dragon gold and dreamspinner silk

“Oh, yeah,” the human pipes up. “They've branched out, it's not just mushrooms anymore.” He ambles close to Saar's side with a casualness that implies either deep-seated rudeness… or deep-seated familiarity. Given how Saar shifts to lean her elbow against his upper arm, it is the latter. Solas feels a strange pang in his chest at the sight, but then the human greets Solas.

“Samson,” he introduces himself. “If Saar said she's seen worse—I'm worse.”

“Mushrooms are not plants, actually,” Solas replies on autopilot. “I mean—Solas.” Samson smiles in a concerningly genial manner, and Solas finds himself wondering whether he is a former Templar, a runaway Gallows mage, or a different type of ‘all sorts’ altogether…

"Good to meet you, Solas." Samson nods at Saar, then at him. "I'll see you around." As he leaves, he pats Solas' shoulder. On instinct, Solas' magic rises up inside him, trying to sense whether the human carries the same, and if so, how strong—and dangerous—he is… But there is nothing. Only a deep, empty well. Solas glances after him in morbid curiosity. Would Saar—or any free mage—really be this familiar with a former Templar?

As far as Solas is aware, the Order has no foothold in Wycome, which was part of the reason he chose the city. But Orlais has all but legitimized them, and some Free Marcher cities like Kirkwall give them free reins…

#

"I have a suggestion for today," Saar tells Solas once they're in the back room, with the silencing sigil activated. Solas, who rather reassuringly had settled right into the client chair, straightens. Saar gestures at his limbs. "Given how fucking big your tattoos are, at the rate we're going that's gonna take a really long time, and a lot of sessions. Like, dozens and dozens. And I suspect they don't exactly pay you first rate, at FDC."

"…I possess certain savings," Solas offers after a moment. "If you're concerned that I would be unable to pay."

"I don't want to disembowel you like a feastday nug, Solas. Even if you could afford that."

He blinks, surprised. "I—thank you." His expression softens, in a way that makes it really hard not to immediately burst out with the question that's been hounding Saar since Merrill showed her those articles.

Are you safe? Are you in danger, if that ink stays in you?

"So, the suggestion." Saar picks up a second syringe she assembled that morning. "Today's free. And we work on adjusting the enchantments instead of any actual removal."

For a long moment, Solas just stares at her. Then, a very small, cautious smile creeps onto his face.

"I'd like that," he says.

#

Solas eyes the cuts of exsanguinated pig. The skin has not been removed, and instead is marked with several lines of silver ink.

"You came prepared," he comments, unable to keep the wonder from his voice.

Saar shrugs. "Well, better if we do initial tests on something that's not you."

"It would not be the first time," Solas says absently, tracing the ink infused on the pig skin with one finger. It does feel subtly different to his own markings, but it ought to be similar enough for experimentation. After a moment, he realizes that Saar has not continued to speak. Instead she watches him with open, almost horrified curiosity.

Oh, no.

Please do not ask.

The words stick in his lungs, but perhaps they do show on his face in some manner, because Saar turns her piercing gaze from him. She huffs out a noisy breath.

"If," she says, "there are parts of your skin that have experimental magic woven into it, tell me before we get to those, yeah?"

"I will," Solas replies quietly, grateful in ways that make his throat tight.

When Saar knocks her shoulder against his, he does not move away.

"All right," she murmurs, setting the new syringe on the little table before them, "let's get started, shall we?"

#

Solas is not entirely sure what possesses him to ask. Perhaps it is the careful gentleness with which Saar holds his hand in hers as she tests the modified enchantment on the ink atop his wrist. The way overflow magic seeps from her in tiny sparks that slip down along her limbs towards the floor. The expression of focused concentration on her face, how her vitaar—stylized flames, in blue and white—shifts with it.

"Is Samson a Templar?"

Saar halts. Her eyes flick up to meet his, watchful. "He was," she says quietly.

He ought to leave it at that, out of propriety if nothing else. But he can still sense her magic flowing from her and into the enchantment, he can see the spell draw on her power, how she casts. Anyone could see it. A mage who embodies their magic this openly…

In a bittersweet, piercing way, it reminds him of Arlathan. In Tevinter, those in power flaunt their magical abilities, but it is not the same. There is an ease to Saar's magic, a simple existence that is strangely comforting, despite the sharp-edged memories it calls up.

So he asks: "How does a former Templar come to be so familiar with a mage such as you?"

This time, Saar's gaze lingers on him longer.

"A mage like me?"

"You do not hide. Your magic does not hesitate."

"Ah." She sets aside the syringe tool and reaches for wipes and disinfectant. "I think we're onto something here. This wasn't easy, but it definitely went quicker than last time…" Solas wonders if he pried into something painful, but as Saar takes care of his hand, her touch is as gentle as ever. "For the gory details, you're gonna have to ask Sam yourself," she continues as she works. "But… Sometimes people get into bad situations. Sometimes they don't get out before they break. But they still can get out. Can make amends, heal, change, whatever it is, y'know?"

Solas stares down at the now-broken line of his vallaslin atop his wrist. The way Saar handles him as if he is delicate.

"Do you believe that is true of anyone?" he asks quietly.

He tidies away the dishes from dinner. He brushes his teeth. He checks the wards again. He dons his nightclothes. He goes to bed.

He falls asleep with the phantom sensation of a hand stroking his back.

Fear not. You will always be mine. I would never cast you out…

You good to keep going?

#

Merrill is already in her pyjamas when Saar arrives: flannel, with ducks and frogs printed on it. Her hair’s still up, and a mess. Saar tugs the pencil out of the bun once she lets go of Merrill from their hug and tucks it into the breast pocket of Merrill’s shirt.

“You sounded worried,” Saar murmurs as Merrill leads her inside. Merrill laughs, a sound that is too sharp and too bright.

“Only a little! Probably!” She drags Saar to sit down on the patched-up couch. On the low table in front of it, pages from one of her vallaslin research folders are spread out. She sits down next to Saar, feet drawn up onto the cushions, puts her chin on her knees and wraps her arms around her legs. “There. That was the article with the best picture…”

Saar scans the headline—the big splash of a tabloid, about infiltration by ancient nefarious beings—then the picture itself.

“…How’d they even get permission to print that?” she asks after a moment.

“I doubt they asked.”

It’s a photograph of a naked corpse. Clinical, with even white lighting, the body laid out on a slab in what’s presumably a mortuary. The wounds may have been cleaned, but something had ripped open the stomach. Saar tries not to look too closely. She can handle fresh injuries, the scent of blood and viscera everywhere, but that… it looks wrong. Feels wrong.

Lines of dark, almost black copper form twisting ribbons and what might be stylized flower buds all over the skin. The motifs stretch from the cheeks down onto the throat, grow along the collarbones and bloom onto the arms. Above the sternum, a stylized panicle of blossoms points down towards the navel, its vines wrapping over the ribs. On the knees more abstract flowers bloom, stretching their leaf-ribbons out towards the hips and feet.

The pattern itself is very different, but the overall arrangement, the strange sheen of the ink even under that sterile light…

Saar’s insides feel cold, and heavy.

“You said the victim wasn’t Dalish?” she asks Merrill, leaning their shoulders together.

“Most likely not, yeah. There was a whole conspiracy going on—y’know, ‘oh, the Awakened Ancient Dalish are coming to take over’—which might’ve played a part, but no clan ever claimed her. And…” Merrill pulls out two different articles, scrawled over with her own notes. “She got mauled by some kind of animal, no idea what because this was in the city, the reports just said ‘animal attack’. But the cause of death—” she taps the first of the other articles, “—probably wasn’t that. It was poison.”

Saar’s starting to see where the potential murder is coming in. She looks at the second article.

“What does ‘Elgar’nan Goldenhand of Arlathan’ have to do with this?” The name’s marked in neon yellow, and underlined. The photograph is of a tall elvhen man, in expensive-looking clothes, a kind of crown on his dark hair.

“His wife and him are the leaders of a Creators’ Temple, in Arlathan. Like, they say they actually are splinters, or reincarnations, of the Creators? The Sun-Father and the All-Mother.” Merrill’s voice goes thin. “And their followers—there’s not a lot of images, never mind naked ones, but—I think they have full-body vallaslin too.”

Saar’s skin crawls. She sinks down into the couch, head resting on the backrest. She looks up at the ceiling. When Merrill moved in, Saar helped her paint it, sky and clouds around a bright sun.

“You think the person who got killed was one of those followers,” Saar says, not quite a question.

“I think they murdered her, because she left,” Merrill whispers. Hearing it out loud is worse than having just the thought in your head, and Saar has to take a deep breath. “Look, I know—I know, all right, I know that there’s no concrete evidence for that, but—” Merrill clambers onto Saar’s lap and into Saar’s field of view, her hands insistently cupping Saar’s jaw.

“Please be careful, all right?”

“I will,” Saar promises quietly. Her breath is going all thin in her lungs, because her brain’s running off and imagining Solas laid out on a metal table like that, lit by dead light, his stomach opened up by something with many teeth. That Merrill feels cold and smells like fear even though she’s practically in Saar’s arms is even worse.

She does wrap her arms around Merrill properly. When Merrill kisses her, Saar just pulls her closer.

“Want me to stay the night?” Saar asks quietly, once they part. Merrill nods and kisses her again.

#

The tattoos on the back of Samson’s shoulder, spilling over the skin from the full sleeve, always move in such mesmerizing ways when Saar fucks him. Seems as if the flowers shift in the wind, petals opening and closing, from the bunching of muscles beneath the skin.

He twists a little to shoot a filthy grin at her over his shoulder. “Getting lost in your own handiwork again?”

Saar huffs out a laugh and a groan. She grabs his hair and pushes his face down into the mattress again. Snaps her hips harder against his.

Afterwards, while she’s cleaning him up, Samson trails his fingers over her knee where she sits next to him on the edge of the bed.

“You back on with Daisy?” he asks, voice very casual.

Saar goes still. How does he always…

“We were never off,” she replies. “And how would you know?”

“It doesn’t take you as long to get really mean, when you’ve fucked her first.” Samson smirks. “I should send her a fruit basket for that, one of these days.”

Saar can’t help laughing. She puts the rag away and applies elfroot tincture to the spots on his ass and thighs where her claws went through the skin. “And what would you put on the card?”

Samson hums. “‘Most gracious gratitude, signed, Raleigh Samson’s libido’?”

“Horrible. She’d love it.”

There’s quiet for a bit, while Saar finishes up with the tincture. Samson never asks, but he also never tells her not to, when she does a pass over the old lyrium infusion marks in the bend of his elbows too.

“I do need a favor,” she says then. Samson just raises his eyebrows at her, looking not the least bit surprised. Asshole, Saar thinks fondly. “I have a client, who…” How does she even put this. I think he ran away from a maybe-cult lead by supposedly reincarnated gods?

Finally she settles on: “I think he’s got a similar history to you. Not a Templar, but… someone who got out of a very bad situation.”

“You want me to talk to him.”

“Offer to, yeah.”

Samson considers this. “How long have you known the guy?”

“Uh. A tenday? We had three sessions—well, two. First one was for making an actual appointment.”

“Saar.”

“What?!”

Samson puts a hand half over his eyes, laughing hoarsely. “No, no, you’re right,” he says. “I shouldn’t be surprised.”

“So you’ll come by?” Saar can’t help how hopeful she sounds. 

“Yes—it might be easier to make adjustments if the spell were to be split into several components. One enchantment to drive the recognition of pigment, another to power the extraction…”

They spend much of the next two hours like this, debating and discussing how to adapt the tattoo removal enchantment to deal with recalcitrant inks like the one that Solas bears. He is aware the fact that he speaks so much, and thereby disrupts Saar’s work, prolongs the task—but she does not reprimand him for it. Or even seems to mind, truly. She is as invested in the question as he is, and her cunning, delight, and creativity as they talk almost let him forget why they are discussing the matter in the first place.

Almost.

“Look, this won’t be relevant for you, but…” She sets down the tool and huffs out a breath. She has been operating it with her left hand today, to more easily work with the other side of his face, as confidently as with her right—but the exhaustion of fueling her own magic into the enchantment is plain. Still, her smile is sincere. Hopeful. “Do you wanna work on this with me, to target this kind of ink? Like, actually work on it? I still owe you that demonstration, obviously, but afterwards…”

Cold wraps itself around Solas’ limbs like vines. Thin, choking tendrils all along his skin.

#

Saar regrets asking almost immediately. Solas looks at her like an animal with its leg caught in the snare. He’s practically cringing away from her, and she scoots her chair backwards on instinct, holding up her hands.

“Hey, no, don’t worry, it—”

Solas sucks in a sharp breath. “That is not—” He snaps his mouth shout. His throat works. “I am…” He stops again, clearly searching for words.

Saar keeps quiet, wary and watchful. It doesn’t seem like he’s about to bolt, so she forces herself to wait. After a horribly long moment, silent except for both their unsteady breathing, Solas gets up from his chair. But he doesn’t leave.

He shrugs off his cardigan. Takes off his fingerless gloves. Drags the undershirt over his head, leaving him half naked.

The vallaslin is everywhere.

Fine, branching tendrils follow the lines of his arms down to the backs of his hands. They wrap around his ribs, over his shoulders, frame his hipbones. By now he’s stepped out of his trousers too, and the tendrils reach all the way to his ankles. Spreading like vines along the sinews of his feet.

Solas watches her with wide, wounded eyes. Any words stick right in Saar’s throat.

It’s always so easy, to fall a little bit in love with her clients. Hard not to, when they trust Saar with something as intimate as marking their bodies. Even if it’s impermanent the way vitaar is, the process of designing a pattern for somebody, of applying it… They open up their souls for her, and then, they allow her to touch it. Trusting her not to harm them.

Sometimes that connection lingers, like Sam, whose Templar marks she turned into a bouquet of toothy red flowers. But even when it doesn’t, when she never sees them again, she still remembers: Karriss, who asked for a vitaar fit for a poet and a knight, to go court a mage politician in Ostwick, as if he’s in a fairytale. Helisma, who asked for the sun of the Tranquil brand on her forehead to be made into a starry sky. Evka and Antoine, wanting to frame their shared scars in colorful ink.

Right now it feels as if Solas cracked open his own ribcage and dragged Saar's hand inside to touch his heart.

“All of it,” Solas says finally. His voice is brittle. “I want all of it gone.” So quietly that Saar barely hears it: “I need it gone.”

Saar just manages a nod, at first. She gets up, blindly drops the syringe tool onto the equipment table. Rubs her hand across her mouth, because about a thousand questions are trying to climb out of her throat. She’s never seen vallaslin patterns that extended beyond the face. And this—it’s massive. It must have taken ages to ink. Not something anyone could drunkenly stumble their way into, or have done in a fugue of a few days. And whatever the reason was, now—now it tears him up.

She takes a step closer. When Solas doesn’t flinch or back away, more steps, until they’re right in front of each other.

“We’ll get rid of it,” Saar murmurs. If she starts asking questions right now, she’s never gonna stop. “I promise.”

Solas nods, lips pressed together. She reaches past him, then drapes his cardigan over his shoulders again. He shivers. And it’s really bloody stupid, because Solas is in his fucking underwear and apparently he can barely talk about his vallaslin, markings, whatever it is, but—

Saar hugs him. Not tightly, not too long. Careful, except for the part where he might be having a panic attack right now. But when she tries to let go, Solas’ fingers claw into her shirt at her waist, holding on. He buries his face in her chest, his breath stuttering.

All right. All right. She can work with that. Slow, deep breaths.

After a while of just holding him, Saar pets his back a little. Wonders if there’s vallaslin under her hand here too.

“You good to keep going? I’m close to done with that patch…”

Solas nods silently, and slowly, with hitched movements, entangles himself from her arms.

“My apologies,” he croaks. “I did not intend… That was rather inappropriate of me.”

…Wow. Saar kind of wants to shake him. And then hug him again.

“Don’t worry,” she replies, her tone a lot lighter than she feels. “Believe it or not, but you’re far from the first client to get snot and tears on my shirt.” At Solas’ glance towards his discarded trousers, she adds: “Not the first one for that, either. Besides, I will see all of it eventually anyway.”

He lets out a slow breath and nods again. Seems to compose himself through sheer willpower, or maybe that’s just Saar’s own worry nagging at her heart. But he gets dressed and sits down, and when she sets her fingers and the needle to his skin again, she could swear he relaxes.

#

Once Solas has left, Saar closes down the shop and calls Merrill.

“Do you know of any Dalish clans that do full-body vallaslin?” Saar asks, without preamble. “Or ones that use spell-infused ink?”

There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. Merrill’s probably putting the pieces together of what this is about, which is… not ideal. But Saar hasn’t actually said anything. And the questions are like a fucking storm in her head.

“It’s rare,” Merrill says finally. It sounds like she’s digging through books or paper stacks. “There are some clans in the Tirashan, their designs extend beyond the face. I’ve never done those myself—we do have a bottle of the pigment somewhere I think? It’s that Sunrise Crimson red—but I can ask… I could reach out to my old Keeper.”

Shit. “You don’t have to,” Saar says softly. “Just, get me a direction, I can go blunder into that mess for info myself.”

Merrill laughs a little, the sound very small and not very happy. “Yes, I’ll put something together for y—oh! Right! Hold on, there was—”

More rustling, hurried steps. Muffled curses. Saar smiles, imagining Merrill’s frantic, excited energy. Around her, the tattoo parlor is just quiet and dark.

“There was a, a death or a murder or something,” Merrill says now, in the tone she uses when she’s talking herself through her memories, “I don’t remember when, a few years ago? Down in the Dales; Lydes, maybe? And the victim had vallaslin everywhere, but the papers said she wasn’t Dalish—where is that damn folder—”

Suddenly it’s as quiet on the other end of the line as it is in Saar’s shop. Tension seeps down her spine and into her limbs.

“…Merrill?”

Adaar leads him into the back room and activates an… interesting example of a silencing sigil. Solas is not exactly familiar with the Free Marches style of academic spellcraft, but he cannot imagine anything like that being taught in official schools. She bids him sit down on the client chair, then straddles her own—backwards, again.

Her amber gaze is piercing.

“I’m not trying to pry, here,” she says, “but if you know anything about the chemical, or magical, for that matter, properties of your ink, that would be real helpful. Or just the specific product name, or manufacturer? I’ve never seen that type before.”

Solas swallows. He had done his best not to involve himself in those… proceedings. “I am afraid I do not know any specific details,” he says finally. “It is—was crafted to be particularly long-lasting and stable. It stains very well.” Like the hands of whoever applied it…

Mythal’s hands, shining silver—

Adaar laughs, small and sharp. “It certainly does.” She gets up, dons gloves, fetches the syringe tool and disinfectant. The scent of alcohol is biting as she applies it, chasing away any fragments of Solas’ memories. He breathes in deep, closing his eyes.

Adaar touches his chin, careful despite her large hands and claws, noticeable even through the thick nitrile gloves.

“Ready to get started?” Her voice is careful as well. Something in Solas’ chest twists painfully.

My dear Wolf, my General…

He releases the glamour spell.

“Yes, I am.” If his voice cracks, Adaar does not comment on it.

#

It stings. More than when Adaar extracted the sample. But if anything, the pain is a welcome distraction from the voice deep in Solas’ mind that screams he should not be doing this, must not be doing this—

“Hey. Solas?” Adaar’s voice is quiet. Solas blinks at her—he is not certain how much time has passed. “Do you… I can ask Merrill to come in, if you want?” she asks. “Hold your hand, or just keep us company? Sometimes it helps—”

“No,” Solas interrupts her, shaking his head. “I would not—the fewer people see…”

The fewer people know, the better. For his own sake, and theirs.

“Gotcha.” Adaar holds a tissue box at him. “You’re crying,” she explains gently, when he raises an eyebrow at her in question. Ah. That would explain the different stinging ache. Solas dabs his face dry while Adaar putters with her tools. She exhales, noisily, and rolls her neck and shoulders. She seems nigh exhausted. A glance at the clock hanging on the wall informs Solas that it has been almost a full hour since they began.

“Are you well?” he cannot help but ask when she sits down once more.

“Oh, yeah.” Adaar stretches her neck, generating a concerning crack, as if to belie her statement. “Your ink’s just a blighted stubborn fucker, so I need more than just the enchantment. And I haven’t figured out yet how to dislodge it more efficiently.”

More than the enchantment… She must be fueling the spell with her own magic, then. It would explain the residual energy Solas can sense lingering all around them, now that he is paying attention.

“How does it work?” Solas asks. “Both the physical mechanism and the spell?”

She hesitates, the syringe tool an inch from his face. “Little hard to explain while I’m doing this—” she gestures with her free hand at his face, “—but I can try?”

“Please do. The article did not go into much detail on the actual manner of functioning.”

Oh, that smile is new. It lights up her eyes like the sun.

“All right,” she says, pulling the skin of his cheek taut with one gentle thumb while setting the needle against it. “The core is a modified extraction spell, like what gets used in magical filtering set-ups… ”

#

It’s far from ideal, trying to explain her particular process of tattoo removal while she’s doing it. Saar constantly has to remind herself not to gesture, because she has a damn needle jabbed into Solas’ skin. The ink itself hasn’t deigned to cooperate in the meantime either, so she has to keep track of the power she’s funneling into the enchantment, move the altered tattoo gun in time when the ink does finally gets pulled out… It’s a bit of a mess, and it takes twice as long as before. Lucky that she didn’t schedule any appointments after this one.

But Solas has his eyes open now, and his breathing is regular. Not flat and fast anymore.

“You integrated multiple spells with one another? In succession?” Solas asks, a hint of disbelief in his voice. Maybe even awe.

Saar shrugs—and freezes. Blights. Good thing she’d already pulled out the needle. “Yeah? For me, it’s easier that way, building it up piece by piece. Don’t have to figure out how to fit five different things together all at once, y’know?”

“How did you deal with interference? I assume there was interference, given the complexity.”

“Oh, for sure. But it’s…” She pauses, resets the tool to the next spot, and gently holds his face still. It’s kind of endearing how readily he moves under her hand—and then completely forgets about stillness when a question or comment occurs to him. “Look,” Saar says, “I don’t know the fancy terminology for it. But I did it like you get cats used to each other. Let them sniff each other for a while, before letting them in the same room?”

“…Fascinating.” He sounds like he actually means it. His gaze shifts to somewhere in the distance, then returns. “Would you be willing to give me a demonstration? One where I am not the subject.”

Saar can’t help smiling, a little giddy. Few people are that interested. “Yeah, absolutely.” She resets the syringe tool. “Now hold still, I’m almost done with this side, then you can go back to not being an experimental subject.”

Solas actually chuckles. It’s a short, low, wry sound, but definitely a chuckle. Considering in the beginning Saar had been worried he’d start hyperventilating on her, that’s almost more of a success than getting that bloody ink out of his skin.

In the end, it takes three hours to do one cheek. Saar decides to file that as a success too. When she’d done the comparisons to the other inks in her sample library, and nothing behaved remotely the same…

“D’you wanna see how it looks right now?” she asks, before she covers the skin in ointment and gauze. Solas’ expression freezes, and only bit by bit unfreezes. Saar files that away for next time. That skittishness evidently runs deep.

“Not—not yet.”

“Sure.” She bandages the raw skin, then pats his shoulder. “Well done. That wasn’t easy.”

Solas squints at her. “I spent the past hours moving as little as possible, while you expended… quite a bit of your magical reserves.”

“True.” Saar’s starving and bloody exhausted. She takes her hand back, arms crossed over the backrest of her chair. “But removing something that was a part of you for a long time, for whatever reason, or just a short time but it still was a part of you… that’s hard. You can be proud of that.”

He looks at her as if he’s drawing up a multi-step counterargument. Saar gives him a sharp grin. “You can try and convince me otherwise next time, but not tonight.”

Solas sighs. He honestly looks exhausted too. “Very well.” He watches her for a moment, gaze inscrutable. Doesn’t smell nervous anymore, though.

“When would it be possible to schedule the next appointment?”

A part of Saar wants to say, tomorrow. But even if she didn’t have her schedule packed, she’d be too worn out to do this again so soon. She needs a lot of food, and sleep, and maybe have another go at picking apart that ink, now that she has more of it. At this point she’s almost sure there’s some kind of magic woven into it.

“In three days, same time slot?”

After a moment of consideration, Solas nods. He draws the glamour spell over the half of the tattoo that remains, and exits after her. In the front room, he hesitates before the door. He turns around and looks up at her with eyes that seem very old.

“Thank you, Saar.”

He’s gone before she can even think to reply.

Merrill, who had been closing down the shop, scoots close to Saar’s side. She gestures at her own cheek, expression curious.

“I thought he came in for tattoo removal?” she asks quietly. “That’s what you put down in the calendar…”

That article is from a year ago; someone on the team had gotten very excited about Saar’s borderline illegal magical experimentations on that front. Saar doesn’t ask how the elf got his hands on it, because he does not sound like a local. People have their reasons, and this guy… he looks tense. Smells tense.

“Yep, that’s me.” She gives him a gentle smile. “You wanna get rid of old ink?”

Again, that caught stare. He nods sharply. “Yes.”

“All right, we can have a look right now, see what kind of pigments and area we’re dealing with. Then I can estimate the fee, and if that works for you, we’ll set an appointment to get started.”

Another small, sharp nod. The way he glances out the shop windows… Probably not just the name of an ex on his wrist. Saar gets out from behind the counter and opens the door to the back room, then tilts her head. “Come in, there’s more privacy back here.”

Saar activates the silencing sigil once he’s followed her and sat down on the customer chair. Although it’s more like a perch, with his back ramrod-straight, legs crossed at the ankles, and his hands folded in his lap.

“Y’know, whatever it is,” she says conversationally, dragging her own swivel chair over with a foot and straddling it backwards, “I can guarantee I’ve seen worse.”

He raises an eyebrow. “I had assumed most of your clients for this kind of work are victims of ill-advised decisions made in the vigor of youth, or under the influence.”

Huh.

“Yeah, sure.” Saar leans her elbows on the backrest of her chair. “But we get all sorts. Removal of Gallows brands. Covering up Templar infusion marks.” Once, even an exiled Dalish who wanted their vallaslin removed. Merrill had held their hand the entire time Saar worked. Both of them had cried.

But this guy has no vallaslin on his face…

Saar sucks in a breath as he releases a spell with a shivering sigh. The faintest glamour, dropping off of his face.

He has vallaslin. Or—

It looks like a version of the All-Mother pattern, but not one that Saar recognizes. From below his eyes, branches feather out along the arches of his cheekbones. The pigment must be something else, because it actually shimmers a subtle silver.

“I…” He makes an aborted gesture towards his face. “I wish to remove this.”

His voice has the hint of a crack running through it, and it pulls at Saar’s heartstrings. “Yeah, of course,” she murmurs. She rolls herself closer. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna pull a sample and we’ll figure it out, all right?”

He doesn’t move while she gets the modified syringe for ink removal, and a small sample vial from the newly organized cupboards. She checks the enchantments working properly, then sits down in front of him again.

“You’re good with me touching it?”

He frowns at her.

“The val… the tattoo, I mean,” she clarifies.

He closes his eyes, drawing a deep breath. “Yes.”

Saar sets the syringe to his skin, carefully holding his head in place with her other hand at his chin.

“This is going to sting a little,” she warns quietly. His face twitches as she draws the sample, but no more. The tiny vial fills—

Oh, that ink is something else. It resists the spell’s pull like a burr, barbs lodged deep into the tissue around it. Saar breathes deeply, funneling her own magic into the enchantment. Very slowly, she pulls enough to do comparisons and a few tests. …All right, maybe two if she’s lucky.

“Does it work?” the elf breathes when she gets up to store the sample for later. Saar goes still, tools and sample in hand. The expression on his face is heartbreaking, this mix of disbelief and hope.

“Yes. Not as easily as most other inks, but… yeah.”

He lets out a very small, very wounded noise. Saar turns around to give him time to compose himself, even though she really just wants to go over there and hug him. But how skittish he’s acted so far… Maybe next time. She’s definitely gonna ask Merrill to stick around, if he’s all right with that.

He agrees to the fee without hesitation, and Saar maybe sets the first proper appointment closer than she has to. His magic is humming right under his skin now, and it sets off her own. Whatever he wants to get rid of by removing the ink, it’s gotta be bad.

Finally she gives him a soft look. “I do need a name, for our files.”

There’s a pause.

“Solas.” No last or clan name, no affiliation… Well. People have their reasons.