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He left her without a farewell, but through the Fade he saw it all: the way she fell to tears in the rotunda. Her sleep grew sad and fitful then, so with a guilty heart he tried to weave her dreams anew instead of nightmares. A selfish whim disguised as grace; a mere excuse to think of her. Night after night, he soothed her from the shadows.
So oft he sought her in the Fade, her pain began to call to him unbidden, like an anchor to her sorrows. Her heart howled like the lonely wolf; he did not turn his ear away. ‘Twas only just she haunted him forever.
* * * * *
It was not the first time Fen’Harel had been propositioned by one of his subordinates. He was constantly surrounded by pretty young agents, eager to serve a pleasure offering to the Dread Wolf in addition to their regular duties.
It was, however, the first time he’d accepted such a proposition. The first time since her, anyway. Shameful, to let anyone so much as touch him, but the ache left behind by his lost love had become too much to bear. If this was to be an effective antidote, so be it.
And so they ended up in his quarters together, his body draped petulantly over the bed as this pretty young thing serviced him. Her pink lips swirled around his shaft, her sweet pair of pointed ears bobbed eagerly in his lap, suckling at his length dutifully. It occurred to him that he could not recall her name, as her wide eyes peeked in his direction, no doubt in search of approval from her hahren . He sighed, but could not reward her with a show of pleasure on his face.
For there was none, not really. Instead, the sensations merely palliated the ache he felt at every visual reminder that this strange creature was not Ellana Lavellan.
Those were not Ellana’s wicked eyes, green as the Marches from which she hailed; not her fiery hair, bold as the rest of her; not the exquisite furrow between her brows that appeared when he found himself the subject of her entire focus (as if, even in the face of world annihilation, nothing had mattered beyond the moments that she and Solas shared).
Despite his efforts, he couldn’t help but draw Ellana even further into his thoughts.
She was no mage, yet force of will coursed through her veins like mana would; she’d wielded it more deftly than her daggers. She hearkened back to Arlathan, a stronger echo of the world that he’d destroyed than any Dalish “magic.” It stirred in him a love so strong he saw it not for what it was until he’d nearly abandoned his duty.
Oh, how she had tried to brandish that willpower against him, in the Crossroads.
Solas, var lath vir suledin.
But even she was no match for his power – power to ruin all he touched.
I wish it could, vhenan.
Now she was gone, and so was he.
She was a mistake he would not make again, he told himself – as if it were business already concluded. As if his immortal lungs were not still drowning in his love for her at every moment.
When his mind finally regained its footing he found himself wilting under the poor serving girl’s ministrations. Such thoughts were not conducive to pleasure; in fact, their mere presence was conclusive proof that his experiment with distraction had already failed miserably. Perhaps sensing his dissatisfaction, this da’len – no, the term felt wincingly wrong the moment he thought it – this girl redoubled her efforts, taking him further into her hot throat. He longed for pleasure to overtake him, but it remained just outside his grasp, sensation subsumed by numbness, his mental presence eclipsed by his lover’s physical absence. It was a pathetic display, to be sure.
Admitting defeat he pulled the girl off of him, her lips unlatching with a pop, her eyes full of questions. Yet he answered none, dismissing the poor thing as the intolerant Fen’Harel would his subordinate, with no more than a flick of his hand. As she scurried off dejectedly, he wished he could assure her it was a kindness. That he was an old and rotten man who had only meant to use her. That it was not her fault, that she was not Ellana.
Would it have worked, if the girl’s face had not been wrong, all wrong – vallaslin most of all?
Solas had removed Ellana’s marks, yes, but then he’d pushed her away. He’d never had the opportunity to see how it would’ve changed her face in their private moments, if it revealed more of the delicious flush of her cheeks or if there were new crinkles to be spotted around her eyes within the newly liberated expanse of skin.
It shamed him, that the very idea made his cock stir. Finally, utterly alone, he took himself in hand as he considered the possibilities. How would her pleasure look now that he’d remade her in his image?
He recalled, with a hiss and a firm tug at himself, the first time he made her come undone. Quietly, so quietly, under the stars in the garden at Skyhold; one hand stroking her and the other cradling her head. She denied any thrill to being taken out in the open, but her muffled sobs of pleasure, sweeter than the song that once lived within the stones of their fortress, betrayed a feeling equal to his own at seeing her face bathed in the moonlight. Do not trouble yourself with the others, vhenan, he’d ached to say. None in the world could keep you from me.
None other than himself, at least.
Still, a shiver ran up his spine at the memory of those sweet sounds. He jerked his hips, feeding the whole of his length through his fist. Would her cries be louder, freer, now that she herself had been unshackled; her marks of servitude removed?
Relaxing into the bed beneath him with a groan, he thought then to their next furtive liaison. She’d come to his door unbidden, her eyes full of wanton mischief. Solas had still been holding himself to some standard of propriety then, as if maintaining certain physical limitations between the two of them would somehow blunt the extent of his wrongdoing. Yet, when Ellana offered to take him in her mouth that night, he was powerless as ever to stop her.
She had been so eager, lavishing him in a manner he did not at all deserve. He had spilled down her throat despite himself, an apology on his lips until he caught her satisfied look. She gazed at him with what he hoped and feared was adoration, and as she stood to meet him face-to-face he kissed every part of her face he could. Her cheeks were hot and red and wet with tears, a filthy testament to her devotion that she carried as a badge of pride. He held her for what felt like hours, then, delighting in the light of her laughter as he rewarded her, covering her face in kisses.
Had any of her naked freckles, those hidden by the vallaslin, gone unseen? Would he be able to delight in finding new ones now? Would he bring his lips to each of them one by one?
The night they finally made love, tucked away together in the relative safety of her quarters, the question of should had become merely an ostensible one, a reflex from a moral compass so untended it had become dormant. This shadow of a world he’d made felt bright when she was touching him. He wanted no more than to live inside her. He could deny her nothing.
She sat astride him, that very first time, and he was embarrassed to admit he’d hardly remembered to look at her face, so engrossed was he with the novelty of finally seeing the rest of her. She’d teased him mercilessly, riding him with only the shallowest rocking of her hips. If she was not a god she did not know it, for she pleasured him like one, as if time were not the slightest consideration.
Her gentle touches eventually drove him to a maddening peak and he spent himself inside her, panting bonelessly until she swallowed up his breaths, pressing her mouth to his. Then she guided his gaze downward, so they could share in the view of the lurid evidence of their coupling that spilled out between them.
It was not long before he was atop her, taking her again, for suddenly being without had become intolerable. But if he was an addict, so was she, for she told him so; she told him how aching and empty she was for a feeling that only he could give her.
I’ve never felt this way, vhenan; I need you here with me, my love; I fear that I’ll be craving you forever.
Her eyes were wide and glassed over as he pushed and pulled against the dam of pleasure building inside her. He could not seem to tear his gaze away; he was a fool to ever have thought those eyes to be dull, that any part of her could be somehow lesser than his People. He worked her towards her own release, drawing on every secret of her body that he had committed to memory, and when they both reached their peak, exchanging cries, he was not Solas nor Fen’Harel, but merely hers, and she was his, as he claimed her with his release.
He wondered, then, would her eyes sparkle brighter as he entered her, unburdened by the tattooed frame that had once encircled them?
The tip of his shaft began to weep fervently with his desire as he began to grab at himself less and less gracefully. He was hungry; he was lost.
He had not even begun to consider the vallaslin that resided elsewhere on her body, and his body shuddered once he did. He had removed the lines that he once used trace down her spine, those ornate designs that served as perfect guides for his hands gripping her hips.
No marks at all. Just her perfect plaster skin, ripe for him to decorate.
His cock felt heavy and his skin hot as he imagined just how he’d decorate her: lavishing generous brushstrokes of his tongue between her pink folds, sucking blooming purple bruises into her neck and thighs, painting her inside and out with his seed.
She would be bared to him as she’d never been to any before: the glory of her natural form, too good for even gods to claim; a fresco of his love colored upon her.
With great restraint that he stayed his hand, lest the image leave him undone too soon. If he was going to stoop so low as to pleasure himself to her, he was going to draw it out. Perhaps if he remembered every detail, lingered in every memory until he felt nothing at all, if he sucked the marrow from the bones of their dead love. Perhaps that would be enough to cure the ache.
He already knew it would not be the case, but still he would endure.
A miserable thought occurred to him, then: the implication of the years they had spent apart. The fact that although he had not experienced the majesty of her unmarred skin, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that someone else had. Who would it be? Cullen, perhaps? A sick feeling ran through him at the thought that she would associate herself in such a way with the Commander, and his no doubt clumsy imitations of the pleasure that Solas alone could wring from her.
Of course, Solas had no right to bristle so. He had left her. He could not expect her to go without company forever, even if he almost certainly would.
But the cold bath of his jealousy began to warm when a most terrible thought occurred to him – would her thoughts ever wander to the Dread Wolf as she was with another, just as his had? It was a cruel thought, of course. His vhenan, his most precious desire – she should enjoy only peace, only safety, only joy. Solas should not want to haunt her.
But the wolf – the wolf wanted to possess her for all of time, as she had surely possessed him, for nothing else could explain the constant torment he felt even now.
His cock twitched in his hand at the thought of her holding back all that she used to sing to him – oh hahren, please, Solas, my vhenan, satha, I beg you – as Cullen mounted her like a clumsy beast. Solas increased his pace at the thought, fucking his fist in earnest as he imagined the tender tips of her ears, pink and aching for a touch the shemlen would not think to bestow.
How she’d long for Fen’Harel then, for the wolf to come and turn her inside out with pleasure, to sink his claws into her flesh and his teeth into her neck and claim her for all the wretched world to see. Solas bit his lip hard enough to nearly draw blood as the thought sent him soaring to the edge of completion.
Would she touch herself to the memory of him? Of those nights he had pleasured her to the end of her sanity? How he had taken her not only in every way a man could take a woman, but also in ways that only a god could? He pictured her sprawled out across her bed in Skyhold, skin glowing with sweat as she dragged a finger through her folds, picturing the moments he’d brought her to the brink with his mouth alone. She’d slip that finger inside herself as far as it could go, a poor substitute for his cock, and as she shattered she’d call out for him in a reverent whisper. Would he feel it then, those little quivers of her heat rippling across the Fade? Would he hear it ringing in his dreams, the sound of her begging to surrender herself to the Dread Wolf, the confirmation that she’d still have him not in spite of but because of what he was?
Fen’Harel take me, please, vhenan, I need you –
With a howl through gritted teeth he finished, his cock pulsing angrily as he spilled over the tight grip of his hand. He did not relent but instead worked himself too far, until he ached, as if it were a punishment that might ever stop him from so debasing his most precious memories of her.
He cleaned himself then lay down again, breathing deep as he recalled their many shared afterglows. Ellana used to hold him so tenderly after their joinings, one hand pressed against his chest and the other–
The thought hit him like a slap to the face.
Her hand.
How despicable was he that he could somehow forget? For it was not only her vallaslin the Dread Wolf had taken from her.
When Fen'Harel finally returned to his duties, he was certainly no less agonized than he'd been before. For his attempt at a cure had only worsened the ailment, and in search of solace he found only more reminders of his failings.
He was a wretched, evil man. He had nothing but pain to share. It seemed that he was doomed to love her always.