Chapter Text
i.
The first time their paths cross is on the docks of Llomerryn.
He’s a Maester, and she’s – well, she’s Ellana, backwater island raised, her father’s worn staff held between palms too soft for battle, and seeing the world through eyes too wide to hide her ignorance of it. She’s never seen a town so big, nor so many people in the same place at once, but the one who captures her gaze is him, holding her attention as he steps smoothly through the crowd of onlookers who have gathered to watch Maester Solas greet the daughter of High Summoner Lavellan.
He bows – the formal greeting made lovely by the languid, familiar movements, and his slender hands, cupped just below his ribs, a perfect execution. A clever smile lies curled at the corner of his mouth, a thing of unexpected kindness that echoes in dawn-grey eyes, and she feels her breath catch.
“Summoner Ellana,” he says, inclining his head, a less formal greeting, but his tongue wraps around her name like a prayer.
“Maester Solas,” she manages without a stutter, and something leaps within her when his eyes curve in response.
He asks her about their voyage, and listens attentively when she speaks of what they’ve encountered. And she grows bolder under his gaze, speaking more freely than she should, but delighting in the soft chuckle that escapes him when she remarks on a particularly obnoxious deck hand on their last ship, who’d given her a terrible impression of Orlesians.
“I would like to assure you the general population of Orlais have far better manners,” Solas explains. Then, dropping his voice, “As there is a crowd, I fear I must,” he adds, good humour winking in his eyes, and Ellana has to concentrate so as not to burst out laughing, surprised to find that kind of levity from a Maester.
Then he offers his solemn blessings on her pilgrimage, a courtesy expected of his position, but she feels it in her bones, every word like a promise – “I would assist you,” he says, eyes holding hers. “In any way that I can.”
She walks from the docks with a blush rising in her cheeks and a smile she can’t quite stifle, and feeling the furious flutter of her heart like a bird’s wings behind the cage of her ribs.
ii.
When they meet next it’s at the heels of a disastrous operation, a fire stoked by the hubris of mankind, until all that’s left of their conviction is ashes, and more broken bodies than she’s seen in her whole life.
He finds her in one of the tents, her back bent a little further from new burdens, and her eyes a little less wide.
“You look tired,” he remarks, when they are given a moment alone, although Bull lingers in her periphery, ever wary. The tip of his broadsword shoved in the sand, he has his lone eye on the horizon, as though Sin might arise from the sea once again, although the beach is littered with bodies and there is nothing left to destroy but the skeletal remains of whatever machina is still standing.
“It’s the sending,” Ellana says, and resists the urge to rub at her eyes. “I always feel tired, and this was a long one.”
She doesn’t know what she expects – words of wisdom, perhaps. Not a promise that it will get easier, it never does, and he is a Summoner too, and knows that better than anyone.
But she doesn’t expect him to take a seat beside her, close enough for her to touch, but before she can sputter her surprise, he simply leans back against the tent-post, as though he has nowhere else to be. As though he’s not a Maester, and he has time to comfort a single, exhausted Summoner, when there are others in more need of his attention.
“Rest, if you wish,” Solas says, the offer clear. And for one staggering moment she’s too stunned to respond.
Then – hesitantly, because he is still a Maester, and she is still just Ellana – she leans her weight against him. And he’s warm – warmer than her, fingers white-knuckled from gripping her staff and her skin flushed cold from the sea spray and the sinking temperature as evening crawls across the sky. And after hours of dancing, the sand between her toes and her heart in her throat, his solid weight is reminder that he’s still alive, and that he won’t drift away at her touch, like all the souls she’s guided on their final journey today.
Sleep claims her before she’s had the chance to properly consider the sheer and utter impropriety of her actions. And it’s probably for the best that she doesn’t catch the murmurs rising around them, and the curiosity sparked by the sight of them where they sit; two people so different, finding solace in each other amidst the ruins of Sin’s destruction.
iii.
They part ways at the Redcliffe temple, and weeks go by before they see each other again.
Their journey across the Hinterlands is uneventful, but after the events that transpired on the Storm Coast, she’s glad of the routine in each day spent on the road, waking at the first blush of sunrise and walking until her feet ache, and retiring by the fire to Varric’s stories. She listens to Cassandra’s prayers in the morning, and Blackwall and Sera’s banter, volleyed back and forth with an ease that leaves a pang in her chest, and a desire for someone to talk to with the same familiarity, if not the same amount of lewd remarks.
She thinks about him, sometimes – catches herself doing it more than she should, attempting to recreate the soothing lilt of his voice from where it’s tucked away in her memories. And she wonders what he’s doing, and if he catches himself thinking about her, at odd moments. But she’s quick to shake off the thought that she’d leave a lasting impression on someone like him, and that he’d spare her any thought beyond hope for her well-being.
She reminds herself of this until she believes it. But then, just beyond the outskirts of the Fallow Mire, her skirts soaked and her hair plastered to her face from the sky’s relentless onslaught, she finds a procession waiting for them – servants of Yevon, from the temple of Val Royeaux by their attire.
And at their front stands Solas, seemingly unmindful of the weather, hands tucked into the sleeves of his robe and a determined expression knitting his brows together. “Lady Lavellan,” he says, a formality so at odds with what she remembers, and for a moment she fears the worst – news of Sin after weeks of nothing. But not Val Royeaux, surely? Too heavily guarded, but still–
“I would ask to become your guardian,” he tells her, before her thoughts can run away with her completely, and his expression is so serious it threatens to lure a tumble of laughter from her chest. Because here she is, drenched to the bone and with her rag-tag group of guardians at her back, and he’s bowing before her, pledging his assistance like he’d promised that day at the docks, and looking at her like she’s the only thing worth seeing in all of Thedas.
And if she’d been asked weeks ago what she’d say – how she’d respond to a Maester of Yevon bending at the knee and asking to join her, to pledge himself to her – she would have had a damn good laugh, but now all she can focus on is the furious stutter of her heart, and the terrible joy rising in her chest, escaping her lips with breathless reverence–
“I’d be honoured to accept.”
iv.
They object, at first. The others.
“A Maester?” Varric murmurs to Cassandra, dubiousness dripping from every word, and she shushes him with a sharp look, unwilling to speak ill of a high-standing servant of Yevon.
“It is an – odd request from such a man, I’ll grant you,” she says at length. “But he is well within his rights to offer his assistance. Sin does not discriminate between Maester and commoner. And if he wishes to lay down his life for Thedas…”
Varric snorts. “Still. You’d figure a Maester would prefer the cushy temple-life to the road.”
The former Seeker offers a lingering look in Ellana’s direction. “Perhaps he was inspired.”
“By what, the promise of certain death?”
Cassandra says nothing, but spares another glance towards their Summoner, and the smile that seems to have taken up permanent residence on her face.
“No,” she says then, quietly. “Something rather different, I suspect.”
v.
He makes her laugh.
She has not laughed properly in years – not like this, the mirth building from deep in her stomach, until it spills from her lips in peals that carry, and turns the heads of each and every one of her guardians. Bull only shakes his head, but hides a smile of his own, and Varric mutters something under his breath – a nickname he won’t share openly, to spare Cassandra’s Yevon-worshipping sensibilities. Chuckles.
It’s meant ironically, Ellana knows, but can’t help but find it oddly fitting – however severe the pull of his brow, and however grim his remarks, there’s a humour lurking beneath it all that speaks of a past where his smiles were freer, easier things. And it makes her wonder what made him like this, and what it was that put the shadows behind his eyes that he can’t always conceal.
But they all have their burdens to carry, and so she allows him his secrets. There’s a long journey ahead of them still, what might well be her last, and she’ll take whatever small joys she can find.
Like the way the corner of his mouth quirks, before stretching into a full-blown smile, lighting up his features in a way that make her forget, if only momentarily, who they are and where they are going, and what awaits them at the end of their journey.
vi.
It does not take long for rumours to spread, about Summoner Ellana and her guardian Maester.
A bond that might defeat Sin, the whispers say, like High Summoner Ameridan and his wife before them. Perhaps it’s fate?
They give the people hope – flowers are strewn in their path, blessing the steps of her pilgrimage, and prayers sung in their wake, that Yevon will see them safely to the ruins of Arlathan. And she feels it, the hope; remembers every smile on every face, but the sadness that had once accompanied the thought of her duty is not so great a burden these days, walking beside him, their hands bumping, and with his quiet conversation to keep her company. He knows much, languages long forgotten, and history – stories that are not as fanciful as Varric’s, but that captivate her all the same, spoken in his low, lovely voice.
She thinks about it, awake at night in her bedroll and listening to the others sleep – Bull’s familiar snores, and Sera talking under her breath. She turns the events of the day over in her mind, and their conversations, laden now with more than just polite interest, at least on her part. And she thinks about her small touches to his arm in passing, and wonders idly what the hell she is doing, and why this should strike her as the appropriate time and place to have a crisis of heart, like a girl fresh into her adolescence.
But then she remembers his looks, offered from across the campfire, and the weight of his gaze when he thinks she doesn’t notice. And she falls asleep smiling, feeling like a girl ten years younger, uncaring of time and place, because if death awaits her in Arlathan, let her have this now.
Yevon, please let her have this.
vii.
They worry.
They don’t say it to her face, but she can tell from their expressions – Cassandra’s brow, heavy with thoughts she’s loath to share, and Varric’s unusually pensive looks. Bull’s silence, and Sera’s jokes, cutting a little deeper than normal, and Blackwall’s weary sigh that reminds Ellana a little too much of her late father.
“Something not right about that guy,” she hears Varric say one night, and she keeps her breaths soft and even, feigning sleep. With her back turned, she can’t see the look on his face, but she can guess it well enough. Solas is out scouting the perimeter with Bull, and she feels a pang of sudden resentment, that they’d jump at the opportunity to discuss one of their companions behind his back.
“I agree.” It’s Cassandra who speaks now, her voice low. “I do not know what it is, but there is a feeling of…wrongness about him. I do not believe he is telling us everything.”
Sera scoffs. “’Course he isn’t. Skeevy bastard.”
“But she’s happy,” Blackwall speaks up then, quietly, and Ellana has to concentrate so as not to let slip her surprise, alerting them all to the fact that she’s wide awake. “She’s smiling. Isn’t that what’s important?”
A silence follows at the heels of his words, and no one speaks. Then – “I would see her happy,” Cassandra says. “I just wish – but perhaps we are letting our personal feelings cloud our judgement. He has done nothing to warrant our suspicions.”
“Other than be skeevy,” Sera mutters under her breath.
“Hero’s got a point, though,” Varric sighs. “And hell, I’m not gonna tell her who to be smitten with. She’s been groomed for this business since her old man defeated Sin. Let her have a crush if it makes waking up in the morning easier.” A snort, then, “Yevon knows we could all use something like that.”
“You do not think–” Cassandra says then, but stops.
“What?” Sera asks.
A sigh, expelled with terrible softness. “You do not think she would change her mind? That she would – quit.”
There’s a pause. Then, “You hoping she will?” Varric asks, but by the tone of his voice it’s not so much a question as it is an observation, and an offer of understanding sitting deep in the words.
Cassandra is quiet for a long moment, so long that Ellana wonders if she will answer at all, but then, and with a voice softer than she’s ever heard her speak – “We are all allowed our share of hope in this world,” she says. “That does not make our desires any less selfish.”
No one says anything after that, and the silence that descends is a terrible thing, pooling in the wake of their words and making Ellana’s fingers fist in her bedding, although she doesn’t know who she’s truly angry with. Herself, perhaps more than anyone else. Selfish. Is that what she is now?
And Cassandra’s words stay with her into the early hours of the morning, keeping her company long after the others have retired to bed.
viii.
She confronts him later, in a secluded spot halfway through the Crestwood, a spring at their backs, the water dappled with shadows, and an odd quiet all around them. Peace, for however long it lasts. It’s a rare commodity these days.
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Solas doesn’t seem surprised by the question – in fact, by his grim expression, he’s been waiting for it.
“Solas?” Ellana asks. Her mouth feels dry, and she tucks her hands into the folds of her skirt to keep them from shaking.
He draws a breath, and, “Yes,” he says, turning to look at her, and what she finds in his eyes makes her breath hitch.
Ellana swallows, and steels herself for the truth. “Will you tell me?” she asks then, lifting her chin. A hundred thoughts is running through her head as to what it might be, the reason behind the sorrow she can see so plainly now, etched into his every feature.
Touching his fingertips to her temple, Solas brushes a curl away from her face; winds it tenderly around his knuckles as he buries his hand in her hair, to cradle the back of her neck. And she’s barely breathing, mouth parted slightly with an anticipation she’s never before felt, drumming like a song in her veins. And when he looks at her now she doesn’t see the pity she finds on the faces of everyone else – doesn’t see that desperate hope, and the fear that she won’t succeed. It’s only desire she finds now, hot and earnest, and when he presses his brow to hers, she feels her knees buckle beneath her, the legs that have carried her for so long and through so much yielding under the weight of feeling his touch has awoken within her.
“Yes,” he says, and kisses her soundly, hands fisting in her hair, and she feels how they’re shaking – worse than her own, curling around the fabric of his robes, knuckles white with a desperation that’s new and terrifying and utterly, wonderfully exciting.
Yevon let her have this, Yevon let her have him, all of him, the brightness of his soul to light her path and the whole of his body pressed flushed against her. She’s asked for nothing her whole life, not a single, selfish thing, but she’ll beg for him if she has to, and she breathes her prayers in wordless gasps against his throat as he lays her back in the grass.
And in that moment she doesn’t care what it is, the secret he carries that seems to weigh even heavier than her own burdens. Because she knows the prayers of the people of Thedas; she’s seen their offerings and heard their pleas for her success, their honouring of her heritage, but she’s never known a worship like this, with his hands on her skin and his mouth igniting a path of fire in the wake of his touches. It’s almost blasphemy, this reverence he shows her, this Maester with his robes undone and his hair loose around her fingers, but she takes it all, and in that moment, knows only him and how he feels against her; buried within her.
And when they life in the afterglow, and she imprints the memory of his bared body in her mind, she makes a decision that surprises her, with the force of its conviction. She’ll be no passive sacrifice – no herald of peace in her gentle death, accepting her fate with grace. Sin will take her screaming – Sin will take her living, laughing and shouting, because for the first time in her life, she feels it.
And she’ll grip the feeling with both hands until her very last breath.
ix.
“Hey,” Bull mutters, nudging Varric with the toe of his boot, and nodding towards the two shapes emerging from the trees on the far edge of the camp. “Looks like someone got lucky.” A snort, then, “Should probably rough him up a bit for that.”
Looking up from his book, Varric lifts his eyes in the direction of Bull’s nod, heart sinking at the sight of familiar, freckled cheeks dusted with a tell-tale blush, and russet hair a wild mess about her shoulders. A wilder mess than usual, that is, and it doesn’t take a genius to guess why.
And at her side walks the Maester, an alleged picture of piousness and propriety, and holding back a smile that, on the face of any other Maester in Varric’s acquaintance, would have made him laugh himself into a heart attack.
But as it is he recognizes what lies beneath the smile – the honest sentiment that kills any hope he might have harboured, that whatever blossoming between them was nothing more than a crush.
Well…shit.
And it’s the worst kind of fate – he knows this, because he’s written enough tragedies in his life; has lived through twice as many himself – giving your heart to a dead woman walking.
“I don’t know if ‘lucky’ is the word you’re looking for, Tiny.”
x.
It’s on the summit just beyond The Hundred Pillars, that he finally tells her the truth.
He brings her out to the edge of the cliff overlooking the ruins, her hand cradled in his palm and her heart light after their defeat of the mountain’s guardian – one of many obstacles that will mark their path to Arlathan’s heart, but she feels almost giddy with their victory, and the end of their journey, so close she can scarcely believe it.
Then he turns her towards him, and the expression on his face has her heart dropping into her stomach, but she rights her back and prepares herself for the truth she knows is coming, now at long last.
But whatever she’d expected, nothing could have prepared her for what he tells her, calmly and evenly – his reasons for singling her out, amidst all the Summoners in Thedas who’d set out on their pilgrimages. Why he’d pledged himself to join her, to protect her and make sure she would reach her final destination – why he would ensure she would be the one to challenge Sin –
“The circle of death is what sustains Thedas,” Solas explains gravely. “Sin is what sustains us all, and I–” But he doesn’t finish, as though at a loss for words. The first time she’s seen him struggle, and at any other time she would have found the sight endearing.
But after what he’s told her – what he’s admitted with a straight face, a truth more terrible than any her imagination could have ever hoped to conjure–
“You wanted to become Sin.” Her voice doesn’t sound like her own, and she can hardly believe she’s speaking the words.
Solas’ expression softens. “At first,” he confirms. “Now–”
“No,” she says, taking a step back. “No, don’t – don’t say anything else. Just – just don’t–”
“Now I cannot bear to lose you,” Solas says, taking a step towards her, but he doesn’t reach out to touch her, although it’s clear he wants to – she spots the restless twitch of his fingers, the agony on his face. “And there is no less truth in that, than what I have told you of my initial reasons for joining you.”
She’s shaking her head, although she’s not sure exactly what she’s disagreeing to. “You – all this time – and when we–”
“Ellana–”
“I’m giving my life to defeat Sin! And now you’re telling me you want it all to continue – that you want to –” She can hardly get the words out – can barely summon the strength to look for them, let alone force them past the growing lump in her throat.
“There is no defeating Sin,” Solas tells her. “Death is the very essence of this world.” His hands clench then. “Although, being with you–”
“Please stop,” she croaks. “Please don’t remind me. I trusted you. I–” I loved you is what she doesn’t say, what she can’t make herself say, but it’s what he hears, regardless. That much is clear from the grief that passes across his face, a near unbearable sight.
“I cannot take it back,” he tells her. “But I could not go on…I could not let you do this, unaware.”
A laugh tears from her, a shrill, mirthless cry of disbelief. “Why?” she demands. “It would have all gone according to plan. If what you’re telling me is true, if – if I have to choose, I–” She shakes her head, but she feels the truth where it comes to settle, a stone’s weight behind her ribs. “I would have done it, if you’d accepted. I would have picked you. It would have killed me, but I would have had you at my side, until the end. And you–”
“I would have accepted,” Solas tells her, voice little more than a rasp. “And not for the reasons I had to begin with, but because–”
“No,” she cuts him off. “I don’t want to hear it, I – can’t.” She can barely look at him, and the hurt he doesn’t even bother to hide, an expression so vivid she feels every ounce of it herself.
And perhaps that is why it’s so difficult to grasp – easier, if he’d simply used her and been done with it. Easier if he hadn’t cared.
“Please just go,” she tells him then, voice breaking now that she can no longer hold back her tears.
Solas looks ready to protest. “Ellana–”
“Go!”
He takes the word like a physical blow, flinching at the force of her voice, and the anger spat with the order. At his back, the ruins of Arlathan lie, and she can see the myriad of pyreflies rising towards the dusk-lit sky, eerily beautiful with their gossamer tails, and their soft, mournful song.
“As you wish,” he tells her then, quietly, before he steps away – gives her a wide berth, before walking past her. And she doesn’t turn to see him go. As it is, it’s taking all her strength just to keep standing.
The first sob tears free when she can no longer hear his footsteps – a violent, racking thing that makes her chest constrict painfully. And then she’s sinking to her knees, fingers clawing at the dirt as she heaves from the sheer force of her grief, offering her lament to the city of the dead, her back bent completely now under her burdens and her losses, a mockery of prayer.
And although she’s faced the truth of her death for years – has known it as fact since before she’d started on her pilgrimage, wide-eyed and naive in her conviction – the thought of it now, facing Sin without him, with the knowledge that he’d have exploited her sacrifice for his own gain…
She doesn’t know how long she kneels there, curled in on herself, but then there’s a weight on her back, a large, familiar hand spanning the width of her shoulder blades, and she knows whose it is even before he speaks.
“Say the word, Boss,” Bull rumbles. “I’ll catch him before he gets to the foot of the mountain – leave his corpse for the crows to peck clean.”
Her heart swells – a small, desperate flutter, and she’s reminded of the time she was seven and she’d fallen and scabbed her knee, and he’d held her through her tears and assured her the bigger the scar, the better.
And there are those who would help her, still – who would rather see her live, but who would follow her to the ends of the earth if she asked. People who have followed her this far, and who did so of their love for her, not for any other reason.
“No,” Ellana rasps, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, though her tears have all dried up. “No more death.” Her tongue feels thick in her mouth, and her chest like she’s broken all her ribs. It’s hard to breathe past the pain. “There’ll be no more death. I’ll make sure of it.”
Bull says nothing, but helps her up when she tries to stand, her knees trembling, and when he walks her back to camp Ellana lifts her chin, defiance burning in place of her shame, her disbelief.
She’ll still go down screaming – Sin will take her, defiant to the last, and she’ll give all she has left of herself, all that he didn’t take, to make sure it all ends with her.
xi.
The last leg of their journey is the hardest – the final stretch of the pilgrimage she’s walked for months, and her back feels bent enough to break; her feet too heavy to lift, but she walks, still, each and every step with her chin held high, her tears at bay.
At the heart of Arlathan’s skeletal metropolis, Ameridan greets them, hard of brow and marked by his long years as unsent, sustained in an endless circle of sacrifice and death, welcoming Summoners to follow in his footsteps. To someone like him, Ellana knows she is just one face among many, but he remarks upon her name, and she tells him of the legacy her father left her – named after his late wife, Telana the Dreamer, and for a moment there’s a flicker of something other than death in his old eyes.
She stands before him, her guardians at her back, and something tells her he knows there is one missing, from the way his gaze spans the distance between them, as though looking straight through to her soul.
Something passes between them – a shared sense of loss so profound she feels suddenly robbed of all coherent thought. And she thinks of the stories, Ameridan and Telana, paving the way for all Summoners and their guardians. The very first sacrifice.
He speaks then – the same things Solas had told her, of the familial bonds to ensure the final summoning be strong enough to defeat Sin. Bonds between siblings, between mother and child. Between close friends.
Between lovers.
And she doesn’t doubt for a second that the strongest bond in her heart was the one she’d severed.
Ameridan looks between her guardians – Cassandra’s grave acceptance, and Varric’s softly uttered curse. Sera’s unusually serious expression, and Blackwall, a silent sentinel at her back.
And Bull, who meets Ellana’s look with a nod. Bull, who’d seen her through her worst years, and borne the brunt of her tantrums, her over-wrought heart.
And it’s the same heart that breaks all over again, a thousand little pieces, because she knows, even before Ameridan asks,
“Who will you choose?”
xii.
After it’s done, she orders the others to leave.
Ignoring their rising protests, she tells them to go back, that their work is done, and that the last few steps are hers to walk, alone. No more death but her own.After Bull’s sacrifice, she can’t bear to lose another.
But, “No,” Cassandra says firmly, arms crossed with a finality that rings like a death knell.
Surprisingly enough, what swells in her chest isn’t grief, but anger. “Cassandra–”
“Tell me to go however many times you please,” Cassandra cuts her off. “It will not change my mind.”
“Sorry, Dimples,” Varric says. “Not going anywhere.”
Sera snorts. “As if we would.”
“Give us some credit,” Blackwall laughs, a humourless chuckle, but what she feels most keenly is the yawning absence of Bull’s voice, even though she feelshim still, at the back of her mind, ready to be called.
They won’t be persuaded, not by her tears, or her shouts. Not by her insults; lies too transparent to convince anyone with ears, and Sera only pats her on the back and tells her with a soft snort that she’s a shit liar.
And so they follow her as she walks the length of the battlefield, a wide-open stretch of endless plains, barren of life. In the distance the sky stretches, blood-red clouds heralding what will be her last sunrise, if she lives that long. A fitting place to end a decade’s reign of death, Ellana thinks, and forces herself to believe her own words, even as her companions fall around her.
Sera is the first to go down – reckless even in this, arrows aimed with surety, and with ‘fucking Sin-shite bastard’ shouted on her dying breath. Blackwall follows suit shortly after, blade raised high, and cleaving a path through the throng of sinspawn before he’s overwhelmed. Cassandra walks, straight-backed and shield raised at Ellana’s front, a living barricade, and a prayer on her breath it takes a killing blow to silence.
And Varric…Varric is the last. Varric walks with her, and Varric talks, filling the silence left by their friends, and tells her all the stories she’s heard before, of his Summoner before her – Hawke, larger than life, who tried to take Sin down with her bare hands. He talks until his voice is hoarse, and tells her, with a wistfulness that almost breaks her – “Dimples, shit, but the stories I would have told about you.”
And then it’s quiet, and she’s all alone, standing in the midst of a battlefield riddled with sinspawn and her fallen friends, her father’s staff held between slack fingers, and she knows what she must do – they’d given her a fighting chance, and it’s her turn now, to finish it. She won’t squander their sacrifices with her indecision.
Sin sits perched before her, a titan among beasts, watching her coolly. And she wonders at the soul who’d spawned it. Which of his guardians had her father chosen, to bear the true burden of Sin’s existence? Is there a sliver of them left still, existing somewhere within that monstrous shape?
She wonders idly, what will remain of Bull, when it’s done.
And suddenly she can’t move – can’t lift her staff to begin the summoning, paralysed with the thought of what her choices have brought her; what they will still bring, long after her death. The Calm, and then what? Another Sin – Bull – and someone else to walk the path she’d walked, to face him down. Another loved one sacrificed. A never-ending spiral of death.
A hand on her shoulder – it’s so sudden she jolts, but then he’s there, a solid warmth at her back, and she’s too stunned to speak; too stunned to manage so much as his name.
“Finish it,” Solas says, tucking the words against her ear. “This will not end with you, but it will end someday. Your actions will give someone else the chance to break the cycle.”
She looks at Sin, eerily quiet before her. She wonders how insignificant it thinks her, so small in comparison. Or does it sense the power she carries within her – the sacrifice offered out of love; the same kind of love that once created it?
Does it wait for her to put it out of its misery?
“It will end someday?” she asks, and doesn’t know who she’s directing the question towards, but Sin is silent, and behind her, Solas nods.
“You must believe it will, you of all people.” A pause, before he adds, “You taught me more of living than a lifetime in this world. There is no greater truth I can offer.” Then, and she feels his rueful smile, curling along the words, “Well. There is one, but you know it already.” I love you.
The words come to settle in her chest, and she swallows thickly, tears pressing at her eyes now, for an entirely different reason than her ever-piling losses.
“Okay,” she breathes, her grip tightening around the haft of her staff. And, “Help me?” she asks, but she already knows the answer; feels it in the way his arms come to wrap around her. And he holds her up – bears her weight as she pours her last reserves into her very last summoning, feeling it leech away her strength even before she’s reached within herself, to call for aid one last time. It’s a power so savage it rips through her, a destructive force beyond reckoning, and on the edge of her hearing, a delighted, familiar laugh, and –Horns up!
Solas holds her as her knees give out – cradles her against him as her strength leaves her, until she can no longer keep up with the battle, with Bull’s aeon or with Sin, and the clash of brute force that rocks the ground beneath them.
Instead she looks at Solas, kneeling above her. “You came back,” she murmurs. She tries to lift her hand to touch his face, but she can’t move her arms.
He nods once, the gesture almost too soft, for the battle raging around them. And he doesn’t say anything – there are no excuses, no apologies, but she finds she doesn’t need them. There’s only one thing she needs, now.
And so – “Stay?” she asks.
Solas smiles – eyes curving and the corner of his mouth lifting up, ever so slightly. And though her body is broken, in that moment, her heart mends. “You have my word, whatever that means to you now.”
She wants to tell him it means everything, but she can’t locate her voice to speak. But by his expression, the weight of his gaze focused solely on her, Ellana doubts there’s any uncertainty in his heart as to the truth of her forgiveness.
Then ground beneath them gives away, cracks down the middle like a broken plate, and it’ll take them both down with it, but Solas doesn’t budge. Instead he only tightens his arms around her, a gentleness in the gesture that allows her eyes to slip closed, and when the darkness swallows them up she lifts her chin to the skies – one last act of defiance that takes every last bit of her strength.
Horns up.
xiii.
Something is making her lungs hurt – a pain that stings like nothing she’s ever felt before, and she tries to breathe, but instead only succeeds in pulling seawater into her lungs. And her surprise is almost greater than her pain, wedging like a knife between her ribs.
It takes her a moment to realize she’s submerged underwater.
Panic settles – clamps like a vice around her windpipe, and then she’s trashing, arms flailing, desperate to reach the surface but it’s too dark to see anything, and there are pyreflies everywhere, dancing around her, and is this how Summoners die, she wonders idly, and a twinge hysterically.
“It’s okay,” a voice says then, speaking directly into her ear, and she jerks, eyes searching for the speaker, but finding nothing but the blackness of the watery depths.
A shape materializes before her then, and she knows it – the pale, shaggy hair and the over-large hat. The patchwork clothing.
She knows him, Ellana realizes.
“I helped,” the fayth says, voice kind. Compassionate. “I asked them, and they said it was okay. They’ll keep dreaming, a little longer.”
She’s shaking her head – it’s not making any sense. She should be dead. Sin – did she succeed? And she can barely think past the pain of holding her breath, and–
“You can breathe,” the fayth says – Cole, the name comes to her between the ripples of her confusion, a small trickle of warmth – and Ellana heaves a breath, and is surprised when she finds it’s true.
“Where am I?” she asks, and it’s awkward speaking the words underwater, but she manages somehow. Am I dreaming?
“You aren’t,” Cole says, as though she’d spoken the words out loud. “They are.”
She doesn’t ask – every question she has seems to elude her, slipping between her fingers when she grasps for them, but, “Where am I?” she tries again.
The fayth tilts his head, hat slightly askew, and – “Sand between his toes, he hasn’t felt like this in years, free, unburdened. Alive. If only she were here, he’d walk with her again, to the ends of the earth and back. He promised he would stay. He gave his word.”
A thought grabs her – spurs her into moving, kicking her arms and legs as she scrambles for the surface she can’t yet see, the water an all-encompassing darkness pressing down from above. Her lungs are hurting in truth now, and she can feel the water in her nose; stinging her eyes. The fayth is nowhere to be seen, and she can’t hear anything but the frantic hammering of her own heart, like a headache pushing against her skull.
Then she breaks the surface of the water, gasping for air, and she finds it – filling her lungs, and it’s at once relief and blinding agony, and she can’t see with her own hair obscuring her vision, plastered to her face as she threads water with aching legs.
Wiping her sopping curls from her eyes, the sight that greets her is one that steals her new-found breath – a sandy beach, sprawling alongside water so blue it beggars belief, and a sky that seems to go on forever stretching above her head.
Making her way towards the beach, she’s stumbling against the shore, skirts heavy with water and legs trembling beneath her own weight. But the fayth’s words are still ringing in her head – he promised he would stay. He gave his word.
Then, at the far end of the beach, beyond which a city rises into the sky – towering spires cutting into the clouds, a city out of legend, not dead now but alive and thriving – she sees him. No Maester’s robes but a commoner’s clothes, and his feet bare in the sand, wading through the shallow water a stone’s toss from where she’s standing.
And at his back, four familiar shapes, all of them standing, and none of them broken. Only four, but it is four more than she’d had two heartbeats ago, and she won’t insult the memory of the fifth with her grief now.
She hasn’t moved – hasn’t budged so much as an inch since she’d made it out of the water, heels buried in the soft sand at the sight of them – but something makes him turn, to look towards her where she’s standing, once again drenched to the bone but laughing now, alight with a happiness she can’t stifle; a disbelieving joy that pours from her mouth in the sound of his name.
Solas takes a step towards her – one hesitant, stumbling step, as though not sure if what he’s seeing is true, but Ellana finds she doesn’t care if it isn’t. If it really is just a dream then let them dream a little longer, whoever allowed them to have this, so long that they keep dreaming long enough for her to reach him.
A heartbeat passes. Overhead, a seagull cries, a startling, living sound.
Then, a smile breaking out across his face, wiping once-grave features clean of sorrow, and she’s running before her name has made it all the way off his tongue.