faderift | this town is only going to get worse.

There is always a weight to Solas and perhaps that is the problem; he has carried it for so long, so secretly, that it is simply a part of him now. There is no escaping it, no avoiding it, and so he lets it rest upon him. It might not be obvious to everyone that looks at him now, but to Thranduil and Galadriel? It must appear like holding up the world itself.

"There were many mistakes made in youth," Solas admits quietly, looking down at his bound feet absently. "If you wrap well and use appropriate fabrics there is no need to fear where you step." The idea of being watched more makes him feel very uneasy indeed, but there's no denying the fact that if there was anyone to do it he would prefer it be Thranduil himself.

Tilting his head, he raises a brow.

"Is there a reason you are so concerned with my feet, my friend?"

"You must show me sometime," he says, and his hands find his way to his lap instead.

Amusement both warms his face and turns his smile into something feline. "Is it something I ought to leave to Galadriel?"

The chance to tease will never be avoided, but the expression smooths off his face and he shakes his head, exhaling. "No. Only as they are part of you. I would carry more of your burden, but I know not how to ask so that you would say yes."

They live split lives in that regard, both of them biding their time, dependant upon the work of others. He is patient, moreso for Gwenaelle, who he has so little time with. He envies Solas the eternity of Galadriel, if not Galadriel herself.

"If that is what you wish." Though, he thinks, it might well not be the most exciting of means to pass the time. "Though I would imagine she would find it equally as boring."

All the same, the smile goes from soft to something daring and Solas scoffs, staring at the hands in his lap instead of his friend's face.

It's easier, he thinks, to ignore the knowledge Thranduil has of his intimacy with Galadriel, such a strange and new thing. They have spent much time together over the last few days as Solas came down from the heights of pain the Temple had caused, bringing him back to the kind of spirit that might well be able to survive conversations without losing himself entirely. It had taken calm and kindness from her, the kind Solas knows himself to be unworthy.

"Your knowing is enough," Solas says, finally, after a drawn out silence, choosing his words with care. Honestly, Thranduil and Galadriel's awareness is enough to make him more uncertain, more on edge, but he'll not voice there. "There is nothing more you can carry for me."

"You will ask," he says, "if that changes, so that I needn't coax it from you."

Thranduil reaches for his drink, rising slightly off his knees to do so before returning to his seat on the floor. He lets them stay in companionable, easy silence. He will need to leave in the morning, but it is not the morning yet, and he longs to linger here for as long as he can.

He is halfway through his cup when he speaks.

"Do you have anything you wish to say before I go to Skyhold?"

Nearly everyone else has made their opinions clear.

"It matters," he admits. "But less, given our intentions, our plans. I would arrange things to our advantage as much as I can."

"If it changes you would be among the first to know." It's easy enough to promise, because Solas is well aware the likelihood of it changing is minimal. It's an impossibility - he has no desire to share anything, to admit anything, to let anyone else know the depths of his secrets.

It is strange, to have Thranduil on the floor beside him, but Solas does nothing to protest or argue against it. He allows his friend his own strange comforts as he has his own; he wonders if it would be considered rude or not to join him, to settle down with his back against his desk and his thoughts as distant as they are now.

The conversation changes, however, and Solas pauses, considering.

"Only that you ought to take care of as many as you can. The Inquisition is a precious resource and it would not do to see it limited. It would be dangerous for us all should anyone else gain strength and traction over one group or another."

He lifts his shoulders.

"But I am no diplomat, and I will not be attending. I am sure you will attempt to make the best of it for as many as you can. It is not in your heart to be ill to others."

He tilts his head to smile up at Solas, then settles.

"The Chantry will demand concessions, and I will guide the talks as best I can, but I am no king, and none of them owe me loyalty. Their concerns are likely to be more varied than mine, and if they outvote me--"

He shrugs his shoulders, and takes another drink. "However this ends, there will be those who will be angry with my choices. You may know my heart," and he is grateful for Solas' generous estimation of it, which he will not admit to, "but others know me not so well."

He does not have much softness left in him.

"Gwenaelle has not spoken to me since I told her I would be attending the negotiations."

Solas smiles in response, small it might be.

"That has always been the case," he shakes his head. "I have yet to see the Chantry do anything that might demand a level of respect that they think they ought to deserve, and those that follow them..." Solas shrugs his shoulders. His views on organised religion are varied and confusing at the best of times, but at least the Chantry ranks higher than the Qun.

It's no great surprise.

Looking elsewhere, Solas breathes out quietly before he manages to find words again, careful and deliberately chosen.

"I know some of your heart. I would not expect to know it all." No more than Thranduil would know his. He doubts he can even promise to be contented with the results, whatever they might be - he has no reason to think that whatever happens will please him. His anger will be varied and just, he thinks.

Finally, his attention returns to his friend.

"Yes. She was quite outspoken on our travels."

He does not look at Solas- one of the benefits of the position- and maybe it is even embarassment that prevents it.

"You should know of my plans," he confesses. "I would buy us enough time,and freedom to be by your side when we fight Corypheus, that you might have four hands reaching for the Orb, and not just your own. I intend to bargain for the right to convert, and take it, and the right for recognized personhood alongside. If permitted, I will wed Gwenaelle, yes, because I love her, but also for what it would grant the Inquisition."

He exhales, shakes his head, stares down into his cup. If Solas could see it, he might call the expression mournful. This is a man who is choosing a path he knows to be rocky, but doing it for the sake of something.

"The elves loved me, and I them, but that I gave up to protect the Rifters. In that was political gain. This will sever the last of those bonds. I will lose the Dalish and the chance to attend Arlathven. But this assumes that Gwenaelle will not leave me for-- forging ahead, with the matter of the phylacteries. For assuming our future."

Tell me our friendship will stay, he does not say. Tell me I may depend upon you, and trust you.

It's not an expression Solas can deny recognising; he knows how it feels, to choose to walk a path that will end in danger, destruction. He has been preparing for that path for a long time, aware of the price that he might have to pay each time he makes another step. Plan after plan falls around him and as he goes he recognises that the only options left to him might be drastic indeed.

"Time is all we can ask for, with the Inquisition as it is." Solas sees the Anchor shards and feels pained, knowing them for what they are, sparks of power that only he can control. It's good that few question why he has the knowledge, or consider it part and parcel of his understanding of the Fade, not considering the depths of his link to each shard that comes under his hands. "That Rifters are not recognised as people is a shame indeed, for I've seen better from them than I have many people born to this world."

It's something that he's still struggling with himself all the same. Rifters... To consider anyone of Thedas 'people' when they are so cut from the world, so different from what had once been, so very far from what Solas remembers... Personhood is not something he would be entirely willing to grace them with, even now, even with Thranduil and Galadriel and Adalia resting close to his heart.

"The Dalish have no love for me," Solas shakes his head, frowning. "They do not see the truth and deny their histories, their heritage. It does not come as a surprise that they deny you, too." The idea of the wedding, of conversion, of it all makes Solas frown, an intensity to it, something frustrated and uncomfortable, but... Thranduil has chosen his path. Solas knows well enough that he cannot likely dissuade him, no matter how strongly he disagrees.

"You are making many grievous choices." It's all he can say for a moment, back shifting to straighten, face tight. "But..." But. He breathes, bowing his head, eyes closed. "Remember your goals and do nothing that does not further them."

He lays his shard-embedded hand on Solas' knee. The glow is dull, unused to seal a Rift in several weeks, but there always, a persistent night-light and reminded of just how he came to be in Thedas, what he is and who he is not.

"You have my love," he says, "And I do what I do for my love of the elven, and the good, that something like Corypheus might be prevented from rising ever again."

(The Blight, it always comes back to the Blight.)

"I have lived with hatred and misunderstanding before, I will not falter in the face of it again. I will walk beside you, until we accomplish our goals, and after, when we might know rest."

He owes Thedas that much. Eru placed him here, he understands the reasons, now, as much as he can claim to know the whole of the song.

Reaching, Solas rests his hand upon Thranduil's, touching the glow of the shard without pause. It had been painful, once, to see the glow of shards and Anchors and know what he had lost, but here he can think only of what he has gained; that there is a friendship here that is unexpected and, yet, welcomed for the intensity and promise it carries. He allows some of his power to reach, hopefully to soothe, but nothing that would betray that he had done anything but touch skin with tenderness.

"That is the hope for us all, I think." Solas does not respond to the love, but he is certain his friend recognises the impact of such simple words. "You know why I walk the path I have chosen, the reasons behind my actions. I do not think there is room to explain it once more."

Galadriel might have learned more of him from his mind, but Thranduil knows enough - more than Solas might ever willingly be comfortable with, but enough all the same.

"I have walked the paths of time itself, eras long gone in the eyes of the people. I would have them remade, reborn, returned to how they once were. I would have the People bright again, as they deserve to be. To have a friend at my side is a gift that I had not expected; there are no thanks that might be enough."

Thranduil does not notice; if there is a change in sensation it is beyond even the notice of elven senses, but he will sleep better tonight, when he is finally allowed it.

He turns his hand, palm-up, but does not close his fingers around Solas' own, and only leaves the promise of a future squeeze of his hand, if they come to a topic where he needs it. Thranduil likes this languid conversation, the pace made comfortable by their measuring of time.

"Without the slavery," he says, only somewhat wry. "I wish I was able to walk you through my home, or Galadriel through hers. You might know what we seek to build, then, and know it as more than a dream."

Arda, unmarred, or something like it. Middle-earth, but cleansed, and with no fading to worry about. A paradise. Hope, the potential for growth, the advancements of the First and Second age without Feanor or Sauron.

He confesses, halting: "- Gwenaelle has guessed enough of my plans. I fear she may leave me when she knows the whole of them."

The truth of the Anchors is something that Solas holds close to his chest, afraid and uncertain of the dangers that might fall upon them all should it be found out. For people to learn of his mistake, of the reasons why it is his touch and his magic that soothes the burn, why he alone can predict the Rifts and heal the pains - it is too much. This is enough for now, the casual tenderness between friends, what would be hidden behind dancing half-truths of Fade memories and understanding of elven magic of ages past to all others.

He keeps his hand where Thranduil can reach it, playing pretend at healer rather than anything else. It is there, should either of them need the grip of friendship to tide their feelings, there in case what they speak of becomes too much. The topic is heavy tonight and there's no avoiding it.

"That would be preferable," Solas comments, expression tight. "Galadriel has told me stories, shown me images and pictures of the world she knows. It... Is not completely different from what Arlathan once was. I am sure there are more similarities than we could count."

Frowning, Solas pauses, looking down once more, brow furrowed with his own confusion and uncertainty.

"What has she learned?" Which sounds too accusing, so Solas sighs. "Does she not love you?"

"I miss my wood," Thranduil confesses, a moment of unguarded longing. "The trees here do not know me, do not welcome my presence."

It is such a small thing, and they live in a city of stone and deaden wood, but he misses it anyway. He will never have it again, he realizes, and holds the pain of the realization in his heart before he lets it pass. It is not a vulnerability worth allowing, and that he had it at all once was a gift.

Thranduil shakes his head slightly, trying to ward off Solas' sigh and low mood.

"She knows I intend something. It would be impossible for her to know me and not know how I see what the elves face and how my spirit rages at it. She also knows about my disgust with how this world handles the Blight. I did not say to her as I said to you 'tear down the veil and purge the Blight'- you were in Skyhold and Galadriel gone; I had not the means to do either. I thought I would need to play the long game, and would have until after her death to start." He shrugs, and his smile is bittersweet. "She loves me, and I will have perhaps half a century of that-- I am greedy for it. I would keep her close if I could."

"They would not," Solas agrees, quietly. He misses the temples, the libraries, misses... So many things, so much that he can't even put into words, things he can't voice because nothing in this world would be an accurate reflection.

He wishes there were better words to help Thranduil, to help - soothe this ache, this pain, to make it better and aid it. Solas cannot offer more than what he has; a gentle hand, a welcoming ear, enough that he should not feel entirely alone. It is what they have given him, after all.

"You and I share many opinions, it seems." But not enough that it would soothe Gwenaelle, not enough that it would make it easier for her to shoulder. There are some secrets that cannot be told, cannot be shared, and Solas knows that. The burden on their shoulders is great, with plans growing and rotting before them. "I had imagined less time than this. I never imagined that Corypheus would become so strong, that he would have become what he had before my orb touched his hands."

He feels sick, weary.

"I would that there was more time for you."

"Clearly you must turn your attention from the Fade into time magic," he says, affecting a serious tone, playing at his own reputation for imperious talk and lofty affectations. "So that you can prevent him from taking it."

He shakes his head. He has resigned himself to this.

"She does not have enough of her mother's grace that restoring the Elvhen would affect her at all," he concedes. "But our children..."

If Gwenaelle can be persuaded, if they are lucky (for these things are harder for humans and her health so fragile). If they are very lucky, perhaps Iorveth--

"My nature ought to protect them, Veil or no Veil."

No Valar meant that peredhel would never have to choose. He holds to that.

"I do not think that playing with time would be a suitable solution for any of us," Solas responds, as if the matter were serious, as if Thranduil was truly expecting to do anything with time itself. No, what Solas plans is enough for Thedas, and no amount of magical power could undo what he had caused.

This is simply how it will be for the two of them, from this point forward, captivated by their own misery.

The idea of children does make Solas pause, but only for a moment, his brow furrowing into something dissatisfied before he looks away. It is not for him to comment on, not for him to judge, though he imagines he might have to add to the mural in the office should such a thing come to pass.

"I cannot give you counsel on this, my friend." Solas sighs, his hand touching his head, pained. "You know my path and what it will bring to Thedas. I cannot tell you to follow your heart and bring children to this world when we know the darkest secrets of it."

A shoulder lifts, falls, sad and adrift.

"Protect them as well as you can. That is all that you can do."

"It is for them that I will do this," he says. "For those elves who ought to be born into a better world. It is," he admits, "a mortal way of thinking of things, to do something for those generations as yet unarrived."

How he feels about that- being brought into a mortal way of thinking about things- is brief on his face, but the acceptance is there longest. He turns to cup Solas' cheek, to lift his face, to meet his gaze.

"Why else do it, if not for love and hope?" He speaks gently, kindly, trying to appeal to Solas' pride. The words have him wondering, if only for a moment, if Solas did not have children he had to leave behind. "Dark places need not remain so."

"For the People," Solas nods, expression intent and strict even now. "When I created this world I did not imagine the impact that it would have. I imagined freedom for them, not suffering. I imagined happiness, not... Not a world where they are scarce people to begin with."

The touch to his face surprises him for a moment and his eyes widen, flicking over Thranduil's face before he relaxes, the tension fading away. The expression he carries is something sad, but gentle, warm because of his friendship rather than lost in the wake of it.

"Hope is all that I might cling to," he admits. "I do not know if my plans will be a success, nor do I know what might happen to Thedas in the wake of it. I want nothing more than to restore the People, to show them the future that they ought to have had." He closes his eyes, seeming lost for a moment. "It is all that I can do now."

"It will be done," he says. "We have time."

We, we, we. An elf alone is a dangerous thing; they are not meant to be. Solas' loneliness wounds him, and he will soothe it, if only by repeated application of his own company.

"Once Corypheus is defeated," he amends. The danger is real, and he does what he can to push the war effort forward, but he would be lying to say he is content with things as they are being run. The Mannish rulers are weak and slow and wrapped up in themselves. The elves, the ones who ought to be reminding them of their duty, who ought to have memories long enough to dispense the wisdom needed to battle this, are children of a dying race.

"When I... convert," when he lies his lies, and spins a pretty tale to win love and gold for the Inquisition, when he loses the love of the elves who he is protecting. "... it might be in our interest to... disagree, publicly. What are your plans for after Corypheus' defeat, should you have the orb in your possession once more? If he breaks it?"

"We are not yet able to defeat Corypheus. We have until a means of destroying him is discovered, you are correct."

And Solas is actively working on that, which is part of the problem. He had given Corypheus the strength to become this powerful and he must find a means to undo it. To get his orb back is what he dreams of, more than anything else; to have the power he had enjoyed before his sleep, to feel the strength return to him in full force rather than part by part. He feels weak without it, as though he is truly the aged man he appears to be.

As if the forties were old. As if he were not thousands of years on top of that.

Solas, of course, is still dismissive of the Dalish. He has no love for them, no concern for them, and he shakes his head as he frowns. He finds them intolerable, he finds them too foolish and too ignorant, unable to see what is laid out before them, what lies are whispered in their clans. He wishes, desperately, to help them, but time and time again he is rejected.

Turning his head down, Solas frowns, expression tense.

"... Perhaps so." Publicly, but not so privately. Solas' fingers flex and he breathes, trying to manage himself. "I will take the orb and regain my power. I need my Foci to have my strength. After that... I will find a means to strengthen the People once more."

"You have the Inquisition at your back," he says, which it true and very different from having it at his command. Beleth Ashara wields more effective power than he does; he is under the authority of three different people, including Thranduil himself (who chafes, occasionally, at being under the command of Skyhold). But it is not at cross-purposes, even if it is occasionally slow.

"We will speak of it later," he says. Let the thought sit. They can refine it at their leisure.

He stands, a slow unfolding of his height, and goes to the windows, to peer out at the harbor around his curtains.

"I leave in the morning for Minrathous."

"For now," Solas admits, low and quiet. "They are not my friends. I know well enough that the Inquisition sees me as a means to aid them in their ventures. I am useful to them, for my knowledge, for what I can give." He's well aware of that. They don't question him as long as he is managing to help them, as long as he is useful, and that's what Solas uses as a means of protecting himself. He keeps himself safe by being exactly what they need.

Solas watches as Thranduil stands, tilting his head, watching. His friend is weighed with as much as Solas himself is, and he knows it.

Frowning, he shakes his head, tense.

"I will not be joining. I have no desire to see what became of the People in Tevinter."

Thranduil turns to look at him, fingertips pulling the curtain back to reveal the night sky, the stars.

"Instead you will see them at the Arlathvhen. I am very nearly jealous."

But there is the matter of Gwenaelle, and the upcoming conversion. Still, he would have liked to see it once, and been comforted by it.

"I fear I will sleep poorly tonight," he admits, letting the curtain slip past his fingers, and coming back to stand before the fireplace. "Will you be able to find me in the Fade, even when I am in Tevinter?"

"Those are not the People. They are the Dalish."

It's what he does when he is cornered and whipped with our people or your people. He is not of the Dalish, he is not of their world, not of their ilk. He is of the People, beyond anything the Dalish could hope to achieve without his input, his stories, his power. They are adrift, blaming their sins on the shoulders of the one who freed them, and Solas loathes it.

He breathes out, focussing, forcing himself to be calm, to relax, to settle.

"I can come to you, if you wish it." It wouldn't be the most difficult thing and Solas knows his powers in Dreaming are beyond that of anyone's estimation. "I could find you anywhere, my friend, no matter how far you go."

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