"I cannot save everyone from what has already been done," He hissed, drawing himself up to his full height. It was an unconscious distance, seeking some strange, conceptual high ground that he had no other right to, and knew it. He could not stop himself, "But that does mean that all of you must die. You believe the world to be whole, because you have grown up surrounded by weeping scars, and think of them as natural and right. You have never known the world."
But he can hear in her words the ignorant misunderstanding; she sees her own life as the default, that squalid, short span as something to be aspired to. And he, some aberration, some outside thing, come to cut it down and destroy all that was good in the world. But there was no good in a world where all that lived was snuffed out so young, and he was already a monster of myth and legend in their eyes. There was no redeeming the name of Fen'Harel from the tarnish time had put on it.
It was all he could do to live up to the path he had been born to, the geass Mythal had laid on him in her solemn plea for aid before ever he had drawn his first breath, and all that had transpired since. All the vanished faces of the lost, those who had died, who had known him, who had gone into the annals of history trusting him to bear the weight of— of doing whatever it took to see the world won truly free. There was no one else to offer it to, none left standing who might take the burden; he was the last, the only one left alive. All were dead, and even their children were dead, and their children's children's children... And he, his veil, his much-vaunted artifice of which he had been so proud, was their killer.
"Hate me if you must— I expect that you will continue to do so. Just as I am sure you will take every advantage of my weakness, that you will fight, and even kill me, if you can," He does not want to turn and run, but there is nowhere to go, no home to bolt to, no eluvian to seek. Where even would he go, except down the street, into an alley, or behind a convenient corner? Here, there was nothing for him, not even the Fade, "It does not absolve me of the responsibility to see it through. Nothing can."
Maybe then, she really would kill him. Would he be free, if this body died? Would that be enough to say he had done all he could? In his heart, Solas knew that it was not. But even here, he could hope.
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But he can hear in her words the ignorant misunderstanding; she sees her own life as the default, that squalid, short span as something to be aspired to. And he, some aberration, some outside thing, come to cut it down and destroy all that was good in the world. But there was no good in a world where all that lived was snuffed out so young, and he was already a monster of myth and legend in their eyes. There was no redeeming the name of Fen'Harel from the tarnish time had put on it.
It was all he could do to live up to the path he had been born to, the geass Mythal had laid on him in her solemn plea for aid before ever he had drawn his first breath, and all that had transpired since. All the vanished faces of the lost, those who had died, who had known him, who had gone into the annals of history trusting him to bear the weight of— of doing whatever it took to see the world won truly free. There was no one else to offer it to, none left standing who might take the burden; he was the last, the only one left alive. All were dead, and even their children were dead, and their children's children's children... And he, his veil, his much-vaunted artifice of which he had been so proud, was their killer.
"Hate me if you must— I expect that you will continue to do so. Just as I am sure you will take every advantage of my weakness, that you will fight, and even kill me, if you can," He does not want to turn and run, but there is nowhere to go, no home to bolt to, no eluvian to seek. Where even would he go, except down the street, into an alley, or behind a convenient corner? Here, there was nothing for him, not even the Fade, "It does not absolve me of the responsibility to see it through. Nothing can."
Maybe then, she really would kill him. Would he be free, if this body died? Would that be enough to say he had done all he could? In his heart, Solas knew that it was not. But even here, he could hope.