Chapter Text
He reflected on how this had begun as they rode together in companionable silence.
She had found him, in the rotunda, as she usually had. They had not had much chance to speak of the events of the Temple of Mythal at length prior to this. He had needed to think, and had busied himself with working on the fresco, and she had let him work without disruption. He suspected she had needed to think as well. She wore Mythal’s vallaslin on her face; regardless of how much or how little the modern Dalish believed that their gods were real, to be present in the temple to Mythal, to walk the petitioner’s path must have been…stirring, at any rate. She had stood a little taller, when she had stepped upon the ancient tiles. She had looked proud. She had been hungry to learn more of the history of their people. Had actually, quite cleverly, baited him into saying more than he had intended by asking Morrigan for her opinion rather than his, and had spurred him into speaking through his irritation.
She had stood so confidently among the sentinels at first, confident that she stood among her people. He had thought that they must surely see that she was one of the People, as had he. He had forgotten, in his love and admiration for her, how he had felt at first. How he had felt about all of them at first. He had been ashamed, that Abelas had called her ‘shemlen’, a shadow wearing vallaslin; more ashamed that he, himself, had thought so, when he had tended her as she lay dying from the mark when she had fallen out of the rift. He thought that he could, at least, pride himself that he had at least thought it with sorrow, rather than contempt. And yet, she was elvhen, not a shadow of their people. She was as fully alive and vibrant as any of the People had ever been. More so, he thought, than any he had ever met before. He could not have lost his heart so completely to her were it not so. But he would have stood with her, over the sentinels, had she chosen to fight. He would have had no other choice, but he would have chosen her regardless.
And she had, when they had spoken after, spoke of trying to create a brighter future. That she would try to change the world for the better. For a moment, it was if he asked for absolution: what if she woke up to find that the world she had shaped was worse than what had been? And she had answered, thoughtfully, as she always did, that she would take a breath, see where it went wrong, and try again. And for a moment, he thought that he might try to help the Inquisitor shape her world instead, once this was all over. That they might, perhaps, build one together, bring some of what had been into her present to create a brighter future. She had teased him, referencing their shared dreams, he was certain, though with flirtatious innuendo to coax him from his melancholy, and he had lost his head entirely, visions of a bright future where he could bed her with her full knowledge of who he was. And to not only bed her, but to sleep with her, wake with her, to share a gentle future where there needed to be no other cares than he and she. Where perhaps the most momentous decision of the day might be to rise or to tarry a little longer in the sheets together. And he had asked her to come with him, where, he knew not, but somewhere, anywhere, that he might lay down his burden and be only hers.
She had flown to him without reservation, as her first thought, had stopped, asked him for time, that if he would only wait for her a few moments, that she would arrange matters that she would be free, and he had been so proud, that she would still have a care for her duty, that she would not abandon hers for him. Had hoped that her own care for her duty might allow her to understand the driving desperation of his own. It was no hardship to wait; in truth he had barely had time to ready their mounts and supplies before she came running up to the front gates.
They had flown through them on their mounts, racing like he was the heedless youth in love that he had never been, or perhaps he that was now, an adolescence found unexpectedly, a puppy love, he had thought, in his early awakening. And while he loved her with a deep canine devotion, his love for her was no transient physical infatuation; he was in love as he had never loved before, her heart, her mind, her spirit the mirror of his own. But yet, he was intensely aware of the physicality of his body, the cold air that stung his nose and nipped at the tips of his ears, the high bugle of his hart, the earthy animal smell overlaid with the sweet grassy smell of hay, the leather of the tack creaking, the sound of the stone under its hooves. How he could feel its muscles bunch under his thighs as he squeezed its sides with his calves and leaned forward to encourage it to run. He felt her presence near him like the prickle of the Fade on his skin, a lodestone to the needle of his heart, pulling it always in her direction.
He had never been so at peace with his physical form, at home in it with her in a way that he had only been at home with it when he was sketching or drawing, smoothing plaster on a wall in the act of creating a fresco, when he was moving through the movements of casting a spell like a dance, when his body was simply an extension of his will, his spirit, instead of a cage for it. And both his body and his spirit were united in his feelings for her.
He reined his hart in, slowed it to a walk and then to stop entirely, swung himself from its back, longing to have her in his arms. She took his lead, with a questioning cock of her head, and he fell upon her, searching to sup from her mouth as if he were a starving dog greedily snatching the choicest morsels from a feast, moving her backwards to fetch up against against the rough bark of a pine as she laughed. He was desperate, hungry for her, pressing light kisses to the corner of her mouth until her back hit the tree and she gasped as a shower of snow fell upon them, wet and heavy. She was quicksilver, she moved like a spirit into stealth, reaching overhead to shake a branch over them in a flurry of snow, and she was gone with another laugh.
His blood was hot and pounding in his veins, the flurry of snowballs she had unleashed on him no damper to his ardor. He retaliated, playful, though blinded, both by love and her ambush, with a wave of green energy pulled from the Fade, raising a wave of snow and knocking her with a startled gasp into a snowbank.
He could not remember ever having been so freely and simply happy; wiping snow from blinded eyes as it melted in a cold rivulet down his spine like the tingle of the Fade, watching her saunter towards him insouciantly, hands behind her back, snow dusting her hair and the fur over her shoulders, her eyes sparkling wickedly as they had when she had dared him to kiss her again on her balcony. He would not refuse her challenge now, though perhaps he might take some small precautions. He barely heard her when she accused him of cheating over the sound of his heart beating loud in his ears to a song he had long thought lost, and yet one he had never heard before.
Vhenan.
She was hunting now, and he was her quarry. She would find that he was not so easily brought to bay. He pinioned her cold wrists behind her as he lightly brushed his lips against hers, his hands easily wrapping around them, finely boned as she was. She was built with supple and deadly grace, light and strong and fast and clever like the coursing hounds that the Dalish kept.
“And you are not?’ he whispered with mock menace, and he felt her her lips curve in a smile against his, and his own curved in a mirror of hers. “Drop it, vhenan.”
She laughed as he kissed her, bright and blithe, and let the snowball drop from her cold fingers.
“Good,” he goaded her, releasing her wrists as he kissed her to press her close against him, the heat of her against the length of his body. He delighted in her sweet revenge, as she rocked up on her tiptoes to slip her slender fingers inside the collar of his sleeveless undertunic, laying her chilled fingers against the hot blood in the veins of his throat. The effect served only to inflame rather than cool his ardor, and he bent her back, catching her off balance as she gasped, startled, into his mouth while he pulled her onto his thigh, her toes drawing a line up his calf.
He was lost to a torrent of sensation as his tongue flicked lightly against her chill of her lips, as they parted lightly with a little sigh, warmed against his.
He had fought a desperate doomed battle against the betrayal of his own treacherous heart, had suffered a catastrophic failure in losing his and gaining hers that was, perhaps more momentous than any failure he had suffered before, a more calamitous ruin to his plans than even the creation of the Veil. But this loss, this inevitable defeat, felt more like a victory than any he had ever won.
It was so easy to love her, to release his grasp on his dire duty and to fall free into the reckless abandon of a man in love, to simply be himself with her, the him that he had always wanted to be and had never thought possible.
She pulled him down into the snow, as he kissed her, rolled them to rise o’er the top of him, glorious, radiant, the sun shining behind her like an aureole.
He would tell her now.
It was on the tip of his tongue.
He opened his mouth to speak.
She laughed gaily as she ceremoniously anointed him with a double handful of snow, dropping it onto his face triumphantly as he spluttered, a mouth full of snow.
“That’s for dropping me in the snowbank,” she declared with glee, swinging her leg off of him to stand and offer her hand to pull him to his feet.
He was simultaneously disappointed and relieved, and let her pull him to his feet, shaking the snow free from his head and shoulders as he stood.
She deserved better than to have the truth revealed to her so abruptly. He would take her somewhere lovely, meaningful. He was not entirely certain where. Truthfully, he had not intended to ask her to come away with him. It had been the passionate impulse of a moment, when he had felt that in the aftermath of the Temple of Mythal that he could tell her everything, that he could simply remain with her as Solas and leave the rest of his duty behind. He had wanted her only for himself, selfishly; hoped that perhaps for a breath he need have no other duty than that to his heart, and perhaps she could lay her own aside for a time.
He planned to tell her tonight, in the intimate light of a flickering fire, only the two of them. There were some ancient ruins that lay half a day from here; they could set camp there.
“We should continue on,” he said. “If we are to reach the campsite before it grows dark.”
She had flashed him a quick grin.
“So you do know where we’re going,” she teased. “I had wondered.”
He hadn’t known. He had simply let his hart lead the way, as they raced across the bridge in joyous flight. But he had a plan now. Tonight, in the ruins, still and quiet, he would speak to her.
The snow was deep and wet, and they would make better time on their harts. He whistled, as did she, and the two mounts raised their heads and wandered over. He petted its soft nose, spoke to it gently.
“Ma serannas, falon,” he said. “A little farther yet today, if you would.”
She was doing the same, he noticed, checking the girth carefully for any rubbing before swinging up on her hart and then stroking its shoulder, leaning close over its neck.
He mounted his own hart.
“After you,” she said, and they started off again.
He was at peace with himself, as they rode together through the deep snow.