Chapter Text
Wind. Chill.
Daylight did not last long up in the Frostbacks, and soon, it would be too dark to see -- she had known it since the meek warmth of a dwindling sun had slipped down her back. She hunched her shoulders to rub warmth back into her ears without much success, wondering, for the umpteenth time, how settling down in the coldest regions she knew could ever have seemed a good idea. She also considered, perhaps, that she should have worn a hat, the one with flaps. But it was quiet, and secluded, both favourable conditions for one who wished to stay lost, and something of the magic of nearby Tarasy'lan Te'las kept strangers and other less agreeable elements at bay. Or, maybe it was the spirits. They never quite recovered from the effects of the breach, and the Veil remained thin in those places it had touched. Either way, through some miracle, she had found Skyhold again, and carved out a home in a hole in the mountain, a space of solitude from the rest of the world.
With a huff and a sigh, she dusted soil-encrusted palms across her thighs and gave the elfroot a last once-over. They were coming in all right; the weeds could grow anywhere, really, and she took a few clippings to tuck into a satchel at her waist in preparation for the evening's stew – Nug, yes, they managed to survive just about anywhere too. She flinched as another gust of wind prickled past her cheek, a reminder that it was time to pick up the pace. She reached out to the side for her staff and flipped it upright in a well-practised gesture to plunge its end into the ground and haul herself up, mindful of bones now weary and brittle with age as she leaned against the gnarled wood.
Turning down the dirt path, she had taken a mere few steps when she heard a crunch of snow some distance behind her. A nug? A ram? No, they were far less noiseless. Maybe assassins, she mused. There had been plenty of those for a time, before she found her way back here, that it hardly mattered where they had come from, or by whom they had been sent. Almost always it was something petty, or distant, or both, hence the third-party contracts. Errantly, she smiled as a distant memory of some old adventure washed over her, but dimmed as memories, fresher still, encroached upon them, where friends and allies dwindled, lost to diverging allegiances or age.
It occurred to her then to consider perhaps that whatever scoundrel who sought to come after her now had been lurking for a while, lying in wait as she puttered about her meagre garden unaware, and unarmed, relatively speaking. They would be poor adversaries if so; a curious by-stander then, but all the way out here? There were few who could pick her out of a crowd these days, and fewer still that would hide from an old hermit armed to the teeth with a walking stick and horticultural sundries.
"I know you're there," she called out to the empty air before her, watching the words fog in a mist. Best case scenario, she would reveal her intruder, or end up sounding a loon to the mountain rocks, "You may as well come out now."
She waited a beat for the elements to call her bluff, and found herself mildly disappointed by its concurring silence – that, yes, two decades or so of social isolation had finally driven her batty, jumping at sounds and shadows of an easing mountain on the edge of twilight. But a sounding crunch of a footstep in the snow cut short her idle ruminations, followed by another, and another. By the fourth, she let herself turn around, prepared to meet a wild stranger, or some stealthy beast.
"Ellana."
Instead, a statement, not a question, clipped and assured. Her ears twitched, her fingertips prickled, and even without looking, she knew. A fragment of an old endearment fought its way to the tip of her tongue with a flavour still fresh, as though the years had not yet happened and he had never left. She half expected to look up and see flags flapping in the distance, freshly emblazoned with the Inquisition's crest. But of course, there were none, only tattered rags and the cackling winds as they blew through the dead wood of the underbrush. What stood before her should have been impossible – a face from a past far removed, yet unchanged – unless...
"I can't have slipped into the Fade without realising... again," she intoned, willing her face and voice steady, "that would be too ironic, given how you were there as well the last time it happened."
He matched her gaze, measuring, searching, and sifting through features that were different yet similar, and found some purchase upon the pieces he had known before, that he would build upon now. Behind him his fingers flexed nervously, as he took the first tentative step.
"Would you prefer it to be?"
Ellana snorted, disbelieving. She had left him an out, and he knew it, he had to. But pride would dictate that he not take it, to trail instead along boundaries of etiquette with beguiling half-truths.
"Cheeky, still, even after all these years without a word?" She huffed when he drew his lips together into that familiar grim line, "ma nuvenin, I'll not pry. Mala gilas mala vir...
… You look well," she added a breath later, as much a query as a statement of fact.
But he did. She could hardly help the sensation that swelled between heart and throat and sat awkwardly between, like a pit she could not swallow, as her eyes traced those familiar planes of features she thought long forgotten. And for a passing moment, she ached to run her thumbs and fingers over them, if only to anchor them in this reality, one she had never in her lifetime considered possible. Because the vision before her appeared as timeless as Mythal’s temple’s guardians had been, so much that it seemed obvious now – the knowledge, his fluency, the dream walking; things she took for granted as opportunity and happenstance. They had seemed more kin to him than she ever had.
Could this have been the confrontation that he had sought so long to avoid? If so, then to what end? Abelas and his Elvhen had slumbered before, and all but vanished now. They were ghosts to the world. Would he have as well? There was precious little that still managed to phase the old dalish, who had witnessed the ruination of friend, family and clan to a world of her own construction, but a part of her still roiled at the possibility of something so terribly trivial in retrospect – that he had merely napped all those days of strife and struggle away – when nothing good had come of the footnote that was their union after all. A smaller part of her felt she finally understood his simmering bitterness then, that flight and avoidance could somehow have been preferable to a warm hearth. Had she not done the same after all?
"As do you," he replied evenly without missing a beat, but let the silence hang between them.
She did. Patient and curious, he watched as her mind went down eddies and tributaries behind a mask that hid as little from him as it had before. It still startled him, after all this while, the swiftness with which time would slip on by while he remained unmarked by its passage. It had been less kind to the woman before him, and between new lines and folds was the puckered flesh of old scars that were missing in those last moments atop the ruins of Haven, reminders that much had happened since, enough to remould and reshape a person. Yet it was undeniably her; and it twisted something in his gut to find that her spirit, though ragged, remained as familiar as before, a pocket of stillness in this inconstant world. He had been unsure of what to expect when he sought out this meeting, still was, in varying degrees. But their exchange had remained cordial thus far. It made things easier, if not encouraging.
The winds were picking up fast now, whipping into a deafening howl. Ellana pulled her furs closer around her to mask a shiver, and it irked her to watch Solas do the same with his. They could be equally stubborn, it seemed, if they shared nothing else now, and their impasse would drag on if neither could address the mammoth in the snowstorm. Without preamble, Ellana turned her back on the stranger she knew, but raised her voice to be heard over the noise.
"I don't suppose we should freeze our digits off while you tell me why you're here. Come on,” she called, making her way down the path without a backward glance, “hope you like nug stew."