[fic] amare et sapere 6/?

Jun 06, 2011 16:10

Title: Amare et Sapere, 6/?
Author: amasaglajax
Rating: PG
Author Notes: This is set in the world of Dragon Age. If you are unfamiliar with Dragon Age, I strongly suggest you read the primer for this fic here. Sorry I didn't post part 6 here earlier, guys! It's an important plot chapter so I'm absolutely kicking myself. I hope you read it anyway despite my tardiness in posting, lol. Thanks for the kind words so far. <3

primer here | ch 1 | ch 2 | ch3 | ch4 | ch5
FFN | AO3 | tumblr

6.

Sam headed towards the chapel at the appointed hour, dragging all his pounds of armor with him because he hadn’t had enough time after the end of his shift to divest himself of it. Sam was exhausted, and whatever Puck and Kurt and some unknown female third party were colluding on, it was clearly nothing a good Templar wanted to be caught up in. He ignored the thrill of intrigue and interest that the very idea of Kurt’s involvement sent through him as he headed towards the door of the chapel anyway.

The door creaked open as he walked towards it to reveal half of Kurt’s face, his white skin a striking contrast to the mahogany of the wood. “Sam,” he said, his blue eyes flicking up to meet Sam’s without expression as he pushed the door open further. “Good. Come in.”

“I’m going to kill Puck,” Sam muttered as he entered the chapel, Kurt shutting the door firmly behind him. “A twelve-hour shift, and now-”

“Try not to judge your fellow man for half a bloody moment and listen to what he has to say,” Kurt said dryly.

“Hey!” Sam protested, but he was distracted as Kurt waved a hand before the door, mirroring the arch where it was set into the wall as though he were limning an echo of that curve before him. Like wind chimes made of spun-sugar icicles, Kurt’s power brushed cool and delicate against Sam’s Templar senses, and Sam could almost see the wispy lines of a glyph glow briefly in the ancient wooden door. “-What are you doing?” he finished, not at all as he’d meant to.

“Don’t worry about it.”

The chapel was abandoned at this late hour - past Kurt’s curfew as an apprentice, Sam noted - and before Sam could quiz Kurt further, Puck strode forward in plain clothes, beaming, to clasp Sam’s gauntleted hand. Behind him approached one of the Chantry sisters, a young woman named Quinn whom Sam had met when he initially arrived at the Tower. She possessed an intimidating perfection of feature with an air of stern reserve to match, her golden hair caught behind her in a demure linen caul.

“Sam,” Puck said grandly, gesturing towards the sister as she stopped by Puck’s side. Tonight, her preternatural reserve was tempered by guarded uncertainty; she worried her lower lip as she met Sam’s eyes directly. “I want you to meet Quinn.”

“I’ve met Sister Quinn before,” Sam said with some confusion, though she extended her hand regally for him to shake anyway. It was so small and thin in his gauntleted hand that he barely dared squeeze back.

“Just Quinn, please,” she said quietly. She glanced up at Puck as her hand dropped to her side. Puck smiled down at her, his expression warm.

“He knows,” Puck said to her, his voice more tender than Sam had ever heard it before. “Sam is my brother-in-arms, a true friend - we have nothing to fear.”

Sam felt his face heat up as he smiled; he considered them friends, but it was very moving to be described in such a manner aloud and to know that Puck considered him just as much a friend. He was glad the flush of pleasure on his face was hidden from the incorrigible Templar’s view.

“The fewer people know, the better,” Quinn replied skeptically. Her posture was rigid, as though a spine of steel kept her at her dignified full height constantly; her thin shoulders were tense. “This is ruinous enough without the risk of drawing someone else in.”

“I can’t do it all, Quinn.” Sam startled at Kurt’s approach, though the young mage didn’t look at him as he took his place at Sam’s side. “Especially not with my Harrowing coming up at any moment. You know I’ve done and will continue to do all I can.”

Quinn bit her lip unhappily, lashes sweeping against her cheek. “I know,” she whispered with a bleak look of strained gratitude Kurt’s way. Kurt’s expression softened with worry.

“I don’t know,” Sam broke in, though he felt seized by a creeping, dreadful certainty, like ivy. “Puck - as honored as I am, I don’t think I want to know -”

“Sam,” Puck said. For all that he was the miscreant scion of his house, tossed to the Templars in an attempt to redeem his noble name, his voice held command. Sam jerked his chin up, and Puck’s voice softened slightly. “Please.”
“Sword of Mercy, Puck, you didn’t even tell him before you brought him here?” said Quinn incredulously, her nostrils flaring. She pinched her lips together and pressed her fingers to the bridge of her nose, taking a deep breath before raising her head to look at Sam. “If Puck speaks for you, then I will speak to you truly, though I implore you to keep silence.”

“I can’t rightly promise such a thing,” Sam said, swallowing hard at the look of betrayal Puck threw him. “Not without understanding the nature of the matter.”

“It is ruinous-”

“It isn’t,” Puck said, looking at Quinn anxiously. “You say that, but it isn’t.”

“It is ruinous to me.” For the first time the Chantry sister’s eyes shone with tears. Sam watched her warily in case she wept, but the sister’s iron control won out. She took another breath, her voice steady, if quiet. “For six months, Puck and I have carried on an affair, conducted in the utmost secrecy, of course.”

This was scarcely news, from the way Quinn leaned into his side and the warmth that transformed Puck’s face when he looked at her. Sam could imagine the well-traveled road down which this tale would go. He said a little desperately, “You needn’t tell me even so much. I won’t tell a soul what you’ve said, but - please, I don’t want to know this.”

“We need help!” Quinn’s lips pressed together, her trembling hands smoothing her robes by her side. “Ser Samuel, I don’t know you well, but if Puck treats you as a brother I have no choice but to trust you, for I have no sisters here. I beg you to hear us. We have no one else.”
“If I had anyone else,” Puck added softly, “if I could tell that blockhead Hudson or even the Knight-Sergeant, I would not lay this on you, brother; but if you will not help then I will speak.” Puck looked hard at Sam with a meaningful raise of his brow, tilting his head in Kurt’s direction.

That wiped any lingering trace of a smile off Sam’s face. Silence hung tensely in the chapel like a single spider on a single thread before Kurt apparently took Puck’s gesture as an invitation to speak.

“Quinn and I have been friends since she arrived at the Tower these two years past,” Kurt said without preamble. “I don’t always… agree,” he said with a wry quirk of his brow at her, “with her conclusions, but nonetheless, we are friends. She maintains the illusion that her debates will save my heathen elven soul-”

“Someone has to try,” Quinn interrupted, lips twitching in the ghost of a smile, “lest you never see the Maker’s light.”

“I’m a mage, Quinnie. When I’m Harrowed I’ll be right there in the Maker’s neighborhood, strolling through the Fade, and I have every confidence I won’t find him.”

Kurt’s teasing provocation worked; the young sister rose to the bait, her large eyes flashing. “Because He doesn’t deem any of us worthy yet, especially not an insolent little apprentice mageling-”

Kurt held up a finger at her. “Must you make it personal, darling? Must you?”

Though Quinn snorted, she appeared to draw some life from the exchange. Puck slung an arm about her shoulders, drawing her in, while Sam, who was standing awkwardly beside Kurt, shifted on his feet as though he hadn’t seen the young mage die nightly in his dreams for the past two weeks.

“Anyway.” Kurt clasped his hands in front of him with a brisk exhalation of air. “The point is, unlikely as it may seem, Quinn and I are good friends. I was one of the first people to know about her assignations with Puckerman here.”

“You weren’t happy about it at first,” Puck said with a sly grin.

“I’m still not. You’re both idiots,” Kurt returned sharply, and Puck’s grin wilted slightly as Quinn took on a look of faint offense. “Oh, please. Both of you know what I mean.”

“You aren’t my nan. Furthermore, you’re never going to finish the damned tale. I am with child,” Quinn said simply. “By Kurt’s reckoning I am three weeks along.”

“Three weeks?” Sam repeated, not knowing at whom to stare in horror first. He settled on staring at Puck, whose hand had come up to brush a tendril of Quinn’s hair back over the shell of her ear. “But - that’s rather early to be able to tell anything, isn’t it?”

“Thank you, goatherd,” Kurt replied. His tone was acidic even given his usual manner of speaking; Sam recoiled, looking over at him, but Kurt met his gaze unflinchingly. “I am a mage, and while the healing arts are not my chosen discipline, it is a simple enough question to answer. Quinn suspected, she asked me to check, and she was right. Now, as we caught this… this situation early, there are a number of remedies-”

“No,” Quinn said immediately. Kurt rolled his eyes. “You may make all the faces you like, Kurt. Absolutely not. There is no choice; we must leave before we are discovered.”

With a growing sense of horror, Sam stared between all three of them. His offense at Kurt’s brusque treatment of him would have to wait. “You couldn’t ask the Knight-Commander-”

“Think for half a second, Sam,” Puck said, his tone caught between entreaty and bitter frustration. “You really see Goolsby giving a damn? That pompous ass thinks gallant is when a horse runs fast. And Schuester? He thinks he wrote the bloody Chant. We tell anyone, and this is what happens. I’m thrown out of the Templars, my name blackened, sent home to join the local guard with all the other lordly spares and disowned by my family when the lyrium sickness hits and leaves me useless. Quinn is defrocked and sent home in disgrace, and she has our child, and my babe is given to the Chantry as though no one ever gave a damn-” Puck snorted, disgust twisting his features. “No.”

“But your names will be blackened anyway,” Sam said. “You’ll lose it all anyway-”
“Not the babe,” Puck said.

“Nor each other.” Quinn looked up at Puck and released a breath, love filtered through the sound with wryness and determination. She reached out for Puck’s other hand, their fingers intertwining. “We do have time,” Quinn said, turning her gaze from Puck to Sam, “to decide our plan of action. But if we’re to run, I’d prefer to do so before I’m-” She paused a moment, before she said in a tone of suffused revulsion, “ungainly.”

“You won’t be,” Puck said instantly, squeezing her shoulders. “You won’t ever be.”

Quinn smiled wanly without response, and the four of them stood in silence for a moment before Kurt’s eyes widened. “A moment,” he said, quickly walking back towards the door to press his ear against it. They all turned to watch him go, the dreadful reality of Puck’s situation sinking into Sam like an anchor to the floor of the sea.

“Puck, I - I understand, and I’m honored by your trust,” Sam said, every word feeling like a stone dropped from his lips, heavy and clumsy. “You have my word I won’t speak of this. But I don’t know what you want me to do.”

“There are going to be times I need you to cover me,” Puck said. “To make my excuses when my lady needs me, to help her when I can’t avoid whatever small stupid task they’ve stuck me with in any given week. Things Kurt can’t help with, Templar things. And when we run - lyrium, Sam. It’s going to be an issue.”

“Maker’s breath, Puck, you want me to funnel you lyrium?” Quite aside from the fact that the last thing Sam had ever illegally smuggled was a bit of ham to bed with him at age eight, lyrium was a strictly-rationed commodity under the direct control of the Chantry. Sam hadn’t the faintest idea how to even begin getting a hold of lyrium, let alone the specially-processed kind the Templars took, let alone enough enough to satisfy the daily need of a Templar on the run. “Are you insane? Are you aware how many different kinds of illegal that is?”

“No,” Puck snapped, “I’m not. I had no clue. Thanks for the information.” He sagged for a moment, squeezing his eyes shut before opening them once more, his gaze hard. “I can’t ask Finn, Sam, you know I can’t. He’d turn me in thinking he was saving everyone involved, like it’s that damned easy. And…”

Puck’s gaze shifted its focus over Sam’s shoulder, and Sam followed it to where Kurt was walking back towards them, brushing his hands off on his robes. “Nothing,” Kurt said, “false alarm,” and Puck’s eyes met Sam’s, deadly serious. Sam’s jaw clenched; he got the warning, even if he had to bite back a snarl over it.
“You don’t have to do that,” Sam muttered instead, because in the face of what Puck and Quinn were preparing to do, Sam couldn’t say he wouldn’t have seized on anything he could to compel assistance, too. But he liked to think that he wouldn’t stoop to blackmail, especially of a brother, especially when there wasn’t anything… happening. It wasn’t like Kurt knew, or could know, or felt anything in return, or would even if he knew. “You have my help already, whatever that’s worth.”

He was already on thin ice since Hudson had gone and opened his damned helpful mouth to Knight-Sergeant Schuester, for no good reason since Sam had done nothing but suffer a few bad dreams. The last thing Sam wanted was Kurt’s name to be linked to that. He thought of the dull, blank eyes of the Tranquil and glanced down at Kurt, who returned him a wary and curious look. Tranquil mages never had that look.

“Anyway,” Quinn said, her quiet voice drawing attention regardless for diction precise enough to match Kurt’s, “Puck and I need to speak privately. Kurt, if you could-”

“The wards have been set since I walked through the door, dear,” he assured her. “No one will walk past without my knowing it.”

“All right.” Quinn gave the ghost of a smile, looking up (and up and up) at Sam. “Sam, I’m sorry to put this on you. Thank you for listening. Please, swear you won’t say anything.”

“I swear, Sister,” Sam said with a deep nod of his head, and raised his head only to see Quinn wincing.

“Just… Quinn. Please,” she said, and Sam grimaced behind the steel wall of his helm. “Till we meet again.”

She drew Puck away with her, and the two of them retreated behind the screens separating the chancel from the nave, leaving Kurt and Sam standing alone before the rows and rows of pews. Kurt stared after them for a moment, his brow creased.

“I didn’t know you were such good friends with Puck,” Sam said into the silence. “And a Chantry sister, as well. I would never have thought it.”

“I was friends with Quinn first. Probably the only friend she’s got,” Kurt said, bringing a hand up to his chin, fingers pressed thoughtfully against his lips. “She’s a very ambitious person, as am I. Now she’s gone and fallen for this lunk, and what a mess they’re in… there’s no accounting for taste, but.”
Sam waited, but Kurt didn’t add anything. “But what?” he prompted.

Kurt’s lips twisted a little as his gaze flicked up towards Sam. “Just thinking. The Chantry tries with all its might to regulate the heart along with the soul. Who may speak to whom, love whom, as though our strata make any difference to the Maker, as though he’ll miraculously come out of his almighty hidey-hole if we divide ourselves just right. Even if I think they’re fools for this, they have as much right to their foolishness as any other couple. The dwarven Carta has less criminal instincts.”

Sam wanted to argue the point, but he could hardly pretend that the Chantry wouldn’t come down on the two lovers like the blade that split Andraste’s mortal neck open. And he didn’t really know anything about the dwarven whatever, anyway. He headed towards a nearby pew instead, taking a seat. The wood groaned under the weight of his armor. He stared at the rusty maroon of the cloth skirt he wore as part of his uniform, the dull gold stars, the lumps beneath it of the poleyns strapped over his knees.

What a situation.

Soft footsteps drew his attention as Kurt took a few steps forward. “Do you plan to stay?” Kurt asked briskly, impersonally.

“Do you?”

“Well, I have to,” Kurt said with a shrug. “I’m the one keeping watch for them, and I need Puck to walk me back to the dormitory or I’ll get in trouble for being about after curfew.”

Sam nodded and looked down at his hands, encased in Templar silverite. His armor was made to wield swords against magic, against mages. Every day when he rose he took a substance made to give him an edge in a battle that never ended.

“Why are you upset with me?” Sam asked without meaning to, the words quiet, less angry than he’d have made them had he meant to say them. He sounded pathetic, he thought to himself, like a scorned schoolboy, and something hot tightened in his chest in unhappy anticipation.

“Who says I’m upset?” Kurt looked taken aback, crossing his arms over his chest. “I’m not upset.”

“Did I do something to offend you?” Sam pressed, raising his head, since he’d already opened his giant mouth anyway. “I thought - I mean, we’ve had perfectly civil conversations, Kurt, and I thought they were interesting, I - don’t understand why you’ve been so, so…”

His shoulders hunched under his heavy armor. He was tired, he thought. A twelve hour shift, and now he was faced with this on the tail end of his daily lyrium dose’s usefulness. He felt muddled and weary, and his conversations with Kurt had become spots of color in a life of scheduled sameness very quickly. “I really liked when we talked.”

Kurt was staring at him, his initial air of outraged offense softening into some wary middle between uncertainty and - something else. “You were one of the Templars at that girl’s Harrowing, weren’t you?”

Sam closed his eyes. Of course, he thought. Of course it would be this. “What… was her name?”

“She’s dead. What does it matter?” Sam opened his eyes again. Kurt was already porcelain-pale, but in the moonlight he looked literally white as paper, his eyes burning blue. “She was only an abomination. You cut her down.”

“That’s my job, Kurt-”

“That’s the problem.”

Sam huffed out a pained breath. “I was reprimanded, did you know that? Because I didn’t strike fast enough. Someone else took the final blow. And now you’re chastising me because I struck at all. I can’t exactly win here, can I? She was gone. She’d become an abomination. There was no saving her.”

“I have my Harrowing soon,” Kurt replied. He heaved a deep breath, pressing his lips together as he stared off past Sam’s head. “Soon I’ll know if I’m to be given the chance to become a full mage at all, or if they’ll decide I’m too much trouble, if they’ll just make me Tranquil, instead-”

The nightmare of those blue eyes turned blank and obedient, never angry or sad or thoughtful or kind ever again, flashed before Sam’s vision. He spoke instantly, without thinking. “That isn’t going to happen.”

“You don’t know that.” Kurt looked at him uncertainly, for a moment seeming horribly young. “Do you?”

“I can’t tell you when the Harrowing will happen, or what it entails, Kurt, but look, I’ve stuck my neck out far enough just by coming here tonight,” Sam said, building speed as he spoke. His words came like a boulder rushing down a hill, faster and more reckless by the moment. “If they try to make you Tranquil, I’ll see you out of here myself. I swear it.”

Kurt’s brows drew together, his lips parting. “Why?” he breathed, a hand curling against his chest.

“Because I was there when they cut that abomination down,” Sam said, but shook his head instantly, because that wasn’t right even if that was part of the whole truth. “Because she used to be a girl, and you’re so - you’re really - you’re so fiery… It’s a good thing,” he hastened to add, tripping over his words. Kurt looked as though he wasn’t sure whether to be flattered or further irritated, settling on a brow-furrowed expression of bewilderment. “I… have nightmares,” and Sam hadn’t meant to admit that either, “where they make you Tranquil, and they’re horrible because you aren’t you anymore. I can’t, I couldn’t let that happen to you.”

Kurt’s eyes widened. “I show up in your dreams?” He shook his head and said insistently, “I’m not - I’m not doing anything, I’m not -”

“I know you aren’t doing forbidden magic.” Kurt shut his mouth, staring at Sam in tremulous, mute appeal. “I’m not going to tell anyone, I’m as aware what would happen if I breathed a word of it as you are.” Sam shook his head miserably. Nothing he meant to say was coming out properly. “That’s not the point. I became a Templar because I wanted to help. To protect and serve people who needed it. You mages need it in a different, special way. More than anyone. And I don’t see how maiming your souls helps you or anyone find their way to the Maker. You’ll face your Harrowing same as anyone,” even if Sam’s stomach cramped with suffused panic at the idea of Kurt’s Harrowing going as badly as that girl’s had, “but don’t be afraid of the Rite. It won’t happen.”

“I…”

Sam chuckled, though nothing was funny, and got to his feet with the creak of the wooden pew and the metallic shuffle of his armor plates. Kurt didn’t move back, leaving them standing within each other’s space. “I only meant to say that I guess I kind of miss you. Not all the rest of that.”

“I’ll - stop by more often, then,” Kurt said, and he actually smiled, a gentle smile that lit his face, his lively, beautiful eyes, his pointed face tilted up just slightly towards Sam’s. “I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to be a nightmare to you,” he added, making a face. “I’m sorry.”

“The only nightmare is that anything might happen to you that I could have prevented.”
Kurt bit the inside of his lip, causing a pout, as he searched the shadow of Sam’s visor, putting up his hand to touch the helm once more. This time, Sam didn’t flinch. “You say that,” Kurt complained lightly, “and do not let me see your face when you do. Not all Templars wear the helm, Puckerman never does.” He ticked the metal. The sharp ring echoed in Sam’s ear. “You see me in your dreams, and I haven’t seen you at all. It’s unfair.”

“I have to wear it,” Sam said awkwardly. As if Kurt’s gaze weren’t sharp enough to pierce through mere silverite massive armor, anyway. “Kurt, I - I need to pray. Will you watch for me?”

The irony of a Templar asking that of a mage didn’t appear to escape Kurt, judging by the glimmer in his eyes, but Kurt gave a gracious nod. “Of course,” Kurt said, dropping his hand to the ornamental curve of Sam’s shoulder pauldron briefly before dropping it completely.

Sam wondered, as he walked to kneel heavily before the statue of Andraste, what that hand and that brief touch of comfort might feel like against his bare shoulder, knowing that Kurt’s gaze followed him as he walked.

character: sam evans, character: noah puckerman, multipart wip, ship: sam/kurt, character: kurt hummel, author: amasaglajax, character: quinn fabray

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