Felassan has ever been his most fervent general, his strongest supporter. He had carried the rebellion on his shoulders throughout Solas' millennia in uthenera, had watched the People fall and fail and crawl their way to tenuous survival in a world determined to destroy them. He saw, more even than Solas himself, what a mangle has been made of the world, what the Veil has cost the elves and spirits both. He was loyal, once.
He was Solas' friend, once.
That is what stays his hand, in the end—not the friendship (he has killed too many friends to flinch at the prospect now), but the dissonance of the betrayal, the impossibility of it. It is no longer a surprise to be betrayed by those he would have once considered dear friends, but this—
The sting of it has mellowed, some, after some weeks between Felassan's defiance and their meeting in the flesh. If Felassan had come to him immediately...
He had not. It is not worth considering.
Solas' temper has cooled enough for this, to look his general hard in the eye across the ruins they made of their People's homes with no weapon in hand.
"Of all those who have betrayed our cause," he says, cool with the contempt he has always reserved for traitors, "yours is the turn I least suspected. Well done indeed, Slow Arrow."
"You shouldn't be awake," Felassan answers — or doesn't answer, letting the contempt wash past him and the squirm of disagreement over betrayed go unvoiced. What could he say? What could he say that Solas would hear? Every traitor has their reasons, and Felassan has made quick dispassionate work of executing his share, in his time, even as they named the promises they'd been made or the lovers and children whose safety was held over their heads.
This would only be quick if Felassan allowed it to be. It is too soon, and Solas should not be awake, and what Felassan lacks in deity-worthy power he may make up for with thousands of years' more experience working against the resistance of the Veil. He could probably walk away.
He's walked so far to reach him already, though. It's enough to make him ache like someone one hundredth his age.
Felassan perches on the crumbling remnant of what was once a towering wall, gnarled staff laid across his lap so he can bend a leg and dig a knuckle into the arch of one foot, and contemplates the Dread Wolf. Felassan last saw him mere weeks ago, and Felassan has not seen him in millennia. He looks different here, no part projection or reflection, in sunlight dappled through shifting branches. He looks like someone Felassan was never really afraid of, only for.
"But if you're going to insist," he continues, words friendly, tone conversational, but with a hard-toothed edge that conveys he is in fact perfectly aware they're arguing, "it's not the worst century for it. It's looking interesting so far."
Felassan's gift for dodging topics he would prefer not to speak on has been useful to them both in the past—Solas has even found it amusing, on occasion. The charm of it is somewhat lost in its being turned against him.
His expression remains frigid and impassive, unmoved by Felassan's attempt at levity.
"This is a century of ruin. Suffering. Death."
Death, not just in battle or accident, but inevitable. Death by aging, infirmity, illness—all things the elvhen should never have had to face, save for his rebellion. Torture, corruption, imprisonment of their spirit kin—the loss of who they are. None save Solas remain alive who know the emotion from which Felassan was born.
There was a time, not some hundred years past, that Felassan would have understood that.
"Do you find that so interesting?" he questions, arch, subtly mocking. "You prolong all of this, denying me the passphrase, so I suppose you must. Have the years made you so callow?"
His goal is not beyond him without the eluvians, Felassan knows that as well as he, but it will take time to acquire them now. Time, and effort—lies, manipulations, more... regrettable measures. A year, perhaps two, to put all the pieces in place. Barely more than a blink in the long scheme of their existence,
but a blink in which hundreds of thousands of spirits and elves will suffer and die, needlessly, senselessly. Because of Felassan.
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surpriiiiise
Felassan has ever been his most fervent general, his strongest supporter. He had carried the rebellion on his shoulders throughout Solas' millennia in uthenera, had watched the People fall and fail and crawl their way to tenuous survival in a world determined to destroy them. He saw, more even than Solas himself, what a mangle has been made of the world, what the Veil has cost the elves and spirits both. He was loyal, once.
He was Solas' friend, once.
That is what stays his hand, in the end—not the friendship (he has killed too many friends to flinch at the prospect now), but the dissonance of the betrayal, the impossibility of it. It is no longer a surprise to be betrayed by those he would have once considered dear friends, but this—
The sting of it has mellowed, some, after some weeks between Felassan's defiance and their meeting in the flesh. If Felassan had come to him immediately...
He had not. It is not worth considering.
Solas' temper has cooled enough for this, to look his general hard in the eye across the ruins they made of their People's homes with no weapon in hand.
"Of all those who have betrayed our cause," he says, cool with the contempt he has always reserved for traitors, "yours is the turn I least suspected. Well done indeed, Slow Arrow."
:O
This would only be quick if Felassan allowed it to be. It is too soon, and Solas should not be awake, and what Felassan lacks in deity-worthy power he may make up for with thousands of years' more experience working against the resistance of the Veil. He could probably walk away.
He's walked so far to reach him already, though. It's enough to make him ache like someone one hundredth his age.
Felassan perches on the crumbling remnant of what was once a towering wall, gnarled staff laid across his lap so he can bend a leg and dig a knuckle into the arch of one foot, and contemplates the Dread Wolf. Felassan last saw him mere weeks ago, and Felassan has not seen him in millennia. He looks different here, no part projection or reflection, in sunlight dappled through shifting branches. He looks like someone Felassan was never really afraid of, only for.
"But if you're going to insist," he continues, words friendly, tone conversational, but with a hard-toothed edge that conveys he is in fact perfectly aware they're arguing, "it's not the worst century for it. It's looking interesting so far."
no subject
His expression remains frigid and impassive, unmoved by Felassan's attempt at levity.
"This is a century of ruin. Suffering. Death."
Death, not just in battle or accident, but inevitable. Death by aging, infirmity, illness—all things the elvhen should never have had to face, save for his rebellion. Torture, corruption, imprisonment of their spirit kin—the loss of who they are. None save Solas remain alive who know the emotion from which Felassan was born.
There was a time, not some hundred years past, that Felassan would have understood that.
"Do you find that so interesting?" he questions, arch, subtly mocking. "You prolong all of this, denying me the passphrase, so I suppose you must. Have the years made you so callow?"
His goal is not beyond him without the eluvians, Felassan knows that as well as he, but it will take time to acquire them now. Time, and effort—lies, manipulations, more... regrettable measures. A year, perhaps two, to put all the pieces in place. Barely more than a blink in the long scheme of their existence,
but a blink in which hundreds of thousands of spirits and elves will suffer and die, needlessly, senselessly. Because of Felassan.