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1. Frostback Mountains
"A word."
Lavellan follows him to the outskirts of the makeshift camp the Inquisition has set up in the wilderness of the Frostbacks. Someone's supplied him with a heavy, rough-hewn wool blanket which he has draped over his narrow shoulders, his clothes too loose on him, but warm enough. Though his feet are still bare. He's limping, still sore, and Solas walks slowly so he can keep up.
He can't stop looking at him while he speaks -- The humans have not raised one of our people so high in ages beyond counting... -- watching his face, the exhaustion laid bare, the way the delicate, precise lines of his slave markings shine over his features. His face is clear, but in Solas' mind he keeps seeing him at Haven, blood-splattered, wavering on his feet, how his face had gone grey when that thing -- archdemon? no, it couldn't have been -- screeched over head -- how he had turned to them, lit from behind by the parts of Haven that were burning, and shouted for them to retreat. And he had gone, because he had to, and when he had looked back he had seen Lavellan in the distance, tiny, watching the sky. Waiting to die.
He had resigned himself to this thought once he and the others had reached the Chantry and then the hidden path the others had evacuated through, though it surprised him, his disappointment. Sadness, even. What was that about?
And the depth of his feeling when he had been there when the scout had pointed, then turned and shouted, "It's him!" The Inquisition had leapt into action, Cullen and Cassandra on their feet so fast he would have thought they'd both spontaneously manifested magic to step through the Fade to get to him, running with a group of Inquisition foot soldiers, one of whom had thought to grab a blanket. He had been close enough to see Lavellan's distant outline on the hill falling to his knees, and his heart had squeezed most curiously.
Cassandra had been the one to carry him down, Cullen shooing off the throng of onlookers who came to stare in awe at their Herald, who had, to their understanding, now come back from the dead. Their chatter meant nothing to him; he was watching Lavellan be carried to the makeshift tent they had set up to tend the wounded, how Cassandra had passed closely enough to where he stood that he could see Lavellan's face.
Ashen, taut. Stricken. Dried, crusted blood covered one side of his head where he must have struck it, his clothes and skin in places badly charred. He had lost both gloves at some point and the Anchor was in plain view, burning fierce and verdant as Lavellan lay unconscious, barely hanging on, dangerously cold. He had approached then because with Lavellan out of commission, he was their most qualified healer. To their reckoning, anyway.
To him, the injuries he was left with were superficial -- not life-threatening, at least, save maybe the shock and cold. If he had had his full strength back they would have been no more than flea bites. As it was, it took him more time and effort than he cared to admit to get him as far as he did. Lavellan would live, though he would be scarred, and once Solas had done all he could he had fled to leave him to recover.
When he looks at him now, he sees his face as it was when he was carried towards him. Bloodied, raw.
"... they'll find a way to blame elves eventually," Lavellan is saying, tired, almost wry, resigned to the inevitability of human hatred. And beautiful, he realises. Almost foreign, but familiar enough -- the elves of this wrong world, this warped reality, still look so much like they should have that it jars him. And Lavellan of all of them feels the most like he is supposed to -- electric-tinged, pliant as water is pliant, Fade-touched.
He is seized with a sudden mad desire to cup his cheek and press his lips to his. Sudden because the thought slipped up behind him when he wasn't paying attention, and mad because what could that possibly accomplish that would be positive?
No. He hadn't brought him here to hurt him.
But he wants to, anyway.
2. The Dirthavaren
Lavellan came to him before anyone else at Haven. He was still sickly, ashen under his dark skin, even darker circles under his Fade-green eyes, and it was Solas he came to for -- what? For comfort in the familiarity of his kin? He almost hated to disappoint him, knowing he wouldn't find what he was looking for. And he was harsh.
"I thought you would be more interested in sharing your opinions of elven culture. You are Dalish, are you not?"
Lavellan had looked at him, arrested by his tone, he knew, and shifted his weight from one bare (and probably cold) foot to the other, as if to physically recenter himself to compensate for being emotionally off-balance. "Yes. I am. The Dalish are the best hope of preserving the culture of our people."
"'Our people'. You use that phrase so casually. It should mean more. But the Dalish have forgotten that, among other things."
"What's your problem with the Dalish? Allergic to halla?" His tone was light -- he tended to diffuse tension with humour -- though tinged with bewilderment. He was used to negative reception -- but not for these reasons, Solas knew.
"They are children acting out stories misheard and repeated wrongly a thousand times."
And bitter, now: "Oh, but you know the truth, right?"
"While they pass on stories, mangling details, I walked the Fade. I have seen things they have not."
"Ir abelas, hahren," Lavellan said, abruptly. As if coming to some divergent conclusion, his tone and face had softened then. "If my people have treated you with discourtesy I would make that right."
And Solas had paused, stumbling for the first time. Ir abelas, hahren. I am sorry. What had he heard in his voice that time? How much did he see?
Lavellan continues to not be what he expected. He expected blunt ignorance, but Lavellan is curious and bright -- he asks intelligent questions and listens when others speak. He does not interrupt, or attempt to correct others, but allows them to say what they wish to say, and then he responds or does not respond, but Solas sees the pattern in his words. Ir abelas, hahren. Lavellan senses when a delicate touch is needed, when anger comes from a place of hurt, rejection, fear. He fears Templars, but speaks to them as the people they are -- often poor peasant's children hoping to claw their way out of grueling poverty, then leashed to the Chantry with a lyrium chain. He sees the rebel mages for what they are -- ignorant of the outside world and frightened by the burden of their new freedom.
Solas has grown used to being dismissed as a madman, a fool, but how many times has Lavellan stopped in the midst of one of his meandering explanations, and looked at him, his brows knit together, and said, I hadn't thought of it that way. You're right. He had thought the Dalish stuck in their ways, unwilling to change, but he questions that now with how willing Lavellan is to listen, to really listen.
And who taught him that?
"Keeper taught me everything I know," he'd said idly once when Solas had commented on it. "She ought to get all the credit. I was a terrible shit." He doubts that is the whole truth, but comes to understand that it is part of the truth. The Dalish are a living, breathing culture -- not the dead, static thing Elvhenan is to them, now -- and they adapt, they grow. He watches Lavellan practice his culture, the twisted bastardization of Elvhenan ritual, sees the joy he takes in it. How he stops to pray. How on their path through the Exalted Plains -- the elves here call it the Dirthavaren -- he greets the other Dalish, pressing nose to nose, naked relief on his face to be among his people again. How they revel, the dances they do, jingling with beads and bells, the young men showing off their skill and grace in front of the girls. The prayers they turn into songs, a call-and-response, voices raising and twining, becoming one entity, one heartbeat. Even he feels moved when they sing for Mythal.
They're real. They're real, they're all real. All of this is real. He is real, so real, flesh and blood and thought and motive, so all of them are real --
In the camp at night he sits with the others at the fire, watching the Dalish dance. Cassandra has flatly refused to participate despite multiple people urging her to join, but Blackwall, after a few of those... things the Dalish call whiskey, has been roped into some sort of circle dance, clumsy, making the children laugh. He had thought the Dalish a closed society but they welcome these human companions of their cousin as friends of the clan themselves. And Lavellan, well. He is freer here, more himself, less aware of the eyes on him. Solas watches him lit by the campfire, the quick shuffling movements of his feet, the fluid gestures of his hands, the way the light plays off his dark skin. He's never seen him dance or heard him sing before. It's arresting.
When they move on, Lavellan leaves with another stack of promises he has made, favours he has agreed to do for people whom he owes nothing.
"You have a soft heart," Solas tells him when Lavellan asks him for advice. It's been months and Lavellan still often turns to him and says, Teach me. I want to learn. "It will be a disservice to you."
"I disagree," Lavellan says, "respectfully, hahren." They're seated slightly apart from the others at a stone pit full of veilfire of their own making; Lavellan had asked him to teach him more of rift magic. "Keeper taught me that it takes strength to be kind in a cruel world. We're all just people. You have to understand people first."
We're all just people, he says. So casually. But you aren't, he wants to argue -- a thought that becomes less and less true every day he spends with them. With him, in particular. Bright and curious. Kind. Full of thoughts, that sometimes he airs and sometimes he does not, and Solas cannot always predict his behaviour.
Lavellan turns to him and grins, a bright flash of white warmth on his dark handsome face. "But you're right, it's a bit shit," he says.
They are so close that he could span the distance between them. It would be a simple thing to put his hand over his hand, the way that he knows Lavellan craves -- for contact, for affection, for intimacy he shies from because he fears himself under the title that has been smothering him for months. He could make him forget that. How easy to cup his dark cheek, to hold his head in his hands and watch the play of emotion on his face, to know that what he sees behind his eyes is a person, living, breathing, thinking -- and how gently he could press mouth to mouth, to show him trembling what it is that Solas knows he wants and has been missing. It would not be the first, but the standard by which he would judge all other kisses. He is looking at his face, the way Lavellan's smile fades with uncertainty at the intensity Solas knows he must see in his gaze.
He should absolutely not be doing this. He is going to ruin this boy.
So he shakes his head and chuckles to dispel the tension. "More than a bit," he agrees. "But still I think it would serve you well to harden yourself."
Lavellan turns away first, his voice barren as the dead lake of Crestwood. "You might be right."
3. Hissing Wastes
The Fade twists around itself in a way that is unfamiliar to him. The Fade goes where it wants to go, or leads you to where you want to go if you approach it calmly in command of yourself, but now it keeps wrenching from his grasp, and turning into something black and twisted, glittering with malice. He stays calm, because to panic would be to fall deeper into the trap, but when he hears it -- grunting, panting, pained whispering, echoed and layered over itself a hundred times so he can't tell from which direction it comes -- he recognises the voice and feels his heart leap into his throat. His spirit wrests itself of the unnatural grip the Fade has on him and flees back to his body, where he wakens with a start to find that Lavellan is not in their camp.
There -- in the distance. That green glow.
He stops only to throw his tunic on before he takes off in that direction, his staff left behind, forgotten. He doesn't need it anymore, hasn't for weeks, and if he tarried it might be too late.
His feet carry him swiftly beyond the dune where he sees him, finally. Lavellan on his knees, bent over, his right hand grasping and clawing at the left which sparks and burns angrily, a sick black curtain roiling down his arm from the inside like oil. He hears him approaching, whips around, his dark face unnaturally grey-green tinged in the light the Anchor is throwing off.
"Solas," Lavellan cries, his voice hollow, "ma halani." Help me.
He is there between one heartbeat and the next, crouched to his side, and without thinking wraps his arms tightly around him and pulls him to his chest. "Da'len," he says. "It's all right." Lavellan gasps and he grips him tighter and lets the magic spill out of him as loose as fire, burning out the corruption of the Anchor that is not compatible with Lavellan's body. Calming it. Lavellan will not ask how he does it, only assume that it's because Solas is more experienced with things relating to the Fade than he is.
He drains the burning from the Anchor and feels Lavellan relax a fraction of a degree against him. He takes a breath so deep and shaky it rattles his bones when he releases it, and Solas keeps him pressed tightly to him. "It's all right," he says, again. "You're safe." Lavellan does not move. He does not pull away, even when the pain begins to fade.
This is the longest he has ever touched him, the longest they have ever been so near each other, save for the time Lavellan does not remember, when Solas sat by his cot for days in Haven holding his hand and trying, and failing, to remove the Anchor. He had held that boy's hand in his, watching the dull pulse of the Anchor and thinking he could make this easier for him. Better to kill him now and slip away than let him suffer -- but in the end he could not let himself do it. The magister, Corypheus, was now an unknown factor in his plans and must be stopped, and the Anchor would play a key role in that.
If needed, he could get this boy to help him. Once he had his strength back -- open the Fade, let him in. He would die when Solas tore down the Veil, they would all die, but they weren't truly people, and it was a mercy to them anyway, removing their suffering. This was a future that never should have happened. He would fix it, restore what was.
He thought. Now he feels Lavellan pressed close to his chest, the way his shoulders shake as he pants from the agony in his arm, the wetness soaking into his shirt. He is so solid, and warm, and he -- feels things. Deeply feels them. Has laughed with him, has raged against his enemies, and now weeps against him, vulnerable and small and beautiful and mortal and doomed.
The Anchor is killing him. He knew this -- now he knows Lavellan knows this, too. The Anchor will burn through his body from the inside out and consume his life force to sustain itself.
Lavellan pulls back, but Solas touches his shoulders and he goes still. His hands rise, cupping his jaw, needing to look him in the face and remind himself that none of this is real. None of this is really happening.
He holds Lavellan's face in his hands, searches his features for -- something; what is it he hopes to find? And Lavellan trembles in his arms, face stricken with pain, cheeks and eyes sunken, his face lit with a sickly green glow by the still dimly pulsing Anchor in his hand, staring at him as if he has never seen him before.
He is so young. They are all so young. How can they be real? How can any of this be real?
Solas forces himself to release Lavellan's face and wrap his arms around his shoulders, though it ravages his heart the way Lavellan leans into him and sighs, trusting, trusting him, believing every word he says. Liar. Traitor. He should drop him summarily but instead holds him until his trembling has subsided, brow hot under a thin sheen of sweat, exhausted. He knows with certainty that he is a person, one he has come to care for. He can't abide his suffering.
And that's why he should leave now. Walk away. He can trust Lavellan to stop Corypheus, and if he removes himself now, it will hurt less later...
He lowers his head, lower, lower, until his lips are a hair's breath from Lavellan's skin, hovering over his straight smooth brow, aching to touch skin to skin. One kiss, chaste, as a parent might a child, a mentor might a beloved student. The affection he feels might still be innocent like that, and to allow himself such a gesture, however brief, might lance whatever wound in his heart keeps urging him towards the reckless self-destruction of holding him in his arms and kissing him until he is out of breath.
Could he do that? Could he hurt this boy -- no, this man -- whom he has come to respect? To admire? Or would it harm him further to have the promise of the kind of intimate affection Lavellan craves dangled before him, then yanked away? He believes himself to be unloveable, and for Solas to tell him that he is loved would hurt him worse.
He presses his nose into his sweaty hair instead. "It's all right, da'len," he says, voice calm and commanding. "Let's get you back to camp. You need rest."
4. Halamshiral
He finds Lavellan on the balcony outside, having already endured having that witch whisper her poison into his ear. His posture is stiff and tense, hands on the railing, his back to him, and Solas makes his footsteps heavy so he hears him coming. Few can sneak up on the Inquisitor. He's one of them.
Lavellan moves at his first footstep, folding his arms over the railing and bending over it. "I'm not surprised to find you out here," Solas says, settling in at his side. Close enough to be companionable, but not to invade his personal space. Bent at his level, though Lavellan is hilariously short. "Thoughts?"
Lavellan straightens, then turns to look at him, his face lined in ways it was not several months ago. He begins to raise his hands as if to throw them in the air helplessly and stops mid-gesture, stiff, and shrugs instead. "It's been a very long day," Lavellan says.
"For everyone, I'd imagine." He stays very still, watching him fidget and slouch. "It's nearly over now. Cullen's giving the men their marching orders as we speak." Lavellan looks at him, wry. He only meant to comfort him.
There's a burst of laughter and applause from inside, which catches his attention; they both turn their heads towards the balcony door but it is Solas who speaks first, his hand already on Lavellan's arm but sliding off when he speaks.
"Come. Before the band stops playing. Dance with me."
Lavellan turns, his face incredulous, a curl having escaped the high updo they've put his hair in to dangle temptingly around his cheek. "Are you serious?"
"Absolutely."
"Two men? Two elves?" The only other elves in Halamshiral tonight are in servant's garb -- besides Briala. Lavellan counted every one, he knows. Including the dead ones.
"Yes, of course. Your name will be on their lips for weeks to come anyway. Let's give them something else to gossip about. Scandal is currency in Orlais, Inquisitor," Solas says, and bows, a hand held out for his, his eyes bright with the well-hidden mischief that only Lavellan seems to properly bring out. "And I do so love a scandal."
Lavellan has pursed his mouth in a thin line, but Solas well knows he is unable to resist when he looks at him like that -- inviting him to share a joke, a secret. "If Josie yells at me," he says, though he's already reaching for Solas' gloved hand, "I'm telling her it was all your idea. Don't think I won't throw you under the carriage, hahren."
"Good. You should cultivate a little ruthlessness."
The air is properly stifling inside the Grand Ballroom, filled as it is with the mingled heady scent of perfumes of varying strengths all mixing together in a cacophany of scent that is positively nauseating, and human sweat trapped under heavy gilded silks. It doesn't bother him the way it does Lavellan, who starts to wrinkle his nose until Solas nudges him, and then he straightens out his face with a wry glance at him.
Every eye in the ballroom turns to stare at them. He doubts the Winter Palace has ever seen such a pair.
His hand grasps Lavellan's, palm to palm, the other to his waist, and Lavellan, after a moment's hesitation, puts his hand on his arm, just under his shoulder. Solas steps first.
Lavellan is a middling-to-fair dancer at best, and that he's accomplished that much is likely owed entirely to the exhaustive efforts of Josephine Montilyet; he will have to compliment her later on turning something respectable out of their Inquisitor with two left feet. But he can tell Lavellan is uncertain because as a man he was taught how to lead, when tutored. Not to follow. He can fix that.
He does not hold back for him despite the discrepancy in their skill level, leaves Lavellan to wonder, with increasing sharp suspicion as he occasionally glares at him, where in the world he picked that up living alone in the wilderness, but there are certain things he will admit to himself he takes pleasure in doing better than him, in being able to teach him. In Lavellan's willingness to be taught. And now, caught in the moment, the softly pulsing candlelight around them, his head muddled by maybe a few too many glasses of red wine, the intoxicating weight of Lavellan's trim waist pressed to his hand, the curve of his long neck under the high collar of his Inquisition formal uniform, the scent of his hair, something with jasmine -- without thinking he finds himself showing off.
Lavellan is bright and quick. He is confident he can keep up, and he does, though he struggles, makes missteps that Solas cleanly covers up for him, his fingers tightening on his waist until Lavellan looks at him sharply with something else in his eyes -- curiosity, intrigue -- is that temptation? Desire?
He throws in a few moves that would not be familiar to Orlesians. Little flourishes from Arlathan, which Lavellan, instinctively -- there is still something in him that is Elvhen, truly Elvhen, however faint an echo -- responds to. And given how close their bodies are when he does it, and how Lavellan's face flushes scarlet under the stark lines of his slave markings, the murmur of human voices around them -- it does not go unapprecciated.
He grasps Lavellan by the waist with his other arm supporting his back and shoulders and spins, dips him very low to the ground, is pleased by the way his arms wrap around Solas' neck automatically, at the dazed startled look on his youthful face as he stares directly into his eyes. The crescendo of the music ending, the smattering of applause around them, all of that is so far away he can't even hear it, it is lifetimes ago. There is him and Lavellan and they are the only two real things in this whole cursed world.
He knows now that is not true. But how he wants it to be --
Lavellan swallows and makes a noise, soft and low, and Solas is too still, afraid to break whatever is between them, to send him fleeing from him like a startled deer. He is holding this pose too long, if only by seconds, though it feels like hours, and he desires, with sudden fierce wanting, is to complete the inevitability and press his lips to his. Here, like this, where he has him in his thrall, where he is half-drunk and Lavellan has lost perhaps a little too much blood, where he could do anything to him and he would accept it but his desire is so chaste -- a kiss, just one, then never again -- that it maddens him.
"Inquisitor," a voice calls, too close, and a fierce black wildness in him longs to snap its jaws. "Darling," and Lavellan has straightened, wrenched from his grasp like a cat that no longer wants to be held, and Vivienne is touching his arm, pulling him to the side. "My dear, this is why you must come to more of these parties. I've no idea what they teach you in those camps of yours, but it's quite a hit." She's leading him away, but turns over her shoulder to glance at him and he knows she thinks she is doing him a favour, extricating himself from the rumour he would have gladly started. She thinks she is doing them both a favour.
She is. He could not let that happen. Lavellan turns to look at him and he smiles, bowed low, and retreats once he is able without staying -- too afraid to see the disappointment on his face.
5. The Breach
When Corypheus separates the very land from itself, when he forces them to follow him, when he summons his blighted dragon, during none of that time is Solas worried. But when he vanishes and reappears higher up, and reaches down and pulls Lavellan after him -- and in his ear he hears Cassandra's war cry, the Iron Bull's roar, Sera shouting obscenities as all of them try and fail to follow -- that's when his heart leaps into his throat. All of them turn to him, imploring in a cacophany of voices for him to do something, him and Dorian and Vivienne together. But he would need his powers back to reach them, or more time which they don't have. Whatever is happening up there will be over in minutes. If not seconds. He feels a black well of despair filling him, the fear that he has failed, and more strongly, the fear that he has lost him --
It's an agonizing two minutes. He is helpless in watching, in choking down the traitorous bile of hope that swells in him when he sees that burst of green light and hopes beyond hope that --
He is already gone before Lavellan emerges. He can't bear to see a corpse, but the orb might still be saved.
When he finds it in tatters, broken in three pieces like so much mundane stone, chipped like fine porcelain, he knees on the ground before it, holding one half in his hands as he struggles with the despair and rage and terror that claw in him for dominance all at once. He has failed.
Without it, how will he rend te Veil? He has no way of knowing if his true power will ever return. Without this, it may never.
He is hunched over it when he feels the stumbling footsteps behind him and clenches his hand into a fist, not daring to turn around in case he's wrong, but he hears the voice in his ears before anything else.
"Solas," Lavellan says, voice cracked and dry, choking on wet blood in his mouth.
This is wrong. All of this is wrong. He's lost his chance, it's over -- "The orb."
He can hear it, the dizzying loss of blood in him. But he will live. He will live, and Solas has failed him, failed all of them, of the People -- "Ir abelas, Solas. I know you wanted to save it if we could."
And he knows, he knows what this mean -- with the orb gone he could give up. He could let it go. Could live in this wretched cursed world, this wrong world, amidst the suffering of the people who are not the People, not quite, and maybe Lavellan could show him all the ways that he is wrong or maybe he couldn't, and maybe he could be happy or maybe he wouldn't, but there is a door before him and he could open it and step through.
He could say, It is no matter, there will be others, he could turn and walk towards him and take him by the face and press his lips tightly to his until he sucked the very breath from his lungs, could crush his body to his body and show him the way Lavellan wants to be shown that he is loved, he is needed. He could calm the trembling of him in his hands, hush him, reassure him that everything will be all right from now on. That he's won, he's fixed this. That neither of them has failed. He could find a way to be mortal, and grow old and die with the rest of them.
"Inquisitor! Are you alive?"
And they would be lies. He keeps his back to him, feels instead the way he turns reluctantly to stumble down the nearby steps, hears the limp in his gait and knows he should get up and follow, should tell him how to heal that more effectively, Lavellan always goes about it the most roundabout fashion and he'll be limping on it for days --
He should get up and go with him, he should tell him -- tell him everything --
His heart swells, then shrivels and pours liquid back down his throat.
Walking away hurts.
Staying would doom them all.
--.
Lavellan feels his bare feet planted firmly in the grass of the fields beyond the Vinmark Mountains. He knows he's there because he can see them in the horizon, lit dreamily in the soft pastel oranges and purples of the golden hour just before sunset. There is a wind gently blowing through his heavy dark hair, slipping over his skin more coolly and softly than any silk he's ever felt. The air is crisp, the leaves of the trees scattered here or there just beginning to turn golden, though the grass is still plush with the fullness of old rain without frost. He leans his head back and inhales deeply, feeling his lungs fill with this familiar air. The breeze is rich with the scent of apples and honey, like sweet beginnings.
He could stay here forever. He wants to stay here forever, this place, it's -- not somewhere he remembers specifically but the clan moves around so often that they're always coming and going from new beautiful places, and... he has to leave, the clan is... the Keeper is...
He is...
He has to find the clan, he knows, and so he turns from the light of the fading sun towards the west, where a thick line of trees cuts through the horizon like a scar. He will find them there, he's sure, slipping through the heavy trunks on feet so silent and swift. Though he's no hunter, he knows how to look for tracks, and even the Dalish can't mask them when they move in such numbers. And he thinks he sees the mad wagon-wheel tracks of aravels too wide to fit through the trees, guided through the forest by the Keeper's magic, swears he sees halla droppings, a branch snapped by a child's misplaced foot, but no matter how long he follows these signs he never catches up to them.
He realises eventually that he has been following the wolf the whole time.
It's always out of sight, but he hears its lonely howling, always in the same direction he is facing. This is concerning to him, because a lone wolf tends to be more aggressive than one within the pack, and though ordinarily they'd stick to soft easy prey like marmots, hares, and nugs, they're still more likely to target a single soft two-legger that generally makes easier prey than the elk and druffalo the pack can and do take down.
But he feels no danger. Only -- compelled to keep moving.
The trees thicken and then thin again until he finds himself at the top of a tall hill, bathed in the warm glow of the sun -- distantly he thinks how odd that it hasn't changed position when he's sure he's been on the trail for hours -- which he can feel sinking into his hair and reflecting it back. When he looks down at his arms, at his hands, he can see it glimmering gold and warm...
At his -- arms, at his... hands...
He knows he is there before he ever looks up. This is when he knows this is a dream.
"Solas," he says, and raises his head. Still he can't see him, though he knows, knows with certainty that it's him he has heard, calling him to him, warning him away, in that the desperate lonely wounded howling -- so like what he had heard stumbling bloodied and bruised from the remains of Haven into a blizzard that blinded him, that howling that urged him on, called him home, back to him.
"Please, hahren," he says, his hands dropping to his sides, limp as dead leaves. His eyes close. It's been so long, and he can no longer bear to look at where he should be but is not. You left me. Like my father left me. You left me like they all left me. Like they're all going to leave me. "Lethallin. Please."
And he's there. Lavellan almost does not recognise this man he sees when he opens his eyes. His brow as smooth as ever, but his form below the neck kitted in the sleek silver armour of old Arlathan, the one Lavellan himself has imitated, his head full of the romance of the stories of the old Emerald Knights. But Solas carries it not like armour, but like second skin, wrapped in a wolf pelt nearly alive, as if it grows out of him, not the tattered furs and rags he wore as Solas-the-apostate.
A long silence, heavy with meaning, spans between them. It fills the air like a river of stone. He is watching Solas' face, more lined than he remembers it, older -- though that can't be -- as his eyes trace Lavellan's face, skip his eyes to run down his nose and linger on his full mouth, and then down, down and slowly, slowly to the left...
"No," he says, looking at his left arm. When his eyes make contact with it, the hand vanishes, along with the forearm up to his elbow. "Solas. It's gone." His eyes are heavy and wet. "It will never come back. It can never be restored."
Is he talking about the hand?
"I am so sorry," Solas says, voice laden with his regrets. "I have done you harm, and for that --"
"No," Lavellan says. He's never interrupted him before. "Solas, no." It was his orb, his choice to give it to Corypheus, but he had not known a young Dalish elf would be there in secret, would not have known that he would have heard a commotion in the other room and gone to investigate, would not have known the Divine would have knocked it from Corypheus' grasp towards the interloper's head, would not have known this stranger would lunge and grasp for it and catch it and thus bind the Anchor to himself permanently, nor would he have known that it would not have killed him instantly and instead dragged his screaming mortal form physically into the Fade. "I have no regrets. It needed to be done.
"But you left," Lavellan says, his voice so hollow that it cracks. "You went where I couldn't follow."
He watches the last crumbling remains of Solas' steely resolve sink into his heart, the way he inhales though no one needs to breathe here, how his fingers stretch. "I am sorry for that, too." He still hears that lonely howling in his man's voice. "There are things I would have done differently. So many things. Hurting you is one of them. But where I go you cannot follow, lethallin. I would not see what would become of you if you went down this path."
"You didn't give me a choice," Lavellan argues, desperately. "And there is a choice. Please, hahren. There's another way. We can find it together." He will not convince him, not here in the Fade where he is the strongest. He needs him in person, to touch him and let him feel the lifeblood under his skin, the electric magic that crackles and burns inside of him. "You said -- you said I was the best hope the Dalish have for restoring our people. Was that a lie, too?"
"No," Solas says, harsh with it. "No, I never lied to you about that. Any of that." He is there where he was not before, in his face, so close to him in that moment that Lavellan can feel the heat of his breath despite the unreality of the dreamworld that is the Fade, can feel the individual prickles in his skin where his hair stands on end, the way the little hairs of the wolf pet tremble in the stilling breeze. He could touch him, he is so close, but he's arrested by Solas' eyes, the way his hands reach out and freeze there without touching him. "You were destined for greatness. Not from fate, simply by virtue of what you are. You have a rare and marvelous spirit. I have all the faith in the world for you, lethallin. If I die doing what I have to do, if I fail, it is you I would hope to lead them."
Once he would have swelled with pride. Now Lavellan wants to die. It's not what he wants to hear, it's not what he wants, isn't he entitled, this once, to see desire fulfilled? Why is it always wrong? "Don't leave me behind."
"I have to. I need you to see why I must."
"No, you choose to! You choose to leave because you think restoring what was will absolve you. It won't, Solas! You won't turn back time. You won't make any of this have never happened. It happened. I happened. I am here. I will always have been here. We will suffer again. And again. And again." Lavellan steps forward and it is Solas who retreats from him though his form is still as a tower. No matter how Lavellan presses forward he comes no closer to him. "Or you could come back. Help me fix this world. Come back, hahren. Come back to me."
He stops with one foot before the other, his hand outstretched to him, knowing this is futile. He can't reach him. May never reach him again.
"Come back."
His voice breaks.
"Ar lath ma vhenan."
The air is close and heavy with the scent of wolf and elf. His head is grasped in Solas' bare hands and tilted upward and then his face is there, he is there, he is touching him, and his mouth -- Lavellan jerks forward and crashes his entire body into his, his mouth so tight against his that he can feel his teeth clacking against his and doesn't care, doesn't care, he needs this, needs to show him that he can still come back, he has to come back -- and Solas is crushing him in his arms, his nails digging into Lavellan's back as Lavellan's one arm clutches wildly at his armoured chest and the stump hangs uselessly at his side and he needs him to come back. He feels his hands, his face, his heart, his throat, the heat of his mouth, the pressure of his tongue until Lavellan's mouth opens to receive him, the pressure of his chest to his chest, how he has to rise to the tips of his toes to reach his face, the hot wetness on his cheeks and brow from someone else's eyes. In the dreamworld it could last a thousand years -- he never has to let him go.
But Solas does.
He drops his arms. He steps back. "I am sorry. I never meant to hurt you. I --" And steps back, and then he's moving, sinking away and Lavellan cries out, his one hand left reaching for him, stumbling to catch up to him. No, not again, not like this, don't leave me behind --
"I am so sorry."
His eyes snap open and he shoots up and he is in bed in an inn in Nevarra, feverish with sweat, a name caught on his lips but which dies when he sees that he is alone in the dark heat, a phantom hand clutching his chest and squeezing, rippling with pain.
"Come back," he chokes, a plea, a prayer. And there is no answer, only a deep yawning emptiness where his friend had been. A light flickers from beyond the closed doorframe and footsteps shuffle towards it. "Come back," he says again, his remaining hand over his mouth to try to muffle the words that he gathers inside of him and wills out of him, hurling them into the void, in the hopes that he will hear, in the hopes that he will say yes.
"Come back."