Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Fen'Harel was alone.

By his warded campfire, there was only one pallet, one pack. Only silence.

There were only the stars overhead, scattered like flower seeds by an unseen hand, blinking Dalish shapes she had drawn out for him once in the ashes with a stick. She had pointed with one eye shut and watched him with the spirit of a smile not yet bloomed as he repeated the pattern she'd taught him, then drawn the pictures they made between their crossed legs. She named them one by one and spoke to him in Elvish of the beliefs of the dying embers of The People and because these superstitions came from her mouth, they were musical and hypnotizing. He listened because she valued them and he wanted to know all the things that made her heart sing. Even when they felt like arrows ripping through his flesh. Even when he knew they were wrong.

"This one is Fen'Harel," she said, carefully outlining a twisted half-truth of a wolf. "The trickster."

"I know who the Dread Wolf is," he told her dryly. 

She smiled at him thoughtfully and then stretched out on her back to better see the pantheon of the night sky. He joined her there, keeping a few proprietary inches between them as their affections were new and delicate and he still foolishly believed himself to be in control. He had not yet kissed her. Not in the Fade or on her balcony or between her legs. Not yet.

"I'm going to tell you something," she decided suddenly, twisting to face him. She was so earnest that he laughed, which earned an endearing scowl. "But you have to promise me you won't laugh or give me lectures on the Dalish."

He could not deny her something so simple, so he smiled and promised.

She flopped back carelessly and her pinky brushed his and his heart stuttered pleasantly. He left his pinky where it lay. So did she. They could not deny themselves something so simple.

"When I was a little girl," she began, already laughing through her embarrassment, "I used to think the constellations truly were the gods. I thought I was very clever -- cleverer than the Storyteller and the Keeper and all the elves who'd come before me -- and that the stars themselves were where Fen'Harel had locked them all away. So every night as the stars came out, I climbed the biggest hill I could find and left out a chunk of raw meat. And I would shout, 'Dread Wolf, Dread Wolf! Dinner!'"

He broke his promise. He laughed. But she grinned at him and he knew he'd been absolved. "And what would you have done if Fen'Harel had come to you?"

She blushed then, caught in the firelight like a secret, and his pinky hooked with hers. "I had a plan, you see. My Keeper used to tell me I could charm anyone into doing anything. She'd say, 'Hal'lasean, you could charm the fur from the Dread Wolf!' So when Fen'Harel came to dinner, I was going to charm him. I would sing to him to keep him calm and pet him and feed him and then I would tell him how very cold it was that night and he would give me his fur to keep warm." She looked terribly pleased with herself. He watched her watch the sky and imagined this little Dalish girl standing on a hill in the dark, calling to his stars. 

"And then?" he asked with amusement.

"And then when I had it, I would hide it away and tell him he could not have his fur back until he gave me some boon."

"What was the boon?" 

Her nose crinkled with reluctance as she turned to admit her folly. "Mostly it was that he release the gods, so that I could ask boons of each of them and so The People could once again live in Arlathan. But I was a child, so some nights I wanted a fine horse of my own or to be heard or to find out my parents yet lived. Once I distinctly recall vowing to myself that should I meet Fen'Harel, I was going to beg him to send spiders into the bed of a very smug boy in my clan."

"I did not think Fen'Harel sent plagues of spiders," he teased.

She laughed like the clear night sky above them. "I was a child. I didn't know."

"And now?" He asked it lightly, but the question was laden with meanings she could not possibly comprehend.

Her smile melted as she considered his face. That sly half-smirk took over. "Now," she sighed, "I know less."

He found the stars she'd named as his and watched them blankly, his mind wandering to her slender form shivering on the battlements of Skyhold, watching the same stars, calling out for Solas.

But Solas, like Fen'Harel, would not come to her.

~~~

The Inquisitor had collapsed quite suddenly. Cullen had taken her to see the improvements on the mage tower and, afterward, they had climbed the ladders to the uppermost level so they could lean into the wind and reassure themselves that the breach in the sky was healed. And they had talked, as they often did, of anything and everything and nothing at all. In the wake of Corypheus' defeat, there was only one topic that was off-limits: a certain elven apostate who had run off with Hal'lasean's heart instead of the orb for which he'd come.

She was telling him laughingly about walking in on Dorian and Iron Bull, her cheeks pink with the cold and red with her story, when halfway through a sentence, she had dropped like a stone. Crumpled without warning into a heap at the tallest point of Skyhold.

Cullen had been beside himself. Just thinking about it now made him break out in a cold sweat. He could charge into battle against an ancient mage bent on godhood without a second thought, but with his dearest friend -- with the woman he loved fervently, secretly, like The Chant always on his lips -- lying unconscious before him, he had panicked. There were no enemies in sight, no assassins he could see sneaking away, and when he searched her prone form with his too-large hands, blushing furiously the whole while and apologizing under his breath, he found no mark or sign to explain what had happened.

So he'd carried her. Over his shoulder like a sack when he needed his hands for the ladder, then draped in his arms, Cullen had raced most of the perimeter of Skyhold's walls until he came to the door that led to her quarters. And he shouted the whole way. Bellowed, more like it. At every startled recruit and weathered guard he passed. When they saw whom he held, their surprised gawping became action and by the time he had settled her on her bed -- he dared not undress her and put her in it -- the remaining members of the Inquisition's inner circle were hovering anxiously behind the healers and surgeons, who one by one examined her and admitted they could find nothing wrong.

He had bellowed at them too then, sending the weaker ones running. Dorian and Morrigan poked and prodded and did Maker-knows-what with their magic to see if it had anything to do with the dormant anchor, but they too came away without any answers.

And since she seemed to be otherwise healthy, the women worked together to undress her and slip her into a shift while Cullen stared stoically out the window. They would let her rest. Perhaps, they suggested to each other without really believing, the stress of what she'd been through had finally caught up with her. But they held vigil over her as she slept all the same.

Cullen had his work moved to her desk and gave orders that he was not to be disturbed so that he could watch the gentle rise and fall of her breath and know that she hadn't left them yet. He paced. It was a large room, much larger than his office or his quarters, so there was plenty of space to be had. He paced it all and then turned around and paced it again. But mostly he sat on the side of her bed and held her hand and smoothed her brow with a wet cloth as she had once done for him.

On the evening of the second day, she woke. 

He was leaning on his elbows on her desk when it happened, frowning deeply at models of what it might look like to go to war with Tevinter or the Qunari. Not because he thought it was inevitable, but because that was how their luck ran. Besides, it was a worthy mental exercise that kept him sharp and occupied now that their biggest battle was behind them. He was moving the Chargers up the coast with one hand and tapping the fingers of the other when he looked up to find the point of a letter opener in his face. He leapt back, knocking over his chair, and was already reaching for his sword when he recognized the slight figure gripping the handle.

"Hal," he breathed, crossing to her and gripping her to him fiercely. "Thank the Maker, you're awake. I was so worried!"

She didn't drop the blade but instead held it out to her side and let it hang limply, which was strange, but not as strange as her not returning his affections. He took her by the shoulders and held her out from him, studying her face for assurance that she was all right. "How are you feeling? I imagine you're starving. Do you remember what happened?"

Her brow knit, uncomprehending, and when she spoke to him it was in an agitated stream of rapid-fire Elvish that left his mouth hanging open stupidly. For a moment, he thought to call for Solas. Then he remembered Solas wouldn't come.

"I don't speak Elvish, remember?" he prompted gently instead. "I can't understand what you're saying."

She tried again, all open vowels and sing-song lilt, but he shook his head. He thought he picked out the word 'shemlen' but she'd never called him that before. Not him.

"I can't understand you, Hal'lasean," Cullen repeated, "but you should be sitting. You're probably weak. And I should...tell the others you're awake." He eyed her uncertainly. She was trembling slightly and there was fire in her eyes. A fire that burned hotter with each word he spoke. "Here," he suggested with a smile, "let's just sit you d--" 

At first he thought she was coming in for another hug. That's why he left himself open.

And that's how Cullen ended up staring down at the decorative hilt of a dull knife protruding from his abdomen.

Chapter Text

Varric, Bull, Krem, and Dorian were sprawled out messily at their usual corner table, a spread of cards in front of them like someone had blown up the deck. But the coins and trinkets being offered were meticulously stacked and separated, and the five cards each held individually were kept close to their chests. They eyed each other suspiciously over their drinks, each one daring his fellows to make the first wrong move.

"Lord Pavus," said Krem with careful civility, "If you don't show me what's in that one sleeve of yours, I'm going to cut it off for you."

The mage's eyes flashed with a private thrill as he made a show of undoing his cuff and rolling it up inch by inch so that he could hold up and twist his bare forearm. "You mean this one sleeve? I'm afraid you've got the wrong man, Cremisius. Someone is hoarding the Angel of Death, but I assure you it isn't me."

Krem's eyes narrowed and Dorian mimicked him comically, matching scowl for scowl until Krem began to doubt himself and sat back a little. "Fine. Let's say I believe you..."

"Then you'd be an idiot," Bull noted cheerfully as he plucked the card from Dorian's massive collar. "He was cheating."

"I was not cheating!" gasped Dorian, putting a scandalized hand to his chest. "I do not cheat! I am a man of unspeakable honor--"

"Unspeakable because it doesn't exist?" Varric asked.

"In his defense, we don't call it cheating in Tevinter," said Krem, discarding his hand on the table.

"Oh no?" Bull looked to Dorian and lifted his brow. "What do you call it?"

The stylish mage looked away awkwardly, adjusting his rolled sleeve and clearing his throat.

"Well?"

Dorian scowled. "Blood magic," he mumbled.

"Say that again?" Varric laughed.

"Blood magic," sighed Dorian, his cheeks turning red. "That's what it's called when you...bind the Angel of Death."

Bull and Varric were caught somewhere between being disgusted and impressed.

"Wow," the dwarf breathed. "That is messed up."

"He doesn't understand why she hurts him." Cole was suddenly beside Varric, wringing his hands together with restless energy, murmuring pained thoughts to the table like other people might give urgent news. "He loves her, he only loves her, even when she loves him instead. Late nights in the rotunda, touching, kissing, soft, silken, supple, sensuous, Solas, he can hear them as he passes, laughing, moaning, saying his name, speaking words he doesn't know but wants to know. But she's never hurt him like this, so deeply, and even as he chases her he worries, he loves her."

"Andraste's ass, Cole!" Varric complained, slapping his cards down and rubbing his face. "Come on, kid, what've I told you! You can't just go around telling us Curly's personal thoughts like that!"

"That poor, foolish, attractive man," Dorian sighed sympathetically. The table nodded their assent. "I do hope it all works out for him somehow. And of course I want her to be happy..."

The men around the table went quiet at that, their thoughts lifting to her tower room, to the ragdoll way they moved her as they searched her for clues and wounds.

"Hey," said Bull suddenly, clapping Dorian too hard on the back. "Boss'll be fine! Take a lot more than some fainting spell to kill her!"

That's when the sound of something heavy and wooden crashed above their heads followed by the racing of fleet footsteps that moved toward them and past them for the stairs. A wary glance passed around the table and they were all reaching for their weapons, Bianca already unlocked and loaded and pointed to follow the sound. A thump from the floor above them as the runner went over the railing in lieu of the stairs. More sprinted steps, around a corner, up onto the railing...

"Hey, Boss!" The Iron Bull broke into a huge, amiable grin and they all let out a sigh of relief. "See? I told you! Tough as a dragon's teet!" He waved her to them and dropped his weapon by the table. "Come on down and join us!"

Hal'lasean dove from the balcony to the bar to the floor faster than anyone should have been moving after being comatose for two days, hit the ground in a roll, and popped up gracefully to burst out the tavern door. Her petite form hesitated only briefly before making straight for the upper courtyard. It was only then that Varric realized she was still wearing her shift.

Dorian's brows lifted in delicate surprise. "She must be feeling better."

But Varric and Bianca were already headed after her. "I don't like this..."

Cole was close on his heels. "He doesn't know these people, doesn't understand them. They're too big, move too fast, they look wrong. He looks wrong! Where am I? He needs to find the others, needs to warn them. Please don't let me be too late. How did I get--"

Another crash of wood rocked the upstairs followed this time by the precise running march of heavy boots. Lots of heavy boots. When the guards hit the balcony, their faces were grey and grim, shock rounding their eyes. "Which way did she go?!" one demanded of Varric.

He immediately turned to face them, his own visage already set to protect her and determined to make a stand here if that's what was needed. "Who wants to know."

They hadn't heard him come down the stairs. In all the ruckus, he had shuffled down from the attic unnoticed, but now he pushed himself through his men so he could speak to Varric directly. If his soldiers looked bad, Cullen looked like the Angel of Death himself. He was sweating and shivering, his skin a sickly pale. One hand supported him with a white-knuckled grip on the railing. The other clutched a bunched cloth to his stomach. Whatever color it had been a few minutes before, it was now almost black with an unending flow of blood. 

"THE INQUISITOR!" Cullen shouted with all his remaining strength. "DON'T LET HER GET AWAY!"

And then he fell.

~~~

Varric had never in his life been so glad that someone couldn't do magic. Their Hal was many things -- stubborn as hell, clever, good with a blade, damn hard to kill, easy on the eyes, stubborn -- but a mage wasn't one of them. She was slipperier than a greased nug when she wanted to be, which was now, but the beauty of Skyhold was that there was really just the one obvious way in and out, and it was right out in the open. 

The word passed quickly over the battlements and by the time she figured out where it was she wanted to be headed, they were already dropping the gate. Varric was there behind her when she made her mad dash for the last gap under the iron spikes, but they were down before she was and suddenly the Inquisitor whipped around to face him like a trapped animal. Her eyes were wide and unfocused, taking in everything but too panicked now to really see. She was looking for threats and with Bianca in his hands, that's exactly what he was. 

"Heeeey, Haaaal," he started with a hopeful smile, sliding his beloved crossbow back behind him and holding out his palms to her. "You got somethin' you wanna tell your old friend Varric? Like what in Andraste's hoisted knickers is going on here!" Her eyes slid across the yard once more before locking in on him with razor sharp precision. She saw him now, but she didn't see Varric. And whatever she did see, she did not like. "Shit. ...Hal? You okay? Talk to me, Hal!"

And she did. She let out a shouted string of Elvish that went right over his head. 

"...Yeah, I'm gonna need to write that down. Can you repeat that while I find a piece of paper?"

She repeated it. Louder this time. And angrier. Much, much angrier. So angry that Varric actually took a step back. Which was a mistake.

Her shoulders hunched and her chin dropped toward her chest and then she was rushing toward him, gaze still locked on his as though she intended to make absolutely positive she was looking him in the eyes when she murdered him with her bare hands. 

Varric urged himself to do the smart thing and get out of the way. He bullied his legs to move him aside even a little. He told his hands to grab Bianca and be prepared to hit his friend in the head. But instead he stood frozen and gaping, wondering when the people he loved were going to stop turning on him and what he had ever done to deserve it. Must've been something. He closed his eyes.

She fell with a clattered thump on the stones before him, scraping to a long stop with the help of the unforgiving forces of friction and gravity. Varric opened first one eye then the other, and when she didn't move, he threw away his caution and dropped to his knees by her side. He rolled her onto her back and touched the cheek that hadn't gotten gravel burn, his features twisted uncomfortably with feelings he didn't like to express. But she was breathing. That was good. And she was unconscious. That was good too.

"Looked like you could use some help!" said Dorian, unable to keep his usual cheer in his voice as he dropped to one knee next to Varric and held his staff out over Hal's limp and bleeding body.

"What took you so long!"

Dorian gave a light laugh, but nothing in him meant it. "Somebody had to stop the Commander bleeding all over the floor.  He's fine, by the way. He's a complete oaf, but he'll be all right."

Varric looked up to find his own traumatized expression echoed in Dorian's face. "Did he say what happened?"

It took the Tevinter mage some time to get the words out and when he did, they were wrapped in wonder, like he was examining their reality even as they left his lips. "He says..." He shook his head and tried again. "She stabbed him. She woke up and she just...stabbed him!"

Chapter Text

"I still don't like it," complained Cullen, frowning over his shoulder at Hal'lasean's bed, where she was bound with rope and with magic, just to be safe. She was unconscious, so she didn't particularly seem to mind, but it sure made Varric feel better about being up here in the dark with her.

"You're welcome to let her stab you all you want, Curly," the dwarf said grimly. "But I like my blood and I'm going to keep it in my body."

He and the Commander were taking the second watch. Well, he was taking second watch. The Commander took every watch. He had passed out on the floor by the fire because he staunchly refused to leave the side of the girl who had, moments before, tried to murder him with an everyday office tool. He had consented only to further healing and a change of clothes and would not hear any argument to the contrary. But it was decided that they should take shifts in pairs now so that when she next opened her eyes, there would be backup. Or at least someone to run away and come back with backup.

Dorian stayed with her first while Cullen slept on the hearthrug. He'd had a book with him, but Varric had a sneaking suspicion the mage had really just curled over her with worry and clutched at her hand. Even falling asleep as he was, Dorian was reluctant to go when Varric showed up to relieve him.

"Why does Cullen get to stay?" Dorian had argued.

"He got stabbed, so he gets dibs," he'd said with a shrug. "You know how it is."

Dorian kept throwing her hopeful, hangdog looks on his way out of sight, as though she might somehow sense he was leaving her and wake up just to please him. But of course she didn't. Not then and now now, hours later, when Cullen was awake and worrying and Varric was pretending to try to write. 

"Which sounds better?" Varric wondered. "'Shit Gets Weirder: The Inquisition Continues' or 'The Inquisition Continues: Shit Gets Weirder'?"

Cullen gave him a wan smirk. "I thought she told you to help first, write later."

Varric grinned. "Aw, no, I was always going to do both. I just asked her because I know how happy it makes her to boss people around."

The other man gave a small, tight laugh and twisted again to get a good look at their fallen Inquisitor, cringing with the motion.

The dwarf let out a sigh. "You know, what you're doing right now, that's the problem with your whole relationship with her."

The Commander unwound in surprise, which made him wince again. "What are you talking about?"

So much for writing. He bent down to set his supplies on the ground beside him and then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, and prepared to talk about Cullen's Lady Problems. "You're always twisting yourself around to get a good look at her, even when it hurts like hell. Even when she's otherwise occupied." Cullen's face darkened with understanding, but Varric held up a hand. "I'm not saying you're doing anything wrong, Curly, we're just worried about you. And her. But right now, let's talk about you. Isn't there anyone else? Don't get me wrong, I think you'd be great together, but you're gonna be waiting a long time. Chuckles really did a number on her."

"I don't really want to be discussing this right now, Varric," Cullen grumbled irritably. "Or possibly ever."

"Suit yourself," said the dwarf with every intention of dropping the subject. But of course he couldn't. "Have you ever thought about Cassand--"

"Shh!" interrupted Cullen, and Varric was about to roll his eyes and continue right along his line of thought before he realized that the Commander wasn't shushing him to stop him from talking. There was movement coming from the bed behind them. They both reached one hand down to feel for their weapons and turned ever-so-slowly to see what was happening.

They found Hal'lasean sitting up in bed, scowling murderously at them. Her feet and hands were still held together and tied to the post, so they were in no immediate danger, and she seemed to know this as well because she wasn't squirming or fighting her bonds. She was trapped and she knew it. So now she was willing, apparently, to negotiate. Or at least to seek another escape.

"You gonna play nice this time, Hal?" he asked, sliding Bianca onto his back and gesturing for Cullen to stay put.

The Commander wrapped his hand around the hilt of his sword but stayed by the fire while Varric made a slow approach toward the bed and tried to look as nonthreatening as one can with a beauty like Bianca peeking over a shoulder. He stopped at the foot and tried again. "Hal? You in there?"

Her chest moved rapidly as she seethed at him, but when she finally opened her mouth to speak, all that came out was Elvish.

Varric let out a miserable sigh. "Still doing that then. Right." He turned back to Cullen and gave a helpless shrug. "I guess I'll go get the others. Keep an eye on her." He smirked. "Try not to let her stab you this time."

~~~

Despite the hour, no one complained when Varric sent the runner to wake them. Most of them didn't even bother to dress. It was a motley crew indeed that now stood in a clump before their Inquisitor, utterly bamboozled by what was happening or what to do about it. 

"Well, obviously we need someone who speaks Elvish," Varric had stated when Cassandra, Josephine, Dorian, Fiona, Bull, Mother Giselle, and the healer had all arrived. They were just missing Morrigan now. They had all looked pointedly at Fiona.

"Just because I'm an elf," came her acidic reply, "doesn't mean I speak Elvish."

But Varric was too busy being worried to bother apologizing at the moment. He looked around the little group for answers, but no one seemed to have any. No one but him, anyway. "Okay, what about that Dalish kid? The one whose Keeper Hal sweet-talked into letting him join. Where's that kid?"

"She misses him," said Cole suddenly, way too close to Varric's ear. The dwarf jumped and let out a curse under his breath, but the kid was already moving to sit next to Hal'lasean on the bed. The elf eyed the young man warily, a distinct distaste twisting her lips, but she didn't try to kill him. Yet. "Misses the things about him she used to hate, misses him that much, the milk-and-tea smell of him, the long, hot days in the field, the dirt and the sweat, she didn't want to leave him but they made her."

"That's what this is about?!" demanded Cassandra. "This is about him?!"

"You know, Seeker," pointed out the dwarf flatly, "for a secret romantic, you're not very understanding." But he waved his hand dismissively. "Anyway, it's not that. Solas broke her heart ages ago now, and, sure, she still cries into her cups about it, but it doesn't make sense for her to break now."

The Seeker glowered at Varric and Hal'lasean glared death at them all. "Perhaps she read a report from an agent seeking Solas and it upset her."

"Give her a little credit, Cassandra!" Dorian scolded. "Our Hal is not the sort to crack up over a lost love, no matter how impressive his stamina." Cassandra made a disgusted sound, but Dorian merely shrugged matter-of-factly. "We're all impressed by it, there's no need to pretend."

Cullen was turning a miserable, pale pink. He probably should have been brighter, but he had lost quite a lot of blood earlier. "She hadn't read a report," he said quietly, frowning at her with concern while she scowled silently back at him. "I'd been with her for at least two hours when it happened. We were just talking and then..." He made a gesture to indicate her fall.

That's when Cole's words caught up with Varric's whirring brain. He turned to the kid with sudden intensity of focus. "Cole. What'd you say about...he didn't want to leave...?"

The spirit-form shook his head. "He didn't leave. She did. It was an honor to be called to serve and she went, but they both knew what it meant and she never saw him again. She slept for so long and when she woke up, he was gone, gone forever, gone away like her people had gone away and now there's nothing."

Varric let out a sigh that drained his lungs of all their air. "Nevermind. Thought I had something there for a minute."

"She doesn't like it when you say things she doesn't understand," Cole whispered.

"That makes two of us," he grumbled.

Josie dropped heavily into a chair and wrapped her ruffled housecoat more tightly around her nightclothes. "It has to be magic. Why else would she ever attack Varric and Cullen? Nothing else makes sense! And this sudden insistence on Elvish when of course we have no one to translate!" She scrubbed her hands repeatedly over her face and made an unhappy sound in her throat. "In the morning, we will simply have to put out word through the castle for a fluent speaker."

Dorian sat gingerly on the opposite side of the bed from Hal'lasean and leaned as close as he dared, squinting a little as he tried to suss out just what was going on in her head. Varric had never seen the mage look so abjectly miserable. "Come on, Hal," he encouraged gently. "Give us something."

She spit forcefully into his face.

He choked back what sounded almost like a sob and quickly vacated the bed, wiping horrified at the saliva that clung to his cheek. The Bull was there next to him faster than Varric would have thought possible for a man as big as that and soon Dorian was leaning against the Qunari for support or protection or...maybe just to hide the hurt behind two tons of purebred Qun muscle. And meanwhile Elvish words were pouring viciously from Hal'lasean's mouth. 

Varric lost count of how many times she said 'shemlen'.

Chapter Text

"What could possibly be taking her this long?" Josephine was frowning down the stairs for perhaps the twelfth time since they had sent another runner to fetch Morrigan. It wasn't that they begrudged her the sleep none of them were getting, but without Solas here, she was their next best expert on the Inquisitor's 'weird shit' and they were running out of ideas that weren't completely ridiculous. When Iron Bull had suggested that it was some kind of second elf puberty, they knew it was time for a break.

So they'd sent for tea and breakfast -- fruit and bread and cheese, since the cooks were likely just now getting up -- and placed themselves haphazard about the room while they waited for food or for Morrigan or for divine intervention.

"You're sure it's not the anchor?" Varric asked Dorian. Again. This time the Tevinter mage didn't even bother to answer. 

Only Cole sat sentinel now, still at her side and listening intently to what only he could hear. He was much closer to her than Dorian had been and yet she didn't seem to mind his presence when she noticed him at all. He didn't speak to her as he might someone else who was hurting. He didn't try to fix it. But he stayed nonetheless.

Because there were so many of them to be served, the meal was brought up by several hands. Josephine and Fiona cleared the desk so that it could be set down all together and the attendants filed in one after the other to place their tray, open it, and serve its contents. In their exhausted stupors, they didn't even realize that two elves had walked right by them until the healer spoke up.

"Pardon me, but don't you need someone who speaks Elvish?"

The last girl hesitated at the top of the stairs and turned to look at Josephine questioningly. "I speak a bit of Elvish," she offered shyly.

They all stared at her, as uncomprehending of what she'd just told them as they were of Hal'lasean's words. As uncomprehending as she was of theirs. And then all at once they were on their feet, scrambling around Hal'lasean and practically manhandling the poor volunteer to the front of their gathering like a sacrifice to a god they hoped to appease. The girl blanched and blushed and looked behind her uncertainly, but Josephine stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. "She's going to say some words to you in Elvish and we need you to translate what she says for us. Okay?"

The girl nodded or maybe she shook. It was hard to tell. But it was too late to turn back because Dorian was trying again. He sat down in the very same spot he had taken before and leaned hesitantly toward his friend, no longer able to hide his hurt and anxiety. "Please, Hal. Whatever it is, it's going to be okay. This girl speaks Elvish, so you tell her anything you need to say and she'll tell us. And that way we can understand each other. Okay? Hal?" He practically winced when she finally turned to look at him.

"An'eth'ara," the kitchen girl mumbled obsequiously, struggling between looking at the tied-up Inquisitor and staring down at her own shoes. But something changed in Hal at the Elvish greeting and she leaned forward as far as she could to study the other elf warily. Dorian was forgotten for now. And once again Hal'lasean began talking rapidly in Elvish. So rapidly that it seemed the volunteer was having trouble keeping up. When Hal was done, she stared expectantly at her kin, eyes bright with hope.

When the girl looked up at the eager faces of the Inquisition, what little remained of her hesitancy cracked and left her crying in front of them. "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I thought I could translate but I can't! I can do it for my da, but I don't know no High Elvish! He only ever speaks like the Dalish do!"

"It's okay," promised Josie, weighting her hands on the girl's shoulders. "It's all right. You did the best you could and that's all anyone could ask. But what was that were you saying about High Elvish? Is she not speaking like the Dalish?"

The girl sniffed and wiped her eyes while Hal'lasean's hope and patience withered on the vine. "No, ma'am! That's no Dalish, that's like what they say for the fancy stories at Arlathvhen! High Elvish, they say sometimes, only I can pick up the meanings in the stories and I can't pick up a word she says! They use it for rituals and whatnot, only nobody but Keepers ever speaks it. I'm so sorry, ma'am! I wanted to help!"

"Hey, kid, you did," Varric assured her with his most soothing smile. "You helped us a lot. Don't worry about it, okay? And, hey, thanks for trying."

"Why don't you take the morning off," Josephine suggested, and the girl's face brightened immediately. "Go on, get some rest."

"Thank you! Thank, Lady Montilyet!" Just as she was turning to leave, though, she looked hesitantly back at Hal'lasean's captive figure. "Ir abelas, Inquisitor. I really did try."  

The girl disappeared down the stairs and left the little group of advisors staring uselessly at their unreachable leader. Hal'lasean gave a sound of capitulation and dropped back on the bed with a muted thump.

"Aaaaand shit just keeps getting weirder," sighed Varric, turning his attention back to his breakfast.

Dorian was still sitting on the bed, though he had pulled back to give Hal'lasean some space. His whole face was wrinkled in consternation and thought, as if he were scraping the very bottom of his reserves of both energy and knowledge. "Do we know what dialect of Dalish her clan speaks? Or what she spoke with Solas?"

No one spoke up for quite some time. And no one expected the person with the answer to be Cullen. "Modern Dalish." They all turned to gape. Cullen blushed as hard as he could. "I thought it might be nice to learn. You know. Now that she hasn't...got any..." He swallowed and looked carefully into the fire. "It's Modern Dalish. Is what the book says."

"There's a book?" Dorian gasped, standing abruptly and making a straight line for Cullen's chair. "Where is it? What's it called? Is it in your room? You're not a slob, are you?" He held out his hand. "Give me the key. I'll get that and everything I can on--" Before anyone had the chance to take a breath, the Tevinter mage's eyes went wide with a mad spark. "Has anyone thought to let her write what she's trying to say?!"

Varric dropped his head so hard into his hands he practically slapped himself in the face. Like Dorian, the idea galvanized him to his feet. Tea went everywhere, but he didn't pay it any attention. "Sparkler, you're a genius! I could kiss you!" When Dorian waggled his brow, Varric added, "I won't! But I could!" He snatched the papers he put on the floor out of the growing puddle of hot tea and shook them off as he raced to Hal'lasean's side. When she saw what he had, she sat up excitedly and reached for the quill with her tightly bound hands.

She scribbled furiously, writing in symbols or letters that Varric didn't know and quickly devouring the entire page. When she was done, she lifted the quill and her brows, nodding at him in confirmation. And now she was active again, eyes moving from one person to the next in the hopes that one of them would somehow be able to read what they couldn't hear. The advisors passed the paper between them, squinting at it determinedly or shaking their heads. It went through Cassandra, Cullen, Varric, Bull, and the healer before Fiona yelped out her sudden discovery.

"I recognize this from the books on Arlathan in the Circle library! This isn't Elvish! This is Elvhen!"

Confusion dropped heavily over the room. Cassandra asked what they were all thinking. "There's a difference?"

Chapter Text

No one even noticed the chair was being lifted until it had already been hurled over the balcony with a furious roar. They watched it sail out of sight impassively and kept watching until the sound of splintered wood came from the jagged rocks far below. They had expected it to be Cullen; a violent display of his increasing frustrations in the face of something unknown and terrifying. He was in love with her, after all.

But it was Dorian who stood on the balcony, chest heaving, fists clenched, the wind whipping mockingly through his thin robe. He was still shirtless and in his smallclothes, even though the castle was waking up. His flesh prickled with the mountain cold, but he stayed outside, turning his back to the group and clutching at the railing like he was seriously considering following the chair over.

"...Dorian..." The Bull was standing in the open doorway, his one eye trained on his lover uncertainly. 

"I'm fine," croaked the mage, flailing a hand to keep them away. Even that had flourish. "Leave me be."

No one went out to him, but they did keep him in their sights for as long as he seemed unstable. They were such an efficient team by now that they split their focus wordlessly, half of them watching Hal, half of them watching Dorian. 

Cassandra took a faltering step backward and dropped into one of the remaining chairs, her features pinched with the effort of keeping herself calm. "There was no note?" she asked the runner tightly.

The poor young man looked deeply shaken by the display he'd just witnessed. "No, Seeker. There was nothing. We searched her room top to bottom. She'd taken everything. That big mirror is still in the storage room, but the Lady Morrigan...she's just gone."

"Thank you for telling us," Josephine said softly, mustering a polite smile. "I know you will keep this between us." He nodded eagerly. "Good. You are dismissed."

When the door downstairs had closed and they were alone again, the silence was stunned. Their hearts twisted and their stomachs turned. One by one, everyone but Dorian brought their defeated attentions to the elven body on the bed, knocked out again after she finally tried to hold Cole hostage with the very ropes that bound her. He escaped before she could, having heard it in her thoughts, but he now sat curled up by the fire with overlarge eyes like a kicked puppy.

In the quiet, Dorian let out a growl that grew into a vitriolic hiss as he slapped a hand on the stonework and marched determinedly back inside. His face was contorted with rage. "That grasping, devious harpy!" he snapped. "This was her plan all along! To get to the Well, to have that power for herself, and when Hal took it from her..." His gaze fell on her sleeping form and his brief flash of despair was overpowered by his need for revenge. "I'm going after her. And I swear, when I catch that seditious hedgewitch, I'll fry the marrow within her bones and leave her stinking carcass for the crows and the flies!" He took off for the stairs, apparently intent on leaving right then and there, though he had no idea where Morrigan was or where she was headed. And though his staff was leaned against the desk behind him. He was almost across the room when The Iron Bull stepped quietly in his way.

Dorian snarled a curse and tried to sidestep the Qunari, but the massive warrior took up nearly the entire stairwell. The mage darted the other way, and when Bull blocked him again, Dorian pulled back his elbows and opened his palms, magic crackling between his fingers.

"I'd think twice about that if I were you, Dorian," said Bull softly. The mage threw a punch instead and another and another, his knuckles crackling painfully against the Qunari's stony muscles. "That's it. Let it out. Let it go." Dorian rained blow after blow with all his strength until his hands were swollen and bruised, and when his fury began to change, Bull wrapped an arm around his shoulders and the smaller man collapsed against his chest, his back wracked by a lightning burst of angry, anguished sobs.

"That was weirdly sweet," Varric remarked to no one in particular. Not for the first time he wondered if he shouldn't take his own advice to Cullen and find someone else. Someone closer. Someone available. He glanced to his right, where Cassandra was twisting a piece of her short hair and staring straight ahead. The dwarf let out a sudden bark of laughter that he quickly pretended was actually a coughing fit.

Wow, he thought darkly, I must be desperate if Seeker's starting to look good.

"Is something funny, Varric?" she demanded sharply.

He abruptly wiped the smirk from his face and shook his head.

Seriously desperate.

"Hal would think so," murmured Josephine with a glance at the bed. "She always knows how to lift morale." And then the ambassador too was crying.

"Okay," declared Varric a little too loudly, standing up with purpose. "This is not even remotely the worst thing that's ever happened to her! She's not dead, she's not dying, she's just weird. Whatever Morrigan did to her, it's only affecting her mind."

"That," Cassandra said with a tremble in her voice, pointing at Hal, "is not the Inquisitor. We must consider the possibility that we have, in fact, already lost--"

Cullen shoved unsteadily to his feet. "Absolutely not!"

"We have the Inquisition to think of, Commander, and we must be reali--"

"As long as she's still nearby, there's hope," Cullen insisted. "Isn't that right, mages?" 

Dorian didn't move, but Fiona cleared her throat. "Theoretically," she agreed.

"And is she? Dorian, is she in there?" the Commander demanded.

They watched with morbid curiosity as the Tevinter noble turned reluctantly from Bull's embrace. His eyes were red and puffy, his cheeks wet, and his mustache was bent at odd angles like a bird that had flown into a window. But he was proud still, his chin lifted slightly as he wore his grief and shame for them to see, daring them to judge him. "I don't know."  His voice cracked like a pubescent boy's. "We...Morrigan and I...couldn't find her definitively when she first fell." His lip curled at the thought of the woman's duplicity. "I've searched since. I believe she's there, though something's interfering. But even if it truly isn't her, I don't think it's a demon."
 
"Regardless," Varric intervened, "I think we can all agree that we'll cross whatever bridge it is when we come to it. And sitting in here moping isn't going to solve anything. So let's make a plan. Because if there's anything we're good at here, it's getting shit done." Cullen took a step forward to start giving orders, but he swayed slightly on his feet. "Hold it right there, Curly. We can make a plan without you standing up. The last thing we need is two incapacitated leaders."

Cullen fell back into his chair with a groan that he channeled into a irritated frown for the dwarf. "We should get the Tranquil and the qualified mages looking for spells and magical phenomena that match her symptoms. Fiona, if you wouldn't mind spearheading that effort. There should still be two of us on guard with her at all times. I'll stay here and try to translate what she's saying. I'll need every book on Elvish and Elvhen we have, since they don't appear to be the same. Make sure to have the rotunda checked as well as the library." His breath caught in his chest and he visibly steeled himself for his next command. "We've been looking for signs of Solas, but that's no longer enough. I have a feeling that smug son of a bitch is going to be our best hope for getting our Inquisitor back. Making contact must be among our highest priorities."

Varric's expression softened at the Commander's last order and he squeezed the larger man's shoulder. "You're a good man, Cullen Rutherford." The laugh that barely escaped Cullen's lips was harsh and disbelieving.

"I'm staying here as well," Dorian decided, his composure bolstered by the prospect of action. "She's also going to need a mage present to keep her in check and in the meantime, I'll help the Commander translate." He attempted a smile and it almost worked. "I know what you're all thinking: brains and beauty? How does he do it?" There was clearly going to be more to the joke, but he tapered off weakly. 

"It's true, Sparkler," Varric assured him solemnly. "You've never been prettier."

Dorian scoffed, but his lips twitched up at the corners. "Anyway, she spit on me, so I get dibs. Isn't that how it works, Varric?"

The dwarf tried a smile of his own, slightly more successfully than Dorian. "Those are the rules. You get attacked by the Inquisitor, you get to pick your job. So Ruffles and I will see what we can do about leaving some cryptic messages for Chuckles in some choice elven ruins. Which just leaves..." He trailed off and knelt before the boy curled up by the fire, countering Cole's agonized expression with a wry, comforting one of his own. "Good news, kid. The Inquisitor attacked you, so you get to choose. What do you want to do?"

The boy lifted his eyes to Varric's like he was Andraste burning at the stake, gaze turned toward the Maker. "I want to fix her," he whispered.

And Cole cried for the first time.

Chapter Text

Fen'Harel snarled as he ripped yet another message from the Inquisition down from a statue of Dirthamen. It was supposed to be clever, he supposed, leaving him a secret message in the hand of the Keeper of Secrets himself. None of them were directly from her; he could smell the strangeness of the couriers that had touched the coded missive, could see by the handwriting that it wasn't her simple, unassuming script. So he shoved this one deep into his pack with the rest, unopened. Unread. He'd found the damn things at every elven ruin he'd visited in the past week and each one was her blade in his heart. Each one was the memory of finally leaving her, of her voice as she had realized that what he held back from her involved the orb. Each one was his regret that he did not say goodbye.

The letters left for him to find were the latest in a fine legacy of her attempts to seek him. In the relatively short eternity that he'd been gone from her, she had first left things in the capable hands of her spymaster and Fen'Harel had found it easy enough to dodge Inquisition agents and the Friends of Red Jenny alike. Then Leliana had become Divine Victoria and suddenly Hal'lasean was maneuvering the network of spies herself. She knew him well, had listened more intently to him lecture about the Fade and Elvhenan than he had realized. But he was not the mage Solas who had left her behind any longer.

Power flooded his veins like adrenaline, Mythal's magic mixing with his, swirling as oil and water, never becoming one.

It was not enough to set his plans in motion, but it was more than ample to weave himself in magics not seen in these lands for thousands of years. The Inquisition would never find him now.

But she chased him in her sleep, her spirit seeking his in the Fade across nations and oceans, calling out to him without knowing how close she came night after night, how he would have to flee her, hide from her, wake to escape, and then sit with his hands over his face to cover his shame and hurt even from himself. 

But Solas' purpose was done and Fen'Harel could not afford sentimentality. Not with so much still to do.

And yet he had tasted it. The tender sapling of happiness. Had held it newborn in his hands and marveled as it grew, even in the shadow of his lies. Had eaten of its ripening fruit. Had shared it with Hal'la. 

And now he was alone. Again. Always. 

It had been so much easier before. He had found comfort in it, his ability to endure even in the face of terror and loneliness. In his rigorous solitude, he could be himself without art or artifice. It had been a point of pride, that he could bear the punishment for his crimes so elegantly. He had felt, in his twisted way, brave and righteous for sitting so comfortable in his fear and pain. It was a place he knew well. A place that suited him.

Before Hal'la.

Now he was restless and agitated easily. Now the familiar pangs of self-loathing as he lamented his mistakes and flagellated himself for his failings did not soothe his ancient guilt and sadness. His hermitage fit ill and chafed. And always the thoughts of her, the scent of her, the heat of her, the fit of her body against his, her laughter at him, her pride in him. In Solas. Her face in his dreams.

If he'd said goodbye, he would have told her. Told her all of it. It would have come pouring from him like lifeblood from a mortal wound, staining everything it touched. And when she knew, he'd see that Dalish fire in her eyes that meant he'd gone too far. She'd curse his name and banish him from her and believe his love was false when it was the truest thing he'd ever known. It was better this way. Better, selfishly, to know he had her love. To know that someone, somewhere wanted him, yearned for him. She was his hope that he would not die alone. A small, fragile hope.

And he was a coward. For he could not bear to show her his whole self and have her turn away.

He had imagined her disappointment in him when he'd absorbed Mythal's power. That he hadn't found another way. That he'd taken a life when his own had not been in danger. Would she forgive him if he told her he murdered Mythal for her? It was a gift he could have given to any of the pantheon to show his love and devotion, but never one his Inquisitor would accept from him or anyone else. Would she understand that he'd done it to free her from bondage? He'd removed her vallaslin, but Mythal's mark had been inked upon her soul. And now he'd removed that too. She was free. As free as anyone who loved the Dread Wolf would ever be.

"Focus, you fool!" he growled under his breath, shaking his head like a dog shedding water. As if that could somehow cleanse his mind of thoughts of her.

He lit the veilfire torch at the entrance to the Temple of Dirthamen with an ease that still thrilled him. He had missed this. The pure joy of casting when the magic hummed through him with every breath. He was not as he had been, but he would get there. If he focused.

And so, torch held aloft, Fen'Harel trudged through the knee-deep waters that had claimed Dirthamen's favorite sanctuary, keeping an eye out for anything he might have missed when last he had been here with the Inquisition. With Hal'lasean. He had seen a single mechanism hidden in plain sight that seemed not to correspond to any of the doors. The others had assumed it was old and defunct and he has not disabused them of that belief.

But he had known Dirthamen. Dirthamen and his secrets. As though he were the only one. As though the Dread Wolf had not kept his secrets better. And so he had returned without his disguise or his distractions to sniff out just what secrets his lethallin had been keeping when Fen'Harel locked him away.

The ancient elf entered the receiving chamber without care or caution, certain that the Veil was strong enough here now to hold back anything more strange than spiders. And if not, he would dispatch them with little effort. Of that he could be confident. Here he was in danger only from his own mind, from the memories that had marinated the mossy walls of the ruins of Elvhenan, the last remnants of his failed legacy.

But what he found there in the little island of his torchlight sent his heart into palpitations of dread. For now he stood before another statue of Dirthamen, and in the Keeper of Secret's hand was a second message. He stared, horrified, ice forming in his veins, and then he was racing through the temple with his torch over his head, moving frantically from one room to the next with a feeling like lead in the pit of his stomach.

In each room, he found the same thing: a message from the Inquisition in the hand of Dirthamen. A message they were desperate he receive.

"Ma vhenan," he whispered despite himself and snatched the nearest one from the outstretched palm. Fen'Harel ripped through the protective covering and unfolded the note inside. It wasn't Varric's hand, he knew that instantly, but they were the dwarf's words, and even that detail made him dizzy with fear. Something must be wrong. Something must have happened. He should have been there to protect her. He should have read them sooner! When was the last time she'd chased him through the Fade? A few days? A week? More? How had he not noticed?

This message was not coded or hidden. It had been sent out in mass and in great haste. It read only: 'Chuckles -- Halla wounded. She needs you. Come quickly.'

But he was too far from Skyhold and he'd already been ignoring the notes for a week. He'd never get there in time. In time for what? In time to say goodbye? He shook his head roughly. He had to think. Think clearly. How quickly could he reach her if he let the wolf sprint all night? There was one obvious way to get there immediately, but did he dare risk it? How would he explain? Who was this Fen'Harel that would place a single life above The People?

She needs you.

The torch fell forgotten from his fingers.

The Dread Wolf ran through darkness in pursuit of his halla.

Chapter Text

"Oh, lovely, you're awake again."

Dorian stood from the mess of books and papers on elven languages and stretched luxuriantly on his way to the bed, where Hal'lasean's body was now sitting up. He leaned against the post farthest from her ropes and stifled a yawn before launching by rote into the welcome speech they'd cobbled together in their terrible and badly pronounced Elvhen.

"Greetings," the speech went. "My name is Dorian. I am human, but I am your friend. I will not harm you. Please do not harm me. Please do not harm your body. Here are questions. Please answer. There is food. Please eat. Your body is hungry."

During this little monologue, he picked up a piece of paper from a stack of identical sheets that sat on the end of the bed and set it and a quill close enough to the elf for her to reach for it if she wanted it. This was a carefully constructed Elvhen questionnaire. It requested three simple pieces of information: what is your name, what is your job, what are your immediate needs. He and Cullen had handwritten about two hundred of the things so far and now each time Hal'lasean opened her eyes, they started the process over.

Because each time Hal'lasean opened her eyes, she was someone different.

It had taken two days to finally notice the slight changes in her voice and the way her mannerisms morphed each time she woke. Before that, he and Cullen had just fumbled desperately for the right Elvhen phrases to say at the right times, which had resulted in a broken finger for him, a black eye for Cullen, and so many shattered dishes that the kitchen was sending up the food wrapped in cloth now.

Even then, the epiphany only occurred because Cole was sitting up with her in the night. Dorian and Cullen had passed out in chairs by the fireplace and trusted the young man with waking them should she open her eyes. This didn't turn out to be necessary, since the moment she woke she started hollering Elvhen at them in the lowest register and highest volume of her voice. They had bolted upright, dropping books all over the floor, and run to her side to see what the problem was.

Cole stood between the two men silently until she finally gave up yelling for glaring. And then he spoke. "He doesn't like being prisoner! He doesn't like his bonds! He knows he should, he knows it's an honor, but he dreams at night of wandering the world with no master but himself, dreams of a garden and a lover that he chooses freely and fat little children that look like him."

At first Dorian thought perhaps Cole was speaking for Cullen again, but then he and the Commander shared an equally baffled look. Something shifted in his mind, something clicked almost into place, and he turned his full attention to the spirit-made-human. "Cole? Who are you talking about?"

"The man," Cole answered simply, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world, and pointed directly at Hal'lasean. 

Cullen's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. And hung there. But Dorian's brain took off like a stallion scenting a mare in heat. "The man in Hal'lasean's body?" he clarified.

"This one," said the boy, nodding.

"This one?" Cullen echoed.

"He's not the same as the ones what came before," Cole affirmed vaguely. "They were different. Some of them were women. But they're all sad. That's all they say when she sleeps, sad, sad, sad. Sad, sad, sad." He looked helplessly up at Cullen. "And I can't help them."

It took a full day after that to come up with the best questions to ask to give them the information they needed as simply as possible within a short period of time and to translate the welcome speech. He felt foolish and clumsy each time he delivered it -- and he knew Cullen sounded foolish and clumsy when he spoke it -- but it seemed to be working wonders on their visitors. The amount of immediate violence had dropped significantly and though Hal'lasean's already slim figure was still desperately underweight, she was at least getting a little food every day.

It had been the Commander, who, the day after that, had suddenly looked up from his Elvhen dictionary, with a face that Dorian decided was probably also used for masturbation, and practically tackled Cole for his attention. "Are you sure, Cole?! Are you sure they're saying 'sad, sad, sad'?!"

Cole stood frozen like a spooked deer by the sudden onslaught of muscular Templar. "I...think...so?" She was asleep, so he crept closer and frowned and swayed as he listened. And then he nodded hesitantly at Cullen. "Yes, yes, abelas, abelas, abelas, sad, sad, sad."

Dorian's mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. And hung there. "Maker's breath," he whispered. And he and the Commander had been so excited that they'd scooped Cole up on their shoulders and paraded him around the room like a god on a litter.

But there had been no breakthroughs since then. No sign of Morrigan. No word from Solas. Just an endless line of ancient elven slaves and acolytes who took turns puppeting the Inquisitor's body like it was a pony ride at the village fair. It had been two weeks, so Cullen had long since returned to his troops, but Dorian had moved a cot into the room and rarely left -- never unless someone else was with her -- so that he could deliver his little welcome speech and collect his simple questions and try to convince the denizens of the Well of Sorrows to eat a little food. He took breaks only when the women came in to bathe her and change her sheets. And only then because he himself knocked her unconscious.

The Tevinter mage refused to look in a mirror for perhaps the first time in his entire life because he knew he must look like the undead. But some things were more important than vanity. Besides, it wasn't as though he was going out in public like this. 

When the new inhabitant of the Inquisitor finished filling out the form, he thanked her and set out the fruit and cheese and bread that had been Hal'lasean's only sustenance for eleven days now. Dorian breathed out a sharp exhale of relief when the elf tucked into a big hunk of buttered roll. While she ate, he looked over her answers with a growing knowledge of Elvhen writing that impressed even him. This one was a priestess of Mythal named Mereni who had opted to leave her needs blank.

Dorian took his time putting the paper away, organized by date so that they could find them if they needed them. Not that they had needed the papers yet. But it was something to do. Something to keep his hands busy. He dragged his palms heavily over his face and let out a bone-weary sigh. He waited patiently until the woman in his friend had finished her food and then sat down at the foot of the bed with his staff.

This was why he never left. This question, asked in his best clumsy Elvhen.

"Mereni," he began, studying an unfamiliar soul in such a familiar face. "Where is Hal'lasean Lavellan?"

"Who?"

It was what they all said right before Dorian put them back to sleep.

Chapter Text

It was past midnight when the Eluvian at Skyhold began to shimmer. 

Fen'Harel stood on the other side of it, alone in the emptiness of the Crossroads, and hesitated. He had become the wolf for haste, running fierce and unstoppable as the northern wind until even that form was exhausted and slathering at the mouth. He thought to reach the Inquisition on foot, to arrive at the gates and demand entry in the least suspect manner, but even with his added power, it would take him days to reach her. And he had already waited so long.

It took little enough tinkering once he found the nearest broken mirror to put it to rights. And even less to activate it. And now, after all his impatience and urgency, when he was so close to being at her side, Fen'Harel was paralyzed with anxiety. He was aware it could very well be a trap, but they couldn't hold him now. His worries were all for her. What would she look like? Would she be conscious? What if she was mangled? Would she even want to see him? He had abandoned her without explanation. What if he couldn't help her?

What if he was too late?

That thought spurred him to action and he stepped through to the fortress he had so recently called home. He breathed in deeply, taking in the scents of the herb garden she was so proud of, the traces of Morrigan's magic in this room, the refreshing sting of mountain air. His heart leapt in anticipation even as it was hobbled with his dread. The Eluvian settled behind him and there was nothing left to do but go to her.

I am the Dread Wolf, he reminded himself with a few centering breaths. I will not be ruled by my fear.

He cloaked himself in shadows and slipped through the door to the castle proper, right past a human guard. It was all sleep and hush now, the only sound the distant clinking of soldiers at their posts and the rustle and creak of the trees in the wind. The route he took was as familiar to him as his own face -- around the garden, through a corridor, a quick trip through the main hall. 

The moment he opened the first door to her quarters, he was dumbstruck by her scent -- the warm, heady fragrance that was Hal'lasean's, that belonged only to her, that still clung to his clothing and the gifts she'd given him. It enveloped him like a fog, drawing him up and up the stairs and dissolving his thoughts of protest. He was drunk with the smell of her.

Until he picked up something else, something masculine. A man's musk. 

Cullen.

The wolf howled in him.

He had no right to be angry. No right to be hurt. He had told her to do as much. But she'd seemed so certain when she said she'd wait. Wait for him her whole, short life, whether he liked it or not. He should be pleased she changed her mind. Should be. But wasn't.

No, he realized with a sudden rush of relief, Dorian's cologne too. And more recent. 

Of course. Of course, if she was wounded, they would be sitting with her, caring for her. They were her friends and advisors. He was being a jealous fool, as though he hadn't been the one to pull away. As if he hadn't been the one to leave her behind. He gave himself a shake and opened the final door between them. 

"There, you see?" Dorian's voice floated down the stairs. "This one says the modern tongue is Elvish and the archaic one Elvhen, but this one uses the terms interchangeably! According to this one, what we're using for you is a dialect -- albeit an obscure and distant one. And then, of course, there's Brother Genitivi. For a Chantry fellow, he really got around."

Fen'Harel paused just out of sight, his body still shadowed with magic. In all his worry for what he would find when he finally got to Skyhold, it had not even occurred to him that what he might be too late for...was her recovery. She was probably perfectly fine now -- he didn't smell infection or blood, after all -- and he had come all this way on outdated information. It was not too late to slip away unnoticed and be across Thedas by morning.

But she didn't answer Dorian. Didn't laugh at his joke or offer her own limited knowledge of the language of The People. She loved to listen, but not as much as she loved to debate and discuss. If she wasn't engaging, there must be something wrong.

He reached out with his magic to probe the Veil like a spider testing his web, stretching his spirit up and out in search of her. He found the anchor easily enough. His magic yearned for him as he for it, so he was certain she was here. But he couldn't locate the vibrancy of her spirit, which should have shone like a beacon. Instead, he found a swarm of something else. Something old. And there were so many of them. 

Abelas, they whispered. Abelas, abelas, abelas.

Fen'Harel's heart plummeted within him.

What have I done?

He already knew. He had been so sure that Mythal was the answer to both their problems: he would have his power and free Hal'lasean at the same time. It was another inadequate attempt to do something meaningful for her, though she would never have known it was done. He hadn't thought of what might happen when the voices from the Well were no longer controlled by Mythal's will. 

Would there ever be anything he touched that was not destroyed?

Fen'Harel, you fool, he snarled at himself. You prideful, useless fool!

Before he could stop himself, he was up the stairs and rushing to her side, the cloak of his magic falling into nothing behind him. He followed the lure of the anchor past Dorian, who sat at the desk behind an impressive pile of tomes and papers with ink smudged on one cheek. And he found her too-thin, too-pale body bound by magic and man to herself and the bed. His stomach lurched in disgust and then he was turning from her, whipping around to face the shock of the other mage scrambling around the desk for his staff. Fen'Harel bit back a dark laugh and stepped toward Dorian, one hand shooting out to coil elven magic around Tevinter throat. In his shock, Dorian lost his grip on his staff and reached instinctively for his neck, his fingers desperate to find purchase on the invisible noose that was tightening around his wind pipe. 

"Is this the Tevinter answer to everything?!" Fen'Harel growled furiously. "To leash and bind?! How are you enjoying your collar, shemlen!"

"Solas!" rasped Dorian, his eyes bulging. "...S'not...looks...like...me...'splain!"

Fen'Harel's eyes narrowed. He withdrew his magic in disgust and Dorian slumped to the floor in front of him, gasping for air and clutching his throat. "You have one minute." 

"She's...violent!" he croaked, his voice ragged. "Stabbed...Cullen...attacked Cole...she...hurts herself too! She's...not herself! When they...when they wake, they're scared...and...angry. It was this...or a cage!"

"Wake?" Fen'Harel repeated with horror. "What do you mean they wake?"

Dorian was struggling to his feet now, leveraging his weight with an arm on the desk that sent papers scattering everywhere. "I mean...they wake. They open her eyes...and..." He coughed painfully. "It's them. Not her. I can't..." And now it wasn't the bruising of Dorian's throat that was plaguing him. His expression was all grief and worry. "I can't find her, Solas."

He cares for her too, he reminded himself, and his fury melted into something softer. Something less Dread Wolf and more Solas. He was surprised by how good the transition felt. How easy and relieving. It was only then he noticed the complete disarray of Dorian's clothing and hair. Even his prize mustache was frayed and forgotten.

With apology in his expression, he reached out to offer Dorian a hand up. "You look terrible."

The Tevinter mage slammed his fist into Fen'Harel's cheek, sending the elf sprawling onto the floor.

Chapter Text

"I deserved that," admitted Fen'Harel as he picked himself up from the floor, testing the bones of his face with frosted fingertips to assess the damage.

This time it was Dorian offering the hand up. And Fen'Harel took it. Or was it Solas? Why was it suddenly so hard to differentiate?

I must be Solas here, he decided, probably too late, and carefully coaxed the wolf to sleep.

"Yes," the other mage said frankly, his voice still rough. "And you deserve much worse. One day I intend to make sure you get it." The promise might have been threatening if Solas hadn't been feasting on the power of his kin. Not that he disagreed with the sentiment. He deserved much, much worse. Dorian's anger dropped away then, revealing only exhaustion and worry and the hint of a companionable smile. "But today I'm just glad you're finally here."

Guilt and shame welled up in Solas and he was suddenly grateful his Hal'la had not been awake to see him attack her dearest friend. What would she think of him then? Once she knew the violence that lurked within him? "Is she...?"

Dorian breathed an empty laugh. "As well as can be expected. She needs to eat more, but to do that she must wake and if she wakes, she's someone else. But she's stable. Her condition hasn't changed since it happened."

That was good. That was a good sign. The panic that had been vibrating inside his rib cage since realizing he couldn't find her spirit eased just a little. He had time to do this properly. To understand what was wrong with her and fix it. He could still fix it. He must fix it. His regretful gaze fell on Dorian then. "I am sorry for attacking you. I-- That was unworthy of me." He shook his hanging head. "I have no excuses for my actions, nor will I make any. I--"

"You were protecting her," answered Dorian with understanding. His injured voice was hard and uncompromising, as it should have been, but he understood at least. "I might have done the same." He smirked just a little, but it didn't reach his eyes. "I still might if I ever get my hands on Morrigan. Though killing Morrigan would be revenge, whereas you've just attacked the fellow who's been keeping the woman you supposedly love from starving to death."

"Morrigan?" he probed, his brow lifting in surprise and then knitting in confusion. And his heart seized hopefully that perhaps he was wrong. It was Morrigan who'd done this to Hal'lasean. If there had been some kind of sign she'd seen that Mythal was dead...but no. Even in that, the fault was his. It was always his. "What has she to do with this?" 

"Everything," spat Dorian with great vehemence. "This is all her doing. She broke Hal and vanished into thin air." His eyes narrowed at Solas. "You two have that in common."

Solas winced at the jab and let Dorian see it. It was a calculated move, but it was also truthful. He took a tentative step closer to the human, holding up his hands to show he meant no harm. "Your neck. May I...?"

"It is the very least you can do," agreed Dorian. "There's only one man I let leave bruises on me, after all." 

As the Tevinter mage quite literally offered his throat to the Dread Wolf, Solas felt a bubble of warmth spread through his body, a strange swell of affection and gratitude for these people and this man, who -- perhaps foolishly -- trusted him with their lives still, even after he abandoned them. This was, of course, followed swiftly by the too-familiar pang of self-loathing that he shoved away so he could concentrate on healing the wounds he'd made.

"I feel I must tell you," Solas said softly as he worked, "that it is usually inadvisable to let the man who tried to choke you put his hands on your neck."

Dorian's throat reverberated as he laughed. "Especially when you've just punched him in the face."

Solas quirked a small smile that vanished quickly under the weight of his purpose here. "Dorian," he murmured, his own throat constricting.

"Solas."

"Thank you." Solas' voice was barely audible, but it still cost him dearly. He was blinking rapidly as he finished healing Dorian's neck and stepped away. "For taking care of her."

Dorian snorted bullishly and smoothed back his rumpled hair. "I'm not doing it for you." He touched his neck gingerly and then, finding it no longer hurt, pressed more firmly. When he was satisfied, he considered the elf who'd caused and cured his pain. "Go sit with her," he decided gently. "She'd want that." A beat. "Just move out of arm's reach if she wakes."

Solas bobbed his head, a gesture somewhere between a bow and a grateful acknowledgement, as though lowering his status in deference to Dorian would somehow makeup for anything. He swallowed his apprehension at looking more calmly on the mien of the suffering heart he'd left behind, summoned his resolve, and slid into the chair that sat near her head. His breath caught in his throat at how small she was now, how little color remained in her unmarked cheeks. His hand trembled slightly as he brushed his fingers against her forehead, tracing the path that had once belonged to her vallaslin. 

This is my doing. 

But her skin was warm and her breathing deep and even. She tugged at him fiercely, pulling her soul to him, calling to him just by existing. He brushed his lips to her hair and breathed her into him as though she were Mythal's power. He rested his forehead lightly on hers. "Ir abelas," he whispered thickly. "Ir abelas, ma uthlath. Ma vhenan."

He was pulled from his pain by Dorian's weight on the end of the bed and he drew back from Hal'la reluctantly, rubbing at his face to collect his mask. 

"Have you told her that?" asked the human and Solas' back stiffened at the intrusion.

"Told her what?" he replied coolly, keeping his eyes on his lover. He slipped a finger under her physical bonds experimentally and was relieved to find the skin whole and healthy.

"Told her," sighed Dorian, "that she is your eternal love." Solas' eyes widened and he turned sharply to face the Tevinter mage with shock and suspicion in his eyes. Dorian must have misunderstood his expression because he tilted his head thoughtfully. "That's the correct translation, isn't it? 'Uth' for 'forever' or 'eternal'. 'Lath' for 'love'." The elf scowled dangerously at the other man, who continued on unimpressed. "I only mention it because it seems the sort of thing one tells one's eternal love. Doesn't it?"

"She knows," Solas growled.

Dorian nodded thoughtfully and then went in for the kill. "No, you're quite right. I think if I ever found my uthlath, I'd push her away and then vanish entirely, leaving her alone and heartbroken. It's only logical, really."

Solas' jaw worked, clenching and unclenching, teeth grinding, but he forced his attention back to Hal'lasean. "I am going to examine her. I would appreciate silence." His hands took on a subtle glow as he began to move them over her, following the energy of her body from head to heart, unable to stop himself from caressing her collarbone or brushing her side. His soul twisted with each touch because it wasn't enough, it was never enough, he needed more time with her, more time to study her, to worship her. Suddenly the silence he had so sharply requested was suffocating and he took in an audible breath just to get air into his lungs again. He was not aware that Dorian had gotten off the bed until the hesitant weight of the human's hand was awkwardly patting his shoulder. "You do not need to comfort me," he mumbled, the points of his ears turning pink. "Though I appreciate the gesture, I am undeserving."

"Yes," Dorian assured him. "You are. And you're an insufferably pretentious, slovenly jackanape and she's much too good for you. Unfortunately, you're also my...friend." He shrugged dismissively. "Or at least my comrade-in-arms."

The elf struggled inwardly with how to react. Fen'Harel was uninterested, but something in Solas responded positively to such a label, even feeling as he did about Tevinter and Dorian. They had saved each other's lives countless times in battle. They had shared meals, stories around the campfire, drinks, and sometimes tents. That was a kind of friendship, was it not? And, of course, they shared her. "Dorian..." He braced himself for the full, unavoidable weight of the blame. "Tell me what happened."

Chapter Text

"I'll let him speak as soon as he explains just how he managed to sneak into Skyhold!" Cullen argued stubbornly, his voice just below a yell. "The gate remained closed all night and none of my men reported seeing an elven apostate somehow scaling the battlements!"

Solas had not moved from Hal'lasean's side since he first went to her, nor did he do so now that he was surrounded by the people with whom he had served against Corypheus. His comrades-in-arms, as Dorian had called him. Before he'd deserted. He now found himself the subject of some rather heated debate and a ceaseless volley of pointed questions and accusations that he would not answer. They weren't pleased.

It didn't matter what they thought of him. He deserved worse than they could give him. All that mattered was that he was responsible for Hal'lasean's condition. All that mattered was saving her. And if the only way to accomplish that without incapacitating everyone in the room was to give Cullen what he wanted to hear, then so be it. 

His face was a perfect mask of calm as it had been before Hal'la, which wasn't hard now because his guilt and self-hatred had drowned out all other feelings. "I made use of the Eluvian," he admitted quietly, impassively. "I would have traveled by horse and arrived at the gate as is customary, but Varric's messages implied there was no time to spare."

Cullen fumed and paced, though whether it was because he had used the Eluvian or because he had returned at all, Solas could not have said. "I had a guard posted!"

"He is still there," Solas assured him, doing his best to keep the cheek from his tone. "He was quite alert, but I gave him no chance to see me." He paused thoughtfully and added, "You may wish to station a mage there in the future."

The Commander made a ursine grunting noise in his throat, but it was Cassandra -- perhaps the only Inquisition advisor as irate as Cullen -- who spoke. "That thing must be moved immediately. If we cannot move it, we must break it."

"I will help you move it, if that is your decision," Solas promised quickly, heading off a multiperson debate before it could begin. "But I must insist you leave it in tact, wherever it is. It is an invaluable tool for the Inquisition."

Cassandra scoffed loudly. "As if you care about the Inquisition! You care only for your elven artifacts!"

"Seeker, don't you think that's a little unfair?" suggested Varric delicately. "We all had our reasons for being here. He was with us until the end and then he left. And even though he's an unpardonable nug-nut and a coward with an ass for a face in matters of the heart -- no offense --"

"I take none."

"That doesn't negate that he fought by our side from the beginning."

"Thank you, Varric," murmured Solas.

The dwarf glowered ferociously. "Don't talk to me, Chuckles. If I could reach your face, I'd punch it."

"I've already done that," Dorian pointed out tweely.

Varric turned to survey the Tevinter mage skeptically. "Really?"

"I punched him so hard he fell to the floor. It was glorious." Dorian waggled his eyebrows and Varric looked suitably impressed. Solas was just grateful that Dorian had neglected to tell them how he'd nearly been strangled to death.

"Later," said the dwarf, "I'm going to buy you a drink and you're going to tell me all about it. With a reenactment."

"Every delicious detail." Dorian gave a self-satisfied smile. For the first time in days, it actually reached his eyes.

Solas cleared his throat. "As much as I am sure you would all love to hear that tale, you were called here to discuss Hal'lasean." He glanced down at her now-gaunt face and took in a settling breath. "Dorian has told me that she collapsed approximately eleven days ago. It cannot be a coincidence that eleven days ago, Mythal was killed."

Silence.

For several whole minutes, the Inquisition was rendered officially speechless.

"...The Dalish goddess Mythal?" Dorian finally ventured, the clear notes of disbelief in his voice. "The same Mythal whose temple held the Well of Sorrows? The same Mythal to whom Hal'lasean pledged herself when she drank from it?"

"The very same." Solas looked closely at each of their faces, searching reactions for signs of genuine doubt or, worse, accusation. 

He could always count on Cassandra for that. "How do you know this? Why should we trust you?"

You shouldn't, thought Solas grimly.

"You can trust that I would never knowingly do anything to cause injury..." He stopped and swallowed, his heart suddenly racing in his chest. This wasn't true anymore, was it? He'd knowingly injured her twice now, first when he'd pulled away. Then when he'd run. And caused this. He had saved her from his magic only to abandon her to Mythal's. He let out a hard sigh and when he spoke again, his voice was tight with regret. "Trust that I love her. Whatever else you may believe of me, trust that." His throat clenched. "She does." Now to weave a convincing lie on a foundation of greatest truth. 

Forgive me, vhenan.

"Since leaving the Inquisition, I have been searching for the remaining Eluvians. I have been modestly successful in that endeavor and gained access to the place known as the Crossroads." He hesitated only briefly. "I saw her body with my own eyes. The woman called Flemeth. Someone had drained her of her power and in so doing, killed her." His mouth felt suddenly dry as images of the murder he committed against his kin played over and over in his mind.

"And you did not think to tell us this?!" demanded Cassandra.

Solas lifted one brow. "I did not wish to be found."

"It was Morrigan," Dorian declared with fierce certainty, just as Solas had hoped. "She was raised by this Flemeth. She had the means to access the Crossroads and more than ample motivation. Why else would she flee when she saw what she'd done to Hal?"

Solas looked carefully down at Hal'lasean's bound hands and willed his arms to stop quivering. Once deception had been a thrill. It had been a rush to know he was more cunning and clever, better at the Game than all his peers. Now it felt like a weight was chained to his soul for each new lie he told. The trickster indeed. "What matters now is not who committed the murder," he said softly. "It is what has happened to Hal'lasean. I trust you have gathered by now that these...squatters that are using her body are the voices from the Well of Sorrows. Morrigan was not wrong when she told us that for someone like Hal'la, drinking from the Well could have...unforeseen, catastrophic consequences." He gestured with a wave of his hand over her comatose form. "This is one of them. While Mythal lived, she controlled the voices. They were her servants and so obeyed her in all things. They could not reach Hal'la's mind without Mythal's blessing." He exhaled sharply. "But now Mythal is dead. And the voices are free. And whatever else they are, they are ravenous to be heard." He made himself make eye contact with each and every person present. "And they are crushing her."

Chapter Text

That was twice in one night now that Solas had stunned the Inquisition into silence. It might have amused him had the subject been anything else.

This time Cassandra was the first to speak. "These voices from the Well. Are they shades? Demons?"

"Wait," interjected Varric, wrinkling his forehead in confusion, "I thought only mages had to worry about running into demons in their sleep."

"They're not demons," corrected Dorian. "I can tell you that much. Shades is more likely, I should think. I've tried to find them in the Fade, but whenever I get close, the Fade turns me right back around." He gave a thin, unconvincing smile. "No matter what I do, they won't let me reach her." And because Bull had taken the Chargers out on a mission, Dorian wrapped his arms around himself for comfort.

But Solas shook his head. "I believe they are silanavhen. It is an Elvhen concept, one that I had heard of in the Fade but never encountered until now, if that is what they truly are. There is no word for them in your languages because their magic has not existed since the fall of Arlathan, but translated roughly, it would be 'The People who give their thoughts'. They share much in common with spirit and memory, but they are neither, and they could not survive without a container or a host."

Cullen's expression turned bleak and agitated. "So they're parasites?"

"No!" Solas insisted without hesitation. "Nor are they true symbiotes. My understanding is that they were created to function in an advisory capacity and as a record of the times in which they lived. The intended recipient would have been a powerful mage of the Elvhen, who would have been found worthy and prepared for the ritual of drinking. It is...an impossible amount of information to process for an immortal mage." His heart swelled then with the thought of his Hal'la stubbornly arguing with Morrigan about who should drink from the Well. He had been furious with her for being so rash, for putting herself in danger, but he could not deny the nobility and bravery of her choice to refuse The People's knowledge to a shemlen. He dropped his attention to her face again, brushing the backs of his fingers over her forehead and tucking stray hairs behind her ear. "This is what would have happened to her when she drank from the Well, had Mythal not walked among us."

My brave, selfless halla.

"So you're saying she knows too much?" asked a baffled Varric, rubbing at his brow. "That's the problem?"

"It is but one of the problems," sighed Solas. His lips tightened into a thin line. "It is why she collapsed. But it is the silanavhen themselves who are keeping her away, not their knowledge. They are the essence of the person from which they came: memories, knowledge, and personality. This allows them just enough of the spark of life to hold a conversation with the mage recipient in their dreams. But Hal'lasean has no control over the Fade or herself in it unless she is there physically. Were she magically inclined, she could be taught to construct a home for them in her dreams, where she could lock them away until she needed them. In the Fade, they are aware of what and why they are. But they are wandering her mind unchecked while she is burdened with the immensity of their knowledge. I...believe that is how they are able to possess her body. She is trapped in her own mind and these silanavhen are..." He swallowed and searched for just the right words. "...climbing into an empty saddle and taking the reins. I believe it is their confusion and fear and a lack of awareness of their true nature when using her body that has been turning them violent."

The Commander clutched the back of Varric's chair by the fire with tight fists. "That's all well and good, but what can we do about it? There's been enough waiting and talking! Eleven days of it while you were Maker-knows-where, hiding away like a criminal and ignoring our messages! Stop lecturing us on elven history and start telling us how to bring her back!"

Solas took his ire patiently. He deserved all of it, even from a man so clearly in love with his vhenan. Perhaps especially from a man who was so clearly in love with his vhenan and could stay with her, make her happy, marry her and have beautiful children. Grow old with her. Without realizing it, Solas touched his hand gingerly to his heart as if checking for bruises. "I will bring her back. The plan is simple enough: I will enter the Fade and gain access to her dreams. I will find her and help her and lead her back to herself." What he didn't say was how he had never done anything like this before in all his thousands of years. He didn't tell them he had no idea if, when he found her -- if he found her -- she would have anything of herself left. There were unquantifiable variables in this hypothetical process that could lend themselves to an infinite array of possibilities, and the vast majority of them were horrible. Only a very few involved successfully bringing Hal'lasean back to her own body with her mind in tact. Even fewer let her keep the knowledge of the Well.

Knowledge that named him Fen'Harel.

"I'm going with you," Dorian declared, and Solas felt his stomach drop.

"You are a helpless child in the Fade, Dorian," he argued, unable to keep the heat from his voice. Dorian could not come. No one else could come. Not with his secrets in her head. "This will require a precision and delicacy and certainty of action that you do not possess. I understand that you are eager to help your friend, but this is no open battlefield: this is her mind. One poorly placed foot, one ill-considered word and we could do irreparable damage. No. I will go. I am the only one with the expertise required for any hope of retrieving her."

Josephine had remained quietly behind the desk while the others talked. She had been so still and listened to intently that Solas had almost forgotten she was there at all. When she finally spoke, her voice was all Antivan flame. "And just what makes you think we would ever let you go in alone after you abandoned her? Dorian will accompany you or neither of you will go and we will find another way. That is final."

Solas' jaw went slack with incredulity that quickly turned to frustration. "Why, because I did not stay for the celebratory drinks?! Because I did not say goodbye to the woman I love before I went? My reasons are my own and what transpired between Hal'lasean and I is none of your business. I am here now, I have the knowledge and experience to save her, and you would force me to bring some Tevinter lummox into my love's already fragile mind?! You would so willingly jeopardize her life and for what? A personal vendetta regarding the etiquette of my departure!"

"Sparkler," said Varric, his voice level as a knife's edge, "punch him again."

Dorian cracked his knuckles. "Gladly."

"You forfeited your right to make demands when you left her, apostate," Cullen rumbled. Solas watched him expressionlessly, waiting for the former Templar to finally lose control of his rage. The Commander was nearly shaking with it. "She is our Inquisitor, our friend, and you will play by our rules or we will find someone who will!"

"Or are you so willing to jeopardize her life?" Josephine asked with a calm more threatening than Cullen and Dorian's bluster.

Cole was suddenly beside him at the bed, uninterested in Solas' return except as it applied to his current agonized fixation on Hal'lasean. He pulled his overlarge hat from his head and rested his ear against her chest, bewilderment battling with fear on his face. "Solas," he asked needfully, "I can hear them, but I can't hear her. Does that mean she's not in pain anymore?"

Solas was aware that his whole body was trembling, but he had no hope of controlling it. He had to find her. He had to find her now. "Dorian will come. But he will do exactly what I say exactly when I say it without argument or hesitation. He will touch nothing and speak to no one without my express permission. These are my terms." And if that did not satisfy them, he would simply have to remove them from the situation by force.

"It's a deal," agreed Dorian.

Chapter Text

It wasn't as though there was anything the non-magical among them could do. To them, it looked like Dorian, Solas, and Hal'lasean had all decided to take a nap together: Dorian on his cot and Solas stretched out placidly beside his bound love. They could all see the way he struggled with the space between them, aware that they were watching him like territorial mother bears. But just before he'd fallen asleep, he had slipped his hand into hers and interlaced their fingers. They could not deny him something so simple.

They had called in Fiona to have another experienced mage in the room in case Hal'lasean woke up or something went wrong. She and Cassandra now sat in opposite corners of the room, each trying and failing to read. Josephine scratched away at correspondence at the desk. Varric had convinced Cullen to teach him to play chess and the board was set out between them in front of the fire, but it had been some time since either of them had spoken or touched a piece.

Cole sat at the end of the bed, spaced perfectly between the feet of the two sleeping elves, and rocked absently back and forth, occasionally mumbling under his breath. "Sad, sad, sad. Abelas, abelas, abelas."

When Varric could no longer stand the waiting and the quiet and the tension in the room, he banged his hand on the arm of his chair in decision. "All right, that's it. Who wants to hear a story?"

"Varric," Cullen groaned, "not now."

"That was a rhetorical question, Curly," replied Varric slyly. "It starts with a young, exceedingly handsome buck of a dwarf. He was a surfacer, but he had an enchanted smile and a silver tongue with the power to disappear the smallclothes of any lady he fancied..."

~~~

Solas and Dorian had no difficulty at all finding the cyclone of energy that marked the chaos of Hal'lasean's body. As soon as they entered the Fade, it was all they saw, consuming the horizon in the same sickening way the Breach once had. But where the hole in the sky over Haven had been vivid green and drew the eye to its own wrongness, the swirling mass that surrounded what Solas was sure must be Hal'la's dream forced the gaze away, made it slide elsewhere. It was a similar experience to trying to peer into the depths of the Well of Sorrows when it had been but a pool in Mythal's Temple.

"It is no wonder you could not reach her," Solas commented as they trudged resolutely toward it. But the closer they got, the harder it became to put one foot in front of the other. The Fade kept warping, pushing them aside, until finally the two mages had to stop and regroup.

"I assume you have a plan to get us in there?" Dorian asked hopefully. He kept trying to peer at the shifting, swirling darkened mass that was their destination, but the greater his effort, the more it pushed him away. In his final attempt, it turned him completely around where he stood; he gave up with a frustrated grunt. "Because I never get farther than this. I've tried every staff I own, every spell I know. That thing won't have any of it."

Solas considered the ground just in front of where his eyes were forced aside and reached within himself, sifting through the magic that was made of him, was closer than a twin to him, searching for a thread of Mythal's power. "I have a theory," he assured Dorian. He grasped Mythal's magic and drew it around the two of them in a protective barrier.

"Care to explain?" probed the other mage, looking up and around their bodies at the plum shimmer that enveloped them.

Solas adjusted his robes and took a tentative step forward. "I believe the agreement was that you would speak to no one without my express permission." He took another step, this one larger, and stared straight ahead at their target. This time, his gaze did not move away. He didn't manage to hide the self-satisfied smile that twitched at the corner of his mouth.

"That's for Hal's dream. This is just the Fade." Dorian had no trouble catching up, his longer legs swallowing distance even beyond the physical world. "What sort of barrier is this?"

"The sort that requires great concentration," Solas snapped.

"Come now, Solas," Dorian argued, almost cheerful to finally be making progress. "The one thing you would always discuss with me was magic. What if you leave again and something goes wrong? I should know how to reach her."

Solas let out an irritated sigh. He marched forward relentlessly, never taking his eyes from Hal'lasean's turbulent dream, as if afraid his barrier would fail if he looked away. "It is an ancient elven magic I learned from a spirit. You cannot hope to cast it yourself. But I will think on alternatives when this is over."

"So you don't deny you'll be leaving again." Dorian's gaze was suddenly so sharp it pricked at the back of Solas' neck.

The elf's shoulders hunched at the accusation but his gait and gaze didn't falter. "I will see her safe and whole and then I must go."

"You must go?" Dorian repeated snidely. And then he was shaking his head in agitation. "I don't understand you, Solas, and I don't think I ever will. I have tried, for her sake. She loves you devotedly no matter how you hurt her, so there must be something worthy in you. And I know you to be courageous in battle, so you can't be a complete coward. So what is it I'm not seeing? Because I have watched you two together since I came to the Inquisition and it seems to me that your love is...rare. It is an extraordinary love; one for the ages. What could possibly be so important that you could leave something like that behind?" His eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You're already married, aren't you. That's what it is."

Solas had stopped walking when Dorian had called their love 'rare'. They stood not far (as the Fade went) from his love's dream, but his heart was so heavy that he felt incapable of dragging it any further. "Dorian," he almost whispered, his chest tight, "I am not married. Please leave this alone."

The Tevinter mage must have recognized the intensity of his companion's hidden burden because he did fall quiet for long enough that Solas began to walk again. But he didn't leave it alone. "The bard's written a song about you, you know."

Solas's pace stuttered subtly. "Do I want to know?"

"It isn't only about you. It tells the story of the elf apostate who was so in love with the past that he couldn't see his future with his true love. It's quite catchy, actually. She makes a clever little couplet out of 'Hal'lasean' and your obsession with 'Elvhenan'. Oh, how does that bit go?"

It was too much. It was simply too much. Did he deserve it? Of course. But not now, not when he would need all of his wits about him even to find her in her own mind. "Dorian!" Solas whipped around to face the other man, his face habitually neutral but his eyes ice blue torment. "Enough! For her sake, if not for mine!" He didn't wait to find out if Dorian planned to finally leave him be. Instead he turned back toward the strange mist before them and pushed stubbornly onward.

The human paused only briefly to consider Solas' words before hurriedly catching up. The fog was all around them now, blocking their view of the Fade entirely without yet giving up its own secrets. They might have become lost and spit back out where they started were it not for the insistent pulsing of purpose from the barrier. It knew its own magic just as surely as the anchor knew Solas, and it drew them forward with it, toward whatever might be waiting in Hal'lasean's besieged mind.

Chapter Text

"Do you have any idea where we're going?" Dorian asked when they'd been walking through opaque, swirling fog for several minutes.

"Yes," Solas returned sharply, and then, after a moment, "I have some idea." He thought certainly that Dorian would have something smart to say about that admission, but instead they continued on in silence. Solas was grateful for that at least, especially as the barrier's longing for the magic of the Well became so insistent that he had to rein it back like a wayward steed. And just as he did so, the fog swept behind them, revealing a bubble in the Fade like a single drop of water. They had reached the membrane of Hal'lasean's dream.

The Fade around them had been flat and empty, though their physical bodies slept in a mountain castle. Inside her dream, however, it was the Arbor Wilds all over again. The colors were slightly off -- a little too sepia in places, a little too bright in others -- but there was no mistaking the Temple of Mythal waiting deserted before them. It was no ruin in the dream, but whole and glorious, and Solas' breath caught with unbidden memories of intrigue and scheming he had known within those unblemished walls. It was only fitting, he supposed, that he should be forced to face this place so soon after murdering its goddess, his kin, his friend. He would have to walk its halls -- empty because of what he did -- to find the only person he ever loved enough to compete with Elvhenan. So in that, at least, the bard was right.

Did Mythal plan this? he wondered suddenly. Did she know I would end up here?

He reached out with testing fingers to probe the boundary to Hal'lasean. He had slipped into her dreams before so many times. She'd kissed him there, woken something within him he had never known was missing. Sated a need he'd never noticed existed each time they coupled. Each time he'd entered her dreams, he had found the boundary as pliant and willing as her flesh beneath his hands. This time, however, it was thicker. It gave still, but with effort. The change felt like cold claws down his spine. 

"Speak to no one," he told Dorian. "Touch nothing." And then he pushed his way through.

The air inside was heavy and tropical, dripping with fragrance and...voices. By the time Dorian joined him in Hal'lasean's dream, Solas was already staring with a mixture of fascination and dread at what from the outside had looked like empty chambers, empty halls. They had been deposited in the inner sanctum, but they were not alone. No, they were surrounded by dozens of elvhen, each wandering in their own world through the Temple. Every single one of them bore the vallaslin of Mythal.

She must have known. She said as much. I should have known!

How could he have been so sloppy, so blind? But of course he knew exactly how. Hal'lasean was how and why and when. Hal'lasean was everything. This was why he had pushed her away. This was why he'd left! Had the voices from the Well been spying for Mythal all along? He should have stopped her from drinking. He should have insisted she choose Morrigan or destroy it completely. He had failed her again. He could not fail her now.

Dorian was tapping urgently on his arm and Solas looked up irritably to see what the great ox could possibly want now. But he didn't have to ask. Because those elves -- those servants of Mythal who had given their memories and their voices to the Well at their ends -- had all stopped their ceaseless meandering and turned to face the two intruders with fear and hatred in their eyes. No, Solas realized with a sickening clench of his stomach, it was only him. They were all glaring murderously at him.

They knew who he was.

So there was nothing for it then but to give them what they expected. If they wanted the god Fen'Harel, they could have him. His mask, his manner, his pride. It fit strangely when he tried it on, the physicality of who he had been as a young man. Had he ever been so self-assured? There didn't seem to be enough of him to fill out the memory of the Dread Wolf before the fall of Arlathan. Before uthenera. Before Hal'la. But he had to try. He drew himself up to claim his full height, squaring his shoulders with purpose and determination. How had he walked then? As the wolf, a sway that he had affected to show his ease and confidence and because it drove women mad. He almost smiled at himself at the thought...and remembered that Fen'Harel would have smiled then, so he let it grow. A few of the nearest silanavhen shrank back as he defined his territory, increasing the space around him as was his right, by birth and ability. And when he felt large enough and dangerous enough, when the indolent smirks of young Fen'Harel rested lazily on his mask, he moved through them. They parted before him and it sparked some dormant lust for power and control within him that he fanned into a flame of vanity and entitlement. He wondered suddenly if this was how Dorian felt as well -- the noble he was raised to be at war with his own better nature.

But he didn't have much time for wondering. It started as a single whisper, a single voice, and passed along like a lit fuse, coming ever closer to them even as they made their casual, confident escape through the crowd. "Harellan." 

"Harellan," they were whispering, and then someone shouted it instead. "Harellan!" Solas gestured precisely as he always did when casting a sleep spell, intending to take down the whole room without harming the invaluable voices. ...But nothing happened. His magic would not cast. Beside him, Dorian echoed his movements. Nothing. They were vastly outnumbered by silanavhen and they were utterly defenseless. The room erupted as they all took up the call. "Harellan!"

The veneer of young Fen'Harel crumbled like an abandoned ruin and Solas turned to Dorian with urgency in his eyes. "Run."

They had two things in their favor. The first was the life flowing through them; the silanavhen had knowledge and memory, but they could not think much beyond those things, so if Solas and Dorian could get out of their line of sight, the chase would theoretically be over. The other advantage they had was the element of surprise. They sprinted hard for the nearest exit, pushing past ancient elves with arms and staves and taking a sharp corner into the endless maze of hallways between the inner sanctum and the rest of the temple. Fast on their heels was an fearsome militia of Mythal's most loyal servants, their ancient loathing for Fen'Harel turning their joined voices into a mad baying of 'Betrayer! Betrayer!' And still no sign of Hal'lasean.

As they ran, Solas called out instructions to the human mage behind him. "We should endeavor not to kill the silanavhen, but Hal'la is more important! She would be somewhere meaningful to her--" A second group of silanavhen cut them off at the next hallway and they zagged hard to the right, escaping through a door that they shut tightly behind them. 

The moment they could no longer see the mob, the shouting fell abruptly silent, as though the voices had simply ceased to exist. Solas let out an audible sound of relief and leaned back against the nearest wall to catch his breath. It was only then that he recognized the place that had offered them sanctuary: they were standing before the Well of Sorrows as it had been before Hal'lasean had emptied it.

And they were ringed on all sides by sentinels with arrows drawn.

"Fenedhis," said Solas.

Chapter Text

This couldn't have been Solas' plan, if there had ever been one. Dorian was fairly confident that if the apostate had had any inkling that the voices from the Well would be so aggressive he would have warned him. Probably. And given that they both tried to work their magic without success, he knew with certainty that Solas hadn't expected that either.

That word they kept shouting. Harellan. It itched at the back of his brain. He knew that word. He'd seen it somewhere...in one of the Elvhen books. But where? What did it mean? And why were they only shouting it at Solas? But of course he had more pressing concerns at the moment.

Dorian kept himself very still while the arrow was trained in his face by the elvhen warrior, grateful that the ancient People were not as twitchy as their descendants. He longed to make a quip about deja vu because that was most definitely what he felt, standing here by the Well of Sorrows with Solas and a bunch of angry sentinels bearing the same tattoos -- what were they called? vallaslin? -- that had once painted Hal'lasean's face. 

It marks them as slaves, he remembered, accompanied by the image of his best friend's wet, green-blue eyes as she'd told him what it meant. His heart clutched at the memory and at the thought now of where she might be within her own mind, trapped or lost or worst.

Oh, Hal. Hold on a little longer. We're coming.

If they could figure out how to get out of this alive. What did happen if you died in someone else's dream? 

The sentinel closest to the Well spoke to Solas in a lilting Elvhen that Dorian groped at blindly. 

"You are not welcome here, harellan," he said. Dorian caught that much. There was a stream of words then that he couldn't grasp, but they were looking at him now, and just at the end he heard the Elvhen term for Tevinter and 'shemlen'. As much as Dorian loved his home, he was really beginning to wish he were from anywhere else. Nevarrans, for instance, were not nearly so reviled by literally every other culture in Thedas.

"We are here only for Hal'lasean Lavellan," answered Solas diplomatically, keeping his gaze trained with great intensity on the  lead sentinel. He spoke his ancestral tongue slowly and plainly, and Dorian wondered if that was for his benefit. "We mean you no harm."

"We know no one by that name."

No, of course not. They never did. He couldn't hold back a frustrated sigh, but no one paid attention to him.

Solas shook his head. "She drank from the Well of Sorrows."

This seemed to be the wrong thing to say because suddenly the sentinels were agitated and offended. They took one unified step closer. The lead sentinel spit what was probably a vulgarity and unleashed a string of Elvhen so quick that Dorian was helpless to understand. Except 'harellan'. That word, again and again, and so vicious it sounded like a curse.

"Yes," snapped Solas impatiently, pressing his chest into the nearest arrow and still keeping his eyes on the speaker. "Yes, she drank for the Well! You are not" something something "this is not" something "it is the Fade! You are in her dream and you are killing her!"

The sentinel smiled like unsheathing a blade. "Says the liar."

Solas let out a snarl that was more animal than man. "Dorian," he said in the common language of Thedas, his voice level through sheer force of will, "Close your eyes. Do not open them until I say."

Dorian couldn't help the way his mouth fell open at the command, and before he followed the instructions, he turned to stare at Solas in shock and confusion. Close his eyes? Was there about to be some kind of secret elven dick measuring contest that no human could witness?

The apostate's lips were twisted in a sneer. "Remember our agreement. Close your eyes."

The Tevinter mage took in a deep, steadying breath. He'd much rather die with his eyes open, but he had given his word. He would honor it. His heart was fluttering unpleasantly as he shut his eyes.

The plaza around him erupted with the familiar sounds of battle. The sentinels shouted commands at each other and loosed their arrows again and again. They flew close enough to Dorian's face that he could feel their breeze. He flinched each time, preparing for the agony of arrowhead ripping through flesh, but they never hit. They weren't even aiming for him, he realized with a twisted sense of relief. Whatever Solas was doing, it was working so well as to render Dorian inconsequential. There were gasps and gurgles of pain from all around him, a beast's fierce growl, and the constant clatter of thin wood on stone. 

And then, quite suddenly, it was silent. Only the memory of singing birds could be heard.

"You may open your eyes," said Solas. His tone suggested that he had simply changed his clothes and required his modesty rather than...well, whatever he'd just done.

When Dorian opened his eyes, his jaw dropped nearly to his chest. The elf stood on the other side of the little square, casually dusting off his robes, standing in an almost perfect circle of discarded bows. There were no bodies, no signs of the carnage Dorian had plainly heard. The only indication the sentinels had ever existed was the detritus of their many failed arrows.

"Andraste's tits, Solas!" he exclaimed before he remembered not to talk. "What did you do! Did you kill them all?! How?! And where was that skill when we fought Corypheus!"

The other mage gave him a flat look for speaking, but didn't demand his silence. Instead, Solas began collecting arrows and took up two of the bows, one of which he offered to Dorian. "It was unfortunate, but unavoidable. How is your archery?"

The whole situation was so absurd that all Dorian could do was take the bow and laugh. "Terrible! Do you really think you're going to get away with not telling me what just happened?" He kept his eye on Solas' face for hints even as he wandered closer to the pool to gather his own arrows.

"Yes," was all Solas said.

"You can't feed me that line about ancient elven magics taught to you by a spirit for every impossible thing you do, you know. I might catch wise." Dorian was rewarded for his teasing with the subtlest of sly smiles from his companion. He was preparing to keep going when his fingers brushed an arrow that wobbled at the edge of the water, and instead of grabbing it, his clumsy human fingers sent the slim elven arrow skittering across the stone and into the Well.

Solas looked up in alarm until he saw what had happened, and instead of being on alert, he turned irritable. "This is why you agreed not to touch anything."

"Yes, yes, I'm a big, helpless Tevinter bull. As if you're doing any better, 'harellan'."

Behind him, Solas sucked in a sharp breath at the word, but Dorian wasn't paying attention. Because he had just noticed that the arrow wasn't floating in the water as it should have. Instead, it sank slowly to what would have been the bottom of the pool in reality...and then kept going. 

"Solas?" he said in wonder, reaching out a hand to beckon the elf to him.

"What now, Dorian?" Solas sighed.

"Solas, is there supposed to be a forest on the other side of the Well?"

Chapter Text

They kneeled together by the Well of Sorrows, the Tevinter and Elvhen noblemen, their shoulders barely touching as they leaned forward to peer into the murky depths of the water. Just as Dorian said, there was, undeniably, a forest on the other side. They studied it in silence for some time, clutching their stolen arrows and bows now that their magic was useless to them. 

"What do you think it is?" asked the human.

It was a few moments before Solas could reply because his heart was thumping with warm hope in his chest. "I think," he began, not sure if he even dared to speak the words lest they change the nature of the dream, "that Hal'lasean grew up in such a forest." Not even his mask could hold back the tiny, excited smile that broke across his features when the forest didn't disappear. "I believe that is where we will find her."

Dorian, too, was grinning tentatively. "How do we get there?"

"We swim, of course." Solas tucked his arrows into his robe and slipped the bow over his shoulder before diving gracefully into the water. It would have broken his neck if he'd attempted it in the actual Well, but this dream reflection swallowed him up eagerly. He heard the muted sounds of Dorian splashing in after him and then they were both propelling themselves forward like frogs through a pond.

The air had only just begun to burn in his lungs when his head broke through the surface of a frigid spring in an otherwise temperate wood. Dorian bobbed up next to him and they scrambled out as quickly as they could, dripping cold water onto the leaf-strewn grass of the bank. It was not a particularly dense forest, though it stretched on beyond their line of sight in all directions, and warm, amiable sunlight spilled through the leaves to dapple their skin. It was an inviting and lazy sort of place, and though Solas had never seen this part of it before, he knew its like from other dreams of Hal'lasean's he'd visited when their love was new and privacy scarce.

"Are you able to use magic here?" Dorian asked hopefully. He was squeezing out the hem of his tunic as best he could, but they were both completely soaked through and covered with goosebumps. "I still can't and I have to tell you, Solas, I would really like to be able to dry off."

Solas gave his own power a try, forming the spell in his mind that would heat his skin and evaporate the spring water, but without much expectation of its working. And it didn't. He let out an annoyed breath and put down the bow and arrows, so he could peel off his heavy outer garment. He dropped it unceremoniously in a sopping pile on the ground and began to wring out his shirt. "I'm afraid we are left to our own devices."

Dorian made a sound of dismay and disgust. "I can't remember the last time I had to air dry!" He hopped a few steps to take off one of his boots, an absurd sight that quickly turned comical when he lost his balance and shot out his hand to steady himself on the nearest tree. A tree in Hal'lasean's inner mind, if Solas was correct -- and he usually was -- which meant...oh no.

"Dorian, don't!"

 But it was too late. One second they were in the forest, the next...

 "Hal'la," Solas growls hungrily, his voice a rumble. His face is wet where he's been worshipping between her legs, making lustful promises to her in Elvhen when he comes up for air that her head doesn't understand, but her heart and body do. Every nerve within her is sparking deliciously from his magic, his tongue, his hands, the way he smiles at her when he's like this, as though he were feral and uncontrolled, as though he were dangerous, and it makes her ache for him, to be claimed by him, because she knows that he loves her, knows he will only be wild until she stops him, but she won't. She never wants him to stop. She wants the wolf that he is when he's like this, wants the wolf inside her, filling her, making her cry out. The wolf loves it when she cries out, but she doesn't have to pretend. Never with him, and she loves him for that and for so many other things that it doesn't fit inside her skin. She loves him with everything she is. Heat and pleasure spread like wildfires through her body from his touch and she's trembling and lifting herself toward him. It'll be soon, she'll come soon, but she wants him in her, wants to be one with him, so she puts a hand on his head, tugs on the tip of his ear, and he's there faithfully, loyally, sheathing himself inside her with his teeth on her neck. Their names become prayers of joy on each other's lips, their mouths come together, and they move as one being, gasping and growling and whispering 'ar lath ma, ar lath ma,' and 'vhenan,' speaking filth to each other in their native tongue and then speaking only with their tongues and then she's climbing higher, hotter, gripping his back with desperate fingers. Every muscle in her contracts and she whimpers, burying her sound in his shoulder with her teeth and knowing no greater satisfaction than the way he snarls in surprise and releases into her--

"...Oh. Oh Maker. I-- Oh."

They were back in the woods, the two men, neither one of them quite capable of keeping their feet. Dorian stumbled, his shoe still in his hand, and instinctively reached out to the tree again to catch himself.

"No!" Solas shouted, and Dorian pulled back like he'd been burned. "Don't! Touch! Anything!" He doubled over and steadied his hands on his knees as soon as he was sure the other mage wouldn't make the same mistake twice. He was dizzy with her pleasure, with the way he'd made her feel, with the sense of completion that had come with having him inside her. And the way her love for him had overwhelmed her at his touch, how she saw him when he smiled. He suddenly couldn't breathe and his eyes were stinging. He knew his usually pale skin must be bright pink, but there was nothing to be done for that now. He needed...he wasn't sure what he needed, but this wasn't it. He felt raw, humiliated, aroused...

There was splashing in the spring behind him and he almost tripped over himself trying to see which of the silanavhen had followed them here, but it wasn't a voice at all. It was Dorian, who had waded into the icy water to his waist and was pouring handfuls over his head and shaking himself out. The Tevinter's skin was already much darker than his own, but at the moment it wasn't bronze so much as copper. At least, Solas thought dryly, he wasn't the only one who was flustered by what they'd seen. After a few more seconds of trying and failing to catch his breath and redirect some of his blood flow, the elf followed the human into the spring. They didn't look at each other and stayed as far apart as possible while they convinced their bodies to calm, and only when they were too cold to stay in longer did they pull themselves out and begin again the business of drying off.

Dorian had been mercifully silent up until this point. But once they were standing up and wringing out their clothes, he cast an obnoxiously knowing look in Solas' direction. The elf pretended he didn't see it, which only made Dorian grin. "Solas, you old dog." Solas made a noise of disgust. "No wonder she's waiting for you."

Solas felt his cheeks flare up with a brand new coat of pink that spread to the very tips of his ears. He very carefully avoided looking at Dorian. "Do you ever let anything go?" he wondered with weary resignation.

The grin Dorian sported turned wicked. "Where's the fun in that?" But his expression faltered thoughtfully. "Solas..."

"Don't. Please don't." Whatever he was about to say, Solas' heart couldn't take it. It was still shaking even after his legs had stabilized. Some part of him had always assumed that because she was young that Hal'lasean's affections were somehow more fleeting than his own, that her love was as mortal as she was. But it had felt the same as his, as big, as deep, as full of longing and passion and respect. Her joy at his pleasure as pure. And he had taken that love and ripped it away from her without warning or explanation. His heart throbbed clumsily in his chest. "We have to find her, Dorian. I need to find her."

"We will, Solas," Dorian promised, his voice hitching slightly. He took a slow turn where he stood, peering deep into the woods around them while Solas collected himself. This time Dorian's smile was not smug or lascivious, but relieved. "Look there," and he pointed deeper into the trees where the trunks were wider and the roots more gnarled. "Each of these trees is a memory, is it not? And those are the oldest trees of the lot, so those would be her oldest memories. I'll bet you five gold pieces that's where we'll find her." 

Solas didn't quite smile at Dorian's optimism, but he was grateful for it. He was even more grateful when the larger man began to walk in their chosen direction, taking the lead and letting his distracted companion have a little privacy for his turbulent thoughts.

Chapter Text

It was all Dorian could do not to touch every tree he passed. Hal never talked much about her life before the Inquisition beyond vague mention of the Dalish as a people. He knew her parents had died when she was young -- she'd told him so to convince him to at least go and meet with his father -- and that she'd been raised by the clan. He knew she'd lived with the Storyteller, though he wasn't entirely certain what that meant beyond the obvious. She was a hunter, which he could have said just from watching her move. But she hadn't mentioned particular friends by name and rarely discussed her Keeper. The girl was a complete mystery to him even though he felt he'd known her his entire life. They were close, but as far as he knew, she'd sprung fully formed from the Breach and was making up details as she went along.

But he wouldn't trespass on her trust and privacy anymore than he already had. His cheeks burned just thinking about it. And he couldn't stop thinking about it. His body heated and he sucked in a breath, trying not to think of the lust in Solas' eyes or the feeling of being filled or the way he'd felt her toes curl when she'd-- 

So that's how a woman feels when she comes. 

And then he almost laughed at himself. If only his father knew he was contemplating, with movement in his loins, the sexual pleasure of a woman. He grinned. If only his father knew he was contemplating, with movement in his loins, the sexual pleasure of an elf.

He cast a glance behind him at Solas' silent, pensive figure moving behind him through the forest. 

Harellan, he reminded himself and furrowed his brow as he tried to place the word. Liar? No, but something like that. Harellan. Harel. Fen'Harel was the Dread Wolf according to Hal, so fen for wolf and harel for dread, which makes Harellan...dreaded? Fen'Harel is the trickster. Does Hal feel tricked by Solas? Can't say I blame her. But if those were her subconscious feelings, does that mean she resents me for being Tevene?

The thought that it might be true made him achingly sad. He had thought with amusement about how he wouldn't mind being from somewhere else without ever really meaning it, but in that moment, he truly wished himself someone else for her sake. To be her friend without their peoples coming between them. Perhaps if -- no, when -- they found her and brought her back, he could talk to her about it. It would be uncomfortable and probably involve feelings but for her, he could brave it. As long as she allowed him to make a joke now and then.

"Solas," he wondered suddenly, slowing his pace to let the elf catch up with him, "has she ever talked to you about her life before the Inquisition?"

"Of course," he answered simply.

Dorian shook his head. "No, I don't mean general things, the unavoidable things one learns about a person when you're together constantly, but the way a normal person might discuss themselves. I know she gets homesick for the Dalish and the Free Marches, but I don't think I've ever heard her mention the name of a single one of her friends. Why do you think that is?"

Solas thought on Dorian's words for a moment, his brow pulling down as it did when he considered a subject that fascinated him, which was always. "She and I rarely discussed our pasts," he admitted. "We might mention something we had thought when we were younger, but rarely in the context of others." He smiled with something secret that pleased him. "Perhaps we were too concerned with the present."

The image of Solas' face buried in Hal's sex popped intrusively into Dorian's mind and he turned away from the other man to discreetly adjust his trousers. "Don't you ever wonder, though?" he asked, in part to distract the elf from his embarrassment. "She seems so worldly sometimes and so pure at others. She understands so much but must have experienced little before the Conclave. She plays The Game so well but blushes so freely. I am constantly surprised by how educated she is!" He held out his arms to indicate the woods around them. "She was raised in this, had no tutors or proper schooling, and yet...!"

"There are many ways of learning," Solas answered with quiet condemnation. But it didn't last long. "I am...always surprised by her insights and curiosity. She is not so guarded or narrow-minded as her fellow Dalish. Perhaps that is why she doesn't mention them."

"Maybe she'd like it," Dorian realized out loud. He stopped to adjust the bow on his shoulder. "If we asked her about it." But then his expression darkened. "You won't be able to from wherever it is you're going, but I will." He looked up, suddenly intent on Solas. "Her smile isn't the same, you know, without you. I do my best, but she's struggling."

The elf hadn't paused to wait for Dorian, but he was so surprised by the intimacy of the comment that he twisted sharply to stare at the human. "I--" Solas' cheeks tinged with color even as his eyes filled with questions.

When Dorian started walking again, being careful to avoid running into particularly elevated roots and especially low branches, Solas stayed ahead of him, moving backwards with a grace the human didn't even possess with his front. "Why didn't you say goodbye, Solas?" He couldn't stop himself. It was becoming a compulsion. "Why didn't you stay to celebrate?"

Solas' expressions were infamously difficult to read for everyone but Hal, but Dorian was sure there was hurt and admonishment in those cool blue eyes. It was some time before the elf bothered to answer. Or perhaps before he could. When he did, his voice was quiet. Humble. Regretful. "I knew that if I stayed another moment, I would stay a lifetime." He hesitated and then added, "And cowardice."

"Because of the orb?"

Solas didn't respond, but he didn't have to. He looked so forlorn that Dorian gave him a small, encouraging smile. "But you're here now, when she needs you."

The apostate said nothing, but he did press his lips in acknowledgement of the sentiment, even if it didn't seem as though he believed it. He was still walking backwards when Dorian suddenly registered the dramatic drop off dead ahead.

"Solas!" he snapped in alarm, reaching out with magic that wasn't there.

The last thing he saw was an unguarded look of pure surprise before Solas plummeted from his view.

Chapter Text

The ground beneath Solas' feet was there one moment and gone the next. He reached out, of course, with his magic to catch himself, but there was no magic here, either because of the Well or something going on with Hal'la or perhaps even something Mythal did. Whatever the reason, it meant he had no option but to tumble. He didn't see the first tree that he hit.

This is how she loves him best, standing enraptured in a memory in a dream in a place that once knew life, sharing it with her without her having to ask because he knows her so well. He turns to her and smiles and her heart expands with the corners of his lips. "It is so beautiful," he tells her, but he's looking at her and not the echoes of Elvhenan. But he's holding something back. She can see it, read it in him, she knows when he's at ease and present with her, but now there's that distance in his eyes like he's a thousand miles away, like he's in another world even as he's here with her. She touches his cheek and he kisses her palm. 

"Ar lath ma, Solas," she assures him. Why won't he tell her whatever it is? 

And just like that, he's back with her. "Ar lath ma, vhenan."

He grabbed for the nearest branch after his back slammed into the trunk, but his fingers slipped off. There was too much momentum now to stop himself. Solas breathed in deeply and relaxed his body as best he could, preparing for the next tree.

This new Tevinter mage winks at her across the campfire and laughs and then she's laughing too, and Solas is sitting in irritable silence next to her, which makes her laugh harder. She slips her hand into his and he looks up at her in surprise, but he doesn't move away. 

"Tell us a story, Varric," she requests of the dwarf next to Dorian. "Tell us a shocking one."

Varric is happy to oblige.

He bounced off a trunk and slammed into the ground hard, but the slope was steep and he could find no purchase. He scrabbled at it with hands and feet, but the dirt was loose and crumbled beneath his grip. He flipped himself over with effort even as he was sliding uncontrolled down what he could now see was a massive crater, as if there had been some horrible impact by a celestial object that had scooped out the earth but left all the trees hanging on by the barest of roots. He saw the next tree coming just soon enough to shield his face with his hands.

The journey has been a long and hot one, but they've finally made camp for the night by a beautiful, crystal clear lake. She starts out collecting blood lotus and spindleweed and sometimes a particularly interesting stone. But soon her feet aren't enough and she's pulling off her tunic and breeches and wading naked out to float contentedly in the water. She imagines she can hear the humans gossiping about her, that savage Dalish, the Herald of Andraste, and she dives down as far as she can in the water and holds her breath until her chest is on fire. When she comes back up, the sun is setting over the mountains and the tents are silhouetted before it and she aches for the halla and the music and the melodic rhythm of her people.

Did her clan wish they'd never found her now that the shemlen are calling her the chosen of a god they invoked when they massacred the Dales?

It's for the Breach, she tells herself. It's not for the shems. 

The tree beyond the one he just hit knocked him sideways with a grunt. Solas struggled to right himself, to point his feet downhill to protect the rest of him. His elbow cracked into a branch.

They've provided a little house for her, like having her own stationary aravel. She's never had so much room to herself before and isn't quite sure what to do with it. And it's lonely here. So she tries not to stay inside too long. The Commander is a handsome man and smiles at her easily, but he's human and a former Templar. It makes her uncomfortable even though she's drawn to him. So she sits by herself on the wall by the troops and watches him train them, watches him yell at them, watches him encourage them. They are loyal to him, she can see that. She's fascinated by his presence, by his ability to command. 

The elf called Solas sits a few feet away from her. She can tell he's watching her watching the Commander, but she's too proud to stop what she's doing. 

"Tell me, lethallan," he requests of her politely, and she warms because he calls her kin and it's good to hear Elvish in this strange, cold, Andrastian place, "what are you seeing?"

"He's one of them, but he's above them," she replies without thought, and then she blushes because it probably sounds naive. Or Dalish. But when she looks at Solas, he nods approvingly at her, so she goes on. Though she feels awfully silly to be voicing the thoughts she always kept to herself in her clan. "He wears his leadership like his heavy cloak. I was wondering what it looks like when he isn't wearing it. Or if he remembers how to take it off at all. Perhaps he can no longer tell the cloak from his shoulders."

When she looks up again, Solas is studying her with great intensity and it makes her ears turn pink. This makes him smile, just a little, and she feels as though she's earned something truly special because he so rarely smiles. "What do you see when you look at me?"

She laughs and shakes her head. "Oh, lethallin, no!"  His smile grows and she can't refuse him. "I see a man who speaks like a song because the world sings to him." She knows her cheeks are bright red, but she can't look away. "But I wonder what it is about the world's singing that makes him so desperately sad."

His progress was slowing now as he neared the bottom of the crater, if he could just avoid this root ahead--

There are Templars everywhere. Lines and lines of them and mages and Chantry figures. Almost all human. The roads are cramped this close to the Conclave and no one is willing to give a ride to the Dalish heathen, so she's on foot. They're leering at her. The shemlen men are leering and making lewd jokes about her vallaslin and her pointed ears. The women whisper their insults instead, just loudly enough for her to hear as she passes. She keeps her chin high and her chest out and does not look even when they throw things at her. She's almost there.

Don't let them see you cry, she demands of herself. Don't let them see you shake.

A Templar grabs her roughly by the braid, pulling her back--

Solas lay on the rocks and soil at the bottom of the impact site for some time after he finally stopped moving. His back was scraped and raw, there were bruises already forming all over his body, and he struggled to catch his breath. He tried not to think too much about what a scar on the landscape of her mind like this might mean or how it got there. There would be time for that anxiety later. Now there were limbs to check for function and a rather large hole to escape. And her memories of moments with him to carefully set aside for the long, lonely journey he faced without her.

 "Solas!" Dorian shouted with worry from somewhere above him, so Solas held up a hand to show he was alive before finally rolling onto his stomach to work his slow, wincing way to his feet. When the other mage saw he was in one piece, he added, "I thought you said 'don't touch anything'!"

Solas sighed irritably as he brushed dirt and streaks of blood from his skin and ripped clothing. "Stay there!" He only waited to see that Dorian did as he was told before he finally turned his attention to the crater around him; there had to be an easier way out of it, but he also needed to find out what had made it in the first place. He didn't have to look for long. In the very center of the impact, only feet from where Solas' body had finally come to a stop, was a round, ragged hole about the size of his rotunda at Skyhold. He crept closer, mindful of the stability of the ground beneath him, and leaned out over it.

He wasn't sure what he was expecting to see -- a meteor or lyrium or at least some sign of what had caused this in the first place -- but this wasn't it. Where the world had flipped itself on its head through the Well, it now took a turn at a sharp right angle. The rip in the forest floor led to a sideways view of the edge of the forest, where the trees were ancient and ringed the beginning of rocky hills. But where the sky above the crater was clear and bright, the one through the hole was all twinkling stars and a blood moon. Between the forest and the hills rested a clan's worth of crimson aravels.

"Dorian!" he called as he stepped back. "You will need to find a way down! Try not to touch anything!" 

"Oh," cried Dorian chidingly as he walked the edge of the crater to find the clearest, safest path. "You won't let me have any fun!"

There was no way down that didn't involve a painful slide without holding onto branches and limbs, no matter how far around it the other mage went, so eventually Solas took another step away from the crater's center and braced himself for the onslaught of Hal'lasean's memories. "You will have to touch some of them," he admitted. "At least be careful!"

Dorian scoffed as he began to pick his way down the least treacherous of the slopes. "I'm always careful!" And then he slipped.

"Mythal," she tells her Keeper, but the truth is none of the gods call to her. She loves the hunt and the Way of the Bow, loves the animals of the forest, but feels no affinity for Andruil. She understands the importance of Sylaise, but is too restless to keep the hearth herself. The male gods do not interest her at all. She loves stories of the Dread Wolf, enjoys his cleverness and the thrill of fear and danger she feels when she thinks of him, but he has no vallaslin and it's bad luck to invoke him at all, much less permanently. Ghilan'nain became a halla for being faithful to Andruil, so that's out of the question as well. What does that leave? If she isn't willing to honor one of the gods, perhaps she could honor all of them. Mythal is the All-Mother. It doesn't suit her, but it makes more sense than the others. She closes her eyes and bites down on a piece of halla leather as the Keeper begins her work and she prays to Mythal that she's making the right choice. Not because she thinks Mythal will hear her, but because it seems the proper thing to do.

Chapter Text

Though Dorian's descent was, in most ways, infinitely more controlled and graceful than Solas', it still required him to hold onto a few trunks and branches.

They experienced the devotion and tenderness she felt as she saw to Solas' injuries after a brutal fight with a nest of wyverns in the Hissing Wastes and a sleepless night staring out from her balcony when they first came to Skyhold. They were overwhelmed by the awe and panic, inadequacy and weight, inspiration and honor of the survivors of Haven surrounding her in the deep snow, singing a song meant for their Maker but that spoke to her heart. Dorian had never known such otherness, not even living with his father's expectations in Tevinter. He wondered not for the first time what it must have cost his young Dalish friend to head the Inquisition, to be the Herald of a religion that hated her. Now he thought he might understand a little more. No wonder she preferred Solas' company.

He made it to the bottom of the drop on his feet and carefully dusted himself off as he made his way to Solas, who was staring at the hole in the middle of the crater with a far off expression that seemed less to do with what lay beyond it and more to do with what they'd just witnessed.

"Solas?" Dorian ventured delicately to make sure his companion's mind was all right. When Solas looked up, he took the opportunity to study the long lines of the elf's body and the damage done by the slide. He offered a sympathetic wince. "You know, just because Hal jumps off cliffs doesn't mean you have to too." He was pleased when that earned a tiny hint of a smile. "May I--" But, no, he realized, he couldn't offer healing. He sighed instead. "Nevermind, I can't. You'll just have to suffer." He stepped up beside Solas and peered down into the hole...that wasn't a hole at all, apparently, but a bend in space and time. "Is this all supposed to be here?"

"I do not know," Solas admitted softly. "It is possible that the crater is what remains of the events of the Conclave and meeting Corypheus in Haven. It would explain the sharp turn her mind seems to take here. But it is difficult to be certain when the impact occurred in a place where time is fluid. It is equally as possible that the crater was made when she collapsed, perhaps by something set loose from the Well."

"Your theory, then, is that we either already survived whatever caused this," Dorian clarified cheerfully, "or we're about to run into a giant mind monster when we can't use our magic."

Solas' eyes crinkled at the corners. "It is one of those, yes."

"Splendid!" said the human. "Can't wait."

The actual process of moving from the sunny crater into the dark Dalish camp was one that resulted in quite a bit of vertigo and more than a little queasiness. It was unnerving to step over the lip of what looked like a bottomless pit and instead find one's feet on the side of it with a new sky over one's head. Solas seemed to have no trouble adjusting whatsoever, but Dorian had to kneel for a moment and look only at the ground until his equilibrium caught up to their surroundings. When he was acclimated, Solas offered him a hand up, and together they began the slow, cautious walk into the circle of aravels.

A communal fire crackled invitingly in a circle of stone in the center of the camp with benches and seats all around it and in a roped-off section of wood off to the side was a small herd of halla. Everywhere were the signs of Dalish life, but the elves themselves were nowhere to be found. The camp, though apparently well-tended, was completely empty. Dorian stepped over a discarded basket full of colored yarn and ducked under a clothesline hung with worn linens. The only things in the clearing that moved were the halla, the flames, and the mages. 

"Well, this is creepy," Dorian remarked, peering with one hand up to block the firelight through a little window in an aravel. Inside it was dark and still like a piece in a museum. "Where is everyone?"

Solas stood before the fire and turned a slow circle to take in the camp around them. "It is possible that like the forest, this is simply a place for memory. I imagine that if we touched these objects, we might find they react as the trees did." Dorian hesitated with his hand hovering just over the side of the aravel he'd been examining. "Dorian."

"Yes, yes, I know, don't touch anything," Dorian sighed, dropping his hand. "But you can't tell me you don't want to know what she was like as a child."

"We have intruded enough."

They searched every hidden nook and cranny of the camp that they could without touching anything, but it was entirely unpopulated. Dorian wandered over to the hallas and held out his hand for them to sniff. "I suppose we can rule out that a monster came through here, since the herd is calm and intact," he mused. "But where do we go from here? I would have thought if she were anywhere, it'd be hiding in her old landship, but we've looked in every door and window; no one's here." A sudden, unsettling thought struck him. "Solas, is it possible to get lost in someone else's mind?"

The elf made a soft 'hm' sound from a few feet away, where he was frowning pensively back in the direction from whence they'd come. "In theory, yes, it is possible. It is, however, highly improbable." Solas turned in the opposite direction then and delivered the same expression toward the hills in the distance. "It is not a concern here," he decided with a downward tug on his brows, "because while Hal'la may not have told us every detail of her life before the Inquisition, she did tell us what she held most dear to her." With one last turn, Solas was now facing Dorian with a promising light in his eyes. "For instance, were you aware that Hal'lasean was not the name given her by her parents?"

Dorian's jaw dropped. "Maker, no! What's her given name?"

"She does not know," said Solas simply. "She cannot remember. Clan Lavellan found her one morning sleeping with their halla herd when she was a young child. Hunters found her parents' bodies in the woods. She would not speak again for another year. The clan adopted her and, when she would not give them her name, called her Hal'lasean. It means, roughly," and his lips quirked slightly, "'our gift from the halla'." He lifted his brows and nodded at the rope between Dorian and the animals. "We loose the herd. I believe they will lead us to Hal'la."

The Tevinter mage was dumbstruck. How did she neglect to mention to her best friend that not only was she a Dalish foundling, but one who was mute for a year? "She volunteered this information to you?" he wondered with a deep crease between his eyebrows. 

"It was not an elven name I had ever heard," Solas admitted, and since Dorian made no move to untie the pen, he strode over to do it himself. "I inquired after its origin when we first met in Haven. It did not strike me as something she preferred to discuss." He hesitated briefly before touching the rope and they both braced themselves for the incoming memory, but nothing happened. Solas' fingers deftly worked the knot from around the tree and he stepped aside, clicking his tongue at the halla. "Add it to your list of things to ask her when she wakes."

The little herd stepped tentatively out of their holding and spread out around the camp, sniffing at the Dalish crafts and homes and picking with strong lips at tufts of grass. One animal stayed between the trees, however, and it was to this one that Solas introduced himself with an offered hand. Dorian watched him with fascination as he stroked the halla's face and neck and then touched their heads together, murmuring in unintelligible Elvhen. The halla huffed and bleeted as though they were having an actual conversation. He had seen this dance many times before. Solas and Hal had their distinct ways of doing it, but they were both exceptional with their mounts and wild animals alike. He had seen Hal on more than one occasion convince a hart or a horse up impossible slopes or into dark caves no sensible creature would have gone. And yet it never ceased to amaze him.

When Solas stepped away from the halla, it took off at a pleasant trot. The other members of the herd were still grazing in the middle of camp, but this enterprising little animal left them all behind and headed straight for the hills. Solas looked particularly self-satisfied. "He has agreed to lead us to her."

Chapter Text

There were no words in either Elvhen or any other known language to adequately describe the flare of anticipatory nerves and the whirlpool of conflicted emotions that Solas experienced when their halla friend stopped at the base of the tallest hill in sight and looked at him expectantly. This was it, those intelligent eyes told him. The thing he sought was here.

He stubbornly ignored the pain in his scraped and bruised limbs as he immediately began the climb. Dorian stood below him with his perpetual amusement only hindered by his worry and confusion, but Solas had no patience now to explain. He was not even entirely sure he would know how. He knew only that what he sought was here and his heart was outpacing the rest of him to reach it.

Dorian followed him up the rocky face of the hill, lagging behind as though he expected Solas' body to give out on him at any moment. It was a touchingly protective gesture, but even if Solas were not so much stronger than he had been when last he fought beside the other mage, his mind and spirit would not have let his form fail him when he was so close to her. Not when she needed him.

He pulled himself up onto the ledge at the top of the hillside and did not wait for Dorian. Instead he crested the hill with long, urgent steps. There was a small cluster of trees just beyond it and his spirit felt hers strongly there. But when he stood before the copse, it was not his Hal'lasean who was curled up asleep beneath the sheltering branches.

His disappointment dragged at his heart even as the sight before him lifted it. If it weren't already broken, it would have been very disagreeable indeed. Because it was not his Hal'lasean, but it was a Hal'lasean. She was eight or nine, he estimated, with the sweet, rounder face of childhood, unmarked yet by the vallaslin he had removed with his own hands. Her expression was untroubled in her sleep -- free for the moment of future nightmares of magister-gods and deaths at her command -- and that same silverite hair that he loved so well draped across her neck in a couple of unkempt braids with bits of grass and leaves stuck in them. As he watched her, his lips lifting at the corners, Dorian finally joined him.

The Tevinter mage's mouth gaped open. "Is that...?"

Solas' smile grew. "It is."

"She looks so..." Dorian searched for just the right word. "...peaceful. It seems a shame to wake her." The human's gaze dropped to a nearby rock, flat like a table, and his eyes widened. Solas followed his attention and his breath hitched in his chest. There on the stone, presented as an offering, was a little handful of raw meat. "Is that a Dalish thing? Napping with your meat?"

The question earned him a flat look. "No, it is a Hal'la 'thing'. She's making an offering to the Dread Wolf." 

He tried to calm the panic clutching at his sternum as he crouched beside her, studying her small hands and the unburdened rise and fall of her reedy side. "She is not who we are looking for," he murmured to Dorian. "She has no anchor."

"Should we leave her be?"

"No," he sighed regretfully, "I think she may be our guide." He reached out to trace fingers over her ear and against her baby's cheek. She stirred and mumbled, flopping an arm over her face. His smile was broad and pained. 

 Is this what it would be like, he wondered compulsively, torturously, to sire her children? To raise them by her side, to love them and worry for them with her, to fight with her over punishments and rules?

His breathing ceased all together and Solas brought a shaking hand to his face to cover the twist of anguish taking over his lips. A tidal wave of imagined futures flooded through his mind: her swollen stomach under his delighted hand as their first child kicks, his arms cradling a sleeping toddler as he carries the babe to bed, little charcoal-haired, blue-eyed elven children chasing each other through the courtyards and hallways of Skyhold, much to Commander Rutherford's amused chagrin, teaching them to hunt with her, telling them stories of Elvhenan by the hearth, tending to their scraped knees and the invisible hurts of first love, walking with them through the Fade, introducing them to spirits and ancient knowledge...

"Solas?" Dorian asked worriedly from behind him. Solas scrubbed a hand across his face and was surprised when it came away damp.

"I am fine," he assured the other man, even as he imagined a future in which Hal'la insisted Dorian and Iron Bull help raise the children as adopted uncles. He would complain and act irascible, but she would win and she would be right. The children would climb them like trees.

He sucked in a sharp breath and reached again for the child Hal'la, giving her shoulder a gentle shake. "Hal'lasean," he said lovingly. "Wake up, da'len."

She stretched and yawned and rubbed fisted hands against her eyes and Solas' heart cried out in loss. When she finally focused her bleary eyes on him, they went wide and round with her fear, but she made no move to flee. Brave even as a child.

"An'eth'ara, Hal'lasean," he greeted with a smile that came as easily and earnestly as any he'd ever given her as an adult.

"Fen'Harel?" she gasped.

"Yes, da'len," he replied with soft warmth in his voice. "I have finally come for you." 

Chapter Text

Little Hal'lasean studied Solas intently for quite some time after he confessed his identity to her. Her brow knit with comical concentration and her lips pursed. Solas waited for her to find her terror of him, to remember the stories her people told about Fen'Harel, to start screaming for help. But instead she sat up and put her face very close to his. She did not ask before she placed her soft hands on his cheeks nor did he stop her when she began to check him over with her fingertips. She traced the line of his jaw and brow, ran both palms over his shaved head, measured the length of his ears against her own, lifted up his lips to check for fangs. When she finished, she frowned at him so seriously that he had to clamp down quickly on the laugh it elicited.

"Dread Wolf," she said frankly in sing-song Elvish, "are you going to hurt me?"

"Never," he breathed in her own dialect, lifting his eyebrows in surrender to her childish charms. "I would never hurt you, bright one. Not you."

She narrowed her eyes at him skeptically but seemed to find nothing alarming about his face or what he'd said, so she sat back on her heels and turned her wide turquoise eyes to Dorian, who still stood behind Solas several feet away. He was grinning like an idiot at her.

"Dread Wolf," Hal'lasean began again, her frown returning. "Why have you brought a shemlen with you?"

This time Solas could not help but smile. He smoothed down her hair and ran a thumb down her chubby cheek and tried not to think about the ache in his soul. "This is our friend Dorian," he explained, looking back at his companion. "He would never hurt you either. Do you believe me, Hal'lasean?"

She thought about that for some time, squinting at his face and running her little fingers over the teeth of his jawbone necklace. She gave Dorian a sidelong look that was so much like ones they'd both gotten from her adult self that they both had to hide their amusement. "You're the trickster," she pointed out thoughtfully.

It should not have hurt him quite so much. He had been expecting it. And yet still it stung. "That is what your people call me," he agreed.

"You locked the other gods away!" she accused, the frown returning. Solas nodded his affirmation. But he watched her appraise him again and whatever she saw in his eyes softened her young ire. "But why would you do that, Dread Wolf? When we had the gods, we lived in Arlathan and everything was beautiful! And now we live in aravels and we have no land to call our home!" She cast a sharp look at Dorian, who morphed his expression into an appropriately cowed one. "Is it because you love the shemlens? You wanted them to have lands that were ours?"

For the second time in under ten minutes, tears pricked threateningly at Solas' eyes. He swallowed them down like particularly bitter medicinal tea. "Da'len," he ventured gently, his voice taking on an even more teacherly quality, "have you ever told a lie?" She nodded with great emphasis. "Have you ever told a lie to avoid getting into trouble?" Again, she nodded dutifully. "Have you ever told a lie to avoid getting into trouble that blamed someone else for something you did?" Hal'lasean nodded once more and Solas favored her with an approving smile that lit her face up like a lantern. "Long ago in the days of Arlathan, The People were unhappy. The gods had grown cruel and treated The People badly. I tricked the other gods to keep The People safe."

And then I left them alone and vulnerable to face the Tevinter threat, he added silently, viciously.

"But The People were afraid without their gods," he continued, "and because they were afraid, they lied. They told each other that I locked away the gods selfishly and that I had betrayed them. They told each other this lie so many times that they forgot what was true." How many times had he wanted to tell Hal'la this story? How many times had it caught in his throat? The relief he felt finally revealing it to her, even though it wasn't truly his Hal'la, was a tangible thing. 

The little girl's face twisted as she considered him and his story and his companion. "These are things a trickster would say," she declared eventually, but she sounded unconvinced of her own logic. "Why would Fen'Harel be friends with a shem?"

His smile was sweet and soft. "I have given my heart to a beautiful Dalish woman and she has given me hers. Dorian is her best friend. They have saved each other's lives many times and he has saved mine as well. And because I love her, her friends have become my friends." He cast a sly look in Dorian's direction and waggled his brows at Hal'lasean, "Even if her friends are big, smelly, stupid shems."

Hal'lasean laughed, a little thing like the twinkling of stars in the heavens, and Solas felt he had accomplished something truly worthwhile. 

"I heard that," grouched Dorian in the common tongue. That made her laugh too.

"Would you mind, da'len," Solas requested, joining Dorian in the trade language, "if we spoke like this so that Dorian may join us?"

"Pretty please," added Dorian for good measure with his most dashing smile. Hal'lasean was powerless to resist. Solas found he did not mind how she was made to smile, so long as she kept doing it. 

"Dread Wolf," she said again, and though her smile slid away, her concentration returned, and Solas did not mind that either, "I thought you were a big wolf with sharp teeth and long claws and six red eyes and fur!"

"Oh, I am," he promised her, pretending to look menacing. She smiled again and his heart thumped dramatically in his chest. "But I am only a wolf for my enemies. For my friends and my kin and ma vhenan, I remain as the elf that I was born." He watched the wheels turning in her head as she mulled over that new information. He studied her with fascination as she seemed to come to some secret conclusion with a small jolt. He reached out to her when she began to shiver. "Da'len?"

"Oh, Dread Wolf," she told him with impressive sincerity as she rubbed her hands over her upper arms and continued to shake, "It is so very cold tonight and I have not brought my warm cloak!"

This time, it was Solas who laughed. He laughed so hard and for so long that both Dorian and Hal'lasean were staring at him in surprise and bemusement when he finally trailed off. "Hal'lasean," he told her, fond and amused, "little trickster, I have no fur or overcoat to give you to keep you warm. But I will grant you any boon within my power if you will help me find someone."

"If the Dread Wolf asks for a favor," Hal'lasean replied uncertainly, "you're supposed to say no and run to get the hunters."

"It is a simple favor," insisted Solas quickly, holding out his hands so she could see he meant her no harm. "I think you have a secret place that not even your clan knows exists. Is that true?" She hesitated and then offered a nod. "I think my beautiful Dalish love is hiding in that place. I think she's in trouble and she needs me. But, da'len, I cannot find her without you. And I would grant you any boon you like, so long as I am able." His smile turned conspiratorial. "You may have the boon...and I will send plagues of spiders into the bedrolls of certain little boys."

Her eyes went round again and she looked quickly from Solas to Dorian, as if asking for confirmation. The Tevinter mage wasted no time. "It's true," he promised helpfully. "I've seen him do it. Big, terrible, nasty spiders that leave itchy red bites."

"What is your love's name?" the little girl wondered.

"Why, da'len," said Solas with a slow, pleased smile, "my heart's name is Hal'lasean. That is why only you can help us find her."

Chapter Text

As it turned out, Hal'lasean had been a shrewd negotiator even as a child, and after long, squinting stares at each other and several counter offers, Solas agreed to some future as-yet-to-be-determined major boon, Dorian's sentinel bow and arrows, the plagues of spiders, and for the little girl to meet his Dalish love with her name. He and Dorian swung between being impressed and laughing for most of the haggling. Their only caveats were that she lead them to her hiding place and that she seal the agreement by giving each of them a kiss on the cheek. These they knelt to receive as though she were a queen and they achieving knighthood. Dorian's came with a curious tweak of his mustache, but Solas' was accompanied by a hurried, scandalising whisper in his ear.

"You are not so scary, Fen'Harel," she breathed in her melodic Elvish, "but I won't tell."

He smiled with such feeling that his lips pulled down at the corners.

This, cried his heart and soul, this is what I want every day. To have her give me children, to love and be loved and not be alone, just for a few decades. But his head reminded him ruthlessly that he did not deserve such sweetness and light. He had had his little piece of stolen bliss and now he had a duty to himself and to The People. So as much as he longed to gather her in his arms and smell her hair and carry her on his shoulders to hear her laugh, he helped her to her feet.

"Dread Wolf," she realized suddenly, "you haven't had your dinner!"

For a moment he was utterly baffled until he remembered the raw meat on the rock.

"Yes, Dread Wolf," encouraged Dorian. "It's terribly rude to refuse food prepared specially for you." Solas sent him a look that only made him grin.

"Do you know, little one," said Solas leadingly, "that I have already eaten my dinner tonight. But I am honored by the offering. Truly." When she seemed disappointed, his heart squeezed painfully. "I cannot carry it with me, my halla, but I will return for it when my love is safe. Will that make you happy?" She beamed at him and he knew in that moment that if he did not get out of this quickly, he would be lost. His noble struggle could not wait, not even for fifty years. "Will you lead the way, da'len?"

"Yes, Dread Wolf," and she trotted on little bare feet along the ridge of this hill, headed for the next.

When she was out of earshot, Dorian was beside him with an imperious but amused expression. "You're really taking this 'harellan' business to heart, aren't you, Solas?"

Solas squared his shoulders. "She was expecting the Dread Wolf, so that is what I gave her."

Dorian snorted. "Yes, hello, little girl, I am the creature from your nightmares. Won't you wander around with me alone?"

"It worked, did it not," he replied edgily, and gave Dorian a withering look. 

"Only because Hal has apparently always had a bit of a death wish!" the other mage laughed.

"Fen'Harel!" their miniature guide called from far ahead, planting her fists stubbornly on her slim hips. "We do not all live forever, you know!" Dorian nearly choked.

Oh, my halla, Solas lamented in the very core of his being, you have no idea the truth you speak. "Ma nuvenin, da'vhenan," he said humbly, and he and Dorian followed her to the next hill. She only stopped glaring at them when they were standing by her side. They let her walk just in front of them, her back proudly straight and her new bow tucked over one narrow shoulder, and listened with hidden smiles as she prattled cheerfully and exuberantly about anything and everything that crossed her mind.

"They call this ridge the Wyvern's Backbone," she lectured with great confidence and importance. "That is because when these hills turn into mountains further on, there is a much bigger ridge called the Dragon's Backbone. I'm not supposed to be up here, but I also am not supposed to speak to strangers or shems, and I am not at all allowed to ever speak to the Dread Wolf, so being on the ridge is not so terrible in comparison." She glanced back at Dorian without ever stopping her pace, "Are you a slaver, Dorian? Keeper says many shems are slavers and that even if they aren't, they're dangerous." Her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "But then, Keeper also says the Dread Wolf is the enemy of The People who eats bad little girls, but here you are!"

For the first time in her presence, neither man could muster up a smile. Dorian cleared his throat. "I am not a slaver," though his family owned slaves, Solas added darkly, "but your Keeper is right about shems. You must be careful. You are much too precious and I would be disconsolate if you were hurt."

She flashed him a smile over her shoulder that seemed to make Dorian feel worse, and what she said next was salt in his open Tevinter wound. "I will be careful. I wouldn't make a good slave. I hate to wash and cook and clean more than anything! I'm going to be a hunter when I have my vallaslin. I come out and practice with daggers and archery every night when everyone is asleep. No one ever notices I'm gone because they are all worried about their own children and I am smaller and quieter than the others." A thought struck her so abruptly that she stumbled and turned completely around to face Solas. "Fen'Harel, what is your vallaslin? Maybe when I'm older, I'll honor you!"

She meant it sweetly, but Solas could not hide the revulsion that swept over his face. The little girl looked momentarily frightened and then hurt, and the swell of feelings within him caught him so off guard that without thinking, he swept her into his arms and squeezed her to him, planting a pained kiss on her messy braids. "No, Hal'lasean," he insisted thickly, his voice intense with the weight of what it would mean for anyone to ever wear his vallaslin again. He had been Dorian once. He would never be that, never again, for as long as he lived. "I had vallaslin once and many wore it, but it has gone the way of Arlathan and no one -- not even you, my favorite child -- will ever bear my mark again. Not ever again." He held her out a little to search her tear-filled turquoise eyes for understanding. "If you wish to honor me, da'len, honor me by refusing your vallaslin. Your sweet, bare face is all the honor I will ever require. Will you do that for me, Hal'lasean? Will you never let them mark you?"

Solas was aware that Dorian was watching his sudden outpouring of emotion with growing suspicion, but he had eyes only for the child in his arms. Her cheeks were wet and her eyes wide, but she gave him a solemn nod. "Ma nuvenin, Fen'Harel. Ir abelas."

He pressed his lips to her forehead and tightened his arms around her. "Tel'abelas, da'vhenan. Tel'abelas."

Chapter Text

Dorian's brain was a whirlwind of activity and it seemed to be in cahoots with his heart. It was a heinous conspiracy to make him think and feel all of his least favorite things. He walked silently a little ways behind Solas, who now carried Hal'lasean piggyback. They chatted amiably, interrupted only by her occasional instructions when they needed to change course to reach her secret lair. They were so natural together that he couldn't help but imagine her not as Hal at all, but as her daughter with Solas. Their easy connection sent confusing stabs of jealousy through him. He had only ever considered children as the inevitable product of his eventual unhappy marriage with some suitably pedigreed Tevinter noblewoman. He thought of them not disagreeably, but as a duty he had no desire to perform.

But he had been through so much since he'd left Minrathous, changed so drastically. He'd found a kindred spirit in Hal and what was becoming a serious committed relationship with Bull, neither of which he had ever experienced before the Inquisition. While he never felt that he truly belonged in the South -- there was always someone determined to remind him of the crimes of his countrymen -- he had discovered a family of sorts in the myriad misfits Hal had collected about her. It was the closest he had ever come to feeling at home.

He had always assumed he would return to Tevinter when Corypheus was defeated, that he would take on the mantle assigned to him by his birth and work to change his country from inside the Magesterium. But he couldn't hope to compete with the magisters soaking their magic in blood. It was something he would never do, and so he could not hope to prevail. He would be assassinated or turned over to the Templars within a month.

It was Hal and the Inquisition who had defeated Corypheus, as outsiders, and so if he had any chance of changing the course of his people, it was becoming clearer and clearer to him that he must do so with the Inquisition.

Besides, Hal needed him. When Solas left her again, she would be devastated. She would need him by her side, holding her hand, helping her heal. Varric would be leaving soon and Leliana and Blackwall were already gone. She would find no sympathy and understanding with Sera, though she would never think to look there. Cullen would be there with his dear heart full of love and those puppy dog eyes, wanting everything from her but expecting nothing. She wouldn't dare burden him with her heartbreak while he dealt with his own. Bull would get her drunk and possibly laid, but it wouldn't be what she needed. Cassandra would be no help at all and Cole would only make it worse. Josie, at least, could be of some use, but would the Ambassador hold her while she cried or let her sleep in her bed when she could not stand to be alone in the night? No, Dorian was all she had now.

And then there was Bull. Dorian still wasn't certain what that was, but it was...something. Something quite special. He knew that much. He knew he couldn't give it up. He was not Solas.

Perhaps one day he would return home. If he thought he could finally do some good there. When his father died, he could free the family slaves. That would be something. He imagined entering Minrathous with his Qunari lover on one side and his Dalish Inquisitor on the other, stopping traffic in the streets with all the gawping. He felt unstoppable with them around him, as though he really could make a difference. Dorian smirked a little at the thought. Maybe then Solas would actually learn to like him. Not that Solas would stick around.

He watched them thoughtfully, studying her small, filthy bare feet and her silver hair in the moonlight. Solas was talking to her about the stars and she was arguing with him cheerfully about what the Dalish called them, which she considered to be how it was. Solas laughed and Dorian's chest tightened. 

What would become of Hal after Solas left again? Would she remain alone for the rest of her life? His spirit ached for her sorrow. Perhaps one day she would learn to love Cullen. They could be good for each other. Cullen was loyal and attentive and certainly not unattractive. They could marry and have children and though it would never be as legendary as her love with Solas, she could be happy. That was more than most people ever got. And if not...well, if...if she wanted children, then perhaps, one day...well, perhaps if he got very drunk...and Bull enjoyed women, so if they all three got very drunk...

If ever there was a woman I could rally the troops for, it would be Hal.

And Dorian knew beyond a shadow of a doubt in that moment that they could be a strange but happy family too -- Bull and Dorian and Hal, and Cullen and Josie and Cassandra too, in their way. He could be all the things his father never could be for him. And they would be gorgeous elfblooded children with his tan and her eyes. His family would disown them, but what need would he have for House Pavus then?

"Dorian?"

He looked up from his wonderings to find Solas standing before him with little Hal'lasean on his back.

Even if they were all little copies of her, that would be a life well lived.

 "Yes?"

Solas was watching him closely, examining him almost with concern. "You stopped walking."

"I did?" He glanced down at his feet that were, sure enough, no longer moving. "So I did!"

"Are you tired, Dorian?" asked the child. "I know shems aren't used to walking places."

Dorian feigned exaggerated offense. "Tired! Me! Why, I could run the rest of the way with both of you on my back!" He stepped toward Solas to prove it, bending his knees and reaching for the apostate's waist.

"Not if you value your life, Dorian."

He straightened and put his hands on his hips with an overserious frown. "Now, Dread Wolf, I will not have my honor so maligned and not accept the challenge!"

Solas might have killed Dorian just with the glint in his eyes, but Hal'lasean was giggling and neither man was willing to put a stop to it.

"You may carry me, Dorian," Hal'lasean declared, already squirming to get down from Solas' back. The Tevinter mage had rarely seen the somber elf look so very disappointed. "But no one carries the Dread Wolf. It would be unseemly."

Solas and Dorian shared a hidden smile and then he dropped to one knee, holding out his arms so he could scoop her up and deposit her, with a childish squeal of delight, on his shoulders.

"I could touch the stars from here!" she gasped. "Fen'Harel, if you told me how, I could release the gods for you!"

Solas' face faltered. "Not yet, sweetling," he murmured. "Not just yet."

"Tell me, my little Dalish princess," Dorian began mischievously, "Have you ever galloped an Imperial Warmblood?"

"No," she admitted, "I've ridden a horse only once and she was old and slow. But I have galloped harts and hallas!"

"Show me," requested Dorian.

She touched his sides with her heels and held the neck of his shirt like reins and made a sharp "hyah!" Dorian took off racing along the ridge with one foot in front of the other, tossing his head and whinnying when the mood struck him. The child squealed and cheered and laughed and Dorian thought again of the future and Hal and the clear sounds of children giggling in the halls of Skyhold.

Solas walked behind them, eyes locked on Hal'lasean, trying and failing to ignore his envy and hurt at having to share her when he could only be with her for so short a time.

Chapter Text

"Whoa!" commanded little Hal'lasean, pulling back on Dorian's shirt. "Whoa, boy!"

Dorian stopped dutifully and stood with the child resting lighter on his shoulders than his battle armor while Solas caught up. When the elf was beside them once more, Hal'lasean held out her arms to him beseechingly. "Fen'Harel, will you help me down please?"

Solas' face lit up at the prospect and he swept her dramatically from Dorian's shoulders, spinning her a few times with her legs flying out behind her so that she gasped and laughed and then setting her feet on the ridge with a kiss to her forehead.

"Fen'Harel," she said breathlessly, "will you take me with you when you go? I will be quiet and good and useful, you'll see! I can hunt for you and make your meals and keep your camp. I have no family to miss me. I am no one's child. And I'm a quick learner, Fen'Harel! If you teach me, I won't ever forget! I even know how to read and write in Elvish and in the trade language! I'm good at math and history and telling stories! I'll learn whatever you like! And, Fen'Harel, I am very good at lying. You only have to tell the people a little bit of the truth and they'll believe it, even if it's a lie they don't want to hear! Please, Fen'Harel!" It poured out of her passionately, desperately, with such feeling that there were tears in her wide turquoise eyes. She stopped for breath only when her pitch was done and looked hopefully between them, expecting only the best of results without fear of rejection as only a child can.

It was only then that Dorian realized with a sharp twist of his heart how lonely and hungry for attention his Hal must have been as a child. A member of a clan with no connection to her parents and no knowledge of her past, raised by the group but not truly cherished by any one of them as their own. He knew a little bit about that, about being fed and cared for, but with certain indifference, without the fulfillment of knowing that someone somewhere loved you more than themselves, loved you even when you were inconvenient. And he thought of Solas, who had seemed to give her that, finally, and then pulled away. Solas, who left her behind.

But of course they couldn't take her with them. She was a piece of Hal, a memory of herself given agency only within her own mind. How did they tell her that? Could they tell her that? Dorian glanced uncertainly at Solas, whose face was hard and unreadable in a way that Dorian knew by now meant that he was shattering inside. It was how he had looked the day after he'd first pushed Hal away. There was no way they could tell her no but no way they could tell her yes. When Solas had been silent for so long that Dorian started to get worried, he took matters into his own hands and knelt before her, gently turning her chin toward him. "The Dread Wolf and I are on a dangerous mission, sweetling, and once we find his love, we must leave with her to get her help. But I think we could use someone just like you, so when things are safer, we'll come back for you. How does that sound?"

Hal'lasean's chin dimpled, but she stubbornly refused to show her despair. "It sounds like a lie," she whispered.

"Da'vhenan," said Solas, his throat tight around his voice. He lapsed into Elvish so that she would see the weight and meaning of his words. "I will come back for you. I will always come back for you."

Dorian wondered anew just what it was Solas was involved in that would make him leave behind something so pure and rare, something that he clearly held more dear than just about everything else, even his elven history and his blighted aloofness. And why, if it were so important, would he not seek help from the Inquisition as everyone else had done?

Hal'lasean studied Solas with a fierce look that Dorian had come to know and love from her adult counterpart. It was the one she always used when she was about to do something she knew was impossible. He had seen it first when she'd learned of the Tevinter domination of the Redcliffe mages. It meant she was about to amaze them all yet again. It always sent a thrill of anticipation through him. "A little piece of truth wrapped in a lie," she murmured in the trade language. Solas looked as though he'd been caught doing something horrible. "It's okay, Dread Wolf. No one else wants me either."

Maker, Hal, how did I not know? thought Dorian as tears pricked at his eyes. He felt as if all the air had been squeezed forcefully from his lungs. But Solas, he realized, was regarding her with a shrewd gaze. "A little piece of truth wrapped in a lie," he told her knowingly, and they smiled at each other as though they'd come to a deep understanding. Solas held out his arms to her and she dropped her bow and arrows and threw herself into them, hugging tightly to his neck. He hooked his chin over her shoulder and kissed her ear. "Even when I am not with you," he told her in melodic Elvish, "I will be watching over you. That is the truth."

She let out a little resigned sigh and pulled back, kissing him sweetly on the cheek and then extricating herself from his arms. "Come then," and she switched back to trade as she gathered her weapon, "the cave is just behind those trees." She pointed to a copse at the foot of the ridge and led the way confidently, leaping down a drop off taller than her head with the same easy nonchalance she would use as an adult.

Dorian and Solas exchanged a glance that seemed to be a consensus about their little friend, a mixture of mourning for her childhood and wonder at her precociousness and heartbreak at leaving her behind when they were done. 

"Well," laughed Dorian, "she hasn't changed much!"

"No," Solas agreed softly. "She is just the same." He steadied himself and tugged down on his tattered tunic. "Which means she will not wait for us to catch up."

The men leapt after her, jogging to keep pace, as they had on all their journeys with her since the Breach.

Chapter Text

The cave, as it turned out, could be more accurately described as a tunnel. It was ancient and crumbling, with a spiral pillar on either side of the entrance pocked with the remains of what was once an inscription in Elvhen. Dorian made out the word 'sleep' and one that might have been 'eternity', but they weren't anywhere near each other and everything else was eroded beyond recognition. Hal'lasean was perched on one of the plinths at the foot of a pillar, her bare toes wiggling just above the ground. Solas stood beside her, his hands clasped behind his back, staring into the darkness before them with a intense frown.

"What do you suppose it used to be?" Dorian wondered, moving from one side's inscription to the other. This time he found the words 'spirit', 'honor', and 'night'. "The entrance to an old mine, perhaps?"

Solas' voice was strained. "It is the exit of a secret passage. It would have led beneath an elven city and come out in the basement of a shop or a residence." He swallowed. "It would have been used to smuggle out escaped slaves." The look Solas bestowed upon him then was both condemning and, unless Dorian was completely missing his mark, possibly slightly guilty. "I imagine it has its like all over Tevinter as well."

Dorian's bronze skin turned subtly copper with his shame. "I'm aware of their existence, though I have yet to actually see one." Before Solas could say anything scathing to that, he added quickly, "But I imagine I'll be building my own or borrowing someone else's when I return."

It had the opposite effect he had intended; Solas's eyes widened just enough so that Dorian caught a hint of panic. "You will return to Tevinter?" he demanded. "Will you leave soon?"

Dorian could not roll his eyes dramatically enough. "You can untwist your knickers, Solas, I'm not going to leave her."

The elf opened his mouth to reply, let it hang there for a moment, and then closed it again with a sharp click of his teeth. When he turned abruptly back around to face the tunnel entrance again, he crossed his arms over his chest. Dorian could not quite help the way his brow quirked triumphantly in response. Then suddenly there was a child by his side, tugging at his sleeve.

"Why do you call Fen'Harel your pride?" Hal'lasean asked, her brow knitting with her confusion.

Dorian's echoed hers. "What's that?"

"You called Fen'Harel 'solas'," she insisted. "That means 'my pride'."

This earned her a shrewd look from the Tevinter mage, who put his hands on his hips for emphasis. "There's nothing that gets by you, is there." She smiled and so did he because he was powerless to resist. "'Solas' is what we -- his...friends -- call him," he explained, remembering this time to add a little piece of truth to his twisting of it. And because he was also powerless to resist a chance to torment his companion, he added, a little more pointedly, "Because he can be an arrogant bastard." Solas' shoulders stiffened and Dorian grinned. It really never got old. It had been something of a relief, in some ways, when Solas had first pushed Hal away. It meant that Dorian could stop trying and failing to be friendly with him and instead constantly antagonize him. It was infinitely more fun. "Anyway, you can't just go around calling him the Dread Wolf in mixed company. Not everyone is as sweet as you."

Hal'lasean considered this thoughtfully for a moment before giving a slow, understanding nod. "If he came to my clan and we said he was Fen'Harel, they'd probably try to kill him." Solas let out a little sigh, but she was burrowing her hand around his elbow and smiling consolingly up at him. "I wouldn't let them. I would stand in front of you and they'd have to kill me too!" 

Dorian couldn't see Solas' face, but from the way Hal'lasean's expression shifted from sincere adoration to confusion to pure worry suggested it wasn't revealing anything particularly pleasant. How many times had their Hal done that for them? Stood between them and their fears or their pain or certain death and insisted it go through her first. At Haven and always against Corypheus, of course, but countless other subtler times as well. The vivid memory of meeting his father at the tavern in Redcliffe with her by his side crept unwelcome to the forefront of his mind and his heart thumped hot in his chest.

She really is just the same.

The elf slipped an arm around the girl's shoulders and pulled her against his side. Her arms wrapped around his waist as far as they could. "No, da'len," murmured Solas. "I am grateful for your trust, but you must never put yourself in danger, least of all for my sake. It is my duty to protect you. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Dread Wolf," she agreed.

"Good," continued Solas with a glance over his shoulder at Dorian. Then his attention was focused entirely on her. He cupped her cheek with his palm and drew his thumb across her cheekbone as Dorian had watched him do with Hal when he thought no one was watching. "Because what is in this tunnel is dangerous and I will not put you at risk. You must stay here and if someone comes, you must promise me you'll hide until you know for certain it is one of us."

The wheels were visibly turning in Hal'lasean's head as she considered the ramifications of promising and what, exactly, she was promising. It couldn't have escaped Solas either, but he at least maintained the seriousness and sincerity of his expression, even if Dorian was smirking just a little. "I promise." Solas smiled his approval and bent to kiss her forehead, then turned her around and swatted playfully at her backside to send her back to her seat. She went dutifully, settling down and once again swinging her legs.

Solas spared a glance for Dorian to make sure the other mage was with him and stepped into the tunnel. Dorian followed, squinting while his eyes adjusted to the overwhelming darkness and cursing for the millionth time whatever force it was that was keeping them from using magic. Oh, what he wouldn't give for a fire in this ink. Hal always came prepared; she'd had to learn to be, as someone without magical ability, and she constantly told Dorian and Solas that they would find themselves in a situation like this one day. Neither of them had listened. It was one of the few things on which they both agreed. And now they were stumbling blind through a tunnel in Hal's mind. It was a sort of poetic justice, he supposed.

"She is here. I sense her spirit," said Solas quietly, much closer to Dorian than he'd imagined. He jumped in surprise, but managed at least to keep from shouting like an imbecile. "It is not as bright as it should be."

"That's bad, isn't it?" Dorian whispered.

"It is not good," sighed Solas. "She is also not the only presence in the tunnel with us. It is difficult to be certain, but I believe before we reach her, we will need to pass through a not insignificant number of silanavhen."

"Oh good," Dorian laughed. "I was just thinking how much I missed being chased by a murderous mob of ancient elves. You needn't ask me to close my eyes this time, at least. I can't see a blighted thing." Solas' hand pressed between his shoulder blades then, guiding him at a gentle angle to his left and forward. "Am I to take it you can see in this mess?"

Solas hesitated and then offered, "I am not completely blind, no." Dorian rolled his eyes and let himself be led along, occasionally stumbling or scraping a wall -- he had a sneaking suspicion the elf was doing that on purpose -- but generally moving forward.

"Solas," he murmured, patting a hand along the wall nearest him just to be sure of where it was. "Do you think Hal'lasean is following us?"

"Oh," and Solas actually laughed, "I have no doubt."

Chapter Text

To the child's credit, Solas could barely hear her steps in the passage behind them, and she crept along in the dark with a certainty that meant she had explored and memorized this path many times before. He was not exactly surprised by this, given that it was Hal'la as a child and it was precisely the sort of thing he would have expected from her, but he would not have thought to have attributed such advanced planning to such a young girl, especially a mortal Dalish one. She kept far enough behind that, were he anyone else, he would not have heard her at all. Then again, Hal'lasean always did have a way of sneaking up on him.

They walked silently in the dark for some time, Solas just behind Dorian with a guiding hand on his back, applying gentle pressure between the man's broad shoulders just as he would the reins of a horse. He had begun a little less carefully, allowing the Tevinter mage to bump walls and occasionally his head, but his amusement had given way to his caution and now he was keeping them as quiet as they possibly could be. He had only a vague idea of the location of this next group of memory-forms and he had no desire to be taken by surprise again. He thought with regret that he would need to kill these too, but he would have done much worse to anything and anyone that stood between him and Hal'la's weak spiritual star.

Unfortunately, the silence that was necessary for their approach was devastating for his soul. It finally allowed all of his renewed fears of what was to come to sprout and grow in his mind, to cover all of his thoughts like a parasitic vine, draining the life from every other feeling. It was only terror now. Terror at the idea that Hal'la's condition was serious enough to sap her very essence. She had been blinding like the sun when last he left her. Now she was a flickering candle in the dark, lost to him at the first stiff breeze. His only hope was in the little lantern sneaking along behind him -- not quite her spirit, but a piece of the puzzle nonetheless.

He was having to carefully regulate his breathing so that his lungs wouldn't forget completely, and though his heart was in a permanently contracted state, it raced palpably against his ribs. Neither his breath nor his beating heart would heed his instruction. He had learned long ago to embrace his fear, to transmute it to something more useful, like determination or decisiveness or ruthlessness. But that was before Hal'la. Before his heart began to live outside his body. Before his heart had become mortal. He had never in his life known fear like this. It was as consuming as his love and lust for her, as filling and as intense. It made him stupid and careless, just as her love did. It lit the emptiness of missing her inside him on fire and burned hot and endless. He had to be wary. He had to think. For her life and for his journey without her, he must think clearly. If he lost himself to her again, he would fail The People as inevitably as their love, as inevitably as her future death. But if he lost her now, lost her before her time, lost her to a choice he'd made to protect her...

Dorian stopped abruptly in front of him and Solas almost ran into him. The human twisted toward him, gripping his lower arm urgently and looking generally where he guessed Solas' head must be. "Do you see that light," he whispered, "or am I losing my mind?"

Solas stepped around Dorian and peered into the pitch darkness of the tunnel up ahead. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, as his other senses had been working in overdrive to compensate for the lack of light, but it soon became apparent that Dorian was actually right. There was a light up ahead, or at least a phosphorous glow, reflecting dimly on the wall up ahead where the passage took a sharp turn to the left. "There is a light," he agreed, voice barely audible, "This may be where we will encounter the silanavhen. We must approach with stealth. If we can pass them without a confrontation, that would be ideal."

"And if not," Dorian added wryly, "I close my eyes and you do whatever terrifying thing it is you did at the Well somehow despite the fact that we can't do any magic." When Solas didn't answer, Dorian muttered, "He said, foolishly hoping for an explanation but receiving none." Solas said nothing to that either, but it brought him none of his usual pleasure in frustrating Dorian. There was no room for anything within him but his fear.

"It's a pool," came a small, hushed voice from just behind them. How had he not heard her approach? "It is very deep and very slippery and very cold, but the algae in it glows and it bounces all over the chamber. There's a pretty stone bridge that goes over it and queer catfish that are all white and have no eyes in the water. I don't know how they got in there, though, unless there's an underground river through the very bottom that I can't see." She paused and then wondered helpfully, "Shall I sneak in and see if the coast is clear?"

"Absolutely not!" Solas whispered seriously. "The information is very useful, ma halla, and I thank you for that, but if you are to come with us, you must do exactly what I say exactly when I say it or else you will face a very angry Dread Wolf. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes," she agreed solemnly.

"Yes what?" Solas prompted.

"Yes, I promise to do exactly what you say exactly when you say it."

This earned her a tight but pleased smile. He smoothed a hand over the silk of her silver hair. "I want you to stay with Dorian no matter what. You will help guide him in the dark because he cannot see well enough on his own." He turned his attention then to the man in question. "If the situation devolves as it did at the Temple of Mythal, you are to take her and run back here or however far you must go to keep her safe."

Hal'lasean took Dorian's hand in the dark and Solas' heart skipped a beat. He could not avoid flexing his own empty fists with envy. "Do you think it might be smarter to have us go through first?" Dorian asked. "Since it seems to be you that sends them into such a frenzy."

Solas considered their options with a grim expression. Dorian was not wrong: it had been cries of 'betrayer' that had led to the chase last time, but they were not much fonder of the face of the Tevinter invasion that many of them had no doubt lived through and possibly died during. Dorian had no magic to defend them and Hal'lasean had his weapon, though she was most likely more skilled with the bow than he was. If they followed the two of them further into the tunnel, where they had no idea what might await them, Solas might not be able to get to them in time. No, their only sure exit was behind them and he was their only certain defense. He shook his head, and then, because Dorian couldn't see it, said, "We will get close enough to see the chamber and make a decision then. But it is probably better to stay as a group until we must divide for safety."

Solas led the approach, followed by Hal'lasean, who steered Dorian by their joined hands only mildly less expertly than Solas. Or perhaps Dorian did not quite trust a child to move him forward as much as he did a fellow veteran of the Inquisition. By the time he maneuvered himself against the turn in the tunnel and leaned out just enough to see the chamber proper, his heart was so loud that he could hear the blood rushing through his head.

The pool would have been a truly beautiful sight to behold, all rippling lightning blue that cast wiggling water lights on walls and ceiling, but there was no time for admiration or exploration. Not even of the exquisitely carved Elvhen bridge that arched over it like a woman in ecstasy, all seamless latticework railings barely touched by the ravages of time. Perhaps when this was done, he could find this place in the Free Marches and spend a night here, watching The People escape across it to a freedom they had never before known. 

But here, now, the noble student of military strategy in him, the commander of the most skilled Fade warriors in Elvhenan, could see only a dangerous choke point on a slippery, narrow bridge that was overtaken and well held by an enemy so numerous they could barely move themselves. That, at least, was to their advantage. He noticed also that the clothing worn by most of them was much older in general than the ones they'd encountered in the temple. These elves had perhaps only known shemlen as a rumor, might still hold him in esteem, could very possibly not recognize him at all. He was not so old as Mythal, after all.

So it seemed he must once again don the ill-fitted fur of himself as a young man, arrogant even by his own standards, lustful and territorial and aware of his own power and majesty. Young Fen'Harel had truly been the Dread Wolf. He breathed in deeply and did his best to mimic the posture, assume the mantle of his pride and ability and blue blood. He bowed to no one. He was one with his fears. None could tame him, though many had tried. He smiled wickedly at the memory of the lovers he had tossed aside when he grew bored or they confessed their love to him. Not even Sylaise or Andruil could catch more than his trifling interest in the hunt.

If only they could see me now, he thought darkly. Fen'Harel come undone by the winsome blushes of a quickling girl, the Dread Wolf finally tamed by a mortal who bore Mythal's mark of ownership on her face and her soul. An elfling barely old enough to be claim adulthood, who will never know the thrill of magic woven like tapestries or the beauty of Arlathan that could make elves of thousands of years weep as the sun set. This was the woman who had finally won his heart. This was the spirit to whom he had finally whispered 'ar lath ma'. Oh, how they would laugh. Even he, young alpha male, would have laughed. But that was before Hal'la. Before he began to finally understand the world.

He could not lose her now. It was too soon. She had not yet begun to live. And he was not ready to say goodbye.

Chapter Text

"Stay behind me," Solas hissed at Dorian when he ducked back behind the wall. "Do not make eye contact with me or speak without my permission. They must see that I am in command." He glanced down at Hal'lasean and his lips twitched upward even as his heart sank. "You will stay with Dorian, but you may speak to me as your father. Is that understood?"

Dorian made a sound of assent, but it was the girl's beaming delight, her desperate hope at the idea of being Fen'Harel's daughter that stole all of his attention and all the air from his lungs.

"Yes, babae," she whispered excitedly, and an unbearable pain cut through Solas' chest. He blinked his eyes clear and turned from his companions before they caught sight of his sudden and excruciating rush of emotion.

Remember this, Fen'Harel. Remember this well for the empty, loveless millennia that is your miserable fate. Memorize every detail for the poor shadow copies you will make in your dreams for eternity.

He shook himself out then, reminding himself that while he might be able to pretend the Dread Wolf had sired a bastard daughter or possibly even taken in a ward, they would not believe for a moment that he had grown so chastened and understated. He must truly be his pride. He breathed in the Wolf and exhaled his painfully acquired humility -- what little he had of it. And with a lifting of his chin and a glint of wildness in his eyes, he stepped into the blue glow like a...well, like a dangerous god manifesting gloriously to his followers. Like young, victorious Fen'Harel deigning oh-so-generously to put in an appearance to receive his rewards and acclaim in the Arlathan court. Which meant that he stood in the best light he could find and struck his most effortlessly magnificent and lazily aloof yet languidly predatory pose -- one that his body remembered well from its probable overuse. But it always got results. He postured in the gentle neon blue with his shemlen manservant and his illegitimate but equally striking daughter coming to rest just behind him and to his right...and waited for the recognition and adulation that was his natural due.

And he felt completely ridiculous.

It was many long minutes -- for all things with the ancient elves took time -- before they began to notice him, for which he bestowed upon them a withering, reductive stare. How dare they, said the stare, but they were not worthy of his voice. He would not waste his breath on such insolent slaves. Just the thought of the word in such a context sank sharp claws into his gut. He did not envy Dorian the eventual self-loathing that came unstoppably on the heels of finally understanding one's entire existence was built on the backs of the damned and the wretched. Hal'la's vallaslin had mocked Solas mercilessly, a bitter reminder of his least worthy self marring the face he loved most. Not even her smile had escaped Mythal's grasp, for the ink had run over her lips. It was the same marking he saw now on the most dedicated and loyal of the All-Mother's retinue and it turned his stomach. But still he waited to be seen.

A ripple of attention spread through the crowd of silanavhen like the lights from the pool beneath them, like the chill breeze that blew across the water from some secret source. They were only just beginning to realize they were not in their own worlds any longer, were just starting to become aware of themselves and their surroundings in the present, when a clear, bright voice from behind him cut through the silence like the daggers she would one day become so fond. "My father requires your attention," Hal'lasean called authoritatively, her sound echoing slightly against the chamber walls. Her language was modern Dalish, but the root words were similar enough that they must have picked up at least 'father' and 'attention'. Regardless, they snapped around to look at the newcomers as one entity, picking up her intention and her social status even if they couldn't understand the words.

Clever little halla, he thought, and let it curl his lips upward into an enigmatic smile that could easily be mistaken for a snarl. She had, whether consciously or not, set the scene for the Game they were playing and established status with one simple sentence. And because she was a child, her actions would be seen as those of an elfling of great position and privilege still learning to navigate how to speak to the slaves of others in the pantheon. In the periphery of his vision, he could see her standing tall with her hands clasped behind her back and her chest out, taking up as much space as she could with as little effort as possible. It was an eerily accurate mimicry of the way he stood as Solas: proper, contained, measured. It showed breeding and the sort of self-possession that any noble child would have learned even as they took their first steps. A quick learner indeed. 

Even young Fen'Harel would have been intrigued.

"Hush, child," he purred in her dialect. Then, with a whip in his voice and in the archaic Elvhen that Abelas had spoken to him at the Well so that the memories could understand him even if his companions could not, "Which of you is in charge here!"

The silanavhen seemed to notice each other for the first time, turning around sometimes in complete circles to stare at one another and compare their class or position with those immediately adjacent. After a sufficient number of minutes had passed so that Dorian and Hal'lasean were growing restless behind him, a voice finally answered from somewhere in the middle of the pack on the bridge. "I am." It was a woman's alto tones, mature enough to suggest that she had lived much longer by the time of her end than Solas had yet to achieve. The figures on the bridge began to rustle and shift, some of them spilling out onto the banks on either side of the water to make room for the voice's owner, though none of them dared go near Fen'Harel. It was starting to become obvious by their reactions to him which of those present had known of him and, of those, which had known him as the virile, swaggering, tempestuous Dread Wolf, and which as the repentant noble who had scandalously released his slaves from their bondage. But regardless of whether or how they knew of him, they all gave him a wide berth. And through the parted center of the crowd stepped a handsome elderly woman with the vallaslin Hal'la had worn, her steely gray hair in intricate but practical braids down her back. Her robes and clothing spoke two things very clearly: first that she had been a high priestess of Mythal, the apex position for someone of her station and rewarded to only a very special few throughout the reign of Arlathan, and second that she had lived and died at least a thousand years before Fen'Harel had ever ascended to the pantheon.

Fenedhis.

The priestess knew her place and her privilege well -- she looked him over carefully, noting his lack of vallaslin and the manner in which he held himself and spoke, but she dared not make eye contact, nor did her thorough study give away any of what her opinions might have been on him and his entourage. She was both magnanimous and stern at once. "Forgive me, ser," she said, polite but firm, "but the high priestess of lady Mythal may not speak with simply any free man. May I inquire as to your name and title?"

Several of the others gasped, some in horror because of what he might do to her, some in horror because of her ignorance. A man beside her, who wore the fashion of Fen'Harel's early time in the pantheon, bobbed his head in supplication. "This is the lord Fen'Harel, the Dread Wolf, of the House--" Solas lifted a hand and the man fell silent.

"You may be forgiven for not knowing who I am," Solas replied without hurry, luxuriating in each of the sounds that dripped from his lips as though they were generous donations to the population of the cave, "as I suspect you were before my time. May it satisfy you that I am Fen'Harel, peer and trusted friend of the lady Mythal." At least until he murdered her. Again. "Which priestess are you? Mahana? Neria? Perhaps Serrani?"

"My name is Mereni, my lord."

From behind him, Dorian let out a soft gasp.

Mereni, he repeated silently, combing his memories for what he knew of Mythal's high priestess by that name. Ah, yes. "I have read Mythal's records of your deeds, Mereni," he admitted, and her eyes widened in surprise. "You were known to be fair and kind to those who earned it, though never merciful. But I suppose that is to be expected from one so dedicated to the determination of justice with clarity. I wonder...will you show yourself capable of such virtues now?" He waved a dismissive hand, clearing the question from the air, and smirked at her. "Do you know what you are, priestess?"

"I..." she began, but trailed off uncertainly. The woman looked at the tunnel around her, at the elves in all their strange and different costumes, at her own hands. Her forehead cinched in the center as she struggled to put the pieces together. Finally, she looked up, still not quite meeting Solas' gaze. "I am silanavhen?"

His smile was immediate and relieved. Such an open expression of approval from Fen'Harel sent murmurs and anxiety through the room, as though it might be a calculated move to hide his sudden murderous rage. That is right, he realized suddenly, I was so skillful once. And that made him smile more. "You are all silanavhen. And you do not belong here."

Chapter Text

Another wave of mutters passed through the gathered slaves and acolytes in a mixture of revelation and confirmation. There were expressions of sadness and confusion and resignation, but they seemed to lose a little of their fear as a collective. The room became less tense, the energy of the Fade soothed. They no longer regarded Fen'Harel with the fear of death because they had already embraced death, but they were wary and nervous and respectful of him still. Solas decided this was to his advantage, since they were less likely to turn on him and more likely to accept his command. Perhaps this time they could come to a peaceful solution that preserved the silanavhen and let them reach Hal'la. 

"Forgive my ignorance, my lord," Mereni requested obsequiously, "but were you the chosen one? Was it you who drank from the Well of Sorrows?"

This was where it was going to become a delicate and complicated procedure. He would need to choose his words wisely and with precision. Step one: "No. It was not I." This was a solid foundation. Now how did he tell them that not only was the person chosen to receive them not actually chosen the way they had planned, but was also not a mage, not immortal, and had not yet even lived an entire century in the world? 

Oh, vhenan, you should have listened.

Solas resisted the urge to speak to them as a teacher or even to address them amiably. The Dread Wolf could not be seen to demean himself by comforting or coddling servants who had lived beneath Mythal's strict hand for countless millennia. He wanted to explain the situation to them in gentle terms as his Hal'la might have done, as he had seen her do so many times in their confrontations all over Thedas. Her capacity for active kindness even in the face of reprehensible individuals had won them information and connections on multiple occasions. It had been a wonder to behold her on the throne at Skyhold, dispensing ironic and merciful judgments while bearing Mythal's vallaslin. It would have driven his old friend to distraction to witness Hal'lasean's ideas of justice. And yet Solas could not deny the merit of her actions. They were often more cunning solutions than execution or imprisonment, though not always kinder. They were, however, always strangely fitting. And afterward she would retreat to her quarters or his rotunda or take a hart out into the forest and worry or cry or shake out of sight of the Inquisition because it went against her very nature to lord her power over others, despite her artfulness at wielding it. He went to her every time and consoled her or turned her mind to other, more...pleasant things. She had changed him irreparably. She had made him better, more tolerant, more willing to listen to those who had not lived quite so long or studied quite so much. She had taught him value in things he had always dismissed as useless or foolish. She had softened him. Yet another reason why he could not stay.

No, he must continue to be the Fen'Harel they expected, no matter how strange or overbearing it felt. No matter the harsh nature of what he was about to say. He must be the Wolf even in this. Even when it no longer made sense. "The worthy recipient of the Well," he decided eventually, taking his time to string together the sentence, "is the brightest spirit I have ever known. She is extraordinary in every way." He sucked in a subtle but ragged breath. "She drank from the Well without the proper preparations or ceremonies to keep the knowledge contained therein out of enemy hands. She was coping well and then..." He was still being too soft, explaining too much. He should just tell them to leave. Young Fen'Harel would have made his demands and expected them followed, would have punished those who dared to deny him. But young Fen'Harel had not yet seen the fall of Arlathan and the loss of all the knowledge and beauty he held most dear. Solas could not afford to risk destroying this last piece of his home. Not if there was still a chance to save them. "There was a psychic event -- an attack that destroyed the containment of the Well within her mind. I must repair it. You must all return to the Well."

And then it happened. One voice at the far end of the room, echoing clearly against the stone walls and ceiling and floor, ricocheting toward them like a panicked bird. "He cannot be trusted! He betrayed us all!"

Solas barely had time to think anything profane in response before Hal'lasean's sweet voice cut through the quiet rumble of the silanavhen's reaction. She must have understood the accusation of betrayal. "No he didn't!" she insisted in her Dalish, stamping her foot and putting herself between Solas and the mob. He could have laughed or wept in that moment with equal abandon. Instead he reached for her shoulders and dragged her back to him, pinning her safely to him. It did not do anything to stop her crying out. "Fen'Harel--" He felt her tense beneath his hands. "My father has only ever helped The People! He locked the gods away for us! For all of us!"

And now he would need to repair the damage Hal'lasean had caused as well as convince them to go back of their own free will. Or whatever they had in place of free will. Solas could feel the intensity of emotion ratcheting exponentially upward in the chamber around them. They were confused and agitated, a dangerous combination for anything with the ability to do harm, but especially volatile in memory-forms like these, for whom self-awareness was a privilege only afforded them while they were calm. They had no doubt only picked up some of what the child had shouted at them, had gotten her intent and possibly words like 'father' and 'The People'. If he were very lucky, they would hear 'help' and not 'locked' or 'gods'. 

He could only deal with one crisis at a time, so while the sound of the acolytes debating with each other slowly escalated, he turned Hal'lasean around to face him, his brows lifted to make sure she knew he wasn't angry, even though he'd told her he would be. How could he stay angry with those eyes looking back at his? Perhaps it was for the best he would never sire children by Hal'la. She would have to deal with all the discipline. "My halla," he scolded gently in her native tongue, "you made me a promise." Her cheeks went a brilliant pink and her eyes filled with instant tears that threatened to spill over at any moment. "You are not in trouble," he assured her immediately. Yes, he would be no use when it came to punishing any children that resembled her. "But you must go to Dorian and stay with him. You must." She nodded sincerely several times and ran to the Tevinter mage's side to take his hand.

That voice in the back was shouting, "Harellan! Harellan!" The others weren't taking up the cry, but they were getting more and more upset with each echo of the word against the stone. The situation was devolving quickly and soon they would forget who he was and surge toward him. He widened his stance and shook out his hands by his sides, focusing sharply on his best course of attack should he need to become the Wolf. 

"Dorian!" he snapped, raising his voice over the commotion. "Be prepared to take her to safety!"

Mereni stepped forward, closing the distance between herself and Solas, and it was all he could do to keep the beast inside him at bay.

Not yet, he cautioned it. Not. Yet.

But she wasn't looking at him. The high priestess of Mythal was staring hard at Dorian as though seeing him for the first time. Behind her, the chaos was brewing, but she was still self-aware, and she had narrowed all of her attention to the shemlen holding the elven child's hand. 

"Dorian..." she said with a befuddled frown, testing the name out and then weighing it as it floated in the air before her. "Dorian! I remember you! You fed me! You wrote me a note! It said..." Her eyes grew large and she whipped around to face her fellow silanavhen, holding up her arms with the palms toward the bridge. Her back was to him, which would have greatly offended Fen'Harel, but Solas watched with fascination. "In the name of Mythal the All-Mother, I command you to silence!" It was not magic. There was no magic here and certainly not from something that was not even a spirit. It was a compulsion, a last remnant of their slavery. Every voice that bore Mythal's tattoos ceased simultaneously. With a deep breath, she turned slowly to drop a small bow before Solas in apology, keeping her eyes to the ground. "My lord, I beg your pardon if I or my fellows have offended you. We are...not ourselves. This place...changes us. It makes us quick to fear." She glanced at Dorian then before returning her devoted attentions to her mistress' peer. "Your serving man showed me kindness. He told me not to harm the body I occupied. ...Was it the body of the one who drank from the Well?"

"Yes, priestess," affirmed Solas, carefully leading the Wolf to its cage behind his ribs. "The silanavhen have been possessing her physical form. It is killing her. It must and will stop."

"Dread Wolf?" requested Dorian meekly in the shemlen language. When Solas gave him his attention and a nod of assent, the mage asked, "What's she saying about me?"

"She says you were kind to her when she was afraid. She remembers what you told her when she possessed Hal'la." He looked thoughtfully back to the priestess for a moment and added, "I think she finally understands."

Dorian grinned and waggled his brows. "Well now. Aren't you glad I tagged along?"

Chapter Text

"I am unsure how we ended up in this place," Mereni admitted, glancing behind her at the others but not daring to turn her back on her superior again. "I do not recall waking at all. I remember my life -- I sacrificed myself at the birth of my mistress' first child to lend it my strength. It was an immeasurable honor to be considered worthy. But from the moment of death until I opened my eyes in a body that was not my own, Lord Fen'Harel, I have no memory."

Dorian and Hal'lasean had moved to the nearest corner of the chamber to sit because the child had grown restless and the two of them were now playing a game in which Dorian attempted to name an object in her Dalish language on command and she would correct him or clap when he was right. Most of his guesses were Elvhen, which was slightly disconcerting, but it pleased her greatly to teach him. Solas thought more than once the Tevinter mage was making mistakes on purpose because of the face she made and the way she would console him. There was nothing for them in this conversation; Dorian's grasp of the archaic dialect they spoke was useless unless they made a point to use only small, basic words and simple concepts. This was hardly the time or the place for that. So it was only Solas who still stood, despite his injuries, occasionally prowling the space before the bridge and feeling conflicting bursts of amusement and guilt when the slaves scattered from his path. He rested one hand on his hip and let the other swing free, his eyes narrowed with the intensity of his concentration. None of what Mereni was telling him made any sense; the entrance to the Well had been far from here and though distance didn't matter in the Fade, this was someone's inner mind and less likely to shift or change on a mere whim. So how did they come to be here?

"You do not remember Mythal manipulating the voices of the Well to answer questions or give information?" he demanded of the priestess, and she shook her head. He let out a sharp sigh. "And what of the tunnel beyond the bridge? Have you explored it? Have you not seen an elven woman without vallaslin further into the passage?"

It was to Mereni's credit that she did not shrink away when he directed the full force of his agitation at her and he wondered if she had always been so unflinching in the face of her betters -- no, not her betters, her masters -- or if it had come as a result of her ascension to such a position of honor. Without his bidding, the thought sparked a rush of memory: he stood in Hal'la's quarters at Skyhold after Haven, faced her on her balcony in the crisp mountain air, asked her if the anchor had changed her. Had she always been so impossibly bright a spirit? So cunning and selfless, so brave and compassionate, so forgiving and so unyielding? Had she always been so...enchanting? He let himself look for a moment at the child at Dorian's side, swinging her legs and interacting with such vibrant, insatiable curiosity and enthusiasm. She had told him she thought she was the same. Now he knew she had been right.

"We cannot move beyond the other side of the bridge, my lord," explained Mereni apologetically, "Each of us has tried but there is a powerful and intricate warding that repels us. I may be incorrect, but I believe it is of the lady Mythal's making." Solas' heart snapped like brittle bone and it was hard to tell if the grinding sound he was hearing were his molars or the pieces of his heart pushing against each other.

Mythal, he groaned inwardly, is this the price you would have me pay? It is not her debt, Mythal!

He thought again, almost morbidly this time, of her first words when he arrived behind her in the Crossroads. She knew he would come. She knew he would come, she knew she owned his heart, and now she was murdering his heart to avenge his murder of her. But there was no justice in this! Had the blade of Mythal's divine judgment grown so dull that she would hack away at anything in her path? It was her daughter, after all, who brought madness back from the Void. Had it corrupted Mythal as well? 

This is no justice!

He had acted so quickly to remove Hal'lasean's vallaslin after she drank from the Well, knowing she would soon come face to face with, at the very least, one of Mythal's favored vassals, and knowing how they would react to seeing her marked as Mythal's slave. It would have been offensive for a slave to have partaken of the Well of Sorrows, but more than that, they would have seen her as an object, not as a worthy recipient, not as an individual with free will. But by then Mythal had already allowed the voices to tell Hal'la to return to the Arbor Wilds. Was it possible that Mythal had seen through the turquoise eyes he loved so much before he had taken away the vallaslin? Had Mythal watched him with her that night he pulled away? Solas suddenly felt intensely ill. He was such a fool. He had not distanced himself soon enough and Mythal had seen his love. And had she laughed at proud Fen'Harel brought so low as to give his heart to her own slave? Is that why she had demanded nothing of Hal'la at her altar? Mythal had turned his own heart into her collateral. Into her insurance that should Fen'Harel move against her, she would have her revenge. Why did she not tell him! He would have spared her to spare Hal'la!

Would you have spared Mythal? part of him wondered viciously. Would you have given up your one remaining source of power for a mortal girl? No, you would have gone through with it regardless. You would have killed what little remained of your true self for the benefit of The People.

He moved slowly, deliberately to the edge of the water, resting his hand on the banister and looking unseeing into the pool. It bathed him in cold air and he let out a long, carefully controlled breath. It was all he could do not to empty the contents of his stomach or burst into hateful tears. When had he become Solas? How could he be so at odds within himself?

Hal'lasean. 

His heart. His home. His soul's journey. But when had that happened? His journey, his struggle was for Elvhenan. It always had been and always would be. He had a duty, an obligation, an eternal calling. Even his halla would have told him to leave her behind if she'd known his cause. Especially if she'd known his identity.

Stop it! he snapped, giving himself a mental shake. You cannot change what has happened or what you must do, but you can save Hal'lasean. That you may still do.

Unless Mythal's plan was to lure him here so that he could watch her spirit die.

Just as his composure was beginning to crack, he felt the warmth of a small calloused hand slip into his own. When he dropped his gaze to the little girl, she was looking up at him with such devoted worry that he smiled, just a fraction. She mirrored him hopefully. "Don't be sad, Father," she pleaded in soft Dalish, "we'll find her." He clasped her hand in both of his larger ones and blinked up at the ceiling to contain his turbulent emotions. He swallowed to clear his voice of cracks and breaks and turned his attention back to the priestess. "Mereni, you must lead your people back to the Well of Sorrows. When I am done here, I will rebuild the wards at the entrance so that this does not happen again. You will serve your original purpose. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, my lord," agreed Mereni without hesitation. "Though I do not know the way."

"That's strange," came the child's voice beside him. She tugged needfully on his hand and when he finally looked down at her, she was pointing emphatically at the water. "Look, Father! The fish have all disappeared!" And then she gasped and looked up at him with round, horrified eyes. "Do you think they fell into the sky?"

He might have dismissed the question as childish fantasy had the water not rippled right then at just the perfect angle to allow him a crystalline view of the bottom of the clear pond. But instead of algae and stone, he once again found himself looking through a pool to a different, inverted world beyond it. 

So that is how they came here.

It was not the Well of Sorrows, but a tiled room within the temple proper -- a bath for serenity and contemplation, for obtaining the clarity of mind so lauded by Mythal's subjects. 

"I believe, priestess," said Solas, tilting his head at her, "that you will have to swim."

Chapter Text

Mereni was the last of the silanavhen to step into the biting waters and swim to the temple. She had overseen the transfer of the others and compelled when necessary, then offered her genuflecting apologies and received her dismissal. They watched from the peak of the bridge as she surfaced seemingly at the bottom of the pool and climbed out. And then she was gone.

The chamber, without its packed occupants, turned out to be rather large. The three of them could stand side by side quite comfortably across the width of the bridge without touching, which is what they did now that they were alone, studying their surroundings and the effortless beauty of the bridge, and frowning thoughtfully at the warded continuation of the tunnel before them.

Solas was terrified. He had felt pieces of such fear before in moments when he thought he had lost Hal'lasean or when he was close to disclosing his true nature to her. He had known it keenly when she had taken it upon herself to drink from the Well and again when he realized Mythal's spirit was waiting for her at the altar. Those were sunflare flashes of it through general anxiety. But he had never experienced it so sustained and searing. He fought hard against the Wolf for control because the beast had caught the scent and was practically rabid with it. He had to find a way through the ward to Hal'la, but he was not so certain he wished to see what was on the other side.

"So," drawled Dorian with more edge than cheek, "tell me, Fen'Harel, just how old are you?"

Fenedhis!

He supposed it was inevitable, given the circumstances. He should have assumed he would need to deal with Dorian's discovering him, but he had hoped he might play it off as a trick of Hal'lasean's mind. Dorian was, after all, not a complete idiot, and the clues were everywhere, even for a mortal Tevinter druffalo.

Solas was loathe to use compulsion. He was a fervent defender of free will, even for those he disliked. And it never worked quite as intended unless the subject was bound to you and even then one stray thought at the wrong time could turn a perfectly healthy man into a gibbering shell. It was less likely without his old power, but it was still possible. Worse than all of the risks, however, was the fact that, despite everything he found repulsive or offensive in Dorian, he supposed part of him must truly consider the other mage...a friend.

To compel him would be a terrible betrayal. He had been physically sick after forcing Cole to forget contacting him through the Fade. It was no wonder the spirit had no interest in his return. Hal'la and Varric had made Cole more human, so he was experiencing emotions of hurt and anger. And Solas deserved them. 

Now he would betray Dorian as well, and in so doing, Hal'lasean. Again. And to steal the agency from someone so close to her heart was to strike against himself.

The Dalish are right, he thought bitterly, I am the Betrayer. I am cursed.

He would pay Dorian the respect he deserved before he turned against him. He could do him that courtesy at the very least. For all the times he'd saved Solas' life. For all the times he'd saved Hal'la's.

Solas' eyes stung and his ears warmed as he turned to fully face Dorian, his face repentant but proud. "Will you accept 'very' as an answer?"

Dorian's brows shot up, his manner protective in a way he only assumed over Hal'la. All too well did Solas remember their confrontation after he pushed her away. "Maker, you really like them young, don't you, you lying prick. No wonder your little village was abandoned for centuries."

"Fen'Harel is not a liar!" Hal'lasean cried from between them, planting her firsts on her hips.

Solas placed a weighted hand on her shoulder. "It is all right, da'len. He is well within his rights." He moved her gently aside and took a step toward the other man, leaving himself wide open as a symbol of his attrition. "Do you doubt my love for her, Dorian?" he asked calmly. He was surprisingly collected, actually, all things considered. The terror was still there, but the sudden crisis had allowed him to push it down, to bury it under what must be done.

Dorian's eyes narrowed suspiciously, but he deflated a little and let out a resigned sigh. "No. I watched you try to avoid your love for her. Watched you fight it and lose." Realization dawned across his bronze face and he tossed up his hands. "Maker, is this why you pushed her away, why you left her behind?" And once his brain caught up to the reality of the situation, each new question was a revelation: "Are you the Dread Wolf?! The one who locked away the elven gods?! Andraste's fiery nipples, the orb?! That was yours?!" He barked a laugh. "All this time, taking everyone's abuse for being from Tevinter, from the people that gave us Corypheus, and all this time, it was your fault! It was your doing all along, you arrogant Elvhen hypocrite! Fasta vass! No wonder you know all this ancient elven magic! No bloody wonder you knew so much about the rifts and the Temple of Mythal and the silanavhen! Saw it in the Fade indeed!" His hands curled into fists and he twisted restlessly where he stood as though looking for something to hit.

Solas took another step forward. "Would it help you to punch me again?" He smirked just a little, and though Dorian scowled, he eventually laughed.

"Yes, actually. I think it would make me feel much better!"

Hal'lasean was pressed against the railing further along the bridge, watching with a mixture of fascination and horror, her mouth hanging open. When Solas offered his chin and cheek to Dorian, she let out a gasp. It turned into a shriek when the much brawnier Tevinter mage slammed his fist into Solas' stomach instead.

He doubled over, his vision swimming and his lungs screaming for air, and prepared for a final blow to his back that never came. Instead, the human shook out his hand and crossed his arms.

"If anyone deserves the truth, it's Hal. If you don't tell her when this is over, I will."

No, Solas thought grimly as little Hal'lasean rushed to his side to administer her anxious attentions. You won't.

Chapter Text

"The thing that kills me," Dorian ranted, occasionally flailing his arms for emphasis, "is that she'll probably just forgive you immediately and try to make sure you don't feel guilty! But, oh, I wish she were meaner for her sake! If she had any sense, she'd cut you off for good and jump in bed with Cullen! Maker knows he'd treat her the way she deserves! He wouldn't lie to her -- the man is honorable to a bloody fault -- and he would never abandon her! He'd make her a blushing bride and fill her up with babies and they'd grow old together and die holding hands in their marriage bed!" And then a shadow passed over Dorian's ire and his energy crumpled. He was suddenly looking at Solas with pity, which was quite possibly worse than hate. "You can't grow old with her."

"No," Solas agreed, his voice breaking. "I can't."

Now that the truth was out, Solas' reluctance to compel Dorian to forget it was amplified by how good it felt to step from the shadow of his lies. He felt naked and exposed and his spirit was raw from eons of self-flagellation, but he was experiencing the air around him in a way he had not for a thousand lifetimes. He felt...present. He had of course been present -- tangibly and deliciously present with Hal'lasean -- but he had always had to hold back. Even in intimacy, even in moments when he unleashed the Wolf to devour her, he maintained some semblance of control. Some part of him, even when he was emptying himself into her, enveloped by her in ecstasy, was always gripping white-knuckled to Elvhenan. To Fen'Harel. But now Fen'Harel was here in the room with him. And it felt...right.

"Maker," Dorian breathed, making no effort whatsoever to hide the tragedy of the realization from his face. His pity chafed and Solas rolled his shoulders to shake it off. "Maker! You poor, miserable bastard. That's--" Without warning a few tears slipped down the Tevinter man's cheeks and he pressed a palm to his heart, stumbling back a few steps to lean against the railing. "No wonder you were reluctant to..." He shook his head and wiped at his face. "If the bard only knew, she'd write your love a hell of a song." Solas didn't bother to tell Dorian that no one could know. Because Dorian wouldn't know once they rescued Hal'la.

The child Hal'lasean was hovering nervously by his side, hanging from his hand with both of hers as if worried he might bolt. It was not an unfounded concern, though she did not know it yet. Her cheeks were wet too -- it seemed only Solas was unwilling to cry -- and she watched and listened intently, soaking up every word and expression, every exchange's minute detail. She didn't scold Dorian for hitting him nor even give him one of her scathing glares, and part of Solas noted with surprise that her ability to parse complicated conflicts for pieces of the truth had always been with her as well.

"You really were trying to protect her when you pushed her away," sighed Dorian. He dragged his hands over his face and looked up at the ceiling.

"I should never have even kissed her," admitted Solas, and the confession was like pulling an arrow from his flesh. His mouth gaped slightly and his eyes unfocused. "It was stupid and selfish. But she..." He blinked away tears. He would not cry. Not in front of Dorian.

"I think we're all a bit in love with her," said Dorian with a sad, sympathetic smile. "I suppose I can't blame you for giving in when she loved you back."

Solas shook his head gruffly. "You can and you should."

When Hal'lasean finally spoke, it was to Dorian, and her voice was so soft it was like fennec kit fur. "We call Fen'Harel 'He Who Hunts Alone'. He did a brave, selfless thing for The People and they hate him for it. Sometimes when you're alone for very long, you forget how to be loved."

Tears rolled slowly down Solas' cheeks. He turned his back sharply to the other two and struggled to compose himself. He forced air into and out of his lungs with even counts and determination, but breathing apparently only made the hurt worse.

"Maker's breath, little Hal," laughed Dorian weakly, "you could give Cole a run for his money."

"Who's Cole?"

"...Someone who reads people's pain," Dorian decided, and then his hand was gripping Solas' shoulder. The elf hunched defensively, not for fear of bodily injury, but because the connection was too much.

"Ir abelas, Fen'Harel," whispered Hal'lasean unhappily from just behind them. "I didn't mean to upset you."

"It's okay, little one," Dorian assured her, and Solas could hear the smile in his voice, "why don't you go wait for us by the warding over there? We'll join you in a moment."

Solas' eyes had decided rather cruelly to refocus on a particularly intricate scene carved into the base of the banister. It was a relief he had never seen before, depicting a large, six-eyed wolf leading a line of elves with vallaslin from a symbol for slavery to a symbol for freedom. The scene just beyond that one ended in a haloed halla with a bleeding heart, an arrow through its chest. He knew it was probably part of the story of Ghilan'nain or some other legend born during his long sleep, but the way they butted against each other -- the wolf leading The People from bondage and the bright, sacrificial halla -- made it look as though the wolf was forever turning his back on the elves and seeking freedom with the graceful creature beyond it.

"I have two questions, Solas," Dorian murmured, still clasping his shoulder. He made no move to correct the name he'd used. "Whatever it is you think you have to do, is there truly no way the Inquisition could help? We saved Blackwall and gave him aid and a second chance, and while I can't say I know all the details of your crimes -- if they were crimes -- I can't imagine it involves murdering children and letting your subordinates pay the price."

No, Solas sighed inwardly, but countless children did die because of me. Because of my actions. All he could find the strength to croak out, though, was, "I am beyond the Inquisition's help." He hesitated and then added, at a whisper, "And I could not ask it of her even if I weren't."

"I thought you'd say that," replied Dorian with resignation. He took in a deep breath and let it out audibly before his second question. "If you didn't have to do this thing of yours, would you stay with her? Would you tell her the truth?"

"Yes!" The word burst through his lips before he had even truly considered the question, his soul desperate to say that one, vital truth. "Fenedhis, yes! I would have confessed to her before I even told her of my love for her, I would tell her everything, walk her through the Fade so she could see Arlathan fall herself! And if she would have me," his back shuddered with a withheld sob, but he could not contain his passionate, heartsick words, "I would wed her as The People once did in Elvhenan, with undying flowers braided into her hair and a gown of silk woven from the very fabric of a sweet dream of spring's first blush! We would dance the steps my parents danced and their parents before them and I would make love to her as my wife as she had never been loved before! I would sire a new People by her, beautiful, bright, pure spirits that would never know bondage or famine or disease or the wandering fate of the Dalish! I would spend every moment of her life at her side, making her laugh and smile and sing with joy and pleasure! And when she aged, I would worship each new wrinkle, etch the lines of her face into my soul! I would hold her in our marriage bed as she died and guide her to the Beyond with my own hands and then, when her body was all that was left, our children and I would turn her ashes into stars and hurl them into the heavens so that we could see her each night, shining down on us! Yes, I would stay!"

It was only when Solas dragged in a harsh, painful brearth that he realized just what and how much he had said, how loudly he'd said it, and how much he'd needed to express just that. He was quick to shove his hands over his face to roughly erase his tears, and then he stood motionless and silent as he waited for Dorian to deal that final blow.

But the human did not do it this time either. Instead, he grabbed Solas' shoulders and turned him around so they were facing each other...and wrapped him in an embrace so firm that Solas felt his spine shift.

He did not return the gesture, but he accepted it without protest. He looked past Dorian's shoulder and the bridge to where Hal'lasean stood watching, to the future he could never have and did not deserve, and let himself be comforted.

Chapter Text

There was no doubt in Solas' mind that Dorian would have held onto him as long as was needed, which was sweet but unnecessary and, when Solas remembered through the haze of his heartbreak that he would soon have to alter Dorian's memory, it was also deeply uncomfortable. He pulled away after a few moments and forced himself to look the human in the eyes because he was still, after all this time, too proud to avert his gaze. Perhaps it was the Wolf in him, refusing to submit even when he was feeling humiliated and laid bare. He made his expression one of mild gratitude but with enough regained neutrality to make it clear they would be getting back to business and most likely never discussing this ever again. It had not happened.

It was not as though he never cried in public: in Elvhenan, it was common practice to weep openly at the exceptionally beautiful in the world and to keen over a fallen comrade on the battlefield. But those were acceptable tears; they were not tears that made him seem weak or broken, but spoke of his honor and duty and his great love for The People. He had memories of elves of all ages filling an amphitheater to hear impassioned speeches and debates or to see an elegantly choreographed dance or sometimes just because the moon was large and full overhead, and all of them with tears streaming down their cheeks as they laughed or cheered or sat in raptured silence. It brought a profound feeling of connection with the world and with the Elvhen, a shared expression of the experience of being alive. He had shed tears a handful of times since uthenera: first when he awoke to find Elvhenan had fallen and learned the plight of The People, a few times walking the Fade with Hal'la when they came across something that stirred their souls, once with Hal'la, however briefly, when they said their goodbyes and he pushed her away, then over Mythal's fallen human form with a keening as she deserved and as he had done once for her before in ages past...and here in the Fade with Dorian and the child Hal'lasean, in the face of Mythal's avenging blow against his heart. But only the tears he had cried in Hal'lasean's dream this night had felt weak. He felt as though he had reached his fill of guilt and shame and loss. The mask he had made as Fen'Harel and adjusted for Solas had been gathering cracks and chips and he had somehow not noticed the damage until now, when it seemed to be coming apart under his cursed fingertips, doomed like everything he touched.

I am so tired, cried his soul as it once had after he locked the pantheon away. But he could not go back to sleep. He could not close his eyes to the world and expect it to move on the path he had prepared for it. He must guide it along, drag it by the bit if necessary. And he had to save his heart.

He fixed his tattered tunic and smoothed his hands over his head and fingered the wolf jaw hanging against his chest. Action. Action was the only thing that would lighten his burden. So without another word to Dorian, he set his shoulders and crossed the bridge to the child, for whom he rallied a ghost of a smile to let her know he was not angry or upset at her or because of her. Dorian followed silently behind him.

Now they stood before the beginning of the passage proper, an arm's length from the near-invisible wavering of a plum-colored barrier. Oh, yes. This was Mythal's work. The thought filled his lungs like water and froze there, blocking his breath. Dorian reached out to touch it experimentally, pressing his fingers into the energy until it would not give anymore and sent his magic crackling like lightning up his arm and over his body. The mage let out an irritated huff and flexed his other hand. "So my magic will react to other magic, but will it let me cast? No, of course not! That would just be silly!"

Hal'lasean tried next with none of Dorian's caution: she simply placed her palm against it and pushed as hard as she could, so that she stood angled to it with the slight, sinewy muscles of her arms flexing with her effort. Dorian laughed, but Solas -- though he was amused and his heart was warmed -- was too exhausted to so much as smile. He wondered briefly what shape he would be in had he come by himself and he was suddenly glad for Dorian's glib and obnoxious company, if only because it distracted him. Then again, it was Dorian's incessant need to pick at his every wound that was making this situation so much worse.

You would give worse than this to someone who had treated Hal'la as you have, his rational mind pointed out obnoxiously and Solas shut it up by shoving his hand completely through the barrier.

"Let me guess: ancient elven magic?" mused Dorian dryly. Solas didn't dignify it with a reply.

Deep purple magic swirled over his fingers like a glove and he stretched them thoughtfully on the other side, searching for signs within the ward of traps or general unpleasantness. As a child, he had created a barrier before the entrance to a park popular with young, unsanctioned lovers that had allowed anyone through but gave any who did so a sudden covering of body fur. Ever since then he had been wary of the barriers of others. He took a step closer to the ward and plunged his arm in up to the shoulder so that he could really test its defenses and feel out its purpose. It felt...somehow temporary, like one piece of a larger puzzle. His fingers stretched through the membrane into the air on the other side and though his body was flushed with Mythal's magic, the tips of his outstretched fingers were sparking a reactive green. Magic like home. Magic like the blood in his veins. His magic, but no longer part of his body.

"She is so close," Solas said urgently. "I can feel the anchor on the other side."

"Can you get all the way through?" Dorian asked. "Can you get us all through?" 

Solas glanced down at the child watching his hand in the barrier with fascination and then up at Dorian, who was watching him hopefully. Depending on what was on the other side of Mythal's ward, he was not entirely sure he wanted the little girl to see it nor did he feel comfortable pulling Dorian through immediately when it might be more efficient to compel him out here. He could not walk the Tevinter mage into a room with a conscious Hal'la to blurt his true name to her without thought. No, he must go first and reconnoiter. It also meant they stayed safe if something dangerous lay in wait in the passage and -- his blood drained from his face at the thought -- should Mythal have designed this game to end with his watching his love die, he would prefer to hold her in his arms and kiss her lips without peering eyes or panicked friends.

"Stay with the child," Solas decided, leaving no room for argument. Dorian gave him a flat, irritated look in response, so he soothed it with a perfectly sensible explanation. "We have no idea what lies beyond this ward. I will go through and determine whether or not it is safe and, if and when it is, I will return. Then we can see what is to be done about bringing you both through."

He did not wait for Dorian's approval or acceptance. He was not going to give the other man a choice. He took a breath, narrowed his eyes at the plum wall, and took one large step through it. It slid across his skin like perfumed satin, like the bedsheets of a familiar lover, and just as he broke through the membrane into the air beyond, he caught a scent like heavy spices on a cool breeze that jerked his memory roughly to Arlathan, to the day he had held Mythal in his arms as her life pooled on the floor despite his best efforts to heal her, and howled at the sky. And then he was standing in the air of the passage and his skin tingled and his bones ached and Mythal's magic went dormant inside him, submitting to the wild, leafy snap of his emerald energy. 

The tunnel was filled with it. He walked through it like smoke and breathed it in. It mingled with what remained of his power in his own body, playing and teasing like old friends, and in his heart a thread of connection, pulling him onward without conscious thought so that he hardly noticed his surroundings. He knew only the familiar embrace of his pulsing green magic and the certainty with which he followed the path around a corner, beckoned by the harmonious singing of the anchor with his blood and that weak, flickering light where he knew Hal'la would be. He reminded himself as he walked only half-aware that there could be demons up ahead or some fatal magic left by Mythal. He opened his palm and veilfire burst from it with a relieved thrill. He could be prepared for these things. He would fight through whatever lay before him to reach his vhenan.

But he had not prepared himself for what he saw after the next curve in the passage and he stumbled, his hand flashing out to catch himself on the nearest wall because his legs could no longer be trusted. His eyes were wide with horror and his jaw hung loose from his skull. 

No, his soul keened. No, no, no!

For the tunnel had collapsed violently and recently, heavy stones and small boulders stacked from floor to ceiling, wall to wall, at least several feet thick. This was not so terrible in itself, not when he had access to his magic, but he could hear the hive-like buzz of the rift in the rubble and see the green glow through cracks in the rocks. And hanging limply out from beneath the crushing weight of the cave-in was the upturned palm and long fingers he had studied so carefully after the Breach. The one he had kissed. The one that had stroked and caressed him. The one that had held his. But the anchor was no longer the jagged scar on her pale skin that it had once been.

The anchor had consumed her. Her whole visible arm was a thrumming crystalline green.

Chapter Text

He wasted no time. There was none to waste. Solas was even afraid to breathe, lest the air from his lungs gutter what remained of her spirit. He pivoted on his unsteady legs and sprinted as fast as his muscles would allow and then faster still, skipping forward through the malleable space of Hal'lasean's mind until the barrier stopped his progress. Then through Mythal's warding with only his upper half, arms already reaching for Dorian's. "Come, Dorian! Quickly! I cannot do this without you! Stay here, da'len!" He wrapped his fingers around the other mage's wrists and dragged him through to the magic-heavy air within the wards.

"What?" Dorian demanded, racing breathlessly behind Solas with electricity bursting across his skin as he moved through the outstretched feelers of the anchor. "What is it! Where is she! Maker, Solas, speak to me!" But Solas did not have to say a word. They whipped through the last turn and he immediately fell to the work of feeling for stable points in the debris that would allow him to start moving stones from her body. Dorian stood in shock behind him, staring at the wavering opaque green of her skin, as though she were a macabre statue carved of pure veridium. "Oh, Hal," he half-sobbed.

Fury seethed through Solas, amplified by the saturation of his lost power. "Stop crying and help me!"

Dorian took a step toward the boulders and dragged his staff from his back. Solas had lost his on the slide down the crater, but he hardly needed it now; not with adrenaline in his veins, Mythal's magic mixing with his, and the very air he breathed dripping with his old power. He could feel Dorian's energy probing as his had done, trying to find the best place to begin. There was no time.

"Dorian, ward her! Keep her stable! I will deal with the rest!"

It was as though he had never left the Inquisition; they became the efficient and intuitive duo they had been at Hal'la's side, warding and protecting her from several yards back while she concentrated on closing a rift or tore through flesh and bone like he worked with paint and plaster. It was thrilling to behold, her grace, her focus, her awareness and command of a battlefield. It was also nerve wracking. He had never before cared about someone or fought beside someone who was not a mage. To watch her so intimately engaging with claws and steel while he stayed in relative safety had been maddening. But he had never once doubted her ability in a fight. His favorites had been the ones where she'd called him to her, Varric and Dorian smiting demons and Red Templars from on high while they swirled together as one on the field, back to back, an unstoppable cyclone ballet of spell craft and dragon bone, breathing in tandem as though making love. Complementing one another's strengths and weaknesses. And now she was listless before him and changed. She had become his magic. His power, his past, his failures had consumed her. Altered her very being as she had altered his. But where she had made him better, he was killing her.

The human cocooned his magic around her unresponsive form, coating the visible hand and rolling energy along the contours of her body and then gently outward until she was encased in a hard Tevinter shell. "I've got her!" Dorian had shouted and then the tunnel shook ominously as Solas cast a net behind him and began throwing boulders with abandon into it, frantically and tirelessly digging through the cave-in to free his crushed heart. Progress was frustratingly slow -- he had unearthed her whole arm now, her head and half her torso, one of her legs, each new glimpse of her increasing the break-neck speed because the anchor did not stop at her wrist or her shoulder; even her hair, which floated out around her when freed, had given up its silver sheen for a deep, unsettling jade.

"Maker!" Dorian rasped. He was cautiously increasing the space around her within his barrier as Solas relieved the weight, shifting the remaining rubble enough so that the elf could drag it all off of her at once. "What's happened to her?" Neither of them withheld the horrified gasps that ripped from their strained throats when the human pulled back his warding. Without the boulders to hold her in place, the Inquisitor's body lifted into the air, floating above their heads on a line of crackling anchor energy that seemed to grow from her spine. Her head lolled and her limbs hung lifeless from their sockets.

He had been so wrong. So, so wrong. The rift had not opened under the collapsed tunnel. It had opened inside Hal'lasean.

This time it was Dorian whose voice cracked through their shock: "Don't just stand there staring, you immortal shit, it's your anchor, your blighted magic! Do something!"

Solas' body and mouth were moving before his mind could fully catch up with the situation. "Grab her! Hold her steady where I can see her!" He was already grabbing her hands and pulling her downward, the contact shooting his lost energy through him like meteors, searing his insides and boiling his blood. Dorian snatched her feet and then her calves and her knees, gritting his teeth and letting out a pained grunt as the anchor dug into him as well. When she was close enough, the human wrapped his arms around her waist with the firm gentility of a trusted lover and sank to his knees, pulling her along with him. Sweat was beading on his tanned forehead and dripping from his hair.

"Hurry it up!" Dorian shouted through clenched teeth.

Solas dropped down beside Hal'la's glowing green form and tried to remember what he'd done for her when the anchor first tried to claim her in Haven. He hovered his hands above her chest with his heart pounding in his ears and stretched the tentative fingers of his magic into her ribs, through her lungs...

"It has her bones," he cried out in despair. "Her entire skeleton is...rift!"

Dorian's arms were trembling with effort and pain, sweat poured from his body, but his eyes were boring through Solas with a fury that he had never seen in Dorian before. "You will save her, Fen'Harel, or I will never stop hunting you."

Chapter Text

How? How had this happened? The anchor had been contained! She had been wielding it expertly since her near-death at Haven and it made no sense that it should consume her like this, worse even than when she had been originally marked. And it could not be from her destroying his orb; that magic had been lost, spilled out into the aether and reclaimed by the universe. 

...Had it not?

Solas would have noticed if she had absorbed it, would have felt the seething of so much of his own power inside her. She would have succumbed to this -- whatever this was -- in the Temple of Sacred Ashes before he had a chance to leave. He had visited her dreams since then on nights of weakness, lingered as the Wolf just beyond her spirit's senses and watched her longingly. She had been herself! There had been no sign, no indication of...

Mythal.

But why hide his magic inside Hal'la? Why protect her from it? Why not hold his heart hostage? But then, she could have done as much with Hal'la in her service and she had not then either. But this made no sense! Did she want to wait until he stole Mythal's power to exact her revenge, which was...what? To trap Hal'lasean within her own mind, fertile ground for the anchor to grow through her petite, mortal, non-magical form like Red Lyrium, until Solas came to rescue her so that he could watch his own faithful power tear her apart from the inside?

That had to be it. He could not imagine a crueler reckoning. And then to live with this memory for eternity...

"I don't..." he stuttered, his mask in shambles, "I don't know what to do..."

Dorian's voice was a lightning storm beside him. "Then try everything!" The other mage's face sparked with epiphany. "The only thing you love more than her is lecturing, so pull yourself together and talk me through it! Explain it to me like I'm as stupid as you seem think I am!"

Yes, Solas thought, and his mind calmed like the forming of obsidian after an eruption. He made a mental note to return Dorian's hug later should they bring her through this.

"She..." Solas hesitated and shifted his magic within her ribs, following each of her bones carefully, checking for the intensity of the rifts, for breaks and damage, for anything that might speak to him. "It is one continuous rift -- not even a rift, not truly, but a cut in the Veil that branches through her marrow and then...hops to the next bone it finds. But I cannot find any...injuries. She is whole. There is no tearing or bleeding. All of her organs seem to be functioning, albeit weakly. Her spirit is faint, but seems...resilient..."

Power arced from Hal'la's body into Dorian's and he hissed sharply, his muscles clenching around her middle. Her brow wrinkled. It was so slight he might have missed it, but the energy within her rippled, stirred. Hope gripped Solas' heart and suddenly his brain was registering the information he had at a dizzying pace. He could not close the rift, not even with his power all around him and the added boost of Mythal's inside him. Images of her listless body in Haven flashed through his mind, his first baffled probings of the mark, holding her limp hand up to the Breach, the sudden flare of the anchor. It should not have been possible at all. She should not have lived and yet she did. She should not have wielded it with such skill. She was not a mage, after all, and yet she had. And this. This should most certainly not be possible. It was not even probable. And yet here she was. But would the anchor still respond in her hand when it was all through her like this?

Solas furrowed his brow and renewed his examination more firmly this time, placing his hands on her burning skin and wrapping his magic around her bones, sending it in a rush through her limbs, into her head. Her back arched and a cry of agony tore from her mouth, but it was worth it. It was worth it because he had seen her so clearly in that moment, the heart of the rift in her solar plexus, the strength of it along her spine, the tingling caress of the Fade in the chambers of her heart, but most importantly, the anchor in her hand. The anchor, which had been sewn invisibly into the magic from his broken orb, but that butted almost imperceptibly against it. The same but not quite one.

"Fight, vhenan," he whispered, and then he held her marked wrist out, her palm toward her body, and poured his power into her, channeled it through her, joined it with her own until the green of her skin was blinding.

And then the familiar undertones of the reactive rift, the beam of his energy bursting from her palm into her chest, and she was screaming out, her body bending backwards so sharply that Dorian pushed down on her stomach to keep her spine from snapping. The injured Veil inside her buzzed furiously in protest, it's frequency changing with each renewed pulse of the arcing magic, the sound amplifying and crescendoing and then...

Sudden silence. She crumpled toward the ground and Solas dove beneath her and the two men held her to them with shaking arms, dripping sweat, as the green began to slowly, beautifully recede.

Chapter Text

The magic and light ebbed like a low tide, draining from the very air around them, from its interplay with their bodies and their magic, disappearing into Hal'la until only the anchor remained visible of the emerald energy that had claimed her. The men sprawled out with relief underneath her, Solas on her anchored side with her head resting on his lap, his hands smoothing her forehead and stroking her hair, and Dorian on the other side, propping up her lower half with his legs and holding her unmarked hand. They were exhausted and recovering from the excruciating pain of being in physical contact with the feral magic released from the orb. Their muscles twitched at random intervals as they caught their breath and wiped their brows and stared down hopefully as their Inquisitor returned to her normal -- though frighteningly pale -- coloring.

It was only when the green was completely gone from her body and Solas felt capable of focusing his magic that he pressed his palms to her cheeks and searched for damage. He moved his energy through her like a warm breeze this time, starting at her head and working his way down her spine, out through her ribs, down her arms, into her pelvis and hips and legs. 

"Well?" urged Dorian, his eyebrows lifted high in expectation.

Solas shook his head to indicate he was not entirely sure of her condition yet and closed his eyes to better guide his healing tendrils around the porous bones and nerve clusters where the tear had been. He traced each joint and listened to the blood rushing through her veins and delicately explored her heart. When he was finished and felt that there was something to report, even if he was not entirely certain what it meant, he opened his eyes and settled his gaze on Dorian. "The rift is closed, but..." His brows pulled low over his eyes. "The energy from the orb is inside her still. It has seeped into her bones and become the marrow there. It lives still in the chambers of her heart and it sparks along each of her nerves. It pumps through her veins in her blood. It is almost as if I were examining a mage and yet...it is not quite right. It is something else entirely. Something I have never before encountered."

"But she's okay?" Dorian insisted, reaching to place a hand on her stomach so he could feel the magic in her for himself. "She's going to be okay?"

"I...do not know," Solas admitted, and his throat tightened. "Her spirit is stronger now that it is not having to fight so hard to exist, but it is not even half its usual brightness." Of course, he did have a theory about that, but it was only a theory and after having been so horribly wrong about the rift, about the reason for Hal'la's collapse, about what was holding her in her own mind, after nearly failing her in his shock, he did not trust himself to properly judge. Not even after successfully closing the slit in the Veil in her body. Because he should have seen this -- all of this -- coming: Mythal's revenge, the Well's release after her death, the energy from the orb attracting to the anchor, even the struggles with the silanavhen. He should have foreseen it and prepared for it, prepared Hal'la for it, or at least stayed long enough to make sure she was all right. He should have suspected that Mythal had access to Hal'la's mind, that if she knew he was coming for her, she would make sure all of her plans were in place. The only thing of which Solas was certain in that moment was that Dorian must be compelled. The child Hal'lasean must be compelled. Neither of them must think Fen'Harel and see Solas. He knew those truths. He knew he would need to build wards at the entrances to the Temple of Mythal. But he had no idea if it would be safe to wake Hal'la. What her body could sustain here in her own mind could be very different from what it could hold physically. If he woke her, would he be killing her? "I...believe it would be best to attempt to bring her to consciousness here before we truly wake her." His worried gaze fell to her face, to the sweep of her cheekbones and the pillows of her lips, to the always amused arch of her dark brows. He grazed his thumb across her jaw and steadied himself with the feel of her. And then he turned grimly to offer Dorian his hand.

"Dorian," he began, fighting to keep his voice even and what remained of his mask in place, "I cannot begin to thank you for all you have done for her. For me." The Tevinter mage looked a little dubious, but he let go of Hal'la's hand to take Solas' and met his eyes with an unspoken understanding of their love for the woman draped across their laps. The touch, the eye contact were all Solas required to do what he must. "I am truly sorry," he added, and he focused intently on creating a disconnect in Dorian's mind between Fen'Harel and Solas, between the Dread Wolf and his face, his voice. He left the ideas of playacting the part for Hal'lasean and the silanavhen, but fogged over their confirmation of his identity, and, with great reluctance, smothered their conversation about who he was entirely, so that they watched Mereni leave and turned their attentions to the barrier. He blurred mentions of the orb being his, the magic in Hal'la being his, in any of this being his fault. "You must forget."

The human's eyes glazed slightly, staring back at his unseeing, and then Dorian was shrugging dismissively as he usually did with uncomfortable confessions of sincerity. "Don't thank me yet," he mumbled, and returned his hand to Hal'la's. "We still have to get her out of here. Thank me when she's lying awake in her bed in Skyhold, eating a good meal." He quirked a brow at Solas then. "If you're still around." That was when Solas knew it had worked. Now if he could only ignore this nauseated despair in the pit of his stomach and his soul's anguish at being relegated once again to the shadows of his lies.

"Fen'Harel?" came the little girl's uncertain voice from behind them. "Fen'Harel, Dorian, the ward is gone. There was a bright, bright green light and then it was just gone." Solas nearly cringed at the use of his true name and his guts twisted unpleasantly within him at the thought of wiping Hal'lasean's innocent childhood self clean of the truth. It had been so dear, so filling to speak all the things he had withheld to her, to have her accept them and still retain her trust and affection. But then, he had never really lied to the child, so of course she would trust him. 

You will do what must be done, he commanded himself sharply, you will find a way to save your love, and then you will leave. For her sake now as much as for The People's.

"Dorian, will you please take Hal'la?" Solas requested, already rising to his knees with her head and shoulders in his arms so he could transfer them as gently as possible to the other man's care. Dorian took her without protest, sliding her legs off of his and crossing his legs to make room for her upper body. As Solas had done moments before, the Tevinter mage studied her still features with fondness and concern, tracing fingers over her skin and combing her hair back from her closed eyes. The open pain on Dorian's face was like needles in Solas' chest, leaving tiny holes that would not heal and bled guilt into his veins. Dorian did not deserve what Solas had done. None of them did. Nor did they deserve all that he would do.

I am sorry.

He breathed out a sigh as he climbed to his feet and crossed to the curve in the tunnel where the child Hal'lasean stood pressed against the wall to help guide her in the dark. He lit veilfire orbs on his way, letting them float overhead to cast their soft, flickering light now that the orb's magic had gone. When he was directly in front of the girl, blocking her view of the woman, he knelt and offered a tired smile. She was only too happy to return it tenfold. 

"Is that your Dalish love?" she asked eagerly, her face brightening at the prospect of meeting another Hal'lasean. "Is she okay?"

"I do not know, da'vhenan," Solas admitted, swallowing the break in his voice. "We have done all we can think to do, but she has not yet opened her eyes and her spirit is weak." He pretended to consider the girl, then glanced back to truly consider the woman. Please, if there is a power beyond these worlds, I beg you, let this work. Let her live her life. Solas gave his attention back to the child with another of his weary smiles. "Would you like to see her?"

"Oh yes, Fen'Harel! Yes, please, I would!" Her enthusiasm coaxed the corners of his lips up a little more until the gesture just began to manifest in his cool blue eyes.

"Very well," he murmured, and held his arms out to her. She folded herself into them without hesitation and he clutched at her desperately, taking in the hope-and-potential scent of her, the wild forest fragrance of her hair, the feel of her tiny hands gripping at his tunic. Solas lifted her as he stood even though it felt like leaving his heart behind on the stone floor and turned her around so that her back was to her adult self. He pressed his lips to her cheek and shut his eyes and memorized her weight and softness and how her gangly legs held his sides. And then he thought of his short, precious time with her, waking her on the hill, making her smile and laugh, the word 'babae' in her sweet, bell-like voice. He thought of all these things and carefully erased himself and Dorian from them. "Forget," he whispered into her ear. "Forget, my darling girl." Her hands went still on his back, her feet hanging listless, as though she had fallen suddenly asleep. Before she could regain her senses, he pulled her from his chest like tearing off his own skin and, with shaking arms, turned her around to face his heart. Her feet found purchase just as her mind did so that when her eyes focused, it was on Hal'la.

"Oh," she gasped in wondrous surprise, shuffling closer to the unresponsive form in Dorian's arms. "I know her..." She reached her little fingers down to touch Hal'la's chest just above her heart and with that simple gesture of recognition, disappeared entirely.

Yes, his hope encouraged, yes, please work. Come back to me, vhenan.

"Solas," Dorian breathed out needfully. Because Hal'la began to stir.

Chapter Text

Dorian had rarely known such joy and relief as he did in the moment Hal burrowed her face against his palm and drowsily opened those vivid teal eyes. His smile could not be contained by the physics of his face and he made no effort whatsoever to hide the few happy tears that rolled down his cheeks and dropped from his chin to her clothing. "Welcome back, gorgeous," he whispered thickly. "I've missed you."

She smiled back weakly and her brow knit with cloudy confusion. "Did one of us go somewhere?" Hal let out a little laugh. "I saw you at lunch today." Her smile turned into a strained frown as she struggled to sit up in his arms and began to see their stony surroundings. "Where are we? We didn't go forward in time again, did--" Though she hadn't quite managed to sit up -- she was much too weak and sore -- she did turn her head just enough away from Dorian to finally see Solas' freckled, anxious face. The elf's brow was raised as far as it would go, all barely withheld emotion of every imaginable type that only magnified when she reached for him with her anchored hand. Like Dorian, she had no interest in stopping or hiding her slow, hot tears. "You came back," she whispered tremulously.

Solas took her hand in both of his and pressed her knuckles to his lips. She cupped his cheek and he pushed back against her hand, his eyes closing in reverence. But he didn't speak a word. Hal watched him with wet eyes from Dorian's lap and Solas kissed her palm and her fingertips, but he said not a word in his defense. He offered no explanations. He didn't say what had happened or why he'd returned. So it fell to Dorian, who gave the other mage a disapproving look that he was fairly certain went entirely unnoticed. "Hal," he started slowly, and waited for her to pull her attention from Solas. She kept her hand against his face, though. "You've been unconscious for two weeks." Her expression turned immediately anxious and she once again tried to sit up. This time both he and Solas helped her do so, supporting her back between them even when she was settled.

"Mythal was murdered," added Solas, finally finding his voice.

"By Morrigan," Dorian snarled. 

Solas sighed. "By someone. Possibly Morrigan." 

Dorian rolled his eyes. "By Morrigan. And when Mythal died, the voices from the Well started running amok in your head. You were talking to Cullen and you collapsed and we've been looking for you ever since." He offered her a wry smile. "We even sent out panicked messages to all the elven ruins we could find to bring Solas back to help."

"It was not only the Well of Sorrows," said Solas softly, his eyes crinkling at the corners for a miserable smile he never finished. "When the orb was broken, the energy stored within it was attracted to the anchor. I did not sense it or I would have..." He swallowed and shook his head. "Mythal's wards were also keeping the energy from consuming you. When she died, both the Well and the energy were set free within you."

Hal began to laugh, though she kept having to stop and suck in deep, shaking breaths. She laughed and laughed until Solas and Dorian were sharing concerned looks behind her back. "Of course," she said when she paused to breathe. "Of course they were. Because I'm the blighted Herald of Andraste and the Inquisitor and if anything absurd is going to happen, it's going to be to me." Dorian favored her with a half-smile for her ability to joke even in the face of something so terrifying. But then, they hadn't mentioned that a rift had opened in her bones yet. Or that she'd been possessed by the memories of ancient elves.

"Are you...well?" Solas wondered, placing the back of his hand against her cheek to check her temperature. She responded by clutching at his wrist and holding him hostage with her trembling grip.

"I'm alive, aren't I?" Hal asked with another laugh, and she smiled broadly, but Solas couldn't muster up one of his own in return. 

"You are alive," he agreed softly.

"And you're here," she added. Now her laughter was accompanied by more tears. Solas' expression faltered and though part of Dorian wanted very much to see him struggle and suffer in the face of what he had done and what he was about to do to her again, most of him just didn't want her to stop laughing or smiling ever again. Even if she had to cry while she did it. So the Tevinter mage jumped in before any of them could murmur the words they must all be thinking: 'for now'.

"We're in your head, darling," and that made her laugh too. He gave her a lopsided grin. "You've got quite a group of people gathered around your sickbed worrying themselves silly."

"There is still much to do here," pointed out Solas seriously. Though Solas was rarely not serious. Perhaps he pointed it out solasly. Dorian smirked a little at his own joke. "We must reestablish the wards dividing the Well from your mind to keep the silanavhen controlled and we cannot be sure what will happen when you wake." He hesitated, something dark flickering across his blue eyes, and then murmured, "You are changed from this, vhenan." Neither Dorian nor Solas missed the soft sound she made when he called her his heart. "The energy from the orb has been absorbed into you here. We cannot know how your body will respond to so much power when you wake."

She gave her best brave half-smirk and Dorian's heart swelled with affection. "Only one way to find out." Weak amusement twinkled in Solas' eyes even as he gave her a look that said he did not agree with that course. It was a look Solas gave everyone all the time, but it was only ever gentle for Hal. 

"Do you truly not remember any of it?" the elf asked earnestly, tracing a finger under her jaw. Her eyes fluttered closed and she sighed out her pleasure even as she shook her head. "Perhaps that is for the best."

"It does sound like it hurt a lot," she agreed and this time she grinned at Solas so intently that her nose wrinkled and she wouldn't stop searching out eye contact with him until his lips curled upward just a whisper at the corners. Her grin spread across her face victoriously. 

"Solas," Dorian mused thoughtfully, studying the ghostly pale pallor of Hal's skin, "what would you say to letting the wards go for now? The silanavhen can't find their way out on their own, can they? After all, they stopped chasing us the moment we were out of sight and I doubt Mereni would let anyone escape now. We could wake her and see to whatever complications arise and feed her and then she can rest. She'll need it, I imagine, and we can see to the wards when next she sleeps."

And then, thought Dorian with a quirked brow, you'll have to stay at least through the night, you slippery bastard.

Solas considered him with subtle suspicion as though he could hear his thoughts, which made Dorian grin at his bald companion. He thought about Bull's glistening, naked body, about nights with rope and pleasure and pain and fucking until he was too sore to wear pants the next day. Solas' brow pulled down sharply, and while it was probably just in reaction to Dorian's wicked smile, it amused the Tevinter mage to imagine that somehow Solas had gotten his message. They eyed each other for a moment more and then Solas turned his attention to Hal. "The choice is yours, ma lath."

Her lips trembled at the endearment. "Will you be there when I wake?" The question was the shadow of a voice, as if she were afraid to scare him away. Not that she didn't have good reason to feel that way.

Solas leaned toward her, holding her anchored hand in his with his other palm along the line of her jaw leading to her ear, his thumb brushing her cheek. She closed her eyes and shuddered and then he was brushing his lips against hers, tentatively at first, asking permission, and when she parted her lips for him, their mouths met prayerfully, their kiss sacred and fragile. Tears fell from her closed eyes to his fingertips and he pulled his lips from hers even as he rested their foreheads together. "Vhenan," he breathed with great effort, "wake up."

Chapter Text

"So I end up running through the richest streets in Starkhaven in the middle of the day in just a surcoat! And I can only cover half of me at a time, so it's either show all of the lords and ladies the little Paragon or admit to having beads braided into my chest hair! So obviously I got arrested for indecent exposure!" Despite the circumstances, Varric felt that he'd done the story pretty solid service and no matter what the situation, that last line always managed to get a laugh. But as he looked around the Inquisitor's quarters at the grim faces and thin, polite smiles of his friends (except Seeker -- she didn't even pretend to enjoy it), he let out a hard sigh. "Tough audience." His attention fell to Dorian on the cot nearby. While Solas had maintained a perfectly neutral expression in his sleep, the Tevinter mage had scowled and twitched and sometimes even smiled in his sleep. Now his brows were cinched together and his chest was rapidly rising and falling. "What do you think they're up--"

Cole, who had been gently rocking on the end of the bed by Hal's feet, shot up and across the room like a spooked cat. Varric had only seconds to be confused, though, because suddenly the Inquisitor's body was glowing an intense green. The mark on her hand sparked and flared against Solas' and threw bolts up the outside of his arm. His fingers tightened around hers but his face stayed a placid mask. Meanwhile the rest of them -- the conscious ones -- were on their feet like an enchanted audience, except that instead of clapping and cheering, they were all shouting to the Maker with mind-numbing horror in their voices because they could see -- actually see through her skin -- Hal's entire skeletal structure. It pulsed with her heartbeat -- they could see that too -- sent skittering feelers out over her arms and legs, and then winked out like the tamping of a candle. And then nothing. 

Nothing at all.

For minute upon grueling minute.

"Is she...?" was all Varric could manage to croak out.

"She's breathing," Cullen said with immeasurable relief. "Thank the Maker, she's breathing." He turned with ready fury on the healer who stood mute and overwhelmed in the corner. "Don't just stand there! Examine her!" The healer was too shocked to move, even as Cassandra began to round on her with the kind of wrath only that woman could bring. 

"Out of my way!" Dorian shouted as he shoved Varric and Cullen apart and sprinted across the room to her side. They all just stood there gaping. They hadn't even heard him wake. Or noticed him stand. He was by her side in a dragon's heartbeat, taking the empty chair by her head and reaching for her unmarked hand, leaning over her worriedly and checking her pulse, testing her temperature, listening to her breathing with his ear to her chest. They didn't notice Solas rise either, but he was there as well, sliding his hands across her belly and, Varric assumed, sending magic into her body to take care of that examination the healer couldn't manage. Otherwise it was just a really awkward touch.

"What's--" Cullen began, but Dorian and Solas both held up hands to silence him. The Commander scowled with frustration, but he bit his tongue and waited with bated breath and constant prayers like the rest of them. Prayers that were apparently answered, even if it took two weeks of agony first. Because beneath the mages' dual ministrations, Hal shifted in the bed. Her brow knit and her lips twisted and then her eyes opened and they all hung on the moment like dangling from the edge of a cliff by their fingertips, trying to make her speak anything but Elvhen with sheer mental effort.

Come on, Hal, come on...

"Fenedhis," he heard her grumble and his heart lurched. No... "I'm starving!"

The room erupted with sound. Cullen was at Dorian's side faster than a cornered nug, gripping the nearest bed post white-knuckled but unable to form existent words, much less coherent sentences. Josephine was openly weeping; she collapsed back down at the desk, put her hands over her face and sobbed her relief. Cassandra started shouting angry questions and when Dorian and Solas ignored her, she whipped back around to shout at the healer to bring tonics and a good warm meal and a hot bath and anything else the entered her mind and left her mouth. Cole crept slowly closer to the bed, but each time he passed another person he jerked away in surprise as though he'd been physically scalded by their emotions. His eyes were so wide they could actually be seen through his overlong bangs and he kept asking nobody in particular, "Is she fixed? Did we fix her?" Fiona vanished down the stairs after the healer, presumably to aid with the myriad tasks assigned by Cassandra. Dorian was grabbing food from the bed side table and pushing it into Hal's hands -- an apple and a lump of hardened bread -- and packing pillows behind her so she could sit up in bed. And Varric? Well, Varric was laughing. Maybe a little hysterically. But it felt impossibly good to have an actual reason to laugh.

"We'll tell you everything in a moment, just calm down!" Dorian snapped at Cassandra, who had begun pestering him with questions again. "Cullen, you're blocking my light!"

Solas' question, when he asked it, was so soft in comparison to the whirlwind of activity in the room that Varric almost didn't hear it at all. "How are you feeling, ma lath?" He had to wait for her to finish swallowing the bite of bread she'd taken for his answer, which came with a sweet, doting kiss to his lifted hand.

"A little lightheaded and very hungry, but...fine? And you're still here." She smiled devotedly. His lips shifted upward in response. 

Dammit, Hal, Varric grumbled inwardly, make him earn it back at least! You deserve better than that!

Before they could start canoodling, Varric strode purposefully to the end of the bed and leaned against the post that was essentially keeping Cullen on his feet. He crossed his arms under his chest and watched Hal eat and Dorian fuss with her ropes and the Commander rub his face every time he tried to find the words and failed. "You might wanna slow down, Hal," he told her with a smile by way of welcoming her back. "Your stomach probably shrank. Give the bread some time." She smiled at him with her lips closed around an overlarge hunk of cheese and the dwarf felt the world right itself after two weeks of nothing making sense and the ground constantly shifting beneath them. Cassandra apparently didn't feel the same way because when she still could get no answers, she took to stomping around the room and moving things out of the way as loudly as possible, presumably for the food and tub, but quite possibly just because she needed something to do. "So," Varric added while Hal chewed, "who wants to tell us why her skeleton turned green? Oh, and also where in Andraste's tightened bodice she's been for two weeks!"

"Well," Dorian began and even Cassandra stopped making noise long enough to listen with rapt attention. "The long and short of it is that not only was Mythal's magic keeping control of the silanavhen in Hal's head, but it was also apparently holding back all of that energy from the broken orb. Turns out it went right into Hal after she killed Corypheus and just sort of lived there until Mythal's death, when it and the wards around the Well went berserk, I suppose. Somehow, she got split in two in her own head and we had to follow this adorable baby Hal to this tunnel by pretending Solas here was--" It was only when Dorian brought attention to the elven apostate that they noticed his absence. Hal was already staring with her broken heart clearly written across her pained expression at the place he had been only a moment before, at the hand he had held that was now empty. "Fasta vass!" Dorian hissed, leaping to his feet. "The Eluvian!"

Once again the room was a storm of motion and sound. Cullen was grabbing for his sword and Josephine had stopped crying and gotten to her feet to do whatever she could to help whatever the problem seemed to be now. Varric slung Bianca over his back and was already at the Commander's side when Dorian and his staff joined them. It looked like they were starting a war party rather than a search party, but Varric couldn't say he particularly minded. That selfish son of a bronto had some serious explaining to do. They were headed for the staircase before they even realized that Hal had crawled unsteadily out of her bed and was following behind them in her shift and bare feet. 

"Stop!" she shouted in a voice that could have -- and often had -- woken the dead. But they didn't. "Stop where you are! As your Inquisitor, I'm telling you to stop!" Cullen was in front of the group and came to an abrupt halt just at the top of the stairs. Dorian hit his back and Varric hit Dorian's and Cassandra hit Varric's. Only Josephine and Cole were hovering worriedly around Hal, arms out in case she collapsed again. She was wavering slightly and pale, but they knew the expression on her face instantly. They had no choice but to do as she commanded. "If anybody's going after him, it's going to be me! Someone has to help me get down to the Eluvian right now! There will be no fighting! Everybody else is going to stay here! Whoever's helping me, let's go!" Cullen and Dorian looked at each other uncertainly. Nobody so much as blinked. "MOVE!"

The two human men both made for Hal but Dorian shoved his staff into Cullen's hands -- mental note: good line for 'Balls in Minrathous' -- and darted past him, scooping the underweight elf into his arms and taking off down the stairs at a reckless run. The poor Commander stood with the stave held awkwardly in front of him looking as though Dorian and Solas had both just kicked him squarely in the Deep Roads.

Chapter Text

One moment she was telling Cullen about the elaborate contraption she had caught the Bull using (apparently very successfully) on Dorian and enjoying the scandalized way the Commander blushed, and the next she was back in that strange, dark, swirling echo chamber that had claimed her after she drank from the Well of Sorrows.

But it was not just voices and whispers this time. She stood alone in the center of a recessed stone floor with darkness all around her and suddenly she was blinded with an impossibly bright light dead ahead. She had held up her arms and clenched her eyes shut, but still it had turned the insides of her eyelids a searing white. Though it felt like an eternity, the light dimmed in only the passage of a few seconds, and she warily lowered her defenses and tried to adjust again to the darkness of the room -- or whatever it was -- with spots swimming in her field of vision. She was immediately aware of two things: first, that she was woefully unarmed and unarmored, and second, that where the light had just been there was now an elven woman of such astounding beauty that she felt instantly unworthy. It was not only awe-inspiring, however, this impossible magnificence; it was equally as terrifying. She felt herself being weighed by the woman's unfeeling gaze, felt herself undressed and skinned and peeled away layer by layer until only her spirit remained.

Just as she was sure she could take no more, the woman spoke to her not in the Elvhen she'd heard when last she was here, but in her own Dalish dialect with an almost motherly voice.

"We do not have much time, Hal'lasean Lavellan."

~~~

It was Dorian who closed the door behind her as Hal stepped further into the sheet-draped and dusty storage room where lived the Eluvian. They were alone for the first time since he had mourned the pieces of the orb, told her what they'd had was real, and disappeared the moment she'd let him from her sight. Alone together finally, the Dalish Inquisitor and the elven apostate now crouched before the oversized mirror, wrapping it in elaborate magic that he should have had no reason to know. He must have heard her come in, but he did not falter or pause in his work.

She felt tears welling in her eyes and her cheeks burning with her humiliation and heartbreak even before she managed to form words that came out soft and fluid as mist in the musical language of her people.

"You would leave me again without saying goodbye, Fen'Harel?"

The man who had broken and still held her heart froze where he knelt. He rose slowly, deliberately, his back to her. His shoulders dropped and his chin fell to his chest. But he said nothing and did not turn to face her.

"Look at me," she whispered, her voice strained with the weight of her emotions, not the least of which was such sorrow and compassion and affection for her Dread Wolf. "Please, my only love."

Those Elvish words touched him as surely as if she'd cast a spell and he turned finally so she could see his face, though he would not, could not meet her eyes. He stared instead at the floor before his feet, his mouth slightly open as if in silent pain, his features twisted with his guilt and his effort to maintain his composure. She stepped closer to him and then again until they were near enough that whatever energy now surged within her -- his energy, she reminded herself -- cried out to join with its other half in Solas' -- no, Fen'Harel's body. He was shaking his head, tiny, denying movements that were slow and subtle as he so often was. Hal reached gentle fingers to catch his jaw and he tensed -- nearly flinched -- at the touch of her skin on his, as though he were afraid of what she would do to him. Power hummed where they touched. She lifted his chin with the delicate movement she would have used for a newly bridled hart until he had no choice but to meet her gaze. His storm blue eyes were clear and open to her as she had never seen them before. He looked...vulnerable. But she had no time to explore the old, secret parts of him that had become available to her through the simple magic of his true name on her tongue.

Because the connection as their eyes finally met in this new, wondrous way was startling, like electricity or the sudden tingle of a thin Veil, but inside her as well as on her skin. The sensation was so deep and so intense and so unlike anything she had ever experienced that her already overtaxed legs went out beneath her and then his arms were around her, holding her up, holding her to his chest, and the raw magic that bound them must have filled them both with the same breath-stealing liquid heat because they cried out as one, hers voiced and pitched above his harsh, low breath. She had noticed something strange between their joined hands and shy, longing looks when she'd wakened beside him, but this was amplified infinitely, as though one or both of them had relinquished control of something tightly held. She thought again of the power of his true name on her tongue and she gripped his tunic in shaking fists as she once more made him meet her eyes.

"Fen'Harel," she purred, and it washed through them again, scouring them clean and sinking them to the floor where he clutched her quaking, too-thin form to him like a life-line.

"Well," she laughed despite the cruelty of their situation and his stunned reticence, "that could be fun." She grinned up at him, but if anything the joke seemed to have injured him deeply. He gave another little shake of his head, and though it obviously cost him greatly, he made himself look her in the eyes. They gripped each other through the pulse of magic and when it ebbed, he spoke only three words, each one more strained than the last.

"I cannot stay."

They kept their gazes locked both because  they could not bear to part them and because it was easier than riding through another surge of energy. Her smile sweetened and saddened and her eyes moistened threateningly. "I know. But you don't have to leave yet."

Fen'Harel practically grimaced at the thought. "If I stay even a day," he rasped, "I will never leave."

This time Hal was the one to shake her head, earnestly, stubbornly, "I'll make you leave. You must, for our people."

His eyes widened at that, his brow furrowing with anxiety and confusion. "My heart, how...?"

She smiled knowingly, wryly, and touched her fingers to the subtle bend of his ear. "Love may be blind, Dread Wolf, but I'm not. You left enough hints." He looked chastened and horrified and she laughed, which only baffled him more. "Mythal."

"Mythal?" he echoed, and this time his fear was for her and tangible between them.

"She came to me. I suppose while I was unconscious. She was..." Hal shook her head with wonder. "Oh, Solas--" She closed her eyes and tried again, offering a sheepish smile for her mistake. "Fen'Harel, she was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. She wasn't the Woman of Many Years, she was Elvhen and glorious."

Fen'Harel's blue eyes were wrinkled at the corners with his pain and dread. "You said you remembered nothing."

She could not keep the ironic half-smile from her lips.

"I lied."

Chapter Text

Fen'Harel had the good sense to cringe at the implication of Hal's words, the glib and pointed way she'd said them. But he was much more interested in holding her out from him so he could look her over again, as though he might have missed some cleverly hidden wound or mark left on her by Mythal during his last examination. "Did she harm you?" he asked needfully, and they waited through another pulse of energy as his gaze desperately searched hers for signs of change or trauma. 

Hal caught his hands in hers and held them to her chest as she sincerely, reassuringly shook her head. "No, my love. Quite the opposite." She laughed. "Although she is very intimidating!" But the worry and fear in his eyes drew her smile into something smaller, fond and soothing. "Hey," she murmured, cupping his face in her palms and bringing his forehead down to hers, enjoying the way their shared power sang, "I'm okay. Did you really think she'd hurt me?" His nod was emphatic but simple, his eyes rounded in an almost child-like confession of his concern for her. She smiled again. "So this is the terrible Dread Wolf."

Despite himself, Fen'Harel gave her a ghost of a self-deprecating smile.

"She was weak," Hal finally continued, not because she wanted to talk more than she wanted to kiss him until he stopped looking so ashamed, but because these words needed to be said. "She said she would be drawn to the Beyond any moment, but she had secrets for me. She said she'd been protecting me from the energy of the orb and the Well, that her magic would be failing soon, but that she was going to put everything she had into keeping all that magic contained in one part of me, to keep me alive until..." Her smile trembled. "Until Fen'Harel came for me."

His confusion and surprise were plain to her on his face, though his expression barely shifted. She could feel his turmoil through his power just as easily now as she could always peek behind the mask, and the closeness was intoxicating. "And then she told me a very interesting story about Elvhenan and the madness of the ruling class, the in-fighting and the cruelty and the slaves...and a young, wild warrior-mage who cried for her when she was murdered and channeled his not insignificant power into an orb, designed as the key to a prison built for those who could only be contained by the Fade itself."

Fen'Harel was watching her mournfully as she told his story in the rhythm the Dalish used for their most sacred legends, her voice soft and loving as she spoke of the young Wolf. He listened as though enchanted, as though he didn't yet know the ending. "She said that when you woke from the long sleep, you were devastated by what had become of The People, but that you had been too weak to unlock your orb and fix what you thought you'd done. That you gave the key to Corypheus because you needed it unlocked and you didn't think he could use it."

"I am so sorry," he breathed thickly, and she nodded because she knew.

"Do you know what else she told me?" He shook his head with slow sincerity. Her smile was pure love. "She told me that she watched us together, saw you through my eyes. She said that the Dread Wolf had infamously never given his heart to anyone in Elvhenan, that he was considered the greatest prey of all. That that was when they first called him He Who Hunts Alone." To her delight, his ears flushed with color. "She said your struggle was a noble one, one that you must pursue, one that only you could manage. She said that's why she gave you her power. Her time is done for now."

"Gave?" he blurted, his mouth falling open. He shook his head again, repeatedly, another denial. "No, no, my heart, she did not give--"

Hal placed her fingers on his lips to shush him. "These are her words, my Wolf, not mine."

His breath caught and the power throbbed with his stuttering heart. "Say that again," he begged.

Her smile was warm and wicked. "My Wolf." Her voice caressed the words as her mouth had so often caressed his arousal, and another wave crashed over them. When it faded away, she stroked her thumb over the top of his pointed ear. "She said her power was her sacrifice for the good of The People. She said it was her ultimate justice. And she told me she was giving us each a gift."

"A gift?" Fen'Harel repeated dumbly, his expression unbelieving. 

Hal's smile was tight with tears she didn't trust herself yet to let fall, not with so much left to cover. "She told me to tell you that I am your gift. She is paying her debt to you for your service and what it's cost you...with me. She told me your true name, Fen'Harel, and kept me alive for you. And she told me to tell you that it was time you learned to hunt with a pack."

His horror and refusal were instant and he began to pull away as though she were suddenly too hot to touch, swinging his head in furious denial. "No," he said sharply, "no! I will not, I cannot! You do not know what you ask!"

Hal reached for him again, to put a soothing hand on his cheek, but he scrambled out from under her and struggled to his feet. The disconnect of their shared magic was agony. He let out a wounded grunt and she hissed sharply, but when it was done she stayed on the floor before him and looked up with that stubborn resilience that he so loved and admired, but that in that moment seemed to terrify him.

"You don't have a choice, Fen'Harel. Your power, your magic, all that you poured into the orb is now in me. Don't you get it? Mythal already knew. She was waiting for us to understand. I am the key to the gods you locked away, my love. I am what you've been searching for. And more than that, Fen'Harel, my beloved Wolf, my soul's journey..." Her expression hardened and she was the Inquisitor. "I am your only hope of winning over The People."

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Fen'Harel looked everywhere for an escape from the trap Mythal had set for him, but not even the Eluvian promised refuge from the brutal truths that now lay before him. Literally lay before him, since Hal'la was still curled up on the floor where he'd left her, though the effortless challenge in her face more than made up for his height advantage. Not even the weak trembling of her limbs as she held herself up could diminish her capacity to wield power. Normally it filled him with a desire to dominate her, to have something so commanding beg him for release. It was the Wolf's favorite game, to barter control and submission as it suited him, but neither he nor the Wolf had any illusions now about who was suddenly on top.

And she knew it too.

His head was spinning and his heart raced with fear and all he wanted to do was bury himself in her, to fill her and sate her and lose himself while she cried out his true name, to care for her, to hold her, to spoon soup into her mouth until her collarbones were not quite so pronounced, to bathe her tenderly, to lie awake with her breath on his chest and twirl her silver hair around his fingers. He wanted to press his nose into the curve of her neck and forget the rest of the world existed, to spend each moment exploring this newfound magic they shared. He wanted to grow old with her. But neither of them would grow old now. His folly and Mythal's machinations had seen to that. She would die before her time now. Violently. Horribly. Dragged screaming into the Void by Elgar'nan or hunted down for sport by Andruil. His lips twisted at the thought of how the huntress would enjoy his halla. So smart, so resourceful, so lethal. She'd be hard to spot and harder still to catch. Impossible to take alive, though that was not his kin's style. Hal'la would have Andruil crowing with rabid glee, frothing with the thrill of the chase.

There was no air in Fen'Harel's lungs and he had not been able to fill them for some time, so they burned with their want. He was forced to sink into a sheet-covered chair, which sent up a cloud of dust, with his hands clasped tightly over his face as though he might be able to make this go away by not seeing her there before him with her beautiful face full of her victory. She could not know what it would cost her. If she did...

He dragged his hands down his face and let them fall limply into his lap, his gaze unfocused on the wall opposite him, not yet resigned to this future but heavy with the knowledge that it would be difficult to circumvent. "I only wanted to protect you," he murmured, the words sticking in his throat.

She slid across the floor to him, leaned her head against his knee, and he closed his eyes as their magic rolled through him. His hand was in her hair before he knew what he was doing. "I'm safest with you by my side," she replied softly, and though he could feel her eyes on his face, he could not bring himself to look back.

Fen'Harel shook his head like the slow tolling of a bell, his chin moving from side to side with the weight of his denial and fear. "My halla," he said, and his voice broke. His brow pulled low over his eyes and he knew that if he had any chance of convincing her of this, he would have to look at her. Their eyes met and she wrapped her arms around his leg to hold herself up at the surge of power. "You do not know my kin as I do. They are...twisted, entitled, and exponentially more powerful than Corypheus. I was once a match for them, but now..." He let out a shuddered breath of a laugh. "Even with Mythal's power, even with their long captivity, I will barely be capable of protecting myself. I pushed you away because I cannot..." He swallowed and looked up at the ceiling rather than at her, his brows lifted pleadingly at the universe at large. "I cannot...lose you." The confession was a festering wound in his chest and speaking it aloud to her of all people made him hunch forward protectively. "And if they...find out that I...that you are my heart..."

"Look at me," she whispered again, her voice firm with her demand.

"No," he growled, even as he reluctantly dropped his gaze to hers. Their magic spasmed like his heart. "You cannot ask this of me, Hal'lasean. This is my journey and it is mine alone. I will not put you at risk any more than I already have. I cannot afford to be selfish now! There are things I must do for the sake of The People--"

She sat up sharply at that, her gentle, loving expression morphing to righteous indignation. "And am I not one of The People, Fen'Harel? You know what's happened to us because you watch memories in the Fade and because nothing could ever be as right as Elvhenan, even with its slavery and carnage, but I have lived the plight of The People! I have spent my life listening to their hopes and dreams and fears and struggling beside them and starving with them! I fed them with my hunts, slept beside them, protected them from ignorant shems! They raised me! Their blood is my blood! And they may not be quite The People you remember from your floating crystal cities, but they are my people! You may be a god -- I'm still not completely clear just what you are -- but you have been an absent one -- no, don't cringe, it's not an accusation, it's just the truth! You don't know us now! You know me, but Fen'Harel, if you didn't love me, would you even listen to what the Dalish believe or want or how they live their lives now? And even I can't speak for the elves in the alienages or our wretched kin under the Imperial whip! You don't get to wake up after thousands of years, look around a little, and decide what's best for The People! I'm sorry, my love, truly, I know this has been difficult for you, that it hurts you to see us as we are now, that you think it's somehow your fault, but if you want to fix it -- if you really want to help us, you don't get to make our choices for us! You freed us from slavery, Fen'Harel, so let us decide our future! Help us, guide us, work with us, but let us choose! You named yourself Solas. But it's not just your pride. It's our pride. Solan, my love, not solas!" Despite her furious beginning, her words turned hopeful, encouraging, her face exultant at the idea of the rise of her people, and though her lecture stung like the sea on raw skin, there was, as there always was, a wisdom she brought to him that he could not ignore. When she saw his resolve weakening, she went for the jugular, her eyes flashing with her determination and her threat. "I won't let you do this without me. If you run from me, I will hunt you. And I am full of your magic now, so there will be no hiding this time. The halla will hunt the Wolf until he submits." Her brows lifted dangerously, daring him to argue. "And let me be perfectly clear, my heart, we will be doing this my way. If I'm going to put the Inquisition behind you, I have to know you won't betray my trust again. The Inquisition is Thedas -- Qunari, dwarves, humans, and elves. We will carve out an elven land from what was stolen from us, but we'll do it with a very long Game. I won't pit one race against another. Not ever again. But with me at your side, you will have your key, your power, and the entire weight of my Inquisition. The two of us, together, can finally unite all the elves! We can teach them not to fear the truth and start a revolution that no army can quench."

They sat in silence for some time when she was finished, Fen'Harel's expression subtle anxiety and ancient guilt, Hal'la's all fiery will and triumphant challenge. Each waited for the other to blink, to look away, and this was a game of dominance that the Wolf knew all too well. He would not fold. He would not submit. But there was a sprout within the hardened core of his shame and regret, a fragile but undeniable seedling of...hope. And yet still he could not bring himself to agree. Not with her safety on the line. Not when he was still so undeserving of such bliss. "You truly believe your advisors will support this?"

She raised one cocky eyebrow. "Let me worry about them."

"My heart," he murmured, knitting his brows together and giving another little shake of his head. "I do not want you involved in this."

"It's my fight just as much as it is yours," she argued without hesitation, "and even if it weren't, all of your fights are mine now. You're my heart too, you stubborn ass, and where my heart goes, I go. What matters to my heart, matters to me. My whole life -- short though it may be in comparison -- I have only ever truly wanted two things: to be loved, well and unconditionally, and for The People to have a home. You, Fen'Harel, can give me both of those." She sat back a little, wobbling unsteadily as she did, and crossed her arms under her chest so she could level him with an imperious but mischievous scowl. "And as you are returning to the Inquisition, your first order from your Inquisitor is to stay." He opened his mouth to protest, but she held up her palm for silence. "Not forever. We both have important work to do. But first we have to prepare and we have to figure out what I can do with your magic. So I'm commanding you to stay with me, at least for a month. You have a painting in the rotunda to finish, more research to do here, plans to make, and a woman to make love to at least once a day."

Fen'Harel was prepared for his regret, his anxiety, his shame and guilt and all the painful self-loathing that he always experienced when he thought of staying with Hal'la. When he thought of asking for help from the Inquisition, of telling the truth, of doing anything besides sacrificing endlessly to atone for his mistakes. But instead, her orders made him feel...light. As though his burden were finally lifted from its rightful place on his back. He felt relieved and...excited. He felt...hopeful. He could not disguise the thrill that went through him when he gave her a suggestive smirk and her visage burned pink with her delight. "Which woman, if I may ask?" His smirk grew. "Cassandra?" She grinned at him and his heart took flight. A month. He could wait a month. She said she'd make him leave and after this, well...he believed she really could. "Only once a day?"

Her smile was so self-satisfied that it took all of his discipline and control to stop himself taking her right there and then, but she was still so frail. The consummation of their newborn alliance would have to wait until she was stronger. "That's a minimum," she clarified playfully.

His brow quirked. "Is there a maximum?"

"Only one way to find out."

It was quite possible that his heart was going to burst, that it had shrunk from a lifetime of being alone and could no longer hold all that she was offering him. Tears welled in his eyes, but he swallowed them down. He would save them for the moonlight on her naked body, when he could be truly taken with her extraordinary beauty. When his tears would be in worship of her. "Ar lath ma, Hal'lasean."

Her bare face written with her love for him, that was his vallaslin now. "Ar lath ma, Fen'Harel."

Chapter Text

The finished fresco in the rotunda said something important about Hal's heart, she thought, or perhaps about the future. When that last panel was just the barest sketch of a wolf -- of the Wolf, though she hadn't known it at the time -- it had been a symbol of the hole inside her, of the emptiness that Solas had left when he vanished. Now she wished the room were bigger so that Fen'Harel could continue their story each time he returned to her, so that she could curl up beside him as he worked and watch him silently and catch him stealing glances at her that made him smile his content. Perhaps she could build him a new tower just for frescos. Not that there was room on the mountainside to expand Skyhold. Still, the idea of building pleased her and she decided to bring up expansion at the advisors meeting today. They could start a town just outside the walls for refugees and anyone seeking their protection. The Inquisition could build a diverse, multicultural, and thriving Thedas. The new town, like Skyhold, could be their grand experiment.

Oh! she thought suddenly, a college specifically for the study of Elvhenan!

She'd have to speak to her Wolf about it as well, since he was her foremost expert on the subject. And would Abelas, when they found him, be willing to come teach? These were the things that had been bubbling in her mind for the past month, the things she'd argued heatedly about with Fen'Harel as they entwined naked together by her hearth surrounded by stacks of books and maps of Thedas, Orlais, Tevinter, and the Arlathan Forest held down by rocks and cups and daggers. These were the things they dreamed about lovingly in the Fade where no one could hear them, making plans and setting things in motion for the Greatest Game Thedas had seen since the fall of Elvhenan. They had toiled tirelessly for the future of The People, building delicate international webs they would be strengthening for decades to come for her, lifetimes to come for him. And all those ties began with the Inquisition, fostered in the four weeks they had given themselves.

The month had been a whirlwind of blissful entanglement, exhausting experiments with Hal'lasean's newfound power, and tense conversations between Fen'Harel and his former comrades-in-arms, between Hal and her advisors, between her conflicted friends. But even with all their mistrust and nursed grudges, no one who knew the two lovers could ignore how deliriously happy they were in each other's company. No one had ever seen the elven apostate smile so often or so freely and there was no denying how loyally he served their Inquisitor now; he put himself in charge of her recovery and saw to her every physical, emotional, and mental need. They made no effort to hide their cohabitation or the fact that it was temporary. He would leave, they explained often, and soon. And because Hal seemed to be okay with all of that, the others had to be too.

Fen'Harel and Dorian had returned to Hal's mind that first night in her sleep and worked together to create a ward over each entrance to the temple that only those with her express permission could enter. And while they were there in the Fade, the elf pulled the startled human into an awkward but appreciative hug and whispered "remember" into his ear. Dorian was too furious even to throw a punch when he realized what had occurred, but Hal calmed him down as she always did and, though he had spent a week goading Fen'Harel at every opportunity, he was also the first of their friends to support their fledgling cause. The slaves he intended to free, after all, would need somewhere to live, even if he wasn't particularly keen on carving pieces out of his beloved Tevinter to do it. And because he was so willing to help and cared so deeply for Hal'lasean, Fen'Harel began to truly enjoy Dorian's company. And Dorian, for his part, became Fen'Harel's most vocal defender besides Hal.

They had decided it best he remain Solas to the majority within the Inquisition, but one by one Hal took her most trusted people aside and told them the truth. Cassandra was livid, Cullen was speechless, Josephine was endlessly suspicious, Bull was entirely unimpressed, Varric added it to his growing list of 'weird shit', and some part of Cole seemed to have known his friend's nature all along. And when conversation in the War Room began to turn to what was next for the Inquisition, Hal laid the foundation for what was to come so artfully and patiently that it passed almost entirely unnoticed. She wanted the Inquisition to be represented at the upcoming Arlathvhen, she told them, and she wanted to know how Briala's work in Orlais was going at Celene's side. She requested an envoy be sent to Clan Lavellan inviting them to visit Skyhold during the upcoming summer months and placed agents in the alienage of every major city. They launched an elven education program at her insistence, to teach a common modern Elvish -- spoken and written -- to anyone who wanted to learn. And as she had always made it known that the Inquisition would welcome anyone -- especially elves -- they continued to pour in from every corner of Thedas.

Hal played cards with Varric and they discussed what was to be done to help Kirkwall and the Free Marches, what changes he'd want to make in Orzammar or for surface dwarves, and how best she could help him do so. Then she explained the struggles of the Dalish and admitted her worry for the city elves and her desire to free the slaves in Tevinter and suddenly he was writing to two elven friends of his and Hawke's who might have things to say she'd like to hear. She walked the ramparts with Cullen and spoke of growing up in a clan of roaming aravels, of the Templars who had antagonized her on the road to the Conclave, of the injustices heaped upon all elves at human hands. She wanted Cullen to commit because it was the right thing to do and not because he was in love with her, and she made that very clear to him. But the way she smiled at him and kissed him on the cheek when he told her he would support her in rebuilding Elvhenan turned all of his visible skin an endearing, distressed red. Cole required no wheedling at all. She walked up to him and he felt her pain for her people and immediately pledged himself. Bull was equally as easy. As long as she paid the Chargers, they were hers, and even if she didn't, he'd probably still follow her, especially if Dorian was with them. The men had all been on her side for at least a week. Josephine and Cassandra would need a subtler, more lengthy handling.

And Hal and Fen'Harel spent long afternoons in the practice yard when the troops were done for the day and tried everything they could think of to do with the magic she'd acquired. He had been right; she wasn't a mage, but she was something. It was not only rifts she could open and close now, but she could slip physically in and out of the Fade, push through the Veil from anywhere, take anyone and anything with her, come out with objects that should have ceased to exist in the waking world. They discovered quite by accident that she could tear away pieces of Fade and Veil and mould them into powerful weapons and supplies. Her new favorite arms were her barbed dragon bone daggers wrapped in spiraling blades shaped from the fabric of a nightmare. At night, Fen'Harel taught her to protect her mind and her dreams from most outside forces, showed her how to create a dream, how to control it, how to seek out and befriend spirits, how to listen to the ripples of major events in dreams from all over the world, and, most importantly, how to find him no matter where he was.

But every moment not spent with Inquisition business or persuading her allies of her plans for the future or learning to use her Wolf-given abilities was spent in Fen'Harel's embrace. For the first week, they made love only in the Fade while they slept naked and intertwined in her bed because she was regaining her strength and patiently allowing her Wolf -- "ma Fen" as she had taken to calling him -- to dote on her and make sure she ate her meals. They spent their leisure days walking the woods beyond the walls in blissfully loving feuds over methods and lands, over when and how and why to release his kin, if they were to do so at all. They fought joyfully about his fear of her aging and dying, about whether or not certain means were justified if it meant the return of Elvhenan, about how long it would take to set all of their carefully laid schemes into motion. And when she was well enough, they coupled all over Skyhold. Sometimes it was an expression of their eternal devotion to each other, slow and soulful and full of feeling, but Hal discovered early on that if she called him his true name, if she cried out to the Dread Wolf in pleasure, he would unleash something that he had always before kept contained. They broke vases and one of his staves and eventually her bed, ripped curtains and clothing, left bite marks and bruises on each other that they wore as badges of honor, as the vallaslin of their love. They laughed and groped and moaned and worshipped and he growled when he came in a way that made her want to start again immediately. And they often did. Repeatedly. There were, apparently, some incredible perks to being the consort of an immortal elf revered as a god.

And now she sat with her knees held to her chest on top of his desk in the rotunda, staring at the exquisite lines of his art and remembering the exquisite lines of his body. And she cried, even though she knew it was coming, even though she was the one who made him leave, even though she knew she'd see him soon enough in the Fade and that he could reach her at a moment's notice if she really needed him and that he would, in fact, be back for the summer when her clan was meant to come. She hadn't thought it would be this hard, and it wasn't, not really, but she was crying anyway. She'd been like this for at least a week and a half now, if not longer, weeping at any little thing. Fen'Harel had laughed at her tears as she saw him to the Eluvian they'd moved outside Skyhold's walls. He'd kissed them away and kissed her lips well and for quite some time and then, with a last exchange of loving vows, he stepped into the Crossroads. And she was alone again.

"Why didn't you tell him?" Cole asked in his wispy voice, suddenly sitting beside her. He became more human with each passing day, but he still maintained an uncanny ability to show up anywhere at any time. "It would have made you feel better," he reasoned. "And it would have made him very happy."

"Oh, Cole," she sighed, wiping away the wetness of her cheeks and turning to give him a patient and wan smile. "It's already killing him to have me involved. I don't want to scare him away."

The blonde boy shook his head emphatically. "But he wants it! He thinks about it all the time, he thinks of nothing else, just you and Elvhenan and his worries, his fears for what will happen, but his hope, so fragile, fulfilling, feels like home, happiness, hearts wound together, and then what if, he thinks, what if, with her eyes and her hair and the blood of Elvhenan, but he makes the tea every morning because he's scared of the others, scared that he doesn't deserve this happiness he's found, scared to ask for more. He'd be mad at first, he thinks, angry at himself and at the world, but then he imagines he picks you up and spins you, fills you up even though he already has, makes you sing his true name to show you how full his heart is. It makes him happy."

The words turned Hal's ears pink and she beamed the warmth in her heart to Cole through her pleased smile. But as she reconsidered whether or not and when to give her last secret to Fen'Harel, her mourning returned, shading her upturned lips with hurt. "I didn't tell him, Cole, because I promised him I would make him leave. And if I'd told him, he would have stayed forever. I can't do that to him, no matter how much we both want it."

He considered that for some time in silence and she leaned her shoulder to his, which made him flinch and then smile. He rocked side to side as he thought and so she rocked with him, and in that way they soothed each other's pain and worry. "Will you ever tell him?" Cole wondered finally.

She grinned at him. "Cole, he's coming back in the summer. Don't you think he'd notice? I'll tell him in a week or two, when he's too involved in his work to come rushing back to me."

This seemed to satisfy the spirit's needs, and he hummed to himself a little before he blurted, "What's its name? I want to know what to call it when I speak to it."

Hal laughed, a delighted thing that carried up the tower and into the library and then above that as well. "I'll have to talk to him about that, but I was thinking...Solan, if it's a boy. It means 'our pride'. And if it's a girl, Panowen, which means 'she who emerges ready to fight well'. Because she's going to have to, with a god and the Inquisitor for parents."

Suddenly Dorian's face was leaning over the balcony above, perfectly manicured once again as though his long, rumpled vigil at Hal's side had never happened. "I thought I heard you down there, my sulking beauty! Come on, Hal, let's go get terribly drunk and take all Cullen's money! Your faithful wolf made me promise I'd keep you from moping and as I am a man of my word, I'll carry you to the tavern if I must!"

"Or Dorian," Hal added dryly, her lips twisting as she considered the man hollering down at her for all of Skyhold to hear. "Because I'll probably feel bad after I murder him."