Chapter Text
The headache fades, after a time, and the walls stop swinging on their axis and stay upright, as good walls should. The voices fade too, becoming a dull murmur at the back of her skull, a fast-running stream instead of a storm. She catches herself humming songs she has never learned, and remembering places she has never been.
Small prices to pay after drinking from the Well of Sorrows.
She can feel the knowledge stretching deep into her mind, fractals unfolding into limitless space. Here are the rituals, the songs, the stories, the memories – all her people had known and built and lost. Any moment she has (and these are not many) she spends with quill and parchment, trying to record the un-recordable, trying to press the memories into paper in case the worst should happen. If Corypheus takes her life, she will leave something behind.
The only thing she does not write are the dreams.
Dreams are dreams, of course. Not being a mage, she has no talent to walk the hidden pathways of the Fade. Her dreams are as everyone else’s – strange fragments of half-forgotten memory, pieces that did not happen, things that never would. They vanish like ghosts in the light of the morning sun. Except.
Not these dreams.
She dreams of a man in golden brocade, his voice low and kindly. He walks among the forest and greets the spirits there as if they are kin. She does not see his face. On waking, his voice disappears like mist in the morning breeze.
He makes his way gently through her dreams, this man, and she welcomes the distraction. Since Crestwood, her thoughts have been dark and preoccupied. Sharpen your grief to an iron edge, he had said, as if he knew anything of her grief, her fear, her loneliness and anger. Better to let another – a wandering wish? A memory? – occupy her thoughts. The days are filled with the stink of sword-oil and the ringing of hammers as she prepared her company for war. In the evenings, she studies maps and reads reports until the letters become ghosts behind her eyelids. Only at night, and not for long, does she slip away. Only then does she allow herself to dream.
It is a memory, she thinks, as the days pressed into weeks. A memory walking with long, angry strides through shining towers of crystal and glass. A memory bathed in ashes, screaming on a battlefield long forgotten. His face slips out of her mind, like a reflection distorted in the water. Perhaps because it is a dream. Perhaps because of the Well. Perhaps because, somewhere, she already knows.
One night, the man wears a cloak of black wolf-skin. His spine is set and angry, and his staff sparks with the power of a thousand storms. He walks through a maze of mirrors, enemies scattered in his wake. She wakes with a childhood story on her lips.
Fen’Harel, she thinks to the memories that lay inside her head. Do I dream of Fen’Harel? She receives no answer but a migraine, which does not mean yes, but does not mean no.
When he strides through her dreams now, it is not with gentleness. The memory of this man, unfolding in the Fade, is no longer kind and gentle. Giants weep at his passing, and demons fear to scream when he drew near. She sees him in a crowd, like the eye of the storm, and elves with clean faces are shouting in raging triumph, Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel enasal!
She wakes in a sweat, her stomach twisting. The echoes in her mind say, Herald! Herald! Herald of Andraste!
She does not sleep again for a very long time.
Corypheus is coming. Days and nights are one seamless press of troops and inspections and reports stained with dirt and mud and blood. The cold of Skyhold bites into her bones – her clothes are too loose, it is hard to get warm.
She dreams the world breaking, shattering in shards of crystal glass. The wolf kneels at a mirror, blooded and torn, and weeps. Mas serannas, he whispers, hoarse with pain. Mas serannas. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.
She wakes, furious, tears on her cheeks, and she does not know why.
She does not know why, she does not know why, and she continues not to know why until she is standing in the Nightingale’s nest above the library and she hears his voice come up from below. Solas' voice. She has not seen him, they have not spoken in months - always avoiding, taking the other stairs. But his voice drifts up from below and suddenly she knows.
It is a thunderbolt, a blade to the ribs, a key sliding home in a lock. She knows. She knows that voice, she knows that face, she knows that name, she has seen him in her dreams, it was, it is, and it couldn’t be-
yes, murmurs the magic in her mind. yes.
Fen’Harel.
Shit.
She sits down, hard, as the pieces click into place. The Temple of Mythal, Adamant, even the Winter Palace-? Where did you learn politics? I have seen it in the Fade. His grasp of magic, the self-taught apostate who did not clunk-
No wonder he hates the Dalish. They are wrong, your vallaslin, slave markings, the spell from his hands as effortless as a breath, as if he had done it a hundred times before. You think walking in the Fade is such a great accomplishment?
You mean so much to me, more than I have ever imagined, so I will tell you the most important thing: the truth. The tiniest of hesitations, the fear that had flashed in his eyes-
The truth.
Someone is shaking her shoulder – “Inquisitor? Inquisitor! Inquisitor Lavellan!” She stands up, the anger rolling off her shoulders. Leliana looks at her, surprised, confused. “Inquisitor?”
“I’m going to kill him,” she hisses in Elvhen. She takes the stairs as a storm down a mountain, rolling with dark fury. He dared, he dared, he dares-
The door bursts open ahead of her. He is bent over his desk, straightens at her approach, hands tucked behind his back. You sound different, Solas, Cole had said once. Like the old songs. She couldn’t hear them then, but she can now.
“Inquisitor,” he greets her. Polite indifference. “How may I help you prepare for our final battle?”
“You!” she roars in Elvhen. “You lying, insufferable, weasel-blooded dung hoarder! You false-faced, yellow-livered, coward heir of a whore. How dare, how DARE you stand here, you pizzled block of pus?!”
Shock flashes over his features for an instant. He schools them to stony boredom. “Inquisitor-“
“Enough!” she shouts. “No more lies from a silver-tongued mongrel! I am not your Inquisitor, I am not your heart, I am your fool. The Fool of Fen’Harel!”
She watches the word hit him like a physical blow, watches the blood drain from his face and she is glad, oh, she is glad to shatter that façade.
“This is your mark,” she spits, the words of the oldest language like hot blood on her tongue. “This anchor, this orb, this Breach, this fortress – I will not be a pawn in your games, you puppy-headed son of a whelping bitch.”
He is crystal, he is glass, he does not move, does not breathe, does not deny. Stands there, shocked and shattered as she attacks. She will shred, tear, rip through his tunic, his chest, his flesh and bone until she finds his heart, takes it whole.
But when he breathes out, his eyes close. She can see the relief etched into his shoulders, the curve of his neck, the way his hands fall to his sides. Behind his breath, he is so weary. It stops the bile up in her mouth.
“Not that I’m not enjoying this little domestic,” someone drawls from far overhead. “But perhaps you would like to take the show to a more private location.” She drags her eyes from Solas – the galleries overhead are filled with wide eyes and curious faces, mages and servants and spies peering at her from above. Dorian lounges on the railing in a blood-red robe, posture careless, brows tight with worry.
She wishes for an instant she was a mage. Her fury would set the whole rotunda afire.
Instead she pulls in a breath, letting the cool air hit the back of her throat. Her anger settles into sick embers in the pit of her belly. She turns, walks away, footsteps soft with an elf's grace.
She knows he follows behind her. He is as silent as a wolf.
The Great Hall is pale candlelight and paler faces, both wavering and without substance. The stone of Skyhold grounds her as she walks. Her mountain, her fortress, her mark, her soul, her heart. She is no game piece for the Old Wolf. She is her own, a Herald of herself, and she burns.
Josephine, at her desk, looks up when the door swings open. Whatever she sees, her mouth shuts, and she does not say. Cullen stands planning in the war room, lit by the light of too many candles. They flicker in the draft as she opens the door. Cullen looks up and swallows, hard.
“I, well, I actually was just leaving.” He gathers his papers in a careless pile, watching her. Watching Solas. “I’ll close the door behind me.” She does not look at him, just let her eyes slide over the patterns of colored glass in the window. The door closes behind him with a thud that echoes – there is a weight to it greater than simple sound.
She is alone with the Dread Wolf.
She does not look at him, just listens to him breathe. Walks to the table. Plants her hands, slowly and deliberately, on the ancient wood. He shifts, somewhere by the door. A silent battle of will – she waits.
“How do you know?” His voice is level.
“A dream,” she says, calm and poisonously pleasant. “A series of dreams, even, from the Well of Sorrows. The priests of Mythal remember you, Fen’Harel.”
“Of course.”
“Of course.” The words roll like stones from her lips, heavy and smooth. She picks up a small dagger, plays with it on her fingers. “And what, now, shall we do? I suppose I must be wary. The Dread Wolf has my scent.” Metal flashes. He does not flinch. The dagger does not brush him as it flies past his cheek, buries itself deep in the wood of the great doors. She draws herself up, pins him with her gaze. “Or perhaps it is I who have the scent of the wolf.”
“You will do as you will,” Solas murmurs in the trade tongue. His shoulders are unbowed. “I have never been able to convince you otherwise.”
“I am not your puppet,” she snaps.
“Nor ever you have been,” he agrees. Elvhen feels natural from his lips, like a half-remembered song. She loves to hear him speak it, now that she can understand. The impulse, like a heartbeat, stokes her fury once more.
“How much of it was real?” she snaps, boiling to the worst betrayal. “How much was a lie? Why did you pretend to love me, you vicious, senseless bastard?” The words wrench out of her, pulling the pain with them. “Why did you tell me I was your heart?”
He looks at her, then, all pretense put away. His face is open, and his eyes –
“I never meant to love you,” he says softly. “I never meant to hurt you. The Breach came, and you burned so brightly, carrying my mark. You should have died, and yet you carried on, bringing hope where there was none, an impossible dawn. And when I came to know you…” He closes his eyes, and the tears gathered there spill over onto his cheek, rolls down to the dimple of his chin.
She knows that wretchedness, that bone-deep grief. It burns like a scar under her skin.
“Loving you was never pretend,” he says with gentle, ancient sorrow. He lets his tears fall. “Ar lath, ma vhenan. You are my heart. I have always believed in telling the truth.”
“You left,” she hisses, but her throat is thick. “You lied.”
“I was afraid,” Solas says. “You are far braver than I have ever been.”
“I don’t believe you,” she says, wretched. “I can’t.”
“I know.”
The grief in her throat is hot and hard. She is crying now, too. “Get out. Get out!”
“Inquisitor.” He bows his head. “Vhenan.”
She weeps, and she does not hear his footsteps. Only the door as it shuts behind him with a final, horrid crash. She should let him go, she should-
She does not want to lose him.
The realization hits her like a wave, adrenaline freeing her feet from the floor. “Solas!” she screams, running. “Solas!” She throws open the door, but the hallway is bare. She missed him, he has gone, she has lost him forever – “Solas!” her voice is hoarse with shouting.
An intake of breath, a shifting of cloth – he had sunk to the ground on the other side of the door, fallen to his knees on the hard stone. He looks up. His face is wrecked and ruined, his eyes are blind with tears.
“Solas.” She sinks to her knees and reaches for him and he is here, she has him, she is holding him, her arms are wrapped around his neck and she cries into the smoothness of his skin. He gasps raggedly like it is his first breath and he is holding her so tightly, his tears are hot against her shirt and she has him. She holds him. It’s okay. It is going to be okay.