Chapter Text
So this is where her world succumbs. And his rises. She supposes it’s only fitting. Skyhold was his once after all.
Tarasyl’an Te’las… The place where the sky was held… The place where the veil was created…
Solas had successfully weakened the veil throughout Thedas, avoiding Skyhold. Delaying the inevitable… Her attempts to stray him from his destructive path had failed at every turn and now the last defense of her world was finally breaking.
The countdown to doom had made her a bitter person. She barely recognized herself. The inability to alter his path made her despair and, with despair, rage come. Soon, she became a flooded well of regret and misery. She would kill him if he pushed her that far. She had failed her friends, only ashes now, but she wouldn’t fail the world. She would stop him, kill him or at least she would die trying.
She was fighting at the top of the stairs that lead to the main hall of Skyhold, when she saw him. Full armor, wolf pelt by the shoulder, chin up and hands clasped behind his back, as he crossed the breeched gate.To the untrained eyes he walked like he was clinically assessing the battle field, but she knew better.
He had come to her in the fade the last nights of his siege. Not as a wolf, but as himself for the first time in years. He had begged her to leave Skyhold. Begged her to leave and flee to the old Heaven ruins. She had refused his plea.
She never looked at him during those fade dreams, always faced him with her backs turned to him, afraid that he would break her resolve. Afraid that all her anger and regret would be forgotten and she would forget all the deaths of her friends. No! She would stand her ground!
And now, as he walked the courtyard, he was searching for her. Hoping that she had fled the fortress before their attack had started.
For the last couple of hours, she had been fighting every elf and sentinel that tried to reach the main hall using her specialization to pull all the energy she could from the fade to empower her rifts spells, trying to stretch her mana for a longer period. Casting Veilstrike, Stonefist and Ice Mine. Then Pull of the Abyss, Ice Mine and immolate. And repeat…and repeat… But, in the stairwell, without the room to cast Fade step and regenerate some of her mana, her casting power got more and more depleted.
Now, with so many sentinels and elves attacking at the same time, all her casting was resumed to simple basic attacks from her staff in a desperate attempt to buy time for a more powerful one that could give her a small advantage and keep them from beaching her defense.
All it took was a brief pause on her casting, as she watched him walk the main courtyard. A small second in which her heart missed a beat and everything around her seemed to blur in the edges except for him.
That’s when she realized that she had failed her world too!
It came from the back…An arm grabbed her around her collarbone as the other forcefully pierced through her ribs from behind.
In that split second that had undone her, it seemed as though time had slowed almost to a stop and every movement around her was now performed in a very slow motion, as she felt the dagger blade drill deeper and deeper in her flesh severing every inch of her organs at its pass.
The loud cry that left her throat, in what looked like a never ending moment, ripped through the sounds of the battle beneath her and through the courtyard.
That’s when he saw her!
As realization hit him, the sentinel turned to stone with a flinch of his eyes. His stance fell as he run...
She watches him speed towards her. His face twisted by an imminent and inescapable death.
Hers.
It’s strange. She knows that she won’t last much longer, but all she can feel now is a comforting sense of peace. She’s finally going to join her friends. And that almost brings a weak smile to her lips, almost… If it wasn’t for the wrenched pain in Solas eyes as he approaches.
For all the fighting, for all the deaths, for all the darkness he bestowed upon her in the past couple of years, her heart still finds strength to care for him, to love him. It’s a surprise for her. She had thought it lost in all the rage and despair cultivated throughout the years, when hope went finally silent in her heart.
Or maybe is the fact that she is undeniably dying.
But she is happy, in some sense, nonetheless. Again, it’s surprisingly. To be able to see him one last time, maybe even touch his cheeks, warms her. To be able to say her peace and lay her head, knowing that after all her heart was not dead, but waiting for its time to sing. It’s comforting.
Maybe, when nothing else matters, when all failures add together and there is no more time to make new ones, everything else just seems irrelevant in the end, to everyone.
She watches mindfully as he kneels next to her.
He carefully pulls her upper body on top of his knees. Her head supported by is right arm, as he presses her to his body, cradling her, in an attempt to hold her with him somehow. His face is washed by fear and regret, and the impending inability to save her.
She smiles slightly. Feeling his body close to her again is soothing.
“'Ma sa’lath… Don’t be sad… Don’t-…Don’t worry…I’m-…I’m not afraid…I-…”.
Her body writhes from the sudden pain in her lungs and Solas face twitches. He grips her tighter. Tears start to run down his cheeks and a sob escapes his lips.
“No, no, no… Ir abelas, vhen'an… Please, pleeease… Don’t leave me… Not now…”.
She struggles to move, the pain now increasingly acute, but she manages to place her hand on his cheek.
It’s upon her. She can feel it. She can feel as her body starts to shut itself down. But she needs to say it! She needs to! Before she succumbs to the darkness clouding her vision...
“Ar lath ma, vhen'an…”.
“No, nooo… It was not supposed to happen this way…”.
“I’m… sorry… my love… mala…suledin…nadas…”
As she freed her last breath, her hand felt lifeless from his cheek. Solas desperately grabbed her against his cheek again, body twitching from his violent sobbing.
And there stood Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, kneeled in the stairwells of Tarasyl’an Te’las, with the body of his lifeless lover tightly against his, her hand an eternal caress on his cheek and a hole where his heart once was.