faderift | your faith was strong but you needed proof.

"They were a spirit, dragged through the Fade to act as a protector to foolish mages." Even now, removed from the situation, with it having come to an end, his fury is obvious. "They were a Spirit of Wisdom, borne to help guide and offer knowledge, not to give chase to those that would harm it. They were twisted and broken and, in the end, lost themselves because of it."

On his legs, Solas clenches his hands, closing his eyes.

"They are gone now. They deserved more than what was given to them."

Galadriel is silent a moment, in deference to the fury in him, but when that moment passes, her hand shifts to rest atop his shoulder, her arm all but wrapped around his back.

"Many do," she says slowly, "and many who live, deserve it little, but do not despair."

She thinks then on Olorin, on his death and how terribly she had handled it. Solas, by comparison, is doing quite well and she is proud of his restraint.

"Death is not the end of all things, especially not for your friend and their ilk. True, it is a sorrowful thing, that their time with you, as they were, has ended...but they can never truly cease to be.

"Facets of them will persist unto the ending of the world and, truly, what is wisdom if it cannot become something wholly new?"

She is uncertain if he would wish to hear a tale and yet she cannot help herself.

"My dearest friends, in all my long years, have been akin to spirits. Their passing is harder for the nature of them...but to find them again, even changed, is so much kinder than to lose them forever to the dim eddies of time. Lament your friend's passing, as it is a tragedy, but take joy that they are not lost. They are not mortal things."

There is a softness, a kindness to her that almost breaks Solas. It's why he had not brought her with him to try and save Wisdom, why it had taken so long to find his way to her side; he knows, as well as anyone might, that the tenderness in which she regards him would soften the fury inside of him. She would make him merciful, and he had no room in his heart for mercy, not for those that broke something so beautiful and wonderful.

"There is always despair," he admits, voice low and hard. "But there is more, too."

There is a promise, a whisper, something dangerous that hides below the surface. All the people in Thedas who think that they know best and better, all the people who have turned their attention to the Fade and said that they know it, that they understand it, that they think of it as something more than it is... All the people who have turned their back on their heritage... Solas wishes, desperately, that he was strong enough to repair this world.

"It hurts. It always does. But I will survive." Saying it aloud instead of alone, in his own mind, makes the words more real. He will survive because there is no other option; he cannot stop, he cannot give in, he cannot allow himself to falter when there is so much left to be done. Not even Galadriel's warmth can calm that flame.

Still, he listens to her story, tilting his head to look at her. There's a calm that reaches around, finally, seeming to temper the frustration and the hurt that had been curling around Solas like a weight, like a flame, like something painful.

"I visited the place in the Fade where my friend used to be. It is empty, but there are stirrings of energy in the Void." It's hard to admit and his voice is softer than it has been so far. "Someday something new may grow there. Perhaps that will be their path, too., much like your friends."

"I hope so," Galadriel agrees and makes no comment on Solas's resolve. He is strong enough that she has no fear he will fade, in truth she is uncertain if the elves here do, but it is old habit that drives her next offer.

"Would you care to meet my friends, Solas?" Galadriel asks a small, slightly bittersweet smile upon her face. "I can show them to you, if not introduce you."

She has used this ability rarely in Thedas and to show others the echoes of Aman or Arda is a singular thing. Solas, however, has earned her absolute trust and she would give him what she can, even if it is ill advised.

"As do I." Solas has little space for hope or expectation. He woke to a world that seems terrible in comparison to what he had left behind and there has been very, very little to convince him that it's something worth protecting and saving. There is nothing to dissuade him from his plans, and he's almost sad to acknowledge it.

Her offer makes him pause, though, and he turns to look at her, exploring her face with quick scans of his eyes. He's not entirely sure what it means, to be given this offer, but he can't help the way that his curiosity is getting the better of him.

"How would you show me them? What would you need me to do?"

"You would need to do nothing, though I expect it might seem less startling if you closed your eyes," Galadriel advises him kindly.

"It is an old skill, one that all elves once shared ere language became so common place. I have always excelled at it, though it is harder here," she says and takes a deep breath, mustering what meager power is still left to her.

Words are harder like this and even I cannot say why.

Her voice whispers into his mind and it is both like and terribly unlike hearing her speak. The sense of her, the way her cadence reflects her thoughts and feelings, is so much stronger without spoken words, but they are easily lost and whole thoughts can slip away like water if one doesn't take care to recall them.

But thoughts...memories, those are simple things.

Almost without her meaning to, the image of Gandalf the Grey manifests itself in her mind. He fits more easily into this place than she ever will and it is no challenge at all to picture him in this room, seated at the table in his huffy, casual way. He fiddles with a long pipe, a sort Thedas does not have, and the smell of pipeweed, however repugnant drifts through her mind and into Solas's.

"Compassion was his calling, his purpose was to defend life, and I had known him for years beyond number."

"Close my eyes?" He does question but, without too much hesitation, allows his eyes to close.

It is not magic that he has experienced before; he is well versed in being a Dreamer, in walking the Fade with control over the shapes and wonders he sees, but this is something altogether removed from what his own strengths allow. To think that it is a skill that all the elves shared once, in an era long before this one... It makes him feel a depth of heartache that he cannot quite manage to quell, a sadness that battles against his curiosity.

There's a moment of startled panic when Solas hears her voice in his mind - the fear that she might be able to see his thoughts, his memories, his feelings, discover more about him than he is willing to allow her access to, but it seems as though it is more a projection than anything else. There's a sense of her presence, her company, but not the power of her digging through things that he keeps locked away.

It's a strange and encompassing feeling, one that he knows he will not be able to describe.

The man, at least, gives him something to focus on and that is what Solas does. An older man, seeming human, with a pipe and smoke curling around him, the scent enough to make him wrinkle his nose. The fact that he can smell this from her memories alone... It is a powerful thing, and he breathes out.

"A good man, then?" He must be, to be her friend. "He appears human. Is that not so?"

"No, he is..." Galadriel hesitates as she searches for the word. Her answer resounds across his mind instead, a concept and more all at once.

Maia. A being of divine power, a shapeless spirit, a free soul, that exists in a timeless shell of a body. She has known him for ten thousand years and his appearance is unshifting. At the table, Gandalf smiles and laughs and begins recounting a tale of hobbits and fireworks. The words are indistinct but warm and welcoming.

"He could be quite contentious, given the chance, but he was kind at his core." The focus in the vision shifts a bit as she forces herself to recall someone who does not align with Thedas.

The woman that manifests on the far side of the room is tall, taller than Galadriel easily, with dark hair and a face wrought in starlight. Ber gown is shifting colors of sylph and she is beautiful. It is a staggering, distant sort of beauty though, like a meteor shower or the eclipse of a moon.

Melian looks much more like a spirit given form, but beside one another it is impossible not to see the same in Gandalf.

Something grand and wonderful. Solas can imagine it, without even trying very hard; something akin to what the Evanuris were, once. A blessing before they were a curse, a gift before they ripped the world apart in their desire for power and vengeance and destruction. It makes his heart hurt, just a little, to imagine how it might have been had they been more like this person, this man that Galadriel trusts so deeply.

He is so happy, despite his age. Solas yearns for it.

"Age makes many contentious. Kindness is more difficult a friend to keep." He knows that well too; his own anger had been destructive, dangerous, painful, and it was difficult for him to imagine how to swallow it down when it had burned so brightly for so long. He feels it when he looks upon the Dalish, the Spirits, the loss of his friend...

The next image startles him again if only because he feels as though he has been thrust back into a time long dead, before the Veil and before the world had been torn asunder. A beautiful woman with glittering fabrics and a warm, bright heart... He has to force himself to focus, to concentrate, to not lose his own mind.

"More friends?"

"Melian," Galadriel says the name aloud and it has been so very, very long since she has. It has a sad ring to it, one that leave little room to question her fate.

"She was the first friendly face I knew when I left my homeland, she taught me nearly all that I know now, all the arts that make me truly formidable, that rendered me Galadriel."

She looks from the both of them, Melian humming in her resplendence as she tends a garden they cannot see, Gandalf puffing away as he curses a Took, whatever that is, and looks to Solas again. Solas's grief is still so very near and she wishes she could take it from him, but that is neither right nor within her power to do. She can grant him advice from those who proved better at such consolations, however, and with them standing so close, even as phantoms, it is easy.

"If I have learned anything from spirits, melda nin, it is that with great age, one must actively cultivate kindness, whenever they can," she says and there is a flicker as she tires, as her ability to project in Thedas outstrips her own stamina. She reaches for power that is no longer hers and then glances sadly to Melian.

She vanishes first, her memory much more distant. Melian's fine features crumble to grief and sorrow, she is anguished but silent as she buries her face in her hands, then at once she fades. Gandalf lingers longer, his death is still fresh in Galadriel's mind, as is his visage, but he doesn't last long. The smell of smoke intensifies, it pairs with ash and blood, becomes stifling, even choking, before he flickers and goes out, like a candle snuffed in a heavy wind.

She lets out a heavy sigh and, at once, the room is mundane and her presence is small, removed from Solas's mind entirely. She does not withdraw her arm from his shoulders, however, and while she tries to appear unaffected, to refrain from burdening him, she does lean against his side as they sit.

"Kindness is the opposite of grief...and while one cannot avoid grief altogether, it is a balm on heart."

"Melian." He repeats the name because it feels like the right thing to do.

The image that Melian makes is one that Solas recognises - someone that taught you, that has allowed you to grow and flourish? Someone who made you what you are? The images that flicker through his mind are of a beautiful woman, strong and formidable and powerful, filled withs power and glory, rising high above the others as a beacon, something incomparable to compare yourself to. She had been so much and the loss of her aches even now, another tally in the long line of people ripped from his bare hands.

Without thinking, Solas reaches for her other hand, the one that is not wrapped around his shoulders. He takes it gently and holds it, desperate for a connection, to feel something to anchor him to this world, beyond his obligations and beyond the vengeance he must repair and remake. She is there, at his side, and Solas can feel the disaster budding inside of him, the flare of panic that makes him think that this was a mistake. He should not have come, he should not have bared himself, he should not have even considered it -

It is too late. He is here, and so is she, and there is no undoing that mistake.

This is not like walking the Fade, he knows. The memories and dreams there are intense and strong, powerful reminders of what once was, but this is living the memory. The smell, the sight, away from the sleeping realm... The strength it must take to muster those images, the weight of the pain on her heart - oh, Solas can understand that too well, and he feels himself betrayed by his own empathy, the ache inside of him reflected in her losses. They have both given so much... and for what? He knows the answer to his question, but not hers. His lives on in the Dalish, the disaster of his own making, his hubris alive and breathing before him.

Solas doesn't hesitate in welcoming her against his body, offering his strong, unchanging posture to balance her weakness. Everyone is tired, he thinks. Age brings knowledge, brings wisdom, brings so much, but it also breaks you. It ruins the heart inside of you; he wonders if his is as black as he imagines it. He doesn't wish to know.

"There is kindness to be found," he admits, thinking of Adalia and Thranduil and Beleth, who came to his aid and supported his anger and hurt. "But the cost is high. I am unsure that it is worth the price, at times."

That is a sentiment that Galadriel is all to familiar with. The cost of kindness is often high and she has before withheld it. Now...in truth, she cannot say she regrets all of those occasions, but she regrets enough of them to give her pause. They are a few of the moments that truly stand out in her long life and they haunt her, distant things though they may be.

She doesn't respond to his statement immediately. She is aware that their conversation will likely end soon and Solas, though kind, is very reserved. He will likely refrain from being so near for some time. To be like this simply not his wont. She threads her fingers through his and laments, briefly, the loss of the ring on that hand.

What she could do here...in kindness or not...is so terribly diminished without that ring.

"In that, we are of a like mind," Galadriel admits with a touch of hesitance. "But I try to pay that tithe, however costly, if and when I can."

She pauses and draws a long breath.

"Can you tell me of your friend, the one who is passed?"

Once, there had been many people who had been kind. Once there had been many people who had offered the world to others, and something great had been borne from it. Those people had been broken and reshaped, they had become something different and dangerous, and Solas saw the Dalish wearing the mantle of that horror. In honour, they say, ignorant of the truth, and it burns somewhere deep down inside of him, making him feel sickly and shattered. All that he had done, all that he had sacrificed...

He holds on to her and accepts the kindness she gives, letting his fingers wrap around hers. He knows he will flee from this comfort sooner rather than later, but he accepts it for now. He accepts her kindness, her sweetness, because it is gentle against the raging fire of his woe and pain, but he will barricade himself again. It's better for him, for their future, for Thedas. He has to make sure.

"No one should be forced to pay it, but the world is not as gentle as our spirits." Solas shakes his head. It's poetic, he thinks, and warm and soft, but the harsh reality is something that bears down. There is little kindness left inside of him now.

Her question makes him pause, and he hesitates before he speaks.

"It was a Spirit of Wisdom. It came to me to share knowledge and learned of this world at my side. We studied together, once, and shared many things."

"What was their favorite?" Galadriel asks on a whim. "Bit of knowledge, in all that you shared?"

She tilts her head back and looks at the ceiling--unremarkable grey stone is uninspiring but it provides a blank place to focus on the past. It is no mirror but it gives her some room to imagine Solas's friend as well as her own.

"Olorin preferred to talk of his little halfling folk, fast friends he made halfway across the world from me. They cherished his big bushy beard and his sour stare and children chased him begging to see some spark of magic. Melian adored her birds and her garden, doting on both as she did her daughter--trees never grew so sweetly as they did in Doraith, nor are they likely to e'er do so again."

"Anything of my People. They enjoyed the history of the elves, sharing their language and their artistry. We walked many memories together while deep in the Fade."

It is certainly something that he is going to miss. Wisdom had been one of his oldest and dearest friends and the loss still cuts deep; months will be taken in mourning, he is sure. Many more people are going to die while they deal with Corypheus, but he had been so desperate to save it. Another Spirit, destroyed by the world... It is agonising. It will take time to feel as though he can breathe properly again.

"There are memories that will never truly leave us," Solas nods his head. "They are gone from this world, but we will recall them in years to come. Perhaps that is the best means of keeping the truth of them alive."

"Perhaps it is," she agrees with little additional comment. She is not certain how it is for spirits here, or how the elves in this place understand their own fea, and she will not pry answers from a grieving friend. The sentiment is easily agreed with, any contrary semantics aside, and she squeezes his shoulder again.

He seems calmer now, more akin to how she sees him daily, and while she will not rush him out, she will not keep him on a pretext.

"If it will not weigh upon you, such things interest me as well. I would share them with you if the wound is not too fresh."

What response can he give her? Acknowledging his own pain reminds him only of all the things he has lost; Solas is forced to turn his head away from her as he thinks back to the years of paradise and wonder that used to be the life of the People. He had torn them asunder in his hubris and now... Now he seeks to repair them at the cost of so, so much. He seeks the return of his power and his heart burns because of it.

Even now, in her hand, the shard of the Anchor prickles against his skin. He did this to them and yet... The guilt he feels is only that they might suffer needlessly.

"Gladly. If there is something you think is worth sharing then I will be glad to heed it."

She is uncertain what motivates her, what makes her shift her hand from his shoulder and lift it, but she does. It is a motion she has done a hundred times, to those closest to her, to those who carry her family name, to even a few here, but she has never done anything like it to Solas. Without preamble, she draws her fingertips across the side of his brow and her palm lights against the side of his face. He is looking away from her and she tilts his head, gently, to look back.

"I will not press you for that which distresses you, Solas, you are dear to me. You need not offer if it pains you."

The tenderness with which she touches him shocks Solas in a way he cannot express; it is rare that anyone reaches out and touches him and all he can do is breathe in, a soft, sharp noise, his eyes turning to look at her. There's a gentleness, something soft and warm, and he knows, knows, that he is entirely unworthy of it. Whatever she thinks she sees in him is a fallacy, a lie, designed to make him appear as a better person than he truly is in his heart.

She is far more than he could be. He cannot. And yet.

"Thank you." The smile that comes is barely there, but it is present all the same. "Your kindness is appreciated."

your faith was strong but you needed proof.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject