Chapter Text
Ellana's attentions were desperate and hurried, urgent with the fear that she might not live or that he might not love her or both. It tore at his spirit with the same vigor she used to rid herself of her robe, and though he was not unwilling to make love in such a harried fashion, it would not do. Not for this. If this were to be the last time, Solas would make it something truly transcendent for both of them. He would think of this night often in the ages to come, he knew, and he needed for her to dream of it while he was gone, to think of him and his touch and how he moved inside her when he had left her behind and she was heartbroken again. He needed Ellana to remember him with passion, to conjure his memory up when she explored herself with her hands or when some other man inevitably had her, to call to him unwittingly in the Fade so that he could take the Wolf's form and watch her from a distance, become the voyeur in a fantasy in which he longed to participate. So no, blind groping and a furious fuck would not do for tonight. For goodbyes. For this one last time.
"Ellana," he murmured against her lips, and they quirked up at the corners in a way that made him kiss her again. Did he dare speak it? The one thing he longed to use his tongue for even more than to taste the woman beneath him? It swelled in him, the urge, the need, stretched inside him like a bubble that threatened to burst. It touched his lips and he was lost. "Vhenan."
Her eyes flared with sudden fire. "Say it again," she commanded in a whisper. Already her fear was gone, replaced by the warm, pulsing light of her spirit that existed only for him in these moments. One day perhaps she would offer it to some other man, but he would not be able to name it, this thing she did to him, this way she looked at him, the way his soul yearned for hers. She would offer it to some other man and he would accept it without knowing, without seeing. But he, Fen'Harel, Solas, he could see so clearly who and what she was. In that moment he had no desire to own her as he often did, as the Wolf often insisted. No desire whatsoever to dominate her.
In that moment, he wanted only show his infinite respect for her soul. But as they were not formless spirits, as they could not reach into one another's being as they might desire, he would make his overtures with tongue and teeth and deft fingers. He would make her come again and again and in the moments of her climax, she would be pure energy, her body joined with spirit, and he would memorize her, her sounds, her movements, but above all her bright spirit, unguarded and present for mere moments -- precious, wondrous moments -- rippling through the Veil as it throbbed and contracted with her. Arched with her. Oh yes. He would bring her to completion over and over until she was on the brink of madness and then he would make love to her and fall asleep inside her and know the weight of her sated form as they found each other in the Fade.
"Vhenan," he acquiesced, and her grateful smile melted like elfroot balm over the rough and worn places of his heart. "Tel'in ar emma tel'in sulahn'nehn. I have missed you."
For a moment her features shadowed and his chest seized with anxiety for what she might be about to say. If she begged him to stay, if she tried to reason with him...but the darkness was fleeting and made her eyes shine more brightly when it passed. She had decided not to push. Not to ask. He loved her ferociously for that. "I miss you too," she admitted instead. Her expression ghosted with guilt and he kissed it away, his lips on her cheeks, her temples, all along the ridge and point of her ears. She closed her eyes and smiled beatifically as she allowed his affections and finally his mouth found hers again, soft and searching and bittersweet. His hands moved to the tiny mother-of-pearl buttons that widened the neck of her nightgown, and while his tongue sought hers, his fingers made patient progress toward baring the perfect handfuls that were her unbound breasts. When the fabric hung open, he moved a hand inside, running scout fingers over the petal-soft skin of her nipple, strumming the pad of his thumb across the tip and smiling into her lips when it eagerly responded. Her body knew his touch, anticipated it, quivered with just the attention of his eyes or the shadow of his hand on pliant flesh. It was enough to intoxicate him for the rest of his years. It aroused his ego as surely as it aroused the rest of him.
Solas sat back on his heels, surveying the slight disarray of her hair, the fabric of her nightgown falling to the sides of her chest to reveal only glimpses of nipple and breast, tantalizing as other people's secrets, sweet as honeyed wine. He marveled at her beauty, compared her in his memory to the crystal spires of Arlathan, to murals painted by Elvhen genius so intricate that the plaster-and-color birds sang in lilting harmony, to curious dancing wisps that flitted above him in the Fade. He compared her to these things and he found all the rest of the world wanting. The muscle of his heart was sore with weeks of restrained desire, calloused with the brutality of hidden love. Now here she was before him, offering, and he would take of her one last time. And if he did not take of her soon, he knew from the lump in his throat and the stirring in his soul that he would willingly drown himself in her, forsaking all else. The one thing he could not do. So when she lifted her brows in question, scared for a moment that he had changed his mind, he found her mouth again with his, kissing with weeks of longing and need as he pulled her shift up past her cooperative arms. They broke apart so she could shed it completely and then her hands were on his tunic, divesting him with practiced ease before he had the opportunity to study her form with the focus it deserved. When he was shirtless, he pressed his palm to her breastbone and guided her onto her back on his bed, offering gentle but insistent weight to keep her down.
Ellana watched him with a vulnerability that he found unnerving, if only because he yearned to protect it for all time, if only because it reminded him of how desperately the man in him yearned to be so vulnerable with her in return. But he could not. Would not. He--
The backs of her fingers moved across the skin of his cheek and down his jaw to brush an adoring touch over the cleft of his chin. Solas lifted his blue-grey eyes under his trouble-drawn brow to the subtle beauties of her unmarked face. There were tears on her cheeks, slow as sunset and just as stunning. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and the muscle of his heart cramped painfully. "Ir abelas. I don't want you to feel like you have to-- just because I'm--"
He hadn't realized he had gone so still for so long, leaned over her with his weight on one arm while the other touched lightly at her hip. She must have thought he was hesitating, that despite his visible desire for her pressing against the seam of his pants, his heart was not in it. Or perhaps she worried only for his peace of mind. She would worry about him, about his needs when she was so certain of her death, when she was already naked beneath him, the scent of her readiness in the air like the first hint of a coming storm.
Fenedhis, but he loved her.
He shushed her with a kiss, and while their tongues danced, he put the flat of his palm on her lower belly and slipped one long finger into the wet and waiting heat between her legs. Her heartbeat met him there, as if that part of her at least, the animal part of her, was not yet resigned to her fate, not yet willing to give up the fight.
Good, he thought with a surge of sudden feeling, fight, vhenan. Let your body convince you of what your mind cannot.
Then he knew exactly what he had to do.
He would let his body convince her of what her mind could not. Solas trailed kisses down her neck and shoulders, between her breasts with a few stops along the way, letting his tongue explore the taste of her skin at areas of particular interest. His final kiss was lingering and carefully rough, slipped between her lower lips to tease at her clitoris until her thighs trembled. "Solas..."
His erection twitched in answer at the sound of her tongue and lips shaping his name. The wrong name. But his all the same. "Patience, vhenan," he murmured, letting his sound vibrate where his attentions had just been. He kissed again, placating this time, and slid off the bed to unlace his breeches, watching her sprawled and naked and wanting while she watched him release himself from his confinement.
If this was to be their last night together, he would make it count, yes, pleasure her senseless, but first he must see to her emotional needs. She craved closeness and assurance. She needed him, not mindless distraction. Ellana was desperate to not feel alone. He knew that dark place well. He was in it now, looking at her. "Ellana," he said as an exhale, a prayer to her and to whoever might be the puppeteer of time and existence to keep her safe, to see her through this. When he climbed atop of her and parted her legs, he said the prayer again, and when he buried himself inside her and she tightened and gasped, it became, "Vhenan."
But in his heart as he took her, as he moved inside her, with each thrust of his hips, his spirit offered a different prayer. A Chant he sent to the four corners of this world and into the boundless expanses of all the others. Live, his spirit sang to hers like a lullaby.
Live, live, live.
And each time he coaxed her to completion that night, each time she came for him, he willed her to fight. To never stop fighting.
"Banal nadas," he murmured into her ear as he finally drifted into the Fade. "Banal nadas, vhenan."
~~~
Solas had designed his room to be dark even with the sun blazing above the mountains, overbright with the thinness of the air, but still there crept in a traveling rectangle of light that moved sluggishly across his closed eyes and drew him from the Fade. He had waited for her for some time there, but his attention had been taken by a young and enchanting Spirit of Faith. Ellana hadn't sought him out and he had sensed no nightmares nearby, so he let himself be led astray by the purity of the spirit's purpose, invigorated in his own forward path. But first, he thought as he came back into his physical form, first there would be Ellana in his arms.
He rolled toward her with a drowsy smile, keen to breathe her in and share lazy morning kisses. He would enjoy her a little more before...
But the bed was empty.
Solas' eyes opened and focused on the spot beside him that was rumpled with the night's exertions but had been so long unoccupied that it was no longer even warm or indented.
"Ellana?" he asked of the room, sitting up with his brows pulling low over his eyes.
She was gone.
She had left him.
"Vhenan," he whispered, and felt his heart break.