Solas, Arlathan

Long ago, there was a time when Solas admired every new creature of Ghilan'nain, and the Halla were his favorite.

She was the only Evanuris capable of creation instead of destruction.

Acrylic ink and fineliner on bamboo paper.

White Nights, Ch. 2: The Docks

A year or so after Trespasser, Lavellan takes a brief vacation from mapping weaknesses in the Veil to Val Royeaux, and brings a new lover with her. She steps out to her balcony to enjoy the melancholy night, glances over curiously when a man steps out to the balcony attached to the room next to her, and freezes. It looks like the Dread Wolf had the same idea.

She says, “I won’t tell if you don’t.” Ch. 2, The Docks: They walk, and they keep on talking. CW: Discussion on whether or not Solas "laid with her under false pretenses." Neither comes to a satisfactory conclusion. Read on AO3 here. I made the banner, and yes, it’s from the movie adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novella of the same name. It’s a good watch! I suppose you can call this a Dostoyevsky/Dragon Age crossover :’’’’)  read Ch. 3: The Broadsheet here. read Ch. 1: The Balcony here.

In the dull lamplight Solas is almost unrecognizable, with the gray in his closely-cropped hair, the carefully groomed beard. Still, she recognizes the silhouette, and part of her thrills to see him. She had hoped he would have already left. She draws closer and notices the embroidery of his shirt: a gift from Clan Lavellan. She touches the filigree at the collar and traces the edge of his jaw. His breathing catches. He is also afraid. They are making a mistake, and she knows she will have to hold herself partly culpable for this. “So,” she says, and waits for him to fill in the silence. Instead Solas puts his hands behind his back, and she rolls her eyes. “This is a mistake,” he says tightly. Yet he came anyway. “So you’ve told me, from the beginning,” Lavellan says pleasantly, “one of many horrible little things you did to me. Still, you keep cropping up. Unavoidable, actually. Like a fungus.” A smile ghosts across his face as they both remember Cassandra. “I am sorry. Loving you--” “I wish you wouldn’t apologize,” Lavellan interrupts, “when you are going to repeat what you did, over and over again. Banal’nadas. The Blight is inevitable. We don’t have time to relitigate this.” Solas takes a shaky breath. “No. We don’t.” He lets his arms fall to his sides, relaxing his shoulders. She takes his hand. He looks at her ring ruefully. “You have always liked symbolic gestures. Your vallaslin--” “I want to show you something,” Lavellan stops him. She lifts her chin, makes a face. “To show you what you mean to me.” She squeezes his hand. “Come with me.” Solas winces dramatically. “I suppose it was foolish to hope you would not remember my worse words. Where are you taking me?” She says drily, “Not a swamp.” Solas rubs the back of his neck, embarrassed. “It wasn’t a swamp when I was there last...perhaps two thousand years ago.” “What was it then? A sewer?” Solas thinks for a second then twists his mouth wryly. “I have called it a cesspool before.” He laughs at the face Lavellan makes. “Fine,” she says. “Keep your secrets.” She starts forward, tugging him along, and she both enjoys and hates the slight bounce to his step as he matches her. Walking with him was always like a dance, twisting in and out of each other’s magnetic orbit. “It was my house,” Solas bursts out. “Or at least the place that held my laboratory, when I was still…working with the Halla-Mother. Where I decided to break with the Evanuris and Geldauron’s clique both. I had planned to tell you everything.” She stops so suddenly he stumbles. He looks at her, afraid, and she lets go of his hand and touches the plastered wall of the building at the corner to ground herself, closing her eyes at the sudden rage that has swept her. He waits, awkwardly, as she breathes. They have done this routine before, of course, she has always struggled with her anger. She reminds herself of what she can feel: cobblestone worn smooth below her feet, ocean-cold air on her skin, the metal end of the prosthetic digging into what is left of her arm. The Veil is so thin now, and she does not want what could have been to tear it. Solas says, “I should not have told you that. That I was going to tell you.” “No,” she agrees. That possibility sits between them, and throws its arms around them companionably: there could have been another way. It should not be like this. Lavellan rubs the bridge of her nose, trying to calm herself down. “You are angry,” Solas says warily. “Did you expect applause?” She flexes the fingers of the prosthetic, as if to check if they still work. The middle finger sticks slightly, and she bends it back into a fist. She does not want to look back at him and see the pity and shame cross his face. She has built her life out of the ashes from Haven, and he has not been the worst thing to happen to her. She has survived worse humiliations. She smiles grimly. At least she is still moving. Solas says, “I have always been too rash in matters of the heart, and even after these long years, I have not yet learned moderation. I indulged myself at the wrong moments, and held back too. And for that, I am sorry.” He sounds like his Keeper has made him sit and think about his apology before reciting it aloud. It has the touch of rehearsal--but Solas has always thought themselves in some tragedy. Lavellan had always thought she was the lead of her own play, but it seems she has been upstaged. Lavellan musters herself to look at him. His eyes are pleading. The beard is ridiculous. She touches it, tracing where he has trimmed it along his jawline. He closes his eyes and leans into the touch like a cat. “I am not your Keeper,” she says. “There is no reason to confess. And I don’t forgive you, anyway. As you said. This is yet another one of your mistakes.” Solas does not rise to the bait. He rarely does. “Where are you taking me?” Lavellan does not know. She picks a street and keeps moving, and he matches her stride. His arm brushes against hers. They look in opposite directions, lost in their mutual self-pity. The night itself is liquid, a wet breeze teasing through the narrow streets. Magelight spills onto the cobbes, worn smooth by three hundred years of human occupation. Her great-great-grandfather on her mother’s side had been from Val Royeaux. He had died in yet another failed raid on Halamshiral, long before her mother was born. The streets are as old as history, and she misses her misspent youth, running goods from Orlais to the Free Marches, taking the Minanter through half of Thedas and leaving friends and enemies in her wake. Tomorrow she and Anders will visit some of them, and see what has changed. She has to clean her mother-in-law’s grave, too. She wonders what her late husband would have thought of this, what he would say. He would say something clever about her moving from the slapstick comedy of their smuggling career to epic tragedy. She says casually, “You know I met my husband here. When I was a student, working for Briala. And then when the Carta began paying me better.” Solas has always been amused by her past. He enjoyed the rumors flitting about her wake, and how they twisted him into it. The truth was stranger than the story, and the story served to entertain. He says, “Mahanon? Yes.” They duck into an alleyway that has an unguarded gate into the alienage--an example of Briala’s munificence. Before Solas stole the key, Briala had kept an eluvian there. A sick hatred rises up her throat, and Lavellan swallows as they turn into the elvhen quarter. A statue of Fen’Harel faces outward, away from the Vhenadahl. Solas grimaces and pats its head. She steers them away from the Vhenadahl--he does not deserve it--and towards the docks. Jasmine vines up the ancient buildings that date to the Exalted March, and she breathes in that heady scent with a rush of nostalgia--for whom, for what, she cannot tell. Perhaps herself, before--before all of this, before love. As they pass, Solas plucks a blossom and places it in his pocket. A perishable souvenir, she thinks: quickling memory. How apt. Solas says, “I was surprised to find how effectively you and Briala had seeded the various great ports of Orlais and the Free Marches with your organizers. And you joined the Friends of Red Jenny, did you not? An interesting move, considering their decentralization cripples their coordination. But it does leverage you into the back alleys of Denerim, Antiva City, and the Grand Necropolis. Though the Qunari invasion has stymied their recruitment efforts in Tevinter.” He is wrong, but she will not tell him that. “The Qunari,” she hedges. “They think if they find out your name, they can reveal your true nature and master you.” Solas chuckles. “I was, and always have been, Pride first. Fen’Haril, and then Harel,” he grimaces, and Lavellan cannot help the rush of affection at how he is still affronted over the name, Keeper Deshanna reckoned the vowel shift must have occurred over two thousand years ago, he has been quietly seething over it since before the fall of Arlathan, “--came during the war. And if Mythal could not master her pride, I have no doubt the Qunari will likewise fail.” The street widens as they approach the dock but he bumps into her anyway. She tucks her good arm into his. They can pretend they are old lovers and not political enemies locked in a cold war. They can accept that they are old lovers, currently locked in a tense nonaggression pact. Lavellan’s mouth twists. Leliana will be so horribly pleased with the whole situation. It is all so terribly Orlesian. Lavellan asks, “Who named you?” She does not expect him to answer. They reach the docks, and he turns to her, smiling. “Do you know,” he says, “you are the first person who has bothered to ask me that? Most assume I chose the insult for myself.” “Yes,” she says. “You’re far too proud to laugh at yourself.” He is avoiding the question, but he has still revealed that he has kept a close eye on the Red Jennys, which Sera suspected but could not confirm. “I have you to do that for me. You keep me humble.” “And here I thought it was Cassandra and her Smite that kept you from picking fights. With anyone but Vivienne, Iron Bull, Thom, Sera--didn’t you have a go at Varric once? What did you call Orzammar? Ah, yes. ‘The severed arm of a once-great empire.’ But now I know you were projecting. Is that what you call the Dalish? Twitching to give the appearance of life. Never dreaming,” Lavellan says bitterly. “Left for dead.” Solas looks at her strangely. “Not anymore,” he says quietly. He walks to the edge of the dock and sits down gingerly, avoiding wet spots and fish guts. He leans back, feet dangling above the water, and looks up at the stars. It is a beautiful night in Val Royeaux, and Lavellan’s heart catches. She remembers too much--friends long dead, friends lost, her first husband. She sighs and sits next to him. He shifts closer to her, pressing his leg against hers. He still smells the same. “Tell me about this place,” he requests. “It holds some significance to you.” “It doesn’t matter,” she says. Those stories are not meant for him. In another world, she would tell him about the Portinari boys, about Sylanna and Garta and Briala’s first girlfriend, and maybe she would have even told him how she asked Mahanon to leave Val Royeaux, on a night as cool as this. But, as he himself told her, that world is not this one. It cannot be. She says instead, “You were going to tell me your name.” She rests her head on his shoulder. He nuzzles into her hair and breathes deeply. Such an odd thing, scent: he must miss it too. He puts his arm around her, tentatively at first. When it is clear to both of them she will not pull away, he holds her tighter, and takes her hand. Solas says, “You know my name.” Lavellan says mildly, “You know lying by omission is still a lie.” “No--” Solas draws back, and the wooden pier creaks beneath them. “Careful,” Lavellan says. “Don’t fall in.” Solas stares at her. “I never lied to you. I...may have misled you. My meaning may have been ambiguous. Our language is one of intents, my heart.” Lavellan’s frown deepened. “You know my intent. In that I have always been clear.” He looks at her, afraid, and he braces himself for what she will say next. Lavellan thinks, oh I don’t want to talk about this oh but there’s no going back oh I should’ve stayed with Anders and ignored this white night. Solas says, desperation in his voice, “Our time together may not be kind for either of us--it isn’t. We both know that. But I did not lie to you. I did not lie with you under false pretenses!” Lavellan says slowly, “Is that guilt I hear in your voice?” Her mouth twists, and Solas’ lips thin. “I do think you protest too much, Dread Wolf. Fen’Harel, or Haril --whatever you call yourself.” Solas opens his mouth to interrupt but a furious look from Lavellan silences him. “You know you did wrong by me. You know what your name is, you know what you should have told me. You--dishonored me, you lied to me--do you think I would’ve fucked you if I knew--” “Then why am I here?” Solas demands. “Why are you here? Tell me--why do you keep tormenting --” “Me or your conscience?” Lavellan snaps. “Nosing at the edges of my dreams! You use me to torture yourself, because you’re guilty and you know you’re guilty, but you’re too proud to admit it so you’ll keep wearing me like a hairshirt--” “I did not force you,” Solas hisses. “I asked you to leave. You pulled me back from the door. Every time. Time and again, I warned you. This...connection has been cruel from the beginning.” He puts his head in his hands and breathes deeply. Lavellan is momentarily concerned, but anger is burning below her skin, despite the chill off the ocean. “If that is what you think…” He is at the brink of tears. “If that is what I have done to you.” He swallows hard. Lavellan is unmoved. “I have been nothing but myself, and my worst self, with you. I was Solas first and I have been Solas since. Did you expect me to tell you, when Cassandra held us both prisoner--oh, to keep us on even standing, I am the monster of your people’s mythology.” He laughs bitterly, wiping furiously at his eyes. He smiles at her sardonically. “Do you think I did not rehearse it constantly in my mind? From when I gave Tarasyl’an Telas, to Wisdom’s murder--and what would you have done? Would you have treated me fairly? Would you have given me hearing?” “I don’t know,” Lavellan says. “Did you, for me?” She meets his gaze steadily. He is at the brink of tears, which brings out the almost violent tinge to his gray eyes. She tells herself she is unmoved. She has watched him cry before, in fear and loneliness, when he could not sleep for the nightmares in the Emprise. They had both been haunted by the mines, and he had been particularly upset at the report that the red lyrium had taken root. Now she knows: he understands the rot has sunk into the soil, eating away at the people, and he was despairing. Then she had been worried for him, now she is glad. Finally, Solas looks away, ashamed as he had been in that ridiculous armor. They both enjoy a good costume performance, but she has him as stripped as she feels. Solas says, “Why are we here? To growl at each other like two territorial wolves, and sniff out what the other knows and does not know. Now you know the Blight that is upon us. You know this world have been doomed since Corypheus slaughtered the city of Kirkwall to break open the Black City.” “Before,” Lavellan says. “The Titan. I found your bolthole in the Crossholds. For a man who keeps his secrets close, you do like to dangle half-truth all over your walls.” Solas laughs hollowly. “I paint. That is what I am, before I am called to Mythal’s service.” Lavellan notes the change in tense, but allows it to pass without comment. “So now you know.” “Dread Wolf,” Lavellan says. “Fen’Harel. Fen’Haril. Rebel. At the feet of Mythal. And Pride first, Pride before all. I’ll spare you the pun about the fall.” “Two millennia too late for that,” Solas says. “But you are the only one counting.” She cannot help but smile at that. She stretches her legs and throws herself down to the pier, looking up at the still-visible stars. Solas looks down at her, fondness mixed with sadness. She squints and picks out a familiar pattern to the embroidery of his shirt. “I gave you that,” she says. “My clan sent that to you. I didn’t know you kept it.” She lifts a hand to his collar and examines the filigree. The magic responds, familiar: her aunt Ithilien sewed the pattern, but Deshanna enchanted it. They thought she would bring him home. From his collar, she moves her hand to his neck, traces it down to his collarbone, and contemplates tightening her grip. Solas closes his eyes. “Stop,” he says. She does not remove her hand. His heart beats steadily under her palm. They wait, listening to the waves gently lap against the shore, the planks of the pier creak, the carousing from beyond them, in the alienage cafes. She remembers fucking her first husband down at the docks, both daring in plain view of the moonlight, then more slowly in the shadows, even overturning, laughing, a boat, grabbing at some poor fisherman’s net. She looks up at Solas. She can imagine him grunting, half in pleasure, half in pain, her scrabbling to get him out of his clothes--perhaps someone opening their shutters to see what the noise is about and rolling their eyes at these two horny middle-aged elves. What good would it do, what pleasure would she take from it? She misses sharply the feel of his skin against hers, she misses him holding her hot against him, all those freezing nights. She says, “Do you remember those nights in the Hissing Wastes?” He says, “And those languid days.” He wraps his hand around hers and removes it from his neck. “My heart.” “Melodramatic,” Lavellan says. “Cassandra will love it.” “High intrigue,” he adds. “Devastating to us both.” He lies down next to her and caresses her shoulder. “Varric will pillory me in song. More than he already has.” She snorts. “Truly, he could not have helped Maryden come up with a better rhyme? And the book . That book--is the moonlight still glinting off my ears? Or has the effect changed, since I grew out my hair?” “He misspelled my name,” Lavellan says. “Called me by my matronym. I think he did it on purpose.” “Entertain me,” Solas says. “What ending will Master Tethras write for us? Because I do not know how to leave this gracefully. Though I suppose any ending is better than the last one, when I left with your arm.”

“Don’t make me laugh,” Lavellan says, “you’re not allowed to make me laugh after I’ve made you cry.”

“Rules of engagement,” Solas says. “You do not strangle me, I let any cancers you encounter strangle  you--no laughing, but we can both cry.”

Lavellan presses in closer to him, eyes sparkling. “But only in the moonlight, under a,” she glances up quickly, “waning gibbous moon.”

“Obscure as your wit,” Solas says. “Agreed.” A draft of wind shivers over them, and they pull together. Lavellan feels hollow, exhausted, as emotional as the tides sucking at the Val Royeaux beach. Solas is  watching her. He always is. He says, “We will  not meet again.”

“One hopes,” she says. “Why that inn? Why Val Royeaux?”

“Because I am tired,” he says simply. “Because I like this city. I did not want to stay in the alienage and think  of you, and the hotelier did not sneer and call the guard when he saw my ears. And you?”

She parrots back, “Because I am tired. Because I love this city. Because I cannot bring a human to the  alienage, and the hotelier did not call for the guards when me too.” Solas’ eyes flicker, and he pulls away from her. She thinks, jealous? Good. He thinks of her in Val Royeaux, he thinks of her in the  alienage--just this one, or in general? They stayed in the alienage, when Cassandra brought her to testify to  the Chantry. The four of them had had a good time. “You should go to your lover,” Solas says. “Before he wakes.” Lavellan smiles thinly. He thinks she lied to him--a lie of omission, but a lie nonetheless. “And you to your empty bed?” He snorts. “Empty, and lonely, and ever-desiring what I should not. I have not changed much.” She is flattered despite herself, and triumphant, but then remembers that he has always laid the flattery a little too thick. “Desire?” she says teasingly. “What do you want?” He stares at her. “Life. More life. And not to die alone.”