Fade-touched Lurker

Quarterfinals — Match 2 of 3

Lace Harding

Propaganda: Harding is such an important character to the story of the game. She was there since the beginning and it is her that brings together so many of Rook's allies. She is kind and compassionate and, despite everything, she is willing to give Solas a chance, she wants to try to save him from himself. But this kindness and compassion isn't weakness. She is willing to threaten Lucanis, an assassin and an abomination, in case he proves a danger to anyone, and later, she apologizes for it. Her story tackles the dangers of trying to please too many people and not allowing yourself to be angry, while also adding another layer to the complex themes of past wrongs and whether the people of today should bear those sins or not. Whatever you end up choosing for her quest, she is able to conquer the memories and will of a Titan and move forward as something new.

vs. Bellara Lutare

Propaganda: Bellara needs way more love than she gets. She is so smart with shaky confidence in her skills. Discovery and learning mean so much to her, but not as much as family and friends. She is such a fangirl. She loves reading and always hopes for a happy ending, even if she's not sure she deserves one herself.

(with rivets!)

I think I'm not going to add any more to the seat for the sake of comfort and flexibility, and keeping it from getting weirdly baggy in the seat, but I might.

On to the rest of it, which judging from how long it took to do my legs vs. the rest of me when I was getting tattooed, is going to be much less time. But I need to wait for more solid rings.

I think I will start at the wrist and work my way up and back down.

Having finally slithered back out of it, I gotta make an arming belt. I have Texture.

What does your Lavellan understand about Solas that makes forgiveness possible without excusing what he’s done?

Is there something your Lavellan fundamentally misunderstands about Solas, and that Solas fundamentally misunderstands about your Lavellan? What finally allows them to understand each other more clearly and how does that understanding come?

What is the dynamic between your Lavellan and your Rook?

If your Rook comes to know Solas primarily as an adversary, while your Lavellan’s experience is coloured by their love and history together, where do their interpretations of him overlap - and where do they differ?

Thank you Fox! I also got @eight-of-pentacles, @fadetouchedlurker and @celesenova asking me back so here we go! It's a long read because I have chosen to indulge. 😂

1.

What makes forgiveness possible for Saethre is that she understands why Solas made his choices and continues to make them.

First, I believe the Inquisitor has a far clearer picture of Solas by the time of VG than some people think. You don’t spend years hunting someone down only to sit back and ignore the details. To me, Lavellan and Solas are like Eve and Villanelle in Killing Eve - mutual obsession (Solas keeps appearing wherever the Inquisition is involved, and Saethre never stops hunting him.)

The conversation she has with Rook at the Cobbled Swan reveals why Saethre can forgive Solas. He isn’t choosing to destroy Thedas for its own sake. He’s choosing to save his people (including spirits), even though restoring them destroys everyone else. Saethre holds that distinction very clearly in her mind. She can also forgive him on a personal level because she knows he still loves her and understands those choices too (as painful as they were - hindsight is a wonderful thing).

Solas' response to the question about killing others back in Trespasser - "Wouldn’t you, to save your own?" is a question she's spent years thinking about. Perhaps she’d have a different answer if her clan had survived, but they didn’t. They were killed because of her decisions or maybe for who she was and represented. She'll never know for certain, but she’ll always carry the responsibility for it. So if she could change what happened, would she? If saving her clan and her fellow elves from continued oppression meant destroying others, would she do it? She actually had answered that question a long while back - when she put Briala into a position of power. She used her own power, her influence, blackmail to get her people into a place of advantage, even if that meant others might hate her or condemn her for it.

So the answer to Solas' question in her deepest, secret heart is yes. She would. And she has. Her time as Inquisitor proved to her that she will kill others in order to protect others.

It’s also tied to what she experienced when she travelled through time with Dorian. She saw that blighted future and lived through its horrors. She was able to return, but the people trapped in that timeline had still experienced hell. She was Solas in that moment, waking up to a horrific future because she'd failed. And now she sees that same kind of world coming to fruition after all. No, she'd do anything to stop that suffering from becoming real, especially if it meant protecting her own people and those she loves.

She’s also painfully aware of the decisions she's made as Inquisitor. She’s no saint. If she turns her back on Solas, calls him a monster, points a finger at him, and decides he deserves to die, then she has to accept that someone else will make the same judgement about her.

We reap what we sow, and Saethre isn’t certain she’s always sown the most innocent or fertile of seeds.

2.

Saethre doesn't quite understand Solas' immortality and how that shapes him. The spirit side she understands. She’s spent years seeking out spirits, speaking with them and trying to understand how they experience the world. But she has no real context for what it means to have lived for centuries upon centuries or how an immortal experiences time or relationships.

She loves this man, but he's an ancient being with immense power and history her mortal mind can barely comprehend. She doesn't know how someone who's lived that long could experience a brief mortal life like hers, or whether she truly had an impact on Solas. It's a question she struggled with for a while. Did he truly love her? She believes he did, has faith in it, but she sometimes wonders what that love meant to him. Did he love her as a man or as an ancient immortal who was so lost and lonely. Could someone like him love in the same way she could? She knows who Solas is, she just can't always grasp the scale on which he exists, or what her mortal life could mean within it (not until they get to regret prison at least).

Solas misunderstands Saethre’s relentless curiosity. He sees her hunger for knowledge, but he doesn’t realize how it’s tied to her need for control. The more she knows, the more prepared she feels, and the less likely she is to be blindsided by another disaster she couldn’t prevent. He took that curiosity for granted.

When Solas told her he walked the din’anshiral, he should have known how completely her mind would latch on that word. She did everything she could to learn what it meant and where that path might lead because, if he's walking it, she sure as hell is walking it too. You do not give Saethre a piece of information and not expect her to run with it. When she finally understood it as the path of death, she realized with some humour that she’d already been walking it for most of her life.

I suppose the other thing Solas misunderstands about Saethre is that she's ok with death. She doesn’t want to die, but she’s survived so many physical and spiritual deaths that she no longer sees death as something to fear. She’s lost her clan, her vallaslin, her arm, the Inquisition, her personhood - nearly every version of herself she once believed she had to be.

It's the difference between mortal and immortal. Saethre's always known death will come, so it has a natural place in the order of things. For years she even mistakenly believed she was a bringer of death. Solas, on the other hand, has lived so long and made such epic, awful choices that death has become tied to failure for him. He has experience with others dying around him for so very long, but he's not emotionally at peace with it, especially because he's the reason elves lost their immortality. Especially when it comes to Saethre dying.

He can't understand that Saethre is okay to die because he doesn't want her to. Of all the people he's sacrificed or killed, she's one person he will protect. He needs her to survive for a couple reasons - one is that he believes in her leadership and the world will need people like her once the Veil comes down. But mostly because somewhere in his mind, keeping her alive means he hasn't destroyed absolutely everything he loves.

So you bet your ass Solas has spirits ready to protect Saethre. If he dies, so be it. Knowing she's alive though would bring him some peace.

It's funny because they're both so obsessed with control. It's the understanding they eventually come to in the Fade together. They realize they're more alike than not - both of them have been trying to control the world, just on very different scales.

3.

Oh Dozer and Saethre. There's definitely tension between them. In another life, they probably would have made a great team, but they'll never be friends. Mutual respect is as far as they get.

who uses all the hot water?

who cooks normally?

how do they make up after a fight?

Thank you!

who uses all the hot water?

Sharanni, every single time. She may be used to using lukewarm water, or washing in river, but she vastly prefers using hot water and Solas will happily let her. If he wants that hot water, he'll have to shower with her.

who cooks normally?

Sharanni can be a very experimental cook when she wants to be. So if you want something that's guaranteed to be edible, you want someone else to do the cooking. And while I think Solas doesn't do much cooking in general, I think that's because he hasn't had the time (funny thing to say about an immortal), not because he lacks the ability.

how do they make up after a fight?

I don't know if this counts as "make up", but since Sharanni doesn't usually hold grudges, she'll just decide they're done and come marching up to him with a long list of questions about history or magic or languages or whatever else popped into her head.

It's sort of a peace offering, letting him ramble at her for an hour or so.

I do think Solas takes longer to cool off after a fight, but she's usually just shameless about it that he'll let it go.

I'm keeping the times on here because I think it's funny how quickly he went from "we need to break up" back to "please, vhenan." Barely even made it ten seconds and he's right back to calling her his heart.

Which really reminds me of a conversation he has with Cassandra, when she asks him why he always refers to her by her title. And he responds that "I say what I believe to be true"

After about six and a half months, I finally finished it! I'm going to be framing it this afternoon. (Some close ups under the break)

Pattern is Solas Base Tarot by 99CentCrossStitch

In which Kitty tries to keep Solas and Lavellan apart and Love and Kitty argue about the matter.

Kitty purred with satisfaction as the dagger thunked into the left shoulder of the practice dummy, and the empty socket in the back of the Lavellan’s wooden hand glowed a triumphant violet. It was easy, here in the Fade to send questing tendrils of self to twine lovingly amidst the Lavellan’s thoughts and feelings, to act as the Lavellan’s hand, to be a piece of the Lavellan, to touch and grasp as the Lavellan wanted. It was proud of their efforts. Of course, it could not act as the Lavellan’s hand and its shield, and they would have to practice with Kitty leaving the hand abruptly, but with the Lavellan’s hand locked to the grip of its dual blade dagger, the Lavellan would not drop its weapon and should be able to manage the transition well enough. They were practicing knife throwing before partnered combat; the Hidden Blades would spar with them once they were ready for a greater challenge. Kitty was fond of the Blades.

“Still pulling to the left,” the Lavellan said thoughtfully, as they walked to the target and pulled the dagger free together, sheathing it on the Lavellan’s left thigh, “I was going for the throat, but given that I’ve always been right handed, that was a really good shot. I think we’ve got the snap of the wrist right, though I think we might be just a touch slow on the release. But mostly I think I need to work on my aim.”

Kitty gently uncurled itself from the springs and cords and pulleys of the Lavellan’s hand and poured itself out in a crackle of violet light to walk up the Lavellan’s arm on gentle paws and wrap itself around the Lavellan’s shoulders.

It snuggled its furry cheek against the Lavellan’s neck. It liked this form, the closeness that they could achieve together. But it thought, not for the first time, of Spite and his host, Lucanis. Lucanis was an assassin like its Lavellan. Kitty wanted to become a part of its Lavellan like that, would love to be that close, but Kitty did not know the trick of it. But it could at least do this, brush against the Lavellan’s mind and act as the spark of life in its hand.

The Lavellan reached up with its live hand to scratch Kitty behind the ears.

“You are building muscle in the forearm, with this practice,” Kitty purred with contentment. “Your socket is almost in need of adjustment, but I think it is still fine for the moment. It was not rubbing, and I could not feel any hurt places, other than the old soreness in your shoulder.”

“I’m so glad you’re looking out for that, lethallan,” Lavellan sighed. “I find it awfully difficult to notice.”

“Of course, my Lavellan,” purred Kitty proudly. “I will always take care of you.”

Kitty leapt lightly off Lavellan’s shoulder as they reached the steps to the main keep. It was always more difficult for Kitty to keep its balance on the stairs, and it did not want to hurt the Lavellan if it lost its balance.

They were met at the top of the stairs by the Wolf and the very meddlesome spirit of Love. Kitty found it highly annoying. It was always pushing together the Lavellan and the Wolf, and trying to pry it away from its Lavellan.

“The way that you flicked the dagger to its target was very graceful, vhenan,” flirted the Wolf, chivvying the Lavellan toward the rotunda, and throwing an insufferable smirk at Kitty from behind the Lavellan’s back. “Come, there is tea waiting for you. You will be in need of refreshment.”

“Are you suggesting I’m graceful?” the Lavellan flirted back as it smiled at him and brushed its shoulder against his affectionately.

The Wolf laughed, all his attention on Kitty’s Lavellan, and Kitty scowled.

“No,” he said, teasingly and annoyingly intimate, bending close to the Lavellan’s ear, “I am declaring it.”

It was not for nothing that the Wolf had been called Spirit Speaker. Kitty had to begrudgingly admit that he had a silver tongue. Kitty was not so easily won over, but it could see why the Lavellan had been taken in.

Kitty had intended to follow its Lavellan into the rotunda and get in the Wolf’s way.

Love, however, was a sneak and a meddler.

It barred Kitty’s way into the rotunda and glared at it, and then Kitty felt the Wolf’s subtle ward and heard the Lavellan’s quiet delighted “Solas!” and the Wolf’s low murmur in answer.

Kitty sighed. The first time could be excused as an accident, and the Lavellan had made this place as a shelter for spirits. Kitty was inclined to be forgiving. These spirits were under Kitty’s Protection because they were under the Lavellan’s Protection, and Love could not know of the special bond that Kitty and the Lavellan shared.

This, however, was not the first time that Love had allied with the Wolf to deprive Kitty of its Lavellan. It could hardly retaliate against the Wolf without upsetting its Lavellan, but Love was another matter entirely.

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