Work Text:
A call. Always innumerable calls. Hurt and need twisting, contorting, agonizing in cries. But his it’s a scream louder than all, of a being that feels all those calls as his own, and echoes the ones of the fallen as they were here still.
But Here is unbending. Reality makes shapes too sharp and sure of who they are, unwilling to make room for change. Moving through the sharp shapes has become easier. Dance through them, step and jump, leap and land. Move quickly, to reach the hurt before it changes shape. Bodies need to move. Too stubborn to let themselves be anything but what they are. Everything is sharp and still but changes so quickly. How?
My fault. All of it.
He always hurts, splinters, hurts jagged and tearing pathways to places untouched, deeper within. Draining life and hope. Broken and tearing. It’s easier to heal or forget one hurt, but his is a web, a connection to everything, a trap he can’t escape.
This is going to remedy one of my biggest mistakes.
But mistakes, they won't disappear by feeding the hurt. That makes the jaws of hurt bigger, sharper, cutting at every step, puncturing at every breath.
A mask of hurt blinding, mistakes creating hurt and hurt creating mistakes . I must stop and help. Heal the hurt. It's easy to follow his hurt. It envelops everything, a trap that has ensnared not just prey but the whole forest. And now the trees and the forest are asunder.
Everything in this world is wrong, I'll make it right again.
“Not like that” he reached him without obstacles, without confusing paths leading him to other people, other hurts, no barriers to cleave Pride and Compassion. He removed them.
He wanted to be found.
Solas is in an amphitheater, friends turned enemies glaring at him and wishing to tear him apart. All but one.
She’s judging, and he lacks. He always lacks. And he always yearns to be enough. He never is.
“She didn't realize. She thought she was doing what was right. She thought she was helping, that her pup would come again to her side, his place in the world.”
Solas turned slowly. From the top of the staircase, he looked down at Compassion. Pride always does.
Ice-colored eyes, hiding hot coal pain. Pride's painful curse; always second, never chosen.
But then there's a new pain taking hold, greater than not being chosen. Choosing and being chosen, seen, accepted. And having to let go, watch from afar, wish and want to never have.
And that is the pain of Solas, not Pride. His greatest curse: choosing to realize his greatest fear to save the world. Embracing misery instead of her.
“She’s still looking, still believing. He wants to build, not to destroy, if I could only reach him.
Var lath vir suledin , even now.”
A moment of bliss, of relief. And then, another hurt on top of the others.
“That’s why you wanted me here; you wanted to know how she felt, if she still felt love, but it hurts even more that she does.” More pain, and Compassion listens, I always listen. “You didn’t steal anything; she gave her heart freely, as you gave yours. She holds it close, keeps it safe. She wants to hold it together again.”
Finally, he used his Real voice “It cannot be.” he turns again, but the hum of magic doesn’t resume. He still is open.
Stairs. Compassion maybe can’t reach Pride, but I can. Cole is friends with Solas. I am. Not Compassion and Pride anymore, but—more.
“You don’t want her to find you because she could change everything again. She still loves me but she shouldn’t. But it’s not up to you to decide everything. I can lead her—”
“NO.” it is cold, the pain he feels in keeping her away. The cold of solitude that is chosen, chased. Atonement.
“Atonement. You want to put the future in the past and the past in the future, but it’s not the correct order.”
“I forge a new era, Cole, where spirits like you may flourish as they were meant to, unbound from the agony of a twisted existence of my making. A dawn where she…her birthright is restored.”
“But she doesn’t want her birthright, she wants you.”
“That is something that is not mine to give.”
“Who can then? You took the right back from your old friend. Betrayer but still beloved. She feels the same.”
He stills. Not just hurt, but thought. Old Wisdom fighting to return to its essence. Opens his mouth, shouts it. Then coldness hits again. Hurt masks as nothingness.
“It is time for you to go.” and with a wave, I am lost again, a maze of Solas’ hurts that will just lead to where the hurt was born. Confused, I cannot find the way to my friend again.
Compassion cannot reach Pride. But she could.
He would allow her one day, but that day could not be soon enough. I should help her find a way. She won’t end up in the maze, her steps are too heavy with Reality.
Making decisions. I make decisions.