When he first woke, everything was jarring.

The long sleep had left him sensitive. He stumbled into the sun with the bleary, blinking, eyes of a newborn. Adrift in a sea of sensation and noise. Wrapped in paper skin that seemed to catch upon everything. Snagging and tearing on every point of wrong in this terrible, mortal realm.

The sky was too bright, the inhabitants too loud, the Dreaming too far, and his limbs too heavy.

Waking had found him in less a plane, more a puzzle, made of ill-shaped pieces forced together into a tapestry of chaos. An abstract of existence that insisted he feel every one of its sharp edges. Every bump and crack along the seams where things did not fit.

Magic, once a comfort, now felt strange in his body. No longer a sigh, but a gasp: a kiss of life forced into his lungs before he'd needed the breath. For the first time a foriegn thing. Spellcasting had become a discordant mess; skipped notes on instruments played without fingers - without control. His hands were too big, too clumsy; as useless as limbs gone to sleep. Dragging like weights behind him while he walked the bustling streets of a new, sundered, Thedas.

Worse were these beings that called themselves people. Fractured ghosts of fallen empires. Their Common tongue a strange reflection of their cities: built a careless mix of culture, trade, and creole. All haphazardly thrown together in some approximation of civilization. He'd hoped learning it would grant him some insight, help him move among them more easily, but the only truth he could divine with it was how muddy the waters had become. It was all so different from what he'd left behind, the creatures unrecognizable.

Dwarves: scattered, orphaned, children wandering out of the dark corners that raised them. Squinting in the light as they searched for their missing lineage.

Qunari reduced to husks, toiling their lives away in the name of higher order - fearing freedom as much as magic. Lashed and yoked by their own institutions.

Humans: arrogant, unworthy, rulers sitting on thrones cast in stolen gold. On razed land. In palaces built by the hands of slaves. Nothing true to call their own.

And elves, so far removed from once was, living in subjugation or crushed under the weight of importance they'd lent their own misremembered history. Serving tyrants as gods, sanctifying the collars they bound them with.

And all of them busy.

Moving, talking, taking, yelling, touching.

Demanding his attention.

Daring him to care while they tossed him from hand to hand, in alleyways and tight streets, like a river tosses a barrel.

Even before, he'd never cared for crowds. These ones were worse. Before uthenera he'd largely kept to himself. He'd become accustomed to the peace that solitude offered, and did not want for more. The age he'd spent building a rebellion, playing strategist and lonely leader to countless conflicts, raised him to a status that left him untouchable in every sense of the word. He could not recall the last time he'd had his arm clasped in friendly greeting, or a hand rest upon his shoulder. Those that followed him paid their respects in words, or acts of service, not with casual affection. As the Dread Wolf it was easy to be alone. To be untouched.

It left him remarkably unaccustomed to the way these beings laid hands upon each other. Upon him. Without reason or request.

Moreover, in Elvhenan touch was reserved for intimacy. It was… personal. Deliberate. Not like here, where it served as punctuation, emphasis, and tone for everything from sly seduction to drunken bar fight. What had once been rare and profound was now cheapened to common parlance.

With it they did not ask, they assumed.

But this world had been cut off from its dreams - it's emotion - and lacked any of the gentle nuance of his time. The ebb and weave of energy that once flowed through every encounter was now startlingly absent. All that remained was the fumbling attempts to fill that space with meaning. In their confusion they'd filled it with touch instead. He could not blame them for that ignorance. These disconnected beings had no choice but to rely upon the physical to express themselves when they lacked so much.

Though that understanding did little to acclimate him. Their dependence on it was maddening. No matter where he roamed he could not escape the constant, incessant, contact.

Fen'Harel might have been untouchable, but a wandering pauper was not. And donning that guise was crucial to gathering agents and information. Though in it he seemed to collect more bruises instead. He wore a growing spray of colour scattered across his shoulders, back, and arms. From bumps and jostles. Hands on his body and in his pockets. Shoves and pushes. People rushing about with no time to watch their path. Travelling anywhere unmolested required striking a balance between politeness and self-defense he had yet to master. He longed for his heavy armour to protect him. Gleaming, fine, and trimmed with furs.

But a simple man had no need of such things - so he wore rags instead - and though they made good camouflage they made a poor buffer between him and the crowd.

One night, in a tavern that boasted standing room only, he'd caught a sharp elbow in his back that left a mark he nursed for days. An afternoon later, a knock into a wall at a similar venue gifted him a splitting headache and a swollen eye to match. That was not even counting the knots he'd received just by entering the building.

He'd have avoided these places if he'd had the choice, but navigating this era's prejudice was a challenge he had not anticipated. Few places served elves, and fewer still cared to grant them the comfort of a warm bed. Without the Eluvian network at his command to cross the continents, and still months away from reforging his connections, his options for food and lodging were extremely limited. He could only patronize roadside inns with bloodstains on the floorboards and no signs above the door. Places people pushed and clamoured. Where drunken men stumbled about with mugs of half-drunk ale that sloshed onto the floor and soaked into his clothes. Where weary bartenders didn't meddle in the fights that broke out over coin and cards, and would look the other way when knives were brandished.

Though many of his first nights were spent sleeping rough, sometimes he was fortunate enough to find an innkeep that took pity on his heavy frown and stained shirt and grant him a night in the larder. There he'd sleep on a bed of hay with a burlap sack for a pillow, and wake with new bruises in the shape of every hand he'd caught the day before. Even a friendly pat from a proprietor on his way out might as well have been the lash of a whip for all the comfort it offered.

Hard hands took precious little to provoke too, he found, and humans in particular were quick to give them out. On one occasion all it took was a ripe apple on a fruit stand to win himself their cruelty. In a forgotten moment of curiosity he'd reached for it, and the old farmer caught him round the wrist so fast he'd not seen it coming; tight as a vise and just as mean.

Vagabond, the grip accused. Rabbit! Thief!

Like a shackle the ugly, gnarled fingers held him fast. His furious jailer glaring, with twisted mouth, demanding he answer for the crime of ignorance. Few elves dared to touch the wares before showing enough coin to prove worthy of considering them. Those who didn't abide these unspoken laws were either brave or stupid… and inexperience had made him the latter.

Though he yielded in the end - offering an empty promise to seek out goods more suited for his kind - his wrist burned where the man had held him. Just a few seconds of contact was long enough to feel branded, and by the time he left the market behind his idle rubbing had done his tender skin far more damage that the grip had.

The experience was unsettling, and the locals' fear of magic made it impossible for him to defend himself appropriately if it had escalated. He'd already seen the danger in being identified as an apostate hanging from the gallows as a warning. It made him rethink his choice to move about in plain sight.

Better to stick to corners.

It was that decision to favour darker streets that led him to feel a curious brush of fingers across his belt some time later. So light and careful that the attempted robbery could easily have gone unnoticed if he were any less perceptive… would have, if he'd spent any more days building up a callous to this world. His meagre coin would be gone long before he had ever thought to check the purse. Instead, he caught the hand in his own just as it had finished cutting through the strings.

Immediately the offender dropped their blade and tried to flee. Yanking their arm back with all their might - to no avail. This time his strength made him the victor; holding tight as they flailed, helpless, in his grasp.

Vagrant, he thought, pitilessly.He had no patience left for these beings and their trespasses! Urchin! Thief!

… elf?

When he tore back the offender's cowl the terror-struck face that stared back was not one of a greedy creature, as he'd expected, but that of an elven child. Filthy, thin, and barely tall enough to reach his waist. The youth had not noticed his ears were long like theirs, as he kept them hidden in the folds of a cloak where they would not cause him trouble. His build was tall and heavy for an elf of this time - even with his sharp features he passed well for human with his head covered.

When he kneeled and pulled his own hood down the child had the good grace to stop struggling and look ashamed. They'd not meant to take from their own, and they weren't looking for much. A few loose coin, if that, to bring back to the others.

And there were others.

He could sense their eyes watching from somewhere beyond the stack of crates full of rotted, sodden, grain behind them. This child was one of several: hungry, and desperate.

Solas raised his empty hands, to show he held no weapons, then fished in one of his pockets until he found a small charm. A simple trinket, something he'd dug out of the dirt a few days past. Near worthless - but it might fetch a few sovereigns for the weight of silver if sold to the right person. Rich to a beggar.

He turned the child's palm up within his own, and pressed the pendant into it. The youth took it readily, their face awash in a strange mix of gratitude and fear. As a parting gift he flashed a small, reassuring, smile: no harm would come to them in spite of the attempted offence.

The child did not thank him for the charity. Simply turned and ran.

As he pulled his hood back up his thoughts lingered on the irony that the first truly gentle touch he'd received since waking was from a thief. The most desperate were often the most kind to their fellows. It was a reminder of his purpose, his sympathies, and it won a crack in the heart he'd hardened.

Perhaps they were not all so terrible.

Hours later, his palm still itched where the little hand had slipped from his grasp.

It would be a while before he felt such gentleness again.

In the year he spent in the world before the events of the Conclave Solas had nearly perfected his façade. Now looking less like a beggar, more of a humble hedge mage; he learned to disappear in the crowd rather than fight against it. Evade capture and notice… finally be less of a target for all those clumsy hands.

By then he'd learned their tongues, their maps, and their calendars. Their storied histories, tales, and cultures. He slept in ruins and forests to collect their memories. He knew where it was safe to rest and where he was likely to get a blade against his throat. He'd even learned to enjoy some of their food and drink. His tolerance — dare say he, acceptance — of the world was growing with time spent in it.

He also learned, once more, how to keep to himself. Until he couldn't anymore.

Until the Conclave, the explosion, Corypheus, and the strange elven survivor that had taken the Anchor. If he ever wanted to see the world made whole again he had no choice but to surrender himself to the cause that took them prisoner. To become a part of something.

She was a strange thing, the Dalish. An elf in name only: small and thin, a thief like the child he'd met in the market. A spy, maybe. Out of place, not unlike him, so far from her savage home in the forest. He wondered how she'd even managed to find herself here. Her kind was superstitious. Defensive and territorial - he'd had run-ins with them before. They'd find no common ground once she woke; she'd extend no thanks to him for keeping her alive.

More than anything, she was unfortunate.

Yet she pulsed with his power - he felt it each time he put his fingers to her wrist to count her heartbeats. They were linked, for better or worse this mistake had connected them. No matter her origins, their differences, he would need to get closer to her.

To all of these people.

It was not the most comfortable of arrangements.

Initially, the biggest problem was simply in the shrinking space between himself and others. It reminded him too much of those taverns.

He was not given much freedom at first, despite walking willingly into the viper's nest of ex-Templars, spies and justice-seekers. Not a single hour passed without a soldier in his periphery. Even his meagre quarters - a single-room cabin on the outskirts of Haven - was well guarded. Though they were not so brash to post a man at the door the implication was still clear: trust was hard-earned. He'd hardly won it simply by showing up. And while it was uncomfortable not to be granted any real privacy at least his jailers weren't unkind, even if they were mostly comprised of Chantry servants. It was more than he could say for most he'd met.

Those first weeks in the motley crew he spent at study. Learning the habits of each of his new companions.

The Seeker who led them was particularly ruthless. Her hands were most comfortable at rest upon a blade, and though it should have made him wary he felt safer in her presence than with others. She was unshakable, stoic — but also predictable. She had no time for cheer or prejudice, and it oddly made her more companionable than most. A considerable time passed before he saw her smile, and the first spark of laughter he heard from her was so startling he'd have thought her possessed if he did not know her order nigh incapable.

The Commander at her side was made of similar stock, though capable of letting the tension ease from his shoulders when the day was out. He would readily share a drink or a story with his men, civilians, or the acolytes who filled the tavern most evenings. He rode the soldiers hard for training but it came from a place of heart. Most importantly, he was kind to the servants when others were not. His hands were not wielded as weapons, but like those of a parent: gently, and with guidance.

The Diplomat lived up to her name. Busier than the other two, so seen more rarely, she was most at home wearing an impeccably tied sash and an unwavering smile. Never without a list of tasks, titles, and suggestions. She was the first to greet him formally - respectfully - as a peer who brought something valuable to their cause. And she was the only one who could coax a smile from the Spymaster.

That one, The Nightingale, was a risk. Sharp, devout, and dedicated to her cause: Leliana proved a formidable opponent. Though she accepted the tale he told of his origins she was cautious by nature, and responsible for keeping him under guard. Both overtly, and in the form of plainclothes agents tasked to watch for signs of subterfuge. It was her, more than anyone else, who forced him out of his quiet cabin and back into the crowd so his isolation would not make him the target of suspicion. Thankfully, most of Haven's populace was indifferent to his presence. If he followed the rules set out for him, and did not forget his place, they were happy to live and let live.

Except for one.

The dwarf was immediately a problem.

A friend not so much made as forced upon him.

Where others were polite, he was audacious; loud where they were quiet. He could not simply get by coexisting with his peers but instead insisted upon their company. No one spent an evening alone with their thoughts if he could help it. Always eager to spend his apparently bottomless supply of gold to buy rounds of ale, food, and song to all who'd accept it… not that many refused. As the only one to attempt it, Solas was immediately singled out as someone most in need of the companionship.

Varric was unapologetically gregarious, witty, affable; it made him friends easily. But there was a calculating intelligence behind his easy smile that begged some caution. The uncanny way he managed to get people to open to him was more than simply an abundance of charm. Not unpredictability, it didn't take long for his status as a 'prisoner' to be reduced to an inside joke. He quickly had a way into every pocket, cupboard, and secret in the camp.

He also had a knack for clapping Solas on the arm when they talked — or when Varric talked to him, more accurately - and he was far too observant to be ignorant of the effect it had. It forced him to learn to accommodate the closeness — the 'friendship' — much more quickly than he'd like. Any discomfort he showed was part of the game, and assured the dwarf his victory: it played into the intent to disarm him. Nudge him just enough to shake loose the mask and see what was hiding underneath.

It was clever, both to find that weakness and to capitalize on it - he'd grant him that. If there was one thing Varric was good at, it was rooting out the cracks in people's armour and worming his way inside.

The Iron Bull, when he joined them, was an even larger concern. Beyond his position as a loyalist Qunari spy he was also exceedingly good at extracting information and throwing people off their guard. He got under his skin immediately. Surely, the careful use of touch he employed was for the same manipulative intent as the dwarf. Seduction when it pleased him, intimidation for the rest. Or just to be annoying. Whenever they shared space there were massive hands on his shoulders and back. An elbow in his side that could throw him to the ground with barely an effort. Booming laughter, and careful eye; watching him as he watched everyone else.

Bull talked with his hands, but with enough care to make it clear every brush of his fingers was intentional. With the Qunari nothing was truly by accident.

Between the two it was trial by fire. By all accounts it should have been made much more accustomed to enduring physical contact day in and day out. It should not still make him flinch and fidget after months of immersion.

And, for the most part, he did get used to it.

She was an outlier.

He never got used to Lavellan.

Always moving, always touching, when she talked. She was incapable of sharing space with anyone for even five minutes without some sort of contact. Worse, completely unapologetic about it. No consideration for polite convention, nor boundary of sex and station. Not a day passed by since her waking where she did not lay a hand upon him. From a playful shove when he made her laugh, a thumb swiped across his jaw to clean away the dirt, to her marked hand around his wrist to pull him toward an artifact she'd found.

Once, after he'd stumbled fallen into mud, she walked up and began brushing the caked sods of grass and detritus off the back of his thighs without even bothering to pause their conversation. Shamelessly, she hit her hand across the back of his pants - upon his rear - with enough force to make him jump. Then teased him for his reaction with a cheeky implication about celibacy.

Was she flirting?

Even the Qunari had limits.

But then, somewhere along the line, something changed… and those little touches started to become more deliberate. Careful. Soft. He started to enjoy them. Even find excuses to invite them. Then, within that space he'd curated, he began to notice little things about her he hadn't before.

The softness of her hands and the callouses on her fingers. That she was right-handed, but always ate with her left. She enjoyed roast quail, but hated preparing it. There were freckles on her nose. A handful of thin scars on her scalp. A crooked tooth that lent to a charming smile.

And her eyes the most lovely shade of green.

He could not say when it had happened, or even what had happened - there was no singular event that stood as the point at which camaraderie turned to attraction. Yet the space between them had become electric. Every moment of fallen silence, breathless; charged with possibility.

In the span of a short year she went from unremarkable stranger, locked in shackles and thrumming with stolen magic, to an obsession he could hardly go an hour without thinking on. A puzzle. She was fascinating. Consuming. Distracting. Full of questions - brimming with curiosity so unlike her kin and always eager to bring it to his door to pull him into a conversation that could easily go on for hours. All the while every innocent, fleeting, caress stirred some part of him that he'd not felt for eons.

He wanted more.

More closeness, more touch, more of everything she had to offer. He could happily spend a day waiting to hear her ask a single question. To grasp but a sliver of time where her attention was focused solely upon him. Each day he woke with a hundred stories to tell with the hope that just one could make her smile.

Now when she laid a hand upon his arm it was not startling, but fond. The smudge upon his cheek left on purpose in the hope she would brush it away. The fingers around his wrist, welcome.

And her mouth, inviting.

Somehow he had grown attached.

It should not have happened. It wasn't supposed to happen. It didn't make any sense! Mere happenstance brought them together. Lavellan was a victim of his mistakes and a reminder of the fragile mortality inflicted on these creatures. She was small, and diminished, and unfortunate - nothing but a vessel for powers she did not even understand and yet…

He longed.

Her body was the first thing he'd reached for since the apple in the market, and once he tasted her, so much sweeter, something inside him began to burn. He was fire and she was fuel. For the first time he wanted to be touched. More than that - he was ravenous for it. At night he dreamed of it. Thought upon her hands, in the dark, when he knew better. Recalled their bumps, scars, and the texture he'd already memorized. Wondered how they'd feel upon his shoulders, his face, running over his back and chest. Down his stomach.

A tight grip on his-

She had made touch a haven instead of a trespass, and it would consume him if he let it.

He tried to abstain.

Cut it off at the source. Enforce a polite distance and the professionalism he'd failed to employ in the beginning. 'Harden your heart', he told her, but could not do so himself. It was already too late. Even after pushing her away every glance he stole set his pulse alight, a hope beyond his better judgement that there existed some slim possibility she might forgive him. Accept him. Tear open his chest to pull out all of his secrets; burn the lies out of his very blood until he was cleansed of all his sins… and she could hold his heart.

Somehow he knew - the first time she'd rest her palm upon his cheek and he did not flinch - that she would win him in the end.

When they finally came together it was devastating. Divine. They pitched, terrified, over the edge of something unknown and clung to each other through the fall. Not knowing where they'd land. She cradled the parts of him too fragile to have ever shown another; gifted him strength with her devotion. She sat with his confessions, naked and unashamed, and heard the truths he'd never spoken aloud. Then she gave him mercy; her kisses sweeter than wine, her touch more nourishing than the finest food. Within it he was home. Without it he was lost. He was addicted to her.

Some nights the cravings were so strong it would pull him from sleep. He would wake gasping, slick with sweat, from a dream of Dreaming. Afraid it still had him. Instead of Waking, he was still lost there - like his kin. Left to wile away the eons in the solitude he'd once desired. Without body, form, or feeling.

Without her.

The first time it happened he rose from his bed in a daze. Confused, consumed by something he had no name for. He only knew she lay at its centre. His skin on fire, he wandered to her room like a man possessed. Starved and savage, ready to tear her apart just for a taste, for relief… for something! Yet so fragile that he crumbled the moment she laid eyes upon him.

Once she opened the door he lunged: fingers sliding over her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, as he crashed into her. Trembling and afraid; lonely in a way he'd never known. His skin had never hungered before. It was an emptiness that ravaged him.

Without the nuance of dream and emotion from his time, without words to describe it, he could only want to fill that void with touch.

Somehow she knew, when she saw him standing there, what he did not: how to purge this fever from his blood. She took him by the hands and led him to her bed. Though he'd not come there looking to slake his lust, what he needed was more than just release, it still wrecked him all the same. He succumbed in moments. Still half-dressed, held safe in the cradle of her arms, as she ran her hands upon his paper skin.

Stroking, caressing, kissing, needing, touching.

His shoulders, face, back, and chest - he was unmade. Delicate fingers eased him out of his trousers and held him to her belly. All softness and heat. Until he was surrounded. Then there were nails on his chest and lips upon his jaw and suddenly he was reeling.

She held him through the fall, as she always had. Caught his mouth when he cried out with a broken, reedy, gasp across her lips - not quite a prayer, not quite a curse.

In the sweet, quiet, after of hitched breaths and whispered oaths she kissed his reddened cheeks so sweetly he would not dare feel ashamed by what only her touch could do. What he needed, now, every hour of every day. From her fingers on his wrist to count his heartbeats to the gentle comfort of her hand smoothed down his back.

In this world of noise and chaos the touch that filled those silent spaces left by all they'd lost had become something sacred. Something better.

Now when he woke without it, it was jarring.