225 pages. That's how long this whole story is in my Google Docs. And I have to edit all of it. Bonus: I started writing it in present-tense, and decided about 10 pages in that past-tense would be better...so now I have 10 or so pages of tenses to fix.

It is finished, though, beyond desperately needing to be edited.

Translations for Elven words and phrases are at the bottom. I'm not translating stuff that's been made clear in the game, because it makes me feel stupid. Elven courtesy of the incredible FenxShiral.

The Spirit

"You are so beautiful tonight, Silea." Latha almost had his features - almost had his voice. Almost. Why it had taken on these aspects of Solas, I couldn't say - perhaps to comfort me, because even though I knew it wasn't him, in spite of everything, I was a little comforted to be reminded of him.

"And what does that matter?" I demanded, too irritated by my own response to the appearance and mannerisms it had chosen, and too frustrated by repeated confrontations, to even attempt politeness. "He doesn't want to hear of me, he doesn't summon you, and you refuse to take me to him. What can it possibly matter how I look?" Never mind that we were also in the Fade, and so I wasn't even certain how I appeared or what shaped my appearance. Latha always told me I was beautiful, because it was a reflection of Solas's love for me, and Solas thought me beautiful.

"It matters to me," the spirit replied mildly.

I made a disgusted sound. "It doesn't matter to me," I retorted, "because you aren't him. Take me to him."

Every night I asked - or sometimes demanded, or occasionally begged - and every night Latha replied: "I cannot." We had been doing this for six months.

I tried to think of something I hadn't yet said, some argument I hadn't yet made, and I couldn't, so instead I returned to my favorite: "This is how I know you aren't him and never will be. He stopped being able to bear seeing what he was doing to me, and yet here you are, every night, denying me the one thing that has any chance of making me happy."

"It would not serve to make you happy," Latha maintained, as it always did when I made this argument.

"I deserve to decide for myself," I retorted.

"You have always deserved better than what we could offer you," the spirit responded just as quickly.

I had lied: if the Fade contained anything I could effectively pick up and throw at Latha's head, that might have made me very happy - at least for a few moments. It wasn't anger, not really - I knew that. But anger was easier than sheer, unmitigated terror, and that was what I felt whenever I considered what Solas might be doing to himself that would make me more unhappy seeing him than not.

Of course I told myself, constantly, that Latha was just like Solas and just as prone to lies, but it didn't help much.

Solas had once spied on my dreams himself - nearly every night - though he never conversed with me as Latha now did. I didn't actually know why he had stopped, I only had guesses - I didn't even know that he had sent Latha to do the spying for him. It just seemed like the sort of thing he would do.

Of course seeing Solas lurking on the edge of my dreams in the form of a great wolf had been both frustrating and a little disconcerting, but it had also been a comfort. As long as he was there, I knew he was alive, hadn't given himself over to a demon, wasn't Blighted or imbibing red lyrium, and generally hadn't driven himself entirely mad.

It had been six months since my last truly restful night of sleep. Now - now I worried about all of those, and more, and I had to put up with Latha shadowing me all through the night, every night. I wasn't physically tired when I woke - I wasn't going to fall asleep over all the missives from Cullen beginning with "just a suggestion, but," or the pages of equations Lennan sent me, or the star charts from Wilhelmina, or the intelligence briefs from Charter, or any of the tasks Leliana set me that required long weeks of travel. But when Leliana said, "I can't say, Silea. You know him best - how would he react?" my guesses didn't narrow the field of possibilities as they ought, because I was trying to think around a knife in my soul that Latha pushed a little deeper every single night.

Torture. Latha was torturing me - and that wasn't a new thought, either, though I hadn't ever expressed it out loud. "Whoever named you made a hash of it," I told the spirit. "Love," I scoffed. "The way Solas loves, you should probably be called Nulam."

"As poor as it may be, he does the best he can," Latha replied.

I was startled into a laugh. "Halla'etunash." At least, I supposed, this was a new conversation rather than a rehash of one we had been having for months. "Solas is a liar and so are you."

I stood abruptly. I had tried walking away from Latha before, of course, and it never let me, but sometimes movement was less frustrating than stillness. Even if it wasn't real movement. "He probably sent you to keep me from thinking clearly," I shot at Latha as I walked away. It kept pace beside me easily. "Perhaps you aren't a spirit at all, but a demon of despair."

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it flicker in something that communicated itself to me as pain. "I am not Despair," it said softly. "Were you to fall to despair, my reason for existing would be gone."

"Then why do you keep pushing me?" I demanded, turning to face it. "This isn't love. You aren't Love."

"I am one man's love," Latha asserted.

"That is such utter rubbish," I muttered. "How did you even come to be? You really found Solas's love that compelling? So compelling you simply had to reflect it?"

"I was invited to reflect this part of him," the spirit told me slowly, as though uncertain how much it could or ought to say. This seemed an interesting line of questioning, at least. It never before occurred to me to ask about its history. As a general rule, I spent my time trying to get away from it or make it take me to Solas. I was much more lucid when I dreamed than I used to be, and Latha's existence made me nervous. I didn't want to learn the hard way that demons could now possess me through dreams. "And...yes, I did find his love compelling."

"Why would he invite you?" I wondered. It seemed a dangerous step to me, considering how full of regrets and contradictions Solas's feelings must be - must have been, rather, because I had little doubt he had forced himself to give them up. Inviting a spirit to reflect all of that turmoil sounded like a quick way to corrupt it into a demon.

"He must take actions that may - likely will - change him irrevocably," Latha told me. "He wished to know the best part of him would live on in some way."

"The best part of him?" I repeated, incredulous. "How is the part of him most easily erased in any way the best part of him?" I demanded. Latha flickered again, and this time I got the impression of surprise. Still, I plowed ahead. "What of his curiosity? His art? His concern for spirits? Why not his love for someone he is not in danger of lighting a pyre under with his actions? He may well kill me when he burns the world, and he has decided not to care."

"He cares," Latha insisted. "Of course he cares. He simply cannot act on his feelings."

"Aven dur'dirtha la'var siljosathen ha'misa," I retorted.

"You don't believe we love you," Latha said, sounding appalled.

"Why should I?" I replied. "It isn't that I believe Solas incapable of loving me, he has simply chosen not to. And as for you - you're not him. Whatever you reflect is only a piece of him, incomplete and unreal."

"Then why do you persist in loving us?" the spirit asked.

"That is the question, isn't it?" I laughed bitterly, walking away again. "I sometimes - often - wish I didn't. It's just...he's perfect for me, or would be if - " I sighed, casting my eyes toward what passed for a sky in the Fade. "I'm certain he came to understand that I don't - didn't - get on very well with most of my clan," I said, hoping the spirit understood the implied question.

"You and your Keeper seem to have a warm relationship," Latha offered, perhaps trying to protect my feelings on the matter, but in any case demonstrating that it did know what I meant.

"Deshanna has always treated me well - quite likely better than she should have. I think she hoped I would become a mage. It would have made things...easier. But," I hurried on, "that isn't my point. Solas and I have similarly complicated feelings about our own people - his on a much larger scale, of course, but even so. We value the same qualities and share the same concerns. It's a solid foundation and - and there don't seem to be many of my people with whom I share many of those values. Add to that his kindness and all the many times he understood - and then gave - exactly what I needed to succeed against impossible odds, and I don't know how to stop loving him."

Latha tilted its head curiously. I could see it from the corner of my eye, though I still refused to look directly at it "But that wasn't how it started."

"Well, no," I admitted, hoping I couldn't blush in the Fade and walking a little faster as though I might outpace a spirit. It didn't work, of course. "Do you remember Bull telling him, they never see you coming?"

"Of course," the spirit replied.

"I don't understand how it's possible for anyone to overlook him - let alone nearly everyone." I felt my brows draws together. "Even though his confidence isn't flashy like Dorian's or, hm, imposing like Vivienne's, looking at him is like..." I stopped walking and stared up at the - stared up again, trying to find the comparison I wanted. "Everything about him says, in a firm, conversational tone, 'I know who I am, and I don't require your notice or approval,'" I said at last, turning to look at Latha. "And that draws my notice. And approval. And...interest. And then he turned out to be fascinating in addition, to have so many stories, and such a way of telling them. Latha - was I truly the only one who wanted to hear him tell them?"

"Yes," Latha said, its tone affectionate enough to make me grimace. "No one sought him out as you did. He thought of you at first as a child asking to be entertained on a long winter evening." I felt myself blush, suspecting there was justice in the observation, no matter how harsh it seemed. It seemed I could blush in the Fade. Easily. "It was never only him, though - you have a gift for listening to others, whether they are offering you advice, asking for help, or simply telling you a story. You are always seeking understanding, and we admire that quality immensely. In time, he came to understand that you asked because you valued his unique perspective on the world, and because you liked being challenged. It was a new experience, having someone with your intelligence and beauty return again and again to converse, though you didn't know who I - he - was," Latha told me, tilting its head precisely as Solas sometimes did when he was offering me a compliment. "We were soon flattered by your attention."

"I know," I said, hugging myself with my remaining arm. "He treated small kindnesses as though they were grand gestures, and responded with such outrageous generosity - like the primer he wrote for me." I had only started learning to read Elven because of Solas. Like most of my people, I could speak the language, but had been subject to the prohibition which kept non-mages from learning to read. "Or the day he spent singing and reading to me when I was ill. He doesn't even care for the Dalish, but he sang me our songs, including many from other clans that I had never heard before. He might have read me anything, but he went out of his way to look for subjects I would find interesting." I laughed, remembering. "He even drank tea so his voice wouldn't go hoarse."

"The tea was the only true sacrifice of the day," Latha assured me. "We enjoyed spending time at your side, even if you were asleep for much of it. And after your near-daily favors, choking down tea was a small price to pay for bringing you a fraction of the comfort you offered us."

"A fraction?" I protested. "No. Bouquets of flowers from the courtyard because I happened to be passing through? Sending meals when he forgot to eat? Those aren't gestures with any real effort behind them. He even mentioned the times I prodded him into going outdoors on sunny days to read, as though I even knew he would appreciate my interference. I thought I was bothering him, and kept on because I couldn't bear to see him alone indoors for days on end."

"You thought of us - of him," the spirit insisted. "That it was effortless, that he so readily came to mind the moment you weren't otherwise occupied, makes all of it more valuable rather than less. No one else ever cared enough to notice that we missed meals or had spent three days in a row indoors, largely confined to a single room. You remembered small matters, like how we preferred various items of food prepared, and made certain they were to our liking. You did us favors - such as the night we were supposed to hunt for dinner, and you did it for us because we were trying to draw water from the book that had fallen in the river. You used your position to gain access to books we wanted to study. You found ways to delight me every day."

"None of that is terribly significant," I argued. "Much of it I would - and did - do for anyone. For example: I used my position to acquire books for Dorian, too."

"It is all significant for someone who has lived a very long life without having before experienced so much consideration," Latha returned.

"He seems perfectly able to contemplate a future without my consideration or small tokens of affection, so I stand by my judgment," I retorted, frowning.

The spirit shook its head. "I very much doubt he contemplates the future any more than he absolutely must," it sighed - an odd sound, coming from a being with no lungs and no acquaintance with air. "Morning approaches," it went on before I could formulate a response. "Perhaps we might pick up this conversation later."

I regarded Latha thoughtfully. "Well, tonight has been an achievement for you. This is the only tolerable conversation we have ever had. I'm sorry if it interfered with whatever task Solas has set you."

"No, you aren't," Latha countered. "Though there is nothing to be sorry for in any case. I hope your day treats you well, inansha'lan. Until tomorrow."

Translations in order of appearance:

Latha: Love (in case you didn't pick that up)

Nulam: Regret or bitterness

Halla'etunash: Halla shit

Aven dur'dirtha la'var siljosathen ha'misa: Words whisper while actions scream.

Inansha'lan: Beautiful one