Alternate title: Pride Contemplates Modesty

If I didn't have a settled form for these, it's what I would have gone with.

I'll do the translations up here since they're just names: "Sileal" means "wisdom." "Leithas" is what I came up with for "modesty." The literal translation is "clear sight" or "illuminated sight."

Solas Contemplates Modesty

His arms felt empty as the last of Inana faded into true unconsciousness. He knew he should be glad she was resting, especially after all she had done to ensure he would have a little time for his grief, but…he missed her. Even if her temporary absence was far from the gaping wound left by losing Sileal, the ache of it did nothing to help that greater pain.

He sank down to sit in the moss Sileal had cultivated in her refuge, resting his arms on his knees and his face in his hands. The memories she had returned to him still felt raw, as though they didn't quite fit within his mind and chafed - or perhaps as though he hadn't had time to become accustomed to the fact that even a part of Leithas had survived Mythal's murder before the memory had been taken from him again.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he had demanded of Sileal when she first gave him the news, shaken from his aimless drifting through the Fade by both hope and anguish.

"I didn't know," she had replied. "She was only just revealed to me and she - it - is…not as it was."

Of course it hadn't been - parts of Leithas had inevitably been lost to the Void, and its memories had been fragmentary at best. But it had still smiled at him sweetly when they met, and it had still been determined to take on a body, even if it had been forced to do so in a more roundabout way that would leave it even less intact than either its past plans or its current iteration. Leithas had been less certain of him and the shivas'lath , but someone it trusted had evidently talked it into the oath, just as Sileal had done with him.

His mind drifted further back. Leithas had always confounded Solas to a certain degree - how not, when their natures were so opposed? There were moments when she would say his name, and he knew that she was telling him that his pride blinded him to something she saw - or believed she saw. Most of the time she had been correct on that score, he admitted to himself. She had possessed areas of blindness, of course, as any spirit - as any person - must, but matters of pride had never been among them, and she had never hesitated to offer her opinion when it was called for. Modesty, after all, was not Humility. She had always been calm and pragmatic, clear-eyed and certain in her decisions, honoring strengths in both herself and others, but always aware of limitations, too.

That had all been true the day she had told him of the final service she intended to do Mythal - at least until he had asked her not to.

"Don't do this," he had pleaded. "You see how dangerous it is, even if she will not."

"I have never seen her so taken with wrath," Leithas had replied, visibly uneasy for the first time since he had known her. "She is blind to everything else, and I fear what they will do to her if…"

"It feels like a trap," he had agreed.

"I will be her eyes one last time," Leithas had said - and that, at least, had sounded calm and certain.

"This isn't a darkness that even your clear sight can penetrate," he had growled, frustrated by her devotion to a principle that would lead her into grave danger.

When she had replied, simply, "I know," he had known any argument he might devise would be in vain. It wasn't as though she was incapable of changing her mind. Though he had typically had little success at persuading her, he had always known this was circumstantial - in part the subjects that they had differed on, which were by nature subjective, and in part his own inability to seek out the sorts of arguments she had always responded to best. Sileal had never had any difficulties, and the only problem Felassan had ever -

Solas in the present shut down that memory quickly, before he could complete it, returning his attention resolutely to his memories of the two spirits. Sileal and Leithas had spent many long hours - sometimes stretching into weeks or months - debating principles and courses of action, and had rarely remained seriously at odds even when their personal preferences differed.

He had looked up, then, to find the uneasiness that suited Leithas so poorly had returned while he reflected. "Solas, could I request one favor?" she had asked.

He had nodded, expecting…what? Messages for their mutual friends, perhaps, should the worst occur? Final arrangements for tasks Mythal had asked her to complete? Something of that sort, certainly.

"Will you kiss me before I go?" Looking away while he had stared at her in shock, she had hurried on: "I have been curious about romantic love for some time - it was what first told me that I needed to step into the waking world or face corruption."

Spirits were always more transparent in their motivations than anyone embodied, and it was at that moment he had understood precisely what had sparked her curiosity about love.

Him. Why else would she have come to him to ask for a kiss? Felassan would have given her half a dozen before she had even finished voicing the request.

And so he had kissed her, and had wondered what would happen if she returned to take on a body. Who would she become, and what would he think and feel about that person?

But she hadn't returned, and so those questions had gone unanswered, becoming one dull ache among many in his chest, complicating his grief for Mythal with anger that she had ever allowed a spirit to accompany her in the first place.

He supposed, sitting on the moss in Sileal's now-silent retreat, that he owed his one-time mentor's memory an apology. If any part of Leithas remained, he could only imagine that it had been some clever device of Mythal's invention that had saved the spirit - perhaps at the cost of Mythal's own life.

None of it made a difference in his affection for Inana. It was, in some ways, comforting to know she held a piece of his old friend, but in other ways it reopened the wound that Leithas's death had left. Particularly since…

He couldn't let it make a difference - any of it, in any of his plans. His finding love at this moment was tragic enough. That he now knew Inana was the sort of person Leithas became - that in another world this would have been a happy ending to everything they had both endured - it was almost unbearable.

But losing Mythal - and Leithas with her - had been unbearable. Losing Sileal was unbearable. This entire world he had created was unbearable.

He had become very good at bearing the unbearable.

Killing Felassan was also unbearable, in case you're wondering - but he's not thinking about that.