Derecho - vivispec - Dragon Age: Inquisition [Archive of Our Own] (2024)

Chapter 1: Cold Front

Chapter Text

Little had changed in 4,000 years; nobility then was nobility now, it would seem, with the only amendment the shape of their trappings.

Solas slowed at the railing of the mezzanine, leaning against it and adjusting his mask. Below, the people danced, skirts flaring as the women spun, the push and pull of couples in motion like waves creeping upshore with their bobbing heads the ships in that sea. They dipped, unfurled, shaping no shadows under the dim light of sunset seeping in through the high windows, and the candles that bolstered it.

Once upon a very long time, he had considered such displays exciting—beautiful, even, in the way they poised like peaco*cks with tails fanned and quivering. As it was now, their incessant posturing was little more than an annoyance to him…but, at the least, it was one with occasional purpose.

The music swelled, as did the tides, and with its retreat a name was called. Those ahead of him shuffled forward, curtsying low to their hostess beyond before descending the steps to join the nobility beneath, and he took their place in turn. Like an instrument rolling beneath the ensemble, the murmur of voices contained behind fan and hand hummed in near harmony with the song, the spreading of secrets an almost pleasing undercurrent, if one could only forget the stakes.

With a final sustained note both songs came to their ends, and all the choir breathed.

“Now presenting, Lord Percival de Bassett!”

With a hand tucked before and behind him, Solas bowed deeply as the name of the noble he was to be that night was announced. He lifted his head just enough to see, waiting patiently for their hostess to acknowledge him from across the ballroom. Distracted as she was by more anticipated guests, all the Grand Enchanter allowed was a wave, with not so much as a sidelong glance spared in his direction—a slight against his persona, no doubt, but one that served him well enough. Even here where Vivienne’s meticulous leer should be fixed upon him, it was easy enough to slip by unnoticed, hidden within the long shadows the aristocracy and their judgments cast.

Still, his presence stirred a temporary buzz as he turned from the steps to skirt the ballroom, with those who cared to listen wondering at how he’d secured an invitation to one of Madame de Fer’s fetes, as well as what he senselessly hoped to gain. He was a nobody with nothing to barter, some lesser cousin or nephew to a more influential noble whom Vivienne owed a favor, made abundantly clear by her inattention.

Their interest was of little note regardless. Despite their vain assumptions, he hadn’t come for the Orlesian nobility gathered here—they meant nothing to him, offered nothing to him, and their petty Game provided even less. No, though he’d once found such functions exciting and the memories they surfaced somehow nostalgic, invigorating, there was little to be gained from the whispers here that was not better left to his agents. None of the visitors in attendance nor their intel were worthy of his attention.

None, that was, save one.

His pace slowed to a stop as she came into view—or, maybe more aptly, as the crowd she drew did. He knew it was there that she’d be, pressed close to the wall opposite him and shadowed by towering nobility as they descended upon her, like scavengers come to ransack her words for gossip.

Viera’vun, the former Inquisitor, and the greatest threat to his plans. The woman he’d loved, despite himself.

After nearly a year unseen, rumors speculating on the supposed whereabouts and shadowy movements of what remained of the Inquisition were sought after not only within the circles of Orlais, but throughout Thedas. Even his own agents struggled to follow in the footsteps of the Dalish huntress, adept as she was within uncharted lands, and had lost her for nearly half that time. Information of the Herald sold for a high price, and within her voice every noble present heard gold.

But they’d make no profit tonight, not from her. Viera’vun was not one to be daunted by the likes of them any longer. They’d easier yield coin by pawning the pilfered goods of their hostess than by stealing secrets from the pocket of their once heroine.

Plucking a glass from a servant’s tray as they passed, Solas drifted out the door beside him and to a balcony, overlooking the grounds of the villa the self-proclaimed Grand Enchanter was staying at for the incoming warmer months. Though his interest in the Herald would in no way be seen as exceptional, she’d be much too occupied to grant him time enough to come by what he sought, should he even make it to her side without revealing his hand. Opportunity was needed for the excitement surrounding her to die down, and for those who prowled her periphery to dishearten and disperse.

But what could she possibly be playing at?

Resting against the railing with his hand to his chin, he scanned the garden below, perfectly manicured and utterly disinteresting as it bathed in dying daylight. Viera’vun had learned well from nearly five years of cat and mouse, and though he’d found her temporary respite her intentions vexed him still. Now more than ever he struggled to parse her purpose, with what word he could catch of her movements within his web only serving to trouble him further.

She was searching for something. And to what end she endeavored, he could not say.

He lifted the glass to his lips, inhaling its aroma deeply before taking a swig and letting the vintage wash over his tongue. What she sought was effectively useless, at least in the fight against his plans: an artifact in the form of a brooch, mistakenly credited to Tevinter as Gemmae Somniarum, or Dreamer’s Pins. Once hunted by Somniari when Dreamers were much more common within the Imperium, the trinkets were said to act as a shield within the Fade.

That was not enough to worry him. Little was to be done with such talismans with regard to their ongoing battle, and any protections afforded were far outweighed by the resources demanded in securing a single one. Those found had since been scattered to the winds for centuries, lost to those who’d take them for their own, as well as the time that made their descendants forget.

This, she surely knows…and yet, still she searches.

There was only one reason he could discern and, though doubtful, the danger it posed was unsettling. What worried him was his connection to the charms, and what she could have possibly discovered that led her to hunt them doggedly despite the limits of their use.

Because they weren’t of Tevinter origins, but Elvhen in make. And, long ago, the pins had been his, imbued by his magic, given by his hand.

It had been by his sentiments alone that he’d discovered her interest, bidding the scouts who’d eventually stumbled upon her tracks to keep their ears open for the brooches, should such a tip cross their path. Until now, he hadn’t even been entirely certain that it was the former Inquisitor tracing them, only that whoever had left the trail was desperate, and growing more and more frantic with every empty-ended lead.

The trail had led here, and his doubts had been cast aside. It could only be her.

Does she suspect another use for them? A way to study my magic, or reverse engineer them? Could she, somehow, use it against me?

An unlikely explanation, he knew, but Viera’vun was a resourceful hunter who wouldn’t waste so much as a second, not in this. There was something tucked within her sleeve, of that he had little doubt. He could not afford to let it remain hidden there.

Sighing, he let his head fall, working a hand beneath his mask to rub at his eyes and pinch the bridge of his nose. Even so much as the thought of facing her ached like an unacknowledged bruise, sore and tender when carelessly brushed against. He’d find no respite nor answers here above the gardens, however, and their time was drawing near. Straightening to throw the rest of his drink back in a single swallow, Solas turned towards the ball—

—only to stagger backwards, pushed against the railing by a force at his knees that was blocked from his view by the bulky thing on his face.

“Ach!”

Holding tight his empty glass, he steadied himself before his eyes trailed down past his mask, lower still and to the ground where the source of impact sat sore on her backside: a small girl, dressed in servant’s clothes and no older than five, he wagered. Rubbing her cheek gingerly, she threw her attention over her shoulder, scanning the space behind her before so much as looking at the man she’d run into.

Seemingly satisfied with the empty balcony doorway, she finally turned to acknowledge him, her big, stormy eyes searching for his behind his mask with a question tilting her head. Then, still dazed, a flash of recollection reignited her, and she scrambled to her feet. Dusting off her patchwork dress, she clasped her hands before her, dipping into an impressive bow that split her unruly chestnut hair across pointed ears.

“Désolée, monsieur,” came words that didn’t quite fit the shape of her mouth, practiced but strange. The silence lingered between them as he continued to study her, and though the child’s patience was admirable, it was evidently not without its limits. Eventually, she peeked out through the curtain of her bangs, bright gaze curious and unafraid, as she looked for any indication of what it was he expected her to do.

Anticipation, but not apprehension. The fear he’d come to know within the elven servants of Orlais was notably lacking, as if the child expected a scolding, perhaps, and not an open palm. The child of a servant from the countryside, maybe, employed by a kinder family who doesn’t raise their hands against the children.

Under his scrutiny she shuffled uncomfortably, glancing back to the doorway. No, she doesn’t feel the true weight of her mistake, he concluded, setting his glass on the post at his side, not as she should for one raised so near Val Royeaux. She is in danger here.

“Je te pardonne,” he finally granted, clearing his throat as she straightened, “but, child, this place isn’t safe for you. I can hardly imagine it’s where you’re meant to be.”

As if unable to control her energy the girl bounced on her heels twice, looking down to her feet to hide the smile pushing her rosy cheeks. “No,” she admitted, tone rife with barely contained mischief, “but I was only going to take a look, that’s all. I was going to go right back after, and nobody was going to know.”

“And yet, I know.” He crouched, lowering himself to her level; even then, he still towered above the small thing. “Take a look at what, exactly? What could be worth such a risk?”

“The ball!” she blurted, and her eyes as they lifted to his flashed like lightning, defiant. As if in response, Solas felt something flutter across the Veil, and he stiffened. “I want to see the ball, all the dresses and the dancing, and the people!” She looked down to her hands, tenting and tangling them. “We never get this close to the city, and I never get to go to the fancy places, so I had to look. Nana said to stay put, but I’m not afraid.”

Clearly an apt request, if one easily ignored. Excitement had made her words breathy, quick and quiet, as if her desires were a secret to be kept between the two of them. He mourned for what the world would do to such wonder; curiosity was a blessing often smothered, and her spark such a scarce thing. Even now, she kept her chin leveled against him—though she listened, it was clear the child’s will was her own. The lack of fear she exhibited, though intriguing, was a dangerous thing. Had he been anybody else that night—

I am not, he argued with his thoughts, and such wonder survives, for now.

But it would not be so for long, if she didn’t learn to temper it; such was the way of the reality she lived in. Leaning forward to divert her attention, he caught the child’s eye and held it firm behind his mask.

“You would do well to listen to her from now on,” he cautioned. “She no doubt has your best interest at heart.”

She winced at his words, head slanting down though her eyes didn’t yield. “You aren’t going to tell her, are you?”

“I won’t,” he assured. He doubted the simple reprimand she’d no doubt receive would deter her anyway, if it did not double her resolve instead—curiosity was not ever sated by suppression. “But do not be fooled by the ornate dress or polite conversation of those gathered here; behind their finery, not all is as it appears. They wear masks for a reason, child, there are wolves within their midsts.”

Her head tilted. “Wolves?” she asked, incredulous, as if his words were to be taken literally. He didn’t correct her.

“Yes, wolves, ruthless in their hunt. They would quickly eat a little mouse up should they catch one underfoot, and find themselves hungry,” he whispered to her, wide-eyed and unblinking as she worked through his meaning. “It would be wise for you to scurry, little mouse, now that you’ve seen all there is here.”

But where he’d hoped the worry that might keep her safe would take root and grow, Solas was met instead with something eager in response as the girl giggled, electric and lively. Again he felt it, a pulse of magic to ripple the Veil, so subtle as to be nearly undetectable, now undeniable.

“I wouldn’t get eaten! Don’t worry, I’m really sneaky,” she asserted. He was at once grateful for the mask obscuring his expressions, stifling the amusem*nt that thrummed in his throat at her boldness. “Nana said not to be fooled, too, that the people here would be mean to me, and that’s why I had to stay in my room, but you’ve been nice.”

“Do not let our exchange alter that impression, child, there are those here who might harm you yet.”

“But you haven’t, so you must not be a wolf,” she asserted, before catching herself and eyeing him carefully. “...Or you are, and you just weren’t hungry. Are you a wolf?”

Bold and clever, it would appear. He considered her and she did the same, wariness evident in her squint though the still soft set to her face didn’t quite seem convinced. After a moment and a cursory glance to the door, Solas leaned in close, letting a whisper close the silence and distance between them.

“Can I show you something, child?” In the quiet, broken only by the murmur emanating from inside, her sharp inhale was a peal of thunder. Still, she kept her enthusiasm curbed, sensing danger in his offer. Maybe I’ve not given her enough credit. “You’ve entrusted me with a secret, and I feel it is only fair that I share with you one of my own. Would you keep it, if I granted you the same?”

She bit her lip, losing restraint, and like an apple in water the girl’s head bobbed. Snaking a hand behind the cumbersome thing concealing him, Solas angled his head and lifted the metal from his face, just enough that the point of his ears could be seen.

“You’re just like me!” she gasped, before clapping a hand across her mouth as the mask sunk back into place, and he lifted a gloved finger to metal lips. Then, quieter, “Your ears, they’re—they’re like mine! Did you sneak away, too? Are you here to see the dancing?”

She had risen to her toes as if an invisible thread were lifting her up, as if she were weightless, and he mulled his answer over. “Not quite. I’ve come to see a person, and to share a dance with her,” he finally settled upon, “but that is not my point. Just as you could not see the tips of my ears, you cannot possibly know who anyone is behind their mask; in that way, I am no different. Had I been another, it may not have been simply your time that I had stolen. Do you understand what I am saying?”

Her enthusiasm gave way to something subtler, something solemn, and when the child nodded again he knew it to be honest. Still she did not yield, did not fear, but she understood. With the beast that was her curiosity sated, he lifted a hand to pat her shoulder.

“Good. Now, I must go,” he said, eyes flicking one last time to the doorway behind her as he stood and drew a long breath through his nose, “...and I believe you must as well. Farewell, child.”

“Goodbye—” she began before she was promptly yanked away, replaced by the bent and graying head of an older elven woman before she could finish. Hurriedly tucking the child behind her with voice grave as she spoke, she bowed as low as her aging body allowed, still as the dead.

“Monsieur, je vous demande pardonne! The child doesn’t know any better, I beg of you,” she begged, and he saw within her pleading what he'd expected from the child—what he had come to expect from all elves of this time.

He hardened his voice to a cutting edge, and found the tone bitter on his tongue. Restraint will do them no favors, no matter how disagreeable the taste. “This is no place for children. You’d best keep a better eye on the girl, lest she be whisked away as your back is turned,” he chastised, watching as her ears turned pale.

“Of course, Monsieur, it won’t happen again.” The woman straightened, though she kept her head low and eyes averted, not daring to cause further offense. Even as she bent to him, however, she did not allow panic to seep into her voice. “She will be put to bed at once—”

“But, Nana!”

“At. Once,” she asserted, firmer this time, and shot a hard look at the child straining to peek around her skirts. Solas waved the two aside and the nanny dipped her head, lifting the child into her arms as she hastened towards the ballroom, clutching her head fast to her shoulder, hands beginning to tremble—

He grabbed another drink as he reentered, wetting his tongue to chase away the sharp taste that wouldn’t wane. Be it by the gentle hum of magic within her like a sweet song newly awakened or the rebellious storm that churned nearby it, the world would have no trouble finding fault in the girl. A mage, an elf, an unbreakable spirit, but to most a threat to all who might control her. Unless she bowed that head of hers, or learned to curb that tongue, life would not be kind.

For now, however, she was an impish smirk over the shoulder of her caretaker, and a conspiratorial wink as they ducked into the servants’ quarters. For now, there was wonder beyond a closed door, and not the fear that should have taken its place.

For however long that may last.

He was there for a different reason regardless, one of much more consequence than one child wandering astray, and he could delay it no longer.

It didn’t take him long to find her, just as one might easily find the sun by following the glow of its heat and turning their face up. Bold as ever, Viera’vun was bare-faced and resplendent in a slim, dark-gold gown, leaned against a table with the dregs of a drink swirling absently in her hand. Her hair was shorter now than he remembered, pulled from her face by an intricate braid, with the rest left to tumble in loose waves like spun sunlight down her neck. The strands framed the sharp shoulders of her bodice, reminiscent of a leather chestpiece with a delicate cape trailing over her right shoulder, displaying proudly the glint of the gilded prosthesis on her left.

Elegant yet severe where once she had been only warmth, and still so radiant. In that, at least, she had not changed.

The ladies remaining at her side chattered though her focus wasn’t with them, light eyes skimming the room not as a scout seeking form in the shadows, but as a woman disinterested. No more than a shield, he wagered as a gentleman tried to engage her directly with outspoken flourish, only to be chased away by her stiff smile and their airy snickering in return.

His approach had been fated to fail from its conception, just as all other appeals likely had. There was no excitement in exaggerated gestures and claims to her beauty, no mystery behind stating one's worth upfront, no challenge to entice the hunter stalking the ballroom’s perimeter. They’d never coax her from hiding, without offering something worth chasing first.

It was the best chance he had. Placing his half-empty glass on the table nearest him, Solas cloaked his voice, and made for Viera’vun. She seemed to sense him nigh instantaneously, chin inching ever so slightly his direction to incorporate him into her field of view in a nearly imperceptible motion. It wasn’t until he was nearly upon her, however, that she turned her head to face him fully.

The delicate pattern of her bodice shone in the light outlining her from the window at her side, a perfect complement to her honey eyes. Eyes that have dulled of their curiosity, he noted as they flicked across him disinterestedly, the corners of her lips upturning, and a smile that does not reach them.

“Quite a lovely evening for a ball, Herald, would you not agree?”

Her gaze remained on him a moment longer before returning to the crowd, and she lifted her own glass to her lips to drain what remained before answering him. “Yes, this spring has been generously warm, even so far south.”

“It seems even the finch has returned from its journey, and deigned to grace us with its presence,” he continued. ”I’ve seen one yet this night, returned from its winter sojourn.”

“How strange,” she replied, the ladies at her side tittering at his attempts at small talk. “It’s quite early in the season for—"

Eyes widened, then thinned as she grasped something familiar, trying to discern intent as he slipped Master Tethras’ pet name for her into their exchange. Looking at him now sidelong, Viera’vun set her glass on the table.

Good. He lifted his hand, an invitation suspended between. Let it be enough.

“Might I have this dance?”

The ladies beside her, as well as many of the guests surrounding them, petered into silence, and he was suddenly grateful for his glove as she studied his proffered palm—had they been bare, he didn’t doubt that she’d expose him by the curvature of his fingers alone. Clearly she sensed something amiss as she worked through the unease of her instinct, and he worried himself somehow exposed.

Fortunately for him, her stare surrendered its scrutiny to instead flick back to his face. Quiet enough to not be heard, but just enough to tickle his bare wrist, Viera’vun released a breath through her nose. Then, with the unfamiliar and solid weight of metal, she placed her hand into his, relinquishing what protection public conversation afforded. She did not speak a word.

Whispers came from the walls to wonder aloud at the connection between the Herald and the little-known noble who’d stolen her first dance—a question she seemed to be asking herself as well, scouring him indirectly for clues with a curious, if cautious, glint. The anticipation guided his thoughts back to nights when their minds had been as one, when tiny epiphanies seemed to gleam within her eyes in plentiful abundance, and he yearned for what he knew would not come. These discoveries impending, they would not fill her with light as they once had.

He could not help himself in wanting.

At their passing a quaking grew, the rumble of those onlooking swelling as they took their place at the top of the steps, waiting until the music lulled to descend to the floor below. For a moment it was near quiet as they parted to bow a greeting, but then the strings found again their pulse and came to life to twine them together and drive their feet, circling in time with the others. Through his gloves he sought familiarity, a flicker of who he knew her to be, but though her agility lent itself to grace within the dance, there remained a vein of tension that kept her stiff. It was the rigidity of nights spent signing papers or pouring over reports at her desk without sleep, not the fluidity of the balcony at Halamshiral, embraced by the cool evening air, and her tired smile.

Does she ever soften like that, now? Who bids her rest, when the weight of her worries grows too heavy? And does she listen? It was not for him to know, not any longer. He doubted the answer would assuage his concern.

Memories best left where they lie, lest they distract.

Regardless, she would not unfurl, guarded as she was; his hint had been vague at best, only enough to lure and not enough to snare. What was unknown to the huntress would keep her to the shadows, until she believed herself poised to strike. To give was to gain now that they were afforded the relative privacy of movement and music obscuring their words.

“I’m curious, how did the Finch fair while she wintered away?” he extended, emphasizing again the name. They tilted in tandem to the side, and though her breath quickened at the hint her face remained unchanging.

“No cold is so bitter as to ground her, and no hand so high-reaching as to seize her,” she responded impassively, and they tilted again. “She need not hide in the boughs when the sky is untouchable, and entirely hers.”

“Still, her presence here is surprising, though not unwelcome. She honors me with her first dance.”

Her eyes were no more than amber slivers as she studied him, pressing forward with deft voice. “Maybe she is simply tired from her travels, and didn’t wish to dance with a stranger tonight.”

“Then she knows who I am?”

“Does she?”

The ensemble built and he twirled her, the light white chiffon of her dress’ skirt flaring around her until, effortlessly, she broke the spin to be dipped. Her momentum plunged her low, arms wrapping the base of his neck with the small of her back cradled, and her body fell slack in his grasp. It was there, at her lowest point and dangling within his clutches, that the inevitable dawn widened her eyes. This embrace was one she knew all too well.

“I’m not entirely certain,” he murmured as he let the cloak slip from his voice, and felt her shudder, “do you?”

A tremor, a sharp inhale, and nothing more. With the tasteful clapping of those onlooking he pulled her into another turn, and by the time her rotation ended a curtain of composure had closed her off. He had been right, there was no light within this revelation; only a bitterness like the first chill after the sun set behind its mountain fortress, creeping up bare arms and into lungs. Viera’vun returned to her feet, and found again the steps she needed to dance along.

“How persistent the hand that stretches skyward. Does it truly have no purpose more pressing than toying with birds?”

“It is a worthy matter, when such tenacity might singe its wings. Take it, if you will, as evidence of my concern.”

Her jaw clenched at the implication, losing restraint with what was inferred as it chipped her away to a keen edge. “Ah, I see. Concern. Odd, I might’ve known it by a different name.”

“It is nothing so crude as that, my lady,” he conceded, letting a whisper of a sigh break his lips. How terribly he wished to let it slip, the pretense and the mask, and to face her bare as she came to him. “But the wolf will not break its teeth on pretty baubles, spirited away by winged things. Your interest has been misplaced.”

“Oh? Has it really?”

“You’ve mistaken connection for solution.”

“How generous your concern proves to be, and here I believed it only to be the latter.”

The admission was enough to hitch his thoughts. Why seek it so doggedly, then, if not for its connection to the one she opposes? A solution to what? As the music began to swell he lowered the hand she held, bracing her as she pushed herself up into the air once, and then again in a controlled bound. She does not dream already, and knows she’ll come to no harm by me there. Protection for another, then?

She floated back to the ground, near weightless. The song had reached its height, and would soon conclude. Though the answer breeds more questions, they are ones best left to another time, whilst my own is running out.

“Vie—” he caught himself, “...Herald. The sun has reached its zenith and now begins its descent, but you’ve hours yet to bask in its warmth. Don’t waste what daylight remains hunting shadows as if it were your duty, when they will surely find you regardless.”

Her brows drew together, though the set wasn’t as hard as it had been before. “I must extend an apology for leading you astray, then,” she whispered sharply, somberly, and for the first time since their dance had begun, Viera’vun looked away. “Both of us know such duty is inevitable. We are strangers, if you sincerely believe that such sentiment would ever sway me.”

“No, I suppose it wouldn’t,” he allowed. “It never was in your nature to surrender.”

And the world was made better for it.

Those thoughts never spoken wrapped his chest, hindering his breath, and Solas’ head fell back ever so slightly to let it wash over him. Her eyes were once good friends to laughter and light, often pinched by smiles of treasured gold; too long had he let the whims of his impulses selfishly drive him to her side, and such was to be the price. When finally her resolve renewed and she faced him, only two things remained of the woman he’d loved, what seemed a lifetime ago.

Her chin, kept level against adversity and him, and the will that was wholly hers. So long as those endured, somewhere so would she.

Sliding from his shoulder, her prosthesis found his other hand, and in one fluid motion Solas reached over to lead her into one last turn that bled into an embrace. With her back to him, their arms twisted together.

“It is strange,” he confessed, pressed close to her ear, “I saw a child at the ball today, so full of vim and untamed, with a spirit all her own and no one else’s. A kindred flame, fearless. Somehow, she reminded me of you.” He closed his eyes as she noticeably stiffened against him, conjuring instead how once she’d melted with his every touch. “If I were to capture that spark, the one you both share…I wonder, would it brighten the night to come?”

“You’re mistaken. The woman you compare her to is long buried, I’m afraid,” she uttered over her shoulder, so close and so quiet, so warm in his arms despite her frigid tone. “And her spark you so admire shall flicker out in turn, alongside the rest of us. Do not fool yourself.”

Reluctantly, he released her to twist from his grasp, a final flourish before the music resolved and they were separated. She bowed her head into a curtsy, not allowing so much as a second for him to consider her as she let etiquette and elegance be her shroud; but she straightened just as quickly, placing her hand in his and turning her face pointedly away, and to the stairs they’d soon ascend.

That desperation to escape would be her undoing. It was only a glimpse, a flash, before that honesty could retreat back behind staunch walls and dissipate, but her stumble had not gone unnoticed. Only a wrinkle, a furrow, but it was enough.

Viera’vun was terrified.

But of what?

Not once since Halamshiral had she feared the Orlesian nobility and their tricks, and she’d learned long ago not to lend mind to the target painted on her back, be it by his hand or fate’s. No, rarely had he seen her worry so openly for herself since accepting her role within the world, even when the eyes of her people fell away and she was allowed release, when those who cared sought to carry that weight.

They hit the steps, and it struck him: her worry had never been her own. There was somebody dear to her he’d threatened with his words, someone she couldn’t bear to lose.

Her clanmates? Companions? He thumbed through the possibilities, scouring his memories for connection in their faces, their names. No, she’s protected her people elsewhere viciously, and those who travel at her side are capable enough to defend themselves. Nothing in my words endangered them regardless, my only mention was of—

He froze at the top of the steps and her hand slipped from his, snatched away to hover above her collarbone. The realization dragged behind it a mangled remorse, but no matter his desire to erase it, he could not unsee what he’d uncovered.

…The child.

And so rose the hatred, scavenger that it was, to feed on the remains of his regret. There had been a child noted in his reports, from before the Inquisition disbanded and he’d lost sight of them. One he’d overlooked, for the sake of whatever wellbeing Viera’vun had seized since his leaving…and, possibly, for his own, loath to use an innocent against her in such a way.

The daughter of Fowler—one of Leliana’s trusted agents, since reported deceased—and Iloniyn, the Herald’s twin soul and hunting partner, her tael’inan. The progeny of Viera’vun’s closest confidant, the sharer of her soul. A child no doubt cherished by her, despite the blood lacking between them.

It was an omission he could no longer maintain. She was to become no more than another tool to him now that her importance was clear, one he may someday have need to use despite his heart's objection.

“Do not come for me again,” came Viera’vun’s final words to him, and she stole away into the crowd like a breeze through the chamber. He watched her weave through the turning shoulders of those gathered, and felt a starving man as he swallowed it all: the dip of her back as she’d leaned into the crook of his arm, the warmth and catch of her calluses across his gloved fingers, the way their bodies still seemed to know just how they were supposed to lock together, memory kept in muscle even after all this time…and finally now, her shrinking silhouette as she left him, pausing with hand raised upon the thick white velvet curtain marking the guest quarters.

As if she felt his burning gaze upon her, she looked back, finding him quickly one last time. Then, quiet as the last glint of light disappearing behind the horizon, Viera’vun slipped away. He savored that glance, just as much as he dreaded it.

Because, though he’d found no explanation regarding the brooch or her interest in it from their dance that night, he did find answers in her eyes, and the anxiety made undeniable within them before she turned away. Answers that could only serve to defile him, pushing him further down the dark path he walked.

She loved the child of her tael’inan dearly.

And that love could only become a weapon in his hands.

Chapter 2: Confluence

Chapter Text

Solas opened his eyes to find the place he remembered, preserved and nearly untouched.

Even within the Fade, so few memories remained of his time. Civilizations rose and fell, building empires upon the bones of his people and overwriting what still lingered of the world he had known. They were forgotten by the spirits, who found their vices and virtues sated by those who came after. In nearly every crevice of this world, they had disappeared.

Nearly every crevice. But not here.

He started up the steps before him, the stone no longer crumbling beneath his feet as it did in the waking world, with corners still sharp and their surface smooth. Here, where few in the modern world dared tread, the spirits clung to the memory of this sacred ground, honoring in their imitation the values it had stood for, once—Valor, Purpose, Hope…

…alongside Fear, Despair, Cruelty, long before. He was relieved to see none by such names found a home here any longer.

His fingers ran across bone-white marble, the statues above bowing their heads as he crested the platform, as if to welcome him back after all this time. Once, they’d been imposing figures, carved to compel compliance in those strong enough to represent his honor, his will. A stage for the claiming of champions and the taking of lives, ringed by forms bent in submission, agony—

Forms from lifetimes ago, when he’d been no better than those he’d come to defy; ones that had long since been replaced, he had to remind himself. Wolves now stood in their stead, dignified and almost serene as they upheld their unending vigil over the ceremonial ground. It had been his hope that they’d serve as a reminder to all who’d swear themselves here—of their own volition and to their cause, not to him—of the pride they should feel, the respect they deserved, and the camaraderie of their kin.

It was here he’d come to recognize and name his most trusted agents, his innermost circle of companions. His friends.

Their presence still echoed here, the air resonating with the chatter of spirits as they recalled those long lost. He closed his eyes, palm still pressed flush to the stone, and could nearly hear them in the laughter, the hum; they were maintained here, forever, by the might of their merit and those who observed it. They were not lost, so long as they were remembered.

She stands before her kith, sword drawn before her with head never bowing. One mentor, chain draped across her open palms, lowers her burden to the altar.

“We have weakened the chain for you, sister,” she says, stepping away, “but it is you who must break it.”

Eyes starving, always hungry, burning as she heaves the sword above her head and roars with the arc of her blade. The link shatters, splitting the metal into two tails, and she kneels to take them into her hands, to wrap them around her knuckles.

“Let your shackles harden you, and become your greatest weapon,” says her second mentor, stepping forward, the fabric and fur they carry flaring as they cast it around her shoulders, “and know that we stand beside you, and you beside us. One people…”

“Our people,” she finally speaks, and it is a whisper like steam escaping.

Her mentors look to him and he steps forward, beckoning her to rise. She does, and the woman who could barely meet his eyes a year prior as blood red markings slipped from her face is unwavering now. He bunches the fabric at her neck, spearing it with the wolf’s-head brooch in his hands, runes glowing lyrium blue as he pours his mana into it.

“Ar lasa mala revas,” he vows to her, a second time, “i ma’ema esem.”

“I ar’ema esem,” he breathed as his eyes unfolded, as his fingers fell away, “and I have chosen.”

A breeze rustled the stretching oak above him, knocking its branches together just as it had all those years ago, and through the cracks in its leaves he found the blue sky unchanging and clear as the day he’d taken the knight that would be his last. Even in the sound around him he found familiarity, the birds and the spiritsong mingling together, harmonizing as if a choir singing praises—

Solas’ head swiveled to the right as he listened, ear twitching to hear through the chorus. There was something beyond it, something he did not recognize from that day, like a hot knife slicing through his recollection.

The sound took shape, and he left behind the phantoms kneeling in his past to hasten down the steps and into the raw ether. Their cry skirted the perimeter of his perception, desperate and confused as it cried for help, bringing to mind the lost spirits he’d offered aid to, on occasion. Quickly the glade he’d remembered dispersed with its rich soil and soft grasses shifting into black rock and gnarled root, the voice growing nearer with every stride into the inbetween.

The path widened into a clearing, pocked by impossible rock formations and floating islands, spilling black water. It was there that he found her beneath a bending arch of stone, hands cupping her mouth as she called.

“Mae? Mamae!”

Not a spirit, but a child, faced away from him with braids trailing down the back of her tunic. Dalish, evidently, but more than that. A mage, possibly?

She stumbled forward, hands falling to her side as she cast about to search the shadows for a figure that did not appear. Her form was…hazy, flickering in and out of existence as if she weren’t entirely there, yet even from so far away he could feel the solidity of her presence. She was not so tenuous as those he often found here, mage or otherwise, helpless to the whims of their dreams.

Not only a mage…this child is a Dreamer as well.

“Da’len, are you lost?”

The girl whirled around, stumbling back a step and tipping her head to look at him. At his hail her edges sharpened, her colors surged, and with a few quick blinks he watched as she returned to herself, fog lifting to reveal the stormy sky of her gray eyes.

Eyes that he found familiar, set into a face that he knew.

“I…I don’t know. I need to find Mamae.”

Niri was her name, though the reports he’d managed to gather since their meeting had little more to say of her: the girl from the ball, the child tied to what remained of the Inquisition, the daughter of the Herald’s Shadow. Her confusion blurred her presence again as she looked down, studying her translucent hands with a worried hum that echoed and crackled unnaturally in her throat.

No, not a Dreamer yet. Something hinders her awakening.

Cold, snaking guilt trickled into his chest, much as it had when first he’d realized who she was, and how his plotting would no doubt use her. Though he loathed it, her stupor afforded an opportunity to him, one he’d be unable to ignore in her presence. The idea was nearly enough to turn him away then and there, and leave the girl to fend for herself—such negligence would likely be kinder, when the alternative would use her own thoughtless words against the people and world she knew

As if she could hear his deliberations the child whimpered, winding her arms tightly around herself to stop her quivering, and he found he could not move.

Is it kinder to her, or kinder to myself?

“...I could help you find your mamae, if you’d allow it.”

Her eyes found him again, wide behind their messy curtain of chestnut hair, and that spark like lightning flashed across them as Niri came back into focus. “Thank you! I—” she began, but when that clarity struck her head as it had her image she stopped short, eying Solas warily. “...No. Mae said never to talk to strangers, especially in my dreams. She said find her first, so she could keep me safe.”

“I cannot fault her warning,” he granted, “though, are we truly strangers?”

With a wave of a hand across his face Solas felt fabric stretching across his head and metal pressing into his cheeks, his field of vision darkening at the edges as a mask cloaked him. Mind still seemingly muddled, Niri’s head tilted with a quirk of her brow. In a last effort to inspire recognition he leaned towards her, and lifted the mask just enough to reveal his ears.

“The man from the ball!” she finally gasped, excitement flaring her colors. Her newfound clarity, however, attracted awareness, and the child glanced down at her hands as they began to fidget, quiet consternation pinching between her eyes. “But…they said not to go anywhere with you, Mien even said I shouldn’t talk to you. I told him you were nice to me at the ball, but he said it was a trick, and that you’d take me away. Him and Bae were really scared, and they made me promise.”

The mere thought of those she referenced, the Herald’s tael’inan and his intolerant, self-righteous partner, were enough to nearly curl his lip. To keep the derision from his tone was no small feat.

“Have I bid you go anywhere with me?” he challenged, more terse than he’d intended. After a short pause to try and trace any trickery, the girl hesitantly shook her head. “You know not where to begin your search: you are a stranger, and a newcomer here. I know it well. Allow me at least to guide you to the path that will lead you to your kin, and from there you may walk it alone.”

“I…I guess that would be alright,” she mumbled, not quite meeting his eyes. “You know where she is, then? Or where I can find her?”

“No, but you are in the Fade now. You care about your mother dearly, do you not? And she for you?” Niri nodded quickly this time, with no reluctance or doubt. “Good. There is a bond there, a powerful tie between your two souls, one that the spirits here respect. Your course lies within that love; your will to see her alone will shape the ether, and guide you to her.”

“But…I don’t know how.”

“Close your eyes, da’len, and think of how her touch feels when she holds you in her arms. Conjure in your thoughts how her voice sounds when she says your name, until you can hear it in your ear clear as if she were calling to you,” he instructed. Her mouth opened as if to respond. “No, don’t speak it. That bond is uniquely yours, both of yours. You need not give it voice for it to be so. Use it as your tether, child, and let it guide you to her.”

Brow knit with tense concentration and hands balled into fists, it seemed the girl was prepared to beat the memories into submission as opposed to welcoming them. Just as he breathed in to correct her, however, the ripples spanning her forehead began to relax, and smooth. Inhaling deeply, Niri’s fingers loosened enough to clasp before her, and the child was softened by a smile that coaxed dimples to her cheeks.

“I feel it,” she whispered, breathless, her eyes fluttering open before the excitement caught up with her. “I feel her, like…like when she comes back from a long trip, and she’s just outside camp, and I know it! It’s like she’s calling my name, but I can’t actually hear it, but I know it!”

“Her spirit, responding to the touch of your own,” he said, and the joy she felt at such affirmation could no longer be contained behind closed lips as Niri’s mouth split into a toothy grin. “Go to her. The Fade will part to let you pass, little Dreamer, as it is your will. You know the way.”

She nodded sharply, determination etched into her face as Niri twisted on her heels towards the path of black stones breaching the waters behind her. Not two steps from where she’d begun, however, her gait faltered, and slowed. Turning back, the girl looked up at Solas, and blinked sheepishly.

“Hahren… could you walk with me, please?”

His jaw clenched at the request. “Did your mother not tell you to keep from my company?”

“Well, she did…but, I know where to go now, so you can’t take me off the path. I would know if you were tricking me away,” she stated, voice trembling even as she made her assertions, “...and she also said the Fade is dangerous, like the forest is dangerous. That I shouldn’t be afraid, but that I need to be smart, and that until I’m big enough to protect myself I have to let Bae and Mimi keep me safe.” The already slight child seemed to shrink before him, with whatever courage she’d mustered under his guidance quickly slipping away as she faced the road ahead, both lonely and strange. “But they aren’t here. What if…what if I need protecting before I find her?”

Such worries were not unfounded, and her mother’s comparison—while surprising in its tolerance—was a sound one. Though he knew the spirits here to be friends, the same could not possibly be true for her, prone to alarm by the ignorance of her youth as she was. The raw power of her presence would be like blood in the air, with those enticed twisted by the panic her inexperience would bring, distorted into aberrant forms.

Distortions that would have little trouble overcoming her, if her willingness to trust him were any indication. The path to her mother’s side may have been a short one, but that didn’t ensure her safety. To let her walk it alone would be to forsake her, alongside any spirits her fears made demons of.

His desire to protect the child’s spark, shrouded behind rationale and guilt, reignited. Those who Dreamed were few and far between in this age, but within the child of his adversary he found something worth preserving. Already established inside of her was a foundation of cautious respect that, if nurtured, had the potential to grow into something now so rare: reverence for what was strange, and oft misunderstood; awe, in place of fear.

Though he knew it to be a useless endeavor, an investment that could never find fruition—and by his own hand, no less—he couldn’t deny that desire to develop such potential. Where alone she’d find only dread in the face of the unknown, she might instead know enlightenment at his side.

…And, though it left his tongue sour, he would be lying if he let himself think that there was nothing to be gained here. Even in his presence, Niri continued to flicker in and out of waking, as if the thread that tied her to her dreams were thin, and frayed. Lips loosened by sleep and struggling for awareness, there was much he could gather from the child of the Herald’s Shadow.

Though circ*mstance had led him here, it was chance that had awoken her that night, and in the state she was in no less. One stroll, enough to kindle and keep that spark, and to gather what he could as payment in return, and then she would not tremble so when there was no one by her side. She would know peace within her dreams, at least, even as he brought chaos to her world.

“Very well,” he yielded. “I will walk alongside you, then.”

He was gifted again with Niri’s bright smile, wide enough now to pinch her eyes at the corners. In their creasing he was reminded of quiet moments left behind, treasured still and longed for though their time had long passed him by, and of the woman who was as well. Of how he had used her, in much the same way. Both of their joys, present and past, he knew to be undeserved.

“Thank you!” she blurted out, sincerity apparent in her eagerness before it caught on the warnings of her elders, and retreated. “But you can’t get too close, okay? You’re nice, but you could still be tricking me, and I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“Fair enough.” Her boldness tugged at the edge of his lip, and he let it. “Lead the way.”

Twirling back towards the water Niri bounded across the stones, quick as she leapt from one to the next. The span between them was no more than a stride for him, but for a girl nearly half his height, her agility was commendable.

That, or she simply believed strongly enough that she would not fall. Here, it made little difference.

As they crossed the water, the jagged edges of land beginning to rise ever higher on the horizon, the quiet and calm lured wisps to alight upon the glassy black surface below, as if to observe their own reflections. Stopping hard enough that she nearly tipped forward, Niri gasped as one dipped low enough to touch its mirror image, sending ripples bouncing off her stepping stone.

“What is that?”

“A wisp,” he answered, reaching a hand forward gently as it returned to the air, floating lazily past him; the brush of its essence against his fingers sent a pleasant jolt of energy through to his elbow. “One of the many denizens of the Fade, and quite obliging, should you find yourself needing guidance.”

“And that big island in the distance?” she asked, starting forward again. In two hops she’d made it to the other shore. “It isn’t getting any closer.”

“It is known by most as the Black City, though you may know it as the Eternal City. It’s a constant fixture here, ever-present.”

“And what about all the branchy…snaky…blue stuff?”

“Lyrium, a mineral intrinsically tied to magic, and thus to this place as well.” He angled his head towards her, nipping the next impending question before she’d even swallowed her breath with a question of his own, “Have you truly never visited the Fade, child?”

“No, I never have,” she scratched behind her ear and slowed enough for him to walk abreast, though he maintained the requested distance apart. “Or, maybe I did. I don’t know, it’s kind of…fuzzy.”

“That is peculiar for a mage—even those less aware come here in their sleep. You recall nothing?”

“I…don’t remember.” Her chin dropped to her chest, where she tucked a thumb under the chain wrapping her neck to pull a pendant out from beneath her tunic. “It’s because of this, I think. Mae says I shouldn’t dream yet, so I need to wear this until I’m old enough. It keeps me safe.”

She proffered the charm, a simple metal piece inlaid with a single clear crystal ringed by glowing blue runes. He recognized it with a twinge of chagrin.

“It is much too late for that, da’len. It is protection to you no longer.”

“But it’s supposed to protect me, and make it so I don’t dream.”

“And yet here you are.” Solas shook his head in a slow arc. “Were you an average mage, it would. Such things suppress one’s connection to the Fade and keep them from dreaming, that is true enough, but you are no average mage. Your tie to this place is much stronger, a rope where most are bound only by a thread. It only serves now to muddy your mind.” He didn’t mention the risk such a daze presented here—he didn’t wish to scare the girl, not when her distress was so dangerous, and her trust so vital. “That being said, you are now within a world easily influenced by perception. Just as the very substance of this realm recognizes the strength of your bond to your mother, so too shall it shape itself by the power of your will. Believe the pendant holds no sway over you, and it will be so.”

“Believe?” Niri studied the pendant, and then him in turn. “Like I believed I could find her?”

“Exactly like that.”

Beginning with the inhale this time, Niri continued her pace despite having closed her eyes—though, led by her heart as she was, she truly needn’t see. In her tiny hand she squeezed the pendant, so hard her knuckles whitened—

Until the charm shattered, sending shards of light between the cracks in her fingers before they dispersed in the air. Eagerly she looked to him, shoving her hand his way to boast her open and empty palm.

“Very good. You learn quickly.”

“Thank you!” she hummed, swinging her arms and skipping a step or two. “Everything does what I want it to here, if I think hard enough. Do you think the spirits would be nice if I believed, too?”

Clever girl. “In a way. You’ve exercised your influence to this point only on the ambient ether, something with no volition. Spirits are intelligent, driven by their own convictions. You cannot change what they are, as they have a will of their own,” he explained. “However, they are of this realm, and thus still swayed by strong sentiments. Approach them with enmity and it shall be returned, but reach for them instead with patience and grace, and often they are tempered. It is only then you can truly see them for what they are.”

Her head bobbed in response, seemingly satisfied, as if she’d been expecting it. “Mimi and Bae say all spirits are dangerous, but Mae says they can be friends, too. She says even demons are just spirits that are confused, and scared. They forget who they are.” She ran a hand across the rock pillar to her left, bridging the ground beneath them to the immense island hovering above. “I shouldn’t talk to them—they’re really dangerous—but I should understand them. You have to understand things to learn how to protect yourself, she says, so I should learn everything I can about them.”

Quite the uncommon opinion, made even stranger by the fact that it came from a woman reported long dead. He’d had his suspicions surrounding Fowler’s death, supposedly lost to complications following Niri’s birth, but found little reason to follow up on a single agent. Here, however, his interest was drawn. It had been his understanding that her mother was an archer by trade, but such grasp of the Fade and its inhabitants was odd for one acquainted with magic, let alone one who, to his remembrance, was not.

A hidden talent, possibly, kept quiet in youth to keep her from the Circle…and then, further concealed for her efficacy as an agent, to be used to her advantage?

With a few steps backwards and a cursory glance overhead, Niri crouched deep before propelling herself into the air, landing on her hands and knees against the pillar as if stuck to its surface. Standing up, now level with the ground he himself still stood upon, she dusted her leggings and continued upwards. In one even stride, he joined her, the pressure of gravity shifting around him like hands pressing firmly his shoulders.

“She knows a great deal, your mother,” he tested. “Is she like you?”

“Like me?” she echoed, tilting her head as if the question didn’t quite make sense before, with a start, she remarked, “Oh! No, she’s not a mage. But she’s the strongest and the smartest person I know, and she isn’t afraid of anything. She knows a lot of things.”

It hadn’t been what he’d meant, but it told him more than he’d sought. Not a Dreamer, not even a mage, and yet knowledgeable enough to make such assertions of a world she couldn’t possibly know?

But then, stranger things he’d seen within his travels. With how confident Fowler seemed to be that her daughter would awaken as a Dreamer, enough to teach her so diligently of its ways, it wasn’t so unbelievable that she’d seek answers—ones likely generously given by the woman she indirectly worked for, the soulmate of her child’s father, and the person Solas had spent so many nights conversing with, often on the very topic.

“Mae said she’ll be silly in her dreams, but that she’ll always protect me. She’s the best, so she doesn’t ever have to be afraid,” Niri breathed, hands clasping behind her back as she gushed, “...someday, when I’m bigger and have learned a lot of things, I’m going to be just like her. I’ll be strong and not afraid, and super smart, too. That way, her and Bae and Mimi won’t have to keep me safe, and I can help them. And they won’t worry anymore.”

“To know so much and not be touched by magic is indeed a rare thing. She must be an extraordinary person,” he continued to encourage, trying to piece a clear picture from her words.

“It’s because of her travels! She’s always traveling—she’s on a really important mission—and so she’s been all over the world. But even though she’s busy, she always comes home to see me, and—” her words were cut prematurely as Niri whirled to face him, her mouth clamping shut as wide-eyed panic stole her breath. “No! I said it wrong! My mamae, she isn’t—”

He raised a hand, interrupting her as she scrambled to find the words to take it back. “There is no need, da’len; I already know your mother yet lives. There’s no use in lying here.”

She bit her lip, glancing askance. “But nobody is supposed to know who she is, I’m supposed to keep it a secret. It’s really important.”

“Then take solace in the fact that I don’t yet know who she is,” he lied in turn, “only that she’s alive.”

This seemed to settle her, if only by a bit. “Well…you can’t come with when we get there, okay? And you have to promise not to peek, not even a little.”

“You have my word.”

Despite such reassurances, the girl’s previous zeal had disappeared, and the spring in her step had been replaced by a somewhat more abashed shuffle. She’s lost faith in her judgment, he supposed, and in her words, uncertain if I’ve tricked her. He’d get no more information about her mother, not now.

“If not your mother, then who taught you to handle your magic? You contained it well at the ball,” he asked instead. As if in response, Niri pulled her braid over her shoulder to run nervous hands across it.

“Mien teaches me, he’s my other babae.”

Solas winced. Of all the people—

“...And what sort of things does he teach you?”

“Mostly how to keep it inside,” she mumbled, eyes glum as they followed the rhythmic motion of her hands. “We have to keep it a secret, so we don’t scare people.”

“You don’t sound entirely happy with that arrangement.”

The girl flinched, as if he’d thrown an accusation and not an observation. “I don’t like my magic,” she finally admitted, looking down and away, “and I don’t like training, either.”

Now how does a girl so bright and curious come to such a conclusion? he asked of himself, though the question was rhetorical. He’d had the distinct displeasure of conversing with Athimien on more than one occasion, and found the man’s opinions infuriating at best. It seemed the self-loathing he carried for his own magic had shadowed her own, like a dark cloud across the sun on an otherwise clear day.

“I don’t want people to be afraid of me,” she continued as the silence carried, “and I don’t want them to hate me, but they will if they know. I wish I didn’t have magic.”

But it went deeper than that; he could tell by the strain in her voice, uncomfortable and threatening tears. No, she didn’t truly hate it—if that were the case, she wouldn’t sound so conflicted. What she hated were the feelings of others, forced upon her and made her own.

“Your magic is a part of you, child, a beautiful and precious thing. You shouldn’t resent such a gift.”

“It isn’t a gift. I thought it was, but…but I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“You don’t have to. The mana within you, as well as your ability to wield it, is merely a tool, one with many uses. It needn’t be a weapon.”

“But it’s dangerous. If I’m not careful, I could hurt somebody.”

“As can the knife that cuts your bread, or the fire that illuminates the darkness,” he pressed. “All depends upon the hand that wields it. A dose of caution is never unwise, but to hate it blindly is foolish, and wasteful.”

Their ascent towards the island once overhead had come to its end, the bridge cutting off and into a steep drop. Niri peered over the rim before lowering herself to the ground, sitting with her legs hanging over and pausing a moment to kick her feet, a movement more pensive than it was childlike. Tucking his hands behind his back, Solas stood beside her, casting his own gaze into the shifting clouds of the ether around them.

“We do not choose who we are, and often we’ve little say in the hand we are dealt, da’len,” he said, softly, and though she didn’t look at him he could feel her attention as if it were a tangible thing, like twine taut between them. “You and I, alongside those like us, have been given a boon, but it is not without its price. Too often, what is different is despised. That isn’t something you can help or change, not as you are now. What you can do is take responsibility for what you’ve been given, and learn to control it.”

Her feet slowed as his head slanted towards her, brow tense as she scrutinized the shifting form of the fog. Frustration, he decided, at her abilities, or her circ*mstance. Such is difficult for one so young to resolve. As he watched her, however, he found her breathing to be steady, and balanced, her eyes flicking across the skyscape solemnly.

…No, not frustration; it is determination. Again, I have given her too little credit.

“How, hahren?” she breathed, and there was an energy to her quiet words as she finally looked up at him, like the static in the air before lightning struck, much too intense for a child her age. “How do I control it?”

“Learn to wield it, just as you would a dagger, or a bow. Hiding it, avoiding it, only serves to weaken your grasp on its grip. There is nothing to gain in forsaking what is yours, and much to lose by inability. You wish to help your parents, correct? To aid them in their endeavor?” She bowed her head solemnly, deliberately. “Then use the mana inside of you, even if it must be done unbeknownst to your mentor. Come to know it as well as you know your breath. There is more to magic than destruction—it can revitalize as well as it harms, secure as well as it destroys. What you do with your gift is yours to decide, and no one else’s.”

Under her breath and to herself, so low he couldn’t discern, she muttered something and closed her eyes. She looked down again, over past her feet and to the land below, to blink into the shifting mists.

“We’re close now. I can feel her, just over this ledge, like if I reach out I’ll touch her.”

Even as she said it, she made no movement to stand. “And yet, you hesitate,” he observed. Her hands pulled together in her lap, fidgeting restlessly at his remark.

“I didn’t want it to end just yet. I like dreaming, and I think…I think…” she buried her cheek into her shoulder, facing away from him with a sharp swing of her legs, “...I think I liked walking with you, even though I shouldn’t.” Her feet stopped and her hands slowed their turning, until eventually the girl gathered enough courage to peek at him again through the gaps in her messy bangs. “They won’t let me dream again, I know it, they’ll find a way to stop me; but I want to, and I want to talk with you again, and learn more. Will I ever get to see you again?”

Her childish candor sent a long, sharp thorn of pain through his chest, the ache deep enough that the breath he pulled through his nose did little to hinder it. He knew what the right answer was, that there was no other reason save pride for him to seek out the child of his enemy. Already he’d imparted guidance enough for her to build insight upon; the rest she could find on her own, without his help. Easily, painlessly, he could slip from her life and become a shadowy figure within her memory, nothing more than a dream barely remembered—

But then, past what was right, he knew the truth as well: that she would no doubt see him again, on the other side of a conflict that had likely darkened the short life she’d lived thus far. Guilt ran alongside the pain, the ache, and he let go the only warning he’d allow slip from his lips.

“I told you then, child, that there were wolves at that ball. I never said I was not one of them.”

“I guess not,” she hummed pensively, “but a wolf wouldn’t help. A wolf wouldn’t care at all for somebody scared, but you did.”

“Or, I am simply the worst wolf of all,” he pressed, “the kind that wears wool, the kind that deceives.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, and Mae says most wolves don’t hurt and eat people. Most wolves just want to be with their family and friends, their pack.” Solas nearly flinched at that, as if the thorn had been twisted, its barbs digging deeper. “So, if you’re wearing wool, maybe the halla are your family. I think you’re more like Isa, anyway. Whenever I’m sad, she makes me feel better, and licks my tears away.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, knowing the answer before the question was asked. “And, pray tell, who is Isa to you?”

“My mabari. She’s like a wolf, but nicer. So maybe, you can be like her.”

Though he tried to stifle it, still a breath of a laugh escaped him, pushed out through his nose with the slight arc of his head. He hoped that, when the time came, she would not recognize him. If he could, he would remain in her memories a halla with fangs, not unlike Isa.

“I promise, da’len,” he whispered, and it was a truth difficult to swallow, “you will see me.”

Her expression rolled into another priceless smile, another joy undeserved. “Then I won’t be sad. I’ll find a way to dream again, and we’ll get to see each other. And when we do, I’ll know my magic better. I’ll be better, so you can teach me lots more.”

His own smile felt wan by comparison, and stiff on his cheeks. “I look forward to seeing what you become.”

Pinched eyes, dimpled cheeks, and a wrinkled nose was his response, and he wondered how someone so sour as Iloniyn could beget something so sweet. If only I’d paid more attention to her mother when I’d been at Skyhold. She must be extraordinary indeed.

“Alright,” Niri said after a time, pressing her hands firmly against the stone with an inhale large enough to puff her chest, “I’m ready. Let’s go,” and she slid down the ledge as if entering a pool of water.

As Solas followed once more, stepping forward and into the empty air in front of him, he felt again the pressure of gravity redirecting and his weight shifting to right him. Beside him, Niri stood up with a giggle, taking little time to admire the thin spires surrounding them in favor of something much more enticing ahead, something that called her name though they could not hear it.

“There it is! We made it!”

A bubble spanned the width of the island, its iridescence a sharp contrast to the black and gray and green otherwise surrounding them. At their approach its colors seemed to fluctuate, pulsing in and out of view, nearly fading entirely away before appearing bright again before them. Niri climbed the steps, two at a time, to stand before it with neck craned back, taking the dreamscape of her mother in with arms spread behind her, as if she could ever measure its scope.

“Here, child, watch me,” he bid, lifting his hand to work his fingers into the tiniest of cracks, parting the silvery barrier as if drawing a curtain aside. It gave way effortlessly, barely a breath of feeling at his fingertips. With little hesitation the girl pushed through as soon as the opening was large enough, her passage rippling the fabric of the dream’s shroud as he split it.

“This is it!” she called behind her, “I know she’s here!”

He stepped in behind her and a forest sprung around them, the air thick with the wet and earthy scent of damp soil and the lulling drone of summer bugs. Already Niri had disappeared into the underbrush like a caught fish back into stream, leaving in her wake a rustling trail of shivering ferns and shaking branches. The trees snaked together to make intricate braids above, tinting what rays filtered through the starkly veined leaves a dusky green that painted patterns on the forest floor. He lifted his hand, stained by the lush light, to rest it on the patchwork of moss that blanketed the trunk beside him, and his breath quickened.

Such vibrancy and texture, such hue, he’d only seen in a single person’s dreams.

“I recognize this place!”

Niri’s voice came from below, and though he glanced her way as she burst from the bushes his eyes were unfocused, and glazed. The woods here are steeped with her influence, shaped by the spirits but undeniably of her mind. He could feel his thoughts racing too quickly to comprehend, a frenetic babble in the back of his head, and that hand clenched. The patterns in the bark, the arching tangle of the roots…as if she signed this canvas herself.

But it can’t be.

“Mae had us camp here last summer,” Niri continued, reaching to press her own tiny hand as near she could to his on the tree he’d steadied himself on. “I know just where she’ll be! We swam in the river, just past the clearing and—”

He struggled to remember what she’d said of her mother before, heard through ears attuned to a different truth, one he struggled to name false. Often travels, he recalled, preoccupied with some important mission. Not unusual for an agent, especially one so close to Viera’vun’s inner circle as Fowler once was. But then, to not be a mage and still understand the Fade with such nuance, to anticipate her daughter awakening as a Dreamer, to allow such grace for the spirits that most would reject without care or thought—

Have I been deluding myself?

“...Ma serannas, hahren, for walking with me, and teaching me,” she said instead, pulling away sheepishly with a slight bow as she cut her loose words once again in an attempt to keep her mother’s identity hidden. “I can go the rest of the way on my own, like we promised.”

Her efforts were in vain. Though still his head denied it, his heart already knew.

She scanned his face for the response never spoken, backing up slow against the foliage as if giving him time. He only watched, not quite seeing her as possibilities, realities, continued to turn in his head.

If she is…then that would mean…

“Well,” Niri tried one last time, raising her hand and giving a little, uncertain wave, “I’ll try my best to dream again, so you have to keep your promises, too, okay? Don’t forget! You can’t peek, and you have to come find me.”

His chin lifted sharply, eyes clearing as she turned away from him. That’s right. She is near. I can confirm for myself who her mother truly is.

“Niri!”

As if anticipating his voice, she twisted to see him, eyes bright as he called to her. She’d only taken a few steps into the brush, and he was at its edge before she’d even turned to face him.

“Yes, hahren?”

“Sathem, child,” he finally replied to her gratitude, hesitating before continuing on to what he truly needed to say, “...and I enjoyed our walk as well.”

She beamed up at him, and he knew them to be words well spent. With a final, more resolute wave this time, Niri turned from Solas to disappear into the greenery…

…and as soon as her braid had vanished from his sight, he had shifted into a lupine form, a pang of guilt piercing him as he broke yet another person’s trust.

It cannot be helped, he justified, I need to know.

He loped after her scent, toward the presence at the center of the dreamscape, growing stronger with every bound ahead. Like a neverending sigh, the sound of rushing water met his ears as the shadows grew brighter, alongside something else—a voice, it seemed, raised barely above the roaring current.

“Now we fly…wheels and wings…hoofbeats are our drums.”

“Mae!”

Over the din and the dream, the child was unheard. Sliding to a stop at the edge of the treeline, Solas peered out across a shallow river, glittering like silver under the pillars of light that cut through the trees. He’d been only paces behind Niri as she’d broken from the woods, now skipping easily from tree roots to slick stones in her descent towards the water and the figure she sought, obscured by the rocks there and singing with a voice not meant for melody.

“A thousand miles beneath the wheels, sails against the sky…”

Crouching lower behind the bushes, he recognized the tune with a start, heard a hundred times over by a thousand different voices. Though the words often shifted, the melody had remained through the centuries: a Dalish traveling song, sung as the aravels were lifted and the People took to the trail.

Fowler was not Dalish.

He circled, keeping out of sight. It was difficult to see from such a distance, especially with the way that non-mage dreamers dreamt—stuttering, blurring, fading in and out of existence, teleporting from one place to the next by way of their whims and conscience—but eventually, he drew near enough. Her back was to him now, body bare and still smudged as she sat at the water’s edge with toes dipped into the current, leaning over to watch the ripples as the flow caught on her ankles.

“Swifter than the fall of night, the People are passing by.”

But then she looked to the waterfall, and as if the mere sight of it beckoned to her she was there without so much as a step, her crooning halting as soon as she’d stood. Crystal clear now with the water rushing around her naked form, the world surrounding her dimmed a shade as if the sensation pulled all her attention, and she faced him with eyes blissfully shut and a hum instead on her lips.

Only then could he see her in full: the high sweep of her cheekbones, the golden cast of her skin, the cascade of white-blond waves falling down and around her shoulders, slicked down by the wet. It was exactly who he knew it would be, deep down though he denied it. Younger than he had ever known her, here where the trees made a cradle and the wind through the branches carried on her familiar song, bolstered by the birdsong echoing throughout, but unquestionably her.

“Mamae!”

Niri had finally made it, standing on the pebbles as close as she could to her mother, shouting over the brimming babble between them. The figure's eyelids fluttered open, her tune ceased, and if he’d any doubt still it was quickly washed away downstream.

Amber eyes, radiant and asking questions. The Herald looked at Niri, and her lips spread into a bright smile, wide enough now to crease her eyes at their corners.

“Arasha! Who let you wander so far from camp?”

Viera’vun stepped from the torrent, sending great droplets to sparkle like gems midair as she raced to her, rushing like the water. In three steps she was upon the girl, scooping Niri up and into her arms as if the child were weightless and pressing a kiss to her cheek, one tinged by the mischievous grin pulling taut her cheeks as the girl squealed.

“Ack! No, Mae, you’re wet!”

“Then come into the water with me, da’u’lea,” she invited through her laughter, “and it won’t be an issue any longer.”

At her daughter’s touch Viera changed, her youthful appearance giving way to the chip in her ear, the scars striping her body, and the wrinkles at her eyes. Her left arm, before intact as it reached to wrap the girl, curled her body now without its hand, but though her image shifted her demeanor did not yet follow.

“You’re being silly,” Niri informed her quite seriously, though the glint in her eye betrayed her amusem*nt. “It took me a little bit but I found you, just like you told me to!”

“Found me? Child, I told Iloniyn where I’d be. You were to stay at camp, until—”

Her proximity to the young Dreamer was beginning to have an effect, and as the woman spoke, the playful cast to her face began to fade away, replaced by a more sober expression.

“We’re in a dream, Mae, we’re not actually here. It’s just a dream.”

“Yes, just a dream,” Viera muttered an echo, eyes quickly scanning the perimeter of the clearing as she caught her bearings and the hunter within awakened, her clutch on the child growing firm. Satisfied with her sweep, she again looked to her daughter, tilting her head with a smile much softer than the one she wore before. “You did well, little love, to traverse the Beyond alone and find me. I’m proud of you.”

Niri, whose face had begun to lift with the praise, recoiled suddenly, and though she didn’t say a word, her mother’s head tilted to study her as she glanced away. Viera’vun inhaled quickly, deep enough that Solas could see it lifting her chest, even from so far away.

“You spoke with somebody on the way.” She didn’t respond, only leaned forward to bury her face into her mother’s shoulder. “You’re not in trouble, Niri, I’m not mad. But I need you to tell me what happened.”

At first the child didn’t move, and all was still save the soothing shush of the water breaking across the rocks. Then, having gathered what courage she needed, Niri lifted her head enough to let her words escape, and no more.

“...I was scared, and I couldn’t think. It was like…like I was really sleepy. That’s when the kind man from the ball came,” she confessed, mopey eyes lifting to measure her mother’s reaction. “I tried hard to find you alone, I really did, but…but I couldn’t, and he helped me. He taught me how to find you, Mae, that I have to reach with my heart. And he helped me not feel so sleepy.”

“The man from the ball? The elf in disguise, that you met on the balcony?”

She nodded. “I know you said not to talk to him, but I needed help, and he was nice to me again. He helped, and he wasn’t a wolf like Mimi said. He didn’t try to take me away.”

The look on her face, it was one he recognized. It was the same look he’d seen when first she’d awoken and been named the Herald, standing before the crowd of humans who revered her. The same, too, as when Haven came under siege and Corypheus first appeared, and again when they’d been trapped wandering the Frostbacks with no hope for salvation.

It was a look that he knew well, one that he’d burned into his memory—the first and last look she’d given him as they met in the Crossroads, nearly five years prior. One of terror, and panic, and denial, stuttering her breaths and freezing her in place.

Before she could break her trance he was backing away, painfully slow as the foliage bounced back into place in front of him, and the underbrush consumed him. “Did he follow you here? Did he come with you, Niri?” Her voice was shaky, frantic, barely contained to the steady tone she held it to, slowly fading as the distance widened.

“Only as far as your dream, and I made him promise not to look, I really did!” her little voice tried to reassure, despite the nervous edge she couldn’t quite conceal. “He promised! He won’t look, he won’t know—”

Whatever Viera’vun’s response, he did not hear it. As soon as he was far enough away, Solas’ eyes flew open with a gasp, the night air filling his lungs cold as he found himself back in his body, cross-legged at the base of the crumbling ruins of what he once knew.

He blinked against the chill, taking a moment to gather himself and catch his breath, while his mind was still numb from the return. Then, as the revelation caught up with him, he buried his head in his hands, unable to support it any longer.

Viera’vun, the greatest threat to his plans and the woman that he loved , had a daughter…

…and, possibly, so did he.

Chapter 3: Downburst

Chapter Text

There was a storm outside. Solas had been listening to its lament for hours now.

With every gust it shook the shutters and rattled the door on its hinges, the cabin he’d occupied seeming to groan with the effort of keeping itself upright. It was relentless in its sorrow, seething since noon the day before with no sign of relief or relent, and snaking in through crack and crevice to bite at every breath he took like some rabid beast.

It was impossible to think past the hissing of the rain and the cold, and his unwilling meditation on the state of the ceiling had begun to grow stale—not that thought had been particularly forthcoming preceding the storm, either. With effort Solas raised himself onto his elbows, and tried to wipe the tired from his eyes.

What had she looked like?

Since before the dawn light had cut through the gaps in the window cover, he’d been trying to conjure her image, no more than a vague imprint in the back of his mind: dark hair, sharp ears, an annoyed expression. Most vividly what he could recall of Fowler was her back on the rare occasion she’d cut through his rotunda, his gaze only straying from study well after the agent had passed on her way to the rookery.

There’d been no need to retain her then. Though undeniably a skilled agent he’d had little interest in knowing the friend of one of his greatest detractors, and had cast his gaze elsewhere as she passed.

But what did she look like? Frustratingly her face was a phantom, ephemeral before him as he agonized over what memory he could manage. Were her eyes gray? How did she smile?

…Did she look like that child?

Somehow he’d appeared before the hearth, though he couldn’t quite recall standing. Clarity was elusive and would not come willingly, her reflection taking on forms he knew to be untrue, and entirely wishful. Suddenly desiring warmth he passed his hand across the coals until they lit, hungry and dim, before placing a log there and running a palm across his face.

When again his eyes opened he found the newborn flames writhing beneath the wood, begging for breath as they clawed their way out from underneath that which he’d intended to nourish. It did not sit well and so he stood, returning his questions to the table in the corner and sinking into its chair.

9:43 Dragon….Child of the Shadow….accompanied the Herald from Skyhold.

With a flick of a finger the candle on its surface illuminated, and he began again to rifle through papers disturbed countless times in the two days since he’d settled there, since he’d dreamt. There was nothing novel to be found within the reports his agents had compiled and presented to him—he knew it to be true—and yet he scoured them regardless, reading over and over as if the repetition would construct an answer he’d yet to devour.

Viera’vun and Iloniyn are tael’inan, he tried again to reason, one soul split between two vessels. In a way, she would be a mother to any child of his, especially if their own was not present.

Yet such explanation did nothing to justify their secrecy. Had the child truly been Iloniyn’s, born of the man known to most of Thedas as no more than an extension of the Herald herself, no questions would likely have been raised had she treated the girl as her own. Though few understood the bond they shared, it had been accepted. To bid the child lie as they had, and to hide the love shared between them, as if to deceive—

It is no proof, he rescinded, the former Inquisitor is a controversial figure, enough so to endanger the lives of those she loves. He pushed the parchment he held aside for another, and scrutinized it much the same. And her age, the girl could not have been older than five years. Nearly seven have passed since last we laid beside one another.

A potentially convincing argument, though the evidence remained puzzling at best. The scrawlings of his agent claimed Niri to be older than his calculations suggested any child of theirs might be, not younger. By their record, she would have been six now; an age made impossible by her size, barely reaching to his hip.

…Unless she were small, like her mo—like the Herald.

An idea supported by the dubious date of her birth, noting the babe to be smaller than a newborn upon her arrival at Skyhold, and already allegedly a month old. With a sigh heavy enough to rustle the papers scattered around him Solas set his own aside, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes.

And what is the more likely answer: that the child’s birth was misreported to avoid suspicion, or that two non-mage parents produced a Dreamer child of such an age to even make this a question?

Not only a Dreamer child, but one of such temperament, so unlike that of her supposed parents. One who was willful and bright, sparking like his lover had when she’d found someplace new, someplace beautiful; and impulsive, too, when her wonder grabbed ahold of her, the smile crinkling the corner of her eyes familiar and unforgettable, exactly the same as—

No, he severed the thought and straightened, inhaling sharply, there is still a chance. A ploy to avoid misconception, perhaps. I have to keep looking.

As he cast about the tabletop for more clues, however, his hand brushed instead against something solid amongst flimsy things, something hard beneath its paper shroud, and he flipped the parchment aside to wrap his fingers round the metal buried beneath. It was cold, heavy in his palm, and as he brought it into the dim candlelight he dragged his thumb delicately across its surface. With every stroke the blue glow emanating from its runes seemed to pulse and grow stronger, swelling with his touch as if in response, and tenderly he lifted the brooch to press against his bottom lip.

A wolf’s-head brooch, forged of black metal and inlaid with eyes of emeralds; his brooch…or that of Sha’iletha, known then as Avisal, the Vas’thanelan who would be his last.

Before she’d had time enough to advance upon them, Solas had slipped within the ruins Viera’vun circled to retrieve the relic for his own. Though the tombs had been built during his ages long slumber, such a place of mourning and sacrifice had drawn the attention of many of the Fade’s denizens, and within their imitation he’d walked the labyrinth of its halls countless times to honor those he’d left behind, and doomed. The spirits had seemed to surge with his very presence as they dipped into his memories, enthralled by the feats of those laid to rest there, having given their lives in the name of freedom, and rebellion. Often he’d reminisced amongst the dead, if only to see their faces cast by stone and spirit once again.

It had seemed nearly too easy to find the pin in the waking world, clasped within the hands of a marble likeness and near to her, exactly where he’d hoped it would be. Where he wished it could remain.

Every pass across its surface was familiar, every ridge known, as if it had never left his grasp to secure the fur at Shai’s shoulders and name her a keeper of the People, a wielder of her chains. Even still the magic he’d enchanted it with endured, if only faintly, catered to preserve the paradoxical woman who’d wanted so terribly to survive, even as she made herself a martyr.

And it had, for a time. But what was made to kill false gods was not so easily turned aside as that, and what he had created to protect served only to grant them precious few moments as she’d slipped away.

To fulfill the demand of her name, he lamented, breathing in deep as he felt snow beneath his knees, and a slack weight in his arms. Behind his eyelids and in the shadow of an assassin turned to stone, she urged failing lungs to deliver final words with lips pulled into a rare but genuine smile, her last as the fire always burning within her soul flickered into smoke. Sha’iletha, happiness in the sacrifice for your kin. I only wish you’d bid me call you by a different name.

Like drought dry soil sucking in a late summer downpour he felt the charm swallow the mana he poured into it hungrily, ravenously. The price exacted by her sacrifice for his sake had been heavy, enough to render the thing nearly useless; even so, the relic had not been entirely ruined, only depleted. Though it had taken days to replenish he could feel its appetite beginning to wane now, nearly sated as he slowed the flow of energy streaming into it from a flood into a trickle, and then to nothing.

Had they found it before him, their month’s long search would have seemed utterly in vain. Without a charge the pin was no more than an empty vessel, made only to open by his touch. It would serve no purpose to the remnants of the Inquisition in their fight against him, and it certainly would not protect the girl, as they seemed to so desire.

He felt a twinge of guilt at the thought of her, and how she’d shrunk at the idea of traversing the Fade alone; enough, even, to push past the warnings of her elders and ask for his company. Their plan in seeking the relic seemed a fine one in theory—it would protect her while she dreamt, for a time—but as many Tevinter Somniari had discovered in their hunting long ago, Viera’vun too would quickly come to realize just how steep the demands of a Dreamer were.

Even were he to hand it to them now, overbrimming with his mana, the price of her protection would sap its reserves within the year. With no way to fill it Niri would be vulnerable once more, her faith and safety dependent upon a trinket drained of purpose, fit only to fasten the cloak at her shoulders.

They will find another way in time, he wagered, setting the pin aside …and until then, I will keep an eye on her from afar. Just until she can—

Like a skip in his pulse, like breath stolen, Solas felt a rush of magic return to him as one of his glyphs triggered, jolting him to his feet. Such was to be expected—he’d felt much the same preceding the storm when the Herald’s party had breached the ruins, and had expected their return by the evening—yet whereas the energy of the spell streaming back to him then had been subtle, far enough away as to be no more than a tickle across the back of his neck, this release was not so subdued. It raised the hair of his arms with the current, prickling his skin and sending his heart to race with the snap of its reentry, dizzying and all at once.

This was no glyph of the ruins, as he’d expected. It was much too close, of the forests surrounding his cabin.

Somebody was nearby.

Abandoning his prior queries he strode to the door, throwing it open and grabbing his cloak. But I spied them in the midst of their preparations the morning before last, as I myself returned from the tombs, he recalled, the image of Viera’vun donned in her full leathers fresh in his mind, her Shadow always at her side. Nearly every one of her agents had been readied then, with only enough remaining to protect the camp, and to care for it. I felt them enter the ruins. They would not send a lone agent to their death against me, if they even know that I am here.

…Unless they left somebody more capable than that behind.

He stepped into the storm, shoulders bowed against the deluge, and before he’d pulled the cloak fully around his shoulders Solas was no longer himself. Magic coated his skin and stretched his muscles taut until on claw and pad he loped, the biting rain and cold seeping in through fur to settle, to stay. The discomfort was paid no mind; such sudden shift left his awareness altered and strange, his waking form not so malleable as to keep mind intact. More driven now, and present, as if the only moment he’d lived or ever would was that singular one.

It was a blessing then, compelling him forward through flashing light, through rumbling skies, with only one demand upon his mind.

Run.

And he did, bounding off of tree roots and stones to drive every footfall deep into the soil, until the winds began to shift. Mouth open in a heavy pant he skid, veering as through the wet he caught it—something familiar, something sweet. It shied from his perception though his fondness found it still, reaching past the distinct scent of elixir clinging to her leathers, acrid and hot, and further still through the sharp metal of a kill caught and cleaned by her hands.

It was the scent of sitting close to her after a long day before the campfire could steal it away, and of bending down when she couldn’t sleep to press a hand to her head, a whisper to her ear. It was her shadow cutting across his sketchpad and looking up to find her worn but not wearied, leaned down near enough to feel the heat of the day’s training like an aura around her as she peered at his unfinished work. It was waking up beside her, dawn light on lashes, and breathing in deep as they were intertwined. It was the smell of her, warm and real in his arms. It was her.

At the edge of a clearing he slowed, ducking behind the ferns and bushes ringing its border as he found Viera’vun, cloak hanging wet and heavy from her shoulders and rivulets running off what was already sodden. With stray white hairs slicked to her cheeks and brow in whirls she turned, only enough for him to see her face, and cupped her hand around her mouth to cry into the gales that would not listen. Her shouting did little more than bolster the wails of the winds, and that hand fell hard to her side again as she stumbled forward.

Searching for something, with haste enough to forgo her crossbow, he gathered, noting the lack of the prosthetic weapon as well as the labored rise and fall of her chest, apparent even from such a distance, and without rest, to fatigue her so.

She turned to the other side, mouth moving to challenge the shadows between the trunks, and he strained to hear her through the roar of the rain. Though her words he couldn’t quite discern he did catch the sway to her voice, somehow wavering where he knew it should be steady, fluctuating now as she stumbled forward.

…Something isn’t right.

As he began to circle her legs buckled, giving in beneath her, and she barely caught herself on the nearest tree. Eyes squeezed tight as she heaved every breath, she paused, tipping her head back to let the shower wash over her as if to cleanse. Then, seemingly deeming the mere seconds stolen rest enough, she straightened her shaky arm against the trunk and tried to stand on legs made unreliable by exertion, and sapped of their strength. She barely made it a step before again they gave way and Viera’vun lurched back into the tree, sinking down its length.

Her sudden decline compelled him into motion. Solas slipped from the underbrush, her stare following him from the moment he’d broken the foliage—dazed, confused, as if she couldn’t quite believe them. But then his vantage began to shift with each and every stride, fur giving way to fabric, to skin, until he stood at his full height above her once more. Haze clearing from across her eyes as each widened to a ring of white, she pulled in a shuddery gasp, driving a failing and trembling limb into the soft ground, desperate to stand, to flee, to fly—

To no avail. Slipping backwards and into the mud Viera’vun shook her head feebly, the only resistance she could muster against his advance a sigh strained through panicked tears. “No…” she choked out before fluttery eyelids refused to open again, and her head dipped forward to meet the ground.

It never did. Despite her weak protests his arms were around her before she could fully fall, propping her up as she lulled lifelessly into his grasp. The tension had melted from her expression, surrendering to the release of an unsought sleep, but where before her healthy complexion had sported a warm undertone he found her golden hue diminished instead. Pressing a hand to her cheek—one that was cold, and clammy—he let a wave of his magic wash over her, waiting until the skin there was warm to the touch before, reluctantly, pulling away.

Immediately her shallow breaths deepened, but only for a moment. It is a temporary measure. Quickly, he pulled the cloak from his shoulders, draping it across her to shield from the rain before maneuvering his arms beneath her knees, and clasping her tight. She seemed nearly weightless as he stood.

Ahead, he found the desperate path she’d carved through the woods easily enough, a clear trail of broken branches and bunched bushes leading back to where he knew them to be camped, where he knew he needed to go. The right path, for him and her both, the one he knew he needed to take though it pained him—

There was movement in his arms. He glanced down, and was met with a grimace as Viera’vun tilted her head slightly, pressing her cheek into the fabric of his tunic and burying a whisper into his chest, so soft it was imperceptible.

His head lifted. Grip tightening, Solas turned away from the path he should have traveled, and started back the way he’d come.

In his absence, the fire had died in the hearth.

At first he’d believed the winds to be at fault, streaming in through the door left open to quell any spark he’d started, but as he kneeled beside what cinders remained he found the log he’d fed it no more than licked by burns. Built in haste with little room to grow, no true flame had set here for the storm to snuff; only ash, smoldering and smothering, blown from the hearth to blacken the floor.

So he took care this time, watching transfixed as steadily it grew, until its light flared to swallow the wood and the glow of its heat brought a warm shine to his cheeks. It was only then that he let himself leave, knowing it would take. Solas stood, and turned away.

I’d forgotten just how small she actually is, with how high the masses raised her.

Nestled motionless underneath the cloak still draped across her, he found it difficult to reconcile the woman he knew with the one he faced now. Even at her lowest point, there had been a ferocity to Viera’vun that seemed insurmountable, pushed by purpose past her fears to always become exactly who she needed to be…or, more aptly, who the world needed her to be. Now, however, it seemed painfully obvious to him just how fragile she truly was, peeking from beneath his furs with disquiet twisting her brow, and the color only just returning to her cast.

Though impossible to know exactly how long she’d wandered the storm, her limits were something he knew intimately enough to wager a guess. This woman was the one who had traversed the Frostbacks, injured and alone, after dropping a mountain upon herself, and the same who’d pushed through the winding paths of the Crossroads to hunt him down with the curse of his magic eating her from the inside out. No simple storm would do in felling her, of that much he was certain…unless it were given time, enough to consume, and enough to make her careless.

Longer than the night, he concluded, and likely, much of the day before. It was a miracle he’d found her when he had, else the squalls may have squandered her completely.

He knelt down beside her, pulling his cloak aside to reveal clothes that were soaked through past her leathers. The warmth of his spell had kept her safe from the chill up until then, but what mana he spared was wasted when the remnants of the storm so quickly stole it away. Slowly, methodically, he began the task of unfastening, working each buckle and knot free until he could relieve her of her sodden clothing.

A task easily delegated to another, had I returned her to her camp.

A troubling thought, one with barbs that had affixed firmly to the back of his mind. Though many had left to delve into the ruins, enough would surely have stayed behind to care for the camp…as well as for the child, treasured enough to warrant such an expedition in the first place. Undoubtedly a healer would remain, or at the very least, a mage skilled enough to care for her in much the same fashion as he had.

She is no longer mine to tend, he reminded, slipping his arm beneath her neck to carefully pull her chest piece out from underneath her. So why have I brought her, when other hands would care for her painlessly?

His answer came as he caught the hem of her undershirt, freezing as he gently tugged the garment up to expose her belly. It was softer now than he recalled, striped by silvery markings that branched up her abdomen like roots and stretched near past her navel. Marks he’d seen before, on her thighs and her arms, but that were foreign here—proof, undeniably, of what he could not acknowledge. He ghosted his fingertips across them, as if the imprints were some illusion that might be cast aside by the testimony of his touch, but found each dip to be tangible.

His thoughts overlapped, each line of reason much too loud to hear over the other; there had to be an alternative, an explanation he’d not yet entertained. A lover taken unbeknownst to me or my agents, he tried, covering what was exposed with his cloak as he continued to undress her, or some malady marring her long after my departure, or—

A murmur broke his musings, hand recoiling at the sound as Viera’vun spoke in her sleep. Releasing the breath he’d unwittingly held, Solas shifted, leaning forward as her head tilted to the side to reveal a brow knit by nightmare, and drawing sweat. Reflexively he pressed his hand to her forehead, the same as he had what seemed a thousand times before, willing the terrors that plagued her to cease so that here and now, at least, she might know rest.

But what worries hounded her here would not disperse, even by his urgings, and the relief he’d once been able to readily provide was not forthcoming. Whatever had compelled her into the woods to search through the stormy night seemed so interwoven with her thoughts as to be inseparable, and not so easily shaken loose as that.

There was only one thing he could think that might frighten her so, should it be lost to the wilds and winds. Again Viera’vun whimpered, a name this time, and Solas felt his blood run cold.

“Arasha,” she whined, tossing her head, “please…to me.”

‘My happiness’. It is the name she called Niri by in the Fade.

That had been the reason, turning him from her camp and back towards his cabin, keeping her here as he cared for her ills. Within her head she held a key that none of his agents had been able to snatch, one that unlocked the truth he so terribly desired, and dreaded.

One that was vulnerable here, protected only by a mind muddled, and feverish.

He stood suddenly, taking with him her wet clothing to place beside the fire to dry. Truly he’d intended to confront her upon waking, loath to steal her secrets from her when she had every right to withhold them; the least she deserved was such base consideration after all that had been done to her. However, if the girl was out there, trapped in the midst of the storm and unattended…

His jaw stiffened and he ran his hand across it, trying to rub the muscles loose as he eyed her prone form before returning to her side. More deceit, always deceit. It is a wonder I did not feel more at home amongst the Orlesian nobility.

For the child’s safety, however, his already sullied integrity was a small price to pay. Crossing his legs he breathed in deep, reaching forward to clasp Viera’vun’s hand as he closed his eyes—

To find himself within the throes of the storm once more.

It erupted into being the moment he’d slipped beyond the Veil, stinging against his skin as the roaring rain engulfed him. Even before his eyelids unfolded he felt lightning crack, reverberating up through his feet to roll within his bones and raise the hair on his arms. She was only a few paces away, her back to him with hand lifting to cup her mouth, much as it had while still awake; here, however, she did not bend to the beating of the storm, standing tall as she shouted into the night.

“Da’u’lea, little spark, where did you go?”

Another flash, enough to illuminate in between the trunks outlining her, and he could make out figures circling within the shadows—figures uncomfortably familiar, and lupine in form. The whites of their many eyes glowed long after their surroundings had dimmed again, and as if to shield her the trees leaned in with the gale to shelter her glade, the wind through their branches a cry alongside her own.

“Arasha, sathan,” she pleaded, edging closer to the perimeter, “it’s not safe! Come back to me, please!”

The peal to follow drove his steps, pushing him from the outskirts and into the clearing as she cast about, reluctant to break the treeline though no other option seemed apparent. By stance alone he knew her to be considering options, stock-still as she tallied the shapes stalking and weighed her chances against them. He recognized thought in the twitch of her ear, resolve in the set of her shoulders, uncertainty in the flick of her thumb against her dagger's charm, and found it bittersweet that the language he’d learned in loving her was still legible, somehow, even after so much change.

“Viera’vun,” he finally called to her, “what’s wrong? What are you searching for?”

She whirled around, eyes wide and breath heavy upon her chest. Blurring with the motion, flashing across the distance, she closed the gap between them in a heartbeat hastened by the momentum of her dreaming state.

“I can’t find her anywhere,” she panted, scanning the darkness behind him, “and the storm, it’s-it’s only getting worse.”

“Who is it?” he asked, already knowing the answer, but it did not satisfy. He needed it clearly, and from her lips. “Who are you searching for?”

“I told her to stay with Greta, made her promise.” Viera’vun glanced over her shoulder, never settling long enough to catch her focus. “She-she doesn’t know these woods, she won’t find shelter in time.”

“Viera’vun—”

“It’s been too long,” she continued as if unopposed, voice rising in pitch as her worry heightened, “she must be so afraid. And what if she’s hurt? Oh, Creators—”

“Viera, listen to me!” As if only just hearing him her head swiveled, frantic gaze finally meeting his own as she was pulled from her agitation by the edge in his tone. “Who are you looking for?”

“Niri! Solas, please,” she gripped his arm, fingers digging into the flesh there as if letting go of him meant the child might slip away as well. “Our daughter, I can’t find her anywhere, she wandered off before the storm hit, and—”

Their contact carried with it clarity, and Viera’vun gasped. As if burned, she lifted her hand sharply into the air, motionless now as she’d been while facing the monsters that lurked within the gloom encircling them.

“I will find her,” he promised, “but I need your help. You searched for her for hours, and you know Niri better than I. Which way did she go? Where did you teach her to hide, if she were caught in a storm?”

Her response was silence, save quickened breath and footfalls retreating, sucked in by the mud. Keeping pace as she backpedaled he denied her escape, matching every step as she lifted her hand in an attempt to shield against him. He did not relent.

“The storm is bitter, it is merciless,” he compelled, “she will come to no harm with me. I will not take her from you, you have my word.”

Nothing but the slow arc of her head, and eyes cast away. He could feel his teeth clenching, enough for thunder to rumble within his ears.

“This isn’t the time for this!” he hissed, the heat building across his cheeks an uncomfortable contrast to the rain pelting them. Though she stopped as she hit the glade’s border Viera’vun stood firm, refusing to falter even as she was trapped. “You would risk her life on your distrust of me?”

But the fault was not her own. It had been his hand who’d sown the distrust in her eyes, so carelessly constructing these circ*mstances, and so it was he who reaped what had grown in return. He knew her to be careful, thoughtful, deliberate in her every decision; for her to hold her silence now spoke loudly of her judgment.

If the choice were to be made between him and the whims of the tempest, she had already assessed the danger to her daughter’s life.

And she had chosen the storm.

With chin held level she challenged him, unwavering as defiant light flashed across her eyes. Already he’d stolen unwilling truth from her lips, and she would allow no more. His time was wasted here, and what was lost could not be reclaimed. What was lost could, quite possibly, be the death of the one both sought so fiercely to protect.

Deferring to her will that would never surrender, Solas did the only thing he could, and turned away. Head hung with brow tense, eyes lidded, he peered over his shoulder one last time at Viera’vun, pushing a sharp breath through his nose.

“I will find her,” he vowed again, to her, and to himself. “I will find her.”

Chapter 4: Difluence

Chapter Text

He found salvation in smoke, choking and hot, like an arrow piercing through the rain.

What the storm should have cleansed was only beaten down to his level, where its stench was a guide through the gloom, a beacon. It was only a trace on the wind, no more than a wisp spinning stories, but the tale it told was enough. Filling his lungs, searing his throat, encumbering every breath until his gasps were lacking and head felt light—holding them, releasing. He lent it strength with every footfall, drawing him closer, closer to its source, rejecting every instinct his form inherited to turn towards the fire, and endure.

Because no fire endured in a storm, unless they were lovingly tended.

It was his only lead. No other scent had lingered past the purge, the world otherwise wiped clean by the rending of the heavens, save that which was burning. It had to be her, huddled near for warmth and light in the darkness. It has to be her.

Movement through the gaps in the trees, a subtle shifting of the light beyond the bushes, and he skid to a halt. As if dropped from some great height, the rock outcrop before him bore a broad crack; one that flickered, one that billowed. On padded paw he crept towards the cleft, careful to bypass the burned-out bowls and precariously propped waterskin collecting rain underfoot so as not to tip them over.

Low beneath branch and vine he peered within its opening, pulse pounding within his ears as they strained to hear past it, and the wind. Stinging eyes sought, squinting against firelight’s flare, scouring the form hunched there with head turned against him—

The embers popped, spitting sparks, and the figure turned to face it. Solas finally breathed.

Pressed as close to the wall as was possible Niri huddled within her makeshift refuge, the fire she’d stoked at its heart blazing steadily with wet kindling set to dry at its side. Cloak wrapping tightly around her shoulders, she’d gathered her knees up and into her arms, hugging them close as her gaze flicked between the entrance where he lurked, still undetected, and the shadows prowling the cave’s back. Small though it was, the den she’d claimed bore marks of her presence throughout, the touch of the child evident in the picture’s etched into the dust as well as the figurines scattering its floor, carved crudely of wood and bound by twine.

As her sweep of the darkness revealed nothing new, she lowered her chin into the cradle of her arms, lingering a moment with eyes only barely visible, as if rightfully hesitant to trust her own senses. Then, tilting her head down to shield herself from the world outside, Niri buried her face within her own embrace, and did not resurface.

Resting, maybe?

But no, there was a motion to her shoulders uncharacteristic of sleep, a tensing in her hands as she squeezed tighter instead of loosening. It took him time to recognize it, unclear until the muffled tone of a whine escaped the bounds of her shirt sleeve, and she pulled in a shaky breath to quiet it.

No, not resting. She is weeping.

It was no wonder—though he had no way of knowing how long she’d been trapped by the storm exactly, he was confident Viera’vun had searched no less than the night. No matter her competence, she was a child still and a young one at that, clearly beloved by those who reared her. Knowing them, he doubted she’d ever slept without the comfort of ready arms only a nightmare away, let alone a forest apart.

There was no need for her to suffer any longer. Finding his form again, Solas stepped from the unknown outside her haven’s entryway and into the lowlight, letting the leaves rustle in his wake. “Da’len?” he uttered, softly and with a voice kept low, in the hopes that his mindfulness would mitigate any alarm.

With a gasp she threw herself against the stone at her back, scrambling up and to her feet. Wide-eyed and desperate, Niri’s hands fumbled at her belt ineffectively until, finally, she brandished her blade: a tiny knife fashioned as a tool, not a weapon.

“Hold, child, it is only—”

It dropped to the floor below with a clatter, and before his words could take their shape Solas was staggered, knocked two steps back by an impact at his waist, crashing into him.

“You found me,” Niri sniveled, burying her voice as well as her fingers into his cloak, his presence coaxing a new surge of tears to her eyes, “you kept your promise, hahren. You found me.”

The words choked him more than the blow had. He had expected hesitance from the girl in the waking world, what with her wits fully about her and the caution of her caretakers still fresh on her ears; instead he had been met with hands fast and grasping, trying to tangle themselves and his tunic into so firm a knot as to be inseparable.

“I was so scared. I tried my best and did everything Mae told me, but it’s been so long,” she blurted, hardly intelligible through her blubbering, “I thought-I thought I heard her, but it stopped. I reached with my heart just like you said, but she didn’t hear me and it stopped, hahren, I couldn’t-I couldn’t—”

She shuddered as tears overtook her, burrowing her face further into his clothing. As if he were more than a stranger she turned to him, seeking comfort in their closeness, and reassurance from the man whose name she did not yet know. How terribly he wished to give in and hold her as she trembled, to scoop her up into his arms and assure her she was safe, and no longer alone. To reach to her as she reached to him, unfettered, like he’d known her from the day she’d been born and not only a few moments.

Like he had always been there, at her side and nowhere else.

It hooked through his chest, pulling the organ there suffocatingly thin, but he held firm as again he was caught between desire and guilt. Too often he’d given in to his whims, letting them guide him to places such as these. This life he saw before him was long lost, abandoned all those years ago when he’d turned from his heart, leaving her alone amongst the rushes and pleading for answers beside the water.

He had made his choice then. It was much too late to covet what had been relinquished and so he held firm, grounding her with hands upon her shoulder and allowing himself no more.

“If only it worked that way while waking, da’len, but it does not,” he whispered, squeezing. As he did, she peeled her face from his tunic, just enough to peer up at him through the gloom of her overcast eyes. “Such feats are only achievable within the Fade. We cannot rely upon them here.”

Niri sniffed, blinking hard. “I heard her. I heard her calling me, and I tried to go to her, I really tried, but…but I didn’t know how,” she said, glancing away from him. “I don’t understand why she didn’t find me. She’s the best tracker ever and she said she’d always find me, so…so why…?” her hands balled into fists as her brow knit, fighting against the wash of fear resurfaced by the memory, “why did her voice go away? Why didn’t she find me?”

The battle was lost. Marking her retreat with a whimper she shoved her head into her elbow and rubbed furiously, as if to wipe the telltale expression clean from her face. As her arm fell away Solas kneeled, weighed down by her worries, and by her weeping.

“It is only because she is unable,” he said, tilting his head to catch her eye. “Do not doubt that your mother searched tirelessly for you, as long as she was able. Only when made sick by the storm did she waver, and cease in her searching.” Her stare widened, flashing into focus as she swelled with anxious air. “Do not fret—she is safe, merely resting now. It is why I have come, to find you in her stead and guide you to her side.”

Her captive breath was released, a smile trailing in its wake. “You know how to find her again?” she began to ask, the light returning before a thought seemed to strike her, troubling enough to pinch her lips. “Wait...how do you know who my mamae is?”

The wariness creeping into her gaze was dangerous. “I knew her long before,” he deflected, “when she was Inquisitor still—”

“But how did you know it was her?” she pushed, and slipped from his grasp. “You peeked, didn’t you? You promised not to look, but you peeked.”

It was not something he could deny. With no answer forthcoming she took another step away, crossing her arms to make a barrier between them with distrust plain and poignant across her face, ousting any relief she’d found within his company to replace it with broken faith. She wanted to be angry—he could read it in the rigid set to her jaw, in the glare that demanded a reason of him, an excuse—but as the distance dividing them grew he watched her indignation falter, and fall away. The nails gripping her elbows tight softened into fingers wrapping instead, holding herself, and the bitterness in her expression that had felt so sharp gave way to something worse, something wounded.

“I…I don’t know what to do.”

Frozen by the indecision Niri turned from him, body rocking as if to soothe. His deception then had been undoubtedly necessary—he’d needed to know—and yet, he could not shake the guilt now that he’d seen what it had done to her, nor the regret at having hurt her so. Just as it had been with Viera’vun, her judgment of him was entirely deserved…though, such understanding hurt no less.

“Then speak your thoughts, give unto them voice,” he said, “and see if, in so doing, they are more easily understood.”

With arms unfolded she lowered her hands to fidget upon her lap, thumbs rolling rhythmically in orbit of one another; a motion that was familiar, an echo of other hands. It seemed at first that his advice had gone unheeded until, wearily, the child took in a deep breath, dulling the edge of her anxieties before speaking.

“You tricked me, just like Bae and Mimi said you would. You made a promise, and you didn’t keep it,” she muttered, her hurt becoming his. “That isn’t fair, but…you promised to find me, too, and you did, even when Mae couldn’t. When she promised, too. If…if you’re right, and she’s sick, then…” her brow drew together, hanging low as she pulled her chin to her chest, voice fading to little more than a whisper, “then nobody is going to find me. I’ll be all alone.”

It was an unfortunate truth, one he was surprised to hear one so young acknowledge. Her boasts to her mother’s benefit, though exaggerated by childish adulation, were far from untrue—Viera’vun had always been a skilled scout, moreso even than she was a hunter. With nearly every trace of the child wiped clean by winds unwilling to cease even she had struggled to find her, and with Iloniyn and her best agents likely still combing the tombs, the chances of her being found were slim.

A reality she seemed to understand well. One he would not allow, though he preferred it be by her choice.

“I don’t want to be alone again,” she told him, “I want to be with Mae. You were nice and walked with me when I was scared before, and you took me all the way to her. You helped me find my way back. I want to find my way back now, too.”

“If you will allow me another chance, I will take you to her. Just as I did in the Fade.”

“But I’m scared. What if you take me away? What if…you really are a wolf?”

Then let me wear the wool well, he wished, closing his eyes a moment to escape the doubt in hers, so I might walk amongst the halla, this one last time. So I might keep her safe.

“I broke our promise,” he admitted, “and in so doing, have rightfully lost your faith. This I cannot, nor will I, deny. When the vow was made, I was yet unaware that it was one I’d be unable to keep.” Her gaze trailed up with the confession though her head did not, still tucked to her collar. “I am sorry. I never intended to trick you, or betray your trust. All I am able to give you now, however, is my word that you will come to no harm by my hand.”

Her hands stilled in front of her as she sifted through the sincerity of his expression instead, biting her lip to concentrate. “Do you promise? That she’s safe, and that you’ll take me right to her? You have to really promise, and mean it this time, too.”

“Dir’vhen’an,” he declared, soft, but unblinking. “I promise.”

Hunting his face for any trace of duplicity she scrutinized him a moment longer, weighing the decision before, finally, heaving a sigh and turning away. As if he’d taken a blow to the chest he felt his breath escape him, unwilling to return though he tried to pull it back; in this too, it seemed, she mirrored her mother, assessing his assurances and finding them lacking. Choosing the storm, for her distrust of him.

But when she crouched again beside her fire, it was not to settle as he feared she might. Instead, Niri picked up a stick from the drying kindling nearby to begin poking apart the embers that remained.

“...Okay.” The flames receded as they dispersed, replaced by red hot coals that seethed at the air forced upon them, and she set the stick aside to let them cool. “One more chance. But if you’re lying again, then…then…”

There was no threat severe enough to make her feel safe, and noticeably she shrunk with the firelight.

“Nothing will prevent me from returning you to her side, Niri. This, I swear to you.”

She nodded, fumbling with the pouch at her belt as she sheathed her little knife, and gathered her things. The ashes continued to smolder, loath to fade away now after having been so dutifully built, and yet to dim even as she finished retrieving her belongings. Again she grabbed the stick, frowning as she prodded at it before, hesitantly, she splayed her fingers above the pit, chewing her lip.

Though it fought, the light there flickered, and eventually went out entirely; a simple enough task for one such as him, merely a wave of the hand and an urging thought, but as the girl’s cheeks were turned by a satisfied smile he felt a pride of his own swell within him. She isn’t hiding it. She’s embracing what should be natural.

“Alright, I’m ready. Let’s go.”

Solas turned to the entrance and Niri followed, leaning to grab her overfull waterskin. As she straightened back up beside him he nearly withdrew at the brush of skin against his hand, and something snaking its way inside.

She held firm, however, and would not let go, wrapping her fingers in his as if it were a familiar motion, and pulling her cloak over her head. Standing at the edge of the overhang above them, letting the hiss of the rain mute his thoughts, he looked down at the child beside him and found it difficult to move.

But move he did into something bitter, something cold, and though they didn’t talk as they had before, he felt warmer now with her at his side.

Yet while he’d assumed her silence to be the product of a newfound wariness, her stumbling steps as they trudged through the mud were strange, and not at all like the girl he’d seen within the Fade skipping across stones. Though the light was dull it was not so much so that he couldn’t find the path beneath his feet. As again his arm was dipped as she tripped across an exposed root, Solas halted.

“Are you hurt, child?”

“No,” she said with difficulty after steadying herself against him, “I’m okay.”

Her mouth never closed around the words, instead stretching wide as her face was split by a yawn, one insufficiently covered by the hand she lifted to hide it. Of course she didn’t sleep last night, he chided himself, feeling a fool, lost in the wilds and cornered by the elements as she was.

“You need not walk. I will carry you.”

“No!” she answered, blinking up at him before repeating, “No. Really, I can do it, I just need to—”

Those eyes again pinched shut as she failed to fend off her drowsiness, tears popping to their corners. If only she had not inherited this from her mother.

“There is no shame in asking for help, or accepting it when freely given,” he told her. “It is easy to spurn proof of our own vulnerabilities, to turn away from that which makes us feel weak. To accept such a thing with grace instead, to know your limit, is what takes true courage.”

A sentiment once gifted to another, one that hurt to speak now. Nonetheless it was heeded as, with little resistance despite her hesitation, the girl acquiesced, reaching up to wreathe her arms around his neck when Solas leaned down. As he lifted her into the air, she nestled her face into the corner between her elbow and his shoulder, and he felt the cool brush of her nose against the skin of his collar. Swiftly he let a pulse of warm mana wash over them, tugging his hood forward to cover them both better.

She was stiff at first, uncertain in his arms, but slowly she relaxed into his grasp as if it were no stranger. Featherlight, just as her mother had been, yet where her weight was centered he felt a soothing pressure, starting in his chest and sweetening every breath he pulled in. It slowed his steps as well as it did his pulse, pushing away the ache that reminded him of the reality he wished to ignore, and he closed his eyes as if to savor every second.

“...I don’t even know what your name is.”

He cracked an eyelid as her voice broke his trance. “My name?”

“You know mine,” she mumbled, lashes fluttering where they peeked out from her elbow, “even though I never told you. You keep calling me Niri, but I don’t know yours.”

Despite the many aliases he’d taken across the years, the seemingly countless masks he’d worn through the ages, in that moment with her cradled against him he struggled to remember a single one. She was a capable girl, one surrounded by those who cherished her, protected her; he was not so foolish as to believe he’d ever be so near to her again, not physically. Not relied upon for comfort and care, as he was now. If it was to be their only memory of one another while waking, he would not have it be a false one.

“Solas,” he finally granted, and it was a weight both surrendered and seized. “It is Solas.”

“And I’m Niri,” she chimed, “though, you already know that.”

A laugh thrummed in his chest. “That I do.” As she glimpsed up at him, a fat drop of water slipped through the boughs above and the girl winced as it broke across her nose, finding her way back to the comfort of his cloak. It reawakened a fear within him, one that sought past the present, and into what came after. “...Why did you wander into the storm, da’len? You must have known the danger you were walking into, not only alone, but without the proper tools.”

He could feel her face bunch against his shoulder, even before she turned to glower at him. “I didn’t wander into a storm! It wasn’t stormy yet,” she argued before stopping herself, and growing small against him. In her silence he heard the gears of her thoughts turning, uncertain as she spoke again. “And I…I could feel it, in my body. Like sparks in my blood. It made my heart beat fast, like I wanted to run, but not because I was scared and needed to get away. Because it would be fun, and it would feel right.” Repetition started at the base of his neck as her hands began to turn, skimming across one another where they were clasped behind him. “It wanted me to meet it, so I could feel it faster. It didn’t want to wait, and neither did I. So…so I listened, and I went.”

There was an excitement to her words even as she shivered, an intensity both compelling and terrifying. It was difficult to discern whether the quickening of her breath was one of alarm, or of thrill.

“As mages, our connection to the Fade manifests in vastly different ways,” he explained. “We all have our affinities, and yours appears to be the storm. Your mana recognizes its approach, is strengthened by it, yearns for it. Like heat from a fire or the inevitable flow of the river, its natural energy bolsters your own. It is no wonder you were drawn to it as you were.”

“I couldn’t stop, even though I wanted to. I knew everybody would worry, but my feet kept moving.” She tilted her head back, searching for answers even before she’d asked her question. “It won’t happen again, will it? I-I don’t want to get lost again.”

The answer she wanted was not one he could give. “So long as there are tempests turning, you will likely hear its call. That does not mean you must follow its every impulse. Do you remember what I told you about your magic, when last we walked the Fade together?”

“You told me it was a gift,” she said with a nod, “as well as a tool. That I should learn to control it, to help and not hurt.”

“Just so. And that sentiment stretches to you as well, da’len.” He looked back up to the path, adjusting her place within his arms. “We must learn to control our magic for our own sake as much as that of others, lest our will be overcome by its every whim.”

“But…but I couldn’t think, I couldn’t…I could only run. How can I control that?”

“By relying upon the ones who love you.” A difficult lesson, one that took many their entire lives to learn, and one he’d forgotten how to embrace himself. It was, of all the lessons he’d taught her thus far, the one he hoped she’d take to heart. “You need not carry the burden alone. There is no shame in asking for help, and knowing when to lay your faith in the hands of another is controlling it. When next you feel that aching in your feet, the one that bids you run, you must tell the ones you trust to keep you safe.”

The quietness of thought, or possibly exhaustion, followed; when he eyed Niri for an answer he found it not so easy to discern, her body still with heavy lids and generous blinks. Be it contemplation or sleep, the twist to her lip did not betray relief.

“For what it is worth,” he continued, breaking the silence to wander back into conversation in the hopes of lightening the strain that marred her expression, “you cared for yourself quite well, despite the circ*mstance. For one so young, I am impressed.”

His praise, not undeserved, was rewarded with the trace of a smile. “It’s because I’m Dalish. Mae taught me how to make a fire and find water, and says the most important part is for me to stay put, so she can find me.”

“And the wooden figurines on the floor of the cave, they were yours as well?”

Her breath pushed into a giggle, light and precious. It didn’t strike him until he heard it again how much he’d missed it, and how he wished to hear it again. “That was my aravel, and my halla to pull it. Every Dalish clan needs them, they are really important,” she answered. “Bae taught me how to whittle, but the knife Mae gave me isn’t very sharp, and I’m not good at it yet.” Her glance trailed up to study him, thinning with the effort. “You’re not Dalish, are you?”

An amusing thought, enough so that it was hard to hide his own behind a placid mask. “What do you think?” he asked, though doubt was evident enough in her eyes already.

As though it were more than a simple curiosity he watched her consider the answer carefully, squinting as she thought it through. “...No, I don’t think so. You call me da’len like you are, but it’s…different. You don’t feel Dalish.”

“And what makes one feel Dalish, exactly?”

“It’s the way you talk,” she declared. “When we visit the clan, they’re always talking about what it means to be Dalish, and how important it is. You haven’t mentioned it even once.” Such blunt honesty was enough to elicit a laugh from him. It seems the People of this time have yet to change. “And you don’t have a bow or daggers, so you must not hunt. Real Dalish hunt.”

“What of the Keeper, and the craftspeople? Are they not Dalish as well?”

“Of course they are! They still know how to hunt, though, because they have to, to be Dalish.”

He opened his mouth to contradict her, but a bracing rush of mana cut his words, raising gooseflesh across his arms as it flowed through him. His pulse skipped, and his grip tightened ever so slightly. Iloniyn and the rest of Viera’vun’s agents had left the ruins, and so the hourglass had flipped on their time together.

“And you don’t have a vallaslin, either,” she continued, distracted from his dismay by the string tying his cloak, bouncing with his every step. “All Dalish do, but not Mamae. She says it doesn’t make her any less, though, just different. Like how I’m still Dalish, even though I don’t live with a clan. So, unless you’re like her, then you aren’t Dalish.”

Though the words came slower than they had in the dream they’d shared he found their languid pace a comfort, their rhythm easier to hold, and savor. With the rocking of his feet against the pathway he leaned his cheek against her crown, and she did not pull away.

“And what does a young Dalish do, when they are caught unawares by the rain?”

“They aren’t afraid! And they are never unprepared,” she stated, sitting just a little straighter as she placed confidence in his arms, pulling her own from around his neck to twist the pouch at her waist around. “See? Mae gave me this for my naming day, I’m supposed to put it on first thing in the morning and take it everywhere, and I did!” With a flick of her wrist she unbuckled the bag, pulling something from it to show him. “It has my survival tools, like my flint and steel, and—see? My compass, too. I know how to use everything, so when the rains started to fall I was ready.”

The eager spark in her eyes had returned, betraying an answer he needn’t hunt for; yet still he did with a smirk of his own, if only to hear her response. “You must’ve been terribly afraid, when first the thunder rolled.”

“I wasn’t! I really wasn’t, I knew exactly what to do, and I grabbed kindling and burdock leaf for tinder and kept it dry, because if I got wet I needed to make a fire to stay warm. And then-and then, I had to find shelter, and I saw the big rock and knew it would be there, but I tripped down a ravine and—”

Her rampant recollection caught on the slip as a bright pink glow broke across her ears, and he felt his brow pinch. “You fell?”

“Well, yes, but-but it was just a little, and not very far. I didn’t get hurt; just a little scrape, that’s all, and I’m really tough, so it wasn’t even that bad.”

“I’ve no doubt,” he assured, sensing something hidden in her reaction, and knowing the girl’s pride to be a reasonable thing when properly fed. “I would have you show it to me still.”

Though the hiccup in her story seemed to bother her, Niri did what had been requested with only a slight pout, working the sleeve of her tunic up and past her elbow to show him the angry red abrasion like patchwork up her forearm. Shifting her to sit better in the crook of one arm, he lifted his hand to graze his fingers lightly across the scraped skin, no longer weeping though its edges were caked in crimson. Unable to hold her wince at his touch, he watched the girl grit her teeth into a smile.

“S-See? It’s not that bad, and it’ll heal just fine, so—”

Her face was lit by blue light preceding wonder, eyes widening as with the brush of his touch the skin began to knit, and heal. The dried blood fell away to mix with the dirt below, and by the time she’d caught her bearings again Niri’s forearm bore no signs of her stumble.

“You know healing magic?”

She bounced with the excitement, and Solas had to grip her once injured elbow to keep the child from tipping out of his grasp. “I do.”

“You must be really good at magic,” she gasped, twisting to scour every inch of her skin. “Mimi says we only use healing magic for really bad injuries, like ones that might kill you. He says it’s a waste of mana on the little ones, and we shouldn’t rely on it too much. You must have a lot of mana.”

His hand as it lowered to steady her again brushed against something that hadn’t healed by his touch, something long-established and now a part of her. It soured him, somehow. “Is that why you’ve a scar already?”

“A scar?” She craned her neck to look where he’d indicated, at the thin pink line wrapping her elbow. “Oh, that. I got that when I first started archery.”

“They let you practice with true arrows already?” he exclaimed. The little knife she’d brandished against him had been reasonable enough, but for her to wield something so sharp in practice, enough even to leave a mark, and at an age more tender than she already was—

“Oh, no, I got in big trouble for that. I have a practice bow but they won’t give me actual arrows, not like Bae’s, so I had to steal one of his,” she admitted. “When he found out he used his really big voice to say my name—and he said all of it, too, so I knew he was really mad—and I was so spooked that I fell on it, and got cut really bad. It bled a lot, but I only cried a little bit.”

“You were not healed, even then?”

“Bae doesn’t know magic, and it was just us since we were on a mission,” she explained. “He picked me up and carried me to camp so we could clean it, but it needed stitches and I’d never gotten them before. I was afraid, so he did it as fast as he could.” Her hand ran across the blemish and her expression shifted, but though he could not see her mouth, he did catch the wrinkle at the corner of her eyes; a smile, not a frown, at the memory. “He held me really tight and told me he was so sorry, that he’d never yell like that again. It was an accident, and he had been scared but he didn’t mean to scare me, too. And he promised to take me to the river, so I could pick out driftwood for a new puzzle box. He made it in the shape of a sparrow, because that’s what Uncle Varric calls me.”

The feeling that roiled within him was a tangled mess of bitterness and relief, the image of somebody else carrying her as he did now as much a remedy as it was a malady. How much better did Iloniyn’s arms know this child, having held her every moment she had grown and not only this singular one? He despised it, the envy he felt at the Shadow who’d taken his place in her life, even as he was beholden to him for filling the space he’d left so achingly open.

Already he knew her to be loved; in every story and lesson she recited she’d spoken their names, weaving them into the tapestry of her life so intrinsically that they could not be removed. Though it was by no means finished, he knew there was only one place for him within her story, and it was not at her side.

No matter where their paths took them, she was within his grasp now, and time spent untangling such thoughts was wasted when it could instead be spent on her. As his eyes cleared of their enmity the trail seemed regrettably familiar, and long before he was ready he could see the wooden roof of his cabin, peeking through the cracks in the foliage. Closing his eyes, Solas breathed in deep as if to trap the feeling there, and fought his heart’s urging to turn from the path.

“It seems we have arrived.”

Niri squirmed within his arms and he let her down as gently as one could a wriggling child, finding his chest somehow heavier without her weight. Racing to the door with feet slapping against the mud, her hand was quick to find the handle before, stricken by something unseen, she hesitated and pulled away.

It reminded him of her reluctance to leave within the Fade and how she’d lingered at that ledge beside him, resisting the end of the dream she’d been denied her whole life, as well as their time together. Wishful, he knew, to think that they could possibly feel in tandem that unwillingness, especially when her desire to return to her mother’s side had been so tangible. A courtesy, then, to him and his privacy, asking permission before barging into a home that was neither hers, nor his.

So he made to open the door, lifting the latch to grant her entry only to be met with tiny but urgent fingers, pulling with all their might to halt him and keep it closed. Her pointer jumped to press a line against her lips, and he raised an eyebrow to question her. Beckoning him close he leaned in, her hand bridging his ear to her mouth.

“Mae doesn’t sleep very well,” she whispered, “so Bae says we have to be extra quiet and careful when she’s resting.”

He struggled to keep his amusem*nt to no more than a chuckle, brushing her hand aside as he pushed open the door. “That isn’t necessary, little one. Your mother will not wake.”

She was clearly not entirely convinced, peering curiously over his arm though she didn’t dare enter. Finding nothing but stillness within the dim dark, however, she squinted up at him.

“Are you sure?”

“I am. Come, before the cold creeps in.”

Such a small push was all she needed. Scurrying past the rush mat that barely caught the muck caked to her feet, Niri made her entrance into his modest accommodations as a flood might. She found her way to the center of the single-room cabin where she spun, taking stock with curiosity aglow in her wide eyes, as if she’d entered again a grand ballroom of Orlais and not something so humble.

“This place is small!” she blurted.

“That it is,” he agreed, coaxing flame to the candles scattering the room.

“Do you live here?”

“Not usually.”

“That’s good, it’s not very comfortable. And it’s all dusty.” Her spinning slowed until she stopped, crouching down beside the hearth where she thrust her hands forward to warm them. “You left a fire going, too. That’s dangerous, you know.”

Not nearly as dangerous as leaving you alone out there as I tended it, or your mother here in the cold.

Chiding aside, she seemed grateful enough for its heat, pulling her own soggy cloak from her shoulders to hang beside the flames, near to where her mother’s clothes were set. For a moment there she seemed to slow, closing her eyes as she settled beside it. He worried the tired child would fall asleep right there, so close to where the popping embers could bite and burn, and raise welts across her delicate skin—

But then her eyes sprung open anew, and she spotted something much more interesting than light, and comfort. Shooting to her feet Niri raced to the table he’d taken as his desk, scrambling up the chair to tuck her knees beneath her and cast wonderstruck eyes across its surface.

“What are all these papers?”

“It is for my research,” he answered simply, withholding from his subject of study the exact details. With the way her eyes flicked across the pages he sensed enough familiarity to imply some literacy, though he doubted one so young to be proficient enough to understand these letters, coded and opaque as they were.

“What kind of—”

Her inevitable question was cut short as something else caught her attention, and she tilted her head. Reaching out, Niri palmed something solid instead, pulling it close to her face with an intense squint creasing her eyes.

“What’s this?”

The flash of metal in the candlelight nearly compelled him forward to snatch it from her hands, feeling a tinge of senseless panic as the child handled it. With an inhale he wrest back control of himself, tucking his hands behind his back instead.

“It is a brooch for pinning clothing,” he said. “It belonged to a friend of mine, once.”

As if drawn by the softness of his tone she looked up, eyes flicking across his face with an emotion imperceptible to him stretched across her own.

“Did your friend leave?”

The question caught him off guard, and he blinked. When his answer didn’t readily come Niri smiled up at him—a reassuring smile, one so earnest as to be enveloping—and he recognized then what he had seen in her expression.

Concern.

“Mae has a lot of friends who had to leave, and she has lots of presents from them, too, like the necklace from Uncle Dori, and the key from Uncle Varric.” She trailed back down to the metal in her hand, lifting the other to run her finger across its face, and tracing the details of the wolf with a tenderness he’d never expected from one so young. “Sometimes she looks at them, and gets the same look on her face that you did. She said it means she misses them.”

After a moment more to study the pin she turned to him, pushing her hand forward and opening her palm. She is a bright child, he thought to himself, reaching to take it from her with head dipped in thanks, perceptive by nature, just like her mother, and—

Before he’d grabbed the relic Solas froze, transfixed by what he found within her hands. There and in time with the rise and fall of her chest, the runes of its surface pulsed with blue light, reacting to Niri in much the same way as it did to him. Her touch had ignited it to gleam within hands that should have left it dim, and dead, siphoning her mana to fill what emptiness remained.

His reaching fingers closed into a fist around it, shielding him from the glaring revelation she cradled. It would seem that, even in this, I am redundant.

“Be careful not to lose it,” she told him. “Gifts are how people tell us they love us when they’re too far away to say it, so we don’t ever forget. You have to take really good care of it, alright?”

“Alright,” he echoed, and she beamed. Satisfied, Niri pushed herself up and out of the chair, bouncing on her heels twice before making a beeline for his bedroll against the opposite wall, as well as the bundle resting atop it.

“Good! Your friend will be very sad if you lose it.” Only just noticing her muddy boots and the dirt she’d trailed behind her as she came to the edge of the bedding, she fell back hard on her bottom, pulling the leather from her feet to place them aside. “When you see them next, that is.”

Without reservation she wiggled her way beneath the furs, nearly on top of Viera’vun as she wedged herself into the crook of her arm, pausing a moment as if in anticipation of some reaction. Seemingly bemused by her mother’s deep slumber as none came, the child snuck a hand up to paw gingerly at her chin, before gently pulling at the lobe of her ear. When the woman’s ear flicked and her face contorted, the girl’s giggle was a wellspring gushing forth.

“Let her rest. I cannot promise she won’t wake, if you bother her that much.”

“I’ve never seen her sleep like this before.” A yawn wrinkled her nose, reminding her eyes how nice it felt to close. With lids grown heavy she rested her hands atop her mother’s chest, and then her chin upon them. “She always wakes up when I get into bed or when I wake up at night. So she can cuddle me best, she says.” The amused smile teasing her cheeks began to slip away, replaced instead by a ripple across her worried brow, and a glance his way. “She is really okay, right? Or did she get so sick that she won’t wake up?”

Even from such a distance he knew her to be safe, vibrant again in the tone beneath her skin and breathing rhythmic, and steady. Still he padded over to them, kneeling beside where the both of them were nestled to make a show of checking her pulse, and testing her temperature. As he pulled away the child tensed, bracing against a dire diagnosis.

“Yes, I am certain,” he concluded, and the stray hairs framing Viera’vun’s face quivered as her daughter sighed. “You need not worry, da’lath’in; she is alright. Only tired.”

With the exhale Niri closed her eyes, relaxing into the release, and Solas stood as he was reminded of a task more pressing than allaying the child’s nerves, looming ever closer with every second passed. Exchanging her boots for a bag slouched at the door he returned to his desk, feeling her lazy gaze trail his every movement from the moment he had turned away, seemingly losing speed as she followed him.

“Solas?” she called out, so slow and sweet it stung. “How did you find her?”

The question seemed more a bid to catch her own attention than his, stretching to stop the slipping of her awareness into sleep by pulling at his own. Still he granted it, unwilling to leave any question of hers suspended; whether the answers were remembered come waking or not, the time would never be wasted on her. He busied himself with the shuffling and rolling of scattered papers, and stashed the loose scrolls away.

“It was only by chance that I found her. I simply stumbled across your mother, already weary.”

“And you took care of her? You made her safe?”

“...I did. She was in no state to care for herself on her own.”

“I don’t understand.”

He paused in his winding of the parchment, snared by something subtle in her voice. Letting his hand drift back down to the table's surface, he angled his head in her direction.

“Bae and Mimi said you’re a bad man,” she murmured into her elbow, a fatigue too great to be credited to mere restlessness tinging her tone, “even Mae told me you’re dangerous. But how can that be right, when you helped us so much?” He hadn’t the words to even begin to explain, and knew he likely wouldn’t have, if able. As the silence stretched unbroken she shifted, the hand she rested upon reaching out instead to skim along Viera’vun’s arm before gently guiding it around her. Though now within her mamae’s embrace, Niri looked no less troubled. “Even though you lied to me, everybody makes mistakes. So how are you bad when you said you were sorry, and you saved me and Mae, too?”

“People are not so simple as that, I am afraid.” No matter his desire to deny it, he would not lie to her in this. He would not let her trust him, as her mother had. “We all wear masks like at the ball, ones behind and not before our faces. You cannot know what lies beneath by what is seen on the surface alone. I am no exception.”

“I want to like my magic. And I want to like the Fade, and the wisps and the spirits, too.”

“You do not need me for that, little Dreamer. Already you’ve found beauty where others would turn away.”

“But I need you to show me how. You make it feel real,” she pressed before shrinking, as if to disappear amidst the furs. “I want to like you, too. I want you to be good.”

I’d like nothing more than that as well. But our wants rarely make it so.

“There is much we cannot control in life,” he said instead, “least of all people. Have faith in what you can control, and in yourself. Your curiosity is a beautiful thing; do not let the intolerance of others diminish it, and you will do fine.”

“But what if nobody will tell me the answer? Or they don’t know?”

“Ask regardless, and if the answer will not come, seek it on your own. You give yourself too little credit.” He blinked as his hands found their motion again, turning as once more he tidied. “You are much like your mother, in that way, as well as in your questions.”

“Did you teach her, too?”

“At times. More often, she taught me.”

“Mae taught you?” The silence between swelled with the whish of a yawn, her query encumbered as it came slow. “About what?”

“Many things. How to appreciate a quiet moment in time, and how to bask in the sun. She taught me of her people, and instilled within me a respect for them I hadn’t thought to consider.” Or, rather, that I would not allow myself to consider. “There were truths I sought to ignore, then, but she would not allow me to turn away. She showed me the err in such willful ignorance.”

With each report in its proper place he buckled the leather satchel, finding his hands empty once again as he hoisted its strap over his head. He had been irreverent then, unwilling to acknowledge the consequence of his actions, a weak man in turning away from the People. A weak man in loving her. His roaming fingers wrapped again around familiar metal. When he closed his eyes, he could almost imagine the child’s mana within had warmed it.

“Yes. She is a special woman, well beyond the hand she had in history. You are right to be proud of such heritage, da’len. I’ve no doubt you will only grow to resemble her further.”

When she did not chime in even then, Solas let his eyes wander down to find his audience quiet, and still. Her head now resting slack against her mother’s chest, Niri had fallen asleep. With nothing left to engage his attention—his preparations complete, her watchful eyes tucked away—he padded over, kneeling down at their side as soft snores and whistles escaped preciously parted lips.

It was an image that, in another life, could have been a mundane thing; here, however, he could not tear his eyes away from them. Though she was dead to all the world, Viera’vun still sensed her daughter nearby, her fingers curling faintly around Niri’s shoulder and to the hand that gripped her own in an enduring vice. They fit together as if made to do so, the molding of their bodies to accommodate the other innate, even in sleep.

Yet while he’d had a year to commit every aspect of Viera’vun to his memory and found his recollection still faithful, there were so many things he hadn’t noticed about Niri while walking at her side, or even carrying her within his arms. The gap in her teeth where she’d lost a tooth, as well as the little fold to her still growing ears; and then there were her cheeks, peppered in a fine spatter of so many freckles.

Do they grow darker in the summer months, just as mine used to?

They barely showed in his reflection any longer, seemingly chased away by thousands of years buried beneath a stone ceiling, but once they’d dusted his own when he’d had a place in the sun.

What else? What else did she inherit that I’ve kept myself from seeing?

Her nose, young and soft, it tilted where her mother’s did not, and her hair was as dark as what he once had pulled into braids and tails. And then there were her eyes, lidded now but gray as the skies beneath, run through by bands of blue like a lyrium vein cutting rock. Undeniable now he saw her, the proof he’d sought clear within a face that was hers…but also, his own, soft and still honest.

My daughter…our daughter.

Unbidden he reached for her to tuck a strand of hair behind that perfectly furled ear. The last grain of sand was soon to fall on their time together, he knew it, but no matter the urging of his head he could not find the heart to withdraw. Not when there were heartbeats yet to be had in her presence, ones that could never be recovered once they had slipped away.

I am a weak man still, it would seem.

As he traced her hairline with his thumb, the glare of another inheritance burst through the cracks in his fingers to illuminate her face, as if drawn to her even now. There was no place for him at her side—he would not fool himself of that—but in this one way his hand in her life might not be entirely lacking.

He twisted his wrist, turning that hope over in his hands. Already he’d watched her light fill this vessel, just as ably as his had. Tied by the blood they shared and his mana running through her, he might keep her safe yet. He could shield her still, if only he let go.

“I wonder what you’d think of me now, ma Avisal. My enduring flame.”

His voice as he bowed his head came hushed, nearly drowned by the crackling of the hearth behind him and the drizzle against the shutters outside, finally dying down. Of all the people he’d liberated, the vallaslin he’d removed, few had burned so bright as she.

Few, he thought as he glanced to Viera’vun, but not none. He was a weak man, and a predictable one, too, always coveting the light from his place within the dark. Cold metal pressed patterns into his brow as he leaned it into the brooch, submitting to the memory as if in solemn prayer.

“I know I’ve no right to ask any more of you than you’ve already given, Sha’iletha,” he whispered into his palm, closing his eyes to trap what welled there before it escaped him, “but I’ve no other choice. Please, protect her, just as you once protected me.”

He brought it to his lips in a final goodbye before, gentle so as not to wake her, he pinned it to Niri’s tunic. There was comfort in its subtle gleam as much as there was pain, as well as in the lingering kiss he pressed to her temple.

What would become of me if I did not depart, and sat until they woke? he asked of himself. Would the trail before me fork again, or is this the only path I’ve left? And would that diverging path be brighter, should I walk it at her side? Would they have me?

Questions, he knew, he would never allow himself the answer to. There came a calling from the world outside, one impossible to ignore though he tried; too long he’d tarried here, and the agony of this tearing away was to be his price. Knowing it to be his last and only opportunity, he tucked a final promise to Niri’s ear, one he had no intention of breaking.

“Ar lath ma, da’fenlin,” he breathed, “i ady uth’lathan ma.”

I love you, my little wolf, and I always will.

The hearth was still blazing, this home now warm as he left it. He did not—could not—look back as he slipped through the doorway, and back out into a storm abating. Heavy though it felt in his arms Solas lifted his staff to the sky, and from it erupted a beam to pierce the heavens, pulling shouts from the shadowy beings he knew to be nearing.

Only then, with their attention drawn, did he abscond. And to abandon them a second time felt worse than death.

Chapter 5: Dissipation

Chapter Text

There were few moments Solas remembered so clearly as the one where he finally, irreversibly, lost Viera’vun.

At the end of a long line of clues he had waited with breath bated, still as the solemn statues surrounding him. Only with the ripple of the eluvian did he come back to life, spurred by the anticipation of a truth impending into motion. He’d taken each wave of the Qunari forces with ease, knowing that with every surge she drew closer, longing for the huntress to close in on his trail just as much as he dreaded it.

And then she had, and every line of script left him. No matter how practiced his reasons, how rehearsed his explanations, it all slipped away with the way she said his name, and how she curled around the mark he’d left upon her. How it ravaged through her, uncontained and seeking freedom.

So many unanswered questions, so many withheld truths. He had to imagine her journey up until that point had felt much like this.

With hand resting against the subtle resistance of its border, Solas lingered outside of Viera’vun’s dream, hesitant though he’d searched for her every night that week since. No matter how he reached she was always just out of grasp, the path to her subconscious ably obscured as it had been since the Exalted Council, no doubt cloaked by the same charm worn by Nir beforei. In all honesty and despite his seeking, he’d assumed another week necessary for the hunter to find the daring she needed to take the amulet off and face him, waiting as she so often did for the perfect moment to strike, once she was fully composed.

Clearly, he’d underestimated her resolve…and, evidently, overestimated his own.

Despite knowing how easily the barrier before him would yield at his touch, the one that enveloped his psyche made it impossible to advance. There seemed endless possibilities, here within inaction. So long as he never moved forward they remained, the many roads of fate never converging into that single and lonely line he knew to be waiting for him, beyond the confrontation.

It did not matter regardless, of course it did not matter. The outcome would always be the same, and those possibilities were mere fantasies he was prone to be lost to. But they were fantasies that would vanish the moment he pushed through, foolish and dear ones that disappeared with the truth.

Time and melancholy would make this no easier. Solas braced himself, and pushed forward.

The fabric of her dream broke across his face like a fine gossamer as he slipped through and blinked away the sensation, the tear he’d worked open fluttering behind him. Its shape shifted into something new, taking now the form of an eluvian with surface reflecting a troubled red, like blood within a basin. Though its image brought to mind a nagging recognition he discredited it, turning away from the exit in favor of venturing further within.

He was met with an equally familiar sight. Eerily, and undeniably, so.

Before him, he found stairs. Stone stairs, climbed by ivy that broke through the patterns set into every step, and framed by the golds, the greens, the reds of the saplings standing at their side. Between their rustling he could hear water’s song, his feet cutting a track through the grasses that burst through the brick below to climb the memory—a memory that ached with both the pain that was old and dull, alongside that which was sharp, and new. As if filled to the brim, snaking streams spilled over its lip to tumble from its crown, where two impossibly large marble statues of regal harts shadowed him, standing guard.

They were stairs he’d climbed often, to a place where once he’d overlooked that which he himself guarded, his mountain sanctuary. Steps she had climbed in turn, so he could curse them both with his confession.

Here within her subconscious, however, he did not find that place he remembered at its summit. Cresting the steps, Solas found Viera’vun fenced in by the rock walls of the alcove in Crestwood instead, not amidst the open air where he’d survey the spires of his once home. Memories had woven together to create something entirely new, the fog from their last tryst as lovers pooling at her ankles to mingle with the crumbling and moss-covered brick of their final goodbye.

Not only bricks, he realized with a cold dread crawling down the back of his neck, spotting amongst the rubble the disembodied hands of unseen statues, run through by daggers piercing their palms. They were hands he knew well, each an exact replica of the one whose light he’d pacified; the one he’d held tight before releasing, and then stealing again. Even now he could feel the catch of its calluses across his fingertips, so strong a sensory memory as to be tangible as it curled them. One of the many prices she had paid, for his own hand in her life.

His eyes trailed up then to where she was, encircled by mirrors in varying states of disrepair, strange as they stuck up through the ground like sprouting plants or floated in midair, each one tilting towards her. Their shattered surfaces bore not her own reflection, but that of distant places, stunning and expansive glimpses into vistas forever out of her reach. As if in rejection of that which she could not touch Viera’vun had tilted her head back and to the sky, her figure outlined at the edge of a deep pool by the waterfall that agitated its waters. It split over the towering eluvian at its back, blurring with the glimmer of its fine mist the image he’d thought to see here, the highland ruins where they’d met near five years prior, trapped behind the glass.

As if sensing his gaze she slanted towards him, aimed by instinct despite the haziness of her dreaming form. Bare toes sinking into fine silt he closed the distance between them, skimming the shallow water to come quick to her side. Twice already he’d stolen answers from her as well as the child, wresting it out of hands made temporarily powerless against him before even voicing such questions. He had been impatient, and disrespectful.

It was not something he was willing to do again. Solas reached forward first this time, followed by blurry and indifferent eyes, and his grasp at her shoulder alone was enough to harden her bleary edges…as well as her expression.

Though for a moment only confusion cast across her face, it was promptly chased away by a biting and bitter resolve. At once she was herself again; or rather, what she had become. He let her go without advance this time as she took a pointed step away, his hand falling back to his side after a heartbeat left outstretched.

“I imagine you know why I’m here.”

The harsh line of her brow sunk across a thinning glare. “Of course I do.”

Despite the acknowledgment she granted nothing more, her only response a sharp breath and her eyes trailing him, unblinking. Though they blazed near hot enough to burn, however, they were not so full of hatred as to overflow, as he feared they might. Behind that adamant mask he recognized exhaustion and apprehension before distrust, alongside a sorrow he knew all too well. One he’d felt keenly, when their roles had been reversed.

He did not miss the place where she now stood, nor did he relish the position he’d forced her into all those years ago, now that it was his. Still, for her to conjure such an image to her mind in anticipation of their meeting instilled within him some hope. Though altered and merged, both had been locations where he’d offered the truth to her; or, at least, where he’d intended to. Truths that had hurt, as this one no doubt would; but even if he left heavy-hearted, he would not go empty-handed.

Despite having been plagued by unrelenting queries in the days preceding, however, Solas found himself blank and barren now that the means stared him down. Only one question remained, one that had prickled in the back of his mind since first he’d seen her scoop their daughter into her embrace, only growing with every report he’d read since. A decision, made before his revelation, that he could not understand the purpose of.

“Why did you hide her existence from me?”

Her gaze held steady a second longer before she blinked, and let it flick down. There was a drag to the words, as if still uncertain in what she was willing to share. “I didn’t. Not from you, at least. From the world.” She studied the water at his feet, and the fish darting between the grasses there. “I wasn’t about to let my title put her life at risk as well. She didn’t need my legacy. It was only chance that protected her from yours as well.”

“No easy task, I imagine, with so many eyes upon you.”

“No, it wasn’t. Only by Tevinter’s magical competence and the South’s lack thereof did I succeed. Such a gambit would never have worked, otherwise.”

He pulled a breath to center himself, the image clearing as all its pieces came into play. Such a simple answer, and yet still he struggled to believe it. Of course a country so deeply preoccupied with social standing and pedigree would have the means; likely, the nobility there had perfected the art of concealing illegitimate children ages ago. With Dorian already a trusted friend and close aide, any time spent casting illusory magic would have been easily overlooked by those not privy to it, including his agents.

“...Viera, if I had known, I would have—”

“You would have what, Solas?” she pressed, cutting him off as her glare bored into him yet again, “Given up on your people to lay down your self-imposed burden? Would you have left the dinan’shiral to instead walk at our side?” Though she let the question hang between them, they both knew its answer. “And what was I to do? By the time I knew of your final gift to me, you were…you were gone. And there was no finding you, no matter how I tried.”

His eyes averted, then closed so that he didn’t have to bear the memory of anguish written across her face. “Viera…” he pleaded, the only word he could manage of the question that hounded him.

How much more did you suffer by my actions, that I do not know about?

When finally he found resolve enough to open his eyes again, to take her misery unto himself as punishment, she had turned from him with arm crossed and cradling her residual limb, speaking her woes instead to the cascade beyond.

“I wanted you to know,” she told it, hesitant. “At Halamshiral during the Exalted Council, when I realized who it was the Viddasala chased? It was my chance, I thought. Our chance. I ignored evidence of your duplicity, I trusted you had a reason—you always had a reason—and I let myself have hope. Hope that, even if the Anchor took me, you’d know of her. That, in some way, you might have each other.” Her head angled in his direction as she cast her glance over her shoulder, still not looking at him as the pain pinched her brow. “But when…when the truth became clear, when I found that-that damned fresco…what was I supposed to do, Solas? What could I have possibly done?”

He had no dispute worthy of entertaining, and so he held his silence. Straining against the weight that would bend her, Viera’vun tilted her head again to the sky, and she did not bow.

“I held onto that hope, long after I should have let it flicker out, and thought to find you. So often you’d yielded to me, if I was only thoughtful. I was so certain that you could be convinced, that if you only knew about Niri—” she pulled in a sharp breath, as if breaching the surface after diving too long, too deep, “...but then, how much had I really seen behind that mask? More than most, maybe, but enough to risk her safety? To trust you wouldn’t take this from me, too?”

Her accusations were sharply honed, plunging to their hilt as they struck, but it was the truth behind them that twisted the blade. Her hand, her heart, her life; all of it he had stolen, be it by consequence of his miscalculations, or the impulse he struggled to keep at bay.

“You never need fear that from me,” he uttered. “After everything, I would not take that.” It was his doing that she would never know rest, for however many days remained. Though her worries were not unfounded, it was the least he could do to try and assuage them, for whatever his reassurances were worth. “I cannot raise a child, nor would I trust any better than you to care for her…but, I would know of her still, despite this.”

“And what would knowing accomplish, if you’ve no intention to change? Is the pain, the longing you already feel for those you’ve relinquished not enough? Your sorrow is not ours to bear. You’ve no need to know more about her than you already do.”

“Is it any surprise I should wonder about my daughter?”

“No, Solas, she is my daughter.” Any frustration he’d felt rising towards her restraint was quickly dwarfed then by the flashing of her eyes, whirling around to pin him where he stood. Like blade to whetstone, whatever had grown soft within Viera’vun quickly sharpened to a cutting edge. “You’ve played no part in her life, and there’s no place for you within it now. Not as you are.”

“And I will never dispute that. She can never walk at my side, nor I at hers,” he lamented, voicing what he’d so foolishly refused to acknowledge before, when she’d been close enough that he couldn’t deny that desire to be near her, “...however, the sun’s descent is well underway, and just as you said, her spark will be lost in the night that follows, with no one to guide her. I can preserve that light, Viera’vun. Let me protect her.”

“Protect her?” she scoffed, tone heavy with the mimicry of humor before growing cold, and bitter. “You are fooling yourself if you truly believe it possible to take her with you. There will be no Niri in the world you bring about.”

“You would wager her life again, simply to keep her away from me?”

“There is nothing simple about this, and you know it. I will not have you do to her what you did to me, I will not have her love you only to discover the truth and be torn.”

“As long as it is my choice, she will never know of the blood we share. Can it not be enough, then, that she endures?”

“You don’t get to pick or choose who lives and who dies!”

“So she is ransom for my change of mind, is that it? All live, or she shall die with them?”

“You’re so certain it was I who made that decision? You’ve no right to judge me.” Briskly, she shook her head, her teeth grit behind her lips so that every word came out a hiss. “And, honestly, what do you think would become of her, when the world that she loves and all who have cherished her are gone? It would not be her, not any longer. Maybe in body, but not in spirit. She will die alongside us; that is the fate that you would condemn her to, not I.”

She was facing him fully now, fervid as she fought, and the light he’d so often found radiant became scorching as all its fury beamed down upon him. Her chest heaved with the effort her anger had seized, the seething of her breaths somehow reaching him across the wind, the leaves, the roaring of the torrent. Only after several heartbeats did it begin to dim, and Viera’vun looked away from Solas, as if the mere sight of him might raise her ire again.

“I came here for two reasons, and two reasons alone, Solas,” she said, “to give you what truth I believed was deserved—as you did for me—and to ask for a truth in turn. Beyond that, I owe you nothing.”

Less than nothing, if it is from you. “What would you ask of me?”

“The brooch that you pinned to her tunic, before you left. We chased it on rumors alone, rumors that are…scattered, and unclear. You seem to have a better grasp of it,” she granted, words growing wary as she pressed onwards, “...what does it do, truly? And what was it to you?”

He curbed his tongue as it made to answer, dragging air through his nose to compose his thoughts. Though the idea left him feeling a lesser man, he knew it to be his only chance to take something with him in turn. “Both answers, I am willing to give…if you will grant me two of your own.”

“Have I not already paid in honesty given thus far?”

“It is all I will ask for, Viera, please,” he implored her, “allow me this much.”

The heat that had flared within her had begun to wane, giving way as she scrutinized him to something akin to fatigue. Whatever it was that she sought within his expression—or, perhaps, within herself—to convince her otherwise remained buried, and at last she conceded.

“Fine. But I’ve the right to refuse to answer, should I so choose.”

“So be it.” His feet found motion from where they were rooted in silt, wading through the overflow to stand at her side, and look out across the rippling basin. “They were once known as Fen’enaste— symbols, supposedly, of my favor. Back when the Fade was simply our Sky, they protected my agents from those who would target them, both spirit and Dreamer, when they’d venture deep into the ether.” From the edge of his vision she followed his motion, and for a moment they stood facing the same direction, not opposed.

“And what were they to you?”

A personal question; one he could easily turn away, should he so desire. Yet there was no desire, only weakness for the woman who somehow, time and again, seemed to wear him down with such ease. Though often it pained him, he’d yet to regret a truth given to her—only in the truth withheld did he hold remorse.

“...They were gifts, once, imbued by my own hand and given to my most trusted knights, my Vas’thanelaan. My friends,” he whispered. She shifted to look up at him, but he would not meet her gaze, could not. “Each was created with the bearer in mind, personalized to aid them best. That one in particular acts as a defense while waking as well. Should the one wearing it be struck while the brooch holds charge, it will protect them from a fatal blow.”

A breeze blew across the waters, lifting his chin to lean into its caress. It felt familiar, pulling to mind the nights they’d spent talking beside the lake at Haven, when everything had seemed simpler, and less entangled. He wondered if she felt it, too, as his eyes wandered down to finally meet hers, and she did not pull away or harden, holding firm…but still, holding.

“It is hers now,” he bid. “That is my only desire.”

That breeze embraced her in turn, pushing the light hair that framed her face into motion across her cheeks. How easily he’d once reached for them whenever the desire struck him, with no more thought to the gesture than the want within his chest. She’d feel different now in ways he could not possibly fathom, and he yearned to discover her anew, to brush the tips of his fingers along every crease in her skin, every new scar.

Her head tilted at his silent searching, pulling his presence from the past, and breaking his aching reverie. “You’ve questions of your own still, do you not?”

For only a moment longer, I might forsake them entirely.

He could not be so wasteful as to entertain such a thought, not after pressing so hard for them as he had. What he failed in asking of her here would undoubtedly haunt him come waking, should he falter now. Though the question brought to mind was simple and likely a given to many who knew her, there was one defining aspect of their daughter that eluded him still. It was longed for above else; strongly enough to break the trance he was under, if only to hear its answer.

“...What is her name?”

Names had meaning, purpose, a drive of their own, and to know her by only a fraction felt like hearing only part of a story, finding the pages that remained blank after just reaching the climax. She studied him carefully, and in her prolonged pause he feared she’d found reason to deny him, as was her right. Then, however, the golden suns within her eyes set, disappearing behind her eyelids as they dropped thoughtfully away.

“It is Talasyl’nir.”

“Talasyl’nir,” he tested on his tongue, savoring its shape, and the way it whistled through his teeth. Storm dancer. “A name that fits her all too well.”

“That it does,” she acceded, a hint of the barest smile tinging her cheeks. “It had been my wish that she might greet the gales of fate with arms wide open. How literal, fate seems to be.”

“As it so often is.” A muted chuckle rose to his throat with the response, but even such subtle joy in her company was quickly snatched away by the knowledge that it was all to be lost; there was no future circ*mstance where she’d smile so in his presence. Clasping his hands behind him, Solas drifted from the pool’s edge, beginning his slow return to the eluvian that would lead him from her. To linger any longer would be dangerous.

“And what of your second question? You’ve still one more, if I’m not mistaken.”

“It is more a request than a question,” he admitted, pausing amidst the rushes that reached to the back of his knees. She raised no objection, and so he continued. “Will you promise me, that you will let her keep it?”

Again she did not answer immediately, and again it set his pulse to race. He could not blame her for doubting him with what was at stake—he’d no doubt that she was considering the risk of it all being a trap, that somehow he was using her sentiments as a weapon to gain the upperhand. There was nothing he could do to combat such misgivings, save come to her with sincerity as he had.

“...So long as it is as you say,” she finally granted, “then yes. It will be hers.”

It seemed his heart had reached her, this final and most important time. “Ma melava halani. Though I may not deserve it, I am grateful nonetheless.” By her grace, something of his would remain within Talasyl’nir’s hands, even as he disappeared from her life. In this way alone, he could shield her. “Take care of her, and of yourself, vhenan. Dar’eth shiral,” he uttered under his breath, and slipped away down the steps, leaving her standing in his wake yet again.

The crisp air of a cool spring evening was a welcome gift, once Viera’s panting slowed enough to savor it.

While her heart would forever belong to the boughs and her limbs that remained were made for besting bark and branch, there was a numbness to running that the quiet contemplation of a perch above the world never quite matched. Dizzying, engrossing, the headrush taking all of one’s attention to push away every thought, save the one that drove her feet into the dirt. It wiped her clean and reminded her how, despite everything, she was still alive.

Her waterskin found her lips, so water made sweet by fatigue could soothe her raw throat, dribbling down her chin. She’d needed the distraction, and the blank slate, too. Unsettled by her dream the night before, she’d wasted much of the day away trying to untangle the knot within her head, as well as within her chest. Even now, with the sun no more than a dull glow on the horizon, she still felt his token burning a hole from within her pouch, as if it were white-hot.

Why would I ever agree to such a thing?

Pressed for an answer by the remorse, the pleading of his eyes, she’d given Solas a name, and a promise. Now, she questioned such honesty. The uncertainty compelled her to hesitate and, despite her word, she had. As it was, Athimien already prepared the ritual that would keep her daughter from dreams another night; to buy her time, if little else.

But the respite of the forest path was a temporary one, and the roaring of blood in her ears fading fast. No matter how hard she ran, she could never outpace her own mind. Setting her sights on her tent in the distance, Viera’vun started through camp, and began again to unravel the knot.

How much faith can I truly have, in his fondness for her?

For all of their searching in the months before, her team had found little on the relic he would give to their daughter; not even Dorian’s connections had amounted to much beyond myth and legend. Solas’ claims were the only explanation they had, and with no more than rumors to compare it to its credibility was difficult to test.

To slip in a lie, omit a truth, it would be too easy. His gift could be a trap, placed directly into our daughter's hands.

She’d been wary of his request, even in the dream…but then, by his side at the pool’s edge, she had felt the breeze roll off the water, blowing across her as it had all those nights on the shore outside of Haven. In that moment he had changed—or, possibly, she had. As if adjusting to a dim light her eyes seemed to focus, finding him again as he spoke of the Fen’enaste, exactly as he’d been those nights spent conversing by the lake’s edge, speaking of their travels. In the soft cadence of his answers, the sincere tinge to his tone, the ghost of a smile upon his lips, she found proof that the year she had cherished, as well as the love born and carried from it, was not entirely a lie or illusion.

The man who had been, in his own way, a haven to her. Her refuge, her secret…her vhenan. Somewhere, however deep he was buried beneath, Solas still lived.

It was a dangerous thought, one that wagered the world. No matter her bleeding heart, she’d given her adversary countless opportunities to turn from the shadows, to join her in the light, and he had never strayed from the path of death he’d chosen to walk. She couldn’t continue reaching, not when so much was risked in outstretching her hand. For her own sake, and that of those relying upon her, she had to let go.

But this wasn’t about their conflict, or about the world; it was about their daughter, and what means he was willing to risk to meet his ends. Her affliction had been an opportunity, Niri’s trust easily exploited…and yet, neither boons had he seized. He’d shielded them from the storm, guided them to each other’s side, and faded away once they were in safer hands, and he was no longer needed. Despite his desires, despite how he ached, he had chosen what was best for Niri, in the end.

In this alone, she finally, hesitantly, allowed him, and allowed herself, to do what is right for her. If in nothing else, I can trust the him buried deep in this alone.

“—doesn’t even make any sense. You’re telling me three people, including a mentally defenseless mage, took on so many shades on their own?”

“I was telling her, not you. But yes, that is what I said.”

Viera’s ears twitched, her musing interrupted by the rhythm of two familiar voices at odds, kept quiet as they bickered. She’d barely noticed the distance she’d traveled, slowing now to a stop outside her tent.

“Unbelievable,” Athimien scoffed at his bondmate’s supposed claims, “entirely unrealistic. The fight would’ve been finished in seconds, and not in your favor. And the excessive embellishments! You honestly expect Niri and I to believe anybody could shoot through three demons with one shot?”

She could almost hear Iloniyn’s shrug through the canvas that separated them, and saw clearly in her mind that smug grin he’d be wearing on his face. “Stories are supposed to be fun, not realistic. She seemed to believe it, anyhow.”

“Ah! My bad, I must have forgotten that filling a child’s head with dangerous fabrications concerning demons was totally fine, so long as there’s fun to be had!” As if in punctuation to his gripe she heard the clattering of glass, and the furious rustling of pages. “Ridiculous. It didn’t happen like that. There weren’t any demons in that ruin.”

“As if you were there! I was!”

“Yes, well, you must have misremembered. Lack of sleep will do that, though I think such delusions of grandeur are purely yours, darling.” The rumble of a soft chuckle emanated from within, her twin soul keeping muted his amusem*nt towards Athimien’s jab at his expense. “I keep telling you not to stay up with me. I’m fine doing the ritual on my own and, clearly, you need the rest.”

“What, and leave you to a quiet and peaceful night all by yourself, without the constant joy of my company?” Iloniyn gasped. “Perish the thought!”

“Of course, I should be so lucky,” he grumbled before the sounds of his preparations slowed, and then stopped. The pause that followed overstayed, and with the words that came after Viera heard genuine worry behind his characteristic crabbiness. “Truly, dear, I mean it. It’s not like I regularly get much sleep. You, on the other hand, will be quite the sorry sight without it, come morning.”

“You assume I can fall asleep without you in my arms,” Iloniyn teased, voice dropping lower as he added with a purr, “...vhenan.”

“That’s—! Well, I…you!”

The poor man had had enough. Taking pity on her dear friend, Viera abandoned the twilight to push aside the flap to her tent and duck inside, finding them both easily in the candlelight. With Niri tucked tight against his chest and sound asleep, Iloniyn propped his head up on one hand as he smirked at Viera, the other running fingers through the child’s hair absently, tenderly. Opposite him, Athimien sat cross-legged with a short table spread across his lap, head twisting around quickly enough for the locks that followed to whip his face.

“Wh-what are you doing here?” he blurted out, the jerking of his hands jostling a bottle of liquid lyrium on his table’s surface, enough for it to teeter around its bottom rim. “Bleeding—bloody—!”

His hands clamped down around it, keeping the damage dealt to only a thin spatter of glowing blue across the pages he’d been scratching upon. In the heartbeats that followed Athimien seemed frozen still, save the slow rise of his shoulders like hackles raising. When finally his eyes flicked up, the tense smile underneath did not reach them.

“My heart swells at the faith you’ve both placed in me, to believe I could prepare such an intimate ritual with so many—” The words caught in his throat and he blinked hard, eyes widening. “Intricate! Intricate ritual! And all the distractions!” He turned back to the tabletop as Iloniyn freed a hand to hide a snicker, distracting himself from the slip-up by tidying the mess he’d made of his workspace and grumbling. “Touched, honored, what have you. Truly, a knock would have sufficed, ‘O Esteemed Leader’.”

“You want me to knock on a canvas tent?” she asked, incredulous, “On my canvas tent?”

“Or something of the like!” He emphasized the idea with a shaking head and bouncing gestures. “As if keeping awake an entire night to suppress a Dreamer’s connection to the Fade were some walk through the woods instead of the complex process that it is. ‘Thank you, Athimien! We appreciate your tireless efforts, Athimien! We are forever indebted to you—”

“Athimien,” she managed through the light grin his antics pulled from her, and though his nervous babble halted, still he glowered at her critically. “Thank you, I mean it. Without the time your efforts gave me, I don’t think…I don’t think I could have faced him last night. Not as I needed to,” she admitted, and something within her companion seemed to soften, slightly. “You’ve more than earned my thanks, as well as your rest. We won’t be needing that spell tonight.”

“See? It is not so difficult to—” he began to chide before the rest of her words caught up with him, and he squinted. As if sensing trouble, Iloniyn extricated himself from Niri’s grasp, rising to his feet. “...No, don’t tell me you…you aren’t about to—” Under his scrutiny she averted her eyes, busying her hand and head with shedding the day and unwinding her footwraps. “You must have taken a tumble out on the trail, maybe hit your head, to have forgotten the situation, so allow me to remind you. Without this—” his fingers splayed across the supplies on his lap, lip curling as he seemed to spit the words “—all of this, she is his. Make no mistake.”

“If he had the intention of taking her from me,” she countered to the fabric in her hand, before casting it aside, “he would have done so when I was indisposed, and she’d taken him willingly by hand. If nothing else, he is good for his word in this.”

“Am I hearing you correctly? Fen’harel, Lord of Tricksters, the bloody Dread Wolf, is good for his word? Oh, joy…”

From the edge of her vision Iloniyn approached, lifting his fingers to brush lightly against his lover’s elbow. “Fenor—”

“Already we risked enough the night she slipped through and saw him,” he hissed, jerking away, “and it was a damn near miracle she made it out intact. Now that he knows, what’s to stop him from influencing her beyond what he’s already managed? Past her delusions of befriending spirits, and exploring the Beyond? From using her against us?”

“Athimien,” Iloniyn said, firmer this time. When his bondmate snapped back around, however, he eased again, reaching forward as if in invitation this time, without touching him. “Fenor, she will wake if we continue on like this.”

Athimien eyed the hand not quite bridging them, trailing it up to study hard Iloniyn’s expression—tense with worry, just as his own was. Reluctantly, he leaned into the touch extended, letting Ilo’s hand wander lightly up his arm to hover at his back. “You can’t possibly agree with this. Please, tell me you’ve maintained some semblance of sanity, at least.”

“I don’t know if I’d say that,” he scoffed, earning the roll of dark gray eyes in response to his lightness. “Just let me talk to her. I’ll meet you in our tent soon.”

His glance jumped from Iloniyn to Viera, still seemingly unconvinced as he considered them, before it flashed down to Niri. Lips pinched into an unamused line, he squinted at Iloniyn one final time before fanning his hands, and heading for the tent’s flap.

“Fine. If anybody can talk some sense into her, it’s you, I suppose,” he muttered under his breath, voice quickly fading away though he continued his tirade. “Not that sense should have to be talked into her, considering. You’d think after so many years of…”

He parted the canvas and was gone, carrying with him his complaints. In his absence they let the quiet grow, savoring for a moment the pulse of their breaths in tandem, and the sleeping sounds of the child mere feet away. Finally, Iloniyn turned toward his tael’inan, combing a hand through the loose strands of his thick brown hair to rest at his neck, and pushing a sigh through his nose.

“He’s not wrong, Vie. This is dangerous. He’s dangerous.”

“You don’t think I know that better than anyone?” she muttered, before crossing her arm with a sigh of her own. “But it’s not like we’ve many other options. She’s susceptible when she dreams, be it to him or demons; at least in this, we might protect her from one.” Her eyes strayed back to the tent’s flap, still swinging with the motion of their lethallin’s departure. “....And no matter what you and Athi say, I know it takes a toll on you both. I don’t like how much lyrium he has to take to sustain his mana through the night. I’ve seen what it does to people, it’s…I don’t want that to happen to him. We don’t know when we’ll find an alternative, and by then…”

“But what if it’s all for nothing? Solas was never upfront about anything; our people paint him the way we do for a reason. How can you be so sure it’ll do what he says?”

“I’m not,” she admitted, “but I have to trust that something remains of the man I loved, enough that he wouldn’t put her life at risk.” Once given voice, the weight behind her words finally bowed her head, rocking in a slow arc where it hung. “There has to be a reason why he left her with me and led you to us, when he could’ve easily stolen her away. A part of him has to still be in there somewhere, Ilo.”

His hand at her shoulder broke through the gloom overcoming her, grounding thoughts that were inclined to float away. Eyes overfull trailed back up to find his own, hazel and familiar enough to be her own. She sank into that touch, whole again as her other half found her despite the fog.

“You know I’ve no fondness for him, and that I love Niri as if she were my own. Every bone in my body says we shouldn’t, Vie, that nothing could be worth risking her, let alone his word,” he mumbled before squeezing tight and pulling a long breath in, his face twisting just as it had when they were young, and the hahren fed them bitter herbs for travel, “...but you’re a part of me, and I trust you. Tell me you’re certain, that you really believe what he told you, and I’ll let it be.”

Her fingers found their way to his, snaking in where he gripped to wrap them tightly in turn, and they became like vines intertwining. “In this,” she uttered, lids drooping low to shut out the world save his warmth, “and in this alone, I can. I trust him to protect her.”

They swayed as that warmth traveled to envelop her entirely, pressing soft lips to her temple, and by Iloniyn’s embrace Viera melted into her breath. If she let it all fall away, she was not so near to heartache, and much closer to home in his arms. Calm, if for only a moment, before the inevitable storm began again and she was swept away.

“We’re only the tent over,” he murmured against her ear, “and if you change your mind…”

“I know,” she said with a soft grin, and meant them both. “Though I’m not certain I’d survive his wrath, if I were to bother Athimien for his help after all this.”

“Are you kidding me?” he snorted as he pulled away, dipping down to gather what remained of their belongings. “No matter the hour, he’d be absolutely tickled if you admitted he was right, and you were wrong. I mean it, utterly giddy with glee.”

“The self-satisfaction, I imagine, would be equally as fatal.”

“That it would.” He lingered in the entryway a moment, looking back as if reluctant to leave, and seeking something else to say. “...On nydha, ma’nas. Find the time to rest tonight,” he finally settled upon, and drifted into the night.

The tent was silent once he left, inside and out, sweet as it was lonely. Her body found its motion by muscle memory alone, guiding her hand to unbuckle and unbutton until she was down to nothing more than her smallclothes, with everything else heaped at her feet save her belt pouch. Holding it in her hand she paused a moment, considering its weight before, gingerly, thumbing open the cinch and pulling out what they’d found pinned to Niri the week before.

It was dim now, though Iloniyn said it had glowed when he’d found them. Unaware of what it was, he had been quick to cast it from the child’s clothing and extinguish its light, pulling her from her slumber and into his arms, safe and unharmed. She’d not so much as seen it since waking, though it had been left for her to bear.

Fen’enaste, The Wolf’s Blessing. Solas’ only gift to their daughter, and what she’d promised him she’d let her keep.

But how much do I tell her?

Her eyes flicked up, finding Niri sprawled haphazardly across the bedroll they shared. Though Viera’s heart skipped at her unfettered sleep, there was time still before her dreams would begin—time enough, she hoped, to work from her thoughts an explanation that she might understand.

Not that there was much that made it past her. Pride coaxed a wan smile to her cheeks, though she found the feeling double-edged. Their daughter was quick as she was curious, perceptive and bright, and while Viera was of a mind to feed her questions, Niri was still a child. Some truths could only cause harm, if placed into her hands so soon…or possibly at all, in cases such as these. If she let it be, the solution was so simple as to hand it to her without a word; she need not lie then, only omit. The brooch could be no more than an ancient and enchanted relic sought to shield her, bound to nobody with legends lost to dust, just as it’d been when first they’d caught its trail.

…Or it would be so simple, until a few years passed and she sought the answers withheld from her on her own. It was a fine line, between giving too much and not enough.

And while he’d acknowledged the span that had to be kept between them, she saw Solas’ gift for what it truly was: a connection to the daughter he could never know beyond what he’d stolen, and a tether to tie them together, even as he faded from her memory. The part of her that had grown bitter and cold, the place inside that wanted to hate him, sought to keep that from his grasp…but just as he retained some ghost of who he’d once been when they were at each other's side, so did she. There was a part of her still that wished to grant reprieve to him, the man whose grave read ‘loneliness’.

“...Mae?”

The sweet pitch of Niri’s little voice came with an accompaniment of shifting bedding, and the shuffle of limbs lifting to rub sluggishly across her face. Palming the brooch, Viera smiled down at the waking child, her grasping hands reaching towards her as she yawned with the effort of tempting her mother to bed. It was all too easy to oblige, what with the way her downy eyes pleaded up at her, no more than slivers of sleepy moons as she punctuated each squeeze of her fists with a pitiful blink.

“Yes, arasha,” she whispered as she kneeled down beside her, wrapping the child tightly and burying her words into the disheveled mess of hair at her crown. “I am here.”

“Bae was telling a funny story,about how you and him and your old friend Rehn went to an old ruin, and fought a bunch of demons,” Niri recalled, another yawn breaking her words, “I fell asleep, though.” She slipped from her mother’s grasp, seeking again the comfort of the cocoon she’d carved from their blankets and furs. “He was telling me all about how Rehn was screaming, and how you got a big scratch on your shoulder, and that he had to shoot all of the demons with his bow and carry you all out by himself.”

Viera hummed at the retelling, calling to mind the memory herself…though her own recollection wasn’t so dramatic. “And did you believe him?”

“Of course not!” she giggled, as if the thought alone were preposterous. Athi was right about that, at the very least. “Mamae is too tough for that, and that’s what I told him! Then, he and Mimi started bickering again, and—” Halting, her eyes glanced behind Viera, flicking from wall to wall. “Wait, where did they go?”

“It’s only us now. They went off to sleep as well.”

“But doesn’t Mimi have to be here to cast the spell?”

“He won’t be doing it tonight,” she said as Niri tilted up at her, “In fact, if all goes well…we may not need such spells any longer.”

“You don’t mean…” Niri was enveloped by her thoughts, the child’s eyelids fluttering before, with a little gasp, she searched her mother’s face for confirmation. “I get to dream again?” As Viera nodded she saw a momentary eagerness light behind her eyes, the excitement she’d been expecting flashing before, to her surprise, it was replaced by something so unlike her dauntless daughter. “But…isn’t it dangerous? What if a demon gets me, before I find you?”

“They won’t be able to,” she promised, “because I have a gift for you.”

Eyes widened with a sparkle, and Viera shifted aside to pat the ground beside her, crossing her legs. “What did you get for me?” Niri asked, eager as she scooted over.

“Not from me,” she corrected, “but from somebody who wants to protect you all the same.”

Leaning forward close enough to rest her elbows on her mother’s thigh, Niri peered into her palm as her fingers unfurled, revealing the pin lying beneath. “What is it—” she began, angling her head before, much to Viera’s surprise, she gasped. “Wait, I remember! The man from before, Solas, it was his!” Her satisfaction began to fade away, however, replaced by worry written across her knitted brow. “But Mae, he said this was from his friend. He's going to forget they love him if he doesn’t have it. I told him to take good care of it.”

Viera recognized the words as her own with a tinge of pain, ones she’d often repeated when the longing for those past had twisted her as well. “Maybe he knows he will not forget,” she offered, “or, maybe, he’s decided he’d much rather you have it.”

Shyly she reached for it, though the way she took it into her hand was much more familiar than her hesitance implied. Immediately its light returned, dim at first but growing brighter with every heartbeat, as almost reverently Niri twisted it this way and that. She studied the pin closely until, eventually, it found its way to her lap, as did her eyes.

“...Mamae? Is Solas good, or is he bad?”

The question caught her off guard, earnest and direct as it was. Despite having asked herself much the same all these years since she’d not found a satisfying answer, least of all one that was well-suited for a child. No matter how they wished it was so, reality did not often conform to what they believed it should be.

It was in that concession that she found her answer. Catching Niri’s eye she patted her knee, and guided her daughter’s head into her lap.

“What do you remember, of the stories I’ve told of Fen’harel, the Dread Wolf of Dalish legend?”

“You never wanted to tell me stories about him, or any of the other Creators. All you ever say is that he’s a clever man who tricked the gods, and trapped them all away,” she answered, wiggling as her mother’s hand busied itself with undoing her tangles. “Bae and Mimi told me all kinds of stories, though. He’s a really bad man who hunts our people in our dreams, and Mimi says he hugs himself, like this, and giggles madly, and—”

“Yes, that is what our people believe,” Viera interrupted, ignoring for now her companions’ exaggerations, “and in an easy world, it might just be so. Good would be good, bad would be bad, and right and wrong would be clear to us without a doubt in our hearts.”

“...But it isn’t easy, is it?”

“No, I’m afraid it isn’t.” Her fingers unraveled their last knot, and she combed them now through Niri’s hair without resistance. “There are other stories to be told, ones long lost to time, of a man who freed those weighed down by their chains. Some saw the Great Wolf as not a symbol of dread, but one of hope. They followed him willingly, because he fought against those who would make them bow their heads.”

The rhythm of her strokes slowed, and Niri looked up from her scrutiny of the pin to study her mother’s face instead. Though given the room, she didn’t ask any questions; only listened intently.

“I’m telling you this because this brooch was made by him long ago, to be given to those who fought at his side. To protect them in turn, and to keep them safe. It will keep you safe, in the Fade.”

“But isn’t the Dread Wolf the one you’re hunting? Doesn’t he want to hurt the world?”

“Yes, he is the one I hunt. He made a mistake and he’s trying to fix it, but some mistakes can’t be fixed, no matter what we do. To undo what he did, to bring back his people—” She sought a way to voice the words she’d had to tell herself a million times over, a way to make palatable that which made her sick, but little could soften the reality of it. “It would hurt ours, and I cannot let that happen. Sometimes, Niri, bad people do good things…and good people do bad.”

“Just like how Solas lied to me about peeking, but helped us in the storm,” she pieced, face solemn as she found her way to the answer.

“Yes, exactly like that.” Viera drew the pin gently from Niri’s grasp, working the clasp open slowly with her one hand. “I told you before that he was dangerous, and that is still true…but he also cares for you a great deal. Enough to want to see you safe, and to give you this.”

With her chin she gestured for the child to sit up, and speared the fabric above her heart. After testing the strength of its bond with a firm but light tug, Viera found the pin to hold fast, and ghosted her hand across it.

“There,” she whispered under her breath, glimpsing up with a tender sweetness on her cheeks. “You’ll still have to come find me, but I’ll sleep better knowing you’ll be safe. For now, however…”

Viera’s arm traveled to wrap fully around her daughter then, pulling them both down into the bedroll as she struck. Sleepy giggles burst forth from blankets pulled around them, and noses nuzzled where they made a nest underneath.

“That’ll be enough for tonight. I know you’ve more questions, but the ones that matter most will remain come the morning. And if you wake early enough,” she dragged, letting the anticipation build with the breath it stole, “...then, maybe, you can join me on the trail at sunrise, and we can scout together. Just us two.”

“Do you mean it?”

“I do,” she assured. “We’ll have plenty of time to talk then, when we’re rested and the day is new.”

“I want that.” Niri smiled to herself before a yawn wrinkled her nose, and she shimmied down further into her mother’s embrace. So quickly within the quiet comfort of their little world did she grow tired, lashes already fluttering at an increasingly languid pace. Viera too felt a demand upon her eyelids, coaxed from its hiding by the warmth that lingered here, and urging her to rest.

The crease at the corner of Niri’s eyes fell away, however, giving in again to a thoughtful furrow as she worried a lock of her mother’s hair. “Can I have just one more question, before we go to sleep?” she asked, and Viera could find no reason to deny her.

“Alright,” she granted, “one more. Go ahead.”

“...Do you think that he knows?”

“Knows what, arasha?”

“That I love him, too.” Viera drew in breath, though it offered no relief, and lifted her head to rest her chin on Niri’s crown. “The pin will help me remember, but…what about him? I didn’t give him anything.”

“Don't worry,” she murmured, and squeezed her eyes shut. “He will know, da’lath’in, I promise. He will know.”

Niri nodded into her chest, her words slow to come. “Okay, as long as he knows,” she mumbled, “Then I can…and he won’t…”

Her breath had grown deep, slowing down as from her toes to her head she relaxed into Viera’s hold. Valiantly she fought to keep her eyes open, opposing the forces that bid her rest until her thoughts had been freed, but it was not a battle she could win. As at last her lids yielded to the night, Viera dipped her head down and pressed a cheek to her daughter’s, tucking a farewell into her ear.

“On nydha, arasha,” she whispered, and though her mind had already wandered well beyond her reach, Niri still rewarded her mother with a response, one that eased.

“On nydha…Mamae,” she managed before surrendering to sleep, and with the whistling of her nose, she slipped away.

Viera pulled back to look at her, studying her face as it softened before brushing gentle kisses across her freckles, her eyelids, her nose. When finally she settled into the bedding drawn around them she found the tiniest grin, frozen onto Niri’s face as she slept, and inside love welled near to bursting.

The question she’d asked about him still sat heavy in her chest, taking up space and difficult to breathe through, with the tether that had been tied between them frightening. The love Viera harbored for Solas no longer felt so light as this, weighted down by absence, betrayal, and conflict. Along his path of darkness, there was no light for the bud of such an innocent love to bloom, and she knew it to be fated to wither, and die.

But just as she couldn’t extricate her own heart from the gnarled roots that wrapped it, so too did she find it difficult to uproot what had begun to grow here. For all her fears of him uncovering the truth, all the terrible scenarios she’d agonized over, they remained intact when, by all means, they shouldn’t have. The storm had been weathered, the gales now past, and though the landscape of their lives had forever been changed by the path it cut, there was nothing so ravaged within that could not grow back just as green.

Only time would tell how far its gusts had traveled, and what the wind had changed. Viera’vun soothed her heart, closed her eyes, and fell asleep.

And at her side, Niri dreamed.