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“Solas?” The Inquisitor’s voice drifted lazily out across the large quarters, reaching her lover perched at the desk in the corner. His ear twitched in her direction, but he didn’t look up just yet, focused on the work before him instead. He was sketching in a small notebook, capturing her while she lounged during a rare lull in her work. The Inquistor, his vhenan, was always wrapped up in some newly risen crisis and he found he cherished her moments of peace more than she did. He finished the curl of her lips on the paper before raising his eyes to her actual form.
“Yes?”
She didn’t reply while shifted slightly on the bed, the lush blankets slipping down her back and revealing a new swath of sunkissed skin. Turning his page, Solas was determined to capture the curve of her spine, his charcoal scratching at the paper swiftly.
“Do you ever wish…I was a mage?” Those words paused everything, his hand stilling and his eyes snapping up to find hers as the air grew thick around him and time seemed to slow. Across the room, she wouldn’t look at him, keeping her eyes glued to the bedding in front of her, expression wiped clean. He knew her well enough to know that when her features bore no emotion outwardly, they belied the tempest that was swirling beneath them. What that tempest was made of, however, wasn’t as easy to tell.
In the time it took for him to examine her, she’d apparently made up her mind about his answer. “You do. Ar eolasem ra.”
Getting up from his seat, he crossed the room swiftly and planted himself firmly beside where she lay on the bed. Staring down at her, his lips drawn into a stern line, he made sure she was paying attention before he answered her definitively, “No, vhenan, I do not. What would cause you to think that I wished such a thing?”
She sighed and rolled over, facing away from him again as she wrapped herself more fully in blankets. “…Nothing…”
“I’ain, one does not fabricate opinions like that without influence,” Solas slid farther onto the bed, catching her eyes flick towards his own, then back down to the sheets once more. Her face, however, remained expressionless and she didn’t respond to his prodding. “…I don’t find your silence amusing.”
“Oh, hahren, you sound like my mother!” Rolling her eyes, she forced a smile and tried to change the subject to something other than what she’d just blurted out. She hadn’t meant to open that jar of worms. Not yet, anyways.
Solas, however, wasn’t taking the bait. “So clever. I am an old man. We’ve established this. Now, why do you think I would prefer you a mage?”
She wanted to ignore him, to forget she’d ever opened her mouth, but it was obvious that he wasn’t going to let it go. That being the case, she felt justified in turning it into an argument rather than a discussion. “Ohhhh, I don’t know, maybe the way you’re always discussing new theories with the other mages, teaching them things and looking so damned happy about it? Oh, and that short one, the pala’da’lin with those long blonde locks – Frindle? Fergie?”
“Faorel?” Solas shot I’ain a dubious look, his brows knit together with confusion and hurt. He hadn’t ever thought that she might see his exchanges with other mages as anything but academic, barely social. He certainly hadn’t himself.
“Ooooh, on a first name basis now, eh?” She sat up, blankets still wrapped around her like a cocoon, her short cropped hair now thoroughly mussed and sticking up to one side. He wanted so badly to tell her she looked like a crazed pauper on the street and kiss away her insecurities, but now was not the time. Despite her attempts at sarcasm, this clearly wasn’t a laughing matter to her. “Well, good. Better, even. Go forth and frolic with your pretty little protégé, then.”
“…She is hardly my protégé,” Solas found himself floundering for words, unsure of what it was he should say, what would confirm that he didn’t care if she had magic or not. He was unsettled at how easily she was rattling him, which, he would reflect later, was a testament to how deeply he cared for her. He didn’t pay attention to what anyone else thought about him or his beliefs, but this woman…Her opinions were the only ones he gave consideration to.
“But you don’t deny she’s a tart, do you?”
“I would not know,” He stated truthfully, “My interactions with her are scholastic in nature. Discussions about the Fade, spirits, the Veil and how they affect our abilities.”
“Exactly,” She turned sharply, finally meeting his gaze with a saddened expression, her mask falling away while she lost control of her emotions momentarily, “Your abilities, your magic, your…It’s who you are and it’s who I’m not!”
Turning herself away briskly, I’ain grit her teeth and tried not to let her tears fall, tried to stop her shoulders from trembling, hide away her weakness like she always did. Even with Solas, who she trusted and cared for like no other, she didn’t allow herself the courtesy to truly feel everything. Assassins disconnect from their emotions to get the job done, something she let carry into her personal life as well. But she wasn’t very good at that part, it seemed.
Sitting beside her, Solas was having a minor revelation about their relationship. Normally, he’d walk away and stew in that revelation until he understood it as fully as he could, but this was not a time for reflection. He spoke plainly to convey what she needed to hear, “You are enough.”
“Well, sorry I’m not - ! W-what? Wait….You just – “ She whipped her head around, ready to strike back, but she realized belatedly that he’d given her no reason to strike at all. He took advantage of that shock and placed his hands on her shoulders to turn her to face him fully, nudging her chin up to lock her gaze with his a moment later.
“You are…enough.”
“But…” She struggled, eyes fraught with a fear she didn’t have a name for yet, one that spoke to the man she loved more than she could know. It was the fear that found you when you finally had something to lose, when your actions could cost you everything because you had trusted someone. It was a fear he knew well, a fear he often played on, and a fear that he had no right to give her. And yet he knew he would, someday, instill that fear in her fully. And it would ruin her.
Outside of his head, he saw her chin dip and her shoulders tremble while she continued on, voicing everything he should have been able to guess, “You should want a pretty girl you can teach and mold and guide, who’s easy on all the right senses…Not some boyish rogue who can’t be bothered to rouge her lips and sit pretty for Orlesians, who can’t understand how it feels when ice runs from your fingertips, when fire roars from your palm, when lightning dances from your wrist…I can watch and admire and take a bloody guess, but I’ll never know…I’ll never understand you the way someone like Frisky-business McGee could…”
Giving a chuckle, Solas shook his head and regarded her warmly. “I do not want those things. I do not want a woman who fusses over golden tresses when she ought to be tending to her duties. I do not want an mageling to cling to my knowledge, mistaking that thirst for something deeper. I do not want a being who seeks to please others simply because there’s a precedent for it. I will say it until you believe me, I’ain. You are enough.”
“…But I’m not…” Her reply came soft and weak, the innermost parts of her bared with those three small words. Pulling her close, he wrapped her in his arms carefully, knowing that she was just as fragile as she looked in that moment.
“Ane te telir ma vhenan, ane ma ga rahn.”
He felt her tears wetting his shirt just above the curve of her smile. “That’s my line, ha’hren…”
Chuckling, he kissed the top of her head and slid is hands down the skin of her back, nearly tickling, but not quite. “You haven’t even dressed yet…They should call you the Exhibitionist, not the Inquisitor.”
She giggled at his touch and slid out from the blankets, draping her tanned arms over his shoulder and straddling him. “Gyanwyr and I should start a campaign to bring in gold for the Clan. ‘Clan Lavellan: Where the Dangly Bits Wave Free’ am I right?”
Smirking in spite of the situation, Solas wondered what man in his prime would shake his head and sigh at a naked woman sitting in his lap promoting said nakedness. Maybe he was getting too old…