[ Enough he can have a head start, Athénaïs said. That's how sure she was that Solas had been truly convinced to leave the Veil alone. Fresh — on his scale — from being executed in part for suggesting perhaps they ought to leave the Veil alone, Felassan has not trusted her judgment enough to avoid occasionally trying to find the correct configuration of words to ask the Caretaker about his whereabouts in a way that would produce a useful answer.
No luck.
But when his head start is over, and Athénaïs and Felassan climb into the Caretaker's boat to start searching for signs of him, the Caretaker, true to their nature, rows them not to where they want to go but where they need to go. Over and above and under the nearest islands, farther away than the Veilguard ever had need to visit, until, far in the distance, there's a jutting platform with a little smudge of a person standing on it.
As they glide closer, Felassan cocks his head so far to one side that the tip of his ear points straight up. ]
( before they get close enough to reach, when they’re still far enough away that solas might fleetingly imagine he hasn’t been noticed or recognised — if there’s one thing these adventures have taught it’s that not even fen’harel is immune to futile wishful thinking — it’s athénaïs’s voice that carries across the distance, swiftly dispelling any such notion with words she has said to him before: )
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
( the caretaker does not react, or at least not until she starts climbing the front of the boat, bracing herself with her staff as she says, )
Speed up, I wanna try something—
( which means there is probably a limited window in which solas can join them with his dignity intact. )
there truly is no peace for a broken man. if plain, a few moments of peace may not have been entitled, but so wanted. which if he had been inclined to be plain, he would not have hurried out so. it is not escaping his accountability ( maybe for a day or two in the timeless abyss ), but catching the breath vacuumed away by felassan's voice. losing it all is one thing, every little thing, and the numbness cooks off. makes one lighter. getting something back that he threw away puts a heaviness back in his chest that nicely weighs on each of his lungs. nice, even weight distribution of having to ungrief.
he does not know how much there is to be no peace, in this moment. standing on the ledge, shaping the path ahead without urgency. meandering back toward, not away. there is something moving in that far way ahead, not drifting, but coming.
worst, he's not put together the script of reintroduction to his 'old friend' yet.
sketched an expression so squinted, mouth half-open, it is evident he has foregone his sense of presentation. it is unsure. it is dawning. if felassan had struggled to find him when he would dart off to avoid sharing his worst conclusions, he was not expecting, firstly, the sellout of the kindly caretaker. that, in later retrospect, will seem less of a blindside, what with all the heart rook poured into this place. but the centuries, caretaker— second, for the three to come propelling at him as though they're taking him down with them. one final stand against the dread wolf, an enemy, a frenemy, and a vaguely friend shaped spirit conglomerate. ]
( athénaïs hauls herself higher again, one hand around the rise of the bow,
the caretaker helpfully providing balance for her, beneath initially flailing little booted foot. if anyone challenges this dynamic, she’s very ready to declare herself much prettier and more charming than either of these dickheads, no offense to the less offensive dickhead in question. felassan has rather won her over — her confidence that he isn’t going to interfere with what she’s about to do not irrelevant to that point.
power flows through her, alighting in her eyes as she focuses it through the staff that she so rarely reaches for, and it isn’t an outright act of hostility that she launches at solas. not exactly. it’s pure force, it’s willpower, it’s a fucking lasso of the fade whipping across the remaining distance. the boat sped up; it does not slow down as she snags solas in the grip of her magic and they
keep going.
the laugh she lets out says the thing she doesn’t, out loud: wow, I didn’t know that was going to work.)
[ Athénaïs is right; Felassan doesn't interfere. The curious cock of his head doesn't change, though it does pivot so he's watching her as much as Solas, and he doesn't tense out of his unconcerned slouch on the bench or adjust his loose and unready hold on his staff. But maybe he would lose some points with her, nonetheless, if she knew how near a thing it is. How dependent on his confidence that if she were going to hurt Solas — physically, and setting aside whether the question of whether hurting his pride is in fact wounding his very essence — she would have at least done less to save him.
Even with that confidence, beneath the outward insouciance he is coiled and ready, albeit more likely to spring forward with a barrier for whomever seems most in need of one at any given moment than with a lightning bolt. (It doesn't occur to him that it might be pathetic, under the circumstances, to not want Solas hurt. Because it isn't. No one who's ever maintained a friendship for fewer than five thousand years plus an apocalypse one of them caused is allowed to tell him that it is.) In this very short time he has already learned not to rely too heavily on what he might expect of Athénaïs, who began their acquaintance wearing his robe and dropping world-shattering facts like they were nothing, but if he had tried to predict what she meant to do —
It would not have been this.
The moment he understands what she's done, his lazily placid observer act breaks just enough for a snort of laughter, quickly smothered, smile hidden behind a raising fist as if it might have only been a cough. ]
[ that's it, the veil is coming down again. enjoy your nug lords, you flippant bastards. rook is the only being this world with the improvisational gifts of timing, comedy, and chaotic magic required to deliver on this moment. maybe save for the older gentleman on the boat, on a very good day. he would get off to something like this.
maybe imshael on any day.
the word only might be crumbling, but the point stands. a rare talent. had by half of the people in this room.
his footing also crumbles. reactive magic is sometimes as useful as putting your hand up as you trip down the stairs. even for a man who has probably spent the sum of an entire year falling down stairs figuratively in his lifetime. he's good at saving himself. blame state of mind or state of magic, not good enough for this and her. solas flinches, toes curl, and the rock under his feet gives. a resisting grip that loses one, before he can punctuate it with a blink. he slides forward and away, seized by an unknown spell that leaves him dangling. her laugh is lost with the wind whipping by his ears. nothing like your stomach falling out miles down to dig it from your throat.
he and felassan might, one day, commiserate about the lighthouse having become a mad tea party. right now, felassan is complicit. her march hare. solas has no counteract for this hook athénaïs has in him, nor could he spin one up on the spot. the clenching flesh and blood instinct not to fall with nothing beneath him is too strong. he does flail. anything to curl around, that incorporeal leash. the longer he is left like this, the longer he has to find that footing he needed.
pride is going to get to that boat and put someone in a mystical chokehold. ]
( completely heedless of the possibility of imminent retribution — different to not having factored it in at all, just: worth it — athénaïs takes the opportunity of her secured grip upon him to loosen the leash enough to send him further back, the boat’s speed creating distance,
only to yank, purposefully bringing solas spinning to land in the bottom of the boat with a thud that briefly threatens to upturn it entirely. a thing until this very moment she wouldn’t have sworn to even being possible, but it’s enough of a jolt that she’s reaching for felassan to steady herself even as she relinquishes her grasp on the third, most annoying of their number.
what exactly it is that they number three of is a question awaiting an answer. the world’s probably not going to end about it, though, so there’s no rush. )
Well, hey, ( she says, breezily, ) would you look who it is.
[ Felassan has an entire collection, from his years of listening to the Dalish tell him about his people around campfires. At least they came by their love of dramatic titles honestly. With no pressing reason not to spend an hour or two introducing someone, much of Elvhenan was worse.
His grip on his staff has gone tight, the butt of it braced against the wall of the boat while its rocking steadies. The other hand on the back of Athénaïs's arm in answer to her reach for balance. As he speaks he looks with some interest at the unfinished path Solas was cutting through the Crossroads – where to? where from? — and at the Caretaker, who's steering a wide arc to turn them around, unjostled and undisturbed by any of it.
Then Solas.
There is some impulse to kick him. But the world and Athénaïs's lasso have punished him so thoroughly already, the impulse filters through ancient affection and current concern until it's only his leather-wrapped foot extending for a harmless, nudging push against his shoulder.
The teeth in his smile are on the sharp side, though. Sharper than they might have been a few days ago. He didn't run from Solas. Then again, he isn't the — ]
— Lord of Tricksters. We thought you might be getting hungry.
[ solas will never recover from this moment. maybe for the dismount more than the shock. it's a boat. a magic boat, but a hard bottomed boat. there is no graceful way to be yanked into a boat like a salmon. lucky he didn't break a collar bone. an elbow, maybe. he rolls to his side, hissing at the landing, but ends up back on his face.
we. duo that are, each, a knife in the gut. every organ is taking a hit today. from a boat laden with vengeful— rightfully vengeful, he will concede, humbly— assholes and whimsy. the wolf wanted an answer for everything before they asked, a whole rhyme and reason to offer. put them all in his comfort zone. wise and ready, not rattled. ashamed. probably a pinch of something whining. felassan likely knew that.
went, we better get to him before he pens the last bit, it'll be eighty percent long wind. though the chaos of it seems athénaïs. was it pitched to his old friend in this way, he might wonder. ]
I was coming back.
[ emphatic. directed to the boat bottom that is standing in for all of the above him. it is not a lie. a bare route, away from the livelier places the spirits have taken up again. just a small, far place. if far constitutes much here. not as though he had slipped between the cracks and headed for the deep roads.
be quiet, he thinks, about names. names that gave him pride while he complained and lamented to felassan the way they built a beast around him. a wolf god he did not want worshipped, but oh, wasn't it compelling. moved and clenched hearts. wasn't it exactly what it was going to be and they both knew that. he will not say be quiet because one wields a large stick and the other an unforgivable wrong. although lord of tricksters, please. look where he would rather be. look where they are.
He hadn’t recently tried to end the world, so I flashed some titty.
( those things are not actually connected, although both are probably true and the latter less deliberate. hell, maybe the former wasn’t even that deliberate considering the complexities of their relationship and how fucking convincing solas can be when he wants to —
who’s to say he wouldn’t have persuaded felassan, if he’d woken just the right amount sooner?
she likes him. trusts him, even, a great deal— not more than she trusts herself, though, a person who’d fallen for solas’s bullshit even as she called it how she saw it. if solas had had a better angle on her and more time…
anyway, none of those things happened. felassan showed up late and probably saw half a tit. )
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anticlimactic wolf hunt.
No luck.
But when his head start is over, and Athénaïs and Felassan climb into the Caretaker's boat to start searching for signs of him, the Caretaker, true to their nature, rows them not to where they want to go but where they need to go. Over and above and under the nearest islands, farther away than the Veilguard ever had need to visit, until, far in the distance, there's a jutting platform with a little smudge of a person standing on it.
As they glide closer, Felassan cocks his head so far to one side that the tip of his ear points straight up. ]
no subject
You’ve got to be fucking kidding.
( the caretaker does not react, or at least not until she starts climbing the front of the boat, bracing herself with her staff as she says, )
Speed up, I wanna try something—
( which means there is probably a limited window in which solas can join them with his dignity intact. )
no subject
there truly is no peace for a broken man. if plain, a few moments of peace may not have been entitled, but so wanted. which if he had been inclined to be plain, he would not have hurried out so. it is not escaping his accountability ( maybe for a day or two in the timeless abyss ), but catching the breath vacuumed away by felassan's voice. losing it all is one thing, every little thing, and the numbness cooks off. makes one lighter. getting something back that he threw away puts a heaviness back in his chest that nicely weighs on each of his lungs. nice, even weight distribution of having to ungrief.
he does not know how much there is to be no peace, in this moment. standing on the ledge, shaping the path ahead without urgency. meandering back toward, not away. there is something moving in that far way ahead, not drifting, but coming.
worst, he's not put together the script of reintroduction to his 'old friend' yet.
sketched an expression so squinted, mouth half-open, it is evident he has foregone his sense of presentation. it is unsure. it is dawning. if felassan had struggled to find him when he would dart off to avoid sharing his worst conclusions, he was not expecting, firstly, the sellout of the kindly caretaker. that, in later retrospect, will seem less of a blindside, what with all the heart rook poured into this place. but the centuries, caretaker— second, for the three to come propelling at him as though they're taking him down with them. one final stand against the dread wolf, an enemy, a frenemy, and a vaguely friend shaped spirit conglomerate. ]
Fenedhis.
no subject
the caretaker helpfully providing balance for her, beneath initially flailing little booted foot. if anyone challenges this dynamic, she’s very ready to declare herself much prettier and more charming than either of these dickheads, no offense to the less offensive dickhead in question. felassan has rather won her over — her confidence that he isn’t going to interfere with what she’s about to do not irrelevant to that point.
power flows through her, alighting in her eyes as she focuses it through the staff that she so rarely reaches for, and it isn’t an outright act of hostility that she launches at solas. not exactly. it’s pure force, it’s willpower, it’s a fucking lasso of the fade whipping across the remaining distance. the boat sped up; it does not slow down as she snags solas in the grip of her magic and they
keep going.
the laugh she lets out says the thing she doesn’t, out loud: wow, I didn’t know that was going to work. )
no subject
Even with that confidence, beneath the outward insouciance he is coiled and ready, albeit more likely to spring forward with a barrier for whomever seems most in need of one at any given moment than with a lightning bolt. (It doesn't occur to him that it might be pathetic, under the circumstances, to not want Solas hurt. Because it isn't. No one who's ever maintained a friendship for fewer than five thousand years plus an apocalypse one of them caused is allowed to tell him that it is.) In this very short time he has already learned not to rely too heavily on what he might expect of Athénaïs, who began their acquaintance wearing his robe and dropping world-shattering facts like they were nothing, but if he had tried to predict what she meant to do —
It would not have been this.
The moment he understands what she's done, his lazily placid observer act breaks just enough for a snort of laughter, quickly smothered, smile hidden behind a raising fist as if it might have only been a cough. ]
no subject
maybe imshael on any day.
the word only might be crumbling, but the point stands. a rare talent. had by half of the people in this room.
his footing also crumbles. reactive magic is sometimes as useful as putting your hand up as you trip down the stairs. even for a man who has probably spent the sum of an entire year falling down stairs figuratively in his lifetime. he's good at saving himself. blame state of mind or state of magic, not good enough for this and her. solas flinches, toes curl, and the rock under his feet gives. a resisting grip that loses one, before he can punctuate it with a blink. he slides forward and away, seized by an unknown spell that leaves him dangling. her laugh is lost with the wind whipping by his ears. nothing like your stomach falling out miles down to dig it from your throat.
he and felassan might, one day, commiserate about the lighthouse having become a mad tea party. right now, felassan is complicit. her march hare. solas has no counteract for this hook athénaïs has in him, nor could he spin one up on the spot. the clenching flesh and blood instinct not to fall with nothing beneath him is too strong. he does flail. anything to curl around, that incorporeal leash. the longer he is left like this, the longer he has to find that footing he needed.
pride is going to get to that boat and put someone in a mystical chokehold. ]
no subject
only to yank, purposefully bringing solas spinning to land in the bottom of the boat with a thud that briefly threatens to upturn it entirely. a thing until this very moment she wouldn’t have sworn to even being possible, but it’s enough of a jolt that she’s reaching for felassan to steady herself even as she relinquishes her grasp on the third, most annoying of their number.
what exactly it is that they number three of is a question awaiting an answer. the world’s probably not going to end about it, though, so there’s no rush. )
Well, hey, ( she says, breezily, ) would you look who it is.
no subject
[ Felassan has an entire collection, from his years of listening to the Dalish tell him about his people around campfires. At least they came by their love of dramatic titles honestly. With no pressing reason not to spend an hour or two introducing someone, much of Elvhenan was worse.
His grip on his staff has gone tight, the butt of it braced against the wall of the boat while its rocking steadies. The other hand on the back of Athénaïs's arm in answer to her reach for balance. As he speaks he looks with some interest at the unfinished path Solas was cutting through the Crossroads – where to? where from? — and at the Caretaker, who's steering a wide arc to turn them around, unjostled and undisturbed by any of it.
Then Solas.
There is some impulse to kick him. But the world and Athénaïs's lasso have punished him so thoroughly already, the impulse filters through ancient affection and current concern until it's only his leather-wrapped foot extending for a harmless, nudging push against his shoulder.
The teeth in his smile are on the sharp side, though. Sharper than they might have been a few days ago. He didn't run from Solas. Then again, he isn't the — ]
— Lord of Tricksters. We thought you might be getting hungry.
no subject
we. duo that are, each, a knife in the gut. every organ is taking a hit today. from a boat laden with vengeful— rightfully vengeful, he will concede, humbly— assholes and whimsy. the wolf wanted an answer for everything before they asked, a whole rhyme and reason to offer. put them all in his comfort zone. wise and ready, not rattled. ashamed. probably a pinch of something whining. felassan likely knew that.
went, we better get to him before he pens the last bit, it'll be eighty percent long wind. though the chaos of it seems athénaïs. was it pitched to his old friend in this way, he might wonder. ]
I was coming back.
[ emphatic. directed to the boat bottom that is standing in for all of the above him. it is not a lie. a bare route, away from the livelier places the spirits have taken up again. just a small, far place. if far constitutes much here. not as though he had slipped between the cracks and headed for the deep roads.
be quiet, he thinks, about names. names that gave him pride while he complained and lamented to felassan the way they built a beast around him. a wolf god he did not want worshipped, but oh, wasn't it compelling. moved and clenched hearts. wasn't it exactly what it was going to be and they both knew that. he will not say be quiet because one wields a large stick and the other an unforgivable wrong. although lord of tricksters, please. look where he would rather be. look where they are.
boat.
he'll be getting to his feet. stiffly. ]
You enjoyed your meeting.
no subject
( those things are not actually connected, although both are probably true and the latter less deliberate. hell, maybe the former wasn’t even that deliberate considering the complexities of their relationship and how fucking convincing solas can be when he wants to —
who’s to say he wouldn’t have persuaded felassan, if he’d woken just the right amount sooner?
she likes him. trusts him, even, a great deal— not more than she trusts herself, though, a person who’d fallen for solas’s bullshit even as she called it how she saw it. if solas had had a better angle on her and more time…
anyway, none of those things happened. felassan showed up late and probably saw half a tit. )
And where the fuck have you been?