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He knew returning was foolish, to these memories, or even to the idea of them. However, he reasoned that with so much behind him, and so very much looming ahead of him, the comfort of nostalgia may just have been the soothing he needed after a month of slowed progress and frustrations. He let his stride return to a solid gait once he reached the practice yard, the reassuring groan of Haven’s reinforced doors brought a small smile to his lips. The trees moved softly in gentle winds, the soundless snow comforting after so long in the wet rot of overgrown swamp and decay. It felt clean, as only the rose veiled hindsight can. He traced old memories of steps, flickers of the figures he knew at the corners of his vision. He glanced at his old territory, his old cabin. He sensed her memory, the filtered ambiance of her tentative interest making him shiver. He tried not to think of what it culminated in, searching instead for the lost smiles and yearning they each held for one another, the one he tried to smother in himself and the one she tended like a garden. He reached out to the low stone wall, unmarked by the explosions, blood and red lyrium that would surely stain it in the corporeal realm. So distracted by reminiscence, he did not realize one of her figures was more solid than a memory should be, until she spoke.
"I expected you would come eventually."
Fen'Harel did not startle, exactly, but he stopped at the sound.
“Val'wen...”
"I did not search for you here,” Whether she referred to the fade in general or the waking world’s ruins of Haven, he could not quite tell. “I simply... dream here. And Skyhold. It's easier than letting my dreams wander."
"I am relieved." He admitted to no hurt, no concern, but it welled up nonetheless.
"I knew I would not find you in the waking world, but I searched anyway. I still search."
"You should not." He stated this more firmly than he felt, his grip on the wall tightening.
"What was so heavy a task you could not ask for my help? Even if I couldn't have helped, I would have listened."
"I cannot tell you. Could not have."
"I think it's a matter of will rather than ability. You do not want me in your life any more-"
"No! Call me a traitor, call me anything but do not doubt what we had or how I felt." That is the one thing he could not deny, not even to himself. He wanted to reach out, readily closing the distance, but she turned away to started towards her favored hidden path to the chantry. His feet moved to follow her, but he never seemed to reach close enough to touch her.
"Had. Felt. Not have. Not feel." He sensed rather than witnessed her walls rising cold for a moment. The tension in her shoulders slipped away, the landscape of her face barren once more when she glanced at him. Guilt gnaws at him, his eyes cast away from more of his crimes.
"I should have rebuffed you, I can only ask forgiveness. None have been your like, nor will ever. I tried to tell you it would be kinder if we didn't indulge ourselves."
"No."
Fen’Harel did not understand, but did not say as much.
"I came to the conclave for my clan. I led the efforts here at Haven for no one else could, or would. Corypheus's threat filled the gaps in my determination with his assault. All through this you were there. You kept me from losing myself to a cause I barely believed in, you thrilled me, challenged me and engaged me, and it was... I was so happy. To spite all the suffering around us, you made me happy. The inquisition would have failed if I did not have respite. I suppose I could have found it elsewhere, but that is difficult to imagine now." Grateful she kept her eyes on the green misted horizon beyond the frostbacks, Fen’Harel would have poorly held the sight if she turned to him.
"My actions cost innocent lives here. Worse yet, I lost my clan. Then you."
"I-"
"You ended it to make your departure easier, don't pretend. I lost you then, but you did not lose me." There was no heat in her voice. Her wooden tone reminded him so much of tranquility he shuddered. "With Corypheus sealed, all his rifts closed and the elvhen sphere broken, most all of our numbers filtered away. I am alone here now." Haven flickered to Skyhold and back, battlements seeping gaps around the stone path away from the snow laden chantry yards
"Alone! You had an army, a spy network, endless followers, close comrades!"
"Neither soldiers nor spies chat with their Inquisitor to cheer her up. I was placed upon a pedestal. I will remain or be knocked off it, but they do not want me to step down to be their equal, not when they could push me off it instead."
"Such mistrust is new in you... But those you called friends, surely-"
"Gone. Scattered to the winds. Some by my orders, but the rest... they have their own lives. I am glad for them."
"And your plans? What of re-taking the dales, the Emerald Graves?"
"Dreams. Sweet, idle things that I will miss." She smiled at herself. It was a small and bitter thing, near hollow. His stomach twisted.
"Orlais is still in stasis, my doing I know, but not for long. I do more for The People who make their way to Skyhold than to needle the three fools of Halamshiral. Leliana's influence makes sure I sit comfortably in Skyhold's throne, but little else. There is nothing else, just as there is nothing here." He heard her voice grow thick, the shudder in her breath.
"Why are you telling me this if you despise me so? If this is how you turn the blade of our parting to me-"
"I am not capable of hating you. I could have, if your affection had been a lie. I have a feeling it was the only truth you told."
"Then, why? Why open up to me again? Here, of all places?"
"Because I am lonely. Because I miss you," Her voice wavered harder, and instinctively he lurched to hold her and soothe the harm he inflicted. He is stopped short, to spite his efforts. “Even after all these months of silence, I still love you."
"Please, don't do this... You don't know, you can't know..."
"As ever, you deem yourself the judge of us alone. You never asked me... you never asked me what I wanted of us, towards the end. You loved me but could not trust my love of you, that much is clear." She turned to look at him then, the ghost of Ghilan'nain's vallaslin iridescent on her skin."I will call off the search, if that is what you truly want."
It was not, but he could not speak. For the second time, he witnessed the light in her eyes gutter. Haven sprouted up and over them, and she is once again framed by cascading water of Crestwood's gully as the hope in her dies again. He buckled, weak as he had been in their first shared dreams and on her balcony. Instead of finding her lips with his own; however, his hand found purchase on the wall of the cave.Fen’Harel could not avert his eyes. His breath, however much he may not need it in the fade, shuddered. He could not turn away, deserved no right to.
"You did not free me when you took the lie from my face."
His throat closed, beyond speech.
"If you see me again and I bear a vallaslin once more, do not be shocked. When I do not see it in the mirror, all I see is this,” her fingers spread, the gully sharpened into focus, the shadows devoured the light. "and I see you, turning away... it’s too much." Her voice crumbled then, "I will call off the search and I will replace my blood writing. I will free myself of you and you of me, if you wish it." Hoarse, her voice barely rose over the echoing fade winds and rushing water. He should have lied to her.
"You deserve better, what time we had I selfishly indulged but I... You are no one's slave-"
"With it gone, you shackled me to your memory. I never could have forgotten you, with or without it, but with it I... I might feel myself again. I could face The People as they are now, not how they were." She covered her face then, trying to steady herself. "I cannot bear this halfway existence, not without answers, you, or a face the clans can see and respect... there is nothing left in me to persevere... Tell me the truth, tell me you never loved me, tell me to stop searching... one or all." She wept, for the first time in months it seemed. He let out a strangled sound, cursing himself once more. "If I deserve better, I deserve answers, real closure... Even if all that's left are the points of my ears-"
"You are so much more than that! You are more than a race lost in poor translation, lost in lies! You showed wisdom, mercy tempered with justice! You have the power and the vision to make so much of the world..."
"Then stop deflecting and give me an answer." The iron, he had thought corroded from her entirely, braced her enough for her tears to slow.
"Do not ask this of me!" He strode to her, but the distance grew under her influence, leaving him just as far from her as when he started towards her. "Please, vhenan!" The word stilled her like a spell broken, her figure dimming as she gradually forced herself awake.
“This is not kindness, Solas, if even that is your name. None of this has been kindness, not from the moment you left me in Crestwood. I cannot stop loving you, I think I will carry that until I die. I do not need you, now that my trials are over. In truth, I wonder if I needed you at all.”
“Val'wen, do not leave like this,” he choked on the words he wants to keep her with, to treasure her with again. He makes ground towards her but it is a fight of their wills.”Ir abelas, abelas, I could not burden you, you of all, my heart-”
“You left me there for yourself, and now I leave you here for myself. Goodbye, vhenan. Do as you will and forget me, I will seek you no longer.” He felt her hold on the fade slip enough that he could finally reach her, but as his arms closed around her, and even as her head tucked into the fur draping his shoulder and she returned the embrace, her consciousness and her figure trickled away. Left with empty arms, Fen’Harel saw nothing, even as the green mists of the fade devoured stone, water and starlight alike. He awoke in the abandoned mining complex more tired than when he had laid down to rest. He covered his face from the soft glow of the wards placed around himself, and from the night shadows beckoning just beyond them. He is alone.
Leagues away in the walls he had led her to, Val'wen Lavellan opened her eyes to starlight and a warm bed. She rose, watching the embers of the fire with her covers still wrapped around herself. She stirred the fire to a roar and opened the windows to clear the stale air. She might have gone back to sleep, or even down to the Mage’s tower, where she might have found some distraction. Instead she penned a letter to Divine Victoria, the absent Lady Josephine Montilyet, and to her unwillingly vacationing Commander Cullen Rutherford. The Sun would rise, her followers would bustle, and that day she would begin to work on the last mural in the rotunda, painting over the sketch Solas had left behind with her own design.