How many times?

How many times had he gazed at her with tears staining her lovely cheeks while she pleaded with him? How many times had he left her kneeling in the damp earth while she begged him not to go? How many times had he broken her beautiful heart while she promised she'd save him?

How many times?

Solas watched the ancient memory fade around them and felt another piece of himself die inside. He'd lived and relived it a thousand times, among so many other memories of her. It never stopped hurting. It never got any easier. No matter how indifferent his expression might have suggested.

He had dreamed of meeting her again. In another time. Another place. Another world. One where they could finally be together. Be happy.

This was not that world.

Her hands were entrenched deeply in the rich soil beneath them. Her breaths were labored and choked as she fought back against the memory that so wanted to be reclaimed.

Her violet eyes swirled with storms of confusion and blind rage. Tears made them shine in the ethereal light of the forest. Her hair had slipped forward, shrouding the curve of her face, but her eyes were unobstructed and they bore into him with such a demand as her question heaved from her lips.

"A memory." He answered evenly.

"Whose?" She choked.

Solas kept his expression as blank as possible. The way a physician was supposed to when delivering news of a terminal illness.

"Yours." He murmured.

Her hand lashed out. The orb was flying through the air before it had fully unraveled, and the memory crashed against a nearby tree in a dust cloud of blue-green light.

"Bullshit!" Elera shouted over him before he'd barely finished uttering the word. She'd hung her head and was fighting to swallow back the tears that had so decimated her speech, while images of a life she didn't remember cast shadows over them.

"Is it so difficult to believe that you might retain memories of a life before this one?" He asked. He made it a simple question. His voice carried little inflection. No judgement of her inability to see the possibilities of her situation.

She pushed herself upright, rocking back on her knees to rest her weight on her heels. "What are you talking about? Reincarnation?"

"Of a sort." It wasn't what he'd come to believe had happened to her, but if that was the explanation that was easiest to grasp, then he would allow her to believe what she needed to. For now.

"No!" She spat. There was a low hanging branch. An orb glittered at its end and Elera snatched it from the air. The moment it touched her skin, the quartz began to disintegrate and light emerged. She threw it at him, but it was little more than dust and magic between them. She could see Solas' face in the memory, eyes bright, full mouth smiling, before it faded and revealed the flesh and blood elf standing before her. His expression altogether different.

Solas felt one dark brow arch in question. "No?"

"No, I don't believe that." She stammered. "No, I'm not some reincarnation of some ancient elf woman. I'm Elera Lavellan. I-" She shook her head.

Solas was letting her rant, but she'd given pause, her eyes darkening with some new revelation. She fixed that angry gaze upon him and he watched her hands form into fists at her side.

"You!" She accused, standing. The rage in her voice renewed. "Dreamers can shape the Fade. Can manipulate the dreams of others."

Solas sobered his expression. He might have expected denial. "And you believe that I planted these memories?"

"You're the only one capable." She hissed, clinging to her rage like a child to a blanket.

"I thought all Seekers were immune to such manipulations?" He offered. There was an air of condescendence in his voice that he could not control.

Elera's mouth opened and closed like a suffocating fish.

"How do you suppose you knew my name that night at the café?" He wanted her to form her own conclusions, but in her accusations, she was gravely misinformed.

"I…I don't know." She swallowed. "I thought maybe I knew you before…before the coma." Her voice had lost some of its sting.

"And so you did." He felt his lips twitch into a soft, sad smile.

She kicked a fallen orb toward him suddenly, perhaps hoping it would not react and she'd reach her target. He caught the small stone of veil quarts beneath his foot a moment before its casing fell away to spread the memory out like a pool beneath his feet. It was far later into their previous life together. She was chasing him through the Crossroads. Always chasing.

Solas' eyes scanned the forest surrounding them. So many memories. So many that he played a part in.

"Why push me away then?" She asked suddenly, pulling him from his melancholy. "If I'm supposed to be some long lost lover, someone you loved so…" her voice broke as emotions she waged against swam to the surface of her face. "…much." She swallowed back the word, blinking too fast. "Why would you leave?"

How many times?

"Do you believe it was easy for me? That I could see your face, your dreams, your memories, and simply turn away?" He realized his voice was losing some of that indifference. He'd moved toward her. A few steps taken slowly, in between words. He was close enough now to touch her, but he kept his hands neutral and limp at his sides.

"But you did, and without so much as an explanation. How am I supposed to believe any of this? How am I supposed to believe you?" She was trying desperately to hold on to her anger. He understood. It was familiar to her. It always had been.

"That night, when you found this place, when I began to truly suspect…" His lips tightened into a hard line. "I believed, it would be kinder in the end." Even his words sounded like memories. Was he so doomed to repeat himself for all eternity?

Her arm moved swiftly, jerking another memory out of the trees. Whether she meant to throw it, he did not know. His hand was faster, fingers clutching her at the wrist as he stepped into her.

"Coward!" She shouted as fissures raced along the orb in her hand and light spilled out over them.

"What would you have had me say?" He murmured, the barest hint of anger creeping into his voice. She jerked her arm against his grip as magic trickled down over them, bathing their skin in its familiar light. The scene played out above them as she stared up at him with angry eyes caught somewhere between the past and present. Somewhere between love and hate.

"I would have had you trust me!" Her voice echoed from the memory unfurling above them. The sound of it made him wince. An old wound torn asunder.

Elera's eyes widened until they were wild and frantic. He felt her panic as she struggled against him.

"I want to wake up!" She demanded. Her free arm came up and slammed into his chest. He stiffened against the blow. Her small hand balled into a fist and drew back once more to strike him and he caught it close to his chest and held it between them.

"Let me wake up!" She screamed, thrashing in his arms.

"Vhenan." The plea slipped from his lips almost involuntarily.

"I'm not your vhenan!" She raged, but she was crying. "I'm not her."