faderift | the holy dove was moving too

WHO: Solas and you
WHAT: Open post
WHEN: Throughout the entire month
WHERE: All around Kirkwall
NOTES: N/A

LIBRARY.

Solas spends much of his time in the library as he always does. There are books open in front of him. They're written in Common, in Elven, one or two with scraps of Qunlat littered around the margins (this is Kirkwall, after all). He is devouring what he can, still studying and investigating everything that he can, making notes and putting pieces of parchment to one side, putting things to one side, closing books but not getting up to put them away.

What proves clear, eventually, is just how much time Solas is actually spending in his studies. For a man that enjoys sleeping as much as he does he is not getting much of it - and he has no other symptoms, so this is clearly a personal endeavour rather than anything from his own suffering. The piles of books get larger, higher, and he can often be found scowling at them, as if they should have more answers than they do, as if the hours he had spent uncovering the history of Kirkwall had been entirely pointless.

He sits in a corner keeping to himself, waiting, frowning, reading and reading. He makes himself comfortable eventually, pouring himself a cup of something to drink - not tea - before he gives himself a moment to shut his eyes and relax.

KIRKWALL.

When not in the library, Solas can be found wandering Kirkwall, investigating things he might have otherwise missed. He doesn't linger much in taverns or bars - they're hardly the kind of place he'd waste his time, even if it means he might be able to discover more of what the 'common' people might be interested in - but he does travel to Darktown at times, does look into the depths of what it is like for the elves here, offering what he can to aid them as little as it might be. He is a familiar face to some of them: they are absent from the Dalish and so the two of them get along far better than he might with anyone of the clans.

Eventually, he makes his way back to the Inquisition proper and spends a little time wandering around the gardens, arms crossed behind his back and his attention focussed on the herbs, on the plants, on the things that interest him. He does not seem to mind being interrupted, if anyone has the desire, and he seems in a pleasant enough mood before he makes himself comfortable on a bench, drawing a book from somewhere and beginning to read, flicking the pages absently.

WILDCARD.

( Find him in the Gallows, near his room, hanging near Galadriel and anywhere else your heart desires! )

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It isn't unusual for Gwenaëlle to seek out Solas—she's long made him responsible for the safe-keeping of some of her more sensitive work—and he had made such a point not to treat her any differently that it had seemed at first unnecessary to change the habit. Awkward, a little; she's never allowed herself to hold many illusions that his tolerance of her is very separate from the friendship he'd so ruthlessly discarded with her husband. Holding out her own hand patiently took on a somewhat different flavour, when it felt less like something she might build from and more...

He doesn't treat her any differently, however angry he is, however he's cut them off. Whatever she knows, which she suspects is substantially less than he thinks—

It's hard not to feel, in the face of how easy that has seemed to be—how smoothly done, how she'd never have known if she didn't have Thranduil's unhappiness to mark it by—that it can only mean he was always false to her, and that this simply requires nothing different of him.

He didn't leave Thranduil to die when he had the chance, so maybe that's not unsalvageable (for his sake, she hopes not), but more than anything it's a tired feeling of old embarrassment that lingers. That again she's presumed too much of someone's sentiment, hoped for something that she shouldn't have, and can't have even the satisfaction of feeling her mistake is anything significant. When she knocks at his door, Hardie close at her heels, she doesn't carry more notes as she might usually—and she is trying very much to look as if she isn't looking very serious.

It's important not to be bothersome, or to make a fuss. It's worse if she makes a fuss.

“Hello,” she says, and her usual warmth with him isn't absent, just muted; her fingers fidgeting behind her back until she flattens her hands and clasps them in front of her. “I just wanted to come and collect my anchor-shard notes.”

Solas has not treated Gwenaelle any differently because he has no reason to. What has happened is not her fault: it is the fault of Thranduil, the man who broke the trust of a being centuries, with countless millennia behind him. He might have been asleep for a long time but he had dreamed and walked and lived in different ways - he had learned more of the world than anyone might imagine. Thranduil had betrayed the trust of someone who would have changed the world and allowed him to be a part of it, but that has now changed.

Thranduil is separated from him now, but that does not mean that Gwenaelle must be as well. He is still as good to her as he has always been, still been good enough to make sure the ripples of his ire and frustration did not colour her, as what she did was simply exist.

He likes her. He is fond enough of her. That is not likely to change, no matter how he feels.

Solas opens the door without too much pause or hesitation, watching her for a moment before he nods, stepping back to allow her entrance to the room. The fact that she has come for her notes does not seem to surprise him and he steps over, unlocking the box without too much word.

"Of course." Unlocked, opened for her. "As you wish." They are not his to keep, after all, and he's memorised what he had been permitted to read anyway.

So much goes unsaid, and Gwenaëlle has a mind that is wont to fill silences—and never with anything good. She's never been certain of her friendship with Solas; her own affection, of course, but he's so...

And it makes sense, now, how stand-offish he can be. How little he shares, how careful he is, how protective of his privacy. How artfully he does it, that most of the time it might scarcely seem noteworthy. She's never been wholly confident that she doesn't exaggerate her idea of his fondness—that he isn't only tolerating her, after all, that he might tire of doing. It's so, so easy to fill the gaps with old logic, with the things that have always made more sense to her than someone else's honest sentiment: that it is practical to be kind to her, and that Solas has proven himself to be eminently practical.

She trusts him, in a sense. Enough that she is comfortable, not pursuing more than she knows now—because he is practical, because he is clever, because whatever else is true, in this moment the Inquisition's interests are everyone's if they aren't a fucking fool. He is not that, so everything else can wait, must wait—

She can't quite be still. Behind her, Hardie paces the doorway, sits down and doesn't whine; she straightens her fingers against the paper before she can crumple it in her hands all unintentional. “Thank you,” she says, politely, and—

—means it for a hundred other things. For tolerating her, if he did; for not leaving Thranduil on the battlefield, for being someone Galadriel could reach for, for not dying and being one more fucking thing, though that last one seems something perhaps they don't need to worry about in him, too much. It's very abrupt, suddenly, when she presses her notes to his back because she's wrapped her arms around his middle; she doesn't come up very high, her eyes screwed shut to take one more liberty.

She's small, and warm, and so tense it seems entirely plausible that one wrong move could send her flying apart in a thousand directions, but for the moment composure or something like it is still within her grasp.

There is no point in Solas speaking to her of Thranduil - she must be aware of the tension in their relationship now, in the shift of things between them, and she must know why. Gwenaëlle is no fool and that is what frustrates Solas more, the fact that Thranduil had given her the crumbs and she will follow the trail no matter how careful he tries to be with his own. He has been forced into a corner and he will not hesitate nor pause. He will lash out and it will be at Thranduil's feet should something unforgivable happen.

Solas does not shoulder any blame in this. He does not think there is any point in pretending otherwise. Thranduil is the one that Solas is upset with and the one that he broke the trust that had been so deep and sure between them. It is not something he can ignore easily nor something he can choose to act as though had not happened. It is impossible for him. Not with all the weights he carries and the dangers that lay at his feet.

What he does not expect is her politeness, the way she acts with him, the shape and the movement of her. She does not seem to treat him entirely differently from the way she had before, which makes him feel a touch on edge, a touch unsure. Nothing has changed in the treatment despite what she knows, and it makes Solas aware of her more than he has been before despite the easiness of their friendship and the calmness of their camaraderie before now.

The embrace has him stiffening for a moment.

The only people who have ever dared embrace her are Thranduil and Galadriel, two people that he finds closer than others. For a moment his hands hang uselessly at his side before he lifts them up and slowly wraps them around her in return, careful and as appropriate as he can manage, ignoring the tension he feels and acting relaxed. He is a master at that.

"... Of course. There is no need to thank me for anything, Gwenaëlle."

What else would he do? He is gentle with her because there is no reason to punish her. Not yet.

Gwenaëlle is already disentangling when his arms come up—he stiffens and she's letting go, of course, slipping out from between his fingers like so much smoke. A regrettable lapse, inappropriate and judging by his reaction not particularly welcome and the voice sounds like her mother, not Guenievre but Anne, who would have known what to do with all of this. Who would have followed those crumbs, probably, but with her—ah, what he's afraid of will never happen. It never occurs to her to assure him of that; it had seemed so obviously irrelevant and pointless when Thranduil had been speaking, it will never enter her head what, precisely, Solas might think she'll do.

It has seemed so much more bitter to lose a friend for nothing.

“There is,” she says, and it's almost light except that she means it, matter of fact.

She hesitates, a moment longer, and then—

“Well, I'll leave you to it.”

Her face falls, a little. She can't help it.

the holy dove was moving too

wildcard.

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