Dragon Age: Origins/Awakening, Part 7: PERMANENTLY FROZEN
Dragon Age: Origins - Part 7 is
PERMANENTLY FROZEN
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It had been such an ache, to breathe. To blink. To roll up on a stiffened elbow, to parse his bones from the hard-packed dirt of his outdoor cell. His ears flinched and throbbed with noise, and the poison that Antivan blonde had misted across the hall stones still felt as a hundred insects biting and stomping across what bare thigh his armor left exposed (for ease of movement, and silence, and perhaps just because the Maker was as cruel as any father could be).
Nathaniel felt the elf before he risked the pain of daylight to see him by, Madha'in a coiled bundle of fury and heat. The blonde Antivan, just within earshot, still giving himself away with sultry witticisms - Nathaniel could have dashed his life out through his eye with the grouting chuck he'd pried free and hidden up his greave, but -
Madha'in, ever contrary to expectation, was checking Nathaniel Howe over for serious injury, plying at his vulnerable spots inexpertly, watching for a flinch. His hands were knotted by sword and shield, knuckles scarred with trapwork and dark forearms starry with pale forge burns; and he worked over and under Nathaniel's leathers with a deftness more suited to whoring than interrogation.
Nathaniel was mortified by his arousal, having just returned home (for revenge) from a soujourn of indolent hedonism, and the largess of his bluster to follow was nothing worse than embarassment; for Mad Mahariel was not the same Dalishman as Madha'in-of-Sabrae and every Warden present could affirm this. Besides, Mahariel was supposed to wear tattooes head to toe, and stand a head taller than most elves, half-blooded said the rumors. Madha'in, as he introduced himself, was only any taller than most Dalish were over city elves, better fed and further tread. And there was not a tattoo to be found, just a map of scars from Denerim's Blight-end he and his kin had answered the Hero to attend.
It was concluded that Nathaniel would have a greater chance meeting the Hero of Ferelden, should he enlist with the very company that had acquisitioned (stolen) his father's assets. Else, he could die for no further purpose than as a brutal example on what gains an assasin could find stalking Grey Wardens; or escape to never further his goals as he was by all accounts now penniless (his family name ruined by Rendon Howe's exposed sadism).
"I am noticing a theme," the Antivan elf had purred at Madha'in from the cell door as Nathaniel was helped to his feet. "With you and wayward assassins."
Nathaniel did not want to lean quite so heavily on the Warden under his arm, but found the support unwavered, a surprising iron strength in the lean frame pressed warm against the side of his leathers, Madha'in shoeless in a belted linnen tunic that bore no Clan's embroider (for Nathaniel had a little experience with the wandering tribes, as did most travellers straying off roads, and knew the cant of their accents and the glow of their artistry and this man beside him was years apart from his ilk, either joined in late childhood or strayed in early adulthood, his accent peppered through by Ferelden commons).
"Shove it," Madh had answered the Antivan (tan and tattooed and impeccably coiffed, unintroduced), "And run the decision to the Commander, will you? We'll have four for the Joining after all."
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And a not very small, not so new part of Nathaniel argued against his dread; for Madha'in was a sympathetic friendly thing under all that pensive scowling, with hands that knew their way under armor; and half up a flight of stairs to a healer's office, the inky black spill of Madh's loose-braided hair was not unpleasant to rest a cheek against; and there was an apology strung delicate through the air between them, but Nathaniel was not sorry for the attempt to reclaim his birthright, and Madha'in could not be sorry for the death of Rendon Howe even if he were the culprit Mahariel (which, it had been said, was slightly racist to even suggest).
So up the stairs they went, new Warden and new recruit, Nathaniel politely interested in Madh's Dalish lineage (Sabrae, traded as a babe from Olnin that patrolled the coasts of Antiva, which explained the over-protective cousin they'd left); and Madh politely interested in Nathaniel's shemlen aspect on 'inheritance' (for Dalish owned naught, but had 'inherited' much, none of it enviable).
And, healed only to be poisoned again by bitter flaming demonblood, Nathaniel would again ache in the opening of his eyes, and feel Madha'in before he could see him, easing into the recognition of the body sitting them both upright so as not to reveal his growing affection (knowing damn well what Dalishmen thought of shems and their clumsy assumptions over things like personal space and bodily autonomy and elven sex appeal and Nathaniel needed friends in the Wardens if he was to find his revenge; otherwise he'd have risked it right then and there, risked a broken arm for two breaths of pleasure, risked the public rejection for the private victory; but found himself content, instead, to sit and rest his chin across the top of warm black hair the way a lumbering scar-mangled Mabari had trotted up to rest his chin against Madh's knee.
And though all Wardens grew accustomed to the poison in their veins, the hunger, the nightmares, the new heat, there would linger in Nathaniel's lungs a dull ache, as if coming home to find that home overtaken by strangers, as if meeting a stranger to find their company felt like coming home.
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