In the next Dragon Age game, assuming we get to play the Inquisitor again, I want my Lavellan to become so powerful that she brings Solas to his knees.
Prompt: “Tell Me”, wherein one character confesses something to another. Summary: Solas’s thoughts as he and Lavellan travel towards Crestwood, where he’s decided he will tell the Inquisitor everything.
Spirits like spiders spinning gossamer blue-green. They threaded in and out a version of the Veil that didn’t quite cover, but wore like lace letting light through as sea tints tingled on the skin. It was some place in-between, as dawn is morning and evening is night. The Fade didn’t bleed through here; it whispered kisses from soft lips, and tickled with the tips of fingers which fell into caressing.
“I was trying to determine some way to show you what you mean to me.”
The words were close; honeyed confessions gathered despite stings of truth. And while a spoonful might have sweetened, Solas wanted Ma'ven to drink to the dregs, see what was left, and respond. If she ran, if she recoiled, if she balked and turned away, he would deserve it. But if she nodded, smiled, held him and knew… How Solas longed to rest without shackles; to stretch out the stiffness of dishonesty and be free. Bruises left by the binding of his lies would be soothed by the Inquisitor’s tender hands, because Solas knew, beyond doubt and beyond belief, that she would—
“Apples or pears?”
Blinking, Solas messaged a hand over his brow which had become sore with tensing.
“Pardon?”
“Apples or pears?”
The afternoon had finally shaken off the last airs of a dreary morning. People were moving about to inspect the baskets full of produce from the Allger family farm, and the Inquisitor, dressed so prim in her peasant’s bodice and skirt, had returned to Solas’s side. In one palm lay a golden treat of grainy, juicy pleasure, and in the other sat a hardier fruit as red as rich, dark wine.
“Oh. I—”
Solas hadn’t expected to be caught unawares. His mind was lingering perpetually as they traveled the roads together, slowly ambling towards Crestwood. ‘Ambling’ wasn’t quite right, though. The Inquisitor had much to do upon returning from this short respite, so she was keeping them on a fairly strict schedule. A stop at a road-side market of various stalls certainly hadn’t been on the list, but she’d gasped, wrung her hands, and then Solas was left by himself as Ma’ven jogged over, her wrapped feet kicking up the dust.
“If I stand here any longer, they’ll think I’ve stolen them,” the woman suggested wryly. Glancing back over her shoulder, she giggled. “And their little daughter was very insistent that I don’t steal them. She asked three times. Her pronunciation was so precious! And you see should her hair; how her mother braided it — so beautiful.”
Solas chuckled. “Pears, Ma'ven.”
The Inquisitor returned to make her purchase.
Three days nearer their destination and Solas’s heart wouldn’t stop beating like a drowning man battling the current. In fact, he could hardly see the surface for all his fear. To confess that he was Fen'harel, the great adversary in her people’s mythology, put not only him at risk, but also the fragile fabric of reality, as so many people held onto their erroneous theories concerning the Fade. Ma’ven could believe him, and it could turn out terrible. She could not believe him, and that might be worse. Any of the dozens of outcomes would likely end in Solas being alone once more. But then, as though to convince him, Ma'ven would do something like gently put her hand in his, smile, pull him towards a road-side market, and…
Become distracted by talking with the locals about improving their economy.
“Oh, no, I understand the need for autonomy. I’m not talking about paying traders to come out here. There would be no taxes whatsoever. What I’m thinking is this—“
Solas sighed deeply. He could hear her suggestions for wooing merchants back from the larger cities, and promising to secure the roads under the protection of the Inquisition. Perhaps it would’ve been more romantic for her to have guided him somewhere serene and secluded, but were the sounds of rumbling cascades any better than this? Ma'ven vowing to enhance the conditions of a nigh impoverished community did more than convince him that he was doing the right thing. She deserved more. She deserved that he be better; that Solas no longer keep her in the dark. She absolutely deserved the best that he could give her.
“For now, the best gift I can offer is the truth.”
But not yet.
The Fade called once they had bedded down for the night. The land of dreaming was so like the land of the living for him; every memory of breeze or impression of sunshine asked that it grace her skin. So Solas went looking for Ma’ven. With the Anchor as bright as a beacon and her heartbeat as loud as a storm, it hardly took time to find her most nights, if she did not find him first. The latter case had proven problematic in the past, as Solas had things to hide in the layers of the Fade. But soon, and so soon, that would no longer be the case. And he would show her not what the elves had lost, or what they could one day be again, but he would show her that Solas had never been a lie. There would be his home, his family: such precious things that he had shaken off to survive.
Perhaps he would show her tonight as they slept. Solas could place his hands over her eyes, hold Ma’ven close and tenderly with the dread that this may be the last time, and take her to the village of this youth. The spiral crystal cities, palaces of liquid glass, colours with no names but with shades that you could taste: those would come later. First, a memory of his parents, for he so longed to see them but had never had the strength to go alone.
The thought made the whole thing seem easier. Let the Fade speak for him, when the words were so hard brought to his lips. Let images paint a picture of what he’d been trying to show her in Skyhold’s rotunda. But Solas could not find his Inquisitor this night, so he could show her nothing.
“Vhenan?”
Ma’ven startled beside him. She sat cross legged, just as naked as he, reading over missives with broken crimson seals. There was a soft light falling like a golden haze within the tent; an illusion of sunset which Ma’ven had conjured so she could see.
“Are you alright?” she asked worriedly, feeling over his forehead as though he might be sick.
“Won’t you join me?”
“Soon, love,” the woman smiled softly. Still she caressed his brow. “There’s a few more things to read and respond to. I want to send them off to Leliana at the next town, but I won’t have time to do this in the morning. Go back to sleep. I’ll be there soon.”
Solas folded his hands upon his chest, closed his eyes, but found himself transfixed by the quill scratching out orders in Ma’ven’s audibly messy writing. Perhaps it was the fear that she would reject him when they reached Crestwood, but for now the man preferred the waking world. The Fade had not yet captured this moment of her head just so inclined, hair falling forward and utterly ignored, as she worked through petitions and reports which she had insisted she bring along.
And it was a revelation. Never, ever had he expected to find someone who could so capture his attention and hold him happily as a hostage to his own heart. The Fade was an endless bank of memories, feelings, emotions and sensations, but she was more. She was, without question, utterly and purely…
“You are unique.”
“Hm? What was that?”
Solas looked up, and in his surprise instinctively held harder at the hand in his. He truly needed to stop rehearsing things in his head.
“My apologies, Ma’ven. I was distracted.”
“Yes, I noticed. And, I think, talking to yourself. What’s wrong, Solas?”
Ma’ven looked so concerned before the backdrop of birch trees swaying in the breeze. They were walking; moving fast along their path, and they were so near Crestwood he could feel it.
“Nothing. Nothing is wrong.”
Ma’ven sighed, softened her gaze, and leaned into him. “You’ve been distant since we left. Is this not what you were expecting our little sabbatical would be like?”
Solas shook his head. “Not at all.” His words were misconstrued, if her piqued brow was any indication. “What I mean is…”
“There is something I must tell you.”
“There is something I must tell you.”
The Inquisitor’s eyes widened and they both stopped their paces, coming to face one another.
“What is it?” she asked when Solas said nothing.
And why not here? Why not in the middle of a dusty road where commerce trod and families traveled, and this was just another day of their lives which would be followed by another? Why was Solas so afraid of giving Ma’ven what she deserved; what she was owed by him, the man who was responsible for the Anchor eating away as her flesh? This was not about Solas; this was about putting her first. Before him and his selfish solitude, his obsession with clinging to protective silence and his… his duty.
Solas’s head tilted. His gaze grew cold for a moment — just a moment. Then it passed like the wind and the sunbeams.
“You look beautiful.”
Ma’ven snorted, rolled her eyes, tucked in under his chin, and sighed. Her body was a tense as his. Solas messaged across her lower back, and with his other hand threaded through her hair.
“Will you tell me what’s wrong when we get to Crestwood?” Ma’ven asked unconvinced against his chest.
“Yes,” Solas whispered desperately, now holding her as tight as he could. He shivered with the prospect of what would follow that evening: freedom, happiness; those things which made life worth living.
Replayed Crestwood and if that wasn’t enough feelings all on its own, now I keep thinking about the fact that Cole probably knew EXACTLY when it happened.
And now I picture him in the middle of having a nice chat with Varric and Dorian and he just gasps and clutches his chest and stumbles into a nearby piece of furniture.
“You okay, Kid?”
“It hurts,” he shudders, curling into himself as his thoughts are pulled to two of his closest friends, their hearts screaming across the ripples of the Fade. Weeping, wounded, wretched. “Ithurts.”
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