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Her quarters had been too confining.
After… everything, she found herself needing the open sky above, the ground between her toes, the feel of open air on her skin. What she needed was her clan, but… well.
After everything, her advisors had promised to leave her alone to grieve.
Isrina had opened all the windows, had removed her damned boots, had closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was somewhere else if only for a moment, but it was not enough. She felt the walls crawling on her, but there was nowhere to escape in solitude for the Herald of Andraste, for the Inquisitor, but to her quarters. So she stayed in her shemlen room with its shemlen trappings – what would her Keeper have said, she wondered, of the canopied bed the Champion of Kirkwall herself had recommended? – and waited impatiently for nightfall.
When she’d hoped enough time had passed that Skyhold’s inhabitants would be well enough in bed, she emerged from her quarters and padded down the empty hall, the stone cold beneath her bare feet. Months ago she’d hung Dalish drapery, installed Dalish glass. She’d had this done despite Josephine’s polite protests and Vivienne’s rather more disapproving glances. The fortress was covered in the heraldry of her people. She’d wanted no one to forget where she came from.
The courtyard would be far too public. The garden, then.
She found an area uncovered with stone and sat down in the grass. This, for now, was the closest she could be to her life Before. She almost laughed at the absurdity of her life now – to think, not so long ago she’d been a hunter for her clan…
“Isrina.”
Of course. “They told you.”
“No.” Solas sat beside her, close enough so she could feel his warmth but not quite touching. “It was Cole.”
“I couldn’t let them see me,” she said, and her voice broke, and suddenly everything within her was breaking. “So many already question my ability and I couldn’t even –“
“Vhenan.”
“I couldn’t even save my clan.” She tried to curl up within herself, to rein her grief back in, but Solas closed the small distance that remained between them. Suddenly she could hear his heartbeat, feel his arms around her, his hand in her hair.
“Ir abelas, vhenan.” His voice was quiet in the air, but pressed against his chest she could hear the strength of the sorrow in the words. For a moment she just breathed in the scent of him – the wool of his shirt, a hint of elfroot, what she’d come to learn as the particular scent of Fade-magic.
“I’ve failed before,” she said, having regained some control over her voice. “I’m not the… chosen… of Andraste. I’m still learning how to lead. I’ve made mistakes. But this…” Her grief welled up in her chest, threatening to break her again. “I’ve lost everything. I’d thought of returning to my clan after all this. I have no home. I’ve failed my people.”
“No,” he said fiercely, “you have not.” Her advisors may have said, Skyhold is your home.
No, she thought, Skyhold is the home of the Inquisitor.
“You’ve done nothing but honor your people since the Conclave,” he said. “You’ve brought the world back from the brink of destruction. You’ve helped countless people across Thedas. Your people should be proud of what you’ve achieved—“
“But I couldn’t save them,” she said. “All the power of the damned Inquisition at my will, and I couldn’t save my clan.”
“I know.” He began to stroke her hair, and she felt the tempest of her grief quiet if only for a moment. “You are not to blame for what happened, Isrina. It was the people of Wycome, not the Inquisition, and not you.”
“I’ve lost everything I’ve ever known, Solas.”
“And you carry it with you still.”
You carry clan Lavellan with you. They are coming for us.
Solas let the silence hang between them, as if he knew she could say no more. And then, after a hesitant breath, he began quietly: “Hahren na malana salin.”
She knew what this was. Her heart broke. She did not, under any circumstances, wish to continue the eulogy… but she knew she had to. “Emma ir abelas,” she said.
They finished it together:
“Souver’inan isala hamin
vhenan him dor’felas
in uthenera na revas
vir sulahn’nehn
vir dirthera
vir samahl la numin
vir lath sa’vunin.”
They stayed there in the garden together for a time, and when she woke she was surprised to find herself back in her quarters, in her canopied bed from the Free Marches, Solas at her side, his arm over her in sleep. When she pressed closer to him he did not wake, and she took comfort in his scent and his warmth and his closeness.
The next time you need to mourn, she had said to him, you don’t need to be alone.
She could almost hear his response now – neither do you.