Chapter Text
Paint still dripping from his fingers, he gazed up at the mural on the wall, every chord within him struck at once. The very veins giving life to his form flush with intense emotion.
It wasn’t supposed to be this; the crook of the nose, the slant of a delicate neck, the startling corona of flame crowning wild curls, the rosy depth of parted lips, so full, so gloriously full. He had not meant to paint her likeness—had never dreamed of committing her fire to frightful image.
Yet, with each careful addition, with each stroke of his finger, entranced, he’d conjured her like a dream.
Inquisitor. Herald. Lavellan. Vhenan.
Hand raised before the torn seam of the Veil, held high in purpose, with his own likeness thrown beside her, his own paling form shadowed by her light. Lithe fingers wrapped so carelessly around her wrist. Fingers that now yearned to remember what the warmth of her palm felt like or the texture of her softest skin—lips wet from wine, cheeks flush from battle, a navel exposed beneath the rushing water of a stream, the silken sheen of rose oil coating her parted thighs…
He banished the thought the instant it arose, swallowed down the dry thirst blooming in his throat and walked past the pianoforte—past the reams of paper that carried her perfectly charted face, piercing eyes full of affection, and a wry smile taunting.
He kept his head low as he walked over to the chair that held her symbol. He’d carved it the hard way: painstakingly slow and with deep care. For nearly two years, he’d watched her pass judgment, issue pardon and take on the role of executioner from the spiked helm of the Inquisitor’s throne. And each time, he’d fantasised gifting her a seat for peacetimes. A seat from which she could read her favourite tomes; curled up with her leg slung over the armrest, cattish and lazy.
A seat he could place beside his own in the rotunda.
He never got the chance to make it for her. Never when it mattered. So he made it for himself, imagined it a kind of caress every time he sat in its safe perimeter, backrest bowed to allow him reprieve from discipline—a chair he could slump into, as if a hug.
In languid, meaningful strokes, he traced a fingertip across the grooves of the oiled wood, mindful to keep the paint from leaving a mark. He imagined the armrest supporting her elbow, his finger sparking static between her skin and his, eliciting a laugh that could fill the silence of his music room. And then he imagined the keenness of her smile, the velvet of her voice, the strength in her muscles, the shine of her curiosity whenever she’d seek him out in Skyhold.
So real, almost tangible, the seat promised rest for his weary feet, as if a hug.
Cold, head heavy with the weight of regret, heart tight with tension, he fell into the chair and sighed. The sound was nearly a whimper. Half a cry. Before he knew it, her name left his mouth like a prayer and he was drawn to the fresh mural where her back was to him, her love turned away from him, her warmth kept at such a cruel distance.
Solas shuddered, a preternatural chill driving deep past his veins, all the way to the bone. Such a burdensome ache, it made him wish to return to stone, to collapse under the earth and become the very ground so she could one day tread her feet across his entire being—so she could lay across the ground and be covered in the grass he’d grow around her, the lavender he’d spring after winter to help her sleep on the nights she was restless. He'd turn to the very hovel that housed the rabbits she’d hunt in the summer and he’d carve tunnels so deep they’d make rivers for her to bathe in, naked and beautiful.
And then, finally, finally, he’d embody the essence of a pride worth having.
But not in that moment. Not as long as her back was turned to him, her forgiveness never to be had in the form of a simple kiss.
He was forced to hold his head up by the base of his palm, eyes grown tired but too afraid to tear themselves from the mural—afraid that if he did not watch the paint dry, it would change to something else in the time it took him to blink. Then he would lose her all over again. Just as he lost her each time she was pulled out of dreams.
Every morning was a twist of a knife. And every evening was that knife unsheathed—heart cut deep and the wound left open. Usually, that ache was bearable—expected—but some days it was unforgiving.
Some days it was wrapped in the poison of desire.
That same flame that she encompassed, the likings of a sun Elgar’nan could never comprehend of being—full of nurturing light and the hope of a dawn after the endless dark—it burned within him hopelessly. Pale imitation. Hungry. Gnawing at him like the very wolf does his own leg to get free of the trap.
When desire took root, it was horrible. And when he conjured the lyrics of her in the throngs of passion, her voice was always dampened by his thundering heart. Her smell was always a note too faint. Her smile barely visible behind the haze that formed across his mind. Her tongue sorely absent from his, their passion never meeting within his wanton mouth, his lips never carving out the sound of her name against her very soul, his fingers unwetted and devoid of her warmth… his arousal, primed and ready for her, only her, surging forward and greeting nothing but the awkward creaking of the chair as he leaned too far back.
Solas bit back a groan of utter frustration, kicking free of the chair with such force that it struck the crates behind him, sending the pages of the last issue of the Randy Dowager flying.
Sheets of prose rained down around him, lines of erotic fantasy toying with his wired mind. Secreted away and breathless. Yes, he had secreted himself away, had he not? His chest did ring with the loudness of a beating drum as his heart raced at the prospect of losing himself to the dream of her. They knew it was inappropriate, that stray ears, sharp and curious, could catch the thrill of moans passed between their tongues, but neither cared for anything but their burning desire for each other. Inappropriate it had been, but the Dread Wolf was not known for being level-headed in her mythologies—he was always crazed, acting out rashly and with little regard for consequence. And did he not encapsulate everything the Dalish said he was? Most of all with her? Pressed together, limbs tangled in a desperate desire to hold each other closer than their layers of clothes would allow, the Herald and her secret lover toiled the few, spare minutes away in the pursuit of dangerous pleasure. Each salacious word traded between them was heard by none but the golden lions of the Orlesian throne.
He had once been introduced at the Empress’s ball as a servant of the Inquisitor, and, with the tears stinging his eyes, Solas was brought to his knees before her mural. By the time the last sheet of the gazette fell, he was rendered useless against his cravings for her. Even without her physical presence, the sheer memory of her had turned him a wretch, made him mad with the mania of desire that he’d lost himself to a trance and painted her. All because he’d read a copy of the Randy Dowager.
What in reality had been agonising and pure, a relationship that he should never have entertained but was powerless to cull from the moment she promised to protect him—a stranger—from the wroth of Cassandra and the templars, was turned raunchy and debasing.
The Herald of Andraste, Blessed Champion of the South, reduced to a mess of incoherent babble and stifled moans as her elf, apostate servant dipped his tongue into her heat, spreading her folds wide with two fingers so he’d bury his nose into the softness of her wild curls, only to emerge with a face slick and glistening, a grin wide and shameless.
The Imperium had strung their story together from rumour and lies, yet they had been right about one thing: he had desired her terribly that night. The wine. The music. The grace with which her body swayed on that dancefloor, leading Florianne like a mere marionette, wielding wit for a dagger and the wry twist of her mouth for a balm. Fenedhis!
He had been tipsy, and had he had the opportunity to steal a moment of her time, held only within the gaze of two golden lions, Solas could not say for certain if the scene depicted in the gazette would have truly remained fantasy.
Revasan. Freedom. What irony. What cruel, cruel irony it was to fall for a woman named after the promise of elven freedom. The very promise that drove him away from her. And what cheap mockery of his heartache was it that he yearned to be stripped free of everything, title and past, just for a moment of mortal passion.
He was above such baser things, was he not?
He was wiser, was he not?
So, why then, was he untying the laces of his trousers, shirking off the duty of his armour and tracing the meandering curves of his flush veins all across his body as if it was her doing so? Why was he biting down against his gloves to stifle moans no one could hear if not to imitate the enticing fear of discovery, as if in the middle of a moment of secret passion? Why was he aching and hot within the grip of his hand, casting warmth through his cold skin to imitate the warmth of a mouth wrapped along his shaft—or else her molten core, tight and greedy with its undulations?
Hopeless. Utterly hopeless.
“Vhen’an…” he croaked out between shallow breaths. “Nuvenan rosa’da’din in ma sule enan’ma.”
The filth that clawed its way from his mouth, the utter degrading filth! He should have been ashamed. But why did it sound like an exaltation? For the first time in so long, he could just barely hear her laughter, her joyous laughter of domination, as if she’d mounted him and brought him to the very edge of passion. He was rendered an animal—a chaser of that sacred high that could only be found inside her.
He could hear it now, her triumphant, heavy pants. He could feel the fire of her nails dragging across his back as she bucked her hips and rode him faster, deeper, greedier.
Whisper soft but dark with ravenous, mounting pleasure, she would speak into his ear a spell, and it would sound like “Come. Come home. Come to me. Rosa’da’din in’em. Vhen’an.”
And then he’d paint her with his seed. So full and so hot. And she’d keep her eyes trained on his, watching to see the moment he was overcome by the white clouds of pleasure across his peripheral, curious to see how much of his polite mask would break—and it would have been all of it.
The tears left salt trails on his face, and his hand pumped restlessly, fast and sloppy—nowhere near as fulfilling.
If there were any spirits wandering the halls, they’d hear his weak moans stifled by teeth biting down hard against the leather of his gloves. They’d hear the lewd sounds of his precum mixing with the paint on his hands. They’d feel his pain and pleasure—they’d become confused by it, unsure if it was compassion or admonishment he required. It would have been both.
The muscles in his abdomen went taught, and the tightness in his groin became unbearable. And for one glorious, fleeting second, he closed his eyes and she turned to him. Her face exactly how he pictured it would be in such a moment: head thrown back, neck long and curving, throat bobbing as she swallowed, hair cascading behind her, breasts exposed and covered in a sheen of sweat, thighs apart, hips with the perfect dips for his hands to hold…
Then the second passed, and behind the cover of his eyelids, his vision went white as he bucked forward, a great moan escaping him as ropes of cum spilt onto the floor.
Spent, he fell back, dissatisfied.
It would always never be enough.
Defeated, he rolled onto his side and curled into himself, hand reaching up towards the mural the way she had reached for every breach in the sky, and then he cast the image from his mind and the very walls of the Lighthouse.
The paint that had once been fresh and vibrant had been aged and chipped off like a scab peeled free from an old wound.
Tomorrow he would paint something else over it.
Something less hurtful.
But equally regrettable.