#i'm watching the inextricable destiny right now and

[bebemoon]

unsolicited cdrama rec but since I've been seeing a lot of angst may I suggest an ancient love song? I think you might like it, even if it's lower budget because the story truly punches above its weight

thank you- noted ! i actually hadn't heard of this one before now.

[irlaimsaaralath]

"Oh, my belovèd, have you thought of this:  How in the years to come unscrupulous Time,  More cruel than Death, will tear you from my kiss,  And make you old, and leave me in my prime?" So I was reading Edna St Vincent Millay poems and this one (the whole thing but this part especially) struck me as very Solavellan. I say as someone who hasn't romanced the egg in ages bc I'm still mad at him from my first DAI playthrough

Apologies for this taking so long.

Also, Solas ugly cries.  Sry not sry.

Standing in the courtyard at the base of the stairs into the main hall, the people of Skyhold moved around him as if he were invisible.  In fairness, they were the craftsmen and laborers and had little reason to note him, and he, likewise, had his grey-blue eyes turned to the fortress and paid them no mind.  It had been years since he had stood within Skyhold’s walls, and it was likely he would not have recognized any of the faces even if he had looked.  His easy gait carried him up and through the double doors to the unoccupied hall beyond.  Each step echoed as he made his way to her chambers, and he couldn’t help but think how strange it was to see so massive a space so utterly vacant.  As it ever was, her heraldry hung high on the wall, and her throne sat empty.  They were the only witnesses as he passed through her door.

Along the walkway, his steps were quiet, the sharpness of his sabatons muted by the wood underfoot, and as he topped the short set of steps to her chambers, he didn’t bother to knock.  When he passed through the door, he was immediately assailed by the scent of blackberries and sage – it was her favorite soap.  He paused to breathe her in, filling his lungs and relishing in the tingle it sent across his skin.  When he rounded the top of the stairs, he expected to find her there, but she was nowhere to be seen.  A shard of apprehension shot through him, and his brow fell low.  “Niyera?”  Her answer was prompt:  “On the balcony.”  He thought it curious, but his relief was such that he did not question, simply went to her.  Her back faced him, and her hand rested lightly on the railing.  He noted that her hair was much longer than it had been when last he saw her, even more so than when she joined the Inquisition.  Gone was the braid that held back the strands from her shaved undercut, and instead, her hair was thick and full and swept the small of her back.

“Why have you come, Solas?” she asked, with no malice in her voice, only a calm curiosity.  The air was particularly biting, more so than it seemed it should be, and he stepped toward her, close enough that the pelt over his shoulder brushed the back of her arm.  “I missed you, vhenan,” he replied, and a sharp wind off the mountain teased strands of her hair against his hand.  He shifted closer, settling a hand on her hip as he bowed his head to press his nose into the hair behind her ear.  “We both know that isn’t so, ma lath,” she said, a mirthless chuckle tumbling over her lips.  “It is past time that you were honest with me and with yourself.”  The hand on her hip slid to encircle her waist, and his eyes closed as he pulled her tight against him.  The way he held her, it was as if he was trying to memorize the feel of her body on his – her lines, her warmth, the way they fit just so.  When he spoke, his voice was strained, “I do not know what you mean.  You are never far from my thoughts, vhenan.”  

With gentle fingers, he drew the hair back from her neck and placed the softest kiss just beneath her ear.  He felt as well as heard her sigh.  “Perhaps not, but that is not why you are here,” she said as she turned in his arms and tilted her gaze to his.  Her viridian eyes were dark, but clear as always, though lines now crinkled her skin at the corners.  Around her face, strands of silver mingled with the white, and her pale skin was lined with more scars than he remembered and infinitely more wrinkles.  Regardless, she still stole his breath.  “You know you should not be here,” she continued as she smoothed a hand over the pelt on his shoulder.  “I told you not to return,” she finished, quieter, as her fingers lingered against his neck.  Abashed, he let his eyes stray from hers as he resettled his arms about her waist.  She was right, of course; she always was.  Even when she did not know his name, she knew how to read him.  “Forgive me.  This is the only place I want to be,” he intoned, “I do not know how to stay away.”  She braced a gentle finger on his jawline to turn his face back to hers.  Meeting her eyes, he found sadness, regret, even love, though it was a love left unsatisfied.  Taken for granted.  “You do.  You always have.  There is just something here you can’t find anywhere else,” she accused, her hand having come to rest beneath his chin.  Her thumb eased over the dimple on his chin.

So simple a touch, but it sent a tremor through him, ice under his skin.  Her hand fell to his chest, and she patted his armor in the space over his heart before a light push caused him to withdraw his arms and stand aside.  He watched as she began inside, and only at long last did he speak, “What is that, vhenan?”  On the threshold of the balcony doors, she paused, glancing back at him as she spoke, “Punishment.  But, I am no longer inclined to give it to you.”  His features drew taut as she turned away from him, and though his mouth opened to speak, he managed to say nothing at all.  This is not how he had imagined this would be, how he needed it to be.  Following in her footsteps, he found her before the hearth, her arm wrapped across her stomach.  She said nothing, only stared into the fire, while the flames lit her features in light and shadow.  “I…do not understand,” he finally said as he stepped toward her, and her head canted in his direction.  “Of course you don’t.  You’ve come here expecting to find what you always find:  a shadow,” she said, and while her voice was firm, there was no anger in it.  “But, I am not a shadow, Solas.  I am that which casts it, and I will not allow you to use me for your self-flagellation.”  

His mouth abruptly went dry as his grey-blue eyes widened.  No.  It was not possible.  Before he could move or speak, she was standing before him, with her fingertips on his cheek.  When her touch grazed his brow, his breath hitched in his chest with the flash of images before his mind’s eye.  –  It was their life.  Together.  The years in the Inquisition.  When they’d met, how they’d fallen in love.  All the moments that wove them together like threads, knotted and bound.  How he’d cut those threads, abandoned her even before he left her.  Then the years she had searched for him.  Two sides of the same coin, facing in opposite directions always, but inextricably bound.  How she’d found him, and he’d turned from her yet again, forsaking her love, their love, for a destiny he could not be convinced to abandoned.  How many more years had she searched?  So many.  Until at last she’d found him.  Still more time had passed before he’d relented, and by the time he had made amends, won back her trust, the balance of her life was nearly spent.  The years that had seemed so few to him were a literal lifetime to her.  He’d taken her for granted yet again.  

Anguished and wretched, a broken cry struggled from his lips as she withdrew her hand.  His knees had become too weak to hold him, and so he slid to the floor, knelt at her feet.  “It is actually you,” he said, barely audible.  He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so they rested on his knees.   “I thought…the memory was all I had left of you,” he confessed, face downturned.   An almost bitter chuckle exited her, and she summoned his gaze with light fingertip on his cheek.  “My body was not the only thing left scarred by our love, ma lath,” she said softly, with a voice that was meant to be soothing, but drew tears to his eyes.  He bowed his head, helpless to do otherwise, unable to hold her gaze.   “I am so…sorry, Niyera, vhenan,” he struggled to say through his tears, the weeping that made his shoulders sag and tremble.   “Ar lath ma, above all else.  But, I squandered our time, your life.  If only I could-,” his words were clipped short by her interruption.  “But you can’t.   And it’s time you accepted that,” her fingers were a chill that slipped beneath his chin to lift his face.  

Tears ran silver streaks down his face, that were then glossed a pale green as the Fade began to fray the edges of her form.   “I am so weary, Solas, my Fen’Harel,” and even as she spoke, pale terror washed across his eyes as he lurched up from sitting on his heels.   Under his gaze, the Fade teased tendrils of her essence away from the whole, unraveling her one strand at a time.  “No!” he begged as he clutched at her hand, then her waist, trying to hold her together by sheer will alone.  “Niyera, don’t go!  I can't…”  He felt the weight of her embrace on his shoulders, the press of her lips to the top of his head, and smelled the blackberry-sage scent that haunted her as she haunted him.  “Ir abelas, vhenan,” she whispered, the sound assailing him from all directions as she slipped from his grasp.  “Never doubt that I loved you,” came her voice once more as his arms closed on empty air, and he fell forward, braced on his hands with his head bowed.  The arched line of his back shook with the force of his sobs, and he curled in on himself as the last of her, a rush of white, spiraled away into nothing.   

The pain of his sorrow was physical, and he felt it in every fiber, every sinew of his being.   The culmination of it sat him straight as he threw back his head and howled his grief.  It reverberated across the Fade, rippling out from him to tear through the mist-made walls of Skyhold until he was left kneeling in the center of a vast emptiness, with only fingers of Fade reaching to comfort him.  His eyes fell closed, and he took a deep but trembling breath.  When he opened them again, he was back in the chilly basement storage of Skyhold where the eluvian was housed.  Around him, it was silent and dim and hollow.  Everything was hollow.  The tears he’d shed in the Fade were warm on his cheeks outside of it, and he couldn’t seem to catch his breath.   He should go before he was discovered, and yet, he couldn’t bring himself to move.  So, he folded his arms over his stomach, bent double by his grief, and mourned the loss of the only thing he still held sacred.