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Anders' breath shuddered out of his chest as he stood in the cold, desolate room.
It reminded him, in ways, of the clinic of Darktown. An old, hole-in-the-way sanctuary, tucked away in the corner of the sewers. The first level at least. Kirkwall was a place built upwards, with slopes like the mountains surrounding it.
The bed was as small as his cot had been, but packed fuller than his old rickety thing, piled with furs of various creatures for warmth. Some of the furs had been stroked so insistently it bore the marks of their suffocating comforter. He brushed his fingers over one blanket as he sat on the edge; bear fur, he guessed, from the familiar texture of the pelt, and the deep brown colour. He buried his hand in it and fisted the softness, forcing himself to tear his gaze from it even if his grip refused to loosen.
His eyes travelled over the minimal furniture, the lack of sentimentality spilling into the room from the absence of trinkets. What furniture there was, was old and well-loved. Vintage in a sense, with something otherworldly in every curve. The style reminded him of the winding, curling beams of Arlathan that he saw in his dreams. The crystalized decor that hummed with magic; gone for longer than it had been known.
The Well of Sorrows had been named adequately. Every new glimmer of its knowledge he waded through to taste on his tongue soured into something bitter. Sorrow was the only word to describe the wonders he learned of, and quickly realised he would never see for himself. It never would have been his place, but knowing no one would ever see it again did not lessen the tragedy of it all. If anything, it heightened it.
Anders drew his eyes back to the walls. For all that it lacked, the paint upon the walls brought the room to life in a way he could not describe. He found it hard to look upon his own imagery, though he had done so so many times before. Statues of honour and heroism; book covers on mage rights and his fight for them; operas of his grand love affair, and the dramatised, painfully inaccurate rendition of Cullen and his union, from the streets of Kirkwall to the wondrous castle of Skyhold.
He blamed Varric, partially, for those awful Orlesian theatre shows. He wondered what he would write next. If he would find reality as… riveting as his fantastical stories.
Probably not. That was the bitter part of him talking.
He sighed, because that’s all he could manage these days. A gentle acceptance, because he had run his course of every other step. It didn’t lessen the pain.
So he focused on the art before him. He thought about the brush strokes that created the silhouette of his staff, the sharp cut of his cheek, the slope of his nose. He wondered what colours were mixed to achieve the regal blue of his favoured coat, the gentle, sunshine yellow-white of his feathers, or the coppery gold of his hair, marked with slivers of silver that had managed to eat away at his roots over the years.
He still looked young in that portrait, younger than he was now. Immortalised, in a way. Untouched by age and ruin. By dust or a crumbling infrastructure. Not yet.
When he looked up, he could see himself again, but rather than the Herald, he found the Apostate. The staff was closer to a broken branch, twisting and curling upwards into a fruitful apple tree, red string tying a stone wolf to its centre. There was something softer in this portrait; the angles, the contrast, the outline. The colours were bleeding into each other like a watercolour canvas. He looked messier, but younger and fiercer, even in the tenderness of the piece.
The part that felt out of place was the wings across his back; large, encompassing and in varying shades of grey and brown. Like ash. They took up space in the piece, like they desired to expand even further to cover the whole room. They reminded him of Griffon wings, with that white, almost striped pattern at the tips of the primary feathers. He had only seen them in books, until he received detailed illustration from an ecstatic young Warden who wished to impart the glorious find to him.
Inquisitor Anders Rutherford,
We all lived to see this day because of you. Once a Warden, always a Warden, as it is said. You’ve more than completed your duty. You deserve to see the fruits of your labour. — Warden D. of the Weisshaupt Fortress
P.S. Let’s keep this between us. We Wardens are good at keeping secrets, aren’t we?
He smiled faintly and lowered his gaze to the mural by the door. Rather than depicting the Herald of Andraste, or the Apostate of Kirkwall, it painted an image closer to his current self. With his long hair, tied back into its usual half-up and half-down, glittering with gold rather than with silver these days as he aged. It wasn’t finished, Anders noted with a strange coil of… something in his gut. It set him on edge, noting the incomplete strokes that travelled down his neck. He looked almost regal, dignified with a sense of maturity he still felt at odds with some days. Yet there was a gentleness to the painted lines of his face, a loving caress that made him look almost holy in a sense. Worshipped.
His eyes held no colour, slabs of white waiting for the correct shade of brown to grace them, but the dusky pink shine of his lips had been captured, along with the divoting scars from a lifetime of chewing on his lips, tearing at skin and tasting blood. The scar on his chin, a tiny mark from his youth that never faded, was captured too, along with freckles and moles he couldn’t say for certain were placed correctly, but instinct told him they were next to perfect.
“Why does it not surprise me that you managed to sneak past my defences?”
Anders dragged his eyes from the portrait to the doorway, his heart leaping into his throat at the sight of him. After so many years…It was eerie to note how frozen in time the man was compared to him. He was not unchanged, but he wasn’t changed enough to be comforting either.
“Solas.” He thought he would have more to say, but words felt inconceivable in that moment. What did one even say to a man they hadn’t seen in years? A man they had been chasing after for over a decade?
“Anders.” He could feel the elf’s gaze roaming over him, taking him in, and he wondered if he had done this many times before, or if he had had other people do his spying for him. Anders would be a fool to think himself unwatched this past decade, when he had been watching Solas in their dreams.
He fisted the pelt of the bear and slowly, released it from his grasp. He stood tall, but it was not for grandeur or intimidation. It was for his own strength, his wish not to falter and crumble before the man.
“Are you going to ask how I did it?” He questioned, almost hoping he would.
“No. I already know how.” Solas stepped further into the room, one step, then another, before stopping at the end of the bed. He reached out and placed a hand on the curve of his bedpost, giving the design his silent admiration as he spoke on.
“Nothing in this place would come to harm you, Anders. It was never my intention to do so. Yet my plan wasn’t to allow you inside, either. I never assumed…” He faltered and smiled weakly. “That was poor planning on my part.”
“I was starting to think that maybe you had finally come to your senses.” Anders gave a grim smile. “Silly me. Getting my hopes up.”
“I’m sorry. For what it is worth. I truly am.”
“I know, Solas. I’m sorry too. For dooming your world, like you’re trying to doom mine.”
“I’m trying to find a way it can work. A way we can collide and both survive, Anders. But time is running out. I never had to worry about time before, but it gets ever shorter, ma vhenan.”
“Don’t call me that.” Anders' voice was hoarser than he wanted it to be. “Just don’t. Not now.”
“Ir abelas. To make you fight when you have already lost so much…”
“So you know.”
“Yes. I was informed.”
“Could you have done something, Solas? Like you did for the mark. Could you— would you have helped?” Anders eyes watered against his will, voice wavering even as he tried to keep it strong. He couldn’t afford to break down again. Not in front of him.
“If I could?” Solas' gaze was full of compassion, and an empathy that burned Anders up inside. Not with anger, but pure internal destruction. Like a forest burning to regrow when the season changed. “In a heartbeat, to save you this pain.”
Anders spat out a curse, and he couldn’t tell what language escaped him at that moment, as he sank back down onto the bed and hung his head in defeat. Cullen used to tease him. To kiss his cheek in an attempt to coddle his anger, smothering the flames with the blanket that was his love.
“I don’t know what I like more. When you go all gruff with the Anderfel curses, or all sharp with the elven ones.”
“Just be glad I didn’t pick up much of the Kirkwall accent. Sounds uglier than sin.”
He pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes to stifle the tears. It did little to help.
“I was supposed to go first. That was always the plan. I never thought…” His breath hitched. “It isn’t fair. I wasted so much time looking for you; time I could have spent with him.”
“If it wasn’t me, it would have been something else, Anders. The Qunari, even. It is who you are; you chase purpose and burden, even at your happiest. I understand.” Solas’ expression hardened, but it only served to make him look more agonised. “I regret fighting at all, but I will not take blame for you chasing me when I told you to take what time you had, and to live it well."
Anders launched from the bed of pelts to shove the elvhen mage in the chest with both hands. He budged two steps, before standing once more like a solemn statue; a sorrowful gargoyle.
“You threatened to take the world from me!” Anders yelled with old anger that had renewed in his grief, shoving him again, and again. The mage stumbled and then righted himself to take another blow each time. “You gave me a time limit that I didn’t know the number of! Days, weeks, months, years! I had to sit with him and wonder if I was too late, if I would go from eating dinner with the love of my life to being erased from existence! Chucked into the Beyond with no warning!”
Anders grabbed the fur lining his shoulders and shoved him hard into the wall, pinning him beside that damning, incomplete portrait.
“You told me you would end my world, to have yours back. And I—“ Anders shuddered in a breath, his bottom lip quivering as his eyes threatened to spill over. He didn’t want to cry. Dammit, he didn’t want to cry again.
“I understand. I’ve seen it. In my dreams. In- in moments I think are memories, but they’re not mine. I drank from that well because you wouldn’t, and because you didn’t trust Morrigan.” He shook his head. “I know things I shouldn’t, lives I’ve never lived, and I can’t just forget them. I heard the voices of your people, and I understand why you want them back. But I love my people just as much as you do. I can’t let you erase them, Solas.”
His head fell upon his chest, curling into himself as he bit his lip hard to stifle a sob.
“I want to go back to the days when you were just another apostate to me. Us against all who feared us, even as we tried to save them…I want to be able to cry on your shoulder again when it’s all too much. Solas, it’s all too much.” He heaved out a harsh sob, hiccuping painfully around it as he dug his nails painfully into the metal armour.
Gentle arms enveloped him, winding around his back. A hand cupped the base of his skull, cradling his head reverently as fingers carded through silken hair for an indulgent moment. Solas hugged him tighter, and Anders let the tears fall in fat droplets, rolling down his cheeks as he shook within the Dread Wolf’s embrace.
“Then cry. My shoulder will always be yours, Anders.”
Anders didn’t bother to quiet himself. He let out loud, achy sobs, accompanied by soft wails of mourning, as he clung to the elf, wetting his fur with salty tears and snot. There was nothing beautiful or cathartic about his cries. They were simply heavy, lonely shouts at a Maker who had ripped his heart out and stomped all over it.
“Why…? Why me? After everything…This world just takes and takes, and I—“
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You want to take it all away too. Don’t tell me you’re sorry.”
“I want to save this world from a crueller death, Anders.” Solas hugged him tighter. “If the Evanuris found freedom from their prison…I’m not sure anyone could stop them. Not even I.”
“So that’s it. You tear down the Veil, lock them back up, and lock us all out. Remove us from the equation to make it easy.”
“It is not easy.” Solas pulled back to cup the mage's face, urging him to meet his gaze. “It will never be easy. I told you, I want to find a way for us both…”
He trailed off with a weary sigh.
“If I could make a world that could coexist, I would. But history has proven the hubris of man will not allow my people to flourish, not while yours live.”
“You don’t know that.” Anders scowled, smacking his hand from his face in rebuttal. “That was the past. The future is ours to make of it as we will. You could help shape it, Solas. If there is a way to coexist, I will help you. To have a world full of magic again…”
“Don’t. Do not make me hope for something I cannot make true. Time is dwindling. There is not enough of it to spare anymore.”
“You could have told me. You could have told me the moment you thought coexisting could be possible; we would have had time then.”
“I could not see you.”
“Why? Why shut me out when we could have…”
“You know why.” Solas’ tired gaze moved past Anders shoulder, looking upon the visage of the Herald he had once been. “You know why, Anders. Do not make me say it aloud.”
“Why didn’t you come to me sooner? Solas…” Anders reached out and gently turned the elf’s cheek, eyes pleading for answers. “Talk to me. We were friends once, weren’t we?”
“You never stopped being mine. No matter the distance. No matter the trials. You were always…” Solas’ eyes flashed, a brilliant burst of pale blue, grimacing as he turned away. “I took more from you than I could ever pay back. I had no right to see you. It was easier to stay away.”
“Solas, how much of this conviction is really yours? I know. I know with my arm, Justice disappeared. I thought he died, or returned to the Fade, or that you would return him, but…” Anders licked his dry lips, afraid of the answer he might receive. “Solas, did you keep him?”
“It was more complicated than—“
“You kept him.” Anders stepped back, a wreath of betrayal twining around his heart. He thought he knew Solas better. That he would have learnt from their talks how dangerous it had been, no matter how Anders had cared for Justice before their merging. That all the spirit had ever wanted at his core was to go home. “You kept him from the Fade. After all the lectures you subjected me to!”
Electricity sparked over his right hand, the urge to shock some sense into the man overwhelming him. His anger, even if it warped Justice once, had always been his own. He was far too old and far too tired to hold back anymore when it gripped him.
“He is trapped in a manner I cannot undo, Anders. You think I have not tried?”
“I don’t know. You’re infamous for your conniving tongue. A trickster god who only cares for his own ambitions.” Anders sneered. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. Especially when it comes from your mouth, Fen’Harel.”
Solas winced, a physical cringe more than an audible sound, looking away guiltily.
“I suppose I have earned your distrust. Omission is no better than a bold-faced lie.”
“I would know. I was a notorious liar once too.” Anders grasped his left wrist with his right hand, and with an ominous whir, it sparked to life, deep purple-blue strobes of electrical current surrounding the metal prosthetic. It crackled and zapped loudly as Anders raised it to the level of Solas’ chest. A bundle of energy pooled in the palm, a mass of power slowly growing.
“This thing is trigger happy, so you better make your next lie believable, Solas. The love of my life is dead. My friends are scattered to the wind with their own missions, their own lives. If killing you sets Justice free, I damn well might consider it, before I follow you to whatever awaits men like us.” He would chase Solas to the ends of Thedas to make good on the promise.
“Killing me would doom the world you love.” Solas raised his hands in a mildly temperamented gesture of peace.
“I wouldn’t be here to regret it. My connections know some of the most prolific mages of our age. They would find a way to save this world. We always find a way. I trust them more than I trust you right now. Why didn’t you set him free, Solas?”
“When he protected you at the Conclave, from ancient magic and explosion alike, his essences warped with the magic of the orb. It created a bridge between you and it. A connection, with as minimal harm as possible. It kept you alive long enough for me to find a way to stabilise it.”
“I know this part. Why haven’t you found a way to free him? You proclaim ancient power and knowledge and you do nothing with it.”
“When I stabilised the orb, it also stabilised what was left of his essence. What hadn’t been eaten away by the same decay that was killing you.”
“You removed it from my body. But he’s not dead.” Anders stated more than questioned.
“Yes.”
“Then why isn’t he home, Solas? Stop dodging the question!” The crackling magic grew, Anders using the arm as a conduit, a focus, much like he would a staff.
“He is not the Justice you remember. He has no consciousness. When I took back the magic of the orb, my magic, he merged with it like any other possession. He has no will, no shape, no purpose. His essence may live within me, but he gone for all intended purposes, Anders.”
Solas grimaced, eyes full of sympathy.
“I didn’t want to tell you, because what my magic has done to him, is of equal measure to making a mage Tranquil. I’m sorry. There is no spirit to return. If he were to leave, all the memories he gave me would be obsolete. His memory, in death, would be erased.”
“He— he gave you his memories?” Anders eyes widened, the magic sputtering out and dying as he dropped his hand. Then, his eyes raised to the ceiling. “That’s how you knew. Every detail…it’s like looking in a mirror.”
“A spirit holds more clarity than any human would. They aren’t bound by the mentality men have on their appearances. They are not skewed by any other perception than their own, and that of their purpose. The memories are clearest of when he was a Warden. They are inclined towards change within yours. There are gaps of time missing…but he remembers with startling clarity, even if he is now voiceless.”
“Please— please don’t go on. I can’t…” Anders' heart sank as he lowered himself onto the edge of the mattress. He felt unbalanced, like he might fall over if he didn’t sit down.
Justice. Reduced to the equivalent of a Tranquil. His stomach roiled at the comparison.
“It would be better if he was dead.”
“I fear how it would affect my own memory, if I picked him apart from my magic now. Much of what he saw has blended into my perception of day to day life. To put him to rest could take years of knowledge I have acquired to stop the Evanuris from escaping. I cannot risk it.”
“So…you know everything Justice knows. You know why I did what I did in Kirkwall. How far does- how far can you see?”
“The Conclave. After that, his energy was conserved towards keeping you alive, rather than remembering.”
“Fuck.” Anders buried his face in his flesh hand, scrubbing it down his stubbly cheeks. “Fuck.”
“Ir—“
“Ma harel!” The healer leapt from the bed and pinned the elf to the wall with both hands upon his shoulders. Solas did not resist, back pressed against the incomplete facade of the mage glaring him down. “You’re not sorry. You should have found a way to release him as soon as you knew. You did know. You bided your time to make that fucking excuse.”
“Perhaps I did. Is that what you would like to hear, Anders? Would it help you rest at night?”
“I want the truth.”
“I have given it to you.”
“No. You haven’t. Why didn’t you release him sooner? If you could unravel his essence from yours, why didn’t you?”
“Would you like me to tell you I am selfish? Because that is the truth. I am no monster, even if the Dalish proclaim it in their legends. I am a mere man, as you are, who has happened to see empires rise and fall, in the waking and unwaking world.” Solas reached up and curled his fingers around the mages wrists, thumbing over cool metal, painted to resemble flesh, if not for the telltale lines in the plate that divoted the artwork.
“No matter how long one lives, how wise one can grow to be, people still fall to their desires. Selflessness is the harder choice, where selfishness is far easier. Forgive me for being selfish, ma vhenan, but he was you. A part of you I could keep close. I did not want to part with it any less than I wanted to part with you.”
“Solas…it’s been ten years.” Anders sighed, his grip loosening, but not falling away. Solas’s hands danced higher, thumbs pressed into the centre of his palms as he squeezed his hands. Anders stared at them, because it was far easier to look at his hands than to look in those eyes.
“I know.”
“The Calling will come for me soon. I am old by the standards of this world.”
“I am aware. It is not something easily forgotten.” To an unchanged man like Solas, of course the constant ageing of his heart was something that plagued him.
“I have loved and lost, and I am still mourning. I might never stop.” Four months. Four months, and four days since…
“I understand the endless mourning, Anders. More than you can imagine.”
“Why? You could have moved on. Forgotten me. Ten years—“
“Is a blink in my peoples eyes. A mere fraction of time. You have made these ten years agonisingly slow, my friend.” Solas guided his hand to his cheek and turned his face to press a gentle kiss to scarred fingertips. “Yet I could not forget you. I could not replace you. Once, my people loved a one and only, with incomparable ferocity. For an elf to love twice in a lifetime is rare.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you?” Solas smiled ruefully as he bent his head and knocked it gently against Anders. “What would make you unworthy of my affections, when you were my first friend in this strange new world I awoke in? How could I not fall for such passion, wit and conviction? You care without restraint, ma vhenan. You love with the ferocity of a wild cat. Your curiosity knows no bounds, ever hungry for more, and willing to listen. Your stubbornness and temperament are both flaws, yet they strengthen you when the time for hard decisions come. Something I admire. So why not you?”
“We’re on two different sides, Solas. You know this. I can’t abandon my cause any less than you can.”
“We are on even ground here, Anders.” Solas cupped the back of his neck and sighed softly. “Here, we are as we were. Two mages, trying to do the right thing in the face of scrutiny.”
“You bastard.” Anders laughed, but it was hollow and weak. “I see now why they called you a trickster.”
“That was not my intent—“
Any defence he had was silenced by warm lips on his own. Anders pulled away, and Solas grasped his nape tighter, drawing him back in for another. Harder, fiercer, desperate.
Anders groaned against his mouth, gasping at the slip of tongue the elf gave him, as Solas’ hands found a home on his lower back, and the back of his left thigh.
Solas had ached for this for almost fifteen years. This moment where he could covent the mages lips for himself. Anders moaned as he was guided backwards, knees cowing when they hit the edge of the mattress. He fell back with a winded gasp, staring up at Solas with wide brown eyes, like amber sap from an old pine tree.
He wanted to be fossilised within that gaze, to slumber there rather than the Fade.
He slipped his hand beneath one thigh, wrapping Anders legs around his waist as he lowered himself to cage the healer in, lips a breath away. Anders leant up to meet him, a hesitant brush of lips compared to his first daring kiss.
Solas pressed back restlessly. He wanted to take hkm, devour him, like the Dalish legends warned he would.
“Ar lath ma, vhenan.” He breathed it like a prayer, though he held no faith in higher powers.
Anders pushed him back with a forearm firmly against his armoured chest, freckled cheeks ruddy as he panted softly. There was something like regret in that honeyed gaze, tinged with pain.
“Na abelas.” Anders cupped his face in one hand, and Solas leaned into it, even as his brows furrowed in confusion. “Ar enasalin, Fen’Harel. You were right, Solas. Ir annala for ros.”
“Anders,” He silenced him with a kiss.
“Whatever happens from here on out… Telanadas, vhenan.”
Anders smiled ruefully, a glimmer of tears in his eyes before he whispered.
“It’s time to wake up.”
Solas was thrown into reality with a ragged gasp, grasping for an arm that was no longer there, nails scratching against his bare chest. The cold air of the room caressed his skin, and he shivered, looking up at the ceiling.
The Apostate stared back at him with hardened conviction, griffon wings stretched wide behind broad shoulders. He whispered a curse and shuddered in a deep breath, hanging his head as he sat up. He rubbed at the scar above his brow, habitual, and slipped free of the sheets to stand. When he looked up from his bare feet, he was faced with the Herald, and he sighed.
He was being haunted. It was his own fault for spending so much time on these pieces, putting them in his quarters…
He turned to the unfinished mural behind him and grimaced. That dream has been so real. He had been so wrapped up in Anders' presence that he almost thought it was reality. Had he truly been there this time? Wandering his dreams once again? It had been so long since Anders had tried, or Solas had allowed him that close. He had to be. It had to be him.
Anders was prolific in what should only be for the Sominari; years with Justice had strengthened his ties to the Fade, he had insisted once, many years ago, when Solas was weak enough to allow him walk into the centre of his dream. Close enough to almost touch.
He looked down at his hands as he walked to the mirror in the corner of his room. When he stood before it, he dared to look up.
His eyes glowed.
“You sought him out.” It was not a question. He knew it like he knew how many shades of paint it took to perfect Anders' hair colour. “I told you, we cannot drag him into this. Not again.”
Power cracked out of the cornea of his left eye, splitting up the scar above his brow and cracking into the thick spiralling branches of a Vhenadahl. He scowled.
“He cannot know.”
The mirror shattered with a burst of magic. A torrent of the mages name swirled about his mind like a whirlpool, flashes of golden hair and pale brown feathers overwhelming. A bubbling of injustice burned beneath his breastbone.
Within the cracks, he could see the spirits rage burning along the veins of his face.
“Enough.”
The light dimmed, cracks knitting slowly as the anger lessened to a prodding annoyance. He was the host; this body was his to command. It was his, just as Cole’s visage had become Compassion's body with time.
“The Evanuris take priority. You know what will happen if we do not stop them.”
He felt a pulse of impatience.
“Soon, my friend. The ritual is almost ready...” He grasped the edge of the mirror, and slowly grazed his fingers over the cracks, sewing the damage until there was nothing more than thin lines to where the foundation was most fragile.
“With Wisdom, we will be their jury.”
His reflection stared back at him with slivers of Fade green amongst the pale blue, like sand grains falling through an hourglass.
“And with Justice, their judgement.”
When he pulled his hand away, the wood was brandished with vein-like burn marks. He did not bother to fix them, even as the spirits glow dimmed to nothing.
The truth held no comfort for a grieving man. Anders was best believing Justice was all but gone.
They would not — could not — be distracted from their duty.
That did not stop him from yearning for one last kiss.