Chapter Text
They spend another two weeks in the Hinterlands, closing rifts, claiming the Winterwatch Tower from Speaker Anais, and arriving at Master Dennett’s farm only to find there’s more work to be done. The days are long and draining, and when they finally reach Haven with the promise to build watchtowers in return for new mounts, all of them are worn and tired.
Two days after their arrival, Solas finds himself outside Haven’s walls, standing on a jetty overlooking the frozen lake, and soaking up the quiet. He’d once told Athera that the burdens of leadership were invisible, but no lesser because of it, and he’s felt the truth of his words deeply over the last few weeks. Not only has he had to maintain the mask of the humble apostate, shrinking himself and taking orders while they trek for miles across war torn farmland, but he’s also slipped back into Fen’Harel’s role once again.
His agents have started to infiltrate the Inquisition, knowing only that he’s a member of their cause, but never suspecting his true identity. A city elf called Hallen is working as one of Josie’s scribes, and one of his few Dalish agents, Midha, has found a position among the Nightingale’s lowly runners. With the scrutiny of both the shemlen powers and his own comrades focused on him, he’s finding it harder than ever to maintain a calm exterior.
In the Fade, with the Nightmare kept at bay by Wisdom’s wards, he meets with agents scattered across Thedas, all of them working towards the reclaiming of his orb. For now, it seems that Corypheus has retreated to the Vinmark mountains, but the reports of his control of the Blight make Solas nervous, and his trust in Mythal is waning. Standing in the midst of a soft afternoon snowfall, he feels lost.
It had seemed so simple before. He would wake, unlock the focus, and use its power to destroy the twisted remnants of Elvhenan while freeing those who had survived. As the veil fell, he would use the raw power of its sundering to obliterate the last vestiges of the Blight, and if the act destroyed him in the process, then at least he could be certain that whatever was left of the new world would be better. Safer.
Now, his plans fall over themselves, twisting in uncertain shadows with equally uncertain ends. He doesn’t know if he can rely on Mythal to be his guide, and without the certainty of his oldest friend to lead him, he feels abandoned. How can he destroy this world when the people are real? How can he let it continue when the veil is already weakening, and the Blight creeps ever closer with each Old God’s fall?
It’s an impossible situation, and he yearns for someone to share it with. He wants to turn around and feel Athera’s fingertips brushing over his cheeks, calming his racing thoughts and murmuring words of comfort into his ears. He wants to bask in the certainty she’d always seemed to hold, that he was good. That he would find a way. That the choices he faced were not so hopeless after all. Now, standing in the cold, he can’t be sure there’s any hope left, and if there is, then he doesn’t know how to find it.
Alone by the lake, he lets the snow drift around him, biting at his ears and blanketing his shoulders in a soft crush of white. The thin whine of the wind echoes back to him over the ice, and he listens to the clash of metal nearby while Cullen drills the new recruits. It isn’t peace he’s seeking, he realises, but oblivion. He wants to disappear. To drift away into the air and for it to be as though he’d never existed.
He lets a snowflake settle on the palm of his hand and sighs into the cold. Athera had made him believe that he could be Solas again, but he sees now that it was never an option. How can he be Solas when it’s the Dread Wolf the world still needs? It was a selfish dream he’d clung to, but it would serve him as a wish no longer. There are things he must do if anything in this world is to survive the coming storm.
Walking with a measured pace, he lets his feet carry him back to the walls where he’s certain Cassandra will seek him. Since the fight with Ellana, he’s isolated himself from his companions, but he knows he’ll need the Seeker’s good grace in the long months to come. It’s time he started to cultivate it.
“You look thoughtful, Solas,” she says as he approaches. “Is something wrong?”
“No more so than for anyone in times such as these.”
He casts an eye over the training dummies, at least three of them haggard by her attacks.
“You train hard, Seeker,” he notes. “But would it not be more useful to spar with a partner?”
She watches him with a challenging smirk, her dark eyes assessing.
“Was that an offer?”
His lips twitch.
“Perhaps.”
A few minutes later, he ducks a vicious blow from her sword and spins gracefully out of her reach. The air is cold in his lungs, his breath leaving him in bursts of water vapour, but his muscles are burning and his staff is solid in his hands. The Seeker is intent on him, eyes sparking and a sheen of sweat glistening on her cheekbones.
It feels good to fight.
He draws on the veil, pulling a static shock through his fingers and forcing her to step to the side. Her shield takes the glancing blow, and while she recovers he lays a series of frost runes around his position, knowing they’ll be as good as invisible in the snow. Cassandra charges, a powerful attack with her shield that forces him to parry with the blade of his staff, and hides the forward thrust of her sword behind it.
His barrier takes the force of the charge and he fadesteps away, reversing their positions with a flurry of powdered snow. She spins to keep him in her sight, and he sees the thrill of a well-matched battle light in her eyes, and knows the same expression is reflected in his. Their friendly sparring match has grown into something more - a true contest between equal allies, and the satisfaction of it fizzes in his veins.
“Good,” he praises, when she rallies quickly. “But remember to use your opponent’s strengths to your advantage.”
She brings her sword down and he meets it with the middle of his staff, the metal scraping against the enchanted wood and raising a sheen of sparks in the air.
“And what are your strengths, Solas?”
Around the perimeter of their contest, they’ve drawn a crowd, and he revels in the performance for an audience. Ordinarily, he wouldn’t draw attention to himself like this, but he’s been too absent from too many conversations to regret it now. He needs to work in the shadows, it’s true, but he can’t allow his fragile position in the inner circle to be overlooked completely.
“It’s not my magic you should fear,” he tells her. “It’s the speed at which I might escape.”
To demonstrate, the next time she swings her sword, he sweeps down into a crouch and fadesteps onto a raised incline behind her. She twists again to face him, eyes wide in surprise, and he retakes a fighting stance on the other side of his runes.
“Your power is in your strength, but an agile enemy can always turn that strength against you.”
Cassandra offers him a feral smile, both grateful and combative at once. Both of them are out of breath, the flush of blood in their cheeks, and Solas savours the burn in his muscles.
“And how would I turn your speed against you?”
They are circling each other now, two predators on opposite sides of an invisible line.
“You would struggle,” he replies truthfully. “Stumble, and lure me closer until I drop my guard. If I don’t believe there’s a need to run, then I’ll be less likely to plan for it.”
They trade a number of blows after that, inching closer to the hidden runes. Solas harries her with bursts of flame and she makes him dodge around their tightening circle to avoid the wide arc of her sword.
“And in this moment, when a feint would be expected?”
A knowing smile twists his lips.
“In a moment such as this, it will be cunning that wins the day.”
In a flash, he lunges forward, stabbing with the blade of his staff before leaping back out of her reach. Cassandra jumps to the side, caught off-balance, and then with a snarl pursues him over the snow. He grins, co*cky and self-assured, and with a surge of power the runes light beneath her feet.
The ice wraps around her legs and freezes her where she stands, and Cassandra lets out a cry of surprise and struggles not to fall. The battle is undoubtedly won, but on instinct it seems, she plunges her sword into the ground. Before he can even think about moving, Solas feels the smite rush through the air and cut him to his knees.
He gasps at the sudden sucking sensation of the Fade being forced away from him, and his ears pop while his hands plunge into the snow beneath him. Nausea rises in his throat, and he blinks dark spots from his vision while Cassandra uses her shield to break herself out of the trap.
“Solas, are you alright?”
Her voice sounds distant, and when he closes his eyes he feels an echo of a Templar’s armour pressed against his back, and hears Athera shouting his name.
“Solas, forgive me. I didn’t mean for that to happen.”
The world comes back into focus, and he realises he’s still kneeling on the ground. Cassandra has freed herself and is standing by his side, her expression guilty and worried when she peers into his face.
“Don’t apologise.”
He’s relieved to hear that his voice sounds steady.
“Were this a true battle, such an instinct would have saved your life.”
Her grip is strong when she hauls him back to his feet, and he draws a steadying breath in and tenses his muscles to keep from shaking.
“Were this a true battle, you’d have run me through with a blade the moment the trap sprung.”
Her tone is wry and tinged with reluctant approval, and Solas swallows against the pounding of his heart and offers her a smirk in return.
“Perhaps, but had they not been camouflaged, I doubt you’d have walked into my runes.”
She concedes the point with a nod of her head, her hand still cupped at his elbow while she turns her scowl on the audience they’ve drawn around them.
“Haven’t you all got anything better to do than to stand around gawking?”
He’s grateful for her commanding presence when their spectators begin to disperse, and he reassures her he’s fine one last time before slipping away with the crowd, and back into the anonymity of Haven’s streets. His legs feel like dead weights and sweat is cooling on his skin, but he forces himself to walk, stately and calm, back to his shack by the apothecary.
When he passes Varric’s tent, the dwarf gives him an appraising look which he returns with a bow of his head, but he doesn’t think for a moment that he’s fooled him. Mercifully, he doesn’t press the issue, and Solas struggles up the slick stairway and stumbles gratefully into his rooms. As soon as the door closes behind him, his calm façade crumbles as though it had never been.
He lurches towards the bed, sinking to his knees with his palms braced against the mattress and his forehead pressed into the blankets. The Seeker’s smite is less potent than the Templar’s, and less dizzying than the magebane, but although he can already feel the Fade returning to him, its sudden loss lights bitter memories like a bonfire behind his eyes. He feels himself trembling and remembers his terror in the dark of the Spire, and his fingers tangle in the furs and twitch with the need to reach for support.
“Athera,” he murmurs brokenly.
It’s only the second time her name has passed his lips since he parted ways with Leliana at the Spire, and his next exhale comes out as a plaintive whine. That sensation again, of tears gathering behind his eyes and sobs crowding too tightly in his throat, makes him gasp, and he prays silently for the dam to break.
Let it be done. Let it be over. Let me grieve.
But whatever pain is still contained within him refuses to be released. He groans hopelessly into the bed, the Fade wrapping around his mana again but bringing him no relief. He’s so lost in his turbulent memories, that he barely manages to raise his head when the mattress dips beside him, and a familiar voice begins to speak.
“She echoes in the cracks she left behind. Vhenan, ma lath, my star. She didn’t want to leave, but the stones were too heavy to lift.”
Solas blinks. His mind falls silent for a single, blissful moment. And then he finds himself on his feet and tackling the spirit to the bed.
“Compassion.”
It comes out as a snarl, vicious and mocking, but Cole makes no move to push him away.
“Hurt like ice that breaks through the mountain. How can the cold burn?”
Solas lets out a cry, his hands closing around the spirit’s neck while his legs pin him to the bed.
“You were meant to keep her safe!”
The words are agonised, torn from his chest in a desperate howl. He had looked for Compassion everywhere in the days after the rebellion. Searched the Fade and the Waking for any sign of the friendly shadow that Athera had taken into the darkness with her. Now that he’s here without her, he wants to scream. He wants to make it hurt. He wants the answer to a single question that falls like a plea from his lips.
“Why?”
He knows the spirit can hear the full scope of that word in his thoughts.
Why did you leave her?
Why didn’t she survive?
Why didn’t you help her escape?
Why are you here when she is gone?
And the final question that even he doesn’t realise he’s asked.
Why am I alone again?
“I’m sorry,” Cole says miserably. “I sent her away but the stones were too fast. Sharp, falling, dark and bright. Ma fen, ir abelas. Then she was quiet.”
The sound that leaves him is one he’s never made before. A distraught, hopeless note that rises higher as he drops his hands from the spirit’s neck, and slides bonelessly back to the floor.
“My star,” he’s murmuring, over and over. “My star, my star, my star.”
He doesn’t know how long he sits there for, his back against the wooden bedframe and his head in his hands, but when he next looks up again Cole is sitting opposite him, his pale blue eyes watching him sadly from beneath the wide rim of his hat.
“I’m sorry. She misses you too.”
He co*cks his head.
“Misses. Did miss. Will miss. Had missed. Is missing?”
Solas stares back at him dully.
“I’m sorry. It’s all jumbled. Too much hurt and not enough words to hold it.”
He swallows, his throat dry and the shard of ice in his heart spreading like a fog over his skin.
“Why are you here?”
“Your hurt is louder now,” Cole tells him. “Across the veil, tearing holes, the ice is spreading. Don’t leave him alone, Cole. He doesn’t want to be alone.”
The spirit ducks his head and rests his chin on his chest.
“She wanted me to help.”
Solas tightens his jaw against the warm wave of painful love that engulfs him. Of course she had wanted Cole to help. She had always wanted to help him. She’d just never realised that the only person he’d trusted in this world was her.
“You can’t help this, Cole,” he whispers. “I do not…”
He trails off into the silence, the words sticking in his throat.
I do not deserve your help.
Cole looks back at him, his eyes flashing beneath the shadow of his hat.
“Solas who wanders. The wolf that dreams. You think you can’t be him anymore.” Cole blinks at him guilelessly. “But you can. She told you so.”
Solas closes his eyes, exhaustion weighing like a mantle across his shoulders.
“She was wrong.”
