Chapter Text
Elgar’nan, voice dripping with charisma, rouses the goodwill of the party again. The noise level kicks back up. Slaves go back to their duties. Holding her breath and half-prepared for someone to stop her, Idunn beelines for the door, and exits.
Back in the white hallway, Solas strides away, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his head hunkered down. Idunn dashes after him, cold stone against her feet.
“Solas!” she whispers, not wanting to draw anyone else’s attention.
She tries to wipe the sweat from her palm on the side of her dress. She succeeds only in smearing a syrupy feeling of lyrium across her hand and wrist. It makes her jittery. If she were awake, she’d need to cast a spell or two soon to burn off the excess power, before she makes herself sick. Maybe she still should, even while dreaming.
Solas pauses and turns in undisguised surprise as she sprints and catches up to him. “You are in danger, lethallan,” he says.
He has intrigued admiration in his expression and voice, not caution.
Solas grabs her right hand with his left. “Come quickly.”
Solas pulls her down the hallway so fast it makes Idunn dizzy. She scrambles to keep up with his swifter, longer legs. Two parallel walls run on either side of them in the hall, until she realizes with a jolt that the distant vanishing point up ahead is suddenly converging on both of them. The flat floor warps into a curved hill beneath her feet, tripping her. Solas laces her fingers in his and squeezes her hand tight as she falls.
And then she and Solas stand in a tiny, mostly-empty cubic room, the floor checkered dark and light like a chess board. Moss and vines hang down all four walls, the tips of greenery dripping water onto the floor. Behind the foliage, Idunn thinks she might see glimpses of more of Solas’ murals.
“What is your name?” Solas asks, rounding on her, warm but no less demanding for it.
“First-Thaw,” she says on impulse, thinking of the Avvar, thinking of names most likely to belong to ancient spirits. Idunn hears it translate into Elven the moment it leaves her mouth: something like Eireth’lim.
“I see,” Solas says, looking even more fascinated.
She can’t stop staring at the way his vallaslin shift at the tension and stretch of his facial movements. His bottom lip is fuller now than in her time, though chapped. The whites of his eyes are bloodshot. Idunn wonders how frequently, lately, he’s been crying. She probably shouldn’t ask him.
“Why did you risk yourself to follow me?” Solas asks.
“Because I love you, Solas, and I want to know you,” Idunn says before she can stop herself.
She’s terrible at pretending, but she’s not this bad. It must be the boundless Fade, the room, his magic, or all three. Her heart slams at speed against her chest, but he’s reacted worse to the declaration in waking life than he reacts now.
Solas makes a thoughtful and satisfied noise, rich and deep in the back of his throat. He moves forward toward her. Idunn curls her toes, looking up at him.
“Who were you, before your body?” he asks, voice gentle. “Loving Understanding, perhaps?”
“I—” she begins, not sure how to answer.
How typical. Solas doesn’t think her love is about him as a person. He’s giving her a spirit taxonomy instead.
“I understand it may be difficult to think of now,” Solas reassures, when she takes too long to respond. “Whatever the case, you are a rare and marvelous spirit. You have shown yourself twice now ungovernable in your curiosity and love.”
“Love for some people more than others,” she points out, wry. A frenzy threatens to build inside her if she thinks too closely about Elgar’nan and Mythal.
“Such is the nature of having a body,” Solas agrees with a nod. “Thank you for choosing me for your attention.”
The rebel youth reaches freely toward her. He runs a bold hand over the liquid fabric at her hip. Idunn gasps, then presses her lips together.
“You are so earnest, now,” Solas says. “The longer you live bound, the more likely it is that Falon’Din will distort you. Obsession seems likely. Perhaps an extreme form of Self-Sacrifice, or a variant of Despair. You deserve better! You’ve proven your willingness to disobey when and where you can. Such acts are more political than you may realize.”
“Join me,” Solas breathes, fervor and ease and certainty. She hadn’t realized how strongly part of her longed to hear him say that. “I have a plan.”
Idunn swallows. She’s careful with her words. “I want to help you. I believe everyone should be free.”
Solas gazes at her, smiling warmly, like a full-bellied predator. His thumb rubs firm in a circle, pressing into the inner ridge of her hip bone. Arousal floods through Idunn, and she leans against the wall. She’s dizzy again. Cold condensation from the mosses soak against her back, and she shivers.
Solas leans down over her. “Eireth’lim. Do you drip for me like your namesake, the melting frost? Bodies can be troubling, but I can teach you ways to take pleasure in your physical form. Would you enjoy learning this from me?”
She knows him. And because she knows him, she knows: he’s trying to seduce a freshly minted spirit to his cause. To free her, yes, and to seal in her loyalty for the battles ahead. One day, as he grows more broken and hopeless, she’ll be pliant for sacrifice, collateral to the goals of Pride’s rebellion. He might even love her by then, just in time to kill her.
A war criminal taught him how to fight.
His attraction isn’t a lie, but it’s not the kind of sex she wants to have with Solas. She loves this hot-blooded man with the flowing hair, and the tattoos across his scarless face. But he doesn’t love her here, not yet. He doesn’t know her. And she’s not here to fulfill her own fantasies in another world. She’s here to understand the much more damaged man in her time, the one with the nick on his forehead, who awoke, still enslaved, in a world he no longer understood. The one who calls her vhenan. The one with even more blood on his hands.
“I want you, Solas, and badly,” Idunn says, aching, and Solas’ eyes go dark. He grins, so near her mouth. He presses his fingers against the curve where her ass meets her hip, and his other hand tips up her chin, about to kiss her. “But I won’t do this,” she adds quickly. “Not here. It’s not right.”
It’s her turn to give cryptic rejections now. Thinking of the role reversal she’s stumbled into, a suppressed laugh hitches in her chest. Idunn bites her lip to keep from laughing, fails, and laughs in Solas’ face.
Solas stops touching her and steps back, startled, with a tinge of mirrored amusement on his face, and not-insubstantial hurt pride. Brows lowered but lips smirking in confusion, Solas examines her expression. She presses her lips together and swallows down another giggle.
“It is up to you, of course,” he says. “You surprise me. Would you be willing to tell me—”
He’s interrupted by a high, thin howl, above their heads. Idunn looks up at the ceiling.
She falls backwards, upside down in the sky.
***
Freefall, in a void, then floating. Points of light.
The light multiplies. It unfurls, sunny and golden, into long tendrils: bundles of glowing nerves, new connections lighting up and branching in infinite space.
It is a Fade creature with splayed roots and stems and eyes, stretching and reaching, curious and wise. Pieces of experiences, memories, languages, and architecture float by like the soft, lofty fluff of wind-carried seeds. Feelers pluck at them, stroke them, watch them from all angles, unblinking, then gently let them go. The creature floats and shimmers, new offshoots forming.
Another spirit drifts close, amorphous blue and white. If Wisdom grows like branches, then Benevolence sighs like clouds. One spirit ignites a spark in the embodied who approach, lighting up and sending out new runners of ideas, inspiring and advising. The other spirit soothes, taking shapes the needy need most, in a soft, hazy embrace. Feather-stuffed pillows under children’s heads, cooling their fevers.
Two old friends journey together, and sing.
One day, Wisdom is alone. It peers around a corner and watches the earth shake. It looks down at one of its own limbs, branching into many possible paths, many of them a warning. It remembers charismatic Command, who left to prove itself. It remembers the naive certainty of Benevolence, that anything could be eased with a touch. Wisdom coils its limb close to center mass.
It watches a full-grown woman crawl naked in the dirt, weeping and trying to speak, as a tyrant laughs at her. Wisdom drifts unseen at her side, trembling. It teaches her what it has observed about words, politics, and bodies, until she walks away.
It roams, agitated, tendrils grabbing and inspecting objects in the Fade along the way. Then it jerks in surprise, its fringe of eyes standing on end. It quivers with relief and confusion.
Mythal’s voice speaks from a great distance. “You have so long observed the world. Why not consider joining it?”
The spirit shifts, uneasy. It does not want to. Even if it wanted to, it’s afraid of the danger. Benevolence used to breathe, free. Now it—she—is hard edges. Wisdom is ready to assist. But it does not want a body.
What it wants is not so important. Mythal sweetly tells the spirit it is lacking as itself. Incomplete. Gelded. Weak. Power is the only thing that matters now.
Tendrils reel back, recoiling. Nerve endings creep forward again with longing, then contract again, uncertain.
She speaks of need. She is lonely. She is scared of her husband. Her husband will kill many people. He might kill the world. She needs to stop him. She needs Wisdom. She needs. Wisdom curls around itself, unhappy. It tightens into a ball, shrinking. Glowing roots grow dull, shivering.
It dares to hope, too, and tangles into knots.
A woman’s pale hand, made of a single shape, reaches out. One of the spirit’s tendrils, hesitant at first, flicks a touch along her palm, and pulls back. It reaches out again, pressing against her palm, deciding. Trusting. I will always follow where you go.
Her hand clamps around it. It jerks back in pain and alarm, but she won’t let go.
Binding stones, then, and blood and bound Stone, and a terrible, claustrophobic push up out of the earth, being born. Sharp, knife-edged walls slam down around him, excising some of his branches. Limbs fall off, disintegrating. Others contract and pulse red hot. He is reshaped, wrought into something made of pain. The pain of strangers, and hers, and his own.
Solas screams, spitting electricity. An elven woman soothes him in amused, honeyed tones.