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Cassandra’s form relaxed in sleep. Lavellan could still see the strength in her frame, trace the outline of her muscles, but asleep she gained a boneless, warm grace. She was, although she would never accept him saying it out loud, cuddly. Her edges softened and her body curled unconsciously around him.
Wiggling a hand free, he raised it to stroke the pads of his fingers softly across her cheek, tracing the powerful arch of her cheekbone. His motion stilled as his breath caught, overwhelmed by her beauty for a moment, his fingers resting against the soft warmth of her skin. He was always aware of it, but sometimes a simple tilt of her head or curl of her lip could strike him speechless.
She grumbled sleepily and he drew his hand back, not wanted to disturb her rest.
Awkwardly, he regarded his arm, growing cold in the open air. With a sigh, he tried to worm it back under the warm blankets without actually moving too much, but Cassandra grumbled again and her eyes blinked open.
“You are worse than the cats,” she told him, her voice hoarse with sleep.
He blushed, but hid it from his tone, opting to tease instead, “I do not bite your toes without asking first.”
“Urg,” her nose wrinkled and she leaned back a little, so she could look him in the eyes. Her grumpiness was still gentled with fondness. Laying her head back down, she glared at him with both narrowed eyes and a soft smile.
He moved his hand back upwards, sliding it up her arm before reaching out to smooth her short hair back from her forehead, where it had dried earlier. Under the scent of the fleabane, stuffed into the bedroll with the wool, they both still smelled of sweat and sex. “Hamin, emma lath, sleep. I will refrain from disturbing you again,” he promised.
Her eyes closed and she sighed. “That hardly seems likely,” she said with a smile still in her voice. “You seem fascinated with petting me in my sleep.”
“I am fascinated with you much of the time,” he admitted. “But Bull and Skyhold are bad enough without any extra encouragement on our part.”
Cassandra hummed. “And you did not get your fill of touching earlier?”
“Never,” he grinned, embarrassment falling away. “Melanada. But you seem softer like this.” Without thinking, his hand moved to cup her cheek, fingers trailing down the line of her scar.
Her eyes snapped open. “Soft?” she asked, flatly. Her hand covered his. “Do you know how I got this?”
Still, for all that she glared at him, Cassandra’s hand rested gently over his. Lavellan pulled his fingers away from the ridge of poorly sewn together flesh that ran down her cheek and flipped his hand over to clasp hers. Holding her hand, he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
“Was it bears?” he asked as he pulled back, smiling. “It was probably bears, wasn’t it?”
Laughter bubbled out of him when she pulled her had away to swat him in the side.
“I do not provoke fights with bears,” she told him, her annoyance still shaded with fondness. He was beginning to believe it always would be. “I do not know why they seem so set on attacking us, but I imagine it is the constant intrusion of armies and soldiers that has them so edgy and aggressive.”
“Dragons then?” he asked, a bit more serious.
“No,” she said. “It was not dragons.”
“Soft does not mean weak, da’mi,” he claimed her hand back and settled against her side, wrapping an arm around her waist, his head tucking under her chin. “I am... joyful,” he continued, softer. “I believe that is the word... you trust me with your vulnerabilities. I will listen if you care to tell me, emma lath, but I do not mean to provoke the story from you.”
She hummed, reaching across herself to run her free hand through his hair. “If I thought that, you would not be here,” she told him. They lapsed into silence and he thought Cassandra had decided not to speak of that which had brought her pain after all.
“It was the Conclave,” she said, a long time later, abruptly into the silence. He blinked to rouse himself from where he had been drifting at the edge of sleep, warm against her side and from the heat rising from the forge below them. “I had not truly arrived before... I was still outside the gates, but pieces,” she paused again. “Something heavy hit my head. And my side. I remember pushing myself up from the snow, running toward the fire, the greenest of it, and the smoke. My face burned and the air when I breathed... I think I was concussed, but the search for survivors could not wait. It was hours, I believe, before...”
“Before you found me.”
She snorted, the seriousness falling away from her again. “Captured you. While concussed and burned.”
“I had just fallen out of the Fade,” he reminded her. “And was unconscious.”
“You have gotten much better at it,” she allowed.
He started laughing again. But this time it rose out of him, not from humor or joy but just from the absurdity, and the fear, of this new reality. Cassandra’s arms curved around him, firm and secure.
“I am sorry,” she said.
“Tel-abelas,” he said, shivering against her side, but sincere. “Tel-abelas ma dirthara. For all of it.”