Hours ticked by after the Knight-Captain left the dim candlelit rotunda, but Solas remained motionless at his desk. His long fingers interlaced under his chin as his eyes glanced over the piles of texts on his desk now the least of his current concerns.
Idalya's limp form dozed on the cot Leliana's messengers delivered minutes after the Spymaster stormed from the room. Solas lifted the incapacitated woman and brought her onto the cot afterward, careful to not hurt her lingering injuries. Her sepia skin drained of its glow now held a sickening pallor. Deep bruises under her eyes and running the length of her neck. Streaks of dried blood remained on her tunic and through strands of her long silver hair. Traces of violence and grime speckling the surface.
Daylight grew dim through the gap of the heavy wooden doors. The hours of the day ending as the night took over its reign. The stirrings of visitors and servants throughout the tower quieted as people left the dining hall for the Herald's Rest to close out their day.
Looking up into the balconies, a silhouette stood at the edge of the railing unmoving as they watched him at work. Solas resorted his haphazard piles of paperwork and texts, pretending not to notice Dorian above. The wafting judgment from the Trevinter mage drifted towards him though he had no interest in being on the receiving end of the mage's venom-filled glare.
Solas' eyes never moved from his desk and a slight grin appeared on his features when Dorian's footsteps echoed across the stone floors as he exited the rotunda, joining Evelyn in their ritual overindulgence of wine.
No other sounds lingered in the tower as Solas turned to the sleeping elf. She tossed and turned in her cot, soft whimpers escaping her lips.
Rising to his feet, he walked to her cot, checking for any signs of infection. He sighed in relief to find her clammy, but without fever. She would heal, but the consequences of the day remained unseen. His bare feet moved without sound against the stones as he paced back to his chair. Standing over the desk, he shook his head, arms crossed over his chest as he headed to his sleeping alcove and stepped inside.
Laying down on the minimalist bedding, he pulled a thin woven blanket over his legs as he settled in. Willing his body to relax, he closed his eyes, preparing to enter the Fade. The muscles in his body twitched as sleep overcame them. He focused on Idalya's face and features, the feel of her spirit, as he drew himself into the part of the Fade she occupied.
The familiar heavy weight of the Fade melted over him as he slipped deeper into the dream world. As Skyhold's ancient stones over the eons became clearer, Solas moved towards something in the Fade much further away. Images and long-lost dreams blurring around him as he flew around countless memories laid into the surrounding land until it stopped.
His balance was impaired, his vision muddy as he opened his eyes. They adjusted to an image of a camp ahead bathed in night. Abstract parts of the memory were missing. Similar to how dreams resembled when the Fade projected to those who traveled its paths, but much stranger spots in the camp were missing than Solas had experienced.
Objects ripped from the fabric of the Fade itself or covered in light so blinding, he turned his eyes away. Careful not the interact with these missing pieces of time, he walked further into the camp on delicate footing. Unlike his other travels while Fade walking, this memory remained frozen in time.
A large bonfire seated at the center of the camp was the focal point, its flames unmoving, the world paused.
A young Leliana, in thin armor and bow at her side, laid next to the fire. Her head in the lap of a towheaded elf running his hands through her hair, an expression of adoration covering his face as he looked into her eyes. Moving closer he saw how the last decade had worn down the Inquisition's Spymaster, her eyes so bright and holding no circles underneath.
Without knowing Leliana, you would miss how weighed down from the daily decisions in her job she was. To see her happy and at her most relaxed? Solas turned away uncomfortable with his intrusive spying through memories. Seeing someone who no longer existed. It bothered Solas to see her cold and calculating eyes turned warm and thoughtful, knowing the girl with the kind face had many hard years to face in front of her.
On a further side of a camp, a large Qunari, the current Arishok, sat unmoving in the center cleaning a large broadsword in his lap. Nearby, an older woman with white hair in a tight bun, soft blue mage robes spread around her on the ground, held a massive tome open in hers.
Solas remembered Wynne. He'd observed her in a memory of Cole's he'd walked through with the spirit. She was a mother figure to the group, looking out for their wellbeing. Using her experience of overcoming adversity in the Circles to help these children survive fighting a Blight alone.
Solas stepped over a Fade hole in the ground as he crossed the camp, finding what he had been searching for.
Idalya rested on the ground, knees to her chest, arms wrapped around her legs. In front of her, a version of herself leaned back in a bundled cloud of light. The light stung at Solas' eyes, but Idalya remained steadfast as she stared at herself in this memory locked in time.
Solas contemplated leaving.
All of this was wrong.
The holes in the Fade, Idalya separate from a memory watching it as an outsider. Only the most powerful of mages contained this level of power to manipulate the Fade, yet here she was. This moment was too intense; he should not have come here. Preparing to leave, she spoke to him.
"You followed me here." Her voice was deep, rougher than normal, her throat aching from crying and the damage she taken from strangling in the training ring hours earlier.
There was no accusation in her voice. just more one thing to surprise him in dealings with the Warden. Over his life, he met many that would live forever through mythology and legends. All of them mere fractions of the people in those stories, but Idalya was the exception. Her legend and the surrounding stories didn't do her justice.
Leading was in her blood, her presence demanding respect. Within days of joining Skyhold, she was respected more by the soldiers than their own Inquisitor. Every morning she was the first warrior out training and every evening the last one on the field. Cleaning up and preparing for the next day to the horror of the servants who begged her to stop lest the Commander think they were shirking their duties.
Solas contemplated if Idalya existed in the time of ancient elves, their fate might not have been doomed. Idalya could have prevented the Exalted March and saved the elves from themselves and those who sought to bring fear and ignorance into the hearts of humans concerning them. It was ironic she had little care for the elves and saw herself as only a person existing in Thedas rather than someone representing elves as a race.
Stepping around pieces of the Fade falling apart, Solas walked to her side. "I followed you here, but I find myself speechless at what I've found."
Idalya stayed stationery staring at the image of herself.
Lowering himself to the ground, he sat cross-legged next to her as he observed the scene. Within this memory Idalya grinned, tiny lines formed around her eyes, her cheeks glowing with a rosy tint, white strands of her hair frozen in the air flowing in the breeze.
The shape of light behind her mesmerized Solas. He knew of nothing like it in the Fade before. When people experienced memory loss, their visions still existed in the Fade, they were just unable to access them.
This was something else.
Idalya's memories existed broken and disjointed, her mind disassembled like a quilt, patch by patch. Tears ran down the lengths of her tanned cheeks, pooling onto her arms as she peered over them to watch herself.
"You see it don't you?"
He looked back to the frozen image in front of him and regarded it, his brows creased.
"I was happy, Solas. What if I can never find what I lost?" Her voice wavered as her fingers clutched into her skin. "Something is missing. I'm… missing?" With that last word, great sobs shook her core as she placed her head down on her arms, letting the tears fall.
Part of him wanted to reach over and comfort her, but he understood when the grief experienced by a person was greater than the comfort one person could give them. He waited out her cries until her breathing returned to a steady rise and fall of her chest.
"Is this what your memories are like?" He asked, and she shook her head in response, her eyes still glazed with her tears.
"No, I see memories through my eyes. Not like this." Her hands wrung together. "I wasn't expecting this. This hurt. I've lost something and now I've confirmed it. It's no longer a lingering question I'm too afraid to ask."
Watching the armor of the honorable warrior crumble away, leaving behind the trembling girl was too much for Solas to watch. How often had he sat amongst memories of times gone past yearning to be part of something so much larger than himself? He recognized her pain, acknowledged it, and internalized it so much more than he could ever tell her.
"The only people who can access the Fade in this fashion are demons, spirits, and mages." He watched her face for any change in expression. She winced as he said demon but seemed unsurprised when he mentioned mage.
Idalya hesitated. "Is she… all right?"
Solas nodded. "The Templar?" She was concerned for a Templar who would have slain her without a second thought hours ago. "She'll be fine. You remember, don't you?" Idalya nodded as her body shook. "I assume she's confused and even more so after she woke up from being incapacitated by Blackwall."
She frowned as she absorbed his words.
"Don't think poorly of him, you owe Blackwall and the Templar Captain your life. The Templars wanted to throw you into a Skyhold cell until the Inquisitor sentenced you as a hidden apostate. They would have let you die in that cell… well, again." He gave her a brief smile as she snorted at his inappropriate humor.
She turned back to face the frozen grin in front of her. "Have you seen anything like this before?" Idalya motioned towards the blinding light. "Does this happen when people forget memories? How does that happen? It feels so familiar, yet it's nothing. There's nothing there."
"No, I've never seen anything like this before," he lied.
This girl was already broken and the last thing he'd let her hear was parts of her memories had been ripped from Fade. This wasn't an alteration of her memories, but an attempt to rip them out of space and time itself.
"Am I… am I a mage?" She looked down towards the ground, her shaking boots digging paths into the dirt.
"No, you are not," Solas answered with confidence. He waited until she turned to gaze at him, with red crying rings around her purple and gray swirled eyes. "You have no discernible mana. The Templar had the advantage, you sensed great danger, and something protected you. In a situation like that, many circle mages would become abominations, but you defended yourself. I do not understand how. That and how you were smited." That caught her attention.
"Smited? How in Thedas was I smited?" Her eyes stared at him in disbelief as he considered how to answer her question.
"If you haven't figured out by now, I'm not here just rifling around in your memories… or what's left of them. You were injured when hit by a smite. Warriors should not be hurt by such an attack, the same way a warrior shouldn't shoot lightning from their hands. It seems we have many mysteries today."
She motioned towards the bundle of light again, "What do you think would happen if I touched this dream? Or whatever this is." Solas considered her question as his own curiosity took over.
"I don't know, but I am intrigued to test it out."
She nodded and rose to her feet and approached her smiling twin and its glowing companion. As she reached out of her hand to graze her fingers over the edge, Solas interrupted her.
"I don't know what will happen. Hold on to my hand to keep us from being separated. Fade walking is not a skill you have developed. You could be trapped because I lost my connection to you."
Idalya reached behind her, sliding her long fingers into Solas' palm as her other hand stretched forward hesitantly towards the pulsing glow. Her fingertips buzzed as they drew closer and as her fingers made contact a blinding light overtook their eyes as she was pulled to some other place.
The room was composed of nothing but bright light from floor to ceiling. The buzzing in Idalya's fingertips now worked its way up and down the length of her entire body.
"Fuck!" she screeched, her voice echoing in the strange room. "I am so sick of this shit! I didn't want this! No one would ask for this." Her voice broke on the final words. "I don't know why I thought it would be different with you here."
Solas squeezed his hand around hers in reassurance he recognized as inadequate. She shook her head and pulled her hand away and wrapped them both around her chest.
"I don't know what I am or who I'm supposed to be. I have almost no memories, I've fallen into a time I don't belong. Maker, I'm not even a warden anymore..." Solas stepped in front of her.
"What did you say?" His eyes scanned her face in panic.
She looked at the ceiling, holding back tears, as she refused to make eye contact.
"After a warden undergoes their joining, they are forever linked to the darkspawn. I no longer have that connection." She closed her eyes, squeezing tears out through her thick lashes.
Solas' mind had gone blank. All of this for nothing. So much pain this girl had endured, and she might not be what they needed.
"How are you sure the connection is severed?"
Idalya looked him straight in the eyes. "Blackwall."
"Has Blackwall said something to you?"
"Not yet, but I can no longer sense him. I should be able to sense every Grey Warden and darkspawn within a range of Skyhold and I sense nothing from him. I'm too scared to approach him and ask if he can sense me still. What if he goes to Leliana or the Inquisitor?"
Solas shook his head. "Warden's protect their own. Blackwall has already shown that today, your secret is safe. We should investigate before the Inquisitor is aware."
He was concerned for the wellbeing of the Hero. If the Inquisitor discovered she had no value, there's no telling what Evelyn would have planned for her. Experiment? Sell her off to the highest bidder? Anything that gained her more power over others made it worth it to Evelyn. Solas snooped through enough of Evelyn's memories to know she was not to be underestimated.
The deadliest predators were the ones that looked the least threatening, letting you drop your defenses before stabbing you in the back.
"You would help me?" At that moment she looked so young.
She exuded strength, but this was pure vulnerability and she was trusting it to him. He'd disappointed many people in his life, she would not be one of them.
"You can trust me. I will warn you that sometimes the past is lost from history for a reason, what you find may hurt more than the absence of the memories themselves."
She smiled and nodded in acknowledgment.
"Are you ready to leave Idalya?"
Her eyes scanned the empty room. "Yes."
He leaned close to her. "Then wake up."
Her eyes widened in shock and she faded out of sight exiting the Fade.
Solas sighed and pressed his fingers to his temples. This was far more complicated than he imagined. Some spell or magic destroyed the essence of who this girl had been, leaving behind broken pieces for her to put back together. It was cruel torture. Idalya didn't deserve this.
Solas came into the Fade to make sure she could complete what the Inquisition needed from her. He left wanting to help her. He understood the dedication Leliana and Cullen vowed to the elf, he also understood Evelyn's deep-seated hatred and mistrust for her. Something deep in that girl's soul demanded respect and Solas would help her find what she needed even if it destroyed her because she asked for it and not ordered it like the Inquisitor.
Upon preparing to exit the Fade to meet Idalya in his rotunda, something caught his eye. In the corner of the room something, out of place, rested on the floor. Walking over and kneeling, Solas reached out and picked up the object.
A single long-stemmed red rose.
Perfect on all sides, left alone somewhere in what used to be a memory, he theorized. Unsure of the significance of a single flower, Solas placed it back on the ground before willing his soul back into his body.