Chapter Text
It was a matter of pure chance, their meeting after he had fled the Inquisition. He thrummed with her power, more than he’d felt since he’d awoken, and the tiniest spindling tendrils that connected him to those who had pledged themselves to Mythal.
Including her. Including Inquisitor Lavellan.
This was not a power he’d ever wanted to hold over her, and so he’d taken refuge in a tavern, hoping for a distraction from the connection between them, now tangible in its imbalance. Magister Halward Pavus provided that distraction in spades.
He was not recognized, not by the magister nor any of the other travelers. He kept his distance, nevertheless, and observed: he had traveled with two bodyguards that Solas could spot, and drank heavily, paying far too much for the bottle of absinthe that he had the bartender leave by his stool. His bodyguards had to carry him back to his room.
Solas took his leave to his rooms shortly thereafter, and settled himself down on the bed. He was curious, about how the Inquisition was faring, and on what other business could the magister be found this far south but the Inquisition’s business?
Well. He might have considered it a personal matter, but the Inquisitor would disagree with that assessment. Vehemently.
He closed his eyes. Being a Dreamer had its advantages. So did having control over the essence of Mythal.
He found the memory he sought easily enough: a meeting with his son, at a tavern in Highever. The weight of it was heavy with the crushing regret at all that had lead him to becoming the sort of father whose son did not feel safe speaking to him without an escort.
Solas’s mind attempted to assign familiar faces to the people surrounding them: Ritts and Jana sharing a drink, Helisma in the corner with Fiona and Clemence, Krem holding court with the Chargers in a side room. It was unlikely that they were there, however: it was, like as not, merely his own subconscious projecting familiar faces onto people who had no bearing on this event.
Dorian was seated in a booth near the far side of the tavern, across from Lavellan, and nearly upon the Bull’s lap. That was unlikely to be how it happened when this meeting had actually taken place, Solas thought: it was far more likely that some closeness of body language gave their relationship away, and given the magister’s feelings on the subject, it now had a disproportionate emotional weight.
“Father,” Dorian greeted him.
“Dorian,” Magister Pavus returned, sitting down next to the Inquisitor without acknowledging her. “I was surprised to receive your letter.”
“Yes, I expect you were,” Dorian replied.
“It didn’t specify why you wanted to meet,” the magister said. When that failed to elicit a response, he added “I don’t suppose you wish to discuss arrangements for returning home.”
“Not with you I don’t,” Dorian told him. “I’ve actually asked to meet you on behalf of my mother.”
“Your mother?” Magister Pavus repeated, shocked.
“Yes. The woman who gave birth to me,” Dorian clarified. “Mater.”
Shock was the very least of what the magister felt at that proclamation. Solas could feel his mind sinking into another memory and indulged it, the room shifting into one that was clearly in Tevinter, occupied by a younger Halward, his resemblance to Dorian all the more apparent for his youth, a human woman, likely Lady Pavus, her face obscured by a wine glass, and an elven woman, her face downturned, a mole visible on her cheek, and from what could tell from the memory, otherwise bearing a striking resemblance to Halward.
That must be her: Metrodora, mother of Dorian.
“Oh, let’s not play coy,” Lady Pavus said from her reclining couch. “House Pavus requires an heir, and I cannot provide one. I presume she’s fit and intelligent? If I’m going to claim your elf-blooded bastard as my own, I’d prefer it if the child weren’t some crippled idiot.”
They snapped some years and most of a continent forwards, back to the tavern in Highever, and for a moment Dorian’s appearance shifted dramatically. His cheekbones protruded, his ears and neck elongated, and his eyes glowed green despite the mid-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows.
He looked, Solas thought uneasily, more human-blooded than human. Then, abruptly, Dorian’s appearance returned to normal, the only thing exaggerated about it the mulish expression he wore.
“You know,” Halward said.
“I know,” Dorian confirmed.
“How?”
“I’ve suspected it for some years now,” Dorian told him. “Recently, I had those suspicions confirmed. It’s nothing that would hold up in court, if that’s what you’re worried about. But it was enough to make me certain of what you did.”
“And?” Halward challenged. “What now?”
“Now you do what you should have done twenty-five years ago when my magic manifested and you free her,” Dorian demanded.
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can,” Dorian insisted.
“We’re not ignorant of the difficulties in freeing a slave, Magister,” Lavellan interrupted. “So we’ve taken the liberty of arranging things for you. We have here an application for liberati status, and a speedy courier to take it to the embassy in Denerim. We have people in Tevinter. Once we have confirmation that everything has been filed and ordered well enough for government work, we’ll have them arrange transport for her. She can stay with the Inquisition, should she wish: we have need of a scribe who’s fluent in Tevene, and someone with experience tutoring, or with archival work. She’ll have her pick of positions, or else we’ll see to it that she’s situated in comfort elsewhere. All you have to do is sign on the dotted line.”
She pulled out the paperwork, an inkwell, and a quill, arranging them in front of the magister.
“You don’t understand,” Halward said. “What you are asking me for is beyond my power to give.”
“And why is that?” Dorian asked.
“Because,” Halward tried to steady himself, but his control was frayed, had been frayed long before he arrived here, and Solas could feel the individual strands snapping beneath the strain of this conversation. “She’s no longer mine.”
“You sold her?” Dorian yelped, and the Chargers came tumbling out of the side room, armed and ready.
“Elgar’nan, calm down,” Lavellan snapped, though Solas would be very surprised to learn that she hadn’t been keeping a hand on her dagger since the magister had sat down.
“You heard the boss,” the Bull added, and Halward swiveled around in alarm, suddenly noticing how many people there were in this tavern, and how many of them seemed to be watching them- watching him- intently.
Perhaps those familiar faces weren’t a product of Solas’ memories after all.
“Yes, Father, they know,” Dorian said icily. “They know we’re discussing my mother, and they know what you did.”
There was a rush of lightheadedness so strong that had he not been already seated, Halward probably would have collapsed.
“You told them,” Halward said.
“I did,” Dorian replied.
Control, control, control… there was none to be found, but Halward would never admit it. “Must you always create such a spectacle of yourself?”
“Ha!” Dorian laughed bitterly. “Let’s stop lying, shall we, Father? This is a spectacle of your own making. I’ve just thrown back the curtain and let everyone see the mess you’ve made of things. Now, where is she?”
“I don’t know, Dorian,” Halward said. He wanted to be annoyed. He wanted Dorian to be a petulant child with no real understanding of the sacrifices demanded of adulthood. He wanted to believe that was the case, rather than merely pretending it to be so.
“You don’t know,” Dorian repeated flatly. His fingers drummed on the table, electricity jumping from knuckle to knuckle in a calculated threat.
“Perhaps,” Lavellan suggested. “You should tell us who you sold her to. Our agents can take it from there, and you can take your leave.”
“You misunderstand,” Halward said. “I don’t know where she is because she wasn’t sold. She’s merely gone.”
“Gone?” Dorian asked, going ashen. His hands stilled, one of them slipping down off the table and slotting into the Bull’s. Halward could see it, even though the table should have obscured the view, and it broke something in him.
The tavern and its occupants flocculated wildly: robes and armor swapping back and forth between southern designs and Tevinter ones, Lavellan’s skin darkening, her vallaslin disappearing until she strongly resembled Metrodora, the Bull first shrinking down to a near-human size before swelling to a larger and even more impressive one, and Dorian’s features sliding between elven and human at random.
There was a memory that tugged at him: a garden, Metrodora and a young boy who must be Dorian. “Will I have magic when I grow up?” he asked, and she replied. “You should. You’re Magister Pavus’ son.”
And another memory: an office, Halward and Dorian only a few scant years younger than they currently were. “Get out. You’re no son of mine.”
“When you say gone,” Dorian continued, and the environment resolved itself: the tavern, the meeting with Dorian, Lavellan, and the Bull, all of whom looked very much as they would in the waking world. The regret was back as well, sharp and grinding. “What do you mean, exactly?”
Halward couldn’t bring himself to explain fully, not with an audience, even if Dorian had told them every detail. Instead, he echoed his son’s words back to him.
“She found out. She left.”
“Oh,” Dorian said.
“Your moth- my wife had her freed,” Halward continued. “Just to spite me, I think. She claims that Metrodora was planning on heading south- to find you. I can tell you nothing more than that.”
Solas awakened before Magister Pavus and his escorts, and indeed before most of Kirkwall. He paid for the room and headed north.
There was something had to do.
No, that was a lie. There was something he wanted to do- something to bring closure to his time in the Inquisition.
He would find Dorian’s mother, and guide her back to her son. It would be safer, in a way: heading north removed the temptation to travel east, where he might find himself in Wycome, speaking to members of her clan, perhaps even with her family, her children. This would be cleaner, simpler, easier: one last hurrah before he truly returned to being the Dread Wolf.
Just this one thing, he would do.