I almost didn't put this up because Fridays are crazy for me - no help with childcare - but I'm going to be gone this weekend, so I put in the effort.

Confessions

"The tie between us now is tenuous," Solas told me after taking a moment to compose his thoughts. "Were it stronger, we would feel each other's emotions unceasingly - we would feel each other. We might even be able to communicate, in a limited manner, over short distances. Left on its own, it will remain thus - a minor inconvenience. The danger lies in indulging the pull between us. Even seemingly-innocuous touches will entangle us more firmly - though only very slowly, so long as they remain no more than friendly. More...passionate demonstrations should be avoided at all costs."

"You...find this inconvenient?" I asked so quietly that I was surprised when he heard me. The word seemed to leap out of his explanation, and I knew what I truly asked: do you find me inconvenient?

He was silent for a long moment. "I…" I heard him take a breath in the dark. "Don't you?" he asked at last.

I might have pointed out that I had asked first, but his question - and the blind, entirely open surprise behind it - was answer enough. "No," I said, drawing my knees to my chest again.

"Inana - " he began.

"My first memory is dreaming of you," I told him, steeling myself against the embarrassment and shame that filled me as I offered up the full truth. "And, by that time, your face was well known to me." He made a choked sound, but I didn't wait to find out if he meant to stop me. "Maela said you were a spirit that had taken to me, but I knew you weren't - or at least that you weren't like other spirits. I didn't know what you were, but you were kind to me when I was young, offering up wonderful things you found within the Fade when you happened to notice me. As I grew older, I saw...other sides of you. Sometimes you were younger, and didn't see me at all. Sometimes I found you near despair, and sat with you for the night. A year or two after my vallaslin failed, you kissed me for the first time."

A harsh intake of breath. I pressed on.

"We weren't carrying on together," I said, hoping it might reassure him. "Nothing as linear as that. Just...sometimes I dreamed of you kissing me. I - I was much too experienced in the Fade by that time to pursue more. Sometimes the...edge of more pursued me, but I never...indulged those fantasies." Not in the Fade, anyway, and surely - surely - I didn't owe him that truth on top of all the others tightening my chest and burning my face.

"And the request from the version of me you met in the future - ?" His voice was hard, though it seemed he was reluctant to say the word "kiss."

I choked on a laugh that was at least half sob. "You greatly overestimate my courage if you think I would ever make up and follow through on a pretext like that."

He was silent for a long moment, and then he shifted, which, in the small tent, was enough to bring him more or less beside me. "No, I believe I have estimated your courage correctly - what I have underestimated is your integrity." His voice was gentle. "Ir abelas."

I raised my chin from my arms so I could look at him - what little I could see of him in the he leaned toward me, and I could see more. The light of torches outside the tent caught the edge of his face and revealed the intensity of his gaze. I felt his breath on my lips - but then he closed his eyes, drew back minutely, and sighed. "You still don't yet understand the full import of the binding." I waited. "We could break it now, if we chose, and it would wound us both, but we would likely recover. If we allow it to gain strength, however…"

Was that what had happened to me when I watched him die in Redcliffe? Had it been the breaking of our bond that had nearly driven me to throw away my life and any chance I had at changing the future? "So you want to break it?" I asked, trying not to panic.

His mouth twitched, and he reached up to brush his fingers against my cheek.

No.

"In part," he hastened to tell me, his hand retreating, "I prefer to understand before taking any rash action." His lips twisted in a smile nearly feral in its bitterness. "A preference I am too rarely able to indulge. The shivas'lath is not something one can force on another. If we find ourselves so bound, at some time, in some way, we both agreed to it."

"Why don't we remember?" I wondered.

"That, I cannot say - but there are ways such memories might be obscured." He enumerated possibilities on his fingers. "Powerful spirits might either force them into slumber or steal them away entirely. Less powerful ones might do the same with our cooperation. Long ago, there existed spells that might have been turned to that purpose. I believe them lost, but what is lost can be rediscovered." He hesitated. "There are other, darker powers in the world - but the shivas'lath cannot be compelled or coerced. And," he added more quietly, "we are so very well suited that I am inclined to believe this was intended as a gift - a kindness - rather than anything sinister."

I might have reminded him that he found it an inconvenient gift or kindness, but that, in itself, would have been unkind.

"Do you still dream of me?" he asked.

"Occasionally - less often than before I met you," I told him, stifling a yawn. As fascinating - and harrowing - as this conversation was, I wasn't going to be able to remain awake for much longer. My body demanded rest. "And, once, I wasn't entirely myself in the dream. That was new, and it's harder to remember - though perhaps that's only because it made no sense."

"What happened?" he asked, curious.

My brow furrowed. "You were younger - you had hair." I smiled at him shyly. "It was rather magnificent." He chuckled and looked away as though embarrassed. "You were arguing with Deshanna - my Keeper - about...something. Only maybe she wasn't Deshanna? She looked like Deshanna. She called me her daughter - or maybe like a daughter - and then I woke up." It was an effort to keep my words from slurring. Speaking of dreams reminded me that I wanted to be dreaming.

He paused, and then shrugged. "That is a dream whose meaning is singularly opaque," he allowed with a smile.

"Saw you as a wolf, another time, but when I tried to speak to you, you ran away," I told him with a shrug of my own, not managing to stifle my yawn this time. I went on after it had passed: "Was that one true? Do you know shifting magic?"

"Ah, well." He seemed embarrassed again. "I believe, that time, you caught me observing your dream. I - didn't think you would remember, or that you would have recognized me if you did remember."

"I always know you," I told him, leaning toward him involuntarily. I was too tired even to feel surprised at the confession - he shouldn't have been able to observe my dreams without my consent. Supposedly the Dreamers who could do so didn't exist anymore, though it also wouldn't have surprised me if he broke all the rules of existence generally.

"To be perfectly truthful, you shouldn't have seen me at all - though I suppose the tie between us is explanation enough. I will have to hide myself better if I intend to watch your dreams," he told me, his smile making it a joke. Mostly.

"You could share my dreams," I pointed out. We were both mages - he could offer me access to his dreams if he wanted to. We could share dreams right now - an idea that struck me as utterly delightful, perhaps in part because it meant I would be asleep.

He laughed quietly. The sound was hemmed by despair, but when he rested his forehead against mine, all I got from him was that same hunger that had saturated the kiss we had shared earlier. "That would be inadvisable," he whispered. "Things have always been...easier for me in the Fade, and nothing will strengthen this tie faster than unchecked emotion."

Oh. He still wanted to avoid that. "Then what is this?" I asked, indicating our current position. My eyes drifted closed. Whatever it was, I liked it.

"This is me not kissing you," he replied.

"Oh," I breathed. "Well...good work."

"Ma serannas. It requires every shred of my admittedly ragged self-control," he told me...slyly? Was he trying to tell me something else? "I should leave you to your rest," he added while I was trying to puzzle out his meaning.

"Likely," I agreed, giving up. I was simply too tired for games. It was natural, though, to tip my chin up so I could brush a kiss against the side of his mouth. I did it without even considering what we had been speaking of - it was a reaction to knowing that succumbing to sleep meant he would leave me.

He exhaled with something like relief, turned his head, and captured my lips. This time he was gentler, more controlled, though no less thorough. If he had devoured me the first time, this was more of a feast, one in which he savored every touch and every small sound either of us made. Still, it was technically chaste - his hands didn't grab and his tongue stayed out of it, though his teeth did graze my lower lip a few times. But, Creators, he kissed me as though it were the most important task facing him - the most important he had ever faced - and as though there might never be another chance.

I would have happily invited him to share my bedroll right then.

Though...I might have fallen asleep before we had time to make good use of it.

Sharing a tent in camp was inadvisable, though, especially when we didn't know what we were and hadn't made any commitments, regardless of what the magic tying us together tried to demand. Humans were strange about everything - perhaps all the more so because none of their nations shared a single cultural foundation - and the Chantry was the strangest of all. What self-respecting religion encouraged people - any people, anywhere, under any circumstances - not to have sex and reproduce?

But, then again, I supposed humans weren't in desperate need of every child born as the Dalish were.

The Dalish took romantic liaisons seriously - clans were too small to allow hurt feelings to proliferate - but the only things at which they would have looked askance if I decided to take up with Solas, temporarily or long-term, were his status as non-Dalish and my own as a non-adult whose vallaslin had failed. And the latter would have been worse. Otherwise, privacy dictated not talking about other people's relationships - at least not where they could hear it - and we would have been free to progress at our own pace.

We weren't among the Dalish, of course. This time I broke off the kiss. "On nydha," I whispered, trying to ignore how much I already missed his presence.

His fingers brushed my ear. Regret, gratitude, sympathy. "On nydha, ma - " He bit back the rest of whatever he had been about to say, shook his head, and left.

On nydha: Good night