Just realized I never posted this in full on Tumblr. This was one of the earliest things I wrote for the DA fandom and gosh well it turns out IT IS PERTINENT AGAIN NOW.
Post-Trespasser, perhaps 1 month after. I also just wrote a direct response to the teaser trailer, which is here.
~3800 words. Read on AO3 below:
tinyurl.com/solavellanhell2*****************
Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance. If they were more than simple dreams, she could not say, for every time she reached for him, he vanished into nothing. Still she searched, and dreamed, and waited for a way to change the Dread Wolf’s heart. – Epilogue from Trespasser
When Elia finally finds him, he’s not what she expects. Or perhaps he’s just not what she hopes.
He glances over his cloaked shoulder at her. “You should stop searching for me,” he says.
His blunt words are a slap in the face. Pride, he calls himself; unapologetic arrogance, more like, but she supposes that’s not as pithy an appellation. He couldn’t be more dismissive unless he refused to look at her altogether.
She strides towards him, picking up speed until she’s running, sprinting, and still he watches her coolly from across the forest.
She runs, grass flowing into water melting into snow and ice and flowers beneath her bare feet. She ignores it all, her eyes fixed on the back of his neck.
Eventually Elia stops; no matter how long she runs or how fast, he remains out of reach across the sandy dunes. Finally he turns to face her, his hands clasped easily behind his back. “Stop looking,” he suggests. “Don’t waste the years that are left to you.”
The years that are left to you. He speaks of her eventual death like it means nothing to him. His presumption takes her breath away. He’s so damned cold and detached. This is not the man she knew – or thought she knew.
She thinks back to when they first met. He’d been humble, helpful, a touch pedantic but nevertheless fascinating in his talk of the Fade. His arrogance started bursting through shortly after, but she ignored it, accepted it as part and parcel of loving such an esoterically intelligent man. She’d point out his more pompous moments and he would smile, chuckle, pull her close, kiss her softly like they had all the time in the world.
It was an act.
She knows this now; of this she is certain. After he stepped through the eluvian, leaving her maimed and alone at the feet of a handful of petrified qunari, she hid from this truth for months. She denied it until long after he was gone, clinging to her rationalizations until they became poison. A potent combination of Cole’s patience, Dorian’s humour and Cassandra’s pragmatism eventually dragged her out from under the weight of her disillusionment.
Tag: solas fic
Solavellan angst & smut: Outside The Realm
Just realized I never posted this in full on Tumblr. This was one of the earliest things I wrote for the DA fandom and gosh well it turns out IT IS PERTINENT AGAIN NOW.
Post-Trespasser, perhaps 1 month after. I also just wrote a direct response to the teaser trailer, which is here.
~3800 words. Read on AO3 below:
tinyurl.com/solavellanhell2
*****************
Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance. If they were more than simple dreams, she could not say, for every time she reached for him, he vanished into nothing. Still she searched, and dreamed, and waited for a way to change the Dread Wolf’s heart. – Epilogue from Trespasser
When Elia finally finds him, he’s not what she expects. Or perhaps he’s just not what she hopes.
He glances over his cloaked shoulder at her. “You should stop searching for me,” he says.
His blunt words are a slap in the face. Pride, he calls himself; unapologetic arrogance, more like, but she supposes that’s not as pithy an appellation. He couldn’t be more dismissive unless he refused to look at her altogether.
She strides towards him, picking up speed until she’s running, sprinting, and still he watches her coolly from across the forest.
She runs, grass flowing into water melting into snow and ice and flowers beneath her bare feet. She ignores it all, her eyes fixed on the back of his neck.
Eventually Elia stops; no matter how long she runs or how fast, he remains out of reach across the sandy dunes. Finally he turns to face her, his hands clasped easily behind his back. “Stop looking,” he suggests. “Don’t waste the years that are left to you.”
The years that are left to you. He speaks of her eventual death like it means nothing to him. His presumption takes her breath away. He’s so damned cold and detached. This is not the man she knew – or thought she knew.
She thinks back to when they first met. He’d been humble, helpful, a touch pedantic but nevertheless fascinating in his talk of the Fade. His arrogance started bursting through shortly after, but she ignored it, accepted it as part and parcel of loving such an esoterically intelligent man. She’d point out his more pompous moments and he would smile, chuckle, pull her close, kiss her softly like they had all the time in the world.
It was an act.
She knows this now; of this she is certain. After he stepped through the eluvian, leaving her maimed and alone at the feet of a handful of petrified qunari, she hid from this truth for months. She denied it until long after he was gone, clinging to her rationalizations until they became poison. A potent combination of Cole’s patience, Dorian’s humour and Cassandra’s pragmatism eventually dragged her out from under the weight of her disillusionment.
Now, the silken scarf he tied over her eyes is frayed and torn, ruthlessly cut away by the jagged edge of truth. As she stares into Fen’Harel’s eyes, she’s suddenly enraged at his duplicity. It’s a fury that’s usually smothered by the blanket of sorrow she can’t seem to completely shuck from her shoulders, but here in this place, the usual inhibitions that hold her back are long gone.
“Fuck you,” she hisses.
He tilts his head slightly, and the faint look of chiding on his face makes her see red for a moment – literally. The verdant moss under his feet, the flakes of snow drifting through the sky, the energy infusing the air, it all glows a vivid crimson for a split second.
He blinks. “I’m surprised, Inquisitor,” he says. “You’ve never been one for petty cursing.”
She steps toe-to-toe with him and glares up into his handsome, haughty face. “And you’ve never been one to show such a complete lack of logic,” she accuses. She’s been thinking about this for a long time, and now that he’s here, now that she’s here, she’s damned if she’s not going to tell him exactly what she thinks. “You think your world was so superior to ours?” she rails. “I saw the Shattered Library. I saw what your people were like. Pulling knives over roof colours, Solas? Really?”
He narrows his eyes slightly, but she ignores the signs of his censure; she’s too angry to stop. “Your people weren’t so different from us. You debated, you learned, you built your worlds, you warred for decades on end. You loved. How can you possibly say you were so superior that we all deserve to die?”
“You saw only fragments in the Shattered Library,” he says calmly. “Scattered, disconnected pieces. You do not know what it was like – the beauty we lost, the millennia of history in every individual mind. Spirits walked openly among us, not feared and reviled because of ignorance. The raw magic thrumming through the air… it was more real and more palpable than the humidity after a summer storm. It was more beautiful than you can imagine.”
“There’s beauty in my world too!” she retorted. “The caers of old are masterpieces of architecture. The monsoons of the Storm Coast are marvelous – don’t act like you didn’t enjoy the rain. I saw you turn your face to the sky when lightning struck the sea. I saw you admiring dragons from afar before we attacked. I saw you relishing in that infernal ball at the Winter Palace. It all might seem quaint to the mighty Dread Wolf, but it’s all beautiful too, and I know you saw it. You’re choosing to ignore it now. This is a choice you’re making, and you can change your mind!”
He shakes his head and turns away, but she grabs his arm. “There’s magic in our world too,” she says forcefully. “It might not float in the air like pollen, but it’s there. You know this, Solas. You don’t have to destroy everything. Teach us.”
He laughs, a caustic bark of a sound, and she releases his arm, suddenly feeling like she took hold of a stranger. He looks at her again, and a ripple of heartbreak shivers through her chest; his eyes are hard and determined, with not even a hint of the gentle warmth she treacherously hoped to see. She really doesn’t know this man at all.
“There is no teaching your people,” Fen’Harel says flatly. Wisps of mist collect around him as he speaks. “They walk around with blinders on, ignoring wisdom that drifts at the tips of their fingers. Worse yet, they don’t care to take the blinders off. The Chantry, the Dalish, your precious Grey Wardens – there’s nothing I can do to redeem them.”
“That is not true!” she yells. She throws Cole’s words in his face, words that she’s never been able to forget, even if he forced Cole to forget them. “I’m real, so everyone could be real, and that’s what scares you. Admit it. You’re just scared to change your course of action!”
He spins on her, teeth bared, and she inadvertently steps back from the flare of lupine rage in his eyes. “The only thing I fear is leaving the world in the hands of those who are too Tranquil to see what’s directly in front of them. I will not complacently stand by and allow this to continue.”
“You’re throwing away possibility before you’ve even given us a real chance!” she snaps. Vaguely she notices that the wisps are thickening, massing into a cloud that surrounds them both, but that’s not her concern now; her ex-lover is staring down his aristocratic nose at her, and she can barely hear his reply through the roaring of anger in her ears.
“There is no chance, and no choice. The Veil must come down.”
“You are making a choice!” she yells, and the cumulus of spirits ripples like an ocean wave. “You’re choosing to ignore alternatives, and that’s your failing, not ours. We don’t deserve to die because you’re too inflexible and unimaginative to find a different solution.”
He recoils at the word unimaginative as though she’s struck him, and the spirits around him flare away before returning. She takes advantage of his shock to rally a new argument. “You were only awake for a year before giving your Orb to Corypheus,” she says. “One year. How could you have seen enough of my world in a single year to decide we weren’t worth saving?”
He turns his back on her. The fur trim on his midnight cloak looms around his shoulders, giving him a forbidding air, but she’s not intimidated; despite everything she’s seen him do, everything she knows he’s capable of, he’s never intimidated her.
The silence clots between them, thickening to match the crowd of spirits who drift around attentively. Perhaps she should feel odd to have an audience, but she doesn’t; she and Fen’Harel are intruding on them right now, after all.
Finally he turns to her again, and his face is perfectly calm and placid, like a stagnant pond. “We are comparing one year of experience to thousands of years of wisdom, knowledge, and magic that would be forever relegated to the void. If it is a question of logic,” he says pointedly, “Then the answer is clear, is it not?”
She glares at him. His question is rhetorical, but he gazes at her as though she should agree with him, and her anger flares anew. “What’s the point of this, then?” she snaps. “Why did you bring me here if all you were going to do is tell me to go away and die?”
She throws the last word at him like one of Sera’s poisoned arrows, hoping to stir a reaction from him, but she’s disappointed; he only bows his head briefly, then raises his gaze to meet her eyes again. “Your dreams were a distraction, pulling attention from the denizens here. The spirits were distressed and fascinated, clustering too firmly against the Veil.” He gestures to their spectral spectators. “I felt the need to intervene.”
He’s so frigid and self-contained, it’s unbearable. Humiliation strikes her in the abdomen, driving the air from her lungs for a moment. How could she have ever thought she knew this man? A howl of misery scrapes the back of her throat and she’s desperate to smother it, but the only feeling that can compete is a wild, burning rage. The spirits around her press close, drifting over her shoulders and smoothing over her forehead, but she ignores them.
She steps aggressively into his space. “You complete coward,” she spits. “I wish I’d never met you.”
He glances down at her sharply, his hands still folded behind his back. “Words are powerful, vhenan. Do not say what you do not mean.”
Vhenan. And just like that, almost as though he’s cast a spell, the belligerence leaves her.
She can feel the blood draining from her face. She hasn’t heard that word in years. Did he mean to say it…?
She stares at him, her anger completely washed away by confusion. A spirit peels away from the crowd and wraps around her like a gentle embrace, and she feels a brief sensation, a whisper of please try before it releases her.
She looks at him more closely. His expression is stony, but he won’t meet her eyes. The spirits are writhing around him, clamouring as though to get his attention, but he doesn’t move.
“Solas,” she says firmly. “Look at me.”
He bows his head again and starts to turn away, but she grabs his arm and pulls him back. She reaches up and cups his cheek in her left hand. The spirits roil, and she feels a distinct frothing of anticipation as she runs her thumb across his cheekbone.
“Tell me why we’re here,” she pleads.
Finally he lifts his gaze to her face, and she has a split second to take in the utter blackness of despair in his eyes before he surges forward and kisses her.
Relief. It surges through her so forcefully that she can barely breathe. Perhaps it comes from their spectral bystanders, or perhaps it just comes from her or from him, but it surrounds her now as she parts her lips in welcome and clasps his face in her hands.
His fingers slide over her bare shoulder blades as he pulls her close, and she’s vaguely grateful that her left arm has returned to her; one hand isn’t enough to take in the feel of him, the smooth heat of his skin as she runs her palms over the ripped muscles of his back.
His kiss is tender, soft, slow; his lips pull sweetly at the plumpness of her own, and she’s utterly lost. If they were talking about something, if there was something important she was supposed to say, she can’t recall it now. She leans into him dreamily, savouring the warmth of his body. His furred cloak is soothing, blowing and wrapping around them to match the shiver and sway of the spirits.
His fingers slide through her hair. His thumbs stroke the vallaslin she wouldn’t let him take. The pad of his thumb brushes her lip, light and gentle as a petal of crystal grace, and she darts her tongue out to taste him.
He pulls away from her and inhales deeply through his nose. “Vhenan,” he murmurs.
She opens her eyes slowly, then half-wishes she hadn’t, for his face is a perfect picture of pining. This is what the most treacherous and selfish corner of her heart had hoped to see when she found him: evidence that he regretted leaving her behind. But now that she has it, now that his pain is laid bare in front of her, it’s almost too much to take. This is the man she knew, her gentle lover, her Solas, and suddenly the re-education she went through to convince herself he didn’t care is all wiped away by the hopeless longing in his face.
Tears drip unbidden from her eyes. A bold spirit strokes her cheek in sympathy, but this only causes her throat to swell more painfully.
Solas cradles her neck in his palms and presses his lips together, and she shakes her head. “Don’t,” she pleads. “Don’t speak. Don’t think. Just… be here with me. Please.”
“I shouldn’t,” he whispers. His voice is broken and vulnerable, and she feels an incongruous surge of triumph. She can sense his weakness, and she doesn’t hesitate; she presses herself against him from breast to thigh and captures his lips with her own.
Suddenly her back is against a wall. He presses close, crowding her with his body as he greedily returns her kiss. The relief has returned in full force, pulsing more powerfully than before, prompting her to wrap her arms around his neck and arch into his lean chest.
Skin to skin, his heart pounds against her breastbone. She opens herself completely to the heated stroke of his tongue and the tender stroke of his hands over her body. His touch seems everywhere at once: a finger trailing down the line of her spine, a firm grip sliding along her thighs, curious fingers grazing the curves of her breasts, and she luxuriates in the heat of his elegant hands like a dragon languishing in the sun. He stretches her arms overhead, his fingers tightening on her wrists, and a shivering gasp of a breath fills her lungs as his mouth moves over the puckered buds of her nipples.
With every beat of her heart and every breath they share, memories slide inexorably through her mind’s eye. She sees them bright, like explosive arrows igniting specific moments in time, moments she couldn’t forget even if she truly wanted to. She sees them clear, like exquisitely rendered paintings of their history. His fingers trail along the lines of her ribs, and she sees the grateful tilt of his eyebrows when she told him she would protect him from the Inquisition. His teeth graze the tendon in her throat, and she sees the mischievous look in his eye after their first Fade-touched kiss. His palm skims over her belly and lower still, and she sees his palm extended as he invites her to dance at the Winter Palace, the fondness in his gaze as she shares a freshly baked bun with Cole, the glow of his sweat in the candlelight as he looms over her in bed.
She opens her eyes with languid ease. The spirits dance across her vision, slow and relaxed, and she sees him here and now, his lips pressed to her cheekbone, his mouth hot on her breast, his fingers sweet and coaxing between her legs. The memories cascade through her mind, flashes of happiness and pleasure and love crystallizing beneath her skin, the shards coming together piece by shining piece under the skillful influence of his hands. She gasps and cries out, and the ecstatic sound is echoing and muffled both, contained and shared by the benevolent cloud that surrounds them.
Her nails score his arms. They tangle together, her fingers clutching his neck and her legs around his waist, and it’s like she’s come home. This part has always been easy for them, this colourful if chaotic dance, the careless twining of limbs and hips and tender curves that contrasted so dearly with their heated debates and their amiable agree-to-disagrees. Memories continue to flit by, images and flashes that evoke so much more than the boiling lust that their current act embodies.
He nips her breast, and she sees his angry glare when she stops him from killing those careless mages in the Exalted Plains. He grips her hip and flexes, and she sees herself playfully swatting his hand away from an incorrect astrarium solution. He groans against her shoulder, reaching deep inside of her where no one else has ever quite been able to reach, and she sees his lips as they form those fateful words: ar lath ma, vhenan.
She arches gracefully into his hard body. “Do you see them?” she breathes.
He brushes her bangs back from her forehead. “I see them every night,” he says softly.
He sounds pained, and his eyes are molten granite, liquid with longing. She refuses to sink into that pool right now, so she kisses him hard, wraps her arms around his neck, rises to meet him thrust for thrust until he shudders against her, his tongue in her mouth and his chest flush to hers.
As the euphoria wanes and the twinkling memories fade, she becomes acutely aware that her every breath comes closer to the last one she’ll take in his presence. She knows where they are, knew this couldn’t last forever, but that knowledge is somehow unable to cross the threshold of her heart until it’s too late.
He holds her close, cradled beneath the heat of his body, but his fingers are gripping her flesh a bit too tensely, his arms tight and strained around her, and she knows what this means. He always holds her closest when he’s preparing to set her free.
She wraps her arms firmly around his neck, determined not to let him go, but despite her best efforts, he peels away.
“Don’t go,” she begs. She deserves her righteous anger, she’s well and truly earned it, but at this moment, it’s nowhere to be found.
He squeezes her hands, then kisses her ersatz left palm. “You’ve lost too much already,” he says. “I won’t see you lose any more time.”
His fingers are spectral, melting from her grasp though she tries to clutch them. Their wisplike spectators tremble and trill with sorrow, but they’re withdrawing now as well, as though compelled by his departure.
“No,” she says. She’s desperate now, clinging fast to his presence even though his warmth has melted from her grip. “We’ll figure something out. You don’t have to go. You don’t have to do this!”
He shakes his head and turns away. How did he get so far away so quickly? “I was never here,” he reminds her gently.
His voice is in her ear. It’s right here. How can he not be here when his voice is a warm breeze against her cheek? She steps towards him, then picks up speed until she’s running, the dunes warping into grass flowing into water melting into snow and ice and flowers beneath her bare feet. “You’re the one who told me that dreams are more than they seem,” she cries.
He brushes her cheek with his knuckles, and she stares up at him with breathless hope, but it’s all for naught; his expression is tender but pitying, and despite a fresh wrench of indignation in her chest, all she can do is beg. “Stay with me,” she says. “Don’t go, Solas. Please don’t go.”
He shakes his head and steps back. His cloak is billowing and black, swallowing him piece by piece as the light rises behind her. “I’m not the one who is leaving, vhenan,” he says. “You are.”
She shakes her head. Horror is rising like bile in her throat. She can’t stop this, but she needs to. “No. No.”
“After all, it’s time to-”
“No!”
“-wake up.”
Her eyelids snap open. Her maimed left arm is stretched in front of her, a gaping reminder of everything she’s lost. “No,” she gasps.
Her eyelids are heavy, and she fights to stay under, to remain in that slippery threshold of sleep and wakefulness, but the fiery sunrise is too bright through the windows. Just before traitorous wakefulness takes her in its claws, she hears his final whisper.
Ara vhen’an’ara… ar rya shivana, y ma ina in ara lath’in bellanaris.
Tears leak down her temples towards her ears. She chokes back a sob and wipes her face roughly. “You coward,” she whispers hoarsely.
His absence is a gaping hole in her bed. The ache is fresh and throbbing, a wound that’s been opened far too many times, and she curls on her side and grips her hair fiercely, praying for the agony to leave her chest and assault her scalp instead.
She lies paralyzed for a long, painful moment. Then, slowly, she heaves her aching body from the bed.
She splashes cold water on her face. She rolls up the left arm of her night’s watch coat and pulls it on. She fixes Dagna’s mini-crossbow prosthetic in place.
She finds Sera in the great hall, sitting on a table eating a stale cookie. Sera munches the cookie noisily and inspects her face, then speaks through a crumbly mouthful. “Phwoar. Rough night, you?”
Elia manages a half-hearted smirk. She doesn’t have it in her to explain, and Sera would hate the explanation anyway. “Let’s stick it to some nobles,” Elia says instead. “What have we got?”
Sera grins devilishly. “That’s the spirit, then. I’ve got a little man who thinks he’s big, but bees in his breeches will set that right, innit?”
Elia nods, and they make their slapdash plans. If every haughty noble they antagonize today bears a certain wolf’s face in her mind’s eye, nobody can blame her.
She’ll catch Fen’Harel in the end; this she knows for sure. Big people never see the little ones coming. And if a treacherous corner of her heart still aches for her Solas, she ignores it. The embers of his memory might come in handy someday, but she can’t count on it.
After all, who can count on a man who appears and fades from reality as easily as he does from her heart?
****************
Elvhen phrase translation, thanks to FenxShiral on AO3:
“My heart’s desire… I must fulfill my duty, but you’ll live in my heart for all eternity.”
Solavellan angst: Never Too Late
Inspired by the DA4 teaser trailer. I’ve got that Solavellan, Solavellan sadness… *sung to the tune of Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness*
Timeline note: vaguely a couple of years after Trespasser.
For @dadrunkwriting Friday.
Read here on AO3:
tinyurl.com/solavellanhell1
**************
He talks to Elia still, sometimes.
The conversations take place in his imagination, of course. They are fairly one-sided, and might more accurately be called monologues, but his thoughts are always aimed at her.
He travels across Thedas largely on his own. He moves between his multitude of strongholds and sees the swelling numbers of elves who have flocked to the promise of freedom. He provides the encouragement that he can, and he gives the commands that he must. And all the while, he imagines what she would say to all of this.
He imagines her wide-eyed dismay if she knew that Briala had ceded the eluvians – and her countless spies – to his cause. He imagines the sad resignation on her face if she knew that Abelas had joined him as well. He imagines her, and in the privacy of his mind, he explains to her why he must do everything that he has done.
If he can explain it to her – if he can imagine that she believes him – then he can continue to believe it himself.
He keeps the conversations imaginary. He does not seek her in the Fade. His agents are watching her, just as they are watching everyone, but he refuses to hear what Elia is doing unless it directly impacts his plans.
So far, despite her best efforts, little that she has done has made him need to change his course. He is unsure whether to be relieved by this fact, or to pity her for it.
When he is not plotting and planning and issuing orders to his officers, he walks the Fade and watches where the spirits are clamouring. Sometimes he walks as himself and talks to the spirits. He gleans their advice, and he coaxes them away from the dangers of the thinnest parts of the Veil.
Other times, he walks in his other form so he need not speak to anyone. When he prowls on four lupine legs, he is hidden among the multitude of other creatures who fly and crawl and slither in the shifting unreality of his native world.
It is on one such night that he finds an unusual lacune of peace in the Fade. It is a dark glen, thick with trees and soft grass underfoot, devoid of the usual roiling whirl of spirits who have grown more restless in the past few years. The spirits who float here are calm and sedate and slow.
Curious about this place of quiet, he pads into the glen on his four furred feet.
A raven-haired adolescent sits high in a tree. It is an elven figure, pale of skin and dark of hair, feet swinging with the happy abandon of youth.
He stops when he spots her, and she stops swinging her feet.
Then she turns her head to look at him.
He stares back at her. She is young, and her cheeks are round and bare. But her brilliant cerulean eyes are unmistakable.
She slides down from the tree, and by the time her toes touch the ground, Elia is her full height and age again. Her sweeping vallaslin stands out starkly on her cheekbones, and the exuberance of her swinging feet is gone.
She wraps her one remaining arm around her middle. There is a frailty to her, a certain fragility that he doesn’t recall, but the gaze that meets his own is steady.
“What brings you here?” Elia asks.
Her question is polite and calm: far more calm than he expected, and far more polite than he perhaps deserves.
He cannot answer with his lupine teeth and tongue, and it is for the best. In truth, crossing her path was completely accidental, but Elia has always had a talent for tempting words to leave his heart that are better left unsaid.
He remains silent. A moment later, or perhaps it is an eon, she sits slowly on the grassy ground.
She wraps her arm around her knees and regards him gravely. “You’ve had agents observing me. Observing us,” she amends. “The… former Inquisition.”
Her words are a statement, not a question. She is correct, of course, although observation is only a fraction of what his people have done. But of course, he cannot say that; not with the goals that take precedence in the logic of his mind, and not with his wolf’s jaws and mouth.
He remains silent.
She watches him for a moment longer, then nods her head as though his silence is an answer. The tranquility of this place is as thick and heavy as a wet snowfall, and he wonders if it is Elia’s calming influence that has brought this cloying brand of peace. Perhaps she had purposely sought this silence.
If that is the case, his presence is ruining it for her.
He should go. He knows he should. He knew it the moment he spotted her short and tufty hair. There is no point in his being here; the lines were clearly drawn the last time they met, and there is no place for either of them at the other’s side. Despite the skirmishes he’s orchestrated and the spies he’s sent to infiltrate her allies’ ranks, the worst that he will do is still yet to come.
He studies her face in silence. Her eyes are soft and sad, but there is something strange about them; something oddly flat. He can’t help but remember other times when her eyes were bright with happiness, with the awe of discovery, with love.
He remembers being the focus of the happiness in her eyes. He remembers being the reason for her joy. He didn’t appreciate it enough at the time. But then again, he should never have allowed himself to become so important to her at all.
He turns to leave.
“Solas,” she calls.
He stops in his tracks. Solas. It is a foreign word to his ears. He hasn’t heard this name in years. He shed the name when he shed her people – when he shed her. But the impact it has, the power of this name in her soft and rolling voice…
“You can still change your mind,” she says. “You don’t…” She pauses. “You are stepping farther away from the man I knew,” she tells him. “I don’t want that for you.”
He turns around to face her. Her cavernous gaze is deep and full of empathy. The weight of it – of her understanding – is more than he can bear.
Suddenly he is speaking, speaking before he can stop the words from leaving his now-elvhen tongue. “I did not want any of this for you,” he says.
She rises slowly to her feet. “Then make it stop,” she says simply.
Her voice is gentle but just as flat as the look in her eyes, and his ominous sense of offness increases.
“That is impossible,” he says.
She steps closer to him. “It’s never too late,” she says. “It will never be too late to fix this.”
She is wrong. There is always point of no return, a point at which it is no longer possible to go back, and he is swiftly reaching that time.
She stops a foot away from him. Her one remaining hand hangs limply at her side. “I haven’t given up on you, you know,” she says.
Her lackluster tone belies her words, and the bleakness in her expression continue to strike a discordant note in his heart. He may be moving farther from the man she knew, but the woman before him – this woman with the weight in her eyes and the weariness in her face: this is not the Elia he knew.
He swallows hard before speaking. “I assure you, I am beyond your reach. It would be wiser for you to invest your energies elsewhere, Inquisitor,” he says.
For the first time tonight, she smiles. “I haven’t been the Inquisitor for years. You know that. Or have your spies been so amiss?”
Her smile is a twisted mask of rueful bitterness, and finally he realizes what is wrong. She may not have given up on him, but she has given up on herself.
A boil of emotion rises in his chest, frothing behind his eyes and at the back of his tongue. He hates seeing her like this, so devoid of hope and so lacking in passion. He would almost welcome the vitriol that she screamed at him the last time they met; at least it was evidence of passion and of life.
But she is only like this because of him. He has no one but himself to blame.
Before he can stop himself, he is reaching for her.
He cups the softness of her cheek in his hand. Her eyes snap to his face, and for an instant, there is a spark in them. He stares greedily at her eyes, hungry for that spark and wishing with his entire aching heart that he could foster it, but he knows it isn’t possible.
I’m sorry. The fault is entirely mine. The words rattle in his mind, but he holds them back. He has said these words before, and they were useless then. They will be just as useless now.
She stares back at him, and bit by bit, that fragile little spark dies away. She smiles again, and the smile is wrong, heavy and crooked with melancholy.
“I’ve never stopped defending you, you know,” she says. “For all that we’ve been working against you, I’ve never stopped believing you’ll change your mind. They all think I’m a fool.”
“You should listen to them,” he says, then winces at his unintentional cruelty.
Elia laughs, but it sounds distinctly like a sob. “I should, shouldn’t I?” She sighs heavily, then takes a step away from him. “I can’t give up, Solas. It’s too late for me. But it will never be too late for you.”
She takes another step away. He wants to follow her, to convince her that – what? That there is hope for her, to survive and thrive? That he will come back to her? That he will change his mind?
His tongue is paralyzed by the lies he refuses to tell her. He simply watches as Elia backs away. “You know where I’ll be,” she says. “Or your spies will, at least. If they do their jobs.” She shoots him a tiny smile.
It’s wan and sad, but more genuine than any of the others smiles she’s given him thus far. Before he can properly appreciate its beauty, she is gone.
He takes a deep breath and presses his fingers to his burning eyes. Then a small voice speaks in his ear. “Waiting, wanting, never waning. ‘He does not want this,’ she says. They don’t believe her, but it’s true, isn’t it?”
He sighs. The spirit always seems to find him, even when he begs it to leave him be. “You should go to her,” he tells the spirit. “She needs you more than I. And I am certain she misses you.”
Compassion floats in front him, a faded reflection of a boy with shaggy hair. “Yes,” it agrees. “But she misses you more.”
A tear slides down his cheek. “I know,” he whispers.
three word prompt 15 for solas/elia, fluffy if possible :) thank you <3
Perfect timing for this prompt – thank you @bronzeagelove! I just finished reading a soul-crushing Solavellan fic for the second time and am utterly destroyed, so some nice fluffy Solavellan is a soothing balm to my soul…😉
The prompt: grace, dark, holding.
Elia leans her elbows on the balcony and sighs.
“Is something wrong?” Solas’s quiet voice floats out from her bedroom, followed by the man himself. His barefooted steps are silent as he comes to lean against the balcony at her side.
She smiles up at him. “Quite the contrary, actually. I was just listening to the music.” She nods her head vaguely in the direction of Skyhold’s grounds. “Someone is playing… something. It doesn’t quite sound like a lute…”
Solas cocks his head to listen to the delicate serenade, and Elia watches the thoughtful creasing of his brow. Then he shifts his weight and folds his arms. “Lyre, if I am not mistaken. It is a lovely duet.”
Elia gazes at his handsome profile with a rush of affection. He always seems to have an answer, even for her unasked questions, and he rarely requires more than a few seconds to pluck the information she requests from the depths of his mind. She wonders what it must be like to have such an excellent memory.
Eventually he meets her gaze, and his expression softens. “What are you thinking?”
She shakes her head. “Nothing much,” she says, not wanting to gush all over him like the hopelessly besotted woman that she is. She leans affectionately against him instead. “Just that this is nice. The quiet, the music… it’s so peaceful.” She closes her eyes and smiles, savouring the fine sound of the lyre duet as it slides through the darkness of the night. “It sounds like… raindrops tinkling against metal, but fuller. Or maybe… like pearls falling against a mirror, but less strident.” She sighs, frustrated by her inability to properly put the sound into words. “That distinct resonant plucking… I just really like stringed instruments.”
She sighs again and opens her eyes only to find Solas staring at her with such warmth that her breath catches in her throat. Without breaking her gaze, he steps back from the balcony and extends a hand to her. “Come, vhenan,” he says softly. “Dance with me.”
Solavellan fluff: Cole
I love Cole, and I find it an interesting challenge to write from his first-person POV. Hence this little drabble of Cole hanging out with Elia Lavellan and Solas, based on a Fictober prompt: “If you cannot see it, is it really there?”
Fandom: Dragon Age Inquisition
Pairing: Solas/Lavellan, through Cole’s eyes
Rating: Gen
***********
Crumbs crumbling in her fingers. She offers the scone to me. “Would you like some?”
I shake my head. “Thank you. But I don’t eat.”
Elia rubs her forehead, face twisting in a smile. “Right, of course. Sorry, Cole.” She breaks off a bite, chews, smiles again. “So what’s been going on lately? Anything that I should know about?”
I look out at the courtyard. It’s harder to hear here on the ramparts. The hurts hang low, hovering over heads as they move around the hold, but it’s quieter up here.
I answer her question. “I heard some people talking about me. ‘Just a story,’ they said. ‘The Inquisitor’s ghost makes her sound more scary than she is, but the boy doesn’t exist.’” I look at Elia. “They don’t think I’m real.”
Concern creases her brow. “Yes, I’d heard something about that too,” she says softly. “Cole… do you ever really worry that you don’t exist?”
I look at the courtyard again, thoughtful, thinking. “The dungeon in the Circle was dank and dark and deep with despair. I wasn’t sure then, not until Rhys saw me. But before that…” I close my eyes, memories moving close. “Alone, afraid, eyes slide past me like raindrops on the rafters. The only ones who see me are the ones whose eyes I close forever. If you cannot see it, is it really there?”
I blink and look at Elia. She shifts a little closer, eyes serious and sad. “There are lots of things that are there even though you can’t see them,” she says.
“I know,” I reassure her. “I didn’t know it then, but I know now. Spirits hide away, shrouded and shy. They’re invisible, intangible, but alive.”
She smiles. “You’re right. Spirits are the best example. But other things too. Like… smells! The smell of this delicious scone.” She takes another bite, sugar-sweet smile as it melts across her tongue. “Or memories,” she says. “Just because we can’t see memories doesn’t mean they aren’t real.”
“But Solas can see memories,” I say. I give her an example, lifted from his lips this morning. “‘I saw a mural made of stone, with graven glyphs from ancient times. A dwarf stood there, his chisel raised, but regrets were ringing in his mind. One can strike the name from stone, but it cannot be struck from the heart.” I tilt my head.
She bites her lip, tries to hide her smile, but it curls at the corners of her mouth. Rosy pink like a sunrise across her cheeks, a burst of warmth in her belly, his name like a bell in her mind: Solas.
“Yes, well.” She speaks softly, smiles softly, softness in her eyes as they drop to her lap. “Solas is special. He has a talent for seeing things in the Fade. Most people can’t see memories in that way, so… so memories are a good example. What else…” She straightens up and snaps her fingers. “Feelings! Of course. We can’t see them, but they’re obviously there.” She blinks at me, eyes bright and blue and open, echoing like the sky. “That’s how you know who needs help, right?”
I nod slowly. “Feelings. Yes. That’s how I know.” Worry, hurt, fear, anger, resentment – I don’t see them: I feel them. I follow them, and I soften the edges, sand the roughness away, erase what can’t be eased. She is right.
But I don’t feel any of those things right now. The courtyard is where those hurts exist, but here on the ramparts, there’s only Elia. And what she feels is love.
Solas. His name is still there, chiming in her mind. I wonder if he can hear it too? Maybe he does, because suddenly he’s here.
“Good afternoon, Inquisitor.” Solas joins us, standing next to Elia, his smile soft and sweet as the scone in her fingers. “Hello, Cole. Taking in the view?”
“Yes,” I say. “It’s quiet and calm. There’s agony in the undercroft, but it’s lighter here, lifted free. It’s nice.”
His eyebrows lift slightly: a smile tinted with regret, so faint I almost can’t feel it above the brightness of Elia’s joy. She beams at him, chin lifted high to meet his eyes, a tickling shiver down her spine as his hand traces the length of her back.
She is happy. And so is he. But there’s something else there: sadness in his spirit, a taint of tragedy, anchored to ancient obligations. If she dug deeper, picked and pushed, she would find it.
But then she wouldn’t be happy. And neither would he.
I don’t say anything. It would only hurt, and I don’t want anyone to hurt.
I sit a little bit longer. We talk about the kitchen staff and the cats and the spiders on the sill. I ask why Dorian dislikes the Iron Bull, and Elia laughs and says he doesn’t really, which is confusing.
I watch them as they talk: her laughter reflected on his lips, his words writing warmth beneath her ribs. His thumb strokes her cheek, and she presses her hands to his chest, and I wonder if maybe Elia is wrong.
Maybe I can see feelings after all.
For DA Drunk Writing: Kiss 19 for Solas x Lavellan!
Thanks for the @dadrunkwriting prompt! Kiss #19 is “a good luck kiss”. So here we have some Solavellan at the Winter Palace.
Fun fact: I hate this mission. Timed missions are the death of me.
*************
Solas keeps his head canted low as he skirts the edges of the courtyard. The Winter Palace is a feast of fine wine and gentle music, of beautiful gowns and gently twinkling fairy lights. Nobles from all over Orlais drift through the gardens, their dulcet voices a scanty veil for their poisoned words.
They ignore Solas entirely.
It’s clear that any elves present here tonight are assumed to be waitstaff or servants, and it’s an impression that Solas purposely reinforces with his cultivated deferential air. At any other time, the assumption would be galling. But tonight, it serves Elia best if he slides beneath the notice of anyone important. Drunken socialites have loose lips in the presence of their servants, and Solas might be able to learn something of use by virtue of his pointed ears.
Despite – or perhaps because of – his anonymity, Solas is enjoying himself. Arlathan and its politics had countless faults, but one thing they’d always excelled at was throwing a party. This human masquerade is paltry compared to the grand affairs of ancient Elvhenan, but no matter the time or place, formal fêtes always have a handful of common features: the lush costumes, the posturing and the intrigue, the dancing, and the plots hidden within plots. Fen’Harel had grown weary of the backstabbing and the schemes toward the end, but here in Halamshiral, the stakes don’t feel as high.
Perhaps it is because Solas sees the greater picture, and he knows that the outcome of this night will be of fleeting consequence in the grander scheme of things. Or perhaps it is because he knows Elia will prevent anything too atrocious from occurring. No matter what the reason, Solas is feeling quite relaxed indeed.
I hope I will come across some of those frilly cakes, he thinks idly as he watches Elia socializing with the myriad guests. The Inquisitor’s stature is proud but polite, her smile demure but her handshakes firm, and Solas thinks that some of the nobles’ gentle laughter is actually quite genuine rather than practiced or biting.
He continues to drift along the edges of the party, separate from the festivities without being truly apart from them, his attention divided between his lover and the murmured conversations around him. Eventually Elia extricates herself from the company of the nobles and heads up the main stairs, and Solas notices something.
As she walks up the stairs, she twines her fingers together and rubs the thumb of one hand against the length of the other. She turns her head briefly, her eyes darting quickly over the garden. An instant later she is composed again, her hands loose and relaxed at her sides and her chin lifted confidently as she reaches the top of the stairs and turns to the right.
She is nervous, Solas thinks with a pang of fondness. Slowly and carefully, he makes his way up the stairs, following the path she’s taken.
The area she turned into is dim and occupied only by a couple standing at the balcony and kissing ostentatiously. Assured of their inattention, Solas slips through the one and only door in the wall.
It leads down a quiet and well-lit corridor, and Solas silently follows the hall to a small storage room. Elia is standing just inside the door, and she jumps when he enters the room.
“Solas!” she gasps, then rests her palms against his chest and wilts with relief. “Fenedhis. I’m sorry. I’m just…”
He grasps her arms reassuringly, then pulls her close and runs his hands along her back. “You are performing most admirably,” he says softly. “Truly, you are a sight to behold.”
She smiles ruefully up at him. “‘Performing’ is the right word,” she says. “I feel like an actress who could forget her lines at any second.” She slides her arms tightly around his waist and presses her cheek to his chest, and Solas feels her ribs expanding beneath his embrace as she inhales deeply.
“I’m scared,” she whispers. “What if I slip up? Say the wrong thing, or step on someone’s foot, or insult someone by accident-”
“Vhenan,” he interrupts gently. He runs one hand through her short dark hair, then tilts her chin up to face him. “The path you walk holds its perils. I would be concerned if you were not afraid,” he says. “But do not let your fears paralyze you. Trust your instincts. You are polite and diplomatic and an excellent negotiator, and you listen extremely well. And there is nothing these people like more than being listened to.”
She huffs out a breathy little laugh, her arms relaxing around his waist. Finally she sighs, then releases him to press her palms against his abdomen instead. “All right,” she says. “I’m ready to dive back in.” She tilts her head coyly, her aquamarine eyes twinkling with renewed good humour. “A good luck kiss, perhaps?”
He smiles back at her, then cups her face in his hands. “You do not need luck,” he tells her. “Everything you need is here.” He taps her temples with his thumbs.
“Indulge me,” she whispers. And so he does.
Elia’s lips are soft and sweet, as rosy and restorative as a velveteen petal of embrium, and Solas enjoys the feel of her hands on his neck and her gentle tongue as it traces his lips. Finally she pulls away and strokes the angle of his jaw.
“You’re wrong, you know,” she says. She taps her temple. “This isn’t the only thing I need.” Her smile is warm, but her eyes are serious and heavy with affection. She gently pulls him down and presses her forehead to his. “You’re always here when I need you,” she whispers. “Thank you.”
Solas closes his eyes. There’s a bittersweet pulse of affection in his chest, slightly more bitter than sweet, but it is a bite he is prepared to suffer for the exquisite taste of her love.
“Ar lath ma,” he whispers. Then he takes a slow and reluctant step away from her. “Now go and write history, Inquisitor.”
She grins at him, then squeezes his hand once more before slipping out of the room, and Solas waits for a long minute before following her out.
He will not always be here for her. Their time together is finite, and Solas has always known this acrid truth. But at the end of this night, by Elia’s side is where he will be.
KISS on a Scar for blackwall/lavellan OR solas/lavellan whichever inspires you most! 🖤🖤🖤
Thanks for the Friday night @dadrunkwriting ask, lovely! I have no ability to pick between Solas OR Blackwall so I will be doing both in time, LOL.
For now, here’s the prompt fill for Solavellan! Read on AO3 instead if you prefer.
It makes reference to a (fairly popular) headcanon/fanon that Solas started life as a spirit, then took a body to help Mythal and wore her vallaslin for a time. My understanding is that the seed of this headcanon is one particular line of dialogue with Cole, which I can’t unsee as being about Solas: “He did not want a body, but she asked him to come. He left a scar when he burned her off his face.”
**************
Soft and gentle lips drift across Solas’s cheekbone, and he smiles.
His eyes are closed, allowing him to focus on the silken heat of Elia’s skin as his fingers drift lazily along her back. She’s slightly sticky with sweat, and he can only imagine the salt that must be meeting her lips as they brush across his cheek.
She drops a whisper of a kiss on the tip of his ear, then the corner of his eye, then the upper edge of his eyebrow. “Is this a scar?” she asks.
“Mhmm,” he mumbles, and she chuckles softly before kissing the marred patch of skin a second time.
Then she leans away slightly to touch the tiny dent on his forehead with the tip of a finger. “This is the only scar you have, isn’t it? I haven’t seen any others anywhere on your body.”
Solas finally opens his eyes. Her voice is still languid from their tryst, but he recognizes the light of curiosity in her turquoise eyes.
She’s not wrong, but he’s reluctant to confirm her question just yet. He knows his Elia, and he knows the answer will only lead to further queries. “Perhaps you have not looked hard enough,” he teases. “You may need to inspect my body more carefully next time.” He slips his fingers up along the back of her neck and into her short raven hair.
He pulls her down to kiss her smiling lips, and his dreamy satisfaction returns when she enthusiastically returns his kiss with a firm press of lips and a gentle slide of her tongue. But then she raises herself on one elbow again.
“I’ve seen you healing your wounds with magic. I truly can’t recall any other marks on your body,” she says. She gently strokes the mark on his forehead again. “Why keep this one?”
Her tone is gentle and her expression sympathetic, and he knows what she’s thinking: that he’s kept this scar by choice to mark something important.
Again, his insightful Dalish lover isn’t wrong. This mark is the only remaining evidence of the vallaslin he used to wear so long ago. But this is not a tale that he can share with her, as much as he may want to.
And there is a part of him that wants to. He wishes he could tell Elia everything: the spiritual origins of his life and the reason he took a body; the eons of war he suffered and the countless comrades he lost; and above all, the truth about the Dread Wolf.
He can’t tell her any of it, not now. He loves Elia, loves her more than he can remember loving anyone in a very, very long time. But there are duties that must come before the desires of his selfish heart.
He tells her a careful version of the truth instead. “It was the result of a serious fight,” he says. “If I had lost the fight, I would have lost myself. The scar is a reminder of… sacrifice. And determination.” He sighs and closes his eyes again, suddenly feeling weary down to his bones.
Elia’s gentle lips brush the scar again, then drift along the side of his face to arrive at his ear. “I’m sorry, Solas,” she whispers. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
He shakes his head, eyes still closed as he absorbs the warmth of her words. “Do not apologize, vhenan. I am the one who is sorry,” he murmurs. “I… will tell you more in time.” It’s not a lie, not truly. He hopes to tell her some part of the truth someday, once he has sorted out which parts he can safely share.
A kiss brushes across his ear, sweet and gentle as a summer breeze. “I’ll be here when you’re ready,” she tells him. “I’m right here.”
He swallows hard. “I know,” he says softly.
The Sharper Edge of Love: Romance, Sex, and Fanfic 