind to another, like a dog chasing it's tail, all the while being acutely aware that if she truly was alive, the longer he allowed himself to sit here and let his thoughts argue amongst themselves, the more likely it would be that she would have moved on before he could seek out the truth.
At some point he found himself sitting before an easel staring blindly at a blank canvas. When his mind was under siege from conflictions and indecision he often found himself with a brush in his hand. He would wait in perfect patience for his subconscious to guide him not through complicated thought, but through his hand, compelling to depict the most relevant point. At first nothing came to him but those same conflicting thoughts, still swarming his mind, finding new places in which to set their sting. It was only when he forced his own hand to strike out at the canvas with his brush, with no real idea of what he was going to paint, all he needed at that point was a single mark upon all that untouched white, a starting point for his thoughts to follow, after that it was a simple matter of letting his subconscious do its job. He worked for hours, the action of painting first luring him into a clearer state of mind as abstract shapes began to take form, and when it captured him entirely he was lost in another kind of fugue, one that kept his brush moving long after the ache set its jaws into his wrist.
He only allowed his body to collapse boneless and exhausted into his chair when the painting was done, sleep taking him like an abductor, dragging him into the dark.
His dreams were a maelstrom of memories that sucked him in one after another until he couldn't tell where one memory began and the other ended. He allowed himself to tumble freely through this fragmented dreamscape, resisting the urge to guide his path with too much force, much as he had when painting. He watched their time together flash past his eyes, every image muted and suffused in green light. When he woke, it was with the knowledge that he had finally found that relevant point he needed to narrow his scattered focus. He climbed out of bed and padded over to the finished painting, barely remembering what the end result had been, but it was clear once he saw the canvas, that his dreams and those subconscious thoughts had both come to the same point.
He had painted her in a series of greys and black, her solitary figure standing at one end of a road that stretched into a perspective that spoke of vast miles. Dead trees twisted into malformed shapes lined either side of this road, their branches forming a rough arch, as if they had been reaching for each other in the moment of their death. The picture would have been utterly bleak if not for the object cupped in her hands. It was the world, cupped safely in her hands, its spherical edges radiating with that same pale green light. The meaning was so simple as to be obvious to him now, perhaps embarrassingly so, for how could this not have occurred to him before? There was an easy answer to this of course, she had always been able to scatter his thoughts to the four winds without much effort.
She held the world in her hands, and that was not just a metaphor. His scouts had been looking for a hiding place for all these years because he had been convinced she would have hidden it knowing she would not live to protect its location. Now faced with the possibility that she was alive, he began to understand that her solution may have been far more simple. She had kept the orb with her, naming herself it's keeper, putting herself between it and all those that now searched for it. Was this why she had orchestrated her counterfeit death, it made far more sense than the idea that she would simply abandon the rest of the inquisition. Before, he had been unable to think of a single reason why she would not have given her life to stand beside her friends, but if she imagined that she was the only thing to keep him from finding that final piece of the puzzle, it would of course have been in her nature to make such a sacrifice.
He called those he trusted best to the tower room and explained his plans to leave for a short time. None of them expressed surprise, it had become his habit to deal with certain matters alone and they had long ago stopped asking about the whens and wheres of his travels, it was one of the very few useful things about people placing him upon that god like pedestal. He took his time packing and changed his clothes to the ragged but comfortable garb he had worn when still with the Inquisition, the people of Thedas knew his name well, but there were few among the common folk who knew his face, and he would fare better in what Dorian had dubbed his 'Apostate hobo' gear. His mind was now clear because he needed it to be, now that he had decided to finally pursue a goal, his thoughts were now attempting to turn to what he might do if he really did find her, and there were even more opposing opinions waiting on that line of thought, any one of which might well draw him back into that fugue state again.
The last thing he did before stepping through the Eluvian, was to destroy the painting. It stabbed at his pride to do so because it really was a thing of somewhat macabre beauty, but the nature of his relationship with Lavellan had remained a secret from those who now served him and he would not risk prying eyes being able to decipher the deeper feeling behind the picture. He watched the paint bubble and burn, the careful features of her face becoming warped and ugly beneath the flames until only ash remained, and as he stood again he felt a chill shiver race down the length of his spine as he prayed to the world in general that such destruction of her image would not eventually become prophecy.
~~~o0O0o~~~
The air smelled heavily of recent heavy rain and new growth, the ground giving a little beneath his feet as he began to get his bearings, it had been some time since he had last been here and the greenery had already overgrown some of the old paths he recognized. The last time they were here, he might have said that there hadn't been time to appreciate the wild beauty of this place, but he'd seen the ache of familiarity that Talitha couldn't quite hide, and they had perhaps spent more time than needed searching the area for red templars and freemen. The place had a stillness to it that it didn't have before, of course without the freemen roaming the roads and the red templars trying to move their lyrium through the Graves there was a lot less around to disturb the natural order of things. But there was still a hushed and expectant quality to this new silence, and it was easy to get the impression that you were being watched.
Eventually he decided that the only things watching him were likely creatures in the undergrowth who were still trying to work out if he was a danger or a possible meal, and he began to carefully retrace old steps that would take him to the small bridge that stretched across the overburdened stream. Now that he was here, he could no longer hold back the tide of questions that had gone unanswered in the days he had spent trying to decide what he should do next. He could only guess upon her reaction to seeing him again as being adverse given that she had expended some amount of serious effort to disappear, but what was his reaction going to be?
It was the one question that he alone should have had the answer to, but every time he tried to focus on a particular emotion he found himself with a belly full of snakes that churned and roiled at the thought of coming face to face with her once more after all this time. Who would she be when he found her? Surely not the same woman who had laughed easily and viewed the world through hopeful eyes, hiding for so long changed something essential in a person. Would she still possess that same vibrant spontaneity that had once allowed her to run through this very forest chasing august rams?
A small part of him liked to imagine so, but that unshakable pragmatism warned him that higher his hopes rose, the more likely the chance of them crashing at his feet. Did he even have any right or practical reason to hope? He had finally dedicated himself fully to bringing his people back to their full potential, would her being safe, happy and whole make the slightest difference to that? More importantly, would it make it any more likely that she would give up the orb without a fight?
"And what will you do if she refuses?"
This question scared him, badly. It had been a long time since his fear had been provoked, but every time he got near to thinking about what might happen if she refused to give him the foci, his body broke out in a cold sweat. Six years ago he had barely accepted that he must end her on the battlefield, now he was alone and it would not be a case of her death being one among many, but cold blooded murder, because if she did choose to fight, she would do so with the same determination that had ended Corypheus. And so with every step he took, deeper into this green haven she had chosen, he could not help but note how his feet dragged as his desire to see her again, warred with the knowledge that this could end tragically.
As he was navigating his way around a recently fallen rockpile, he heard the distinct sound of several people moving in heavy armour and became perfectly still. It was unlikely that Orlais would send patrols through such a wild area, and both the Villa Maurel and the Chateau were unoccupied according to his scouts reports. With his body mostly hidden behind the fall of rocks he peered carefully to where the bridge crossed over to the Chateau's entrance to see a ragged band of men in mismatched armour making their way carefully to one side of the gate. Everything about them advertised that they were neither hunters nor any kind of official guard, their weapons were just as mismatched as the armor, both of which were as unkempt as the men themselves, and they spent rather too much time periodically looking over their shoulders as if expecting trouble.
Solas might have cursed his luck if he didn't think they might hear him.
In the place where cruelty tried to overcome the magic of youth and paid for it in violent dreams
The clue had led him here, the Chateau d'Onterre, a once nightmarish place that had been infested with undead and a particularly cruel demon. It was a vast building and easy to hide in, but he couldn't help but wonder why she would have not felt more comfortable in the woods as she always had. There were only five of them, but he'd been hoping to approach as quietly as possible, if he made too much noise in dispatching these men it might be all the warning she would need to flee again. As he watched them approach the main gates, something fleeting caught his eyes, a distortion of the air atop the wall surrounding the Chateau, he tried to focus on it but the moment he did, he lost it.
Before he could go another round of deciding whether or not he should risk action now. something released a blood curdling cry and complete mayhem landed in the middle of the bandits. The horned creature was a confusion of feathers, bone and fur, it whirled amongst the men like a small maelstrom, lashing out with gibbering snarls and high pitched shrieks that drilled their way into his brain and made him grimace. The shape darted to and fro, it's attacks swift and lethal, one already falling to his knees clutching his throat while blood poured steadily between his fingers. The figure vanished, only to come up behind another of the bandits, his back arching as something buried its way into his back with a flash of amber light that disappeared as quickly as the agile creature.
Something tugged at the back of his mind for attention, but he shrugged it away, creeping around the rocks to get a better look as it appeared again mid leap, its legs wrapping about a third bandit's neck, a twist of it's body snapping bone, leaping away again before the man even hit the floor, already dead. One of the men clearly decided on his life over loyalty and fled the other way, but the last was man was older, and his numerous scars spoke of more experience. Solas watched him grow quiet, already understanding that he needed to use his ears rather than his eyes now. The rest of the forest seemed to grow still, as if every creature now held it's breath in anticipation
The bandit suddenly pivoted on one foot and brought his greatsword down heavily on seemingly nothing. There was a grunt of effort and the creature reappeared as the great sword clashed with something in another flash of that amber light. Solas squinted against the brief glare, and when his vision cleared he saw the old bandit attempting to use his superior weight to push away the creatures blade, a weapon composed of crackling light and spirit energy. He felt his heart drop several degrees below zero as he began to understand and see the picture more clearly. The 'creature' dropped and rolled away as the bandit staggered forward under his own exertions, barely getting one foot under him before the figure sprang up and brought the spirit blade down hard, severing his neck from his shoulders.
Even as he watched the armoured body tumble, he heard a rustling not a few feet beside him and tensed. From amongst a clump of bushes, the runaway bandit returned, this time aiming a bow across the river and for once, Solas didn't need to think at all, merely react. Stepping alongside the terrified looking man he brought the heavy end of his staff down on one arm, hearing the satisfying and brittle crack of bone before the staff whirled and its bladed end speared the hapless bowman against the nearest tree.
That sense of utter stillness came again as he yanked the staff blade free and he turned to see the horned figure staring at him from across the river. It was easy to see why he had been confused at first, she wore a demonic headdress of bone and horns that obscured the upper half of her face, topped with a multitude of feathers that fell like strange hair about her shoulders and hung to her waist. With her body wrapped tightly in fur and more salvaged bone that looked as though it had been fashioned from the same demon as the headdress, it was clear to see that she had desired to seem as monstrous as possible. Now he could feel her regard settling upon him, the slow tilt of her head as animal like as the rest of her unique costume.
"Vhenan?"
The figure flinched, and when he took a step forward she took one back, her knees bending with a click and rattle of bones as her body became hunched in an undeniably defensive pose. His heart throbbed in his chest with the next step he took, knowing it was a mistake the very second he moved, yet unable to help himself. She was so close!
"Talitha, wait!"
But she had already turned on her heel and bolted and he gave chase immediately, knowing that if he gave her the smallest chance she would outrun him and then he would never find her. She was even faster than he remembered, her feet taking her in a zig zag pattern that drove them both into dangerous territory filled with thick, jutting branches and treacherous tree roots. He had never tried to run with her before, and even while he ran flat out, she was putting more and more distance between them. His body and his magic now both resonated with the sympathetic and unified need to catch her and it was a glorious relief to be able to let it happen. All those years before, such magic would have unmasked him to the Inquisition, now he allowed the flow of his natural magic to take him with abandon. The change was no grand spectacle, he merely felt everything he was, being poured into a more convenient shape that had simply been waiting for him all along. There was a single complicated moment when his mind was trying to control six legs at once, then six became four and he was suddenly gaining speed.
She didn't look over her shoulder, she was too clever to break her own concentration while the risk of tripping or impalement was still present, but she guided their path deeper into the woods, creating obstacles from rock piles and areas crisscrossed with thick vines through which she slipped with an eerie agility. Solas was only able to keep up through the simple expedient of not stopping. He leapt the rock piles and tore his way through the thick vines, unable to thread his larger wolf shape through them with as much skill as she had, yet his endurance is renewed and by making him chase her she was tapping into something old and primal that lived in the minds of both men and beasts, his adrenaline rising with every foot of distance he closed between them.
She suddenly leapt with a snarl and promptly plummeted out of sight. Now he did stop, all four paws digging furrows into the earth as he came to a sliding halt just inches from the edge of an overgrown and mostly hidden descent down into the stream below. His eyes darted frantically from one end of the stream to the other as he cursed in his head, descending the steep hill of rock and weeds carefully, loose pebbles sliding out from beneath his paws to splash into the water below. He could not see her, yet surely she hadn't enough time to disappear to the other side of the stream before he'd reached the edge of the hill.
When he was on firmer ground he allowed the change to take him again, and on two legs he stood very still, his head cocked to one side, in much the same way the bandit had earlier, though this was not a particularly comforting thought given what she had done to him. Of all the reactions he might have expected from her, this had been beyond the grasp of his imagination, that palpable sense of almost violent fear that had radiated from her. He'd smelled it as he'd chased her, his heightened senses triggering yet more old and primal senses in his brain then. But now the very idea disturbs him almost as much as that renewed silence and the knowledge that she seemed to have acquired the ability to disappear at will.
It was the sudden rush of air that alerted him in time to bring his staff up to catch the descending spirit blade half way through its intended slice, and he met her wild eyed stare through the eye sockets of her macabre mask, his own expression falling into disbelief as he realised she'd tried to cut him in two!
It seemed she had no patience for the same test of strength as before and she raised the blade to bring it down again, then again, her strikes filled with the fury that pulled her lips back in a snarl. Again and again she struck, the furious blows forcing him to take the defensive stance, his backwards steps leading them into the stream. She was losing all finesse in her desperation, but seemed to be making up for it by sheer determination and wild panic, each parried blow from the blade sending painful vibrations up his arm. While his concentration was bent upon continuously deflecting her blows, his own natural instincts began to alight his anger and when her next swing barely missed his face he felt the roil of power building as his subconscious prepared to protect the rest of him.
"STOP!"
The shout echoed loudly through the trees and several nugs fled from beneath a clump of bushes as his magic snapped outwards in a single blast that knocked her backwards five feet, her body landing heavily in the water, the spirit blade sliding out of existence as he rattled her concentration as well as her bones. He was on her before she could struggle her way back to her feet, his knees digging painfully into her inner thighs while she snarled and swiped at his face with her hands. He wrestled briefly to get a grip on both wrists, but even then she thrashed and bucked beneath him, truly wild with both terror and rage, lunging upwards against his grip to snap her teeth at his face.
"Talitha….Talitha stop, it's over!"
She bucked again, almost throwing him off her, twisting her wrists in his grip at the same time until one hand came free and she finally marked him with a rake of her nails across his face. Instinct rose again as it clashed with pain and frustration and he snatched up the freed wrist again, slamming both beneath the water, his face jerking to just inches away from hers with an archaic growl that should not have been possible. The sound seemed to reach into that part of her brain that she had once called her 'monkey brain', the part of her that told her when to freeze like the pinned animal she currently was. She would have been utterly still if not for the fast and hard quality of her breathing, almost as if she were one step away from hyperventilating.
"Stop. Moving"
The edge of that growl still chased the tail of these words as he very carefully gathered both of those thin wrists in one hand, pulling his face back as he reached for the bone mask that hid all but the lower half of her face. She jerked her head away on the first try, but eventually he got a good grasp despite the dagger like fangs that framed her jaw. He moved with a reverent sort of care now, aware that his hand was shaking as he pushed the mask up from her face. If she had chosen to buck or jerk her hands free just then she would have gotten away, for something weakened in him when he finally saw her face.
His memory had recalled it perfectly, the angle of her high cheekbones, the sharp line of her jaw, the blue of her eyes, but the remembered picture was only perfect on one side. Deep furrows had at some point been raked along one side, from forehead to jaw, and the eye on this side peered blindly up at him through a cloudy white sheen. Her expression depicted a feral sort of fear that was directed at him and this was perhaps almost worse than seeing the scars that marred her face. They stared at each other in silence and he watched the tears first gather then fall as she slowly shook her head back and forth, either in denial or simply to tell him that she had no words for him, and in that moment he could find none for her, because there simply were no words to articulate what was welling up inside him.
The beautiful, kind hearted creature he had believed dead, had been returned to him vicious, scarred and full of fear, there was no telling what she had been through and how much of it might have been his fault. If he'd ever had any small salvation in the years before they met in battle, was that even though he had hurt her, he had never broken her, but this...this went beyond broken, this was so very far from the woman he remembered.
"I'm not sure if this will kill you...buuut i'm pretty sure Sera loaded it with fire bolts, so at the very least it's going to burn. Get off her"
The voice was familiar, but he didn't have time to think upon it. Once again he displayed an eerie speed as he he hauled both himself an Talitha to their feet, crossing her arms over her chest along with his own even as she sought to take advantage and squirm away. Dagna stood in the middle of the stream, holding up a crossbow that looked two sizes too big for her. It didn't look quite as deadly as Bianca, but it was likely still powerful enough to launch the loaded bolt at deadly speeds.
"Dagna. Where is…."
It was the first time he had heard her speak in six years and the words were rife with panic verging on the edge of hysteria, and yet almost as soon as she started to speak she cut off her own words, as though he could have no idea of what they spoke.
"Safe" Dagna said quickly, narrowing her eyes at him and lifted the crossbow just a little higher, though it took visible effort.
"You are not going to shoot me Dagna. We will return to the Chateau and…"
At the mention of the Chateau Talitha renewed her struggles, lunging forward in an attempt to break his hold, forcing him to move with her as she jerked and heaved against his crossed arms. From the corner of his eye he could see the tip of that crossbow bolt wavering in the air, trying to find a shot, and if he didn't get control of this situation quickly, nerves or bad judgement was going to kill someone. With a grunt of effort he threw Talitha heavily to one side, her body impacting into the thick trunk of an oak as he ducked, feeling the wind of the bolt on the back of his neck before he was upright again, his magic lashing out in an ethereal fist that slammed into the dwarf and knocked her off her feet into the water.
He reached her in just a few strides and grasped the collar of her tunic as he scooped up the fallen crossbow and flung it far over to the other bank. With his eye on the unmoving shape at the bottom of the oak, he dragged the dazed dwarf onto the bank, he didn't know if he had intentionally sought to knock Talitha unconscious, but whether he did or he didn't the result was the same and he could now turn to securing the dwarf. He tugged a bandana free from about her neck and took his time securing her hands together before lowering himself to his haunches to bring himself eye level with the scowling dwarf.
He was wet and cold, his limbs ached with exertion and his face stung where he'd been clawed, his patience had been very quickly whittled to a sharp point and it showed in the way his eyes now centered upon Dagna, his gaze hitting her like a thrown dart.
"I am taking her back to the mansion. You may stay here or follow, I care not which, but do not get in my way, you will not keep me from her or what I have come for"
He didn't wait for an answer, far too aware that Talitha could awaken at any time. He stood and moved to the base of the tree where he bent again, carefully turning her head in his hands, sighing quietly when he noted the thin trickle of blood that ran from her hairline. A quick inspection revealed no fractures or moving bone and only then did he pick her up, noting how much lighter she was as he placed her over his shoulder.
"Do you really think it will be as easy as showing up again? It has been six years Solas and you have no idea what has hap-"
He turned with a sharp look, his glare cutting off her words like a guillotine, and when he pointed back towards the direction of the Chateau she sighed wearily and took point, her despondent steps leading the way.
She was right of course, he had absoloutley no idea what had happened to Talitha in the last six years, and he only had the vaguest of ideas about what would happen if she woke up, but he would cross that bridge when he came to it. The only way to calm himself now was to rely upon certainties, and the only thing he was certain of now was both their reactions at the mention of that once haunted building. Somewhere in the Chateau, his foci awaited him, and if nothing else came out of this highly confusing and emotionally draining mess, he would content himself with finally securing the means of a better future for his people.
Or so he told himself. Because it was easier than thinking about or admitting that her fear of him was slowly causing his heart to break.
~~o0O0o~~
It did not take them quite as long to reach the chateau as he first imagined. It turned out that Talitha had taken them on a rather circular route, trying to lose him somewhere amid the trees and vines before desperation had led her to jump down into the stream. She remained limp over his shoulder as the rooftops came into view behind the trees, but given her earlier ferocity he found himself constantly alert and ready to combat a sudden flurry of movement. In front of him, Dagna carefully picked her way through the undergrowth, she'd picked up the demonized headdress in both bound hands by one of it's curved horns, and now it's damp feathers dragged laboriously behind her as she struggled to navigate over a clump of tree roots. He didn't offer to help and she didn't ask, neither one of them trusting the other as far as either of them could throw a full grown Qunari.
When they reached the main gates she fumbled laboriously about her person to find the key, her bound hands forcing her to work at an awkward angle when it came to unlocking it. Solas stepped through into the gardens beyond and waited for her to lock the gates behind them and resume her place just ahead. The gardens had been running to overgrown the last time, now nature had clearly begun to reclaim the land, obscuring their view of the lower half of the house with tall grasses and overarching plants growing heavily over ripe with flowers and broad green leaves, permeating the air with a thick, jungle like smell.
Inside the house was just as dark and draughty as he remembered, only now several layers of thick dust had settled over most of the surfaces. Though they had banished the evil presence that had drawn the undead to this place, there was still an empty feeling of desolation and despondency about this place, as if the very building mourned its slow decline. The light coming from the dirt flecked windows was only just enough to see by and memory served him enough to guide them up the vaulted staircase to the second floor. They stopped outside an open door leading to a bedroom that had an air of being lived in recently, and it took Dagna a few moments to note his pointed stare, her own expression crumpling before she forced it back into determination.
"I'm not leaving you with her!"
"You will, my patience has become thinner than a strand of silk, i suggest you do not test its resistances further"
She opened her mouth to argue and his eyes flared with misted blue light that had her backing quickly into the room, her lower lip trembling with impotent anger that appeared no less dangerous for all her diminutive stature, and it is only now that he remembers that his own scouts had killed someone she had cared for deeply just days before. He forced that fearful light to fade from his eyes, his voice still firm but his expression softening.
"I have not come here to harm her Dagna. But I am going to talk to her, and I wish to do that alone"
He closed the door upon her unchanging expression, passing his hand over the lock which first turned white with heat before it began to warp and melt into a solid mass that would make picking the lock impossible. Shifting Talitha's weight on his shoulder, he took to another flight of stairs, the next floor housing the stuffed and mounted dragon suspended from the ceiling with thick cables, it's mouth still held open in a silent roar. The large drawing room beyond was cold and even darker than it had been downstairs, but he remembered the couch and found it to still be there. He carefully lay her down and assured himself that she was still unconscious before he turned to the large hearth in front of them. There was no firewood in the basket beside the fire, but this end of the large room was filled with spindly decorative tables that could be smashed against the hard marbled edge of the fireplace, and after fifteen minutes of surprisingly satisfying destruction, he managed to get a fire lit.
Only now did he begin to feel some of the layers of tension sliding away from his shoulders, some of that alertness falling away as he finally knelt beside the couch to finally get an unobstructed look at the woman who had successfully hidden from him for over six years. The fur and bone had been bound to her body with intricate ties of thin rope, he set to work on these, meticulously unravelling each knot, placing the bone and layers of fur wrappings on the floor beside him until he revealed the vest and short leathers beneath. He observed that she was thinner than he remembered, but tough as ironwood, her sinewy muscle now more defined than it had been.
Scars lined her arms like white ropes embedded in her tanned skin and once more he faintly wonders what wars she has fought to be in such a condition. A finger draws a half moon under her ruined eye, the texture of the scars there causing him to grit his teeth as an old feeling of anger crept up on him, He mourned that lost gaze of twin orbs regarding him in quiet amusement, even as his thumb smoothed over her brow. To touch her again was something privately sacred, an unbidden wish come true, but not in a way he had ever wanted.
He remembers her fear of him and that sickened feeling churns in his gut again as he set his hands over the wound on her scalp, forcing the flow of his magic to gentle some before he let it set to healing the small injury. She was alive, and no matter their current position as friends or enemies, some part of him was quietly overjoyed, but the effect was poisoned by her reaction and by the very true fact that she had tried her damndest to kill him when she saw him. In all that they had been through she had never thought that violence was the way to get through to him, and she had loved him enough that attacking him had never been possible. Had six years finally been enough for love to be corrupted into hate?
Only when she was healed to his satisfaction did he turn and sit with his back propped against the couch, to watch the flames devour a dismembered end table. One hand remained resting lightly on her arm, as if he didn't dare lose complete contact with her, just in case she melted away like smoke, or a dream.
Where had she been, and who had she fought to have gained so many new scars. She could not have been here for six whole years, the house wasn't nearly lived in enough for that, the layers of dust proved that much. So she had travelled...but why? He still couldn't wrap his head around what she could have been thinking to keep the orb with her, she'd had the entirety of Thedas in which to hide it. Why fake her death only to live a life where she must constantly run, none of it made any sort of sense to him, not when he had known her to be fiercely intelligent.
She had outwitted him once, and that had been enough for her to gain an advantage, she had done so again by causing him to believe she was dead, and she had been utterly determined to stand beside her friends to the end, even if that meant facing him on the battlefield, what could have possibly turned her from such a iron clad course.
As his thoughts began to chase each other's tails he let them, partially ignoring them in favour of absorbing her actual presence once again so very close to his own. Their natural personal spaces had always merged together with ease, and it was almost possible to pretend that they did so now while she wasn't fighting against him. He still loved her. He had known this somewhere in the periphery of his soul, but the reality of it hit him now in this half dark and silent room. It complicated matters and it always would, making every simple task a treacherous journey of the heart that would almost certainly kill one or both of them as he had once thought it had. But he loved her, and it came to him in a warm rush that might have knocked him off his feet had he been standing. He turned slightly, bowing his head to the back of her still hand, inhaling that aroma of pine and lightning that had haunted him for so long. The reality of her was still so very hard to take, and he couldn't help but rub the side of his face along her arm like an animal scenting, the gesture for comfort rather than any private perversion. When he stilled, he allowed himself to drift not into sleep but a sort of daze that allowed nothing else in but her scent and her slowly warming skin. For just this one moment nothing else existed. Not his foci, his people or the conversation that must happen when she finally woke, only her and the fact that she still existed in this world.
Over time the fire began to dwindle, but he couldn't quite force himself to pull away from her and bit by bit the shadows crept over them as the sky beyond the windows dimmed, casting the room in darkness that shifted with the trees outside.
It was the sound of careful footsteps that forced him back to that fully alert state, some part of him had clearly still been listening even while he had been partially lost in the woman beside him. He should have guessed that the melted lock wouldn't have fooled Dagna forever, the woman had a mind like a steel trap and he had lingered here too long. He rose wearily, scooping up his staff as he peered into the darkness, trying to discern the dwarfs shape among the swaying shadows. He would have cursed himself a fool, but surely no man could blame him for a loss of sensibilities at this time?
The footsteps stopped and Solas could feel eyes upon him, tracing his outline in the dark. He was about to take a step forward when a tremulous voice spoke up from just a few feet away, and Solas felt all the air leave his lungs in a sharp gasp, as once again, his whole world changed.
"Mamae?"