Chapter Text
The first time it occurred to Solas that he might actually like Evelyn Trevelyan as a person, it was in the Hinterlands.
He found her just outside of camp, fiddling with the astrarium the Inquisition troops had pointed out to her just the other day, and he stopped a way's off, listening to the heavy grind of stone as she made it turn. Her face was nothing but concentration as she peered into it. She showed no sign of noticing his approach, or indeed anything else of her surroundings, and though it should have struck Solas as foolish to be so careless when the Hinterlands were still dangerous, it was fascinating to see her so absorbed in her task. He would have thought far less of her if she were incurious, instead of incautious.
"Aha," she said at one point, a sound of quiet victory, the familiar satisfaction at solving a puzzle.
"Something interesting?" he asked.
She looked up at him, surprised, before her face split in a grin.
"Solas, come here," she said, with an excited beckoning gesture.
He obliged and stepped closer. She hooked her arm with his, and pulled him up next to her. Before he could protest, or even balk at being manhandled, she pointed to the astrarium.
"Shifting the sphere makes connections between the stars, but a line can't go through the same place twice. Look, look!"
Then, in a fit of zeal, she demonstrated. She rotated the sphere with great confidence, and as he watched, the shape of a constellation was etched out before his eyes. When the final line fell in place, the astrarium lit up, its magic awakened. A beam burst from it, cutting across the sky before them.
"Is that what it does?" Evelyn whispered, clearly not expecting this outcome.
"It seems to be pointing to a location," Solas said.
"Is it?" Evelyn scrambled for the map she kept in a pouch at her belt, and then fumbled through the other pockets for a stick of charcoal. "Where was it pointing, did you see?"
She unfolded the map, and they put their heads close together, trying to figure out where the beam might have ended. Fingers traced hills and valleys over the map, finding their own location first, and then a straight line clean across the paper. Evelyn marked down their best guess for an approximate location, and then she remained staring at the map, absent-mindedly tapping the charcoal stick against her lips.
"What do you think?" she asked after a while, and then grinned at him with a twinkle in her eye. "Treasure hunt?"
"If you can justify allocating the time and resources," he replied neutrally.
"If we actually find treasure, it'll pay for itself, won't it?" she said.
"And if we don't?" He raised an eyebrow.
"Then it's an educational experience," she said, playfully solemn, and she punctuated the remark by jabbing the air with the charcoal. "Even if all we learn is to not trust shady artifacts littering the landscape. Are you in?"
The charcoal left dark smudges on her lower lip and chin. He laughed softly, endeared by her enthusiasm, and found himself having to suppress the urge to wipe away the smudges himself.
"After you clean your face, certainly," he said.
She blinked in confusion at first, before she understood his words. She rubbed the back of her wrist against her chin, flustered, but she also laughed, her eyes locked on his, sharing her mirth freely, even if it was at her own expense.
He liked her, Solas realized. It was a complication he did not desire, but he did.
She offered her trust easily. It was in the way she accepted his presence at her back without a single backwards glance, the way she guarded his own, the way she offered him her hand for study, not a flinch or a sign of hesitation even as his power flickered between them in her palm.
It was in the way she always passed him the first lyrium bottle after a hard battle, swishing the liquid just to see it climb the walls of the vial before placing it in his hand. He accepted the lyrium, still sore, still splattered with blood, but feeling fortified once he drank it and his mana was replenished.
The Templar camp they'd just vacated had supplies which could be useful to the fledgling Inquisition. Varric and Cassandra were already tearing through chests, scrounging for anything useful, and after downing a health potion, Evelyn flipped the lid off a crate as well, and inspected its contents.
"You don't drink lyrium," Solas remarked.
Evelyn shrugged, not looking away from the crate.
"I do, sometimes," she replied. "I just don't much like it." She was silent for a few moments more, poking through the contents of the crate without much enthusiasm. "Two of my brothers are Templars," she added quietly, as if it explained everything. Perhaps it did.
Solas wasn't sure what to say in response. Condolences seemed both appropriate and unnecessarily morbid.
"I might have been a Templar," she continued, and dug out a coin purse from the crate, rattling it to hear the tell-tale clink. "I have four older siblings. My parents had the heir and the spare, and the rest of us were... Well, traditionally the extraneous Trevelyan children end up with the Templars or in the Chantry." She grinned. "I have a dozen cousins in the Chantry. If not a Templar, I likely would have ended up taking vows instead."
Her amusement at the notion seemed genuine, and this, at least, Solas could grasp more easily. Life's unexpected turns could lead to complex ironies. It was better that she could laugh rather than let such things turn her bitter.
"Revered Mother Evelyn," he said ponderously.
"Give me a bit more credit," Evelyn scoffed. "I think I could have made Grand Cleric, at least."
Solas smiled, but despite her joking...
"Do you regret being sent to the Circle?" he asked.
For a second, he wondered if the question crossed a line. Evelyn's hands gripped the edge of the crate.
"It's not like that," she said. "It just wouldn't have been fair otherwise. Like I said, my brothers are Templars. Plenty of people in my extended family are. How hypocritical would it have been to hide me from the Circle while half the Trevelyan clan worked to take children away from their families?"
"No children at all should have to be taken from their families," Solas said.
"No," she agreed softly. "But the point still stood back then." She turned her eyes on him. "And what about you, Solas?"
He regarded her calmly.
"What about me?" he asked.
"What about your family?" she said. "I assume you have a family. You didn't just spring fully formed from the Void, did you?"
"Not fully formed, no," he replied.
She snorted a laugh, her nose scrunching, but she let it go. She released him from questions easily, mindful of his privacy in a way she never was of her own, and they settled into comfortable silence.
Haven celebrated, and Solas packed.
The Breach sealed, there seemed no point to lingering anymore. Things seemed well in hand for now, and if they still had room to go badly, he did not wish to be around to witness it and be delayed even more from his mission.
He looked over his temporary dwellings one more time, making sure he did not forget anything, and then closed the door a final time. No one would notice him slip out of the village and disappear into the night, another apostate, another anonymous elf in the world. He might have made it all the way out of the village without anyone being the wiser, but for Evelyn lingering near the gate, and spotting him.
She took in his backpack and guarded expression, and he could see in the brief flash of disappointment she tried to hide that she knew what he was doing. He dreaded she might try to talk him out of it and try to make him stay. He wouldn't, but it would make things unnecessarily difficult for the both of them. Instead she smiled at him.
"What, too much visibility during the day? The roads not dangerous enough for your liking?" she asked. "You couldn't wait until morning?"
"Elves have excellent vision in the dark," he replied, and matched her smile. "And bandits do generally sleep at night."
"An embarrassing oversight on their part, I'm sure," she laughed. "Missing out on all those destitute traveling apostates they could be robbing."
They regarded each other, dragging out what might have been the last moment of camaraderie they'd ever share. And then she broke it off, and looked over to the burning bonfire, and the revelers around it.
"If you told me you were leaving, I would have had Threnn set aside supplies for you," she said.
"I have everything I need, but I appreciate the thought."
She made a non-committal sound, and looked back at him with a devious grin.
"Just one more thing for the road," she said, and moving so quickly he had no time to react, she kissed his cheek. He blinked at her as she pulled back, feeling his face heat up.
He could have returned the kiss. He could have caught her in his arms and hugged her tightly against his body, buried his face in her hair and held her against him until her body heat sank into his flesh and he memorized her scent. In a distant flicker of thought, gone as quickly as they formed, the possibilities did occur to him. But they were just that, fanciful imaginings, things he felt he had no right to do, acts which would only make the separation more painful in the long run.
So instead he gave her a respectful nod, and said goodbye.
She nodded to him as well, smiling even as she looked regretful, and did him the small mercy of walking away first.
He could have left Haven with an easier heart, the way she released him so kindly, but he never got the opportunity before Corypheus attacked.