Well, no one seems to feel strongly one way or another, so I guess I'll stick to my plan.

CW - Panic attack and brief sexual content.

Anticipation

Dissecting my interactions with Corypheus took a long time, and at the end of it we still had to deal with my fall into the tunnels and my attempts to scale the pass alone, in the snow. Solas, sensing how exhausted and tense I was, called a halt.

I was almost sorry. Beyond my tent, the night was alive with the sounds of camp - footsteps, conversation, shifting animals, creaking ropes, snapping canvas. So normal. So deceptively, dangerously normal. Dorian had promised I would never be left alone to face something like Haven again, but who could say what would happen if another attack were to come unexpectedly? There might not be a good reason for Corypheus himself to attack one of our small camps, but something else could happen. Anything could happen. Regardless of what anyone intended, I could easily be separated from the rest of our forces.

Especially if I were already alone.

"I'm here, ara'lath," Solas promised, smoothing his hands down my back as my fear echoed down our bond.

My tent was warm - too warm, to tell the truth, though I didn't mind after so many weeks of implacable cold. His glyph was doing its job well, though if it got any warmer, I would need to start shedding layers.

"Inana." I looked up at him, though I could see very little in the darkness - the glitter of his eyes, and, briefly, the edge of his cheekbone as a sentry passed with a torch. Little else. "I will stay for as long as you need. All night if necessary. Tomorrow night. The night after. Cassandra may be as scandalized as she pleases - this is more a matter of healing than personal inclination. As the only healer currently available, I will remain for as long as you need me. Ir abelas , I should have made that clear earlier."

I took a long, steadying breath, and then released it again. "Ma serannas."

His fingers went to the back of my neck, sliding along my spine and easing the tension from my muscles. I hummed my appreciation, leaning against him as he continued - until he was stopped at my shoulders by the many layers of my clothing.

I needed to take something off anyway, and quickly struggled out of my robe. "Don't stop," I begged, having only just become aware of how I ached with tension. Even my fingers were stiff and sore from gripping Solas's hands and tunic. He chuckled but made me sit in front of him, his hands working at my shoulders gently. "You may have to do my whole back," I warned him.

"You say that as though it weren't already my plan," he replied.

"Is it?" I asked.

"I brought a vial of oil, a cloth so you don't risk stains on your clothing, and I have already made the tent uncomfortably warm for anyone fully clothed," he told me, sounding slightly smug. "My only concern was whether you would feel too vulnerable after revisiting that night to want - to feel comfortable - "

"Stripping for you so that you could put your hands all over me?" I asked, unable to repress a smile.

Well. It appeared I had a sense of humor again.

Solas flicked one of my ears - the sort of mild punishment a hahren might inflict on an impudent child - and I squeaked in surprise before breathing a soft, unexpected laugh. "This isn't about personal inclination," he reminded me. "At least not tonight," he added darkly.

I shivered, wishing, for a moment, that tonight were about personal inclination - but I was also tired and aching, and so perhaps it was better this way. I lit a dim magelight at the apex of the tent, making us both blink. "Sorry, I need light to unlace my stays."

Solas turned away as I began stripping, which I again found a little funny. "You know the Dalish often bathe communally," I told him as I pulled off my tunic and started on my laces.

"And so do my people," he replied, taking longer than I thought was probably necessary just to retrieve some oil. "But communal bathing is somewhat different from the two of us alone in a tent together."

"True," I allowed as I settled myself on the bedroll. "I'm only half naked, and you're still entirely clothed."

"If you labor under the impression that complete nudity would be required for me to make your toes curl, not only have you been misinformed, I can only lament your clanmates' apparent lack of creativity," he replied calmly, turning towards me once I had made myself comfortable. His touch, once he had settled beside me, was carefully impersonal - the touch of a healer. For a moment I was disappointed, but then he began smoothing oil across my skin, and I felt myself beginning to relax. By the time he began massaging in earnest, I felt as though I might melt away entirely. My magelight didn't survive. I had no attention left to spare for maintaining the spell.

I fell into a doze at some point, and was only convinced to wake up long enough to pull my shift back on after considerable prodding. Somehow Solas had managed to smuggle his - or at least a spare - bedroll into my tent, and he had spread it out next to mine. The tent was again lit, and so when I curled up under my blankets I could see him lying beside me, his face so close that I could easily read its expression - at least until he doused the light.

"On nydha, emma lath," I said quietly into the darkness.

"On nydha, arasha," he replied, and he was so close that I felt his breath brush my face.

I closed my eyes, smiling, and went back to sleep.

It didn't save me from dreaming.

That wasn't a surprise - or at least it wouldn't have been if I had spent time considering the possibility. Feeling things again meant opening the door to bad things as well as good - so it also wasn't a surprise when the dream was enough to wake me.

Logically, none of it made much sense - but when had that ever stopped a dream from feeling as it felt? Everyone in the inner circle was with me, and we were battling Corypheus, except we were both in Redcliffe and trying to trigger an avalanche. Even though I was trying to get my friends out before I launched the trebuchet, they kept rushing back into battle. I supposed, to be fair, we were fighting Corypheus, his dragon, red templars, Venatori, and a whole army of demons. Still, I kept trying to push them towards safety at the same time I was trying to keep control of the battle, and I kept making mistakes because I couldn't split my attention that many directions. One by one they fell, and yet it never helped me consolidate my attention - dividing it only became more impossible with each mistake I made.

And then, distracted for a brief, vital moment, I accidentally deposited Solas in front of a shade just like the one that had killed him in the doomed future I had visited. Just as it had there, it reached down and casually broke his neck.

In my dream, I screamed.

I was already sitting bolt upright when I came to myself, reaching out toward phantoms that existed only in the Fade and my own mind, and taking in deep gulps of air while I exhaled soft, wounded cries. My hand, when I reached up to shove my hair out of my face, was shaking so badly that it knocked against my cheek and the side of my head.

Solas was already there, too, his fingers drawing designs on my back, while his lips moved against my temple as he made soothing sounds. He was, I realized, taking care not to do anything that might make me feel trapped. When I turned towards him, demonstrating I was awake, he immediately wrapped me in his arms. My hands found his shoulders, traced the line of his neck restlessly to his face, fluttered across his jaw - but it wasn't enough, so I ignited a small light beside his head, pulling away so I could examine him. He blinked at me as I ran my hands over him again, making sure he was still there, still alive, not -

I shied away from the thought, trying to remember what it felt like to breathe normally. I was lightheaded as I gasped - too fast, I was breathing too fast - but I couldn't stop, so instead I held my breath. Even then, my chest continued trying to expand and contract, though I couldn't tell if I was still trying to breathe or if they were sobs - dry-eyed sobs, because I wasn't crying. At least not yet.

"Breathe," Solas instructed me, taking one of my hands and placing it against his chest so I could feel its rise and fall. "Match your breathing to mine. Ane eth, ma vhenan. Juaman na. Ame amahn. Ame amahn."

The dream was beginning to fade, and Solas's strange, liquid accent banished it faster by making him more real. I had become accustomed to the way he pronounced common Elvish words and phrases - ir abelas, ma serannas, da'len, lethallan - but when he broke into new phrases or more involved sentences, I still had to listen carefully to understand him at all. I couldn't imagine his accent in Elvish. I didn't know it well enough.

Tears came at last as the stifling sense of despair slowly ebbed. I realized it was the first time I had cried over anything since Haven.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Solas asked as my tears slowed after a short storm of weeping.

"No," I rasped. "It was - Redcliffe mixed with Haven. Didn't make sense. Just...bad." I pressed my face to his shoulder, breathing him in, one of my hands grasping the back of his neck. "Ar lath ma, Solas," I gulped. "Ir'el abelas - ar my laimal ir melava. Ar lath ma."

"Eolasan." He pressed me back down into my bedroll, following me as he gently took control of my magelight from me and allowed the spell to unravel. "You haven't wasted time, vhenan. I have known you loved me since the day we discovered we were bound together."

"But I've been avoiding you, a little, at Skyhold," I argued. "We could have spent that time…" Well, I wasn't certain - there was no privacy at Skyhold at present, and my thoughts seemed to be slowing as my fear faded. "Talking, at least," I finished rather weakly. There wasn't much difference between eyes open and eyes closed without my magelight, and that was a relief. It didn't matter that mine kept trying to close.

"You didn't want to talk," he reminded me, his voice soft and warm and comfortable. "And who is to say it wasn't time you needed, if only to understand that what you were doing wasn't working? There is nothing wasted in that - it's merely an unfortunate circumstance."

It was possible he had a point, but I didn't want to admit it. "How could you have known I loved you?" I asked instead, nearly interrupting myself with a yawn. His body, pressed against mine, was deliciously warm, but there was so much more than that. His breath against my skin relieved me of some burden or ache that I hadn't even been aware of until it disappeared. The rhythm of his heart was deeply satisfying. Everything about him seemed to promise rest and peace - and I had been so tired. I was so tired. "I didn't know it." Words were becoming harder to locate. "Maybe I didn't? Just...wanted to."

He chuckled, adjusting the blankets a little to make sure we were both covered. "An interesting distinction, my love, but not one I am convinced exists in any practical sense."

I attempted to reflect on that for a moment, but eventually settled for making a noise that would have made Sera proud, too near sleep to argue semantics. He chuckled again, and I realized he sounded sleepy, too, and there was a vulnerability in the thought that warmed me further. Vulnerable wasn't a word I associated with Solas.

And yet here he was - humming with barely-awake pleasure as I wrapped my arm around his ribs and stroked his back. It occurred to me, maybe for the first time, that I was pleased - more than pleased, extremely grateful - I hadn't died on the mountainside.

This time I slept soundly until dawn, either Solas's embrace or my midnight outpouring of emotion shielding me from further nightmares.

When I woke, I found we had shifted while we slept, and my back was to Solas. He lay with his arm draped across my waist, his body curled around mine.

I yawned and stretched as much as I could without disturbing him. He didn't so much as twitch as I extended my arms out in front of me, so I risked arching my back a little, trying to elongate my spine enough to dispel its stiffness. The motion pressed my lower half back against him a little more firmly.

A brief spark of pleasure, followed swiftly by inchoate desire, surprised me, and it took me a moment to realize it originated with Solas. Then he stirred, his arm tightening around me as his lips found my neck - and that touch, skin to skin, sharpened the sensations I received from him. It was only then I understood what I had done. His growing erection was pressed against my rear - which I had shoved against him when I stretched.

He growled something in Elvish, but the provocative roughness of his voice distracted me from interpreting his fluid vowels and the odd syllables he chose to emphasize, so I caught very little of it. Something about temptation, divine, or perhaps divinity, and worship - I suspected it was at least a little blasphemous, but I didn't know how elves who weren't Dalish treated the Creators. Most of them, as far as I knew, were Andrastian. That clearly wasn't the case for Solas, but I had no particular evidence that he actively subscribed to the religion my people followed. I thought maybe he was complimenting my figure. Or maybe just my ass.

His lust was rapidly becoming our lust as he slid his hand up my ribs to the lower curve of my breast, though he hesitated there. "Isalas em?" he confirmed.

"Vin," I laughed. "Tel'harthas?"

His thumb brushed my nipple and I missed his response - something about desire and blindness. I wasn't entirely certain he finished voicing the thought anyway. He gasped as my pleasure rippled between us. "I now understand why it was said that shivas'lathelanen spent their first - several years together in bed," he muttered into my hair. "This may be as inconvenient as it will be satisfying."

"Who said that - about spending years in bed?" I wondered, trying to distract myself before I stripped off my shift or something equally demanding and probably ill-advised. An Inquisition camp wasn't like a Dalish camp in many ways - the lack of aravels only the most obvious - and I doubted everyone - or maybe anyone - would simply pretend not to hear us.

He hesitated before answering. "Spirits. Inscriptions - or memories of inscriptions. It was, apparently, once quite a common sentiment."

He wasn't telling me something. Again. Rubbing my rear against him once more seemed like reasonable revenge, so I did.

His hands went to my hips, stilling me. "Fenedhis, Inana," he panted into my ear, giving the edge a sharp nip. "Our first time - your first time, I presume - will not be in a tent in the middle of camp."

Even though I had determined the same thing, I wasn't above teasing him a little. "Why not? Can't you keep quiet?"

"Certainly I can. You, however…"

"I'm Dalish, Solas. You think I've never orgasmed in the midst of a camp before? There aren't a lot of choices during the winter." I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see me do it.

His laughter vibrated against my back. "Ma fenorain, if you somehow believe your furtive attempts to gain satisfaction even begin to compare to what I am going to do you, you are woefully mistaken." His fingers pinched my nipple through my shift again and I gasped. Then his other hand found its way between my legs, and even though he was touching me through my breeches, I still had to bite my lip to stifle the moan that tried to emerge. "I am going to wring sounds from you that you don't even know yourself capable of making," he continued, his breath coming harder as I writhed against him. "I won't even begin to be satisfied until you are screaming my name. By the time I finish with you, you are not going to remember whether we're in camp or at Skyhold or somewhere else entirely."

I craned my head around to catch a glimpse of him. "Promise?" I panted.

He left off his assault on my breast so he could raise himself on his elbow and press a kiss to my lips. "Yes," he whispered, and the fingers of his other hand skirted up to my waistband.

Before he could do more than touch my laces, we were interrupted by the increase in noise that heralded a changing of the watch. As if that weren't enough, Iron Bull's laughter echoed across camp as he yelled something at Krem. Solas hesitated and then removed his hand. "The hour is beginning to grow late," he said reluctantly.

"It is," I agreed, a little frustrated. "And I don't disagree about camp. I actually had a similar thought, though mine centered more around how strange humans - or Andrastians, anyway - are about sex. Since we have to work with them…"

"I suppose that means I ought to return to my own tent before things become any busier," Solas tacitly agreed, sounding equally frustrated as he sat up reluctantly.

"Or maybe you should wait and we could pretend we were just having an early-morning meeting?" I suggested, in part because I didn't want him to go - but in larger part because I didn't actually think he would make it out of my tent without being noticed.

"While I'm wearing the same clothing I wore yesterday?" he pointed out. "No - a little magic will suffice to direct interest elsewhere."

"You have a spell like that?" I asked, intrigued enough to sit up beside him.

"It isn't as impressive as you likely think," he replied, getting on his knees and beginning to arrange the extra bedroll so he could pack it up. "It relies on familiarity, redirecting attention from the observer's current experience with the spell's subject to whatever memories the observer has of that subject. Thus, the observer must have had a series of wholly innocuous interactions with the subject for the spell to effectively deter scrutiny. As I am a common sight in camp," he shrugged, "it should be effective enough in this instance."

He quickly rolled up and tied off the mat and blankets. "This is a spare - just toss it somewhere when you pack up your tent," he told me.

"All right. I can pack up everything else you brought, too, if that would make things easier for you," I offered.

"A little, certainly - ma serannas, vhenan." He reached out and cupped my face in one hand, drawing me closer for a soft, lingering kiss.

"Get me some breakfast, if you make it over to the fire first," I requested as he turned to go.

"Gladly," he replied, and let himself out of my tent.

Ane eth, ma vhenan. Juaman na. Ame amahn. Ame amahn: You are safe, my heart. I will protect you. I'm here. I'm here.

Ir'el abelas - ar my laimal ir melava: I'm so sorry - I have wasted so much time

Eolasan: I know

Isalas em?: You desire me?

Vin. Tel'harthas?: Yes. You can't tell? (lit. "You don't perceive (it)?")

Shivas'lathelanen: The participants in the bonding ritual

Ma fenorain: Endearment similar to "darling"