Solas was sitting in the rotunda with Varric. The dwarf had stopped in with tea. Solas suspected he did it on purpose. He knew Solas preferred almost anything else. The few times Varric had done it, he'd played it off as an honest mistake, but he'd done it too often for that to be the case now. He couldn't figure out what Varric's motivation was beyond amusing himself.
Solas was glad of the company though, Varric was fun to debate and definitely one of the better conversationalists about.
Cole suddenly burst into the room, his brow furrowed. "Holli won't wake up."
Both Varric and Solas were immediately out of their seats, the worst-case scenario running through their heads. She often made jokes about suicide and dying, and he worried with how much time she had spent repressing and pretending to be fine that the last tether keeping her here may have broken. He should not have left her alone; he should have tried to get her to talk more, to talk through her grief and guilt.
They burst into her room, his eyes immediately looking for blood and injury or even poison. There was a glass bottle beside her, which he immediately snatched up, trying to identify it. Lyrium.
"She's alive," Varric said with relief, crouching down beside her. He looked up at Cole. "Next time, specify that she's alive."
Cole nodded, a solemn look on his face. Holli did just appear to be asleep.
Varric tried to wake her, shaking her, calling her name, and even closing her nose. Her mouth just opened, and she breathed through that instead.
Solas crouched down on her other side; her magic was gently thrumming, and it took him a few moments to figure out what it was doing.
"Her magic is keeping her asleep," Solas said. "She has entered the Fade."
"To talk to Riluan?" Varric asked.
Given the animosity, Varric was surprised she would try.
"I don't know. But I'll find out," he said, taking a seat in the desk chair.
He didn't know what she had gone to the Fade for. Given she'd had the presence of mind to get Lyrium first, he knew the decision was intentional. He wondered if she had trapped herself in a dream or if she had been able to realise she was in the Fade on her own.
It wasn't difficult to find her. He immediately recognised her house from London. He went inside, the door unlocked. It was still a surprise how different the home was, mostly due to the decor and appliances. Truly, her world had developed some amazing things to make life easier for the common man.
He heard laughter, giggling, coming from upstairs. He found his way to her room, where she was sitting in the chair in front of her vanity. There was a woman styling her hair; he recognised her as Holli's mother despite the lack of resemblance between them. Holli was doing her make-up, and she was wearing a strapless silvery gown with beaded vines and flowers on the bodice and down the skirt.
"Solas!" She greeted him with a warm smile when she noticed him. "Mum, this is Solas. Solas, my mum, Candace."
"Hello," Candace greeted him with a similar smile to Holli's.
"A pleasure to meet you," he murmured.
"So polite," Candace crooned, causing a faint furrowing of Holli's brow.
"Holli," Solas began. "None of this is real; you're in the Fade again."
Holli looked to her mother. "Hey mum, you know what would go awesome with this dress? Those strappy silver heels you have? You know the ones?"
Candace clapped her hands together, the idea seemingly striking her as a particularly brilliant one. She hurried out of the room to go and fetch them. Holli's smile fell slightly.
"I know this isn't real, Solas; I'm not stupid. I remembered from the last time," she said. "But I like it here. My mum loves me, I have my home, and soon I'm meeting up with Curtis and Yvette so we can go to our school formal. I fell in love with this dress and saved up for so long to buy it."
She stood up and twirled around, the dress fanning out.
"Yes, it's beautiful," he agreed. "But doesn't it bother you that none of it is real?"
"Well, yeah, it bothers me. It should be real. I don't want to go back, Solas. I just want to stay here. I closed the Breach, and maybe the rifts will heal on their own. Can't I just have this?"
He felt for her, truly he did. She was devastated and willing to accept an imitation of her old life to cling to. And he had overheard what she'd said to Cole at the waterhole in the Western Approach about her mother. It was tragic.
"I know you have been through some unprecedented ordeals and lost... everything," he said, noting how just mentioning that seemed to irritate her. Having lost almost everything himself, he couldn't imagine any words that would have helped him feel better about the situation. "Myself and the others are here for you; you need not grieve alone."
"That's cool and all, and I'm... grateful, but you and the others can't bring my mum back; you can't send me home; you can't restore my school or bring back my friends or make me forget that my dad is a monster who sacrificed hundreds, maybe thousands of people in exchange for me."
No. No, they could not. He didn't know how to help this hurt. Neither did Cole, and that was his speciality. But he did know denying reality and hiding in the Fade wasn't the answer.
"If you stay here, your body will wither and die without sustenance."
She just gave a shrug. "Then what? I'll get to stay here forever?"
"I don't know if that is how it would work for you. I cannot know which world would lay claim to your soul."
That seemed to give her some pause; she was giving it careful consideration.
"And you'd give up on your dream of becoming a doctor?" He pressed.
"There aren't doctors here. Just herbalists."
"Don't you want to change that? You're an incredibly intelligent girl, Holli. The advances you could bring to this world, the healthcare you could provide... If you left here, you wouldn't really be leaving anything. None of it is real. Stay here, and you're leaving people who care about you."
She dropped back onto her seat, looking dejected. He did not feel good about ripping the fantasy from her. He crouched in front of her, looking up into her face, taking one of her hands in his.
"My heart breaks for you, da'len," he told her.
She let out a shuddering breath, looking at him with wet eyes. "I didn't even get to say goodbye to my mum that day I left for school. She was passed out, wasted from the night before. I just... rolled her over so she wouldn't choke on her own vomit, and I left. The last thing I ever said to my friends was that I had to piss."
Yes, that was...rather unfortunate.
"I don't know if I can get over this. I don't know how."
"It isn't something you get over. The pain will evolve; it will soften. And it will become a part of who you are. There is no getting around that."
"What do I do?" She squeaked out.
"As hard as it is, you just keep going."
Holli eventually nodded, wiping at her eyes. Her mother came back into the room, holding up the shoes triumphantly.
"Found them," she sang out.
Holli rushed to her, hugging her tightly. Candace appeared surprised but dropped the shoes and held her instead.
"What's wrong, baby?" She asked.
"Nothing," she whispered. "I'll see you when I get home."
Candace smiled softly, stroking Holli's hair, and the girl reluctantly pulled back, not entirely ready to go but willing at least.
-
Holli opened her eyes, her vision blurry and wet. She couldn't stop the flow, and she drew her knees up, sobbing into them.
She had been well aware that wasn't her real mother. How loving and kind she was was what made Holli realise she was in the Fade in the first place. Why couldn't it have been like that all the time? It wasn't just the death of her mother she was mourning; it was the loss of what could have been. If the woman could have kicked her bad habits and loved Holli like a mother was supposed to. And the guilt of not being there to give her the Narcan or call an ambulance. Holli was supposed to take care of her. Candace couldn't take care of herself.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and she flinched, looking up to see Varric there. Solas was sitting in the desk chair; Cole was standing awkwardly beside him. She scrambled to her feet, embarrassed to be seen this way.
"We're here if you need us," Varric told her.
Another broken sob escaped her. "I need a hug."
Cole was the first to move, scooping her up into a crushing hug, and she squeezed him back just as tight, her hands fisting into the back of his shirt as she cried into the crook of his neck. The floodgates had opened; she wasn't sure how to close them again.
She wasn't sure how or when they ended up on the floor, but she realised they were sitting down, she was still securely enfolded in his arms, and her tears had finally run dry. It had taken a long time, and now she was just an empty mess on the floor with Cole. He was leaning against the desk and she against him. She felt she should move; he might be uncomfortable, but she just felt drained. At some point Varric and Solas had left them, and she was grateful for it. She didn't like having an audience while she lost her shit.
Cole wasn't holding her as tightly, but his hand was stroking her hair soothingly. Her arms were only loosely around his waist now, and she was lulled into an almost trancelike state listening to his heartbeat and swayed by the gentle rise and fall of his chest.
"Sorry you got stuck with me," she muttered, her voice hoarse.
"I like being with you. You're my favourite person," he replied.
He said it so guilelessly and with no shame. She liked that about him – his ability to just say whatever he felt, no matter how embarrassing it might be. It wasn't exactly out of an I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude either. He was just... uniquely him.
She held onto him tighter. "I like that you're you, Cole," she said.
She had told him as much before, but she hoped he could feel how much she meant it.
"I like that you're you," he returned.
Holli didn't. There were lots of things about herself she would change if she could. But it was nice that he liked her anyway.
They stayed that way until she fell asleep.