#thousands of years of longing to go back to himself and lavellan is the one to do that

[thessaralka]

solas loves lavellan because her wisdom reminds him of who he was before mythal, btw. so no, he wouldn't fall in love with just anyone who gave him attention or showed interest in his mind. he fell in love with lavellan because she was a wise, kind, open-hearted leader with a fat ass who reminds him of who he could have been if mythal hadn't broken him.

[mythalism]

i realized the other day after posting about this fan theory that, at this point, it is basically talked about in fandom as if its canon, and newer fans might not understand why. my goal today was to explain the theory and all of the evidence we have for it in inquisition to give people a better understanding of why this has become so ubiquitous, and to hopefully have something to look back on in two months with that "apollo gift of prophecy" dodgeball meme when veilguard proves us right.

very important before i get started: this is not my theory. i didn't make it up. unfortunately, i also don't know exactly who did and if it could even be traced at this point. this is something that many people have believed for a long time, and i'm not the first to write about it. there are a lot of great posts and essays that speculate on this theory, and what it could mean for solas's character going forward.

PLEASE feel free to contribute thoughts, or link to posts you have made yourself or seen before in the replies/reblogs!!! much of my own experience with this comes from long before this account existed, so i dont have exact sources but rather random, amorphous fandom knowledge of this theory and what major arguments have circulated in the past 10 years. this post by @sammakesart and this post by @mrs-gauche went around recently and both touch on this theory and i highly recommend them both! i know @corseque has also written about this theory multiple times over the years.

i was first introduced to this on tumblr when it started gaining ground in the fandom after the release of trespasser in 2015, predominantly due to a couple of lines of cole dialogue from trespasser, so that is where we will begin.

shoutout to @daitranscripts and the dragon age wiki for the dialogue

this line of cole's is basically the foundation of this theory, and what is cited most often. i'm not entirely sure if the theory existed before trespasser, but if it did, i dont remember it being well-known or widely accepted like it is now.

this line is usually interpreted to suggest that solas, who would have been a spirit of wisdom/pride at the time, took a body and came into being as an elf at mythal's behest. this is also the line that suggests solas himself once wore vallaslin, and that he removed it himself using the same spell he uses on a romanced lavellan thousands of years later, but did so clumsily the first time and left the scar we can see on his eyebrow.

first i want to acknowledge what are pretty much the most damning indications of this theory

solas means "pride; to stand tall" in elvhen, according to world of thedas vol. 1

the dread wolf form we see in murals, written descriptions, and of course, in real life in the veilguard trailer, bears a pretty clear resemblance to pride demons:

most notably, in the face and eyes. yeah i dont really have anything else to say about those lmao it's pretty blatant

overall, inquisition tells us a great deal about spirits, and gives the player an alternate worldview through which to understand them, distinct from the chantry/circle narrative presented previously.

solas himself, along with cole, has a lot to say about the nature of spirits throughout his dialogue and banter with several characters. one sentiment that he espouses repeatedly is that spirits and demons are the same thing, but demons are a spirit corrupted and perverted away from its purpose.

Solas: They rarely seek this world. When they do, their natures do not often survive exposure to the people they encounter. Wisdom and purpose are too easily twisted to pride and desire

During All New, Faded for Her:

PC: Solas, you said your friend was a wisdom spirit. Solas: That is not its natural form. It has been corrupted. PC: Corrupted? Solas: Forced to act against its original purpose. What did they do, what did they do, what did they do?

second, that spirits and the fade are a mirror, and reflect the waking world. specifically, that spirits reflect the perception and expectation of a mortal, and adapts accordingly. belief makes reality.

On Ostagar:

PC: I've heard the stories. It would be interesting to hear what it was really like. Solas: That's just it. In the Fade, I see reflections created by spirits who react to the emotions of the warriors. One moment, I see heroic Wardens lighting the fire and a power mad villain sneering as he lets King Cailan fall. The next, I see an army overwhelmed and a veteran commander refusing to let more soldiers die in a lost cause. PC: And you can't tell which is real? Solas: It is the fade. They are all real.

and third, that spirits are people.

solas expresses concerns over what the breach does to spirits at multiple points, including here with cassandra.

he also regularly argues in favor of spirits personhood, and passionately pushes back against characters who argue the opposite, such as dorian:

as well as the inquisitor themselves, should they choose certain dialogue options:

PC: You trust these spirits not to possess you the first time you accidentally make a wish? Solas: Do you trust your friends not to turn on you? (authors note: LMFAOOOOOOO) PC: Well, yes, but they're people. Solas: Ah, of course. PC: You know what I mean. Solas: Are people only people because they are flesh and blood? Solas: Is Cassandra defined by her cheekbones and not her faith? Varric by his chest hair not his wit? PC: They're not defined by their bodies, but they do have bodies. You need one to be a person. Solas: A demon possessing a corpse has a body. PC: A living body. Solas: A demon possesses a living mage to become an abomination. PC: They didn't make that body. They just took it over. Solas: Technically your mother created your body, with some help from your father, one assumes. PC: You've thought about this. Solas: On occasion, yes. OR:

PC: Spirits are bound by their nature. You said it yourself. They're shaped by contact with real people. Solas: Just as Leliana was shaped by contact with Divine Justinia, as those who serve the inquisition are shaped by you. If I change your mind in this conversation, does that mean you're no more real than a spirit? OR: PC: Im certain you have some rhetorical trick ready to counter anything I say. Solas: It's likely. I've had a lot of time to discuss the question with people. Or "spirits", if you prefer.

aside from this entire conversation being hilarious and very fen'harel coded, i think its notable that his enthusiasm and snark here is distinct from the way he engages in other debates, where he is often clinical and detached. on the subject of spirits, however, we get a lot more emotional investment from him - it feels personal. as he says, he's thought about it. on occasion.

solas having originally been a spirit adds helpful context for his insistence on spirit's personhood despite modern thedas's completely contradictory beliefs, and also helps inform his worldview more generally, especially in regards to elves.

one of solas's most heavily criticized aspects is his disdain for modern elves and the dalish. and i agree, it's fucked up and he is an absolute ass about it at nearly every opportunity. however, his feelings regarding the elves sometimes seem... strange, even in the context of him being an ancient elf.

keeping in mind cole's line from trespasser, that he "did not want a body", as well as another cole line from trespasser:

most people infer that there is some sort of resentment on solas's end for him having to become human at mythal's request. it seems as if he was turned away from his purpose. wisdom forced to be pride.

cole's personal quest, which shows solas passionately arguing to keep cole a spirit, supports this. it is almost as if he is trying to prevent cole from the same fate that was forced upon him.

throughout the quest he says things such as: "This is not some fanciful story, child of the stone. We cannot change our nature by wishing." "A spirit does not work through emotions. It embodies them." "You would alter the essence of what he is." "It is good that he is not entirely changed, however human he becomes."

most telling of all, i think is this line at the end of the quest if you elect to keep cole as a spirit.

Varric: "He could have been a person." Solas: Possibly. Would that have made him happier?

OUGGHGH.

clearly, for solas, the answer was no. being a person has not made him happier.

regardless, solas still values spirits as fundamentally equal to people despite their differences and worthy of the same freedoms, self-determination and respect.

this kinship with spirits, however, might help explain his disdain for elves, in a way i find to be more satisfying than "all ancient elves are assholes" and more in-line with his character overall.

it seems as if solas doesnt see himself as separate from modern elves because he doesnt see himself as a modern elf, but that he doesnt not see himself as an elf at all, but rather as a spirit.

solas infamously says, following halamshiral if you bring up briala:

"I'm sorry, I was confused. I do not consider myself to have much in common with the elves."

the inquisitor has the option for several responses, and although most of us probably pick the one that tells him to fuck off, the others are more telling:

PC: Nor should you. You're not defined by the shape of your ears. They're not your people. Solas: No, they are not. OR PC: Who do you have much in common with. Who are your people? Solas: A good question. Solas: I joined the inquisition to save the world. Regardless of who "my people" are, this was the best way to help him.

"not being defined by the shape of your ears" and solas's immediate identification with the statement and approval of it sticks out to me. it seems like he's just being racist, and he very well might be, but in the context of this theory, it can also be interpreted as him disliking being "defined" by having a body at all, or any physical characteristics, consistent with how he resists the idea that varric and cassandra are defined by their own physical characteristics.

if the player insists they want to help the orlesian elves even if he doesnt, he still has something interesting to say:

Solas: Stop Corypheus. That will do for a start. It speaks well of you to feel for the oppressed. Help them for that. Know them for what they are.

this is not the only time he equates all oppressed groups of thedas to one another, defined by their shared subjugation rather than the real, in-world divisions such as race and religion. it's also interesting to consider the relationship between oppression, as a situation that evokes certain emotions in those who experience it, such as pride. as solas says of ostagar, spirits there were drawn to the emotions of the soldiers there. are spirits of pride drawn to situations of oppression, where pride is needed for liberation?

solas's failure (or refusal) to recognize the reality of how oppression functions in modern thedas along lines of race and ethnicity specifically is one of his biggest flaws, but it continues to fit with this theory, as it is consistent with that same sort of single-minded, spirit tunnel-vision that we see from spirits and demons. i would also assume that he considers spirits to be part of this monolithic group of "the oppressed", considering the spirit slavery/bondage practices in tevinter and nevarra, both of which he criticizes.

i do believe, however, that to equate all of solas's unfair derision of the dalish to him identifying with spirits over people, rather than ancient elves over modern elves, would be too generous and an oversimplification. its also clear how much of his anger towards the dalish comes from... wait for it.... his wounded pride.

solas is prideful. when he is faced with pride in others, he becomes defensive, even nasty. when his pride is challenged, often by others pride, he becomes almost unrecognizable. the dalish specifically rub up against his pride, in the most specific of ways that grate at his most cherished qualities and that disregard his own perception of himself. the thing he is most proud of, leading a slave rebellion against corrupt tyrants, erased from history entirely. branded a traitor instead, while those he fought against are worshiped as saviors for millennia.

Solas: I have joined my fair share of causes. But when I offered lessons learned in the Fade, I was derided by my enemies... and sometimes by my allies. Liar. Fool. Madman. There are endless ways to say something isn't worth listening to. Over time, it grinds away at you.

its also possible, considering what we know of the nature of expectation creating reality for spirits, that the dalish framing of the dread wolf actually does indeed make him worse - more arrogant, less compassionate, more ruthless, more cunning, more of a liar. a spirit being perverted into a demon based on the dominant perception of it.

perhaps the most interesting tidbit about solas of all which supports this theory, is that this phenomenon of expectation shaping his nature, making him more prideful or more humble, is not exclusive to the world of thedas, but also occurs on a meta-level with the player by proxy of the inquisitor.

a 2020 interview of trick weekes, solas's writer, says this pretty much verbatim.

"Solas mirrors. If you approach Solas from a place of humility and say, "I want to learn from you," Solas will bend over backwards to tell you how flawed he is and how he's just coming at this from his own limited understanding. If you come in with ego, Solas is genetically incapable of not bristling when he sees your ego... because he can't not do that."

this is fascinating for like 7 million reasons, but most notably for the language trick uses that i believe to be incredibly revealing. first, solas himself talks about how spirits "mirror" the real world multiple times. second is the way in which they speak about solas's mirroring as innate, uncontrollable, and involuntary. he is genetically incapable of not mirroring. genetically incapable of not bristling at someone else's pride. this being a genetic incapability implies, pretty unambigously, that he is a spirit. we dont know of any people in thedas who have pride in their DNA. except. you know. pride demons.

pride is his purpose. he cannot turn away from it or betray that purpose to pursue something else. he cannot change his nature simply by wishing. if he were to attempt it, he would be corrupted.

trick offers this information as an explanation for player's extremely varied perception of solas when playing the game, and it perfectly mimics the way solas himself talks about spirits as being created by a dreamer's expectation of them.

when asked about his friendships with spirits, he says:.

PC: You're saying that you became friends with pride and desire demons? Solas: They were not demons for me. PC: Meaning? Solas: The Fade reflects the minds of the living. If you expect a spirit of wisdom to be a pride demon, it will adapt/ And if your mind is free of corrupting influences? If you understand the nature of the spirit? They can be fast friends.

i just love how perfectly this reflects every fandom argument that's been had on twitter about solas for the past 10 years. like seriously.

random twitter user: you like that guy!? but hes a [demon]!! solas stans: he wasn't a demon for me

and it is true; people who are pretty deep into the games often know what solas is like to a low-approval inquisitor, but it can be shocking for new players to see what he is like at the other end of the approval spectrum, whether that is someone who hated him seeing the tenderness with which he kisses a romanced lavellan goodbye to remove her anchor in trespasser, or someone who romanced him witnessing the cruelty and detachment which with he grabs a low-approval inquisitor to yank off their anchor. he becomes almost an entirely different person based on how the player treats him.

for all that solas, in true spirit form, reflects the perceptions of the players, he has plenty of pure pride-demon vibes on his own, independent of player expectation. he is not just proud, or made proud as a mirror for player/character pride, but he often even goes as far as to act in ways that mimic how we have seen from spirits more generally, as well as pride demons specifically.

the wiki states:

"Spirits are not complex in the sense that they seize upon a single facet of human experience, and this one idea becomes their identity.[3] They are formed as a reflection of the real world and its passions.[10] A spirit embodies and latches onto a specific purpose and will do all in its power to fulfill that purpose. For instance, a hunger demon will attempt to feed on anything it crosses,[4] and a spirit of justice will stop at nothing to uphold its name”

along with further reinforcing solas's tunnel vission as characteristic of spirits, he does indeed intentionally attempt to stoke arrogance in others, as well as test characters to see if they are vulnerable to arrogance and power-hungriness. this is probably best exemplified by his banter with vivienne, versus his banter with cassandra.

i mean this one is self explanatory. cmon.

but it becomes especially interesting when compared to his interactions with cassandra, of whom he starts out very distrustful of. however, through their banter, he immediately begins to test her for indications of her inclination towards arrogance and desire for power:

cassandra passes solas's tests and earns his approval through her humility, curiosity, and willingness to give up power for the greater good. as a result, solas softens considerably towards her, and becomes more evocative of wisdom than pride, offering her advice when she asks, though very humbly:

"i would hardly presume" is actually hilarious considering how he does presume. ALL THE TIME. but it shows the extent of this "mirroring" that trick mentions, when compared to how he speaks with vivienne, who does not pass his tests of pride: notice how his jabs at her specifically target her pride, the things she is proud of about herself, and tear them down:

he tells her that her position in the orlesian court is unearned, that the freedom she is so proud of winning for herself will come to an inevitable end, and that her resistance to demons does not make her special. its absolutely BRUTAL.

its especially important to note how little bearing vivienne and cassandra's backgrounds have on solas's perception of them. vivienne is a circle mage, a group of people who solas deeply sympathizes with, and believes should be freed. meanwhile cassandra is effectively templar, a group whom solas despises and finds unjust, and has been complacent in the oppression of mages that solas is so vehemently against.

and yet? it does not matter. he measures their worth based entirely on their propensity for pride.

it’s worth noting too, keeping in mind Solas’s almost uncharacteristic reverence for cassandra’s faith in the maker and (take this with a grain of salt because it was david gaider and he said via forum post….) that there are actually two types of spirits that become pride. wisdom, and faith.

"A spirit embodies and latches onto a specific purpose and will do all in its power to fulfill that purpose."

what we DONT know: pretty much everything else about this. what was the process like? at what point in history did he take the body? how was that body made? was it stolen? did he start as wisdom and turn into pride later? did he always oscillate between both? was he corrupted by what was asked of him, to fight, as his friend was in his personal quest?

i could continue talking about this forever, probably, especially with how it manifests in the solavellan relationship and what it suggests for solas's story in veilguard, but ill cut it here for both my own sanity and yours. but first, a few fun dialogue bits that strike me as very pride-demon coded but didn't fit anywhere else in this analysis.

in conclusion:

[baphometsss]

On Solas's romantic history

Okay. I know what the consensus is. That he’s way too smooth in Inquisition to be inexperienced but... (and I’m fully prepared to get shat on for this lmao don’t kill me)

When he kisses Lavellan, that doesn’t read to me like he’s super suave and seductive. It reads more like—endeared by them trying to run away after kissing him, then being so surprised by how good the kiss felt, that he grabs Lavellan, kisses them again, pulls back with a surprised look on his face, and then goes in for more. It’s touch-starved, desperate, hungry. It’s not really all that smooth because he’s literally bending them over backwards lmao like Solas can you chill maybe

He is very smooth when flirting with Lavellan, but he's also an absolute gobshite who's spent thousands of years sassing the hell out of wannabe gods so that's not a surprise. He's witty af and enjoys some back and forth.

Solas is a very lonely man. He keeps everyone at arm’s length because he’s seen what getting close to people can do to him. His biggest fear is dying alone, and he almost gives into that because it’s what he believes he deserves for all he’s done. His life has been so stressful for so long that he's almost totally unable to consider anything else but his battles. He even says explicitly that he's tired.

That doesn’t make me think of someone who was out there in Ancient Elvhenan sleeping around all those years. No doubt he considered it, but he likely didn't pursue much with anyone physical; he enjoyed spending as much time as possible in the Fade. (The banter with Blackwall doesn't count to me personally since Solas himself thinks the whole idea is preposterous, which speaks for itself really.) Especially after being a slave/servant to Mythal seems to have voided him of his agency for some time. Then he led a rebellion and fought for thousands of years against brutal tyrants. Any one of the people he was close to could’ve been trying to kill him. Lavellan, however, has no reason to do so, so he can flirt with them freely. In all that time, it seems as though the only people he allowed to get close to the real him were Felassan and Mythal. I don’t think he slept with either, because the relationship was familial. Felassan was also loyal to Mythal, but didn’t burn his vallaslin off. (Is this a right hand/left hand of the Divine parallel again? Two brothers and their mother? Idk, I need to think about that one). For creatures with bodies made from the blood of Titans, they don’t have blood families. They would’ve had to forge their own, which is what Solas did with Mythal and Felassan.

And then there’s his ‘it has been a long time’. Most have taken this to mean that it’s been a long time since he’s been intimate with someone, but given what we know now and that he spent thousands of years in the Fade while his body was in uthenera… I wonder if he’s actually saying-- ‘it has been a long time since I lived in a body’-- ie. ‘it has been a long time since I felt physical drives, a long time since I have felt so physically real’. To me, this makes a lot more sense than the ‘he’s thousands of years old he can’t possibly be a virgin/inexperienced’ take bc like... My friends. It probably didn’t feel like thousands of years to him bc he’s essentially always existed. Time is different for spirits. It’s not like he’s gonna go: ‘well I’m nearly 4000y/o, better lose my v-card’. Time is no object when you are a timeless being. Then, given the path his life took, it wouldn’t make a lot of sense for him to be that experienced given how hard it is for him to trust.

I also personally headcanon him as heavily demisexual/demiromantic too. His true nature is so non-physical that the idea of him being very promiscuous or something just doesn’t fit his character. He needs a mental connection, to feel something, before sharing much of himself, or allowing himself the vulnerability intimacy brings, something he clearly feels with Lavellan based on how shaken up by it he is.

And it’s also canon that Solas has never been in love before meeting Lavellan. So. If he went however many millennia without falling in love, it’s also possible he went without intimacy for a long time too.

To be clear I’m not trying to say that this is the correct conclusion. My opinion has just changed a little since Veilguard (I used to think he was being smooth etc bc he's old af/v experienced, but with confirmation of former spirit Solas it’s changed my perspective somewhat)

Also:

‘Things have always been easier for me in the Fade’

‘I am not often thrown by things that happen in dreams’ my man is shooketh guys SHOOKETH

[much-obliged-timothy]

Whumptober #27

Dragon Age - #27 - Magical Exhaustion

*

“Keep them off him!” Dorian yelled to Iron Bull. 

Bull ran forward, swinging at the creatures trying to attack Lavellan. Lavellan stood in the chaos, the Anchor raised to the giant rift he was attempting to seal.

Dorian could see the pain and exhaustion on Lavellan’s face. His arm trembled as he fought to keep it raised, his stance strained. The rift was larger than most he sealed, and he’d already sealed three others on the way to get to this one.

He was pushing himself too hard, exerting a power he hardly understood because he felt he had to. He couldn’t keep this up. 

Dorian focused on using his magic to protect Lavellan for now. He was trying to keep track of time in his head. If this took much longer, he’d tackle Lavellan to the ground, rift be damned. 

This was too dangerous. They had no idea what ill effects such reckless use of the Anchor would cause to Lavellan. Dorian wanted to punch Solas for encouraging this behavior.

He settled for reminding himself that Lavellan would probably kill Solas with a heart attack one of the times he leapt down onto his desk at random. Damn bastard never could use the stairs. Doing so would mean not stressing out Dorian, and as Lavellan was very dutifully proving now, he lived to do just that.

“Any time now, Lavellan!” Bull called.

“I don’t think it’s much fun for him either,” Dorian said.

“Hey, killing these things is plenty fun. My arms are just getting sore because this fight has felt like a thousand years,” Bull said. 

“He’s got about two more minutes before I knock him out and drag him back to Skyhold to rest,” Dorian said. 

“I’m sure they’ll react well to the necromancing Tevinter mage carrying in the unconscious Herald of Andraste after bashing in his head.”

“I did not say I would bash it in. I considered doing so, but I would simply…hit him hard enough to knock him out. For his own good, of course. And for my sanity. I’ve aged a thousand years since this fight started.”

A sharp sound had them both snapping their attention to Lavellan. He let out a harsh yell as he clenched his fist, jerking it back as the rift finally sealed, destroying the remaining demons.

“About time,” Bull said, lowering his weapon. “Drinks?”

“So many I forget the stress of today,” Dorian agreed.

His stress grew as Lavellan collapsed without warning.

“Amatus!” Dorian cried, running to him.

He rolled Lavellan onto his side, checking his pulse. Weak, but there. 

“We need to get him medical attention,” Dorian said, lifting Lavellan into his arms. “Bull, run ahead and warn the others.”

“No. I’m staying with you. You can’t leave him undefended in that state if you run into trouble. I’ll clear a path for us and we’ll get him back faster and safer,” Bull said, already jogging ahead.

Dorian couldn’t logically argue with that, nor did he want to waste the time. Instead, he ran behind Bull, cradling Lavellan to his chest and hoping he would be alright. 

-

Dorian sat up straighter as Lavellan stirred. He blinked his eyes open, looking disoriented.

“Lavellan?” Dorian said, placing a gentle hand on his arm.

“Dorian?” he muttered weakly. “What happened?”

“According to Solas, some type of magical exhaustion. You used the Anchor too much, too frequently,” Dorian said, trying and failing to keep the chiding from his tone. “Lavellan, please. This is dangerous. It’s hurting you. You can’t keep doing this.”

“No one else can close the rifts. I have to do it, Dorian,” he said, trying to sit up. “How long have I been out for?”

Dorian pushed him back down. “Two days. Two full days, because you overdid it. You need rest, Amatus.”

“Two days wasted, then,” he said. “Dorian, I can rest when this mess is over. I need to get back out there.”

“Dammit, Lavellan!” Dorian snapped. “Are you really going to make me watch you kill yourself like this? Because that’s what you’re doing. Your body can’t handle this. Whatever this magic, or this power, is, we don’t understand it!”

He’d managed to get himself sitting. “Dorian, this isn’t the time.”

“Will your funeral be a good time, then?” Dorian said.

“You’re being-”

“If you say ‘overdramatic’, I will absolutely bash your head in, stereotype confirming or not.”

Lavellan put his head in his hands. “I can’t do this right now. I have a headache.”

“Because you exhausted yourself. Funny, how that works.”

He glared between his fingers. “Not now. Please.”

“Then when?” Dorian whispered, hating the choke in his voice. “When, Amatus? When you collapse again and can’t fight me on it? I can’t keep watching you do this to yourself.”

Lavellan finally lowered his hands. He reached out for Dorian and Dorian reached back, because no matter how mad he was, he couldn’t stop loving this stupid, stubborn, infuriating bastard.

They embraced. Dorian hated the way Lavellan’s normally sturdy arms trembled with exhaustion.

“You know I have to, Dorian,” he said quietly.

Dorian only held him tighter. He knew that. He also knew there was no way this could ever end well.

This bloody bastard would break his heart. But while it was still whole, it belonged to Lavellan.

[mageglory]

I have no idea if I have ever summed all my Dragon Age Canon Characters but in short. Oh and I treat Bioware Canon like my playground so be warned.

Galria Theirin nee Brosca: Brosca origins (obviously), two handed reaver berserker. She is the Warden and becomes Queen of Ferelden with Alistair, her romance. She is the first non human queen of an human kingdom in history and tecnically she converted to andrastianism for politics (and because she doesn't care anyway about religion) but the Chantry keeps annoying her until Leli becomes Divine Victoria.

Ignis Hawke: Fire magic, Force magic and Blood Magic. He follows Anders romance and is a ruthless supporter of Mage RightsTM. He keeps switching between Red Hawke or Blue Hawke answers depending on who he is talking to (Red Hawke with Meredith, Elthina, Orlesians. Blue Hawke with fereldeans refugees, mages, elves and similar). He is one of the leaders of the Mage Underground with Anders if not the leader (mainly because Anders keeps telling him he's the boss even if Ignis considers himself equal to him) and he helped enlarge the underground across all the Free Marches, a lot of the random apostate npc we fight on the wounded coast are gonna live as members of the underground. To protect his identity/keep his family safe from Templars and because Hawke is not Hawke without drama he wears a mask in his rebel persona and Meredith has been yelling to Cullen to bring her the apostates leader in chains for years. He doesn't want to hurt civilians, but he is ready to accept civilians casualties as necessary if it's to free his people. His mabari is called Templar and Varric keeps saying Ignis exausted all his life capacity for jokes in that one idea. He's the gayest revolutionary/terrorist (depends who you ask) in town.

Raphaël De Bougainville: The Marquis of Serault. He has an obviously smaller role and is kinda irrelevant to The Fate of ThedasTM but he is a good guy despite having a very orlesian centric view of the world out of ignorance/cultural upbringing. His main worries are to restore Serault glory, which he succeeded in (and he also annexxes Aloyns along the road since the neighboor Marquis tried to sabotage his relationship with Justinia and failed) and romance Krem while visiting Skyhold. He had the idea to pay some mages after the rebellion won to come work for him with the glassworkers and now there are a lot of Serault glassworks for nobles with sparkly enchantments, but nothing plot relevant, he's just rich because now every noble in Orlais wants Serault magical glass. His main quirk is that he's an enthusiast of scientific research (think the king guy in Eragon) and his dream is to teach at the University of Orlais.

Melkior Lavellan: This damn boi is a pacifist. IN THEDAS. He is not the First of his clan, but only because he left the position to travel around the clans and bring messages/organize things. I'm not sure if canon mentions something similar but he's basically a travelling Keeper, so he has a bit more knowledge of the world, especially thanks to his high emotional intelligence. Kind of guy who smiles even when he doesn't like you and the "if he yells shit is going down" character archetype. Clan Lavellan Keeper is his grandma because his parents were murdered by Gaspard De Chalons during a dalish hunt, in front of him. Gaspard would have killed him too but decided that a knife eared kid wasn't worthy of a chevalier steel. Years later, Gaspard will fail to recognize Melkior at the Winter Palace (because elves are all the same amiright? I doubt Gaspard remembers his victims faces) and that's how the Granduke died and also one of the two occasions in which Melkior got really angry. Also, Melkior is the host to a spirit of Hope, which made the entire Inquisition scream in fear of abominations when they heard about that. Melkior romances Cassandra (altought I made her supposed character arc/change matter uh Bioware?) and tries to spare/redeem/imprison if necessary as much people as possible when sitting in Judgment because he doesn't like to kill and he does that enough on the field. At the end of Trespasser he disbands the Inquisition but he also creates a constitution that blocks the power of the Chantry so that in 100 years no Divine will be able to recreate Circles or Templars and a council to oversee the constitution with elected officials with a mandate of 5 years max.

Alidda Tabris: Someone could ask why I put the Tabris after the Lavellan, well that's because Alidda Tabris, my non warden dual wielder rougue, is more linked to Briala than Origins. She was prisoner of Arle Howe dungeons with others during Origins, forgotten there after having murdered the Arle son. She was freed by the Warden before the Landsmeet and despite the long imprisonment she suffered she fought in the Battle of Denerim, defending the alienage. After the death of the Archdemon, she helped King Alistair and Queen Galria in dealing with the many issues the elves had and was later sended to Orlais to investigate the risk of a new invasion of Ferelden. She joined Briala during the events of The Masked Empire, helping Celene in beating Gaspard but hating the Empress for her genocide of elves, she was helping only because forced to choose between her and Gaspard. She joined Briala at the end of the book and the two got together shortly after. In Inquisition, Alidda breaks in Celene vault during Wicked Eyes and Wicked Hearths to get her beloved medallion back and the two keep plotting the liberation of the Dales after the ball.

Livia Amladaris: Magister of Tevinter, new leader of House Amladaris, descendeant of Corypheus and the worst person ever and I love her for that. Livia is literally my favourite classic villain tropes throwed together, because if you don't do that in Tevinter what's the point. While Livia wasn't a Venatori during Inquisition, she took control of the movement later. She is considered the most beautiful woman in the Imperium by many (the Amladaris pratic eugenics unironically) and she is a political genious and probably the greatest demonologist and necromancer (the Quentin kind, not the Dorian kind) Tevinter will ever see. Sadly, all this perfection on paper was given to a woman who respects only one thing: power and hates the other Magisters because they are limited in their ambitions. Livia intends to not simply enter in the Fade like her ancestor, but to open thousands of minor rifts controlled only by her, causing an army of binded demons to invade every nation of Thedas at once. The Imperium will rise again with her as the first Imperatrix of all Thedas. Someone could call her mad, but if she is mad then she is of the lucid and most dangerous kind. She has invented numerous evil spells (the "blood sacrifices and demons" kind) and has the power to turn others in abominations against their will. She is at last defeated at the end of DA4, but not before she blood sacrificed all of her supporters inside the Imperial Senate to start her ritual and shapeshifted into a giant monster before being slain. She is the Maleficent of Thedas and I love a good old fashioned evil witch ok?

[pikapeppa]

Felassan/f!Lavellan: Braids

Chapter 23 of The Love That Grows From Violence (post-Trespasser Felassan x Tamaris Lavellan) is posted! WITH ART THIS WEEK by the inimitable and glorious @elbenherzart​!!

~5900 words; read on AO3 here instead. 

The next day, after their usual morning routine of breakfast and sparring, Felassan decided to finish reading This Shit Is Weird. He settled one of the plush sofas in the study while Tamaris stripped the wallpaper from the study walls, and he made his usual cheeky comments on the book as he read, which kept her entertained for a time.

It wasn’t long before he really sank into the book, however, and Tamaris understood why: he was reading the section about the Temple of Mythal, which was followed shortly after by the tale about going into the deep roads and discovering the existence of Titans — the two parts of the book that Felassan had been anticipating the most.

By the time Tamaris’s stomach was clamouring for lunch, Felassan was still reading in a very intense silence. She padded over to him and tapped his shoulder. “I’ll make some sandwiches,” she said quietly. “Is grilled cheese and ham all right?”

He looked up at her with a smile and took her hand. “Kiss me first. To help me concentrate.”

Her belly did a little leap of pleasure. She gave him a chiding smile. “I thought kissing you helped you with your magic, not your concentration.”

“It helps me with a great number of things,” he replied. 

She tsked, then bent over to kiss him. He slid his hand into her hair and gently nipped her lower lip, and when he finally released her, her heart was fluttering like a hummingbird.

He smiled and stroked her jaw with his thumb, then lowered his hand. “Try putting some mustard in the sandwiches,” he said. “Mustard and apricot jam. Just a small amount of both.”

“You’ll take your sandwich how I make it and you’ll be happy,” she scolded.

Felassan’s easy laughter followed her out of the study, and she couldn’t help but grin in response as she made her way to the kitchen.

When she returned to the study twenty minutes later, Felassan was sitting cross-legged on the sofa and reading with a stunned look on his face. Tamaris set the tray on the sofa and sat on the floor. “Which part are you reading?” she said quietly. 

He looked up at her. “You were inside of a Titan? Actually inside of it?”

“Yes,” she said. “It was…” She shook her head at the memory. “It was fucking vast. Cavernous, literally. If not for the heart, we wouldn't have known it was a living—”

Felassan interrupted her. “The heart was intact, then?”

He looked very serious, and Tamaris eyed him cautiously. “As far as I could tell. Valta didn’t seem to see anything wrong with it, and she was connected or tapped into the Titan, or whatever it was that happened to her...” She trailed off as Felassan’s eyebrows rose.

“Valta tapped into the Titan?” he said quietly. 

Tamaris frowned. “Yes. Have you not finished reading that part yet?”

“Not quite.”

She waved at the book. “Go on then, finish reading it!”

“I will, once I’ve eaten,” he said. He put the book aside and picked up a sandwich.

Tamaris watched guiltily as he took a bite of his food. “Felassan, it’s okay,” she said. “You can read while you eat. I promise I don’t mind.”

“I mind,” he said. “I would prefer to talk to you while I eat.”

His expression was warm and open, and it lifted an answering warmth in her chest. “All right,” she said, and she picked up her sandwich.

Felassan took another bite and hummed approvingly. “You put in the mustard and jam.”

She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t going to argue with the thousands-of-years-old chef.”

He chuckled. “It’s nice to know you respect my age, if nothing else.”

She wrinkled her nose playfully and took another bite, and Felassan swallowed before speaking again. “I see that Fen’Harel is notably absent during this adventure. He decided not to come?”

“Oh.” Tamaris pulled a little face. “Um, no. I… told him not to come.”

Felassan raised his eyebrows, and she shrugged awkwardly. “He broke up with me when we were on our way to the Storm Coast to deal with the deep roads collapse. So I told him to go back to Skyhold.” A sudden flash of a memory crossed her mind: the way Solas’s expression had melted from tender to tragic, right before he told her he had distracted her from her duty and that it would never happen again. 

Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you dare fucking look at me like you ever loved me. Her own furious words rang in her ears, and for a split second, she felt like a stone had dropped onto her diaphragm.

“Ir abelas,” Felassan said quietly.

She blinked and looked up at Felassan — beloved Felassan, with his clear purple eyes full of tenderness and truth. 

She took a deep breath. “Don’t apologize,” she said softly. She took another bite of sandwich and shrugged. “Honestly, it was for the best.”

“How so?” he said.

“If he didn’t trust me enough to tell me the truth after a year, he was never going to trust me,” she said. “I couldn't see that at the time, but it’s obvious now. We would never have worked out with that many secrets between us.” 

Felassan didn’t reply right away. After a few seconds of silence, Tamaris looked up to find him watching her with a little smile. 

Her heart leapt at the obvious fondness in his face. She bashfully tucked her hair behind her ear. “What?” she said. 

His smile widened slightly. Then he tilted his head. “If it is any comfort to you, you are not the only one he didn’t trust.”

Tamaris nodded. Felassan had mentioned before how strict and withdrawn Solas had become around the time that he began developing the magic to make the Veil. “What happened exactly to make him so suspicious?” she asked. “I saw some of the memories in the Vir Dirthara slandering him, but… was it really just that? The propaganda against him?”

Felassan’s expression started to sober. “I suspect I’ll be telling you and Varric in detail tonight. Which reminds me: we should invite him over, if you wish for him to know about the Titans.”

“I’ll send the raven after lunch,” she said.

Felassan nodded. “I’ll be sure to make something non-spicy for him.”

Tamaris mock-pouted. “What about me?”

Felassan’s smile chased away the melancholy in his face. “I’ll make you something spicy tomorrow.” He playfully tweaked her hair. “You are getting terribly pampered. How did you survive before you met me?”

“By eating a lot of shitty food, apparently,” she said dryly.

He laughed heartily. “This sandwich is far from shitty, avise.” He inclined his head in that regal way he had. “Thank you for the lunch.”

She smirked at his manners and took another bite, and they spent the rest of their lunch break comparing ancient Elvhen and Dalish dishes and marvelling at the similarities and differences between their cuisines. When their lunch was finished, Felassan stretched out on the couch and went back to his reading, and Tamaris sent a raven to the Viscount’s Keep before starting to wash the residual glue from the now-stripped walls. 

Washing the walls was sweaty work, and she eventually stripped off her shirt and put her hair up into a messy bun to try and be a little more comfortable. Some time later, she glanced at Felassan to find him lounging lazily on the couch and watching her with a little smile on his face. 

She wiped some sweat from her forehead. “Paint a picture,” she said teasingly. “It’ll last longer.”

His smile widened. “Come over here.” 

She raised her eyebrows. “Are you finished reading?”

He nodded. “Varric has no further reason to resent me,” he said. He patted the couch and gave her a winning smile. 

She padded over to the couch and sat beside his outstretched legs. “So? What did you think?”

“I think that Varric has spun a fine story here,” he said. “I hope to spin one for you tonight that is just as entertaining.”

“He wasn’t spinning a story,” she protested. “He was just… beefing up some parts and downplaying others.”

Felassan lifted one eyebrow, and Tamaris smiled sheepishly. “Okay, fine, he was spinning a story.”

He chuckled, and Tamaris poked his belly. “But you’ve gotten to hear the real version.”

He took her hand and laced his fingers with hers. “I do get to enjoy that rare boon, yes. Insofar as any version of a story can be real.”

She shot him an odd look, and he casually waved his hand. “Oh, I’m not questioning the veracity of your and Varric’s telling. Just commenting that there are versions of every truth.” 

She frowned. “Yes, but there are also objective facts. The facts of a story are just as important as the way they’re interpreted.”

He tilted his head. “Would you prefer for me to stick to the facts in my telling of ancient history, then?”

She hesitated. Her instinctive answer was to say that yes, she just wanted the facts. But she didn’t want Felassan to feel like she was just pumping him for information. Whatever he told them tonight was sure to put that look on his face, that anachronistically world-weary look that made her heart ache, and it would be cruel for her to force him to turn that heartache into an objective report.

Besides, she had heard what ‘just the facts’ sounded like in Felassan’s voice: his telling of the time he’d spent as a Tranquil. She didn’t ever want to hear him sounding so flat and lifeless again. 

“No,” she finally said. “You should tell us however it makes sense to you. I just… I just want answers.” She sighed. “I’m not going to like them, but… I need to know.”

“I’ll do my best to make your answers as entertaining as possible, then,” he said softly. Then he lifted his shoulders in an elegant shrug. “What is the objective truth, anyway? It is like the humans’ Maker: something that everyone insists is real, but the more you seek it, the more gaps and questions you’ll find instead.”

She snorted a little laugh. “Now you’re just trying to cheer me up by making fun of the Chantry.”

“Is it working?” he said. 

“I hate to admit it, but yes,” she said dryly.

“Good,” he said. “I haven’t lost my wily words, then.” He pushed himself upright on the couch, then leaned forward and playfully nibbled her neck.

She wrinkled her nose and waved him off. “I’m all sweaty.”

“Is that meant to deter me?” he said. He nipped the juncture of her shoulder and neck, then reached up and released her hair from its bun.

“Ugh, why?” she complained. She pulled her hair away from her neck. “You’re just going to make me sweatier.”

He playfully smacked her hand. “I’m going to braid it.”

“That’s so much work,” she protested.

“It will be worth it,” he said. “You have beautiful hair.” He shifted slightly so he was sitting on her left side, then gently combed his fingers through her hair: enough to smooth out any snags without breaking up her curls too much. 

She scoffed. “Are you jealous of my curls?”

“Very,” he said with a smile. He began carefully parting her hair to the left. 

She sighed and relaxed into his capable hands, but she couldn’t help one last playful dig. “If you leave my hair as a tangled mess, you’re going to be the one picking out the knots.” 

He tsked, to her amusement. “Don’t insult me so. I know exactly what I’m doing.” He began twisting a braid into her hair on the exposed left side, keeping the braid tight to the scalp. “In ancient Arlathan, the braiding of hair was an art. Some people spent their days coming up with elaborate hairstyles with curls, plaits, ornaments and feathers, and even horns.”

Tamaris huffed. “Just goes to show how much time you ancients had on your hands.”

“Don’t be rude,” he said drolly. “We were not so different from this time, really. Think of the Orlesians and their masks. The Antivans and their clever tailoring. Extravagant beauty of some form is a mainstay of every culture. And as with every culture, such elaborate beauty was more than just an art. For my people, elaborate braids were a sign of status.” He smoothed his fingers over the braid he’d made, which now spanned just behind her ear. “The more ornate the style, the closer you were to the gods.”

“Of course,” she muttered. Then she shot him a curious look. “What did your hair look like in the past?”

“For a long time when I was young, I wore simple braids and styles, not unlike what I do now.” He shrugged. “Simplicity befitting of an Evanuris’s household staff, you know. Then, for a time, I had no hair.”

She blinked in surprise. “No hair? Like Solas?”

His answering smile was a little crooked. “Not quite. Fen’Harel shaved his head of his own free will. The Evanuris forced us — the slaves, that is — to shave our heads.”

Tamaris frowned. “Why?”

Felassan paused in his braiding and tilted his head. “Can you imagine what it would feel like to be forced to shave your head against your will?”

Her mind conjured an image of her lustrous black curls being shaved by force by a human, and her stomach lurched. She took a deep breath. “It would feel like being stripped in public,” she said quietly. “It would be… humiliating.”

Felassan nodded and continued braiding her hair. “The Evanuris said it was to help us stay clean and hygienic. But those of us who were freed knew the truth. It was a means to subjugate us. To make it easier for them to use and discard us, once they had shorn us of that which was seen as a sign of beauty and closeness to the gods that we all revered.”

His voice was hardening as he spoke. Tamaris turned her head slightly to look at him. “Ir abelas,” she said softly.

He met her eye, and the anger in his face softened slightly. “Ma serannas,” he said quietly. He smoothed his fingers over the braid he’d made along the left side of her head, then gently squeezed her shoulder. “Turn so your back is to me.”

She did as she was told. Once she was settled, Felassan lifted a small section of her loose hair and began making a small plait. “Once Fen’Harel freed us, we could grow our hair again and wear it however we wished,” he told her. “Some choose to keep their heads shaved as a reminder of what had been done to them, and a reminder of what they had overcome. Others wished to wear marvelous hairstyles like those of the Evanuris, because why shouldn’t they? But many of them did not know how to create such styles anymore. Those of us who remembered, like myself and Fen’Harel, helped them with this.”

Tamaris raised her eyebrows. “Fen’Ha— I mean, Solas helped people to braid their hair?”

“Yes,” Felassan said. “He was highly skilled in the braiding of hair, in fact. Did he never offer to braid yours?”

She shook her head slightly. “I very rarely wear my hair in braids, though. I can’t be bothered.”

Felassan huffed in amusement. “I don’t blame you. I can rarely be bothered to do more than the simplest styles myself.” He continued plaiting small locks of her hair. “Regardless, Fen’Harel was very good at braiding hair. He had elaborate hair himself for a very long time, you know.”

Tamaris snorted. “You’re lying.”

“I would never lie about something so glorious,” Felassan said. “At one point, he had long beautiful braids reaching down to his waist, studded with beads and rings of gold.”

Tamaris turned around partway to give him an incredulous look. “Braids with beads and rings? You’re fucking kidding.”

He grinned. “I promise you, I’m not. I wish I had some of those beads and rings, in fact. They would look exquisite on you.” He eyed her hair wistfully, then shrugged and began making another small braid. “I shall ask Varric to find some for us.”

Tamaris scoffed at the frivolous request. Then she sobered. “But you said he chose to start shaving his head. Why…?” She trailed off with a frown and thought for a moment, then glanced at Felassan again. “He shaved his head out of solidarity?”

He gave her a small and slightly melancholy smile. “In support of those that he freed, yes. And in defiance of the elaborate styles of the Evanuris. He sought to divorce himself from the Evanuris — to show clearly that he was not of them. And many of the freed slaves felt more comfortable in his presence when they saw that the famed Fen’Harel looked like them, even if he had never been a slave himself.”

Tamaris nodded slowly. Then she shot Felassan a little frown. “Do you think it’s odd that Solas was the leader of the freed slaves, even though he wasn’t one of them?”

He smiled. “Do you think it odd that you were the leader of the Inquisition, even though you do not believe in Andraste?”

“Every single fucking day,” Tamaris said flatly.

Felassan laughed. “Fen’Harel did, as well. For that reason, he was always very insistent that each freed slave’s life was their own, and they owed him no fealty. I chose to become his spy, but others simply chose to live in peace in Arla’fen, or to flee to the outer edges of the empire to start a new life outside of the Evanuris’s reach — or as far from their reach as possible, in any case.” He sighed. “I have long felt that this is part of what made him so lonely.”

“What do you mean?” Tamaris asked.

Felassan lowered his hands and looked her in the eye. “Imagine an elf who was once a spirit, standing as the favoured companion of one of the Evanuris, but not being one of them. An elgar’venathe who spent much of his time freeing slaves in secret, but he was not one of them, either.”

She frowned slightly, but with a pang in her chest. Felassan smiled faintly, then stood up and sat on her right side. “The Dread Wolf trod carefully and skillfully in many worlds, but he did not truly belong to any of them,” he said. He lifted another lock of her hair and began forming another small plait.

Tamaris was quiet for a long moment as she remembered Solas’s solitude, and how he had always kept himself apart from the rest of the Inquisition…  No, wait. That wasn’t true. There was one person he’d always seemed far more comfortable around — someone other than Tamaris herself.

Cole, she thought. Solas had always been particularly fond of Cole, and particularly loquacious with him. Then there was Solas’s spirit friend in the Exalted Plains — the only old friend Solas had ever spoken of. 

She glanced at Felassan. “I think he wished he was still a spirit.”

Felassan met her gaze. His expression was pensive and a little bit sad. “I have often thought the same thing.”

“Why did he become an elf, then?” she asked. “Or, um, take a… what did you call it? Take on a corporeal form?”

“Because Mythal asked him to,” Felassan said. 

Tamaris blinked in surprise. “Seriously?”

Felassan nodded, and Tamaris gazed at him with wide eyes. “Why?” she asked. 

He gave her another sad little smile. “I will tell you tonight when Varric comes.” He leaned back slightly and smoothed his hand over her hair. “In the meantime, you should find a mirror and look at my work. You are even more stunning than usual.”

She rolled her eyes. “Uh-huh.” She stood up and made her way to the elaborately-framed mirror in the front foyer, and when she caught sight of her own hair, she stopped short in surprise. 

The left side was bound in a perfect tight braid that coursed along the side of her scalp and behind her ear, then flowed down over her shoulder. The rest of her hair lay in loose tousled curls as usual, but sections of it were caught up in tiny braids that looked like ornaments in and of themselves. 

She raised her eyebrows. She wasn’t used to seeing her hair in such a fancy style, and the contrast between the sleek left side and the wild right was… interesting. In a good way. 

In a really good way, actually. She glanced at Felassan, who had followed her into the foyer and was leaning casually against the wall with his arms folded. “I like it,” she said.

He smiled. “I’m glad I didn’t snarl your hair into a mess of tangles for no good reason, then.”

She winced. “All right, fine, what I said before was rude. I’m sorry. I really like how this looks, though.” She patted the sleek braid on the left, then frowned; there was nothing fastening the bottom of the braid, yet it wasn’t unravelling.

She looked up at Felassan again. “How is this staying in place?”

“Magic,” he said.

She gave him a chiding look, then paused; he was smiling still, but his expression wasn’t jocular. 

Her eyes widened. “Wait, are you being serious?”

He nodded, and her jaw dropped. “How…?”

He shrugged. “It just… came to me without thinking. An automatic pattern of the fingers and the mind, it seems.”

She gaped at him with growing wonder. “But that’s… that’s good, right?” She gestured at her hair. “This was exactly what you mean to do, right?”

“It was, yes,” he said.

Her belly leapt with excitement. “It came to you naturally like breathing,” she said. “You did exactly what you mean to without thinking about it! That’s how magic is supposed to feel to you, right?”

He chuckled. “Yes, Tamaris, it is.”

“But that’s — Felassan, that’s incredible!” she exclaimed. “That’s…” She gaped at him in awe, then suddenly flung her arms around him in a hug. “That’s incredible!”

He hugged her back, but his words were cautionary. “This was just a small feat, avise. Don’t get carried away.”

“I’m not getting carried away!” she protested. “This is incredible! And it doesn’t matter if it was just a small thing. It felt the way it was supposed to. That means everything you’ve been doing is working!” She leaned away and poked his chest. “You’re on your way to getting your magic back, see? I knew you would!”

“Everything we have been doing is working, you mean,” he said. “I would not have reached this point if not for you.”

“Well, neither would I,” she said. “I’d still be a bitter drunk mess if not for you. Fair’s fair.”

He gave her a chiding look. “You discredit yourself so quickly. You would have found your bearings in time.”

“So would you,” she retorted.

He gave her a slow and breathtaking smile. “We are a well-matched pair, then,” he said. “Two non-broken people who helped each other to become even less broken.”

She gazed at him, wordless with pride and adoration, and in the warmth of his smile and his brilliant violet eyes, she could see the reflection of the feeling that was making her heart pulse with happiness. She and Felassan were more than just two people who had helped each other. Through each other’s eyes, they’d rediscovered something in themselves that they’d each thought was lost, and over the course of that discovery, they’d twined their lives together in a way that Tamaris would never have thought possible with someone she’d known for so little time. 

She smiled helplessly at him, then pulled him close for a kiss. He immediately sank into her kiss, parting his lips under the coaxing pressure of her mouth and sliding his tongue sinuously along the length of her own. He gently nipped her lips with that exquisitely gentle care that told her how much he was savouring the taste of her mouth, and by the time he gently peeled his mouth away from hers, she was panting. 

He ran his thumb across her cheek. “We have a pocket of time now before Varric comes,” he murmured. “I wonder what we should we do with it?”

She smirked; she could tell exactly what he had in mind from the heated and mischievous look on his face. All the same, she playfully tilted her head. “What did you have in mind?”

He chuckled. The sound was more of a purr than a laugh, and it sent a lovely shiver down her spine. He leaned in and brushed his lips to hers, and his silky reply was a whisper of warmth over her lips. 

“I believe we should… go finish washing the walls in the study,” he murmured.

Cheeky ass, she thought happily. Then she hopped into his arms.

Felassan caught her with a laugh of surprise as she looped her legs around his waist. “Later,” she said huskily, and she kissed him once more. 

He kissed her back and carried her to the sofa in the study. And for a lovely, blissful time, they indulged themselves in a discovery of a more carnal kind.

***************************

Late that afternoon, Varric arrived with a box of fine Antivan chocolates and a wry smile. “Hey,” he said, and he handed the chocolates to Tamaris. “These arrived at my office this morning. They’re from Ruffles.” He took his usual seat at the dining table. “Thought we might need them if Jester’s going to be telling us some horror stories tonight.” He glanced at the kitchen, where Felassan was finishing up dinner. 

“Good thinking,” Tamaris said. She sat across from him and shot him an apologetic look. “Listen, I was being an ass last night. I shouldn’t have just stormed off like I did.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Varric said. “Honestly, Cuddles, I don’t blame you. It’s a tough time for everyone.”

“That’s kind of my point, though,” she said. “You’re so calm. How are you so calm through all of this? Aren’t you angry?”

Varric shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t see the point. This isn’t our first disaster, remember?”

“I know, but still.” She leaned her elbows on the table. “Tell me your dwarven secrets. How are you so fucking pleasant all the time?”

He huffed in amusement. “You don’t know that I’m pleasant all the time. Maybe I spend my evenings gnashing my teeth and wailing before I go to bed.”

Tamaris clicked her tongue. “Seriously. How are you coping with this so well?”

“Honestly?” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “I’ve been writing something.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Really? What are you writing?”

He tugged an earring. “It’s… something really stupid.”

Felassan piped in. “It’s smut, isn’t it?” He slid a platter of fragrant salmon and rice onto the table, then headed back to the kitchen.

“Is that all you ever think about?” Tamaris called after him. 

“It is a solid third of everything I think about, yes,” he called back. 

Tamaris snorted in amusement and turned back to Varric. To her surprise, Varric was looking vaguely embarrassed. “I hate to admit it, but he’s right. It’s a trashy romance thing.”

“But I thought you didn’t like writing those!” Tamaris said in surprise.

He shrugged again. “Eh, I’ve changed my mind. They’re not so bad. It’s less pressure too, since almost nobody reads my romance serials.”

“So why are you doing it, then?” she asked.

“Because it’s relaxing, Cuddles,” he said wryly. “You asked me how I relax, that’s how I relax.”

She peered carefully at him. “Are you saying you… you know? While writing them?” She raised her eyebrows suggestively.

Varric rolled his eyes. “You’re just as bad as Jester. The two of you need to find a new hobby.”

“I take offense to that,” Felassan said as he re-entered the room with a platter of grilled vegetables. He gave Tamaris a chiding look. “I wouldn’t make such a crude suggestion to our esteemed writer. Varric is obviously writing another romance serial for Cassandra.”

Tamaris scoffed. “No he’s not.” She turned to Varric. “Are you?”

Varric grimaced slightly and tugged his earring again, and Tamaris’s jaw dropped. “You are?” 

“Of course he is,” Felassan said. He began serving everyone’s food. “He said almost no one reads his serials, and we all know who his most avid fan is.”

“All right, fine, I am,” Varric grumbled. “But it’s just for fun. Honestly, I think the Seeker gets more out of it than I do.”

That makes it even sweeter, Tamaris thought, but she didn’t want to make him uncomfortable by pointing this out. 

Felassan, as usual, had fewer qualms than she. “That’s very considerate of you,” he said. “Exceedingly considerate, in fact. I was just telling Tamaris the other day that we should invite Cassandra to visit sometime.”

Tamaris kicked him under the table, but he didn’t even bat an eye. Varric, on the other hand, raised an eyebrow. “Visit Kirkwall? Why?”

“Why not?” Felassan said. He waved his arm in a vague gesture. “We have this large empty house. She would be welcome to stay. Wouldn’t she, Tamaris?” He shot her a very innocent smile.

“Of course she would, Felassan,” Tamaris said through clenched teeth. “But she is pretty busy with, you know, rehabilitating Tranquils and the Seekers and all that.”

“Everyone needs a break sometimes,” Felassan said cheerfully. To Varric he said, “Do you think we should invite her to stay?”

“I mean, you could,” Varric said. “Cuddles is right, though; she might be too busy. Wouldn’t mind seeing her, though.” He popped some salmon in his mouth and eyed Tamaris thoughtfully. “Your hair is different. It looks dressed up.”

“It does, doesn’t it?” Felassan said. 

Varric smirked at him. “Your handiwork, I’m guessing?”

“It certainly is,” he said with a smile. Then he snapped his fingers. “Ah, forgive me; I forgot the sauce for the salmon.” He rose from the table and leaned in to kiss Tamaris’s cheek, but as his lips brushed her cheekbone, he whispered to her. “Take note that he changed the subject.”

Smug fucking spy, she thought, but of course she couldn’t say a word. Felassan sauntered away to the kitchen, and Tamaris smiled tightly at Varric, whose eyebrows were quirked in a quizzical expression. 

“Um, yeah,” she said lamely. “I look fucking fancy now.” She speared some vegetables and salmon on her fork. “Be careful that he doesn’t offer to braid your chest hair. I don’t think he’s above it.”

“I heard that,” Felassan called from the kitchen. 

Tamaris smirked, and Varric chuckled. Felassan returned to the table, and they spent the rest of their meal chatting casually about local goings-on and a book that all three of them had read when it came out about ten years ago. 

When their meal was done and Tamaris had finished tidying the kitchen, they retired to the library with Varric’s chocolates and Tamaris’s sending crystal so Dorian could be included in the discussion. Varric sat in an armchair while Felassan plopped onto one of the plush couches and stretched out his legs, and Tamaris settled herself cross-legged on the floor by Felassan’s couch and swept her thumb over the sending crystal. 

A few moments later, Dorian’s voice floated through. “Tamaris! I was just thinking of you. I had hoped you were missing the mellifluous sound of my voice.” 

“I missed you desperately, Dorian,” she said dryly. “Felassan and Varric are here too.”

“A whole party of people who miss me dearly!” Dorian said brightly. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Varric replied. “It’s storytime with the ancient elf. We thought you’d want to join in.”

“Oh, is Felassan telling us tales of the past?” Dorian said. “How amusing.”

“Amusing is what I always strive for,” Felassan said. He tilted his head thoughtfully. “Disturbing is what the result will likely be, unfortunately.”

“Even better,” Dorian said.

Tamaris raised an eyebrow. “Really? You want to be disturbed?”

“I want to be accurately informed,” Dorian said. “What Abelas told us at the Well of Sorrows has never left my mind, you know. To know that my people were scavengers, not conquerors… it means something. We should never have striven for that reputation of the glorious conquerers in the first place, and to know that we never were is humbling, in a good way.”

Felassan’s smile was soft. “You are wise beyond your years and your race, my friend.”

“I do believe that was a compliment,” Dorian said. “If so, I will happily accept.”

Tamaris rolled her eyes. “Do you two need some time alone to bond?”

Felassan playfully tugged her braid. “Don’t be jealous, avise. You know you are always my favourite person the room.”

Varric groaned, and Dorian tsked. “If that’s what this call will be like, then give me a moment to find a bucket to vomit in.”

Tamaris smiled goofily and scratched the back of her neck, and Felassan chuckled. “Enough idle small talk, then. Don’t let me hold up this storytelling time.” He rubbed his hands together. “What do you wish to know first?”

There was a brief pause. Then Dorian, Tamaris, and Varric all spoke at once. 

“Why was Solas so angry about the archdemons being killed?” Tamaris asked. 

“How did red lyrium get the Blight in the first place?” Varric said.

“I’d like to know more about that orb that Solas had,” Dorian said.

A slow smile crept over Felassan’s face. Then he started to laugh. “So you wish to know everything, then. I suppose I ought to start from the very beginning. Of what I know, at least.” His expression grew serious. “Much of what I will tell you happened long before I was born. The knowledge I have isn’t as first-hand as the facts you would get from Fen’Harel himself, if he had ever been so inclined to share it with you.” He sighed. “I also have strong suspicions about things that… that Fen’Harel did not want his people to know.” He looked directly at Tamaris, and his gaze was soft and utterly serious. “Things he would not have wanted you to know, for fear of corrupting the woman he loved with that which eventually poisoned our entire empire.”

Her pulse began to rise at this. “Just tell me what you feel comfortable with,” she told him. 

He nodded. Then he smiled and laced his fingers casually behind his head. “All right. I should probably start by telling you what — or rather, who — the archdemons really were.” 

****************

An important note: Felassan’s anecdote about the importance of hairstyles in ancient Arlathan, and the terrible meaning of slaves having their hair shaved, was heavily inspired by the IRL history of European slave traders shaving the heads of West African people when they took them as slaves. The sources I referred to for this are here and here – two sources that corroborate each other, both of which I recommend. My fiancé beta’ed that section for me as well. If you recognized the inspiration for this anecdote, I hope it came across as it is intended: a respectful homage to black history in North America.

[modernagesomniari]

Fic ‘I am Changed’

Part of the Mala Suledin Nadas Series (Eli Lavellan).  You can read it on AO3 here.

The parallels between In Hushed Whispers and Solas' situation have always made me unneasy (which shows good writing tbh) but I wanted to explore how different Eli and Solas' attitudes are towards this sort of thing, how it's a natural part of who they are, which is why they'll oppose each other eventually.

PG-13, ~1750 words

I Am Changed

It was the new sparkly kid who told them what had happened, not their Eli.  This was the first thing that set off the warning bells in Varric’s head.  The second thing was that, within minutes of Dorian starting the story, she’d quietly warned him off exaggeration.  The third thing was that he then did what she asked.  In Varric’s opinion, men like this one didn’t tone down their exaggerations for anything.  He should know.

Not that wasn’t like Eli to be quiet - she’d spent a good deal of the first week or so barely saying a word unless you spoke to her first, but Varric could understand that.  She’d just been thrown into a situation so far from anything she’d experienced, anyone with any brains at all would take a few days to take the lay of the land before they started throwing their weight around.  She’d picked up about day eight, starting to initiate conversation and get to know her new surroundings.  Cheered right up, if he was honest, he couldn’t fault her strength.

This was different.  She was sat in the circle they’d made around the camp fire down the King’s Road from Redcliffe.  None of them had particularly wanted to stay in the town, so they’d kept walking and camped halfway between the town and the camp.  Once the sun had set and they’d eaten, inevitably they’d asked what had happened.  She was playing with a piece of leather in her hands, twisting it and tangling it only to thread her tiny fingers through it and smooth it out before starting all over again.  She watched the fire, something violent in the way it reflected in her huge green eyes, but there was nothing on her face.  This had moved her, deeply.

He kept his eyes on her as he listened, mostly horror struck, at what Dorian was telling them.  The red lyrium clenched his gut, but the new kid’s description of who they found and how was worse, far worse.  Poor Leliana.  It was a sobering thought, the idea that a world where he himself was dead had existed.  Not for long it seemed (only it had also lasted a year?  Only it hadn’t?  There was no way he was going to be able to put this into any book, was there?), but still the reality of it was a cold slap in the face.  No one liked imagining a world where they were dead.  Eli, apparently, had seen and experienced it.  Watched some of them die.

It was only when Dorian was finishing the story, trying to tell them that it was all ok, that they’d found the amulet, sent themselves back, none of it ever happened, it was all a bad dream etc etc that Eli looked up, something wrong and fierce in her eyes now.

“It wasn’t just a bad dream, Dorian.”

Her voice was low, but something about it quietened the whole damn camp.

“Well it might as well be.  Otherwise I’d have to live with the reality the whole rest of my life and nightmares do play havoc with age lines…”

“We can’t just pretend it all didn’t happen because it’s easier.”

Now her voice was raised and she’d sat up, leather clenched tightly in her fist.  “Dorian.  It happened.”

“Technically, no it…”

“Yes.  It did.  To us.  If it hadn’t happened, we wouldn’t be here.  Alexius still sent us forward and then we came back, so if it hadn’t happened, we’d still be gone.  And then it would have happened.”

Varric considered himself a clever sort of bastard, but he was having trouble keeping up.  There was something frustrated but pained in Sparkler’s face.

“I see your point.  But that doesn’t change the fact that they don’t fit into this world any more.  For us to be here now means they never have to exist.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t exist.  Just because they don’t fit anymore doesn’t mean they didn’t exist when we were there.”

Andraste’s ass but there were tears in her eyes now, not falling but glinting just enough in the firelight he knew they were there.  He could never stand it when people cried, damn it.

“Then where are they?  I know you think I’m being cowardly about this, but what do you want me to do?  Cassandra is sitting right here.  Solas has as impeccable a skin routine as when I first met him, not a red vein to be seen.”

“So they didn’t die?  Is that what you’re saying to me?”

Varric definitely preferred it when she’d raised her voice to this quiet fury she’d switched to now.

“I didn’t say…”

“But that’s what you want to believe.  What’s easier to believe.  They died, Dorian.  They died so that we could come back.  And they were real.”

She shook her head, her face crumpling slightly as she couldn’t keep the tears in anymore.  The brokenness of her voice did nothing to the ferocity in her eyes as she stood across the fire from Dorian, not flinching even as the tears ran down her face.  “I am changed, Dorian.  Their fight, their death, their sacrifice.  They have changed me.  And I am real.  So they are, too.  Think me foolish for mourning them if you must, but I will.  And I will not forget.”

She turned, refusing to wipe her eyes but clearly not wanting them to see any more.  They let her go.  Silence fell over the fire as they all watched her take herself to sit on a rock at the edge of camp, looking down the ravine at the hinterlands below.  No one said anything.  It made Varric respect the new Tevinter mage slightly, that he just nodded solemnly and poured himself another drink rather than try and continue to fight his corner now he had no opposition.  As for Varric, he took a sip of his own drink before casting a quick look around the fire.  Most people were staring into their cups, uncomfortable and pensive.  One of the few who wasn’t was Solas, who was looking after where Eli had gone like he couldn’t look away, something unreadable but deeply uneasy in the expression on his face.  Varric’s inner alarm bells started going off again.  This didn’t bode well.

“Was it so bad?” The Seeker asked after a while.  Clearly tired, Sparkler just shrugged and nodded.

“I know what you look like after being speared by a Terror demon, if that paints a picture.  And I’ve seen the difference between human and elven eyes when exposed to truly horrific amounts of red lyrium, which tops it all off nicely.”

“There’s a difference?” Varric asked, immediately wondering why he always asked questions he didn’t want the answer to.  Dorian’s gaze was slightly haunted to match his hollow laugh.

“Elves are apparently more susceptible, or perhaps it’s just the same thing that makes their eyes glow at night.  I don’t know.”

He took another swig of his hip flask before gesturing over to Solas.  “You were a bloody breath of fresh air.  Barely had to explain anything - caught on quick as a whip.  Have you known her long?”

Solas looked as confused by the last question as Varric felt, eyebrows drawn together as he shook his head.  “No.  Didn’t think so.  You get on though, don’t you?”

“If you are suggesting some sort of elf connection…”

“No.  No I’m not.  It’s just…”

Dorian paused, flicking his gaze over to the silhouette that was Eli, back at Solas and then back at the fire.  Finally he just shrugged.  “Oh, she’ll tell you if she wants to.  If I were either of you, though, I’d find a few moments on the journey back to Haven to remind her you are both, in fact, still alive.  She took your deaths pretty hard.”

No one said anything after that.  No one really moved either.  Varric wondered what it was - the horror, the reality of this Elder One, or just the realisation that their Herald wasn’t strong because she was all-powerful, but because she didn’t let her fragility shatter her.  She would mourn, she would let her heart break for this world that should never have been and then she would allow it to make her stronger.  Varric had seen it before, watched a person take more pain than he thought possible and turn it right back into fierce determination and unshakeable loyalty.  Maker’s balls, but he was going to get in way over his head again, wasn’t he?

Solas got up first, quiet and graceful, stepping around them all as he angled towards the tents.  Varric watched him go, wondering at what Dorian had said and hoping that what he suspected was going to happen wasn’t going to.  Because he’d been there before, too, and there was nothing there but hurt, he knew it.  So some part of him started silently willing Solas to keep heading towards the tents, even as he watched him slow down.  Knew that there was a suspicious squint to his eyes as he watched Solas draw to a halt, looking over at where Eli was sat at the other side of camp.  Felt something release as he turned away, back to the tents and clench right up again when he hesitated.  If a low ‘Don’t you dare, Chuckles’ left his mouth under his breath, he couldn’t be blamed.

His heart sank as Solas changed his mind again, something reluctant in his gait even as he turned once more towards Eli and started walking towards her like it was despite himself.  Honestly, Varric would almost say that the man was even more irritated at himself than Varric was for not being able to leave her.  He watched him hesitate one more time, just behind her, before he took one more step forward and sat close beside her.

Varric couldn’t hear what they were saying.  Knew damn well that he wouldn’t be wanted there even if he could.  He watched her body sway slightly before she let it lean gently against Solas’ arm and his heart was heavy enough he actually sighed into his ale as he watched that arm come up around her shoulders, pulling her in.  Damn that man for being an idiot, damn Eli for being, well, Eli and damn himself for seeing so much and caring even more.  He’d seen this play out in Kirkwall, seen it a thousand times in every tale of every hero in Thedas.

There was no way this was going to end well.

[ofgoodmenarchive]

Blighted Empire: Ch. 4.5

Unbroken

Since spotting Dorian's ghoulish cast from across the battlefield, Evallan's thoughts had not stopped reeling. He'd attempted to console himself, citing the skill and intelligence of the man. However upon sighting the freakish anomaly, he'd known Dorian could not succeed on his own. The Tevinter was cunning and gifted with a surprising dexterity but had not the experience to survive the encounter.

  We must protect him!

The urge overcame him, overcame everything. Lightbringer did not protest- if anything she understood with perfect clarity. Dorian Pavus was not clan but he was treasured as much by her wielder. As an entity devoted to the protection of family and kin, she could not watch him fall anymore than Evallan could.

At least his suspicion was confirmed; she had no intention of abandoning Dorian the previous day, only meaning to tease him over his panic for the man.

So they sprinted, two beings with one goal. By the time he reached the line, magic fizzled around him with erratic fury and no one in the huddle dared reject his command. They probably thought he meant to do something of more significance than rescue the foolish Tevinter.

  “Let me through!”

The river of red-stained shields parted then clanged shut behind him. Embodying a blizzard, he ripped across the field, encasing the world in ice as he went. His vision blurred to the point of leaving him sightless yet he found no need for eyes. Senses reduced to textures and frequencies, the Deep Roads existed as a map drawn onto his consciousness.

His focus centred on two heartbeats; the first inhumanely slow and deep, almost dead, the other was quickened from panic but still with a signature he recognised.

  Dorian.

Evallan moved with enough urgency he almost startled himself when confronted by the bristling aura of the aberration, a foreboding stain upon the canvas of life.

  Kill it! Kill it now!

The order still hung in his mind when the thing was petrified and imploded into the tiniest fragments. He would have laughed in discomfort at the absurd efficiency if he were not so strangled by concern, refusing to stop for breathe until Dorian confirmed his health.

His thoughts may have calmed in their reeling then, if the fool hadn't-

Evallan could not repeat it to himself.

Embarrassment towards his actions and appearance melted into satisfaction, terror into hunger. He could dance around his emotions all day but not when Dorian Pavus gave of himself so willingly.

  The nerve of the shem!- He must have known.

Known that Evallan's carefully-constructed veneer of restraint was thin and riddled in vulnerabilities. Known he would have no choice but to embrace him- it was not a choice to him.

  If a key is made for a lock, it will turn.

However the most scandalous knowledge Dorian had somehow obtained was the location of his lost birthright, pressed to Evallan's ribs all along.

  Yet you did not take it, you did not confront me. You chose to -

  I really cannot say I understand the way you think either, Dorian Pavus.

Nor could he bring himself to vocalise any of these musings. He was achingly aware of Dorian studying him, calculating but somehow not unkind.

With a steadying inhale, he glanced at the caved-in tunnel and renewed his efforts to meet the man's gaze- a challenge to be sure.

  “I am sorry about your friend...You are alright?” Perhaps he would not wish to discuss the amulet, considering the fate of Elias Caladrius.

  “Oh, I'm fine I suppose, I just...” He started a little hoarsely and had to clear his throat. “He always wanted to be a Warden, but I never imagined it would actually happen. Or if it did, certainly not like this.”

  “I know it is little consolation, especially as it is yet to be seen if he will survive,” He eased as he talked, thinking they might evade other topics. “But the Wardens are in need of recruits like him- capable mages who are good at following direction.”

  “Nothing like you, then,” Dorian joked freely, affectionately. “You do whatever you please.”

Evallan felt the corner of his mouth quirk into a smile, unable to prevent it.

  “And yet my place should be with them.” He answered casually, only realising the gravity of his statement when Dorian perked a brow in alarm.

  “You want  to be a Warden?”

  “No, not truly- that would be foolish, no?” He relented beneath the worrisome expression. “But they do not fear me. They would utilise my abilities to their fullest. They would not poke and prod when something escapes their understanding...”

The Tevinter nodded in slow comprehension but his features soon became pensive, a knowing curve playing along his lips. Evallan had to look away once more, unable to withstand the invitation he read in that smile, knowing he could not refuse it.

  “The Wardens aren't really what we should discuss, Evallan.” He said it softly but with obvious meaning.

He sighed, still refusing to view the man's face.

  “You wish to speak of that now?” He mumbled more coldly than intended.

  “I think I'd rather that than worry over my friend, yes.” His reply seemed sincere. Evallan had to submit with another weary sigh.

  “As you say...” He struggled to make his voice audible as he fished into his robes. “I believe this is yours...”

Tarnished gold swayed from his trembling digits though he did not extend- and Dorian made no motion to claim the birthright. This reassured him somehow, though he couldn't explain why.

  “How did it come into your possession, then?” He pressed- but gently.

  “When I hit you-” Evallan fumbled with the words, eyes on the ground. “It was dropped...I had knelt over it without meaning to. I took it without knowing what it was- at first...”

  “Why didn't you simply return it, Evallan?” Dorian's pitch heightened, both incredulous and sympathetic.

  “You were correct in your assessment,” He laughed brokenly, rubbing his eyes so they would not shed. “I am a coward. I could not face you...I wished for Amrallan to deliver it, but he refused.”

  “Amrallan knew?” Dorian chuckled. “Well, that explains him being so cheerful when he saw me outside your aravel..”

  “Yes, he...understood the situation. We could never hide anything from the other,” Speaking of his brother quelled his nerves, nostalgia blanketing him. “Our mother always said it was a mistake of the gods we were not born together.”

Dorian allowed him to linger on the memory, not pushing him for more but merely watching in respectful quiet. Given time to balance himself, he continued with more strength.

  “He told me I could return it to you, or hold onto it and let it drive me mad...so that is what I did.”

  “But for so long?” Though he still could not look, Evallan heard the confusion. “You could have just...hidden it in my room, or something?”

This would be more difficult to convey. Indeed he wished he could skirt it entirely, the way he did all his emotions. He knew that was no longer an option- Dorian Pavus was owed more than that.

In truth he was owed more than Evallan could ever give.

  “At first...I was simply a coward,” He wrestled with each syllable, forcing them into the light. “But it...became something that helped me survive. A reminder.”

  “A reminder? Of what?” Dorian's voice cracked.

Evallan had to meditate carefully upon his answer, needing to conceptualise feelings and ideas he'd never had to verbalise.

  “One of the last things my brother did was to refuse the amulet. Not long after, he died to protect our clan- to protect me, because of what I represent.” He sucked in air painfully, the grief left unvoiced for years oozed from him like infection from a wound. Pressure that must be released, but that agonised him to do so.

  “I watched their bodies burn with your birthright around my neck. Whenever I looked at it, I would feel guilt, and imagine them.”

  “It was all you had left of him.” Dorian uttered suddenly, voice as melancholic as Evallan felt.

  “It was.” He choked back a sob, transformed it into a bitter laugh- more like a bark. “But soon it was not him I imagined, or my family. It...was you.”

Finally he mustered the courage to make visual contact with the Tevinter; grey eyes full of wonder and heat, sparking with hints of the amber light of The Deep Roads, for now rendered speechless by Evallan's admittance.

  “I imagined a world where I returned this to you, and you...” Speech fizzled in his throat but Evallan knew he had to persevere, the rest leaving him in a hush. “Would recognise me as yours along with it...And so, you see...when we finally met, I could not let go of this imagining.”

Dorian's features softened, a sadness to his gaze. Yet somehow still welcoming- even without a smile.

  “You don't have to imagine that, Evallan.” He said this just as softly and it took everything within himself not to break right then, into a thousand shards, like one of his own spells.

  “Yes, I do.” His voice wavered, he felt so drained, breaking eye contact once more. “I am the Keeper of the Lavellan Clan.”

  “You wouldn't be the only Lavellan involved with a shem- or a Tevinter.”

  “It is not the same.” He shook his head, fingers tightening around the chain he still held. “Lightbringer and I are all that remains of the heart of our clan. My life must be a service to others- to those who sacrificed themselves so I could fulfil my purpose.”

  “And there's no room for anything else- why?” Dorian was incensed, though clearly attempted to reign himself in. “All because of some spirit? You have to live at the whim of others for the rest of your days because- because she chose you when you were- how old even were you?”

  “Ten.” Evallan replied, flat.

  “Ten?!” The Tevinter gave way to unhinged chuckles. “So a spirit took a liking to you when you weren't even old enough to piss straight and that should decide your whole life!?”

  “Yes.” He replied again, still flat.

  “Evallan,” He chortled deliriously. “That's insane, you must see how insane that is- at the very least, it is quite cruel.”

  “It may have been different, if it were not for the Blight,” He murmured, shrugging. “As things are, I am a symbol my people must feel they can rely on.”

  “But you're a person!”

  “To you, I am a person,” He ground out, becoming impatient. “To them, to Thedas, I must strive to be more. I must embody them, their faith in me, their lack of it- all of it.”

This silenced him, though Evallan lacked the nerve to truly witness how it was received- he could not bear to look into Dorian's face and see disappointment or grief. Instead watching the amulet swing near his breast- he had to ask.

  “You saw this when we fell, but you did not take it...”

There was a pause. Then, full of impassioned stubbornness-

  “You can't think of anything I might value more than some silly little amulet!?”

He froze, staring at the gold etchings and nothing else.

  “I have a duty to my clan.” He stated with as much conviction as he was capable of- which in that moment, was very little.

  “And I to my country,” Dorian countered, undeterred. “But don't you think it's possible that we could also have a duty to each other?”

He recalled Titus Ahriman and the blighted oath he'd insisted on swearing to the Lavellan Clan, to Fila.

  You all act as though it is so simple.

  As though every expectation can be overthrown- for what?

  For a simple feeling?

  I envy you that freedom.

  “I would like to believe that.” He rasped after some time.

  “But you don't.” Dorian stated it as a matter-of-fact and Evallan could give no reply.

  To say I believe is a betrayal of my duties.

  To say I do not is a lie to you.

  And I grow so weary of lying to you, Dorian Pavus.

He thrust the amulet into the chest of its rightful owner, grimly announcing;

  “It does not matter what I believe.”

Dorian was briefly wordless, then-

  “No- I don't want it.”

  “What?!” Evallan snapped his posture to actually behold the Tevinter, staring at him in bafflement that tilted towards outrage. What did he mean, he did not want it?!

Of course Dorian Pavus was quite amused and even satisfied by this, smiling pleasantly.

  “If it's all you'll have of me, I'd rather you kept it.”

  “Dorian-”

  “I mean it, Evallan! I want you to hold onto it!” He interrupted, laughing cheerfully. “It's probably brought you more luck than it ever has me! You'll be going back to Tevinter anyway, won't you? You'll be taking it home for me! And when the Archdemon is slain, you'll return it, and I'll carry it home for good.”

There was much he wanted to say; that this was not some whimsical bedtime story exchanged in the dark, that this gesture ultimately meant nothing, that this stupid thing had haunted him for almost half his lifetime and all he desired was the fool to free him of it!

But lost for words, all he could manage was;

  “I cannot...” While lamely attempting to empty his hands into Dorian's.

  “Alright, well...” The man peered down at his newfound burden, pondering. “...I'll just toss it, then!”

  “What?!” He had no control over how shrill his voice became.

  “Well, it hardly has any value to me!- Especially without a country to go back to!” Dorian guffawed and sauntered some distance, amulet dangling precariously, headed for an edge where stone gave way to endless void.

  “Something tells me this will hurt you a lot more than it will hurt me, so-”

An image of the demonic figment from his Harrowing imposed itself upon the world. Evallan's heart caught in his throat and his chest constricted. Unconscious of himself, he sprang and snatched.

  “Give it!” He hissed, vehement, and was overjoyed and shamefully comforted when instead of taunting or hurdling it away, the real Dorian allowed the metal coils to slip onto his fingers with a heart-warming chuckle.

  “So we're agreed!” He announced brightly. “You'll hold onto it for me!”

Clutching the object for dear life, he practically smothered it against his chest while scowling at the man- who did not seem even slightly unnerved in response.

  “Until the Archdemon is slain.” He grumbled, looping the birthright carefully around his neck and beneath his robes, where it had rested for a lonely decade.

  “I'd say you can wear it on the outside of your robes now, but I know you won't.” Dorian observed with feigned humour- Evallan could hear the bitterness there.

  “I must report to Marcus.” He decided, ignoring the rest, avoiding his gaze. “And you must see to your injuries.”

Evallan marched for his destination without another word, never looking back.

Deep within himself, he cried out against the impenetrable darkness.

READ MORE ON AO3

[athenril-of-kirkwall]

#6. OC scolding LI, and LI loves it!

I’m going to do a quick switcheroo on this one!

f!Lavellan/Josephine co-starring Prof. Frederic, Prof. Bram Kenric, Lace Harding, Collette: “Of Professors and Pastries” (AO3)

Josephine resisted the urge to slam the door behind her as she followed the Inquisitor into her office, a short corridor away from the main hall of Skyhold’s main keep, where an affray which had broken midway through a function was being concluded, the aggrieved shouts of its participants echoing behind them until the door finally sealed shut.

Rivka had crossed the room, sitting back on Josephine’s desk with her hands astride her bottom, tapping gently on its edge as one would an instrument, her lip curled into a slight smile even as a furious Josephine was closing the distance with her with every stride, until she stared down as imperiously as she could at her Inquisitor and girlfriend, taking advantage of the three-inch difference in height between them.

The ambassador took in a deep breath, finally stating slowly but firmly, “I am going to need a full explanation as to why the two eminent scholars of the University of Orlais are covered in cream pastries and are being physically restrained by Scout Harding and Collette.”

Rivka’s eyes narrowed as she asked, “Do you need the entire context, or…?”

Clasping her hands to stop them from making strangling motions, Josephine said, “That would be appreciated, Rivka.”

“All right,” she started, “So I thought that whilst we were holding that dreary academic symposium…”

Josephine screeched, “Dreary?!”

“…over here, and yes, while I do understand the importance of sharing our knowledge, coming from where I have, there are only so many lectures in the War Room I can sit through before drifting into the Fade…”

“Just get to the point,” Josephine hissed.

“…I thought I might draw upon the knowledge of our archaeologist and draconologist friends, namely, Professors Kenric and Frederic, as concerns one of the artefacts that we’ve wound up with in the undercroft.”

Josephine raised an eyebrow, asking, “One of the weapons you’ve encountered in your exploits, you mean?”

Rivka nodded, saying, “Exactly. To be precise, I just wanted to know what either of them could tell me about that Axe of the Dragon Hunter I got off Bonny Sims down in the courtyard.”

“Ah, right,” Josephine said. “Given that it was an easy twelve thousand sovereigns from the treasury I suppose that makes sense, from a certain point of view. Incidentally, next time you’d do well to let me negotiate prices especially when the values come up to that much.”

Rivka crossed her arms, asking, “Are you lecturing me on diplomacy or haggling, Josephine?”

Josephine’s stare was so sharp it could cut the air, where with enormous restraint, she finally managed, “Those are one and the same thing in Antiva, Rivka. Will you let me continue, or at least stop digressing?”

Rivka held her hands up in surrender. “All right, so the main point of what I was going to say was that I just wanted to learn more about Bonny Sims’ axe, and suddenly Professor Kenric got all professional, saying it was hardly appropriate for him to try and valuate it with his expertise then and there, but Professor Frederic was more than willing.”

“So, they had a dispute over the professionalism of evaluating artefacts on the spot?”

“Oh, no, it wasn’t that,” Rivka said, continuing, “Not wanting to be outdone, Professor Kenric started cutting in with his own observations, and while I don’t remember all of the details of that flurry of points they were shooting at each other, the exact moment Frederic excitedly concluded that this couldn’t be anything but the original, Bram objected that this clearly was a forgery made twenty years after Nephram Pentaghast’s possible lifetime.”

“Ah,” Josephine said comprehendingly, adding, “Oh no.”

“Oh yes,” Rivka said. “It was right at the moment that Frederic called Bram ‘a puffed-up abecedarian of a Marcher with no sense of romance’ that the two of them started coming to blows.”

Josephine planted her wrists on her hips, questioning Rivka, “And that’s the point where you decided the best thing to do was to arm Professor Kenric with a pie?”

Rivka answered, “Well, it was that or the axe.”

Becoming increasingly incoherent with rage, Josephine spluttered, “You-you, oh you…were those genuinely the only two options?!?”

“He had the axe in his hands,” she said defensively. “The way I see it, at least this wound up turning the two of them into laughing-stocks instead of, well, dead.”

Taking several deep breaths, Josephine said, “All right, all right. Maybe you had a point there…where is the axe now, anyway?”

“Safely in the hands of the retainers,” Rivka said, “And yes, I mean, it was admittedly hilarious, but I was actually trying to defuse the situation, so—”

Rivka never finished her justification, as the door swung open to reveal the two professors, who had made some attempts to clean the cream and cake off their clothes, being marched as sheepishly into the room as students into a headmaster’s office, Frederic being escorted Collette, and Kenric by Harding.

Bram glanced imploringly over to his research assistant, and Collette flashed him a look nearly as steely as Josephine’s to Rivka earlier on, cocking her head towards the Inquisitor and the ambassador as though it was an order.

Clearing his throat, the professor began, “I, and the eminent Professor Frederic, are here to apologise for our conduct as concerns what ought to have been a purely academic matter, and the effect that our, ah, affray has had on the atmosphere of the symposium.”

Frederic added, “Even were one of us in the absolute right and the other in the wrong—and this happens to not be the case, or at the least, the possibility certainly exists—clearly hurling pastries at each other is unbefitting of gentleman scholars, and certainly not fellow colleagues from the University of Orlais.”

“As it so happens,” Bram said, straightening himself up, “I was so fixated upon the Van Markham crest upon the fittings that I had, in my haste, neglected to consider the ritualistic reuse of such venerable weapons long past and jumped to conclusions concerning its relatively recent manufacture.”

“And I was so enchanted by the antiquity of the weapon itself,” Frederic explained, “That I had not even seen it upon first pass. But it undoubtedly dates to the Steel Age and was treated with great renown within its own time, leading to the plausible conclusion that it is the original weapon of Nephram Pentaghast…”

“…and was refitted with Van Markham decorations to commemorate the restoration of Pentaghast rule,” Bram concluded. “An eminently rigorous conclusion which we reached once, ah, our tempers cooled.”

Frederic nodded, saying, “For the time that the Inquisition shall be retaining this weapon of great antiquity, our joint recommendation is that it would be a fine gift to the Lady Seeker should you wish to use it for such a purpose, given her connection to it and, well, her role in breaking up our conflict.”

Silence reigned in the room as the two expected some sort of announcement or judgement from Rivka, who cleared her throat and straightened out her tunic, adopting her officious tone as she addressed the two academics.

“I, and the Inquisition, am very pleased that the two of you have achieved some form of resolution, and look forward to your continuing contributions to this seminar,” she said, continuing, “And I certainly look forward to your future discussion over this antique weapon later this evening over refreshments.”

Right on beat, Josephine added, “We’ll make arrangements for some privacy at the Herald’s rest after dinner, and we certainly look forward to your presence. Both of you, professors.”

“As well as Cassandra, seeing as you think so highly of Lady Pentaghast. I would hardly like to deprive the two of you of the opportunity to present it to her. That is what you both want, isn’t it?”, Rivka asked.

Frederic and Bram glanced at each other nervously before turning to the two women, nodding complyingly.

“It would be, ah…”, Bram started.

“…our honour, naturally,” Frederic finished, bowing to Rivka and Josephine.

Imitating his actions, Bram followed him and Collette out of the room, Harding closing the door behind them, flashing them a grin right as it closed after her.

“Right, so I believe I’ll grant that to myself as a job well done—”, Rivka said, stopping as she wheeled around to the sight of Josephine with her arms crossed and an eyebrow raised, next asking, “—what, I’m still in trouble?”

“Immeasurably,” Josephine said. “Please meet me in my quarters once you’re done entertaining our squabbling academics such that I may apprise you of the numerous letters to the University of Orlais which I’m going to need your signature on. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going back to the main hall to oversee the clean-up. You’re just fortunate that neither of them egged a Fereldan potentiate in the process.”

With that, she turned to the door, Rivka asking after her with a wry smile, “‘Apprising’ me? Is that what it’s called amongst humans?”

Controlling her own mirth, Josephine shouted back, “Don’t make this harder on yourself, Inquisitor!”

“What if I like the sound of that?”, Rivka teased.

“Enough!”, Josephine shouted, finally slamming the door shut behind herself.

Rivka chuckled to herself as she sat back upon Josephine’s tables, wondering just what her beloved ambassador had in store for her. Whatever it was, she was reasonably certain she’d enjoy it far more than what Josephine intended.

-

@dadrunkwriting

[ramblinganthropologist]

Writober 2020 - 20 (Grey)

Summary: An armor test brings up a lot of unanswered questions among the Warden crew... like why the fuck were they called Grey Wardens anyway? Seriously, does anyone know?

(That Dragon Age Actor AU, Dragon Age Origins)

---

“Does this armor make me look more intimidating?”

“You're playing an 18 year old hunter's apprentice. Nothing could do that.”

Nothing like new costumes to bring out the excitement for filming the next season. After weeks of waiting, it was finally time for the four actors known as the Warden crew to try on the armor they would be wearing during the season finale. Today was just a preview – final adjustments would be made after.

Merin pouted a little as he adjusted one of his leggings. “Eli, don't be a dick.”

“That's my job, for I am the bearer of dicks.” Eli crossed his muscled arms over his chest. Since it was just an outfit try on, he had both eyes functioning. Once they had to do it for real, the makeup and contacts would be in to simulate his character's ocular issues. “Though, maybe with the tattoos it would work. You're going to lose some points once they cover Elgar'nan up.”

That only made the elf groan harder as he sat back down. At the moment, his tattoos were on full display, covering half the side of his face in dark blue. They would be covered up the moment he became Cahel again, however. Unlucky for him, the famed apprentice didn't match vallaslin with him. He wasn't Shianni.

“Damn it all, we need to speed it up to Awakening or something.” Merin sighed as he ran a hand through his hair – his undercut was starting to grow in since he was wearing a wig so much. “Remi, you almost done in there or what? We wanna see!”

His question was directed to the curtain they were standing in front of. Their costar had disappeared behind there a few moments prior, citing issues with his breastplate. Judging from how much he was grumbling, he was still having that issue.

No surprises there – idols weren't typically known for being able to get armor on.

“Just...” he started muttering to himself in Orlesian. “There! I got the strap right!”

The curtain parted as he stepped out. Like Eli, Remi had a copy of Warden warrior armor on. It was only fitting, given he was supposed to be playing the future king of Ferelden in his Warden days. The effect was somewhat spoiled due to the fact he was using his actual accent, but he could handle that when it was time to film.

He was pretty good at hiding it. So was the guy who played Loghain...

“Not bad, you make the heavy armor work.” Merin frowned as he stared at the griffin on his costar's breastplate. “Though... serious question. Why the fuck are they the Grey Wardens when they wore silver and blue?”

The question caused both Remi and Eli to look down at their armor and pause. A glance passed among the three men in the room, none of them able give a proper answer. It was one of those things people just... accepted.

But yeah, they didn't really wear grey. What was up with that?

“It's because your skin turns grey before you off yourself in the Deep Roads.”

Their final costar entered on that killer line. Shianni, like Merin, was dressed in rogue armor. Unlike him, she made it look damn good. He cursed that a little as she took Eli's chair, perching on it like some rare bird of prey. Her reaction time was just as good too – he had seen it first hand when they had been in Orzammar.

People were still making gif sets of their group fight. It was kinda endearing.

Merin shook his head at this answer, though. “Nah. That's way too on the nose for these guys. You know they hid the taint thing until it was killing them.”

“Hiding the answer in plain sight is pretty Grey Warden if you ask me.” Shianni sounded almost bored. “Why, what's your bright idea?”

To this, the elf shrugged. “I figured it was a linguistic thing. You know how words change over time. Maybe silver meant grey then or something.”

Truthfully, even he could see that answer fell flat. However, Eli and Remi were quick to remind him of that as they both shook their heads. So, that was another idea shot down by the peanut gallery. Two were still in play, however.

Though... he could tell it was about to get stupid in here.

Remi tapped a gloved finger to his cheek as he thought about it. “Aren't griffin feathers kind of greyish? Maybe it was supposed to represent them.”

“Griffins come in a shit ton of colors, it's only the babies that are all grey and fuzzy.” Merin, ever the ranger, shot that one down pretty quickly. “It's the down.”

Eli rolled his eyes at this. “Only you would know that, Lavellan.”

“Hey, excuse me for doing some research, Rodriguez.”

There was no barb to their words, of course. By now, Eli and Merin were something like friends. It was a natural consequence of having to spend so much time with each other, though it helped the older elf had finally let the stick up his ass go. So he was a necromancer – big deal. It was the digital age, after all. Nobody really minded.

Nobody except them when it was time to tease him on it, mind you. After all, they were only sentient.

Remi knew when he was beat at least. He nodded at the information. “Right... I doubt they'd name them after baby griffins. It's not exactly intimidating.”

“They probably picked the name because they all had hard ons for grey morality.” Eli rolled his eyes. “I mean, that whole take who they want no matter what, get the job done even as your rotting in place, no lands or master thing just screams it.”

Shianni snorted at this response. “It be less impressive if you weren't saying that dressed as the berserker.”

Yeah... the whole conversation was just punctuated by the fact they were all standing around in prop armor discussing the history of a name. This was the kind of thing shitposters on the internet did when they were bored. So... maybe they had more in common with their fans than they thought.

Eli's cheeks turned hot at this as he turned away, pulling off a pretty decent impression of his character as he did so. “Who says Miris wasn't a man of philosophy?”

“Uh, he did. A lot. It's in the journals, check page 30, 56, 120...” Merin started counting off his fingers, smirking a little. “I can keep going.”

“Nobody likes a smart ass, Lavellan.” He paused. “Yeah, except Remi I know. You don't need to remind me.”

That just got him a tongue stuck out from the would-be ranger and his boyfriend. He returned it in kind, which meant civil conversation was definitely lost for the moment. Thankfully, before the battle of the tongues could continue, someone stuck their head in.

“Why do the Wardens have their tongues out?” Kaaras was practicing his Sten inflection, probably because he was in costume as well. The rest of him soon entered the room, coming to rest next to his on-screen girlfriend. Off screen, she was gay and he was a father of two. They played it well, though – they had won a few chemistry awards.

Merin pulled his tongue back in before Eli got the chance, though that was mostly because he needed to use it. “Because Eli is being an edge lord.”

“Hey, you're the one who asked the question in the first place.” Eli turned to the new occupant. “How about it, Kaaras. Why do you think the Grey Wardens are called that?”

All eyes turned to the qunari as he stopped to think about it. He tapped his chin a few times, deep in thought as he mused on the subject. Given he was dressed for war, it was a pretty hilarious sight. However, they wanted the answer more than they needed the laugh. So they waited, pins and needles jabbing into them.

He finally shrugged. “Because the Wardens have a thing for qunari I suppose.”

His response was met with a mixture of groans and snickers. That seemed to be what he had wanted in the first place, because he flashed them a very out-of-character thumbs up that shouldn't have been possible with his gloves. Someone in costuming was really earning their paycheck, no doubt about that.

“Should've seen that one coming a mile away.” Shianni shook her head. “Who knows, maybe it was the first Warden's favorite color. For all we know, they had a lover with grey eyes and the name stuck.”

Merin nodded at this, beaming suddenly. “Sounds gay, I'm down.”

That got Eli chuckling, though it was somewhat exasperated. “You're always down when it comes to gay subtext.”

“Hey,  I was in fandom for how long? Gay subtext is my bread and butter.”

Nobody could argue with that fact. Still, it was clear by that point that it could have been any of their suggestions, or a thousand other ones they didn't have the time to think of. The true answer was probably lost to time, as was many things about the Dragon Age and what came before that.

So... maybe they were all right. Or wrong. Who knew?

Kaaras shook his head as he glanced around the room at the assembled fake Wardens. “Anyway, they wanted you guys out to see how the armor fit. Hurry up and get going or you're going to keep Herah here for ages on makeup once that's done.”

Right... they were supposed to be working. Sometimes it was easy to forget that. The Warden crew nodded as they left, ready to handle whatever came next. With any luck, they wouldn't be seeing the head of makeup that day. It was kind of late for that.

Still...  why were they called Grey Wardens anyway? That was going to bother them for a while. Damn it all...

[kita-lavellan]

2019 Writer’s Round-Up

I was tagged by both @pikapeppa​ and @elveny​ so I figured I’d better put some effort in and try to figure this out. It’s not going to be easy since I have my writings scattered everywhere, including handwritten snippets, but I’ll give it my best shot!

Word Count

I can only really get an approximate number for this since, as I mentioned, my writing is scattered all over. Having said that, I’ve gone through my Googledocs going back to January, checked 4TheWords, double-checked what I’ve posted on AO3, and skimmed my last 3 months of Tumblr Posts, and totally ignored my handwritten stuff (I’m not word-counting that for you :p).

After dividing the word counts from my collaborative Original Fiction pieces by 2, and adding it all together with the help of a spreadsheet...

2019 Total Wordcount: 127,565

Number of Smut Scenes

Three.

A low number for me, but I’ve been writing a lot of original fiction that hasn’t centred around the topic.

New Things I’ve Tried This Year

Science Fiction!

I’m usually a strictly Fantasy writer in my original works, but @skekiss​ challenged me to try my hand at some Sci-Fi, and not only was it surprisingly fun, but it also didn’t turn out terribly, so I might do some more of that next year.

Favourite Thing I’ve Written This Year

My Favourite piece of Original Fiction was that Science Fiction piece my friend challenged me to do. It still doesn’t have a title, but here’s a snippet...

In the year 2421, the colonization of Mars finally became more than a simple societal need to expand, it also became a financially viable option for the over-crowded people of Earth.

The ship, destined to terraform Mars into a planet that humans could not only live on, but thrive upon, was named ‘The Scout’, and set out for the red planet in the year 2436, from a launchpad that had been constructed in international waters.

The Project was funded by nations from across Earth, and ‘The Scout’ was outfitted with the most advanced technology from all of the participating countries.

It was designed to be capable of terraforming Mars into a state that would allow for the development of permanent settlements in a sustainable manner, and construction was completed in under ten years.

The subsequent five years between it’s completed construction and the eventual launch date was spent finding and training a crew of over 3,000 officers, medical staff, scientists, and civilians from all walks of life so that they would be fully prepared for the challenges ahead.

It was a joyous and celebrated day when ‘The Scout’ launched from Earth, it’s state of the art quantum drive meant that travel to Mars would take the ship only sixty days.

Somewhere along their journey between the two planets, ‘The Scout’ encountered the sudden creation of a wormhole close enough to them to disrupt the ship’s controls and, unable to steer away from the pull of the forming singularity, the ship was pulled inside.

By chance, the addition of quantum energy from the ship’s drive core to the forming wormhole stabilised its throat long enough for ‘The Scout’ to emerge from the other side before it collapsed upon itself, stranding ‘The Scout’ and all three thousand souls in an unknown galaxy...

“Kelsey!”

The shout of her name drew her golden-brown eyes from the presentation, complete with an interactive holographic projection, to her employer.

He looked angry, she noticed, which wasn’t surprising really since he’d sent her to get fresh stock from the workshop an hour ago.

“Branner-”

“What do you think you’re doing, girl!?” he snapped as he used his broad shoulders and tall frame to force his way between crowds of early morning shoppers and over to where she was standing.

“Umm…” Kelsey turned her eyes back to the presentation for a moment, the display had continued to explain about ‘The Scout’s’ settlement on an uninhabited planet with permission from the other races of the odd galaxy they’d found themselves in.

The young children were chasing holographic stars and barely paying any attention to their own history, their supervising teacher looked ready to tear her own hair out, and Kelsey turned back to Branner guiltily.

“Nothing?”

He glared at her for a long moment, his own gaze flicking to the presentation and his eyes narrowing.

“Get those ship parts back to the stall, I’ll be along in a minute,” he growled, and Kelsey nodded, moving quickly past him and dodging the smack he aimed at the back of her head with practised ease.

As for fanfiction... I think my Favourite piece of 2019 is probably “Fascinating”. A little Solavellan one-shot I did about my favourite flirt with the bald elf. 

Fascinating can be found here

Favourite Fic I’ve Read This Year

Asking the tough questions now... hmm. I do even less reading than I do writing when my depression flares up, but I’m gonna scour my AO3 for my top 3 of the year...

In no particular order;

1) Begin Again by Anthropasaurus A recent find of mine. There are only two chapters, but AO3 says I’ve visited this fic 7 times, so that should tell you how invested I am already. It looks like it’s going to be interesting and clever, so I’m excited to see where this one goes. Rating: M Pairing: Solas/Lavellan Tropes or Tags: Time-travel, Self Harm/Suicide mention, Angst, Slowburn, Fixit-Fic. Summary: “There’s a small moment, as you’re harvesting a person when you feel their soul almost literally in your hands. All you would need to do is cast your spell right at that moment. We know where my body and Solas were at that time. It’s the only chance we have Dorian.” The years following the Exalted Council had not been kind to Raven or Dorian. Years of thwarting Solas at every turn took everything they and what few allies still survived had. They all knew the end was drawing near and if they didn’t act fast, southern Thedas would fall. But not even Solas could have foreseen what would happen when the Veil fell. Her memories of Redcliffe paled in comparison to the atrocities that now spread across the land. The Evanuris were free and roamed the lands like a plague. Whatever plans Solas had had failed. It had been weeks since she had seen him on the edges of her dreams. She feared the worst.

2) Spark of Hope Series by Elveny I don’t read series often, I like all the story in one place, but Elveny’s Lyssa/Solas story just sucks you in, and you’re clicking “Next Chapter/Next Story” without even realising it until you’ve read the whole thing in one night and are DESPERATELY left wanting for more. *coughs awkwardly* It’s not finished, but there are 147,000 words (approximately) over 5 stories, and a new one coming sometime in 2020, so it’s absolutely worth reading. Rating: E Pairing: Solas/Lavellan Tropes or Tags: Anxiety/Panic Attacks, Emotional Hurt, Break Up, Prequel Story Included. Summary: Everything has gone wrong. Corypheus has opened the orb and the magic did not return to Solas. A giant Breach is throbbing in the air, threatening the whole of Thedas before he is powerful enough to do what he set out to do. Instead of following his plans, he finds himself in Haven, caring for an unconscious elven woman whose palm sizzles with green magic... his magic. He needs to keep her alive if he wants any chance to get it back. But then... she wakes.

3) Elastic Heart by cedarmoons I’ve read this half a dozen times, and the end of the first chapter STILL makes my heart stop >.< This is the fic that convinced me there were actually good Solavellan Writers hiding out there.  I’ve found many since then, but this was my launchpad moment. Rating: E Pairing: Solas/Lavellan Tropes or Tags: None Summary: For the DA Kinkmeme. After making love to Lavellan, Solas accidentally tells her his identity.

Writing Goals for 2020

At least, an easy question! Write More. I’ve had a rough year for writing with many depression flare-ups. I’m hoping that 2020 I can get back to a more regular schedule, starting with a whole day of it on Jan 1st, I’ve cleared my schedule to get some writing time in and have my fingers crossed that it will be a good starting point for the rest of the year.

Thank you’s and Tagging...

Firstly, thank you PikkaPeppa and Elveny for tagging me! I’ve written more this year than I thought I had, and that’s been a lovely surprise, and a bit of a mood boost too. Thank you @skekiss​ for getting me into Tumblr. I’m not sure if I should thank you for this since it’s EATING my life, but regardless, I’ve met some fun people here in the last three months. Also, Thank You to @the-solavellan-archive​ for giving me a place to hang out, and share my Solavellan works, and for welcoming me with open arms ^_^

Now to tag people who may want to take part in this...

@rivainisomniari​, @lyrium-lavellan​, @solas-disapproves​, @cornfedcryptid​, @skekiss​, @faerieavalon​, @ranawaytothedas​

If you feel like doing this and I’ve not tagged you, feel free, and @ me so I can be nosey! :D

[angelofame]

The Lion with the Raven Wings Chapter 2

In a world where soulmates recognize each other on their marks, two souls find each other due to a common course.

Cullen joined the Inquisition because he wanted to help, to redeem himself. Not in his wildest dreams, he would have ever imagined he would meet his soulmate. Raven just wanted to prevent further bloodshed, not be the Herald of Andraste nor meet her soulmate in the middle of a war.

Can they help become each other the best version of themselves and prevail together, or will they both shatter at their own insecurities?

A Soulmate AU

________________

If you have missed the previous chapter,s you can find it  here

------

Chapter 2

Raven had been in lots of strange situations. But waking up in chains and with a pounding head was a new one even for her. The first she did, she turned her focus inwards to check herself for injuries. When she was satisfied that nothing was wrong besides the headache, she slowly sat up. She was not surprised to see that somebody had taken her staff, but she was surprised to see a mark on her left hand, which gave off electric sparks.

"Good, you are awake.", someone said from outside her cell. A woman in a cloak came up to the cell bars.  She opened the cell doors and motioned for Raven to stand up. She led her to the adjourning room, where she sat down at a table.

"Please, sit!" She indicated for the seat opposite her. Raven dropped down and faced her opposite expectantly. "My name is Leiana," began the woman, "I am going to ask you some questions."

"You are the left hand of the divine, is that correct?" When Leliana nodded, Raven continued. "So to answer your upcoming questions: My name is Raven Lavellan. I am the first to Keeper Deshanna Istimaethoriel Lavellan. I came to the conclave to help solve the conflict peacefully. I have no recollection of arriving and what happened before I woke up in the cell. The last thing I remember was walking through the forest, a few miles from the Temple. Everything after that is a blur."

She paused to think. "That was all I could think of, you might ask." Leliana just looked at her. Raven shrugged. "Not the first time I was in a similar situation. I was a little bit of troublemaker in my teens. That reminds me you might wanna know how old I am and where I am from. I am 24, and I am from all over, because dalish, obviously. I am also a nervous rambler, which you probably figured out at this point. I will stop talking now, not entirely, though, because you want answers." She took a deep breath. "Please continue with your interrogation."

Leliana chuckled. "I think you've covered everything already." She paused, then she stood up. "Follow me." She unlocked Raven shackles and led her outside.

Cullen followed the heated words of Cassandra to the hut of the prisoner. The Herald of Andraste, as she was now called, lay inside, sleeping. Three days ago, they managed to contain the situation with her help. Three days ago, she closed the first few breaches. Since then, she lay unconscious again. Adan and Solas had checked her over. They said she was okay, just needed to rest.

"How could you do that, Leliana. She killed the divine. She is responsible for thousands of deaths.", screamed Cassandra. "We don't know that, Cassandra." "She was your friend too."

"Enough!" Cullen interjected himself between the two women. "Cassandra, calm down! Leliana had her reasons, and I, for one, am glad that she took a chance on the prisoner." Cassandra tried to interrupt him. "She did more in an hour than we all together in three days." Then he turned towards Leliana. "While all went well, it could have been very different, Leliana. I know you can take care of yourself, but you didn't know what she is capable of, we still don't. What if she is responsible, she could have killed you. And most importantly, you are team, act like one."

Cassandra sighed. "You are right, Cullen. I am just..." "...angry. I understand. But we will accomplish nothing if there is infighting." Before he could say anything else, the door to the hut opened. And the elven girl tasked with watching over the Herald stuck her head outside.

"The herald is awake." Cullen nodded in thanks to the girl. "If she feels up to it, she shall meet us in the chantry." "I let her know, sir." Then he turned around and walked with Leliana and Cassandra to the Chantry.

It didn't take long for the Herald to catch up to them. She slithered five minutes later into the room.

"So now that we all here, we can begin. This is Raven Lavellan, a dalish mage." Leliana began by motioning to the black-haired elf. "You've met Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast." Raven nodded. "And the other two are our Ambassador Josephine Montilyet, my soulmate..."

"You have to be shitting me. Your actual soulmate is a woman. I always wondered what it would be to lay with a woman; actually, I wondered that about a man, too. Would I know what to do, where to touch? I think it would be easier with a woman because I know the body of a woman because I am one. But I am also curious how it would feel to have a man's..."

Cullen coughed before she could finish her sentence. His face was flushed with color. Leliana instead burst in a delighted giggle.

"Can we adopt her, Josie, please?" She begged her partner. "She is so cute. and look, she made Cullen blush. " Cullen hated Leliana at that moment; maybe hate was a too strong word. He immensely disliked her at this exact moment.

"I am not sure if you can adopt me," Raven said deliberating. "I am already adopted. But maybe you can request shared custody with Keeper Deshanna. She is my adopted mother." She paused. "Although I can't imagine why you would want to adopt me. I have a broken brain to mouth filter."

Cassandra cleared her throat.  "We are getting off track.", she said.  She looked at Cullen. He Coughed slightly.

"Right, I am Commander Cullen Rutherford." He extended his hand towards her. She stared surprised at his outstretched hand before she took it into her own.

"Nice to meet you, Commander," she said and smiled at him. Her eyes sparkled.

Chancellor Roderick chose that moment to barge into the meeting and demanded that Raven was brought to Val Royeaux.

Cullen lay awake the same night, unable to get the rest he needed. He let out a frustrated sigh. Finally, he decided to take a walk. Maybe get some work done if that wouldn't work.

As he was nearing the dock, he saw a figure sitting on the wooden planks next to a small lamp.  He considered turning around when a female voice called out, "Couldn't sleep either?"

He walked the rest the way till he stood right next to her. "No, Herald." She scoffed. "I am no savior." She looked up at him.

He gasped. "Your face tattoo is gone." He kneeled down next to her and took her head into his hands. He turned her face from side to side. When he didn't find a trace of the vallaslin, he leaned back on his feet with a confused look on his face.

"Because what you saw today,  it was a henna tattoo," she answered him. "It means it's wipeable. My clan wears it vallaslin on the back of our right hand." She showed him her right hand, where a phoenix was depicted. "We worship cuil, the god of life. We wear these henna tattoo when we meet with other dalish elves."

Cullen nodded appeased. "So why decided your clan to do it differently?"

"It is recorded that a long time ago that two brothers were hunting in the forest. It got dark. They sat up their camp when a big beast attacked them. The older brother was killed. The younger brother managed to flee. He waited till dawn before he returned to the campsite. There lay the creature weak and hardly conscious. As the younger drew closer to the beast, he noticed the chains around his legs, which cut into its body. He took pity on the creature and freed it from its chains. When the last chain fell, a bright light radiated from the creature, and before he knew it, a woman stood before him. She introduced herself as Cuil and thanked him for showing mercy.  She said to him that he could have anything he ever wanted, power, wisdom, gold. He said the only thing she could do was bring his brother back to life. She answered that she would need a sacrifice for that to be possible. He said to her:'Take me as your sacrifice. My brother is needed more than me.' Stunned, she did as he asked. When his brother awoke and saw his brother dead, she explained to him what had happened. He begged her to bring his brother back. She thought long and hard about the request and finally said:'I have never seen a bond so deep. I will grant your request. I don't need a sacrifice. If you start praying to me, in a year, you will have your brother back. She kept her word, and since then, Clan Lavellan wears the phoenix on their hand. As a sign of the rebirth."

"But why on the hand?" Cullen asked

"Because their faces wore still the traditional vallaslin. The hand was free, and it was the hand that freed her. So with time, the face vallaslin lost meaning to the clan, and it wasn't done anymore."

She yawned. "You best go back to bed, herald," Cullen said. She nodded and stood up.

"Please call me Raven.", she told him.

"I am afraid it would be inappropriate.", he countered.

She shook her head and walked towards her hut.

"Goodnight, Commander," She called back to him.

"Goodnight, Raven," he whispered into the night.

@rachelleofalltrades @darlingrutherford

[pikapeppa]

Solavellan smut: Three Times

The final chapter of Sweet Dreams Are Made Of This is up on AO3! In which @elbenherzart‘s Nare Lavellan and Solas FINALLY fall into bed together. FINALLY. 

It’s quite long that’s what she said; >10k words. Do people like chapters of this length being posted in full on Tumblr? Either way, it’s on AO3 as well.

************************

Going to Nare’s quarters was a foolish idea.

Solas padded silently up the stairs. With every step he took, he told himself he ought to turn around. He ought to go back to the rotunda and sink his focus into the pile of tomes on his desk. He ought to be learning more about the use and misuse of magic in this world so he could dismantle his most egregious mistake as painlessly as possible. 

But his bare feet kept carrying him forward, and he continued making his way up the stairs to Nare’s quarters. 

It was strange, that: to think that these familiar steps to that familiar spacious bedroom now belonged to Nare, not to him. It wasn’t that Solas was sorry to pass this legacy on to her, not by any means; he had done all that he could with Tarasyl’an Te’las. It was only fitting that any further memories to embed themselves in these ancient stones would be created by the woman who unwittingly bore his mark.

The same woman whose torrid taste still lingered in his mind. 

A pulse of lust dropped into his belly like a gulp of hot soup, and Solas paused on the stairs. It had been several hours since Nare had spread her legs for him on the desk in the basement library, hours since he had gloried in the softness of her lips and the perfect canvas of her skin, and still he was incapable of ejecting the thoughts of her from his mind. 

He ought to turn around. He ought to return to the rotunda and to his studies. 

For a suspended moment of time, Solas stood unmoving on the stairs, paralyzed by the weight of what he knew he ought to do. Then his feet kept carrying him up the steps. 

A minute later, he knocked on the door to Nare’s bedroom. When she opened the door a second later, the smile that bloomed across her face was a mixture of relief and nerves that made his heart ache. 

“Solas!” she breathed. “Come on in.” She hurried up the final set of stairs into the bedroom, and Solas followed her at a more sedate pace. 

He looked around surreptitiously as he stepped into the bedroom proper. The decor was… far different than it had once been. The hearth was in the same place, but Solas had kept his bed on the upper level. And here on the lower level, he had once had a small waterfall that flowed into a tidy little pond and then back up to feed the waterfall itself. It was an elegant and admittedly frivolous piece of magic that fed itself on a perpetual loop, a little project that he’d painstakingly constructed on a particularly lonely night, and it was the one indulgence he had permitted himself to keep throughout the ages. Even when the war against the Evanuris had grown so terrible that he was barely able to spend any time in the privacy of this room, the waterfall had remained intact: an attempt at keeping some peace somewhere, despite the increasing ferocity of the war. 

Now, the miniature waterfall was gone, destroyed like every other subtle work of magic that the Veil had sundered. In its place was a bed: Nare’s bed, made up with simple but comfortable-looking coverlets in shades of aqua and seafoam-green. And standing at the foot of the bed was Nare herself. 

Her expression was apprehensive. Solas tilted his head.  “Are you all right?” he asked. 

“Are you staying?” she said bluntly.

He raised his eyebrows. “I beg your pardon?”

She winced. “I – damn it.” She rubbed her arms nervously. “I just… when I asked you if you wanted to be with me, you – you didn’t – um… fenedhis.” She let out a self-deprecating little laugh. “I’m being foolish. I’m sorry. Do you want some coffee? I’ve banished all tea from this room for the rest of the night, don’t worry.” She gestured at the desk, where a tray with a cafetière sat with two cups and saucers. 

Despite her obvious nerves, her smile was hopeful and warm, and her teasing reference to his disdain for tea… Nare really did see him as a normal man. She truly saw him as a friendly companion and not as an ineffable figure of power to be revered or reviled. 

He gazed at her with a terrible sort of warmth in his chest – terrible in that it felt so good. In the space of these few short months, Nare’s companionship had become so dear to him, and he couldn’t fathom how it had happened. No matter how many hours he spent trying to rid his mind of her while painting his murals, or how many nights he spent pondering this problem while lying awake in bed, he hadn’t come any closer to understanding how he had allowed this to happen. How had he become so hopelessly fascinated by a native denizen of this infuriatingly static world? How had he become so thoroughly ensnared by someone whose existence was premised on his greatest mistake? 

Was it possible that the magic of his mark had somehow made her feel more like home to him? Perhaps this was why he had allowed her to become so familiar.

“What were you like before the anchor?” he asked abruptly. 

She blinked, so he pressed on. “Has it affected you?” he said. “Changed you in any way? Your mind, your morals, your… spirit?” 

Nare frowned slightly and nibbled her lip in thought, and Solas turned away to avoid staring at the lushness of her lips. He wandered restlessly toward the west-facing balcony, and Nare followed him. When they were standing on the balcony in the fresh mountain air, she spoke. “I… can’t really say. A lot of things in my life have changed, beyond just having the anchor,” she said. “Travelling on my own, making friends with shemle– er, humans, having people looking at me like a political figure…” She grimaced and leaned her elbows on the balcony railing. “So much has changed since I was with my clan. If I’ve changed, how could I know for sure if those changes are because of the mark, or because of everything else changing too?”

He raised his eyebrows appreciatively. “That’s an excellent point,” he said. Truly, he was impressed by how analytical her answer was. And even with the analytical and accurate nature of her answer, she hadn’t quite answered his question at all. 

It was a masterful response. Wise, careful, open to multiple possibilities… 

His heart throbbed again, and he rubbed his forehead. It was unfathomable, and it shouldn’t be possible, but he couldn’t deny the way she made him feel. He couldn’t keep trying to dodge it. Solas had never been one to bury his head in the sand. He may once have been impulsive and quick to plunge in headfirst, but hiding and dodging from ugly truths? That was not how the Dread Wolf operated. 

Not until recently, at least, with his admittedly juvenile attempts to avoid Nare. Now, as he stood in front of her gazing into her lucid aquamarine eyes, he could not hide from the most terrible truth he’d had to face in several thousand years. 

Nare Lavellan was real. She was incredibly, unfathomably, breathtakingly real. And Solas was hopelessly and terribly in love with her. 

She took a small step closer to him. “Solas, is something wrong?”

Yes, he thought. I am enthralled by you, and it is the worst thing that could have happened to us both.

He folded his hands behind his back. “You have shown a wisdom I have not seen since… since my deepest journeys into the ancient memories of the Fade,” he told her. “You are not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” she asked.

I expected ignorance, he thought. Ignorance was all that he had encountered in the year before his agents had led Corypheus to the orb, after all.

He began pacing slowly on the balcony. “Most people are predictable,” he said. “You have shown subtlety in your actions. A wisdom that goes against everything I expected.” He rubbed his chin, then forced himself to ask her the question he really didn’t want the answer to. “If the Dalish could raise someone with a spirit like yours, have I misjudged them?”

She pulled a little face and shrugged. “I don’t know, Solas. I didn’t meet the Dalish that you did. I can only speak for my clan, and I like to think they’d have listened to your stories.”

“They are not stories,” he said, more harshly than he intended. “They are memories collected during my journeys in the Fade.”

Her expression grew apprehensive once more. “I know. I didn’t mean… I don’t mean ‘stories’ in a bad way. Any good story is like a pearl, right? Under all the shiny layers, there’s a grain of truth.” She smiled tentatively. “That’s what Deshanna always says, anyway.”

Solas gave her a sharp look. “Is that what you believe, as well?” he said. “That a story represents the truth shrouded in layers of fantasy and misdirection?”

She frowned slightly, and her eyes moved carefully over his face. “You could put it that way, yes,” she said. “But I think Deshanna’s way of saying it sounds nicer.” She offered him a soft and hopeful smile. 

He gazed down at her with an ache in his chest. If only she knew. If only she was aware that some of the most stubbornly held Dalish myths were seeded in a truth so close and so tangible that she could literally touch.  

He bowed his head and turned away from her to pace some more, but she suddenly grabbed his hand. “Solas, please,” she said. “Please don’t leave.”

That was the problem; he hadn’t been trying to leave. It was no longer his intention to leave her room, if he had ever even truly intended to leave. 

“Please,” she said. “Please look at me.”

Her voice was strained now, and Solas finally raised his eyes to her face. Her beautiful face that was bursting with hope and vitality and more wisdom than anyone in this static world had any right to have… 

She took a step closer to him. “I want to be with you,” she said. “I can’t stand the… not knowing. I just – I need to know. Do you…” She took a shaky breath. “Do you want to be with me?”

I do, he thought. More than anything, he wanted to be with her. But he didn’t have the right. The Dread Wolf had forfeited the right to have anything he wanted the moment he’d saved his people and doomed them in the same catastrophic stroke. 

He released a slow breath. He ought to leave. He ought to take his hand from hers and walk away. 

“It would be kinder in the long run,” he said quietly, almost to himself. Then, against his better judgment, he reached out and cupped Nare’s cheek in his palm. 

Her fingers tightened on his other hand, and Solas brushed his thumb tenderly over her lips. “I should not stay, Nare,” he said softly. “But losing you would–”

Her tongue darted out and flicked over the pad of his thumb.

He froze. Nare’s eyes went wide and darted to his face, and for the space of a heartbeat, they stared at each other. And in the space of that one single heartbeat, that one single pulsing squeeze of his heart, every final feeble barrier he’d been trying to build against her fell into utter ruin.

“Fuck,” she breathed. “Solas, I’m sor–”

He pulled her against his chest and kissed her. 

She let out a little whimper of surprise, but it was swiftly muffled when he coaxed her mouth open and licked her tongue. The next thing he knew, Nare was clutching the collar of his tunic and pressing herself against his front, and his hand was sliding into the thick russet ropes of her hair while his other hand drifted down her spine toward her bottom.

He gripped her buttock and pulled her against his thigh, and she broke his kiss with a gasp. When he gently pulled her hair, she craned her neck back and burst out a single word. “Please!” 

He didn’t reply. He sealed his lips over hers and walked her back toward the balcony railing, and then he was clasping her neck and stroking the line of her jaw and kissing her with all the enthusiasm of a starving man at a feast. 

He nipped gently at her lips and pressed his thigh between her legs. She pulled his tunic and tilted her groin against his thigh, and Solas sighed blissfully into her mouth. The taste of her tongue, the citrus scent of her hair as he threaded it through his fingers… it was every bit as good as he remembered from that scintillating night they’d spent together in her tent, and it was every bit as illicit and ill-advised as the torrid moment they’d spent locked together in the downstairs library this morning. 

And Solas relished it. He sank into her kiss without thinking, without guilt and without bothering to convince himself to stop, because there was no stopping this. There was no point denying the depth of his feelings for her. There was no point trying to push her away, only to have the memories torture him at every moment of the waking day and every second of the dreaming night. Denial was useless, a juvenile attempt to stave off a reality that was better confronted head-on, and if confronting this reality involved the delectable sounds that were trickling from Nare’s lips and the wanton way she was rubbing herself against his thigh, then Solas had no right to complain. 

Her hands left his tunic, and she began fumbling with the laces of her shirt. Solas broke their kiss and took her hands. “Nare, wait a moment.”

She wrested her hands from his and gripped his tunic again. “Don’t go,” she begged. “You can’t – don’t – don’t leave me again, please…”

“It is not my intention to leave,” he said soothingly. “I wish only to speak more of what you told me before. About your other… partners.”

He couldn’t quite shave the disdain from his tone, but Nare didn’t seem to mind; she relaxed and gave him a wry smile. “You want to hear about how I’ve never had good sex even though I’m thirty-one?”

He brushed his thumb fondly over her cheek. She said ‘thirty-one’ as though her handful of years spanned an entire lifetime. “I do,” he said. “It is important, given where we are headed.”

Her tongue darted over her lower lip. “And where are we headed, exactly?” she asked breathlessly.

He smiled faintly, then penned her against the balcony railing and slowly lowered his lips to her ear. “To a state of considerable undress if your restless hands are anything to go by, da’len,” he whispered. 

She dragged in a raspy breath. Then Solas tipped her chin up and brushed her lower lip with his thumb again. “Tell me what sex was like for you before, Nare. It is important.”

She swallowed hard, then dropped his gaze. “It was… it just wasn’t good. They… I don’t know if it was them or me, but it… I thought I was ready before they, um, entered me.” She shrugged and kept her gaze on the floor. “I suppose I wasn’t actually ready, but I only know that now because you…” She trailed off, then looked him in the eye. “Solas, you make me… I didn’t want any of them like I want you.”

Her cheeks were rapidly turning red, but Solas gazed seriously at her. “You say it didn’t feel good. Did it feel bad?” he asked.

She pressed her lips together and lowered her gaze, and his heart twisted for her. “Were you in pain?” he said softly.

She took a tremulous breath. “I don’t think it was their fault,” she mumbled. “It – it hurt with all of them, so it couldn’t have been their fault, it must have been my–”

“Stop,” he said, quietly but firmly. “I must stop you there. You are not at fault.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “If they did not recognize your pain, they were not worthy to touch you.”

Her face crumpled. Solas took a deep breath to quell the sympathetic aching in his throat, then stroked her cheek with his knuckles. “Do you recall what I told you about the nature of magic back in the days of ancient Arlathan?” he said softly. “How new spells would spin out for years untold, echoing and harmonizing with those from countless years before?”

She nodded, and Solas gently brushed a tear from her cheek. “Just as magic could linger in an unending flow, so it was with sensations of a more carnal nature as well.”

She darted a glance at him. “What do you mean?”

“I have seen memories in the Fade,” he said. “Lovers twined together in a perpetual cycle of pleasure, bringing each other to orgasm through delicate touch and words alone.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Touching and talking only?”

“Yes,” he said. “It took time and patience, but these were privileges that our ancient forbears had in plenty.”

“That sounds… incredible,” she said softly. “Like an amazing dream.”

He let out a small laugh. “Yes.”

She gave him a shy smile. Then her expression became sly. “You’ve seen these memories, you say?” she said cheekily. “So you watch people doing more than just dressing their hair, it seems.”

He chuckled, pleased by the return of her humour. “So it would seem,” he said. He tilted his head. “Would you be interested in feeling what this is like?”

Her eyes went wide. “In… in feeling what, exactly?”

“In a climax brought to you through simple talk and touch,” Solas said.

Her face slackened, and Solas watched with satisfaction as her cheeks turned red – but not with embarrassment this time. No, there was nothing embarrassed about the way her spine was straightening and the obvious interest in her aquamarine eyes.

“Is that a yes?” he said mildly.

“Yes,” she blurted. “Yes, absolutely yes.”

He smiled at how eager she was. Then he reached for the laces of her shirt. 

She drew a tiny breath through her parted lips. His body thrilled at the subtle sound, but he forced himself to calmly loosen the laces. He carefully untucked the fabric from her breeches, then raised his gaze to her face.

“Lift your arms,” he said quietly.

She did as he asked, and he carefully pulled the linen shirt up to reveal the planes of her belly. Her breasts were bare beneath the shirt, and by the time he pulled the shirt off and dropped it on the ground, his cock was a rock-hard rod in his breeches, and Nare’s eyes were dark and feverish with want. 

He took a careful breath and looked her in the eye. “If I do anything you dislike, you must tell me right away,” he said. “This is never negotiable. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” she said.

He tilted his head. “Yes, what?”

She arched her spine slightly, drawing his greedy gaze back to her nipples. “Yes, hah’ren,” she breathed.

He smiled. “Good,” he said, and he continued undressing her. When Nare was naked, Solas stepped back and studied her. 

The fresh mountain air was raising goosebumps on her skin and bringing her nipples to pebbled peaks. The starlight had turned her skin to a lush shade of pearl, and at the apex of her thighs…

Her desperation was obvious, a glossy shine that glazed her cleft and the insides of her thighs, and the mere sight of her wetness was enough to lift a feral sort of hunger in the pit of his belly. He breathed slowly to master the hunger and scanned her slowly from head to toe, then took another small step away from her. 

“I will not lay with you tonight,” he said.

Her face slackened with disappointment. “What?” she blurted. “But–”

He interrupted her. “Not unless you ask me three times.”

She frowned. “Three times? Why…?”

“Because I need you to be certain,” he said. He reached out and lightly stroked the slick inside of her thigh. 

She shuddered at the featherlight touch, and he breathed slowly to calm himself before speaking again. “This is a gift, Nare,” he said quietly. “One that can only be given freely and without qualm. I will accept this gift only if you are completely certain that you are ready to give it.” 

“And what if I asked you to fuck me three times right now?” she said.

He smirked. “Even though I spoke to you of the ebb and flow of pleasure through careful words and gentle touch?” he said. “You wish to curtail that before I have even begun?”

She wilted. “No, hah’ren.”

He chuckled. “A wise choice, da’len.” Then, very gently, he slid two fingers between her legs.

She bucked her hips and moaned, and Solas greedily enjoyed the needy sound before withdrawing his fingers from her warmth. When she opened her eyes and met his gaze, he licked her sweetness from his fingers.

She pressed her thighs together. “Fuck,” she whined.

Her voice was strained with need, and the restless hunger in his gut stirred once more, but he forced himself to ignore it. He tilted his head at her bedroom. “Go inside and wait for me to join you,” he said.

“How should I wait?” she asked eagerly.

He raised his eyebrows in appreciation. For a woman who had never engaged in such roleplay before, she was adopting it seamlessly. “You should stand,” he said. “Near the couch is fine.” 

She nodded, then practically ran into the bedroom, and Solas followed her more slowly. When he was facing her, he clasped his hands behind his back. 

“Ina’lan’ehn,” he said quietly. “You know the meaning of this word, da’len?”

She nodded. “It means, um… beautiful.” She smiled awkwardly and dropped his gaze. 

“That is correct,” he said. “But there is another more subtle meaning as well.” He began to pace slowly around her. “It refers also to the manner in which a thing of beauty brings out the finest traits in all that surrounds it.” He stopped behind her, then tucked her hair over her shoulder and brushed his knuckles along the length of her spine. 

She shivered prettily, and Solas leaned in close to her ear. “You are beautiful, Nare. But the reflection of your spirit on those around you is what makes you truly exquisite.”

The tips of her ears were turning pink, but she laughed softly. “You sweet talker,” she said. “You’re just flattering me.”

He paused and tilted his head. “Do you think me to be an idle seducer, Nare?”

“No!” she exclaimed. “No, of course not.”

“I should hope not,” he said. “It is not my intent to shower you in disingenuous flattery.”

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “Oh, Solas, that’s not what I meant. I’m just– ah...” She trailed off, and for good reason; Solas was smoothing his hand over the curve of her bottom. 

He squeezed the supple curve of her butt, then skimmed his fingers from her wrist up to her shoulder. When he trailed the tips of his fingers along the side of her neck, she inhaled shakily and tilted her head to the side.

She seemed to be enjoying his touch and his talking, but in truth, Solas was a bit disappointed in himself. He could see why his words might seem like mere flattery to her; the common tongue of this time was a crude language without any of the inherent magic or lilting fluidity of his native tongue. This language lacked the layers of metaphor that Elvhen words so neatly encompassed, so of course his words didn’t have the proper intended effect: they weren’t the words he truly meant. 

He frowned, then dismissed the quandary for now. He refused to let a foible of language interfere with Nare’s pleasure. He would simply have to get around the linguistic hurdle in a different way. 

He slid his arm around her waist and rested his palm on her belly. She gasped and tilted her head back against his collarbone, and he brushed his lips over her ear once more. “Are you opposed to the use of magic during sex?” he murmured.

“Magic during sex?” she panted. “I… I’ve never – but no, I’m not opposed, not at all.”

“Good,” he said. He slowly slid his hand lower, and when his hand was cupping her sex, he gently pressed his middle finger into her cleft. 

She mewled and jerked her hips, and Solas gently kissed her ear. “Patience, Nare,” he whispered. He traced a tiny pattern between her legs with the tip of his finger, then whispered a word in Elvhen: “Isalath’is.” 

A tiny burst of magic warmed his palm, and a rush of pleasure surged through his body as the glyph took effect. He bit the inside of his cheek to control his reaction, but Nare gasped and arched uninhibitedly into his chest. 

“Solas!” she moaned. “Gods, fuck, I feel so – what is that?” She breathed hard and pressed her bottom back toward his throbbing cock. “What–? How did you…?”

He hastily shifted his pelvis away from her tempting curves. “I linked your desire to mine,” he told her breathlessly. “I can feel your lust, and you can feel mine. We are joined this way until I undo the glyph.”

She moaned and wiggled her hips. “It feels amazing.” 

“I am glad you enjoy it,” he murmured. Then he removed his hand from her body and stepped away from her.

She whimpered and gazed desperately at him as he slowly made his way around her. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” he said. “I simply wish to look at you.” He paused in front of her and clasped his hands behind his back. He perused her slowly, lingering on the rosy peaks of her nipples and the dip of her navel and the lean lines of her thighs as they flowed down to her calves and her pretty little toes, and with every second that he spent staring at her, her desperation surged more strongly through his groin by way of the magical glyph. 

She shifted restlessly and arched her back. “Solas…”

He raised his eyes slowly to her face. “I meant what I said before, da’len. You are truly exquisite. Your beauty captured my attention, but your spirit… A single conversation with you, and I was enchanted. Your passion, your curiosity, your open mind…” He reached out and brushed his knuckles over her belly, and when her muscles jumped taut beneath his touch, he smiled.  

He looked up once more into her blazing blue eyes. “You are infinitely tempting,” he told her. “A flame that flickers in my mind when I am attempting to sleep at night, but instead I ruminate on thoughts of you.”

“You think of me at night?” she asked breathlessly.

He gave her a reproving look. “Did you truly think that incident in your tent was the first time I fantasized of you?”

Her jaw dropped and her cheeks turned pink, and Solas smiled faintly. “No, Nare,” he said. “That was not the first time.” He stepped close to her, then gently took her hand and placed it over the bulge in his breeches.

She instantly molded her fingers over his cock. The resulting rush of pleasure raced through his blood, then rushed through him again and again thanks to the glyph that linked them.

Nare whimpered and squeezed his manhood, and Solas shamelessly enjoyed her touch for a moment more before stepping away from her and drawing a deep and bracing breath. His whole body was roaring with hunger, but he couldn’t sate it yet; he couldn’t sate himself on the infinite feast of Nare’s passion until she asked him three times to take her. 

“Solas,” she begged. “I want to touch you…”

“Not until you come, da’len,” he said firmly, both as a reminder to her and to himself. “You must come for me first. I want you to think about me wrapping my fingers around my cock.”

He balked mentally at his own clumsy words; he couldn’t decide if they sounded seductive or silly in the common tongue, but Nare seemed more than pleased: the minute the word cock left his mouth, Nare’s reflected pleasure pulsed deep down in his belly. 

“Mhmm,” she moaned. “More, please…”

Ah, good, he thought. He began slowly circling her again. “I want you to think about my hand sliding along the length of my cock,” he said. “Imagine me dreaming of you while I grip myself, wishing it was your hand instead.” He reached out and brushed his thumb over her nipple.

She jerked at his touch. “Yes,” she moaned. “Yes, please, I want to…”

He stopped behind her once more and wrapped his fingers around her throat, and she arched her spine with a gasp. 

He brushed his thumb along her neck. “Think of this, Nare,” he said. “Focus on my hand here on your neck.” He stepped closer to her, then pressed his groin against the cleft of her ass and gently squeezed her throat.

She mewled and twisted her hips fitfully. Her pleasure surged through the glyph they shared, and he released a shaky sigh before doggedly resuming his talk. “Think of me taking you from behind,” he murmured. “How it would feel for me to fill you up and spill my… seed inside of you.” He squeezed her throat once more and pumped his hips teasingly against the bare curves of her ass. 

She sobbed and pressed her hips back toward him. She was near, so near to the precipice of her own pleasure, and if he spoke to her just so… 

He nipped her earlobe and pressed his hips to the curves of her behind. “Are you thinking of this, Nare?” he rasped. “Are you thinking about me fucking you?”

She shuddered and cried out suddenly, and Solas gasped: her climax had finally struck, and it was shivering through both of them in tandem. 

“Ah, y-yes!” she cried. She strained back against his chest and dug her nails into his wrist, and he squeezed his eyes shut in ecstasy: her peak was pulsing through his body, pouring through his abdomen like a scintillating burst of bliss, and he groaned helplessly as Nare shuddered against his chest. 

“Fuck me!” she cried.

He forced himself to take a deep breath. His cock was pounding from the referred pleasure of her climax, and he was desperate to do as she asked, but he couldn’t – not yet. 

Not until she asked it of him three times.

“That is once, Nare,” he said, in the calmest tone he could manage. “You have now asked me once.”

She gasped in another breath and nodded, and Solas released her throat and stepped away from her. The moment he released her, she fell to her knees in front of him and reached for his belt. 

His cock jerked in his breeches, but he hastily took her hands in his. “Patience, Nare,” he scolded. 

“Let me suck you!” she blurted. She shuffled closer on her knees. “I want your cock, Solas, I – I want you in my mouth, please…”

He raised his eyebrows. “Is that a command, or a request?”

“A – it’s a…” She broke off and gazed pleadingly up at him. “Please, hah’ren, I want… can I suck your cock?”

“Yes,” he said. With slightly shaking fingers, he unbuckled his belt and pulled his tunic over his head. He stripped as efficiently as he could without making a fool of himself like an untried youth, but in truth, he was feeling like exactly that: an eager and untried youth bursting with enthusiasm and hunger and barely a thread of discipline, and the reflection of Nare’s voracious hunger through the glyph wasn’t helping matters. 

He finally shucked his breeches, and Nare whimpered and crawled toward him. “Please, hah’ren...” 

“Not yet,” he told her. He sat gracefully on the couch, then took his manhood in his fist. 

Her eyes grew wide, then wider still when he ran his fist along his length, and he couldn’t decide whether the accompanying pulse of pleasure in his gut came from himself or from her. He stroked himself three more times, and when Nare was mewling and writhing her hips like a cat in heat, he finally gave in.

He patted the couch beside him. “Lay here on your belly,” he instructed. 

She jumped to her feet and obeyed him, stretching out on the couch and resting her palms on his thigh and his hip. Before he could give her any further instructions, she took his cock deep into her throat. 

Shocked and thrilled, he groaned and jerked his hips, and Nare mewled around his length. Then she was suckling him with deep, quick strokes, her lips firm around his shaft and her fingers digging into his thigh, and it felt – fenedhis, it was good, too damned good, far too good and too fast, and his pleasure was rising and hers was rising too and she was grinding her hips unconsciously against the couch as she suckled him, and –

And it was too much. “Slow down, da’len,” he gasped. He ran his palm gently over her hair, then began gathering her hair in his hands. 

She whimpered and continued suckling him, so Solas gently pulled her hair.

She released his cock with a gasp. “Please!” she sobbed. “Please, hah’ren, let me...” 

“Slowly, Nare,” he said in a firm tone. “Go slowly. There is no need to rush. We have time.” 

She whimpered and pressed her hips into the couch, and her nails bit into his hip. “But I waited so long, I’ve been waiting, I–” 

He pulled her hair again, more firmly this time. “Slowly,” he said, very quietly. “Will you obey me, da’len?”

She sobbed again but nodded her head, and Solas lessened his hold on her hair. As soon as his fingers loosened in her hair, she took him in her mouth once more, but the heated strokes of her lips and throat were deep and slow this time.

Solas sighed blissfully and flexed into her lips. The pleasure was just as great but less urgent now, and he was better able to concentrate on Nare’s pleasure as well. He slid his free hand over her shoulder, then down along the smooth curve of her spine. 

He lovingly ran his palm over her bottom, and she jerked and moaned into his cock. Riled and encouraged, he stroked the smooth globes of her bottom until she was writhing, then slid his hand lower still and smoothed his fingers over her inner thigh.

She jerked again and released his cock just long enough to let out a feral little cry, and Solas groaned as his pleasure surged in time with hers. Her slickness was smeared across the inner margins of her thighs, and he had no doubt that it would grace the couch as well when they eventually stood. 

He slid his hand back up to stroke her bottom, and Nare arched her spine and began sucking him faster. 

Solas gasped in a breath and pulled her hair. “Slowly, da’len,” he groaned. 

She obeyed him, but arched her spine further and wiggled her hips, and Solas squeezed her buttock. She moaned, and he clenched his jaw to stifle his own pleasured moan: her desire was so acute and tense that he could feel it through the glyph. Her fingers were digging into his thigh and his hip, and as he continued to caress her ass, she strained to lift her hips toward his hand… 

So Solas followed his instinct and spanked her.

It was a small spank, just enough to feel a hint of sting through his palm, but Nare suddenly released his cock and cried out, and Solas gasped helplessly as her pleasure mirrored itself through his limbs. 

“Solas, fuck me!” she wailed. 

He forced his eyes open and dragged in a breath. “That is two times,” he gasped. “You have asked me twice now, Nare.”

She moaned and nodded, then dipped her head low and slid her lips over the head of his cock, but Solas stopped her with his hand on her chin. “Enough now,” he panted. “On your hands and knees, da’len.”

She sobbed with frustration but did as he asked, and a moment later she was on all fours on the couch while Solas stood beside the couch and stared at her, trying desperately to calm the inferno of desire that was raging at him from deep inside his gut.

He breathed deeply to try and cool his desire, but it was impossible – no, that wasn’t true. It wasn’t impossible; Solas just didn’t want to cool it. This desire, this sheer and breathtaking lust, the way he felt when Nare looked at him and touched him and wrapped her lips around his aching cock, like a current of lightning and heat and pleasure was rippling just beneath his skin: it was a gift, a blessing he hadn’t realized he was missing, and he didn’t want to give it up. 

He hadn’t felt such passion in years. He hadn’t been this lustful in decades, and he hadn’t felt this alive in even more centuries before that. Before the casting of the Veil had stolen his reserves and cast him into a forced uthenera, his life had been a series of catastrophes one after the next, each requiring as logical and passionless a solution as he could manage despite his rage and grief. It wasn’t until now, while staring at the breathtaking sight of Nare’s naked and willing body, that he realized the toll that the constant war had taken.

He hadn’t been alive when he’d fallen into that dark and dreaming sleep, not truly. He had been a shell of a man, a lifeless shell driven by the duality of vengeance and justice, and it wasn’t until now that he remembered what it was to be alive. 

It wasn’t until this moment, with this flame-haired woman splayed before him with her heart in her ocean-blue eyes, that Solas remembered what it was like to truly be alive.

“Solas, please,” she begged. “Please touch me.”

He drew a bracing breath and took a small step closer to her. “How should I touch you, da’len?” he said.

She glanced over her shoulder at him. “Will you… will you lick me, hah’ren?”

Her cheeks were starting to pinken from the bold request, and Solas smiled faintly at her. “There is nothing I would like more than to taste you,” he said. He ran his palm over her bottom again. “Spread your legs further. Let me look at you.”

She placed one foot on the floor and twisted her hips toward him. Solas swallowed hard, then slowly lowered himself to his knees behind her and ran his palms up the backs of her thighs.

She mewled and arched her spine, and a crystalline strand of desire dripped from her fragrant flesh down toward the floor. 

A roar of approval surged through his blood, rendering him lightheaded, and he forced out a breath. “Veraisa,” he murmured.

She glanced at him over her shoulder. “What does that mean?” she asked.

He tore his eyes away from her pussy. “It means ‘temptress’,” he explained. “One who inspires an endless depth of desire.”

She laughed. “I’m not a temptress!”

He shook his head slightly. “Nare, you cannot fathom the depths to which you tempt me,” he said softly. He lifted his hand and slid two fingers over her slippery folds.

She mewled again and bucked her hips, and Solas splayed his palm on her ass to hold her still. “Every shift of your body is a temptation,” he said. “Every time you speak, every time you laugh – you are tempting me more than you realize.” Nare tempted him, and as playful as he made this sound, it was a hard and brutal truth. Solas had never encountered a more delectable and dangerous temptation than Nare, and part of her danger was that she didn’t realize just how dangerous she was. Without even realizing what she’d done, she had lured him into seeing this world as more than just a deadened place. She had made him see these people as more than walking husks, and she shone with a sort of hope he hadn’t encountered in centuries.  

Nare had tempted him to love her, and Solas had fallen directly into the honeyed trap of her arms. And yet, despite the dangers and the pain that was likely to come, he couldn’t bring himself to let her go. 

It was selfish and unfair and exceedingly unwise, but he couldn’t let her go. 

He tilted his head and pressed his lips between her legs, and she cried out the instant he touched her with his mouth. He braced his palms on her thighs and lapped at her wetness, enjoying her nectar just as much as he had this morning, and when Nare began rocking her hips back to meet his mouth, his enjoyment surged even higher. 

He angled his head and caressed her clit with his lower lip, and she bucked her hips and sobbed. “Fuck, please, more of that…” 

He smiled at her shameless request. It would never fail to amuse him how vocal she was in the throes of her pleasure compared to her shyness at the start and end of their carnal episodes. 

He lapped at her clit and teased the swollen little nub with his lower lip until she was writhing, then kissed the precious bud and suckled it very gently. 

Nare gasped and clenched her fingers in the cushions of the couch. “Creators, yes!” she yelped. “Solas, p-please, that–”

He continued to gently suckle her clit, teasing her in between with long strokes of his tongue for the sheer pleasure of hearing her breathe his name, and all the while he could feel her pleasure building and surging through the glyph he’d traced between her legs. When she was right at the edge of her climax, he felt it between his legs and in the tension of her thighs beneath his palms. When she finally hit her peak, she arched her spine and cried out, and Solas lapped her clit and slid one finger deep inside of her. 

She jerked and let out a wild wordless cry, and Solas moaned helplessly into her flesh. He felt her, felt her orgasm as it pulsed through her belly and her thighs, and when he curled his finger carefully inside of her, it kicked their shared pleasure higher still. 

He moaned again, then leaned away from her and gasped for breath, his eyes fixed shamelessly at the joining of his finger with her dew-slicked folds. Then Nare suddenly shifted away from him. 

She fell to her knees on the floor in front of him and grabbed his shoulders. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please, Solas, fuck me!”

His cock throbbed eagerly, but he clasped her wrists and looked her in the eye. “That was three times, Nare,” he said seriously. “Are you certain that you want this?”

“Yes!” she cried. “Yes, yes, I’m sure, I’m so sure – Solas, take me!”

He paused for a split second. Take me. Like that foolish Dalish curse – may the Dread Wolf take you…

Nare clasped his neck in her palms and kissed him hard, and Solas opened his mouth to welcome the sleek thrust of her tongue. She tilted her head and aggressively slanted her lips over his, and Solas permitted her lusty kiss for a moment before reaching down and palming her ass. 

She gasped against his lips, and Solas took full advantage to thrust his tongue into her mouth. She pressed her breasts to his chest and clenched her nails in his collarbones, then broke from his lips with a moan when he rubbed his cock against her belly. 

She pressed her hips toward him. “Solas, please, please–”

“Lie on the bed,” he said.

Nare’s eyes widened, and he couldn’t blame her. His voice was rough and tense, and he sounded unlike himself – almost like a feral version of himself, in fact, but this only seemed to rile her further: she whimpered and clawed his chest and twisted her hips toward him, almost like she was devolving into something feral and wild herself.

He sealed her lips with another kiss, and she moaned into his mouth and grabbed his cock. He gasped, then thrust his tongue back into the precious heat of her mouth, but she was stroking his cock and trying to push his shaft between her legs even though the angle of their kneeling bodies was far too awkward for them to meld, and – fenedhis, he needed to wrest control of this situation before he lost it entirely. He needed to regain control before he did something hasty, like shove her down on the carpet and fuck her like the bestial roar of want in his belly was begging him to do. 

He pushed her away with one hand on her hip, but she whined and grabbed at his shoulders again. Veraisa, he thought, exasperated and riled in equal measure. He reached up and firmly gripped her chin. “Go lie on the bed, da’len,” he said roughly. “Now.”

“Yes, hah’ren,” she blurted.

He released her chin. She jumped to her feet and ran over to the bed, and Solas swiftly followed her. She crawled onto the mattress, but before she could turn over onto her back, he crawled onto the bed behind her and placed his palm between her shoulder blades.

“Lie down,” he said, and he pressed gently on her back. 

She did as he asked and laid flat on her belly. Solas brushed her hair aside so he could admire the side of her face and the naked canvas of her back, then slid his palm slowly along the center of her back and down toward her bottom. 

She whimpered softly and arched her spine, lifting her hips slightly in the process, and Solas forced himself to breathe through the mind-numbing haze of lust that was threatening to blind him. She was so beautiful, the perfect combination of pliant and wanton: she followed his every carnal command while actively demanding more, matching his every action with the most exquisitely pleasured reactions that a corporeal body could provide, and… 

And it was all for him. Nare wanted him. By her own confession, Solas was the only person she had ever wanted with this degree of sheer desperate desire. 

She wanted him. In this deadened world where apostates were reviled and his kin from the Fade were feared, Nare had listened to him and heard his stories and told him stories of this world in turn. She smiled at him, and she debated with him without writing him off, and now she was here, naked and stretched out on her belly and begging him to touch her with the twisting of her bare body. The scent of her, the sound of her whimpering voice, the complete and uninhibited acceptance that was implied by her willing and submissive pose: she was so raw, so visceral and tangible and real–

She was real. Fenedhis, she was more real than anything or anyone he’d encountered in all his time here – no, longer than that: she was the most real, genuine, guileless person he had known since before he was Fen’Harel. 

He exhaled shakily, stunned and overwhelmed by lust and adoration and grief and confusion, but the lust soon surged back to the fore as Nare restlessly lifted her hips.

She arched her spine again, and Solas’s eyes fell to the apex of her thighs – the fragrant and shining apex of her thighs where the glyph he’d traced was channeling her desperation straight to his cock.

“Solas, please,” she mewled. “What are you waiting for?”

He dragged his eyes back up to her face. “I’m not waiting,” he said. “I am watching.”

“Watching what?” she panted.

“You, of course,” he said. “The shifting of your body is like a tidal wave of lust. It is a sight to behold.” He reached up and tenderly stroked her hair. “You think you were to blame for your lack of pleasure in the past, but I assure you that the fault was entirely theirs.”

She stilled and dropped his gaze. “I don’t know about that. I–”

“You misunderstand me,” Solas interrupted. “This is not a question that is up for debate. This is a fact.”

She glanced at him again with wider eyes, and he stroked her hair again. “You are perfect, Nare,” he murmured. “Every part of you, exactly as you are. The precise shade of your eyes, the silk of your hair, the velvet of your skin: you are beautiful, and you are perfect. You are… passion,” he said slowly. “You embody it. It is evident in every movement of your body and every word you speak. It is not your fault that they failed to reveal this facet of who you are.” He smoothed his palm over her back and her bottom, then reached between her legs and petted the wetness there.

She gasped and jerked her hips, and his glyph flared with a fresh bolt of pleasure. Solas inhaled carefully and continued to brush his fingers between her legs. “This is part of who you are,” he told her. “This desire that you feel? The way you want to be touched–”

“I want you to touch me,” she interrupted. “Only you. You’re the only one I – I want you.”

A fresh pang of gratitude and grief squeezed his heart. To be wanted by someone like her — someone bursting with hope and youth and optimism, all the things he had long thought lost… 

He shunted the melancholy aside and stroked her wetness. “This is for me, da’len? This desire that is dripping between your legs is for me?”

“Yes,” she breathed.

“And the curve of your spine?” he asked. He stroked her back with his free hand and rested his palm on her bottom. “The way your back is arched, like a bow that is ready to spring. Is that for me as well?”

“Yes, yes hah’ren, yes!” she cried. Her voice was strained as she rocked her hips back toward his fingers, and Solas forced himself to breathe as he stared at her. She was wet and shining and ready, ready and waiting for him to take her, and the glyph between her legs was positively pulsing from the strength of her desire. 

He took his cock in his hand and slid his shaft teasingly between her folds. She jerked and clenched her fists in the covers, and Solas hissed in a breath. She was hot and slick and waiting, and the mere touch of her heat against his shaft the most pleasurable torture… 

He reached out and pulled gently on her shoulder, and she obediently raised herself onto her elbows. Then Solas slid his fingers around her throat.

She gasped and bucked her hips, and he hissed in another breath as his shaft glided teasingly through the slickness of her flesh. “Is this what you want, Nare?” he asked, and he gently squeezed her throat. 

“Yes!” she cried.

“You are ready for me?” he said. “You are ready for this?” His voice sounded rough and feral again, but he didn’t care; Nare was writhing and clawing at the bed, and the glyph between her legs was pulsing so hard that he could barely concentrate on anything else. 

He slid his cock along the length of her cleft once more, and she jolted and mewled. “Yes, yes!” she whined. 

He squeezed her throat again. “Yes, what?” he demanded. 

“Yes, hah’ren!” she wailed. “I’m empty without you, please!” 

Empty. That was how he had felt, before Nare reminded him what it was to be alive. Before she had appeared in his life, an accidental side-effect of his latest disaster, and shown him in the most wonderful and terrible ways that this world was worth far more than he thought.

His heart twisted, and he dragged in a bittersweet breath. “Then I will give you what you have been demanding,” he said huskily. And finally, at long last, Solas gave himself to Nare.

He gently gripped her throat, and slowly, very slowly so as to savour every long-awaited second, he slid inside of her. 

She let out the most beautiful little mewl, and Solas groaned out loud. She was so tight and slick and blissfully warm, and he shuddered helplessly at how exquisitely good she felt. He breathed slowly and pushed himself deeper, and before he was halfway hilted, Nare was panting desperately for air. By the time his hips were flush to the smooth curves of her ass, she was clawing at the bed and crying out in a strained and breathy voice, and the vicarious feeling through the glyph…

Nare was already at the edge of climax. From a single blissful stroke, she was nearly ready to come. 

Slowly, torturously slowly, he withdrew from her, and she moaned and twisted her hips. “Solas, please–”

“Be patient, Nare,” he breathed. He slid into her once more. 

She cried out and shivered, and Solas forced himself to breathe. She was teetering right on the edge of ecstasy, and he could feel the threshold of that ecstasy through the glyph between her legs, and if he did this right – if he moved inside of her in exactly the right way…  

“P-please,” she whimpered. “Please, please, I need you…”

He squeezed her throat and entered her in a long, smooth stroke, and she came.

She gripped the covers and let out a loud and visceral cry, and Solas cried out in turn as her tightness gripped him and her pleasure reverberated through his body. Her climax was a deep and throbbing pulse, as though her entire body was spasming from the crux of her thighs all the way down to her toes, as though Solas truly had filled a part of her that had been aching and empty, and he squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his jaw at the sheer intensity of it. By the time the crashing waves of Nare’s pleasure began to wane, she was sweat-laced and shaking and sobbing with pleasure. 

“Solas,” she gasped. “I’ve never… that was the first time I…” She trailed off with another sob, and Solas dropped a tender kiss on her back. 

“I know, da’len,” he murmured. “Take your time.” He caressed her back with his lips as she trembled and tried to breathe, and when her shaking began to wane, he carefully pulled out of her.

She cried out and reached for him. “No! No, please, I need more–”

He stroked her hip. “Turn over,” he said huskily. “I wish to look at you.” 

She swiftly turned over onto her back, and Solas stretched himself over her. He clasped her hands, then slid himself teasingly through her heat once more. 

She arched her neck and sobbed. “Please, please, don’t tease me, I c-can’t – I need you, Solas, please don’t tease me– ah!” 

Solas sheathed himself inside of her in one swift stroke. She threw her head back and cried out sharply, and Solas silenced her pleasured cry with a kiss. For a mindless, blissful time, he rocked into her and caressed her tongue with his own, and when she was rolling her hips up to meet him, he peeled himself away from her lips. 

“Passion,” he panted, and he thrust into her again. “Never forget, Nare. Never doubt that this is who you are.” 

“For you,” she gasped. “You’re the only – Solas, only you know me like this. I…” She trailed off as another trickle of tears ran down the side of her face, and through the rising wave of his pleasure, he could feel a bittersweet warmth rising in his chest. 

He knew what she had meant to say. He knew what she felt, because he felt it too. Through the conversations they’d had, through the passion they had shared and were continuing to share right now, Solas felt as though Nare knew him – truly knew him, even though she didn't and couldn’t know everything that there was to know. Nare knew his mind and the feral hunger that he had long thought lost. She knew his esoteric interests and she knew his quixotic moods, and she wanted him anyway.

He kissed her again and rolled his hips, and Nare moaned into his mouth, and in a matter of moments they were breathing and fucking each other in a frenzy of rapidly rising rapture. Her palms were hot and sweaty against his own, and he was pumping into her in a driving rhythm and savouring her every gasping moan, and at the moment that his climax finally crashed over him, he had no resistance left to stop the words from leaving his mouth. 

He shuddered and groaned, then pressed his forehead to hers. “Ar lath ma, vhenan,” he whispered. 

She gasped and squeezed his hands. “Solas, I–”

He cut her off with a kiss. When his climax ebbed away, leaving him boneless and spent, he finally lifted himself from her lips. 

She gazed up at him with those big guileless blue eyes. “Did you mean that?” she breathed. “That you…” She faltered and dropped her gaze, and Solas smiled at the inevitable return of her shyness. 

“That I love you?” he supplied. He brushed his thumb tenderly along the edge of her face. “I do mean it, yes.”

“Then why…?” She stopped herself once again and nibbled her lip.

Solas shifted onto the mattress beside her and soothingly stroked her belly. “Speak your mind, Nare. Never feel that you can’t speak your mind to me.”

She nervously licked her lips, then glanced at him once more. “Why were you avoiding me, then?” she said in a small voice. “I thought you didn’t want me.”

He gazed at her with an aching sort of fondness. “It wasn’t a lack of desire that prompted my childish behaviour. Quite the opposite,” he said softly. “I avoided you because…” He sighed and told her a very simple version of the truth. “Because you are a da’len, and I am a hah’ren.”

“What’s wrong with that?” she said. “I like that you have things to teach me. Besides, you aren’t that much older than me.”

If only you knew, he thought sadly. But Nare was blithely pressing on. “Besides, don’t you like being my hah’ren?” She gave him a cheeky little smile, but he could see the insecurity in the tilt of her eyebrows.

He skimmed his knuckles over her cheek. “I do. More than you know,” he replied. Even as a young elgar’venathe, he had always enjoyed teaching others and sharing his knowledge. And now, sharing in this kind of carnal knowledge with such an eager and exquisite pupil as Nare was better than the finest dream.

Her smile softened with relief. “Good,” she said. “Because I like it too.”

“Do you?” he said. “I couldn’t tell.”

She shot him a sideways look, then burst out a laugh, and Solas admired the pinkening of her cheeks. “You’re teasing me,” she said.

He smiled at her and tweaked a strand of her hair. “How can I not, when you turn such an endearing shade of pink?”

Nare laughed again, then rolled onto her side to face him and stroked his cheek. “I love you too, Solas,” she murmured.

He smiled at her and didn’t reply; there was no need to speak, not when the happiness in her eyes was a mirror of his own heart. He skimmed his palm along the curve of her hip, enjoying the simple pleasure of having someone so close and so dear whose bare skin was his to stroke.

Then Nare shuffled closer and tucked her head beneath his chin, just as she’d done that night they’d slept together in his bedroll, and Solas closed his eyes against a sudden burn of tears. In this moment, with Nare’s bare body wrapped in his arms and wreathed in the fragrant afterglow of their sex, he was happier than he had been in far longer than he could remember. 

And this happiness — this simple, undeserved happiness — scared him more than he could say.

He sighed softly and pressed his lips to her citrus-scented hair. He was Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf of elven legend, and in time he would be forced to assume that mantle again. But for now, he was simply Solas: a mild-mannered apostate with a passion for the Fade and a weakness for one red-haired woman named Nare.

For now, he was simply Solas, and he would enjoy the delicious simplicity of being a man in love. 

[for-the-dales]

Chapter 6: Solas

Chapter 1 (Leliana): https://for-the-dales.tumblr.com/post/185692342364/the-path-forward-chapter-1-leliana

           Solas dreamt of home. Of great palaces floating in the sky. He dreamt of grand and decadent parties that lasted for years. The sort of dances that would make a chantry mother faint. The food that would make a magister scream in envy. Solas lost himself in his own memory in this dream. It was a celebration Mythal had thrown, ostensibly to celebrate the work of an artist she admired. Solas wove through the crowd of moving bodies covered scantily in silks that seemed to have minds of their own. The music created by instruments no human had ever heard flowed through the room and tasted exciting. The music and the dancing had reached a crescendo. Solas closed his eyes and smelled the perfumes and delicacies. He could almost fool himself into thinking it was all real, and that everything that would happen after this had all been a bad dream. A nightmare. He opened his eyes however, and he could see the haze that hung over everything. The slightly blurred faces, the fabrics that couldn’t quite remember what design they were supposed to have.

           It was all a dream.

           Still, he could dream a little while longer. He could allow himself that.

           He reached the edge of crowd and wanted to weep. As blurry as everything else was, she was clear as day. Mythal stood on the balcony overlooking everything with a maternal smile on her face. He knew that she was always happy to make her children happy. She had dark hair that hung simply down to her hips and her deeply tanned face had only the slightest alteration from paints. Her red gown was simple too. The only thing she wore that suggested her status was a multitude of golden rings on her fingers and in her ears. The largest ring was her wedding band, which was made of intricately woven gold and was weighed down by more diamonds than most people could count quickly. Her husband was not in attendance tonight. They had fought recently. That happens when you’ve been together since the beginning of the world. She was the least extravagantly dressed person in attendance. But it didn’t matter. There wasn’t a person for miles around that couldn’t feel the power radiating from her.

           Solas caught her eye and her smile widened as she motioned for him to join her. As Solas walked up the steps to her small sanctuary he heard her voice as if she were standing next to him, whispering in his ear, “I need your help, I cannot do this alone.”

           Solas pulled aside the curtain at the top of steps and looked into Ellana Lavellan’s eyes.

           Solas shot awake as if someone had stabbed him. It felt like he had been wounded. He wanted to scream. He was sweating so much he wanted to throw himself into the snow outside his hut. It had been a long time since he had dreamt without being in control. He had decided he didn’t care for it. He would have to consult with Wisdom when he slept next. It would have to be tomorrow since he certainly wasn’t going back to sleep tonight. He laid back down and tried to slow his breathing. It was still dark outside, but Solas could hear the rumblings of people starting work. The sun would be rising soon. Solas rose with it.

           As Solas left his hut a few people nodded to him, but he knew no one in the camp really knew what to make of him. A free elvhen mage that didn’t seem to be frightened of humans or their Templars. Solas briefly considered acting more scared at the beginning, but ultimately couldn’t suffer the humiliation. He had spent enough of his life bowing to people who didn’t deserve to be bowed to. He walked over to a fire where some people were preparing breakfast and stopped dead in his tracks. Ellana Lavellan sat in the middle of a group huddled around the fire as she added a sprinkle of herbs to a soup she was making. Someone asked her a question and she laughed lightly before answering. Her laugh wasn’t condescending, and the woman who had asked the question smiled with her while she explained. She hadn’t tied her hair back yet, and it floated around her head and down her back like a dark cloud. She wore Dalish armor, but it wasn’t showy. The most elaborate parts of her were her vallaslin. It had been a long time since Solas had seen vallaslin that extensive. Of all of his people’s ancient traditions, why did this one have to be the one they carried down?

           “Chuckles! Come grab some food!”

           Solas shook himself out of his thoughts and turned to Varric. He sat to the left of Ellana and motioned for the others to move down so that Solas could come sit next to him. Everyone had turned to look at him now, including Ellana. She was smiling her benevolent and kind smile, and it worried Solas greatly. She did remind him of his old friend when she smiled like that. It put him on edge because he knew that kind of smile could be as dangerous a weapon as any knife. It was the kind of smile that inspired friendship and devotion.

           Even worship.

           Yes, the smile unnerved Solas, but he couldn’t just walk away now. Everyone was staring. He took the offered spot and bowl of the soup Ellana had apparently made. It was good, with spices designed to wake up the eater. Still, after his dream and remembering food before, it was dirt. He listened to the people around him discuss what needed to be done today. He noticed that the majority of those seated were elves. There were a few humans, but they wore the old and worn clothes of common laborers. The great Herald of Andraste ate among the common folk, it would seem. Even cooked for them. She was playing a very clever long game. He looked over at the woman in question and saw her listening attentively, asking questions here and there. The meal passed amicably and eventually everyone got up and went their separate ways. Everyone except Solas and Ellana.

           Ellana. What a ridiculous name. She said it with such confidence and elegance, as if it were not as meaningless as her religion.

           “Something you’d like to discuss with me?”

           Solas looked up from his empty bowl at the woman. She was looking at him with her large green eyes and unnerving smile.

           “Why would you think that?” Solas asked, setting his bowl into a pile of dishes to be cleaned.

           “You’ve been watching me since you walked up, but you haven’t said anything. I figured there was something you wanted to discuss with me in private.”

           She stood gracefully and extended her hand towards the gate of Haven and asked, “Shall we?”

          Solas did not bother to contradict her, instead he stood and followed her out of Haven and past the soldiers training just outside the gates. They walked in silence until they reached a short pier on the opposite side of the large pond in front of Haven. Ellana sat on the end of the pier with her feet swinging below. Solas elected to stand next to her, his hands folded behind his back. She leaned back on her hands so she could look up at him better, not commenting on his refusal to sit next to her.

           “You said you came from a Dalish temple.” Solas stated.

           “I did.”

           “I was not aware the Dalish had temples.”

           “I’m not surprised.”

           Solas tried not to let his hackles rise.

           “I should like to see one. Where would I find one?”

           “You can’t.”

           Solas did bristle some this time, “Excuse me?”

           Ellana sighed and looked forward, “They can only be found by believers. You have made it abundantly clear you don’t believe in my gods, so you can’t find it.”

           This made Solas pause, “That sounds like a strong enchantment.”

           Ellana nodded, “It is, it was a safety precaution put in place by our gods before The Fall.”

           “How do you know that they are the ones who cast the enchantment?”

           “That’s what all the stories say. Also logic. The enchantment has been in place since The Fall so it makes sense that the gods whose temples the protection is placed upon are the ones who put the spell in place.”

           “How do you know the enchantment has been in place that long?”

           “Written records that survive.”

           Solas felt his forehead crease and his eyes darted down to look at Ellana. He did not think any records survived from his people.

           “Did your people find them with temple?”

           Ellana laughed, “No, my people recorded it.”

           Solas sat slowly and carefully next to the woman. Finally he asked, “What?”

           “My people have inhabited the temples since before The Fall. It hasbeen thousands of years since then so obviously not all the records survive. That, in addition to the hardship we have dealt with, years of loss, flood, and fires. Much has been lost. Still, we preserve and learn from what we can. My temple doesn’t actually have many records on hand. Most writings and artifacts are taken to the temple of Falon’Din, the history keepers. They evaluate everything and present findings to the other temples every few years.”

           Solas’s head was reeling. How much exactlydid she know? How could he ask without giving too much away?

           Could she know everything and be messing with him?

           “Wait,” Solas’s train of thought suddenly skidded to a stop , “I’ve met Dalish tribes. They never told me about any of this. I seemed to know more from my dreaming than they did. Do you not tell them any of this?”

           “So, you assume because you walked into a Dalish camp and demanded information, they would tell you everything they know about their sacred history and religion?”

           Ellana looked at him as if she were talking to a child. Solas scoffed, “Why do you assume I was demanding?”

           The woman rolled her eyes, “Because I’ve had a conversation with you before, Solas.”

           “Still, with all of this apparent knowledge, why haven’t you used it to create more permanent settlements and civilization?”

           “We did once,” Ellana said quietly, “Just ask the Empress in Halamshiral.”

           Both were quiet for a moment. Ellana broke the silence and said, “The humans outnumber us, easily. They have more resources, more land, and more bodies to throw around. If we ever try to reassert ourselves again publicly, it would have to be a very delicate process. The humans are unnerved by people in power who aren’t exactly like them.”

           Solas was silent, she spoke truth and it frustrated him. Ellana wasn’t done yet though and turned to him, “Why do you even care?”

           Solas started a bit at that, “What do you mean?”

           “I mean why do you care. Ever since I’ve met you, you’ve only ever spoken about the Dalish with disdain. You even lift your nose up at the elvhen who live in alienages. You don’t seem to like your own people very much so I will repeat myself before we continue any further. Why do you care?”

           Solas turned to stare at Ellana and wanted immediately to defend himself, but she had shared much with him and he would do her the courtesy of considering her question.

           “I… have not lived much among other elves,” Not recently anyway, “and the few I have interacted with have not treated me with an abundant amount of kindness.”

           Ellana nodded, “I can see how that would color your perception, but have you considered why they would treat you in such a way?”

           “Like everyone else, they are afraid of what they do not know.”

           Ellana nodded again and turned back towards the pond, “That could be part of it. Have you also considered it was because they have had to be afraid? Have had to treat all outsiders with suspicion? The world is a dangerous place for elves. Surely even living separately you must still know this.”

           “I do. Still, it is frustrating.”

           “I can see how it would be. If it’s worth anything, I’m sorry you were not treated kindly, you didn’t deserve that.”

           Solas was quiet for a moment while he regarded the woman next to him, “Thank you.”

           Ellana looked back over to Solas, “When all this is over, would you like to see a temple?”

           Solas thought for a moment. If what she said was true, and it really was a temple of Mythal, it was very likely he had been there before. He didn’t know if he could go. Knowing that she wasn’t there. That she never would be again. He had purposefully kept himself away from elvhen ruins since he had awoken. He didn’t want to see his home like that. Ruins.

           “I think you might actually like it there,” Ellana said, still looking forward, “plenty of people to debate with. The priests of Mythal are rather known for that talent.”

           Solas chuckled, that much at least had stayed the same, “Maybe I will.”

           Ellana smiled at him again, and Solas found it just a little less unnerving.

           “So, were you raised in the temple or in a clan?”

           The light atmosphere shifted suddenly and Ellana looked forward again, “Neither.”

           Ellana tugged on a pendant he had noticed her wearing before. It was a carving of a dragon’s head, an old piece of leather was tied around one horn, and the bottom of the carving was smoother than rest after years of rubbing at it.

           “My mother was raised in a clan, I think.”

           Solas felt a pit in his stomach, but forced himself to continue, “You think?”

           She nodded, “Yes, this was hers, and I remember that she had vallaslin like mine.”

           “What happened to her?”

           “I don’t know. I was taken from her when I was five.”

           Solas didn’t say anything. It was the most emotional he had ever seen Ellana. She didn’t cry, but it looked like she had plenty of times before. After a moment she gathered herself and smiled. It was the smile that had unnerved him before, but now he saw it for what it was. She got up, bid him goodbye, and walked away.

           Solas spent the rest of the day helping the healers to stock pile salves, help those injured by rifts, and continuing his study of the Breach. He found it difficult to focus however. The People had fallen so far. The suffering they have endured. It was unimaginable.

           And it was all his fault.

           After trying to read the same sentence in his book for the fifth time he decided he wasn’t going to get any work done in his current state. He needed someone that could help him focus on what was really important. Not on just one example of suffering. He needed to refocus on the big picture. He laid in bed and quickly fell asleep. As soon as he entered the Fade he found himself in an old library that he had visited many times growing up. Tall trees wove together to make shelves covered in heavy tomes. The roof was nothing but beautiful green leaves. He looked around for his friend, Wisdom, but could not find them anywhere. Odd. They were normally here when he came looking.

           “Hello?” Solas called. His voice echoed strangely here.

           “I need to focus on what is really important.”

          His own words surrounded him as the ground beneath him gave way and he fell. He reached out desperately to try to reshape the dream, but to no avail. He landed on a cobblestone alley on a beautiful sunny day. There were plants hung along the walls drying, and several barrels were stacked along the walls as well. Suddenly a door behind him burst open and screams filled the air. A human man emerged holding a screaming elven girl. An older elvhen woman came barreling out after before being grabbed back by other hands. He couldn’t make out the woman’s face, or the faces of those holding her. But he could smell the spices. They filled his nose and made him want to be sick. The feeling was made worse when he looked at the face of the child and saw her bright green eyes rimmed red with tears.

           He shouldn’t be here.

           He tried again desperately to leave this dream, but still couldn’t break out.  Solas followed the child’s line of sight to see the woman being beaten in the alley. The girl screamed louder. Finally the guard yelled, “If you don’t shut up we’ll break her arm!”

           The girls eyes widned and she bit down on her lip. She looked back at her mother on the ground, now trying to stand back up. The woman looked up and stared at the child as if she were the only thing in the alley, the whole world even. The guards started walking again and Solas followed little Ellana out of the alleyway and into another memory.

           She was in a rickety old cabin that shook all around them. A storm raged outside and the only light was provided by the flashes of lighting in the sky. Ellana sat curled up on a small cot with a threadbare blanket covering her. There were seven other cots like hers in the tiny space, with other small children in them. All of them were soaked from the myriad leaks in the roof. All of them were shivering. In these conditions, Solas wouldn’t be surprised if half of them died in the night. Ellana was crying, but the child in the bed next to her was sobbing. He was screaming for his mother. For a cherished blanket. For a lost toy. There was a fireplace in the back of the cabin, but the wood was soaked and no matches were provided.

           Solas knelt next to little Ellana’s bed and watched as her eyes focused in on the child next to her. She gritted her teeth and sat up in bed with a look a fierce determination on her face. She looked at all the other little bodies in the room shaking from the cold and fear. Solas knew suddenly that all of them had come with her, had been taken from their mothers with the same purchase that took Ellana from hers. She got into the bed next to her and took the little boys hand. The boy squeezed her hand back and his sobs calmed some. She turned to check on the child on the other side of her bed, who had been quiet. She crawled out of her bed and onto the other little girls. She picked up the girls hand and felt that it was cold. She felt that the hand wasn’t shaking either. The girl wasn’t breathing. Her wide blue eyes were still wet from tears, but they weren’t crying anymore.

           Ellana flung herself back and Solas wanted to scream in rage. The other children had gotten up to see what had spooked her so bad. Ellana looked at all of their faces, and Solas could see what she saw. Despair. Complete and total heartbreak. No child in that room was older than seven. All of them were shaking and Solas was terrified his earlier prediction would prove to be true. Ellana’s little face set again as she got out of bed. She went over to the fireplace and knelt down.

           The oldest looking child, a girl, asked, “What are you doing?”

           Ellana stared at the dark fireplace, “My mamae taught me a trick. In the winter when it would get cold and we couldn’t get enough firewood, she knew how to get warm.”

           “What’s the tri-”

           “Shush, I’m focusing.”

           The older girl looked annoyed but didn’t say anything else. Ellana held her hands over the logs, as if they were lit and she was warming them. Her face was scrunched up and her eyes were closed. He could hear her mumbling to herself, “I am warm,” over and over again.

           For a few long minutes nothing happened. The other children all looked at each other confused. The older girl rolled her eyes and laid back down. Solas pitied her, she was too young to be so jaded. Solas kneeled down next to Ellana and he could see the little tears coming out of her squeezed-shut eyes and could hear her sniffles.

           “I am warm.” She was crying to herself.

           Solas knew he couldn’t help, this had happened long ago for her, but still he whispered, “You can do this.”

           Her face twisted even further and her head tilted, like she was giving it one more go. Suddenly steam began to rise from the logs. More and more rose and the other children rose with it and gathered around her. Ellana still hadn’t opened her eyes. The other children lifted their little hands up to and prayed with her, “I am warm. I am warm.”

           Suddenly a small flicker of light appeared deep under the logs, all the children gasped. Their prayer grew louder and louder as the flame grew. Ellana didn’t open her eyes, but her voice rose with theirs. Solas could feel it coming off of the children in waves.

           Faith.

           The fire grew bigger and bigger until it engulfed the logs. Only then did Ellana open her eyes. The children cheered. Ellana didn’t. She stood and walked over to the little girl still in her bed with her unseeing blue eyes. The other children sobered and joined her. They gathered around the bed solemn as priests at the passing of great king. Very gently Ellana pulled back the blanket and placed her hands under the girls slight shoulders. The other children followed suit and lifted her carefully, so as to not disturb her. They placed her in front of the fire and covered her back up with her blanket, pulling it so it covered her face. The other children sat around her with Ellana in the middle. They all grabbed the child next to them and held each other. Solas knelt behind them and watched them fall asleep like that.

           The room darkened and Solas was pulled into another memory. Solas was still reeling from the previous scene that he didn’t even try to stop it. He was kneeling on a riverbank with trees all around him. For a moment he thought he was back in his library, but then another elf joined him. He recognized Ellana again, but she was older this time, maybe fifteen. She did not yet have vallaslin on her face, but she was gripping the same pendent she had been wearing earlier. The same determination was set on her face as she stared at the water.

           “Hurry it up!”

           Solas swung around with Ellana and saw a human guard standing a few paces behind them. There was enough detail in the armor now to confirm Solas’s suspicions. They were from Tevinter. Ellana wore no shackles, but she didn’t need to. She turned back and dipped her hands in the water and took a drink. Others joined her at the riverbank. Solas counted at least twenty before Ellana was standing and Solas was moving with her. It was dusk and it was obvious that this was a traveling party that had made camp for the night. A rudimentary fence had been set up with little bells on the wires hanging between wood posts. Bedrolls were set up inside, and Ellana walked through the only opening in the fence and sat on one. The guard at the entrance spoke to the elves present, “One hour until the end of dinner.”

           All of the elves nodded and the guard walked a short distance away to talk to another human. It was still light enough out, though it would be dark soon, and he didn’t really have to worry about them escaping. Solas could see the road from the clearing where they had made camp and recognized the Imperial Highway. Solas looked back at Ellana and could see that she wasn’t looking at the road. Her eyes were deadlocked on the river. Another elf sat on the bedroll next to hers so that both of their backs were facing the guards. Solas recognized her face as the older girl from the shed.

           “Don’t even think about it.”

           Ellana smiled but didn’t take her eyes off the water, “Too late.”

           “Are you crazy,” The girl was whispering but Solas could tell she wanted to scream, “You can’t swim.”

           “I can float. I can grab a piece of wood and kick. That’ll help me float faster.”

           “You’ll drown.” The girl hissed, looking increasingly desperate.

           Ellana turned to look at her and asked, “Are you going to tell?”

           The girl scoffed, “Of course not.” She hesitated for a moment, “I just don’t want you to die.”

           Ellana held her pendant firmly and looked back at the water, “I’m not going to die.”

           She seemed to be saying it more to herself than her friend. The memory blurred and her friend drifted away. There was movement around Ellana, but she didn’t take her eyes off of the water. The sun sank in the sky, and the guards were finally drunk. Solas knew that she would be all right, but the air was thick with tension and it was hard for him to breathe. Finally, Ellana rose. She looked behind her and saw that the guards weren’t paying attention. She looked down at the small pack next to her and thought for a moment. She grabbed only a small shiv out of it and stuck it in a small pouch tied at her waist. She took off her necklace and reached into her shirt to tie the cord tightly around her breast band. She took off her boots and started to walk casually towards the water. Solas could see other elves heads rise and look at her. Their idle chatter stopped and she began running. Solas heard a guard shouting behind her but she was moving too fast. Solas ran along side her and watched her face scrunch up the same way it did when she had made fire just as she jumped into the fast moving river. Solas was dragged under with her and couldn’t tell which way was up. All he felt was the water, and the fear. It dragged him down and he kicked his legs desperately and brought himself above the surface. He saw Ellana do the same and desperately try to keep herself above the surface. Solas was pulled back under and didn’t see anything else.

           When he could open his eyes again, he was staring up at the night sky. He turned and saw Ellana a few paces away puking up water and bile, her feet still in the water. Once she could breathe again she was laughing. Solas could feel her jubilation. Her freedom. It was gone the moment they both heard shouting. They spun to look at the opposite bank and could make out torch light in the distance through the trees. In a moment Ellana was on her feet and she was running. Solas could only follow. They ran together through the forest and Solas could feel the fear rolling off Ellana in waves, but she didn’t slow down. The trees almost seemed to part for them. Showing them the way. Solas turned his head and saw that they were in fact closing behind them.

           Time seemed to melt away as they ran. They ran through heat, through rain, through forests, through snow. They just ran. Solas could see Ellana getting thinner, could see her wearing down. Finally they reached a bog. From the state of Ellana’s clothes she must have been on the run for weeks, if not months. The pendant was clutched in her right hand with the cord wrapped around her wrist. Her left hand clutched the small shiv desperately. Ellana had abandoned her shoes when she left, and the bog was treacherous. Ellana was soaked and exhausted but forced herself to keep moving. She couldn’t last though, Solas could see that clearly. She was starving, hadn’t rested, and from the sweat on her forehead was likely very ill. She was trying to climb a small hill when her feet finaly gave out and she collapsed in the mud.

           With what was left of her strength she rolled onto her back and wailed. It was thunderous. Solas felt it in his soul. She had fought for so long to die on this hill in this bog. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks as she wailed. If she were caught now she didn’t have to worry, she wouldn’t survive the journey back to the Magister anyway. She turned her head to the side and looked at the pendant she clutched. Solas strained to hear her whisper, “I’m sorry. I don’t know any of the right words. My mother used to sing them, but I don’t know them anymore.”

           She pulled her arm with the pendent to her chest and clutched tight, whispering, “I don’t even know your name.”

           The scene began to fade when Solas heard a gentle feminine voice float down around them, “Her name is Mythal, and she has brought you to safety.”

           The last thing Solas saw was a glowing elvhen woman reaching down to Ellana.

           “I need to focus on what is really important.”

           Solas heard his own voice again and was suddenly back in his library. Wisdom stood in front of him. Solas collapsed to his knees in front of his friend, breathing heavily. Wisdom bent down in front him and said, “When you only focus on the big picture, it can be hard to remember why your goals are so important.”

           Wisdom reached down a hand and pulled Solas to his feet, “You do not trust her because you do not trust faith. It has betrayed you, and many others. You must also understand that your experience is not universal. Faith can be a good thing; it can bring strength where none exists. Make the impossible, possible. She is strong because she has had to be. Clever because she has had to be. Manipulative because she has had to be. You of all people should understand.”

           Solas nodded. Wisdom opened their mouth and a strange mix of Ellana’s and Mythal’s voice came out, “I need your help. I cannot do this alone.”

           Solas shot awake.

------

Chapter 7: https://for-the-dales.tumblr.com/post/188454450694/chapter-7-vivienne

[pellelavellan-a]

'A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.'

Mallas Theron of Clan Lavellan

NICKNAME(S):

Vhenas (Pelle)

Little Arrow ( Durgen)

AGE:

22 (deceased)

RACE:

Dalish Elf

GENDER:

Cis Male

HEIGHT:

5'7" (170.18 cm)

WEIGHT:

142lb (64 kg)

MARITAL STATUS:

In a relationship at the time of death

SEXUALITY:

Homosexual

AFFILIATION:

Clan Lavellan

TITLE:

N/A

RELIGIOUS VIEWS:

Dalish

CLASS:

Rogue (Dalish Hunter)

ALIGNMENT:

Neural Good

FACE CLAIM:

Marcel Boroweic

INTRODUCTION:

Mallas was the youngest son of Clan Lavellan’s battle master, Assan Theron, as well as the late Keeper’s secret lover for several years. He was not only a confidant to Pelle during his life but also a dear friend who often offered a little more than moral support. 

BIO:

Mallas and Durgen’s mother died giving birth to Mallas in the summer of 9:19 Dragon. Their father Assan had to fight his grief not to blame his youngest son for the loss of the love of his life, but he struggled for a very long time. He knew the tragedy was not the child’s fault, but anytime he looked upon Mallas, it reminded him what he lost to receive his son. 

He never truly forgave Mallas for this, but he elected to keep these feelings to himself. 

As Mallas became a child, it was obvious to his father that he was nothing like his brother Durgen. He took little interest in the hunt or anything that had to do with his father’s line of work. He instead spent all his time wishing he could cast spells and study the ancient lore like Deshanna’s young apprentice. For years his father was actually worried that the way Mallas was drawn to magic was a sure sign that he would develop magic. 

This he couldn’t allow and so he pushed very hard for Mallas to become a hunter. 

Mallas, even at his young age, was very unhappy with the decision. He didn’t understand why his father was forcing his profession on him, or why his father frowned upon him learning anything past what he was taught through stories told by the clan’s Hahren, Faolan Sibil. He begged Faolan to teach him to read behind his father’s back. Faolan, who disagreed that a hunter could not both be skilled with a bow but also educated, agreed to teach him what he knew. 

Even more than that, Mallas also crept into some of Deshanna’s lessons about their history with Pelle, hungry to also learn the lore and maybe get his hands on a book or two. It was because of this secret tutoring, that Mallas and Pelle became very fast friends. 

It wasn’t incredibly often that they spent an extended amount of time together thanks to being trained to perform separate duties for the clan, but when they did the two could converse for hours if they were allowed. 

As the years went on into Mallas’ adolescence, he soon discovered something else about himself aside from his love of learning...he also had what some might call an unnatural attraction to men. 

He knew he could never bring this up around his father, nor even Durgen. Nobody was allowed to know--what an awkward position it would put him in. By the time he was in his teens, he’d been trained enough as a hunter that he was allowed to go on hunts with the marked pack (those with their vallaslin) to shadow them and learn from them. 

He often was paired with his father, brother, and another of the young hunters in training Talwinne Yevys, the blacksmith’s son. While he would never say it aloud, he was very jealous of Talwinne--or he supposed more the way his father idolized Talwinne and seemed to prefer him over Mallas himself. 

While Mallas wasn’t a bad hunter, he did not have nearly the same talent for the craft that Talwinne did. To his father Assan, both Durgen and Talwinne were his pride and joy, both having the skill to take his place when he died (or so he would say).

And it wasn’t just his father who’d noticed, the other hunters did too. Many often suggested that Mallas give up the time in his day he spent reading to work on his hunting a little more--but Mallas refused. He wasn’t going to give up something he actually loved doing just to impress his father. 

Besides, he liked seeing Pelle when he borrowed books from him. They always had such pleasant conversations--and Pelle always knew what to say whenever Mallas seemed troubled about the whole situation with his father or his hunting and even offered to help him improve if he ever needed it. 

It never occurred to him that he actually had feelings for Pelle until Pelle began seeing the Keeper’s granddaughter, Aela. He couldn’t explain it but he felt overwhelming envy of Aela-- envy that was far stronger than the one he felt for Talwinne. 

What was worse was that he often suspected that Pelle was unhappy in his relationship with Aela. He never would have called out his dear friend, but he could have almost sworn that Pelle also did not exactly fancy women--he was still suspicious of it. 

Something seemed off about the way Pelle seemed more relaxed when Aela was away for days on end due to hunting. He’d also noticed the way that Pelle’s ever-present smile had seemed to gradually fade the longer he and Aela remained together. There were many times he asked Pelle if everything between him and Aela was alright, but Pelle always refused to go into any real detail. 

The mystery remained unknown until Mallas was seventeen years old when he went on his first as an officially marked hunter with a few other elves. Things had gone south and they’d run into some Tal Vashoth who hadn’t been kind about them crossing paths. Some of the hunters with him perished in the fight, but Mallas and a couple others managed to get away only to find themselves hiding in fear. 

Mallas had been injured in the fight, a broken ankle meant he wasn’t exactly getting anywhere relatively quick. Any other injuries he had simply caused his body to ache and bruise. If those qunari were to find them again, Mallas feared he might be used as bait while the others got away to return home and warn the clan. 

He really hoped it didn’t come to that. 

It would not be until the bodies of the dead hunters were found that a search party including Faolan, Talwinne, Durgen, Pelle, and a few others would be sent out to search for Mallas and the others. 

They were recovered without any conflict with the qunari and returned home as soon as possible. On the way back, and even after arriving back at the clan's encampment Pelle had taken upon the responsibility of taking care of Mallas. 

Mallas was grateful to Pelle for this, both for the healing hands and the kinds words of concern for him given that his father had spared him but the bare minimum. It had been a long time since he and Pelle had spent such long periods of time together--which made it difficult for Mallas to pretend that he didn’t have feelings for the other elf. 

It was in fact during the time they spent together that Mallas confessed his feelings for Pelle with a kiss, one that much to Mallas’ surprise, Pelle enjoyed enough to ask for another. Mallas apologized profusely, of course, feeling as if he’d overstepped into something he really should stay out of.

 But then he learned that his suspicions were correct, Pelle did indeed prefer men but much like Mallas, kept it a secret to save face. Pelle also explained that for him, Aela was not only a coverup--but in a way an obligation, and given the type of young man he was there wasn’t exactly a plethora of women lining up to bond with him. 

After that day, Mallas didn’t feel so terrible about kissing Pelle or touching him in ways that others might have frowned upon. He was now aware that while Pelle was bonded to Aela, he was not happy in the relationship. It was a duty to him, nothing more. 

For that reason, the two of them played with pleasure in secret, telling no one of the ways they explored other ways of intimacy with one another.

This game of pleasure play continued on for many many years. Though Mallas could not have Pelle openly, when the two were alone...the young mage was his. 

When the incident with Aela happened and Pelle went missing, Mallas panicked. He knew he could not beg or demand anyone to search for his lover, but still, the stress of not knowing whether Pelle lived or died drove him mad. He was relieved to learn that his lover was alive--but the state he’d found him in broke his heart. 

Pell changed after Aela’s death, it was hard for Mallas to watch. He tolerated it as Pelle sought comfort from his grief through offering his body to some of the other hunters who he knew would blindly fuck him with little regard to his well being in all of it. In a way, he felt that he could understand that Pelle just wanted to experience something mindless and a little painful in order to take his mind off of the depressed state he was in for most of his day... but still knowing that other people were sleeping with him--even being rather rough with him. It both made him jealous and angry at the same time. He resented the very thought. 

It was Talwinne who had talked Pelle out of his habit, advising him to seek healthier forms of coping. That was the first time Mallas felt that he had something to thank Talwinne for--as his advice did cause Pelle to realize that this habit of his was only hurting him more. 

He instead began taking walks into the woods in the early morning, sometimes collecting herbs. Mallas made it a note to join him eventually, looking for any able opportunity he could to spend time with Pelle. In due time, the walks stopped being what just that, now they were little rendezvous away from the rest of the clan. It was a time where Mallas and Pelle could be themselves without any fear of scrutiny. 

Of course, there were times when Mallas would be away on hunts, but when he returned he always made time for their little getaways, wishing they could have them every single day. If only. 

For the two of them, this pattern continued on as the seasons passed. There was always a spot they would meet, and when the clan moved they simply found another. 

Life continued this way until it was met with a stark end in 9:41 Dragon on a fateful day when Mallas returned from a hunt in the wilderness of Orlais. He’d asked where Pelle was the very moment he returned, excited to finally see his lover after being away for two weeks. Once told that Pelle had gone out to the clearing they often met at, Mallas happily decided he would surprise Pelle and visit him.

But he never arrived there...

He instead found himself running from hunting dogs, chased into a corner with an ankle that had decided to quit on him (He’s had a bad ankle ever since it was broken by the qunari in his teens). It wasn’t long until humans clad in fine clothes and armor came riding in to surround him on horses. He had become their prey--this was their hunt and much to his misfortune he was their freshly cornered game. 

It was those men who were the last Mallas ever saw. By the time he was found by his people, all there was to see was his broken body left for dead. 

[roguelioness]

Epicure

Solavellan, modern AU.

Thanks, @dreadhobo, for encouraging me to write this!

Lavellan wasn’t a huge fan of the dating scene.

Not that she was opposed to it. On the contrary, she very much longed to find someone to share her time with; someone she could care for, and who’d care for her in return.

It was just that she had a hard time finding people who’d stay after that first date.

She wasn’t unpleasing to the eye. She wasn’t ill-mannered, or boorish. She wasn’t mean-tempered or spiteful. No, her problem was not as significant as those, but- but she was aware it was off-putting.

She stared at her phone screen.  I know of a good restaurant nearby - the Gull and Lantern. It’s a small, family-run place, but they serve the most wonderful burgers, and I confess I’m a huge fan of their fries. Would that interest you?

Yes, she thought to herself, yes it would. She loved fries - absolutely adored them, as a matter of fact, the hot, salty, fried potato sticks delighting her tongue in all the right ways. Still, it was a risk meeting her date in a restaurant. It increased the chances of him stumbling into her secret by over- well, it was practically guaranteed he’d discover her shameful secret by the end of the night.

Her fingers hovered over the keys. With a defeated sigh, she quickly tapped out her reply. Sounds great! I love fries myself. What time do you want to meet?

She gnawed on her lip as she waited for him. How about seven? I can pick you up, if you’d like.

She dismissed that option immediately. If what she thought would happen was going to happen - and there was a very good chance it would happen - she needed her own way to get back home. If it’s all the same for you, I’d much rather meet you there, Solas. I hope that’s not an issue?

Not at all. So, tomorrow at seven?

It’s a date.

Creators, she flung herself backwards onto the mattress. What have I done? She liked Solas. He was quiet, well-spoken and polite. She’d never in a thousand years thought he’d find her attractive - or interesting, for that matter - but he did, and now they were going to go out on a date- a date that she was definitely going to ruin, and he’d never look at her the same way again, and she’d lose out on his friendship-

Calm down. Just calm down. It’ll be okay. Just- just think of the fries. Mmmmm. Fries. Fries are good. Fries are very good…

He was waiting in the parking lot, hip leaning against the side of his car. There was a frown on his face as he scanned through his phone.

She cleared her throat. “Hi.” she said with an awkward smile.

He looked up at her, a slow, wide, pleased smile growing on his lips. “Hello.” He pushed himself off the car. “You look beautiful.”

She blushed. “Thanks.”

He walked to her, long, fluid steps, an easy grace to his movement. “Shall we?” he asked, one hand lightly resting on the small of her back. This close, she could smell him - something woody and spicy, bringing to mind deep, mysterious forests. She liked it.

“Yes, please. I’m kinda hungry,” she confessed with a quick laugh.

“As am I,” he grinned down at her.

Solas had a table reserved for them, in a spot tucked away carefully in a corner by the window. It was clearly the best in the house, for it offered a spectacular view of Lake Calenhad. Between the moonlight illuminating the crests of the small waves that lapped at the docks, and the scent of the night-blooming flowers wafting in through the window, Lavellan was thoroughly charmed.

“What’ll you have?” The waitress was a matronly, full-figured woman with dimpled cheeks.

She made her order, as did Solas. “Oh,” she added just as the waitress began to leave, “could I get an order of fries?”

“Of course.”

The fries, when they arrived, looked glorious. All golden-brown and fresh, Lavellan could make out the tiny grains of salt on several of them. She waited impatiently for Solas’ food to arrive - which it did, moments after - and then began to dig in.

They were sensational. Lavellan added the Gull and Lantern to her mental list of favorite places to eat.

“Those fries look great,” Solas remarked.

She stilled, mid-chew. “Mhmm,” she offered weakly after she’d swallowed. “They’re- they’re good. Just, you know, like all fries.” She forced out a chuckle.

“Really? Let me try.” And he reached across the table, his elegant fingers gripping several fries, and before she could react he’d pushed them into his mouth.

What happened next was instinct.

She leaned in close, took a deep breath-

And growled - loudly! - “I. DON’T. SHARE. FOOD!”

This was why she hated going on dates. No one understood her ‘food selfishness’ as they called it. She didn’t quite understand it herself - she was generous with everything else, but not with food.

And especially not with fries.

Now absolutely miserable inside, she dropped her gaze to the table, and waited for him to leave. She was sure he would - everyone else had. They’d call her crazy, and leave. The nicer ones would pay for her share of the meal, but inevitably they all left.

“I apologize.” It was not just the words, but the calm sincerity with which they were said that caught her attention. “I did not mean to upset you.”

Lavellan could only gape at Solas as he quietly called over the waitress, and placed an order for a fresh plate of fries. She was speechless when the new order arrived at their table, as he took her half-eaten, now-cold plate of fries for himself, and placed the freshly-made fries in front of her.

“I hope that makes up for my transgression,” he smiled, his eyes warm and entirely free of any kind of judgement.

“I-I, uhhh-” she blabbered. It took everything for her to not burst into tears.

Those fries were the best fries she’d ever had in all her life.

Later on, when she was in bed, she found herself staring at the ceiling, her mind unable to think of anything else but Solas. He brought out a very strange feeling in her heart.

If it hadn’t been so absolutely ludicrous… she’d have called it love.