This piece was written as part of an Annual Angst Challenge on the Beyond the Veil Server. Our mission, should we choose to accept it: write an angst-filled piece to make one of our users cry. Last year, the prompt was apples. This year, roses.

Dedicated to Noire-Pandora on Tumblr.

Content Warning: contains major character death, and implied suicide.

It happened quite suddenly, on a Wednesday afternoon.

Solas would never forget it was a Wednesday, because he always met with his council on Wednesday afternoons, after the midday meal. That Wednesday had been no different: he'd supped on the usual light fare sent over from the cooks—after his taster tested it, of course. He could never be too careful, what with the Inquisition after him. He'd met with his war council and spymasters, and retired to his quarters to read, as he was wont to do. He'd taken a book from his collection, settled himself among the cushions…

And a dried rose slipped from the pages and onto his lap.

Solas blinked in surprise, holding the delicate pressed flower between his fingers. It was browned from age, but he still remembered how vibrantly white it was, once, how sweetly it had mingled with the heady scent of jasmine perfuming the balcony of the Winter Palace. How beautiful his vhenan looked that evening, as she leaned against the stone, overlooking the gardens…

"I will never understand these shems and their politics," she'd said in Elvhen, to guard against eavesdroppers. "They're so foolish, squabbling like children over a glorified chair."

He'd chuckled at her calling the Orlesian Imperial Throne a 'chair;' she always had a way of simplifying things, his vhenan . He missed her sensibility…

"It is rather poor timing on their part," he'd agreed, leaning beside her. "But I am glad we've put it behind us." He still remembered the weight of her head on his shoulder.

"I'm glad that when I faced them, you were there with me," she'd said, twirling a rosebud between her fingers. "…I saw this, when in the gardens. Reminded me of you."

"Oh? How so?"

She'd smiled her glorious smile, the one that reminded him of sun glittering on the water. "It reminded me of your… beautiful hat," she'd said.

He'd laughed. "It is a helm , not a hat; a very dashing helm, too, I'll have you know." Her eyes had sparkled so beautifully, that night, in their teasing. It made his heart ache just thinking of it. "…In Tevinter, they call roses the flower of silence. If something is done in secret, it's done sub rosa , or 'under the rose.'"

She'd held the bloom aloft over their heads. "Then I shall tell you a secret: I absolutely, positively adore you, ma vhenan ," she'd said, punctuating her words with kisses.

Solas closed his eyes to shield himself from the memories; they still came unbidden.

He had wanted to tell her. He had wanted to tell her so many times of his own terrible, burdensome secret, but couldn't find the words for it. He'd pressed the rose, preserved it to serve as a reminder, yet even that couldn't help him in his cowardice. Now it only served as a reminder of his regrets and myriad of mistakes.

Solas scoffed a laugh as a thought came to him. White roses were the flower of choice for Andrastian funerals; perhaps their ill-fated love had been foretold that night with the rose, and he'd been too foolish—or, perhaps, too stubborn—to realize it.

There was a knock on his door. "Your Dreadfulness," a scout called, "I have urgent news." Solas heaved an exasperated sigh, setting his book aside as he answered the door. The elven scout bowed, wide-eyed, no doubt surprised to meet him in person.

"How many times must I say it? Hahren , please," Solas snapped. The spy nodded, head threatening to fly off his shoulders.

"F-From our spies in the Inquisition, Your Dread—I-I mean, Hahren , ser," he stuttered. Solas waved him away with a huff, studying the handwriting as he made his way to his desk. Agent Rylen, perhaps? No. Lena the Inquisitor's personal assistant, possibly. He slid the letter-opener under the seal, eyes scanning the parchment. He never noticed the ribbon fluttering to the desk below.

'Yer Dreadfulness,'

He made a mental note to petrify whoever was training the field agents…

'It's with a heavy heart I inform ye that Her Ladyship, the Inquisitor, did not survive her injuries sustained in the field. The advisors held an Andrastian ceremony for her; the Divine herself, officiated. Inquisition reeling from impact; a blow now would cripple them, for certain.

'I await yer guidance and instruction.

'-L

'PS: I saved her favorite bracelet for ye, as a keepsake to remember her by. She always spoke of ye highly, Yer Dreadfulness , even after all that has happened. Couldn't let those damned shems burn it on the pyre.'

His fingers dented the paper as his eyes stared ahead, unseeing. The Inquisitor… did not survive? How? Why? She'd lived through dragonfire, through darkspawn and demons, through the Anchor, itself—how could a mere sword-blow finish her? Where were the healers?

Where was he , when it had happened?

His hands trembled. She'd died undoing his handiwork, in the far-flung reaches of Tevinter, while he? Solas had been comfortable here at his base, surrounded by his books and paintings. He had had his meals and wine served on pewter plates, while she'd scrounged for lizards and beetles in the desert. She'd slept in the cold mud while he'd lounged on silk cushions. Solas had been here , among his followers and sycophants, and not there with his beloved, where he ought to have been. Guilt gnawed a hole in his chest; he'd never felt more useless in his entire life.

A flash of red caught his attention. Solas picked up a length of worn red silk. His eyes lingered over the lovingly mended tears and frays, freezing midway. There, in the center, was a rose embroidered in white thread, flanked with the phrase ' Var lath vir suledin ' in white script.

"'Our love will endure all loss,'" he whispered, fingers running over the now blurry runes. Solas blinked hard. "Oh, vhenan ."

He broke then. Something physically snapped inside as he collapsed into his desk chair and wept. " Vhenan ," he wailed, " ir abelas, ma vhenan . Forgive me, I beg you, I failed you." There was no answer but cold, cruel silence. Silence, he knew, he deserved for treating her as he had.

The years stretched on in an eternity of bleak, endless gray without her. Nothing mattered, anymore. The Inquisition was, as Lena had said, sent reeling by the Inquisitor's premature death; it was all too easy to corrupt it from within, and let it dissolve into nothing. Through great trials, he brought down the Veil and fulfilled his promise. The known world ended, burnt on the altar to fuel the rise of Arlathan and the restored glory of the Elvhen. It barely resonated with Solas; he merely roamed Thedas, seeking a peace he could never find.

He somehow found himself in Skyhold, drawn to the place as a moth to a flame. His flame, his Isene , as he'd called her; even if that had not been her given name, it suited her best, in his mind. 'She who is like a flame.' His memories of her were seared into his heart and mind, driving him ever onwards to the last place where he'd been happy.

The fortress was in ruins now, long since abandoned. He walked the great hall. The fireplace where Ser Tethras once sat was ashen cold, broken by ceiling beams and crumbling masonry. The undercroft was all but nonexistent, as were most of the areas his once friends called home. He held his breath and pushed open the creaking door, unsure what he would find en route to the library.

He almost wished he hadn't looked.

The rotunda where he and his beloved had spent so many hours conversing and painting was broken, the plaster of his frescoes badly damaged from water and ice. The great chandelier had fallen, reducing his old desk to splinters. Tears filled his eyes anew at the sight of it. He could hear her laughter ring off the walls, if he listened hard enough, and yet their happy memories lay about him in ruin.

Solas sighed. He couldn't leave the room in this state; he may have neglected his Isene when alive, but he would honor her legacy in death, immortalizing it here for posterity. He centered himself, drawing upon the magic in the air to mend the frescoes and restore the fortress to its former glory. He conjured pigments, painting their story in the rotunda. It spilled into the great hall, wrapping around the throne to the mosaic panels. Their trysts, their walks on the battlements, the secret meetings no one but he, his beloved, and the stars had witnessed: he immortalized it all, tears flowing along with paint. And once he'd reached the end, somewhere on the second floor, Solas sat back on his haunches and stared. An elven woman wreathed in flame stared back, gray eyes impartial just as they had been in life. No matter how hard he searched, there was no pity in them, or forgiveness.

'Justice is hard, cold iron,' she'd said to him once, 'it doesn't bend for anyone, least of all us.' He placed his hand over the woman's raised palm, leaning his forehead against the plaster. The embroidered silk band on his wrist bore several drops of paint.

" Isene ," he whispered, "wait for me, vhenan ; I'll join you soon."

The frescoes of Skyhold are still there to this day. Fortune hunters and brave adventurers travel there from time to time, intent to see the fabled Dread Wolf's masterpiece, yet none dare stir past the courtyard. Shrieks from demons—demons of regret, they say—echo through the halls, but none of them are as loud as those coming from the late Inquisitor's quarters. Some say it's the Inquisitor's ghost, others say it's the Dread Wolf, himself, howling in his grief. Others merely claim it's the wind whistling in the holes in the roof. But whatever it may be, it doesn't account for the specter appearing on the Inquisitor's rose-covered balcony every night-white roses that had never been there while the Inquisition used the fortress-or what seems to be blood-red paint staining the flagstones below it.

Roses have been considered the flower of secrets since ancient times. In mythology, Cupid gave the god of silence a rose to keep him from spreading news of Venus's romantic 'indiscretions.' Meeting and dining rooms often bore carved roses on the ceilings, as a reminder that whatever was said there must be kept confidential. 'Sub rosa,' or 'under the rose,' is still used today when something must be done secretly or said off-record; I used Latin for Tevene here, as I felt it was appropriate.

Also, when coming up with Solas's title... I couldn't help 'Your Dreadfulness,' it was too good not to use.