In case you're wondering: of course the pun is on purpose. I still occasionally read John Donne because I love his poetry so much. Any puns are on purpose.

Translations at the bottom.

Solace

"You know," I told Solas as we lay together, both our heart rates slowly returning to normal, "if you had given me a few minutes, I would have happily reciprocated."

I felt more than heard his laugh as a hitch in his breathing and a puff of air on my ear. "And if I had been capable of giving you a few minutes, I would have happily accepted," he replied in a lazy murmur, and then sighed. "How many hours has it been since I fed you?"

"How would I know?" I asked, but my stomach let me know it was wholly in favor of a meal.

"Too many, certainly. Ir abelas - I forget to eat far too often…" Perhaps sensing my amusement, he opened his eyes to look at me and found me watching him with a patronizing smile. "...as you know far too well," he finished. "You might have reminded me."

"I was too busy alternately arguing with you and having sex with you. I forgot, too," I told him. "But I am hungry, if you can arrange for something."

He whispered a few words, and a little formless wisp of energy came at his call. He gave it a list of instructions - or perhaps requests - in Elven, though he used a number of words I didn't know, and spoke so swiftly, in an accent so different from any I had heard among the Dalish, that I only managed to catch half of what he said.

"I didn't realize you were trying to sound Dalish when you spoke Elven," I told him when the wisp had gone. I got out of bed and stretched, thinking over what I wanted to wear. His accent had always been strange to me, but there were many clans I had never personally encountered, and I had put the oddness down to that - until I learned the truth, of course.

"I'm not, specifically," he replied, sounding mildly offended even though his gaze was appreciative as he watched me move about. "Merely adopting the partial vowel shift that occurred as the language was reconstructed. You would have considerable difficulty understanding me, if I didn't. My accent is still quite distinct from yours - or any of your people."

"A vowel shift," I said, summoning clothing very similar to what I had been wearing earlier with a mental shrug. "Do you think you might send me some materials to learn to do it the other way? Shift my vowels back to what they would have been in your time? I...can imagine reasons that might be useful."

He sat up in bed, studying me with some emotion I couldn't read. "I - yes. I can arrange for something, so long as mysterious packages appearing in your living space don't perturb you."

"No, Solas, I expect it sent by courier - and make sure you're outing one of your agents when you do it," I replied dryly, summoning a brush and pulling it through my hair as he finally rose and dressed himself with a thought. I sighed. "I'll have to find someone to practice aloud with, preferably someone who already knows the language, which won't be easy thanks to your influence over most of the Dalish."

"Are you expecting an apology?" he asked calmly, but went on before I could answer. "Ir abelas. I suppose I owe you one - I can also imagine situations in which having mastered enough Elvhen pronunciation to make yourself understood would be more than merely useful. It might be essential in certain matters. I'm glad you thought of it, and I am sorry that I must make such mastery more difficult to acquire."

Spirits appeared carrying dishes of food, then, and I watched them set the balcony table as I finished brushing my hair. Some looked solid, indistinguishable from normal, physical people, while others were degrees more nebulous. The least cohesive were merely vaguely elven silhouettes that terminated some distance above the floor - much as Latha had been when I first met it. Solas directed them, but now he wore his affection openly, smiling and thanking them by name for their help: Duty, Courtesy, Fidelity, Devotion, and other similar concepts. I couldn't put names to them individually, but I thanked them generally before they left. They responded with appreciative murmurs, again referring to me as fenes'saota.

"Please be aware that this is not a commentary on my expectations - but you still have my gratitude for treating them, my spirit allies, as rational beings and not as things to be ordered about," Solas said as I made my way toward the table.

"Not a commentary on your expectations of me, you mean," I said as I sat down. "That you feel the need to express it is most certainly a commentary on your expectations in general - and, I feel certain, for good reason. Are spirits treated especially badly now?" I asked.

He handed me a plate before answering. Our meal was again Dalish, and more particularly typical of my own clan: halla-milk cheese paired with fruit and nuts, and rabbit pasties made with vegetables and an herb butter. Most other Clans didn't have civilized luxuries like flour for pastry - Clan Lavellan had had the advantage of a steady trade of game, furs and certain potions in return for human staples like flour and eggs for generations.

"There have always been those willing - eager, even - to exploit spirits for their own gain," Solas told me, "just as there have always been those willing to make thinking, physical beings into slaves. The difference is that, with spirits held behind the Veil, otherwise well-meaning people can easily decide or be taught to disregard the possibility that more evolved spirits deserve the same respect as any other rational creature."

"So mages still enslaved them - at least sometimes - in the days of Elvhenan," I said before taking a slice of peach from my plate and eating it with a wedge of the cheese. Even Fiona hadn't managed to serve halla-milk cheese. I couldn't remember the last time I had eaten it - sometime before I left my clan to observe the Conclave in Haven.

"They did," Solas agreed, pausing to answer before taking a bite of his pasty. "Ironically, however, demonstrably rational spirits had significant protections around their service throughout most of the empire. Sou'i've'an'thanelanen - those, like me, you would call Fade or Rift mages - had a great deal to say on the subject, and because our discipline was respected, we were listened to." He bit into his meal as though taking out his frustrations on it.

"That isn't a bad thing, Solas," I told him. "Yes, those same protections should have extended to everyone in the empire, but not saving everyone from bad policies doesn't negate the good you did in saving someone."

He took his time chewing and swallowing. "Ma serannas. You are correct, of course. At times the bitterness of my failures leaves me unable to appreciate my rare successes."

"Well - learn to appreciate them," I advised him. At his skeptical look, I added, "Regret makes you impatient and panicky, and then you begin mistaking the insanely stupid for the clever." I took a breath, paused, and decided he should be reminded: "You also sometimes create demons. I know you're a god of rebellion, but you don't have to rebel against everything. Obvious good sense, for example."

He gave a little snort of laughter. "Were I a god, my first demand would be somewhat more reverence from you."

"No it wouldn't," I replied, fixing my attention on my meal. "I'm not at all certain you are capable of demanding somewhat more - or less - of anything. You are a very all-or-nothing sort of person, you know."

"I do." He sighed and closed his eyes for a long moment before shaking his head and refocusing on what he was eating.

We ate in silence for several minutes. As I was coming to the end of my meal, Solas set aside his plate, several sheets of foolscap and a pencil taking its place. He looked across the table at me and I raised my eyebrows in return, asking the question silently. "Would you be willing to show me the equations you have been working on? To calculate trajectories?" he asked.

"I thought you weren't interested in mathematics," I responded, surprised by the request.

"Not in general, no, but I am interested in you. Seeing you light up with enthusiasm is…" He shook his head helplessly. "There are few things that give me more joy."

"All right," I agreed, aware I was blushing. I finished my last few bites and then dragged my chair to his side of the table. It was crowded with both of us. "You could make this bigger," I told him.

"Or…" he said, leaning in to kiss my neck as our two chairs merged into a single, short bench.

"How is that better?" I asked.

He pulled me against him with one arm, and used the other to reposition my legs so they crossed his, though I wasn't quite sitting on him. Then he handed me the pencil. "Start from the beginning," he instructed.

I didn't - not from the very beginning. He already knew algebra, thankfully, so instead I began with simple derivatives...and within an hour we were discussing differential equations it had taken me months to master. An hour after that, we were deep in a discussion about the logical problems with the infinitesimals Lennan used to make his calculations. We were in the middle of arguing - my contention was that infinitesimals merely needed to be formalized to be made rigorous, while Solas maintained another framework would more quickly and easily grant the discipline the rigor it required - when I came to a realization.

"You're showing off!" I interrupted him as he mused on the benefits of decoupling mathematics from physical reality.

"Excuse me?" he replied, his eyes going wide in a good approximation of innocence - almost as good an approximation as that provided by infinitely small points defining a line.

"You heard me." I poked my finger at his midsection, more or less playfully. I was slightly offended, but much more amused. "You didn't ask to do this because you wanted to watch me doing it - you wanted to show off how quickly you could pick it up." I spent a moment regarding him suspiciously, considering and discarding possible reasons. "You weren't - you couldn't have been - did you get jealous because I called Lennan brilliant?"

"I did want to watch you doing it," he protested, but notably didn't argue about the rest of my conclusion. "And if I learned quickly, perhaps I had an engaging instructor."

I laughed outright at that. "My instruction had almost nothing to do with it, and you know it as well as I do. Would it make you feel better if I told you that you were also brilliant? Perhaps mentioned something about your vast intellect - or perhaps I already did say that once, and you immediately rejected the compliment."

"You didn't precisely phrase it as a compliment," he reminded me - or it might have been a protest.

"And yet I'm fairly certain that someone as brilliant as you are shouldn't have trouble reading between the lines," I retorted.

He laughed and caught my chin in his hand. "Silea. Arasha. Yes, the prospect of gaining your admiration in a subject that means a great deal to you was certainly a worthwhile side benefit - but my primary motivation was simply a desire to participate in your preferred intellectual pursuit." His gaze cut away from mine. "Though, admittedly, I may have wanted to share it with you more urgently knowing there are...others with whom you also share this passion."

I moved, swinging one of my legs over his to straddle his lap and laying my arm across his shoulder. My hand came to rest at the nape of his neck, and I stroked his scalp lightly with my nails, making him shiver. "There are all of three, dahn'direlan: Augustus, whose main concern is logic, not mathematics, who is human, and who treats me as a granddaughter. He admonishes me with young lady, but I'm fairly certain that is in deference to my title - he is certainly thinking girl and child when he does it. There is Wilhelmina Leiber, at the University of Markham - also human - who, while attempting to study the motions of the stars and planets, has hit on some of the same equations Lennan has found. And then there is Lennan, whom I have never met. I don't even know how old he is - probably over thirty considering that Augustus refers to him as that young man, but I haven't the least idea. He has entirely ignored every polite personal inquiry I have directed his way. Some of his letters are literally just pages of equations. When he's feeling particularly tolerant, he gives me arrows or one-line explanations to let me know which ones are related - the rest of the time I have to puzzle out their connections myself."

Solas smiled up at me fondly, his hands finding their way to my waist, but there was an edge of bitterness in his expression. "You have no need to justify your friendships to me, and I am not jealous of them. May I point out, however, that I have no reason to believe you would be dissuaded merely because a man is difficult?"

"It isn't the same," I told him. "You might have been a little reticent about yourself, but you were still personable. You told me stories, discussed ideas, bantered - with words. I enjoy equations, but they don't convey emotion or personality well."

"I'm not jealous," he repeated, "merely envious. I will never be a permanent part of your life, and so I have an urge to reach into all its corners, to find everything you love and touch it at least lightly."

That was...not a sentiment I had anticipated, and his words hit me hard. "Solas - ane ma'sal'shiral," I leaned down and brushed kisses to his face, hoping to hide how near tears I was.

"Sul'mala," he replied steadily. "I have too much faith in you to believe your spirit will remain forever on this path - that you will never find new ways to think and new directions to grow. Were I going to survive this, we would grow together, but as I will not - I know you are too bright and resourceful to trap yourself with memories of me. One day you will find you think back on me in the same way you think back on your struggle against Corypheus and the Breach - as a transformational experience, but one that no longer actively reshapes your present decisions."

I hid my face against his neck and swallowed a sob, my nails digging into his skin as my hand tightened convulsively. I felt him flinch and relaxed my hand immediately, but he only turned his head to brush a kiss against my ear.

"Still," he whispered, "I am not eager for that day to come. Selfishly, I desire to remain a part of your present for as long as I can."

This time, I couldn't stop the little whimper that escaped and squeezed my eyes closed on the tears that threatened to follow.

Solas seemingly recognized my struggle for the first time. "You don't have to - " he began.

"If I start now," I ground out, interrupting him, "I don't know when - or if - I will stop."

Abruptly, his arms wrapped around me tightly and he got to his feet with an effort, lifting me with him. Surprise distracted me from grief, and I wrapped my legs around his hips reflexively, my hand leaving his neck to clutch at his shoulder.

Once he had gained his feet, my weight didn't seem to trouble him significantly. He carried me to the bed and put me down with care, pulling me flat onto the mattress as he stretched out beside me. I discovered our clothes had disappeared at some point, and took advantage of it by pressing my body against his. "Lasas em ama nar'mis," I begged, desperate to get closer to him before the chance was gone.

He went still but for the motion of his chest as he exhaled slowly. Then, instead of replying, he reached up and smoothed my hair away from my face as his lips found mine. But, though I clung to him in desperation, his kiss was gentle - unhurried and reassuring - and his hand stroked its way calmly through my hair and then down my back before returning to my head and beginning again.

I didn't want reassuring - I wanted a passion fierce enough to make a stand against savagery of my impending loss. Reassurance wouldn't leave me too breathless to sob or too distracted by pleasure to feel. All it promised was that I would come through his loss more or less intact - not that there was any way to avoid losing him. I didn't want it. I didn't even know that I wanted to come through intact.

Solas offered no comment as my chest tightened convulsively with audible sobs. He didn't stop kissing me as my tears wet both our faces and left the taste of salt on our tongues. His hand continued its slow journey through my hair and down my back, the soothing comfort it offered almost a mockery of the future that stretched out before me, devoid of any such thing.

And yet - it worked. All of it. The gentleness, the reassurance, the acceptance - I didn't cry forever, as I had feared I might. I didn't even eat up much of our remaining time together.

"I had hoped to give you this," he whispered after I had been silent for several minutes, my thoughts lulled into formlessness through comforting repetition. "You ought to have the experience as a reference - when you need to remember it."

"I don't know that it will help," I told him dully. "Learning to live without you has meant accustoming myself to self-sufficiency when everything is terrible. Remembering all the times you told me exactly what I needed to hear in order to pick myself up and go on only adds your absence to whatever has knocked me flat to begin with. Perhaps mourning you directly will be different. Or perhaps not."

"No one else tells you what you need to hear?" he asked, his hand stilling for a moment on my hair before going on.

"No one else seems to know what I need to hear," I corrected him. "At least not consistently. Every once in a while Sera comes up with an unexpected insight, or Bull. Varric is a decent source, when I can get his attention in a timely manner - which isn't often."

"Not Cassandra? Leliana? Dorian?" he asked.

"That is a role I fill for Cassandra more than the other way around," I replied, burying my nose in his neck. "She needs permission to be fallible - she doesn't remind other people of imperfection's inevitability. Leliana is busy, and I am supposed to be lightening her load. Like you, she trusts me to take care of things. So I do. Dorian is usually too busy fretting about whatever thing I've found myself tangled up in this time to know what I need to hear to get myself out of it again. And - I feel bad about that, considering how many of his own concerns he should be fretting about instead."

"I believe I had forgotten how many times I helped put events or decisions you came to regret into perspective for you," Solas said quietly. "You have done it so often for me, and your mistakes are usually so minor compared to my own - it seemed a small thing, hardly worth remembering."

"Not to me," I retorted, and we fell silent again for several long moments.

At last Solas sighed, his hand coming to rest on my back. "Do you think you could sleep again?"

Again? It couldn't be more than two or three hours before I was supposed to leave. The worst thing about giving in and crying that way was how raw it left me - I swallowed my disappointment only with considerable effort. "Probably, if you have other things you must see to."

"I meant - " A warm breath of air touched my ear as he laughed. "Del'rajane assan. I meant with me. Together. There is something I would like - I think I ought to - show you, but I am uncertain if I can lead you there while you remain awake."

"Oh!" I breathed, surprised. He had always seemed resistant to the idea of us actually falling asleep together in the same bed. Even earlier today, after the question of sex was already thoroughly settled, he had left me to sleep alone - though that was understandable since I had hardly warned him of my arrival, or that I would demand a portion of his time. I knew how much oversight was required to organize forces to oppose him - no doubt destroying and/or restoring the world required a similar level of attention.

"Which is not to say," he continued in a lower voice, recalling me from my reflections on the matter, "that I won't enjoy learning what it is like to wake beside you."

I tilted my chin up until we were nose to nose, so I could look into his eyes - more grey than blue in this light. He gazed steadily back at me. "Well. I...never expected to see you release caution so entirely."

His gaze dropped from mine for a moment - perhaps in acknowledgment - before returning. "If I could become sufficiently numb, I thought it would be easier to rip out my own heart. But that does you a disservice - and me as well, I believe. I don't know what I will become, but I have been a man - and, at times," and here his tone became rueful, "even a reasonably good one. Giving myself up before the sacrifice is required would be a betrayal, not only of myself, not only of you, but of everyone who has ever managed to care for me in spite of my many flaws."

I pulled him toward me and kissed him, hard, before any more tears could make an appearance. "Ane tual em nulama garahnen i've'undirthan."

"Why?" Solas asked, sounding honestly uncertain. "I regret that you couldn't change my mind about anything that matters to the larger picture, but your righteous anger - and the words that accompanied it - at least forced me to reconsider this point." He closed his eyes. "That - and your selflessness," he added in a whisper. "I understand sacrifice. Why I thought you wouldn't - I cannot even say. Perhaps rewriting your memory into a less ideal shape made it easier to let go, though perhaps I simply underestimated you. Again."

"Solas," I said, fighting to keep my voice even, "you know even if you are right, even if one day you are merely one of the most important people who ever shaped my life - you know I will always, always love you."

"Eolasan," he said, and then gave a humorless snort of laughter. "Ir abelas."

"Tel'abelas," I retorted - and then there was no more to say. I curled up against him and enjoyed the unfamiliar experience of falling asleep as I listened to his breathing.

Ane ma'sal'shiral: You are my life/You are my soul's journey

Sul'mala: For now

Lasas em ama nar'mis: "Allow me to sheathe your blade" - asking for sex

Del'rajane assan: "Misdirected arrow," shortened form of "ara dirth de del'rajane assan," meaning less "I shouldn't have said that" and more "I was unclear."

Ane tual em nulama garahnen i've'undirthan: You are causing me to regret everything I said before

Eolasan: I know

Tel'abelas: Literally "no sorrow," but it mostly seems to mean "I'm not sorry." I do wonder what they use for "you're not sorry."