Work Text:
The bedroll was far from clean. Cold air seeped through the holes in the tent. It was far from ideal. Fortunately, his magic could supply warmth—and as for the dirt? Theneras herself had been covered in it when they laid her down.
Cullen had objected to his insistence on a separate tent.
“The people need to see their Herald,” he said, jaw set, her body held close against his chest.
“Not like this,” Solas replied, forcing calm into his voice and maintaining the carefully neutral expression he reserved for the commander. “Not as though death might claim her at any moment—certainly not tended by an elven apostate.”
“Everyone knows you kept her alive when she first fell out of the Fade,” Cullen countered. He looked unsteady, as though sheer will alone kept him upright.
“They do not,” he answered, irritation threading his composure. He had no desire for anyone to see how he quieted the Anchor. Time was not on his side. There was more at stake than frostbite or broken ribs. The Anchor had changed. It was growing, consuming her. It could do more than before, but it was also turning her into the substance of the Fade itself. If he did not still it soon… She would not survive.
He exhaled, his breath turning to frost. “They believe I was merely Adan’s assistant. They will want to see a Chantry sister tending to her. Prejudice against my kind—” he paused, then amended softly, “—our kind,” for Theneras, too, was counted an elven apostate, no matter what title she bore. He left the thought unfinished.
Cullen bowed his head, defeated by logic he could not refute. “We recovered a few,” he murmured. “I’ll see one set up.” He retreated toward a pile of equipment near the small campfire. Solas watched him sort through the salvaged goods, searching for a tent with the fewest tears.
It took scarcely a heartbeat before willing hands assembled one. Their Herald had returned from death itself, of course she would be given her own shelter.
Solas did not fault Cullen for wanting her tended openly, healed beneath the eyes of the faithful. His concern sprang from genuine care—though Solas suspected there lay a small amount of jealousy beneath it.
Theneras spent much of her time with him, often deferring to his counsel rather than Cullen’s. That Solas met her attempts at charm with quiet indifference did little to ease the commander’s mind. In Cullen’s eyes, Solas had become a rival.
Once Theneras had been lain down and the tent flap secured, he breathed a sigh of relief. His hands moved systematically over her slight frame, halting where he detected the uneven give of fractured ribs.
The cause was irrelevant. The impact could have occurred when Corypheus threw her against the stone wall near the trebuchet or during the subsequent avalanche. What mattered was his ability to heal them.
He tried to keep images from distracting him. Corypheus gripping the Orb — his Orb – in one hand, Theneras in the other. He wasn’t sure which bothered him more. The Orb, saturated with the Blight and bent to the will of a corrupted magister, or the certainty of her death.
She had told them to run, and they had. He had been certain she was just behind him, until the Blighted dragon dropped between them, cutting her off. He tried to turn back but Cassandra had caught him and held him tight.
“There is no time and nothing we can do,’ she whispered in his ear. He had struggled, curbing his desire to use his dwindling reserves of magic to toss her aside.
“Don’t you think I would be down there, if I thought there was any hope?” The Seeker seemed unconcerned by what his magic could do to her. “We need you to protect these people. That is what she would want. That is what she was willing to die for.”
At that point, he had no choice but to watch the scene below unfold from a vantage high above Haven, desperately hoping for a miracle that would save her or the Orb or both. He could feel himself losing the fight against his emotions.
He shifted uncomfortably. At the start, when he saw her lying on a pallet in a disused jail cell she had been nothing but an annoyance. The bearer of a mark that should have been his, an impediment to his plans.
Corypheus had been correct, without enough power, only death could remove the Anchor. What the blighted magistrate had not known was that her death would cause it to wink out of existence, possibly taking her with it.
Frustrated, he had set on a new course. He would save her, hoping Cassandra and Leliana would believe him. Believe that their prisoner could use the mark on her hand to close the Breach. Once that was done, he could place himself at her side, gaining her trust, guiding her.
He had felt no hesitation in making her a means to an end. Tearing down the Veil and restoring the world to its proper form remained his duty; nothing was permitted to stand in the way of that. It would not be simple, and it would not be swift, but if he could endure and wait, events would unfold as they were meant to.
What he had not foreseen was the intensity of human belief. That they would so quickly name a Dalish elf their Herald, setting aside centuries of distrust and hatred, had not entered his calculations. His growing admiration for her had also not been part of his plan.
He attempted to turn his attention back to her injuries. The signs of a concussion were obvious, and the only reason she did not already show the waxy pallor of frostbite was the fur-lined armor she wore and the residual warmth of the underground passageways into which the avalanche had thrust her.
He could let her die. It might even be a mercy. But he would not. The Orb was still in play. It was just a matter of taking it back. She could be useful—guided, shaped, positioned as a leader the humans would follow. He could advise her, maneuver her, turn her into the instrument he required.
To do so, though, he would have to do to her what had been done to him. She would cease to be a person and become an emblem, a symbol around which others would rally and die. She would send hundreds to their deaths in the hope of saving thousands, burying her name beneath titles and expectations. She would lose the clear, stubborn sense of right and wrong that he had seen in her. She would no longer be the woman he— The woman he what?
He stopped the thought there, refusing to give it shape. He tried to push it aside, but it stayed with him, persistent as breath. She had become more than a tool to him. More than a shadow. She had become uncomfortably real to him in ways he could not easily categorize. Was it the Anchor? Had his magic changed her, woven some unintended thread between them?
Perhaps. He let his hand travel down along her side again, telling himself he was searching for additional injuries, knowing he simply wanted to feel her body beneath his hands.
The Anchor flared, its light sparking sharply, a stark reminder of what it was —obligation, duty, promise. It cut through his thoughts, naming what he tried not to say. Fantasy. Desire. Need.
None of it could be allowed to take root. To indulge it was to invite pain for her, for him, for the world he meant to restore. He gave a quiet, humorless huff of breath. Betrayal suited him, did it not? The Dalish already believed as much. In their stories, the Dread Wolf was always the one who turned against those who trusted him.
And yet, the thought of having something his was seductive. He had never allowed himself to want in that way. So many causes, so much responsibility, had filled every space where personal desire might have lived. Until now.
He inhaled slowly, holding the breath as if he could press the feeling back down where it belonged. Wanting her did not mean she would want him. She had flirted once or twice, and he had let his guard slip—for a moment. He could not afford to do so again.
She is a tool, he reminded himself. A key. The means by which he could reclaim what had been lost and save his people. And still, he could not stop wanting her.
Almost in spite of himself, he leaned down and brushed his lips against hers. The contact was brief, yet a sharp jolt ran through him, as if the Anchor’s lightning had leapt from her hand into his veins. He drew back at once, unsettled by the intensity of his own reaction. Feelings like this were dangerous. If he allowed them to grow, they would change everything.
He forced his breathing to steady, slowly gathering his composure piece by piece. He would heal her. He would guide her into the role he needed her to play. He would let the part of him that had worn the mask of the Dread Wolf for centuries step forward and take control. She would be his instrument, nothing more.
And yet, even as he reaffirmed that decision, he found himself leaning down once more, unable to resist the quiet gravity that drew him back to her lips.