Turning in Revolution; Chapter 4 [Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany; PG-13]
Title: Turning in Revolution (4/?)
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Characters: Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany. F!Hawke/Isabela implied.
Wordcount: 3,245
Disclaimer: I do not own DAII. Believe me, I would love to, but I don't.
Authors' Notes: Nathaniel is, as always, an exceedingly nice guy. The voyage to Weisshaupt gets unexpectedly interesting. The rating, I fear, is likely to rise very, very soon. Also, the next chapter has guaranteed cameos by at least three familiar faces...
Chapter 4: Fire Starting
"There's a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark,
Finally, I can see you crystal clear..."
-Adele, "Rolling in the Deep"
***
Nathaniel takes the First Warden’s flawed deductive reasoning philosophically - “It is better than the alternative, isn’t it?” - but he is less than pleased with her announcement that she is to accompany him to the capital. “I had thought,” he says, furrowing his brow, “that Stroud indicated some time ago that it would be best for all concerned if you remained here.”
“Stroud is in Val Royeaux,” she says flatly. “And he is outranked.”
“I do not like it,” he tells her with a scowl.
“I do not believe you have a say in the matter,” she replies; now that the hysteria has passed, she feels calm and very tired. She goes to the wardrobe and draws out her dress uniform, which she has worn perhaps thrice since joining the order; it is the finest thing she owns and she does not doubt that it will see plenty of wear now, if she is to attend two kings at once.
Nathaniel curses under his breath. “You are taking this well.”
She shrugs and points out, “I do not have a say, either.”
He watches her lay out the uniform and begin the process of packing for a long journey. Finally, he says, “And what of your stray?”
“I suppose,” she says softly, “that it is time for him to move on.”
He is silent for a time, then tells her, “Life is short, Bethany. Especially for ones such as us.” The words are spoken with a quiet finality that belies their message of selflessness; she wonders how difficult they were to say. She finds she cannot look at him, fearful of seeing the price of such altruism writ plain upon his features. She does not think she can bear it.
“You of all people should not say such things to me,” she replies after she has wrestled her guilt down far enough that she can speak over it.
“Maybe not,” he tells her. He comes to stand behind her now, his hands warm upon her shoulders. “But some things must be said, and there is none other to say them.”
“I do not want your… blessing,” she says, with as much venom as she can inject into the word.
“And I do not want to give it, but here we are.” His chuckle is devoid of all humor. She looks down at her hands, clasped so tightly that the knuckles are white. After awhile, he removes his hands; footsteps, the creak of the door hinge, and he is gone, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
***
She recalls very clearly the first time she met Nathaniel. Early in her tenure with the Wardens, she was plagued by nightmares, and she suffered them without the quiet stoicism of her new compatriots. She woke with tears on her cheeks, screams and whimpers dying in her throat as she shot from the dubious comfort of sweat-soaked blankets, searching with wild eyes for enemies who were never there. New recruits were given leeway with this sort of behavior, and to be honest, she realizes now that no one expected her to last very long, the way she carried on at the time. But in her first year with the Wardens, she was beyond shame; her own sheltered frailty was a difficult lesson to swallow, and she had feared, then, that she would lose her mind long before the taint took her.
And so she dreamed, tossing and turning, but on her first mission with him, she woke to his face, and not the empty silence of her tent. She can recall sheepishly now that she attacked him with her bare hands - a mercy she hadn’t had the wherewithal to try magic - and he brushed her blows off as though she were no more than a kitten batting at his chest. She had gone from swatting at him to crying into his jerkin, and his arms had come around her back to hold her, gently. When she at last felt empty of everything - tears, bitterness, even nightmares - she had felt, for the first time, as though she might be all right.
He hadn’t said anything at the time, only offered her a handkerchief and a compassionate squeeze of the shoulders with his large, gentle hands. She had tried her best to offer a smile - shaky and watery as it was - and he had graciously not commented on her teary, swollen face. Instead, he had told her, quietly, It would be a comforting lie to tell you that this will fade with time, but it does become… somewhat easier. Once it was clear that she had regained her equilibrium, he had left her kneeling there, in the disheveled pile of blankets, as though he understood that she needed a few moments to compose herself in solitude. Even then, he seemed to know instinctively when to offer her space.
He was quiet and grim, then. It was said he was in mourning, although no one would quite disclose for whom, and she dared not ask him herself. His silence suited her, and hers seemed to suit him, and so they gravitated towards each other based, perhaps, on this single similarity. At his side, she has slowly recovered her emotional strength; in those early years, he was like a comfortingly solid wall which she could hide behind whenever her sanity was threatened. What he saw in her then she cannot say, but it does seem to her that they have, over time, come to heal each other. He has remembered how to smile, and she has remembered how to laugh, and in their slow and quiet progression from unlikely friends to something more - as though they have all the time in the world at their disposal instead of a handful of years - they have both discovered that despite the darkness that fills them, they are still capable of affection.
She thinks of this in the few hours meant for rest before the journey, and by the pattern of his breathing she can tell that he is also awake, although his thoughts are, as always, a mystery to her. He is once again quiet and grim, the way he was then, and she is off balance, and it feels as though they have somehow stepped back in time. She has always treasured their silences, filled with the easy comfort of understanding; they are silent now, but she is not comforted, and she does not know where to begin breaking the silence to unravel the knot in her stomach. They have never spoken of the future and they have rarely had cause to reminisce about the past; this is the first time she finds herself regretting the single-minded focus on the present which has helped her keep if not exactly cheerful then at least peaceful.
When she closes her eyes at last, it is only to dream. In the dream, she is dying; she feels the darkness creeping through her blood, an invader bent on her destruction. She cannot see except in nauseating swathes of too-bright color, and every breath is labored. She wants, very badly, to lie down and let herself be taken, for she is too ill and tired to be frightened. Death, she thinks, will be a release from the waves of pain and the feeling of violation. It will be a release from her magic - her curse - and her weakness. It is fluttering inside her chest, pushing vainly against the darkness, or perhaps the fluttering is her heart. She cannot tell anymore.
A blessed coolness washes over her, bringing with it a few moments of lucidity and relief. From the incomprehensible golds, browns, blues, and blacks smeared across her vision, his face comes into focus. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a sharp crease between his eyebrows; she can feel him in her blood as he pushes the taint back. He is strong, stronger than anyone she has ever known, but she knows he is not strong enough. Let me go, she whispers.
The flash of anger in his eyes - hot and blue and foreign - makes her wonder if she is slipping away again; the crease between his eyebrows deepens. He looks to be in pain himself, as though he has taken her suffering into his own blood to ease it. I will not.
I cannot -
He cups her face in his hand, and his touch is as cool as his magic. You can. You must hold on.
Wearily, she obeys.
Colors swirl around her; the darkness whispers in its thousand sibilant voices. His hand becomes her father’s, cool and wide against her fevered face. She reaches up to touch his beard with little-girl hands but finds only air. Her father’s face fades into nothing. She feels fire under her skin, in her blood, licking at her bones as her heart pounds like a drum at a frantic tempo. The voices chitter all around her, and she can almost understand their words, if she concentrates.
She doesn’t want to concentrate.
She wraps her arms around herself to quell her sudden shaking, and Nathaniel’s quiet, gravelly voice whispers, Peace. You are safe now. His voice chases back the other voices in the darkness, but they are still there, on the periphery of her consciousness, and they promise death, or madness. There is a distant roar, growing in intensity; she wakes with its ringing in her ears to another snowy pre-dawn and Nathaniel’s hand brushing her hair from her forehead. She gulps in greedy lungfuls of air, trying to still her heart from the effects of the nightmare; she does not remember the last time she had one so vivid, or so incomprehensibly terrifying.
Nathaniel does not say anything - he never has, not since the first time - but he watches her with his usual quiet concern until she can bring his face into focus and shake off the remnants of terror. “It is nearly time,” he tells her. “I thought it better to wake you.”
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is almost calm. “Thank you.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and finds she can stand, although the cold stone floor makes her shiver. “I will be but a moment,” she promises, composing herself, erasing her distress, refusing to think of what such a dream could mean in light of her imminent departure. “You should go on to the mess hall,” she tells him, and even manages to smile. “Get some breakfast, before all we’ve got is boiled oats and bad tea.”
He tilts her chin up with one finger, places a cool kiss upon her lips, and tells her, “Don’t be long.”
***
There are seven of them going to the capital, which seems like a small number only until one takes into account the relative capability of even one Warden to take on half a dozen darkspawn at once with a healthy chance of survival; she doubts anything short of the Starkhaven army is going to cause them difficulty. She has known most of the men for years, and she is fond enough of a number of them: Jazek, a mountain of a man originally from a village not an hour from Weisshaupt, his grin easy and his sword enormous; Koris, a Nevarran whose diminutive stature belies a speed that is almost not to be believed; Darek and Romik, looking like twins in their identical dwarven plate; Lerrel with his dark eyes and Dalish longbow.
There is a great deal of good-natured ribbing about their mission, warnings that getting fat and lazy won’t be tolerated, innuendoes about the feather beds they will no doubt be sleeping in once they reach the palace, requests for souvenirs to be brought back. People pat her on the back - and the stomach, proving once again that rumor travels at a speed not to be believed - and wish her well. She can’t watch as Lerrel and Syrinn say good-bye; it is obvious to anyone with eyes that Syrinn resents her intrusion into what was supposed to be his place. The First Warden puts in an appearance, says a few brusque words, then strides back into the keep, and that is the end of it.
She turns and follows the others through the archway leading to the world outside, thinking that it feels very strange to be marching away with a pack of supplies on her back after years of watching others from the courtyard. Koris strikes up a marching song in a clear tenor and the others join in, one by one, although no one else has a voice nearly as fine. She adds her soprano to the second verse, thinking that it does feel very much like they are setting out on holiday.
Nathaniel, who is the only one not singing - possibly because he could not carry a tune in a bucket and Koris has threatened to maim him if he ever forgets it - shakes his head and says, “It’s a good thing stealth isn’t our first priority.”
“If someone attacks us,” Koris says as the song goes on around him, “just sing a few notes. Problem solved.”
Everyone laughs, even her, and she can almost forget about the dream and Anders, who she is leaving behind.
***
Three days into their journey, just past a small village clearly struggling to survive a poor harvest, trouble finds them. The landscape here is rocky, with endless hiding spots available, and they do not detect the ambush until they are in the middle of it. An arrow scrapes her ear, the unexpected sting of pain so sharp that she gasps. A second stops a handbreadth from her eye and falls harmlessly to the snow, deterred by a sudden crackling field of repellant magic so intense that the snow around her feet doesn’t so much melt as it evaporates.
Everything after that happens in an instant.
The bandits seem to melt out of the scrubby brush to bear down on them from both sides of the valley. Her staff is in her hands, the hair at the back of her neck rising as she flings spells at their attackers. Beside her, she hears the rhythmic draw and snap of Nathaniel’s bowstring. Above the ring of steel on steel, the sky blooms with fire and lightning, and not all of it is hers. With a cool detachment, she aims and fires, concentrates and releases, ignores the screams of the wounded and dying as she rains down death on the archers stationed at the lip of the crevasse. Arrows are flying around her, but nothing touches her. From behind the unyielding barrier, she watches with the dispassionate concentration she has perfected over the years as they fall - one, two, five, seven, ten, fourteen. Then only silence remains, until one of the Wardens - all standing - cheers and the others around him take it up.
Before she realizes what is happening, she is being picked up and whirled around; she barely keeps her balance when Jazek sets her down. “Andraste’s knickers, woman, since when can you do that?”
“Stop shaking her, Jazek, you’ll hurt the baby,” Lerrel tells him crossly.
“There is no baby,” Bethany insists, but no one is listening to her. Romik pulls out a flask from somewhere, as if by magic - no real surprise though - and Koris starts tossing the corpses for valuables. Nathaniel and Lerrel join him, and no one at all is looking at her as a hand snakes out from behind a boulder and yanks her into its shadow.
She doesn’t scream - quite - because the hand has the feel of magic about it, and it is a magic she knows almost as well as her own. “What are you doing?” she hisses as he pulls her around to face him. “What are you doing here?”
He ignores both questions. His hands are in her hair, pulling it back from her cheeks. He hisses in irritation as his hand comes away from her ear bloody. “You could have died,” he accuses. “If you cannot watch for your own safety, one would think that Nathaniel, at least-”
“You’re crazy,” she informs him in the same angry, hushed tone. She is hyper-aware of the others, only steps away from the shallow crevasse he has pulled her into. Darek belches; Romek laughs. Lerrel appears to be disputing the ownership of the bandit leader’s particularly nice ring with Koris. None of them seem aware of her absence, or of the man who has followed them from Weisshaupt with, apparently, the misguided idea that he needs to protect her. “It’s a scratch. I have been taking care of myself for ten years; I don’t need you, or Nathaniel, or anyone to-”
His magic slams into her without any finesse; quite aside from the scratch on her ear, every tiny bruise and ache she has developed over the last several days vanishes in its wake, along with her breath. “You clearly have no idea what you need,” he cuts off, his face twisted in rage.
She almost responds, the last thing I need is you; she wants to say it, but she is caught by the fear and fury in his eyes, and cannot say anything at all. His hands are still in her hair and her heart is still pounding with adrenaline and it seems the most inevitable thing in the world when he drags her against his chest and crushes his mouth down on hers.
For years, she has labored under the delusion that Anders is a gentle man; every word and caress that she has guiltily allowed herself to imagine has been filled with the tenderness her life has lacked. He is not gentle now, but then, none of this is how she imagined it would be.
His hand in her hair is almost painful as it drags her head back, but she allows it, allows her lips to part, allows herself to feel the need burning through her, like a tempest, like fire, like magic. It is unlike anything she has ever experienced, except perhaps the darkness which nearly devoured her, once; much like she did then she feels completely outside of her own control, and if the feeling this time is glorious, it is also acutely terrifying.
It lasts an eternity, but only moments; she hears footsteps and someone calling her name - Nathaniel - and sanity returns. She pushes herself away, wild-eyed, breathless, transformed. He lets her go, but she can see, in his eyes, the same indefinable something that is now burning at her core; he does not need to speak to tell her it is not over. One way or another, they have merely begun.
The footsteps come closer; she raises her voice and croaks out, “Can’t a woman use the privy in peace?” There is male laughter, a crude comment about the inconvenience of robes, another about babies, then the sound of a scuffle, a shouted apology. The footsteps retreat.
For a few more moments, she holds his gaze. She runs her hands over her hair, her robes, trying to put herself to rights. He watches her do this, silently, and then he mouths, go. She knows that she should tell him the same, that she should make him go, anyplace at all as long as it isn’t here, but the words refuse to come. The only thing she can tell him, it seems, is stay safe.
On to chapter 5!
Author: chaineddove
Fandom: Dragon Age II
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama/Romance
Characters: Anders/Bethany, Nathaniel/Bethany. F!Hawke/Isabela implied.
Wordcount: 3,245
Disclaimer: I do not own DAII. Believe me, I would love to, but I don't.
Authors' Notes: Nathaniel is, as always, an exceedingly nice guy. The voyage to Weisshaupt gets unexpectedly interesting. The rating, I fear, is likely to rise very, very soon. Also, the next chapter has guaranteed cameos by at least three familiar faces...
Chapter 4: Fire Starting
"There's a fire starting in my heart,
Reaching a fever pitch and it's bringing me out the dark,
Finally, I can see you crystal clear..."
-Adele, "Rolling in the Deep"
***
Nathaniel takes the First Warden’s flawed deductive reasoning philosophically - “It is better than the alternative, isn’t it?” - but he is less than pleased with her announcement that she is to accompany him to the capital. “I had thought,” he says, furrowing his brow, “that Stroud indicated some time ago that it would be best for all concerned if you remained here.”
“Stroud is in Val Royeaux,” she says flatly. “And he is outranked.”
“I do not like it,” he tells her with a scowl.
“I do not believe you have a say in the matter,” she replies; now that the hysteria has passed, she feels calm and very tired. She goes to the wardrobe and draws out her dress uniform, which she has worn perhaps thrice since joining the order; it is the finest thing she owns and she does not doubt that it will see plenty of wear now, if she is to attend two kings at once.
Nathaniel curses under his breath. “You are taking this well.”
She shrugs and points out, “I do not have a say, either.”
He watches her lay out the uniform and begin the process of packing for a long journey. Finally, he says, “And what of your stray?”
“I suppose,” she says softly, “that it is time for him to move on.”
He is silent for a time, then tells her, “Life is short, Bethany. Especially for ones such as us.” The words are spoken with a quiet finality that belies their message of selflessness; she wonders how difficult they were to say. She finds she cannot look at him, fearful of seeing the price of such altruism writ plain upon his features. She does not think she can bear it.
“You of all people should not say such things to me,” she replies after she has wrestled her guilt down far enough that she can speak over it.
“Maybe not,” he tells her. He comes to stand behind her now, his hands warm upon her shoulders. “But some things must be said, and there is none other to say them.”
“I do not want your… blessing,” she says, with as much venom as she can inject into the word.
“And I do not want to give it, but here we are.” His chuckle is devoid of all humor. She looks down at her hands, clasped so tightly that the knuckles are white. After awhile, he removes his hands; footsteps, the creak of the door hinge, and he is gone, leaving her alone with her thoughts.
***
She recalls very clearly the first time she met Nathaniel. Early in her tenure with the Wardens, she was plagued by nightmares, and she suffered them without the quiet stoicism of her new compatriots. She woke with tears on her cheeks, screams and whimpers dying in her throat as she shot from the dubious comfort of sweat-soaked blankets, searching with wild eyes for enemies who were never there. New recruits were given leeway with this sort of behavior, and to be honest, she realizes now that no one expected her to last very long, the way she carried on at the time. But in her first year with the Wardens, she was beyond shame; her own sheltered frailty was a difficult lesson to swallow, and she had feared, then, that she would lose her mind long before the taint took her.
And so she dreamed, tossing and turning, but on her first mission with him, she woke to his face, and not the empty silence of her tent. She can recall sheepishly now that she attacked him with her bare hands - a mercy she hadn’t had the wherewithal to try magic - and he brushed her blows off as though she were no more than a kitten batting at his chest. She had gone from swatting at him to crying into his jerkin, and his arms had come around her back to hold her, gently. When she at last felt empty of everything - tears, bitterness, even nightmares - she had felt, for the first time, as though she might be all right.
He hadn’t said anything at the time, only offered her a handkerchief and a compassionate squeeze of the shoulders with his large, gentle hands. She had tried her best to offer a smile - shaky and watery as it was - and he had graciously not commented on her teary, swollen face. Instead, he had told her, quietly, It would be a comforting lie to tell you that this will fade with time, but it does become… somewhat easier. Once it was clear that she had regained her equilibrium, he had left her kneeling there, in the disheveled pile of blankets, as though he understood that she needed a few moments to compose herself in solitude. Even then, he seemed to know instinctively when to offer her space.
He was quiet and grim, then. It was said he was in mourning, although no one would quite disclose for whom, and she dared not ask him herself. His silence suited her, and hers seemed to suit him, and so they gravitated towards each other based, perhaps, on this single similarity. At his side, she has slowly recovered her emotional strength; in those early years, he was like a comfortingly solid wall which she could hide behind whenever her sanity was threatened. What he saw in her then she cannot say, but it does seem to her that they have, over time, come to heal each other. He has remembered how to smile, and she has remembered how to laugh, and in their slow and quiet progression from unlikely friends to something more - as though they have all the time in the world at their disposal instead of a handful of years - they have both discovered that despite the darkness that fills them, they are still capable of affection.
She thinks of this in the few hours meant for rest before the journey, and by the pattern of his breathing she can tell that he is also awake, although his thoughts are, as always, a mystery to her. He is once again quiet and grim, the way he was then, and she is off balance, and it feels as though they have somehow stepped back in time. She has always treasured their silences, filled with the easy comfort of understanding; they are silent now, but she is not comforted, and she does not know where to begin breaking the silence to unravel the knot in her stomach. They have never spoken of the future and they have rarely had cause to reminisce about the past; this is the first time she finds herself regretting the single-minded focus on the present which has helped her keep if not exactly cheerful then at least peaceful.
When she closes her eyes at last, it is only to dream. In the dream, she is dying; she feels the darkness creeping through her blood, an invader bent on her destruction. She cannot see except in nauseating swathes of too-bright color, and every breath is labored. She wants, very badly, to lie down and let herself be taken, for she is too ill and tired to be frightened. Death, she thinks, will be a release from the waves of pain and the feeling of violation. It will be a release from her magic - her curse - and her weakness. It is fluttering inside her chest, pushing vainly against the darkness, or perhaps the fluttering is her heart. She cannot tell anymore.
A blessed coolness washes over her, bringing with it a few moments of lucidity and relief. From the incomprehensible golds, browns, blues, and blacks smeared across her vision, his face comes into focus. There is a sheen of sweat on his forehead and a sharp crease between his eyebrows; she can feel him in her blood as he pushes the taint back. He is strong, stronger than anyone she has ever known, but she knows he is not strong enough. Let me go, she whispers.
The flash of anger in his eyes - hot and blue and foreign - makes her wonder if she is slipping away again; the crease between his eyebrows deepens. He looks to be in pain himself, as though he has taken her suffering into his own blood to ease it. I will not.
I cannot -
He cups her face in his hand, and his touch is as cool as his magic. You can. You must hold on.
Wearily, she obeys.
Colors swirl around her; the darkness whispers in its thousand sibilant voices. His hand becomes her father’s, cool and wide against her fevered face. She reaches up to touch his beard with little-girl hands but finds only air. Her father’s face fades into nothing. She feels fire under her skin, in her blood, licking at her bones as her heart pounds like a drum at a frantic tempo. The voices chitter all around her, and she can almost understand their words, if she concentrates.
She doesn’t want to concentrate.
She wraps her arms around herself to quell her sudden shaking, and Nathaniel’s quiet, gravelly voice whispers, Peace. You are safe now. His voice chases back the other voices in the darkness, but they are still there, on the periphery of her consciousness, and they promise death, or madness. There is a distant roar, growing in intensity; she wakes with its ringing in her ears to another snowy pre-dawn and Nathaniel’s hand brushing her hair from her forehead. She gulps in greedy lungfuls of air, trying to still her heart from the effects of the nightmare; she does not remember the last time she had one so vivid, or so incomprehensibly terrifying.
Nathaniel does not say anything - he never has, not since the first time - but he watches her with his usual quiet concern until she can bring his face into focus and shake off the remnants of terror. “It is nearly time,” he tells her. “I thought it better to wake you.”
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is almost calm. “Thank you.” She swings her legs over the side of the bed and finds she can stand, although the cold stone floor makes her shiver. “I will be but a moment,” she promises, composing herself, erasing her distress, refusing to think of what such a dream could mean in light of her imminent departure. “You should go on to the mess hall,” she tells him, and even manages to smile. “Get some breakfast, before all we’ve got is boiled oats and bad tea.”
He tilts her chin up with one finger, places a cool kiss upon her lips, and tells her, “Don’t be long.”
***
There are seven of them going to the capital, which seems like a small number only until one takes into account the relative capability of even one Warden to take on half a dozen darkspawn at once with a healthy chance of survival; she doubts anything short of the Starkhaven army is going to cause them difficulty. She has known most of the men for years, and she is fond enough of a number of them: Jazek, a mountain of a man originally from a village not an hour from Weisshaupt, his grin easy and his sword enormous; Koris, a Nevarran whose diminutive stature belies a speed that is almost not to be believed; Darek and Romik, looking like twins in their identical dwarven plate; Lerrel with his dark eyes and Dalish longbow.
There is a great deal of good-natured ribbing about their mission, warnings that getting fat and lazy won’t be tolerated, innuendoes about the feather beds they will no doubt be sleeping in once they reach the palace, requests for souvenirs to be brought back. People pat her on the back - and the stomach, proving once again that rumor travels at a speed not to be believed - and wish her well. She can’t watch as Lerrel and Syrinn say good-bye; it is obvious to anyone with eyes that Syrinn resents her intrusion into what was supposed to be his place. The First Warden puts in an appearance, says a few brusque words, then strides back into the keep, and that is the end of it.
She turns and follows the others through the archway leading to the world outside, thinking that it feels very strange to be marching away with a pack of supplies on her back after years of watching others from the courtyard. Koris strikes up a marching song in a clear tenor and the others join in, one by one, although no one else has a voice nearly as fine. She adds her soprano to the second verse, thinking that it does feel very much like they are setting out on holiday.
Nathaniel, who is the only one not singing - possibly because he could not carry a tune in a bucket and Koris has threatened to maim him if he ever forgets it - shakes his head and says, “It’s a good thing stealth isn’t our first priority.”
“If someone attacks us,” Koris says as the song goes on around him, “just sing a few notes. Problem solved.”
Everyone laughs, even her, and she can almost forget about the dream and Anders, who she is leaving behind.
***
Three days into their journey, just past a small village clearly struggling to survive a poor harvest, trouble finds them. The landscape here is rocky, with endless hiding spots available, and they do not detect the ambush until they are in the middle of it. An arrow scrapes her ear, the unexpected sting of pain so sharp that she gasps. A second stops a handbreadth from her eye and falls harmlessly to the snow, deterred by a sudden crackling field of repellant magic so intense that the snow around her feet doesn’t so much melt as it evaporates.
Everything after that happens in an instant.
The bandits seem to melt out of the scrubby brush to bear down on them from both sides of the valley. Her staff is in her hands, the hair at the back of her neck rising as she flings spells at their attackers. Beside her, she hears the rhythmic draw and snap of Nathaniel’s bowstring. Above the ring of steel on steel, the sky blooms with fire and lightning, and not all of it is hers. With a cool detachment, she aims and fires, concentrates and releases, ignores the screams of the wounded and dying as she rains down death on the archers stationed at the lip of the crevasse. Arrows are flying around her, but nothing touches her. From behind the unyielding barrier, she watches with the dispassionate concentration she has perfected over the years as they fall - one, two, five, seven, ten, fourteen. Then only silence remains, until one of the Wardens - all standing - cheers and the others around him take it up.
Before she realizes what is happening, she is being picked up and whirled around; she barely keeps her balance when Jazek sets her down. “Andraste’s knickers, woman, since when can you do that?”
“Stop shaking her, Jazek, you’ll hurt the baby,” Lerrel tells him crossly.
“There is no baby,” Bethany insists, but no one is listening to her. Romik pulls out a flask from somewhere, as if by magic - no real surprise though - and Koris starts tossing the corpses for valuables. Nathaniel and Lerrel join him, and no one at all is looking at her as a hand snakes out from behind a boulder and yanks her into its shadow.
She doesn’t scream - quite - because the hand has the feel of magic about it, and it is a magic she knows almost as well as her own. “What are you doing?” she hisses as he pulls her around to face him. “What are you doing here?”
He ignores both questions. His hands are in her hair, pulling it back from her cheeks. He hisses in irritation as his hand comes away from her ear bloody. “You could have died,” he accuses. “If you cannot watch for your own safety, one would think that Nathaniel, at least-”
“You’re crazy,” she informs him in the same angry, hushed tone. She is hyper-aware of the others, only steps away from the shallow crevasse he has pulled her into. Darek belches; Romek laughs. Lerrel appears to be disputing the ownership of the bandit leader’s particularly nice ring with Koris. None of them seem aware of her absence, or of the man who has followed them from Weisshaupt with, apparently, the misguided idea that he needs to protect her. “It’s a scratch. I have been taking care of myself for ten years; I don’t need you, or Nathaniel, or anyone to-”
His magic slams into her without any finesse; quite aside from the scratch on her ear, every tiny bruise and ache she has developed over the last several days vanishes in its wake, along with her breath. “You clearly have no idea what you need,” he cuts off, his face twisted in rage.
She almost responds, the last thing I need is you; she wants to say it, but she is caught by the fear and fury in his eyes, and cannot say anything at all. His hands are still in her hair and her heart is still pounding with adrenaline and it seems the most inevitable thing in the world when he drags her against his chest and crushes his mouth down on hers.
For years, she has labored under the delusion that Anders is a gentle man; every word and caress that she has guiltily allowed herself to imagine has been filled with the tenderness her life has lacked. He is not gentle now, but then, none of this is how she imagined it would be.
His hand in her hair is almost painful as it drags her head back, but she allows it, allows her lips to part, allows herself to feel the need burning through her, like a tempest, like fire, like magic. It is unlike anything she has ever experienced, except perhaps the darkness which nearly devoured her, once; much like she did then she feels completely outside of her own control, and if the feeling this time is glorious, it is also acutely terrifying.
It lasts an eternity, but only moments; she hears footsteps and someone calling her name - Nathaniel - and sanity returns. She pushes herself away, wild-eyed, breathless, transformed. He lets her go, but she can see, in his eyes, the same indefinable something that is now burning at her core; he does not need to speak to tell her it is not over. One way or another, they have merely begun.
The footsteps come closer; she raises her voice and croaks out, “Can’t a woman use the privy in peace?” There is male laughter, a crude comment about the inconvenience of robes, another about babies, then the sound of a scuffle, a shouted apology. The footsteps retreat.
For a few more moments, she holds his gaze. She runs her hands over her hair, her robes, trying to put herself to rights. He watches her do this, silently, and then he mouths, go. She knows that she should tell him the same, that she should make him go, anyplace at all as long as it isn’t here, but the words refuse to come. The only thing she can tell him, it seems, is stay safe.
On to chapter 5!