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And so, Solas disappears beyond the Veil, becomes part of it. Atonement, he says. The blight begins to retreat; another battle is over; people cheer and hug each other and search for survivors and loved ones; and the Inquisitor walks away. Walks mindlessly, wherever her feet carry her: a quiet corner between the ruins the battle left behind.
She presses her head against the cold stone of a broken wall, and takes a deep, shuddering breath. Her body trembles. Almost a decade of searching for Solas. “Lethallan,” he said, at the end, “I am sorry.” He wept — but not for her — and he left.
Ferelden and Orlais are a wound in the earth. Varric is gone. Varric is gone. Lavellan does not know where to begin measuring her losses.
Anger, she decides, is what makes her body tremble. Anger when her mouth parts with a sob; anger when she gasps for air, her chest heaving with it, as sudden as it is violent; anger when the tears fall from her eyes. When her nails scrape against the wall, as if she can dig her way out of her grief.
A hand touches her shoulder. When she looks up, she finds Dorian’s familiar gaze, and quickly turns her face away again, tries to stop the sobs that shake her body.
“Now, old friend,” he says, quietly, “you’re not trying to hide from me, are you?”
Lavellan’s mouth twitches as she wipes at her eyes, to no avail. She huffs a sigh, and turns around, and Dorian is already opening his arms for her. She buries her face in his shoulder, wraps her arm around him, and cries a little longer. Dorian holds her like this, one hand against the back of her head, and remains quiet. Despite the years they have known each other, it is the first time she lets him witness her tears — she does not remember the last time she had allowed herself to shed them.
They stand there, in the long night, shadowed by ruins. Slowly, the trembling stops. The tears stop.
“Dorian,” she whispers. “I am so — so tired.”
Dorian holds her a little tighter. “I think if anyone has the right to be tired,” he says, “it would be you.”
Lavellan eases from him, wipes at her face, and looks up at him. The ghost of a smile lifts her lips.
“I got your shoulder wet,” she murmurs.
“I’ll forgive it,” Dorian says, “if you talk to me.”
He leads her out of the ruin, into the open air. Some distance away, they see what remains of Elgar’nan’s throne.
“I think some part of me thought I would die here, today. Maybe even hoped to,” Lavellan says after a few moments. “That Solas would kill me like he —” She can’t speak it, Varric’s memory a rock in her chest. “And then I would be gone. I would not have to face this grief. I would not have to face the consequences of everything.” Would not have to face her failures, face the people who lost their loved ones and their homes because she had not acted in time, had not found Solas fast enough. All that impossible devastation.
She laughs, quietly.
Dorian stays silent for a while — and when she looks up at him, his gaze is so tender and forgiving where she expected anger that she can’t help looking away.
“I cannot tell you how relieved I am that you are still here. Words would not suffice,” he says, then. “If he had taken you from us, I think I would have chased Solas into the fade and haunted him there for all eternity. And I think there would be a great number of our friends who would feel the same.”
Dorian turns to her, lifts his hands to hold her face between them, holding her gaze. “Whatever there is to face after this, we face it together. Never alone. As we always have.”
Lavellan cups his hand with hers.
“I will need your help, too,” he says, as he slowly eases away, looking around at what is left of the city around him, the one he had been fighting to change for the better; a long and hard battle that would turn longer still. “But one thing after the other. You would think there are only so many times you have to do the impossible in your life.”
“You would think,” she says, breathing a laugh.
In the silence that follows the storm, they stand, once again.
“If Varric was here,” she says, “he would have just the right words. He would …” Her smile falters, her gaze drops. Beside her, Dorian looks straight ahead; his grief, as well, too heavy to make light of, binding his tongue. When Lavellan looks up, she feels that spark of fury there again.
“I will give him a proper burial. I will make sure everyone everywhere knows his name, and it is never forgotten. I will go to Kirkwall and — “ Her voice falters, and she closes her mouth, her jaw tensing.
“Together, my friend,” Dorian says. For Varric was loved by many, and his mourners are numerous; countless lights would be lit in countless corners of Thedas in his memory. Varric, ever loyal to his friends, dead at the hand of a friend.
The Dread Wolf had taken her friend. The Creators had devastated everything she fought to protect. And still, some part of Lavellan kept seeking solace in prayers to Mythal, as though her own will would change the shape of the truth, the essence of the gods.
“Let’s go,” Lavellan says, after a moment, turning around, her back to the throne. In the distance, the noises of people ebbing and flowing with both despair and hope. “There’s much to be done.”