Brittle Eyes, Brittle Dreams

2

He stayed with her that night.

They lingered on the balcony for hours despite the cold, huddled against the hard flagstones. He murmured spell words and watched as a barely-detectable warmth barrier surrounded them like a blanket, an additional wave emanating near her bare and still-tender feet. After a time, the mountain gusts mercifully stilled themselves. She avoided looking at him, but her frame gradually slumped more and more, not so much relaxed as unable to maintain rigidity.

Thick silence settled on both of them. Inadvisable as it was to remain outside, he didn't dare move her. She still shook occasionally. His gaze often flicked about, but he only rarely paused from his vigil.

When her eyelids steadily became heavier, he risked shifting his arm until it was around her shoulder. He didn't so much pull her in as let her lean into his warmth. The light in her face shifted somehow – her own way of acknowledging approval – but was still all too dull. He braced for more waves of her grief, but something was smothering the tides now. She wouldn't, didn't, couldn't sleep. She only sat in the shadow of his stillness.

They both wandered in their own lulls, motionless but for their breaths, a thousand miles apart despite their closeness. Their invisible sphere of truce persisted until the hour before earliest dawn. Solas checked her face yet again. She still fought to stay awake, her eyes barely comprehending her surroundings but far from restful.

He cleared his throat with a silent but drawn-out swallow. "I want to show you something, vhenan."

For a long moment, her lull remained unbroken – but as ever, the sound of the endearment drew her out of herself enough to speak. She shifted her head slightly. "You've shown me enough."

"But not what you need to see."

They were both silent again, but wrinkles formed lightly all around her face. "I know what I need to see. I'll never see it. No one will." She sighed, for the first time with only a ghost of a shudder. "It doesn't exist."

"Perhaps not in the waking world, no."

She snorted – barely. "The Fade?"

"Come with me."

"No." Her legs folded tightly into herself as she coiled away. The warmth barrier disintegrated with her movement.

"You have already seen it."

"No." Her hands vaguely reached for her head. "Not there."

"Let me help you."

She staggered to her feet and paced. Her ankle only gave her a light limp now.

He watched mutely as she passed him four times. "I would like to do more for you."

She folded her arms tightly against the pervasive chill. "Why?"

"Is it not obvious?"

"You're here for the Inquisition. This isn't anyone's business – especially not the Inquisition's."

He stood. "You are our leader." His arms fought with themselves again, this time to disguise wing-flaps of sternness. "How can it not be my concern?" His hands won enough sovereignty to extend out from his sides, his palms more like oars than appendages.

"It's not about what happened today or yesterday or last week."

A single finger on one of his hands twitched as he swallowed, but his shoulders locked in place. "No. It is not. It never is."

Her head bobbed in every direction. "Some demons can be killed. Some can't."

He bridged the distance between them by two steps. "And some do not need to be destroyed at all. Some can be reasoned with."