Translations at the bottom.
A Room Full of Motivation
I gave Solas a sharp glance. "What?"
"You can care for Enansal. Personally," he offered.
That was an incredibly tempting offer, and yet - Enansal had never been primarily my responsibility. No child had. Yes, he had looked up to me, viewing me as his savior, and we had shared a considerable fondness that had only grown as we exchanged letters over the course of several years - but that was different from assuming the role of a parent, or at least a much-older sibling. "Is he still unhappy where he is?" I asked Solas.
"No," Solas admitted. "I reviewed and chose the people given charge of the children personally, to be certain they were suited for the task. Enansal's adjustment was difficult - but he is content where he is."
"Then I certainly won't uproot him again," I told Solas. "Especially when I have no idea whether I could do better. You shouldn't even have offered," I added. "Not when you know he's doing well where he is."
"Where he is still isn't permanent," Solas reminded me. "With you - he would have a permanent guardian, beginning now."
There was that - but it still bothered me to think that I would be taking Enansal from the company of other people, people he had come to rely on, to spend an unguessable period of years held captive with me. "Let me think," I told Solas, sitting up abruptly and turning my back on him. Enansal was...in his fourteenth year, now - an adolescent. I didn't know a great deal about children and their needs, but I knew his peer groups were beginning to take precedence over family ties. I had overseen the hunters in my clan for two years, including organizing the training of children his age and a little younger who had shown interest in and special aptitude for tracking and shooting. That training wasn't just about fostering skills - it was also about fostering peer-bonds between clanmates.
Well, that made it easy, didn't it? "The answer is still no," I sighed. "I can't take him, force him to live in hiding with only me for company, for my own peace of mind. And how do you know his current situation won't be permanent? Those children will all go through the end of the world together if you have your way. Even if I survive, I would never take him from people he loved if he wanted to stay. By the time things have settled, he might not even be a child any longer."
Solas was silent for a long moment, and I could almost hear him reviewing arguments he might make. He clearly wanted this to be a solution, likely because he had no others to offer. "Very well," he said at length, dissatisfaction audible in his voice. "But - is there anything else I could offer you?"
"Nothing springs to mind," I replied quietly. "And - all this talk of Enansal...I don't know if I could stay even if you let me see you. Not unless there were some hope of making you see reason." Parts of my conversation with Innovation had been circling through my thoughts, and those thoughts made it harder to justify staying even for him - but I didn't tell him so. I couldn't guess what he would do if he knew what I was beginning to think. Perhaps he would be pleased - he claimed he wasn't eager to destroy everything. But if he thought the new plans slowly taking root in my mind were a threat to his plans? He might not let me leave.
When he spoke again, his voice was flat: "This was always the conclusion we were going to reach. Even so, I had to try."
I wrapped my arm around myself. "You're just being grim and fatalistic to get me into bed," I whispered.
His fingers tracing my spine let me know he remembered. "As it turns out, grim fatalism isn't the most effective way to get you into bed. Angering you is more efficient."
"That's not funny," I told him, but I was smiling in spite of myself as I said it. I turned to look at him. "Would you please stop being you so I can hate you for a few moments?"
"Ma delathe," he replied, voice heavy with irony.
"You're doing it wrong," I informed him, crawling back to his side.
He put one arm behind his head and wrapped the other around my waist, pulling me down half beside and half on top of him. "You may need to give me more specific instructions."
My skin had become a little chilled away from him, and his warmth was pleasant - which didn't help with the plan to hate him for a few moments. "Remember Livius Erimond? Try being him. He was such a snivelling little toad that no one could possibly love him."
Solas ran his hand up my side to tilt my chin up so he could study me. "As glad as I might be to make the attempt for you, ma'lath, I fear I cannot grow the necessary facial hair." Though his tone remained light, his expression was concerned.
I ducked away from his hand, pressing my face to his chest. "Was that intrinsic to Erimond's repulsiveness?" I asked, my voice a little muffled against his skin.
He was silent for a long moment. "Silea," he sighed at last. "Your anger and grief need not wait. Elan rosan'sule'din nar'nu."
There was no choice but to laugh - painfully - at that. "Telemavelan. If that were true, I wouldn't be leaving here in a few hours."
"There is a difference," he said, "between enduring for a few hours, and watching the passing days grind the hope from you." His voice was a little off - frustrated, or concerned, or perhaps confused, I couldn't quite say - but something lurked behind the sentiment he was offering me. "Eolasan isalas fra'sha minen melathen - y isalan ladara na la'var'elan. Tel'isalan na uth'dan'lathal sasha."
His spoken words, leaving aside whatever he wasn't saying, were enough to make my chest tight. "I shouldn't," I insisted, my voice thick. "I shouldn't - indulge in self-pity." I forced myself to take a slow breath. "Consider: how many of the people we know have had their romantic lives go as planned? Dorian and Bull can rarely be in the same place, and never for long. Josephine and Blackwall flirted and exchanged a few tokens, but never anything more because of the difference in their social status. Varric and Bianca - she chose to marry someone else. Even Hawke, it turns out, spends more time fixing other people's problems alone than she does with Fenris. Only Sera and Dagna really have the freedom to spend as much time together as they like - and Sera's commitment to the Red Jennys combined with Dagna's commitment to finding new kinds of magic to take apart mean that they separate for long periods, too." I wrapped my arm around him and hugged him tightly. "This isn't all that different."
"Even if that were true, do you think none of them ever mourn or curse fate?" he asked. "Most of them also have benefits like regular communication and a shared purpose - and, presumably, broad agreement on how they conduct their relationships, or whether those relationships should exist at all."
"Fine," I said, pushing myself up and away from him so I could look directly into his face. I didn't miss the way his eyes flickered briefly to my breasts, but I had no time for amusement. He wanted anger, grief, and pain? I had them in abundance. "Here's one: for all your extravagant flattery, you don't think highly enough of me and my abilities to want to secure them for your own use." His eyes widened slightly. "I'm not asking you to abandon your goal, all I am asking is that you look for a more humane way to do it. If you would just - " I made a sound of wordless frustration. "Solas, if you just gave a little, you know my first loyalty is to you and our people - even above the Inquisition. I am not asking for that much, just an honest attempt not to burn the world in chaos, and every resource I can command would be at your disposal."
He smoothed a lock of hair behind my ear, his expression troubled. "You misunderstand, ma vhenan. The picture you paint is...undeniably tempting. More, even, than your skills and contacts - which are formidable - you have earned my trust many times over. All the cares that I alone bear now - some of them might be passed to you, and they would require no more attention from me, because you would go about resolving them with your usual efficiency."
"Then why?" I cried, sitting up fully.
He closed his eyes. "Would you prefer the personal or principled reason?" he asked.
"Which is worse?" I asked in return.
"Likely - the principle," he replied.
"Then tell me that one," I sighed.
He sat up before beginning, leaning back against the headboard, head averted, not meeting my eyes. "I don't know that there is any more humane way to do what I intend to do, but if there is, it would involve bringing the Veil down slowly, allowing the Fade to mix with the waking world in a slow but growing stream. In the meantime - at least until the process had advanced considerably - our people would remain mortal, they likely would not become mages as they may once I drop the Veil, many of them would remain at the mercy of humans. They would die." He finally looked at me and reached out one hand, his fingers ghosting along my cheekbone. "You would die. Besides the question of mortality - there would be war. The only way to avert those conflicts is to restore our people to absolute dominance without delay. There will be death, regardless of how I do what I do. If I must make the choice of who dies," his voice hardened and his hand fell away, "I will not choose to end the lives of my own people, whom I have already wronged so grievously."
His stare was hard, but anguish lurked beneath, and for the first time I saw clearly what Innovation had said to me - Solas might have a brilliant mind, but it was trapped under ages of remorse and guilt, of fear for the future and fear for me. He couldn't clear enough space to make use of the creativity I knew he was capable of.
The irony was, if I joined him and took on some of his load, that might give him space - but I couldn't trust him to use it as I wanted him to.
"Responsibility is not expertise. Action is not inherently superior to inaction," I quoted pointedly.
He laughed quietly, without humor. "Of course you remember everything I so unwisely revealed. Why do you think I find the Grey Wardens so unsettling? They are as foolish and desperate as I have ever been, accountable to no one, and they play with forces for which they possess little understanding."
"Like you with the Veil," I retorted.
He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "Like the Wardens, I am compelled to this rash, foolish action - and I cannot turn aside, lest the entire world fall."
I huffed and turned away from him, curling up on the bed with my back to him, too exasperated even for tears.
"Do you want to hear my personal reason, or are you too thoroughly disgusted with me now?" he asked.
"You may as well tell me. You can hardly make things worse," I grumbled in reply.
He was silent for a long moment. "I - don't know what I will become," he said at last. "Even if you and I could come to an agreement over how many casualties are too many, I wouldn't dare recruit and make use of you, no matter how - " He broke off and let out a breath. "No matter how desperately I wish to," he finished, so quietly that I wouldn't have heard him had his Fade-shaped world not been perfectly still.
"Why not?" I demanded when he didn't continue immediately.
"I cannot know what I will become," he repeated with more emphasis. "What if I am driven to hunt down everyone I ever cared for - and you chief among them?"
I sat up in surprise and turned to look at him. "What? Why would you think - that?"
"Because I have seen that kind of madness," he said carefully. "It may well be my future. My only solution, at present, is to put you entirely from my mind - to make not thinking of you such a thorough habit, that I can have some hope your memory will not surface even if my mind and self-control are eaten away to nothing."
For a moment we stared at each other as I digested his words. "I would take the risk," I whispered at length.
He reached out again, his fingers finding and tracing my jaw, skimming my neck, until his hand closed - warm and gentle - over my left shoulder and the remnants of my arm. "I know you would," he said quietly. "Your love is selfless and courageous, and - and yet of all the things I must do wrong, this is one I may do right. Your brilliance is not for my use. If I have any role in its use at all, it is only in sacrificing my own desires so that the new age of the world has you in it, working to shape it for the better."
"That is why you took the threat of my giving in to despair seriously," I realized, sighing.
"Yes," he agreed.
"That's the reason you want me to go to the inor'alas'enaan - you could seal me behind an eluvian you don't have the key for," I added.
"Yes," he whispered.
"But why didn't you just say so?" I demanded. "Why...all of this ridiculous posturing about how awful it would be for me to watch you slip away?"
He studied me for a moment. "I fear all the ways in which I might overburden you," he said, and then shook his head, smiling sadly. "Do you truly not understand why I might be ashamed of what I am driven to do, and to become - and what it might mean for you?" He peered at me closely, and then shook his head again. "Of course not. How could you understand? I wish I possessed even a fraction of your integrity."
"My integrity wouldn't fit you, because I am not you," I informed him. "And that? That wasn't worth being ashamed of."
"Wasn't it?" he asked. "Whatever danger I put you in is entirely my own doing. I allowed Corypheus to find my orb. I failed to calculate his power - his immortality - and so its destruction was my own fault, as well. Without all of that, we would not be here, and you would be safe."
"Safe with my clan, resented, resentful, and doing nothing of use," I retorted.
"Safe," Solas repeated.
I threw up my hand. "Fine. I would be safe. Desperately unhappy, but safe."
He released my shoulder to cup my face. "Arasha," he said quietly, "you are rather desperately unhappy now."
Elan rosan'sule'din nar'nu: I can edure your pain
Telemavelan: Liar
Eolasan isalas fra'sha minen melathen - y isalan ladara na la'var'elan: I know you wish these hours to be happy - but I wish to comfort you while I can
Tel'isalan na uth'dan'lathal sasha: I don't wish you to always grieve alone
Arasha: My joy