Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon Age or any of its affiliated characters or properties.

Unforgiven; Unforgotten

Every night for three weeks now, Dorina Lavellan woke in the twilight morn to heady sweat, and self-hatred.

This morning was no different. And she was furious. She'd almost had him this time. So, so, many times in her dreams he dared encroach upon the edges, so subtle she missed him more often than not.

But the more she focused, the stronger she grew, the more she began to realize... the bastard never left.

It made her blood absolutely boil.

Doe screamed in fury and upheaved her bedside table. Pottery and silver clattered across the cobbled floor in the day's first light beams, but the source brought her no heat. No warmth, no comfort.

This was the part she hated him for, she thought, as she composed herself enough to bellow her next scream into a pillow.

Of course he warned her early on, and truly had he just left as he'd always intended, she could have convinced herself to handle it. Expectations had been set low, it wouldn't have been a betrayal. But to so openly claim his love for her, then forbid her from his side had been cruel enough. Now, he hadn't even the decency to leave her be.

He's weak, she scorned, inwardly. Oh she knew, she'd always known there was more to him than met the eye. She'd told him so, before she even knew what it was.

"You don't have to tell me. But I see you."

She repeated it bitterly into her solitary room.

She understood now that falling for her had never been his plan, that much she could easily trust. But if he were so fade-bent on his goal over their love, why couldn't he just abandon her like he promised?

Could she not just be left to her sorrow in peace? To be lost to memory and time until she eventually doubted they ever loved at all, and forgave him?

No, now she sensed him in her sleep. A constant, aching reminder of what it was like to be in his enthralling presence. Even on the nights she wasn't quite strong enough to remember, she woke missing him with sour sharpness that rendered her helpless to conclude anything less. Perhaps he didn't think she could tell, but it wouldn't be the first time he'd underestimated her.

Now, like him, being awake grew tiresome. Lavellan became nigh-impossible to live with, and the others learned to more or less keep their distance unless business demanded otherwise. She retreated deeper and deeper into herself, and as time passed, the suspicious hushed whispers of gossiped rumors grew more and more wild and brazen. She lost all interest in combating them.

As far as she was concerned she'd served her purpose. And whether to stop him, or join him, or even merely scream at him- whatever her future held, it demanded she find him.

Then one day, she snapped. It was not the first time, but growing desperation tilted the balance when she caught a look at herself in a reflecting pool for the first time in months.

With her vallaslin gone... she did not even recognize herself.

She was what he had made her. Her own person. Her own spirit. He helped her find her true self, cultivated it... then claimed it as his own when he left.

Her fists clenched so tight her fingernails dug into her skin in red crescents. The skin broke, bled, and healed in repeated cycles as she flexed her magic.

She would find a way to make him cave, to make him take responsibility for what he had done to them. She couldn't think about anything else. Suddenly she felt she couldn't breathe until she found resolution.

That night, fury served as her focus. She disrobed until she stood in her room, stark naked, and lay herself on the bed. With a determined nod to her ceiling, she let her lids slide shut with purpose, leaving her skin exposed to the cool air.

She'd been practicing. It was the only reason she'd been able to catch him the last few times. Yet he always faded away when she pursued. This time, she would not give chase.

The world melted away in a drug-like blend of time and space. Inside of five minutes, she couldn't plot if seconds, or hours, had passed. She held on to her self, focusing on a place she visited often. One in which he'd know to look for her.

It was simple setting. A crossroads of sorts where her tribe often met with other Dalish while migrating. As she crafted the place to memory, the trees shifted amber with autumn, the grass grew tall and golden, and the twigs crisp with dry air.

Just under the surface, the Fade attempted to reflect the true form of her destination in the real world, but she focused her will on reinforcing her imagination to the more familiar season.

Plus, she'd begun to suspect Solas may be tracking her magic signature as much as her dreams, and she knew of no better way to call him.

Remembering her plan, Doe breathed deep, adjusting to the intoxicating notion to run naked through the thicket. The nostalgia fled as briefly as it'd come, when suddenly the hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

She began speaking before she bothered to rotate, knowing his shadow-wolf form would be gone by the time she'd turned.

"You know I can't just walk away, Solas!" She called to the nothing that greeted her. A couple aging leaves drifted to the ground, their landing muted by the stillness of the air. "You know I won't let this go. I can't!"

Again, silence. But she knew it was true. Any other woman would have easily obeyed him as if he were a master above reproach. And he would not have respected them for it.

"Would you have loved me if I were anything less?!" She gestured her arm wide, spinning as she called to treetops and sky.

All the air sucked out of her dream. She knew she were immersed now. A random hallucination and she wouldn't have noticed the air, or lack of. But she distinctly wasn't feeling the cold sensation of icy night chill back in the physical world. She were as much here as he were now.

She felt a hungry glare rake over her flesh, the source still shrouded. It felt near inhuman, like the dream itself were about to growl in bestial response to bare form.

"You said you wouldn't lay with me while I didn't know the truth!" She tried again. "So why not now? If you mean for me to die in the next few years, what more do you have to lose? What more harm could you do me?!"

She began to scream louder, to push back, violently, against any threat of tears as her emotion began to erupt. "To love me and break my heart, we've already done that! You could have at least let us have this!

"WHAT MORE HARM COULD YOU DO ME?!"

Her voice cracked with her fury, and a flock of ravens burst from the boughs a ways off. Sign of retreat? Of him, or another spirit?

"Fine," she spat, more to herself than anything.

But she refused to go home empty-handed.

Doe plopped herself on the ground unceremoniously. If other spirits remain to watch her, she cared not. Not anymore. There was only one set of eyes she needed to capture.

Her frustration sped her forward, and she found herself tentatively parting her legs with her small hand.

Her lithe elven fingers ached from years of war, when all they'd really wanted was to grope, stroke, and squeeze.. to dig into flesh and draw pleasure instead of pain for awhile...

"Solas, damn you," she ground through her teeth. "Damn you..."

She closed her eyes, holding a lose tether to her setting so she didn't drift too far. But she determinedly ignored all other energies she sensed.

She wouldn't be satisfied until his finally broke through.

She found her body resentful that it wasn't him touching her. That their prolonged romance had denied them joys of the flesh she had fantasized about nightly. With self-loathing, she craved him. Craved to discover what secrets he had yet to reveal to her... what pleasure and sensations he would unlock for her.

Regret made every stroke of her fingers over her core bitterly unsatisfying. In her anger, she struggled to find the delirious heat he often inspired...

Then her mind wandered... to the kisses they had shared, instead.

Hot, burning, for hours at camp sometimes. He always stopped them before it went further, but oh, the promises in those kisses.

Her fingers slowed to a firm rhythm as she began to lose herself. She moved her hand to her breasts, pert playthings that longed to discover the texture of his tongue and the strength of his fingers.

A mewl escaped her lips as she felt herself grow a little wetter at the thought.

She remembered every time he groped her a little too tight, in vivid detail. How hard his body always felt pressed against hers, how needily he plundered her mouth and crushed her form against him.

"Damn it, Solas..." The words left her mouth again without a second thought, beyond the memory of his teeth on her lower lip. Then his hot breath against her ear.

"Vhenan."

Doe had replayed that word, in that tone, in her mind so many times she suspected it little more than her imagination at first.

When it came again, her breath caught, but she dare not open her eyes.

She dare not stop.

"No," she inhaled sharply.

"Vhenan, look at me." He spoke only in elven, knowing she were helpless to respond to it.

Her unresolved distress kept her hand in place on her body. She would make him face what he left behind. The tortured frustration she dealt with daily. She arched her back and parted her lips, eyes slammed firmly shut.

For about five seconds, before long fingers lashed around her wrist and threw it back to the ground above her head. She felt a familiar weight on top of her, pulsing warmth through the Fade, and she rolled up against it in a fit of revenge.

"Look at me!"

Not the tone of a polite apostate. It vibrated through her like the command from a mighty god that it was.

And her glassy eyes opened.

She withered under the brazen, flushed glare of a man she hadn't seen in longer than she could remember. She briefly feared he were an illusion, but his energy blazed too real, too bright. The burning of his cold eyes scorched her, and she twisted under his grip.

"Stubborn woman," He admonished from above her. He sounded disappointed, angry, not amused. But she cared not for his judgments.

She glared back into his fuming gaze. "At least my weakness doesn't make me a coward!" she spat.

Danger flashed behind his eyes, and a hand was on her throat in an instant. "You know not of what you speak," he growled.

But she only narrowed her eyes at him, teeth bared. She'd almost be relieved if he strangled her at this point.

He did squeeze, but just enough to catch her breath in her throat.

Then he invaded her.

Breathless, she remained caught under his fiercesome true form and tight grip, hungry tongue devouring her from the inside.

She struggled only a moment as his body stiffened in the most delightful way on top of her. She knew now she was going to win. She somehow doubted she'd feel better in the morning, but as his hands took purchase on her rear to persistently yank her to him, she found less and less will to care.

She peeled at his clothes furiously before he changed his mind. She rubbed her naked body against his skin like a kitten in first heat, eager to discover the feeling of their flesh against one another.

Doe found herself praying to Fen'harel when hot, hungry pants and moans passed between them through nipping kisses. All the power in the world, and he still sounded deliciously on edge while she toyed with him under her fingers.

He didn't let her up. He took her over. In every way she had hoped, but dared not expect.

Solas guided her legs around himself with the most wicked line to his lips, then leaned over her to keep an intense glare on her face; to commit every expression, every whimper to memory as he rocked them together tight and hard.

Doe couldn't believe the amount of friction she was able to feel through the Fade. It beckoned for her focus, but whenever she relinquished more the sensation became close to too much.

The realization that she was somehow finally feeling him inside her made her heart break in a way she refused to let him see.

She repeated his name through strangled moans. She wanted him to hear it whenever he closed his eyes. She bit, clawed, and milked whatever parts of him she could reach. To remind him, long after he would pretend it hadn't happened, that it did.

And she pointedly ignored that he fit perfectly inside her like she were made for him.

Her frustration at the situation, simmering under her lust, turned her feral. Surrendering, she eagerly shifted to her hands and knees, and arched her back to low to proffer herself to him.

He bent down over her, his hot flesh melting with hers on contact. He caught her face in his hand, and she tried not to look too smug as she realized how important it seemed for him to see her. To know it was her.

She cried out as he began to fuck her with more force than anyone had needed with her before. Her hips and spine jolted, but she found herself devolving into a delighted animalistic mess.

He began chanting heated elven in her ear, and it nearly ended her at how incredibly sexy the words sounded as they rolled off his silver tongue.

"You're mine. You always have been, you always will be, now. You belong on me, wrapped around me..." He hissed into her ear, and she shuddered with a pathetic whimper at what it did to her insides. "Vhenan. I can no more let you go than you can walk away. The Fade will remember our passion for eons."

"Solas," she finally mewled, losing herself in the tight cocoon of arms he wrapped her in. "Don't... stop."

Even she no longer knew to what she was referring.

His narrow face delivered a hot, greedy bite to her neck, a deep howl of lust in his chest at her back as he began to jerk inside her ferociously.

A string elven pleas and slang tumbled from her lips as he reduced her to little more than an animal slave to hormones and instincts and need.

The feeling of him nearing completion set her off. The quickening of his breath, the intensity of his grip, the throbbing and twitching of his cock inside of her.

As it all began to cascade upon her all at once it became too much, and she cried out in a shattering burst that left her muscles trembling to keep herself upright for him.

He withdrew from her as he became overwhelmed by the sensation, and she tried to not be too jealous of the ground for getting what should have been pooling inside her now.

If he caught her pout, he showed no sign or acknowledgment.

Immediately, Doe expected him to disappear as quickly as he'd appeared. To leave her furious again, if physically satisfied.

She was shocked, instead, when he gathered her in his arms and turned her to face him. He stroked her hair and kissed her forehead as if they had been doing so for years, their naked bodies melding into a tangle under the trees.

"What are you doing here?" she pried, afraid of the answer. "I mean.. you're not going to go again?"

"Of course I am." His calm, soothing voice delivered sad news so easily. "But I always stay for this."

She blinked as she was forced to watch his pale hand dance and play with her fingers between them, their hearts both still pounding.

"You... 'always' stay?" Confused, she talked herself into searching his face.

Oh by the gods, he was still beautiful. All neat, composed lines. Wisdom and strength both clear in his features.

He gave a short, almost pitiful laugh. "Always. This is not our first time."

Doe felt... unsettled. But he kept his silence, patiently waiting for her to follow the threads to the obvious conclusion.

He continued to caress and stroke her body as if he'd already learned how to play it like a lute.

And then, sure enough, she understood. "Why? Why would you make me forget every night?"

"So that one night, you might stop coming to look for me."

He didn't sound forlorn at the prospect that she might someday forget him, and that became the most heartbreaking part of all. Not that he couldn't deny their relationship, at least in dreams. They couldn't seem to keep their distance, neither could they be together. But what hurt the most was how easily he seemed to accept it.

She found herself holding him with a little more force; though, she doubted it would physically trap him anywhere, despite her desires. "You can't really want me to forget you... forget us. After everything we've seen together?"

"I would have you live out the rest of your days in utter happiness," he corrected. "I would have you forget me if you would smile every day for it. I could endure your happiness without me much easier than the pain I cause you..."

Well, if she had any remaining doubts over his person, they were put to rest. This was definitely the man she had fallen in loved with. Unfortunately, his words did little to seal wounds of the heart.

"So... you keep making me forget what I dream? How many times have we done this?"

"Spent time together in general, or...?

She gently shrugged. "Either?"

"Near a hundred..."

Her ancient love did sound solemn, if she could still call him hers.

"And you... you keep... tucking it away, every time? So I won't remember?"

Instinctively, Doe immediately began to dedicate some energy to the minor details. His stomach flexing against hers when he breathed, his breath sweeping over her bare skin.

"And you keep coming back... The longer I resist each time, the more reckless you grow to get my attention. You'll draw others if you're not careful."

She had every reason to be mad still. She'd gotten what she wanted, and yet, she didn't feel she'd won. For on the morrow, she'd never recall the passionate delights hidden in her memory.

And yet, she knew that even if she never remembered seeing him again... She would. In this way, in some dark pocket in the worlds between imagination and hallucination, they could be together.

She kissed Solas as much as she could before she felt dawn anchor her consciousness closer to her body, gently tugging her away. As their lips met again, and again, she felt a distinct lack of restraint on the other side. Here, it seemed, he'd come to accept the way things were much easier. He held no reservations about kissing her senseless, about confessing his regrets over their departure, or blithely sharing his fantasies with her- without fear of the harm he'd cause if she knew what she'd had and lost each night before she arose again.

For, sure as the sunrise itself, the next day, as with all the days before it, Doe woke to a harsh pang of missing him. She felt alone, abandoned, and wondered to herself for the thousandth time if he ever really loved her.

She'd already forgotten the state of her evening, nor remembered the position in which she'd lain. Too preoccupied with being distraught, she tossed the blanket from her body with no notion of how it got there, sat up, and buried her tired, mournful face in her hand.

"It's okay," she comforted herself in her loneliness, tiredly pushing stray strands of hair from her face. "Maybe I'll find him next time."

Yeah, okay, it's sad, but.. I can't help but think that this is what could so easily become of these two. A tragic love story for the ages (ironically).

Don't forget! If you want to see more like this, drop a review or add to favorites so I know where to dedicate my time next! Hope you enjoyed!