Aaaaand I'm back! Sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience! Just as another side note, I'm deliberately not going to go into specifics (until Bioware gives us more info) on the whole 'what happened with Solas/Mythal and why does Solas leave and what is he doing' thing because I'm fairly certain I'd screw it up if I tried, just so you know 3
Chapter Thirty Seven
Like cold shattered remnants, the orb lay broken on the ground. It was gone. Irreparable. And he couldn't even begin to process it. All his hopes had been bound up in recovering his foci after they defeated Corypheus, and to have it lost...
Solas didn't even have any contingency plans in place because it had never occurred to him that this might happen. And yet it had.
With shaking hands he held the broken fragments of the orb, the cold metal unwelcome against his skin and he stared, silently, for so many minutes as he tried to piece together what he was seeing. When he spoke, his voice was cracked and weak, a hollow shadow of his usual smooth speech.
"The orb," he started and he paused for a long moment, his eyes wide in disbelief. It was little more than a choked noise when he added, "No."
"I'm sorry." It was Lavellan that offered to comfort him in that moment and he didn't deserve it in the slightest.
After all that had happened she'd barely talked to him since their encounter in his room, and yet her words were laced with genuine empathy in that moment. It shamed him, and he forced himself to his feet as his mind raced to piece together another plan. The ground was uneven and broken, rocks digging into the bare soles of his feet but it barely graced his thoughts while his hopes lay shattered.
"How?" he breathed as his gaze flickered to hers, and he meant that it should have been impossible for her to care after everything that had happened between them. When her brow furrowed, he continued softly with, "It is not... your fault. It has never been your fault."
"Maybe we can fix it?" she offered and her words were hopeful and bright, but it did nothing to lighten his mood.
"If only it were that easy," he whispered and he let himself gaze at her for a long moment, drawing in her appearance in what he knew could easily be the last time he'd ever see her in the flesh. What options he had left to him he knew wouldn't hesitate to deny him the chance to ever see her again, and he didn't want to forget her bright eyes or soft features.
Her skin was bruised and bloody from their fight with Corypheus, white hair tangled and knotty and body rising with soft pants from the exertion it had taken to defeat their foe. Covering her like a thick cloud was the tingle and shimmer of the magic she'd used in their fight and yet despite all of this she was still beautiful to him. He would long for her, far more than he had when she'd died because this time he would have to live with knowing she was out there somewhere, but that he couldn't be with her.
"Whatever may come," he started softly, "I want you to know that what we had was real."
"Why would you-" she cut herself off as her brow furrowed and understanding dawned on her features. "You're leaving."
Her features flashed with anger, hands clenching into fists at her side and muscles tensing but nothing slipped from her lips. Her reaction was hardly unexpected to him.
"You have every right to hate me." A pause and the fury on her features faltered to her hurt for a moment at what he said. "I hope in time, you might understand and... remember."
It took a heavy breath for him to steady his wayward emotions so that his voice wouldn't break and crack when he added, "You will always be my heart, Lavellan."
He turned from her then, on the one who'd been everything to him. And he did not look back once as he left because he knew if he did, he would cave to what his heart begged for.
He was a selfish creature and he always had been.
Even after he left the Inquisition, even after he broke and abandoned her, he still visited her dreams.
It was an intrusion of her privacy, but every night he was desperate to glimpse her again even if only for a second. Any sight of her, no matter how fleeting, dulled the longing in his heart for a time.
With his ability to twist and meld dreams at whim, Solas thought he could hide from Lavellan, that he could watch her to pacify his longing without her realising what he was doing. It worked in some ways – she did not figure out what he was doing for many weeks. But he'd been tortured by nightmares that evening before he'd bound them to his will, and their clinging fear at his mind twisted his form when he found her in the Fade.
So it was as the beast that he watched, and where before he could hide himself from her view, as the wolf her gaze locked onto him immediately even through the twisted shadows of deception. Her features turned into fear and terror for moment, and she backed away from him but no sooner had her trepidation become apparent then had she gritted her teeth and forced a steely look onto her features.
Before he could flee her fingers were twisting with magic and like ropes she conjured a spell from the Fade that caught and bound him to the floor. He was a fool to ever come here as he struggled against her magic.
"Dread Wolf," she hissed and the ropes were like a vice, digging into his flesh the more he tried to free himself. "Do you think I don't know you are there after the months you spent haunting me?"
With no other option left to him he slipped into his elven form but twisted his appearance into the one who she'd thought stalked her dreams so many years ago, the way he'd looked in Arlathan. In this way he could shrug off the ropes of her spell and stand, and she moved away from him a few steps as he rose to his feet free from the confines of her trap.
"Why me?" she continued in a shout. "Why now?"
When he gave her nothing, she continued angrily with, "Answer me! I have earned the truth through pain and heartache!"
It was barely more than a whisper when he replied but she heard him say it nonetheless. "I do not haunt you to cause you anguish."
For a moment she hesitated, her features faltering to surprise and the tension in her body relaxing. But almost as if she realised how dangerous it was for her to lose her focus around one she thought meant her such harm, she pushed a snarl onto her features and hissed, "Then why are you here?"
"Because you have bound me to your side."
It was a long minute of silence that stretched between them and she stared at him, wide eyed and confused at what he told her. His blue eyes held her gaze, calculating and considered his options. He could have fled, could have slipped from her dream so easily but even then he wondered, with the smallest part of him, if he could convince her to remember.
Truly he was self absorbed that he even considered it, because there was no benefit for her to learn the truth any more while he was gone. He tried to justify it to himself that it would be a favour to her that she know, as if it might make her understand better why he left her and that it was an injustice that she was still missing so much of her past. But they were only excuses to placate his want that she not stare at him, Fen'Harel, as if she hated him.
When she said, "What do you mean?" he caved.
With a small wave of magic he twisted his appearance into the one she was so familiar with, the one that she'd spent months whispering sweet nothings to and kissing openly and without shame while he was with the Inquisition. A choked noise escaped her and she stared, speechless, for several moments before she reigned in her shock and left only her disbelief and anger behind.
"No," she hissed and magic bristled at her fingertips as she shouted at him. "You won't torture me with him."
The power flowing through her unleashed as a vile angry spell. It ripped over his body, her magic mixed by what her keeper had taught her and the strength the Well had given her. It hurt, and he gasped as it bristled over his nerves like fire against his skin. With a twist of his wrist he dispelled the spell she'd sent rippling over him, but she'd summoned another at her fingertips in seconds and he frowned as she advanced towards him.
"My keeper taught me how to throw you from my dreams," she snarled and her fury scared him in that moment because it was foreign and unnatural against her kind features. "I will not suffer your taint again."
And with a jolt of magic over his body she jarred at his connection to the Fade. Like a mauled, mangled thing, she broke his hold over the dream and yanked him awake. With panting gasps he tried to force air into his lungs because he felt strangled from the violent way she'd forced him from his sleep.
It took minutes for him to calm his breathing and he knew from where before her keeper's teaching might only have been enough to throw him from her own dream, since she bound with the Well her powers had increased enough that she'd managed to temporarily fray his connection to the Fade. With fingers pressed to his temples he soothed the ache throbbing in his mind with a small burst of magic and then leant back against the ground where he'd made camp that night.
Beneath the night sky he stared up at the stars, his palm pressed to his forehead and admonishing himself for the foolishness that had overcome him to think he could still see her after he left. It was selfish of him to ever stalk her dreams, but the longing had been driving him mad and he thought he could get away with it.
Evidently he realised, then, that he couldn't.
He wouldn't visit her again and with his lips pulled into a snarl he rolled onto his side, glowering into the dark night as he carefully edged back into sleep once more.
Just a note: Not quite the end yet, 2 more chapters!