#i want to believe that she would’ve spent AGES at this before interrupting wolfy-vhenan like that but i wasn’t sure

[clan-lavellans-magpie]

it is better in her hands

In which Solas and Lavellan are definitely artists. A fic present with Helwys Lavellan for my dear beautiful friend @koala-biscuits.  It was splendid. Gods and men, the destruction and chaos of battle; he had managed it, finally filled that next spot in the Rotunda. Haven crouched at the base of the wall, flame bright above it, a looming figure behind. His brush scraped against the clay. With his attention focused, he could distract himself from thoughts of his friend, the empty spot in the Fade. Now I must endure. The room seemed cold, a draught from outside blowing in through the corridor, cooling his hands. If he didn’t finish first, the wind would harden the plaster. Eventually, he stepped back, inspecting the masterpiece. It covered the wall from ceiling to floor in both bright and sombre shades, reflecting the nature of the event, and the losses they could not escape. Then he glimpsed a bare patch of plaster, barely the length of his thumb and just beneath where he was looking. How had he missed it? Well, it would be fine. Surely. No-one would see it; it was small enough, and... it could have been intended. Solas attempted to quiet his discomfort - he could mix more of the pigment later. It would be fine. It looked good, actually. He stirred the pigment on the palette and chose a dark blue, leaning towards the illustrated shadows on Corypheus’ robe. “You missed a spot!” The voice was surprisingly loud behind him. “I - I’ve got paint here, so… uh… I could - just - ?” A brush snuck through the space between his arms, laden with red paint - not his, but remarkably similar - and began dusting it gently on the bare spot. An arm followed it, outfitted with a Dalish wrist-guard that he knew belonged to Helwys Lavellan. He frowned, brows knitting together. “Not like that!” “Look, it was annoying me. Were you supposed to leave it blank?” Helwys tilted her head to look at the painted spot. “At least it looks hidden, now.” It was, as she pointed out, disguised. The colour even matched. “How should you know? I was unaware that any Dalish currently practised this style.” Discomfited and flustered, the words came out with more bite than he intended. “Well, given how much you seem to dislike us, I’m surprised you have any accurate information at all.” A replying tinge of annoyance coloured the words. Helwys crossed her arms, dripping paint on her sleeve. She barely noticed, with her eyes fixed firmly on his. “So what if we don’t? I read your notes on it.” “What? When?” He’d thought he had hidden those notes, given how little he needed them. He’d written them when he had woken, as one did a half-remembered dream, but his skill was still as strong as it had been. So he had put them away amongst… amongst the other reports, on his desk. “While you were still in the Exalted Plains. That was more than enough time to get through the four volumes on paint alone. I damn well hope it’ll help me understand this. Four volumes.” He swallowed. “I spent a lot of time observing artists in the Fade.” The Fade. Spirits, knowledge, and Wisdom. The ache inside him still hurt. He wanted to get back to painting, shut out the world again, but she was here. And he… He didn’t want her to go. Helwys ran her fingers feather-lightly across the dry paint, almost reverently. Coming out of his thoughts, Solas found his respect for her deepening. “I’m not entirely sure ‘a lot’ covers it,” she was saying. “Nobody practises this anymore, and yet you’re painting masterpieces on the walls of this castle as if it happens every day!” “You think they are masterpieces, lethallan?” Helwys went a fiery red. “No! - Yes! - I mean, maybe? I’ve just heard people say that.” Then she shifted the documents in her arms, tucked the paintbrush behind her ear, and examined the closest fresco critically. “I mean, they’re fine, other than the bit you completely missed.” “It is practised by precious few in this day and age. But if you think you could do better, go ahead.” “Oh, really? Pity you sound so cynical about it.” She blushed, scowled, then her gaze set, determined and in her element. A smile of challenge danced over her face as she took the palette from his hand. He felt forgotten already. As his hand brushed hers, he felt the power beneath her skin, entrancing and warrior-like and beating to a dancing rhythm. It set warning bells ringing in his skull. He should not leave his painting alone with Helwys Lavellan; who knew what he would come back to? But he kept watching. It turned out to be as much a distraction as painting was, saving him from the dark thoughts that kept creeping into his mind. His artist’s sense couldn’t look away; his gaze was caught by the slender line of her figure, the curve of her arm as she touched the brush to the wall, the colours of her skin and her hair and her clothes. Dark hair crumpled in a knot at the nape of her neck, and he was fascinated by every spark of light within it. By the time she stepped away from the painting, he was drunk on the sight of her. Beautiful, lyrical, his dreamer’s mind called. She had spent time around him before now, but never like this… She was occasionally brusque, gathering reports and information from him without a ‘hello’ or a second glance, and always, always quiet-seeming, secret, walls like cliffs around herself. He’d seen her, walking the battlements when the whole of the Inquisition was asleep. She, who never slept, and himself, who spent all his spare moments asleep in the Fade. He was coming to realise that he wanted more of her company. … That was if she didn’t try and change everything he’d done in the Rotunda. Solas looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of what he’d let her loose on, trying to gauge just how great a mistake this would turn out to be. This is the price of being hypnotised by that scowl of hers, he thought. It was… surprisingly good, for a first try. She missed the finer points of the technique, and the details she added ended up slightly blurry-edged and clunky, but he wasn’t left cringing. He was, in fact, left staring. The red swathe of light, which he had left relatively simple to better emphasise the detail at the top of the wall, was covered in tiny details, so many that he could barely see them, like fish scales through ocean water. She… She’d met his challenge, and preserved his intention. “Have you had any… Other experience, other than reading those notes?” “You asking if I’ve practised?” She turned fully around from the wall and stared down at him, pigment smudged across her nose and wielding her paintbrush like a knife. “Go check the walls of my damn room. Creators, I can even show you, if you want.” A look of mortification crossed her face. “Uh… I meant… Not like that.” He chuckled quietly, and she went back to painting, scowling. Most of the time, she was invisible. Caught in the shadow of her brother’s decisions, decisions that shook the world and the Fade. The elf in the corner of the Orlesian balls. Like himself. But doing this…. Standing in the faint light of his veilfire, painting, she was a goddess, an angel, infallible in her own light. Doing this, she stood out further than her brother’s reach could ever put her. “Lethallan -” She waved him silent with one hand, barely even glancing down. “Shush, stay there. I didn’t lose four nights of sleep over this stupid technique for nothing.” “Four nights?” “Not in a row, obviously. And I’m not even counting the days. You and my stupid brother were gone a while, and you were away even longer than he was.” He felt almost… honoured, if that was possible. If she’d done it for him. “What possessed you to learn such a thing? Curiosity?” “Curiosity. Mostly.” She stood on tiptoe to reach higher up the wall. “Thought I could help you. Either that or I’d paint murals in my brother’s room just to freak him out. There’s a good wall...” Her voice softened, thinking out loud to herself. Solas thought he caught Sera’s name in her murmurings. Shortly after, Helwys slid down the ladder, happy sparks of magic popping around her, and announced, “Done. I think. Probably.” He gazed up at the wall. From far away, it was still his work - but now he knew. There was now a part of her in the mural of Haven. And there was a part of her that clung to him, sticking to him like the last trails of a good dream. “You are an artist, then.” She raised an eyebrow, tone slipping into sarcasm. “What kind of question is that?” “I… I didn’t mean… I haven’t had the honour of seeing your work before. All I knew was from the Inquisitor.” He held his hands up in surrender. She was close now, her silhouette close to pinning him against the desk. The light of the veilfire caught in her hair, in the air behind her, creating an aquamarine halo like those around Andraste in the human chantries. Inadvertently, Solas’ breath caught in his throat. He wanted to - but there was no place for that now. Not to mention he would be on thin ground, both with Helwys herself and the Inquisitor as her half-brother, when events reached their... climax. They had just begun in Skyhold; there were duties to be seen to, reports to be written - there was no time for this. But, if he went by that same logic, there would be no time for painting, either. And she was a painting. It was in the smile that rarely surfaced on her sharp face; the brushstrokes were the tiny ink droplets that always accompanied her signature, smudged fussily as her eye for perfection tried to get rid of them; caught in the books and papers that she was forced to put down in order to do anything other than work. She was light caught in ice, frost on flower petals. She was beautiful like an avalanche was beautiful, and he was standing on the ice. Helwys raised a brow. “You look like you’re thinking something especially poetic.” “I am around you. How could I not be?” “No. No flirting. Stop it.” She glared at him, shifting from foot to foot. Then, in as low and quiet a voice as she could possibly manage, “Flatterer.” A simple word. But one she seemed unused to saying. Did she mean -? No. The moment he started thinking things like that, everything would go awry. Helwys flushed as red as a sunset, and hurried to turn her attention back to the finished wall. “Mmm,” she muttered, purposefully fixing her gaze on a spot halfway up, “Huh. Should’ve added something -” Her sentence trailed away as he laid a hand on her shoulder. “It is wonderful, lethallan.” In a blink, Helwys spun around, the length of the palette all that separated them. “What?” “It is beautiful.” Like you, he didn’t add, knowing it might make her uncomfortable. Always like you. “Uh… thank you?” She leaned closer, closing the divide between them, and his heart leapt with hope. Their gazes met, his blue-grey eyes meeting tired ones, rimmed with kohl that was more smudge than line, the colour of aeons of veilfire, and for him, only for him, as warm as a hearth. This couldn’t go on for long, he would only hurt her, would only bring her grief and sadness, but she was the brightest soul he had seen since her brother became Inquisitor, since the Fade. He knew how he felt. What he felt. This might not work out, might never last - relationships were a dangerous thing in times like these, and she knew that, too. He couldn’t do this. Not properly. But he knew love when it grew upon him. In that instant, he gave his heart into her hands, and kissed her. Helwys’ eyes widened, and he caught a trace of awkward happiness in them, before her eyelids flickered closed and she leaned into him, palette forgotten. Her lips were soft on his. Solas’ heart skipped a beat, breathless and full of light, weighing no more than a feather. She smelled of leaves and paint, fresh air and ink and the sharp scent of frost magic. Joy poured through him, thundering like a waterfall. At the end of it all, this would hurt more than anything. The barbed thought stung more than he would have liked. He could see her, in his mind’s eye, what would happen if he left as he needed to. Tears unshed. Sleep forgotten. Paint strewn across her hair, her skin, the floor, nowhere, the canvases whose tears she hid. Veilfire and betrayal written in her eyes. He pulled away, breathing sharp and deep to calm his nerves. He could not do that to her. He could not. She had cares and worry enough of her own. She needed light, not darkness. Not what he could give. Perhaps he could stay. He loved her, after all, he knew it. He could stay with her, or - or take her with him. No, not that. But if he didn’t have to leave… He could stay. He could. With her. Helwys’ eyes opened, and he smiled, to reassure her all was well. Vhenan. Watching her reaction to it - confused, suspicious but glad - his smile reassured himself, too. She took a breath as she scrambled backwards, blinked several times, and murmured, “Woah.” He was thinking the same thing. “Who is flattering whom now, I wonder?” Her mouth shaped into an O of indignation, and she lunged for the palette. Elegant fingers scraped all the red from its wooden surface, and he didn’t even mind when she smudged a great deal of it over his face. Helwys smirked. “Missed a spot.” Then she leapt off the platform and ran for the door, feet flying, echoes ringing all the way up to the rookery, Solas at her heels. Eventually he gave up and stopped to lean against his desk, paper rough beneath his fingers, sighing and catching his breath. Her lips had left him with the taste of salt and strawberries, quiet and unassuming but powerful enough to shake his world to its roots. She was a wonder. “I am never going to be able to let that go, am I?��� Just before the door of the Rotunda swung closed, he heard a laugh that made his heart race, and her gleeful voice shouting, “Never!”