In this episode, Dorian gets tired of waiting at Skyhold, which works out nicely, because he's a delight to have around. Ashiril and Solas share an evening talking about mostly depressing things in an effort to rekindle their friendship, because hey, why not bond over stuff that makes you cry?
When they made it back to camp, Dorian was there. He had spread a duvet over a large stone and was sitting with a drink in one hand and a book in the other. He looked up as they approached, a greeting on his lips, then his face fell at the sight of Ash hobbling behind a triumphant-looking Blackwall.
"Sweet Maker, what on earth did you get into?" he was astonished. Blackwall was already heading back toward the elf with a potion from their cache.
"Fell down a very deep hole," she took the potion and drank deeply, then let out a satisfied gasp and wiped her mouth. "Also got shot with an arrow and hit with a very large hammer. There was probably more." Healing prickled through her body, knitting muscles and skin back together. She let out a sigh of relief.
"Well, no wonder I felt the sudden urge to come join you. Clearly my unconscious was trying to save you from getting yourself killed."
"Is that so?" she laughed. Solas and Cole were in sight, now. Dorian waved hello.
"How is it that you're the only one who looks like you've exploded and tried to put yourself back together again? Terribly done, I might add," Dorian snapped a look at Blackwall. "Our Warden's a close second, but that's nothing new."
"Why are you here, again?" Blackwall sounded unamused.
"I was bored," Dorian said primly. "I'm the only one who was left at Skyhold, surrounded by all those stoic soldiers training, refugees unpacking, nobles whining."
"Nobles whining? You'd think you'd feel right at home," the Warden snorted as he started to unlatch his armor for cleaning.
"You'll recall I left home."
"I, for one, am happy to see you," Ash declared. "Come here!" She moved quickly toward him, arms outstretched. Dorian looked horrified at her fast approach.
"You wouldn't dare!"
He started to scrabble off the stone and for his staff, but the small, incredibly strong elf had grabbed him in a tight bear hug. Mud, dried blood, and deepstalker innards flaked off her as he struggled.
"You deserve no less a greeting," she declared. Dorian gagged and pushed futiley to dislodge her.
"This is unequivocally the cruelest thing you've ever done to me," he gritted his teeth. "I could light you on fire, you know."
"I know," she pulled his face down and kissed his cheek, then finally released him, laughing. He scrubbed furiously at his robes, looked with disgust at his hands, then paused in confusion as to how to proceed.
"Excuse me. I have go burn these now."
"I'll miss you!" Ash called after him as he stomped off toward a tent. "Ah, it's good to see him."
"I'll never understand how you get along with almost everyone, no matter how much a pompous brat they are," Blackwall shook his head.
"One day perhaps you'll meet my clan's keeper and realize just how wrong you are about that," Ash waved a finger at him. "Now. I'm going to grab a quick nap. The potion was lovely, but I feel like I could sleep for days."
She only slept for a few hours, and woke as the sun was setting. There was food cooking over the fire when she emerged from her tent and stretched. The arrow wound had closed up and her leg was only moderately sore. Good enough. She announced brightly that they would seek out Hawke's Warden friend in the morning.
Ash finished her dinner and oversaw some reports with the Inquisition soldiers, then heaved a sigh of relief that the day was done. Blackwall had turned in early, seemingly exhausted from the day's events. And Cole was wandering around the campsite, staring at things and quietly muttering to himself. Dorian wasn't around, and she assumed he was taking shelter in his tent until he was relatively certain everyone had bathed.
Ash spotted Solas sitting by the campfire. He seemed sullen lately. They had not shared as many moments as they used to since before their ill-planned kiss. It didn't rest well with Ash.
He didn't look up as she approached.
"It's been too long since you've shared a tale with me," she joined him. His eyes flicked sideways to her, then back to the fire. He smiled humorlessly.
"I would not command too much of your attention, Inquisitor," he said quietly.
"And you won't. Just a few stories," she pressed. "You've had days to come up with some."
"It is true," he paused. "But you have little free time. Is it not best spent making plans for the Inquisition? Or honing your fighting skills?"
Was he… being passive aggressive? An unease crept over her, that maybe something irreparable had occurred between them, and she had missed it.
"If you are advising me to do so, I will consider it," Ash said. "But Solas… I enjoy these tales. You give me pieces of lives, real histories, that I would never have otherwise had."
His eyebrows twitched and he turned to her. She couldn't tell much from his expression. She never really could, when he didn't want her to.
"I honestly believe it makes me better at this job. This Inquisition business," she confessed, breaking his gaze to look down at her hands folded in her lap. "I know I'm reckless at times. I lived in a small world before this. And your experiences… sharing them with me has been one of the greatest gifts I've ever received. You both ground and inspire me."
She hadn't expected to have such raw words tumble out of her. Ash felt wary of looking at him, so she stared into the fire instead and waited. A few seconds of silence passed, and she almost thought to get up and leave him in the solitude he seemed to prefer tonight.
"I saw a peaceful village by the seaside in ages past," his voice was low and neutral. "One late summer day, strangers charged in with torches and burnt the village to the ground." Ash looked at him. He was staring into the evening sky. His face crinkled with remembrance, as if he were contemplating a puzzle. "They did not take prisoners, but slaughtered all, and stole what livestock and valuables they could find, which was not much for a simple people. I saw a mother of three herd her children into a tall tree, where they stayed, quaking in fear, as she lured the attackers away and to her doom."
Well, shit.
"What happened to the children?"
"The eldest led them into the forest, where they survived for a time. Eventually a passing clan adopted them, and though it was never home, they found some kind of peace again," he concluded.
Ash tried to imagine such a life. The life if she and the other clan children had been driven from their home, alone, into the forest, and perhaps adopted by traveling human merchants. It was… unpleasant.
"I met a spirit in the city once, haunting an elven alienage," Solas continued. "It had lived there long and lonely years before the city grew around it. I knew not what it once was, driven mad as it had been by despair around it. Voices of hunger, loss, pain, confusion, doubt, and more cried daily. I imagine it must have once been Compassion," his eyes flickered briefly to Cole's form, wandering the perimeter of the camp. "It showed me flashes of dreams, a jumble of faces twisted in tears, gaunt with starvation, or stilled by death… children crying for their lost innocence, adults turned to stone by sorrow and fear. The spirit longed to flee, but had forgotten where there was to go, and its existence was compounded by the madness of despair it spread to those around it."
Ash let out a shuddering sigh. Somehow, these tales seemed appropriate on the heels of Crestwood. After finding out the mayor himself had drowned the old town in a tragic attempt to save those he could, it felt like a vigil.
"Do you wish me to continue?" Solas broke her reverie. "I do not have particularly uplifting stories on my mind this night."
"Must they be?" she leaned back on her elbows and looked up into the sky. Stars were beginning to appear. "I didn't feel particularly cheerful tonight anyway. Were you in Crestwood?"
Solas chortled for the first time that night.
"Ah. Are you suggesting you would emotionally hamstring yourself over past events that you cannot change?"
"What?" she was chagrined. Ash turned on her side and glared at the smug elf. "Look. Maybe you're joking, but... Okay, consider a world with only joy. No tragedy. No loss. And one day, a terrible thing happens. Perhaps just the once. But it would be a greater tragedy to forget that it ever happened."
Solas blew air out his nose.
"I know it's a heavy-handed example," she scowled, "but the point is, I'm not wallowing. I'm… remembering."
The elven mage shook his head and sighed.
"As you say."
"Oh, shut it," she hissed. "You agree with me."
Solas laughed.
"Yes," he caved. She felt relief ease the tension in her shoulders.
He began another story, this one of a cave beyond a waterfall that served as a respite for a lonely ranger. Then another, and another, until Ash's eyes were heavy-lidded with drowsiness and the stars blurred overhead.
"What of your past?" Solas asked softly. He was lying fully on the ground now. The fire crackled low nearby. All the Inquisition soldiers had turned in for the night. Cole was still about, somewhere.
"It's a simple one," Ash propped her head up behind her arms and glanced at the mage.
"But it is yours," he said. "I would know it." She bit her lower lip and looked back up into the cloudless night sky.
"I am a child of the strongest hunters in my clan, one of three, and the youngest," she began. "My older brother, Theolan, is a mage. He's one of the most talented mages I've ever met, and he knows it."
"Oh, is he?" Solas's tone left no doubt to that he wondered how he measured up.
"You two together?" she scoffed. "It would be insufferable." Ash hesitated. "My older sister, Thalanil, followed in our mother's footsteps and took up the bow. I was the smallest, and so naturally I decided the great axe of my father was for me."
"Is that the reason? The impracticality of it?"
"I was stubborn. And I knew my father wanted a warrior in his bloodline," she shrugged. Ash sighed, readying herself for the rest of the tale. "I proved to be very good, once I had made myself strong enough. I goaded my siblings into many hunts we likely should not have taken on alone."
"I am shocked."
"When the blight began, we didn't realize it for a time. I convinced Theo and Thala that we should go on an extended hunt. Venture days from our clan. Test ourselves."
Solas was silent now. He sensed the shift in her story.
"We were attacked by darkspawn on our third day out. I remember counting each day. I wanted to tell the story of our journeys for years to come. We'd never encountered anything like them. We retreated into the forest, but Thala was wounded. She had been infected by the taint, though we did not understand it at the time," Ash shut her eyes. She could still see her sister's face, twisted in pain, and fearful she would not make it home to see their mother and father. "My brother's magic could not heal her. She died on the third day of the journey back, only miles from home."
She heard Solas shift closer across the grass. She looked over as he propped himself on an elbow to face her.
"You blame yourself?"
"Yes," Ash said without hesitation. "I know we would have done well on that excursion, if not for the darkspawn. I know now they would have encountered my clan regardless, as they did a few days later. But it does not matter." His expression was cryptic as ever. "I have mixed feelings about the number three."
His eyebrows and lips twitched in macabre amusement.
Ash snapped her stare back to the sky. She felt her eyes grow hot. Damn it. She rolled on her side away from Solas.
A warm hand pressed gently against her upper back.
"Ir abelas, falon."
She blew out a long, shuddering sigh. He called her falon. Her chest tightened.
"Ir nuvena suledin," she said quietly. "Ir telema."
"This from the woman who earlier tonight told me that we are better for remembering our tragedies," he chided. A bemused laugh forced its way out her throat.
"I am all contradictions. That should surely instill confidence in those around me."
"If you do not stop belittling yourself, I will chuck you into the fire," he promised.
Ash's laugh was parts grateful and defiant. She sat up and narrowed her eyes. Solas did not move from his languid position, propped up on one elbow, but his gaze followed her. She had been ready to spit a retort at him, but the intimacy of their closeness made her falter. Instead, she pushed herself to her feet.
"I've enjoyed this," she smiled warmly down at him, then moved toward her tent. Ash stopped at the entrance and looked back. Solas was sitting up now, watching her. "On era'vun, falon." He smiled, and this time it reflected in his eyes.
"On era'vun."