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The moment they pass through the thick barrier of the veil, Solas expects to be met by darkness.
It is only fair, he thinks, to prepare for nothing less than burning dust cloying his lungs, for the scent of rotten fruit whose name he does not remember, hanging from trees he has not seen flush with leaves in a myriad, to cling to his every breath. In those seconds that had felt like hours, on the precipice of the abyss, he had made peace with that fact. Months without the faintest memory of light had not been erased by what little time he had spent outside, for even that had been darkened by blight and acrid smoke — and, in a way, it had given him some relief, the thought of going back to that horrible familiarity. He had found a sick comfort in the knowledge that, at least, he would know how to face this.
What he does not expect, after the dust settles, is to find himself standing in the Inquisitor’s quarters.
The room is unchanged, untouched by the inexorable passage of time. There is a moment in which his exhausted brain stalls miserably, when he wholeheartedly believes everything that has happened in the past decade has been nothing but a bad dream, a sick invention of his own twisted regrets. It would be almost effortless, to close his eyes and let himself believe that cruel fantasy — but he remembers the last time he has been here with a clarity he wishes he did not possess.
It had been the eve of what they now knew to be their last battle, their last stand. The halls of Skyhold had grown quieter and quieter as the sky darkened, the silence gone undisturbed even by those whose tasks did not end at sundown. No one had dared to speak louder than a whisper in days, for fear and superstition gripped the hearts of all who fought and all who stayed behind.
Solas’ heart had been no less heavy. He had tried to read, at first, to keep his mind occupied from the restlessness that had hung above the keep like a sickness; but it had not given him any respite from his racing thoughts. He had sketched, and painted, and finally he had wrapped his cloak around himself and made for the battlements.
The biting chill of the night air had grounded him, somewhat helping in settling the pacing beast he had become. He had walked on the silent stone, up endless stairs and through countless archways, headed for nowhere, wanting for everything. His feet hurt, frozen and numb, but still he kept going, clenching his jaw hard through the pain. What had he hoped to achieve? An endless walk, a penance for all his mistakes? He had been nothing but a fool, to think that forgiveness could be bestowed upon him in any form.
In the end he had sat within a divot in the rampart, tucking his knees under his chin, and, against all better judgement, he had fallen asleep. His dreams, short-lived though they were, had been cold and biting, sharp talons and wicked claws, tender flesh ripped from lovely bones, his mouth sore from a kiss as warm as the most destructive fire.
A firm but gentle shake had ripped him from it, stripping the suffocating air of the nightmare from his throat, and Solas had blinked, hard, eyes stinging with frost, trying to put the world around him back into focus. The stars had been bright and foreign above him, just as they had been any other night he had spent looking at them, searching pointlessly for constellations he knew no longer existed.
Ta'revas had stood there, one hand lingering on the side of his neck, the faint shape of Fenrir sitting mockingly upon their shoulder.
“What are you doing out here? You’re freezing” they had said in a low tone, checking his temperature by brushing the back of their knuckles against his cheek. When they had moved away to unclasp their own cloak from their shoulders and make quick work of wrapping it around his frame, Solas had ground his teeth, fighting against the urge to whine at the absence of their touch. “We need to get you warmed up”.
If they had wanted their words to sound admonishing, it had not worked. The worry in their voice had been a knife’s edge, pushing upwards against his neck until it drew blood.
“I am all right” he had tried to say, but his voice had cracked with fatigue, too exhausted to push out of him, yet too stubborn to stay silent. He had looked away, towards the black expanse of night beyond the shape they delimited, unable to stand the look in their eyes. Pity he could have handled, anger he had almost hoped for; it had been the tender fondness, unwavering despite everything, that he knew not how to accept.
“Of course you are” they had scoffed, closing up the last of the laces over his front, making sure the fabric lay comfortably over his body. It smelled lovely and familiar and Solas had so very badly wanted to cry. “When was the last time you slept?”.
With you, he had not said, a coward hiding behind a wall of his own making. On the damp earth near Crestwood. You kept chuckling at something I said and I fell asleep with your laughter echoing in my mind and I have not known peace since.
Ta’revas had taken his silence as they always had: with a respect he had never deserved. They had rested their hand around his bicep for only a moment, squeezing lightly, before letting them trail down until their fingers were loosely intertwined. “You need to rest, you look exhausted.” they had said, words kind and comforting, a siren’s call he could never resist. “Come”.
Too tired to fight, powerless against the way their palm had felt in his once again, Solas had let them lead him back inside the keep, feet silent against the carpeted floors of the main hall, heading for their quarters. Once inside, they had sat him on the chair nearest to the hearth and busied themselves with stoking its drowsy flames back into a blaze, its heat immediately warming his very bones. Without a word, they had lowered themselves on one knee in front of him, taking his hands back into their cupped palms. Bringing them close to their mouth, they had blown softly over his chilled skin, rubbing their thumbs over his frozen knuckles.
Solas had been able to do nothing but stare, his vision blurred, before he had swallowed painfully and had murmured “Revas, I —”.
“Don’t”, they had sighed, making the words die in his throat and his teeth click shut. The flickering light of the fire had softened the crease between their eyebrows, but the small, exhausted smile that had ever so slightly tilted the corner of their mouth had been so very sad. “Please, don’t. Just come to bed”.
And in that bed he had let himself be held, back flush against their chest. Caged in the safety of their arms, they slotted together like pieces of a crushed mosaic. Their left hand lay on his chest, open palmed and flat over his solar plexus, the soft pull of the anchor on his skin so achingly familiar it made him choke down a sob. Its magic had thrummed, a dissonant, lovely rhythm — and he had wondered if they could feel it, how each beat matched his broken, thundering heart.
“Good night, Solas” Ta’revas had whispered, their breath warm on the nape of his neck and close, so close. Their lips had brushed against his skin, barely a kiss, wings of an elusive bird whose song he could not stop chasing.
Emboldened by the safety of darkness, Solas had laced their fingers together and brought their hand to his trembling mouth. “Good night, vhenan”.
When he had roused, Ta’revas had already gone.
Light had poured from the window, casting the room in deep shades of yellow, a beautiful sunrise made brighter by the snow. If it had been a dream, he would have allowed himself to stretch, turning beneath the sheets to bury his nose in the warmth of their neck, delighting in the way their skin scorched his tongue. Ta’revas would have sighed, still far from proper consciousness, baring the column of their throat to his ministrations with a contented hum.
But the waking world was harsher, colder, and Solas had woken up alone.
He had dressed in the unforgiving quiet of the room, his eyes trained on the unlit hearth. The embers that had crackled with life the previous night had long since turned to ash, and Solas had found himself looking away, his chest tight.
Before he had made for the stairs that would have led him out of that fragile, fleeting moment of respite, he had stopped in his tracks. Maybe he had known, deep down, that he would not be back; that he would never again see the crooked vase of once blooming marigolds slowly wilting on the desk, the scarlet coat of dalish weave haphazardly thrown over the sofa’s armrest, nor his own staff propped by the door as if it belonged nowhere else.
And so he had brought his hands to his neck, tore out a chunk of his heart, and left.
His jawbone necklace lays now, lonely, in waiting, by Ta’revas’ pillow.
Solas has not seen it in so long he has almost forgotten the weight of it around his neck, how each dip in the bone felt against the slide of his fingertips, worn down by time and constant touch. It had always been a comfort, a leash, a reminder — still he had placed it there, that final morning. Parting with it had felt like a loss too big to describe, too vast to comprehend.
He knows that it is no more than an illusion, the cruel and ruthless reconstructed shape of recollection placing it there. He is fully, painfully aware of the real thing hanging around Ta’revas’ neck, the leather cord disappearing beneath their collar.
But the sight of it punches a breath out of him nonetheless. He staggers forward, barely catching himself on the edge of the stone railing, his feet ultimately failing him. Strong arms are there to hold him up, the clank of metal hitting metal ringing so loud in his ears that he winces, struggling to keep his footing as the world spins.
Solas can hear a scream, from a great distance away. The sound is warped and muffled, made to echo on the imposing illusion of mountains sprawling beyond the balcony. It is the roar of a lashed animal, the guttural, anguished cry of something broken and utterly forsaken. He knows it would hurt, to wail as such. His throat aches at the thought, dry and inflamed against the mere memory of pure misery, of unspeakable grief, of inevitable defeat.
Ta’revas is holding his face in their hands. Their lips are moving, slowly, forming words he cannot hear through the ringing in his ears. Their bottom lip is cracked in the middle, bloody and swollen — but the sight of that lone, lovely freckle on the corner of their mouth grounds him, tethers him to a reality that slips through the wreckage of him, a ghost unbound.
The scream, now a whimpering, heaving sob, does not subside.
“— here, Solas, you are safe. Ma vhenan, look at me”. Their voice is hoarse and so very tired, but their words ring strong and clear, pushing stubbornly through the fog that clouds him. When they rub their thumb beneath his eyes as he tries to look into theirs, Solas can feel the wet slide of tears, as hot as shame — and he knows, with mortifying clarity, that the pitiful, howling beast has always been him. “You are not alone”.
It is easy, falling into their embrace. It had always been easy, against all better judgement, to fall to pieces at their feet in adoration and supplication alike. The moment his knees stop holding him up, when the weight of it all finally comes crashing down, he crumbles with it.
But Ta’revas does not stand, as he almost expects them to. They do not lay a hand on his head in a pantomime of comfort, letting him exhaust his tears in silence as his heart hardens in his chest with every wracking gasp. There is no pity, no superiority, no imbalance to tip the scales in anyone’s wretched favour.
Instead, they fall to their knees with him, meeting the floor with a hard thunk. Their hand is firm and sure at the back of his neck as it guides him to rest against their chest, to hide in the crook of their neck. They hold him long and hard, bodies crushed together so tightly it borders on painful. Solas claws at the back of their garments, grasps past the biting steel of their armor, and weeps.
For what feels like an eternity, they stay like that. Exertion makes their limbs tremble and Solas’ bruised ribs press painfully against the lining of his breastplate, but his shoulders have finally stopped shaking and his tears have slowly ebbed. Ta’revas’ lips are warm and dry as they press a kiss to his ear, their breathing ragged and raw.
“Ar lasa mala revas, Fen’Harel” they say, quietly, like a secret no one else is there to hear, the same words he has uttered so many times to the lost and the broken, mirrored back to him at last. In it is the cracking sound of broken shackles, the agonising burst of pain on his brow as the tree burned, the overwhelming guilt of failure soothed by a cause bigger than he ever was. It is forgiveness, but it is not absolution, and he could not ask for any more grace.
After just another selfish, indulgent moment wrapped in the sanctuary of each other’s arms, Ta’revas pulls back. Solas is helped back on his feet, legs weak like a newborn foal’s, but he does not buckle.
“Let’s get you out of this dreadful thing” they say once they are satisfied enough with his steadiness, rubbing a gloved hand over a deep dent in his side, fingers moving the broken leather straps that now hang in useless tatters. There is the ghost of a playful smile at the corner of their lips, and Solas almost laughs at that terrible joke, the sound coming out of him in a wet cough instead.
Removing each piece of his damaged armour, watching them make quick work of taking off their own bloodied one, allowing them to sit him down and peel off his ruined undershirt from his bruised chest, all of it goes by in a blur. Adrenaline has left him now, all at once and without mercy, each and every one of his muscles screaming in pain. When they touch his shoulder again he almost howls, the joint clearly dislocated, worsened by his reckless movements. Ta’revas soothes him, voice calm and steady. “I’ll be quick, I promise”, they assure him, gingerly placing their hand back on the offending joint, the other cupping the back of his head. “Breathe for me”.
The moment his arm pops back into its socket, he is too drained even to scream. He is only half aware of how his head lolls forward, forehead coming to a rest against Ta’revas’ sternum as he struggles to get his vision to stop swimming, but they do not push him away. If anything, they pull him closer, shushing him softly under their breath, before gently letting him rest against the back of the sofa.
In a blink, in which he may or may have not blacked out, they are gone, and back the next. They have filled a clear, round bowl with fresh water, placing it carefully on the wooden table. Next to it stands an assortment of phials and bottles, their contents varying in colours and labels, from medicine to disinfectant.
“You don’t have to do this for me” Solas says, words falling quietly from his lips in an exhausted plea. The throbbing in his shoulder is now a dull, constant ache, settling in an almost soothing rhythm with the pounding in his head. “It should not be your burden to bear”.
Ta’revas is silent, for a moment. They reach for what they need without barely looking, so accustomed they are with their surroundings, collecting bundles of freshly cleaned towels from drawers that still vaguely smell of the dried herbs he himself had once put in the sun, so long ago.
“You don’t get to decide what I should or should not bear, Solas”, they say at last, adding a generous amount of a light blue liquid into the bowl, before unraveling the fabric and dipping it carefully under the clean surface of the water. Their tone is stern and leaves no room for any sort of rebuff, but it is not unkind. “You have already taken the liberty of choice away from me once. No more”.
“You could have died”, he pleads, and I could not stand the thought, he does not add. Curse his rotten, selfish heart. Better to know you heartbroken than cold and lost to me.
He knows it is an argument long expected, one that has had a whole decade to brew in both their hearts. They had started it, on that lonely hill as the anchor burned its relentless path into their veins — but they had never finished it, years of unspoken resentment and love and confessions pressing between them like a suffocating veil. They had lacked time, then. And do they not have all of it, now? Time?
“If that had meant being able to stand by you?” Ta’revas says at last, wiping away the remaining traces of blight from his lips, cleaning the dried up blood on the battered curve of his cheekbone. “I would have paid that price unflinchingly”.
To that, Solas says nothing, not trusting his own voice not to break in the face of such open devotion. He lets his eyes drift closed for a moment instead, letting himself be pacified by their repetitive motions, the soft drag of fabric over his skin, the slight sting of salve over open cuts.
“Do you remember when we came back from Redcliffe?” Ta’revas asks after a beat, their voice low in the comfortable silence. Their back is turned to him now, hand busy wringing the now soaked towel over the basin, droplets cascading in the warm water below and dyeing it a light scarlet. Their shirt lies discarded alongside his own, and from where he sits Solas can see jagged battle scars licking up what remains of their left arm like coiled snakes, the rest hidden by shadow. The scars are old, and have long since healed over — but they are new to him, an unfamiliar pattern of hurt his hands have not yet traced.
When Ta’revas turns back to him and holds his face again, gently turning his jaw to get better access to the cut on his brow, Solas closes his eyes with a trembling exhale. Veilfire shaped in the most beloved form warms his chilled skin, the familiar hum of their magic a soothing lull.
It does not seem that they expect an answer, which is for the best. Solas’ throat feels swollen shut from crying and his lungs rattle with every breath, and whether that is due to injury or grief, he could not say with any clarity.
“I was in pain and bleeding and all I could see when I looked at you riding beside me was death, a future I had barely prevented, barely escaped. It might have not been my hand that molded it, but it was my own inexperience that had allowed it to happen. I was ready to be alone, to crawl into my cot and let it choke me”.
Their movements are precise and skilled, the touch of a healer born of necessity and a leader shaped by war. Yet they linger, thumb stroking the blooming bruise on his temple, the motion gentle beyond worth.
“Instead, you took my hand and you brought me to your cabin with naught a word. You sat me on your bed and you cleaned my wounds and you asked no questions. You were there for me, when I felt so small I thought the world might swallow me if I let it”.
Their eyes are trained on the task at hand, focused and unmoveable. Their lashes, light and slightly clumped with dried soot, shadow them almost completely, yet standing as close as they are, Solas can see the way they shine with unshed tears, and the way their lips tremble. He feels untethered, unmoored, shattered with a thousand fractures. Stripped of his armor, of his purpose, of his pride, there is no more hiding what he truly is; a man, broken and worn by heartache to the point of insanity. Ta’revas’ spirit holds firm, even there at the edge of the world, whilst he would have crumbled were he not cradled in their palms.
Slowly, tentatively, Solas brings his hand up to theirs. He takes the towel from their grasp with shaky fingers, allowing it to fall forgotten on the bed next to him. They let him, hand lowering to cup his cheek, almost as a reflex. The pads of their fingers are calloused and rough, and he would have known them blind.
“My blood was on your hands and I knew I loved you” Ta’revas whispers, their voice breaking on the last vowel. Tears are streaming down their cheeks now, heavy and hot as they fall on his chest. When they look at him, eyes golden in the impossible light of a lovely past, Solas cannot stop the dry sob that escapes him. “Let your blood be on mine, vhenan”.
Solas had not planned to survive. Despite all he had screamed at Varric, that fateful night, in the end he had seen no other better option; if the necessary evil for the veil to come down had to be his death, then let it be his downfall once and for all. But now he was here, and he should have died, and he so very desperately wanted to live.
Whether he is the one that reaches up, or if they are the one that pulls him in, it matters not. The only certainty in that moment is their shared desperation, lips crashing with a hunger so immense it could blot out the sky, the salty taste of both their tears heavy on his tongue. Solas buries his fingers in their hair as they tilt his face up, parting his lips for them to claim, and the sigh that leaves their mouth pulls at something vital within his ribs.
"Ar lath ma", he sobs each time they break apart, a plea and a prayer and the truest thing he has ever said, quickly swallowed by another, deeper kiss. Ta’revas says his name, in those same stolen breaths, over and over again, as if terrified he would disappear if they did not. When he places a hand over their heart, its beat like a war drum, their naked skin feverish to the touch, they whimper against his mouth, a feeble cry he is quick to comfort.
Eventually, with no small amount of reluctance, they slowly draw back from one another. Ta’revas rests their forehead against his with one last exhale, still holding his face in their hands, still tracing the outer shell of his ear with trembling fingers. Solas lingers, caressing up their arm, the one still made of flesh and blood, delighting in the way goosebumps raise over their skin under his attention. He kisses them again, softer this time, loose and unhurried, his hand trailing past their forearm. The pads of his fingers brush against the soft braided bracelet upon their wrist, and he stops a moment. He does not need to look, for he knows its shape by heart, the shock of bright ginger hair interwoven with delicate leather, scuffed by time and wear. If he were to close his eyes and listen, he knows he would hear its magic hum still, her presence reaching past the veil, even to the farthest point where the eye does not reach. The kiss he places upon the token of her love is one of reverence, a silent apology from the mouth of a thief, before Ta’revas cradles the back of his neck and pulls him in once more, one last lonely tear escaping their red rimmed eyes.
“My heart” they whisper against his lips, and there is a smile in their voice now, something light and airy and so very hopeful. Solas can feel that same impossible feeling take hold in his own chest, a small bright thing as warm as the sun that loves him. “If you think this a good tactic to stop me from patching you up, you are a fool”.
A chuckle escapes him, deep in his throat and a little strained from injury, but he can feel himself smiling back. “It has proven quite effective” he says, stroking the sharp line of their jaw with his thumb, unable to tear himself away.
Ta’revas scoffs, shaking their head in fond disbelief. Placing their palm flat over his chest, they gently push him until he is flush against the backrest again. “Sit back down, you ridiculous man” they say, though it bears no bite, reaching for the discarded towel next to him and turning just enough to wash it quickly before resuming their earlier task.
Solas complies, pliant and obedient. He lets his shoulders sag, finally allowing himself to let go, but he does not close his eyes this time. He watches them work, with the deliberate calm of someone who has no desire to be anywhere else, revelling in each stolen glance they send his way, almost as if it pains them to not look at him for too long. There are the faintest signs of age by the corner of their eyes, laughter lines etched softly into their skin, and he commits each one to memory, starved for the story of each moment that has ever eased their worries.
“Will you tell me?” he asks, with sudden urgency, words leaving his mouth faster than he has time to think them. They cock their head towards him in confusion, a puzzled look in their eyes, and he adds, quieter this time, “All that you have lived?”
Ta’revas smiles down at him, the corner of their mouth curving up, a flash of teeth and dimples that he had thought he would never see again. What a wonder it is, he thinks as they bow down to place a kiss over his brow, the first stirrings of a story leaving their lips, to be proven so spectacularly wrong.