🌻Solas🌻

// Reposting for the day crowd because I fixed my pin and I’m proud of it yaaaay

//and u would be right to do so

-- didn't need to describe to Maggie what he would see when he closed his eyes. He feared even if he closed them now that his mind would flash with memories of the blood and rubble of his home.

-- "Just a bad dream..."

The hand squeezing her wrist slipped into her palm and interlaced their fingers. Physical contact was helping. Keeping him grounded to reality.

"What if it happens again? I can't even rest for a few hours without seeing..." His voice trailed off. Solas figured he --

Solas's breaths came a little slower. Still trembling, but not erratic. Maggie's hand on his head helped bring him back to reality. He leaned into her touch.

"Not in a dream," he echoed, like a mantra. Sundrinker wasn't here. Wouldn't hurt them again, at least not right now.

--

-- now, before that portal closes."

He put a hand on his waist to double check the knife was still there. It was. "You have a weapon on you, right?"

"Right," he said with a curt nod. "No going off on our own, unlike 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 people..."

Solas pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. He had to get over himself. Whatever frustration he was feeling right now could wait. There were people that needed help, and Druid couldn't do it alone.

"Let's go --

-- edge of the low wall around the roof. "Fuck this. If it's safe for Druid to go, I'm going too."

Already turning to jog down the stairs, Solas muttered to himself with incredulity. "Thinking I'll just wait and rest while you do all the work," he grumbled. "This is 𝑚𝑦 home we're talking about."

-- the destruction made him feel sick, and that feeling mixed with the anger that bubbled from Druid going on the rescue mission while insisting they both stay and rest. Was it not obvious how badly Solas wanted to go? They'd even studied his own map!

"No way," he whispered, hands gripping the --

"What do you mean, 𝑎𝑏𝑠𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑑?" Solas demanded, crossing the roof to where Maggie was looking. "They 𝑙𝑒𝑓𝑡?!"

He peered over the edge at the portal in the near distance, showing a milky image of Solas's ruined city. It was near unrecognizable, but he knew those streets. Even just a window into --

— going to kill us now?” he croaked, staring through the wall in front of him.

— here, though. Unhurt. That muffled sound was her attempt to get his attention.

Eyes still unfocused, Solas reached out and grabbed her arm. Not pulling her closer, not stopping her from moving, but gripping her wrist tightly as if he might float away if he didn’t.

“Is it here? Is the dragon —

Solas didn’t. He was hardly present in his body. Mentally, he was alone in that forest again, watching his city burn and running from gnashing wyverns. Maggie’s voice hardly registered. He might’ve had a glimmer of recognition after seeing her hand, but the memories clouded his vision.

She was —

𝑩𝒖𝒈𝒔 𝑨𝒓𝒆 𝑷𝒆𝒐𝒑𝒍𝒆 𝑻𝒐𝒐.

🍀 In which Solas befriends the Hollow Knight by being kinda nice to it. 🍀

bsky.app/profile/hall...

𝑴𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑨𝒍𝒍 𝑴𝒚 𝑯𝒐𝒎𝒊𝒆𝒔 𝑯𝒂𝒕𝒆 𝑻𝒉𝒂𝒕 𝑮𝒖𝒚

🍀 In which Solas’s chosen home is destroyed by the dragon Sundrinker and he enlists the help of friends to help rebuild. In the process, realizes he’s severely untrained to handle crises like this. 🍀

bsky.app/profile/sund...

— staircase and ascended to the kitchen, where a roast was boiling but a Druid was nowhere to be seen.

“They’re not in here,” he called to Maggie. “Where 𝑑𝑖𝑑 they go?”

— Solas only noticed Druid had been gone for a while after Maggie said something.

“Yeah, they’ve been gone a while. I’m starving. Should we…”

He glanced at the staircase they’d rushed up the steps of.

“…check on them, maybe?”

Before even finishing his sentence, Solas crept over to the —

Druid did seem to leave rather quickly, but Solas was far too preoccupied with the map and his growling stomach to give it much thought.

Solas bit into an apple as he regarded the map and considered Maggie’s idea.

“Our numbers will be few,” he estimated. “But if we can spread out enough…”

—

Your future pain is the only one I’m concerned about.

Do your worst. We will be there at the end.

Yes, that’s all it was!

I won’t let you hurt me again.

-- didn't realize he'd been turning and whimpering in his sleep, but now that he was conscious, the panic hit him like a brick. Breath didn't come easy. His shoulders trembled. If Maggie was speaking to him, he couldn't hear through the blood pounding in his ears.

-- me?" she asked with tears in her eyes.

Solas was trying to sputter an explanation, maybe an "I'm sorry", but his thoughts were interrupted by a low, vibrating voice coming from behind him again.

𝑌𝑜𝑢 𝑎𝑟𝑒 𝑡𝑜𝑜 𝑙𝑎𝑡𝑒, 𝑢𝑠𝑒𝑙𝑒𝑠𝑠 𝑒𝑙𝑓.

It startled him so much that he jolted awake with a gasp. He --

-- brick. Solas tried to help his boss, Ramone, out from under a fallen beam from the warehouse but lost his bottom half in the process. He died asking for his mother.

Worst of all, Maggie lying against a broken wall bleeding from a shard of wood run through her abdomen.

"Why didn't you save --

-- wails of the dying all bombarded his senses. He pulled someone's hand, and only an arm came up. The body of his friend Rhun, the man who'd taught him the art of pickpocketing, recognizable only by his jacket and boots because his head had been reduced to a splat of blood and bits underneath a --

-- he'd chosen to call home echoed in his ears, even louder as he ran. He didn't notice when he made it to town, but the first thing he saw was the insurmountable piles of rubble.

𝐼 𝑐𝑎𝑛 ℎ𝑒𝑙𝑝 𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑖𝑚𝑒.

Twitching limbs under piles of heavy bricks, blood pooling in the streets, anguished --

-- darkened. A horrible roar sounded in the distance. He stood and spun around, but the dragon was nowhere to be seen. It felt like the noises came from behind him no matter which way he turned.

Then came the screams. The agonized cries of his friends, his coworkers, the residents of the town --

Solas slept soundly, deeper than he would even in his own bed, for a little less than an hour. For that time, he dreamed he was sitting by a quaint little pond with a good book. The birds were chirping and the pages of his novel smelled like a library. But just when he got comfortable, the sky --

— get them past the guards in the first place.

— him pause.

“Who gets the biggest cut?” he asked, eyeballing that pile. 𝐴𝑛𝑑 𝑤ℎ𝑦 𝑤𝑎𝑠𝑛’𝑡 𝑖𝑡 ℎ𝑖𝑚? He was the reason they were able to break in at all! He had the lockpicks and the insider knowledge! Nevermind that Fleet had flown them in and hurt herself in the process; 𝑆𝑜𝑙𝑎𝑠 had been the one to —

“Sounds like she has a strong moral code,” Solas mused as he watched Fleet count the money. Usually, he would’ve noticed that she’d given herself the smaller share and give her a few of his coins, but in this moment, he was just glad to have received the bigger half. The largest pile, though, gave —