A/N: Hello lovies! It's alive! I'm so very sorry for the delay in updates. I'm battling the mother of all colds and I find it difficult to write when my head is all foggy and stuffed up. Couple that with school and work and you've got a perfect storm of not being able to write. But here it is!
Deep roads are next chapter, I absolutely promise (Harlow and Alistair too!).
Many thanks to everyone who has faved/followed/reviewed. Your readership means the absolute world to me. I try to respond to every review but I feel like a few have slipped through the cracks, and I'm really sorry. To those who haven't gotten a reply, please know I value your feedback greatly and thank you profusely for taking the time to read my musings.
R&R lovies, reviews are the antidote to the common cold!
Evanthe stared blankly into the crackling fire, the image blurry and wet through her unfocused eyes. She had spoken not a word since the party had left the slaughter of the elves behind, and even now, surrounded by starlight and the safety of the camp, she remained silent. No one dared approach her, even Elissa and Leliana had given her a wide berth. She didn't know if this was an act of kindness, a privacy given that she may better wallow in her grief, or if it instead was an act of caution. Perhaps they all worried she would break once more, screaming her pain to the heavens as she attacked blindly. Evanthe didn't care much which was the cause of her forced solitude, she merely relished it, wanting to be numb and alone.
A battered tin mug dropped into the right periphery of her gaze, held out in offering by graceful, slim fingers. Evanthe reached out to grasp the cup, turning her head as she did so to find Solas standing just behind her, a mug of his own held loosely in his free hand. Evanthe nodded in thanks, a gesture the man took for an invitation, and he settled next her on the ground.
"Tea?" she inquired numbly, raising the libation to her lips and sipping carefully. "I thought you hated tea."
"I detest the stuff," Solas replied, drinking deep and grimacing as he did so. "But I detest hypothermia more."
"Funny, here I thought you didn't mind the cold. You're the only one who hasn't made some passing comment about the weather."
"Complaining would not change the elements," Solas replied with a shrug, "what then is the point of lamenting that which cannot be altered?"
"I don't remember you being so infuriatingly pragmatic. Where you always this way? Or was I simply so blinded by feeling that I didn't bother to notice?" Evanthe muttered, taking another drink of her tea. It was a pleasant blend of jasmine and chamomile, and it left a languid trail of warmth down her center as she swallowed.
"Emotion does have a way of blinding us to the insufferable," Solas answered, raising his mug to sip once more, only to frown and put it aside. It appeared that even the bitter cold was not enough to force the man to drink the sweetened brew.
"What did it blind you to in me?" Evanthe asked, genuinely curious. Solas stiffened a bit at the question, startled that she would so blatantly ask such a thing.
"Who is to say I do not still suffer that particular malady?" he replied after a time, words soft and brittle. Evanthe wondered why he did not lie. It would have been so easy for him to select a flaw and pretend that his feelings for her were a thing of the past. Instead he was honest, giving her a truth that both of them could see, despite whatever deceptions they might speak aloud. She almost questioned why he had not offered a falsehood, but stopped herself when he looked at her with barely guarded resignation. She remembered then that she had told him trust must be earned. It appeared he was taking her words to heart. He would not lie to her, not even to save them both embarrassment and pain, because she had made it clear that anything less than honesty would put an end to his redemption in her eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said at last, and it was an apology for so much more than his lingering feelings. It was a lamentation of all they'd lost, of her own stubborn emotions, and for the burgeoning relationship between her and the commander.
"You have no reason to be, da'vhenan," Solas replied, "it is I who am at fault for my circumstances."
"Even so," Evanthe muttered, finishing off the last of her tea. "I know it can't be easy to see me with Cullen, and-"
"If we could refrain from speaking of the commander," Solas insisted stiffly. "While I freely offer penance for mistakes of my own doing, I nonetheless would prefer to not engage in conversation regarding your romantic attachments."
"Fair enough," Evanthe conceded, leaning back and bracing herself on her hands. "But we have to figure out a way past this, Solas, if only so that those who live with us aren't forced to drown in our maudlin tension."
"You are right, of course. What would you have of me?"
"Friendship?" She answered, and the notion seemed to surprise him.
"I do believe such a thing requires forgiveness on your part," Solas hedged, the words careful and edged in hope. "Can you truly offer such a thing after all that I've done? Am I not to blame for the current state of the world?"
"What is the point of lamenting that which cannot be altered?" she replied with the slightest bit of a grin, parroting his earlier words back to him. It earned her a breathy chuckle, and Solas shook his head, looking at her sidelong from the corner of his eyes.
"Were you always this pragmatic?" he teased and Evanthe laughed, the sound a cleansing all its own. It felt good to feel a small bit of joy one more. It seemed to lessen the burden of death she carried with her on almost constant basis.
"Hardly," she answered, tilting her head back to gaze at the night sky. "I've tried to hate you Solas, gods know you deserve it, but I don't have it in me. Even after all that you've done, what you set in motion...I don't know. I think there's a part of me that will always want you near. I can't fight against that anymore. And frankly, there is a whole mess of other, far more dire, issues that demand my attention. Petty anger has no place in this world. So I've decided to let it go...and claim your friendship if you'll have me."
"A pretty speech, da'vhenan," he said after a pregnant pause. "I forgot how eloquent you can be. Yes, you shall have my friendship, however difficult it may be. You may find it hard to hate me, Evanthe; I find it just as hard to to feel only simple camaraderie for you. But perhaps that is to be my penance."
"No need to be dramatic," Evanthe chided, rolling her eyes.
"Apologies, I suppose that was a bit over-wrought," Solas replied with a smile. "I am unused to anything other in your presence, having been on the receiving end of your own melancholy rants."
"Hey," Evanthe scoffed, bumping her shoulder against his, "no fair pointing out my bad behavior when I'm calling you on yours."
"And you wonder why I call you 'da'vhenan'," Solas mocked good-naturedly. "Your youth is ever present." The two shared easy smiles, and for a moment Evanthe could almost forget all that had come between them. It felt for all the world that they were back at Haven, sitting along the township's half wall and talking long into the night. She had been unaware of how greatly she had missed his friendship, gifted to her long before his romantic inklings. It was nice to recapture a bit of that, even if she instinctively knew it would never be the same. The moments of joy and camaraderie stolen beneath the crisp blue sky of that mountain town were tarnished a bit now. It was hard to replicate beneath the yawning chasm of the fade when the memory of such things were tainted by secrets. But Evanthe could try.
Solas took advantage of her introspection and rose gracefully to his feet. Evanthe blinked up at him in surprise, startled at the abrupt end of their discussion. Solas quirked one corner of his mouth upward in amusement before holding out his hand in a bid for her to rise.
"I do believe we have a lesson to attend, da'vhenan," he offer in clarification and she frowned up at him in displeasure.
"Really? You insist on continuing this exercise in failure?"
"It is only failure until you succeed," Solas argued. Evanthe closed her eyes at this and let loose a weary sigh. She was so tired, so emotionally wrung out and hollow. The last thing she wanted to do was tromp off into the cold, far from the warmth of the fire, and try to learn how to kill people more effectively.
"Please, Solas," she whispered, rubbing her temples and furrowing her brow. "Not tonight. Not after all that's happened. Just...just let me have tonight."
"There will be more death, Evanthe," he said quietly, and she opened her eyes ever so slightly to peer up at him. "Today it was a clan, tomorrow it will be a town. The slaughter will be never ending for that is its nature. You cannot allow yourself pause simply because it pains you. You must rise to greet it. How else are you to stop it?" Evanthe groaned, but reached a hand up, lacing her fingers tight with his. Solas made a grunt of approval before hauling her upright and leading her away from the camp.
When they were a good twenty yards off, far away from the flickering light of the fire, Solas brought them to a halt. Evanthe slumped her shoulders and dutifully raised her palm, preparing for another evening of frustrating failure. Solas shook his head and pushed her arm down. When she cocked an eyebrow at him in confusion he simply sank to his knees, motioning for her to follow suit.
"What's this?" she asked with open curiosity. "I thought we were to-"
"We must change your magic, Evanthe," he interrupted. She was too stunned by the words to do more than fall to her knees in front of him, mirroring his positioning. Sensing her discomfort Solas sighed and waved his hand in the air, as if he could erase his initial statement. "Forgive me. Your magic is more than adequate. What we need to change is how you access it."
"I access it just fine," Evanthe insisted, calling up a bit of fire in an outstretched palm to underscore her point. Solas smiled gently at her parlor trick before leaning close and blowing out the flame.
"It is more a matter of undoing the pathways you have unconsciously created to access it," Solas clarified. When Evanthe frowned, clearly not following his meaning, he let out a small sigh and endeavored to explain further. "Upon watching you call upon your power I feel that you, like almost every other mage in Thedas, access your craft through careful pathways. Think of it as a system of locks. You lower one barrier to access one school, thereby shutting off the other magics in the process."
"But I don't need the others," she argued. "If I'm casting chain lightening what need have I for incinerate or-or blizzard?"
"You are right," Solas nodded, reaching out to grasp her fade-marked palm and holding it up between them. "Were this any other lesson your pathways would be more than adequate. But this is different, da'vhenan. This is fade magic that has no school of power to call home. This is wild, untamed. It is raw and the pure essence of what we as mages play with."
"And my...lock system is interfering with this?"
"In your careful crafting of your power you have unwittingly created barriers between yourself and all that you are capable of."
"But I accessed the power once," Evanthe insisted. "It got out somehow. Clearly these 'barriers' didn't matter then."
"Think, da'vhenan," Solas urged. "Think upon how you let lose the magic upon that blood soaked battlefield."
Evanthe frowned but indulged him, turning inward to think upon that dismal day. She remembered her fall, so instinctive at the time yet obviously insane upon reflection. Her hands had been hurt, shredded, but she hadn't cared. She had raced to Cullen's side, only to be faced with a demon bearing down on her and the commander. The blast of power she had unleashed had seemed futile; a last, desperate prayer of foolish hope. There had been no time for her to draw upon the magic as she usually did. There was no controlled second nature spiral to access the spells at her disposal. It was more a letting go, an opening of everything inside her. That had been the difference.
"You allowed yourself to be flung wide, Evanthe," Solas explained, as if he could hear the course of her thoughts. "You're imminent demise allowed you to let go of your carefully constructed training and simply exist as a being of magic."
"I don't know how to replicate it," she whispered. "And I don't relish putting myself in near-death situations in some misguided attempt to."
"Be at peace, da'vhenan," Solas replied with an easy laugh. "It requires nothing so dramatic, I assure you. We must simply locate your barriers so as to better work upon letting them fall in tangent."
"And how do we do that?" Solas became quiet at that and a faint blush stained his cheeks, barely visible in the darkened night. "Solas?"
"I must guide you to where they are," he muttered after a time. "To do so will require that I...merge my power with yours. It is...invasive, though not unpleasant."
Evanthe's mouth grew suddenly dry, and she felt her heart beat ever so faster. If she was reading Solas' meaning correctly, what he was proposing was a ritual of a very intimate nature. The fact that he seemed hesitant about it, embarrassed even, put her a bit at ease. She knew he was not suggesting this course in an underhanded bid to play upon her tangled emotions. It was truly an exercise in power management, however delicate and improper.
"Will you allow me to do this?" He asked quietly when she had not said anything for quiet sometime. Evanthe blinked once before gently nodding her head, forcing her posture to stand a bit straighter. Solas raised his right hand, hesitating only briefly before placing firmly upon her chest. It rested just above the hollow of her breasts, fingers splayed out, the tip of his index brushing against the pulse point of her throat. Evanthe swallowed hard and her eyes fluttered slightly. It was a touch and placement reserved for those with whom she shared familiarity, and while Solas was no stranger, the history of their entanglement made this act all the more taboo.
"Close your eyes, da'vhenan," Solas commanded quietly, "and open yourself to me." Evanthe complied, at least with shuttering of her vision; she wasn't quite clear on how she was to open herself. The answer came a moment later when she felt the presence of something other pressing beneath her skin. It felt foreign, strange, and yet were she asked to put a title to the sensation she would have named it 'Solas' without a second thought. This power that was begging entrance at her own was the pure embodiment of the man who knelt before her. It was woodsmoke and ether, physical and fade, gentle passion and fierce control. And it wanted inside her.
"You must let me in, Evanthe," she heard Solas order her and she took a deep rasping breath in reply, still trying to get to use to this wondrous intrusion.
"I don't know how," she breathed. Solas huffed every so slightly before redirecting his power and then she felt it, the slightest of ticklings in her torso; a tendril of magic pressing against an intangible barrier. Solas had found one of her pathways, had directed her attention to this block she had unknowingly constructed. Evanthe sucked in a breath and focused hard upon the wall, examining it with her inner senses as best she could. Ever so slowly she began to dismantle the wall, picking it apart until it was latticed and penetrable. She could feel the faintest pulse of fire magic residing on the other side and for a moment she panicked, fearful that she would not be able to reconstruct the barrier.
"Do not fear it, da'vhenan," Solas voiced murmured soothing. "The barriers are part of you. Their reconstruction will pose no effort at all. Evanthe nodded and continued her work, forcing herself to hold back the fire magic that beckoned lest she lose her focus and end up burning them both.
When at last she had worn enough of the wall away Solas slipped quickly and delicately passed, eager to to get inside lest the barrier snap close. Evanthe's spine bowed at the sensation, a shaky gasp breaking free from her tongue. It felt so alien to have someone else inside her, so intimate. Nothing she had ever before experienced compared to this. When his magic wrapped tendrils around her own it caused a startled cry to rise up within her, the sound primal and mewling. She could feel Solas, could hear his heart beat and feel the pulses of mana riding hot and heavy in his veins. They truly were entwined in that moment, plaited together so as to better instruct her in this exercise.
Inch by painstaking inch Solas guided her through her body, their magic searching out barriers and systematically dismantling them. Evanthe knew that this guided tour served only to show her were these blocks inside her lay. It was rather genius of Solas to show her in this manner. Whereas anyone else might simply have brought her barriers down so as to more efficiently access the mark inside her, Solas instead showed her how she could be in control of it. This lesson in magical anatomy had given her the knowledge to replicate the process herself should she so choose.
With every new barrier broken Evanthe's heart began to beat faster and her breath came in labored pants. When at last there was but one wall left, Evanthe opened her eyes, needing, beyond reason, to look at Solas in that moment. His skin was flush, pupils wide and dilated in a sea of blue. His breathing was just as labored as hers, and a look of intense concentration lingered in his gaze. When their eyes locked time seemed to slow and the two hovered on a precipice of waiting. Somehow this exercise had become more than just a lesson, and each of them knew it. Evanthe better understood Solas' initial hesitation, and part of her wished there had been another way. It was too late, however, to turn back now. Evanthe could feel a pulsing power deep with in her, yearning to break free and explore. They were so close, they just need to take that final step over the edge.
Whatever Solas saw reflected in her gaze was enough to have him pushing through, guiding her power with his own and the final barrier collapsed. Evanthe cried out as magic flooded her body, primal schools swirling and melding into unnatural braids of spell craft. This is what it felt like to be uncontained, to be open and raw. Beneath the overwhelming onslaught of power Evanthe could feel the fade, the pulsing otherness of her mark, and as it rose up within her it began to swallow everything in its path.
"You must direct it!" Solas cried out, the words harried as he struggled against his own share of sensation. Evanthe arched her back as another wave of magic crashed through her, eyes rolling back in her head. It was sadistically pleasurable, almost too much. She better understood why mages compartmentalize their power; to feel this crush of contentment and freedom was drugging and she could easily see how one could be consumed by it. The power rolled through her, blending and separating as every school of magic she claimed fought for supremacy. She tried to gather it into a cohesive cable but it was unruly, willful, refusing to bend to her commands.
"Evanthe! To the mark!" Solas cried out, reaching for her palm with his free hand and thrusting it upwards. She could feel that they were quickly approaching the end game. The magic wanted to be released, and it would do so one way or another. If she wasn't careful, if she didn't take control the results could be devastating. Gritting her teeth Evanthe tried once more to guide her magic, furiously working towards completion and control. When the power finally bent, ever so slightly, Evanthe cried out, the sound ragged and dripping in exhilaration. She clumsily guided the swelling magic of the fade down her shoulder, through her arm, and into her hand. It left her skin in a dazzling display of light and power, causing both her and Solas to gasp in tandem and stiffen up. The magic shot out, flying into the sky and exploding outward into a misty ball of green. It hovered, twisting and twining and emitting a low, dark hum. Evanthe stared after it in wonder, thinking it oddly beautiful. The display lasted only a minute before dissipating in a flash of light, a display that left her temporarily blinded. When her vision returned she let out a startled bark of laughter, tears pricking at her eyes as she gazed upon what she had wrought.
In the midst of the green tinted night sky, the smallest, barely discernible bit of black gleamed defiantly. It was so tiny, hardly noticeable unless one knew where to look, but present nonetheless. Evanthe fixed her gaze upon that bit of black and smiled wide, her happiness overwhelming her.
"Congratulations, da'vhenan," Solas offered a bit breathlessly. "Not only have you learned to access the power...you have begun to heal the heavens." Evanthe let out a joyous laugh, and swung her gaze back round to his. There was pride there, pride for her and what she had accomplished, but also tension laced with heat. It was then that she remembered their placement, remembered that his hand still rested above her heart, merging their magic into one. They had shared something, the two of them, merging in a way few before them ever had. It made things strange and uncertain between them, and even though Evanthe stiffened, she made no move to remove his hand from her chest.
"Herald!" Leliana called out, rushing over from the camp with Elissa, Varric, and Zevran in two. "Are you alright?" Solas dropped his hand, releasing her from his power and touch in one fell swoop. Evanthe gasped at the loss and felt strangely hollow.
"I am more than fine," Evanthe answered the bard, rubbing her fingers over the space where Solas had touched her. She could still feel the warmth upon her flesh, and it was comforting. "Look to the sky."
As Leliana and the others turned their attention heavenward, startled and jubilant gasps rising to their throats, Evanthe kept her gaze locked with Solas', unsure as to where they stood with one another. When he simply rose to feet, slightly shaky and off balance, she knew that they would continue on as before, pretending. It was for the best, she knew this, but the lingering traces of what they shared still sparked through her veins, leaving her strangely sated and utterly confused.