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They were three days into the hunt and spirits were relatively high.
A fire blazed in the middle of their little group, lit the small clearing between trees and turned the shadows thick and misty.
A laugh, delighted and jovial, cut through the low chirp of distant bugs, the call of a lonely owl seeking its mate.
Lessa Hawke covered her laughter with her mug, snorted into the low-tide of her ale and then covered that with a deep drink. She finished it with a pleased hum, held the mug out towards Varric and positively beamed when he filled the mug to the brim with a wink and a smile.
Watching from the shadows, Morrigan smiled to herself, her hands occupied with a mug of ale she hadn’t touched. She had accepted it to stem the onslaught of objections and the attention such a scene would bring but had no intentions of drinking any of it.
They were all in good sorts, merry and quick to sing, quick to banter, to tell tall tales and share war stories.
She smiled more at the lies that weaved like snakes through the truths her sister told, and shook her head as the lot of them took her words as gospel.
Her twin always did have that effect on people, a natural story teller.
Lessa and Varric were two peas in a pod.
The stories grew grander, demanded hand gestures and wild arm movements, and then, when they shifted too close to truth, proof.
“I shit you not, I’ve got the best scar here!”
The chorus of disbelief was light-hearted but enough that Lessa took it for challenge and jumped to her feet.
And as if she didn’t take several long minutes strapping herself into it, Lessa whipped off her leathers, yanked her undershirts over her head and bared the slender line of her chest to the entire camp.
With the reveal of so much skin, tanned and pulled tight over wiry muscle and dusted lightly at the shoulders with freckles, came the reveal of a maze of history, a maze of memory, a maze of pain.
Scars littered the rogue’s torso, changed from light and white and shining in the firelight to deep and dark and the colour of burning. Slices and cuts, a bite from a mabari she’d challenged to a duel and the strange pale blue of a burn that fanned out over her ribs and smelt strangely of winter when a chill set in.
But it was none of those scars she showed off, not the bite or the ice burn, not the cuts or the through-and-through hole of an arrow that had barely missed her hipbone.
No, Lessa lifted her arms, a manic grin on her face, a gleam in her eyes, and held them to the fire.
“Behold, miscreants after my own heart, scars of the storm-born.”
And behold they did, eyes wide and fascinated as she slowly turned her hands, shifted the skin at her wrists, her forearms, and showed off the myriad of spindled red, a crosspatch of light fire that followed the undercurrent of blue blood from the tips of her fingers to the bend at her elbows.
“Maker’s breath, Hawke!” Anders muttered, eyes locked on the damage a spell could do to the human body.
She grinned, wiggled her fingers and positively preened under the scrutiny.
Fenris, impressed but never one to show it, waved a hand and smiled with just one corner of his mouth. “A fine scar indeed.”
“I know right?” Lessa grinned, turned her eyes on her own scars with a fondness that bordered insanity. Then she looked up quickly, eyes wide and showing her madness. “But how cool would they be if they glowed like yours, right? Imagine!”
“I’d rather not, thank you,” he muttered, and turned his attention to his wine.
Lessa, never one to be deterred, waved her hands through the air mystically and bent towards the fire. “And who of you would like to know how it is I came to bear these scars?”
Whether or not they answered, she continued on, delighted with the spotlight and the chance to gloat and spin her legend.
“It was the time of kings and dragons, when evil roamed the lands and lingered in the shadows, a time long ago, in a kingdom far, far away–”
“It was Orlais, less than five years ago.”
“Morrigan!” The petulant whine in her voice was rather comical, put on and as much for show as everything else Lessa did.
The twins shared a look, shared a silent word, and with the breaking of eye contact, Lessa continued her story as if never interrupted.
She weaved her web, a wordsmith at heart, a born liar, and snared their attentions with secrets of a war waged in the shadows.
She spoke of the mage they’d been tasked to hunt, of the sights they’d seen when they’d finally found her, and of the battle that followed.
None of it was even remotely close to the horrors that had actually happened, but Morrigan knew the truth was very rarely a good campfire tale.
“And then, as fire burned its way up my veins, I took up my blades, took to the mists only I control and found that bitch’s heart in the dark. I left that fight with these scars you see today, and she, well, no one cares about her. You should have seen me! One with the dark, King Cailan’s famed Shadow. They should have known better than to fight me but I never said they were smart.”
Laughs, both drunken and amused, rose with disbelieving groans coming from Aveline’s side of the circle.
The woman clearly took everything Lessa Hawke said with a grain of salt.
As the chatter grew, as more flesh was showed, more clothes discarded and scars placed on show, Morrigan set aside her untouched mug, rose silently to her feet and made for the dark.
She didn’t get far.
“Hey! Where are you going? I wasn’t finished the story!”
Morrigan turned, blushed when she noticed all eyes on her, and twisted her fingers nervously around her bow. “I was just going for a walk is all.”
“You can’t,” Lessa started, her boasting forgotten for the moment as she tried to tamp down on the panic that set to shine in her eyes.
But whatever retort she might have thought to say was lost to her when Sebastian spoke, an unlikely ally against her.
She stared at him, held his gaze, and tried not to feel betrayed when his words cut through the camp. “Your sister is right, Morrigan. It’s far too dangerous to go wandering through the woods on your own.”
And his words, right and polite and concerned, were not thought out in the least.
She saw the light grow in her sister’s gaze, an inferno blazing behind the green as her grin widened, worry turned to madness turned to meddling.
“Sebastian’s right,” Lessa chimed in, voice high and delighted and smug.
And then she turned on him as quickly as she’d sided with him.
“Which is why you’re going with her.”
Her switch was so rapid Sebastian wasn’t the only one who did a double take. Brows furrowed, confusion at the fore, they watched as the exiled royal flustered, tripped over his next words and then settled for embarrassed silence.
Instead of fighting it, instead of playing Lessa’s games, instead of allowing the group’s amusement to grow, amusement at Sebastian’s expense, Morrigan stepped over to Sebastian’s side, took up his bow, then his hand, and pulled him for the dark.
She ignored the catcalls that followed their backs, that hounded their steps, that echoed into the shadows they disappeared into.
They wandered in silence, steps practiced and light, and wandered on until the camp was lost to them and the sounds of chatter were replaced by the calm of the woods at night.
It was then she realised she was still clutching his hand, but when she made to let go, made to pretend she’d never held on so tightly, she found her fingers laced, entwined, found her hand held just as tightly, just as close.
Her heart skipped.
Her head swam.
She very nearly tripped and fell.
And then he let her go, accepted his bow with a silent smile and not a single word in mention to what had passed between them.
She was grateful.
They walked for what felt like hours, circled the basecamp and followed the different tracks of midnight animals.
They hunted without truly seeking prey, were of one mind as they snuck up on a small family of fennecs, and watched the small foxes titter and play, unaware of the eyes on them.
And they let the animals be, crept away until their steps were far enough so as not to disturb the games of kits.
So lost in the pleasant sight, Morrigan saw nothing of the beast a ways off, and would have missed it if not for Sebastian’s presence suddenly at her side, his arm sweeping across her chest to still her momentum.
Fire burned hot across her cheeks when the weight of him settled close, when he pulled her in and dipped to her height to speak his whispered words against her ear.
And simple as they were, a gentle beckoning towards the distance, she was swept into the warmth of his breath against her skin, the heat of his touch, the closeness of his body.
She wondered how she didn’t burst into flame.
And then she focused, just a little, and saw.
Outlined by the shadows at its back, the gentle sweep of the weeping trees a curtain to its profile, was a great and shining halla.
The silver of its coat glowed in the moonlight, shone like precious gems as it shifted and drew closer, moved to drink from deeper waters.
They watched, enthralled, as the beast lifted its head, crown wide and high atop its slender face, and met their gaze.
They expected it to run, to disappear as quickly as it had appeared, but it lingered, watched them in turn, and only after several long moments of study, did it bow its head and turn to leave, a king at peace within his own borders.
Morrigan felt blessed and couldn’t keep it from her face as she turned in Sebastian’s hold and all but exploded with joy.
“Did that really happen?!”
He watched her lose herself in the moment, emotions dancing in her eyes as she shoved her hair from her face and looked back to the small stream in disbelief.
“Aye, leannan, it did.”
“Wow, I just…” she shook her head, felt the muscles in her cheeks set to aching from the continued smiling, and laughed softly, turned back to him. “He was gorgeous! Did you see the way he moved! So graceful! So…so majestic! Thank you, Sebastian, for sharing that with me.”
It was then she saw the way he was looking at her, the way his eyes lingered, locked, looked deeper than just the surface and saw more than any had before.
She was not so green that she didn’t know the look of want on a man.
Her blush intensified, burned down, down, disappeared beneath her leathers and yet, hidden from him, she wondered if he couldn’t see it, couldn’t trace it, wondered if he didn’t know just what he did to her.
She thought it best not to think of such things while alone with him, while lost to the aid of distraction, lost to the aid her infuriating and meddling and lifesaving sister provided.
She cleared her throat softly, dipped her head so that her hair would spill over her shoulder and offer some form of reprieve from his piercing gaze.
“We should,” she started, paused to swallow around the tightness in her throat, and tried again, “we should head back. We’ll no doubt have a long trek tomorrow, and they’ll all spend it grumbling about headaches. I’d rather deal with that with a rested mind.”
“You’ve the right of it, Morrigan.”
And as they started back, side by side, she couldn’t help but feel as if he’d said her name differently, as if it were a caress rather than just a sound that made up her name.
She lingered over the thought too long, was dragged out of her mind by a question she hadn’t heard.
“I’m sorry, what?”
He laughed, lowly, softly, too familiar for her sanity. “I asked why you seemed so intent on leaving the camp, and at that specific moment. One might think you were hoping to avoid any questions about your sister’s story.”
She sighed.
Of course he’d noticed.
He always noticed.
She sighed again, pushed down on the warmth that pooled low in her belly and ignored the question that echoed in her head; just how often does he watch me?
“It’s not so much the story I avoid, but the possibility of discovery that comes with it. She tells it, weaves her words, shows off her scars, and every time she does, I fear the time she’ll slip up and let too much of the truth in.”
And as always, he read between the lines.
“You were there, and you worry that people will expect you to share the story, to share the scars.”
“I – yes.” She looked to her feet, felt the weight of self-consciousness press across her shoulders, push her down, keep her there where it was cold and safe and ultimately void.
“You worry,” he started, closer this time, a softness to his tone that plucked at the strings keeping her bound, “that no one would ever care to know your story, or to see your scars and accept them. You worry what people will think of you.”
“And you don’t?”
And that it came out as an accusation shamed her, but the shame was gone as quickly as it grew, was replaced with something else, something she couldn’t name, something that soothed as he smiled and nodded, agreed.
“I always worry, I have to. Sometimes it feels like I was born to.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked at her, held her gaze for a moment, searching, and when he looked away again, a soft smile in place, she wondered what it was he’d seen to put that look on his face.
“Being sworn to the chantry changes nothing of where I was born, of how I was raised, of the mistakes I’ve made. It doesn’t change who I am. And because of that, because of who I am, everything I do is scrutinised. I worry, that despite my best efforts, my parents, my brothers, their deaths will go unpunished. I worry I won’t set things right. I worry that if I try, I’ll only make it worse.”
He paused then, in speech and step, stopped her with a hand on her arm and turned her to face him. When their eyes met, held, he spoke again, voice still soft and for her only. “I worry I’ll fail, just as you do. I worry that people won’t accept me beyond what they see right in front of them, beyond what I make them see, just as you do. We paint pictures and hope no one wants for more than what’s put before them.”
“It’s easier that way,” she muttered, and turned her gaze to her feet lest his gaze turn her to ash.
He followed, though, took a hold of her with strong yet gentle hands and turned her into him. “Aye, it is. It’s easier to keep everyone out than risk being hurt, but is it better?”
She couldn’t answer him, couldn’t put words to everything clawing at her mind, everything dying to get out, to be heard by someone other than herself.
But she wasn’t ready, wasn’t strong enough to share, to tell him, to take the hand he offered and let him in.
She feared she’d never be ready.
But he understood, and that he understood soothed her panic.
He touched her hair, a barely there brush of fingers across her cheek as he tucked the fall of black behind her ear.
Silence fell between them, around them, but not the silence of discomfort, the silence that fell between lovers who fought, it was a silence of companionship, a comfort.
He lingered, a little longer than was proper for a friend and certainly too long for one sworn to the life of a lay brother.
And that she wanted him to linger longer shamed her not nearly as much as it should have.
Finally, he pulled away, hand from her cheek, presence from hers, and took to a slow stroll back towards camp. She followed, hands hidden lest he see the way they shook, and the walk was quiet, a walk of contemplation.
She hated it.
She wanted more of his words.
She wanted more of his touch.
Maker, but she wanted more of him.
“Did you save her?”
She startled, stumbled, corrected herself quickly and blushed when he caught her fumbled steps and only smiled.
“Lessa, did you save her? In the story she told.”
Nerves took to roiling in her belly, left her off balance and cautious and too afraid to meet his gaze.
She spoke to the ground, kept her eyes on the path her feet were to take and tried to detach herself from the memory, from the ghost of pain that flared and flowed and took her back to a time when she’d almost failed.
“No,” she started, and paused when Sebastian stepped closer, slowed his pace to match hers and waited. “As strange as it seems given what you know of our dynamic, she saved me.”
“And was everything she said true? The parts which could possibly be true, of course.”
She laughed, shook her head and knew he had done that on purpose. “Some of it. It was a mission for Cailan, and it did involve a mage. But the one she tells of, the one who changes with each retelling, was actually several. So she’s never truly lying, she’s just distorting the truth.”
“And the magic?”
She paused, felt her nerves deepen, darken, felt the phantom pains seer right alongside the nerves.
“Morrigan?”
She looked up, realised she’d paused for too long and found him watching her with concern in his eyes, in the pinch of his brow. She shook it off, pushed it down, pushed forward, and swallowed against the need to be sick when memory tainted the smell of damp woods and turned it to charred skin and air on fire.
“Sorry, I just…the magic is true, as much as the singular mage is. If Lessa told the truth, if she told of…it doesn’t make for a very good story.”
It was only when he took her hand that she noticed how much she was shaking. He squeezed, and she squeezed back; he breathed, and she copied.
He soothed and she calmed.
“It was a cage,” she blurted out, felt a weight lift as another took its place, as the binds tightened and shifted. “Lessa was harassing them, keeping their attention while I picked them off. We were trying to find the leader, cut the head off the snake. It didn’t work. I…have you…it was like a storm, it started like a storm. I felt the static in the air, felt the hairs on my arms prickle and my breath grow thick. I’d never felt…and then everything was light, like a flash of fire after too long spent in the dark. I couldn’t see and I…I don’t…it felt like fire and yet wasn’t fire at all. Cold and hot, burning but turning everything to ice. Then it was everywhere and all I could do was scream and–”
He stopped her, turned her into his chest and wrapped her in the warmth of his arms, the safety of him and the present, dragged her from the memory and the pain and held her as the fear swept through her, over her, washed over everything and turned to tears she spilled against the dark of his coat.
He spoke to her, words lost but for the lulling sound of his voice, and then slowly they slipped in, soothed and turned her fear away. She understood nothing of what he was saying to her, the pitch of his brogue too deep, the words unknown. Yet there was comfort in his tone, in the way he held her, and because of it, it mattered little that he spoke to her in his mother tongue, but that he spoke at all.
And whatever the words, she didn’t need to know, she only needed.
She felt so, so small in his arms, in his presence, and she’d never felt safer.
When she spoke again, when his crooning turned to silence, turned to gentle strokes of his wide palm over her hair, her voice was broken, a wispy and barely there crackle of words she hoped he understood all the same. “She was hurt trying to get me out of the cage. It hurt her to see me trapped but she didn’t – even when her hands turned black and blood split her skin open, she still tried to get me out. Even when I screamed for her to stop, to stop it, she wouldn’t. She should have stopped. She should have…she should have left me.”
His grip tightened, his hold drawing her so close her breath left her and her sobs were staunched. She felt his nose in her hair, felt the press of his lips at her ear, felt the words as much as heard them, and dug her fingers into his back until she felt the ache in her knuckles and knew he would feel it too.
“I’m glad she didn’t, Morrigan.”
And as he held her, as her heart slowed its rapid canter, as her blood stopped its singing in her ears, as the tension seeped away and left her bone-tired against his chest, she felt, if only a little, that she was glad too.
Even when he pulled away, even when he brushed her hair back from her face and wiped the tears from her cheeks, when he said nothing of what she knew he saw, said nothing of how terrible crying made her look, she believed it, and believed him.
And then he pulled away, only a little, and shifted, moved, unbuckled and lifted, pulled the hem of his coat aside, the hem of his shirt up, and revealed the damaged expanse of his ribs.
Her brain stopped working.
She may have died.
He had more muscle than she had thought he would, was trim at the waist but so, so broad in the chest that her body overheated and all thought left her.
She lifted a hand, fingers shaking, lifted it towards him and knew, had she not stopped herself, he would have let her touch.
But she did stop, did pull her hand away and twisted her fingers into her own cloak if only to stem the need to touch, to feel, to comb her fingers through the deep dark of his chest hair.
She almost wept with gratitude that he never went anywhere without first covering himself from neck to toe.
He would give Varric a run for his money.
Then she met his gaze, saw the smile there, the smile that pulled up at the corners of his lips and hinted at dimples, and all the blood that had slowed in her veins rushed straight to her cheeks and left her dizzy.
He knew.
He had to know.
She pushed it down, the embarrassment, the fear, the hope, and trained her eyes on the scars and not the rest of him.
She struggled.
The scars, grizzled and dark and as thick as two of her fingers, tore into his side from sternum to hip with the entirety of his ribcage between. They circled around, five thick marks, claws dug deep, and as she studied them, as she looked, followed with her eyes, felt her fingers twitch, she felt panic bloom in her chest, felt it push everything else aside and thought of nothing but touching, touching to make sure they were scars and not wounds.
And he let her, kept his feet, his place, let her touch and test and soothe, and smiled when she looked up at him with fresh tears in her eyes.
“How? Wh–Sebastian, a bear! What happened?”
He grinned then, covered her hand with his, kept it pressed to his skin when she would have pulled away, and started his own story. “My brothers, not unlike your sister in some regards, were rather the bastards. Oh they came to my aid when it was obvious their trick had backfired, but before that, they laughed and joked and had their fun.”
“This was fun to them?!”
He let his shirt drop, kept her hand trapped with both of his own, kept her gaze locked with his. “It was a hunt – boar. A celebration for what, I can’t even remember now. I was young, thirteen if I recall correctly, eager and foolish, and they took me with them just to shut me up. When we found the cave, they spun stories of the horrors that called it home, each greater than the last until I was thoroughly terrified but too proud to admit it. They told me if I could make it into the deepest cavern, I’d be given treasures the likes of which I’d never seen before. Foolish and proud as I was, I went in.”
He shifted, moved her hand higher, kept it pinned between his body and his own hands, and felt her spread her fingers over the deep thrum of his heartbeat.
“They thought it was empty. Father had just recently paid a group of hunters the bounty for a bear that had been causing trouble for the farmers. The bear wasn’t gone at all. I found the treasure, thought I’d take it home for mother and finally, finally, she’d look at me the way she looked at Alaric. It was a hand-mirror, finely crafted and lined with jewels. I never stopped to think why it was there, or how, I was too lost in the tales my brothers had told. The mirror, my prize for bravery, saved my life. I saw the bear in the reflection and turned just as it took its swipe. It got me, and my brothers, laughing on the outside about how funny they thought they were, came running when my screams echoed out of the cave.”
“You could have died Sebastian,” she said, voice not above a whisper to keep the emotion from showing, to keep it from pushing her over the edge, from causing her tears to spill.
How afraid he must have been, thirteen and facing down a bear.
She pressed closer without thought, lifted her other hand to touch her palm to the scars, to the memory, and hoped, with everything that she was, that she could soothe him, take the memory away.
“Aye, and I might have, had my brothers not loved me enough to come to my aid. I could have been tricking them, they could have thought it a joke, but they thought I was in trouble and they came and they fought a bear for me. And even when I cried for them to go, when it would have been safer for them to leave me there, when I couldn’t stand seeing them hurt on my account, they never left. And when the bear was felled, they cared nothing for the kill, of how proud father would be that they’d slain such a beast while so young, they cared only for me. I was theirs to defend, theirs to torment, aye, and they often did, but theirs to defend.”
“They wouldn’t walk away.”
“Just as Lessa wouldn’t walk away from you, no matter how much you begged her to. Pain, fear, the possibility of death, it means nothing in the face of saving those we love.”
She felt the weight of his statement, felt the heat behind it, the hidden words, and hoped, beyond everything, that she wasn’t imagining things.
She looked to where he held her hand captive, flexed her fingers and drew her bottom lip between her teeth to nibble. His heart, strong and steady, his warmth, welcoming and beckoning, his chest hair…
She giggled, shook the sound away and looked at him through the curtain of her hair, and found him staring at her.
“Sebastian…”
He waited, watched, waited longer. “Aye, leannan?”
She shivered, shook, smiled a secret smile and lost her nerve.
She was never going to be strong enough.
The thought alone was a quick dip in a frozen lake.
She pulled away from him, slowly, shyly, kept her eyes on safer things than his chest, his muscles, his chest hair.
She fiddled with her hair, hid behind it, and turned things to safer waters. “And the mirror? Did your mother like it?”
He laughed, deep and hearty and shook his head as he pushed and pulled and put his clothes to rights.
With the last buckle in place, he shook his head again, rubbed a hand over the back of his neck and smiled awkwardly. “Actually, she hated it. Accepted it, of course, but threw it away when I wasn’t looking.”
“She didn’t!”
“Aye, she did. When I was up and about again, I found one of the cook’s daughters playing with it. When I asked her where she got it, she said she found it in the bin. I was too embarrassed by it all and just left the girl with the mirror. I never asked my mother why she threw it out, it was probably something trivial and entirely aesthetic. I was a young boy, what did I know of fashionable things?”
She shook her head, in disbelief and no small amount of disgust at his mother’s simple dismissal of such a gift, and when she spoke, it showed through in her voice. “Whether it fit in with her apparel or not, it was a gift, she should have at least respected that you thought of her at all.”
“You disapprove.”
“Of course I do! A mothers job is to love their child and to encourage them! If your child loves you enough to think of you, loves you enough to bring you gifts, the least you can do is affirm that affection by keeping the treasure they thought to share with you! You thought of her, Sebastian, and she thought of you not at all. You deserved better than a mother who would throw your affections away so carelessly.”
When her words died, when her anger passed, she looked at him, found him staring at her with a look in his eyes she couldn’t read, and blushed under the scrutiny.
“I’m sorry, that was entirely inappropriate and I shouldn’t–”
“You’re right.”
“–have said that – what?”
He laughed, a quiet sound of fondness that carried only to her, and smiled. “You’re right, what you said about my mother, and mothers in general. I loved my mother, and her death was a tragic loss I will avenge, but I’m under no illusion that her death made her a better woman than the one I knew. She was a hard woman, fair and faithful and a firm believer in the chantry, but she often forgot that being a mother meant teaching us, watching over us, and loving us even when we tried her patience. She handled us as a politician and not a mother, and we suffered for it.”
“Sebastian, I’m sorry.” She paused, hesitated, waited with her hand lifted and halfway to his.
He closed the gap.
He laced their fingers.
And he smiled softly when he looked at her, the smile as much in his eyes as it was on his lips, and kept his words quiet, honest, just for her. “We’ll learn from them, from their mistakes. We’ll do better.”
And he led her back to camp, the words on repeat in her head.
She went to her place on the edges of the camp, her back to the fire and the darkness before her.
And as she settled in, curled up on her side, she found no sleep, found no rest, she found only longing, a loss of reason, a reason why he’d said that, what he’d meant.
And when sleep did finally claim her, when dreams swirled behind the lids of her eyes, when she lost herself in imagination and fancy and looked down at a babe with eyes the blue of summer skies and hair of auburn warmth, she smiled, in dream and in life, and knew it didn’t matter why he said it, or what it meant that he had.
It only mattered that it was true.
They would do better.