AN: The significance of pet names. The language of lovers.
Rated: T mild implications, but really it is pretty safe.
The first time is almost an accident. Knotted together under a pile of furs in Emprise Du Lion, the pale mist of their exhalations mingles in the night air. She watches him watch her, losing herself in the softness of his expression, the intensity of his gaze. He reaches up and smooths the hair back from her face with warm, careful fingers. Something bright and burning swells in her chest. It pushes its way up her throat and the words slide from her mouth before she even knows she is going to say them.
"Ma sa'lath." The meaning is something velvety and warm, and truer than she knows how to properly convey in Common. It is more than a simple endearment; it is a name. A title. A new thing for him to be. She has been thinking the words to herself for quite some time, but never found the courage to voice them, unsure of his reaction.
He stares at her in mild shock in the semidarkness of their tent, his eyes wide, his hand still tangled in her hair. She feels the heat rising in her face, her mind racing with possibilities of how to retract her statement without causing greater offense.
His features quickly melt into something tender and vaguely amazed, a wide disbelieving smile crinkling the corners of his blue eyes as he pulls her closer. She can feel the rough staccato of his heartbeat against her chest as he kisses her. Against her lips, he breathes her name in quite wonder.
"Vhenan."
There never seems to be much time for them to be affectionate. For the sake of appearances, as well as desiring some small shred of privacy, they keep their touches fleeting, the tone of their words casual, the heat in their glances set to a low simmer. This is the one thing they keep.
Vhenan. Ma sa'lath. They pass the names between them until even the original Elvhen meanings are stretched into something more than simple phrases of love.
I am with you. Please be careful. Stop it. Come back safely. Help! Good morning. Hello. Good night. Stay with me. I missed you. Calm down. Please? You are my home. I love you. Don't leave.
These names become their own private language, the only words that ever truly need saying. Even when they stop saying them.
"Ma sa'lath!" she cries out in a broken whimper, one last frantic appeal for him to stay as hot tears scorch their way down her cheeks. She does not know how else to hold him. The anguish splintering her voice is sharper than an arrow, piercing him squarely between his shoulder blades as he walks away from her into the fog. He stumbles slowly back towards Skyhold an animal mortally wounded. The distant sounds of her heartache gnaw savagely at his insides with every step he takes.
When he can walk no farther, he slumps down at the foot of a tree, burying his face in his hands. Just once, he wanted to touch something beautiful without destroying it. Just once.
His head is spinning, his thoughts and feelings mangled by the jaws of fresh despair. His chest feels tight, as though it is too small to contain such an overpowering storm of grief. The name he gave her escapes him in a strangled gasp, the word tearing at his throat, desperate to be heard by the one it belongs to.
"Vhenan."
"No matter what comes, I want you to know that what we had…was real."
"I love you," She replies, a strange hint of panic dancing on her tongue. Something is wrong. The words seem like simple flimsy things, useless and ordinary. She says them despite herself, wounded and panting, the remnants of the shattered Elvhen orb laying on the ground between them.
He looks devastated by the thought of it, though it can hardly come as much of surprise. His face and posture are those of a defeated man, sagging and miserable. He looks at her and she sees a terrible weight in his eyes, the loss and the longing he only showed her glimpses of before. He opens his mouth as though to speak, but his words are lost to the worried voices of their friends as they call out for her, searching.
She offers him a faint smile before walking over to the stairs to let their companions know they are alive and relatively unharmed.
He stares after her for a moment, burning the image of her into his mind.
When she turns back, he has vanished. Her heart plummets into the pit of her stomach.
"Solas?" She asks hoarsely, hoping beyond reason that he has simply stepped out of her line of sight. The silence is all that greets her. She looks down at the broken relic of her people and knows that he is gone. She leans heavily against the stone wall at the top of the staircase, gazing out into the empty night.
"Ma sa'lath," she whispers. It is still true. She hopes he knows without her saying so.
In the deepest shadows of the crumbling ruins, a great white wolf watches the Inquisitor with piercing eyes. A low whine rumbles from the beast's throat as she turns and limps away.
"Vhenan."