#at least solas knows this

[celemee]

Happy Friday x3 I'd love to see: I still remember how you taste for Dadwc, and maybe with m Lavellan/Solas if you are in the mood for it x3 Happy creating <3

Ohhhh yissss, I'm exactly in the mood for some Solavellan angst. Thanks for the prompt and happy Friday, Spicy! Here's my villain Inquisitor and Solas meeting in the Fade, the prompt is slightly modified.

Solas x M!Lavellan Rating M for violent imagery and war

for @dadrunkwriting

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“Mahanon.”

The voice stops him dead in his tracks. What was he even watching? A few quick blinks and the surroundings blur, leaving one person sharp and colourful in a sea of now-monochrome crowd. 

“Solas,” he breathes, and for once he can wrestle himself from the role of a spectator in his dreams. The frozen figures of his imagination implode into dust as he stalks through them, headed towards his love. 

Soon they stand close enough to touch, but… 

“It's been a long time, Solas,” Mahanon says, his fingers squeezing into a tight fist he pockets. Fighting the urge to hug Solas, or worse yet, kiss him. 

A sad smile curls on Solas' lips. “You've been waiting for me?”

“Of course,” Mahanon scoffs, though it's not anger. Not really. “I've waited my whole life for someone like you, and then you just…”

He throws his hands in the air. Even here, under the waxy black sky, he can't say it. 

“I still remember everything. Your touch. Your voice. Your taste.” Mahanon sighs, the oft-played memories flashing in his mind as he stares in Solas’ eyes. “How could you just… forget about me?” 

Mahanon notes the way he takes a half step back, how his brows furrow. 

With a flick of Solas’ hand, their surroundings shift from deep emptiness into a field of battle. Corpses lay on the ground, cries of desperation pierce the air. The stench of burning flesh closes in like claws, but Mahanon's attention shifts back to Solas. 

“What?”

Solas blinks a couple of times, his mouth turning downwards. He shakes his head, looks up to Mahanon. 

“Do you not see?” His hand draws an arc, gesturing at the burning field. “This is why I've had to forget about you. You and I, we do not stand for the same thing.”

Mahanon's hands flex at his sides. For once, he's silent, waiting for the inevitable blow. 

“You do this,” he points at a phantom clutching a grievous wound, “because you enjoy it. You cut through—” 

“I don't enjoy it!” Mahanon growls, teeth bared. “I have to! I have no choice!” 

Solas stays silent for a moment, a finger rising to his lips. Then, quietly, “Then what is your end goal?” 

Mahanon crosses his arms on his chest, closing his eyes. That's… a good question, one he's never quite found the answer to. 

There's one thing he knows for sure. “I'm lost without you.”

“You were already lost when you were with me.” Solas’ jaw tightens, his posture stiffening. “There's nothing I can do for you.”

Everything fades to black without a warning, and when Mahanon's eyes open, it's to stare at a ceiling he knows all too well. His castle, quickly falling back to disrepair. 

The fireplace is nothing but embers at this time of night, but he shelters by its fading warmth. Reports from the warfront already in his hands as he tries to shake the nightmare. 

To think of it as anything else would be unacceptable. 

[hollytree33]

Hi so I might’ve made a painting of my Inquisitor while trying to mimic Solas’s style so I can pretend he made it

[hejee]

i really just wanna draw them shirtless

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[elvyn]

Red

[mrs-gauche]

Alas, so long as the music plays, we dance.

(Cole's cryptic comments + The Song)

[hyperbali]

"Rook never knew the real Solas, it's just a mask, only Lavellan knows the real Solas 🥺"

[ayebibs]

I think one of the saddest things about Veilguard is that I have no reason to replay it after a thorough playthrough (I did all side quests and only missed a couple evanuris statues and a couple codex entries). Forget about desire to replay it (there is none), there is legitimately no reason. The narrative is so linear and the most impactful choices that you do at the end are not dependent on choices you’ve made in dialogue, but whether you have ground out companion and faction quests. The results of this are not even compelling. It’s good or bad endings. I don’t even care to romance another companion because of how short and bland those storylines are (they are literally only 20min on YouTube) despite my playthrough not having the romance canon to my world state. And, world state only means something to me because I can only think of two choices that might be relevant in future games.

[strawberry-halla]

oh man. you ever just think that inquisition started with cassandra, varric, solas, and the inquisitor.

and now, cassandra can be the only one left from the original four.

[treviso-nights]

this is probably an unpopular (edited: condensed & abridged) opinion, but i just don't believe solas had the best time of his life during dai.

this is for a variety of reasons, but namely: he never actually put his burdens down? especially if your inquisitor was not an elf or solas-mancer!! which is. a lot of inquisitors!! idk i don't believe someone as radicalized and/or as Righteously Holy in his agenda would not spend the majority of that year in endless emotional turmoil.

by his own admission, he woke up shortly before the game's events, only to (superficially, bc how do you witness that in totality in such a short amount of time) witness the repercussions of his actions on full, gory display

he then fails to unlock his orb because he's still weak, leading to corypheus's absolute baffoonery, so now he has to clean that up too, and by aiding a human-led political movement nonetheless.

he then has to spend that subsequent year being in forced (self-inflicted) proximity to these humans (which also include templars), along with dwarves and qunari, who he either holds an active contempt or condescension for—

—in addition to sera, dorian, vivienne, and iron bull, who constantly clash against him, and in some instances, intentionally (and for me, understandably) antagonize him—

nevermind if the inquisitor diverges from what solas believes to be the "right" path — allying with the mages, banishing the grey wardens, not drinking from the well of sorrows, etc. etc. etc. and so on and so forth.

this pervasive idea that solas essentially got to put down the burden of being fen'harel for a little while and (maybe) fall in love, as if that wouldn't cause him unimaginable distress considering how he views the world/all of its occupants/its political and religious systems, was everything he could've wanted at the time?

idk. i think a good chunk of that year must have literally felt like a waking nightmare. i think the inquisition was a somewhat influential experience for him, as we see with the inquisition-themed mural he's painted at the lighthouse, but i don't by any means think it was a vacation, nor any sort of an empowering re-discovery of self, when we know he was 100% chomping at the fucking bit because of his overpowering desperation to Right His Wrongs.

[snowveiled]

tv tropes + rahnmyath tarasylah “ran” lavellan

(inspired by night-springs)

[javisfreckles]

I did the ending where you trick Solas with the fake dagger and ohhh boyyy that was satisfying

[sneakyneighboururchin]

So uh, the game keeps calling Solas the god of lies. Pretty sure the god of lies was Dirthamen. He literally mastered a spirit of deciet. It's a whole thing. I get that they wanted to keep a nice reminder for the player that Solas was going to lie to them but I fee like just emphasising the Great Betrayer part would have covered that base.

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

This quest annoys me. A lot. So far, I've never done it. I intend to try with another character at some point. I originally thought I'd try it with my human noble for RP, but he's a relatively nice (and rather religious) guy, so I feel like the disrespect of desecrating an ancient burial site, even if it's a culture he may not understand, is still a bit too much. I mean, I don't see a problem with being able to do it as an option, I guess. I just feel like that being the only solution to the "puzzle" is kind of stupid. Hell, at least don't lock the damn mosaic piece behind it. I don't even need the loot.

On this playthrough, I managed to exploit the mount glitch that lets you clip through the door of the crypt without destroying the graves, just to retrieve the mosaic piece. Also, found out too late that there is a mod for this.

[vaguely-concerned]

during the last solas regret memory, when you choose the sad option (he loved her and blamed her) and rook says: "when the other gods struck her down, he destroyed the elven empire to avenge her," they seem to be looking right at lucanis. (who is also the next person to speak and seems to be meeting their gaze during that). there are some times when the staging of a scene makes me feel slightly unfairly rewarded for being a lucanis romancer haha. (or rather unfairly rewarded for having the kind of unhinged brain I do while being a lucanis romancer, maybe.) guess who pretty consistently gets to sit at rook's right hand in most of the scenes where everyone is at the dinner table too :) just little lucanis privileges

[mrs-gauche]

I beat Veilguard.

It's 4am. I'm a mess. I'm in tears.