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Not only was he not searching for Inana as he prowled restlessly through the Fade, Solas was trying hard to avoid her. Her dreams called to him, but not because she called to him - the reverse, in fact. They drew his notice precisely because she had used all her limited skill as a novice Dreamer to ward them, sending the message as forcefully as she was able that she wanted nothing to do with him or his plans for her. There were few who knew such wards now, and so they couldn’t help plucking at the edge of his consciousness, even if they were more of a symbolic barrier than a real one.
Inana knew it, too, he was certain, just as she knew he could follow her trail through the eluvian and the vellalviraan1 beyond should he choose. Had their bond not told him how bitterly unhappy she was, he might have been inclined to feel insulted by the force she thought she needed to employ in making it clear he wasn’t welcome in her life or her dreams. Running off with his Anchor still devouring her body had, he thought, said everything that needed to be said. But he knew her better than that - if she warded her dreams, it was to prevent herself from hoping he might find her there as much as it was to tell him that he shouldn’t.
He was already resolutely turning away from the beacon of her dreams when he caught the thread of her scent through the Fade, so faint that he might not have noticed had he been in the form of a man and not a wolf.
Strange.
He glanced back over his shoulder and saw that her cobbled-together bastion of dreams was still there. Could she keep it intact without actually inhabiting it? If so, she was far more advanced than he had given her credit for - far more advanced than was possible after the few lessons he had managed to find time for. The thought gave him pause. Was someone else teaching her? A spirit? Benign or otherwise? Normally he would trust Inana to know the difference, but she was distraught.
And anyway, the thought came unbidden, could he allow her to go wandering the Fade as she pleased, with no supervision, clever and insightful as she was?
And anyway, this thought was quieter, did he not hunger for a reason to see her?
He turned and followed the scent.
It remained faint for a long time - longer than he would have expected - and pulled him deep within the Fade before he began to make his way back to the shallow realms inhabited by the dreaming minds of the world he had broken. As her scent grew in strength, he began to notice differences between it and the one he was accustomed to. There was a lightness - an innocence, almost - that said the emotions of its owner hadn’t been burnt by the uncontrolled arrogance of the man she loved. Was this some other version of Inana? Perhaps one who had never had the misfortune of meeting him? The Fade was vast and stranger than anyone knew - perhaps his longing might lead him to find a version of Inana it was safe for him to approach.
He knew he shouldn’t risk it, but he had come so far. He was curious. It was a chance to observe an oddity of the Fade. It had nothing to do with the loneliness that froze the breath in his lungs and made his legs feel weak.
He stepped into her dream, closing four of his six eyes as he did so, and restricted himself to a less alarming size.
It was immediately clear he had made a mistake.
“Solas.” Her voice echoed through the dream, fierce and determined, even before her figure stepped out of some pocket of nowhere and became visible. “What are you doing? Why are you trying to hide from me? And should you really be wandering around the Fade drunk?”
“I’m not drunk,” he replied automatically. “But…you are,” he added as it occurred to him. Or - she wasn’t precisely drunk, he supposed. He would have noticed that level of intoxication immediately. She was a bit tipsy, however - just enough to warp her dreams slightly.
“No more than - ” she began defensively, and then broke off, peering closely at him. “No…you - you really aren’t - ” She backed up a pace, more from surprise than fear, he hoped. “You aren’t my Solas.”
He hesitated, but then ducked his head in acknowledgment. “No, I suppose I’m not,” he said, though there was a bond between them, however hazy and indistinct. It was easily overwhelmed by the one he shared with his Inana, even at all this distance, but it was present.
It was hard to say if the Inana standing before him recognized it, or if she merely heard the sadness in his voice and responded to it. She sank her hands into the thick fur on his neck and then sank to her knees before him, as well. Now he was a little taller than she was, and that wasn’t a position whose symbolism he liked, and so he lay down, resting his head in her lap with a sigh. Then, when that wasn’t enough, he pressed his nose to her waist and breathed in her sweet scent. “Why were you hiding from me?” she asked.
He huffed a laugh against the vague facsimile of clothing she wore. “I hoped you wouldn’t know me.”
“I always know you,” she reminded him.
“Not if we hadn’t met,” he countered. “Not if you had never entered into a bond with me.”
“And what made you think that was this reality?” she asked, carding her fingers through his fur.
“Nothing,” he admitted in a growl. “I had no real reason, truthfully - I simply missed you.” In retrospect, his specious reasoning was appallingly obvious.
“Where am I in your world?”
“Not speaking to me,” he sighed. “For good reason,” he added grudgingly.
She tweaked one of his ears disapprovingly. “Did I find out all your secrets?”
“Most of them, but they, in isolation, were not what drove you away,” he admitted.
She turned his answer over silently for a moment, and he could sense the very edge of the hope that began to squeeze her chest. “All right, then why not tell me now?” she asked.
“Because I only know how you reacted to one presentation in a single set of circumstances,” he replied. “I’ve made my mistakes already - I would not force them on someone who may yet do better.”
The gaze she rested on him was palpably unimpressed - he could feel it without even meeting her eyes. “You don’t think you’re likely to make the same mistakes in my timeline?” she asked flatly.
“I never said that. I deserve the chance regardless,” he said.
“ Do you?” She was supremely skeptical, but went on before he could ready himself for a more drawn-out argument on the subject. “Do you know, then, that I worked out you were Elvhen some time ago?”
“Since I don’t know precisely when we’re speaking, no,” he replied. “But I know you discovered it some time before I told you.”
“Well, that ‘some time’ is a few weeks ago, now,” she told him. “Am I right in believing that if I tell you - my version of you - you’ll…take it poorly?”
He briefly considered telling her that it depended on her definition of “poorly,” but it would have been a lie. “Yes,” he said.
“Of course,” she murmured, still unimpressed, but she continued raking her fingers through his fur and he couldn’t help relaxing into the sensation. In his own world, he fought doggedly against his longing for her, but it appeared he was no longer in his own world. There was nothing to be lost by basking in her affection in this other here and now. “All right, then tell me this: in the Dirthavaren, in Ghilan’nain’s tomb, why did my lack of discomfort with Fen’Harel - or Fen’Elvhenes - inspire lust of all things?” Solas froze. “And just how many wolves were roaming Arlathan?”
She had never brought it up - his Inana had never brought it up. He had thought she hadn’t noticed, or had forgotten. She had never brought it up to him, he realized - if this was his own past, perhaps she had brought it up, just with a safer version of him, one with whom she could be honest without fear.
But if that were true, he hadn’t told her anything - or hadn’t told her anything of note. His first impulse was to convince her that she had misinterpreted his feelings, but she hadn’t and he found he didn’t want to lead her to doubt her own perceptions. It occurred to him only after that he wasn’t certain he could make her doubt herself - modesty wasn’t given to idle fancies, and she was suspicious of him - but he was pleased he had decided against it before realizing the probable futility of the effort.
After another moment of reflection, he began with the second question. It was safer than finding himself drawn into speaking of Fen’Harel or Fen’Elvhenes. “Wolves performed a function - more than one - in Elvhenan,” he told her. “The titles were possessed by people who held ceremonial or practical roles that…” He trailed off with a sigh. “I do not think I can explain without a comprehensive history lesson.”
“We have all night,” she pointed out.
“This is not knowledge that can benefit you now,” he retorted.
“So Fen’Harel and Fen’Elvhenes were different people who inhabited different roles?” she asked.
That was a question he certainly needed to side-step. “Fen’Harel was less a role than a curse aimed at someone who protested certain aspects of our society with too much force. He was…unique in that regard.”
His attempt at distraction was successful, and his heart ached as he watched her turn over the implications of what he had said. Her lips parted, begging to be kissed, as questions and conclusions trembled there, but he was still in the form of a wolf and so it was easier to resist the temptation. Many heartbeats passed as he watched her with naked longing and she sorted through her thoughts. “So is this one more thing the Dalish just…got wrong? Our stories say that Fen’Harel was one of the gods.”
“That is not a misunderstanding that can be blamed on the Dalish,” he admitted. “Fen’Harel had too much power. To claim he wasn’t a god would have called into question whether the rest of them were gods. Rather than risk such a consequence, the members of the pantheon instead insisted he, too, was a god, despite his protests to the contrary.”
He watched a new understanding dawn across her features. “Most of the altars where we leave offerings to Fen’Harel…they weren’t for him, were they?”
“They were not built with Fen’Harel in mind, no,” he allowed, which was both true and wholly misleading.
Her attention shifted back to her original question: “You knew this Wolf of the People,” she said.
“I knew many of the various wolves,” he deflected, “both before and after they took on those titles.”
She gave him a look. “And how many of them did you desperately lust after?”
“I was younger then,” he said, which had the benefit of being literally true, and also true in its implications.
“How many of them do you still lust after?” she persisted. “Were you in love?”
That question brought him up short. “Perhaps,” he snorted, remembering his many centuries of smug self-satisfaction, “though any such emotion would make me a fool.” She was still pursuing the wrong trail, but it was unnerving how quickly she fitted details he let fall into a coherent narrative. It was even more unnerving how closely it paralleled the truth, even if key aspects were wrong or missing.
Her hand, which had continued moving absently across his head and neck, stilled.
“That’s not what I meant,” he grumbled as it occurred to him how his words might be misinterpreted. “Reprehensible as my pursuit of you is, not admiring you is an impossibility. The feelings weren’t the problem - my choice of recipient was the problem.”
“Did Fen’Elvhenes - or one of the people who held that title - become Fen’Harel?” she asked.
He felt his ears flatten against his skull as she cut far too near the truth, and he found himself briefly overcome by a potent blend of regret, impotent rage, and frustration with the inadequacies of Dalish lore. “That was not the betrayal,” he told her, too agitated to think through his words and their implications fully. “The betrayal came long before that, when I, in my pride, believed mere arguments supported by bonds of affection were enough to purify corrupted hearts and spirits.”
Solas only realized how many additional questions he might have raised after it was too late to call the words back, but Inana didn’t seem immediately inclined to pursue any of them. Instead her hands smoothed the fur on his head, and then down his back, until her arms were wrapped around him and her cheek rested against one of his lowered ears.
“You must have loved him a great deal,” she said quietly.
Solas could only heave a sigh, though he wasn’t certain whether it was born more of relief or frustration. “If I - that is, to the extent I might have - it’s no credit to me, ma vhenan. ” He had always thought too highly of himself, and he hated to think she was writing a romantic tragedy out of his prideful self-regard. He just couldn’t think of a way to set her right without revealing far too much of the truth.
She was silent as her arms tightened around him slowly, and he tried to decipher the emotions that filtered through their attenuated bond. “In your own time, I’m angry with you. Will you look on me this bitterly in a few centuries?”
He sat up abruptly, pulling himself from her grasp, and found himself shifting back into the form of a man so he could lean forward and take her beautiful, beloved face in his hands, forcing her to look at him. “No, Inana. No, ma vhenan, arasasha, ma sal’shiral. 2 I need you to believe me when I tell you this is not the same.” His thumbs caressed her cheekbones as his hands cradled her jaw, and the knowledge that, in his own world, he had driven her away crashed over him with as much force as it had the day he returned to his stronghold to find her missing. His grip on her tightened, and his eyes stung.
Perhaps she felt his sincerity through the pale shadow of their bond, or saw the tears standing in his eyes, because she nodded slowly. “I do trust you - I trust you that much, at least, even knowing you’ll make me angry enough to leave at some point.”
“Perhaps in your world, I’ll make better choices,” he offered, his voice more strained than he would have preferred, but he hated knowing it wasn’t true and that he wouldn’t.
“You could tell me enough to let me help you make better choices,” she urged.
He tried to smile at her, though judging by her expression it came out sickly at best. “I wish you could, vhenan. You’ll always have my gratitude for trying.”
“Felasil,3 ” she muttered, and then sighed with palpable resignation. “You know the night isn’t getting any longer. Is there some reason you haven’t kissed me yet?”
He thought of his own version of this woman, and wondered if returning to a time and place in which she wasn’t furious with and disappointed in him, and finding comfort there, counted as a betrayal.
Inana placed a hand on his arm and leaned into his touch. “I’m still me, no matter where and when I am,” she said, picking up on what made him hesitate. “And I will always want you to be happy.”
His tears spilled over, and he did lean forward to brush a kiss against her lips, but then he pulled her to him, enfolding her in his embrace while his dream-tears ran down his face but ceased to be sometime before they could wet her hair. Inana’s arms wrapped around his waist beneath the generic robe his pelt had become. He could feel the warmth of her skin through the thin barrier of his shirt as clearly as if she were really there - a combination of the power of the Fade and of treasured memories to shape it. She pressed her face to his neck and placed a series of soft kisses against his throat. Her lips made him shiver as she spoke without attempting to put any distance between them, even for the purpose of examining his expression: “Solas, let someone touch you. Just - an arm around your shoulders, or a slap on the back - something. Sathan, ma’lath.4 You can’t be this lonely and also make good choices.”
Was there any evidence he made good choices when he wasn’t lonely? He held her tighter. The idea that the touch of another might somehow overwrite hers was absurd, he knew, and yet he couldn’t dismiss it entirely. And that concern sidestepped that fact that he wasn’t certain anyone remained whom he dared allow close enough for casual touch.
Still, it struck him that her most ardent plea had nothing to do with her own satisfaction or desires, but was entirely for his sake.
He swallowed. “I’ll…try to be less reticent about seeking out the spirits with whom I’m acquainted for purely social reasons,” he promised after a moment of searching for something he could offer her.
“Ma serannas, vhenan,” she replied with far too much sincere gratitude, and he wondered how he had ever let her go, and how he was supposed to ever do it again.
1. Crossroads return to text
2. My heart, my only joy, my life return to text
3. Idiot return to text
4. Please, my love return to text