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In all his moments, she was there.
A specter, a phantom—she was sunlight streaming across rooms, the burn against his eyelids, the veins beneath skin. Always there. Always, always, always.
He would not, could not, should not fantasize about her. He wouldn’t think of her lips against his—the softness, the warmth. Or the way her fingers ghosted along his arms, the quiet gasp against his mouth. He wouldn’t think of how she looked at him, wide-eyed, as though drinking him in. As though she were lain across his lap and he was feeding her the grapes of legends past—sustenance only he could provide.
He could not think of her, not now, not ever, for if he did, he knew he would crumble. He would be hers once more. He would be Solas again—her Solas—and he would forget the bonds that held him to this wretched, broken, mistake of a land.
Every waking moment, he fled from her.
But in her dreams, through forests green and lush, along paths they once shared, he would find her. The dread wolf’s paws struck soil and moss, rain clinging to fur like memories clung to every patch of skin. For a moment—just a moment—to look at her.
To look at her would be enough.
It had to be enough.
He had condemned her—condemned all of them—to a life they did not deserve. He had stripped them of wonder, of progress, of history. They were shells of what they once were, and he had made it so. What right did he have to love, or to be loved in return, when he had done this to them?
He knew she would forgive him, and that was a risk he could not take.
She would show him mercy, when there should be vitriol.
She would show him care, where there should be disdain.
She would show him love, where there should be hatred.
No. The sky would burn, and with it, his mistakes would be rectified.
Eons of silence, of fractured histories and forgotten glories, would be undone. The Veil, his Veil, his mistake, would fall, and the world would breathe again—wild, boundless, unbroken. It would not matter that the cost was blood, nor that she would be among those who cursed his name.
This was not for her.
It was for the world he had stolen, the people he had failed, and the dream that had slipped from his grasp. To love her was to falter, to forget those who whispered his name as they were stripped of the beauty of the world that once was.
They did not scream; they did not beg. They simply mourned—softly, endlessly—for what had been lost.
No love, no forgiveness, no tender moment could erase their sorrow. To love her would be to betray them, to condemn their memories to the dust. The sky would burn, and through the fire, he would make things right.
And yet, he yearned for her.
He yearned for a world in which he would be hers, and she would be his—a world where millennia would stretch before them, boundless, unbroken, everlasting. They would be strewn across the stars, their laughter echoing in the void, where time would hold no sway. She would look at him again, as though he were everything—as though he were her world, as though he were not the destroyer, but the maker of dreams.
He would hold her in the space between his lungs. He would breathe her. She would live on in his blood, coursing through him, filling the hollow chambers of his heart. She would be the beat, the rhythm, the life that refused to leave him, even as he stood amidst ruin.
He would carry her like this—within him, eternal, untouchable, unreachable. She would be his secret solace, his quiet ruin. His wound.
Vhenan.