Chapter Text
She is in the dark for a long, long time.
Or at least, it feels that way.
In the dark, in the blackness, with whispers. Familiar voices. Loved ones, friends, comrades. Enemies, acquaintances. Strangers, except she thinks maybe not - she thinks maybe she just doesn’t remember where she heard those voices before. They flit at the periphery of her awareness, and sink into the back of her skull. Clawing at her thoughts. Crying out in distress, and in pain. In need, but, she can’t move. Can’t answer.
She’s trapped, and all she can do is listen.
They don’t even say anything distinct. The meaning of the words escapes her, somehow. As if they’re in a language she doesn’t know, except they aren’t. They slide through the shadows. Make them up. Hold her in this prison, and with each passing moment, she’s less sure that it’s a prison and not a tomb.
And then it cracks.
Little fissures of light burst into the blackness, right before all of it breaks at once. She gasps, somehow feeling as if she had been suffocating without realizing it. Her skin burns, molten hot, and everything is too bright instead of too dark. It sends her careening. Sets her heart to hammering, and her lungs to straining, and her mind to scrambling. Trying to pick up the pieces of itself.
Hands close over her shoulders and she almost throws them off, before a familiar voice reaches her ears.
“Vhenan,” Solas says. His tone is gentle but his voice is rough, and ragged, as if he has been running for miles.
Still, it cleaves through the confusion. It’s real and steady and gives her something to hang onto. She stills, and focuses on the feel of his hands, and the ground beneath her legs. She blinks, rapidly, and the brightness that had been eating her vision resolves into blurry shapes and sparks, and the outline of Solas’ face.
Where are they? In a dream? In the past?
“Solas?” she asks, voice barely more than a whisper.
He shakes, just a little, and then pulls her close. She goes easily enough. Falling into his arms as he wraps them around her, and buries his nose against her temple. She breathes him in, and is increasingly certain that they are awake. She thinks she can feel the crumpled fabric of her bedroll beneath her knees. Solas smells like sweat and blood and pine needles, and the blue flames of their camp fire lick at the air behind him. Barely visible past the rumpled fabric on his shoulders.
“Are you hurt?” she asks him. That iron-heavy scent is disquieting. Her hand moves across his back, but he only tightens his grip on her.
“No,” he tells her. “No, I am fine.”
“What happened?” she wonders.
He is quiet for a long moment. She eases back a little, enough to look at his face. It’s still blurry for a bit, until her vision fully clears, at last, and she can see the shadows in his eyes.
She can see the hesitance.
“There was a malevolent… or, at least, an angry creature in the Dreaming,” he tells her. “It ensnared you. But, it is done with now. You will not have to worry about it again.”
His tone is reassuring. But she knows that look in his eyes. That almost-rueful, painful evasion. Secrets stacking up on one another. Truths that are not the whole truth. It makes her feel cold. Makes her want to pull away. Makes her want to take him by the shoulders and shake him. Makes her want to cup his cheek with her hand and stare into his eyes and just look at him until she can figure out how to see the secrets in him.
“Do not lie to me,” is what she says, hard and jagged as broken glass.
His expression falls. His eyes close, and she does reach for his cheek, then. Catching him. Keeping him from looking down. From casting her aside, and retreating back into his precious half-truths and evasions and all that knowledge that sits inside of him and swallows him away, like a black, hungry well.
Like the whispers, still crawling beneath her skin.
“Solas,” she says, and her voice breaks. She cannot… she cannot stand it, anymore. Being in the dark.
“It is an ancient creature,” Solas tells her. “A thing of this time. I have… appeased it, but only by accepting a task for it. But do not worry. There is little in this world that can counter me, as I am. That is why it took you. That is why it… it made you…”
She waits, as he trails off. Pained.
“Made me what?” she wonders.
“I will fix it,” he assures her. “I will not let it stand. You need not worry. Please, please just… let me handle it?”
“Made me what?” she presses.
He sucks in a breath, and looks at her. And she may not get all of it out of him, she thinks. But she’s got him here. And she thinks she might already know. Or suspect, at least. There’s something… weighing her. Something deep, and heavy with those shadowed whispers. Lying like oil at the bottom of her lungs. Like black fire in the pit of her gut.
“It tainted you,” Solas tells her.
The Blight.
She lets go of him, hastily, half afraid that she might somehow transmit it to him through the simplest of touches. Cold fear knifes through her, along with a surprising depth of resignation. Of course. Of course, it would come to this. She should have been with them, after all. She should be part of it, in the end. So of course she is, now. Poisoned. Blighted by the souls of those she failed, in her love for him.
She pushes at his shoulders, pushes him back, but he catches her wrist. Gently.
“It is alright,” he tells her. “It is alright, I will fix it. We are fixing it. We had to make haste anyway, this changes nothing.”
“Let me go,” she replies.
“Vhenan…”
She pulls, and he releases her. Lets her move back, and wrap her one good arm around herself. She can feel it. Maybe it’s her own imagination, but she doesn’t think so. There are accounts. Of wardens, of tainted recruits, of the dead before they died, talking about it. But when she manages to shift, to lift her hand and look at her skin, she can see no blackened marks. Feel no pain. She uses her mouth to drag up the sleeve of her sleeping shirt, and turns her arm towards the firelight, as Solas watches. Then she takes up her shield and stares critically at her reflection in the polished surface. At the whites of her eyes, and the pulse point of her throat. Maybe it is just too dark to see properly…
Light gleams.
Gentle, magical light. She glances over at Solas, but he only holds it up for her, as she goes back to looking at the shield. Searching the veins at the soft skin of her elbow, and then the backs of her knees. The scarred-over fleshed from her amputated arm.
“It has not progressed,” Solas tells her. “The Blight has only just begun here, and our work with the other Titan has diminished some of it. It has not yet spilled into the Dreaming, the way it had in the future. So long as you stay on the surface, it will move slowly in you.”
She glances at him, lips thinning with displeasure, even as she feels a note of relief.
“You are not leaving me behind,” she tells him.
“No,” he agrees, more easily than she expected. He dispels the light, and then turns his gaze downwards again. “There are better options than simply delaying it. I will cure you of it, my heart. I can promise you that much.”
Sometimes, she thinks, his promises are frightening. Even the most well-meant ones.
“I do not want that promise,” she tells him, numbly. There are too many ways it could awry. Too many dangers, to the ways he might hold to his word. She knows what it is worth… and knows how well he can work around such things, too.
“I…” he begins, and then trails off with a curse.
She closes her eyes.
Blighted.
Setting her shield aside, she cannot help but wrap her arm around herself again. Cannot help but hang her head, and try to suck in a few steadying breaths. But they break in her mouth. Her insides feel like they’ve been coated in bile, and she shakes, wondering how much of it is real and how much of it is her own mind, and how much that even matters in this time.
“It fits,” she finds herself saying. “I should be dead anyway. It fits. They can take their vengeance upon me.” And not you. They can have her, and the whole of it can go to whatever fate awaits them; and this world, at least, can carry on to some better future.
What a bitter hope that is.
“No,” Solas says. Staring at her from the few feet of distance that may as well be a canyon between them. He shakes his head, and his hands clench atop the ground. “No, vhenan. You betrayed no one. You have as much right to life as anyone. There is no vengeance for them to take, not from you.”
As if she would let them have it from him.
She never could. That is why they are here, in the end.
Selfish.
Her eyes burn. She grits her teeth, and shakes, and cannot keep the shaking from turning to sobbing. Clutching at herself, tighter and tighter, until her nails are digging in through the fabric of her shirt, and her vision is blurred by tears rather than disorientation.
“Solas,” she says.
He moves as if a chain has just snapped, and finally freed him to hasten to her. He pulls her into his arms again, and she struggles to recall why he shouldn’t.
“I am poison,” she whispers. Remembers. Reminds.
“Oh, no,” he says. “Oh, no, my love. I am the poison. I always have been.”
They both are, she supposes. They both are wretched, poisonous failures, in their own way. Both of them together. She clutches at his rumpled clothes, and leans into him. Pouring out her tears against the fabric of his shirt, as his own spill down the side of her neck. As he bites back his apologies, until they come rushing free anyway. Not begging for the forgiveness she cannot grant, but nevertheless spilling his remorse across her. Half-abandoned promises and stymied efforts at comfort, all his frustrated hopes of fixing what cannot be fixed.
She leans her forehead against his neck, and breathes in slowly through her nose. As the tears taper off, as the edge of sorrow vanishes into the massive pit of grief that lives inside of her, she sighs. Turns her face more fully towards him, pressing her nose against his neck. All but begging for what comfort she can find, in actions if not in words.
Please.
Touch. Touch is more comforting, she thinks. There are no words that can settle this, but even if it brings with it a heavy pang of guilt, the warmth of his arms around her just… soothes something.
Something that can be soothed. in this broken mess.
She hates herself even as she reaches for it. Curls her fingers against his collar, and lets him keep his arms around her, and gives in to the tiny part of her that feels safe like this. Because nothing else does. She cannot even feel safe in her own skin, now.
Solas stills for a moment. And then he lifts her hand from his collar, and presses her palm to his lips. He answers her unspoken plea with soft caresses. Steady and simple, as he presses her more firmly to him, and runs a hand down her back. Folds her fingers into his grasp, and twines them with his own.
“My love,” he calls her. Wounded and remorseful, and sincere.
“Shh,” she replies, cupping her hand around his cheek again. She presses her thumb to his lips, as he looks down at her in the dark.
He leans in slowly. Telegraphing his intentions, but she doesn’t move away. Doesn’t evade him, as he brushes his lips to her own. It is barely a kiss, at first. She feels his breath more than his lips. Her hand trails up his cheek, and she tilts up, just a bit. Seeking the soft warmth of him, before she remembers why he might not want to press more closely.
Then she does pull back, a little. Dropping downwards as his mouth takes it turn in chasing hers.
“I am tainted,” she whispers. “Is it…?”
Is it alright?
He kisses her soundly.
Pulling her flush to him, his mouth all at once hungry. He doesn’t hesitate for a moment, and the feel of him, the warm press of his lips, his hands on her, his chest against hers… she cracks open at it, breaks a little bit over how much she wants it, how badly she missed it, how undeniably broken she is in so many ways. How this might be the only wound for which there is a balm he can actually provide.
It is the most selfish of her hurts, she believes, that wound that opened up when he left her. But there are so many. So many, with no hope of healing.
She slides her hand to the back of his head, and holds him against her.
“Vhenan,” she calls him, breathless, when he breaks away to trail his lips across her jaw. Frantic presses that make their way to her neck. Her own touch encourages him. Holding him to her, before she draws it down and runs the delicate flesh of one of his ears between her fingers. Brushes his cheek, and wipes a tear track from the corner of his eye.
He stalls a bit, and the trail of kisses turns to somewhat incoherent nuzzling. It is not a frantic pursuit of passions, as it trembles apart, in more tears and touches. She settles against his lap, shifting her legs around him, but they move in the simplest of gestures for a long while. Quiet, but for soft exhalations, and gently murmured words.
Solas pauses at one point to straighten out the fabric of her bedroll. And then she lays back onto it, as his hands slide up the bottom of her shirt, and his mouth trails down her collarbone. He moves intently downwards, but she halts him, and pulls him back up. She doesn’t want him going so far away, as absurd as it may be. She doesn’t need him to catch her on fire. She needs him to meet her gaze, to keep with her, even if only in this simple way.
Her hand trails across his jaw, and she grasps his chin. And he gets it. He stays with her, as his hand slips between her thighs. He presses at her through the flimsy fabric of her underclothes. Long, slow touches, that get her hips rocking into him. When she reaches for him, he catches her wrist and moves her hand back up to his shoulder instead.
“Let me,” he asks, quietly.
She sighs, and pulls him in for another kiss instead. Rocks against his hand as the slow, low heat in her builds. They move in stages. Sometimes he withdraws his touch to from between her legs to trail it up underneath her shirt, and slide his thigh against her instead. Sometimes they simply move against one another through their clothes. Sometimes she presses her face to his neck, and kisses his pulse; or draws him down onto her, and just holds him, and breathes.
“Solas.”
She’s not even sure if either of them come before she falls asleep again, wrapped in his arms. The first few times she almost drifts off, she snaps awake again in a rush of fear that has him whispering assurances into her ear.
“You are safe,” he promises. “Your dreams will be safe.”
She is not certain she believes the former.
But she trusts he will have seen to the latter, somehow. And when she does finally fall into dreams, they are of a peaceful, gentle sort. Lonely only for the first few moments, as she lies on soft moss and familiar pillows, borrowed from her bed in Skyhold. Bathed in sunlight, until Solas is there again, and it is all dreamy sensation. The pale expanse of his shoulder, and heat of his mouth, reverent upon her skin.
She’s not certain if either of them comes while they’re awake. But she knows they do in dreams. As he stays with her, and looks at her, and slides into her. She catches one of his hands so she can thread her fingers with his. So she can hold onto him as they settle into a rhythm that matches the thrum of her heartbeat. That moves in patterns as symbolic as not, sensations drifting up, impressions of his touch lingering like tracks in fresh fallen snow. When she comes, it all melts away into a muted darkness.
When she wakes, she’s pressed firmly to his chest.
Her skin is tingling, and her heart is heavy.
“Marry me,” she asks him.
He goes utterly still, and… yes, she supposes that was a rather unexpected reaction to all of this. It’s possible she’s not entirely awake. Her hand traces pattens across his back. Her nose is squished up near his armpit. He smells like a damp, sweaty forest, and she probably does, too.
He’s the Dread Wolf, she has the Blight, and the world has ended and begun again.
“That would bind you to me forever,” he tells her. Like a warning.
“I am already bound to you forever,” she replies. If there is any further way to prove it, she has no idea what it might be.
Solas presses his lips to the top of her head.
“Then we are already married,” he says. “Because I will never leave you again.”
She closes her eyes, and stills her hand to rest it between his shoulder blades.
Fair enough, really.