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Solas was the last days of summer, when the trees had started to turn golden and fiery red but the heat had still not been chased away by tongues of ice and creeping frost. He was vibrant and muted all at once, passions contained just beneath the surface of a guise that was worn as thin as the knees of his trousers, for those who cared to notice the seemingly inane details of his personality.
It was both impossible to see him and impossible not to notice him. He was the sort of man who repelled attention with a glance, dressed in the colors of early spring, a vague and muddy blur against any backdrop. Even his magic seemed unremarkable and quiet, a chill that crept up unnoticed, coupled with silent magic that worked wonders unseen in the cover of night. As nondescript as he was, bald and seemingly demure, there was a sharpness in his eyes that crept into his voice when he spoke, a passion edged like a blade and wreathed in fire.
There was no mistaking the intelligence he possessed, not if one spoke to him for more than a few moments. His mind was exceptional, the sort that took in information and twisted it into position without ever forcing it to take a shape it was not suited for. Solas saw the world as a gradient of colors, his tongue painting a vibrant mural where others saw only boxes of black and white and sometimes grey.
How anyone could not see his soul bleed from him when he spoke was a mystery beyond fathoming. Every word was measured but pulsed with a life he surely hadn't intended to lend it, betraying how much he truly cared in spite of the way he tried to behave like a world thawing after a long winter. Despite the chill and distance he affected, Solas could no more hide his true self from the world than the sun could stop rising. In knowing Solas, seeing his compassion was inevitable, a matter of course as sure as the laws of nature.
And it was equally inevitable that one would see his sadness, still but deceptively deep, and so clear that one could peer straight to its roots. His namesake evoked images of stately kings, weathered and worn with the weight of the duty they had born all their years, and sometimes Solas' shoulders took the same shape as those apparitions. His sorrows bowed his back and twisted his long fingers into worried knots as he stared without seeing at some distant point, the ice of barren and hopeless winter grasping his heart with icy claws.
She wanted to remove that sadness from inside of him so that they could revel in the quiet moments they so often shared between them, moments when he was wholly himself, steel drained from his eyes and sorrow gone from the slant of his jaw. In those moments, he was as soft as a late summer day's breeze, a puff of breath that barely tousled her hair but stirred something inside of her soul, like the sight of a blazing sunset.
She only wanted to give him the sort of peace she felt when he held her.
And yet every time she drew closer he would seem to pull farther away, dancing just beyond her fingertips. For all his complexities and the gentleness he was capable of, Solas was a paradox of fervent desire and the well of his own depthless regret. It pulled him away from her, into a dark place where she wasn't certain she could follow no matter how badly she ached to.
Sometimes when they were together, when they made love and he pressed into her so deeply that it felt as though they shared one soul, she could feel his urgency. He was slipping away from her by inches every time they touched, a man desperate to steal every kiss he could so that he could preserve those moments in a memory that never seemed to fail or fade. She wanted to anchor him, as surely as the mark upon her hand anchored her to the Fade, to the Inquisition, and to Corypheus, lest he float away on the current of regret that so often threatened to engulf him.
Right now he slumbered against her, nestled against her, face pressed into her neck. Even in sleep he held her, their limbs entwined, at peace as he never was. Her chest swelled as she traced her fingers over the shell of his ear and he stirred to press more fully against her. One day, she thought to herself, curled against him, one day she would bring him peace and they would be truly happy.
But until that day she would watch over him and guard his sleep and cherish every moment together in the hopes that she could alleviate some of his pain. She could not know that she was the shining light that threatened to thaw his heart from its long winter, and that she drew him one step closer to home with every brush of her lips against his.
In this cold, dark world, they had one another, she thought as he shifted in her arms, holding her more closely. Whatever challenges their love faced, it was the one truth she still believed in, even when her faith crumbled to so much dust in the face of history's weight.
Even through impossible darkness, their love would endure, a testament to the hope that burned still in her breast when she looked upon his face.