#Cringe is dead veneer is forever

[dbphantom]

Veneer started as 4 merman princes (Zayden, Echo, Thrymr, and Ike- two of them have been gender swapped since) from different oceans getting together under a shitty time god (clockwork man) to fight evil creatures that keep spawning in because Julian was an impatient little shit and gifted godhood to someone who definitely shouldn't have gotten it and today I figured out how to tie one of those things back into modern day Veneer by blowing up the ocean so, all in all, I'm having a good day

[sasshole-for-rent]

Truth

Commission for @fadedforyou of her haunting quizzy, Amandine Lavellan!

Word Count:  2,218

Amandine and Solas | Post-Trespasser? | Angst

Just so you know, the songs I listened to were: The Weeknd’s I Feel It Coming feat. Daft Punk, Trevor Morris’s Dark Solas Theme, Anna Leone’s My Soul I, and Imagine Dragons’s Whatever It Takes.

Summary: Solas tells her the truth after two years, then disappears through the eluvian. Amandine follows, but not in the skin the dread wolf knows. 

Amandine could never get used to the sensation of walking through an eluvian. The liquid silk washed over her body like the shift of her skin when she morphed between forms, except less painful. It was soothing almost. She cringed when she had first walked through one, half expecting it to prickle, to pinch. Only to curse herself for being so foolish, when nothing but gentle coolness dripped over her skin.

This time was no different.

Apart from the fact that her heart awaited her on the other side. And if his heart ceased to beat, so would hers. She would die in this skin, her soul blooming out of her like a yellow rose. She would find his soul after evanescence and they would be together again. In a different world. In a different life.

She expected to see the Qunari surrounding him, expected to see his defeated form crumpled at sword point. Just as she had been when they first met. however, this was not what she now faced.

A Qunari soldier frozen in stone. His features forever sculpted in the savage rage of battle for all time. The gasp escaped her throat and fearing it would shatter the sculpture, she covered her mouth with slender fingers.

She weaved in and out of the sculptures locked in the choreography of the way of blades. Amandine placed her fingers over her heart, feeling it beat its dread, and knew that continuing further would be her undoing. Yet she persisted.

She followed that thread of her soul that smelled of cloves and stardust, aged paper and the spark of undiluted magic a thousand years restrained. The thread that tied Solas and Amandine together. A fission of souls unburdened by time. She grabbed that gilded thread, dipped in honey, and yanked.

I’m here. She whispered down in her true tongue. There was no answer, save the vibration that sent shivers through her fingers. Needles pricked her skin. A gasp, perhaps.

The vibration quelled, and then he spoke: Ebasit kata, Itwa-ost. Her tongue translated for her. It is over, you all failed.

Maaras Kata. Viddasalla’s coarse voice grated over her pointed ears. Nothing’s over.

Amandine ran, half-climbed the face of the cliff. When she reached the top, Solas had his back to her. Not caring about the powerful Qunari at his back.

“Your forces have failed. Leave now and tell the Qunari to trouble me no further.” Solas dismissed her without so much as a look back.

Viddasala growled, slamming her spear into the ground before cocking her arm back to throw.

Amandine held her breath.

She never got the chance. To release that spear and send it hurtling through him. Before her heart could cringe, with a flash of blue, her flesh crackled into stone before Amandine’s depthless eyes.

“Solas.” Amandine released the breath she had been holding. It was a relief. To say his name. To his face and not in her dreams, in the dead of night, or sobbing into her pillow. It hurt as heartache was supposed. She longed to touch him. To know that he was really there. And not just another dream soured by the loss and despair.

The anchor flared, and Amandine was forced to her knees. Any mortal pain she had ever felt, the anchor surpassed her knowledge of her own tolerance.

Solas strode over to her kneeling form, his hands folded sagely behind his back. His eyes raked over her, what once would have been intimate, now was only mournful. That eerie blue flashed again, and she saw now that its source was his eyes. Amandine found herself wishing she would turn to stone, if only to be spared from the truth spoken from his lips and not her own, and how it would tear her open. That she was right. The pain stopped. She looked up at him through a fringe of frosted lashes. 

“You’re Fen’Harel.” she smiled, standing to her full height. “I’ve known for quite some time, Solas. You needn’t hide it from me any longer. I’ve known since Adamant. I understood every word the fear demon said to you. And you to it. My ears know many tongues, some even you do not know. And here’s the thing, I loved you despite that knowledge. So why couldn’t you love yourself? Why couldn’t you forgive yourself? Why couldn’t you stay?” Her voice cracked on the last word, and sorrow dripped from the crevice. 

“Well done.” Solas’s lips quirked up in pride. “I suspect you don’t have questions then?” he asked.

“Oh, I have questions.” She said, stepping closer. He stepped back. “But first, you will answer mine. Our legends about you are wrong. Loving you proved that further, but if you do this, if you destroy our world. They will be right. You will be the monster the Dalish have painted you as. Don’t let them be right. Come home. Come back to me.”

His features slackened. Shock stunning him into stillness. A brief slip of his mask. It was momentary, of course, but a rush of satisfaction thrummed through her. However, she wouldn’t voice it. 

He gave her a tight lipped smile, wistful and full of mourning. There was something more shining in his eyes, like he could see through the veneer of her borrowed flesh. “You have always been more intelligent than I could have ever expected of one of the Dalish. It seems even I can’t evade the quickness of your wit.”

She merely offered him a slight lift of her lips. Though she said nothing, and waited.

“Very well.” Solas permitted. “I cannot love what I am, because It has cost my people dearly. I cannot forgive what I have wrought down upon my world. What I thought was righteous, was the end of my people. The veil took everything from the elves, including themselves.”

“That’s the past. Do not dwell in it.” She lifted her chin, and he walked toward the eluvian. “Your people yet linger.” Amandine said to him as he had said to Abelas. “You can stay, teach them as you have taught me. There is still hope for this world. For you. For us.”

“I wish that were true,” Solas shook his head. “but they are not my people.”

“You are wrong.” Amandine shook her head as well, cascades of white hair moving like mountain mist. “It is true. They are your people. You’re just to prideful to admit it to yourself. They are still your ken, even though their blood is diluted. How can you forsake them? you will only be repeating what you have done to the elvhen before. There is no redemption there.” She gestured to the eluvian humming softly before them. 

“It matters not. I will save elvhen people, even if it means this world must die. The return of my people means the end of yours.”

“Solas, whatever you want, this world dying is not the answer.” Amandine pleaded. How could he not see?

“Not a good answer, no. Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain.”

“Then, make a better choice. I offered you another choice, if you would just...take it.”

“I cannot. My people fell for what I did to strike the evanuris down. Still, some hope remains for restoration, and I would see that my misdoings are redeemed. This is the only way.”

“There are other ways one can be redeemed.” 

“There is not. Not for me.” 

Amandine sighed. A pause that was the calm before the storm. “There is still the matter of the anchor. Its getting worse.”

“I know, vhenan, and we are running out of time.” His eyes flicked down to the stream that flowed beneath their toes. 

She had felt it build up. She had braced for it. It did not help. It did nothing to diminish the pain of the anchor slowly burning her flesh. She felt her marrow boil and the bone encasing it melt. The pain pulsed through her, rattling her teeth. It forced her to her knees. Again. A scream tore through her. 

Solas spoke but she could not hear him, could not see him past the tears blurring her sight, but she felt him as he grabbed her rotting arm, and somehow, she could breathe. She could see. She could hear. “...at least for now.” Solas said.

His kneeling form towered over her. And she spoke the only words she could find on her tongue. Words borne from desperation and pain. 

“Solas,” The tears were in her throat. She nearly choked on them. “var lath vir suledin.”

“I wish it could,” He leaned closer. The pain faded slowly. “my love.”

His lips were on hers. The kiss bore no passion, no hope. It tasted of tears and farewells. She had had enough of goodbyes. It was shorter than she had hoped. He stood, taking the anchor with him. She knew her arm had dissolved to dust, but it bore no pain. A phantom on the wind. Her dark gaze followed him, as he turned his back to her.  

“Live well, while time remains.” those were his parting words. The eluvian welcomed him. He was gone from her again.

He had left before she got the chance to tell him her truth. 

She had once bore the Vallaslin of June, because she too was a creator. A creator of forgiveness. She helped people, much like Cole whom she had grown close to. Redemption and Compassion. A long lasting friendship and collaboration. Though, she was different. Unlike Cole, She created the will to forgive themselves from within. He made them forget their hurt. She made them forgive it. Her power rooted deep into them and fortified their heartstrings, so that it could beat purely against the murk of their souls, and they could be at peace.

Amandine was the Mender of Hearts and the Harbinger of Purity. She was a daughter of starlight and time, and this was not her end.

It was with this notion that she put her remaining hand on the cold surface, and shed her mortal skin. She knew she couldn’t unlock a path to which Solas had escaped to, unless she could envision a path. She looked for that thread, fearing she would find it severed, frayed.

It was there. 

Its metallic glow dimmer than before, but it was there. A breath shuddered out of her opalescent lungs. There was still hope. She held onto that thread with all she was and shattered herself through the mirror. 

There was no turning back.

The gilded thread dimmed more and more as she flew through the vast ocean of darkness. Islands floated in the shroud. They were an oasis that seemed unreachable, untouchable. Rocks of charred souls were echoing through the chasm held aloft by swirls of pale green. The remnants of lost dreams. 

There was once a time. A cosmic dark age before the birth of the stars, before the birth of her existence. She knew this only when her parents had abandoned her on Thedas. They had planted a seed of memory lest she forget what she was. An alien. A parasite. They were wrong. She was Amandine and she was a savior. When there was no hope. There was only the void. Only desolation. That was what this pathway resembled. This path Solas had trodden was dark and forbidden, even for an immortal. This was a stellar graveyard. Only death could thrive here. 

When her pieces landed on an onyx platform of matter, they melded together and yet, she still felt broken. Lost. She grasped for the thread. It was fraying. The glow was so dim she had to squint to see it. Though she did not need it any longer. She let go, and it frayed into smithereens. She felt the emptiness sever a string of her heart. 

Amandine did not need the thread, because on a island of rock, not far from hers, was Solas clutching at his heart. He, too, felt its absence with his entire being. 

Their eyes met across the chasm.

The distance disappeared, and Redemption stood before his kneeling form.

The Dread Wolf was on his knees.

Solas looked in the ebony of her eyes. The only thing that remained the same. An oblivion he longed to be damned to. Her hand was the dust of a shooting star, and she reached for him. For the side of him he had succumbed to: The Dread Wolf. The Betrayer. The Liar. He bore many names, and each held a semblance of truth.

“I came to save you, Fen’Harel, from yourself. If you’d let me.” Her voice was clearer now, much more brilliant, like the chiming of his magic when he healed a wound.

A spirit of redemption was what she was, and she had traveled across galaxies to be his salvation. So the wolf sat on its haunches, and let Redemption kiss his brow. The red eyes grew weary, and shut one by one, until all of them were closed. The fur shifting, shedding, blowing away like wishes on dandelion fuzz. To reveal a man, broken but healing. 

When Redemption, tipped his face up to hers. Silent tears flowed freely down the angles of his cheeks. She kissed those too, and whispered. "No more."