Dragon Age One Shots

Autumn in Dragon Age -- Solas

Arms enveloped my weary body, my head cushioned by both the reedy chest below and the cream sweater wrapped around it. While he held the shared book in my lap, I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to read the words. So Solas read them aloud for both of us.

"'Go, sit upon the lofty hill, And turn your eyes around, Where waving woods and waters wild Do hymn an autumn sound.'"

A sigh rattled in my lungs. The gentle lap of his words rolled through the poem the same a lake's waves caressed my ankles by summer's day. Solas, however, heard it differently. He paused in his recitation, his eyes drifting down to me. "Are you tired?"

"No," I insisted, barely peeping through my weary eyelids. My body may be exhausted, seemingly at all times now, but my mind ached for sustenance.

He shifted, tugging the coverlet higher up my shivering chest. My toes, swaddled in a pair of thick, fluffy socks, peeped out from the move. It caused Solas to frown, his eyes burning into the edge of the risen blanket as if that could yank it back down.

"Keep reading," I insisted, nuzzling deeper into his arms.

"'The summer sun is faint on them — The summer flowers depart — Sit still — as all transform'd to stone, Except your musing heart...'"

Elizabeth Barret Browning, one of my favorites to chew upon during rainy autumn days. We'd often sit at the breakfast nook, our coffee cooling forgotten while absorbed in private poets as our fingers entwined atop the table. We used to.

As he drifted to the second verse, my mitten-covered fingers rose from the blanket to caress his cheek. Even through the padding I lost myself in the click and flush of his jaw gifting voice to the dusty words pinned to the page. So close to my ear, his gentle voice softened to that of a whisper, the warm breeze wafting against my skin.

I must have made a sound as Solas paused in his recitation to ask, "Do you feel uncomfortable? Are you queasy?"

We both glanced to the barely eaten soup turned ice cold on a tray beside our beaten-in couch. A blush of shame rose at my being unable to finish something he put so much time into, but I shook it away. Shook all the concerns weighing upon my heart away and told him, "No. I'm perfect here. Please."

"Very well," he said, looking prepared to leap off the couch and carry me whenever I'd need. But as I drew my second hand against his chest, the rigidity of his muscles melted away and he leaned back against the armrest of the couch as if he never intended to leave.

"'Oh! like that wind, is all the mirth That flesh and dust impart: We cannot bear its visitings, When change is on the heart.'"

My arm grew weary from the small stretch, comforting fingers tumbling off his cheek to burrow into my lap. I winced as an itch grew under the winter's cap tugged nearly to my eyebrows.

Where my eyebrows once were.

Too exhausted to reach for it, I tried rubbing the back of my head against Solas' sweater. His reading paused, no doubt wondering what I was up to, when he snaked his fingers under the cap and drew the nails over my naked scalp.

"'Gay words and jests may make us smile, When Sorry is asleep; But other things must make us smile, When Sorrow bids us weep!'"

"I'm sorry," I gulped, my swallowed tears finally breaching their levies. I didn't even have the strength to wipe them away, forced to ruminate in the roll of stinging salt.

Lowering the book, Solas tried to gaze down at my face, but I buried as deep as I could to his chest. With a gentle grace, his palm cupped my cheek and his thumb caressed away the tears. "Whatever for?"

"I...I ruined your plans. Your...forcing you to...you can't want this."

He fell silent, his head lifting higher to stare out the window into a world preparing for winter's embrace. This life — of medicine, exhaustion, ferrying, pain, sickness, bile — all of this was too much to ask of anyone. To put upon anyone. It was cruel of me to expect so much time, and effort, and life while unable to contribute anything in return.

"Nonsense," Solas whispered as if reading my thoughts. My tear-stained eyes raised up to him. "You have ruined nothing. And you have nothing to apologize for. Ever."

"But..."

"You are here, as am I. And we make due with what we have. No matter the hurdles strewn in our path, which are no fault of yours, I will not place you down."

A shudder racked my depleted body, but it was a smile that burned on my lips. From his tenacity, from his unshakable certainty. From his unending support even as direness crept like frost over the hills.

"Now," Solas smiled himself, his hand returning to the book, "I believe I should return to reading before your nap."

I nodded along, smearing the last of my tears upon his sweater.

"'The dearest hands that clasp our hands, — Their presence may be o'er;'" A sputter burned in his throat, Solas adjusting as his fingers clung tighter to the book. His eyes swept over the next lines and he voiced them with a bone-shaking warble, "The dearest voice that meets our ear, That tone may come no more!'"

He shook his head, his invisible tears wiped away as he moved to close the book. "This is hardly the poem to be reading—"

I sat forward, reciting what came next. "'Youth fades, and then, the joys of youth, Which once refresh'd our mind, Shall come — as, on those sighing woods, The chilling autumn wind.'"

The shuttering of the poem paused, but Solas appeared entombed, his limbs stone as he stared not upon the words but my eyes. I drew my tongue over my cracked and bleeding lips to recite, "'Hear not the wind — view not the woods; Look out o'er vale and hill. In spring, the sky encircled them — the sky is round them still.'"

Lips pressed to the back of my cap. It was one of many the kindly ladies from a knitting circle donated to the hospital. A penguin graced the front and the entire cap bore a stripe of plum purple. I was instantly enamored with the kitsch of such an ensemble. Solas, of the crisp, cool-lines, white and tans to decorate his restrained lifestyle, would hand clean and dry it for me every morning. I never need go without my cap or fear the chill as long as he watched over me.

Autumn falls across the world; its thievery of summer's beauty leaving behind a new splendor. The bursts of reds, yellows — of entire forests glowing with fire before the summer snow rips them away — read as a promise. Though things be bleak now, though pain and sorrow haunt your path, hope is planted in the ground. And, one day, it will shed its winter coat and rise to the sun.

With one hand wrapped around my ailing stomach, Solas finished the poem, "'Come autumn's scathe — come winter's cold — Come change — and human fate! Whatever prospect Heaven doth bound, Can ne'er be desolate.'"