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[goethbeforethefall]

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Solas The Dread Wolf Fen'Harel

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[loosed]

"Sure," Felassan says, like it's nothing.

And it could nearly be nothing more than a promise to come back sometime in the next decade. He's spent centuries believing they would have freedom soon, that he would find Solas soon, that they would repair the world soon — in all of that waiting for soon it came to happen that he spent more of his life in the world with the Veil than he ever did in the world before it. Now he's watched at least one child grow to adulthood at a quick clip. He learned to measure time in the weeks between each meeting with her instead of the years between generations. Soon still may not mean tomorrow to him, but it doesn't mean in a year or two anymore, either.

So that's something. And it's something, too, that Solas has asked. He's asked carefully and evenly but not with disinterest, and Felassan knows him. He has to stand here holding that, the knowledge Solas wants him around, right next to being so little removed (two soons) from having been equally certain that Solas would prefer, however regretful the mathematics, a world without him in it at all. Wedged between them the question of how much of this distance is acceptance of his place and how much is punishment.

Not all of it, regardless. Some of it is that Felassan likes to go see what there is to see. Some of it is that no more-or-less married couple freshly united after a long separation likes a hanger-on. But some of it is feelings, of one kind or the other, and Felassan examines the drying paint and finishes his braiding while he suffers through feeling them.

"I had the thought," he says after that pause, "that I might owe you an apology."

[goethbeforethefall]

Solas' brush pauses. He stands, staring at a dribble of color as it works its way down, threatening an inappropriate mark, with his mind completely blank of thought. For one brief, blessed moment, he has nothing to give: not grief or fear, not love or wisdom. And then he twists the brush to rescue the line, and remembers to breathe.

"Did you have a particular transgression in mind?" He asks, a little thoughtlessly. It is a joke, you see, to cover the way his mind is stuttering along; that Felassan has so many transgressions, so many pranks and oddities, that he should be spoiled for choice, when it comes to apologies.

That he should apologize to others, to beg forgiveness, and be punished, is obvious. That Felassan should do the same seems unfair. Wrong. He killed his friend; surely that terrible act wiped away all debt between them, or at least all that was not Solas' to bear. Surely.

[loosed]

For what it's worth, there will be no begging forgiveness. Certainly no begging for punishment. Felassan keeps his chin up and his shoulders high as they ever are, a relaxed dignity that doesn't cross into stiffness or formality, and he huffs quiet laughter at the question.

"I left your office in the Lighthouse in some disarray," is also a joke. True — in the immediate wake of the world's sudden sundering and Solas's disappearance, Felassan's search for anything that might help was not what one would call orderly — but a joke, to preface the real issue. "And I should have believed you could be convinced."

It's more than that. But that's the succinct, actionable end point of a longer series of mistakes.

"I was thinking about myself, you know? I was thinking about what I was and was not willing to do to her and to them. I never really thought you would listen. I would have approached it differently if I had. Maybe it would not have changed much in the end, but you did deserve better than that from me."

[goethbeforethefall]

"You need not concern yourself with the Lighthouse, I think. It has other keepers now."

And he does try not to be bitter about that, he does. He tells himself that it is a good thing, that that ancient place be brought to life and light again. That it should live and breathe, and the caretaker be offered more to do, and that Rook and the Veilguard should have a safe haven is. Good. It is, objectively good.

But it is also hard to know that all his private places, the secret diaries and rooms where he dwelt together with friends... were taken from him. Even the memories pulled out and put on display, tutted over by strangers who judged him harshly, and thought of him as an enemy. To know that Beleth, that Lavellan, had a hand in it is... It is. It is good. It must be for the good. He had forced her hand. It was his own fault.

I should have believed you could be convinced

Solas is shaken out of his spiraling reverie by that, and after a pause turns to look at Felassan almost in confusion. Was that what had motivated Felassan to betray him, in the end? That he had truly believed Solas so inflexible, so unwilling to learn? Pride, in truth, rather than merely in name? That's... painful. He cannot summon anger, or even resentment, only a limp, wide-eyed uncertainty, like a betrayed child.

"There is something of Wisdom in me still, perhaps," He says, feeling hollow and hurt. When had he strayed so far from himself, that even his closest friend no longer knew him? "Despite myself."

Was it worse, somehow, than the idea that it had been a matter of principle? Principle, and the courage to face the consequences of upholding them: he had grown used to the idea, respected it, grieved it, and now it was all overset. Solas turns back to his painting, raises his hand to continue, and then cannot. He breathes, and remembers to breathe, and resolves that the work might as well be done, for the day. He is in no mood to create, anymore.

"For what little it can matter, I forgive you. No one can say I did not exact retribution, and you owe me nothing. Your Briala holds power in Orlais, and by every creditable account I will be defeated, and the mortals hold sway, as you wished." He will fight while he can, for what he believes in. Perhaps even he will change fate; he knows it is possible to do so. But Solas is not going to try to argue his many contingencies and plans in the face of Felassan's renewed generosity of spirit, "It is all come to nothing, in the end. I do not deserve to mourn something that I myself have destroyed."

Not home, nor Elvhenan, nor it's people. Not Felassan, nor their long, easy friendship. Not even his own freedom, which he discarded so cavalierly in pursuit of greater goals, hoped-for revolutions. Not even Mythal, not completely. He grieves regardless, the emotion an unstoppable tide, and because he cannot deserve to indulge it, it turns inward, always. Destructive as ever.

[loosed]

Like pulling a knife out of a wound, in the immediate the blood flows thicker and the way forward is more treacherous. Felassan stays silent and still but sorry, truly. His inveterate indisposition toward pleading or crumbling or crying over anything, ever, is not enough to keep fretful regret out of his eyes while he watches hurt seep through Solas's face, then watches him turn away.

For what little it matters, Solas says of something that matters to Felassan a great deal, and you owe me nothing. In that Felassan hears a dismissal. But that is part of the problem, part of that longer series of mistakes that led him to his knees in that clearing. For ages Felassan put his feet in rivers and rubbed his itching shoulders on tree trunks and found new things to taste and let snow fall until it covered him to see how heavy it would feel, and all the while Solas was immaterial in a world that wrapped him in reflections, untouchable and shadowed, and maybe to Felassan he began to feel more like a memory, a ghost, a god. A force to follow or to reckon with. And he had deserved better than that. Felassan had promised him better than that.

No time like the present. Felassan permits him the privacy of his turned back, but not his distance. He puts his hand on one of Solas's shoulders and his cheek to the other, nose briefly squashed down against his arm. New world, new habits, new company, new millennium — he smells like a stranger.

"I have never wished you defeated, harellan," Felassan says, mustering some tongue to put into his cheek at the end. An honest label, but one he's rarely aimed at Solas before without a wink or an elbow to his ribs. "And I don't think mourning is about what anyone deserves, but even if it was, we were destroying ourselves long before you raised your hand to try to stop it."

[goethbeforethefall]

He is not expecting to be touched.

If asked, Solas would be forced to admit that he is not expecting anything at all from Felasson; the apology had been shocking, more than a surprise. That it had moved him so deeply was worse: he had hoped only for another, mild tidbit of hope. A nothing-promise that he would see his friend again. That perhaps one day he might be forgiven half the trespasses he had visited upon him. Solas had had no thought to any pain of his own. And now, he does.

"Did you not?" He asks, thick-tongued and foolish.

Like an unruly mule, once pain knew you could see it it behaved all the worse, as if performing for an audience. But he can feel the warmth of him, at his back. Close, so close, and Solas cannot quite hold himself straight anymore, curling in, feeling strange and weak. He wants to weep, to scream; why, he could not have said.

"Please, " He rasps, voice rough and choked, forced out through a throat that is closing of its own accord. Will no part of him behave, tonight? Will nothing do as it is told? "What does it matter? They will never forgive me, as it is. Falon, I cannot."

Cannot bear up against the gentleness of his attack. Cannot withstand compassion in the way he could easily have stood for a thousand wicked barbs. Why? Why did Felassan not hate him? Why could he not simply wish Solas dead, and have done with it?

"...I..." He can feel himself slipping, the dangerous salt-hot upwelling, and Solas can feel his whole body clench with the force of fighting it. All at once the damn breaks and he turns and clings to Felassan with a sound that even torture could not have pulled out of him. Solas is the taller of them, but he is bent with the weight of sorrows.

Of being allowed to sorrow. He is at the end of his strength, he must be; he has not the power to hold back even tears, though he will die before he allows himself to sob.

[loosed]

Felassan could make meaning of those fragments if he tried, but he doesn't, really. His attention is on the shifts and hitches of Solas's shoulder under his cheek, his choking tone, the stumbling staccato rhythm of his speech when he's usually so fluid and self-possessed. There is meaning to find in all of that, too, and Felassan finds it, so when Solas's shoulders pull out of his grasp he isn't caught by surprise. He isn't expecting a recoil or a retreat, but exactly what he gets. He doesn't flinch or startle. He meets him.

Something in him needed this, too, but the shivering tremor that passes through his torso is fleeting, there and gone, like the shadows cast by high-flying birds when they cross the sun. The hand he puts on the back of Solas's head to keep him tucked into Felassan's neck and shoulder is more permanent. The fist made around the fabric of the shirt on his back. The rise up onto his toes — Solas is too tall. That is the first thing Felassan says: "You are too tall, my friend," against his ear in measured elvhen.

But he's not really too tall. Felassan can manage holding him.

"You will be all right," he adds after a stretch of seconds has passed, a sentence saved from being entirely empty comfort only by Felassan's faith in Beleth's tenacity. "Who will not forgive you?"

[goethbeforethefall]

"It was not by choice," He retorts, an old bitter joke that skews too close to the truth, the call-and-response as well worn as their friendship. Felassan too short, Solas too tall, he should rise to the occasion and Solas be taken down a peg let he get too full of himself...

...there is little of pride in this, now, the weeping, pathetic thing that he has become. Was this better, or worse? Was this the promised breakdown that one heard so much about, that had him weak in the knees, leaning heavily into Felassan's shoulder for support.

Ah, but it is a question worth answering. How could he not? Weak. Weak. Weak as ever to the quest for knowledge, and the ability to give it. Babbler. Blathermouth. Fool of a Pride demon, masquerading as if he had any claim to Wisdom. Broken thing.

"I had thought my enemies wished me dead," He admits, falling into a vague rocking motion, his hands tight-fisted at Felassan's back, "And while Elgar'nan still lives, and walks the world, that will still be true for his part. But the Veil is sustained on the lives of the Evanuris, and when he is dead it will fall. That is when—in the moment after the battle, when I am still weakened..."

And though he had faced the world with admirable calm since learning of it, the despair is a dragon that writhed and roared beneath his skin. All these millenia, all the lives lost, the war, the fighting, the pain and effort, all of it come to an eternity of loneliness, imprisoned and made nothing more than a power-source to fuel his greatest mistake. His greatest regret.

Solas will never be free.

"...I have seen it, and Beleth has lived it: Rook will take my blood, by force or trickery, and seek to imprison me in their place. The last of their gods, to carry the Veil forever."

[loosed]

If Felassan only thought of Solas, if he could put the peace and safety of any one person in the world above every other concern, then a lot of things would be different, stretching back thousands of years. That's not who he's ever been. It's not who either of them have ever been. There's a line, though, that startles and shakes him to think of being crossed. Enough so that he leans back, still close but not that close, and moves the hand on the back of Solas's head to his jaw instead, trying to lift his gaze so Felassan can aim his sharp-eyed frown directly into his wet, miserable face.

Containing a stubborn, unstoppable force so it doesn't wreak havoc is one thing. This is another. Solas has broken so many chains. He broke Felassan's. And in the immediate wake of understanding, before cooler thoughts can prevail, millennia fall off his face, cynicism and callousness peeled off to leave a (relatively) young man who thinks they're supposed to be better than that.

"Throw Elgar'nan back in," he says — snaps, really — like it could be that simple.

[goethbeforethefall]

"Ha," It's a sorrowful smile, and Solas shakes his head in quiet denial. Elgar'nan would fight them with every drop of blood and blight in him, and sooner die than be returned to his rightful place. For once in his life, Solas cannot blame him for the sentiment, "If only it were so easy."

He is still a moment, as if thinking it over, just the same. It does make for an enticing fantasy... but no. No, it is impossible. He does look up, finally, and for a few seconds Solas is rendered speechless by the nearness of Felassan's face.

Millenia ago, he saw his friend for the first time, and the eyes were the same, but so much else had changed. Skin rougher, darker, hair worn differently, faint wrinkles where there once had been none. He had not aged, not in truth, but he had... worn in. Life had touched him, while Solas lay in dark and shadowed dreams, and he had lived it.

His hand, calloused at the fingertips, was warm on Solas' cheek, and he leaned into it unconsciously, seeking comfort like a blind flower, turning towards the light.

"Beleth believes Rook can be merciful. I have not seen any reason to agree. But Elgar'nan cannot be permitted to blight Thedas, and they cannot defeat him without my help. I will return to that world, and I will... I..." His face twists, but the weeping too is at the end of its strength, and he is able, at last, to wrestle it down, "...I will face what awaits me."

Just as Felassan once did. Though, perhaps less humbly.

[loosed]

The natural time to take his hand from Solas's face comes and goes, ignored in the wake of Solas's lean against his fingers and his seeping resignation. Felassan stays where he is. In fact, he adds a second hand, holding Solas’s face between them, both thumbs swiping once beneath his eyes to clear away tear tracks. But that's the only real gentleness involved. Otherwise his hold is firm and his focus sharp, and what he says as he stares up into Solas’s eyes is, “Who are you supposed to be now, Despair? Don’t give me that shit.”

He needs to move. His options are closer again or further away, and he chooses the latter, a half step backwards as he lets his hands fall to Solas's shoulder instead. Perfect to shake him by, if Felassan decides he needs shaking later.

The Spring air is brisk. Birds are chirping. He would like to tell Solas that he's coming with him — or he's coming back — or he'll be there, one way or another — but there are two problems with that. The first is that he doesn't trust these gods enough to truly promise it. The second is that Felassan can't say anything about Beleth's vision of the future unless he's going to say all of it, because Solas has been able to tell when he's lying for a very long time now.

Instead: “What is any of this,” he asks, “if not a chance for us to find a better way?”

For example, throwing Elgar’nan back in. Felassan isn’t giving up on that one so easily.

[goethbeforethefall]

The pressure of his hands, physical and undeniably real, is grounding. For all of Solas' love of the Fade, and of wandering its endless, mutable landscapes, he has not been a spirit in more than facsimile for a very, very long time. How body is an animal that craves connection, solidity, and certainty, and his mind is as much a part of that body as it is of the world.

Of course, Felassan is right.

This place represents a unique opportunity: to rest, and breathe, and grow his perspective. To know peace and practice at happiness. To learn more, and to plan... Had Beleth not already given him more information that he could ever have learned on his own? His heart was true in ways that Solas himself could only aspire to.

And Felassan, who had come to him with open hands. Solas bows his head between them; he had never looked for his own pain to be recognized, had not deserved— But no. I don't think mourning is about what anyone deserves, he had said. If they are acknowledging faults, and resolving to do better, then let it be mutual.

"You make a good point. I have become something of a pessimist," His own hands grip and stay, holding Felassan's shoulders in a mirror to his own. Their arms are the bridge between them, physical representation of what is still being rebuilt, "Though I must acknowledge what may come to pass... if I hold myself alone and apart, I truly will become Despair, eventually."

It has been thousands of years and Felassan is still annoyed by them. There's something charming in that, lovely and sweet, despite his ire. Solas smiles to think of it.

"Forwarned, I can do much, but even if my memories are taken from me, I will trust Beleth for her part in things. She is cleverer than anyone knows; moreso than myself, even. And if I can I will make better use of Elgar'nan than to allow him the mercy of death," His hands flex, and Solas inhales to speak further, then hesitates and lets it go. But no, he tries again, "Would you leave this place, the world of Caldera, and return to Thedas, if you could?"

[loosed]

Solas says the things he needs to say to avoid being shaken by his shoulders. To make Felassan smile, even, a crooked and satisfied little grin. He did make a good point, and to know Solas might try is all he would ask for. Felassan squeezes his shoulders instead, grip turning firmer and bracing, like he's done a hundred times before turning away to set the newest of Solas's clever machinations into motion.

They were so often of one mind, in the beginning. Less toward the end, and less now, after the end, but — but nonetheless Felassan is not shocked when Solas broaches the same subject he has just decided not to broach. Many such cases. But his eyes do narrow infinitesimally all the same, wondering if clever Beleth might have said something to Solas after all, and he takes a half a second longer to say, "I would." Really, if he's being as honest as he can be without breaching Beleth's trust, "It hadn't occurred to me want to stay."

That's more determination than resignation. He'd said it his first day here, thinking mainly of Solas and his prison: maybe they do not have to be returned precisely to the time and place they were stolen from. He would prefer not to die and intends to avoid it if he can. But if he can't, Felassan would choose dying in Elvhenan, returning his body to the earth it was built from and the stuff of his spirit to the swirling eddies of the Fade, reunited in that way with the People — he would choose that over living forever here, in a foreign world, beholden to the whims of new gods.

[goethbeforethefall]

It hadn't even occured to him to want to stay.

Solas' answering smile is sad, and proud, and every bastard mix of strange and half-malformed love that has stood between them, over all the years. Abruptly tender, he reaches and clasps Felassan not by the arm or shoulder, but in the gap between jaw and neck, a gentle, approving touch. Yes. Courageous man, bold of spirit; it really would be so, that that was his desire.

"I can make you no promises," He says, quietly, feeling the strange equilibrium of purpose coming under his feet once again. A project, vast and fascinating; and dangerous, as all things must be... but worthy, nontheless, "But I will do all in my power. This place, these gods... they are not our struggle, except as much as they must be. But the power— I will make you no promises."

And for once, only the fate of they three might hang on it, not the world entire, not all of Elvhenan. It felt... good. Better, at least, than it had.

[loosed]

Solas says he can't and won't make promises, but even so, he's making the one that matters. Felassan looks up at him, small smile and slanted. For a moment he is thousands of years in the past, in the Lighthouse, Solas's face made strange by bareness, the world made strange by the decision to fight, bright and cracked open and full of possibility — and then, overcorrecting, he is mere weeks ago, on his knees, trying to tease through the certainty that he'll die.

His smile didn't slip then, and it doesn't slip now, but with his hand on his jaw maybe Solas can feel it: the way he sways, just barely, as if at sea, before he finds his center of gravity and pulls Solas's hand away in his own.

"Your power and your mind are remarkable, my friend," he says, "but it has always been enough that you try."

Pecking a kiss against Solas's knuckles is nothing Felassan has not done before, save that this time it's done without winking irony. No cheeky imitation of a deferential bow in sight. Then Felassan lets him go to finally complete the simple work of twisting and tying his hair up off of his neck.

"I haven't been putting up wards when I sleep," he adds, which could easily go without saying; it's only recently he regained the ability to block intrusions into his dreams in the first place. But Solas seemed to understand to stay away. He doesn't have to anymore.

[goethbeforethefall]

Felassan's kiss casts the shadow of older jokes, but without the smirking irony of it, the gesture is strangely... sincere. Just for that one moment, his eyes are as the sun, lancing golden through a forest canopy, warm and lively, weighted any light. Were Solas less prepossessed, he might again begin weeping. But the time is passed, clouds swiftly clearing; his face feels dry and tight, and he knows Beleth will guess at his state, when he goes in.

He cannot begin to care.

"Then perhaps you can shall dream," He warns, on a laugh that is sharp-edged and ragged, splintered as a obsidian blade, "Thank you. You cared for me when all the world forgot. I was hasty, and I am grateful for another chance."

[loosed]

He shouldn't have done that, Felassan thinks, catching the tail end of that light. And he wouldn't have done that. He has had thousands of years of practice at not doing that. But something about everything — death, resurrection, a new world, a fresh hope, the real spray of freckles across Solas's real nose — has perhaps scraped a raw gash in his thick skin, and made him stupid(er than normal).

He grin like it's nothing, which it is, or at least will be after he's had a few days to throw rocks at trees in the woods.

"Me, too," he says, with a touch of insistence. This is his apology, damn it. His promise to do better. Solas doesn't get to outdo him. He unfurls his cloak over his shoulders. "I'll come back soon. And I'll try to bring some terrible ideas so you can think of something better."

[goethbeforethefall]

"Hm," He teases, wrapping his arms around himself, tucking the his fingers underneath as if to keep them warm, or guard them from harm, "You shall find it a greater challenge, than it once was. But I look forward to it."

So saying, he smiles; a real smile, bright and true, and ducking his head he turns to go back inside.