Solas scoffs a rough denial, with his face pressed against her hair, still clinging. Forgive, what a joke! She had done nothing worth forgiving, except perhaps permit him far too much of her patience. But he knows, knows from hard experience, how unwilling one can be to accept it.

"Always," He says, instead, "What could I not forgive, when you are my heart?"

So too it must be for her, he thinks, he hopes. He cannot bear to be as it was before, giving himself by pieces to another, only to find he has nothing more to offer, and she disinterested and—

No.

But no, it was not that, it was nothing like that. Because she had relented, had given him this gift of knowledge, this weapon. And trusted him not to wield it. And what was he planning?

To save her, he reminded himself, To save what I can.

Solas pressed a silent kiss to the top of her head and held on, trembling slightly on each inhale. It was not weeping, not truly; no tears came, no sobs, only the damnable trembling. Like seeing someone stepping back from a long and terrible fall.

"This cannot have been our first argument together, can it?" He asks, eventually. They have been in conflict with one another for nearly every moment of their acquaintance, and despite that always been polite, or at least civil. This indignant shouting match had been neither, "Ridiculous."