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Solas awoke in his tent a few hours before daybreak, letting himself savour the feeling of the Fade on the edges of his consciousness as he returned to the waking world. After allowing himself a few moments, he rose and dressed quickly; grabbing his staff and a skein of water, he set out to relieve the Herald for the final watch of the evening.
He stepped out into the night, feeling a light breeze cool his skin and the damp grass beneath his feet. The fire had died to a light flicker in the hours since he had retired for the evening. It cast just enough light to illuminate a small ring around it, including the back of Lavellan, who was turned away from the fire, looking out over the Hinterlands seemingly not noticing his presence.
Approaching slowly, in no hurry to break her from her reverie, he observed the way the light of the dying fire spilled over her shoulder and across the side of her face, reflecting in her eye and making it glint slightly in the darkness.
Somewhat reluctantly, he finally broke the silence as he came up beside her. “I believe it is time for my watch.”
Lavellan turned her head, looking up at him with mild surprise, “Solas. I hadn’t realized it had gotten so late. I’ve just been enjoying the evening.” She gestured out into the night, towards the Hinterlands sprawling out below. “I must have lost track of time.”
“Indeed,” he nodded. “Regardless, there is time enough for a few more hours sleep before we continue on to Redcliffe in the morning.”
She considered him for a moment, and he noticed how shadows cast on her by the fire accentuated the angles of her face, sharpening them, but not so much as to give it the same severity as Cassandra. He could see a look of concern had settled itself on her brow. It seemed to age her normally youthful face several years before his eyes.
“I think I may stay out here.” Her eyes turned back out towards the valley. “I don’t think I’m going to be able to sleep, anyway. You can head back to bed, Solas. I’ll take your shift”
As tempting as the invitation to return to the Fade for a few more hours this evening was, Solas found himself unwilling to simply leave the Herald on her own during his watch. Instead, he took a seat on the log beside her and placed his staff on the ground next to him.
“I have already prepared myself for the day, I believe I too would have difficulty returning to the Fade tonight.”
This was enough to break her focus on the landscape below, and she turned to look at him again with an expression of shock which quickly turned to amusement when a smile split across her face.
“You? Unable to return to the Fade? Well this must surely be sign of the end times. I’ll have to tell Cassandra and Leliana we’ve done all this work for nothing when we get back to Haven.” She shook her head and chuckled. “They’ll be devastated.”
Solas allowed himself a smile in response as she enjoyed her joke. She seemed to relax visibly as she recovered, untensing shoulders he hadn’t noticed were pinched up towards her neck and the slight furrow that had been between her brows smoothed. Some of her usual youth returned as her laughter faded into the night, and he could feel himself, involuntarily, begin to relax as well.
He had noticed, over the past few weeks traveling with the Herald, that she had that effect on people, himself included. She had a warm friendliness to her that seemed to put people at ease and yet was also clever enough to keep them on their toes. She had even surprised him at times with her seemingly endless questions on his studies of the Fade.
She was certainly far more than he had expected from a Dalish elf when he first tended to her in the cell in Haven.
When her laughter had ceased, Lavellan’s eyes once again returned to the view in front of her. As they did, Solas noticed her expression shift and soften, seeming to drink in the landscape before turning her eyes up towards the sky.
“Reminds me of home a bit. Being out here,” she sighed. “When I was a child, we used to sleep under the stars on nights like this. Pick out constellations and make up stories about them. We’d spend the whole night trying to come up with better and better stories until none of us could keep our eyes open any longer”
With this, the last of the youth returned to her face, and she suddenly looked less like the quick, snarky fighter they had come to know, and more like a lonely young woman very far from home. Something in his chest ached for her situation, like calling out to like through the night.
“You miss your people.” This was not a question, but a statement of fact.
“I do.” She nodded. “This whole Inquisition business is far, far from over; I can feel it. Makes me wonder when I’ll see my family again.”
She paused.
“If I’ll see them.”
Solas felt another pang in his chest. Guilt spread through him as he remembered it was his magic coursing through her palm that had placed her in this situation.
“I am sure, in time, you will see them again. The Inquisition, though small, has hope. Potential. I believe a great deal of that is thanks to you.”
Lavellan smiled, “Thank you, Solas.” The smile shifted to a slight grimace. “I apologize for burdening you with all this. I think I’m just worried about Redcliffe. I’ve had a bad feeling ever since that conversation with Grand Enchanter Fiona in Val Royeaux. None of this sits right with me”
“Nor should it, and there is no need to apologize. You did not ask to be thrust into this; it is perfectly reasonable to feel as you do. I hope I have helped ease your mind some.”
Lavellan’s grimace faded and with it so did some of the ache his chest.
“You did, yes,” she nodded, a small smile returning. “Thank you, Solas. For listening.”
They settled into a comfortable silence and Solas took the opportunity to fully observe the Herald in the dim firelight. The tension in her frame seemed to have all but faded in the wake of their conversation. Her renewed comfort made her look as though she had always belonged there, in the middle of the forest, drinking in the sights and sounds of the dwindling night. She breathed slow and deep, smelling the trees and the smoke on the breeze, thinking, he presumed, of her home among the Lavellan clan, far away in the Free Marches.
The firelight continued to make her eyes shine faintly in the night. Between her small, easy smile and look of content he found, inadvertently, that she had a quiet, graceful beauty to her. While he would normally not allow himself to indulge in such thoughts, in this moment, he found himself simply unable (or unwilling) to deny it, nor break the brief peace they had created in the light of the dying campfire.
They stayed that way for what seemed to Solas like an age, until Lavellan finally broke the silence.
“I suppose there is a bright side to all this Herald of Andraste business.”
In a rare occurrence, Solas found himself unable to form a response more complex than: “Oh?”
Lavellan gestured out into the night to the valley below. “I get to see new places, and experience beautiful nights like this.”
For the first time that evening, Solas turned his gaze away from the Herald and out towards the view she had found so engrossing.
The sky was clear and cloudless, the stars in bright, full view suspended around a large, luminous moon. From the camp, the valley was in full view, stretching all the way out towards the Crossroads. The light breeze that blew around them rustled the trees below and the still ponds reflected the moon perfectly, like paintings scattered through the region. In the distance, the soft trickle of water could be heard and animals moved quietly through the wood all around them. They were far enough away from the templar and mages' battle ground that the only smells on the air were those of wood smoke mixed with pine and a hint of wildflowers carried past by the breeze.
She was right; it was a breathtaking night.
Solas wondered how he hadn’t noticed the beauty of the evening before that moment, but as he shifted his gaze back to the woman at his side, he had his answer. Unconsciously, since the moment he first stepped from his tent, Solas’ eyes had been fixed on Lavellan. He could not explain why, and at this point feared the explanation and what it’s implications may be, but he could not deny the fact of the matter.
It was a beautiful night, but all he could stare at was her.