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He’d come out as a distraction. The world has grown and changed, risen from the ashes of the old world twice over. But now? Now the world seems so small. The music pounds around him, bodies shift, writhe en mass on the dance floor, the smell of alcohol fills the air. It’s mind numbing. It’s why these clubs are here. At least by his estimation. Everyone needs a place to escape, to lose themselves.
Usually he’d go to a bookstore, or a library and find a dozen or more tomes to keep him from looking inside himself for a time. But tonight, tonight something called him to step outside his usual box. So, he sits, with jeans slung low on his hips, t-shirt tighter than he’d ever wear to the office, his jawbone necklace on display, sipping an overpriced whiskey, leaning back against the bar. It reminds him, vaguely, of days long past when the Inquisitor would call songs from her memory and drown herself in them. He had always been mesmerized by the way her body moved, flowed, to the music.
How he misses the Inquisitor. She’d run so hard beside him, fought at his back with vengeance in her eyes, determination strengthening her. His perfect, perfect compliment.
But she was long ago consumed by the very magic that had given her to him. Far before he’d torn the world apart. At least now, mages roam free, the elves are free. His hand curls in front of his face, thumb on his lip as he watches the crowd surge and retreat together. He watches without seeing them.
The song changes and he catches a glimpse of – white. Stark white against onyx skin. It reminds him of her. Drags his so viciously through coals he has long tried to avoid. The glass is set aside, he leans forward, elbows on knees, and tries to catch another glimpse of the specter of his past.
She has lost herself to the music. It thrums in her blood, beats with her heart, stutters her breath. She loves dancing, the way she feels complete when she starts. Her hands reach over her head as her hips rock from side to side, knees bending and straightening as she moves. The crush of bodies is intoxicating here. The heady feel of different aura flaring and retreating as if they were greeting old friends.
Partners slide behind her, shift before her eyes and join her for a time. No one ever stays long. She doesn’t leave the floor, and they can’t seduce her off it. Not when she so rarely gets to feel whole and right. Eventually, she has to get water, or she’ll overheat. It’s reluctantly that she goes, a hand lifting her riotously curly hair off the back of her neck.
His heart stops in his chest. There she is. Different now, but utterly the same. White ink set in onyx skin, tribal Rivaini tattoos lining her visible skin, hair long and black as night. She is taller, her figure curvier than he could conjure a memory of, even when she’d been carrying, her thighs had not been so thick, her hips as wide. Her mouth, even her nose is the same, however, that gentle barely there upturn to the tip, the wide lush lips. But those eyes. Those eyes arrest him. They are green, a violent, vibrant almost lime that reminds him of the anchor that ripped her apart millennia ago.
She’s dressed like the Rivaini of the times. Her skin is shown without an ounce of shame, the skirt hitting her thighs but split at the sides, her shirt covering only what it had to, to be named a shirt and keep her from being arrested for public indecency. But the deep green only serves to make her glow, the black skirt giving glimpses and hints of what lay beneath. Gold winks at her navel, along her ears, at her cupid’s bow, just below her bottom lip.
So utterly his inquisitor and so completely different as well. The tattoos are completely Rivaini and hold no likeness to what had adorned the Herald. He barely notices the fact she is moving; until she stops. Those green eyes widen, blinking slowly at him.
The man from her dreams. She’d know him anywhere. There are differences, like the tight coils of his dreadlocks, the youth in his face, but that is Fen’falon. He kept her company in her dreams, at the darkest of days. Perhaps Fen was real, dreamers are rare, but not unheard of. Perhaps this is his son.
A strapping son if she did say so herself. But there is something, something in those cobalt eyes that has her breath catching. Something that urges her closer. It’s like all her connection to the earth is gone and he’s the only person to keep her from floating away.
“Solas?”
A sweeter voice he’s never heard wrap around the syllable of his name. The accent is different, she drawls her words, her voice is smokey and soft. She’d moved closer, and he finds her to be taller than his last vision of her. Her shoulder would sit just below his own had they both been standing. But her voice, his name. They pierce him in ways he hasn’t felt in eons. Is this the Inquisitor reborn? Could someone have granted him a second chance with the one person he needed? He stares at her, hopes, prays.
“Vhenan.”
She’s within reaching distance. He lifts a hand as she reaches out, and sparks are traded when their skin touches. She looks confused, and then jubilant.
“You're real.”