Chapter 8: Solace for a Guilty Heart

Solas was exhausted after what felt like the longest day of his life. He held an apple in the palm of his hand but could do nothing more than stare at it blankly as he ascended the stairs to his quarters, still deep in thought.

His feet stopped automatically in front of a small desk, where he slumped down into the comfortable, padded chair and set the apple down in front of him. Elessa had often sat in this very same place and devoted hours of her time to piles of unanswered correspondences laying on top of it.

Many times Solas had tried to surprise her, approaching as quietly as possible, bare feet gliding slowly across the cold, dark stone as his hand carefully steadied a cup of hot tea. It was his own shadow that often betrayed him, the warm and crackling fire parading its lithe, traitorous form across the walls of the room. The subtle change in lighting never failed to catch Elessa's attention, and she would turn to him and grin as he mischievously leaned in for a chaste kiss.

The memory made him smile, and his hands soon descended curiously towards the drawers along the side of the desk. The first drawer on the left revealed a stack of blank parchment, two quills, and a tiny inkwell. From the drawer on the right, Solas retrieved a single piece of folded paper.

Familiarity and a stream of memories flooded his head as he unfolded the paper - the last thing he had written, hours before their fight with Corypheus. It was a tear-stained poem, and he had tucked it deep into one of his hundreds of tomes in hopes of locking it away. Nobody was ever meant to find it, but somehow she had. He read its contents once again:

Solace for a Guilty Heart

No direction came to mind,
I traveled listless in the fade.
Wishing to leave it all behind,
So many mistakes that I have made.

I walked along a river,
Loneliness my only friend.
Life's resolve began to quiver,
And I wanted it to end.

But I noticed a rare flower,
That bloomed every hundred years.
Precisely on the hour,
I was quickly brought to tears.

Our paths had somehow crossed,
As if it was meant to be.
My love no longer lost,
The one who saved my heart was she.

Solas a symbol of my mistakes,
Another word for foolish pride,
And though our hearts now break,
I pine to have her by my side.

Once again along the water,
She cannot join me in my fight,
I sacrificed two hearts for slaughter.
Because I need to do what's right.

If I survive this heavy weight,
Will she give me one more chance?
For when I change the world's fate,
I shall save her my last dance.

In reflecting, he admitted that he had been wrong in his declaration of what "was right," and he vividly remembered the feelings of hope to which he clung while writing the poem. It simply never occurred to him that she would be lost before they could have their "last dance."

Having spent enough time that day wallowing in despair, he pushed past the pangs of guilt surrounding their break-up and the string of bad decisions that followed. Elessa would not want that, he thought solemnly.

Instead, he began to picture his vhenan finding his poem, perhaps after giving birth their son. He hoped that it had given her strength or comfort in times of sadness. It was probably fortunate that she had found it.

How clever she had been to have discovered his identity years before he was ready to reveal it. Had she never found the poem or given birth to Da'Fen, she still might have figured it all out just the same, he realized as he reflected on his past actions.

Solas knew too much history, and only so much could be explained through the fade. Elessa was unusually bright and eager to learn, and he had been drawn to her like an insect to veilfire. Her unquenchable thirst for knowledge rivaled his own in many ways, and he could never resist the urge to share information, even if it was to his own detriment.

He had a bad habit of unconsciously leaving tiny clues that could potentially give himself away, and he had always realized it until after the fact. He didn't fully understood why he did it. Was it because deep down he wanted her to know, because it was completely by accident, or because the closer he came to getting caught, the more alive he felt? Perhaps it was all three.

He recalled times when he had acted suspiciously as well. Their trip to the Temple of Mythal immediately came to mind. He had argued incessantly with Morrigan about elven history, especially once they found the Fen'Harel statue in the temple. Then there was Abelas, who addressed him as one of the ancients in front of everybody. Solas wondered for a moment if Abelas was ever able to find a purpose or change his namesake.

When they had been sent physically through the fade, the fear demon called him out as well, and Solas remembered feeling extremely uneasy at the time. He had guessed that Elessa had understood most of the conversation, yet to his surprise, she never once brought it up afterwards.

There were more subtler things that gave Solas away as well, like how he became unusually quiet whenever they approached a wolf statue, sometimes to the point of avoiding eye contact. Those statues always made him feel claustrophobic, and he wanted to be as far away from them as possible.

He snickered at the recollection that he once wandered off in the exalted plains to pick elfroot while in the middle of a mission because he needed a distraction from the plethora of wolf statues in the area. Perhaps Elessa could sense his discomfort, and that's the reason why she smiled and allowed it, despite Iron Bull and Dorian's objections.

For someone who possessed so much knowledge of everything elven, he had so little to say about the legend of Fen'Harel when the topic came up, and surly Elessa had taken notice. Yet to her credit, she never addressed the issue. She was always so considerate of his feelings and never once did anything to make him feel the least bit uncomfortable. In hindsight, it was not due to ignorance, but rather out of kindness and love – a shame that he never realized that at the time.

He thought he was so clever, time and time again eluding everyone's suspicions regarding his true identity. In retrospect, he realized that his foolish pride had blinded him from seeing that she likely knew all along. At the very least, she recognized that everything he claimed did not add up, he thought as he carefully folded the paper and placed it back inside the drawer.

His mind drifted back to Da'Fen. It had been a tough day for the boy, no doubt the toughest in his young life. He would soon be asleep and in the fade, and Solas had a duty to protect him. He approached the over-sized bed and snatched a pillow and a blanket before walking into Elessa's closet. As he set up his bedding, he smiled as his nose hungrily took in the familiar scent of elfroot and jasmine.

*I wrote that poem a while ago with the intention of using it in one of my stories. I plan on writing the next chapter or two very soon and hope I don't let you down ;)

Once again, thank you for sticking with me. I appreciate all of the comments so far.