[ Felassan does know. Beleth told him while Solas was gone, while they searched for his consciousness in Caldera's Fade, with Felassan trying to lead her through thoughts of him like a ritual to summon him back to them — a devastatingly familiar activity, for Felassan, made not so bad as before by her hand in his. But he'll never decline to hear them repeat themselves or each other. Different angles, different nuances, and even if they echoed word for word it would still be a chance to listen to their voices for a spell. ]
I love her,
[ is not much louder than Solas's yes.
Old news, though he only says it rarely, but he means it differently right now. Even if he didn't love her — if he thought her eyes were too bright and lively and her freckles unsightly, if her laugh grated against his nerves instead of seizing him by the heart every time, if he considered her a foolish tool in over her head instead of someone who might shape the world with her bare hands, even if he were excluded and pining and jealous of the way Solas's attention winds ceaselessly after her like a river toward the sea — he would love her for this. For what she sees in Solas, and the way she looks at him, and the things she allows him to be with her, and his simple certainty from the day he first saw them together that Solas would never be alone again.
[His smile is, despite himself, a soft and beatific thing, to hear it. Everyone who knew her loved Beleth, but Felassan knew her more honestly than most. Gratifying was not the word, nor was glad...No, it was pride. He was proud to know that they loved one another.]
Yes. It was not actually the very first time we spoke, of course. But it was the first time we had conversation in any detail.
[He is quiet only for a moment then, falling silent as if he means to be finished, but the rest comes out of him in the very next breath. Like an itch that lies forgotten until it is scratched, the strange satisfaction of simply being able to talk about Beleth, to tell someone who knows, who understands... It is irresistible.]
She surprised me. I had expected someone tightly-controlled by fear, isolated, and hostile. I was prepared to be comforting, to act as an advisor, or a point of calm. Instead she met me with her own calm, despite having every reason for doubt, and spoke to me only with curiosity and kindness. I watched as she became what everyone around her wished her to be, molding her persona into the perfect leader— at first, I believed it was only to avoid the danger that even her own followers posed, but then I saw the clever way she manipulated every decision until it pointed not towards what was wanted, but what was right. Her capabilities were unfeigned brilliance, in a way that would not arouse the suspicion of those who thought of themselves as her betters, before they had known her name.
I suppose I too had thought as much, though I doubt she would have perceived it thus. And she never... she didn't ask me for anything I did not first offer. Only asked questions. Only wanted to learn, to...
...I fell in love. You understand too, how it is to stand with her, no matter how humble the task.
[ Felassan listens. Between the picture Solas paints and the one Beleth painted herself, debriefing him on the state of Thedas since he saw it last the first time they spoke, he can imagine it with some clarity. No details, no dialogue, but the clarity of a fresco. He would have liked to have seen it. He would have liked to have watched her work, bending lords and ladies and priests into respect for her and the world into something more just, and he would have liked to have watched Solas grow warm and troubled and vulnerable at the thought of her. A woman who only asked for what he offered — yes, that would have touched him, wouldn't it?
Felassan makes an agreeable sound. He understands. Although: ]
It might have taken me longer if you had not loved her first. I looked to see what you were looking at.
[ It's no insult. Longer is not never, anyway, and to fall at all —
It had not always felt so impossible. Felassan always had his secrets and his higher loyalties, but he wasn't always solitary. When Solas vanished he'd had Darevas and Enasalas, who grew weak and wrinkled under his hands until Darevas died and Enasalas couldn't stand the unfair sight of Felassan's untouched face. Venaste, born mortal, flashed through his life like a lightning bolt — he never quite felt like he actually grasped hold of them. Ethlam was quieter and slower, and it ended not with death but with an ultimatum Felassan couldn't agree to. Ghilissal wove in and out of his path for centuries, ageless but withering beneath the weight of loss. A wisp of herself well before she entered Uthenera. She'd said she would come back, but the shemlen came first.
She'd been the last. After that something in him severed; he withdrew, and for nearly two thousand years he loved nothing except his hopes and the ghost he guarded to keep them alive.
But Beleth would have gotten past it all, he thinks, even without Solas or shortcuts or effort. It would have been enough to hear her speak of her dreams and her strategies, to see her mouth twist in thought and her fingers rearrange her hair, to be the target of her sparkling attention and false outrage at his bad jokes. It would have only taken time for him to be willing to let her wound him with her absence. ]
[He laughs, low and wry and maybe a little bitter. The sting has gone out of the memory, largely.]
There came a rare moment of peace, amidst the chaos of ongoing battle and the political machinations. We left the Inquisition behind for a day, and walked the Crestwood of Ferelden, nearby to where the work had recently taken us. I took her to a grove I had discovered, long-untouched, graced by statuary that had been in its place since Arlathan, and had once been part of a stronghold of the Evanuris, now long crumbled.
[She had loved it; the history, the stories, the graceful leaping forms of granite Halla, barely-marred by millenia of wear, standing up to their hocks in green. All the suffering of Ghilan'nain's people buried, peacefully sleeping under meters of soil and tree-root and new life, which spilled in silver-and-green tides over the seasons and walkways of the reclaimed flagstones. The forest was reclaiming what had been taken.]
I was terribly in love, and so was she. I intended, I think, to tell her everything in that moment. That I was Fen'Harel, that the Dread Wolf was not as her ancestors had taught her, how long I had lived, what we as elves truly were, all my secrets, or as many as I could reasonably do so. I began with that intention, but I—
[He had balked. He had been afraid. Afraid of her reaction, or of his own. Or of what it would mean.]
She changed everything. If I did not love her, then it would have been easy to draw her further in, to weave a tale of a conspiracy of which she was a special and secret member, and deepen the lie. But I did love her, had loved her for longer than I realized. And when she asked me to remove her Vallaslin... I could not lie to myself any longer, nor mislead her about my intentions which were— to her, at least, monstrous. [And to tell the whole of the truth would have been to abandon everything I had done and worked and fought for since the Evanuris last walked free. That much he does not have to say, Solas thinks, and Felassan may understand. After all, what did he tell his Briala of the world, in the end?] So I ended it. I broke her heart, and left her there. That, I think, is when I truly admitted it to myself, ironically.
[ Does Felassan have any room to judge anyone else for self-denial or for what they did or did not confess to the people they loved at any particular time? No. Is he going to let that stop him from saying, ]
Solas,
[ in a despairing tone? Absolutely not.
But it's a gentle kind of despair, more secondhand mourning than scolding. A choice that hurt them both, and Felassan loves them both, and Felassan cannot actually say he would have handled it any differently or any better. ]
That I should not distract her from the task of saving the world, of course. [Of course.] I do not think she believed me, not even for a minute. What followed was... considerable misery. And loneliness, for us both.
What shocked me more was that she never wavered. Whenever we chanced to meet, she was ardent that her feelings had not changed, would not change. Of course my own did not either...
[ Beleth told him something of that, too, trying to comfort him after getting a glimpse of his death. That even when she knew what he was planning, it had taken a lot more than her voice to convince him to turn off the path. ]
No. Not for her alone. And not without her, either. I...
[Solas' hesitation now is no thinking pause, no gap where consideration lies. He genuinely loses the thread of conversation for a moment, has to bow his head and try to find calm.]
For all those we have lost. Who died because of my— Because of me. And how many I killed, to keep to the plan? To heal the wound that I had made in the world. How could I turn away from them all, from all that had been done? I might as well have stayed in Mythal's service from the beginning, if I could turn so easily from my own sense of right and wrong.
[And true too: he could never really escape her shadow, even then, even ten thousand years later. But to hear her acknowledge that she had hurt him, and release him from the obligation to her memory...]
Even so, I could not have let go, without her there to remind me. What matters most.
[ Felassan is quiet for a long moment, in turn. He killed his share, before he came to that overdue and sudden stop. Kept a spy's distance and hardened heart, better and longer than Solas was ever suited for. Cut throats. Demolished friendships. Tolerated as much dissent as he expected Solas to tolerate from him. Obliterated anything in the way of a larger goal because it would only be a matter of minutes, it seemed, before time obliterated them anyway. Anyone was expendable. He was expendable. Anyone but Solas — then Briala.
So he does think he understands. ]
And what is that, hahren?
[ The lightest pinch of teasing, to push against the weight of all those pauses. ]
What is the point of slaughtering our descendants, only to restore a glory whose time is long gone? Let Arlathan rest, lethallin, for it could only have ever been built on a foundation of blood and servitude. Let tomorrow be built by those who come after.
Of course, there is the small detail that these children have leashed me to the sole artifact that maintains their much-cherished mortality. But perhaps one day I shall die, and then whoever remains shall see if they can do better in reality, rather than mere optimism.
In any case, I am at last free of the duty to care, as I am of the one who placed that duty upon me. The veil's weight will not break me, if that could not.
[ Solas may be ashamed if he likes. Felassan is only pleased and relieved to hear they are somewhat more closely aligned on this fundamental question than they had been, only a few short months ago, when Felassan posited that the flood had become the sea and was no longer theirs to change.
The rest he is happier to scuffle over. For example: ]
If you plan to accept that chain as permanent, my friend, you might want to leave me here after all.
[ He says it lightly. The threat is only that he will be annoying — so nothing Solas has not already proven a thousand times over that he can endure. ]
I fail to see that there is any more choice in the matter.
[Solas... doesn't know how he feels about it. It's true that he put the shackle upon his own wrist, and locked it tight. It's true also that he might never have done so without Beleth there to beg him to stop, without Morrigan's ardent plea for mortal wills, without Rook's guileless trust, or the final cruelty of Mythal's last fragment, refusing to grant him death, and at last taking from his heart that final tether.
What then, if he had been clear-eyed, and unpained, if they had not surrounded him with pleading and put the knife into his hand? He cannot know. Only, here and now, he both does and does not regret it, feeling both the freedom and the servitude in the act as an impossible dichotomy. His opinion changes by the day, sometimes by the hour.
But it is worth enduring, if only for the joy of getting to rest, finally. Of having Beleth in his life again. Of hearing Felassan's voice. An incomprehensible, illogical truth.]
But perhaps you would be willing to offer an alternative that I cannot understand. It is my wish to compel you to live, as I once did the opposite. If you are willing.
[ This is also lightly said. A natural thing, for elvhen to eventually decide they've seen enough — although he hasn't. He wasn't tired of the stars or the trees or the taste of roasted rabbit. He's certainly not tired of crawling onto Beleth and Solas in the early hours of the morning and helping himself to handfuls of skin and the warmth they've created beneath their blankets. That isn't the problem. ]
I've wondered what it makes me, to decide a hundred years is plenty for them and thousands are not enough for me. Of course, [ bright as well as light, now, because Solas has enough to worry about already, ] I will go anyway, if I can, and if you notice me becoming a monster you can write me a stern letter.
[ He'd even read it. He'd even listen. ]
I don't have an alternative for the Veil yet, but I will.
[ All confidence. It's not confidence in his own ability to think of something Solas can't — not here in the realm of intricate, world-altering rituals and careful calculations. But he's brimming with confidence he can be obnoxious enough to spur Solas into thinking new thoughts of his own, with time, or else he'll go find some ancient spirits of Creativity and Innovation, or he and Beleth can assemble a team of scrappy mortals with both practical and ethical concerns about the stability of their world resting wholly on the shoulders of one sad man. ]
[It produces a terrible pang in Solas to hear him say that. It would be terribly unfair for it to be true; Felassan come to the end of his long, slow delight in the world, just as Solas is at last beginning to live in truth. But of course, it is a joke.
Only a joke, and he calms himself while Felassan waxes poetic and foolish and optimistic, as is his way.]
...I...
[None are truly free until all are. Once, he would have championed that, and has for long centuries made it a cornerstone of his moral code. That it must be freedom for all, or the work is not complete... But. But, how to square that with what had become of him, in the end?]
I want to be free, I... feel the weight of it, that I am not. [Illusory as it is, he sometimes wakes in the night and feels it like a wet, cloying weight, heavy and breathless upon him. The Veil, his greatest mistake, his most terrible regret. So many dead, so many more yet to die, born to lives so brutally short...] But just the same, there is no one who truly wishes me to be free. I believe I know right and wrong, and I try all I can to act accordingly...
...But every monster believes himself to be in the right. When I am free to act, with only my own conscience to guide me, the entire world becomes my enemy, and even those I love most stand against me.
Perhaps it is better to accept the circumstances in which I find myself, than to struggle pointlessly any longer. Although, if I think about it for too long... Ir abelas, Falon, that I disappoint you.
[ It was not entirely a joke. Felassan does wonder. He does worry. Dying had been a clean solution to the dilemma of how to live in this new world that did not belong to them rather than only waiting in the wings to unmake it, the question of what to do with his hands and endless time, the impossible task of shedding some calluses without bleeding everywhere, and now —
It's set aside to wonder and worry about this instead. To ache for Solas, who has been caught between impossible choices for all the time Felassan has known him. Longer. From the day he was first asked to change the core of what he was to follow a friend. And to ache for his own part in it, even if he wouldn't take it back, and for the simpler days of wrestling with Solas about the details and particulars of achieving the dreams they shared but never doubting he could and would follow where he went.
He says, ]
You do not disappoint me,
[ and he says it in their own language, soft and rhythmic. The common tongue is second nature, now, but this is still first. ]
You know I have always loved to argue with you. You give me a gift.
Are we only free if we can do whatever we see fit with all the power that we have?
[Solas replies in kind, Elvhen flowing out of him almost as a relief. It is still rare and lovely to be able to speak thus, in his native tongue.]
How not? You joined with me as a revolutionary, one who would use his strength as a rallying-point, and a force against the strong, in defense of the weak.
[It was, in fact, something like your idea, Felassan. Do you remember that?]
Is that not the definition of freedom? To do as you will, according to what you see as right. To be stopped only by your choice to stop, by the physical realities, or by the actions of others.
If the Veil is to stand, it must have a living anchor, someone sufficiently powerful to withstand it. With the Evanuris dead at last, and the titans long-destroyed, I am the only one who could do so.
It is not entirely unjust: having once broken the world, who else should be the one to rightly bear this burden? It is the will of The People.
[It is the word for elves that he uses, Elvhenan, but the meaning could so clearly apply to all peoples. It was, after all, not only elves that met to bring down Elgar'nan, nor only elves that lived and died and grew up under Solas' Veil. They had sent their armies, their generals, and their warriors to the battle; Antivan Crows, Rivaini fire-breathers, the Dalish Veil-Jumpers, the Wardens and even the Dwarves. And Beleth. In the end, he had bowed to inevitability, and turned aside from the quest.
The last faithful moment, now ended. So it goes.]
Let it be, Slow Arrow. You are my friend, and I love you. You will always wish I could have had a better ending to my story, as I would wish for a better to yours. But we have seen what I am when I am free. I destroyed the world.
You intend to do more than wish. [ Even in the measured cadence of their language that comes out like a bite. As he breathes, though, I love you curls warmly through this ribs — dirty fighting, but effective. Gentler: ] You have already done more than wish.
[ If this were the end. If this is the end, despite the best efforts of his favorite persuasive false prophet and brilliant not-quite-god. If it is then it's an end where he has said more of what he should have said, seen proof those he cares for will be fine, fallen asleep with his face pressed to Beleth's sweet neck, and laughed with his mouth latched so tightly to Solas's that both their cheeks puffed out. So it's much better.
He breathes. He thinks. He chooses one of a half-dozen points he might argue, because one has to be first. ]
It is their future to build. I believe they can do it. That you endure this for a while, to give them time, maybe that is fair to ask. But not forever. It is one thing to ask a man to hold a beam in place while you search for a nail and another to make him part of the architecture. If their world is built on your back, there will always be a rot at the heart of it, as there was at the heart of Arlathan.
[ Which means Felassan will be entitled to burn it down.
Not really.
... Maybe, though. ]
I am not certain I have ever seen you free, my friend. [ A pause, and a sheepish, warm addition, like he's pleased to remember he can. ] My love. But when I have seen you close to it, you've protected the innocent and you've painted.
Their world has always been built on the back of unwilling captives. It is only the number and names which have changed; I did not sleep in uthenera by choice.
[Did the Evanuris deserve it? In Solas' opinion, there was no punishment too lengthy, too cruel, or too severe for what they had done in their time as the unassailable rulers of Thedas. But if all it was was a tally of sins, a list of names of those they had wronged, whose was the longer list? He suspects that there are worse things than Elgar'nan, by some measurements.
And like them, he would have been in the Fade for many years hence, if not for the clever ideas of one solitary, stupid Wolf.]
...But you have a point. [And then Felassan corrects himself, such as that Solas must close his eyes. Felassan, Felassan, late does the arrow fall and unerring is its aim. He wishes you had stuck his heart sooner, if only that he might have more of this.] I— Thank you. For your faith in me, if nothing else.
And so does Solas. That's why Felassan enjoys the arguing. The asking. Chasing and evading a swift and wily creature in a deep wood until he finds himself somewhere unexpected, be it lovely or alarming. Felassan hums in answer and tugs at the loose threads in his own thoughts. When Solas told him what lay in store he said throw Elgar'nan back in, and he'd meant it. To think of Elgar'nan as deserving of anything like mercy —
But they were something like brothers once, Solas and Elgar'nan, weren't they. Cousins. Distant cousins. People who might have said our and us, in any case, before they found that breaking point. ]
They did not know, then. No one knew who did not mean to unmake it.
[ Easier, while he wrestles unhappily with the thought he may perhaps need to give the Evanuris any pity. ]
I do not believe there is a choice, in their minds. There is only the world as it has always been, and the way someone with great power is choosing to alter it. If I tell them I would merely be putting it back as it originally was, it means nothing to them. They are too young to remember anything as it was before, after all.
[They will always be too young to remember it, now, as they have been for many millennia. Give them a chance, Felassan had asked him once— well, when does that stop? When Briala is dead, there will already be a new generation who considers the world to be their own, younger still and fresher-faced.
And Solas will always be too old, and too broken, to understand why they want it. But he doesn't need to understand in order to please them; he merely needs to serve his purpose, as he has been bid.]
It is a lack of a choice, a maintenance of what is and has always been, for me to uphold the veil. But do you know what truly lurks in my nightmares? [He pauses, wondering if Felassan has realized, or if he knew.] The Grey Wardens.
Edited (cadence was off, needed fixing.) 2025-12-04 03:04 (UTC)
[ He is about to joke. It is fairly clear. But even so, it's a subdued sort of joke, mindful of the fact that something that truly lurks in Solas's nightmares is unlikely to actually be funny. ]
The archdemons they kill are not merely named for the old gods of Tevinter, nor for the Evanuris that precede them. They are those very selfsame dragons, who once had been bound to the Evanuris themselves. With every Blight, with every Archdemon killed, an Evanuris became no longer immune to death.
And once they could be killed, they were, if not by the act itself, then by their fellows— what better source of power, after all, than a god? [The irony in his voice keeps the term a mockery, but he's grim enough that it's a near thing.] By the time I was able to see it, there were only two left alive; Ghilan'nain, and Elgar'nan.
What would have happened, if I had lost faith? If I had simply stopped trying to save them, and let the world go on however it pleased? One by one, the Evanuris fell to desperation and sought a way to breach their prison. It nearly worked, once, why not again? And yet, one by one, they failed, and the Wardens sent them to their deaths.
And when Elgar'nan's Blight died with Lusacan, the Veil would have fallen on its own, anchorless and void of power.
You were right. It would have been much the wiser to simply allow the mortals their chance. But instead... this. So much for the Wisdom of the Dread Wolf.
[ Some of this is news. Some of it is not. All of it is dramatic, and whenever Solas speaks with this kind of gravitas Felassan has always had two competing impulses: to shiver, and to mock. And he's pretty good at multitasking. He makes a sound somewhere between a snort and laugh, a single syllable puff, but it isn't unaffected. Something shaky around the edges of it. Like laughing at a ghost story but also keeping a lantern lit. ]
We live and we learn.
[ Trite. Dry. Typically he cherishes any rare occasion when Solas tells him he was right about something; this time, not so much.
Felassan had never entirely decided that the Veil shouldn't fall. He'd decided he wouldn't take the eluvians from Briala; he'd decided she deserved a chance to fight for her people. Their people. He'd decided they weren't weak, diseased things who should be glad to see their miserable era end, even if it ended in blood and chaos, but people who could and should be allowed to choose their own way.
He tries to imagine it now. Just waiting, after all, probably no more than another thousand years. Watching the Veil fray and dissolve, as destructive as a wildfire and as little anyone's fault — save Elgar'nan's, perhaps, if his death could only come by choice in the end, alone in the Black City with no one left to command. Would he have been sorry? Sorrier than he is now, every time he looks at Beleth and Solas in what should be the blackest dark and sees their sleeping faces cast green by the glow of that damned anchor?
Hard to say. ]
We might have warned them it was coming and given them time to prepare. We still could, if we find a way. If there is nothing but you it could be tied to.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I love her,
[ is not much louder than Solas's yes.
Old news, though he only says it rarely, but he means it differently right now. Even if he didn't love her — if he thought her eyes were too bright and lively and her freckles unsightly, if her laugh grated against his nerves instead of seizing him by the heart every time, if he considered her a foolish tool in over her head instead of someone who might shape the world with her bare hands, even if he were excluded and pining and jealous of the way Solas's attention winds ceaselessly after her like a river toward the sea — he would love her for this. For what she sees in Solas, and the way she looks at him, and the things she allows him to be with her, and his simple certainty from the day he first saw them together that Solas would never be alone again.
Less softly: ]
Is that when it started?
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Yes. It was not actually the very first time we spoke, of course. But it was the first time we had conversation in any detail.
[He is quiet only for a moment then, falling silent as if he means to be finished, but the rest comes out of him in the very next breath. Like an itch that lies forgotten until it is scratched, the strange satisfaction of simply being able to talk about Beleth, to tell someone who knows, who understands... It is irresistible.]
She surprised me. I had expected someone tightly-controlled by fear, isolated, and hostile. I was prepared to be comforting, to act as an advisor, or a point of calm. Instead she met me with her own calm, despite having every reason for doubt, and spoke to me only with curiosity and kindness. I watched as she became what everyone around her wished her to be, molding her persona into the perfect leader— at first, I believed it was only to avoid the danger that even her own followers posed, but then I saw the clever way she manipulated every decision until it pointed not towards what was wanted, but what was right. Her capabilities were unfeigned brilliance, in a way that would not arouse the suspicion of those who thought of themselves as her betters, before they had known her name.
I suppose I too had thought as much, though I doubt she would have perceived it thus. And she never... she didn't ask me for anything I did not first offer. Only asked questions. Only wanted to learn, to...
...I fell in love. You understand too, how it is to stand with her, no matter how humble the task.
no subject
Felassan makes an agreeable sound. He understands. Although: ]
It might have taken me longer if you had not loved her first. I looked to see what you were looking at.
[ It's no insult. Longer is not never, anyway, and to fall at all —
It had not always felt so impossible. Felassan always had his secrets and his higher loyalties, but he wasn't always solitary. When Solas vanished he'd had Darevas and Enasalas, who grew weak and wrinkled under his hands until Darevas died and Enasalas couldn't stand the unfair sight of Felassan's untouched face. Venaste, born mortal, flashed through his life like a lightning bolt — he never quite felt like he actually grasped hold of them. Ethlam was quieter and slower, and it ended not with death but with an ultimatum Felassan couldn't agree to. Ghilissal wove in and out of his path for centuries, ageless but withering beneath the weight of loss. A wisp of herself well before she entered Uthenera. She'd said she would come back, but the shemlen came first.
She'd been the last. After that something in him severed; he withdrew, and for nearly two thousand years he loved nothing except his hopes and the ghost he guarded to keep them alive.
But Beleth would have gotten past it all, he thinks, even without Solas or shortcuts or effort. It would have been enough to hear her speak of her dreams and her strategies, to see her mouth twist in thought and her fingers rearrange her hair, to be the target of her sparkling attention and false outrage at his bad jokes. It would have only taken time for him to be willing to let her wound him with her absence. ]
When did you admit that you loved her?
[ To know it is different than to feel it. ]
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[They are different, after all. And too there are other distinctions:]
Or perhaps you are asking when I admitted that I could no longer lie about it?
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[ It's all right if he wouldn't. They can have some things for themselves, unshared. ]
no subject
[He laughs, low and wry and maybe a little bitter. The sting has gone out of the memory, largely.]
There came a rare moment of peace, amidst the chaos of ongoing battle and the political machinations. We left the Inquisition behind for a day, and walked the Crestwood of Ferelden, nearby to where the work had recently taken us. I took her to a grove I had discovered, long-untouched, graced by statuary that had been in its place since Arlathan, and had once been part of a stronghold of the Evanuris, now long crumbled.
[She had loved it; the history, the stories, the graceful leaping forms of granite Halla, barely-marred by millenia of wear, standing up to their hocks in green. All the suffering of Ghilan'nain's people buried, peacefully sleeping under meters of soil and tree-root and new life, which spilled in silver-and-green tides over the seasons and walkways of the reclaimed flagstones. The forest was reclaiming what had been taken.]
I was terribly in love, and so was she. I intended, I think, to tell her everything in that moment. That I was Fen'Harel, that the Dread Wolf was not as her ancestors had taught her, how long I had lived, what we as elves truly were, all my secrets, or as many as I could reasonably do so. I began with that intention, but I—
[He had balked. He had been afraid. Afraid of her reaction, or of his own. Or of what it would mean.]
She changed everything. If I did not love her, then it would have been easy to draw her further in, to weave a tale of a conspiracy of which she was a special and secret member, and deepen the lie. But I did love her, had loved her for longer than I realized. And when she asked me to remove her Vallaslin... I could not lie to myself any longer, nor mislead her about my intentions which were— to her, at least, monstrous. [And to tell the whole of the truth would have been to abandon everything I had done and worked and fought for since the Evanuris last walked free. That much he does not have to say, Solas thinks, and Felassan may understand. After all, what did he tell his Briala of the world, in the end?] So I ended it. I broke her heart, and left her there. That, I think, is when I truly admitted it to myself, ironically.
no subject
Solas,
[ in a despairing tone? Absolutely not.
But it's a gentle kind of despair, more secondhand mourning than scolding. A choice that hurt them both, and Felassan loves them both, and Felassan cannot actually say he would have handled it any differently or any better. ]
What reason did you give her?
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[It was, as he said, not his proudest hour.]
That I should not distract her from the task of saving the world, of course. [Of course.] I do not think she believed me, not even for a minute. What followed was... considerable misery. And loneliness, for us both.
What shocked me more was that she never wavered. Whenever we chanced to meet, she was ardent that her feelings had not changed, would not change. Of course my own did not either...
[The unspoken: but.]
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[ Beleth told him something of that, too, trying to comfort him after getting a glimpse of his death. That even when she knew what he was planning, it had taken a lot more than her voice to convince him to turn off the path. ]
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[Solas' hesitation now is no thinking pause, no gap where consideration lies. He genuinely loses the thread of conversation for a moment, has to bow his head and try to find calm.]
For all those we have lost. Who died because of my— Because of me. And how many I killed, to keep to the plan? To heal the wound that I had made in the world. How could I turn away from them all, from all that had been done? I might as well have stayed in Mythal's service from the beginning, if I could turn so easily from my own sense of right and wrong.
[And true too: he could never really escape her shadow, even then, even ten thousand years later. But to hear her acknowledge that she had hurt him, and release him from the obligation to her memory...]
Even so, I could not have let go, without her there to remind me. What matters most.
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So he does think he understands. ]
And what is that, hahren?
[ The lightest pinch of teasing, to push against the weight of all those pauses. ]
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[He says it almost as if he is ashamed.]
What is the point of slaughtering our descendants, only to restore a glory whose time is long gone? Let Arlathan rest, lethallin, for it could only have ever been built on a foundation of blood and servitude. Let tomorrow be built by those who come after.
Of course, there is the small detail that these children have leashed me to the sole artifact that maintains their much-cherished mortality. But perhaps one day I shall die, and then whoever remains shall see if they can do better in reality, rather than mere optimism.
In any case, I am at last free of the duty to care, as I am of the one who placed that duty upon me. The veil's weight will not break me, if that could not.
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The rest he is happier to scuffle over. For example: ]
If you plan to accept that chain as permanent, my friend, you might want to leave me here after all.
[ He says it lightly. The threat is only that he will be annoying — so nothing Solas has not already proven a thousand times over that he can endure. ]
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[Solas... doesn't know how he feels about it. It's true that he put the shackle upon his own wrist, and locked it tight. It's true also that he might never have done so without Beleth there to beg him to stop, without Morrigan's ardent plea for mortal wills, without Rook's guileless trust, or the final cruelty of Mythal's last fragment, refusing to grant him death, and at last taking from his heart that final tether.
What then, if he had been clear-eyed, and unpained, if they had not surrounded him with pleading and put the knife into his hand? He cannot know. Only, here and now, he both does and does not regret it, feeling both the freedom and the servitude in the act as an impossible dichotomy. His opinion changes by the day, sometimes by the hour.
But it is worth enduring, if only for the joy of getting to rest, finally. Of having Beleth in his life again. Of hearing Felassan's voice. An incomprehensible, illogical truth.]
But perhaps you would be willing to offer an alternative that I cannot understand. It is my wish to compel you to live, as I once did the opposite. If you are willing.
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[ This is also lightly said. A natural thing, for elvhen to eventually decide they've seen enough — although he hasn't. He wasn't tired of the stars or the trees or the taste of roasted rabbit. He's certainly not tired of crawling onto Beleth and Solas in the early hours of the morning and helping himself to handfuls of skin and the warmth they've created beneath their blankets. That isn't the problem. ]
I've wondered what it makes me, to decide a hundred years is plenty for them and thousands are not enough for me. Of course, [ bright as well as light, now, because Solas has enough to worry about already, ] I will go anyway, if I can, and if you notice me becoming a monster you can write me a stern letter.
[ He'd even read it. He'd even listen. ]
I don't have an alternative for the Veil yet, but I will.
[ All confidence. It's not confidence in his own ability to think of something Solas can't — not here in the realm of intricate, world-altering rituals and careful calculations. But he's brimming with confidence he can be obnoxious enough to spur Solas into thinking new thoughts of his own, with time, or else he'll go find some ancient spirits of Creativity and Innovation, or he and Beleth can assemble a team of scrappy mortals with both practical and ethical concerns about the stability of their world resting wholly on the shoulders of one sad man. ]
We're not free until we're all free, right?
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Only a joke, and he calms himself while Felassan waxes poetic and foolish and optimistic, as is his way.]
...I...
[None are truly free until all are. Once, he would have championed that, and has for long centuries made it a cornerstone of his moral code. That it must be freedom for all, or the work is not complete... But. But, how to square that with what had become of him, in the end?]
I want to be free, I... feel the weight of it, that I am not. [Illusory as it is, he sometimes wakes in the night and feels it like a wet, cloying weight, heavy and breathless upon him. The Veil, his greatest mistake, his most terrible regret. So many dead, so many more yet to die, born to lives so brutally short...] But just the same, there is no one who truly wishes me to be free. I believe I know right and wrong, and I try all I can to act accordingly...
...But every monster believes himself to be in the right. When I am free to act, with only my own conscience to guide me, the entire world becomes my enemy, and even those I love most stand against me.
Perhaps it is better to accept the circumstances in which I find myself, than to struggle pointlessly any longer. Although, if I think about it for too long... Ir abelas, Falon, that I disappoint you.
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It's set aside to wonder and worry about this instead. To ache for Solas, who has been caught between impossible choices for all the time Felassan has known him. Longer. From the day he was first asked to change the core of what he was to follow a friend. And to ache for his own part in it, even if he wouldn't take it back, and for the simpler days of wrestling with Solas about the details and particulars of achieving the dreams they shared but never doubting he could and would follow where he went.
He says, ]
You do not disappoint me,
[ and he says it in their own language, soft and rhythmic. The common tongue is second nature, now, but this is still first. ]
You know I have always loved to argue with you. You give me a gift.
Are we only free if we can do whatever we see fit with all the power that we have?
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How not? You joined with me as a revolutionary, one who would use his strength as a rallying-point, and a force against the strong, in defense of the weak.
[It was, in fact, something like your idea, Felassan. Do you remember that?]
Is that not the definition of freedom? To do as you will, according to what you see as right. To be stopped only by your choice to stop, by the physical realities, or by the actions of others.
If the Veil is to stand, it must have a living anchor, someone sufficiently powerful to withstand it. With the Evanuris dead at last, and the titans long-destroyed, I am the only one who could do so.
It is not entirely unjust: having once broken the world, who else should be the one to rightly bear this burden? It is the will of The People.
[It is the word for elves that he uses, Elvhenan, but the meaning could so clearly apply to all peoples. It was, after all, not only elves that met to bring down Elgar'nan, nor only elves that lived and died and grew up under Solas' Veil. They had sent their armies, their generals, and their warriors to the battle; Antivan Crows, Rivaini fire-breathers, the Dalish Veil-Jumpers, the Wardens and even the Dwarves. And Beleth. In the end, he had bowed to inevitability, and turned aside from the quest.
The last faithful moment, now ended. So it goes.]
Let it be, Slow Arrow. You are my friend, and I love you. You will always wish I could have had a better ending to my story, as I would wish for a better to yours. But we have seen what I am when I am free. I destroyed the world.
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[ If this were the end. If this is the end, despite the best efforts of his favorite persuasive false prophet and brilliant not-quite-god. If it is then it's an end where he has said more of what he should have said, seen proof those he cares for will be fine, fallen asleep with his face pressed to Beleth's sweet neck, and laughed with his mouth latched so tightly to Solas's that both their cheeks puffed out. So it's much better.
He breathes. He thinks. He chooses one of a half-dozen points he might argue, because one has to be first. ]
It is their future to build. I believe they can do it. That you endure this for a while, to give them time, maybe that is fair to ask. But not forever. It is one thing to ask a man to hold a beam in place while you search for a nail and another to make him part of the architecture. If their world is built on your back, there will always be a rot at the heart of it, as there was at the heart of Arlathan.
[ Which means Felassan will be entitled to burn it down.
Not really.
... Maybe, though. ]
I am not certain I have ever seen you free, my friend. [ A pause, and a sheepish, warm addition, like he's pleased to remember he can. ] My love. But when I have seen you close to it, you've protected the innocent and you've painted.
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[Did the Evanuris deserve it? In Solas' opinion, there was no punishment too lengthy, too cruel, or too severe for what they had done in their time as the unassailable rulers of Thedas. But if all it was was a tally of sins, a list of names of those they had wronged, whose was the longer list? He suspects that there are worse things than Elgar'nan, by some measurements.
And like them, he would have been in the Fade for many years hence, if not for the clever ideas of one solitary, stupid Wolf.]
...But you have a point. [And then Felassan corrects himself, such as that Solas must close his eyes. Felassan, Felassan, late does the arrow fall and unerring is its aim. He wishes you had stuck his heart sooner, if only that he might have more of this.] I— Thank you. For your faith in me, if nothing else.
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And so does Solas. That's why Felassan enjoys the arguing. The asking. Chasing and evading a swift and wily creature in a deep wood until he finds himself somewhere unexpected, be it lovely or alarming. Felassan hums in answer and tugs at the loose threads in his own thoughts. When Solas told him what lay in store he said throw Elgar'nan back in, and he'd meant it. To think of Elgar'nan as deserving of anything like mercy —
But they were something like brothers once, Solas and Elgar'nan, weren't they. Cousins. Distant cousins. People who might have said our and us, in any case, before they found that breaking point. ]
They did not know, then. No one knew who did not mean to unmake it.
[ Easier, while he wrestles unhappily with the thought he may perhaps need to give the Evanuris any pity. ]
It would be different to choose it.
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[They will always be too young to remember it, now, as they have been for many millennia. Give them a chance, Felassan had asked him once— well, when does that stop? When Briala is dead, there will already be a new generation who considers the world to be their own, younger still and fresher-faced.
And Solas will always be too old, and too broken, to understand why they want it. But he doesn't need to understand in order to please them; he merely needs to serve his purpose, as he has been bid.]
It is a lack of a choice, a maintenance of what is and has always been, for me to uphold the veil. But do you know what truly lurks in my nightmares? [He pauses, wondering if Felassan has realized, or if he knew.] The Grey Wardens.
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[ He is about to joke. It is fairly clear. But even so, it's a subdued sort of joke, mindful of the fact that something that truly lurks in Solas's nightmares is unlikely to actually be funny. ]
They are doing their bests.
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The archdemons they kill are not merely named for the old gods of Tevinter, nor for the Evanuris that precede them. They are those very selfsame dragons, who once had been bound to the Evanuris themselves. With every Blight, with every Archdemon killed, an Evanuris became no longer immune to death.
And once they could be killed, they were, if not by the act itself, then by their fellows— what better source of power, after all, than a god? [The irony in his voice keeps the term a mockery, but he's grim enough that it's a near thing.] By the time I was able to see it, there were only two left alive; Ghilan'nain, and Elgar'nan.
What would have happened, if I had lost faith? If I had simply stopped trying to save them, and let the world go on however it pleased? One by one, the Evanuris fell to desperation and sought a way to breach their prison. It nearly worked, once, why not again? And yet, one by one, they failed, and the Wardens sent them to their deaths.
And when Elgar'nan's Blight died with Lusacan, the Veil would have fallen on its own, anchorless and void of power.
You were right. It would have been much the wiser to simply allow the mortals their chance. But instead... this. So much for the Wisdom of the Dread Wolf.
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We live and we learn.
[ Trite. Dry. Typically he cherishes any rare occasion when Solas tells him he was right about something; this time, not so much.
Felassan had never entirely decided that the Veil shouldn't fall. He'd decided he wouldn't take the eluvians from Briala; he'd decided she deserved a chance to fight for her people. Their people. He'd decided they weren't weak, diseased things who should be glad to see their miserable era end, even if it ended in blood and chaos, but people who could and should be allowed to choose their own way.
He tries to imagine it now. Just waiting, after all, probably no more than another thousand years. Watching the Veil fray and dissolve, as destructive as a wildfire and as little anyone's fault — save Elgar'nan's, perhaps, if his death could only come by choice in the end, alone in the Black City with no one left to command. Would he have been sorry? Sorrier than he is now, every time he looks at Beleth and Solas in what should be the blackest dark and sees their sleeping faces cast green by the glow of that damned anchor?
Hard to say. ]
We might have warned them it was coming and given them time to prepare. We still could, if we find a way. If there is nothing but you it could be tied to.
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