For DWC - “I can’t stand to lose anything else" Solavellan please !
Eshalineva “Neva” Lavellan x Solas “In Hushed Whispers” angst, for @dadrunkwriting
Neva does her best after she and Dorian find Fiona to let the atrocities and injustices of this future world strengthen her resolve rather than weaken it. Willing herself to channel it into anger, directing it at any Venatori or demons foolish enough to get in their way. She keeps fighting. Keeps pushing forward. They have to get to Alexius. Get the amulet. Put this all right. It’s a mistake. A kind of dream: unpleasant, surreal… It’s when the pair of them find the dungeons where her other companions are being held the nightmare suddenly feels all too real.
He’s quiet, though, she supposes to a certain extent Solas always has been. But the way he stares blankly at the walls of his cell as if he’s not really seeing them, unnerves her. He doesn’t even turn around at the sound of her and Dorian’s approaching footsteps. He doesn’t have anything growing out of him as Fiona had, but there’s a kind of unnatural red aura that glows in his eyes and seems to emanate from him making her heart clench in her chest.
“Solas, what have they done to you,” she whispers horrified, shaking her head as she sets about freezing, then kicking at the lock until it breaks. He jumps when he finally turns around at the creaking protest of the iron door being swung open, eyes wide.
“You’re alive! We saw you die.”
“The spell Alexius cast displaced us in time. We just got here, so to speak,” Dorian offers as she distractedly looks the other elf over, cataloging his injuries and indignities he has been made to suffer with growing rage.
“Can you reverse the process? You could return and obfuscate the events of the last year. It may not be too late,” Solas says quickly with growing hopefulness and excitement taking over where before there had been only empty despair.
“Solas,” Neva interjects concerned, because it seems she simply cannot help herself from doing so, “You look… bad. Is there anything I can do for you to help?”
“I am dying, but no matter,” Solas replies dismissively shaking his head. “If you can undo this they can all be saved. But you know nothing of this world. It is far worse than you understand. Alexius served a master, ‘the Elder One’, he reigns now, unchallenged. His minions assassinated Empress Celene and used the chaos to invade the South. This Elder One commands an army of demons. After you stop Alexius, you must be prepared.”
“You are just brimming with good news, aren’t you,” Neva replies, though her usual attempts at wit and banter seem to fall painfully short now, eyes still brimming with too much sorrow and concern to meet his gaze for long.
“If you can return to your present, you might find it helpful to know what the Elder One plans. This world is an abomination. It must never come to pass.”
He’s right, of course, and she knows it. He often is, she thinks, but that pride which had seemed to rub off the wrong way and come between them before seems to have been stripped away from him in this last terrible year. She’d never expected to miss it, not expected to be so affected, but seeing him now…
They’d butted heads now and again in the present she is more familiar with, times when she’d been furious with him, but it’s been a long time since she thought she might hate him if she ever truly did. And this? This slow, agonizing decay and descent into death isn’t a fate she’d wish on many. Certainly, not Solas.
Varric’s warnings about the evils of Red Lyrium and the dangers of touching it, echo in the back of her mind, but as ever Solas has often criticized sentiment overwhelms her reason. She and Dorian have been walking around surrounded by the stuff for hours now. Surely they are already at risk if this is catching. Solas blinks, staring at her hand where it’s reached out to clasp his own as if he’s once again questioning whether he’s actually just imagining her being here.
“You’re wrong,” Neva offers softly as Dorian steps away to examine a few notes and books on a nearby desk, perhaps sensing the need to give them a moment.
“Mm,” Solas hums, raising a curious eyebrow while still managing to look somewhat impatient with her causing any sort of delay in going after Alexius. “What am I wrong about this time?”
“It matters,” Neva replies softly, forcing herself to drag her gaze up to meet his infected and glowing red eyes again, even though it hurts. “That you’re dying,” she clarifies. “I know if we undo this it will never have happened, but it did happen to you. It was real for you. You suffered. That matters. It matters to me,” Neva concedes finally.
“I- thank you,” Solas nods finally, though his eyes darted once more to where her hand is still clasping his. “I thought perhaps you simply tolerated my presence for my knowledge of the Fade and the Breach.”
“I thought so too, at first,” she admits nodding. “You challenge nearly everything I thought I knew. Knowledge and skills I once took great pride in. That- that wasn’t an easy thing to adjust to.”
“And I wasn’t especially patient or empathetic in my approach,” Solas acknowledges softly with a nod. “Ir abelas, lethallan.”
“I know,” Neva nods as Dorian returns to their group with a map he’s uncovered, which may help them to find where Cassandra and Leliana are being held, and a way to Alexius. “As am I.”
The ground and very walls around them seem to quiver in the minutes that follow Alexius’ defeat. The Elder One knows that they are here. He is coming. They are out of time. This world is wrong, an abomination, and soon, if all goes according to plan it will never have existed at all, except to her and Dorian. Cassandra and Solas share a look before nodding to each other, and Neva’s heart clenches once more, instinctively knowing the agreement that has passed between them before Solas even speaks.
“We will hold the outer door. When they get passed us it’ll be your turn.”
When, not if. He and Cassandra have fought admirably against the various Venatori and few guards they encountered on their way to Alexius, but the Elder One will not make the same mistake. They will die. This whole world will, but somehow the thought of losing him… He will have Cassandra at his side, of course, but the thought of him fighting without her, of him falling. It’s a mercy she won’t likely have to see it happen, but a torment the thought of letting any of them suffer for her sake. She knows her protests are foolish even as she voices them, but she’s lost so much. To lose him now, only just having realized so many new hopes and dreams where she’d given up on having any, of how much he’s come to mean in the last few months of traveling and fighting together, after everything she has already lost, feels unbearable.
“Look at us,” Leliana gestures. “We’re already dead. The only way we live is if this day never comes. Cast your spell, you have as much time as I have arrows.”
“Wait,” Neva blurts out, rushing forward. Solas doesn’t react at first, no doubt surprised and still taking it all in as the younger elf hurls herself into his arms and smashes her lips against his own, but it doesn’t matter. “Ir abelas… vhenan,” she whispers pulling back, testing the name as wide glowing eyes stare back into hers. “We will make this right, I swear it,” she promises, reluctantly letting him go, and rushing back up the dais to where Dorian stands preparing his enchantment on the amulet to take them back to their own time and world.
She’s never put much stock in the Elven pantheon. In that respect, at least, it’s probably for the best the Keeper chose another to be her first for Clan Lavellan. Given some of the conversations she’s had with Solas, and his general disapproval for the Dalish, she suspects he doesn’t believe in the old gods much either. Now, however, in the face of what both of them know will be his Din'anshiral she prays to any higher power which might be listening that it be quick, as painless as is possible, that this Solas, even if his world will soon cease to be, find peace. “Falon’Din enasal enaste,” Neva mutters tearfully as she watches the large stone door close behind them with a heavy thud, followed by muffled shouts and the sounds of battle.
