sometimes it scratches like barbs
an alternate prompt fill for @febuwhump day 9: I love you. Nathaniel has always worn his heart on his sleeve. But Ciel is not Fereldan—now she must manage the fallout of getting involved with one.
read it on ao3 here
Female Andras/Nathaniel Howe | Rated T | 1317 words | CW: self harm, fantasy racism
-
Her hands clenched around his leathers, the smile falling from her lips. Ciel blinked up at Nathaniel. Moonlight hung around his hair and the look he gave her was soft and warm and open.
“What did you say?”
“I love you.” Casual. Nonchalant. Like they needn’t dance around rituals or follow steps. Like there wasn’t a process to such affection. Even when it was possible.
Fereldans.
Ciel dropped her forehead to his chest and squeezed her eyes tight against the emotion welling there. Steeling herself with gritted teeth, she shoved him away.
“You don’t mean that,” she said flatly.
“I do. I love—“
“You don’t. You can’t.”
His expression flashed from surprise to confusion to hurt before it settled on anger. Anger was good, familiar. A parlay they knew well and a tool easily twisted to fix the mistake he seemed bent on making.
“And why is that?” he asked lowly.
“Just one reason will do?”
Nathaniel scowled. “Do not treat me as one of your Banns, Ciel. I am your Constable, at the very least. And your friend, if not more than that.”
He stepped closer, arms outstretched to close the distance she’d put between them. But she held out a palm and shook her head. His hands thudded dully against his sides as they fell.
“Tell me why, then,” he scowled. “I’m a man of reason and logic. If what you speak is true—“
“Would you listen? If I listed the reasons this cannot go beyond a dalliance? Or would you push on, foolishly hopeful?” Ciel shook her head. “This is not a debate, Nathaniel. I do not owe you an explanation.”
“I rather think you do,” he snapped. “And if you won’t give one—“
This time he crowded her against the battlements’ edge, catching her face between his calloused palms and forcing her to meet his hardened gaze.
“Look at me, just like this,” he growled. “And tell me again. Tell me that this—this aching in my heart is anything less than love, Ciel.”
The flat mask of one who’d survived the clutches of the Orlesian Court overtook her face. But her pulse thundered in her throat and she knew that he must feel it against his hands. She clenched her jaw together and glared at him.
This was her fault. He was too new to the Wardens, too entrenched in the oddities of this pocket Order in Ferelden. An intersection of time and fate and happenstance—the rest of the world did not work like this. And eventually, one or both of them would be called away from it and forced to confront a cold, pragmatic reality.
A reality in which humans did not fall in love with elves. In which Fereldans did not love Orlesians. And in which Wardens were not afforded the luxury of love at all.
She knew the cautionary tale of Genevieve. And she knew every rumor about her predecessor in Ferelden and the broken heart that drove her to disappear. Nothing but tragedy awaited a Warden who dared to love. She would not inflict that on Nathaniel, nor would she let him do it to himself.
For once, she broke the stare down first. Within the confines of his grip, she dropped her chin to her chest and swallowed hard.
“You cannot,” she said raggedly. She pushed him away again, but he refused to go. His grip dropped from her face to her shoulders, his fingers digging bruises into the skin there.
“I can,” he insisted. “I do.”
She slapped him. Her palm connected with his cheek and in his surprise he released her. Seizing the distance needed for a clear head, Ciel stepped back and folded her arms over her chest. “Do not be a fool, Nathaniel. Drop this. There is no future in it.”
“No future?” His bitter laugh echoed off the Vigil’s stone. “What future do I have anyhow? You made sure of that, Commander.”
“The Wardens are a future. For you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” He jabbed the griffon emblem stamped across her chest plate. “Unless you have very recent news, they’re a future for you as well. They could be a future for us, together.”
“Ten years.”
“What?”
“Ten years, since I joined the Order.” Ciel pulled the blood-filled pendant away from the hovel of her throat, so he could see how battles and time had worn away the leather cord. It contrasted sharply with the fine, black braid around his own neck.
“I’ll be a Blighted corpse in the Deep Roads before the Calling is even a distant tune in your mind,” she said curtly. “You do not want to tie yourself to a dead woman walking.”
“Is that not all the more reason to seize on the time we have left?” Nathaniel asked earnestly. “Love does not care for the woes of the world—if we must suffer such fates, let us have the moments now to make it worthwhile!”
Her teeth clicked together. He didn’t get it. Heartsick, idealistic folly. She would have to be more pointed, more personal. There must be a clean, unequivocal break, lest he squander the time his limited time with what ifs and should have beens.
“You cannot tell me that I do not love you.” His hands caught at hers and he drew her close, despite the reluctant drag of her feet, unwavering against her harsh glare. She cringed at the repeated proclamation. Wasn’t she a wretched little thing, to have led him along so fully? “Because I know that I do.”
There was a catch in his voice. He took a deep breath. “But if you must be so insistent, look at me. Look at me, do not turn away, and tell me that you do not love me. Tell me that, and I will let it be.”
He caught the point of her chin between his thumb and forefinger. “Do that, and I will never speak of this again.”
“But—“ he brushed the softest, lightest of kisses over her lips. “I do not think you can.”
Under his hands, she stilled, cold and hard as Tevinter’s finest marble. When he pulled back, the moonlight reflected a dangerous glint in her eyes and, for the first time that night, uncertainty, and fear, flashed in his eyes.
“I do not love you,” she lied. Voice steady and even and calm. His hand dropped to her neck, as if he could catch her in the act.
“I don’t believe you.”
“That is not my concern.” She covered his hand with her own and pulled it away from her skin. When she dropped it in the space she’d carved between them, it hung, reaching, disbelieving.
“I do not love you,” she repeated. A lie was usually easier the second time, the words no longer foreign on her tongue, her mind already cementing them as a new truth. But this one burned her throat as surely as fiery darkspawn blood.
Nathaniel’s face crumpled He pressed his lips together and nodded, a single, sharp jerk of his chin.
“Right then,” he said. “Good evening, Commander.”
As he retreated, Ciel propped her hands against the battlements and exhaled. This post had dulled her skills, that she felt so torn by a child’s exchange of the Game.
Damn you, Alisse. Sending me here.
She pressed down against the stone and the jagged edges of it tore open decades’ worth of similar scars and callouses. Loose stone dust stung the open wounds and she drank in the pain as an alcoholic with a wine skin in hand.
Nathaniel had a good heart. Full of good intentions and passion that would take him far.
She twisted her palms, bearing the full weight of her body and her armor on them to drive the wounds deeper.
He deserved much better than her. And she deserved no less than this.
10 notes
·
View notes