#virelan x felassan

[rosella-writes]

Dalish Week 1. Arlathvhen

I’m late, but I wanted to share anyway. 💚 playing a bit of catch-up for @dalish-appreciation-week

The Arlathvhen gathering of the Newly Instated Dales set its back towards the Applewoods.

It felt strange, to gather with little fear of being set upon by angry spirits or humans alike. The humans kept their holdings, their cities, their farmland, with the agreement that the Dalish held stewardship over the Dales. To the colonialist minds of the Orlesians, this meant an occupation — in reality, it meant that clans roamed freely, looked after the restoration efforts of animals and ecosystems that centuries of monocultures and war had nearly destroyed, and settled land disputes in the place of the Crown. It meant that they were free to inhabit the land as their ancestors would, and with the Veil slowly dissipating, the spirits were free to join them.

Virelan felt them press close, here where the Veil was especially thin at the edge of the Tirashan, and smiled. Felassan took her hand in his and squeezed — she caught the flash of a smile before he turned away to seek out his old friends in the crowd.

“There’s so many,” Tulin said. She could feel him close behind her. “I’ve never —”

“Seen so many Dalish elves in one place? Not even in the Fade, da’len?” she asked.

He stepped around her, neck craning as he looked over the heads of those around them. He’d grown tall and gangly at sixteen, and stood a half-head taller than most in attendance. He looked down at her with wide eyes, then smiled a giddy grin.

“Never.”

“Perhaps you looked too far in the past, my friend,” came Kieran’s fond, gravelly voice. He put an arm about Virelan’s shoulders and hugged her tight before pushing forward into the crowd himself. His hair had grown long, and Panasaam had braided it back behind his round ears — when he turned to Tulin to joke and elbow him, Virelan saw much of Loghain in the flash of his smile and lift of his cheek.

Panasaam followed her partner, pardoning herself with low, quiet murmurs, and finally snagged his hand. She looked back to Virelan with a question in her hawklike eyes, but ducked suddenly when her spiralling horn caught on a low branch.

“Is it alright — ouch, Kieran, will you — there, thank you. Mamae, is it alright if we take Tulin with us to explore? I want to visit Clan Ghilain’s halla.”

Virelan laughed. “You don’t need to ask! Go on, it’s fine. Just meet back at our fire by nightfall and I’ll introduce you to the others.”

She watched them go, smiling fondly to herself, and folded her arm over her chest. Over the years, merely holding on to her stump’s elbow had grown comfortable. What was more comfortable was observing this encampment, sprawled beneath the gnarled branches of hundreds of apple trees, full of elves from every corner of Thedas. She spotted a few familiar members of clans from Antiva, their veils hiding the lower halves of their faces and their kohled eyes glinting bright from beneath wrapped scarves. A few smaller clans of about a dozen individuals had come from the Anderfels, bearing goat pelts and knitted wares. A few more from Rivain had set up their camps with their adapted aravels, which showed signs of seafaring on their mollusk-encrusted hulls. A few members had already set to work scrubbing them clean.

In the distance, Virelan spotted Emrys Hawke and Merrill — she raised her hand in greeting, but neither one saw her, so preoccupied were they with their growing brood. Rhiannon Mahariel appeared at Merrill’s side, carrying one of Merrill’s children on her hip, and Zevran Arainai stood behind them, tossing yet another of the Hawke brood in the air again and again.

Virelan had not thought to live to see their families — all of them, Panasaam and Kieran and Hawke and their children — regardless of their blood, at a gathering such as this. Her heart swelled nearly to bursting at the sight.

What finally made it perfect, however, was the warmth of a hand at her back, and the soft sound of a kiss pressed into her hair.

“Vhenan,” Solas said, tucking close until she leaned against his side. “Are you certain you wish to have me with you? I would see you enjoy yourself, and that seems more likely if you go on without me.”

“No,” she scoffed. “Don’t be silly.”

He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. She looked up at him with what she hoped was a comforting smile — he looked down at her, his own face impassive and cool. A slight crinkle at the corners of his eyes warmed it somewhat.

“Put your hood back,” she hummed, pulling at its drawstring lace. “I would show you off here, my red-haired mate. Come on, you’re no longer relegated to the fringes.”

He raised his eyebrow, then glanced pointedly at the ground near their feet. She put her toe out and pushed over the statue of Fen’Harel without sparing it another look.

“See?” she chuckled, planting a kiss on his cheek. “Now you can come in.”

He rumbled a pleased hum, then lifted her chin with his finger and kissed her. “You think I need permission?” he murmured between their mouths.

“Only mine,” she chided, then pulled away.

With a firm grip on his hand, she led him towards the heart of this gathering of their people. Somewhere along the way, Solas did indeed put his hood back — his auburn hair, long and interspersed with braids and beads, fell free to his shoulders, and he finally allowed himself to smile.

[dreadfutures]

Blue‘s Gift Fic Offerings

Here are some abbreviated summaries of all Dragon Age gifts I’ve written.

OC Swap Fics

Fics written with someone else’s OC as the main focus!

treat me like fire. Gift for @noire-pandora. Oneshot.

Rating: E

When Solas had faced down her anger that day in Haven, Elluin had awakened something in him that yearned for more. He could hold his hands to the fire, admire it for its warmth at a safe distance, but ever in the back of his mind was a voice that wondered: what might it be like to actually hold the flames in the palms of his hands—to embrace the inferno? To witness the true extent of the danger, if only for the thrilling chance to return unscathed.

The Gift of the Hunt. Gift for @lalaen. Oneshot.

Rating: G

Gethrael Lavellan had known for a long time that he would never be the Keeper of Clan Lavellan. When he fell out of the Breach and was named the Herald of Andraste, his path might have seemed lonelier than ever.

A new discovery brings more of the People to the Inquisition than he had dared to hope. But at what cost?

-:-:-

General Gifts

all i wanna be is whites and waves. Gift for @noire-pandora​. Oneshot.

Rating: T

Solas removes the vallaslin of Mythal from his face after a fateful battle tests his loyalty to her cause. The elf who would one day be called Felassan is drawn to him in that moment. Based on the idea that Felassan’s nature is Hope the same way that Solas’s nature is Pride, which I first saw in @rosella-write‘s writing

-:-:-

The Mirrorverse.

The Dragon Age Fanfic Writers Discord Server anniversary (Aug 2021) generated a bunch of crossover-type gift fis and introduced the idea of a multiverse connected by eluvians. Thus, the Mirrorverse was born.

the eternal now of experience. Gift for @rosella-writes. Oneshot.

Rating: G

Ixchel is granted a glimpse of Virelan Lavellan and Solas, many years after he leaves the din’an’shiral.

She knows how hard it was for Virelan to believe their love might find root to grow again. She has not seen the road Virelan and Solas have taken. She has not seen the passage of time. But the mirrors grant her one last glimpse into the life of Virelan Lavellan, and it is a vision of love at long last.

turning stones to look for light. Gift for @rosella-writes. Oneshot.

Rating: G

In another world, Ixchel Lavellan has known failure and success; she has seen Solas lost to his despair, and she has seen him learn how to hope.

Ixchel holds another Lavellan's son in the gardens of Skyhold, and she tells him stories of a father who isn't his...but could be.

Walkers of the Lonely Path. Gift for many. Multichapter (5). Complete.

Rating: T

On the darkest night of the year, five beefy elven warriors and a plucky mage find six mysterious eluvians in the middle of sudden blizzards. Now trapped in a foreboding ruin, they must discover why they have been called here…and if there is a way out.

Dungeon crawl for the Buff Elf Agenda squad and friends.

-:-:-

Solavellan Hell Exchange 2022

Full summary post here (x).

the road seems too wild for mixing it with blues. Gift for @maebird-melody. Oneshot.

Rating: G

To the rest of the world, for once, he is not Solas, not Fen'Harel, not the Dread Wolf; she is not Lady Lavellan, not the Inquisitor. They are visitors engaged in discovery, and the world will indulge them for just this little while.

-:-:-

Arlathan Exchange 2022

Full summary post here (x).

Chrysalid. Gift for @enigmalea. Multichapter (9). Complete.

Rating: G

Imagining the journey Cillian of Clan Ralaferin, a DAI Multiplayer character and DAI NPC, took to find the path of the Arcane Warrior. Inspired by the annual Western Monarch Butterfly migration, and borrowing @rosella-writes ‘ Valor (aka Virelan) from her Arlathan AU.

No Punches Left to Roll With. Gift for @rosella-writes. Oneshot.

Rating: T

(Pre-Relationship Lace Harding/Charter.) Harding meets the enigmatic Charter, and over the course of their diligent work for the Inquisition, the two capable women are drawn together in mutual admiration...and maybe something more.

Comrades in Arms, Brothers in Broken Chains. Gift for @queenaeducan | @theharellan + @rosella-writes. Oneshot.

Rating: T

(Felassan & Agents of Fen’Harel.) Geldauran, a leader among Fen’Harel’s Rebellion, believes anyone who wears their vallaslin after being freed is a spy, a traitor, and a slave at heart. Felassan, who himself wears the brands of Mythal, makes sure to correct him. Felassan would know, better than anyone else, that there are a multitude of reasons one might wear the blood writing and still defy the gods.

He is, after all, the Hope of Fen’Harel.

Centerpiece. Gift for @ashalle-art. Oneshot.

Rating: E.

(Felassan/OFC/Fen’Harel.) Now freed, Revas returns to the ballrooms of Arlathan as a spy and a rebel. But beyond her vital work, she does not know how to enjoy her freedom. Her sometimes lover Felassan, and his lover Fen’Harel, are determined to teach her how. Everyone adores each other, everyone gets off, and a happy polycule forms.

sanctify my body with pain. Gift for @anatidae-dragonage.

Rating: E.  Please read the tags.

(Demon?/Lavellan/Solas.) Lavellan finds herself at the mercy of a Desire Demon, in the wake of Solas’s absence. Just when she is about to succumb, Solas himself -- her Solas -- comes to her rescue. Is it just another trick of the Fade? Or is he really here to save her...and fulfill her desires?

And was it her desire that brought the Demon here...or his?

When she wakes, she receives a hopeful clue.

Solas Hell Exchange 2023

Full summary post here (x)

strike a match (whisper my name). Gift for @darethshirl. Multichapter (7). Complete.

Rating: T.

(Solas & Dorian Pavus). Blood magic. Blight magic. Time magic. From the earliest troubles of the Inquisition, it is clear that the topics are intertwined, and Dorian is determined to tease it all out. He is, after all, the brightest thaumaturge Minrathous has seen in an Age. If only Solas would recognize the fact, they might truly get somewhere.

[rosella-writes]

Dalish Week 7. Campfire

I still have Travel I'd like to work in somewhere, but until then here's the ending of our Arlathvhen of the Dales with Virelan's ragtag little family. In which there's a small addition she's kept under wraps, and Felassan and Solas are the only ones to know... yet. For @dalish-appreciation-week

~~~

“Da’len,” Virelan chuckled, spooning light soup into Tulin’s bowl, “come on, eat!”

Tulin winced, but spooned up some soup with his fingerful of fufu all the same. “It pulls on my face. Feels weird.”

“So long as it doesn’t hurt, you’re fine. Tell your Pa if it keeps feeling funny.”

Emrys Hawke took his own food gratefully, then fed some in turn to the little ones in his lap. “Virelan, what is this? It’s delicious.”

“Do not chew,” Solas warned with a laugh. “You swallow it. There is no use eating fufu like potatoes.”

Virelan listened to them, smiling to herself as she looked around her at those who’d gathered around her campfire. Kieran and Panasaam sat opposite her, their faces lit by the coals — Kieran grinned and gestured with hands that lit up with magic at his excitement, and Panasaam listened and challenged him with a sparkle in her golden eyes. Virelan noticed at some point she’d gotten a chain of flowers woven around her horns. Emrys and Merrill leaned against each other, bent away towards their children while grounding themselves with their spouse at their side — Merrill looked tired, but happy, and Emrys had more grey in his hair and beard than ever. Tulin sat close to him, picking at his meal and stopping periodically to answer little Carver Hawke’s incessant questions. Solas passed behind Merrill on his way to the stream, bowl in hand, and bent to take her little stack of dishes from her outstretched grasp. 

Virelan leaned against the warm body at her left, then settled her chin on his shoulder. Felassan’s head dipped to rest on hers for a brief moment, then lifted as he looked at her. He pushed a loc behind her long ear, and chuckled when it twitched. 

“Do you grow tired, ara lath?” he teased. “It’s early still.”

“Ah, well.” She smiled up at him, and caught a glimpse of warm eyes and a gentler expression than his words implied. “You know how it is. I’m more tired these days.”

“You old woman.”

“Hush.” She shoved him playfully. “I’m older this time around, yes. But how different could it really be?”

Felassan didn’t respond at first, but then slid an arm around her and held her tight. He placed a firm kiss on her scalp. “Just don’t let that old wolf hear your complaints. He’ll fuss.”

“He’ll fuss no matter what I do.”

“Who will?” came a soft voice, then a thump of a body slipping down to sit near her side. Solas leaned close. “Tulin is fine, just more conscious of his skin than before. No need to worry.”

Felassan laughed softly in Virelan’s ear. “Good to hear. Now, Dread Wolf, this one needs to be swept off to bed. Are you up to the task or shall I?”

Virelan snorted and rose to her feet, somewhat off balance but all the more stubborn for it. “I don’t need to be swept off anywhere. You’re both coming. Emrys, are you alright to get Tulin to bed before too late?”

Tulin whined, offended, but Emrys set her mind at ease with a grin and a thumbs up. Merrill cheerfully waved as the three of them put their things away and made their way back to their tent.

Settling in between them, warm on their woollen bedrolls and beneath woven blankets, made Virelan feel more at home than any assemblage of clans beyond their fire could hope to. Felassan’s hand on her belly and Solas’s arm beneath her head were the kind of comfort that soothed any kind of worry away — even the one that wondered what the future could hold, beyond this Arlathvhen of the Dales. 

It was just as Virelan was about to drift off, her mind ready to meet those of her loves in her dreams, that a nudge snapped her awake. Felassan jumped too, gasping a tiny noise into her ear. 

“I felt that,” he said, breathless with something between wonder and trepidation. “Was that… was it…?”

Solas moved quietly, and despite his air of calm Virelan could feel the tiniest of trembles in his searching fingertips. He tucked his hand among theirs on the curve of her stomach. They waited, taking only the shallowest of breaths, until that nudge came again.

Solas’s sound was the one she knew heralded the beginning of tears. Felassan gripped her hand so hard it nearly hurt.

It was strange, being the only one of their three who knew what this was like. Her excitement was tempered by familiarity, while these two souls who’d seen the passage of ages had not witnessed even this most simple of things. Her heart ached with the weight of such melancholic joy. 

“Baby's turning over,” she told them. “Getting comfy. They sleep when I sleep.”

Solas’s huff of incredulity married to curiosity matched Felassan’s little croon he saved for small children and animals. Felassan curled around her and fiercely kissed her cheek — Solas nuzzled close beneath her ear and took in a ragged breath. 

“It is good,” he finally managed, “to share this with you.”

No more words could quite communicate what any of them felt as they drifted back off to sleep. They relied purely on the emotion on the air, thin on account of the remaining Veil but still strong enough to feel — excitement, trepidation, and unfettered joy.

[rosella-writes]

for dadwc “ you’re not obligated to do this, you know." Virelan either gets some help and assistance and care shoved on her and grumbles about it, OR, for once, she's the one insisting on helping and gets to tell THEM to accept her help :')

Hmmmmm for u (and for @dadrunkwriting)

Rating: G Pairing: Virelan x Solas Warnings: major character death

~~~

The orange tree was in bloom. Tulin’s poisonous plants nodded full heads of flowers, and his roses were forming hips. And on Solas’s chest, her body wrung dry by the passage of time, Virelan lay dying. 

A few feet away, Tulin and his husband, Ivun, sat with their heads bent over a game of cards they had spread upon the grass. Beyond them, Kieran and Panasaam spoke earnestly with the Witch of the Wilds — Morrigan was hardly wrinkled, but her hair was a braided crown of pure white. The children ran and played and screeched just out of view, chased by a Felassan who remained young and vibrant and strong. 

Solas murmured a quiet remark about Morrigan against Virelan's scalp. In the past, Virelan may have responded with something cutting and dry. Now she merely hummed, with hardly enough volume to be heard. Solas stroked the long locs of her hair.

“Can you smell the orange blossoms, vhenan?”

She did not respond, but she did smile. Her breaths were slow, and Solas felt every heartbeat as he would grains of sand in an hourglass. 

“I thought I was ready,” he finally confessed in a whisper against her hair. A hot tear streaked down his cheek. 

The grip of her one hand tightened in his shirt. “You don’t have to come,” she laboriously told him.

“I am ready to die,” he said. “I was the moment I knew I would not be alone when I did. But I fear letting go.”

She nuzzled under his chin. Her breaths were quick and shallow. “Please.”

Solas looked around at their family. They knew this was near. Tulin had gathered them so that they would not miss a single one of their mother’s final moments. But now that it was time, he felt selfish — he wished to hold on, to extend this moment for fear of it ending. He did not wish to share. He wanted to sink his teeth into her last breath and swallow it whole. 

“Don’t tell them,” Virelan gasped. “Tulin will know. Stay with me.” 

He took her hand and gripped it tight. His skin was pale and thin as tissue paper — he had never felt the loss of his old power so keenly as he did now, on the cusp of this new journey. 

Virelan’s spirit felt as faint as the last few of her inhales — Solas counted them, feeling his own slow to match. He refused to sob them out. It would be a waste of what air he had left. 

He fixed his eyes upon her face. The carved, pale lines of Falon’Din’s vallaslin fell still as her lips parted around one final, sighing breath that did not even stir the petals of the blossom that had fallen to cover her lost eye.

When he allowed his spirit to follow hers, he did not close his eyes upon the end. There were none to close. There was merely her love entwined with his — an emotion older even than fear.

[rosella-writes]

HELLO I have a prompt for Virelan, Solas, and Felassan after their respective reunions.... Perhaps Tulin and Pan are also involved in this space... "Ruins from a devastated city are employed for new ends, their original purposes forgotten (ex. basil planted in funerary urns)" Just seems like a fun family field trip that might involve history, angst, or intrigue as you see fit :3

A fun family vacay is in order, I think >:] just as you said. Thank you Bluuuuue.

An extension of this dadwc fill I wrote a while back. They act as bookends for Virelan's story, I think.

Pairing: Virelan, Solas, Felassan, and their children, Tulin, Panasaam (and one more) Rating: G For @dadrunkwriting

~~~

Solas had seemed agitated for the past few days, as if turning something over and over in his mind. When Virelan held his hand, she felt ripped-raw cuticles — when she kissed him, she felt chapped, chewed lips. 

But it was Felassan who got to the heart of it. 

“I think, falon,” he said gently one night, reaching to touch Solas’s knee, “that it’s time.”

“Time?”

“To tell us what it is that bothers you.”

He looked between them almost as if afraid, wide eyes reflecting the firelight. Virelan tucked closer to him on the chaise and tucked her shortened arm behind his back. 

“After everything, ma’lath,” she chided, “you can tell us.”

He leaned his head against hers for a moment — he felt very warm, and his knee bobbed up and down. “Well. I have been considering… I have not been there since I awoke. It is a place I would like to see again.” He glanced down at her, then at Felassan, who smiled encouragingly. The motion twisted his dark vallaslin. “I would like to take both of you.”

Felassan chuckled. “And leave behind the little ones?”

“Pan will never let you hear the last of it.”

Solas laughed, finally, and it was a too-bright, nervous sound. “Alright.”

~~~

The eluvian flickered shut behind them, casting them into darkness. Papae took Tulin’s hand and held it tight. 

“Y’alright?” Tulin asked him. 

Solas glanced at him. His eyes shone in the dark, and Tulin made out the curve of a smile. “I will be. Come, there are stairs.”

Felassan took Tulin’s other hand — he glanced back, and it looked like everyone had made a little chain with Pan at the end, because she couldn’t see. Mamae was the shortest of all and hurried in Felassan’s wake, while Pan held on to the end of her knotted sleeve. Pan’s horns kept bumping the ceiling, and she looked like she’d like to apologise to the hallway — room? — they were in.

They were oddly quiet as they went. The space felt… old, like Tulin could feel every single year it had existed in his own fourteen-year-old body. The floor was gritty and kind of wet under his feet, like water had dripped through the ceiling over a long time. The stairs were cracked and a little uneven when they got to them, but they worked well enough. Tulin realised as they climbed that the stairs circled in a big curve, instead of going straight up. 

The whole time, Papae walked like he knew the place. And when he suddenly reached up to meet what looked like the ceiling and pushed, Tulin was ready just in time to close his eyes against the sun. 

~~~

Panasaam knew an elven ruin when she was in one. She’d grown into herself in one, been moulded by one — but this one felt even older than the Refuge in the valley. The magic of it hummed, strong and deep. 

She held tight to Virelan’s sleeve. It felt fitting in this moment for the only one without magic to guide the only one who could not see — Panasaam wondered if Virelan was blind to the magic here, just as she was blind to the room around them. 

Her horns gritted against the stone every time she straightened her spine. It vibrated through her skull and clacked her teeth together, but then — there was light, and they ascended the final steps into the open air. She stood tall and breathed. 

The air tasted like fallen leaves and embrium. She looked around her with wide eyes, letting Virelan’s sleeve fall from her slack hand. 

The light was golden through the trees, filtering through leaves nearly as yellow as the sun. As she looked up and turned slowly, taking it in, more leaves twirled towards the ground. She reached out and caught one. 

“It’s…” she trailed off, looking down at the stone that formed a ragged semicircle around this patch of ground. There appeared to be what might be steps, or — 

“They’re seats, aren’t they?” Panasaam wondered. “We had these, in Par Vollen. Tama brought me once to see a show.”

“An amphitheatre, yes,” Felassan said. He tucked glossy black hair behind his ears and squinted up at the sun through the trees. “It has been a long time.”

Virelan came close to Felassan’s side and took his hand again in hers. She leaned her chin against his shoulder, then leaned over and kissed his tattooed cheek. “You’ve been here too?”

“Like I said,” he confirmed with a sad grin, “it has been a long time.”

Virelan looked like she’d like to ask him more questions, but she just shook her head minutely and smiled back with that warm look of hers. She looked at Panasaam, smiled again, then looked past her. Her brow furrowed. 

“Solas?”

~~~

It may have looked the same as the last time I was here, but it felt just as I had once hoped. I was afraid, upon opening the final door, that it would be just as empty as when I had come all those years ago. 

But stepping out into those leaves, intermingled with the chrysalids of butterflies long gone, felt like resolution. 

Tulin’s warm hand remained in mine, as if he could feel my trepidation giving way to cautious optimism. His light eyes shone when I looked at him. 

“Y’alright?” he repeated.

I squeezed his hand. “Yes.”

And it was true. 

Together, we approached the center of the amphitheatre that had once been grand. The presence of the place grew, almost warm with its intensity, and I dared to fix my eyes on the point where I knew she lay. 

Valor. 

She was surrounded by the stems of withered milkweed and more and more of the chrysalids that crunched underfoot. Before I reached her, Tulin let go of my hand and walked ahead of me — I must have slowed, for I found my feet nearly rooted to the ground. Instead I watched, mute, as my son knelt beside the empty cuirass of my oldest friend.

“Is… is this what you wanted to show us?” Tulin asked, laying a gentle hand on the rusted gorget that still hung from the black collar. He looked up at me, and some part of him seemed to understand, if only because he wished to. 

“Yes,” I said. “She was…”

Tulin rose to his feet when he saw me choke. I couldn’t speak, but did not need to — he approached and took my hands in his. He was nearly eye-level with me now, already so tall, and his hands were the same size as mine. 

“Tell me later?” he asked. “In the Fade, if you need to.”

I swallowed, trying and failing to summon up the words that instead brought tears pricking to my eyes. A mere nod would have to do. 

“Solas?”

Tulin let me go, and I turned to Virelan, wiping hurriedly at my eyes. I took them in — Virelan at Felassan’s side, hand in hand, with Panasaam nearby, her face turned towards the sun. The light turned Virelan’s scars, Felassan’s vallaslin, and the pinpricks around Panasaam’s mouth a shimmering gold. 

“Panasaam,” I said, coming near to her. She looked down at me, curious — there was no fear in her eyes, as there had once been so much of. “This place… it is to me as your beach, where I found you, is to you.”

Understanding washed over her face. “Are you… okay?”

“Yes.”

A warm hand — Felassan’s, Hope’s — grasped my shoulder. I turned towards him just to find his other hand on my cheek, my neck, pulling me forward until our foreheads met. I grasped at him, at a loss for words once more. 

“Can you feel her?” Hope whispered. 

I gripped his forearm so tightly that I was certain that my fingertips bruised him. 

“Me too,” he gasped, and I realised that tears ran down his cheeks, just as they ran down mine. 

A short, sturdy figure pressed to us — Virelan, our Valor — and we parted just to let her in and hold her tight. Hope kissed her scalp, and I her temple. 

“Are you going to tell me?” she asked. 

Hope nodded. “Soon, yes, when Solas can speak. But first, what would you say this place is?”

Her bright eye turned from him, to me, then to the amphitheatre beyond us. “I saw an armoury downstairs,” she began, slowly. “And that cuirass over there. Whatever this was once, it can be a place of honour again. I’d like to train here.”

I laughed — it sounded bright and disbelieving even to my own ears. “It is in terrible disrepair.”

Her eye hardened, and her jaw set, in an expression I knew all too well. “Doesn’t matter. I can fix it.” 

She pulled away and turned to Panasaam’s questioning gaze, then Tulin’s pensive one. She gestured with her stump at the armour at the center of this stage. 

“Think we can clean this up? There’s a whole lot of leaves and dead butterflies it looks like. And we can open up the space below and fit it with a few sparring rooms, maybe a forge near where we entered.” She placed her one hand on her hip and nodded, thinking to herself. “Yeah, I think that would work.” 

Virelan approached the cuirass then, touching Tulin’s shoulder as she passed. She knelt at its side, and tucked her shortened arm under the curve of her belly as she did. She looked beautiful like this — her greying hair picked into a soft cloud around her head, the swell of her abdomen softening her otherwise strong, square figure, her skin vibrant with a dark, glossy glow. She laid her hand on the cuirass in turn. 

“Oh it’s obsidian,” she effused, growing more excited. A smile spread across her face. “It hasn’t tarnished at all. I bet I could scrub it clean again and get it into working order. Or —” 

She glanced up suddenly, her face falling in an expression of apology. Her eye darted back and forth between Hope and I. Hope, with a cheeky lift of his brow, turned to me. 

I swallowed once more and found my voice. “I think, vhenan, that it would be best put to use.”

She smiled again, the wrinkles and curve of it bright and warm. “Yeah?”

I came to her side, finding myself once more on my knees beside the remains of Valor. This time, however, Virelan was in my arms. I laid a kiss on her forehead, treasuring the sensation of Falon’Din’s memorised lines under my mouth. 

“I can think of no better person for it,” I said, “my heart.”

[rosella-writes]

Happy Friday Ro!!! For your consideration... Lavellan, Solas, & Felassan + “ We can't keep this up forever. ” from the Angst, Fluff & Smut list. :D

>:] thank you so much Niriiiiii you gave me a chance to try out a funky lil headcanon I spun up today. Just a head's up — in my canon Virelan finds Felassan as a tranquil and puts in the work to cure him. He was once a bodied spirit of Hope. I credit @dreadfutures for the final line and the headcanons surrounding it (you'll know it when you see it and I'm sorry Blue for borrowing aksfhjgkfjhgkfdjhg). It's rambly and all over the place aaaaaaaaaaaaa

For @dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Felassan x Virelan Lavellan (with past Solasmance for both of them) Rating: M for casual nudity? they're in bed

~~~

Felassan didn’t have the heart to tell Virelan that she cried in her sleep. 

She was so strong otherwise — head held high, shoulders braced, spine curved like a tensed bow — and to know she showed such vulnerability would steal the iron of her will. But he held it close, that knowledge, and her when she allowed it. 

It was rare, but happened with increasing regularity, for her to invite him into her bed. It was not her heart — for she showed that only to her son now — but it was a comforting, safe place to be. She didn’t expect platitudes and explanations and professions of love from him. They knew each other’s pain and burdens as only two people who loved the same person could. 

They never spoke of Solas, but he was the ghost between their lips all the same. 

It was during one of these nights, when she had dared ask him to stay, that he felt most drawn to her. He woke with a start when her hand gripped his wrist — expecting her to be awake, to need him — but stilled when her sleep-stricken voice called out with raw, wordless anguish. 

He curled close, barely taller or wider than she, and allowed her grip on his arm. He reached out to touch what remained of the arm Solas had taken — she reached back, as if the hand remained. Felassan wound up awkwardly clasping the end of her stump, swallowing back tears of his own as she screamed hers into her pillow, then his chest. 

“Ir abelas,” he murmured beneath his breath, dragging her sleeping body close. “Ir abelas, falon.”

This pain in her — raw and unfiltered, fresh in her dream as if happening at that very moment — spoke to a pain deep within him that matched. While he had settled somewhat in the wake of Tulin and Cole bringing him back to himself, ragged, torn pieces did not always fit back where they had been whole before. Some festered and rotted, worn more ragged still by this muffled scream against his chest. 

Felassan took as much of Virelan into his arms as he could, searching for the old comfort he could once offer. He used to know exactly what to say, what to do, how to find that one shining piece of possibility in the impossible. But now, in the dark, in the room that smelled of Virelan’s soap and their blended sweat, that swam with the sounds of sobs and gasping breaths, there was nothing but the cold chill of finality. 

In the end, he didn’t need to tell her. She woke herself, her sobs suddenly cutting short with a startled gasp. For a moment she seemed as if she would remain in his arms, clutched close, but with a deep, heart-rending groan she shoved at him and tore away. What had ached for her now bruised deeply with his own hurt.

“No,” she stammered thickly. “No, stop, I don’t need —”

“Of course not,” he snapped, feeling his pain sharpen further to a cutting edge. “You don’t need anything or anyone, do you, lethallen?”

Her eye was bright in the darkness, and there was an audible snap when her dropped jaw closed. Felassan leapt upon that chance, leaning up on one elbow and jutting his chin in defiance. 

“You stand alone. You go your own way. You call upon me on your own terms, asking for cheap comfort, borrowed closeness, and shove me away when your tears escape on their own? Do you know who you remind me of?”

“Stop it,” she snapped, chest heaving. The moonlight glinted off a silvery scar on her breast. “I’m not… no.”

His nose wrinkled as his lip pulled back over his teeth. “You are not the first I’ve held in such a way. But where before I could offer hope for a brighter future, there’s nothing in me now. Would you kill my comfort too?”

Her hand rose to cover her face, and she shook her head frantically side to side. It looked as if her fingertips dug into her flesh. “Stop it. Stop it.”

Something loud, frantic, hopeless sprang up in his chest, screeching aloud its despair until he let it out in a whispered, “We have to talk about him.”

“No!” she all but screamed. 

“We have to!” Louder, this time, but not nearly a shout. “We can’t keep this up forever. We can’t.”

“I want to,” Virelan begged. She lowered her hand and plucked at his — he could see gouges from her nails underneath her eyes. “Ignore it with me, put it away in that unspoken place where it can’t hurt us. I thought you understood —”

“And that is why I must insist upon it now,” he said firmly, returning the clutch of her hand. He grasped her other arm, which reached as if with its missing hand, and ignored her wince at the touch. “You’re using me. I’m using you. We can’t. All it does is hurt us.”

At the confession, the sharp hurt, the bruised hurt, the rotting, ragged pieces all coalesced into an ache that was the ache of cold. It spread through him, icy and leaden and heavy, and there was an odd, self-indulgent comfort in it. It satisfied him, this despair, and he reached for her with it. 

“You are loving me in the place of Solas, aren’t you?”

Her lip shook, and her eye darted away. “No, I —”

“Don’t lie to me.”

A wordless groan, paired with a weak pull, was not enough to free her from his grasp. He didn’t let go. 

“I know because I am doing the same,” he hissed. “I use you to bandage my pain and yet I bleed through.”

She turned her eye to the ceiling, her mouth working open and shut. No sound escaped. 

“I feel this despair of yours,” he continued, “as surely as it is my own. It fills me up, like so much poison, and yet it will not do me the pleasure of letting me die. No, we keep on living, Virelan, we keep on going, clutching at each other like drowning rats. We pretend like we can stop him if given the chance, but can we?”

“Of course —”

“Could you kill him, Virelan?” Felassan said, his voice rising finally into something resembling volume. “Could you? Will that rage drive your sword through his heart, or will your misery drag you down into uselessness?”

Her eye finally met his, and tears streamed from it down her cheek. She held on to him tight, until he could almost feel her fingers wringing the blood from his frozen hand. 

“No,” she sobbed. It pitched up into a strangled wail. “But I have to, Felassan, I have to —”

He shook his head and pulled his hand from hers, raising both instead to cup her cheeks. “You don’t have to do anything. Haven’t you done enough?”

The steel of her spine collapsed. He caught her, clasped her close, and drew her beneath the blankets once more. She was nearly as cold as he felt. What echoed within him, between them, perhaps even inside her now, was a soul-killing refrain. 

Futile. Futile. Futile.

[rosella-writes]

have a prompt beloved: “ everyone is looking at us. is that a good or a bad thing? ” Hope & Valor :D

Okay so this got entirely too horny but there's zero angst so I consider that a win in this scenario.

Pairing: Hope/Valor (Felassan/Lavellan) with background poly with Pride (f!Solas) Rating: M? for nip nops Words: 896

for @dadrunkwriting

~~~

Hope is more graceful than she is, that much is clear. Valor focuses with a furrow of her brow on the passage of her feet, determined not to step on his toes. 

“So serious,” Hope teases with a twinkle in his violet eyes. “You’re holding me so far away from you. It’s easier to lead if you hold oneself more like—”

Valor huffs out the tiniest of laughs when Hope steps into the tiny cage created by their encircling arms, allowing her to slide a hand to the small of his back and hold him flush against her. She can feel his laughter now. 

“This.” Those eyes flick up over her head, darting from one point to another, then back down to meet hers. “Don’t look now, but they’re watching.”

Hope is right—it’s easier to guide their steps when she can feel the minute changes in his stance. She can almost taste the next beat of the song in his anticipation, in his effusive joy. Despite all his years as Champion, he still lets a tinge of his true feelings show through his mask. 

Valor is glad for it. Among all these dignitaries and perceptive siblings of the air, it’s demoralising to be the only one who slips—Hope seems to make slipping a charismatic art in and of itself. 

“Who’s watching?” she finally asks, guiding him along the edge of the room. 

Warm, rosy lights twinkle over his shoulder, held aloft by a young spirit, likely one of Diligence. Valor wonders who has leashed it. Hope’s curled finger, cool and grounding, tips her chin up to look at him, as if he wishes to lay a kiss on her mouth. He’s close enough that he could. 

“Your master’s brother,” he murmurs. She realises he’s used the guise of a promised kiss to speak to her. “My own mistress. Deceit, Dirthamen’s raven.”

“So, everyone,” Valor chuckles. “Is that a good or bad thing?”

A smile twitches at the corner of Hope’s sly mouth. His eyes roam the room, but his attention is centered on her—evident in the press of his body, the firm grasp of his hands, the cant of his head as he turns to her. She is the fulcrum of their dance, and he the lever.

“That depends,” he says cryptically, dropping his voice to a mere whisper. “Bad if one doesn’t wish to be seen. Good if one wishes to be coveted.”

“By whom?” Valor scoffed. She softens the tone of her voice with a twinkle in her eye.

He nudges her with a whisper of will, barely more than the passing scent of anise and lavender. She turns on their axis, her gaze directed by the tilt of Hope’s chin. 

There is a private corner in this ballroom, tucked away behind flowing velvet curtains the colour of gold. Valor remembers many stolen moments behind those curtains, drawing stolen gasps from between Pride’s teeth, or stowing away in search of a moment’s respite from the stresses of constant performance. The slim figure of Pride is silhouetted against those curtains now—she is all long, languid lines, her tall, angular body draped across a chair. A glass of rose-red wine dangles dangerously from one lazy, lily-white hand. Valor looks away, a faint flush rising beneath her collar, when she registers the dress Pride has worn to the gala. 

“I’ve never seen quite that shade of covetousness paint the air around our love, have you?”

Valor glances up at Hope—he looks down at her with a knowing look in his eye and a promise tucked into the curve of his smile. 

“What are you planning?” Valor asks. 

She can feel a thrill moving over the surface of her skin, under her loose, open-collared shirt, beneath the seamless shift of her leather breeches. Hope seems vivid in contrast to her dark tones and modest material—the sleeve of his silken robe shifts beneath her hand, glimmering with embroidered fishes in shades of cobalt and violet. 

“The question,” Hope teases, his dark hair falling forward to touch Valor’s cheek as he leans close, “should be ‘why are you not prepared?’ Look at her again. She wore it for you.”

Valor snorts. “She wore it to be seen.”

“All the better to stoke your jealousy.”

Valor glances at Pride again. She’s only worn this dress once before—in a private moment, stolen beneath the moons—and to see her in it in public has brought heat thumping between her thighs. It drapes over the lines of her, shimmering bronze against freckled skin, and cinches at the base of her sternum to bare the entirety of her chest. Pride’s long, auburn hair is loose tonight, and it just barely hides the glimmer of a pierced nipple from Valor’s gaze. 

Hope’s chuckle has Valor’s eyes darting up to meet Pride’s, barely shuttered lust trapped in her throat. She’s taken a sip of that wine—her eyes shine, bright as mirrors, over the rim. 

“She knows exactly what she’s doing,” Valor hisses. 

Hope chuckles again. “That she does. Now that we’ve been seen, shall we join her?”

As if given permission, Valor abandons her half-forgotten dance. Hope’s hand remains clutched in hers, and he trails, laughing to himself, in her wake as she crosses the room. But all Valor can see is the flash of triumph in Pride’s eyes, as sharp, dangerous, and beautiful as shattered glass.

[rosella-writes]

My Fics for the Arlathan 2022 Exchange

I received many gifts this year in the @arlathanxchange, and somehow managed to write even more! I had a blast waiting for reveals and kept adding to the pile. Here's what I made (all are one-shots):

you are the angel that I couldn't kill, for @wickedwitchofthewilds

Pairing: Andarateia Cantori x Viago de Riva

Rating: Explicit

Tags/Warnings: bondage, rape roleplay, knifeplay, pegging, femdom, forced orgasm — all in the context of a fully consensual established relationship based on respect and love

Summary: “You were such a tricky little mark,” she coos, turning one corner of her mouth up in a promising smirk. “Just out of reach all evening, flirting with the danger that tailed you. You should have poisoned the wine.”

it's enough to be better, for @melisusthewee

Pairing: Quinn Trevelyan x Solas

Rating: Explicit

Tags/Warnings: top!Trev, bottom!Solas, established relationship fluff, teasing and banter, background poly with Cassandra, emotional constipation, confession of feelings in Elvhen

Summary: Quinn Trevelyan is bored, and Solas isn't paying attention to him. Something must be done.

memory is the poison in our veins, for @melisusthewee

Pairing: Hawthorne x Quinn Trevelyan, Hawthorne & Hygge, Hawthorne & Fen'Harel

Rating: Teen

Tags/Warnings: blood magic to access dreams, mild body horror and trippy Fade sequences, derealisation/depersonalisation, past Solas x Quinn

Summary: Hawthorne never asked for any of this. He's just a simple apostate elf with no clan and no name, making his way in the world as best he can. But things get complicated when one tangles fates with the former Inquisitor and Herald of Andraste.

oily marks appear on walls (where pleasure moments hung before), for @dreadfutures

Pairing: Solas x Felassan

Rating: Mature

Tags/Warnings: angst, non-explicit sexual themes, Arlathan

Summary: Solas loved Felassan in the gaps. They hardly had time—in between covert meetings and strikes in the dark—for each other. But for two who were so entangled, in both day-to-day and in dreams, it was difficult not to want. And so they gave in.

The Needle and the Shield, for @settiai, @razzaroo, and @thedastrash

Pairing: Alistair x Zevran Arainai

Rating: Explicit

Tags/Warnings: needles (tattoo needles), arousal from pain, mild painplay, first time bj, virgin Alistair

Summary: Alistair takes Zevran up on his offer to give him a tattoo—Zevran learns that Alistair likes pain.

Fill My Cup, for @bogunicorn and @darethshirl

Pairing: Virelan Lavellan x Solas

Rating: Explicit

Tags/Warnings: established relationship, 69 (nice), teasing and banter, fisting of the vaginal variety, hand kink if you squint

Summary: Virelan wants to come. Solas wants to teach her something new.

Amatus, Kadan, Vhenan, for @noire-pandora, @enigmalea, and @thefoxinboots

Pairing: Dorian Pavus x Solas x The Iron Bull

Rating: Explicit

Tags/Warnings: misunderstandings/arguments and resolution thereof, sex as therapy, sex as apology, top/dom!Dorian, bottom!Solas, bottom!Bull, bottoming from the top, dom/sub elements, semi-public sex

Summary: Solas shoots him another look over his shoulder. His eyes are bright under furrowed brows. “Do not assume I cannot see this ploy for what it is. Perhaps I want to remain upset with Dorian. Did you consider that, oh benevolent peacekeeper?” Iron Bull shrugs. “Or you could fuck about it and stay mad. Makes no difference to me.”

And there you have it! A veritable mountain of smut with one (1) piece of T-rated world-exploration lol. These were so fun to write and have consumed my focus for the last few months, so it's exciting to get to share them at last.