Muse in the Middle

forgive me. If you were here with me, I would carry endless regret. I could not bear the thought of the dangers you would face by my side. For no path is more dangerous than the one the Dread Wolf walks.

But you follow me relentlessly, and compel me to press onward toward my goal with greater haste. To finish the ritual, which will most likely consume all the strength I've managed to recover over these years. I don't expect to be granted a second chance to survive. I couldn't tell you this, but surely you've long suspected it, haven't you?

Vhenan. The ritual is nearly complete. I've made sure you and those dear to you are safe, both during and after the ritual. But I cannot protect you if you continue to follow me. I hope I will manage to complete what I've set out to do, and that after the ritual is done, you will make it here, to the Lighthouse, and find this letter, one of many written to you, but most likely the last.

If you're reading these words now… my heart, you must know I've always felt echoes of your fears and desires in my dreams. Even without the anchor, the shadow of your thoughts and your love haunted me through all these long years. I can no longer deny or silence the part of me that yearns for you, but I must do so all the same. I am so sorry. I hope we'll meet again in another world.

Forever yours,

Solas

Source ~ Neurodivergent_Lou

Alt Text added to each image.

Let’s talk about Lavellan.

Firstly, that woman sees that Egg and says: “Mine.”

And not only does she say “Mine”, she makes it a priority to banish every single fear from him that she’s aware of.

“You’re scared Cassandra’s going to hang you? I’ll protect you however I can. I met you like. Yesterday. Also? Don’t let her scare you. She reads smut.”

“You’re dismayed by how wrong the Dalish are about our heritage? They try. They try and they’ve managed to prevail. It’s not hopeless.”

“You felt everything change? Well. I’m gonna Kiss You.”

“You’re scared for your friend? Grab your staff, let’s go.”

“You’re scared to deepen our relationship?… please stay.”

“You’re scared Mythal would use me? I will use whatever ability she grants me to HELP OUR PEOPLE.”

“You fear dying alone? Even after pushing me away? I’ll hunt you until. I’ll find every clue. I’ll learn your names. I’ll become the most Ancient, modern elf alive. Your dreams will never let you get too far from me.”

“You think you’re unlovable? I’m going into the Fade with you. I just want YOU.”

We’re meant to feel like the good guys watching this?

What person looks at this and thinks ‘yeah we’re the good guys in this situation’???

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Solas, like you said, was a slave but on top of all of that, he is trying to bring down the Veil to FREE the spirits in the Fade.

He’s trying to FREE the Elven people from their mortality (that he cursed them with).

He’s trying to FREE mages from their abuse by non-mages in Thedas.

Solas is a slave whose sole purpose is to FREE others like NO ONE EVER FREED HIM and we, as Rook, are suppose to be, what, happy?

Happy that we put that collar back on him? Happy that we’ve leashed him against his will, body and spirit, like before? The chain around his neck is viscerally upsetting and yet Rook and their companions cheer about ‘saving the world’.

a passion driven woman, who's been fighting tooth and nail to restore whatever little was left from the ancient times? who wants a better future for any elf there is? who's been ostracized from her DALISH community because of her mentor's arrogance? AND who's ok with communication with spirits?? bro

if anything she would've been his №1 ally. a magical researcher. a general. THE general, wearing the eredin-from-the-witcher-3 kind of armor.

special interest autism 🤝 social difficulty autism in a middle of which - pathetic yearning for their leader wives

That’s what I love: the illogical. Because love isn’t logical. For every argument I’ve seen that says it “makes no sense” for Lavellan and Solas to fall in love over the course of Inquisition, or that waiting that many years to be together is unrealistic. I sit back and laugh. Really? Love needs a timeline? In a fantasy?

Beren took one look at Lúthien dancing and fell irrevocably in love - and Lúthien was all in too. They didn’t take three years to build a foundation of trust and talk about boundaries or what they saw in each other. Their version of courtship was joining forces to battle literal evil so they could earn the right to be together. It was reckless, wild, insane, illogical and absolutely delicious. 

Lavellan and Solas hit that same mythic nerve for me. Their story - two people drawn together across time, fate, and existential stakes - feels like something out of The Silmarillion.

I don’t need these stories of love and pain and tragedy and trauma and desire to be logical in the real-world sense. It was never meant to be. Like all mythological love stories, it speaks to something eternal, irrational, and luminous.

There are themes and tropes woven through Lavellan and Solas’ story that utterly captivate me. And it’s partly to do with the fact that their love story isn't a comfortable one. It asks something of you. It asks you to reconcile contradiction: love and betrayal, hope and despair, violence and tenderness, destiny and choice, love as performance vs love as presence.

I’ve uncovered themes and archetypes that fit perfectly in this world of fantasy and discovered new ones in conversations with fellow Solas and Lavellan lovers as well. Here’s my attempt to weave some of those tropes and themes together. 

Their story carries what I like to call the Tolkien Effect: elven atmosphere where immortals and mortals fall in love and brave inconceivable odds just to be together. It’s the story of a man tormented by the choice between duty and love - Solas’ self-imposed responsibility to mend the world demands that he sacrifice his heart, while Lavellan’s bond with him is forged within that very conflict. He stands as the tragic anti-hero: prideful, guilt-ridden, withdrawing into self-destructive isolation because he’s convinced only he can set things right. She, meanwhile, plays Beauty to his Beast - seeing the fractured soul beneath the would-be destroyer and, by loving him, becoming the mirror that reflects his lost humanity. In classic fashion, they are star-crossed lovers - she's a mortal leader of the present, he's an immortal haunted by his past. Their timelines are misaligned, their love a sacrifice in the face of fate.

Their relationship goes from prejudice to passion. At first, Solas sees Lavellan as a biased curiosity - a product of a world he resents. But curiosity gives way to respect, respect deepens into desire, and desire transforms into a love so overwhelming it must be cloaked in restraint. He tries to resist her, but she becomes a gravitational force pulling him into an orbit he can't break.

Here, love becomes existential salvation or existential disruption. Lavellan offers Solas something terrifying: a path out of the endless cycle of destruction. It's a chance to choose life and yet instead he chooses to run from it, fleeing the love that might transform his path.

He tries to let her go, believing he must shield her from the darkness he carries. But he's the immortal who can't let go. He dreams of her. Writes to her. Remembers her. Because this is love across time - a mythic bond that survives years, silence, betrayal, and distance. A love that endures even after everything else has fallen.

He's the lonely immortal whose memories stretch back to betrayals no one else can comprehend. Lavellan is shaped in the mold of Tolkien’s quiet heroes - Frodo’s endurance, Aragorn’s purpose, Éowyn’s resolve - meeting unearthly stakes with a resilience that refuses to break, even when love itself feels like punishment.

In the end, wisdom and mercy override vengeance. Lavellan’s forgiveness doesn’t excuse but provides a path to healing. She has taken on the role of mortal muse of the divine. A single, fleeting human heart - fragile, finite - a key that might yet save an ancient, wounded soul. And so great is this ancient being’s pain, so immense the guilt and fear he carries, that it takes a fellowship to save Thedas, to save him - the mortal and immortal working together. And at the end, the star-crossed lovers are reunited, a bittersweet ending as they experienced so much pain to get there. They ascend together into another world, stepping outside the boundaries of Thedas, likely to inspire new legends in the years to come. 

Should I go on? There are more themes and tropes I’ve pulled from this story - more patterns of myth and meaning that keep drawing me back. And now, with the story of Lavellan and Solas together in the Fade, it begs for new narratives, new archetypes, new emotional terrain.

finally sharing the cameo I requested of Solas saying this post!

He didn’t want to recreate Elvhenan. He said as much in DAI when he explicitly discouraged Dorian from glorifying Arlathan or putting it on a pedestal. Instead, he urged Dorian to ‘free the people of all races enslaved in Thedas’. Not just Elves, not just Spirits, all of them.

Solas’ story was never about a fixation on the past, at least not in the sense that people like to accuse him of. He did not view the past with some rose-colored nostalgia. It was not the empire he missed, but the world itself—Thedas as it was meant to be.

Imagine if you were suddenly flung into the future and found that Climate Change had finally rendered Earth to be the nightmare world we fear. The planet is sick and dying. Nature itself has been twisted, perverted, rendered dangerous and made into something that most people fear, and no one believes you when you try to tell them that nature is, well, natural. In fact, they call you insane, a heretic, someone to be shunned. They say your ideas are dangerous lies, even when you know them to be the truth.

And in this sick, dying world, where people suffer and live in fear, you see no future worth living in. You see that the damage is too much. The world won’t survive much longer unless something is done. Against all odds you’ve found the solution, a way to restore the Earth, revitalize the natural world, and make the planet healthy and stable for all time. It’ll come at a cost, people will suffer, but isn’t it worth it to stop the end of all things? Isn’t it worth it to ensure that life can still sustain itself in a century? A millennia? An eternity?