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He realizes the Dalish are a very tactile people.
This is not a difficult conclusion. There are, of course, cultural differences within the Inquisition: variations in food and faith, in policies and politics. Physical proximity is another variable – people from Ferelden stand an average of four inches closer to each other than do people of Orlais. It is understandable, expected.
The Inquisitor is another matter.
He watches her navigate this new landscape with eagle eyes – they all do. She is an unknown, and yet the lynchpin on which all their plans turn. So he notices the way she stands too close, how she reaches out, initiates physical contact like it is another form of breathing.
It’s a careful dance, but she does not pull away. She leans into Cassandra during a War Table meeting, bumping her head lightly against the other woman’s arm in frustration. She drapes her feet on Varric’s lap as they sit around the campfire, rests against the Iron Bull while they wait at a rendezvous. She does her paperwork leaning against Josephine’s shins, as chairs are another thing the Dalish do not seem to understand.
There are exceptions. She is hesitant with Leliana and restrained with Vivienne. Solas thinks Cole will be another exception, until he comes across the spirit and the Inquisitor in the golden afternoon of a forest clearing. The boy’s head is pillowed in her lap, watching the clouds as she reads to him from a book of poetry.
Solas watches them, and realizes he is smiling.
She was never hesitant with him.
It surprised him, that first night, sitting on the ground beside the fire. They are all so new, so unknown to each other, everyone a puzzle to be undone. And she is so young and so weary, her body still adapting to the strain of the mark that burns inside her skin.
He does not think anything of it when she sits next to him. Their tasks – gathering firewood, setting up the tents – are done, and Varric and Cassandra are arguing about the best way to cook the fish for dinner. Lavellan watches them with a faint smile, a piece of mending in her lap. Their knees barely brush, sitting side-by-side, but he does not pull away.
And when her head starts to bob over her work, he does not move away, just watches as the exhaustion settles into her bones. Like a tree falling, she sways side to side, slowly leans in to him. This close, she smells of leather, oil, herbs, and something uniquely spicy, something just her own.
He could move so easily. A simple shift of his weight, and she would slide to the ground, curl up around herself and slip into the Fade. There is something that stills his movements, something that shortens his breath. He does not move.
This is foolish, of course. He is being foolish. But she looks so weary, and the ground is hard and cold. He can feel the warmth of her through his tunic, the heat, the strength, the softness.
He does not move. But when she is deep asleep and nodding off his shoulder, he shifts her into his lap. She makes a small, pleased noise. He rests a hand on her head, oddly touched. Oddly protective.
When she wakes, the fire has burned to the embers and the others have gone to their rest. She gives him a sleepy smile that makes his stomach twist and says thank you, in elvhen, soft and low. He retreats to the safety of his bedroll, leaving her to her dinner, to her own unknown thoughts.
That was foolish, he thinks. It will not happen again.
He has become very good at lying to himself.
He has a duty – nothing else comes before that. And yet the Inquisitor will take a step backwards into his arms, just a moment, bracing herself before facing a danger, a demon, a crowd of worshippers. She finds comfort in the touch of a moment, and he cannot bring himself to deny her.
That he is comforted as well is another truth that he buries deep, far from the light of his waking mind.
He sees her affection go awry. Blackwall follows her with stars in his eyes until she lets him down, gently and kindly, in the stables at Skyhold. The man is crushed. She is shaken. For a time, she holds herself back – does not lean, does not press, does not reach out to brush a finger along the back of the hand.
Those who have come to love her notice. Dorian drapes himself over her shoulders, hoists her legs into his lap, complains bitterly about the cold until she sits down beside him. Leliana lays a hand on the Inquisitor’s arm when they are sitting in council; Josephine sets a small cushion to the side of her chair, quietly inviting their Inquisitor to sit close. The Iron Bull routinely takes his boss to “come on, have a drink with me and the Chargers.” These sessions often end in a mound of warm drunken bodies, the Inquisitor wrapped up in the very center. Solas draws an idle sketch, the group as a pile of puppies, snoring, bellies full.
It never fails to make him smile.
And they continue the dance. It is the dance that started when he tried to unlock his anchor, when it lodged in her hand, when she swore to protect him, when she fell asleep in his lap and when he did not move away. The things he has buried start to grow, blooming violently in his heart until he can no longer ignore the garden that has sprouted without warning.
She brings her reports to the rotunda, sprawls out on his scaffolding or the couch tucked along the wall. He’ll take his book and join her, let her rest on his shoulder, drape her legs across his thighs. Sometimes she’ll throw her feet up and lay her head in his lap, read bits and pieces of her notes aloud. Sometimes she’ll slip her palm into his hand, tracing his heartbeat under his skin.
He knows he has come to love her. Knows that it cannot last. But the wild, blooming garden that has flowered in his heart reaches out vines, breaking down the walls he has built over lifetimes. Could he- he could tell her. Offer her the truth, take his own past, let himself reach out for the sun.
He could.
He almost does.
At the final moment, his courage buckles and breaks. He strides into the forest, into the dark, tearing up all that has grown inside his soul. He entombs it under a mountain of stone, of duty, of shame. Here lies buried the man that he could have been, the future he denied. He is not brave enough to tell her the truth, so he walks alone into the dark.
He assumed – there is a saying about assuming, perhaps it fits here – that it would be easy. That he could walk away. That because he is old, because he has lost so much, he would be used to it. He would endure.
He has always been a creature of pride.
Losing her is losing a tooth, when the tongue cannot help but investigate the gaping space. It is the shock of missing the final step, the panic as the foot plunges through empty air. It is a wound that runs deeper than he dreamed, an ache like an addict’s, scars that split, flesh that is rent and refuses to heal.
Deep in the night, he stares at his ceiling. Runs through the days, the weeks. When was the last time he felt the touch of another living being? Not heat, fire, passion – a hand shake. Fingers brushing as he passes a book, the wine, a weapon. He does not touch and no one will reach out to him. Not anymore.
Deep in the night, he knows he has driven away the last person who will ever trace a smile onto his soul.
He cannot help but watch her, as he cannot help his breathing. Not that it is easy. She gives his rotunda a wide berth. Her footsteps in the halls fall with a heavier tread, and she does not laugh so freely. The lights in her quarters no longer go out.
He knows when she picks up a new hobby, hears the comments, sees the smiles. Cole has showed her the trick of making small, soft toys out of cloth and old scraps, and she seems to delight in it. Leliana, of course, receives a nug. Cullen is gifted with a lion, Cassandra and Bull with shiny satin dragons, and Dorian gets a peacock to which he claims offense but secretly adores. Varric gets a rat – to remind him of Kirkwall, goes the joke – Krem has a bear, and Sera is given an alarmingly large bee which she is suddenly never without.
It should not be a surprise when he returns to his desk one evening after dinner to find a new companion sitting there. He thinks it a dog, at first, in soft white linen. But no, the stance is wrong, the ears, the tail-
He sits down at his chair, harder than he means to. It is a small white wolf, with six eyes picked out in sapphire thread.
It cannot be possible.
Does she-?
Could she-?
Hope blooms inside him, wild and vibrant and alive. He is, he is still alive, he lives, heart pounds, breath catches, he lives. He lives and loves and perhaps, perhaps there is still time-! Then he hears her, hears her voice saying “come in” and he is standing in the hallway right outside her chambers and the door is opening under his hand-
She is so beautiful.
Her eyes are weary, one arm in a sling – she was injured, hurt, and he didn’t know? A hundred emotions flit across her face, too quick to capture, but she is here, he is here, he is alive, there is still time, but does she, does she know? He cannot tell, cannot guess, thousands of years come down to this instant and he cannot tell if she knows.
“Do you like the wolf?” she is asking, nodding at the toy in his hands.
“I-” he starts, stops, feels a fool. “What-?”
“It was Cole’s idea,” she says. “I asked him what I should make you and he told me, ‘the wolf is small and white when he’s with you.’ That makes about as much sense as anything, but when I showed him, he said it needed more eyes.” She smiles, unsure, tips her head. “Do you like it?”
“I-”
It-
She doesn’t know. She, she doesn’t-
The knowledge sinks, a stone in his throat, a boulder in his chest. She doesn’t know. But she is looking at him, worry in her eyes, and he swallows.
“I do,” he says. And he thanks her.
Except he does not say “My thanks, Inquisitor,” which would be proper, or “My thanks, Herald,” which would be rude. “My thanks, Lavellan,” would have been accurate, or even “My thanks, lethallan.”
Instead he says, “My thanks, vhenan.” He forgets himself, forgets his duty and his promises and walls and the will to endure. An iron weight twists in his gut, the death-of-hope feels as if he is dying. He calls her his heart because that is what she is, because he has always striven for the truth.
Her breath stops.
“You are welcome, emma lath.” My forever-love. She hesitates, the seconds stretching out to infinity, then reaches out a hand. Her fingers brush his cheek, rough, scarred, callused, gentle. They shake. The smallest of trembles.
She is no dream.
She is real.
She is real, she is real, this is real, this must be real, the trembling touch that grounds him, settles him into his own skin. Nothing, nothing, nothing has been more real than this moment, the heat of her, the warmth, the smile. Scared. Full of wonder. She is real, so this is real. This place. This time. These people. This love.
He presses his hand against her own, turning into her palm. The realizations are a storm, threatening to tear him away, but she, she has him. She has his anchor, she is his anchor, and he almost lost her forever. Lost her to duty, to pride and to darkness and the rolling thunder of battle.
He has never been so thankful for a small stuffed wolf. It is the strangest things that tip the wheel of fate.
They walk through the fortress. He does not let go of her hand. In his mind, he had practiced telling her. The reality is unpolished, inelegant. It takes more than one night, one walk, one dawn. But when he stumbles, she is there. And her touch is guiding him home.
Home.