#sfw solavellan fanfic

[firjii]

DAI fanfic: “Brittle Eyes, Brittle Dreams” - part 1

SFW, minor brief language

Ace Solavellan

Words: 2,458

I originally wanted to wait until this was finished because it's not meant to be a book-length thing, but IMO it’s getting too long to be a one-shot item at this point. Any future portions I post beyond this will actually be part of the same extended scene (my writing style just doesn’t have fast pacing).

Angsty/gritty. Set after JoH but before the Temple of Mythal. A mage Lavellan in a state of shock returns to Skyhold after a tough mission. She is straining under crippling self-doubt and a colorful past.

She didn’t waver as Skyhold’s gates opened. Her chin was staunch and stalwart. Her eyes shone, but so did every other soldier’s against the stiff winds. Her hands were quiet fists in bulky gloves, clenched to conserve their warmth as much as to keep them from shaking. One huddled mass looked much the same as another to a tower guard. It was nothing noteworthy. It was nothing strange.

Her shoulders were hunched, as ever, but anyone glancing at her wouldn’t have seen the convulsions. They were disguised too well. She had borrowed another soldier’s armor that very morning, knowing that Inquisition scouts were so prodigious at clearing the mountain paths that she wouldn’t need the best of armor for the final leg of the journey. The set she’d chosen was two sizes too large and made of thick plate, nothing at all like the delicate scales of her favored equipment. The extra metal set a chill in her core, but it almost completely concealed her shaking – and, despite its extra weight, it was stiff enough to keep her standing upright, a proposal which would have otherwise proven challenging.

In the main courtyard, sentries coming and going from watches or missions observed the usual courtesies as she passed by, but she hardly acknowledged them. No matter. Every able body who had managed to return with her was in the same general state of dumbfounded weariness. As she shuffled through the great hall, the lingering smells of a hearty supper only served to turn her stomach further. Each crackle of each inviting hearth and torch only made her twitch and flinch on this night. The vibrant hues cast by the flames did little to brighten her ashen face. Her heavy plate boots – also borrowed, though for the purely practical reason of support for a sprained ankle – imposed a grim, echoing patter through the hall.

She abandoned the idea of scaling her private stairwell in armor when her foot buckled after just three steps. She tugged her gloves off with her teeth, which only made her gums ache when she accidentally bit down on metal instead of leather. Her fingers shakily plucked at straps on the boots, which she heaved against the wall with a clatter when she was finally free of them. The process to remove the remainder of the armor was similarly lengthy. Her face was flushed by the time she completed the ritual. Her nose reddened. She sat in silence, momentarily satisfied that she had at least found a solitary corner to retreat to.

She stayed fixed in place for an hour. Finally craving her quarters and a more hospitable material than ancient stones to lean her head against, she managed to scale an entire flight of stairs before pausing again. She struggled on as far as the forgotten Red Templar banner, the one whose presence utterly baffled everyone in Skyhold, including her. She watched it flutter slightly in an invisible draft, transfixed by the color otherwise absent in the passageway.

Her ankle actively throbbed. She sat again and sobbed, but it gave way to something else when her throat was raw enough.

She slept.

                                               * * *

“There must be easier ways to bring discomfort on yourself.”

She jerked awake and reflexively gasped at the sound of a voice – any voice. She drew a few chaotically rapid breaths before she fully processed the face before her. “Who told you where I was?” she rumbled.

Solas kept a neutral look, though the light in his eyes seemed to shift to something still and careful. “No willing person would choose such a place for sleep without a reason.”

She blinked, slow to realize both the apparent passage of time and her place within it. “And what about you? It’s an ungodly hour for anyone but a bandit.”

He moved his gaze down to his feet as he plucked his way up the steps. “My experiences have shown me that sleep and rest are two very different things.” He carefully sat down opposite her. “No warrior easily finds either after a skirmish, short of complete exhaustion.”

His bright eyes were a mismatch to his serene face. His relaxed sitting posture contradicted his perfectly-squared shoulders, ever assertive. She observed the unlikely combination for a moment. “Even exhaustion can keep you awake if you’re tired enough.”

He watched her stiffly shift against the wall. “You were wounded.”

“Everyone was.” She gestured weakly to her face, to dozens of glancing nicks along her jawbone and a mild burn on an ear. “It’s not bad. Most saw worse.”

“And your ankle?”

She glanced down, slightly sheepish. She shook her head. “I was stupid. I tripped and fell. I wasn’t used to the new stave. The weighting’s wrong.”

“Staying in a cold corner like this one will only worsen an injury.”

She drew a heavy breath. “It’s alright. I’ve had worse. They already did what they could.”

He watched her amicably for a moment. “With your permission – I could do more.”

“No. It’s alright.” She cringed away. “Don’t.”

His eyes flashed. “Do you enjoy letting something blind your judgment?”

She shrugged. “It’s easy to endure pains you can prove.”

“I doubt that the poor in Kirkwall or slaves in Tevinter would say the same.”

She ran a distracted hand through her sweat-dulled hair. “We’re all slaves to something.”

His forehead constricted a fraction, though she didn’t see it. “I know. Let me break those chains.”

“It’s not about my damned foot,” she huffed. Her voice held a strangled quality.

“Then let me remedy it so you might focus on your true problems.”

She held her head as she propped her elbows on her knees. “Alright,” she finally muttered. She straightened. “Fine.”

He removed both layers of her third-hand socks and brushed off the dirt and grime that had somehow snuck into the impenetrable-looking plate boots. He peered at the swelling at length, analyzing each vein and tendon. She cast her gaze away determinedly. “You’re not as hurried as the field surgeons. Were you ever a healer?”

He ignored her at first, too intent to speak. “One who has been out alone in the world must know a little of everything.”

She winced when he checked a bruise on her heel, but his tone drew her eyes onto him. “And what do you know?”

He stopped his work. “We will not stop Corypheus tonight or even tomorrow. You should not try to tell yourself otherwise, especially when you only have one sound foot to stand on.”

In her dazed, pained state – though his quiet magic was correcting the swelling even as he spoke – it took her a protracted interval to realize that the advice was, perhaps, partially a joke. She tried to smile but managed little more than a grimace.

He returned his attention to her ankle. “No wonder. You dislocated it as well as sprained it.”

“I know. They set it back into place.”

“Yes, and then they very likely redoubled the problem by making you walk several miles through slippery mountain passes,” he lilted. His chipper scorn barely aimed past her.

“Mountain fortresses aren’t meant to be found.”

He made the smallest noise of neutral, distracted agreement. A glow slowly formed around his hands, green like the Anchor’s light but somehow less – unnatural. He murmured spell words, though so quietly that he scarcely made more noise than a few random consonants. His eyes narrowed a fraction, peering at her as if unable to see her correctly. His face quietly lit up. “You dislike the damp inside Skyhold.”

“Anyone would. It gets into your bones if you’re not careful.”

“Of course. You are unused to great buildings.”

She snorted. “I’m unused to trekking miles up stairs just to get to my own bed.”

“I have no doubt that any soldier or scout in Skyhold would have lent you–”

“It wouldn’t be any good,” she snapped with a jabbing wag of her head. She closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s as you said. I won’t sleep properly tonight. I only want the quiet. I can’t get that with dozens of people nattering on a few yards away.”

“Adamant upset you.”

She focused her tired face back onto his and frowned. “What’s that to do with it?”

“Everything, I suspect.” He hooked one eyebrow up a fraction as a ghost of a smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, but both gestures soon evaporated. “Since then, you stay outside as much as possible. I sometimes think that you want to be sure that we escaped the Fade by checking if the sky is the correct color.”

Her eyes darkened. “You never say what you mean. Speak your damned mind for once.”

“Would you like to check it again – now?”

“Check what?”

He smiled in earnest and dipped his chin down. “The sky, vhenan.”

Vhenan. The tiny word softened her face, as if it made her remember something equally elusive and reviving. “It’s nighttime.”

“Then it should be all the easier to see if anything is amiss. The raw Fade is vivid and strange no matter the time of day.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Was that not what you planned to do?”

She rubbed her eyes and huffed, but she considered the offer soberly. “Help me up.” Even without armor, she stood heavily as he braced her lame side. He ably harmonized his sound steps with her timid ones as they ascended the final stairs, even when she abruptly paused several times for breath.

“Are you still in pain?”

“It’s just the memory of falling. It knocked the wind out of me.” She chuckled weakly. “I always remember the way I earned a bruise better than the pain from one.”

They mastered the final stone steps. He spied a multicolored stole on a table – one of many tokens from the Avvar for thwarting Hakkon – and snatched it up as the two tottered past. He opened a balcony door for her, but she suddenly removed her arm from his shoulder and stubbornly limped the few remaining steps to go outside. She clumsily eased herself down against a pillar. He draped the stole around her, taking an unusual length of time for the task. She nodded blandly and tugged the stole tighter. He sat next to her but noted her irregular shaking – which had persisted since she had woken – and thought the better of embracing her.

“The snow has its own glow at night,” she muttered. “I forgot about that.” She chuckled soundlessly and tightly. “Isn’t that silly? We spend half our time in Skyhold, but I still don’t remember everything about the place.”

“We often ignore what is nearest to our faces.”

“Does that make us foolish or stupid?”

“Neither. It only means that we constantly adjust to circumstances.”

She sighed. After a long moment, she leaned against his side – barely. “Everything always circles around on itself, doesn’t it?” she muttered. “Sooner or later, we always find the same paths and the same markers as everyone who came before us. The paths might look a little different, but you can’t avoid them – not really. They’re the only choice.”

A muffled but musical whir of mountain gusts echoed out for a long moment while they both stared at the snow, made all the more brilliant that night by the full moon.

She ground her jaw. “I can’t ignore it anymore.”

Solas crinkled his face at the remark and glanced at her only to find her tired stare fixed firmly on mountain peaks. “None of us can.”

She sneered. “You don’t even know what I mean.”

“I know your frustration. What else is there to understand?”

She shivered and leaned a little harder into his side. “I don’t mind being something different than what I began as. I just don’t want that to be less.”

“You –” He swallowed his words and shook his head gently. “That will never happen.”

“You were there. You heard what Ameridan said.”

“The Avvar siege was the most difficult since Haven. You took his words too harshly in the heat of battle fatigue–”

“He couldn’t even stand,” she cut over him. “You saw him. That’s all that was left. He was alone for centuries. Who knows what he thought while he was there? No one should have to sacrifice so much and be remembered for so little. The world almost lost him.”

“Do you expect to be forgotten after all this?”

Her head lowered abruptly, as if a drug had overwhelmed her waking senses. Her shoulders rounded forward, just as they had done upon returning to Skyhold. “He knew. Things weren’t the same for him, but –” Her jaw clenched. “Everything’s been a blur since this started. Either I don’t know what to do and I need to defer to others or I know exactly what to do but can’t. When I saw him, I saw myself.”

“Is that such an evil thing? He was an honorable man.”

“We’ve recruited dozens of agents and thousands of soldiers. None of them ever made me think about it. When you’re all thrown together because the world’s gone to hell, it’s easy to stop seeing yourself. But Ameridan –” Her lip curled. “He made me look. He made me see it.”

Solas finally stared at her.

Her face was slick. Her chin jittered. Her eyes were cavernous. She didn’t look at him – not even a glance.

His far hand clenched and unclenched. It moved several inches above the ground, but his elbow was an immobilizing splint. He let his hand rest back on the stone slabs again.

A single sniffle escaped her. “It doesn’t matter about being chosen. It matters because everyone will suffer if I can’t get this sorted. And if I can’t, it won’t matter. We won’t matter.” Her face crimped, but her sobs were silent and dragging, like the breath inside her was insufficient for the act.

His far hand conducted the same argument with itself a second time. He looked away and frowned before his head bobbed back in her direction. As if in care of an ancient scroll, he took the closer of her hands in his. His other hand soon joined it. She scarcely reacted. “I doubt that Ameridan’s words drove you here.”

“Why?” Her single word held the stretched singsong of barely-restrained collapse.

“You let the most important ones drift away.”

She set a keen glare on him, but it wavered when he met it with quietude.

“‘Take moments of happiness where you find them. The world will take the rest.’” He squeezed her hand.

She went a long moment without blinking as her mouth curled into a grimace. “It already did.” She limply removed her hand from his.

#sfw solavellan fanfic #firjii writes #dragon age inquisition fanfic #firjii's fanfic #yeahhh well firjii does grit and personal hangups #not romance #angsty solavellan fanfic #ace solavellan fanfic