Had this idea stuck in my head from a while with Solas as Eddie Gluskin

ALT

Solas in that days when the grass was greener and the braid was longer

Oran arrives at the Lighthouse in the next chapter of Shadow and Light.

by bitterling

DADWC fill. Prompt: efflorescence - a blooming or flowering, often used to describe a period of creativity or prosperity.

There had been a time of wonder, of beauty, of potential. It hurt now to remember, but there were days that she welcomed that pain.

Words: 477, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 63 of DADWC Collection, Part 8 of Mythal: Veilguard Characterization

• Fandoms: Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Video Game)
• Rating: General Audiences
• Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
• Categories: F/M
• Characters: Mythal (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Mythal/Solas (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Dragon Age: The Veilguard Spoilers, Reflection, Memories, Nostalgia, Character Study, Relationship Study

You were never ready to make the sacrifices that leadership requires.

[part one]

Slowly editing and rewriting my Felassar origin fic because when I first wrote it I was lowkey manic and it was weird, lol.

Anyway I had been thinking about Tranquil Felassan before he had been discovered around the Frostbacks by the Inquisition’s agents (mostly Varric+Harding keeping the name alive). And I cannot really put into proper words how fucking heartwrenching Tranquilassan is to me. Like, in general.

He’s the weirdest Tranquil people have ever come across, because no Circle branding yet he seems to be Dalish. And he’s a fucking creepy lil guy grinning at people and saying shit to confuse them. Talking in riddles just because he can. Somehow he knows way too much for comfort.

But also it’s just… sad. He’s led by instinct so he wanders on foot, slowly, toward Skyhold because it feels like he should be there. He’s aware that Solas tried to kill him, but can’t even feel any way about it. He cannot begin to process it. He’s aimless yet continues to be led by Solas’s shadow because it feels like that’s what he has left to passively follow. He can’t use his magic or anything, and is no use to anyone anymore. He allows himself to grow clumsy and careless because logically he should be dead, and there’s nothing left for him to do, so why not let death claim him naturally?

Fic: Spilling Light Unearthly [4,700 words | Rated T | Lavellan/Solas, ensemble]

Thank you to @loquaciousquark for the beta and the encouragement to write something in a new fandom!

Title: Spilling Light Unearthly

Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition

Characters/Pairings: Lavellan/Solas, background Dorian/Iron Bull, Varric, Cullen, Cassandra, Sera, Leliana, Josephine, Blackwall, Cole, Vivienne

Rating: T

Summary:

“You have left that path. It is already gone.
Your feet can never again tread the dust of Vol Dorma.”
- Canticle of Shartan

The Inquisition has struck a major blow against Corypheus: Samson has been defeated and the Inquisitor has retrieved valuable knowledge from the Well of Sorrows. What should be an unequivocal victory, however, is soured by one small complication: nobody has seen Inquisitor Lavellan in almost two days.

Read on AO3

—

“We have a problem,” Leliana said, storming into the room, and Cullen preemptively braced himself against the rising tide he knew was about to capsize his carefully planned day. “It’s the Inquisitor.”

“Of course it is,” Cullen groaned, and waved a hand to acknowledge Josephine’s disapproving look over her stack of paperwork. “No, you’re right, she’s been doing well lately. Hasn’t made any deeply controversial decisions about demons and mages in, what, two or three days? That must be a record.”

“Four days,” Josephine said primly, but he caught the smile in her voice.

“It’s a rather serious problem,” Leliana said, crossing her arms and leaning in the doorway. “She’s gone.”

“Back to the Frostback Basin, you mean?” Josephine asked, and shifted papers around on her desk, the frown lines deepening between her eyes. “I thought she was going to consult with me first about gifts for Thane Sun-Hair. I suppose we can send them ahead with faster scouts.”

“We haven’t many to spare,” Cullen put in. “The operation in the Arbor Wilds was overwhelmingly successful, but the Empress’s presence meant having to double up on the Orlesian scouts’ efforts. It will be some time before the armies return.”

“You’re not hearing me,” Leliana said. “She’s not gone to the Basin. She’s just gone.”

Cullen met her eyes; he always fooled himself into thinking he could read her thoughts by her face and instead wound up caught in a labyrinth of unreadable expressions. Now, though, the barely suppressed panic was all too visible. “What do you mean, exactly?”

Leliana threw up her hands. “I mean she was seen leaving Skyhold a little over a day ago and nobody’s seen her since.”

They contemplated these words in silence for a moment. Finally, quill hovering over parchment, Josephine said, “Surely she just doubled back in and nobody saw her. She’s quite stealthy when she needs to be.”

“So are my spies,” Leliana said. “There’s no sign of her.”

“Well,” said Cullen, and rubbed his temples. He was becoming so well-acquainted with this particular kind of headache that he was seriously considering naming it after its root cause. “Well, did she take anything with her? Supplies, a bedroll?”

“Nothing of the sort. We assumed she was just going for a stroll, as she does sometimes. Her quarters seem untouched.”

The nib of Josephine’s quill was beginning to quaver over the page, just a little. “And none of her usual traveling companions are aware of where she went?”

“I have tried to be discreet in my inquiries,” Leliana said, wryly. “You can imagine how well that went. But everyone else is accounted for and seems thoroughly baffled.”

“So,” Josephine said. “We have lost the Inquisitor. If this gets out—”

“It will,” Leliana said. “It’s only a matter of time.”

Cullen exhaled, staring at the ceiling, and wondered whether Andraste could perhaps spare him just a bit more strength amid the fires of adversity. “I guess things were going a little too well around here.”

—

Sera liked Blackwall, sort of. He was just the right amount of pathetic to be a bit of a shit, you know? Easy pickings when it came to good stories, too. And a wicked sense of humor under all the guilt and rage and guilt and exhaustion and, oh yeah, mostly guilt. Some people, they got boring when all their secrets came out. Didn’t look like he was heading that way, like maybe he was deciding to live the lie instead. Good for him.

Anyway, sometimes she found herself wandering over to his barn when she was bored or curious or just didn’t want to think about all the Shitty Big Stuff like ancient magic and elfy things and gods with an ‘s’ on the end of the word, like that was ever gonna make sense, right? And he was always just kind of there, eating stew or carving something out of wood or practicing with his sword. Plus sometimes he was game for pranking anyone and everyone, and he had a great face for pranking because he looked serious and all, and the Inquisitor had done her politicking thing to make him mysterious and scary and so nobody quite knew what to make of him.

So, when Sera started to hear rumors that the Inquisitor was gone, like gone gone, she knew exactly where to go.

“They’re just rumors,” Blackwall said, like he was trying to convince himself more than her. He was carving into a block of wood with enough violence that Sera was pretty sure there wasn’t going to be anything left by the end of it. “She’s around somewhere. Leliana probably has her on some secret mission and this is just the cover story.”

Sera snorted, swinging her legs from her perch on the edge of a silly oversized anvil. “Yeah, sure. Great cover story. ‘She’s not on a secret spy mission, we’re just, uh, shit at our jobs and lost her!’ Anyway, I asked around and nobody’s had to clean anything from her room the last two days.”

Blackwall paused, staring down at the shredded little block of wood in his hand. “Maybe she’s started sleeping over with someone.”

“Isn’t,” Sera said. “Not all the time, anyway. She’d have said, last time we got pissed. And if she was, it’d be Solas, right?” Maker, there really was no accounting for taste, there. “No signs of her in his quarters, scullery said.”

Blackwall frowned, finally meeting her eyes. “You think something’s happened to her?”

“We know something’s happened to her,” Sera pointed out. “Whole elfy-elf civilization in her head now, yeah? Maybe their will, too. Not just voices.” She swung her legs, tried not to think about being worried. The Inquisitor was all right to prank people with, too. “I’m thinking some messed-up magic shit’s dragging her out to do some messed-up magic ritual in the middle of messed-up magic nowhere.”

Blackwall made a noncommittal sound in his throat, going back to his carving. “Maybe she just needed to get away. She looked… a little hunted, coming back from the Arbor Wilds. Like she hasn’t looked in a long time. Wouldn’t be surprised if it all gets to be too much, sometimes.”

Another voice, from the rafters of the barn, soft and thoughtful and way too creepy. “Tries his best to look through her, to see only the past. Touches her anyway. Shouldn’t have, so he tries to change it like it never happened. But she told me I shouldn’t do that anymore. Did she tell him?”

“Ugh,” Sera said. “Go away.”

Blackwall’s eyes darted up to the source of the voice, somewhere in the shadows, then back to Sera, his brow furrowed all judgey-like. When he spoke, his voice was quiet like he was trying not to spook a nervous horse. “Cole, do you know something about where the Inquisitor went?”

A sigh. “He tried to tell her the truth, but something bigger drowned out the words every time. He carries bones and bodies with him and doesn’t know they’re gone, but she knows, makes them real. So he chose the lie.”

Sera frowned, drawn in despite herself. “Wait, are you talking about Solas?”

A pause, as though considering. “Sort of.”

Blackwall raised his eyebrows. “He… called off their liaison?”

“Ew,” Sera said. “Why would you call it that?”

“She was hurt,” Cole said. “Embarrassed that it hurt. Too many voices, but his words are deafening. Why are they so loud?”

“So she went somewhere more quiet,” Blackwall said, like it all made perfect sense and wasn’t just a weird overreaction about a rude elf who spent all his time trying to make out with the Fade or whatever. “You think she’ll come back on her own?”

Cole was quiet for a bit, then added, “I hope so. I miss her.”

Sera scowled at Blackwall’s morose expression. He was incredibly boring when he got like this. “Fine. Let’s go talk to Varric. Solas listens to him, kind of.” Besides, if it turned out Solas had hurt the Inquisitor, bad taste or not, Sera would need to start planning revenge as soon as possible.

—

It wasn’t that Varric wanted to wring Solas’s neck for this. It was just that, as he shouldered open the door to Solas’s study, his hands were itchy for purely coincidental, entirely non-neck-wringing reasons.

“Hey, Chuckles.”

Solas didn’t look over from where he was frowning up at one of his murals, the scent of fresh plaster heavy in the air. “Varric.”

Varric sighed and planted his feet. “Chuckles.”

That got him a little sidelong glance, almost nervous. “Yes?”

“What exactly did you say to Lavellan yesterday?”

The corners of Solas’s mouth drew down, briefly, then leveled out, like a wobbly tray of drinks caught by a deft barmaid. “I don’t know what you are referring to, and even if I did, it would undoubtedly be private.”

Varric crossed his arms, leaning against Solas’s desk. “And here I thought we were bosom-pals, ready to share all our deepest secrets.”

Solas sighed, taking a step back to contemplate his mural again. “When have I ever given you that impression?”

“My mistake.” Varric watched Solas in the silence that followed, then added, would-be casually, “She’s gone, you know.”

No reaction, which was a reaction in and of itself. “What do you mean,” he said, carefully. Didn’t even bother making it a question.

“I mean,” Varric said, “she’s run off. I always thought she was a bit too sensible to indulge in that kind of theatrical angst about a shattered love affair, but I think it might also be a bit tied up in a couple of things.” He ticked them off on his fingers as he spoke. His hand, he noticed, was shaking, just a little. “You know, the voice and will of an entire civilization crowding into her head. The whole thing where she’s become an elven mage who’s the figurehead of a very human, very anti-mage organization. The pressure of leading armies into an imminent confrontation with a would-be god who wants her dead. I don’t know anything about your relationship, Chuckles, and I’m starting to get the sense she might be better off, but your timing stinks.”

Solas still wasn’t looking back, just staring at the damned mural like he could bore a hole through it. “You’re right. You know nothing about—”

Varric wasn’t entirely sure when he moved, but in an instant he was closing a hand around Solas’s wrist like a vise, shoving him back. Solas turned, eerily light on his feet, and there was a vibration like the skin under Varric’s palm was something angry and alert and growling, and Varric had the crawling sense that he’d just done one of the most dangerous things in his life. 

He jolted his hand away even as Solas stepped back, and the moment passed as Solas finally met his eyes. Just like that, Varric found himself looking into a face he’d seen many times before: someone who’d royally fucked it up, and knew he’d fucked it up, and was trying to pretend he hadn’t. He’d seen that face in his own mirror, once or twice.

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” Solas said, slowly, like every word of the confession surprised him as he spoke it. “I never meant to. I should have done it sooner, but I was—” He shook his head. “Is she—”

“We don’t know where she is right now,” Varric said. “Some of the others are out looking.” He added, hating himself a little for feeling the need to give reassurance, “I’m sure she’ll be fine. She can take care of herself.”

“She is more capable than she knows,” Solas said. He passed a hand over his face with a sigh, lingering to press at his temples. “I should not have let things progress as far as they did.”

“Not if you knew this was how you were going to end things, no.” But, tempting as it was to keep rubbing it in, there was something irritatingly universal about abject misery, wasn’t there? Varric sighed. “You want a drink, Chuckles?”

“Not especially, no.”

“Good. I’m buying.”

—

Cassandra exhaled into the chill air, watching her breath fog in front of her, then jumped at the sound of footsteps through the snow. She turned, but it was only Iron Bull, dusting off some of the snow that had drifted off a tree onto his horns. She scowled at him. “Any sign?”

“Yes,” he said, his tone annoyingly mild. “I secretly found her hours ago and I’m just playing it really, really cool for no reason at all.”

“There’s no need for sarcasm,” Cassandra grumbled, bending to unclasp and shake out her boot, where a damnable stone had been rattling around since they’d left Skyhold. She was startled when Bull offered her an arm for balance, but took it with an irritated sigh when the act of shaking out the boot threatened to overbalance her. She’d had to do more than her fair share of marching with wet woolen socks; Bull’s amused smile was a small price to pay to avoid that. “I have nothing, either. And yet Leliana’s spies are convinced she was spotted out here in the woods.”

“If she doesn’t want to be found, she doesn’t want to be found,” Bull said. “How’s the boot?”

“Fine,” Cassandra said quellingly, doing up the clasps once more. She glanced into the blessedly clear sky, gauging the position of the sun. “Vivienne should be rejoining us momentarily.”

“Sure,” Bull said. “Hey, quick question. What exactly is the plan if the Inquisitor doesn’t come back?”

Cassandra’s heart pounded with the echo of the words, because of course she’d considered the possibility, but the mere thought had felt like sacrilege, like even allowing the notion might just speak it into being. She’d spoken with Leliana about this, in the abstract, back in the days when Lavellan had been more liability than leader. But it was Varric’s words, of all things, that stuck in her mind now: An organization’s only as powerful as the story it tells about itself. And that story started and ended with the elven mage with the Fade in the palm of her hand. Without her—

“We have contingencies,” Cassandra said, far too late, and had to endure Bull’s skeptically raised eyebrows in response. “Perhaps we should—”

“We should return home,” Vivienne said, striding up behind them, and Cassandra actually staggered with relief at the sight. Leaning on her arm, tight-lipped and serious, was Inquisitor Lavellan. “Come now, why are we dawdling? She’s freezing, poor thing. Hardly dressed for the weather.”

Cassandra moved closer, and couldn’t resist touching the Inquisitor on the shoulder, solidifying her presence. To her surprise, Lavellan flinched at the touch, and what Cassandra had taken as the wetness of melting snow resolved itself into blood soaking through the woman’s robes.

“She is wounded,” Vivienne added witheringly, as though speaking to someone who had just made a rude noise in public. She looked exhausted, Cassandra noticed; she must have been carrying most of Lavellan’s weight for some time. “Which I believe is all the more reason to hurry home.”

Iron Bull, undeterred by both Vivienne’s glare and Lavellan’s odd silence, looped an arm around Lavellan, neatly taking her weight from Vivienne with no visible effort. “You good, boss?”

“Yes,” Lavellan said. Her voice was hoarse, Cassandra thought, and her gaze was a little abstracted, as though she were listening to something only she could hear, but she moved easily enough at the brisk pace Bull set, heading back toward Skyhold. “Ran into a pack of wolves out there. One of them got its claws into my shoulder. I was careless.”

“You were,” Cassandra said, and couldn’t resist adding, “Why would you wander off alone at such a critical time?”

Lavellan just shook her head. Vivienne sighed. “I asked the same question when I came upon her. I suspect it has to do with the Well of Sorrows. But whatever she has gained, she must master alone.”

Iron Bull snorted. “I don’t think so. Sorry, boss, but you don’t get to do much of anything alone anymore. You’re stuck with us.”

That got a weak chuckle. Cassandra frowned, falling into the familiar rhythm of following Bull’s footprints through the deeper snow drifts. “But are you all right, Inquisitor?” she called up.

“I’m fine,” Lavellan said, her voice a little stronger, as though she were remembering the sound of it. “Just needed to clear my head.”

“Some people enjoy a simple meditation in the safety of their own quarters,” Vivienne murmured.

“Our Inquisitor is hardly traditional,” Cassandra said, and was relieved when Lavellan only laughed again. But there was a strain to the laughter that spoke of pain beyond the wound in her shoulder, and Cassandra found her mind running along familiar verses as she walked, about the Lady taking Drakon’s hands from his eyes and saying, Remember the fire. You must pass through it alone to be forged anew.

—

Dorian hesitated at the door to the Inquisitor’s quarters.

It wasn’t that he was necessarily opposed to stoking rumors of mysterious affairs—in fact, for a brief time he’d actively encouraged tongue-wagging along precisely these lines in a valiant effort at distraction. But Lavellan was, well, Lavellan. It felt wrong even to think about playing pretend, and with every curious glance in the main hall, he had to swallow the urge to explain away the bottle of fine Tevinter red in his hands.

In any case, he had to acknowledge that word had probably spread by now about him and Bull. The big lummox seemed completely incapable of tact, judging by the suspiciously specific (and mildly explicit) congratulations he’d received from the Chargers. He’d been mortified, at first, but his feelings about being something someone would brag about were… well. It was new.

There was a murmur from farther back in the hall. The flush rising to his cheeks probably wasn’t helping his cause, here. He opened the outer door and started along the weird little drafty walkway leading between the Inquisitor’s quarters and the main hall, then rapped at the door.

Nothing. He knocked harder. When the Inquisitor finally opened the door, one arm in a sling, looking drained and exhausted, he pushed past her with his most charming smile, valiantly ignoring her audible sigh. “Dorian,” she said, “I’m not really—”

“Nonsense,” he said, pushing past her. “You owe me. I tell you just how much your leadership has inspired me, and you immediately run away like an absolute boor.”

“No connection. A couple other things happened in the meantime,” Lavellan said. “It wasn’t what you said.”

Dorian paused at the base of the stairs leading up to the bedroom, glancing over his shoulder. She sounded sincere, as though she were genuinely apologizing for a genuine slight. It wasn’t like her to drop the conversational ball so badly. He took in the way her short hair was tousled, the wan cast to her skin, the dark circles under her eyes. “You look appalling.”

She raised both eyebrows at that. “Thanks, Dorian. Glad I came back so you could batter my ragged defenses with your scathing wit.”

Well. That was closer to what he’d come to expect from her. He frowned, trotting up the stairs, and set to pouring; she’d taken to keeping a couple of glasses in her quarters since the first time they’d had a drink together after a mission, shaking and horrified and irrevocably scarred by the almost-future only they remembered. “Was that ever actually in question? Your return, not my witty repartee.”

She sighed, trudging up behind him. “Apparently not.”

He extended one of the glasses of wine in her direction, then drew it back when she reached for it. “First, why did you leave?”

She scowled at him, her vallaslin exaggerating the wrinkles on her forehead into an expression of downright childish petulance, and managed to swipe the glass from him on the second attempt. “It’s complicated.”

“People are talking, you know,” Dorian said, pouring his own glass. “It’s wild what theories they’ve come up with. Desertion. Mythal’s influence. Fallout from the end of a sordid love affair.”

To his utter shock, Lavellan gave a bark of laughter and sank onto the floor in front of her couch, slumping with her back against it and tipping her head to stare at the ceiling. “How about a bit of all three?”

“Oh,” Dorian said, sinking down to sit beside her on the cold floor in what he felt was an extremely generous gesture. “Oh, no. You can’t be serious.”

Lavellan blew out a long, slow breath, staring into her glass. “I’m as shocked as you. I suppose it caught me off guard.”

They hadn’t talked much about Solas, all told. Dorian had initially taken that to be an indicator of how casual the relationship was, and had only recently realized that it was, perhaps, more of an indicator of how casual the relationship wasn’t. They’d evidently been close since that nightmarish slog from Haven, stealing away to whisper about Maker knew what, but they were both quiet and professional and private and all manner of other dull things. Dorian himself hadn’t had much more than a sneaking suspicion until he’d actually caught Solas making a hasty exit from Lavellan’s quarters early one morning. And now… well.

Lavellan swirled her wine in her cup, staring into it as though probing for answers. “I don’t know. The voices are… softer, now, but there’s something there all the time. And Solas was… he reacted strongly to the fact that I drank from the Well of Sorrows.”

“Understandable,” Dorian said. The words tripped out of his mouth before he was quite sure he was ready for them. “That was horribly dangerous. And Morrigan was right there! She was prepared for it!”

Lavellan closed her eyes. “I get these headaches,” she said. “Since I drank from the Well. I don’t think they’ll stay, but they’re just the worst tension all the way down my spine. I thought maybe I was dying. And he was so frightened. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him frightened like that. Furious.”

Dorian watched her for a moment and realized, to his horror, that she was visibly trembling. “Did he hurt you?”

“What?” Her eyes flicked open, back to staring into the wine. “Dorian, no. He wasn’t angry with me, not like that. Just the situation. Frustration, undirected. And a weird sort of resignation, like he’d expected it. He’s always like that. Like he’s waiting for the world to disappoint him just so he’s never surprised when it eventually does.”

“I thought I saw the appeal of that kind of cynicism, once,” Dorian said. “Then I tried it on for a while and found it really didn’t suit me.”

Lavellan shook her head. “I would have said the same, but I suppose that would make me a hypocrite, because a part of me was always waiting for him to go. He’d get so sad, sometimes. Distant. Every kiss felt like it could be goodbye, and I never really knew why.”

Dorian turned his glass slowly in his hands. “You think he had a reason.”

“He always has a reason,” Lavellan said, her voice low, intent. “I know he has a secret, and I keep thinking I know the shape of it, and then he turns and it slips through my fingers.” She set her wine glass on the floor beside her and rubbed at her bandaged shoulder, her motions quick and harsh. Surely painful. “So he ended it, and I just started walking, and I thought, well. Maybe I don’t stop walking.”

“Also understandable. You’ve had a difficult road, Inquisitor.” 

He meant the title as a gentle jibe, but she visibly tensed at the word. When she spoke, her voice was choked, like she was forcing each word out. “I’ve been a patsy, a puppet, a symbol, a blunt cudgel slammed into a political and religious landscape I barely understand. They tried to make me into a sacrifice. But I didn’t want to die. I don’t—” A shake of the head, firm negation of that line of thought. “But I lived. In the cold and the ice, I survived, and I chose to survive. And slowly, I thought, the decisions stopped being made for me. The shows of loyalty became deeper, truer.” The slow litany of her words shifted, gaining life as she glanced at him, sidelong. “I made friends.”

Dorian said, “Friends you don’t hesitate to fleece at Wicked Grace,” but his voice wavered on the quip.

She snorted. “Well. I thought he, for all his secrets and sadness, was at the very least someone who could watch my back, could help keep my focus where it needed to be. And then he was gone and I suppose I just overbalanced my way right out of Skyhold.”

“Where were you trying to go?”

“Away.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter. I walked until I found the wolves. Fought them. One caught me from behind when I wasn’t looking.” She glanced to the bandages, seeming to notice for the first time the white-knuckled way she was rubbing at them, and relaxed her hand. “No one at my back. I took the hint. Time to go home.”

Dorian huffed a laugh. “Just like that?”

She blew out a breath. “I thought I’d come back, and I’d have found some greater purpose. Or I’d come back, and I’d come back changed. Or I’d come back, and the world would finally make sense.”

“And what happened?”

A long, humorless chuckle. “I came back. And that was the end of the sentence.”

Dorian let her words echo into the silence, sipping his wine. Then he said, “Inquisitor, you are wallowing.” He grinned outright in the face of her offended glare. “You are. I never would have thought you had it in you. I do so love a good wallow, but there are limits you have exceeded rather dramatically and, I daresay, completely unnecessarily.”

She pressed a hand over her face, but he caught the smile behind it. “I didn’t invite you in so you could harangue me about my terrible handling of my personal affairs, Dorian.”

“You didn’t invite me in at all,” he said, swinging his glass grandly. “And therefore I am not bound by your limited Southern conception of etiquette.”

“Gods preserve us,” Lavellan murmured, but there was a laugh in her voice.

He nudged her good shoulder with his own. “Look,” he said. “Take it from one who’s made a true academic study of the matter: you cannot turn back time. Trying only tears apart everything that you could someday be. Kills who you are becoming.”

She let her hand drop and met his eyes at last. “So we must go on.”

“So we must go on,” he said, and shook his head. “So we are fortunate to go on. Unfathomably. It is difficult and it is unfair, but it is our lot and our terrible privilege. We go on.”

She smiled at that, a crooked little smirk, and finally picked up her glass to sip her wine. “That Dorian Pavus fellow,” she said. “Smart man.”

“And extremely handsome.”

“Passably handsome,” she amended. “But I have it on good authority—his, in fact—that he learned everything he knows from me.”

Dorian chuckled. “You must be so proud.”

They drank late into the night, until her eyes finally drooped shut and he hoisted her up onto the couch to sleep it off, then stalked back to Bull’s quarters to do a little going-on of his own.

And so the Inquisitor stayed, and slept, and dreamed the endless dreams of a people forever dead and gone, and woke to the warm light of a new day.

Solassan Week Day 6: Farewell

This is a story in seven parts, one for each day! the whole thing is here

Somehow, against all odds, Solas makes it through. And somehow, impossibly, inadvisably, Felassan is still by his side.

After their last examination, the streets are full of students celebrating, shouting and laughter echoing loud and sharp beneath the arches. There are still daffodils in the flowerbeds, and the air tastes effervescent, saturated with supermarket champagne. Solas and Felassan bypass the celebrations and stumble together back to Felassan’s room, which is now adorned with a row of little cacti along the windowsill and posters of hummingbirds on the wall. Solas still likes it much more than his own room, where too much pain lingers.

Felassan sweeps piles of now-redundant notes off the bed and they fall into it together; clumsy, clothes tossed haphazardly onto the floor, mouths and hands hot, urgent, grasping, shuddering against one another. For a little while, then, it’s almost like it was in the beginning, when the whole thing still felt like an impossible miracle from someone else’s life. Solas closes his eyes and kisses desperately, blindly, and he wishes so fiercely to remain there, to have always been there, to slough off the past and the future like broken, useless wings.

Then they lie curled beneath the covers. Felassan is holding him too tightly, as if he knows. The cheap blanket thrown over them is as scratchy as ever, still smelling of plastic even after thousands of washes, but there’s a poignancy to it now; as if nostalgia is already setting in, though they haven’t even departed yet.

Solas doesn’t want to tell Felassan, but he knows he has to. As the night falls and the bells begin to ring, tolling ponderously through the purple gloaming, he gets out of bed and puts his clothes back on. The discarded notes waft beneath his feet like the white blossoms that fill the streets of Kinloch Hold in April, and Solas remembers their first spring, picking the petals out of Felassan’s hair and kissing him for every one; how Felassan gazed at him with shining eyes and Solas wanted to say I love you but he couldn’t because it was too soon, so he just kept saying ‘I like you,’ like an idiot, and Felassan laughed, hugged him, pressed their cheeks together, the crisp mineral scent of the sunshine on his skin - 

He squeezes his eyes shut, steps over the notes. Solas organised those notes for Felassan, colour-coded them, highlighted important sections. He’s tried so hard to give something back - the notes and the courses, the laundry, the chores. And whatever he can do with his mouth and his hands, anything, not enough. 

Though, sometimes - he remembers Felassan grasping his shoulders, looking down at him, his eyes split by a bolt of silver-grey. Conflicted, almost distressed. 'You don’t have to, Solas,’ he said. 'I don’t - ’ and he broke off, gripped his own jaw with his hand as if trying to hold something together.

'I want to,’ Solas said.

'Do you?’ said Felassan, and Solas couldn’t answer because he didn’t even know what he wanted any longer, he just had to do something before he was crushed by the weight of everything he owed.

He squares his shoulders, closes his empty hands in a futile clasp so his nails dig into his palms. Then he turns around and shows Felassan the letter on his phone. An offer for a graduate position, in distant Rivain. It might as well be another world.

Felassan sits on his bed, cross-legged. 'I’d like to see Rivain,’ he says, looking up at Solas. His eyes are bright with hope. 'Maybe I could get a job there too. We could move together.’

But Solas can’t ask Felassan to come to Rivain with him. He’s asked too much of him already. He’s seen how it’s weighed on Felassan - worry eating at him, weariness dragging dark hollows beneath his eyes, blue shadows jostling with the branches of his vallaslin.

Felassan has become so quiet. He’s laughed so seldom, this last year. He used to laugh all the time - where has it gone?

The guilt coils thick and heavy in Solas’ chest, snakes a burning tendril up his throat. 'I am not sure that would be a good idea,’ he says stiffly.

Felassan doesn’t even seem surprised. He curls his hands around the edge of the bed. 'Why not?’ he says.

Solas looks down. He remembers his family: we can’t watch you do this to yourself. Felassan shouldn’t have to watch either. He’s already seen too much.

Sometimes now when Felassan holds him Solas remembers other times: Felassan’s arms around him when he was shaking through the night, Felassan’s hands against his chest, finding ribs too close to the skin, Felassan crying quietly into his hair, asking him to try, please, to try …

He doesn’t know how Felassan can stand to touch him after that. How he can stand to be with him. Solas can’t even stand to be with himself.

Somehow he has to make it go away.

'It’s better like this,’ he says heavily, picking up his coat and turning it over and over in his hands. His fingers find the elbow where the tweed has worn thin, plucking uselessly at the protruding threads.

He can’t go on with someone who remembers him like that. He has to leave it behind; draw a veil over the past, start again, become someone else.

He has to believe that’s possible, still, even though his first attempt at a fresh start has worked out so badly.

Felassan is quiet. He doesn’t plead. His eyes are a bruised, haunted indigo; he looks so very far away from the laughing, carefree boy that Solas remembers from that first autumnal day, and the guilt climbs higher, swallows the light. He can’t endure the thought of what he’s done to Felassan. The years he’s stolen from him.

Felassan looks up at him, and the little tilt of his chin is so familiar it makes Solas’ eyes sting. 'Who’s going to look after you?’ he says.

Solas has no answer, but the one thing he knows is that it should never have been Felassan’s burden to bear.

by luzial

It was impossible to ever fully acclimate one’s self to Felassan’s beauty, regardless of either proximity or familiarity. No matter how long one looked — and Solas had spent days of his life looking at Felassan — he could not become ordinary.

“No one we meet tonight will be looking at me,” Solas said. “Not if it means having to take their eyes off you.”

Felassan leaned into Solas, bracing his hands on the sink behind.

“I don’t care about them. Where will your eyes be?”

For the first time since he left for graduate school, Solas visits Felassan in the city where they met. Old habits reassert themselves and cracks begin to show.

With artwork by mimimaru.

This story is part of the Overgrown series and takes place after Geltberg, though it can be read independently.

Words: 20870, Chapters: 4/4, Language: English

Series: Part 9 of Overgrown

• Fandoms: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games)
• Rating: Explicit
• Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
• Categories: M/M
• Characters: Solas (Dragon Age), Felassan (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Felassan/Solas (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Recreational Drug Use, Karaoke, Unreliable Narrator, Angst, Yearning, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Modern Thedas, Unhappy Ending, Semi-Public Sex, Oral Sex, Rough Oral Sex, Anal Sex, Bisexual Solas (Dragon Age), Bisexual Felassan (Dragon Age), Hot-Blooded and Cocky, DIY Prince Solas The Thread Wolf, Unhealthy Relationships

Feeling abysmal but that’s fine because it generates great ideas so now I’m thinking of Elessar, desperate and sleepless, pushing himself to his limits to learn everything he can about time magic just so he can go back in time to a point before he ever met Solas.

by Mount_Seleya

“You will offer instruction, Wolf,” he demands, because a fixed point cannot question, cannot ask, cannot yield.

“I fear you require my correction,” Solas rejoins without hesitation.

Words: 958, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

• Fandoms: Dragon Age (Video Games)
• Rating: Explicit
• Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
• Categories: M/M
• Characters: Elgar'nan (Dragon Age), Solas (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Elgar'nan/Solas (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: POV Elgar'nan, Anal Sex, Rough Sex, Dom/sub Undertones, bottom Elgar'nan, Top Solas (Dragon Age), Bad Dirty Talk, Bad Metered Dirty Talk To Be Exact, Hallelujah Cadence (Dragon Age), Pre-Canon, Not Beta Read, Present Tense, Title from a Florence + the Machine Song

by TitaniumAbsol

“You’ve been avoiding me, Solas,” says a light voice behind him. Solas brings down his brush and turns around slowly to see Nereus leaning against the scaffolding.

He has been avoiding him. For good reason.

Words: 1018, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

• Fandoms: Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Rating: General Audiences
• Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
• Categories: M/M
• Characters: Male Trevelyan (Dragon Age), Solas (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Male Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas/Male Trevelyan (Dragon Age), Solas/Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Unrequited Love, Rejection, Angst

by huldine

The smoke of a burning empire sets the nose for this smooth, silky spirit. It is the quintessence of change. 
Conifer resins and the spray of a chill, briney wind… Here is the ghost of reverent lips down one’s spine– in a whisper of some ancient, unheard prayer. 

A fraying, water-stained letter is attached to this ancient bottle.

Words: 500, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 3 of A vintner’s opus: love from spirit’s call (ficlet collection)

• Fandoms: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
• Warnings: Major Character Death
• Categories: F/M
• Characters: Solas (Dragon Age), Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age), Solas/Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Angst, Grief/Mourning, Romance, Ficlet, 500, Elf/Human Relationship(s)

Solas and Lies in Veilguard

The thing is, we can’t tell if he’s lying based on past information because:

1. He might’ve been lying to begin with.
2. The Writers decided to throw everything away and make something totally different for everything for seemingly no reason so we can’t tell if anything is canon or works with canon or whatever.
3. His opinions on things might’ve changed over time.

And 2 is especially egregious. ‘I abhor Blood Magic’ is probably because they went for 'blood magic is evil’ in Veilguard but it might also be because his opinion on it got worse when he got the full idea of the things you can do with it and when he uses it, he uses it because he DOES see it as evil and he loves to punish himself.

But we can’t tell. And that’s a problem.

The Issue with Veilguard isn’t that any of these ideas couldn’t have worked. It’s that their execution was half-assed. Or quarter-assed, rather.

Yippee! Solavellan art!! I really got hook-line-sinkered into the Solas Romance. It was a simple curiosity to see it that turned into me finding one of my Favorite Dragon Age characters, completely on accident.

I like to think that it was a similar kind of accident for Ms. Lailani Lavellan falling for him. They didn’t get off on the right foot immediately, w his less than stellar comments about the Dalish. But, given time, patience, and a healthy dose of mutual curiosity they found common ground. The two of them are like peas in a pod about magic, the fade, and spirits. They’re a scholar4scholar relationship jdjsjjd

Neither of them had been looking for a relationship during Inquisition. Each had their own missions, attempting to save the world from things they each felt guilty about surviving. But they were so enamored w the other. Lailani was definitely flirting first, lighthearted and cautious. Solas had probably brushed it off in the beginning, responding with a light chuckle and nothing more. But with each animated conversation and playful jest he was getting further entangled.

I think Solas’ feelings solidified after losing Haven. He wasn’t powerful enough to protect everyone, to protect her. He used what power he did have to lead her back to them all w the howls of wolves. Seeing her weak, but returned safe … it made him want to give her, and this world, a chance.

After the kiss in the fade, all breaks were off really. It was almost a “first love” kind of giddiness between them. Everyone in Skyhold knew soon enough,,, they were NOT subtle w the puppy eyes they gave each other. The new comfortability and closeness was also pretty obvious.

Lailani was building a life in her mind, one where she returned to clan Lavellan w Solas by her side. She wanted to introduce him to Dalish community that would embrace him fully, and maybe start to heal that loneliness in him that haunted his eyes. And Solas almost wanted that too. To give up the fight against time for her, to accept things as they were and work with the now.

But then Lailani drank from the Well of Sorrows. She could learn more than he had bargained for from the voices and memories of the ancient elves, at any moment. He had to make decisions fast.

I fully believe he had been planning to tell the truth about himself at Crestwood, to lay it all bare before Lavellan. But, he couldn’t bring himself to do it. So instead, he focuses on the Vallaslin instead. And then he pulls away entirely.

The two pine after each other from then onward. It was Not a clean break, even years after his disappearance. Up until Veilguard, they would occasionally meet as dreamers in the Fade. Sharing stolen moments that both clung to.

Not to mention, Lailani had also had a daughter,,, born some months after the end of Inquisition. She hid Shiral from her father, and most of the world. Raised and protected w/in clan Lavellan. Although, I’m sure Solas met the girl once her own powers as a dreamer manifested, since he was already keeping an eye on Lailani in the Fade.

Lailani’s decision to go into the Fade w Solas is a bit of a selfish one. She is leaving behind her friends, her family, even her children. But, the Fade is in jeopardy, and Solas needs support to make it right. She’s lost so much in her lifetime, and given up many things, so she makes this choice for herself. The waking world will have to put itself to rights w/out her this time. She and Solas will keep people safe from beyond, and finally be together.

by huldine

A fiery and temptuous spirit– far rougher on the throat than it is the tongue. Yet despite what coughing and burning it may cause, one cannot resist a second sip. It is the color of thick, viscous honey… though only half as sweet.

The Inquisition makes the long return from Adamant fortress- made longer by Solas’ anger towards Trevelyan for choosing to save the Wardens.

Words: 500, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

Series: Part 2 of A vintner’s opus: love from spirit’s call (ficlet collection)

• Fandoms: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
• Rating: Explicit
• Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
• Categories: F/M
• Characters: Solas (Dragon Age), Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Solas/Female Trevelyan (Dragon Age), Female Inquisitor/Solas (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Established Relationship, Fighting As Foreplay, Ficlet, 500

Wip wednesday… on time for once!

Trigger warning: kid sneaking a sip of whiskey

Little work on the 1930s prequal, 7 years before the current 1930s solavellan event, a small flashback/nightmare with El'nura Fen'Dahl 🥲

She is roughly 6 and a half to 7 in the flashback

by CaprisunPrince

Leanos, a young scholar at the University of Orlais, is sent a mysterious invitation to a masquerade ball. He did not expect what he would find there.

Words: 2283, Chapters: 1/1, Language: English

• Fandoms: Dragon Age (Video Games)
• Rating: Mature
• Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
• Categories: M/M
• Characters: Solas (Dragon Age), Original Male Character(s), Rook (Dragon Age)
• Relationships: Solas (Dragon Age)/Original Male Character(s), Rook/Solas (Dragon Age)
• Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Vampire Bites, Costume Parties & Masquerades, solas is a vampire, Non-Consensual Blood Drinking

Solassan Week Day 2: Bodies

This is a story in seven parts, one for each day! The whole thing is here.

Through that first winter Solas and Felassan spend many long afternoons competing over problem sheets, followed by evenings huddled next to the fireplace in the pub, listening to the cantankerous crackle of the burning logs and slowly developing a taste for beer. Solas is secretly worried that these sessions might come to an end when the advanced math course finishes, but they find other excuses.

In early spring, after the last frost, the university organises a picnic. Solas protests that he has too much work to do, but Felassan rolls his eyes and drags him along anyway. It’s still chilly and the sky is its usual morose Ferelden grey, but everyone is behaving as if it’s the middle of summer - gaggles of students playing cricket by the river or passing tubs of sticky flapjacks between them, clutching dented plastic cups of Pimms adorned with mint and fat chunks of strawberry.

The drink makes Solas feel soft, fuzzy-headed, and when Felassan comes over to bring him another cup he beams unsteadily. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and then for some reason he feels an urgent need to say something else, so he touches Felassan’s hand and says, sincere and halting, 'Fel, I - I just wanted to - you’re the best person I know.’

Felassan looks up at him, wide-eyed, running a hand through the ripple of his dark hair. 'Oh!’ he says. 'Thank you. I mean - I’m sorry, I don’t think I feel the same way. But thanks.’

Solas stares at him, and a flush of hot shame rises through his body, his skin prickling in the cool mist coming off the grass. He had not even realised when he spoke that he was asking Felassan for something, but all of a sudden he understands that he was, and it’s embarrassing, ludicrous, he has no right at all to ask for that.

The shame presses him down, crushes his ribs into his chest. 'I - ’ he says, helpless.

Felassan’s face softens, and he throws an arm around Solas’ shoulder. 'I’m sorry,’ he says, and then, 'Hey, look. Come play frisbee.’

Left to his own devices Solas would have elected to vanish and render himself unconscious for several millenia, but Felassan leads him firmly across the lawn and thrusts the frisbee into his hands. 'Come on,’ he says. 'Show me how it’s done.’

He’s so kind and it just causes Solas to feel even softer and warmer towards him, which makes the whole thing worse. He throws the frisbee but he’s awkward, angular and clumsy, his feet slipping and sliding over the wet grass. His body has never felt more alien to him and the frisbee doesn’t go where he expects, he can’t catch it, everything feels glassy and reflected and wrong.

That night in his poky little room in college he paces back and forth beside the open window, letting the chill in until the air is so cold it hurts him. His mind unspooling the months that he and Felassan have spent together - the linear algebra, the pub, the excuses. Seeing, now, what he’s wanted all along.

Does he want Felassan, he wonders, or does he merely want to be whole? It doesn’t matter. He can’t have either.

But to Solas’ relief nothing changes after that day; they simply go back to the rhythm of doing homework together, griping about lecturers, bickering about philosophy in the pub, where the long spring evenings have now rendered the fire unnecessary. Blossoms emerge across Kinloch Hold, carpeting the cobblestones in white, and students start taking boats out on the lake, laughter reflecting off the water all through the long glistening twilights.

And then, a few weeks later, Felassan suggests that they should go for a walk together. He’s never proposed such a thing before, and Solas doesn’t know quite what to make of it, but of course he agrees. So they walk around Kinloch’s botanical garden, which is arranged in neatly cropped squares - prophet’s laurel twining along a trellis, bushy felandaris, the roof of a greenhouse shimmering mint-green beyond a line of oak trees. There are too many scents in the air to be individually distinguished; floral and then pine and then underneath it all a sodden, heavy peat.

But the garden isn’t very big, and they come to the end of the path before the awkwardness of the new activity has quite worn off. Felassan looks at his watch. 'Let’s go around again.’

'I have to finish my metaphysics essay,’ Solas protests.

'Yeah,’ Felassan rubs a hand along the back of his neck. 'I know, just - come on, a little longer.’

Solas yields, shaking his head tolerantly, and they set off once more. Felassan is talking too fast, pausing, glancing at Solas and then walking on. Solas doesn’t understand what is going on with him, but he follows willingly nonetheless.

This time, when they reach the end of the path, Felassan says, 'I know, let’s walk around the lake!’

'Fel, I truly have to finish the essay.’

'You don’t need the whole afternoon, surely. Or are you behind in the class?' 

Solas blinks at him, ruffled and indignant. 'I have never been behind in any class!' 

'Well then,’ Felassan says firmly. 'Come on.’

Lake Calenhad is a tranquil, mirror-bright shimmer, stretching out toward the smudged mists on the horizon. The grass around it is absurdly green and wet, the path shaded by trembling birches stippled silver in the cool half-light. Halfway around Felassan comes to a halt and gestures at a place beneath a willow tree, shaded by leafy fronds and a little out of sight of the path. 'Let’s sit down,’ he says.

When Solas sits beside him he feels the dew seeping through his jeans, so the day seems to flicker strangely between too sunny and too cold. The smell of moss and wet slate rises from the water, and buttercups tremble as the breeze passes over them. Felassan clears his throat. 'What you said,’ he says, still too quickly. 'I - well. It’s always been girls before. I haven’t, I mean, I didn’t - ’

'Fel?’ Solas says uncertainly. 

'I hadn’t thought about you that way,’ Felassan says, all in a rush. 'But I - um. Now I have. Been thinking, I mean.'  

Solas stares at him. At first he’s just completely lost, and then the realization hits him, but he can’t quite believe it.

'Oh?’ he says cautiously.

Felassan gazes back at him, his eyes a warm, glorious violet, his cheekbones gilded with tentative sunshine. 'I changed my mind,’ he says, and then he leans in, and their mouths meet. 

And Solas gasps against Felassan’s lips, because all of a sudden he remembers that he doesn’t know how to kiss. Often enough he feels weary, scarred, ancient, but there’s so much that he still doesn’t know - all of the time he should have been learning he spent instead at war with himself, with his body, with the world. He has no idea what to do.

But Felassan knows. Felassan guides him gently, his hand on the back of Solas’ neck, his tongue running along Solas’ lips. When Solas opens his mouth their teeth clash a little, but Felassan just laughs into the kiss and adjusts, his fingers burying themselves in Solas’ hair. He tastes like those stupid butterscotch candies he’s always eating and that fills Solas with a tremor of aching affection because it’s so specific, so very Felassan, and he puts his tongue out and tries to lick the sugar from Felassan’s mouth. 

When they break apart, Felassan tips his head to one side, smiles fondly. 'Was that your first - ’

Solas looks down, heat rising up his neck. Felassan grins. 'Yeah, I could tell.’

He scowls. 'Shut up.’

'Hey,’ Felassan says, and he raises his hand to Solas’ face again, his fingers finding the curve of Solas’ jaw. 'It’s ok. We can practice.’

Solas looks at him, uncertain, and then somehow - Solas isn’t quite sure how it happens - he’s lying in the grass and Felassan is propping himself over him, leaning in, and soon enough they are pressed together, kissing clumsily, sweetly, surrounded by tumbles of birdsong and the sounds of moving water. Solas is conscious of Felassan’s chest flush against his, a warm, comforting weight, and he feels brilliantly alive and present, as if he belongs in his skin at last, as if his body finally makes sense to him.

The long grass waves around them, the sun dips low in the sky. Felassan’s mouth on his, Felassan’s hands in his hair, Felassan, Felassan, Felassan -

Solas forgets all about the essay.