Chapter Text
Sound bounces off the ground and ripples, shoots off desperately towards the walls where the smooth stone denies it embrace, rejects, refuses to swallow—instead, its reflections are sent back, weakened in dejection, twisted, aimless. A heel over the hardwood stretches thus and blossoms into this thorny cacophony, this mockery of footstep-click, which rapidly dissolves into fainter and yet fainter simulacrums, until his ears can no longer pluck it at all. Solas places one foot before the other, then again, then again.
The sound is deafening, an overwhelming rumble—dark, grey, opaquely stifling. He can imagine clearly that storm-clouds have gathered to fill the chamber like loose cotton, then pressed together tightly, until this pressure destroys their very purpose and spins their droplets into rain, and floods the floor, and rises past his neck, and drowns him, drowns him, this echo of his footsteps. Solas touches a rug with his heel and wills it to produce the melting hiss of soaked-through wool, this first omen for his breath. It is completely dry. He turns back, steps once more, and then once more.
The air is helpless. Sound only drowns his mind; his lungs announce their burn, their ever-turning effort: a machine on fire, yes, but functioning—all coal and steam.
Silence could not drown him either—by the void, he tried that first. He stood completely still—and begged and begged to be engulfed, to disappear within its endless depths; he closed his eyes as soon as Nehnis left him, and dove and dove into the dark pit absence carves out for the lonely. A summer night without the crickets, without the stars, without the wind—just endless quiet—how bad could it be?—how badly he wished for it to end him! His hands were clammy, cold against the hardwood of the desk, fingers tensely bent as if to coax their joints a different path—then a fingernail had lost the fight of friction with its surface, and creaked its claw-mark, and thus the summer night had ended: swiftly, with a jolt.
Solas steps ahead, and then again, and finds himself before the desk once more, this wretched altar to his work. Looks down.
If there were someone watching now, they would see him bend, hang his head low; they would see the way his hands are shaking, as if to keep in perfect tact along his breathing. If there were someone looking, they would see the tension at his brow—a concentrated conjuring of migraine—the glisten in his eyes, the tremble. But there is no one there observing, there is no one who would notice, and there is no one who would know.
How long has it been, since he last saw her writing? The scrawl, the uneven placing of each letter—each one a bird in its own stage of flight to settle on a crooked branch? The long sharp hook to end her y after it has followed the jittery bounce of m, which in itself starts so low, that it often takes the shape of three arches, not two—a pair of lovers, holding hands. The perfect-circle of her o, so that his name would be an esoteric summon. A binding to her will. She must know it's what she's doing, she has to be aware. How long, indeed; he shuts his eyes.
Josephine had lovely penmanship and even better manners: it took her no time at all to make her case, that she should pen the letters of the Inquisition. As soon as Luella was elected Inquisitor, she forfeited this privilege, though tongue-in-cheek about it and clear-eyed about the reason—the crooked and pragmatic way she'd learned instead of cursive. Documents were thus out of the question—by the time they were considered fit for outside eyes—official, open to his viewing—the o of this new state had switched its ink, and traded pens—and gained a curve, a tasteful pinch, to match the one which the Ambassador would sign with.
This meant no spies had brought it—and no memo he had read in the time spent beside her would have carried it.
Her journals, in that case? Her endless journals. Summer nights and campfire—and crickets, stars, and wind around them, yes, like the swarming mist which soaks through memories, only he knows it to be true even in hindsight—and she, curled over, squinting for the flicker of the light, book open across her lap. He could sit wherever he had wished those evenings, and so he often sat beside her, if only to softly envy these hard covers. She wrote and wrote and wrote, and looked up and squeezed her eyes to rest them only long enough for him to part his lips and charge them with the spell of some distraction—before she turned down once more and wrote again, night after night, while crickets counted stars and Solas counted freckles. The reality is this: he did not look over her writing; he saw her fingers, traced her knees, trailed down the waves of hair she'd loosened for a break before her nighttime braid, and he had no will, nor want, nor eyes, for the paper, which would so occupy his lover's attention.
And so he knows there is no way of knowing beyond the grim awareness that it has been long, so endlessly long—one mocking stretch of eternity—since the last time he recognised her hand on paper. A glimpse, perhaps, a note she'd left him in his absence: a redundant guide on where to find her—where the books are, always, where the books are. A corner tucked under a tome, so that it would not fly away before he's seen it; a torn-off edge arching downwards, downwards, to betray the source of paper—this journal which so stole her evenings when they were away on missions.
What did she write on now? Is this a proper sheet, bearing the Inquisition marking? Solas now only wishes for a scrap, he longs for it—a throwaway, the quickest note. The feeling of having-just-missed-him racing her letters into a carefree lean; the presumption that they should find each other with such ease—the way this certainty made her notes disposable, at least back when she could be certain. When he could be.
The hold of his fingers burns with the unopened envelope in his address.
(Find me in the library, he daydream-wills its contents to spell out. Hasty and sweet: his knuckles brushing over the dusty canvas of book spines—his palm cradling her hair, defending her skull from the force of a kiss and the surface she's been pressed to. One mocking stretch of eternity, minus the minute it would have taken to leave this inky breadcrumb and skip along the path to her, to press his teeth to her sweet soft neck. The spice of gingerbread and the price of burning; the sensation of a fairytale unravelling about them, grand and yet familiar. The back of his mind flashes desperately with the images of Skyhold, of its arcanium—and then of Vir Dirthara, now that she knows it, now that it knows her.)
He can find her with his eyes closed, he can find her in his sleep—she knows this too, she has to be aware. This is no invitation, it is no scrap—the paper inside the envelope fits snugly, folded thrice and proper. Solas is starving.
He steps away. Sound echoes, swarms about him, and he wishes to swat it away, to chase it off, so that he truly would be as alone as his heart feels. Instead, he runs from it—or dodges it undeftly, sees no difference—steps and steps and steps and curves shy of the wall, then steps his prodigal path back to her writing. I forgive you, the letter inside might say. He wishes that it wouldn't. Steps away again, then lets his feet follow their meek path of retreat, back to her once more.
Instead, Solas wishes for something harsh: a razor-blade tucked between the folds, a threat. A stream of endless hurt—an outlet of hers, perhaps, or better yet—a cause for his. I let you go, now. You were right and I was wrong. A slash across his heart, formed in past tense—three dips like hands raised towards the sky in prayer, a half-empty coffee cup viewed from above, a snake curled up in death—this crooked was—connecting what we had with real. Words hardened to a cutting edge and shot right through—piercing him with her obedient conviction, his most motivated student.
Oh, but he has spent countless nights wishing her into this different shape: this carefree woman who would leave—and countless dawns have lit up with the clarity that this fantasy will never be fulfilled. He knows this by now, he has to be aware. There is no razor in her letter, no cutting blade beside the sharpness of her mind. He feels its contents hold him, even as they are: unseen, unread. Even sealed away, the fibre of this paper warms him with the touch it carries. It brings the worst pain—the unwavering, the certain, and the absent.
Solas sits, then stands, then sits again. The light above is blinding after the strain of trailing over the texture of the paper—and so he squints, lets it filter softly through his lashes while his eyes adjust. He'd wish for pain and blindness any other day but now—now he lifts the envelope between his fingers and settles in its shadow.
The fluid lines of overlapping ink shine through, blood vessels threaded through the paper-pulp; this wyrmling has shed her skin and shredded it for him—or so it feels—then glued it back together as a vessel for the message, at least in figure. If approaching her words conjures such great fear, how did she feel when writing them? Her hand holding the pen is as far as his imagination takes him, before a sob breaks through and Solas grasps to regain his bearing. She would have bent low over the letter—he sees her now, back-lit and diffused like all visions which swarm about him before he commits them to paintings. A loose lock of hair would have fallen over her writing; she would have brushed the curl away, swept at it swiftly, and the nail of her pinky would have scraped against the paper. Oh, she likely would have given it no thought at all as it would happen, and yet still, here Solas is—writhing, agonising at this mere thought of her contact.
(The knuckle of his wrist rejoices with the weightless presence of her knotted hair. Resting pressed against his skin, an airy bridge over the cold rivers of his veins. His heart is heavy—so, so heavy. He shifts his hand; the lover's bridge remains steadfast, brassy-golden, shining in the night-like shadow of his sleeve.)
In the diffused braid of lines folded over lines folded over lines, and words obscuring words obscuring words, he can't make out a thing—no hint of pain and heartache, no trace of comfort or forgiveness. Pressed to his face, the paper smells like hyacinths—faintly, faintly—and he briefly considers calling Nehnis back—locking the door, grabbing his collar into a fist and bashing his face into a broken pulp until his own knuckles give up from the effort—all for the overstep of having this scent rub off onto the inside of the man's cape pocket. Solas does no such thing. Pride recognises Envy when he sees it; he dismisses it through truth—he could just as easily kneel down and kiss the hands that brought to him this note, however dreaded—most beloved.
It takes great effort not to crease it through the tension in his grip; takes greater effort to look down at it again, and greater yet—to look away.
If there were someone watching, they would see a man—hunched over, yet swift and determined in the motion of sliding open the top drawer of a desk. They would watch the man place a sealed envelope inside with the care befit a fragile dry-pressed leaf, fearful of rogue winds encroaching on this solemn den. If there were someone looking, they would see the way his eyes linger over the knob, long after he's pushed the drawer shut and locked it—the way his ribs sink, flinching from the cold kiss of the tiny key he's hung around his neck.
But there is no one there observing, there is no one who would notice, and there is no one who would know.