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He did not touch her in public, much. A brush against her flank when he passed her in the yard, despite there being plenty of room for him to walk around her. A suggestive hand on her knee in the tavern when he deigned it not quite beneath him to join in with the drinkers in the raucous hours. He cradled her in his arms, the one night, when she’d fallen asleep against the bar at the Herald’s Rest. Bull had offered to carry her back up the tower, Cole told her later, but Solas had insisted. When she’d woken up the next day, dreams mercifully quiet, he was sitting on the edge of her bed with the wretched tea and a (far less wretched) tray of breakfast.
The months and weeks of the Inquisition went on much like this. Malika befriended a few of the people she travelled with – Cole (who reminded her of Solas), Bull and Sera (who commiserated with her over the nature of dreams) and Dorian who – despite having the least in common with her save Solas himself – was an excellent listener and friend. She and Solas met each other most often in the Fade, where the forest became their refuge of the eve. Sometimes they just sat and spoke with one another. Other times, spurred on by the sizzle of magic between his flesh and the anchor, or perhaps by a look or sly, provocative word, they tumbled together on sheets of softest satin and silk.
Then, months after the first nightmare that had run her into Solas’ arms, the dreams returned. Perhaps it was their trek through the Exalted Plains, where the roads were thick with the smoke borne of death and waste. Even Dorian had commented upon the thinness of the veil there in the Dirthavaren. But they came to her each night, leaving her jerking awake, clutching at Dorian’s hands, or at Cole’s worried brush of her forehead. Her companions’ worry was almost the worst part of it.
Almost.
…
“You’re very good at ignoring my advice.” Not-Sera said, crossing her legs and taking a sip from her cup. The branch she’d perched on was low to the ground to accommodate for her dwarven guest’s height difficulties. Malika scratched the back of her head and squinted up into the creature’s eyes.
“Does Sera know you’re co-opting her body every night to threaten her friends?” Cadash asked. Not-Sera threw her head back and laughed, tea spilling out of the cup and glittering in the air before it pulled itself back into the ceramic container.
“I’m not co-opting her body, silly,” she answered, taking on Sera’s vocal inflection. Were it not for the dark echo to the words, Malika might have believed it was the elf and not some spirit speaking, “just a teensy corner of her mind. And you may call me Andruil, or ‘my lady goddess’, or ‘Spare us the moment we become Your prey!’” She said, lifting her hands up in some mockery of a beast, and giggling. Her teacup remained hovering in the air, “My followers loved to repeat that last one. They’re all gone now, scattered to the wind. The Dalish are so much less vicious in their hunts. I miss the days where the blood they spilt was not just that of animals.”
“Right…” Malika said. She looked around for something familiar to focus on. She had woken up to ‘Andruil’ for a number of nights now, but she could wish herself away if she tried hard enough.
“Aw, don’t be shy,” Andruil said, and climbed down from her perch to grab at Malika’s arm. Her nails were sharp and long and dug into the flesh, breaking Malika’s concentration with the touch of pain, “Come let’s walk and talk, Malika. I know somewhere we can rest and get to know one another.”
The Fade shifted and groaned around them, golden stairs slotting into place before them and slabs of stone and marble smashing into one another with a soundless grind as the architectural façade of a grand building built itself before them. From the shadows around it sprung curling vines and other sweet-smelling plants and flowers all reaching up to the blue sky and the clouds that Andruil conjured in the dream around them. The… whatever she was, glided up the stairs, bringing Malika along with her as the sounds of splashes and laughter filtered through the interior space.
There, in the centre-back of a great gleaming pool lined with what looked like mother of pearl, lounged a tall (bigger than human, Avvar-sized but pointy-eared) matronly woman with long white curls and almost horn-like protrusions atop her crown. Around her, lithe elvhen tended to her, carrying drinks and salves and washing her hair. Thin, gauzy curtains fluttered in a non-existent breeze that carried the smells of rain and petrichor richly through the space.
“Where are we?” Malika asked, and looked down at herself. Her sleep clothes had been transformed into one of the thin sheath dresses worn by the elves scuttling around the large woman in the pool. Andruil’s form shimmered and wavered, and for a moment Sera’s features faded to reveal piled blonde curls and an angular jaw and eyes. But then it flickered again, and Sera stood before her again, in a similar dress to Malika’s.
“Why, Mythal’s famous golden bathhouse, of course. We all came her often as we could wheedle a favour out of the All-Mother. For Justice, she never was very kind to those who aided her. Oh look,” Andruil said, and pointed at an elf who was sitting with his feet on the steps in the pool, “It’s your favourite little wolf.”
Malika stared at the elf as he reached forward, thoroughly engaged with his work of dutifully braiding the All-mother’s hair. The shape of his hands and his shoulders beneath the long, dark braids atop his head was all too familiar.
“Solas?”
“That is what she called him, before he got too big for his breeches. Pride – can’t do anything with it, can’t do anything without it.” Andruil said with a wave of her hand. She breezed forward into the water, skirts billowing out as she waded deeper. Malika walked around instead, hesitant to follow this madman even as she wanted to get closer to the vision of her lover and understand what Andruil had done to him.
As she approached him, she noticed the tattoos swirling across his brow, cheeks, and chin. Like a leafless tree, they framed his eyes in an unsettling way. He barely blinked, so absorbed in his task was he. She tried to go up to him and grab his attention, but Andruil reappeared in her path to stop her.
“Pish, you’re supposed to be spending time with me. Not the Dread Wolf. Just sit, Malika.”
A brisk wind pushed her into the pool, toppling her over so that she splashed into the water unsteady. Andruil laughed with Sera’s voice, high and nasally and echoing in the open space as Malika huffed and glared at her.
“Why are you taunting me? Does it bring you some satisfaction?!” Malika shouted. Andruil slid into the water beside Malika and tilted back her head to rest it on the edge of the pool.
“It does, little child of the Stone. Your people were always so very blind. I missed the thrill of chasing you, but your people usually can’t reach here in the Fade, and that’s about as far as I can go. But I don’t mean to harm you, little one. My warnings are genuine. He will only betray you – it is all he is able to do.”
“I know he lies to me,” Malika grumbled, and seated herself in the water, staring across Andruil at Solas, who did not so much as look her way, “I know he had something to do with Corypheus, and the orb… It belongs to him. But he’s chosen to help us, me, with the Inquisition. I… trust him enough to do that.” She finished. Andruil rolled Sera’s eyes, and with a gesture called a decorated plate of finger foods into existence on the lip of the pool behind them.
“I’m not talking about the magister, you daft dwarf,” she said derisively, “I’m talking about real betrayal. Fen’harel does not play games. He created the world as it is now, and he will tear it down if you let him. You must strike at him whilst he is still weak. Before he finds her, his All-mother, and she helps him regain what he has lost.”
“And why should I believe you?” Malika asked, frowning at the accusations.
“Because I was betrayed, as I and my father and siblings betrayed Mythal. I might consider myself an expert on the subject, but your lover wrote the book.” She picked through the slices of a fruit Malika had never seen and tossed one into her mouth, chewing happily. Her form wavered again and for a moment, Malika saw her in armour of black and swirling red, bow and quiver at her back, and splatters of tainted blood across her cheeks. And then she was Sera again, and Malika scooted back. She did not partake of the food.
“So what do you suggest I do then, ‘Spare us the moment we become Your prey’?” She asked. Part of her hoped for a reasonable answer – part of her just wanted this dream to end so she could move on to more pleasant ones where elven deities didn’t see fit to intrude.
“Kill him of course,” she laughed, “You’re close enough. He won’t die, not in the traditional sense. But when his essence gets back here I can rip into it and tear it to so many pieces he might feel a modicum of the pain he caused us all.” She said, her teeth elongating in her mouth as the room shook and flashed with dark and reddened light. Malika held on to the golden edge of the bath. Dream-Solas didn’t even flinch.
“That sounds like a great idea, Andruil. I’ll um- I’ll think on that and get back to you. In a few months. Or years. So, no need to check up for a while.” She squeaked. Andruil calmed.
“Right, right. I’ll be watching. You and dearest Sera get up to the funnest adventures together,” she said playfully, patting Malika’s knee and sipping at a glass that appeared in her hand, “Seems our time is up. The wolf is calling you back to him again. Safe travels, da’len.”
…
When she woke in the woods again, Solas was waiting for her. He wore the armour from the first night and had conjured the beginnings of a library around him, shelves modelled after the simple ones in the halls of Skyhold. He smiled back at her when she appeared in the widening grove and then frowned, staring at her clothes. The translucent white dress of Mythal’s bathhouse remained, though not soaked through as it had been in the pool.
“Where did you find that?” He asked, snapping shut his book and walking towards her. His face was carefully neutral, the frown one of projected confusion. She wondered, for a moment, how much of that expression was real.
“In a bathhouse. A curious one. I saw you there, you know?” She answered, lifting the edges of the skirt to examine it in this new space in the Fade, “But you were too busy with some other woman to really pay me any attention.”
“Another woman? And who might that have been?” He asked, stepping close enough to finger the strap of the dress, one arm still curled behind his back. She stood firm.
“I’m not sure,” she said, “Myth-something or the other.”
Solas paused in where he was tugging at the dress, dropping the strap and smoothing a hand over her shoulder. His expression did not waver outwardly, but the edges of the grove flickered.
“It seems you’ve a knack for running into my memories as well as your own now. Mythal is considered one of the Dalish gods, and yes, I did once worship her. She does not speak to the People anymore. I have not heard her in years.”
“How many years?” Malika asked him suspiciously.
“Many. We shall leave it at that.”
“Fine, be cryptic.” She said, pushing his hand from her shoulder and walking around him to the bookcase. She stared at all the books she couldn’t read with a huff, willing the dress to return to her nightclothes. They melted into the familiar and more modest layered cotton dress she most often wore to sleep.
Andruil, Mythal, Solas as a servant in some bathhouse? Her head hurt. How did her head hurt in a dream?
“Vhenan-” Solas sighed, turning towards her.
“Yes, yes. The less I know, the better, right? But somehow I just keep learning more. You’re not even real, are you Solas?” She asked turning and grasping his hands, “You’re just some spirit from the Fade sent to drive me crazy.”
Solas gave her a dour look.
“I was not sent to drive you crazy. At least, I do not do so intentionally. You and I are caught up in a complicated web. My actions have… I am sorry that I have brought you such distress, emma lath.”
Malika sighed and squeezed the bridge of her nose.
“I am just frustrated. In an easier world… In an easier world, you would have caught me smuggling trinkets through an alienage, and we’d have split the take and travelled the Marches and you could have been the first elf in the Carta.” She said. Solas gave her a smile.
“We might still.”
“You really think so?”
“We won’t, but we might.”
“Right. I’m too important to all those Andrastians out there, and you’re too… you – mythical and spirit-y. And I fell for you anyhow. How is it, that even when it comes to love I pick the stupidest possible option?” She asked. He chuckled and leaned down to press a soft kiss to her cheek.
“It is a dangerous trait that we both share. Of all the woman who might catch my eye after so long a time alone, it’s the one who best has the power to undo me.”
She tugged at his collar to pull him down to kiss her and he went gladly. Despite all of this frustration and the dreams and the elven spirits that saw her brain as their own personal playground, Malika thought it was good that she was at least held at night – both in her bed and in her dreams. The pair both slumped to the forest floor, with Malika half-sitting on his waist as she tugged futilely at his leather doublet. He took her smaller hands in his own and helped her undo each of the gleaming buckles, before deftly untying the sashes holding her gown together as well.
“You’re close enough.” Andruil whispered in her ear, but Malika just kissed her lover harder and moved his hands to her bared hips and waist. Screw all the elven gods, every last one of them. She had no real reason to care one whit for what they wanted out of her. But…
“Solas,” she said, out of breath and clinging to his neck, “Who is Fen’harel?”
His hands stilled at her generous thighs and trembled just ever so slightly.
“A ghostly beast,” he whispered, teeth grazing the shell of her ear, “But one you needn’t fear.”
“I’m not afraid of wolves.” She said, and with the hand laden with the anchor she pushed him down and pulled her dress up over her head. From the glowing green furrows that warped her pretty fingers, the waters of the Fade held him down, looking up at her, some ancient nameless power stirring behind his eyes.