I think if I were to tell you that this is one of my favorite chapters in this story (of which I currently have 90), it might tell you something about why I'm so drawn to the tragedy of Solas in general.

Sacrifice

I was breathing hard by the time we all reached the Chantry and heard the doors slam behind us. Worse, my mana was nearly spent. We had saved a number of Haven's residents on the way back, and I had had to do it the hard way, moving someone I could see clearly close to them, rather than simply plucking them from danger. And I had been slinging templars around at the same time, keeping them away from anyone who seemed vulnerable, including myself.

If I were just better at this -

Vivienne pressed a lyrium potion into my hand and I downed it without protest. That would help with my reserves, anyway.

Cole was sitting with Chancellor Roderick - who was still hanging about for some reason - against a pillar near the door, the same one I had coincidentally chosen to lean against. The boy-shaped spirit looked up as he felt me noticing them. "He tried to stop a templar," Cole told me. "The blade went deep. He's going to die."

"What a charming boy," Roderick gasped.

Cullen called my attention away before either of them could say more. "Herald! Our position is not good. That dragon stole back any advantage you might have earned us."

"I've seen an archdemon," Cole told us. "I was in the Fade, but it looked like that."

I hadn't gotten a good look with my normal vision, but I had gotten a better smell than I wanted - it stank to the heavens.

"I don't care what it looks like," Cullen snapped. "It has cut a path for the remainder of that army. They'll kill everyone in Haven!"

I put my hand on Cullen's arm, trying to communicate that he should tread gently with Cole, but Cole didn't seem to notice the tone. "The Elder One doesn't care about the village," he said. "He only wants the Herald."

"But why?" I asked. "The Breach is closed, and I won't open it for him again. Does he seek revenge?"

"I don't know," Cole said, his eyes dropping to the floor unhappily. "He's too loud. It hurts to hear him. He wants to kill you. No one else matters, but he'll crush them, kill them anyway. I - I don't like him."

"You don't like - " Cullen began, incredulous, but I cut him off quickly.

"Of course not. Thank you, Cole - you've given us information we didn't have before. It's enough." I smiled at the spirit, knowing it didn't reach my eyes, but needing to make the effort.

"Herald," Cullen growled, "there are no tactics to make this survivable. The only thing that slowed them was the avalanche. We could turn the remaining trebuchets, cause one last slide - bury Haven. We're dying, but we can decide how. Many don't get that choice."

I blinked at him, somehow not expecting suicide tactics from a former templar.

"Yes, that," Cole said into my stunned silence. "Chancellor Roderick can help. He wants to say it before he dies."

"There is a path," Roderick wheezed. "You wouldn't know it unless you'd made the summer pilgrimage. As I have. The people can escape. She must have shown me. Andraste must have shown me so I could...tell you. I never meant to start on the path - it was overgrown, a whim. Now with so many in the Conclave dead, to be the only one who remembers...I don't know, Herald."

It was the first time he had given me that title, and for the first time I didn't entirely loathe it. I could see how the thought of divine intervention comforted him...and he was dying.

"It's a start," I allowed, "but the dragon is flying. I can't bury it, only the army."

"It won't stray from the Elder One," Cole assured me, "and he's here for you."

"Leaving you no escape," Cullen summed up grimly.

"Was there ever much chance of an escape?" I asked, a little surprised he would think so.

"Perhaps you will surprise it," he replied almost desperately. "Find a way…"

"Perhaps," I told him, lying.

His hand brushed my shoulder, and then he turned, calling out orders, as I considered the most difficult part of this. My own life was...not an easy sacrifice, but I had once been Second, and any Keeper worth anything would sacrifice her life for the clan in an instant. It was a possibility I had come to terms with at a very young age. The problem was, I couldn't go alone. I would have to bring people with me. Even if I managed to send them away before loosing the avalanche, I might not be able to hold back until they made it up to the pass. There was a very good chance some of my friends weren't coming back from this, either.

Cole helped Roderick to his feet, and then let someone else take him. The rest of my companions gathered around, having heard some or all of what we talked about. I didn't know what any of them thought.

"I will come with you," Cassandra said.

"All of us will," Varric added.

"No," I said quickly. "Not all of you. Only those I need. The mages, other than myself, have to stay here - the soldiers and townspeople will need you."

"That - " Solas began to argue.

"We don't have time for this," I cut him off savagely. "They will need you - for warmth, for healing, for when things inevitably break. I don't care how many other mages survived, they will need all of you. By that same token, Cassandra - the Inquisition - "

"Can survive easily without me," she replied. "Am I not the one whom you have most often practiced your magic on? We need every edge, even those that may seem inconsequential."

"All right," I sighed. "Varric, Sera - you'll also be more useful with ones who are evacuating. It's nearing winter, and game is the only thing likely to be reasonably plentiful. If they are to have a chance at not starving, they will need skilled archers."

"Are you frigging serious?" Sera demanded. "That - that makes too much sense to be fair!"

"I feel very similarly," Dorian sniffed.

I glared in their general direction.

"Cole will come with me. And...Blackwall. I'm sorry, Bull, but you don't have an aura for me to find. I need - "

"Every edge," he sighed heavily. "No, that makes sense, Boss."

"We will restock our potion belts," Cassandra said. "Come, Blackwall. Cole. The rest of you find Cullen and make yourselves useful."

They scattered - except for Solas. I found I was unsurprised when his hands closed on my arms, and he dragged me into a shadowed corner. "I am coming with you," he said, stopping near enough that I could look up into his eyes, roughly the color of silverite and similarly hard in the dim light. "Whatever differences we may have, it is childish to put the success of the mission at risk merely - "

I opened my mouth to argue with him, to assure him that my decisions had nothing to do with his unjust attitude toward my people, when I realized how much simpler it would be merely to let him feel my reasons. Simpler and faster, and...Creators, I hadn't even finished out my twenty-sixth year. Winter was the season of my birth, and it wouldn't officially begin for several weeks yet. I would make this sacrifice, but Void take it all if I was going to do it before I got a real, proper kiss.

I took his face in my hands and pulled him closer, lifting myself on my toes at the same time, and pressed my mouth to his. His anger, frustration, fear, and shame all melted away into confusion, which was quickly subsumed under another flavor of fear and a wave of desperation. His hands settled at my waist first, but then slid down to hold my hips, and when I opened my mouth his tongue touched mine, lightly, before finding and tracing my bottom lip. One of my hands stroked along his jaw and down his neck to clutch at his shoulder. I hadn't realized quite how firmly muscled he was, though his shoulders were broader than perhaps any other elf I had ever seen, and he had carried me without trouble when I was injured. I should have guessed after that incident, perhaps - I was no taller than average, but I wasn't as slender as most elven women.

All I could do was press myself against him, wanting to feel - something? everything? - before I walked back out in an attempt to hold off an impossible danger long enough that giving my life made any difference at all. He growled, no doubt feeling my growing resignation, and pressed me back against the wall. One of his hands left my hip, travelling down my thigh -

What he might have done I could only imagine, because that was when Cullen yelled something to Cassandra, startling us both. Solas jerked back a pace, my hands sliding from his face and shoulder, until we might reasonably have been arguing rather than desperately embracing. "I can't keep you from coming with us," I whispered, "but you will be needed here." I raised my eyes to his, even though I knew he already understood what I felt without needing to see it written on my face. "You will be needed here...and I - I would like to know I at least saved you."

He swallowed and looked away.

"I'm not that different from any of my people," I told him finally, needing to say it before I died. "We're all just people - some of us are hopelessly intolerant of anything that even smells like a new idea, some are eager to expand their understanding of the world in any direction available, and most are somewhere in between. I'm not an anomaly, just near one extreme within a very wide range. If you care for me at all, keep in mind that any one of them might be another just like me."

His eyes closed, and I could see him reaching for words - but Cassandra found us first. "Are you ready, Herald?" she asked gently. I didn't know what she thought was happening - whether she was perceptive enough to see the degree of emotion simmering between us - whether she recognized it as inappropriate for companions or even friends. Perhaps she merely thought Solas had taken being left behind particularly hard.

"Tuelanen ama na, Solas," I told him, placing my hand on his shoulder, and not on his face as I would have preferred.

He swallowed again. "Sule in'tasir i've'an," he replied, letting me know he was as certain of my death as I was.

At least neither of us had any illusions left to break. "I'm ready," I told Cassandra, and stepped around Solas to take her arm.

Tuelanen ama na: Creators protect you

Sule in'tasir i've'an: Until we meet in the Beyond