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Solas woke to sunshine, the sound of the wind rushing through the curtains of their bedroom, the music of a nearby spirit, but no Ellana. For a moment his stomach fell, and then he heard her laugh.
"Finally. I thought the whole point of tearing down the Veil was that you wouldn't sleep the day away wandering the Fade."
He rolled over, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and saw her, framed perfectly by the high arch that led to their balcony. She must have been out there, watching the flowers open and close to the sound of the spirits' music, as she often did. She was wearing the robe he made for her - soft, glittering samite, enchanted so the color changed based on light and heat. It was grey now, and it made her lovely brown skin look even darker and her grey eyes even more piercing. His chest tightened as it often did at the sight of her, even after a year living here, in restored Arlathan, waking and sleeping and working together. He started to get up but she moved closer to him instead, and out of the sunlight the robe faded back to white.
"I don’t think we quite accounted for how much time rebuilding this world would take after the Veil fell. It has been an exhausting week," he said. She sat at his side and put her hand on his thigh, and smiled wickedly.
"So we're all immortal again and you still want to claim the old man excuse, hahren?"
He felt his own laugh rather than heard it.
"I am not awake enough for your jokes. Da'len."
"Well, then. I will just be on my way."
She made to stand but he caught hold of her and pulled her down onto the bed, so she lay across his lap, laughing. She no longer kept her hair shaved close and it was a glorious mass of tiny, dense curls that grew out of her head in every direction, a splash of red against the white sheets. No need to shave it close when there was no more fighting, no danger. When she had time to bathe in luxurious oils and care for herself as she deserved. She lay there contentedly, her arms flung over her head, which made her small breasts sit up perfect and round. He ran a hand between them and down her stomach, watching the slight trail the warmth of his hand left on the robe. An intimate gesture more than a sexual one, but he couldn’t help but notice now that even if he wasn’t hard, he was - sensitive. Aware that she was here, and his, and likely not wearing anything under the robe. Swollen, a little, now that she was warm and shifting on his lap.
"Besides, it isn't early," she said as his hand journeyed up again. "The fair starts soon. Shouldn't we get going?"
"My heart, the fair will last a month. Arriving in a fortnight would be late, not arriving a little past noon on the first day."
She sighed. "A whole month. I hope it goes by fast."
His chest warmed, though for a moment he didn't know why (why didn't he know? Strange). Then he remembered, and smiled. "Oh? But you have been looking forward to it so earnestly. The music, the performances, the magic that will be on display..."
"But I'm excited for after," she said, sitting up now, leaning towards him, so they were nose to nose. The movement pulled the sheets across his naked body below and his cock was stirring now, and the room was warmer (the world was warmer with her in it - and yet that made him sad).
"After?" He said, breathing in the smell of her skin.
"After," she repeated, and ran the back of her fingers down his cheek. "Because after, it will not be long until our wedding day."
He smiled. Grinned, really. And then he kissed her through the smile, and she laughed, and it made the kissing difficult, but there was no rush. This was not Skyhold or the wilds or Adamant or any of the other dozen places they'd been trapped by duty and pressed for time. This was Elvhenan. All was well.
So he smiled when he kissed her and then laid her back on the bed and studied her with his fingertips alone: the angles of her cheeks, her chin, her soft, full lips and the corners of her grey eyes. He ran his fingers over the robe and took his time drawing intricate designs on it: words and glyphs and images that glimmered and then faded. She sighed and shifted and leaned into his touch whenever it got close to where she wanted him, but she was learning to be patient now that she had all the time in the world, like him.
"I half wish that this is what you would wear on our wedding day," he said as he parted the robe with his hands, exposing her long legs.
"Please," she said. "After the hours that were spent agonizing over the dress I chose? It would hardly be fair to the enchanters who made it." He ran a hand over the hard curve of her hip onto the softness of her belly and remembered when she first woke in Haven, an underfed Dalish hunter. Now she was so healthy and strong. "I wish Josephine could've seen my dress. And Leliana and Cassandra. They would've liked it."
Her voice was light and airy. She was exposed below the waist now - she'd let him remove the hair that guarded her womanhood on a whim and he was transfixed by the seam of her folds, and he could already see a little slick on them even though her legs were closed. He forgot about her tone of voice.
"Nothing matters," he said. "Nothing matters except that soon you'll be my wife."
"Vhenan," she said, pleading. Too pleading. He had to kiss the sound away, so he kissed the seam that transfixed him so and then slid the very tip of his tongue past it, parting the folds, but using a hand on her thigh to keep her legs closed. He traced designs over her folds with his tongue and the pressure dragged them against that sweet spot that he knew was only growing sweeter from the way she whined.
"Solas," she said. "You said they would compete today to make rocks flow and air burn. You said we'd go and eat food that made the music sing straight through your blood."
"Are you complaining, emma lath?" He said.
"Never," she replied, tilting her hips up towards him. "Just saying that maybe we don't have to take all day..."
He let her part her legs and even though he’d promised her a feast that day all he wanted was before him, tender and twitching. So he took what he wanted, lapping and sucking and kissing and tracing and never staying in one place for too long. Her little pearl swelled up until it was out of its hood and he could tease it as long as he wanted, keeping her right on the edge.
"Remember -" she started to say something, but he never caught the end of it as he lost himself in the scent and warmth and softness of her, for how long he did not know. There was only the taste of her on his tongue, the soft ridges inside her that he stroked with his fingers, the honeyed endearments that dropped from her tongue (ma sa’lath, right there, you’re so good to me, love) and her hands on his shoulders and head and ears as she rocked and rocked and rocked herself against him.
At some point when he took a break from his torment of her she rose, shedding the robe, and walked to the mirror nearby. He followed her and ran his hands down her body, studying the picture they made - himself, tall and pale, angular, and her, slight and dark, all gentle curves. One of his hands found its way between her legs, and he slid one finger and then another one into her wet cunt. He watched as it slid in and out, parting her and letting her close. She hummed and he pressed himself against her back, suddenly aware of how much he was aching for her. Not just between his legs. In his chest. This was all he’d ever wanted - the world set right again, and her. He adjusted his hand so his thumb could find her still-throbbing bud and rub it. First wide, careful circles and then tighter, firmer ones, just this side of roughness, as he’d first learned to those nights in Skyhold.
"Come for me," he said, and she did, with a soft gasp, her body curling inwards and her cunt tightening on his fingers. He kissed her cheek and her neck and her ear as she rode out the sensation, and usually by then she would be limp and sated, or otherwise eager to please him in return. But today she just looked at him clear-eyed and coy and stepped away again, towards their wardrobe.
"Didn’t we say something about abstaining for a while before the wedding?" She opened the wardrobe and looked through, idly. He followed her again.
"Strange how you remember that after you've taken your pleasure of me," he said, knowing of course that she would give in, because she had never left him wanting. That was what he did.
"But didn't we want it to be special?" She asked, turning back to face him now.
"It will be us, vhenan. What else could it be?"
He took her face in his hands and kissed her, and she made a sad, hungry sound against his mouth and then she jumped up, and he caught her, and he carried her over to the balcony because he needed to see her among the sunlight and flowers and spirits. He needed to see the rest of the city far below them. The world he risked everything - risked her - to save. She turned around and bent over when he set her down and it was the work of a moment to sheathe his length in her, to rock forward over and over so she could feel how deeply they were connected, until he was so hard it nearly hurt.
He took a breath and drew magic in with it, then exhaled, felt the tension ease a little, sent the warmth and electricity it generated straight through her so she gasped and writhed against him. Then he began to thrust, to run his hands up and down her back and tangle them in her hair. How had he ever lived without this, without her, this woman who understood him and what he had to do, this woman would be his wife? Would it ever not fill him with a soul-deep thrill to think of her that way?
"Vhenan," he groaned. "Look at me." She turned back to him, serene and smiling. "This was for you. All of it. We will live forever and I will never have enough of you. It was worth it, in the end, just for this -"
She moaned and moved her hips restlessly and tightened herself around him. "Come for me," she said, and he did, pitching himself forward so he could feel her skin on his as he spilled himself in her, pulsing and pulsing and pulsing, and for a moment his spirit was so light that the world around him seemed to dim, as if he would simply float away forever.
For a little while, they stayed there, connected, looking down at the garden and the city and hearing the hum of the fair as it got underway. Even at their distance, they could see the flare and spark of performances that were already beginning.
"Let's go," she said. "You promised."
They took the long way down towards the fair, distracted by the appearance of new spirits, of acquaintances, of the thoughts that came into their head. Of their wedding, and how beautiful it would be. What songs would be sung and how they would dance. The good they would do in the world together afterwards.
"Will Dorian and Bull be there?"
He stopped, not because he was afraid to answer the question, but because he realized he didn't know. Why didn’t he know?
"I don’t think so," he said.
"But our new friends will," she said, turning to a spirit. "Like Wisdom."
"I would marry you alone in the woods. It does not matter to me who is there," he said. She smiled at him, but it did not reach her eyes.
"We're here!" She said then, running ahead of him, and he watched her loose, long-limbed gait, so graceful and at ease, as she moved from one place to another, smiling and greeting the people and spirits they knew. She sampled food and danced to music and belonged utterly here in his world. His world where magic flowed like water, where Elvhen children were not hungry and frightened, where no one bore the mark of slavery.
He followed her at a distance until eventually she slowed down and threaded her hand through his.
"It’s beautiful here. But don't you ever wonder?"
"Wonder what?"
"What would have happened if you left the world the way it was?"
It was not so bright in Arlathan now.
"But it was wrong, vhenan. Broken. So - small." Her hand slipped out of his.
"But I'd be there."
Her back was to him now. She was moving away from him, towards a pavilion made of gleaming lazurite and surrounded by flowers. He was rooted as if by ice to where he stood.
"Ellana - you are here now - and there was no other way to fix my mistake. To fix the world."
"The world was wide enough, my heart," she said.
He was at her side now. He tried to turn her, but his hand went straight through her. She started to walk away again, but now her bare feet made no sound on the stone floor of the pavilion. Then when she was at the other end of it, she turned, and she smiled, and the flowers below her began withering and dying, and then he was looking into the emptiness where her face should have been.
********
It was rare that Solas had a dream that was beyond his control, but whenever he did, he understood a little better why so many in this Veiled world feared the Fade. He was clammy when he woke, and his stomach swirled with disgust and desire alike.
"Fen'Harel?"
The voice outside his door was tentative. One of his officers. Had he made noise while he slept?
"A moment," he replied.
He washed his face, and then his neck and chest, and then everywhere, as if that would make it go away. As if his groin did not still ache. As if he could not still hear her voice in his ears. Then he went out to hear his officers' reports on how soon they could go through with their plans, now that they had the final artifact, but all the while in the back of his mind was the constant drumbeat of the dream. How could he have thought of her that way?
Not naked, of course (he'd dreamed of her purposefully that way before, taken what comfort he could in memories of their time together). Not even in Arlathan (he'd indulged in fantasies of her at his side in the past, or in some imaginary future where they both got the things they wanted). No. He fell asleep too exhausted to control himself and dreamt of her as some passive shade who didn’t care that he ripped her world asunder and killed everyone she cared about as long as it meant she would be his wife. And he longed for it. Enjoyed it. He’d even dreamt of her with two hands, as if she was somehow less whole, less lovely, now that she had only one.
"There's another matter," the woman before him said. "Our prisoner. The Inquisitor. You said you wished to be informed when she was well enough to travel back to her companions."
And that was what made it all the worse. Ellana Lavellan was here. Had been for two weeks. And so far he had been strong enough to pretend that it wasn’t the case. She was here, and if he went to her now she would stand there angry and proud and tell him why he was wrong to do this, why she didn’t want the world he'd just dreamed of her in. And he would love her for it.
"Is she? Well enough, that is."
He would never forget the pure, primal terror he felt when the word came. The Inquisitor is on the field. She never had been before, in their two years as de facto enemies. His forces knew not to harm her. Half of Thedas knew they were lovers, thanks to Varric’s book, but only his top agents, the ones who went undercover, knew exactly what she looked like. In the chaos of battle, what was one more elf? And how well could she defend herself, now that she had neither bow nor Anchor? Of course she was injured. Of course some fool soldier drove a dagger through her ribs and left her for dead. Of course his stomach bottomed out in terror when the news reached him that Inquisition forces were seen trying to find her, dead or alive. Of course he sent his own forces out and discovered her half dead and behind his lines, in a place where her own soldiers would never have found her.
"She is. She has insisted several times that she speak to you personally before leaving, however."
That was impossible. It could do neither of them any good to see each other again. Clearly some part of him wanted a version of her that did not exist anyway, and she certainly longed for a version of him that did not exist anymore. Maybe that knowledge could be enough for the days to come.
And yet.
"Send word for her," he said. "Bring her here."
"As you wish, Fen'Harel."
He was nervous while he waited. More nervous than he should have been. After all, it wasn’t as if she could change his mind. If there was one thing that felt right in that dream, it was Arlathan. That was home, the home all his people deserved (but in the dream when she asked after Cassandra and Josephine and Leliana and Bull and Dorian, he felt his own heart break).
And yet.
He would just do her the courtesy of bidding her good-bye, he thought at first as he waited. But then he thought again of the beauty of her smile in the dream - and then again how it was not as beautiful as it was in real life. He could offer to answer her questions one last time instead. Where, though? He thought of her among the flowers and spirits and spires of the city he'd known and knew then that he needed to take her to the mountain refuge, so he could burn that image of her (the real her, the one who fought and challenged and loved him) among the ruins into his mind forever.
She would be angry - she might not even agree to go with him. It could not end well. But all of that together - that would be enough, then. Enough to sustain him and to strengthen him. Enough to remind him there was only sadness at the end of this journey, no matter what he did. There was no fair, no wedding. But then the door to his study opened and his heart leapt in his throat and she was standing there before him, thin and tired and hard in the eyes but better than any dream.
"Andaran atishan," he said to her, knowing that none of this would ever be enough.
And yet -