Chapter Text
Love has left her eyes.
Only horror remains as she flees from him, but there are too many corpses, too much blood, and she slips, she falls, she can’t get up. For she is fractured and broken, just like her world, and he is the architect of their mutual demise. The Dread Wolf has always feared dying alone, and in this moment of shared mania it seems like she would gladly grant that confined terror realization, if not out of retribution or spite then at least as a final blow of justice. The last one she’ll ever strike.
But he catches her only wrist and pins her down and they both weep, both mourn the loss of their realities.
“Murderer,” she says as he kisses her. Her breath is blood and salt.
“Harellan,” she cries as he presses their foreheads together. Her tears are fire and despair.
“Vhenan,” she sobs as he presses words of love and forgiveness to her skin. Her voice is resolution and misery.
What a glorious failure. He’s never been brought so low. He sacrificed what never belonged to him for a chance at perfection; a type of purity his mind remembered as being superior, but in the ashes of his failure he is forced to reconcile with the truth that this would have been enough.
What she offered so willingly – lovingly – would have been enough.
She would have taken him back and washed the blood from his hands.
But she can’t redeem him now. She has no home to welcome him to, and he no world to lay at her feet.
“No, stay back. I don’t need your pity,” she whispers, horrified, as she sees his lips move. “I will see my world end. I will see you alone, without your People, without your Arlathan. Without me.”
But he says, “Sleep, ma sa’lath,” and so she does.
He took it from her when she met him in battle, tore the amulet her Tevinter friend had poured all his power into from around her throat. He never got to ask whether she meant to use it to reverse time and kill him while he was still weak or attempt to sway him with mercy and truth. He didn’t want to know, still doesn’t.
The amulet shatters.
It’s a magic he can control. He can control almost anything now, and it does not matter for nothing remains but ruins and a world that is heartbeats from its end. He restored nothing and destroyed everything.
His fingers dig into her sides as he lifts her and worm their ways into a fresh wound. She bleeds all over him, and the last thing her world knows is the rhythmic dripping of her blood as he carries her through the portal of brilliant green light that tears through the sky with the same intensity as once the Breach had.
He shakes when he lowers her to the grass and heals her injuries.
He does not smile at the familiarity of Arlathan. It is no longer home.
But at least he is where he meant to end up.
The Wolfling stares at him.
He is young, but already bitter. Not a sliver of innocence remains. Solas remembers those days. Years, mere moments, before he picked up the mantle of Fen’Harel but long since he ceased being mere Pride. He rises and they circle each other; the bloody, older, battered version looking tiredly down upon its young reflection.
“I have your eyes,” the Wolfling says.
“Yes.”
“Your voice.”
“Yes.”
“But not your heart.”
“Not yet.”
Solas surges forward and the two wolves clash, but as he is now he could put the entire pantheon to shame so it is an unfair fight. He grips the thick mane of dark hair and crashes the Wolfling’s head against the dragonbone surface of a tribute to Sylaise.
“You will listen,” Solas says.
And the Wolfling has no choice but to obey.
He feels – remembers – the assault of memories as he passes them over to his younger self. It’s a warm, sizzling feeling in his blood before regret strikes. Then disbelief. Anger. It is a merciless invasion, and his own mind splinters at the edges as the Wolfling trembles, the experience intensified tenfold for him.
Solas steps back and watches as he drops to his knees, fingers digging into the wet earth for support.
“Mythal,” the Wolfling gasps.
But that horror is soon replaced with something entirely new.
Solas observes himself drag an unsteady hand down his throat and toward his chest; blunt nails dig into flesh, cuts left behind welling with blood.
He’s never loved, Solas knows.
The Wolfling has his hands hovering over Lavellan’s face, never coming into contact with skin. He wants to touch her so desperately. He doesn’t know how to worship her and he feels – he feels so much, too much, and he is terrified at this new sensation that’s wedged itself into his heart.
“You did this to her,” he says. “We did.”
“Not you.”
“You are what I shall become. The fault is equal parts mine.”
He lets out a loud sob, but still does not touch her. A wail of despair starts deep in his throat, and then the Wolfling is burying his face in his hands. He shakes with tears that won’t come; mourns what he will cause; grieves all that he shall lose.
Solas pulls him up by the collar.
“Let me help,” the Wolfling pleads. “You are crumbling. You took too much. This power – it is ripping you apart.”
“No.”
“Let me help,” the Wolfling insists, seizing his older self by the shoulders. “You will be able to stay with her. Please. Please.”
“I cannot remain.” Solas pushes him at arm-length and takes his chin. His own eyes stare back at him, wide, tear-rimmed, unfamiliar. “You saw what will come to pass. Warn Mythal and she shall protect herself. Stand vigil. Kill them all, if you must, but do not act as I have.”
The Wolfling’s gaze wanders. “I will not hurt her,” he whispers. He isn’t speaking of Mythal, any longer. “I could never.”
“Give her the world she deserves,” Solas says. “Do not destroy it.”
He steps back.
“Wait,” the Wolfling calls. “What will you do?”
“I will die.”
“Alone,” the Wolfling breathes, voice catching.
Solas inclines his head. “Alone.”
“Dareth shiral.”
The green light from the portal sinks into the lines of his face and he sees his reflection in a pool of water. Wounded and done, he is. Solas feels the exhaustion in his bones and he wants to collapse one last time by her side. He wants to inhale her scent and trail his lips over her neck. Will she still favor the scent of juniper, he wonders, after he is gone. Will she retain her habit of recounting the same story time and again?
Little things. It was the little things that sustained him after he walked away.
He has always thought her a fleeting, lovely memento. It seems that he’s become her constant.
“Dareth shiral, emma lath,” Solas murmurs.
Perhaps it will not hurt. Perhaps there will be but nothingness.
The Wolfling watches the one who calls himself Solas disappear. He seals the gateway with a flick of his wrist, and just like that it is all over. His reality dies with him.
And now amends must be made for what their Pride has caused - will cause.
He draws closer to the woman he now loves so desperately, passionately, suddenly. He pulls her into his lap and whispers promises of devotion, and the words feel like they’ve been spoken a thousand times before – and they have, by him, but they haven’t. She is his, yet she’s never belonged to him.
He’s tasted her lips, knows their softness and occasional dryness, even if he’s yet to experience intimacy.
He loves.
He loves too much and it is a delicious burden.
She wakes as he is caressing her hair. Every wound he heals, he memorizes. And he remembers. Little recollections. The scar through her eyebrow. The one at her temple. The love bite that once adorned her neck; he knows the exact spot his lips have cajoled.
“Please do not run,” the Wolfling tells her. “The one you called Solas was your vhenan’ara. I am not yet him, but I am yours. I will not leave you as he did.”
He sees the recognition in her eyes, like a flash of terror, and then she is crying.
She isn’t his. Not yet. But she doesn’t run.