Couple of translations at the bottom.

Exploration and Explanation

I emerged from Solas's memory feeling as though my cheeks were on fire - which was ridiculous considering that I was dreaming in the Fade and my body wasn't even actually present. If I had thought my memory of that encounter was sexually-charged, it was nothing compared to the way he remembered it. Which led inevitably to my frustrations: first, that my watch had apparently come at such an inopportune moment that morning, and, second, that Solas hadn't seen fit to tell me any of this in the day we had had together.

Upon reflection, though, I supposed one day could never have been enough to explore all the things we might have wanted to try, and it wasn't as though we had needed games to enjoy each other. And as for the other frustration - well, how many times had Solas been on the point of giving in to his desires - or mine - and yet managed to refrain at the last moment? Who was to say this time would have been any different?

I went back to my own memory, and then to Solas's again, taking note of the differences. Among them: I was considerably more eloquent in his memory. I wondered who remembered more correctly. Likely I did, or so I thought at first. Shouldn't I know better than Solas how I spoke? But then I remembered his incredible ability to recall the most inane details, and wasn't quite so certain. Perhaps my feelings - and the frustrated sense I had never expressed them fully - made me remember my words as more halting than they had been. Perhaps, though, Solas remembered the best possible version of me. Probably both were true, and the reality lay somewhere between. Funny, though, how little discrepancy there was between our versions of what he had said.

After alternating between our versions of the memory a few more times, I began to wonder if I could somehow access both at the same time. The memory pillars were near enough together for me to touch both. Also, it was the Fade, and nothing was entirely fixed here - I likely could have repositioned them slightly had I needed to. Taking a breath, I leaned my left shoulder against one, while laying my right hand on the other.

I honestly don't know what I thought would happen. Each memory was from a particular perspective, watching though either my eyes or Solas's, and it wasn't as though I could be in two minds at once. Or at least, if I could, it likely wouldn't have made any sense at all.

But I'm glad curiosity made me try it.

The scene seemed to explode out from my position, unfolding around me until all I could see were the dunes of the Hissing Wastes, silvery under the night sky. I gingerly removed myself from the pillars, and those Fade-constructed representations of our memories obligingly became two of the equipment tents from that particular camp. I found my past self a little distance away, and watched as Solas approached, his face thoughtful, with a small line of concern marking the space between his brows.

The sight of him made me forget to breathe - he was so beautiful in the moonlight - and I realized something that hadn't occurred to me before: the memories as held by the Fade monuments weren't pure experience. They were mediated by the thoughts we remembered having as we sowed the memories in the Fade. That extra layer of thought put them essentially at two removes, because I could still think as present-day me, even while I was inhabiting Solas's thoughts, or those of my past self. In a way, that mediation was part of the point, especially when I was watching through Solas. I wanted to know what he felt and thought. But it was less immediate than feeling that I was standing here, only as myself, watching Solas cross one of our camps in the Hissing Wastes.

It had only been two days since I had last seen him. I hadn't forgotten how he looked, and yet it seemed I had forgotten how it felt to be looking at him. Helplessly, I drifted toward him, my thoughts consumed by how badly I wanted to lick his jaw - perhaps bite his ear -

I was paying so much attention to Solas, that I entirely failed to notice the representation of my past self until I bumped into me. That touch caused a kind of seismic shift - and all at once I was that past me. The other representation had disappeared. The Wastes stretched out before me. Behind me, I heard Solas's approaching footsteps. I glanced down and saw even my clothing had changed: now I wore both armor and heavy layers over the armor to protect against the cold.

I also had two hands.

"It's nearly dawn," Solas's voice said behind me.

I immediately turned to face him, unable to wait for the moment as it had happened in reality - and just as immediately found myself off to one side, no longer occupying the central role in this scene. Another me - or the same one that had been there before - had taken my place, and was still staring out over the desert, enraptured. That was odd, but a moment of thought was enough to suggest the likeliest reason: the events of this memory were fixed. If I played a role properly, I was welcome to it - but if I didn't, the scene would continue on without me.

From both listening to mages and my own more limited experiences with the Fade, I knew that some spirits had the capability to reflect particular individuals so thoroughly that they could think and act in a good approximation of how those people would think and act even in novel situations. These representations of myself and of Solas weren't spirits, though. They were - call them phantoms, perhaps, conjured from the stuff of the Fade itself: no different, ultimately, from a handkerchief or a hair pin.

No different but for the emotion I attached to them - to him.

I wondered, watching the conversation play out before me, whether Solas had known exactly what he was leaving for me - if he had known all the various ways I would be able to experience these memories. Then I realized what a fool I was - of course he knew. He knew everything there was to know about the workings of the Fade, at least in these shallower layers where dreamers actively shaped this world. It wouldn't surprise me if he had left things this way, without any instructions, just to find out if I was clever or curious enough to discover the various facets of his gift.

Or - not find out. The chances he was actually monitoring me, or that he would learn how I had interacted with his gift, were vanishingly small. More accurately, he had left no instructions as a means of encouraging and rewarding my curiosity as I found new ways to manipulate the Fade. It was ironic, really, that he claimed he had never had much interest in instruction. He shouldn't want me to gain mastery over the Fade - we were still adversaries - but he couldn't resist my interest in something he had such passion for. Augustus, I knew, would act exactly the same way if he had some pressing reason not to teach me about logic. And if I had some reason to think Solas would use my equations to calibrate trebuchets he planned to acquire and use against us? I might have managed not to share the precise equations, but I would have found it nearly impossible not to offer him most of the information he would have needed to derive them himself.

That was the curse of loving knowledge, I supposed.

Day came to the Hissing Wastes, and in front of me Solas leaned in to kiss my representation's cheek. I followed him as both phantoms turned to go their separate ways, shadowing him as he made his way back through the camp. Now that I was aware of what he had been thinking, I fixed my gaze on his face, trying to read some sign of it in his expression. All I could see was that he was lost in thought, though, and he was often lost in thought. I had always assumed he was thinking about magic or philosophy, or some other profoundly consequential subject. How often had he been absorbed, instead, by the thought of us together? The way he had broken things off almost made sense from that perspective. I distracted you from your duty. It will never happen again.

I had to laugh. Apparently I had been considerably less distracted than he had been.

How long would this memory run? My portion continued for some minutes after Solas and I parted, but his ended about the time he made it to his tent. Would I be able to watch him…? That possibility put a smile on my face.

We reached his tent, and I watched as he opened the flap and went inside. This was past the point where his memory stopped, so perhaps -

I reached for the flap myself and pushed it aside, peering in.

The tent was empty.

"Solas!" I growled in frustration. "Ane palasnirelan!"

That was enough exploration for one night - or, rather, morning. Time might be different in the Fade, but it turned out that enough practice could give one the ability to keep track of it anyway, and I knew morning was advancing. I wrenched myself free of the dream and went back to the waking world.

The bed in the room Fiona had given me was large, beautifully crafted, and certainly antique. It was also canopied, though when I had arrived, it had lacked hangings. Either bed-hangings were out of fashion currently or Fiona remembered how early I typically rose, and had inferred that I had no desire to block out the morning light. After my return from the Fade, though, I had asked for some to be hung. I had too much to do in the world of dreams to remain beholden to the sun.

Accordingly, the air was dim as I sat up in bed, and light spilled in as soon as I opened the curtains. I had asked Elze, the maid assigned to me, not to bother waiting outside the door until I woke, as my schedule wouldn't be regular while I searched the Fade for Nehnadahlen and I didn't want to waste her time, so I had to summon her and then wait until she arrived before I could begin dressing in earnest.

This morning she came with breakfast - and with Harding.

"I didn't think you would mind eating here with me," Harding told me apologetically as she indicated to the maid that she would arrange our meal. "I wanted to talk privately with you."

"Let me just dress," I replied, and allowed myself to be whisked away to do precisely that.

"Ball tomorrow," Harding commented when I emerged and sat down to have my hair brushed and braided.

"I know," I responded, managing not to make it a groan. "Sera arrives, as well."

"Is it strange that I'm actually sort of looking forward to telling her about your adventures?" Harding asked.

"Yes," I told her. "She'll be furious, you know."

"Yeah," the scout agreed, "but not with me. And her language gets colorful - more colorful - when she's angry. The last time my brother wrote to ask me about whether I had given any more thought to letting him arrange a marriage for me, I told him he could drown his arrangement in a bucket of darkspawn piss and then shove the entire thing up his ass. He hasn't mentioned it since."

"And Sera gave you that?" I asked, chuckling.

"It was closely adapted from something I overheard her yelling at a chevalier who was harassing one of the scullery maids at Skyhold. I left out the part about no hope of the Wardens taking a poncy soft-handed pissface pretty-boy, because it doesn't fit my brother," Harding answered, amusement evident in her voice. "He's not pretty, for one thing."

"I didn't know your family was pressuring you to leave the Inquisition," I told her.

"Mostly just my oldest brother and my mother," Harding said with a shrug. "Mom wants all of us to marry and give her grandchildren, and Dovris wants to expand the family's trading business. The fastest way to do that is through marriage alliances."

"I had no idea." I turned to look at Elze as she tied off my braid and gave it a pat. "I very much appreciate not having to do that one-handed," I told her.

"I know, Your Worship," she replied with a little smile. "I've seen the mess you make of it, trying to do it yourself. Is there anything else?"

"No, not now. Thank you," I answered.

"As you prefer, Your Worship." She dropped me a respectful curtsey and then left, closing the door firmly behind her.

"How private is this conversation?" I asked Harding. "Should we move to the bedroom for it, and then come back out to eat?" My sitting room lay between the hall and the bedroom, so it would be harder for someone to listen in if we were there. I liked Elze very much, but she was an elf - and at the moment most elves, especially servants, were sadly suspect. I didn't doubt Solas had agents everywhere.

"No, it's not...politically sensitive. Any more than everything about you is politically sensitive, I mean," she assured me. I nodded and sat down across the table from her. "It's just - are you still in contact with him?"

I felt my eyes go wide. "Solas?" I mouthed, and she nodded. "Not at all. Why would you think so? I mean," I laughed softly, "I won't say I don't wish I were, but that would be - inadvisable on several fronts. Moreover, he would never agree to it."

She blew out a long breath. "Okay. Sorry, you should eat. I didn't actually mean to spring that on you right away - "

"Did Leliana put you up to asking?" I wondered, both mildly amused and slightly annoyed, as I began spearing sausages and spooning eggs onto my plate."

"Not...exactly," Harding replied, cheeks going pink. "I brought it up - but she definitely didn't discourage me from asking once I explained why."

"Why?" I asked simply, starting on my breakfast.

Harding took a roll of bread, but didn't actually bite into it. Instead she began crumbling it to bits over her plate. "It's just that, well, I spent a pretty good amount of time with you the last three times he…"

"Left me," I finished for her when she trailed off.

She shrugged. "I might have said got scared and ran away, but - "

"He only got scared and ran away one of those times." I paused and thought about it. "One and a half. And only once did his fear really have anything to do with me."

"If you say so," she said with another shrug. "Anyway, you were...pretty upset..."

"Ah. And I am handling things better this time. Assure Leliana that, no, I have no contact with him. That isn't something I would keep from her." I paused, took a bite, chewed and swallowed. "That is my official response, as Inquisitor. If you are also asking out of curiosity, as a friend, I can share my reasons - but I would rather you not send them to Leliana."

"Why not?" Harding asked, her eyebrows going up.

"Because, first, you won't do them justice in two or three lines, in cipher," I pointed out.

"True," she allowed, her eyes sliding to the side as she finally put a small piece of the roll in her mouth.

"Second," I went on, "if someone were to get the raven and break the cipher - I don't want that sort of personal information in the hands of an enemy. I don't even especially want it in the hands of an ally. Leliana is unlikely to decipher the message herself, after all. I don't want to share confidences with the whole of the Chantry hierarchy." I shrugged.

"Her people - our people - don't talk," Harding said.

"They talk to the Left Hand. It's part of their job. That's fine - this is just personal. I would rather talk it over with Leliana myself, once I return to Val Royeaux," I explained.

"Oh, well, that's different - if you just want to tell her yourself," Harding said, relaxing a little. She gave me a small smile. "I am pretty curious. You've as much as said you don't expect to see him again. I just expected..."

"To be picking me up off the floor, possibly in pieces?" I offered wryly. "You may still need to, at some point. My anger and grief before were hot and immediate - too intense to be sustainable long-term - and they looked to the future, to some remedy. This is different. I...imagine it will come in successive waves, as I understand I have lost or grown past some new part of him, or - or some part of who I was with him." I dropped my eyes. "He told me that one day I would look back on him as a transformational figure in my life, but one that no longer actively reshaped the person I was becoming."

"That - must hurt to consider. I'm sorry," she said.

I forced myself to take another bite before going on. "There are other reasons that this is different. We left on better terms, having said many things that needed to be said, and asked questions we needed answers for. Perhaps more especially on my end - but his relative equanimity was entirely due to his refusal to think about any of it. There were things he also needed to say and hear, even if he previously worked to avoid acknowledging them."

"Does he really expect not to live through this?" she asked.

"If he doesn't give his life outright, he fully expects to lose his mind," I sighed, nudging my next bite around my plate absently. "I'm not certain I did him a kindness by reminding him that how he dies matters - to me, if no one else - but I think it was necessary, even if it wasn't kind. I doubt anything will make him change his plans, even marginally, but he wouldn't have entertained for a single moment ideas for doing so before. Now perhaps he would - perhaps even will. It's likely inconsequential, but it's still something."

"So far he seems to be outmaneuvering us," Harding said in a much lower voice. "I don't know if Leliana has been as frank with you about that as with the rest of us, but - "

"She doesn't need to be," I told Harding at the same volume. "We don't discuss it, because my role is to keep order and that kind of conclusion doesn't help me fulfill that duty. But I know it as well as she does." I looked away. "He wanted to hold me captive for my own safety, and captivity is among my more pressing fears. Yet I negotiated with him, because I know how desperately we need something. I was willing to trade my freedom for even a slight chance of upending the status quo, because it is currently very much not in our favor." I had also been willing to trade my freedom to be with him - or at least I had been for a little while - but that was my own complicated knot of regret, shame, defiance, and love. No one else needed to see it.

"This is probably getting a little too sensitive," she said.

"We could talk about it more, in more secure circumstances, later," I offered with a shrug, returning to my meal and taking a bite.

"It won't help anything," she pointed out.

"Our feelings, perhaps," I tacitly agreed after I had finished chewing. "Anyway - there is one more reason I'm not as upset as I otherwise would be, but it's another matter best discussed somewhere...else." I mouthed the word "Fade" at her with another shrug.

I saw her face light with curiosity, but she nodded her understanding. "I...suppose I should probably let you get on with your breakfast."

"I do need to write in my journal," which would mean first deciding what to write in my journal, "but I don't need to do it while I eat. Stay, if you would rather - and if you don't have anything more important to do."

She gave me a sardonic look. "When was the last time either of us didn't have anything more important to do - no matter what we were in the middle of doing?"

"A fair point," I chuckled.

"I already ate, so I should leave you to your meal and your writing, and go send off some writing of my own," she sighed. "But maybe we can get a little of that security later."

"We'll find some time at some point," I promised as she rose from her seat.

After she had gone, I gave a few moments of thought to what I wished to say about my experience with the memory Solas had left for me, but soon found my thoughts tending elsewhere. Today was the last day the evunehim would likely to be of any use at all. I didn't have any, and wouldn't acquire any, either - which had turned out to be less a decision that a self-evident reality once I stepped through the rift. Solas was going to die, or at least become someone so entirely different that he might as well be dead. And somehow I had thought I would ever be able to remove a piece of him from the world? That any other consideration could outweigh the satisfaction of knowing a part of him might live on? No. Had the idea not been so entirely new, I would never have believed it - and I might have realized how ridiculous it was faster had Solas not been there, trying to talk me out of giving him what he wanted.

Moreover - and more worryingly - Harding was right to note I hadn't yet fallen apart. Oh, I had curled up in bed and cried myself to sleep these last two nights, certainly, but that was minor. I was eating. I was exploring the Fade. I was keeping a journal about it. I had even found a little time to begin examining Lennan's latest letter, though I could already see it would take me some weeks to respond adequately. Some of that capacity to function likely was the way Solas and I had parted, and some of it was knowing he had left behind his memories for me. The ability to experience his thoughts and feelings, however briefly, was precious. But that was all about the past, and I still had a long future stretching out in front of me.

Having a child who connected me to Solas might make my future more bearable. At least, I feared that might be one of the thoughts lodged somewhere in my mind.

Not that it was necessarily a terrible thought in and of itself, but chances were still good that I was not going to conceive after one day spent with Solas, no matter how much of it we spent in bed. I was trying not to feel any particular way about it, though stray thoughts like if I wished the use evunehim, this would be my last chance left me feeling decidedly unsettled. I wouldn't have any idea, really, for another two weeks, and even if my courses were late, it wouldn't be a certainty.

I put it from my mind - again - and refocused on what I wanted to say about Solas's memories. On the one hand, they were personal. On the other, anyone - anything - that happened past them in the Fade could access them. And - perhaps that was why he had stopped short of remembering the most interesting part after our discussion of restraint? I offered him a silent apology, though the thought disappointed me. Seeing some of our more intimate moments from his perspective would have been...welcome.

I finished eating and retrieved my journal, still not quite certain what I wanted to include in my descriptions, but having realized that my time with Enleal and the mechanics of retrieving memories would get me started. Once I had set that on the page, I paused. Slowly, I dipped my pen again and sorted through the runes I knew, trying to put together sentences that would at least make sense to me later. Written Elven was even more difficult to pin down than spoken Elven, and my meager skill at writing it would make it even more opaque to anyone trying to determine my meaning. But perhaps that was to my advantage. I wanted to remember these thoughts, but not necessarily to share them.

At least I had moved far beyond that primer Solas had initially made for me. It would have been impossible to say anything beyond the most basic commonplaces had Leliana not acquired more books for my translation of Solas's vows. I had, of course, made good use of them beyond that limited undertaking.

Trying to write my thoughts in runes meant that I took longer putting them down than I had intended, but besides playing diplomat, my only task at the moment was locating Nehnadahlen. My intention, once I recorded what had occurred, was to dive right back into the Fade. Yes, there was a ball to prepare for, but Fiona and her capable staff hardly needed my input. I wasn't certain I would make any more progress toward Nehnadahlen immediately, but I now also wanted to explore Enleal's garden, and perhaps speak more with it if it had time for me. And, of course, I could always go examine another of Solas's memories.

The last had certainly proved worthwhile far beyond the satisfaction it provided me personally.

I called for a pot of water as I neared the end of what I wanted to put down in my journal, found the herbs I needed from my kit, and brewed myself some tea to bring on sleep. By the time I finished writing, I was yawning, and gladly made my way back to bed.

Ane panasnirelan: You are a tease

Evunehim: I forgot to translate this earlier, and it doesn't matter much, but the name of the potion means moon-alter.