Two chapters today. This one is Solas POV.
Solas Welcomes a Chance to Think
Solas welcomed her absence. Or at least he tried. Or at least he told himself he tried.
Thinking clearly was not best accomplished, it turned out, with a fever and an uneasy stomach - and didn't this world deserve to burn for that alone? Disease . He shuddered, both at the idea and because he couldn't stop shivering, though he was, simultaneously, unbearably hot. How dare a pathogen infect him ?
Righteous indignation faltered as nausea swept over him, and he had to take a moment to breathe slowly. He was not going to vomit - not again.
He remembered her cool hands and soft lips with longing, even more than he remembered the healing magic she poured inexpertly through him, seeking to soothe what she didn't know how to cure. Those memories - that longing - made it more difficult to remember what he was supposed to be thinking about.
Ah, of course - how she fit into his plans. How he could make her fit. How he could keep her safe while simultaneously sending her far away, where she wouldn't be able to interfere.
Far away - she was far away now, and he didn't like it.
"She hated leaving," Cole said in a near-whisper from his place at Solas's side. "She thinks it's her fault, but she didn't know you didn't know."
"She is too quick to assign blame to herself," Solas rasped in agreement.
Would she blame herself if he sent her away?
"Yes," Cole said.
Perhaps, he lied to himself, he wouldn't have to send her so far away. Perhaps he might keep her near enough that he could take comfort in her presence occasionally, when the burden of a leadership he had never asked for and still didn't want became too heavy to bear. He imagined gentle, cool hands caressing his skin and gathering up all his cares and sorrows, leaving him peaceful, able to breathe…
He missed her and he wanted her back, but the thoughts and memories reminded him what it felt like to breathe. Breathing led to relaxing, and relaxing led, inevitably, to sleep. He would think more later, he told himself - later, when he was less tired and less at the mercy of his loneliness.
I have very few head-canons that I adhere to strictly - I actually prefer to try out different assumptions and explanations to see how they play out and change things in different stories. This is one hill I will die on, though: the Elvhen had a sophisticated understanding of what we would call science, probably using magic rather than anything we would consider technology. Biology is my favorite field in science, so I tend to fixate on that one the most, but I imagine they would have also understood chemistry and whatever physics analogue we might expect in a world that contains magic. I so badly want Ghilan'nain to have been some sort of mad biochemist/bioengineer.