#featuring Mythal Nanna and Lavellan

[hoboblaidd]

hc question time; we see who/what is in rook's version of the regret prison, what did solas's look like? who was there, what did they say to him?

I live with countless regrets. Some I've learned to cherish more than my victories.

Regret is a discordant opera, a cacophony of inharmonious voices echoing the same refrain: you should have done better.

It has to be finely tuned, a place built around a single emotion. A sharp note here, and you bleed into guilt. A flat note there, and you invite despair. But when tuned with meticulous precision, those voices shouting the refrain are no one’s but your own.

This was a chess game against himself - how do you escape a trap that you built to be perfect? Pride would not allow him even the moment to congratulate himself on his double-edged accomplishment. No emotion could survive in here save one.

Solas stood on the ruined steps of the ritual site. Freedom lay just beyond an impassable chasm into the void below. Just beyond his grasp.

Hey, Chuckles.

He did not turn around. He could not. He knew what he would see at the bottom of the stairs.

A constant, muted roll of thunder was swallowed by the vacuous air around him. But this was still the Fade. This was still his natural home. He called forth a path from the rubble and fled. It would not cross the chasm, but it would let him run deeper into the prison without having to see the body he'd left on the cold stone of the ritual site.

Solas prowled around the perimeter of this prison looking for an edge, a slip, anything that he could use as a footfall to escape.

Statues of Mythal loomed overhead, their great shadows passing over him as he searched. 

"You should not have given your orb to Corypheus, Dread Wolf."

He felt Mythal's hand on his shaking arm as he took his first steps on unsteady legs. Blight snaked over his feet, relentless in its spread. The statues flickered into the tortured visages of the Titans, frozen in a silent scream. 

Her warm blood dripped onto his arms as the lyrium dagger pierced her heart.

"You should not have let me die."

Until with a crackle of lightning, he held her stone body in his arms.

"You should not have killed me."

"I had no choice," he insisted, voice breaking.

"You did, and you always have, my friend. But you never choose the right one."

He couldn't move past her. But if he didn't move, if he didn't escape, it will all have been for nothing.

Hope I'm not interrupting.

The voice echoed again, and he wrenched himself from Mythal's arms and forced another path deeper into the prison. He stalked inwards, ignoring the shadows cast by the statues, ignoring the discordant reverberations.

Alone in a circular slab, surrounded by dead branches of twisting trees, there stood a small stone effigy. A child of no more than ten, perhaps. Flowers in a mess of dark hair, a dress that did not cover her bare feet on what should have been mossy ground but was instead parched grass, and in her hands she clutched a wolf bone talisman.

"Da'len?" he called softly.

"I am afraid of dying in shadow," said Nanna, her voice lost in the limitless air around them, "but I'm still trying to understand."

He felt the gentle pressure of her small hand in his, her eyes full of hope and resolve. She, who would rather have watched the sun rise.

"Why did you leave?" she asked. It was a plea, not an accusation. A plea to understand.

"What else could I have done?"

"You could have said goodbye."

Her stone effigy split as the Veil tore down around her, into her. Sundered her along with the rest of this broken world. The rock that made her face splintered and burst, its particles floating like a crown around the remains of her head. Yet her hands still clutched the totem.

People are dying right now - you need to listen.

He forced a path through her dying forest, following it away from the young girl he'd met in a meadow of memory.

Please.

The dry grass gave way to an all too familiar entryway. Before Solas could stop himself, he stepped into Skyhold's great hall. He did not dare look to his immediate right, where a fireplace crackled and strewn letters from the Merchant's Guild piled on a desk. He passed its scaffolding, the relentless grey of the void streaming through the high stained glass windows. 

The Inquisitor sat in judgment.

"Vhenan," he breathed.

Inquisitor Lavellan was seated on her throne, his orb in one hand and his dagger held aloft in the other. He stood at the base of the dais, another prisoner at the mercy of her justice.

"You have a rare and marvelous spirit," she declared, echoing his own words back at him. "In another world..."

He choked on her follow up. Why not this one? That night in Crestwood, he had not been brave enough to turn from the dinan'shiral and remain with her. He felt her hand on his cheek, the feel of her body against his, the warmth of her breath as she leaned in.

"This isn't real," she said, "is it."

"It was," he insisted. "It is."

"Then why did you run?"

"What would you have had me do?" he pled.

"I would have had you trust me," she levied. "Stayed with me."

Come on, Chuckles, who are you trying to convince here? Me or yourself?

He fled deeper into Skyhold, following its winding stairs away from the great hall until -

Solas stood on the ruined steps of the ritual site. Freedom lay just beyond an impassable chasm into the void below. Just beyond his grasp.

You had to know this was coming, Chuckles.

Solas did not turn around. He knew what he would see at the bottom of the stairs. Who he would see. He could not face him - the shock of pain and disbelief in Varric's eyes before it gave way to resignation. As if this was always inevitable. A dagger in his heart, wielded by Solas' hand. 

He called forth a path from the rubble and fled.

He paced the perimeter of his prison. 

You should not have let me die.

He stalked inwards.

You should have said goodbye.

He fled through the ruins of Skyhold.

You should have trusted me.

He entered the ritual site.

You had to know this was coming.

He paced the perimeter of his prison. He stalked inwards. He fled the ruins of Skyhold. He entered the ritual site.

Hey, Chuckles.

He paced the perimeter of his prison.