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buttsonthebeach · 4 years

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Lost Horizon, Pt. 3

Here we go again folks! @scharoux continues to blow me away with her faith in me as we take Rhaella on this journey!

This long fic picks up almost directly where The Last Game last left off - with Rhaella pregnant and alone in a world where Solas has removed the Veil, despite her attempts to stop him. Rhaella has now escaped Kirkwall (and Solas) with Merrill in tow.

My Ko-Fi || My Commissions

Part One of Lost Horizon can be found here

Part Two of Lost Horizon can be found here

Other pieces about Rhaella I have written include:

1. All Things Green and Growing

2. The Long Road Back

3. The Turning of the Year

3. The Same Kind of Scar (contains explicit content)

4. World Without End (contains explicit content)

5. The Last Game Pt. 1, the Last Game Pt. 2, and the Last Game Pt. 3 (contains explicit content), and the Last Game Pt. 4

Pairing: Rhaella Lavellan x Solas, post-Trespasser

Rating: Teen

Warnings: Other parts of the series contain directly referenced character death for a character from DAI, implied character death for characters from DA2, and general references to death and destruction.

This section contains depictions of childbirth.

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At least they managed to get to the Emerald Graves without any problems.

Rhaella could count that as a blessing.

She cried herself to sleep more often than she didn’t, claimed she needed to take a break from riding because her back was sore when really she wanted to duck behind a tree and sob into her folded arms out of Merrill’s earshot - but at least they’d made it to the Emerald Graves. Beautiful, terrible, full of history. It was oddly soothing to be in a place that outwardly reflected what she inwardly felt, where past and present and heartbreak already collided.

It was not soothing to see so many spirits there.

These were not just the simple wisps that had followed them to Skyhold - these were fully matured spirits that could approach them and speak to them, or command them to go away, as did one spirit of Command as they entered the Graves.

Spirits with fully formed personalities who might pass on word of two elven women, one of them heavily pregnant, making their way through the Emerald Graves.

“Maybe we shouldn’t stay here after all,” Merrill said as it became apparent that they were everywhere, and not just in one isolated part of the region.

Rhaella felt the tears well up all over again.

She was exhausted.

Exhausted in every way a person could be.

She had ridden hard and hoped hard and tried her best and she still had nothing to show for it but a plan that fell apart every time she tried to stitch it together. She just wanted to be safe. To have space to grieve. To prepare to welcome her son into the world. She couldn’t think of anywhere else they could go. The Exalted Plains were still a blasted wasteland and far too exposed by and large - nowhere really to hide, no safe warren to build her nest - who knew what any Dalish clan there would think of her - she couldn’t go further into the heart of Orlais - there was no time to cross the mountains back into Ferelden -

She was dimly aware that her breath was coming in shorter and faster, that the roaring in her ears had returned. Merrill’s hand was on her shoulder. None of that mattered, none of it could override the terror of how trapped she was.

Then, in a puff of purple smoke, there was Cole, eyes luminous, pale blond hair gleaming in the waning sun.

“Panicked, breaking but not broken - you have been here before and you will be here again and you will always pull through. Be still, friend. I am here to help.”

Cole’s hand went to her other shoulder. Rhaella’s panicked breath began to slow.

“What in the name of all of the Creators -” Merrill murmured. “Where did you come from? Who are you?”

“My brothers and sisters are worrying you,” Cole said, still looking only at Rhaella. “Do not be frightened. They will listen to me. I will tell them what a precious secret you carry, and they will keep it. I am here to help. I am always good at helping, aren’t I?”

Rhaella thought of the cheese and mint, the barrels full of daggers, the honey spilled on windowsills. A compassionate knife easing the pain of the dying. The tightness in her chest receded.

“Yes, Cole. You are.”

“Cole?” Merrill asked, bewildered. “Isn’t that a human name? Are you not a spirit?”

“Am I?” Cole asked, his voice laced with amusement. He had grown somehow since Rhaella saw him last. Perhaps he was more at home now that the Veil was gone, now that he was no longer torn between two worlds.

“Cole is a friend,” Rhaella said finally, rising, one hand on her belly, waiting to feel some movement from her child. When she felt it, the final bit of fear eased. “An old friend at this point, I suppose. He is also a spirit of Compassion.”

“And you knew him from before the Veil fell?” Merrill asked. She reached out and took hold of Cole’s hand. “And he has a body? But he can appear and disappear? I have never heard of such a thing. Are you like Anders and Justice, a spirit and a person sharing the same body?”

“No. I am only me. Only Cole.”

“Fascinating.” She dropped his hand and walked in a quick circle around the two of them.

Cole tilted his head, watching her progress. “Bright, buzzing, beautiful - your mind is full of shining gears. So much more clever than anyone ever gives you credit for. You and I will be friends.”

Merrill laughed - giggled, actually.

“Well, that’s settled then.”

A wave of exhaustion overcame Rhaella even as she smiled. “Cole, do you know somewhere safe for us? Somewhere we can settle in for a long time and remain undetected? We’ll need shelter, room to garden, fresh water…”

Cole nodded slowly. “I think so, yes. I will look, and tell the others not to speak of you.”

With another puff of smoke, he was gone.

“Do you think he can teach us how to do that?” Merrill asked, green eyes wide.

Rhaella snorted and shook her head. She did not have the energy to express it, not with her panic so recently gone and her belly so heavy and her back so sore, but she was grateful that Merrill was capable and intelligent and yet also innocent enough to still find wide-eyed joy in the broken world around them.

Cole returned a short while later and told them to follow him. He led them through the woods to a place where the land rose into two sharp cliffs on either side of them, drawing them down into a gorge. It opened up eventually into an elliptical clearing with trees and shrubs, flat grassy spaces, and a stream that poured through the rock face at the very end of it.

“It’s perfect,” Merrill said, pacing around. “Space enough for us to camp, to keep the animals, to start planting that garden.”

“Only one way in and one way out,” Rhaella said, eyeing the high sides of the cliffs around them. “If someone finds us, we’re trapped here.”

“We’ll set daily wards far enough away from the entrance that we’ll know if someone gets too close. A second layer behind that so we can be certain they’re headed in our direction. That will give us time to prepare to move on.”

Rhaella nodded. The exhaustion felt stronger now that the possibility of rest was so close. She nodded at most things that Merrill said from that point on - about the location of the garden, about the idea of making a small pen for their mounts, about making a lean-to to provide better shelter for them. She nodded and nodded until finally their bedrolls were set up and she could lie down and seek oblivion.

Rhaella woke from that oblivion in a flowering field - a clifftop, overlooking waterfalls. She recognized it at once. It was the place she had gone with Solas when he saved her from death in the Crossroads. When they made love for the first time. They had sat here together and talked. It was a beautiful place, if bittersweet now. Bitter because it was yet another place where he left her - sweet because it was the place where their child had been conceived.

She felt the warmth of the sun on her cheeks and tilted her head back and closed her eyes and let herself focus more on the sweetness than the bitterness for a moment. She was going to be a mother soon. Something she had wanted but feared would never happen. She would always have a piece of Solas - of the man she loved still, she could admit that here, surrounded by wildflowers and sunshine - and she was grateful for that. Grateful that it had happened. She breathed in deeply and let the warmth of the thought fill her, crown to toe.

It spread, tingling all over her skin, warming her back - and then there were arms around her, and the warmth was coming from someone else’s body holding her close.

“Ma vhenan,” he whispered softly.

And that was when Rhaella realized what had happened.

She was in the Fade.

She had gone to sleep without taking Merrill’s draught, without setting her own mental wards through meditation.

The arms around her were Solas’s.

She stiffened in his embrace. She felt his arms loosen. She could stand, escape from his arms. Turn and scream at him. But she didn’t want to. She wanted to be held. To be safe in his embrace, to soak in his warmth, to turn and kiss him. She loved him. You couldn’t hide that kind of thing here in the Fade. It shimmered around you like the haze of a late summer afternoon.

She relaxed and felt him relax in turn, hold her closer. She breathed in the familiar smell of him, felt the beating of his heart, felt how her own ached and sped up at how much she longed for these moments with him still, after everything that happened. She heard him sigh, felt him nuzzle against her hair and breathe her in. She rested her hands on his forearms where they wrapped around her waist and felt tears rise in her eyes at the feeling of her palms on his bare skin, how good it felt. That simple connection that he had broken when he broke the sky open.

They lingered there like that for a while - how long she could not say, because love and time both felt infinite here - and then he finally spoke.

“Come home.”

That broke the spell.

“No,” Rhaella said. She started gathering her strength so she could wake. Had he been trying to locate her while they held each other? Had he figured out where she was? She couldn’t risk another second longer in his company.

“Rhaella, please -”

She pulled free of his arms but then his hand was on her chin, thumb on her lips, not holding her, not grabbing her, but cupping her. Longing for her.

She glanced back at Solas over her shoulder then, and it was like looking into the sun. His blue eyes, his freckles, the sharp angles of his face. His grief blinded her.

Ma vhenan, her heart sang back to him, but she did not let the words slip free.

“Come home,” he said again.

“No,” she said, and woke.

It was jarring to be back in the grotto with Merrill standing over her. Rhaella could still hear the roar of the waterfall in her ears. Could still smell the wildflowers. Could still smell him, feel him, at her side.

“Are you well?” Merrill asked. “I didn’t want to wake you but you were murmuring and twitching. Did you enter the Fade?”

Rhaella sat up and pressed the heels of her hands hard into her eyes, until her vision danced with spots of color. When she opened them again, and her eyes adjusted, she felt clear of the dream at last.

“Yes,” Rhaella said. “He was there. Solas.”

“Fenedhis. Did he figure out where we are?”

Rhaella thought about it a moment. She thought about the way he’d clung to her, the look on his face when she pulled away, how he kept asking for her to come home. Begging, really.

“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think he was really hoping that I would tell him. Or that I would just agree to come home. I didn’t get the sense that he was using his magic or trying anything covert.”

“He is the Dread Wolf,” Merrill said darkly. “The trickster. We can’t be certain. If you do really want to stay away from him, we have to assume that he would use an opportunity like that to track us. We can’t let you get so exhausted that you forget to take the draught or to guard yourself in the Fade.”

Rhaella imagined it again - the flowers and the water and the breeze and the sunshine and his arms around her. She ran her hands over her belly and imagined he was there with her, rejoicing in the new life they had created together. She imagined him being there when their son was born, the joy in his eyes when he held him.

Then she took all of those feelings and wrapped them carefully in a box and put them away.

“Yes,” she said to Merrill. “We will be more careful. I don’t want him to find us here.”

For two weeks, Rhaella and Merrill had space to breathe.

Not much space to breathe, of course - the opening they’d found in this ravine was not large, nor was the grotto in the shelter of the rock where they’d set up their shelter. But it was a sliver of peace in two lives that had not known much peace, especially not in the last several years.

They settled in at once with the practice of two Dalish women who’d been on the move many times before in their lives - arranging shelter while keeping an eye on the prevailing winds, designating latrine space well away from their fresh water supply, ensuring the animals had access to the water but likewise wouldn’t spoil it. And, of course, Rhaella’s favorite task - setting up a garden.

It was the garden that brought Rhaella the greatest peace in those two weeks, even more so than the fact that she no longer spent hours in a saddle, even more than the whisper of wind through the trees rather than the clamor of a city, even more than the fact that she could take a nap whenever she wanted to now. This had always been the thing that centered her, brought her peace. Her fingers in warm, dark earth, coaxing things to grow. It was how she and Solas had first begun to connect after all, wasn’t it? That gully in Crestwood, the blood lotus, their hands meeting in the rain.

Rhaella imagined connecting with her son over these same things. Showing him how to test the moisture in the soil, how to space the seedlings apart, which plants made good bedfellows and which ones didn’t. That was what brought her the most peace. The idea that she could build a life for her baby now, however small, however imperfect.

She was beginning to feel better about the idea of her son arriving soon. She and Merrill had no idea when it would be exactly, of course, but it had to be soon. Rhaella was big as a harvest moon in the autumn sky, heavy and tired every day now, working on the breathing exercises she’d once helped her Keeper teach other women in Clan Lavellan. She hadn’t yet reached the point of despair some women reached, where they became convinced the baby would never come, where the sheer weight of the waiting began to crush them. She didn’t think she would reach that point.

Your father made sure I was ready to wait for things with no idea of when they’d come. Thinking that they would never come.

Merrill was the only one who regularly ventured out of the grotto in those two weeks, mostly for the purposes of hunting. She reported hearing other elves nearby, though she never interacted with them. Some were Dalish, some Orlesian, and still others spoke Elvhen, the kind the two of them had only heard spoken by the likes of Abelas and Solas.

“I can mostly understand them at this point, and it didn’t sound like they were looking for anyone in particular,” Merrill reassured Rhaella. “I think they had just awoken from uthenera. They were trying to understand what happened, and find their way to civilization.”

That eased Rhaella’s tension. She had been vigilant about preventing exhaustion, about meditating before sleep, about taking Merrill’s herbal draughts. She had not entered the Fade since that night that Solas came to her, and she had not been using her magic either. She didn’t like the full feeling that gave her, like snaps of electricity might spring from her hands without her control the way they had when her magic first manifested, but it was a necessary evil for now. Eventually - someday - it would not be like this.

She was going to live forever now, after all. Wasn’t she?

When Rhaella was working in the garden one day and felt the staticky change in the air, she thought it was her overripe mana at first. Then she looked up at the sky, saw the high, billowing clouds in the distance. She took a deep breath and breathed in the metallic smell of oncoming rain.

“There’s going to be a storm,” she called back to Merrill, who was busy with something near their bedrolls, her back turned.

Merrill mimicked her at once - looking to the sky, smelling the air.

“You’re right. A good summer thunderstorm, and a strong one at that. I’ll work on blocking off the entrance to the ravine so the animals can’t escape if they are frightened by the thunder and lightning.”

Merrill tucked away whatever she’d been working on quickly enough that Rhaella felt a pang of confusion and curiosity. She didn’t pry further, though. Merrill had done more than Rhaella had any right to deserve since they escaped Kirkwall.

Then Rhaella felt another pang, not in her chest but lower down, in her belly and back. A tightening like a giant hand had come down and squeezed her whole midsection. The back of her neck prickled and her heart sped up.

Could it be - ?

It was better to just keep busy and keep moving. There was so much to do before the storm came. (Her belly tightened.) She wanted to check the trellises for the plants in the garden and ensure that they were secure. She wanted to wrap the baskets with their provisions in oiled cloth so that if water reached them they would not spoil. (Her belly tightened.) She wanted to move their bedrolls further back into the grotto, under the overhang of rock, and then cast a barrier so none of the elements could reach them. (Her belly tightened.) Could she sustain barriers over the garden and their animals, too? Barriers were simple spells and if she cast them without any particular flare, and cast them quickly, they would not attract anyone to them -

This time when her belly tightened, it stopped Rhaella in her tracks, locking up her breath within her chest. It came with a wave of pain bright and coppery as blood.

“Rhaella? Are you well?” Merrill’s voice broke through and Rhaella could breathe again.

“I am,” she said, even as nervous flutters filled her chest and stomach in the wake of the pain, as she considered what it probably meant.

“You can take a rest,” Merrill said. “I can finish the preparations for the storm.”

Rhaella had only gotten through half of her list. She couldn’t allow Merrill to take on everything else.

Her belly tightened hard when she started over towards their dry goods with the oiled cloth, and her steps slowed to a crawl, until she finally had to concede and stop moving. She felt Merrill watching her even through the pain that came with it, spiraling up her spine.

“Barriers,” Rhaella managed at last, after what felt like an eternity. “Could you help with some barriers? Just to keep the worst of the wind - ” The pain was lingering now, slinking through her body even when the tightness was gone. “Off of the plants and the animals and our provisions.”

“Of course,” Merrill said. “Are you certain you don’t want to rest?”

“Positive,” Rhaella said. If anything she felt the need to move and pace, however slowly she moved. Something was happening in her body, something she’d seen happen to dozens of women before her when she still lived with her clan, but something she still feared to name out loud.

So she did move, continuing over to the dry goods and kneeling down, wrapping each woven basket up in its cloth, pausing when another contraction hit her to rest her forehead on her arms. She could use the word now, she knew what was happening. Her child was on its way, and even just thinking the words filled her with twin tendrils of anxiety and excitement. She knew she should tell Merrill but the clouds were thickening and the chemical smell of rain was picking up and it would break soon, and sometimes this phase of labor went on for hours and hours anyway, and Merrill had already done so much for her -

Her belly squeezed tighter and tighter and pain burst behind her eyes in fractal patterns like lightning, and she leaned against another basket of dry goods and did her best to breathe through it, reminding herself to soften her jaw, to unclench her hands. Tried not to wonder what her baby would look like, if she would see Solas’s eyes looking back at her in a few hours.

Tried not to think about what was now irrevocable, undeniable - Solas would not be there for the birth of his child.

The sky darkened and their mounts wickered nervously and the wind picked up and Rhaella had just made her way into their sleeping quarters and laid down when the storm burst above them with a crack of thunder and a cascade of rain. Merrill cast her final barrier, sealing them into the grotto with a shimmer of magic light. The rain hit the barrier and flowed over it, almost like a waterfall, so ethereal and lovely that for a moment Rhaella just watched it, heedless of anything else around or within her.

Then - another contraction, so sharp this time she cried out, and a rush of wet between her legs.

“Now then,” Merrill said calmly, appearing at her side. “Don’t you think we ought to discuss the fact that you are having a baby today?”

Rhaella could not help but laugh, however weakly, as the contraction ended. The next one came on quicker, though, and then she was not laughing.

Merrill hummed to herself, barely audible above the sound of the storm outside, as she set about making preparations. She poured water from one of their sealed jugs into the pot they used for cooking and summoned heat into her hands so she could warm it to boiling, even though they always purified it before they put it in the jugs. She laid a large clean cloth beneath Rhaella and neatly folded several others nearby, and unrolled a pack of surgical tools that was part of any good Keeper or First’s pack at all times. Rhaella tried not to look at those. She tried to focus more on the excitement than on the nerves. She was going to meet her child at the end of all of this.

Lightning flashed while Rhaella labored, illuminating the grotto and casting severe shadows everywhere she looked. There was little room to stand and walk but Merrill encouraged her to move through different positions, to sway and rock and do anything she could to distract herself from the pain as it grew, grew, grew. Merrill fed little whispers of magic into her belly, just enough to dull the pain, but every time it seemed to come back stronger. The wind roared outside and her world narrowed down to just how much it hurt, how each hurt was coming faster and faster and stronger and closer together and how there was nothing but pain and the sound of the rain and Merrill’s cool hands soothing her, soft encouraging words that Rhaella could not longer hear or understand. There was only the pain and the present and the feeling that both were neverending - and then, layered on top of it, a sudden terror - the realization that this was real and if the pain ever did end she would be a mother and she wasn’t going to be enough for her son, she knew that already -

“You can do this, Rhaella,” Merrill said over and over again. “You can do this.”

“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I don’t know how to this on my own -”

“You’re going to be just fine, lethallan. You have everything you need within you.”

“But I don’t have him, I don’t have -” Even in the haze of her pain she cut off the thought. No. She didn’t need Solas here. She didn’t need him at all.

“You have made it this far on your own power. You have everything you need, lethallan. I believe in you. All of our ancestors are here with you in this moment, and they are giving you everything you need.”

The next sensation that overpowered her was a deep pressure, a need to push that overwrote the feeling of pain swarming every part of her. She had to, had to, had to push, had to push right now, had to push as hard as she could, had to push even if it was going to break her, and she feared it might, and Merrill wanted her to try sitting up or moving to all fours but she couldn’t do it, not without him -

“Solas!”

The name was torn from her lips, primal as the sound of the storm, and she wished in that moment that he was as powerful as everyone said he was, that he might appear at her side, summoned like a spirit, and take the pain away, tell her he was here, that she was going to be okay.

But he didn’t come, and that was what she really wanted anyway, wasn’t it?

There was no more thought after that, only the pain and the urge to make it stop - and then, finally, one last long hard push, and there was a tiny, squalling, red-haired infant in Merrill’s hands. The pain evaporated and there was only wonder.

“You have a daughter,” Merill said, smiling, exhausted.

A daughter.

Not what she had imagined, expected. But small and perfect and nestled against Rhaella’s bare chest now, squirming and crying and balling up her tiny little fists. Rhaella felt tears of a different sort streaming down her face as she held her there, skin to skin, close as close could be.

“Hello, little one,” she said again and again over the cries as they quieted. “Hello, hello, hello.”

Then her belly tightened again, hard, and the pain and the pressure were back.

“What’s happening?” Rhaella managed as she felt the urge to grit her teeth - to push again.

“The afterbirth, most likely,” Merrill said, though even she was frowning as she felt Rhaella’s belly.

“No, this feels - this feels like what just -” Rhaella’s breath began to quicken again. She held her daughter back out to Merrill. “Take her.”

And just like that, like a nightmare that would not end, like a dam breaking, the pain flooded her all over again, coursing through her body, tearing another scream from her throat. She had to push, push, push again, but her daughter was already here, she wanted to hold her, she wanted this to be done -

And then there was more crying - another infant in Merrill’s hands.

“Creators above,” Merrill murmured, and then looked up, smiling. “You have two daughters.”

Rhaella laid back against the pillows they had arranged behind her, and held out her arms.

Merrill nestled both babies into Rhaella’s arms, and she held them, and studied their fine copper hair, the scrunched red faces. She marveled at how they both curled against her instantly, as if soothed by her presence. Her daughters. She had two daughters. How was she going to feed and care for two babies?

The ‘how’ didn’t matter, actually. She was going to do it. She already loved them both so much that it paralyzed her and gave her wings. She had two daughters.

Merrill checked them over while they cuddled against Rhaella and pronounced that they were both healthy, and that Rhaella herself was in good shape - nothing a little healing magic wouldn’t repair, which Merrill performed quickly. Rhaella wanted to sleep but she didn’t know how she would take her eyes off the two perfect marvels that were now spreading out their limbs, turning their little heads, exploring, suckling at her breasts. She didn’t know how she would ever sleep again when she wanted to memorize the exact slant of their little pointed ears.

“Thank you,” she said to Merrill when she finally remembered that there was a world beyond her two tiny daughters. “Thank you.”

“Thank you for trusting me to be part of this moment,” Merrill said, smiling. She looked worn out too. The storm was still going, though not nearly as intense as before. Rhaella wondered how long she had labored for. “I did have one more gift for you - though in hindsight, it is not enough.”

Merrill went over towards her side of their grotto and rustled around. She returned carrying a small woven cradle. Rhaella thought back to all the times she’d seen her friend working secretively over the last two weeks, hiding things away, and her heart was so full of joy and gratitude that it broke open again, and tears welled out from her eyes.

“I will have to make a second one, but they should both fit for now,” Merrill said, considering.

“I do not deserve your kindness,” Rhaella managed, barely a whisper.

“Of course you do,” Merrill said. “Everyone deserves kindness. And you have done so much for our world. It is the least I can offer in return.”

Rhaella let the tears fall a little longer. One after the other, her daughters fell away from her breasts, calmer now.

“Would you like to hold them?” she offered.

“Always,” Merrill said, arms outstretched. “That’s the best part of helping, isn’t it?”

Merrill smiled and cooed at them and Rhaella watched her and tried to wrap her mind around it all. She’d done it. She’d had twin girls. She’d borne Solas’s children, and he was not there. She had a family now, so many years after the family she’d known had disappeared. It was not exactly how she’d imagined how it would happen - perhaps not even how she’d wanted it to happen - but she’d done it, and she was beginning a new chapter in her life now. A happier one, because these two girls were in it.

“What will you call them?” Merrill asked.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Rhaella laughed weakly. “I was convinced I would have a son.”

“That’s a decision for later, then,” Merrill said. “Rest now. I’d say you’ve earned it.”

They settled the girls into their bassinette, and as much as she’d thought she would stay awake forever watching them, Rhaella felt her eyelids growing instantly heavy, her whole body dropping like a stone into sleep, and then there was darkness.

When Rhaella woke she was in the field of wildflowers again - the high plateau overlooking the waterfalls. It was peaceful. Lovely. Quiet. Her shoulders and chest felt lighter than they had in years. She tipped her head back and felt the warmth of the sun on her face and let out a long, slow breath. She was going for a walk through this field. She had all the time in the world.

(There was, in the back of her mind, a small prickling, a little spike of doubt like a stubborn weed. But she knew that she deserved this moment. She knew this field was safe.)

The flowers and tall wild grass brushed soft against her fingers as she walked. She breathed in their scent - herbal and sweet and sharp and earthy. There was a river at the other end of the plateau. She’d walk there and let her feet dangle in the water. It had been such a very long time since she rested - really rested - and she had earned this.

(She knew, with all her arcane training, that something was off here - but she did not care.)

The river rushed over a bed of colorful rocks - tans, peaches, browns, creams, all rubbed smooth by eons of running water. Rhaella lifted her skirts and stepped into the river, feeling it pull at her ankles and cool her skin, enjoying the pressure and texture of the rocks against the soles of her feet. She’d been on a long journey, and this was her reprieve. She closed her eyes, and tipped her face up to the sun, and it felt warm enough to banish every winter to come. The sound of the wind through the field and trees filled her soul.

She opened her eyes, and the wolf was there on the other side of the river, looming large and black as the abyss of night.

He sat there on his haunches, and even without the six glowing eyes, she knew him.

Her reprieve was over.

“I’m not in the mood for parlor tricks. What do you want, Fen’Harel?” she said, words sharp as glass.

Smoke blurred the form of the wolf and when it cleared Solas was there, forehead creased with sadness, eyes so blue they pierced her like arrows. There was some pride left in the straightness of his spine - but his shoulders were slumped forward. Not enough that a casual observer would catch it, but enough that she did. She’d struck true and deep with her words.

“I wanted only to observe you for a while. To have the hope that you might look upon me as another part of this scene and not as something you hated.”

Vhenan, why? Why would you smash everything up and then sit and cry amongst the pieces?

“If you didn’t want me to hate you, you shouldn’t have done something so hateful.”

“Please -” he started forward, bare toes touching the river now. “You know it was not an act of hate. You know I wished there was some other way. You know I tried to find another way. But it is done now, and there will be no more secrets or lies between us. I lived a life wrapped up in secrets and I have torn them all away now. I only want you. Our life together. Please -”

Another step forward, and the river lapped around his ankles.

Rhaella did not move.

“You’ve spoken sweetly to me before and brought me only pain afterwards. This is just another one of those times.”

“Vhenan, that is not true. I have meant every sweet word I have ever spoken to you. I mean them now. I cannot keep you safe when you are apart from me like this.”

“You didn’t seem to care if I was safe or not the first time you left me. Why do you care about my safety now when I am the one who left you?”

“Rhaella, you do not know the stakes. The people who are out to find you now - the Evanuris - even you cannot stand before them unaided. And you must think of our child. Come back to me before they arrive, and let me protect you both - let me be the person I have always wanted to be, before all the lies - a man who loves and is loved. Let me be there for my child.”

Rhaella opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment a strong breeze whipped across the plateau, stripping flowers from their stems, bending the trees, bringing with it the scent of water and earth and new life -

And carrying the sound of a crying infant.

Solas went utterly still.

His jaw dropped slowly down.

“Rhaella -” he began, voice hoarse, pleading.

She woke.

“Rhaella. Rhaella.”

It wasn’t Solas’s voice that greeted her on waking, but Cole’s. He hovered over her, moon-pale eyes wide and unblinking. Rhaella came back to her body. She was sore and exhausted in ways she had never been, and her breasts were full and tingling, and she remembered it all abruptly.

My daughters. I had my daughters.

They were crying in their bassinette. Her heart leapt at the sound. Nothing on earth could have kept her from them in that moment. Not even the member of their father standing stock still in the river, eyes as wide as if he’d been dealt a killing blow.

Merrill was hovering over the bassinette, hushing them.

“I wanted to let you sleep a little while longer, but it seems they need you,” she said as Rhaella knelt beside her. Rhaella reached into the basket and touched her daughters, one after the other. Their warm full bellies and their soft rosy cheeks and their little balled fists. She reached for one of them, preparing to lift her. She was dimly aware that the storm had passed, that a thin, eerie mist had snaked its way into the grotto. That something felt wrong. But all that mattered was her two little girls, and she was going to care for them, and she wasn’t going to cry over the memory of their father standing there alone, betrayed.

“There is no time,” Cole said, his voice soft and urgent.

“What is it?” Rhaella asked, though her stomach had already dropped into her toes.

The air was too still. Then Merrill’s head jerked up suddenly, like a horse that had heard the snap of a twig. There was no sound - but Merrill was the one who’d placed the wards well outside the ravine. The one who would know if someone was approaching.

Cole straightened slowly, his gaze distant and unfocused, as he followed Merrill’s gaze.

“He is coming,” Cole said.

#beach writes #beach does commissions #lost horizon #scharoux #rhaella lavellan #rhaella x solas

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