#like not just like Reth like for real slaves

[precious-little-bhaalbabe]

Tbh one of my favorite character tropes is “alien who’s gruff and mean and expositions that ‘that’s just how [their] people are’ but then once you grow on them you realize they’re actually huge softies by their standards of their society and that’s maybe why they hang out with humans”

[edda-grenade]

Nature.

Adaar and her parents have a very serious debate about why Solas is… like that.

#feral verse, 1100 words. on AO3.

Adaar wasn’t sure what exactly Solas was—only that he definitely wasn’t an elf. Not fully, at least.

He sounded strange. Like an elf raised among the Dalish, but… off. Maybe he was originally from a far-off clan where they spoke with the lilt and affect he had, but she had never encountered it.

But then again: he didn’t have vallaslin, despite being more than old enough to wear them.

It could be that he had refused them for some reason, although she couldn’t imagine why. All the young Dalish she had known before and after they had received their vallaslin had seemed so happy and proud to bear them, even when their faces were still raw and sensitive from the markings.

Or he had never been offered vallaslin in the first place. That at least would explain why he didn’t appear to be on speaking terms with any Dalish. Adaar still cringed when she remembered the fight he’d gotten into with Lavellan’s First. And Keeper, and Hahren. At least they hadn’t decided to cut trade ties with her family’s settlement.

He wasn’t much better with city elves, the few times she’d managed to convince him to accompany her into the villages or, on one occasion, the town to the north. She had promised Iolain to fetch him the next time a Dalish clan made camp near their land again so he might join them, and Solas had watched the entire exchange like a man watching an execution. They can’t give him what he’s looking for, he had told her afterwards. All they do is play at being elves, like shadows of the real thing.

And what are you? she had asked, angry and baffled. Solas had given her a look of such abject sorrow it had stopped her right in her tracks.

A shadow of what I was.

So he acted like no elf on earth could be his people. And yet, sometimes, he said things like: My people used to, this place was sacred to my people, back when my people were—

He always caught himself rather quickly, and either ignored or avoided any follow-up questions she might pose. Which was infuriating, but also, horribly understandable…

Because Adaar had the feeling his people weren’t considered people by anyone else. The way he talked about spirits and demons, with a fond melancholy he usually reserved for tales of the ancient Arlathan…

“I don’t know,” said Reth, expression skeptical. “He definitely looks like an elf. And he’s a mage, who apparently didn’t learn in a Circle, or from a Keeper, or the Qun, or in Tevinter. I’m more curious who taught him magic than anything else.”

“That’s my point!” said Adaar. “What if he never learned magic because he didn’t have to?”

“I think he was a slave,” Ari said quietly. “From Tevinter. Probably manifested magic late, and then that presented an opportunity for escape.”

“He’s haunted enough for it,” agreed Reth. “It’s like looking into a mirror, sometimes. Terrible.” He shook himself and downed an impressive amount of the sweetshine they were sharing in one go.

“Leave some for the rest of us, kadan.” Ari swiped the bottle while Adaar folded her legs up on the bench.

“Fine, be boring and sensible,” she said, with two fingers pointed at Reth and Ari. “So Papa’s bet is he’s really just an elf mage, Tama’s bet is that but also a former slave—”

“I’m not going to bet on it,” Ari interjected. They drank a deep swig of sweetshine, then pushed it into Adaar’s hands. “I don’t actually want to be right on this. But I most likely am. Definitely more than any of you lot.”

“That’s depressing,” Adaar said with a grimace. She drank and passed the bottle to her mother. “I bet he’s an—not an abomination, like possessed, but something like it probably? An elf and some kind of spirit, fused together.”

“An old spirit,” Tehenan threw in.

“Oh yes, absolutely. The way he talks about ‘the old world’, it sounds like he was there for it, y’know? Like he’s seen it. Watched it all get sold up the coast.”

“My money’s on one of the Forgotten Ones,” Tehenan said with a grin. “Do you remember how pissed he was when Keeper Deshanna told the story of the Great Betrayal? That reeks of personal involvement.”

“Oof.” Adaar rested her chin in her hands, gaze unfocusing as she imagined what Solas might’ve looked like in the old days, before he got attached to his current shape. “That would be amazing.”

There was a soft lull as her parents’ gazes met among the table. Reth leaned his crossed arms on the table so he was at eye-level with his daughter.

“That doesn’t scare you?” he asked quietly. “The thought that you’re learning from someone who is—who is that old and strange and powerful? Whose nature is so alien?”

Adaar met his eyes. “Should it?”

“…No. You shouldn’t ever have to be afraid of anything.”

“I’m not.” She grinned. “Also, he has a really cute sneeze. I don’t think some creepy old god up to nefarious shit would sneeze like that. And—” she lunged all the way across the table to grab the sweetshine, “—if Solas was going to hurt me, he wouldn’t be teaching me all this magic, right? I can do so much more already.” She tapped the bottle, and frost bloomed along the glass from her fingertips. She set it down in mid-air and left it floating there, spinning lazily, drifting across the table. Ari’s posture shifted, tensed, and she listed against their shoulder, fumbling blindly for their hand, then squeezed it tight once she caught it.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got it. I’m not gonna make it explode or anything.”

“But you could, huh.” Reth’s eyes flashed from across the table.

“Sure. But that’d be a waste of perfectly good sweetshine, and it’s really not that hard. Not breaking stuff is a lot more complicated than, well, breaking it.”

Ari sighed, and squeezed her hand back. “You have no idea how true that is.” They relaxed, and rested their cheek against Adaar’s temple. “Can you heat it up again, Sunspot? It’s too late for cold sweetshine.”

“Yep, let me just…” Adaar curled her claws and forced warmth back into the bottle at a measured pace. And, because she wanted to show off a bit more, she pushed further than before until the glass was comfortably hot to the touch and the bottle sailed from hand to hand without ever touching the table.

“This is good, kiddo. We should have it like this more often.” Tehenan smacked her lips after the first sip of the now heated drink. “Do you think Forgotten Ones know how to make sweetshine?”

Adaar laughed. “No idea. But if he doesn’t, I’ll teach him how when we make the next batch.”