You’re Awake
You awaken in a bolt of pure panic to the sensation of probing magic. Your eyes snap open, you bolt upright, and you shove the person looming over you full in the chest. Your first instinct is to run now and figure out where you are later, but your head is spinning violently enough to give you pause. Your vision goes blurry and the world threatens to go black.
“Emma, it’s just me!” a familiar voice calls out, but it gives you no comfort. It doesn’t matter if you know them, because no one knows you. You feel a hand—large, male—grip your arm and you yank away again, despite your blindness. You half-fall off of whatever surface you’re on, catching yourself awkwardly with one arm.
“Lethallin, hamin!1” the same voice exclaims, and this gives even your panicked mind pause. Elven. Not Dalish. Lethallin. Friend.
You stiffen, but don’t fight the grip that pulls you back up onto the plush surface you’d been lying on. Your mind begins to make sense of your situation and your vision begins to return, though you can’t quite make your eyes focus properly. Both senses come to the same realization at the same time.
Solas.
That does little to assuage your fears, however. You’d felt magic.
Solas says something incomprehensible in Elven. Either he’s speaking too quickly, or you just can’t keep up thanks to your dizziness.
“Come again?” you say, your voice feeling thick, like it sticks in your throat.
“You fell. Blacked out,” Solas explains. “I moved you to the couch and was checking for damage.”
“Damage?” you ask, looking down—stupidly—as if to ensure that you’re fully clothed. The things your mind worries about when panicked, honestly.
“Your head,” Solas explains. “I feared you might have cracked it, in the fall. Particularly given you’re already injured.”
Your hand goes to your face. The bandages are still on… part of why you were having so much trouble focusing, probably. You only have one eye to do it with. “How long was I out?” you ask, worried at how long Solas may have had access to your unconscious mind and body.
“Not even five minutes,” Solas replies. “Which is arguably a good sign. You don’t appear to have any additional physical damage on your skull.” He runs a hand along his head. “You have a remarkable knack for falling. Off a hart, off a wall, even unconscious. You always seem to avoid the worst of it. You barely missed falling into broken porcelain.”
“Broken… porcelain?” Your one eye manages to focus past Solas, and you see what he means. You hadn’t fully unloaded the tray of food before passing out, it seems. The wooden bowl that held your soup has made a mess, and there are shards of broken pottery from the cups and saucers. “Futuo!2” you swear, eyes widening. “Mea culpa, me paenitet,3” you begin, then pause. Wrong language. Not even close to the right language, in fact. Wow, did you scramble your brain that badly?
“I’m not particularly worried about broken cups,” Solas says with a sigh, seemingly ignoring the fact you’d just started speaking in Ancient Tevene… or perhaps not. “I’m more concerned about whether or not you’ve scrambled your head. And what caused you to black out. If you would lay back down—”
“I’m sure I’m fine,” you say, bringing a hand to your head. “I think it’s just the medicine… it’s been making me so dizzy, so I stopped taking it, but since I stopped, I’m even more dizzy…”
“The herbs would make you light-headed, but you should suffer no side effects from coming off of them. How long has it been since you last had some?”
“Last night, late… or possibly, technically early this morning, depending on how you count it.”
“Was the pain keeping you awake?”
“Something like that,” you say with a sigh.
“How long has it been since you slept for four hours or longer in a row?” Solas asks, bringing a hand to your shoulder and pushing you—gently—back into a lying position. You go, regretfully. Lying down on the couch while he kneels next to it is beyond uncomfortable.
“Um…” You hesitate, trying to figure out how best to answer the question, which is more complicated than Solas could even know. “I’m not sure, really… The medicine… everything since the attack is a blur.”
“I suspect you’re simply exhausted… though nothing is ever simple with you,” he adds dryly, and you’re almost surprised by how sardonic he seems about it. “I would like to finish examining your head, to be sure there’s no further damage. These things are best treated immediately.”
“Fine, fine,” you say with a sigh, laying your head back down against the couch. It feels really good to be horizontal, anyway. You really are quite tired, not that you can do much about it. You’re fairly certain at this point that Solas had indeed been focusing his searching on your skull… Your aura was still knotted tight in your gut, the last place he’d be checking for head injuries. And while Solas may be difficult to read, you’re fairly certain that if he had just discovered you were a mage, his expression would be very, very different.
You feel his magic probing back into you. It’s normally a somewhat pleasant sensation, one that makes your aura behave like a cat in a sunbeam. But you haven’t liked the way it feels in your skull… it’s a bit too personal, perhaps; too close to your mind. It makes you feel nervous, exposed.
Solas’s expression is tense, perhaps worried. You can’t blame him. If you’d seen him—or anyone, really—collapse right in front of you, you would be in an absolute panic. So you lay in cooperative silence until he’s finished and withdraws his magic from you.
“You seem unhurt, physically,” he says, sounding unconvinced of his own words. “And I see nothing that would cause you to pass out, other than sheer exhaustion.”
“Well, that’s good news,” you say, hoping to lighten the mood. “I must have just pushed myself too fast, what with all my energy going into the healing and all. I’ll have to take it a little bit more slowly, I suppose. Maybe you can write me a healer’s note to get out of practice with Bull on Monday,” you add as a joke. It falls rather flat.
“What you need to do is sleep,” Solas says firmly, and your expression must fall slightly. Yeah. You know you need to sleep. If only. Now that you’ve stopped being terrified that you’ve been found out, you’re beginning to be worried about consequences.
“I’ve been trying, Solas, I swear,” you… whine. You’re not proud of it, but you don’t want to lose your Elven lessons right after earning them.
“I know,” Solas says with a sigh. “I’m not sure how much of this is typical, for you, but you must realize you can’t continue this way.”
Yeah. Yeah, you’d come to that conclusion yourself. You just didn’t have a lot of ideas on how to deal with it that didn’t involve risking your life.
“If you would allow me to help—” he continues, and you stiffen.
“Solas,” you begin warningly, but he holds up his hand.
“Please. At least hear me out.”
You hesitate. It’s a poor idea; whatever he suggests will probably be an excellent idea and very tempting, but impossible or inadvisable for any number of reasons that you can’t actually tell him. But you can think of no reason to refuse to even hear him out, so you just nod.
Of course, what he produces then makes you want to either lay down and cry or bolt from the room… you can’t decide which.
That fucking blanket. That stupid, fucking, wonderful-smelling, enchanted blanket.
You’d had some very good experiences with it while he was gone, not having realized it was enchanted. You’d also had one very bad experience with it when he placed it on you after you were already asleep, inadvertently trapping you in a nightmare.
You eye it with longing tempered with fear and caution. It’s not safe, not with him here. You could deal with nightmares, though they were unpleasant. Forewarned is forearmed; you would know what was happening if you couldn’t wake up. But being unconscious around Solas is a terrible idea. If he examined you like that, he might actually trip over your hidden, unmoving aura. If he saw your mind in the Fade, he might realize you were a mage… though he hadn’t in the past. Just because you’d always been lucky before didn’t mean you should keep pushing it.
“I cannot blame you for being afraid, not after what you’ve been through, and particularly not after… last time,” he added, glancing guiltily away. You’re glad to know he’s still feeling bad about that. You’ve long since forgiven him—you had within a day of it happening, in fact—but guilty is a safer place for him to be. Though you hate yourself for thinking that.
“However,” Solas continues. “This time, I could keep an eye on you. I could ensure you suffered no ill effects, and intervene if you began to.” His tone of voice is almost begging, and it breaks your heart in two. Because if he’s offering to be right next to you, keeping an eye on you and your sleeping mind for anything odd? You definitely can’t agree.
That realization sinks into your chest like an iron anchor. You can’t. Even if you want to, you can’t. You can’t sleep. You can’t trust him. You definitely can’t combine the two and trust him while you’re sleeping. And it’s not even his fault, or anything untrustworthy about him at all. It’s you. It’s completely and utterly you.
You feel crushed. Deflated. You feel like you’re coming apart at the seams. You just want to scream, or cry, or hit something, or hit yourself. You can actually feel tears brimming to the corner of your one good eye, and wonder if your other one is in the same state, dampening the bandages around it.
Solas must mistake your tears for fear. “Lethallin…” he begins, voice soft, gentle. You feel the tears spill onto your cheek.
Shit… Why does he have to say it like that?
“I would be right here,” he assures you. “I understand if you’re uncomfortable, but I could keep you safe.”
You want to jump off the freaking battlements.
“I promise.”
You need to jump off the freaking battlements.
You’re embarrassed to be crying, but you can’t help it. He’s saying the exactly wrong things, the exactly right way. You can’t risk this. But it hurts so much, and you’re so, so tired. You want to sleep. You would do anything to sleep. But you can’t, you can’t.
You taste blood in your mouth; you’ve bitten a tear in your lip. Your one remaining eye opens and fixes on Solas. You wonder what kind of expression you’re wearing?
His is one of pure concern.
Fuck.
“Don’t… don’t go poking around in my head when I’m out,” you begin hesitantly, and you see a flare of hope in his eyes. “I mean it,” you add. “I want to trust you. No… no freaky mind-magic,” you say, remembering how you’d convinced him of your fear of such magic… and reinforced it after the incident with the blanket last time. “Nothing. Just… if something’s going wrong, if I look weird, just wake me up. Right away. Don’t… don’t try to ‘fix’ it, just wake me up.” You’re begging. It’s not even subtle.
He looks guilty again. Remembering what he did before, or thinking about what he’d been planning on doing? Could still be planning on doing.
You’re not sure you can go through with this.
“At the first sign of any problems, I will wake you,” he promises. You’re hopeful, but unconvinced. But how long can you last without sleep, if you’re blacking out from exhaustion? Solas isn’t wrong. If you do that in the wrong place, you’ll get seriously injured, or even die. There’s no shortage of dangerous places in Skyhold, as you’ve experienced a few times already. But it seems like your odds with possibly passing out in a poor place and falling to your death are better than your odds if Solas, or anyone, finds you out.
Or maybe not? You know better to count on mage-mage sympathies, but you could imagine him giving you a chance to run. But even then, with your identity here tied to your identity in Orlais, your entire cover would be blown. You’d have to start over entirely. You could never go back home.
When framed between possibly falling off a cliff in an unconscious haze, or moving to somewhere like Ferelden, perhaps you would take the cliff.
You’re joking with yourself, of course, but the dilemma is still here. Solas is looking at you, hopeful, patient, nervous.
“No magic while I’m asleep,” you say again, firmly, warily. He nods. If he’s thinking that—being a non-mage—you wouldn’t be able to tell if he was casting magic even were you awake… he doesn’t say it. Now would so not be the time. He seems to accept your paranoia at face value. You suppose in comparison to someone like Fenris, who still reacts to magic and mages like a furious cat, a bit of irrational fear seems almost reasonable.
“Fuck it,” you say with a long sigh, collapsing limply down on the couch. “I’ll just have revenge if you do something weird.”
“I won’t,” he promises again. Then his lips quirk upward slightly. “Though I’m curious about what your revenge would be, given what you’ve done to Dorian in the past.”
“It would be so much worse than pickled fish, Solas,” you promise somberly. “I’ll tell every elf in Skyhold that they should be saying andaran atish’an when you pass by. And I’ll tell them all the wrong pronunciation. That weird one that southern Dalish clans use.” He makes a brief expression, like he’d just smelled sour milk. “Yeah. That’s the one. And I’ll tell every single Dalish in Skyhold that you’re doing a study on Elvhen history and want their valuable insight. I’ll tell Sera how to get into your bedroom. She’ll put mice in your bedsheets, I bet.”
Solas chuckles, holding up his hands. “I surrender.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” you say with a faint smile. “Alright.” You take a deep breath. “Let’s do this.”
You expect him to just hand it to you, but instead, he spreads the blanket across your prone form, even tucking it around between your back and the couch. It’s delightfully warm and soft, just as you remembered. You have just enough time to grasp a corner and curl it up around your face, taking in the sweet, warm smell. The Fade is already tugging at the corners of your mind and, for once, you let yourself go.
You wander through the mists of dreams, only sometimes aware that you’re asleep. Being conscious of having fallen asleep helps, but your connection to the Fade is tenuous despite the enchanted blanket’s help. You have little time to consider the technicals as worlds fall in and out of existence around you, in the hazy way of the Fade.
Solas is a frequent guest in the half-formed scenes, particularly ones in the inn room in Val Royeaux. The bathtub there features at least once, as does the one you used in Iron Bull’s room. Every time you realize which way the dreams are going—and with whom—however, you twist out of them, waking yourself up just enough to “reset” the scene of your dreams. Perhaps it’s disturbing your rest, but after what happened last time you “dreamed” about Solas, you’re not taking any risks.
You believe you would be able to recognize him now that you know what he is, but you’ve no desire to test that theory. You have some senses, after all, but nothing compared to what a somniari must have. If you can exist in the Fade without him realizing what you are, he can definitely do something similar if he so chooses.
You feel the presence of a few curious spirits around the edges of your consciousness, but you ignore them. You suspect regular people would have no real awareness of what was and was not a spirit within the realm of dreams, and you’re still behaving as if Solas is watching. Perhaps due to the fact that you know he’s watching you physically, at least.
If you think about the fact he’s watching you sleep, you really will wake up, enchanted blanket or no. So you let yourself sink back into a dream that’s forming about your garden back in Orlais. Sun in your hair, gloves on your hands, Bella-the-mule’s soft lips fretting around your shoulders and neck as she tries to beg snacks out of you. It’s a good dream. Or at least it will be until the monsters come.
You sense something amiss around the time your sleeping mind is remembering that you can’t have nice things and twisting your pleasant dream into a nightmare about the night the Red Templars destroyed your village. Your mind shifts back to being a bit more aware, remembering once again that this is a dream, that you are asleep. You feel a presence around the edges of your consciousness, one you hadn’t felt earlier. A spirit? No… Not a spirit. You recognize it, recognize the way the Fade seems to solidify around the presence.
Solas.
You resist the urge to yank yourself awake, though the dream twists angrily around you as a sense of profound betrayal settles into your chest. Instead, you bring yourself out of it gradually, as if floating to the surface. You won’t bolt awake in reaction to the barest hint of Solas’s presence. That would be a very stupid idea.
It’s a struggle at the very surface… the effects of the blanket, no doubt. But this time, you do wake. Though it takes you a moment to realize… your surroundings are bewilderingly dark.
Your first thought is that Solas had actually moved you while you slept. Your second is a simple realization that you’re still in the rotunda. You’d just slept through the entire afternoon, and, by the looks of it, half of the night. The tower is dark and quiet. Even Leliana’s birds seem to be asleep. The only light is a candle placed on Solas’s desk… burning very low, but still burning. It perfectly illuminates Solas… where he’s seemingly fallen asleep on the floor.
His back is against one of the arms of the couch, his head slumped slightly forward, his legs sprawled out on the ground in front of him. It doesn’t look like a particularly comfortable position to sleep in. His face is… not that far from yours, as he’d leaned against the arm by which your head had been resting. Candlelight flickers oddly across his skin, making the contours of his face dance.
You realize that it’s unlikely he fell asleep like this on purpose. How late is it? It has to be past midnight. Had he been here all day, ensuring you faced no ill side effects from the blanket? A thought both comforting and chilling. You’re honestly a bit cross with him for falling asleep without waking you up. What if something had happened? Idiot had just promised six ways from Sunday to watch over you, and then he’d gone and fallen asleep.
But you can already see what likely happened. He wouldn’t want to wake you, so he’d stay awake himself. Longer and longer into the night, pushing himself to stay upright so he could let you sleep with a clear conscience.
Then he fell asleep. So close to you. No surprise you’d felt his presence in your dreams. You know enough about the Fade to know that physical location does matter. For all you know, he’d just fallen asleep. You shift slightly. He seems like he’s really out, though. He’s this close to you, and isn’t even reacting to your movement on the couch. You could probably reach right out and touch him and he wouldn’t—
Oh.
You’re doing that.
That’s a thing that you’re doing.
Your hand trembles gently as the tips of your fingers ghost over his cheekbone. He shifts, slightly, and you yank your hand back like he’s on fire. What the Void are you doing?!
But he’s still asleep, and his face has shifted just enough that you have a near perfect profile view. He looks hauntingly attractive in that flickering, fading candlelight. You’re about as close to him now as you’re likely to ever be, and he’s asleep, totally unaware of your staring. He watched you sleep all day… turnabout is fair play, right?
Maybe it’s the light, but you would believe he was carved from marble into the exact form he has now. You’ve long admired his jawline; this close, you can really see the way it angles upwards. Slightly concave, beautifully angular and sharp at the corner where it turns upwards to meet his ear.
His ears… they caught your eye right away. As soon as you noticed them, you’d found yourself staring. In your very first meeting, you had been so distracted, and at such a distance, that you hadn’t even realized he was an elf. But upon seeing him closer, you’d been astounded by your own lack of awareness. How could you have missed those ears? Particularly considering his baldness; there was nothing to hide them.
They weren’t quite so long and thin as yours, but they were definitely more angular than a lot of elves you knew. They were also delightfully straight from his angle. The tops seemed parallel to the tops of his cheekbones, the bottoms parallel to the general line of his jaw, continuing along straight as an arrow til they met at a fine point. You wonder idly, if he ever pierced them? Some elves did, some didn’t. It seemed more common amongst the Dalish than the city elves in the south, but when you’d been a slave, your master had decorated you and many of the other elven slaves with a dozen different piercings, some connected with dangling chains. Your ears still bear fine scars from those holes, even now, years later.
You admit he’d look fetching with dangling earrings like Belassan wears, but you rather like the idea that those ears have never once been pierced. You almost snort. Virginal ears. In truth, it’s just because ear piercings are, for you, all tied up in memories of Tevinter. You hadn’t worn them in Antiva even though it had very much been the style.
Your eyes continue their gradual journey across the contours of Solas’s face. That his cheekbones were godlike almost didn’t need to be stated. Most elves you’ve known have had high cheekbones, and Solas is no exception. But where faces like Sera’s and Fenris’s are soft, round, with wide eyes… Solas’s is sharp, angular, eyes narrow and bright. It had grabbed you from the first moment you’d seen him… he just looks so odd for an elf. Not that his face could ever be described as looking human. He’s very clearly elven, and not just because of his pointed ears. From the high cheekbones to the strong browline to the tall ridge of his nose, he is every bit an elf.
He has little crows’ feet around his eyes, you notice, and smile to yourself in the darkness of the rotunda. He does have wrinkles in certain areas, betraying his age. Which, apparently, is considerable. Perhaps if he had his hair grown out, it would be streaked bright silver? You wonder if that’s why he keeps it so meticulously trim. Or perhaps he’s naturally bald? You hadn’t noticed him shaving while you were traveling or in Val Royeaux.
Of course, this is Solas. He uses magic for so many little things. Could he possibly shave magically? Maybe if you ran a hand over his head, you’d feel stubble. You certainly don’t see it right then, in the dim light.
What color would his hair be? Probably a medium brown, matching his eyebrows, which were the only hair you’d ever seen on him. You try to imagine it, but your creativity falters out. You’ve only ever known him bald; you can’t imagine him with hair at all. What sort of hair would he even have? Straight and thin, like Celia’s? Thick and curly, like Banal’ras’s? Or the sort of tight ringlets that naturally clumped together into thick, strong locks of hair, like Belassan’s? You would probably never know.
Your eyes travel down from the dome of his head back down to his eyes, which rest gently closed, surprisingly long lashes laying against the tops of his cheeks. He looks remarkably peaceful. Solas’s natural waking expression is somewhat severe, which probably serve as one more thing that makes him scary to the staff and soldiers of Skyhold. Asleep, however, his eyes and brows are both relaxed, giving him a peaceful, content expression. He looks so defenseless like this, like a child almost. Which is ridiculous, of course… as a somniari, he’s arguably more deadly when asleep.
He has the high, strong bridge that you associate with elves… that most people associate elves, though not everyone has them. His isn’t as straight as Fenris’s… Not in any dimension, actually. You know from seeing his face from every angle just how angular it was, just how many turns it took. It’s harder to tell from your view now, but you suppose that’s the benefit of seeing different sides of him.
Ha… too bad you’re just seeing physical sides and not different aspects of his personality. You know, for all your secret keeping, do you really know any more about him than he does about you? It’s so obvious he’s not telling you everything… or even possibly anything. Your eyes trace down to those lying lips of his. His resting face is more relaxed, more peaceful than you would have thought, given his normal waking expression. Actually, looking at him, it’s more just the absence of a frown; the line of his mouth is almost perfectly straight, neither upturned nor down.
As you examine, puzzling out his face, his lips part slightly in his sleep, and your mind races back to the Fade, to the memory of how they felt pressed against you. That glorious second where you could swear he was kissing you back, before he realized what the Void was going on pushed you away.
Your face colors bright red; the heat you’re giving off could probably warm even your freezing bedroom.
You are laying here, a foot from his face, staring! Maker, you’re a total creep. Like he was doing this to you; he was just watching to make sure you didn’t spontaneously combust in your sleep or start having nightmares you couldn’t wake up from again. You have no bloody excuse at all.
You quickly stand up, practically bouncing off the couch. Your legs tremble underneath you, displeased at the sudden expectation of holding your weight after lying down all day. To your surprise, Solas still doesn’t stir. Should… should you wake him? Let him know he can go sleep in his actual bed? No, why wake him to let him know he can sleep? That’s stupid. Should you move him onto the couch? No, that’s ridiculous, and you sincerely doubt you could lift him.
You stare in indecision for a few more minutes—definitely not just staring at his peaceful, sleeping form—before tearing your eyes away to search the rotunda for ideas. You find them on the back of his desk chair.
His wolf pelt looks ominous in the flickering light. You’ve made your peace with wolves (as opposed to dogs) thanks to an old friend of yours, but the dead thing makes your skin crawl; in this shifting light it looks almost alive. Your mind dances back to a few of your own run-ins with wolves in the woods. Your little adventure on the way to Val Royeaux had not been your first such encounter, though it had ultimately ended much better for you. You shiver in the darkness, and your mind shifts to Dalish legends of Fen’harel, stalking the darkness around a camp.
You snort. That’s apparently what you needed to feel foolish and superstitious for being momentarily frightened. As boogeymen go, Fen’harel doesn’t make a particularly good one. Most scary things actually, you know, exist. You’re as likely to run into a Dalish god as you are to be killed by a dead wolf pelt. Less likely, in fact. A mage like Dorian could stick a spirit in a dead thing like Solas’s pelt, and absolutely murder someone with it.
You shake your head at your own foolishness, and fetch the fur off the back of the chair. The fur is surprisingly soft, as you’d noticed before. You always expect wolf fur to be sharp and bristly, for some reason, even though it never is.
You bring the pelt to Solas, squatting down in front of him. Hesitantly, you wrap it around his shoulders, letting it trail down over his prone form. He stirs slightly in his sleep, but doesn’t seem to wake. You shift the pillows you’d been using on the couch to support his head a bit better… You don’t want him to wake up with a crick in his neck, though you suspect his back will be hurting him a bit no matter what you do.
It’s kind of remarkable what he can sleep through. You’re a very light sleeper, even when your mind can connect fully to the Fade. Of course, you’re more vulnerable than most while asleep, and Solas is less vulnerable than most while asleep. You’re two ends of a long line.
…Ah. You’re staring at his face again. Admiring how it looks from the front, the sharp angle of his ears away from his head, making his ears so much more obvious than yours. From this angle, it probably looks like his are longer than yours. You take a moment to mentally refresh the image of his nose in your mind. You wonder idly if he ever broke it, in his youth. You would believe it.
He smiles slightly in his sleep, the twitch at the corner of his lips drawing your eye. Unbidden, you smile yourself. Pleasant dream? Conversation with a spirit? Maybe he’s talking to one of the ones that was watching you, asking them what they saw. Creepy. But you’re kind of jealous, actually. You miss talking to spirits. Cole notwithstanding, obviously, though you miss him, too.
He must be having some kind of nice time in the Fade; you don’t see him smile all that much. Infrequently enough that it’s a pleasure every time, even now, while he sleeps. You’d love to see him smile more. He had while you were in Val Royeaux, but of course you’d both been more relaxed there. Free from the responsibilities of Skyhold, from one thousand prying eyes.
But to hear him laugh freely like that again…
Ah… You really would like to see him happy. Happy with you. Your smile falters. There are words for that, none of which you’re comfortable applying to yourself, let alone to the relationship between you and Solas. You suppose you can no longer lie to yourself about how much you’re attracted to him, though you really would prefer to.
You’re really attracted to him. Like, a lot. Enough that you’re jeopardizing everything just to stick around… though he’s far from the only reason for that.
That is a terrible reason to make any sort of risk.
You really should just…
…
You stand with a sigh, and pause only long enough to pull your coat on before softly padding out of the rotunda and then into the cold night.