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Tears were burning in his eyes and his hands were shaking and he was splitting, shattering, breaking but he was walking away. Bare feet on cool grass.
Footsteps behind him, quick as the wind, and suddenly he is being spun, being pushed against the rock wall and her fists are tangled in the tunic over his chest, rage etched in every twist of her features.
His throat cracks a cry like a wounded animal and the tears spill freely down his face but he doesn't resist the warmth of her body or the violence of her near-embrace.
She pulls away.
“I will not let you leave like this.”His vhenan, his heart, hits his chest with fists, a snarl on her face as she throws words at him. “I love you. You cannot do this. You can't.”
“I have to.”
“No. You don't. This is a choice. You are choosing this.” She spits the words and he feels it on his face. “No one's making you break my heart.” All her strength and anger die on those words and she turns away, face wavering – he knows she hates for anyone to see her cry – and she walks away, hand to her mouth like she's trying to stop a freely bleeding wound.
It isn't until he sees her knees buckle and hears the softest plaintive cry from her that he moves, three steps to her, and pulls her face to his and kisses her – biting, bruising, devouring – and he feels her hands flutter up to hold him, to kiss him back. He hears the sounds he's making, hears her own answering groans as their touch grows desperate, accompanied by needy, grabbing hands that pull at each others' clothes, that try to press their bodies closer together.
The hairline fractures in his chest crack open wide and he is a ragged, wild thing made of need and want and frantic prayers to the only god that ever mattered, the only thing he ever believed in. Her. Please don't ask this of me , he begs with every kiss, every lash of her tongue against his teeth. Please don't say it again. Don't tell me you love me. Don't kiss me. Don't hold me like this. Don't make me feel like this. And yet another voice, a louder voice, the one moaning her name against her gasping mouth, that voice is shouting Yes. Vhenan, yes. Take me. Take every shattered piece of my soul and make me new and whole and everything that I am not. Remake me in your image. Cast me in the shape of your laugh, the curve of your lips and the wild light in your eyes.
Because he would give up everything. He would live in this broken world, throw away his chance at redemption if it meant having her breath in his lungs a little longer.
“Solas.” His name is a low groan in her chest as she throws her head back. “You can't do this. You can't kiss me like this if you're going to leave.”
He doesn't hear her, just holds her face in his hands, fingertips tangling in her hair, thumb along her jaw as he lifts her to his mouth and kisses her hard. One more time , he thinks. Just one more. Let me have this one last selfish thing. But one turns into five turns into twenty and he can't stop, can't ever stop.
He bites along her throat and she arches up to meet him, her voice a dark thing saying his name, saying she loves him.
You can't love me , he thinks as hot tears burn down his face again, dripping off his chin and absorbing into the fabric of her robes.
“Stay.” She is breathless and he is sagging in her arms, crying, kneeling before her, fists clinging to her clothes. “Let me love you. Don't run away. Don't leave me.”
Her love is too bright.
“Please,” he whispers against her knees, shaking. Don't love me.
“Ar lath ma,” she says. I love you.
He looks up at her face and the moonlight catches on her cheekbones, on the dark lines of branches sweeping beneath her eyes. The effect is like a stone dropping straight through him.
You deserve an unbroken world.
And I'm the only one who can give that to you.
He stands, digging up every ounce of control left in his body and using it to bury the frantic, wild thing that needs her like his body needs to breathe.
“You are my heart.” He can't look at her eyes, and focuses on her swollen lips instead. “You are the brightest thing in this world. And I-” He swallows hard. “And I am so sorry.”
When he leaves again, she doesn't follow.