A/N: Omg it's chapter 50. Did not think this would end up so long, lol. Thank you to everyone who's stuck with me, and to all the new readers along the way!

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Solas was asleep when Finley got to his tent, and in the ten minutes it had taken to walk back to camp with Bull, she had felt her resolve to recruit him to her cause wavering. Those ten minutes had stretched out forever, scenes both familiar and simply feared playing out in her head as she'd tried to think of how to bring up such a subject.

What if he was too interested in the demon? What if he decided to talk to it?

That…

He was quite fond of spirits. He'd told her how they could be corrupted, how they could be saved. What if he wanted to save this one?

Finley didn't think that the monster could be saved. She didn't want to imagine that all of the things it had done had been because of some horrific misunderstanding.

And so when she'd shaken him and he hadn't stirred, she'd decided it would be okay to wait until morning. After all, a few hours would hardly make a difference.

Except that it could make all the difference.

She knew this.

How many times had she thought something could wait a little while, only for time to run out before she was ready? This wasn't something she should put off, yet she hadn't been able to shake him again, even as her fingers brushed against his shoulder while he slept.

If he was having good dreams, he deserved them. She could drag him into her personal misery later, surely.

Even if time was…

After a few minutes, she slipped out of the back of his tent and out of the firelight, hauling herself up onto a rocky outcrop and moving away until she couldn't feel the fire anymore. Bull might be cross with her for wandering off again so soon, but…

She needed to think.

She needed to make sure that when she told Solas about the demon, there was no room for doubt in his mind that it needed to be dealt with. It was a monster, not some wayward spirit.

Finley sunk down into the wet, moldy moss, hands clutching her head as she curled up as small as she could. She wished that there was someone to talk to who she knew wouldn't judge her. Someone who could listen objectively and tell her that she was right.

She knew she was.

It was just…

It was just that the last time it had shown up to 'help', its actions had put doubt into her mind.

She and one of her friends had been working on an augment to help ward off the Blight, when they'd gotten into a bit of a row over how to structure the spell. It had been a silly thing, really, but they were both recluses, and so being in one another's company for so long had been taxing to begin with.

As tempers flared, Finley had told them to shove off and that they could figure it out without her. Insults had been hurled, as well as a few spells, and then she'd gone off to sulk for the evening. It hadn't taken her long to realize that she needed to be more flexible—Donovan had taught her more than a few of her spells, and people always said that she'd picked up his penchant for criticism along with it—and so she'd considered that perhaps her friend had been on to something that she just couldn't see because she was too busy being 'right'.

She could remember rehearsing what she would say, about how she knew she could be a mite bit picky about spell structure, but if her friend felt it was truly something that they needed to try, she would be willing. She couldn't promise she wouldn't grumble, but she would do her best. She'd been reciting it over and over in her head when she'd reached their hovel and found them sitting on the rocks outside their home, waiting for her.

Even as she'd tried to remember how her 'forgive me' speech was supposed to begin—apologies were not particularly natural to her—the mage had looked up, inky black in their eyes and a greeting that sent chills through her.

Hello again, Little Lamb.

She'd always been so afraid of that thing. It was the unbeatable monster that she had to outrun, but never could. With the templars, she could put distance between them, lose them in a bog, jump a chasm to get away, but with this thing…

The worst of it was that she never knew when it would show up. Never knew when it would try to whisper helpful hints about how to cast her spells while she was experimenting with her magic. She crafted her spells so that they couldn't be interrupted, yes, but also to give that thing as little time to talk as possible.

Because it could talk forever.

Finley had once thrown out an entire spell set that she'd been trying because the demon had suggested a fix for a part she was stumped on, and she hadn't been able to figure out a way to make the spells useable without following its instruction.

Its advice hadn't been blood magic, but…she didn't want it to think she would be open to other helpful hints.

Truly, it was better to just avoid it, when possible.

However, that last time, something had snapped in her. It was just too much. As it had risen and walked over to her, her friend's body moving in a way foreign to it, talking about all that they could do together, she'd screamed.

It had been a sound of frustration and anger, and that scream had stopped the demon in its tracks, bewildered.

She'd cursed the damned thing, told it she wouldn't give it the time of day—a phrase she didn't understand, but knew it meant ignoring someone—if she saw it in another person.

They were people, and it took them over and discarded them like they were nothing.

It had tried to argue, tried to reason, tried to…

Finley had left. She'd ensnared it in roots and run. While she didn't doubt it could have gotten out of the roots easily—likely had—it had just stood there, empty eyes wide, lips parted in surprise.

It had been quiet since then.

She'd heard through others that her friend had been released—well, seeing as they hadn't known they'd been possessed, she'd heard that they were doing alright, just had an odd hole in their memory from the day after their fight—but she'd never tried to go make amends again.

It was better that way.

They were making headway without her, and without that damned demon whispering in their heads because of her.

So many times, she felt that the people it had hurt had been hurt because of her. And after that last time, she'd had a sick feeling that welled up inside of her whenever she thought of it. Time stretched on and it hadn't possessed anyone new, hadn't whispered in her dreams, hadn't bothered her, and she had to wonder if it had really been so easy to make it stop.

That a few harsh words could have saved people before that, if she'd just thought to use them…

It had been during a night musing over that awful notion that she'd remembered another time, when she was far younger, back when her life had been easily at its lowest, back before the templars had saved her.

When she was a little girl, she could remember a boy stumbling across their camp while wandering the woods near his estate. She wasn't sure where her father had gotten off to, but she'd been alone with the demon in control of her mother's body.

As it had slipped through the shadows, easily getting behind the boy, face twisted in glee that it could play with something new, Finley had cried out.

She wasn't supposed to talk, but she'd been so…distraught. She'd seen the boy earlier when she'd dared to wander from the camp to look for song birds and had found him feeding them, and she'd known he had to be something good. So when she'd seen that he was going to be the next of the demon's playthings, she'd cried a single word from where she'd curled up, out of sight.

"No!"

The boy had run off in fear of disembodied voices, and the demon had been left standing where it had been, never having attacked.

When he was far enough away, it had sauntered over to Finley and sat in front of her, reaching out and petting her like she was some sort of pet.

"No?" It had echoed.

She'd nodded, glancing after the boy. "Nice."

She hadn't been good at speaking, and the few words she had picked up were ridiculed by her father. He hated that she couldn't pronounce them right. He always complained that her voice was too high pitched and that it gave him headaches, and if he had a headache, he always took it out on the song birds.

To keep them safe, she kept as quiet as she could.

"How do you know he's nice?" The demon had asked.

Of the three—demon, father, and mother—it was the only one who would talk to her like such a thing was a worthwhile endeavor. The creature terrified her—when it did attack something, it was easily the most vicious of the three—but it had never made a move to actually hurt her, and so, with no one else to talk to, she sometimes tried.

"Bers." That was the best she could do for birds, so Finley had made a hand motion toward the sky for emphasis. She needn't have. It understood her. After all, all of the words she knew, the demon had taught her.

At that, the demon had arched her mother's eyebrows, tilting its head. "You've been out of camp again." When Finley flinched away, it had reached out and pet her again. "It's okay. Mother's sleeping, and I won't tell them. And we'll let that one go."

As much as she didn't want to trust that thing, it did seem like it listened to her. Like it looked out for her, and almost all of its actions that she'd seen had been to help her, even if they were twisted and bloody and horrifying.

While part of her had wanted to try to order it to leave people alone, she was more afraid that if she tried that, it would try to make a deal, and if she said no, it would use whatever her demands were against her, picking off the people she wanted to keep safe until yes wasn't such a scary option.

But then, the problem with that was she'd seen what had happened to her mother, how the demon had fed off her, picking away at her memories so that it could learn from them, gouging holes into her memory and being until her mother hadn't known who she was or why she'd ever wanted a little thing that cried and required attention and maintenance.

Back when she'd still been with her parents, the demon had told Finley that her mother had loved her very much, and that she was sorry that the mage couldn't remember that, but sacrifices had been necessary for their deal.

Finley doubted a mother who loved their child would have willingly forgotten that love. Whether that meant the demon had stepped out of the bounds of their deal or her mother had never really wanted her at all was hard to say.

If Finley told Solas about the demon and convinced him that it was a problem, he would probably suggest killing it. It was a logical step, one that Donovan had drawn after it had stalked him for a few years, trying to get it to make a deal so that it could check up on Finley. He'd known some spell that would let them enter the Fade. He'd been reluctant to cast it, as it was usually used for something called a Harrowing, but he'd thought that if a few of them went in together and stuck close in the Fade, they could handle anything that might notice their incursion.

Finley had been too afraid to see the demon again to go through with it. It knew all of her fears, all of the things that she kept hidden, and she didn't want the few people she did trust to abandon her because it shared her sordid past with them.

Finley had dodged his persistent suggestions until Donovan had resentfully dropped the matter.

She'd been waiting the last few years for the demon to resurface, to show up wearing someone else, to continue to torment her and prove that she should have at least tried Donovan's plan.

And now… Donovan had been quick to declare it after someone, and she'd been so used to the idea that it had terrified her, but…

In the blizzard, it had tried to possess her. It had said…why couldn't she remember? Had it possessed her? She hadn't said yes. And who had it been targeting for help before it had grown so desperate to come directly to her with a plea they'd both known Finley would never accept?

Her mind kept going back to Commander Rutherford, but that didn't make sense. He wasn't a mage. It would gain nothing from possessing him. No magic, no power, and the second Finley saw that he was possessed, there would be no proximity.

So then, who…?

The truth of it all was that she just didn't know how to deal with that demon. She could barely deal with ones who hadn't stalked her for years, so how was she supposed to fight one she had? And even if they did beat it, would she ever really be able to believe it was gone for good? After all, it had been six years between that last possession and the Conclave.

Six years where she'd only occasionally felt it watching her from the Fade.

And now that it was back, it felt…different.

There had to be a way to bring this up to Solas without telling him everything. She'd made the mistake of telling someone about her demon before. Her last lover, Aubrey, had twisted herself into a blood mage after learning how Finley's demon had an 'odd way of helping', trying to convince Finley to join her, to use her demonic patron to become something that would make the templars quake. Aubrey had been ecstatic, insisting that they would never need to hide from the templars again with a demon standing ready to fight them.

Aubrey had been another victim of the demon's possession. Finley had found her lounging in the sun after a particularly bad fight over 'wasting resources', inky eyes closed as the demon basked in the sun in its borrowed body, offering that, "It's alright, Little Lamb. This one won't try to force blood on you anymore."

If Solas was foolish enough to try to redeem it, Finley didn't doubt he'd end up possessed. If he tried to kill it…a small, terrified part of her half believed it couldn't be killed. It certainly knew how to jump out of bodies after possessing them.

But if she never asked Solas, she'd never know. Maybe there was a way to bind it to a tiny piece of the Fade where it couldn't reach anyone or a way to just make it so that it couldn't peer into certain people's heads or…

There had to be a way to ask without explaining what the damned thing was.

Finley spent the rest of the night mulling it over, trying out different approaches and kicking herself when she couldn't figure out how to omit the little detail that the damned thing had been more of a parent to her than her actual parents.

No one would trust a mage who was cared for by a demon. Her templars hadn't. When she'd come into her magic, they'd known she'd never be accepted, and there had been fear in their eyes every time they looked at her. They'd known that with her history she would be made tranquil at best, if she went to a Circle.

Her mind wandered.

If Cullen found out…

He already didn't like magic.

No. She could figure out a way to deal with the demon, and then it wouldn't matter. No one would need to know about it because it would be gone, like it had never been there.

She just…had to find a way to make her query not about it.

Even as she'd hung her head in defeat, that familiar tug of sleep and the terror that came with it had bubbled up, and she'd felt her solution click into place.

And so, as her companions rustled through camp, half awake, with Bull giving her a rather disapproving look that said he knew she'd snuck off, she'd wandered over to Solas and lightly tapped his shoulder, quickly withdrawing her hand to give him his space.

When she had his attention, she leaned closer and whispered. "When I was fleeing Envy, I stumbled into something's lair, and it's been…watching me. Following my dreams, it feels like. I don't know how wise it would be to seek it out, but seeing as you know so much more about the Fade, I was wondering if there was a way to…bind it or keep it at bay?"

Solas appraised her a moment, head cocked, that typical, curious look on his face that always graced his features whenever there was talk of demons or spirits or magic in general. "You think this creature is a problem?"

"I think I would have less trouble sleeping."

"This…demon is a recent development?"

The way he asked that made her uncomfortable, but she shrugged a little. "Since Therinfal Redoubt. I…guess I thought it would go away if I ignored it, but that doesn't seem to work."

At that, Solas gave her a short nod. "I'm afraid I doubt I will have a solution for you tonight, but if you give me a few days to go through my notes, I think I can help you."

"A few days?" It seemed surreal.

Solas gave her a quick smile. "Yes."

With a quick nod, Finley felt like she hadn't just spent all night wide awake and worrying. There was real, tangible hope that didn't hinge of people she knew meeting her monster. Maybe she could finally, finally, finally be rid of that damned creature. And the…fear demon or whatever it was, too.

Turning away from Solas, she scanned the rest of her group to see that they were read, and motioned down the path. "We should get moving. We're bound to run into those scouts soon."