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hrtiu · 2 days

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I finally got around to writing some Solavellan fanfic! Thank you to @namedbrina for the prompt! It's not exactly what you suggested, but hopefully the spirit remains. Also sorry it took me so long to actually write 😅 You can find a link to the fic on AO3 here, or simply read below. I have a whole long story plotted out, but we'll see how much actually gets written ><

Solas has never liked necromancers and is surprised to like Lavellan. But she has always respected spirits and wisps, so perhaps it shouldn’t be as surprising. She who wears Falon’Din’s marks, who even Dorian is a bit in awe of/scared of, and who never leaves a battlefield without using the last of her mana in a Dalish ritual to soothe whatever might remain. As the only elf and perhaps mage around, she teaches this ritual to Solas so he might be able to do it if she has no mana? Idk.

Of all the titles Solas had carried in his long years, his favorite was healer.

Perhaps that was why he was enjoying his time with the Inquisition so much. To many of the folk around Haven, he was known only as the reclusive, slightly odd elf healer. There was something freeing about the many centuries of baggage his name and face carried being stripped away. Solas the healer. Mender of bones, salver of wounds, fixer of broken things. He quite liked that.

Atishal, the so-called Herald of Andraste, enjoyed no such reputation. Oh, the people of Haven respected her, and were all too willing to place their hopes on her thin shoulders. But her Dalish traditions and strange magic warded off any reputation for wholesomeness that might otherwise develop. Necromancy had a way of doing that.

There was something mesmerizing about her magic. Necromancy had always left a bitter taste in Solas’s mouth, but the Herald made it seem natural, almost elegant. Together with Varric and Cassandra, they fought through the chaos of apostate mages and rogue templars, but always his gaze was drawn to her. He was so preoccupied by the sight of spirits from the Fade willingly lending Atishal their strength that he never saw the templar’s arrow coming.

“Ah!” He let out a pained grunt as the arrowhead buried deep into the flesh of his shoulder. He sank to one knee and grimaced, the hand not holding his staff moving to grip the shaft of the arrow.

“Solas needs help!” Atishal shouted above the fray.

Varric tossed a red bottle his way, and Solas managed to catch it with one functioning arm. Solas pulled the cork out with his teeth and drank just enough to muster the energy for a fade step. He stepped through the veil and ended up on a small hill just out of range of the still-battling templars. He caught his breath, intending to reenter the fray when he got the chance, but Varric, Cassandra, and the Herald didn’t seem to need his help any more.

“How are you doing, Chuckles?” Varric asked, hefting Bianca over his shoulder as he trudged up the hill towards Solas.

“Let’s get back to camp,” Cassandra said. “He can rest up there.”

“No need to wait until then,” Atishal said.

Her soft footfalls barely seemed to depress the grass as she made her way to Solas’s side, kneeling down to get a better look at his wounded shoulder. Ginger fingers tested the flesh around the injury, and she hissed in sympathy.

“I don’t have the strength right now to numb it, but I can heal it after the shaft is out,” she said. “Do you want me to do that now? Or should we wait until we get back to camp and we can get you some willow bark for the pain? Or a lyrium potion so you can heal it yourself?”

“Just do it now,” Solas said, not wanting to make the hike back to camp with an arrow in his shoulder. “I’ve dealt with worse.”

“Got it,” Atishal said. She gripped the arrow shaft with one hand and braced her other hand against Solas’s shoulder.

“One, two, three.”

Searing pain shot through Solas’s body, his grunt of pain pushing through gritted teeth. Then, in an instant, the pain disappeared.

Atishal’s hand against his shoulder felt warm. She was still murmuring words of healing under her breath, her eyes closed and her brow unforrowed in an expression of peace.

He blinked in confusion and surprise. Her spell had worked marvelously—he couldn’t have cast it better himself. That was… unexpected.

“Are we ready to go, Herald?” Cassandra’s no-nonsense voice broke through Solas’s daze. “It isn’t safe to stay in one place for too long.”

Solas pushed himself to his feet as elegantly as he could manage, nodding to Atishal in thanks. “Yes, Seeker. I am ready to go.”

They moved in near silence down the rough Hinterlands trail. The battle had taken a lot out of them, and with nothing but more long days of closing rifts, facing down rogue templars, bandits, or mages, and struggling to make a name for the Inquisition, nobody was in the mood for chatter.

They reached camp—a cluster of tents by a tranquil pond—and Solas gratefully took the stew Scout Harding offered him. He didn’t usually eat much, but he was famished. He pressed carefully at the place in his shoulder that had held a templar arrow only hours earlier, but the flesh was whole. A little tender, but whole.

Atishal sat next to him on a large rock by the water’s edge, a short distance from the gathering of Inquisition scouts around the campfire. Far enough away to create some sense of privacy. Solas wondered if she thought they were in some kind of Elven guild, and the thought brought a grimace to his lips.

“How is your shoulder?” she asked, her deft fingers unbraiding her long, brown hair.

“Feeling good,” Solas said, rolling his shoulder in demonstration.

“I’m glad.” She let her hair fall in thick waves over her shoulder, still lovely despite the sweat and dirt of the day weighing it down.

The conversation lapsed, and Solas let the ambient sounds of the dusky forest fill the silence.

“You are quite a skilled healer,” Solas said eventually.

“You sound surprised.”

“I don’t think many necromancers make the effort to learn the art of healing.”

“Really?” she said, turning to him with a raised brow. “I don’t see necromancy and healing as being so different.”

“Healing the living versus drawing wisps into the vessels of the dead? What could be more different?”

She didn’t respond for a long moment. Solas looked over at her, noting the tense line of her mouth. He recognized her expression, of course. He’d grown used to offending people since waking from his long sleep.

He waited for her to leave. He knew her well enough by now to know that the Herald of Andraste tended to shut down rather than confront. But though he gave her plenty of space to make her exit, she stayed.

A mourning dove let out a plaintive cry, and the sun slipped behind the trees. Twilight transformed the woods around them, marking a boundary in time and space.

Atishal picked a stone up from the ground and tossed it into the pond. It made a satisfying thunk as it landed in the water, and she watched the ripples slowly expand for a long moment.

“I used to be a healer,” she said quietly.

Solas raised his eyebrows. “Ah?”

“Do you think a Dalish tribe has much use for necromancy?” she asked, eyes still trained on the last remaining ripples in the pond. “For the first twenty five years of my life, it never entered my mind to practice necromancy. I soothed scrapes and bruises, mended broken bones, guided women through difficult childbirths. Easing peoples’ pain and healing their bodies was my calling.”

Was. There was pain in that word, pain that felt familiar to Solas. He, too, used to be a healer. He could no longer claim such a simple title—at least not by itself. No matter what the people in Haven thought, he knew the truth.

“What happened?” Solas asked.

“A plague. It wiped out more than half of my clan in a single year.” She said the words plainly, without sentiment. “After that, I realized among those who needed healing were the dead along with the living.”

“Healing for the dead?”

“Yes. I know… I think their souls are gone. Inviting spirits to inhabit their bodies doesn’t change that. But so many spirits clustered around our tribe, feeding off of sorrow and tragedy. I found that allowing these spirits space to act, to work through the pain… It was beneficial both to the spirits and to those loved ones who remained.”

The way she talked about spirits… Solas began to regret the condescending tone he’d struck in their earlier conversation. She clearly had a conception of spirits that was much closer to his own than he’d realized—much closer to his than most of the people in this strange half-world. And the way she interpreted necromancy was novel to him.

“I’ve never considered that,” he said. Words rarely spoken.

“I hadn’t either, before the plague. Necessity is the greatest teacher, after all.”

“True.”

Silence fell between them again, and Solas pondered her words. It made sense, in a way, that necromancy would develop new depth and meaning in this hellish world he had created. The people here were so numerous, their lives so cheap.

“You have given me much to think about, Herald,” he said.

She looked over her shoulder at him, a rare smile gracing her lips. “Somehow, from you that feels like a compliment.”

From him, it certainly was.

#dragon age inquisition #dragon age: inquisition #dai #solavellan #solavellan hell #dragon age fanfic #solas #solas x inquisitor #necromancer inquisitor #I know in game you don't specialize in necromancy until later but i think this is more interesting #i have a whole lot of emotional plot stuff in my head and hopefully i'll get to it before veilguard comes out and invalidates all my ideas!

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longer-than-i-should-admit · 2 days

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I hope we get a moment where Varric and Emmrich are chatting and kind of joking about getting old and letting all the youngins handle the hard work and Solas shows up trying to make an effort to be sociable and build a rapport with his new unexpected team and accidental family by commiserating about wayward youths and such and Varric and Emmrich both point out that he doesn’t really qualify because he’s literally thousands of years old and beyond feasible comparison and Solas gets all pedantic as he does and says “my body actually ceased to age at a certain point” and Varric laughingly asks “yeah? when?” and Solas says “in years instituted by the chantry? roughly forty.” and Varric and Emmrich just blankly stare at him for a long moment because they’re well into their fifties at this point and Varric promptly gives Solas that familiar shit-eating grin and croons, “aww, Chuckles, you’re just a baby!”

Solas, of course, despises this turn of events. he is not, in fact, a babe. he was never technically a babe. he is only physically a forty-something year old. his mind and knowledge far exceed that, as many ancient elves were still considered children below their first century and…he is only digging the hole deeper for himself, isn’t he?

“such a shame that the young squander their youth in effort to emulate those older than them,” Emmrich sighs wistfully, tutting and shaking his head.

Solas scowls and leaves.

“such a lack of respect for your elders to walk away without even a goodbye!” Varric calls after him, laughing.

Solas finds no solace in the arms of his heart, either, when she manages to pry out the reason behind his not-petulant grimace.

“forty?” she echoes, her brows inching up her forehead. the creases in her face are deeper than they used to be and Solas is not looking at them.

“yes,” he mutters. “but I am over four thousand years in true age and was witness to events far beyond their capacity to imagine: a fact conveniently set aside for the sake of their irreverence.”

Lavellan gazes at him for a long moment. the corner of her mouth crinkles. “Solas. do you realize how old I am now?”

her date of birth had not been something he had taken into consideration, given the fact that his plans had for so long neglected the impact of the passage of time since he had shored up the veil. he recalls Varric and Josephine orchestrating a party in skyhold, and knows which season it had been, but he is ashamed to say that he cannot recall its specificity.

“does it matter when you are still as beautiful as when I first laid eyes upon you?” he pivots.

her smirk is knowing and unfooled. “I turned forty-five this year.”

Solas drops his head into his hands.

later he overhears Varric teasing Lavellan, “I never thought I’d reach the day where I discovered my boss is a cradle robber.”

Rook makes one remark about not anticipating that Solas would have a thing for older women and never brings it up again after Solas summons a migraine to end all migraines.

#dragon age #dav #the dread wolf | solas #the inquisitor #the storyteller | varric tethras #the necromancer | emmrich volkarin #the rook #humor #fisara’s scrawlings

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