solas is a (harellan) wrote in rooms, @ 2015-02-11 10:08:00 |
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Solas woke to a gentle touch on his shoulder, Evelyn crouching over him, and a soft smile rose, unbidden, to his face. “Dareth vunin,” he murmured, lifting his hands to rub the sleep from his eyes as she drew away. It was strange how comfortable he was with her. So quickly, he found it easy to speak Elvish with her, as though she understood it. It seemed natural. Easy. But many things with Evelyn were natural and easy when they should not be. She simply had that way about her, calm and unassuming, gentle and kind. He rose, folding up his bedroll swiftly and tucking it under her bed. “Have you given any more thought to where we’ll go?” he inquired as he drifted toward the hearth. She’d already made breakfast - it was her morning - and he spooned some porridge into two bowls. One for her, one for him. The intimate domesticity didn’t bother him anymore. “Here.” He passed her one of the bowls and began eating the other quickly so that it didn’t linger on his tongue. Evelyn wasn’t a bad cook by any stretch, but he detested porridge almost as much as tea. “Or are we still picking doors at random and hoping for the best?” She, on the other hand, didn’t mind the taste. But there was a certain urgency in the air and she ate quickly, though not as fast as him. “What,” she said, as she drank her tea, “no sense of adventure?” In truth, she had given it much thought, but the logistics of the hotel thwarted her. There were no signs to tell her what lay beyond the doors. No markers other than differences between the doors to tell her they went to different places. There was little more to do than to just press her luck. Was it foolish? Indeed. Was it the only way? It certainly looked it. “I have a door in mind, at least.” She took another spoonful of porridge as she thought of the door in question. “A few, actually, but one to start. Where it leads, I do not know yet. But what if it’s somewhere wonderful?” Wonderful would be good, though any place that took gold as currency would work just as well. Solas lifted one brow but inclined his head in agreement. Whichever door she picked could lead somewhere wonderful indeed. Perhaps a place where elves still reigned in power. The very thought caused dread to settle in his stomach, heavy and chill. “And need we wear more appropriate clothes in these worlds you have in mind?” He had a few pieces of “modern” clothing in a chest at the foot of the bed. To his surprise, he actually liked the feel and fit of the clothing he’d purchased in the Marvel door much more than his own. Not as much as the clothes he’d worn in his youth, to be sure, but the humans in New York City knew how to craft comfortable clothing. “I wouldn’t know,” she gently reminded him, polishing off the last of her porridge with a spoonful. “We don’t know where we’re going or what attire would be necessary.” Perhaps they would need pants. Perhaps ballgowns. She took a sip of her tea before rising and moving to clear her bowl. “We will just have to wait and see. Or we could bring a spare.” She cast a glance around, her own meager selection of outfits catching her eye but she shrugged. “This will only be a short trip. To see what is there and if there’s anything worth buying. If it’s truly a problem we can come back for a disguise.” When she wasn’t looking, Solas upended the rest of his porridge in the fire, rising with a banal smile in case she turned toward him. No reason for her to think he was anything less than satisfied with porridge. “Then let’s just go,” he suggested, leaning over her shoulder to place his bowl on the nearby table. Their proximity sent a wash of heat through him, coupled with a sharp awareness of her body. For a second, he imagined her in the green small clothes his anonymous valentine had sent him and nothing else. Swallowing hard, he drew away from her. His smile was slightly more tense than it had been a moment before. “Come, then,” he said, clearing his throat to hide the rough edges of it. “Let’s make our way to your doors.” Something was wrong, Evelyn was sure of it. What it was, she wasn’t sure but she watched the tight smile he gave her and spared a glance at his empty bowl. Perhaps it was her breakfast? She’d think on it later. Grabbing her cloak as they passed through the doorway she pulled it over her dark hair as they walked toward the world’s exit. “Have you spoken to the one who is paired with you? Your valentine?” She thought of her own and laughed, a soft sound. “I think I might have talked the ear off of mine. Well, the literary equivalent, at least.” The question startled him, even though it was hardly abrupt at all. Heat flooded his face, and he turned away to keep her from seeing him blush. He couldn’t believe he was blushing. In his defense, it had been years, but even so. He followed her through the door, foregoing a cloak of his own. If he was cold, he’d use his magic to keep himself warm. “I have,” he said slowly, keeping pace with her as they approached the nearby exit. “They are going to attempt to secure the Tesseract for us.” Finally, he turned back to her, smiling faintly. The smile faltered ever so briefly when he recalled Faust’s offer to send Evelyn lingerie and chocolate. “On that topic, do you like chocolate?” “They will?” Her feet slowed as her thoughts stumbled as well, her hand reaching for his arm. The joy was hard to keep out of her voice at the thought of having the Tesseract. The power to go home. It made her squeeze his arm in excitement. Though soon the conversation shifted slightly, making her blink in surprise. “Chocolate?” Blink. “I love chocolate. Josie used to say we might be able to leverage for some pastries.” She gave a dreamy sigh as she thought of them. “Orlesian pastries. They’re too perfect.” They reached the door as Evelyn began to wax poetic about Orlesian pastries, and he filed her love of them away for the future. For, perhaps, a particular day. Perhaps. No matter what his “anon” said, his “valentine,” he was not sweet on her. Not really. It was just a farce. Which he told himself regularly, when he woke early, to the dawn light falling across her sleeping face. “Chocolate is rather affordable in many of the other worlds,” he said, reaching out with a hand to that place where the Veil was thin and a rift would one day form. “After you, Evelyn.” She took his hand without hesitation, the trust easy to give now that they were reacquainted with each other. “You shouldn’t have told me that,” she teased with a smile, her mana prickling with awareness as she neared the Veil exit. Her mark on her left hand pulsed and she shook her head, wondering if she would ever get used to it. “Now I’ll always be on the hunt for them.” As her grip on her hand slackened as she exited their world, she squeezed his hand again as her feet found the floor of the hotel hallway. Then she tugged him along with her, leading him through, as she peered down for the door she had in mind. “Do you? Like chocolate. Or sweets, really.” He stopped her as soon as they were in the hallway, turning her hand over and peering at the mark there. She was new to the Anchor, he knew, and it seemed she hadn’t fully learned to control it - or the spell that came with it. He feathered his fingers over the scar, feeling the mana of it snap and crackle against his own - a warning, and something of a caress. It was a friendly touch. A familiar feeling. “Sweets?” he asked absently, lifting his eyes briefly to hers. “Some. Mostly elven sweets. There was a street vendor, when I was young, that sold a--” He broke off, abruptly releasing her. “No matter. Please, Hera--” He caught himself, knowing she would be irritated by the title. “Evelyn.” A gentle smile. “Lead on.” The touch at her Mark always startled her, and she closed her hand around his finger instinctively, before sheepishly letting him go. Elven sweets weren’t anything she was particularly versed in but she made the mental note all the same. It was important to keep it in mind. They were friends after all. Gift giving was a nice and platonic friendship gesture. Or something like that. They were moving along though, no time to dawdle, and she gestured to the simple, but elegant, door that laid ahead of them. Nothing special radiated from it, no magic to feel, but that wasn’t anything truly new. None of the doors gave any real indication as to what lay behind them. “Ready?” She scarcely gave him a moment to protest before she was opening the door and stepping in through the sunshine. He had no reason to protest. He followed her quickly, willingly, and stepped through the door. Finding new worlds was, in his opinion, always exciting. Feeling the dips and twists in the nebulous magical background energy taught him many things about a world, and there was nothing more engaging that learning new things about the worlds. Finally, he stepped over the threshold of the door, and he froze. It was immediately clear to him that something was wrong. The air tasted wrong. Almost stale. Certainly not fresh, like Thedas’s, but not full of smog like in the Marvel city. It was simply wrong. Dead. “This world has no magic,” he said abruptly, reeling back. Evelyn was just as surprised, even if she wasn’t scrambling. The air around them was as still as she. Even as wind tossed her hair over her shoulder and in the distance, in between the green hills, she could see birds, the world was simply still. Quiet. As he said, there was no magic, and without her connection to the Fade she felt a strange quiet in her. “How do they stand it?” In Marvel the Fade had been distant but it was still there. Nothing was wrong there, even if it wasn’t quite right. “How do they live like this?” She knew it was simply that anyone here wouldn’t know what they were missing, but still it shocked her, and she spun towards Solas. And stopped. “Solas…” Her hand rose to point to his head, her eyes wide. “You’re--you’re…” How did one gently say: You’re human? He’d been aware that something was not quite right. But it wasn’t until she lifted her hand toward him that he understood precisely what it was. Horror etched itself across his face, his eyes going wide. Then his fingers were on the shells of his ears, rounded and wrong, and he felt nausea rise up within him. This wasn’t by any stretch his worst fear, but it was certainly one of them: that he would, irrationally, some day wake without the pointed tips that marked him an elf. “I…” He swallowed, pinching his ears as if that would make a difference. “I am…” Wrong. He was wrong. He was completely and utterly wrong. If there was one thing Evelyn truly knew, it was panic. On the faces of her enemies and in the eyes of bystanders as well as thrumming through her veins, she knew panic. She saw it as clear as day on Solas. Without another thought she grabbed him, or rather, pushed him. She couldn’t feel the Veil but she could bet that the best way to get out was the way they came. Seconds ticked but she made them move, back, back, back, until the door came into view and she pushed him through it once she wrenched it open. Only then did she stop, searching his face for that panic once more. The disconnect to the Fade was jarring but she had felt it a few times before, a templar’s magic wiping her clean of her mana, unable to do spells for a few minutes. She couldn’t remember any stories Solas told of getting caught by templars so she only imagined the apostate was unused to the sensation. And on top of that, the humanity. That…. Her brow furrowed, her tight hold on his tunic loosening as she patted his chest. She couldn’t begin to imagine it. “Are you all right?” His breath came in labored, panicked bursts as Evelyn maneuvered them through the door. He stumbled on the other side of it, hitting the wall beside the door hard, a look of utter horror on his face. The touch of her hand kept him from tumbling headlong into truly uncontrolled panic. Until she’d touched him, he’d been stuck in that place of wrongness, of knowing who he was but having his body not reflect that. For a moment, he’d been one of those races he disdained, one that had contributed handily to the death of his own people. He shuddered, gasping softly, his eyes burning with unshed tears. He wouldn’t cry, not here, not now, but he couldn’t keep the tears away. Reaching out blinding, Solas grabbed Evelyn’s shoulders, dragging her into his arms. He pressed his face against her neck, so very grateful for the brush of her hair on the tip of his ear. “No,” he breathed. “No, I am not.” Hugs were definitely surprising. Her companions weren’t the touchy feely sort, and she always assumed it was because she was a mage. A whole childhood spent in close quarters with strangers made her lose her sense of personal space rather quickly. But most of her newfound friends were a stoic sort, and she gave Cassandra and Cullen and Blackwall wide berth while she leaned on Sera and Josephine, draped her feet over Dorian’s legs as they read, or drunkenly came in close for conspiratorial conversation as she drank with Bull. Solas was the last person she expected to embrace her but there he went, and her arms wrapped around him without hesitation. “It’ll be okay,” she murmured, hands soothing as they ran down his back, her head against his, her words against his cheek. “I didn’t--I didn’t think that could happen.” Magic being gone was one thing. The body changing was another altogether. He shuddered in her arms, fisting his hands in her tunic to hide the trembling. Being smothered without magic was intolerable, yes, but to lose who he was? His identity? To have his entire, elven nature stripped away from him simply by stepping through a door? Half of him wanted to swear off ever traveling through a door again. More than half of him wanted. To lose who he was, if only for a moment… Clinging to her, he inhaled the scent of her. Her hair, her skin, her magic, the Anchor’s. She smelled of Thedas. Of open fields and sunny days, of warm winds and bright skies. “We didn’t know,” he said, trying to make it reassuring to him, too. “We hadn’t any idea.” But that didn’t stop his shaking. It didn’t make him release her. Because under his panic and his horror, under the fear and the shock, he liked holding her. “And we don’t have to go back again,” she gently reminded him. That was far more import to take away from all of this. Now back in the hotel, as unfamiliar as it was, she felt at least a little more on steady ground. Magic still pulsed under her skin and the anchor along with it, each gentle surge of power matching her heartbeat as it slowed from its panicked rhythm. She gave him another tight squeeze, needing to reassurance him once more that this was simply a fluke. She whispered that they were fine again and again before they tumbled into a wordless hum, matching the soothing strokes of her hands along his back. Perhaps she hadn’t been able to picture this between them but now that they were there, she had to admit, it was kind of… nice. Very much so. “No,” he agreed. “We don’t. We won’t.” He wouldn’t. If she wanted to go back later, she was more than welcome, but he wasn’t about to go to a place where his ears were round like a human’s. Still shaking, he drew away from her and settling his hands on her shoulders, studying her face. The concern her found there. “You are…” So unlike other human women he’d known. But he couldn’t tell her that. He doubted she’d take it for the compliment it was. She was nothing like her people, and it spoke highly of her. “Thank you, Evelyn. I…” He grimaced. “I was not prepared for that.” “No, I suppose not,” she said, that concern still not abating even as he pulled away. Her hands slid from his back and across his shoulder to cup his face. She looked at him with a worried expression, her hands stroking his cheeks and her fingers inadvertently brushed the edges of his ears. Though she held his gaze, her face flushed a soft pink, aware of her faux pas and afraid to bring more embarrassment to it by apologizing. Soon one of her hands moved again until it could rest on his wrist, holding it as he held her shoulder. “But it’s not as if we knew it was possible. Who could have prepared for that.” She gave his wrist another gentle rub before she pointed back down towards their own door. “Maybe we should cut this short?” Though she was returning empty handed, she didn’t think Solas would be up for another leap of faith. And she didn’t think he was in any condition to be left alone. The touch went right through him, a bolt of heat and need that he wouldn't have hesitated to act on had she been elven. In spite of her humanity, he was hard pressed not to take her face into his hands and kiss her. He wanted to. Badly. Wanted to taste her mouth, to find relief and familiarity in the circle of her arms. In the dark, she wouldn't be so different from an elven woman. "You had a mission," he said but the protest was weak. The mission. She had almost forgotten, and as she laughed she ducked her chin to hide her face, glad for break. The tension around them had shifted in the moment they stepped through the door again, or perhaps it was when she touched his ear. It was no matter. She was glad to have a chance to break the intense look he gave her. “There is time,” she tried, though she mentally did the math for it and wrinkled her nose. Perhaps there wasn’t as much time as she thought, and the person she was paired with wasn’t being overly forthcoming with a present. “And it won’t be much of a problem if I went alone.” A small smile tipped up the corners of his lips. No, she wouldn't have any trouble by herself. Still, she was the Inquisitor, and to let her go off alone was to risk the Anchor. He couldn't do that. But he couldn't insist without her asking questions he couldn't give answers for. "Your strength is exceeded only by your kindness," he said softly, drawing his fingers from her shoulders. Catching the wrist of the hand pressed to his face, he turned his head and dropped a light kiss on her palm. "I am grateful that you're the one I ended up here with, Evelyn. " The kiss caught her by surprise, her intake of breath sharp as her eyes went wide. Then the rose returned to her cheeks. “I am too, Solas,” she admitted quietly. This was nothing, she reminded herself. Solas was her friend, and while she had bedded an elf before, the elf before her didn’t think of her in that way. His distrust and disgust over humans was understandable and well known. His reaction his rounded ears was proof of that. Her hand lingered at his mouth before she slid her palm down his cheek, pointing once more back to their door, where all that was familiar lay. “Shall we?” “You need not come,” he said quickly, unwilling to inconvenience her more than he had even though he didn’t want to go back to Thedas alone. He made… foolish decisions when upset and alone. The entirety of his youth was a testimony to that. And, too, he should send her on her way so that he could consider this. Her. The strange, twisting inside him. You’re so sweet on her. His valentine’s words echoed in his head, an uncomfortable choir. Human, he reminded himself. So very human, but also Thedosian. What will you do? he asked himself bitterly. Bed her, grow fond of her, and then break your heart when you send her to her world and you return to your own? It disturbed him, a bit, to realize just how easily he could grow fond of her. She watched him with no small amount of uncertainty. He told her to go on but everything on his face asked her to stay. Whatever was holding him back, she wanted to help. And yet, she did have to try and find a gift of her valentine, and she wasn’t about to bruise his pride by insisting that she mother hen him. “I’ll see you for dinner, then,” she promised with a warm and encouraging smile. Her hand grasped his arm with a gentle squeeze before turning her attention back down the hallway. “I won’t be long.” A day hardly counted as long. It took him a moment to parse her words. He was too lost in his own thoughts when she spoke to actually register her words. Because he did want her. He could grow fond of her. She was clever and quick, kind and gentle. An eager pupil, and he did love to teach. In another life, he thought he might have been a teacher. Someone who took joy in imparting knowledge to others, someone who made it fun and enjoyable. His life, however, didn’t have much room for teaching. Except that he had offered to teach her the way of the ancient arcane warriors. “Dinner,” he agreed at last, inclining his head and stepping away from her. His skin burned from her touch, even through the layers of his clothing. “I’ll have something prepared for you.” He lifted a brow, a teasing smile on his lips. “Fennec, perhaps? And we can discuss when you’d like to learn Dirth'ena Enasalin. The ways of the Knight Enchanters.” She laughed softly to herself. Promising to make it in time for dinner. Talking of fennec and conversation. She marveled at how domestic they had become, and how she eagerly awaited seeing him later that evening. The worry faded from her face as she nodded. “I would love that. I’ll see you then.” Her hand lingered on his arm as he pulled away and she held his gaze for one moment longer before she turned and headed back down the hallway towards other doors. |