#fel threads.

❝ SOLAS, ❞ GREETS THE INQUISITOR as she hears a familiar set of footsteps track lightly across the earth behind her. with a flick of her staff, the campsite brazier roars to life – perhaps a little more intensely than it should – and saeris takes a moment to calm the anxiety pinging off her chest like raindrops on armor. they’re cordial. as much as it hurts to look at him, to rein in the thousands of questions on her tongue without batting an eye, there is work to be done. and there is, regrettably, still joy to be found in traveling with solas. sometimes, she almost finds herself falling back into comfort at his side – and then she looks at him, about to reach out, and remembers herself. it hurts. it does. but there is no time for pain. there hasn’t been for a long time; not when her clan was massacred, not when solas left her, not when there’s a world to be saved. shove it down, fel’era. ❝ we’ve uncovered more artifacts of the veil in an elvhen ruin excavated by cullen’s team, ❞ she says to him now, one freckled thumb absentmindedly running over an elvhen engraving just above tempest’s cloth grip. ❝ i requested your attendance so that you can interface with them. additionally, the temple is reported to be trapped – cullen’s men could not make it far in before a retreat was ordered. as mages, you and i may be able to better navigate the space. along with support from the others, of course.  ❞

a short pause, worry furrowing a knot between their brows. ❝ will they ever learn to accept it? is diplomacy possible in such a chaotic world? ❞

THE KISS DRAWS BLOOD. saeris tastes the iron tang on her tongue and she doesn’t care. for how long it has been, and how much they have suffered. at each other’s hands, at their own. her fingers curl into a seam in his armor and yank him closer, and because her other, missing hand cannot, it then travels up to grip the back of his neck.  when they pull away, her eyes open, and creators, she wishes she could keep them unfeeling. they are not. they are full of rage, and grief, and underneath that, a horrible and soft affection that links the two things irreparably. ❝ solas, ❞ she murmurs, because it is his name, solas, pride. even with the cold press of armor between them, the skin of his neck on her fingertips is home — an unfair and horrible feeling, but home nonetheless. it makes her furious.