Ell readies her staff, and its grip grows cold in her hands as she works the Fade into frost, prepared to incapacitate him the moment she found reason. That Solas is unarmed and not drawing on the ample magic at their disposal himself stays her hand. He approaches slowly, hands behind his back, the way he always used to look when he was about to deliver some lecture dripping in self-righteousness.
"Am I supposed to be impressed with these—histrionics?" she sputters, as she pointedly gazes about the unrecognizable landscape surrounding them. Her heart rattles in her chest as he draws close enough for her to take in his features, unchanged, other than the faint scar etched across his right eye.
The way he had looked at her in Minrathous…it had been the first time he had looked at her at that way since removing her vallaslin in Crestwood all those years ago. When they met again in the Crossroads two years later, he wore an unaffected mask. "Harden your heart to a knife's edge," he had told her then. Now he wears the same mask. Or perhaps it never was a mask. Perhaps her Solas had been the mask all along. Bastard.
His voice is as honey, just the way she remembers, but the tone is cool.
"Are you harmed?" he asks.
She nearly laughs at the audacity of the question. "I suppose that depends. But forgive me if I am perplexed by your sudden interest in my well-being, after what you've done," she seethes.
"I know, Ell. And I am sorry. If it is any comfort, I believe I have devised a way to free you," he replies solemnly.
The rage flares in her belly. She had pursued her own freedom for weeks, only for the Fade to upend itself, her reality rearranged as if she had never left the clearing. Caging her as surely as the enchantments of the Ossuary. And before she could even appreciate the scale of her loss, account for the heartbreak of each footstep that had carried her toward a false salvation, he invites her to subject herself to him, to the promise of betrayal, once more?
And, she realized…a part of her no longer wanted the freedom he offered. Illogically, a part of her believed she was already home.
"Oh, have you? Did your guilt catch up with you? Or is this a pastime for you? Leaving me only to hunt me down, so you can leave again? Luring me back to you, so you can say goodbye to me once more?"
Had she been so blind to him? Over and over again he had made the same choice, and over and over again their parting had left her heart shattered anew. "Am I that naïve to think you ever loved me when you've become so practiced at walking away from me? Does leaving me really come so easily to you? Like blowing out a candle?"
Solas opens his mouth prepared with a platitude, then closes it again. He had steeled himself in service of his mission to free her. To open himself to her risked delaying his vital task. But his very soul revolted against the thought of allowing her to go the rest of her days believing he did not love her. Not when the truth was that he had nearly abandoned everything he believed in to explore a life with this surreal spirit. She had shown herself to him fully and completely. She wore no mask, even now. For her, he could lay himself bear. He would break her again, and though every cell of him would grieve for it, he knew her spirit would endure. He will send her across the Veil. But he would have her know the truth of him.
He lets his arms fall at his side. He stops fighting the memories clamoring at his heart, lets himself feel the weight and shape of their love. It overwhelms. He swallows, perhaps in lieu of sobbing, and tries to reassert enough control to speak. His silence continues for so long that Ell looks about the ruined clearing, as if for an explanation.
"It was like choosing to close my eyes the moment a shooting star burns fleetingly into view in the night sky." His voice comes to her, soft and low.
She meets his eyes, and her heart reels as she finds the indifference there before has given way to reverence.
"What?" is all she can manage. Her voice still has an edge, but that look in his eyes doused the flames of her anger.
"That night in Crestwood. That our paths should ever cross was a terrible, impossibly unlikely coincidence. I had sacrificed everything, and was prepared to sacrifice more. And then I met the most magnificent spirit I'd ever known," he says, shaking his head as he often did when sufficiently puzzled. "And loving her forced me to consider rendering all those sacrifices purposeless." Ell can only stare, scrutinizing his expression, though her doubt finds no purchase there.
"If this were a game, I would have thought you an exquisite distraction, set before me by a most cunning adversary. But you were not merely a distraction. You were an earthquake, sundering my worldview and forcing me to choose which side of the gorge from which I would forever covet the other, lest I fall into the canyon below. That was the choice. Everything, or this." His face contorts as if agonizing over the decision again.
"I chose. And when we separated, it echoed across the Fade itself. I have never felt so lost. It was so profound that I questioned whether I had chosen wrong." His eyes fall from her gaze, and his voice fades to a whisper. "I still do."
He looks back at her and traces the details of her face, its many shapes projected before his eyes. A wince smoothing into peaceful rest as he works magic to sooth her pain. Sorrowful and repentant, as she realizes the weight of her burden that night on the Storm Coast. Ruthless and thrilled at once as she perfects a devastating spell combination. Commanding confidence and righteousness as she speaks hope to the hundreds gathered before her at Skyhold. Eyes closed, lips parted as he delivers her to fleshly enlightenment–a moment he had only ever imagined.
"Even now, so close to you, I can feel my heart reassembling, can feel air once thick and dense become clear again," his voice wanders upward, his heart heaving, sputtering.
"So no. It is not like blowing out a candle," he finally says, and the hurt in his voice stings.
A shadow falls behind his eyes. His features smooth into the familiar, unaffected mask, and his accented words fall once again into a calm, unwavering control. "To know I will have to turn away from you again is at odds with my very sense of self-preservation."
"Then don't." Ell's breaking voice cuts in pleadingly. Her eyes shine with moisture as she reaches tentatively toward him. He takes a cautious step away. There they stand, voices echoing endlessly across distance multiplied by years, the plea hanging heavily between them.
She fights back the tears as she continues. "You do not know the preciousness of time. I did not even know to miss the moments I had with you until I would have no more. I could only mourn all the moments wasted."
"Please, Ell. Do not make this more painful than it must be. Thedas has precious few leaders with your wisdom. There is nothing for you here. You must return."
"I have done enough for Thedas. I have given enough of myself. I am tired," she says. Creators, she was tired. "I want only a peaceful life with the one I love."
"Pick one," he says, "You cannot have both."
"You will not have either if I leave you in here to rot," she retorts. "I will not speak of it."
"Foolish," he states simply, his face stone.
She tilts her head as an angry crease forms in her brow. Her blood is hot in her veins.
"Really? You dare?" her voice rises, frustration coming to a boil in her belly.
"You would deny it?" he responds, coolly.
"You," she snarls as she closes the distance between them, forefinger pointed as a dagger, sharp eyes boring into his, "have sowed death and ruin at every turn—you have done nothing right! And you dare call me the fool?" The words echo across the Fade.
His features betray a flicker of consideration, but when he speaks again his voice is cold.
"What shall we do then? Watch one another suffer for eternity?" he asks with a confident air that suggests the inquiry is rhetorical. Ell inhales deeply, stuffing her anger with effort, and allows herself to react only to the content of the question.
She moves in, close enough to catch the smell of him, and she closes her eyes for a moment to indulge in impossible feelings suppressed for years. She stands, trembling, vulnerable, as if before a waterfall, crushing, powerful. She looks at him.
"Heal, Solas." Her eyes fall on the scar crossing his right eye. "Is regret not the reconciliation of wisdom and pride?"
He had wandered the Fade for over a year. The weight of guilt was every bit the burden it had been on the day he arrived. "I have done terrible things, Ell," he says quietly.
"I know the terrible things you have done," she replies. "I also know the man who did those things. And he is only a man. Men miscalculate. Men fail to anticipate. Men make mistakes."
"Some more than others."
"That is no way to measure a man. You made mistakes while the misery visited upon the world by others was entirely intentional. To atone for one's mistakes is to earn forgiveness. From yourself most of all."
Solas drops his head. How could one who had inflicted the magnitude of hurt that he had possibly atone? He simply owed far too much more than he had to give. He stands silent for a moment before finally looking back to her. He swallows the urge to weep as she holds him in her eyes. Eyes that knew his darkness, and loved him still.
"What was it that brought you here?" he asks softly.
Ell searches his face and shakes her head, unsure of how to answer. "What do you mean?"
"What did you regret? Whatever it was provided the prison the opportunity to take you."
"But I…" This only confounds her more. Hadn't she been in the prison already? Finally, the implication dawns on her. "…You have you been here all along."
"Yes. We…we came through together. Tried to. I assumed you could not enter the prison as I did because you gave it too little to reflect back."
Oh, Solas. Fresh tears well in her eyes. All this time she thought he had abandoned her here. Or…wherever she had been. Worse, that he had exploited her love for him to force her to take his place, to suffer the punishment intended for himself. A breeze catches a wisp of her hair, carrying the scent of old forest. The tears fall as she remembers, with a pang of guilt, what she had been regretting moments before the prison took her. "Why can't I stop loving you?"
"I am not sure," she lies. She cannot possibly tell him the truth, not now.
He stares at her a moment, as if to give her the opportunity to correct herself. He does not believe her, but he does not challenge her. "If you can remember, it may help to hasten the process," he says as his hands begin to glow with magic. He starts to turn, making space, presumably, to work whatever spell he had developed to expel her from the Fade.
"Solas," Ell protests, instinctively stifling his magic with her own. That he lets her do this does not go unnoticed, as she is all too aware that he is quite capable of overpowering her.
"Ell," he says patiently, though his voice remain frustratingly neutral. Her eyes dart to the air misting around his right hand. "I do not want to hurt you but I will if I must. You cannot stay here."
She snuffs his magic again, then grunts as Solas thrusts a barrier she does not recognize onto her. Immediately, she understands as she grasps for the magic and finds only air, inert as stone.
"Please," she says, imploring, adamant, searching for the words that could bear her meaning. She steps toward him. His jaw tightens but he does not move.
"I do not know what could possibly become of so much love unrealized." The words are measured but earnest. "I do not know what it will cost the world to forego your wisdom, echoing impotently in a cage, eternally out of reach."
His expression does not betray agreement or disagreement. Her heart thrums in her chest as she narrows the distance between them ever more. "You did choose wrong. And yet it is the only choice you can still unmake."
There. Doubt.
She fixes her eyes on his, as if to pin his doubt in place so she could breathe life into it.
"The world needs your wisdom," she says, so close she can feel his breathing against her lips, and she notes the breaths coming faster. Her voice is quiet, and soft. "And you need me."
She can sense his heart racing, his aura buzzing wildly. A well-practiced mask, collapsing.
"No," he sputters, stepping away from her. She reaches for him, but does not advance.
"It is happening again...," he says, his voice wavering. "I musn't fail again." He paces, eyes shifting as if searching for the conviction he'd had moments ago.
Ell remains where she stands, unsure of how to proceed, how to hold up the crumbling man before her.
"You have distracted me long enough," he says, employing a familiar frostiness that is not entirely convincing, then turns on his heel.
"Solas," she calls, quickly falling into step behind him, but gasps when he swings around to face her, "Do not stand in my way. I will not have you suffer for my failings."
The desperation in his voice is wrenching. She can sense the pounding of his heart, can feel his twitching aura. She is overwhelmed by the urge to soothe his rattled soul. She reaches toward his face with a trembling hand. He turns his cheek away. "Please, Ell!"
"Hamin emma lath." The words are tender but insistent as she turns his face toward hers.
Solas stares at her, his chest heaving. There is fear in his eyes. It looks foreign and strange in the eyes of a man who she has never known to be afraid. She brings her other hand to his jaw gently, and she holds him there, still.
Her lips are warm as she plants a soft kiss on the lobe of one ear. He exhales slowly as she breathes the words once more. "Be still, my love."
She feels his head grow heavy in her hands and she sinks with him to the ground as sobs overtake him.
