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kettlequills · 2 years

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to hear the nightingale (sing on, as if in pain)

Here is my entry for the Black Emporium this time round! My prompt was Leliana/Wynne, let my imagination fly... tw: canonical character death (but she gets better), smut, and canon typical violence. Here it is on A03.

During the long dark hour of the Blight, Leliana finds her breaking point following the Warden, and Wynne finds Leliana.

When Wynne met Leliana, she was blood-drenched and singing.

Huddled behind their barrier, Wynne’s group of mages heard the Warden’s party coming. They were heralded by the lovely voice of the lay sister, whose bard-tongue eased their hurts and wrapped around their hearts.

They came into view a shimmering, imposing squadron of all silverite helms, gleaming eyes and proud spines, lifted on the silent wings of prayer and spirit magic. It hid briefly how heart-wrenchingly young they all were, how their clothes were badly mended, and their weapons scavenged, shields dented from old battles they should never have had to face alone. There were apprentices still summoning wisps older than the Warden, but Wynne had no choice but to place her hopes on their shoulders.

On a leap of faith, Wynne let them through. The archer in a lay sister’s robes gave her a reassuring smile as she passed, so sweet and fervent through all the blood that splattered her cheek. She didn’t seem to mind it, and Wynne hadn’t the presence of thought to wonder how she’d got it quite so all over herself, when she was supposed to be a ranged fighter.

Afterwards, she found out that Leliana was not at all anything she was supposed to be, not a Chantry sister nor a bard, but that kindness stayed with her, and the bolstering memory of Leliana’s song.

—

After she killed people, Leliana would pray. Wynne found her kneeling on the dirty grass riverbank while the others wrapped their wounds and checked for any signs of darkspawn infection. It was bandits this time, but one could never be too careful.

Wynne had only travelled with them for a few weeks, and she was already sick of death, sick of how they all took it in stride. Worst of all was the Qunari, who gave Wynne a flat look, and called her weak and old for mourning when all the killing was done. So she came to Leliana, who was praying, and hoped to find a similar soul in need of soothing.

Leliana’s knives were laid out in front of her. Meticulously, she cleaned her instruments of death, and her lips moved again and again over the shapes of the Chant. When she got the words wrong, her pretty brow would furrow, like she was searching for the right answer. Sometimes, she would remember, and correct herself. Sometimes she would just swear in Orlesian.

She had no wounds to wrap or check; Leliana was much too fast for a bandit to catch her. She was easy to fight alongside in that way, ruthlessly competent and never in need of Wynne’s barriers or healing. She fought like demons preyed on weak minds in the Circle tower, deadly, vicious, with honed and charismatic skill. She sang when she killed, her voice rising high and silvery over the screams of men dying, something beautiful amongst the stench of urine, blood, and desperation. She never hesitated to slash necks or puncture eyes, but afterwards, she prayed.

“Does it help?” Wynne asked as she knelt beside her. She had waterskins in hand to refill, but she lay them to the side, by Leliana’s knives. They lumped there like the wobbling, starved bellies of apostates brought into the Circle after a long hunt, and Wynne was so tired of violence. “You sound like you are asking for forgiveness.”

“It is not meant to be easy to kill, no?” Leliana replied. “I am hoping it will become less so, but I know the Maker sent me here for a reason. He must have thought the Warden could use my skills. So it must not be bad to have them.”

Despite her disturbing words and the blood on her gloves, already her summer-sky eyes were filled with light when she looked at Wynne. It shone out of her eyes like a candle in the velvet dark of Wynne’s office, lighting the way through just one more chapter of her book. Inspiration made its home in the shine of her lustrous red hair, beauty in the careful, clever movements of her hands on her killing-sharp knives. Everything she did was graceful and smooth, like it was a step in a dance Wynne never tired of watching.

“It’s not easy for me,” Wynne said. “But we have lived very different lives. I choose to believe in people. They are more immediate to me than a distant god. I find there is a lot of simple goodness in everyday hearts. Perhaps that is why I struggle to accept the necessity of death.”

“Yes,” cried Leliana, exultant with understanding. “The Maker calls to us all, from inside ourselves, who are we to deny Him? I believe the Maker sent us, all of us, to be here when it was needed. We must do what best we can, Wynne, He would not ask for more.”

“I admire your faith,” Wynne told her, and Leliana blushed. It was a comely blush, crimson blazing along the paths of the wandering freckles spanning her cheeks, more and more with all the time out in the sun. She tucked her hair behind her ear and leant against Wynne, easily as a friendly cat.

Wynne curled her arm around her shoulders, allowing the snugness and solidity of her body to anchor her. Leliana’s hair was smooth against her cheek, scented with floral soap and blood. It was a balm to be close to another; Wynne had found herself missing the easy familiarity of the Circle and the way trusted friends would fold together like pups whenever templars stepped out of sight. A certain amount of leeway was understood, for discreet liaisons, but a lifetime of habit was hard to break.

But no one was watching them on the bank down by the quiet chattering of the river.

The grass was thick and springy beneath Wynne’s aching knees, fresh with rain-blessed mud. Bees wandered between the powdery nodding heads of daisies and dandelions. Were it not for the foul smell of carrion whispering along the balmy wind, it would be a perfect summer’s day, about and humming in a way that Wynne had never grown used to, outside of the Circle.

To her, summer sun was something that streamed in through the mazed glass and lit the dusty shelves with oak brown and gold, so Wynne did not need a new candle. Leliana fit in here, though, and her hair came alive into a thousand shades of titian rose under the sun.

It felt like being on the inside of a painting, of the rare, cherished sort that passed through the Circle well-thumbed by wistful apprentices dreaming of meadows and freedom. The outside world had so few truly contained spaces, it was difficult to feel they were real, to not search for the borders of the canvas, especially in picturesque moments like this.

It was a loveliness, yet, the Blight lurked, and a few paces away, corpses bled dully into the earth. Wynne was of a mind to take the reprieve where she could get it. One did not survive long in a Circle if they were prone to cultivating despair instead of the beautiful snapshots that made life worthwhile.

“It is hard,” Leliana admitted, eyes closed and face tilted to the sun.

It gilded the curl of her eyelashes, naturally thick and long in a way a vainer, younger Wynne might have envied, once. Now, it was only a blessing to see fairness in someone with a kind heart that she was tentatively growing to call friend. She had already fought for Wynne and her people in the Circle tower, after all.

“Many times, I doubted that I was on the right path, or that there was space for me, in peace,” she said, voice subdued enough that the river nearly drowned it. “Yet, I would not trade what I learnt there, at the cloister, even if it was difficult. Ah, though mostly it was the people that were difficult!”

“What did you learn?”

“Faith is an effort,” said Leliana, smiling up at her with a rosy sentimentality, “but belief is only a choice away.”

They were simple words, but Wynne took the time to absorb them, to turn them round in her mind. The bees continued to buzz, the river laughed long and languid, and Leliana did not hurry her. No templar came to chastise them for taking comfort in one another, and as time passed Wynne found that the smell of blood dulled, overpowered by the delicate fragrance of Leliana’s perfume, the oils of Andraste’s Grace.

Reflectively, Wynne said, “That is wise.”

Leliana twisted to kiss both of her cheeks in the Orlesian way. Wynne’s skin prickled under her lips satiny as flower petals. Leliana leant back on her heels with lissome grace and smiled at her like the rising of dawn.

“I’m glad you’re here, Wynne,” she said, suddenly. “I feel like we cannot be too far from the right course, with you on our side.”

“... Thank you, Leliana,” said Wynne, fighting a small spark of self-consciousness as she returned Leliana’s vivacious smile. “That is kind of you to say. But, speaking of courses, we should really get moving before dark.”

“Ah, but I think Alistair is already in the river!” Leliana bounced up to her feet with a speed and surety Wynne envied, holding a hand down to help her up. Eyes dancing with mischief, she added, “Shall we go fish him out?”

“No need,” said Wynne, letting Leliana pull her to her feet with only a muffled groan for her sore knees, “If you fill these water skins, my dear, I believe I know a spell.”

“This I have to see!”

After she killed people, she would pray, alone and removed from the group. Yet, with a little encouragement and a lot of splashing from Alistair, Wynne found that Leliana would play along with the best of them, too, her laughter ringing out along the banks just like her songs did during battle. Perhaps, thought Wynne, that was how one made peace with terrible times and bloody sacrifice - by remembering who it was all for, and who stood beside them.

—

Alistair followed Wynne like a child, begging for a mended shirt and a kind word. He was puppyish and lost, longing for maternal love, and reminded her of the quiet, wounded hole in her heart that whispered of Aneirin and every apprentice of Wynne’s after him who had not survived the rigours of the Circle. He reminded her of Rhys, the baby she had never seen reach toddlerhood.

She wondered if Rhys would be like Alistair, sturdy and a little silly, maybe Morrigan, quick even if she was sharp with a heart that wanted so visibly to melt, though she had not learnt how yet. Or if not either of them, then Leliana, with her lightness of heart and fleet step, and freedom in every syllable of her songs. Hopefully, without the trouble that they all had endured, so very young.

She was so young, to have gone through so much.

“I am not as young as I look,” Leliana said, after Wynne shared this thought with her. Indeed, there was a weight in her eyes, even though she was generous with her smiles, maybe a little too easily.

She was working oil into the length of her bow, testing its limber stretch for snaps or creaks, deft as ever, not a misplaced movement. She handled the bow as if she had been born with it in her hands. “Ah, maybe you are too old to have gone through so little.”

Wynne pondered this as she prepared porridge in a pot. Leliana had got it started, thankfully, but Wynne was carefully stirring it as Zevran had shown her once. Cooking was not so different from alchemy, in the end.

It was a cold, perfect morning, good for thoughts. The morning sun had barely peeked over the crest of the hills they had camped in the shelter of the previous night, and tentative rays glittered in the dew tossed over the grass like diamonds. The other members of the Warden’s group were still stirring; Wynne was awake because she barely needed to sleep these days, and Leliana had had the last watch through the world-rousing hours of the champagne-skied morning. Leliana’s breath fogged in the air, her puffs of breath like lace laid over an enchanter’s potions bench. Her skin was pimpled by goosebumps and even under her travelling cloak, she looked cold.

“Here,” Wynne said, and swung her own cloak off her back. Leliana took it with surprised thanks.

“You will need it, no?” she asked, and Wynne shook her head.

“You are kind to worry, dear,” she said, calling a flame to spark at her fingers, "but I can handle a little cold.”

Leliana gave her a winsome smile and tucked the cloak around herself. She drew the hood up over her red hair, a gleam of oil on the tender inside of her wrist glowing molten gold in a stray beam of sun. It was like all the light in the world focused on her spirit, her good heart and storyteller’s mind, pouring out of her like water from an overfull jug in every crinkle of her inquisitive eyes, in the flare of her nose as she breathed in the yellowing dawn. She returned to her bow, drawing it in a smooth, assured pull that made the muscles of her arms flex like the haunches of a cat preparing to leap.

She was so confident, so assured. Last night she had shot three rabbits for their dinner and skinned them herself. Alistair had set about making stew, and even Morrigan had sloped into camp with an assortment of herbs she swore were good to eat. Wynne had sat back, out of the way, and felt a little useless; they had not even asked her to light the fire with magic, and no one had been injured in battle today.

She was a skilled mage, powerful and careful, steady and calm even under pressure. Yet, outside of the Circle, she was reliant on them to slow down to her pace, to catch her food and help her put up a tent. At Ostagar, they’d had templars and Tranquil handling that, while the mages were awkwardly shuffled off and told to practise until they burned themselves low enough that the templars could relax. Wynne had not had the spirit, then, a gentle but ever-burning coal in her heart, and she had been thankful indeed of a chance to lay down her head that night.

She wondered if Rhys would have liked camping, if he hadn’t been born a mage like her.

“The Circle is my home,” said Wynne. Leliana looked up curiously, not questioning the long pause in conversation; she was good like that, letting it ebb and flow naturally to the shape of Wynne’s thoughts. “I do not regret it, but I will not deny that it left me …unprepared for some things.”

She folded the porridge round the spoon and hoped that she was doing it correctly. Morrigan found it even harder to be kind in the mornings when her breakfast was burnt, and she and Leliana fought so readily with cutting words that it made Wynne tired. There was little enough goodness in the world as it was.

“I wonder what else you would have been, if you had not lived in a Circle,” Leliana said. Drawing it around herself like an embrace, Leliana thumbed the edge of Wynne’s cloak between her fingers. Her eyes were the dusky blue of cornflowers when she glanced at her, sidelong, under her lashes. “What we all could have been, if maybe, we had met some other time, some other place.”

Her voice lilted up at the end, inviting Wynne to share in her imagination, in her fantasy. There was even maybe the smallest flirtation in her tone, for all it was earnest as ever, but Wynne found she couldn’t respond with the gentle dismissal Leliana deserved, or at all.

She had even shifted herself to begin to offer the usual reassurances she gave when non-mages asked after life in the Circles - they seemed to view it with such an odd mix of resentment and horror - that truly, it was a good life, and that Wynne was very sensible of the opportunities her magic gave an otherwise penniless and nameless orphan child. She had had regular food and clothing, a roof over her head, and her letters and numbers taught to her, she had been given the chance and the encouragement to spend her days mastering a unique and beautiful craft. Without her magic, Wynne would just have likely died one cold winter in Langwynne, unburied and unremarked.

Yet, and perhaps it was because she had already been thinking of Rhys, her chest panged with a sharp, tight pain, one that had grown familiar but no less piercing over the years, and Wynne found she could not speak. Wynne was comfortable being what she was; she was a mage, and the Circle her place. She would have liked to have held Rhys, at least once more, before they took him away. But, even if she had not been a mage, and there had been no reason for the templars to take Rhys… she was just Wynne, and she couldn’t imagine herself a true mother to him.

When she looked back up, Leliana was smiling at her very gently, as if she knew her idle statement had touched a wound.

“Forgive me,” she said, softly, “I do not always think before I speak. I have long admired how well you weave spells, and I suppose, I envy your talent, but I imagine it is not always easy to be a mage.”

“You are an uncommon person, to envy magic,” Wynne said, taking the branch in conversation Lelianna offered with some relief. “Also, I hope, less prone to misplacing spell components than I am, if you were.”

Cocking her head, Leliana slyly added, “Maybe less cold too, no?”

“And preferably, with markedly less darkspawn,” Wynne replied, permitting a small smile to creep onto her face.

Leliana rewarded her with her sweet laugh. “Maker willing!”

They would never have met, if not for the Blight, for the massacre at Ostagar and Loghain’s treachery. It was a strange thought to be welcome in any sense for tragedy, but Wynne chose to turn it on its upside; even in the darkest of times, there were slivers of light just the size of Leliana’s smile. A little hope and faith went a long way, after all.

—

“Cup of wine in my tent?” Leliana offered her one night. Just enough interest in the tilt of her head to convey her intent without embarrassing Wynne, voice pitched low so only the two of them could hear. Leliana’s flirtatious invitation was smooth, diplomatic and considerate, the way she did everything.

Her graceful fingers rested on the inside of Wynne’s wrist, a tiny touch. Wynne’s pulse leapt under the contact, knocking nervously against the forklike veins beneath the sensitive skin. She hadn’t even realised her sleeves were still rolled up from beating clothes clean in the river with the Qunari Sten. It felt exposing, and startlingly exciting, to notice it only now, with Leliana’s callused fingertips lightly hovering against her skin, as if she was only waiting permission to caress Wynne’s skinny pale forearm, to tug her after Leliana, into her tent.

Guiltily, Wynne wondered how those roughened fingers would feel against the rest of her, inside of her, even as she smiled politely and eased her hand away. There were much more important things to focus on than temporary dalliances, and besides, Leliana deserved rather more than Wynne could offer.

“How about a cup of tea by the fire?” Wynne suggested.

She was perhaps a little more playfully arch than she needed to be, because even if she was sensible, she was still a woman. She was confident Leliana would understand her teasing for what it was, and was reassured when Leliana’s answering grin was luminous and unfazed, shimmering with good humour.

“Parfait! I will fetch my lute.”

It ended up being a nice night. It was quiet in camp, most of the others off training or foraging, and a secluded area safe enough to relax; Leliana had picked a good time to approach her.

Accompanying herself, Leliana regaled her with Orlesian ballads and love stories, and when she ran out of those, she worked her way through mournful Dalish tales, clever Antivan rhymes, naughty Ferelden jigs and Rivaini reels that made her quick fingers fly like birds pecking for seed over the neck of her lute. In return, Wynne told of her naughtier apprentices pranking the senior enchanters, templars missing the correct polish on their boots sent strolling naked round the tower as a punishment, light tales of Circle life and the many strange characters that Wynne had encountered during it that sent Leliana into gales of laughter, mellow and songful as a nightingale’s call.

The popping fire was sweltering on her cheeks like a blush, the night sky was crisp and clear, and the smoke never seemed to blow in her eyes. They fed it wood and kept a listening ear for Morrigan coming off watch where she lurked in the surrounding trees. When her hands began to cramp from playing, Leliana cuddled up against Wynne’s side, insisting they share a fur and complaining of the cold.

“Let me,” said Wynne, and took Leliana’s hands in her own. A thimble of spirit magic massaged into her palms by Wynne’s thumbs soothed the ache, and afterwards, Leliana kissed both of her cheeks in thanks, the touch friendly and chaste.

Leliana laid her head on Wynne’s shoulder, her cheeks flushed an attractive red, her smile sugared and lively as spring thaw, her effusiveness turned quieter, contemplative. If Wynne tilted her head, she could see the reflections of the stars in Leliana’s eyes as she pointed out each constellation in her story. Indulgently, Wynne let her arm fall around Leliana’s waist, and, feeling affectionate, pressed her lips just once to the crown of her head.

“That tickles,” whispered Leliana, but her blush blazed brighter.

She would have thought nothing of such tenderness to her fellow mages, once, but for some reason, the softness and texture of Leliana’s hair made her lips tingle.

Don’t be an old fool, Wynne, she reminded herself. She was grateful, to have found herself in such good company, after the horrors of the Circle tower, of Ostagar, of the hard decisions and brutality that awaited them in the morning. Though Leliana’s offer had woken a part of her she had thought buried for quite some time, grateful was all she would be.

Still, as she sipped her tea, she could have sworn it was even sweeter, more colourful than it should be, like the world itself came into focus when Leliana was around. Maybe it was the spirit inside of her, reaching out for the faith and hope that burned like a beacon inside Leliana’s heart, or perhaps it was good tea shared with a friend, well-woven stories told by a master bard and a safe fire after a long day’s walking.

Either way, the warmth in Wynne’s bones sank deep and true, and she was content.

—

Wynne died for the second time not long after that. The genlock’s arrow took her in the heart, punching into her breast like a templar’s smite. She staggered back, nerveless hands slipping icily on the grip of her staff, and Zevran shot under her arm and disembowelled the creature with one neat, quick flick of his dagger. He turned on his heel, quick as a dancer, and was lost at once to the dense furore of battle.

Her heart stuttered agonisingly against the arrow-point lodged in the muscle, her mouth was open, but she had no time to scream. It slowed; Wynne wavered. It stopped; Wynne fell.

Damage to the heart could kill in minutes or seconds.

The spirit inside her surged; the Fade contorted around her, and with a snap of reality she was crumpled some distance away, behind the scrubby rise of hill. Shouts and snarling rang out around her like the din of a terrible beast, but Wynne couldn’t sort the cries of her companions from the guttural roaring of the darkspawn. Her mouth tasted of charnel ash.

Wheezing for breath, Wynne gripped at her chest, the gritty sand raw against her cheek. The arrow dissolved into a burn of gold. Around her the battle ground went quiet, and then she heard a shout go up for her.

The Warden was first over the crest of the little hill, quick to signal Alistair to bring a poultice. Their eyes were limned in light, their faiths, their hopes, strung like ropes of gold around their bodies, dancing behind them like vapour trails left by the wings of birds over Lake Calenhad on a moonlit night.

She managed a faint, sweaty smile in hope of reassuring them. “No need,” she said, and pulled her hand away to reveal nothing but a thin scar, barely visible in the neat hole in her robes. She fixed them that night, with a needle and thread, and tried not to remember the first time.

Years of Circle life, the bloody and terrible battle of Ostagar, and the thing that had killed her in the end was a scared apprentice with a kitchen knife shorter than her hand.

His name was Alim, and he had never been much good at defensive spells. They hadn’t found his corpse, among the twisted abominations hauled out and burned. Wynne hoped he had got away, even if she knew there was no chance that he had made it past them all. He had only been an afraid boy, caught up in something bigger than he could understand. For mages, fear was not only deadly but made them monstrous.

If she had to have died at all, Wynne found herself glad that she had made it back to the Circle, even if her tale of Loghain’s treachery had done more harm than good in the minds of the enchanters. How many apprentices like Alim had died, in the chaotic wake of Wynne’s news? The Warden had pressed them to leave before the count was complete. Wynne wasn’t sure she wanted to know, even as she knew that one day, she would ask.

There wasn’t even a scar there from Alim’s attack, not like this time. If it weren’t for the blood down the front of her robes, the swollen memory of choking to death on it in her dreams, and the radiant, loving not-quite-a-presence that had suffused her ever since, there would be no sign at all that it hadn’t been a slip of her mind. She had checked, wondering how visible her condition was, how the templars even distracted as they were had let her go without question or pause.

She was an abomination now, after all, the thing that all Circle mages and templars had been raised to dread. She did not feel unlike herself, but that did not mean she wasn’t something different now.

That night in camp, Zevran found her.

“I saw,” he said, without preamble. “Trust I have killed enough people to know when a wound is fatal.”

Wynne sighed, but he raised his hands, placatingly.

“Do not fear, kind woman, I have no intention of telling anybody. You have saved my handsome face enough times for my silence, yes?”

“There are enough battles to fight,” Wynne said, quietly. “It would be only an unnecessary distraction.”

She wasn’t quite sure how the Warden would take the news that they were all travelling alongside an abomination, and she wasn’t convinced that her healing wasn’t needed enough to risk the Warden turning her away. Stopping the Blight had to come first, and Wynne had no intention of languishing away in a cell or a bed, waiting for the spirit to leave her and true death to come. She had been given this second - now third - chance, and she meant to use it.

The bleeding sun turned Zevran’s compassionate eyes to whiskey and amber. Not unkindly, he said, “Far be it from a lowly Crow to offer advice to a fair lady such as yourself, but you should not keep big secrets from those important to you, I think.”

Tellingly, he tilted his head, and Wynne followed the line of his gaze to Leliana, dancing with Oghren (earthy resplendent, tarnished but true) as they raucously celebrated their victory. She had cajoled Alistair and the Warden (their hearts spiralling beacons of buttery determination) into joining them, and even Sten pounded the beat of their impromptu dance with one mighty foot, his fearsome visage cracked into an equally fearsome smile; his whole core was iron with devotion and duty.

Strands of golden splendour outlined Leliana like a Chantry sun, fluted in the calls of her song and the kicks of her heels as she spun circles around Oghren, like an elegant crane beside a small and beer-sodden bear. Morrigan lurked further away, squatting beside her little fire like she didn’t care at all for their noise, but her gold eyes glittered bright and envious like coins, and with the spirit’s eyes Wynne could see a sordid, cold tangle of disappointed hopes turned old and hard in her chest.

Almost as if she sensed what Wynne did, Leliana cupped her hands to her lips and shouted to Morrigan, something teasing, encouraging, and a little catty all at once. Stiff and surly, Morrigan sidled up to them, disdained Leliana’s hand and joined Sten instead. With a strange little smile on her fey lips, she added pulsing lights in time to the beat that had the Qunari scowling at the display of magic.

“Come, come join us!” Leliana called to Zevran and Wynne, and Zevran smirked back like a cat full of cream.

“I make a habit not to refuse most beautiful women,” he said, hand over his heart (gold and amber and gold again, like a tiger’s eye stone), but as he rose he turned and met Wynne’s eyes, once. Once was all he needed, and Wynne smiled at him, warm with his concern.

“Not right now,” she said to them both. She elected not to question how he knew her to approach her on Leliana’s behalf, and not that of the Warden they all followed. She had the sense that the quick-witted, sly assassin saw far more than he shared.

—

There was a lot of walking involved in defeating a Blight. Wynne occupied herself from time to time imagining how many times she had circumnavigated Kinloch Hold. She grew triply thankful for the spirit she housed, whose sympathetic protective energies imbued her with a strength and suppleness she was reasonably certain she would have struggled without. Oghren and Sten had no problems keeping up, but they were warriors both, and Wynne was not.

The air was mulchy with rain and growing things, oddly thick in Wynne’s nose. The hems of her robes were sodden with mud from puddles that hid amongst the poking green grass, just waiting to soak her shoes. She found herself yet again blessing the foresight of the Warden for insisting on stopping at a cobbler in Redcliffe to get good boots for the entire party before they braved the roads.

Her magic felt fierier here, on the road, sung like a dreambeat with one step in the waking world and one in the Fade. It was a balm to her heart, and her sore legs.

Flitting between people, Leliana seemed as if she could never decide who she wanted to talk to most. She sought out even the company of taciturn Shale, unabashed when her chatter bounced off the golem like river water a boulder. Eventually, she always dropped back to walk next to Wynne, holding up the back of the party.

“So, you are like a fine wine,” Leliana’s light opening line made clear her teasing intentions. “And I am the most graceful person you have ever seen, with my dances.”

There was a cloud in her sky-blue eyes that had Wynne wondering what it was she was she didn’t want to be thinking of. The Blight, her crisis of faith, some other pall that cast a shadow over her withdrawn humour? It reminded Wynne of her praying by the riverbank, whispering holy words over and over like it could cleanse her, and never quite being sure of the correct order.

She paused, her infectious grin catching wild as a library fire across her face. A wiggling insinuation in her purr, she leant forward and added, “I did not know you enjoyed them so.”

The overcast sun dappled her cheeks, cut her eyes like the deep currents of merry rivers, sparkling and flashing in the streaks and strays of light that pierced the tree canopy.

“What are you getting at, my dear?” Wynne asked fondly, taking her proffered arm to help her over a protruding tree root. Leliana’s muscles bent and flexed under her grip, taking her weight with ease. Wynne patted her shoulder as she let go, in thanks, and Leliana smiled. This one, at least, was amiable and genuine. “I thought I told you I did not want to be compared to wine.”

“Sugar, then,” Leliana suggested impishly, “for my tea.”

With a dancer’s energy Leliana twirled beside her, like a song was on the tip of her tongue, replaced only through effort with pretty comments. She had no fear of tripping over the roots she didn’t deign to glance at, for her attention fixed to Wynne like a flower to the face of the sun. If it weren’t for the way her smile had made its way onto her face mechanically, component by component, like a poisoner assembling a deadly weapon, Wynne would have thought her lightness overspilling and natural. Perhaps it was just that she knew her better now.

Regardless, she would not pry. In the Circle, where mages lived side by side without doors and with the constant eye of the templars, the privacy of one’s own mind was sacrosanct. Leliana would tell her if she wanted to, and Wynne would listen.

Wynne did not mind being her distraction, all things told. It was a bit of friendly teasing, after all, and she was wittier about it than Oghren.

“Is sugar better with age?” Wynne retorted. She didn’t mind, but it wouldn’t do to encourage them too much to consider her available.

She was a Circle mage, and she had learnt her lesson with Rhys. It was more painful to love and lose than it was to have succour for a few fumbling moments of passion in the third-floor storage cupboard where templars often forgot to check. The Blight, and the cohesion of their team fighting against it, had to take priority.

Leliana smirked one of her devastating bard’s smiles, wicked and seductive. It made her feel young again, even as it brought warmth coasting to the skin of her chest and neck, a slow-cresting flush hidden, for now, by the collar of her robes.

I know things, that smile promised, terrible, wonderful things, and I can show them to you.

“Oh, it can be frosted, just like your hair,” she said, with faux innocence, “And I like the way it melts on my tongue.”

Her accent waxed stronger when she flirted, like she thought of the words in Orlesian first, and then translated them.

“Would that the darkspawn were as sweet,” Wynne replied, because they were supposed to be keeping a lookout, Zevran’s ears were twitching back towards them like he dearly wanted to turn around and comment, and because her cheeks were a little redder than she wanted to admit.

Leliana laughed. It was silly and endearing, and Wynne had never imagined how she had cherished it, until it was gone.

—

The Warden’s party returned from the Temple of Sacred Ashes in silence, with no melodious song to herald them. Wynne took a bedroll and a pack, and left before the snow could fill the tracks they had made on their way back, one person fewer than there should have been.

—

“You came,” breathed Leliana. “I prayed you would.”

She lay a broken thing in a pool of her own blood on the sanctum’s steps, her hollow gaze turned up towards the lofty ceiling. The shards of the broken, defiled urn crowned her with a terracotta halo. Her red hair spread beneath her head like a wound. She was pale as death, her eyes and mouth bruises in her face.

She’d fought the Warden, and hard. She was littered with wounds and cuts, broken bones and scrapes. The sword had gone all the way through her body, bisecting her like a butterfly nailed to a board. Wynne could see the pinkish-grey red ropes of her intestines, gristly wet and no longer steaming in the cold air. A knife had lodged in her heart; it was still there, the pommel jutting up like an accusing finger, like the judgement of the absent god she believed in enough to die for.

“Of course, dear,” said Wynne, and heedless of all the blood, gathered her head in her lap. A healer’s caution forbade moving her, but Leliana was already dead, had been for the hours it had taken Wynne to hike up the mountain to come find her.

She should never have let the Warden go without her. She should never have trusted them. Let the darkspawn take them all, now.

Her head was a friendly weight in Wynne’s lap. She turned her cheek painfully into Wynne’s hand, her gaze softening under her lashes. Her eyes fair-burned; had they ever been so blue, so bright?

Looking into them, Wynne was seventeen years old and facing her Harrowing, that vast bowl of rippling lyrium taunting her through the skein of the Fade. Leliana’s eyes were blue, blue, beyond blue to silver, just like that bowl of impossibility had been - the blue that something was when it could not be described, could not be trapped or held or seen in the memory, just blue.

“I’m sorry,” whispered Wynne, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here sooner.”

“I knew.” Leliana was so terribly pale. There was too much blood for a human to lose all around her, soaking into Wynne’s robes. “I knew you would come right in time.”

Wynne’s chest tightened, and she couldn’t bear to contradict her.

She wondered if she had been so pale, so earnest, so very alive on her first death. When she woke sagged against the wall with Alim’s knife still in her throat, had she been as deep and true and resounding as the faith that ran through Leliana like veins through the bones of the earth? When the spirit had entered her, had it sunk in like the starlike patterns of her blood making a tableau of ice and flesh and pottery, all shattered on the temple steps? Had she compelled anybody to go to her, like Wynne was to Leliana, to hold her and give her whatever shred of their heart remained in their breast, tear it out beating if they had to, if only she did not look so alone, so abandoned, in her lonely, final hour?

Faith burned in her bones like a pole-star. Wynne would never be alone again, and here, now, neither would Leliana.

Wynne kissed Leliana’s sweaty, chilled forehead. With effort, she folded as much comfort and heartfelt kindness into that simple action as she could, wishing she had Leliana’s skill that sung music into feeling and something nearly like magic. Still, Leliana closed her eyes, and smiled a faint, peaceful smile, like she felt it anyway.

Wynne called on her magic, and Faith answered in a swirl of gold. Leliana’s blood hummed and whispered in her periphery, like the deep dreams of dark stone and memory-made-will refusing silence.

“Let’s get you fixed up, dear.”

—

They camped that night at the base of the mountain, in an old herbalist’s hut. Without asking, Leliana slipped into their one bedroll alongside Wynne, not even a fingerspan of space between them. Wynne hadn’t thought to bring another, hadn’t thought to find her alive. Truthfully, she couldn’t recall thinking much at all, save the burning, intense need to go to her, to find what had happened, to give what peace to her noble soul that she could.

It was selfish. But Wynne’s heart ached, like the arrow was still lodged inside it, and she could not look anywhere but Leliana, the way her lashes would rest on her cheek, the freckles that spanned her like constellations, the hair that was still tacky in places with her own blood. Still, she smelled of Andraste’s Grace, overpoweringly, like the memory of summer in Wynne’s mouth.

It was an impossibility, a miracle Wynne hadn’t even thought to hope for, to find her alive. But some part of her must have done. It must have known to direct Wynne to her, even through the whole bloody and broken temple. She was alive, breathing sleepily beside Wynne with her belly full of rations soaked in tea from Wynne’s pack, her body heat like an animal thing, cosy and lulling.

It was a strange kind of shock. It wasn’t the numbness that had enveloped her at Ostagar, protected her from the awful sights she witnessed there, or the similar distant focus she felt at the Circle’s fall. This was imminent, immense, and filled up with Leliana. She had come to occupy the whole of Wynne, and the grief of what had happened threatened to swallow her whole: grief for Leliana, killed by her companions over her faith, grief for Wynne, and the many times she had died alone, grief for them both, rudderless in a Blighted country and turning their backs on a cause that didn’t want their faith.

Leliana had given Wynne the fireside, to keep her warm. Wynne didn’t have the heart to push against her consideration, not when Leliana’s eyes glittered with their own faint light, and she was distracted and quiet, not quite as present as she once was. Neither of them made jokes about Wynne’s old bones, sharing the bed, or the tea that Wynne found in a side-pocket of her pack, and boiled for them over a flame held in her own hand, rather than leave her side.

Tomorrow, it would be different. Tomorrow they would have to reckon with what to do with themselves. Faith had opinions on the matter and Wynne felt the spirit like a meal in the cosy pouch of her gut, tugging at her, whispering at the fraying edges of her mind. She saw the future in its eye as a long golden line, tangled round blue-beyond-blue eyes.

“Denerim,” said Leliana, thoughtfully. Her voice was rusted; she hadn’t spoken since the healing, since darkness had fallen. “It will end there. Can’t you feel it?”

“I can,” said Wynne. She met Leliana’s eyes, a handspan from hers, saw the searching question in those timeless, shifting skies. She prepared herself to answer, rose the words to the tip of her tongue, but Leliana didn’t ask. Instead, she closed her eyes, and sighed.

The weight of Leliana’s trust after so recent and bloody a betrayal bowed her back like the heaviest of packs. Hesitantly, Wynne grazed her arm, and when her treasured gaze flickered open again, tired but waiting, Wynne opened her arms.

Unspeaking, Leliana snuggled into her embrace. They fit together in the single bedroll better this way, and Leliana’s head nestled under Wynne’s chin. They lay together in brief, tense silence, then Wynne heard Leliana inhale, like she was steeling herself.

Her bruised heart leapt in her chest at the touch of Leliana’s cool lips to her neck. Jerkily, Wynne shuddered, and Leliana’s eyes glowed in the dark like lamplit moons as she wrapped her arms around Wynne. Her hands sought to caress Wynne’s back, seeking the dips of her spine, the smooth hard planes of her shoulderblades and the sensitive, shivery skin between, like she was grounding herself, or soothing Wynne. Perhaps it was both; she must have felt how Wynne’s body tensed, must have heard how her own breath hitched, when they touched each other.

Laying a comforting hand on Leliana’s arm, Wynne stroked the muscle of her bicep. Leliana exhaled raggedly in her ear; Wynne squeezed her shoulder. She shifted in her arms, and her knee nudged between Wynne’s legs, finding heat between her thighs. When Wynne’s hand grasped her hip and Leliana’s breathing stuttered into a wanting sound, she paused and searched her face. There was exhaustion there, in the bags beneath Leliana’s eyes, in the tired wrinkle in her brow, and though she smiled, it was faint and tugged with shadows.

Slowly, Wynne kneaded her hip once in apology, and then grazed her seeking touch to the nape of Leliana’s neck, to tangle in her hair and hear her sigh pleasantly against her.

In the darkness, quiet except the popping of the fire and the rustle of sleep-clothes, whispers of breath, hands roamed, sensory-seeking and loving. Wynne did not touch Leliana beneath her clothes, nor did she offer to undo her own; it was an intimacy apart from sexual, a reassurance in the tangibility and solidity of the other. Instead, she learned her, how Leliana felt in her arms, and was learned in turn, Leliana’s fingertips curiously tracing her curve of her cheek, the tickle of her eyelashes.

At some point, Wynne’s tension unknotted into a deep, bone-steady relaxation. She dozed under the explorative, non-intrusive touches, something full and nourishing inside her that felt like Faith singing at all the parts where their bodies touched.

The future was not determined, they were without allies and had only the vaguest of destinations in mind. But Wynne gave way to sleep that night with warmth in her heart, and Leliana in her arms, and it felt a lot like certainty.

—

Afterwards, they made no particular attempt to travel quickly. Despite being miraculously full of life and vigour, Leliana was sombre and distant. Wynne walked next to her with the distracted air of a scholar with a puzzle, turning the concepts of faith, hope and belief round in her mind, and wondering by what mechanic Leliana had woken from certain death, just in time for Wynne to heal her body and help her from the temple that should have become a tomb.

The chill and briskness of the air thawed as they moved further inland, away from the clawing peaks of the Frostbacks. They passed signs of darkspawn often, villages destroyed and families waylaid, and a steady stream of refugees heading the same way they were, to Denerim. They stopped to buy cloaks from a passing merchant. The price rose when he saw Wynne’s staff over her back and the symbol on her robes. Leliana, winsome and convincing, encouraged him to sell to them anyway, but Wynne left with Leliana’s hand on her arm and ashes in her mouth.

She pulled the cloak over her head, and said, nervously, “Leliana…”

They had stopped to eat in the lee of a shady tree, off the path. The road was clear for now, but Wynne saw wagons in the distance, and knew that they would likely be sharing their fire with refugees again tonight. Leliana hunted for them, and Wynne offered healing where she could, giving her magic freely. At night, they slept in the same bedroll, close as lovers.

Leliana looked up at her, eyes clear and still as lakes. There were shimmers chasing their way through her expression like cloud-flits across the sun, and her hands lay loose and still in her lap. She was too still, too contemplative, for her old self, but then again, death changed a person. Wynne would know.

“I am, technically, apostate,” said Wynne. It felt foul to even say, a lifetime of identity rebelling against the notion. “My dispensation from the Circle was to aid the Warden, and now I am not…”

“If any templars come for you, I will shoot them,” stated Leliana. She spoke so calmly, so reasonably, it was like she wasn’t speaking of treason against the Chantry and Circle.

“I’m sure they will listen to reason,” said Wynne, but a part of her was soothed, nonetheless. She did not want to have to leave Leliana, or worse, be executed for apostasy, before the work was done. She sighed. “There is another matter. I have … a condition.”

Leliana listened carefully, asking questions only when they were necessary, but otherwise letting Wynne speak uninterrupted of the spirit of faith, her first death, and her certainty that however much time was allotted to her now, it would not be long. Afterwards, she embraced Wynne, her cheek against Wynne’s head and her arms reassuring and strong around her shoulders. Closing her eyes, Wynne permitted herself to relax into the hug, gathering Leliana close to her. A now-familiar kernel of warmth lit inside her at Leliana’s body against hers.

“I’m sorry,” Leliana said, her voice vibrating against Wynne’s nose where it pressed to her neck. Her skin was very smooth and smelled faintly of flowers, lyrium, and sweat.

“Do not be,” Wynne said. “We are not so different, and I do not believe death is anything to fear.”

She pulled back, so that she could rest her hands on Leliana’s shoulders and meet her eyes. Uncertainty flitted across Leliana’s face, quick and brief as a bird on an unstable branch.

A lock of russet red hair had fallen across her cheek, and Wynne wanted with a fierceness that burned to tuck it tenderly behind her ear, to cup her cheek. She had always been attracted to kindness, to strength of spirit, and that it was Leliana who offered her such comfort so selflessly and freely given despite her own recent betrayal by the Warden… Leliana’s promise to protect her rang in her ears, and Wynne found herself as touched and trembling as a fool. Perhaps she had read too many romances.

“Do you think that a spirit…?” Leliana trailed off because Wynne was already shaking her head.

“I do not sense a spirit in you,” she said, almost apologetically. “I believe I would have felt it, at least when I healed you.”

“Perhaps the Maker has further plans for us both,” said Leliana, but it didn’t seem to hearten her as much as it did before. Her brow furrowed, glassy eyes turned distant and dim again, troubled by the wanderings of her mind.

She leant into Wynne, and Wynne did not push her away but kissed her temple. Her fingers curled into the front of Wynne’s robes, as if to keep her close. It was not the most comfortable to sit on the grassy ground, with a root prodding against her and the creeping sensation of dew soaking her robes, but it was always good to hold her, and the air was fresh and clear of darkspawn taint.

How far she had come, from the luxuries of her Circle, that good company and clean air were all that she cared for.

“It is strange, how we have both suffered, and things may grow darker still, but… I feel free,” said Leliana, against Wynne’s chest. “Bound, but free. I do not think that I would feel so easy, without you, Wynne. The Gauntlet, fighting myself… I saw cruelty in her… my face. I worry what I could become.”

“You have a kind heart,” said Wynne, “Trust to that. I am a mage. I will always be a threat to another. But in our hearts we find the greatest reservoirs of our strength against the darkness in ourselves. Only promise me one thing, Leliana… that you will not let this world harden your heart. I do not know if I could bear to see it.”

She gave in and gathered the offending lock of hair behind Leliana’s ear. Her hair was soft as silk, and just as fine. Her knuckle brushed the delicate shell of Leliana’s ear, and Leliana shivered against her. Her blue eyes darkened as she met Wynne’s gaze, and her teeth tugged at her lower lip.

It was unintentional, surely, but as she looked up at Wynne with that curious, hungry expression, Wynne’s stomach twisted into eager butterflies, and she knew she reddened. She was looking at her exactly as she had the day she had offered Wynne a chance to share her tent and her affections, serious, intent, the beginnings of a smile playing around her lips.

It was the first time Wynne had seen her smile since the Temple of Sacred Ashes, and it stunned her how it affected her, turning her blood molten and her heart into a fluttering, squeezing thing in her chest. Faith crooned inside her, needy-enthusiastic and love-love-love, stretching towards Leliana through the canvas of Wynne’s skin like sun-rays to the quicksilver surface of rushing water.

“So long as I have you by my side I think I will be just fine, don’t you?” Leliana said, delicately, every word placed down like an offering, like a temptation.

“You are a charmer, my dear.”

Wynne broke their eye-lock to search the treeline and the distant shape of wagons. With a strange, odd lurch she recognised she was checking for the silver glints of armour, of templars coming round the corner to separate canoodling mages, and on the heels of that thought that there were no templars, and any passersby would not think twice at them with Wynne’s Circle robes and mage staff out of sight. They would hear them coming, long before they rounded the corner and saw them off the road under the shady tree, a safe haven to lay their packs down and enjoy a midday respite from walking.

Her heartbeat sped up as she comprehended they were alone, more alone than Wynne had been for some of her more daring trysts in the Circle, and what it meant that she had thought to search for interruptions, when Leliana gazed at her just like that.

“Is it a charm, if it is true?” Leliana murmured to her, still in that dear, quiet way. “You have a nobility unmatched by any I have known.”

Regarding Wynne from under her lashes, she tilted her head, her tongue darting out to moisten her lips in a small, unconscious movement more entrancing than any spell Wynne had been hit with. She laced their fingers together, without looking, like they belonged together.

“…Wynne. I want very badly to kiss you.”

“Then perhaps you should,” Wynne whispered, and so she did.

—

Occasionally, she fretted for the companions she had left behind. Prickly Morrigan, cheerful Alistair, witty Zevran. Morrigan was not much of a healer, they had relied on Wynne for that. But then she thought of how none of them had turned against the Warden, that day at the temple, and she had made no secret of her leaving. They could have left with her if they wanted.

She told herself she did not begrudge them staying and helping the Warden against the Blight. Wynne understood feeling trapped into a duty, a role, a people. She had lived her life in the Circle tower, sometimes one had to … look beyond certain acts, to keep the peace.

But the Warden had defiled the one bright thing Wynne had found along their journey, the hope of Andraste, and sacrificed Leliana for it. Of all the things, that was what Wynne could not forgive.

Duty called for the sacrifice of much, with wise consideration and a heavy heart, and love was a distraction from the purity of principle one must cleave to… but Leliana’s death was senseless, wasteful, abandoned because her beautiful heart refused to accept an unnecessary destruction. Wynne would rather an infected cut took the Warden, then leave her now.

That Wynne had no longer to worry about the dynamics of the group, that she had already weighed the Warden’s quest to defeat the darkspawn against Leliana and found it wanting, was oddly freeing. Perhaps it was a distraction to permit herself to enjoy this, but they were still headed for that inevitable confrontation both of them could feel singing in their blood. They still aided any and all refugees they came across, and though it left a sour taste in her mouth, Wynne directed people to join with the Wardens to fight the darkspawn. And slowly, slowly, Denerim grew closer.

Coming up behind Leliana, Wynne touched her arm to pull her off the track to let a frowning man with a wobbly-looking donkey pass them on the narrow trail. Leliana moved easily, trustingly with her, and as she turned to Wynne her face lit up and the distance cleared from her eyes, like she was blooming back into herself. Faith sung about her like tassels of gold on new Chantry banners flapping in the wind.

“Oh, I am very sorry,” said Leliana, with a bright smile that had Wynne smiling back just as fondly, “I utterly forgot your present.”

“My …present?”

“You’ll see!”

With sudden, decisive energy, she swung her pack off her back right there on the middle of the trail and began rooting through it. Wynne stepped to one side, clearing the path for the passing man. Her smile was unanswered, but his grumpiness did not affect her cheer. Not with Leliana before her, every smile reminding Wynne of that delicious kiss they had shared, and every one thereafter, pressed slyly to Wynne’s lips, her cheek, her neck, as they lay in bed that night round a crowded fire, Leliana’s eyes gleaming with wickedness as Wynne with the willpower of a Circle mage who had slept her whole life in shared dormitories kept her needy exhales silent so as to not disturb their companions.

She was still thinking of Leliana nipping at the join of her neck and shoulder when Leliana straightened, a dusty, foreboding tome in her hand. “Here! I found this in the temple, and I know you like to read.”

It was a thick book, nicely weighted, with that old, papery smell that made the scholar in Wynne perk with delight. She thumbed the embossed title reverently: Discovering Dragon’s Blood: Potions, tinctures, and spicy sauces.

Dragon’s blood, the thing that Leliana had been killed for. It was a sour reminder in the face of a lovely gift, and Wynne shook it off. Instead, she glanced around (nobody, save the man with the donkey, his back to them and not paying attention), leant forward, and kissed Leliana.

It was short, sweet, barely a brush of their lips, but Leliana chased her when she pulled back with a bereft whimper that made Wynne’s heart seize even as her belly flipped with a sudden surge of lust.

“Thank you, dear,” said Wynne, and tucked it into her pack.

Grinning, Leliana offered her a mock curtsey. When she took Wynne’s arm in the guise of helping her back onto the trail she did not let go, but slipped her hand sneakily down Wynne’s arm to grab her hand and press a kiss to her knuckles. Wynne chuckled, and Leliana’s eyes sparkled.

It would never cease to hearten Wynne that something so beautiful as this could flower in times of such chaos.

—

Leliana paid for a room in a small, seedy little inn in Denerim, charming the bartender with extra gold to keep her mouth shut about the two of them. The price was exorbitant with this many refugees cramming into the city, but Wynne had thought to hide her mage staff and robes this time, and there were no shouts for templars. It was distasteful to pretend to hide, as if she were not a loyal Circle mage, but Wynne was ever-practical, and they had work to do.

The room was small, and there was a single bed pushed up against the wall. With both of them in it and their packs off, it shrank until there never seemed to be enough space to be without brushing or bumping into each other. On the third time this happened, Leliana blushing and apologising, Wynne at last volunteered to fetch food from downstairs and all but fled to clear her head.

Then she brought back a bottle of wine, which of course, did not help matters.

“It's a terrible vintage, of course,” she sniffed as she poured them both a glass, swirling the wine to let it breathe.

Leliana imitated her curiously, like a watchful raven. “I think you might just be fussy, no?”

“Ah, you sound like Shale,” Wynne sighed, and was privately warmed when Leliana giggled in response.

After all, they were in an inn room, alone, with the sounds of the city around them but with no eyes and nowhere to be, and it was as if months had been leading up to this, a culmination of a thousand quiet moments. At once, Wynne simply knew that she would have sex with Leliana that night, and as she looked in Leliana’s eyes she saw that Leliana knew, too, and at that, all the awkwardness melted away.

“There is… a ritual, in the Circle,” said Wynne, emboldened by wine and the click of understanding she’d seen in Leliana’s glittering, avid eyes. “On the eve of challenges…”

“Ha! I think many people have a celebration of life, when they are worried for the future, no?” She was beaming with the aftershocks of laughter still shivering in her shoulders, the now-quite-literal light in her eyes. It was strange to imagine that she had ever been so injured that her blood had made a pool under her, seeing how vivacious and alive she looked now.

“Perhaps,” said Wynne, dryly. “It is only a bit of foolishness.”

“Can’t we be fools?” Leliana asked her. Boldly, she placed her hand on Wynne’s thigh, her thumb making small circles against the inside of Wynne’s knee. Biting her lip, she glanced up at her, and when she spoke again her voice had dropped to a deeper register that had Wynne’s skin tightening without conscious thought. “I will, if you will.”

Eyeing the hand on her thigh, Wynne lifted her glass to her lips and took a long, deep pull of her wine. Fastidiously, she placed the glass down on the wobbly dresser by the single bed and then turned to face Leliana.

“I think I’d much rather kiss you, and, if you are willing, I’d like to fuck you too,” said Wynne.

Interrupted in the moment of raising her glass to her mouth, Leliana looked briefly poleaxed. Her cheekbones burnt with a high fair flush, and her wine-reddened lips had parted breathlessly. Her eyes were very wide, but as Wynne watched they darkened with arousal, and she hooked her ankles together to squeeze her thighs tight.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard you swear,” she said, a little weakly, and Wynne smiled at her, covering the hand on her thigh with her own.

She rubbed Leliana’s knuckles with her thumb, savouring the smoothness of her skin. Leliana’s hand twitched under hers and Wynne allowed her to hold her hand, their palms rubbing together on Wynne’s leg. She wondered if Leliana could feel the artery that thudded so ardently beneath the clasp of their hands and layers of skin and muscle, pumping heat that pooled hungrily in the base of her spine.

Leliana sipped at her wine, but her eyes were fixed on Wynne like she wasn’t tasting a drop. Keeping eye contact, she tilted her head back to make a show of swallowing, and obligingly Wynne admired the bobbing of the column of her throat, the exposed strip of bare skin and the eager stretch of her collarbones bared by her shirt. Wynne saw Leliana’s chest rising and falling with her quick, excited breaths, and had to gulp down her dry tongue.

“My dear, I imagine you are about to hear and see many things about me that you have not, before. If that is, you want to-?”

“Oui, yes!” said Leliana immediately, and muffled Wynne’s affectionate laughter with her kisses, sweet, lingering, and steadily hungrier.

She crawled into Wynne’s lap, straddling her with an ease that made Wynne’s hips twinge with envy even as her weight on her made her body pulse. It was a better angle for kissing, Leliana’s lips dragging tender and gentle against Wynne’s as she teased her with light little bites that made Wynne’s nerves tingle. She broke their kisses naturally with brushes of her lips over Wynne’s jaw and neck to give her time to breathe, each point of contact of her warm, wet mouth shivery and perfect. Her hands were not idle, caressing Wynne’s shoulders and smoothing over the back of her head, threading her fingers through Wynne’s hair and guiding her head back to kiss her again.

The pressure of Leliana’s hands on the back of her head holding her in place against the devoted attack of her lips had Wynne melting against her, to Leliana’s evident delight. She smiled down at Wynne, eyes smoky with pleasure, and rolled her hips with slow deliberation.

Admiringly, Wynne held her hips to watch her, her thumbs digging into the strength of Leliana’s muscle, Faith sparking at her fingertips like it wanted to reach inside Leliana. It was nearly unbearably erotic to feel her flex and grind against her, the weight and pressure of her body, the heat of her thighs caging Wynne’s hips. Wiggling about, Leliana shifted forwards until she could grind against Wynne’s belt buckle, her face radiant in a breathless smile as she found the perfect angle to please herself.

Tentatively, Wynne pushed her hips up against Leliana, a small, abortive thrust. Leliana hissed, and when Wynne did it again she bore down, until they found a rhythm that had Leliana’s cheeks blazing red and her breath coming in sighs that hooked and tugged directly the molten arousal in Wynne’s core.

“Wynne,” she moaned, legs squeezing around her, and Wynne nearly choked on her own breath.

“My dear,” she said helplessly, and Leliana’s lidded eyes met her own. The expression on Wynne’s face must have pleased her, because her smile widened as she tugged Wynne forwards to kiss her again.

“You are beautiful,” she whispered, and Wynne’s eyes fluttered closed.

Wynne strained to meet her as she slanted their mouths together, and Leliana hummed a pleased little noise in the back of her throat that made Wynne gasp despite herself. Leliana immediately took the opportunity to lick into Wynne’s mouth, tongue slipping skilfully against hers.

Wynne’s breath snagged in her chest, and the languid pace of Leliana’s hips rocking against her juddered. Her nails dug into Wynne’s scalp as she pressed into her needily, points of sharp fire. Arousal flared in her gut, liquid and roiling, sinking heavy as a stone into the pulsing between her thighs.

Leliana was a very good kisser, and Wynne spared a thought for all the hearts she had undoubtedly broken as a kind-hearted bard and a wicked Chantry sister. Then she stopped thinking of anything else at all, because Leliana was deftly untying the laces of her robes and pushing them off her shoulders with such a fixed determination that Wynne had no space to feel self-conscious.

Her robes puddled down around her elbows, and Wynne sat up to pull her arms out and bare herself to Leliana’s gaze, only glancing up at the (shut and locked) door twice. With the top layer of Wynne’s robes off and her nipples hardening in the chill air, it would be hard to hide what they had been doing, but the landlord was unlikely to come up and check on them just yet. Safe for now.

“Oh,” said Leliana, pulling her out of her thoughts, “Oh, Wynne…”

She cupped Wynne’s cheek and turned her face back to her, kissing her deeply the second Wynne’s eyes met hers again. Her hand slid out of Wynne’s hair and down her shoulder, grazing nail and fingertip over her skin in light, swirling touches that made her shiver. She dragged her nails continuously down from Wynne’s sternum to her belly and then back up, scoring lines of heat that had Wynne breathing sharply into her mouth. She could hear herself, her own ragged breathing, the wet sounds of their lips meeting and parting, even the near-inaudible rasp of skin on skin.

She was slow, confident in herself, like she knew exactly what she was doing, how to take Wynne apart under her hands. She smirked every time Wynne swallowed a sound, a smugness in her glittering lyrium-flicker eyes that was attractive as it was a challenge.

Not to be outdone, Wynne fought with the complicated array of straps that held Leliana’s clothing together for some time before giving up and shaking magic into her fingers. Laughing, Leliana raised her arms as the straps undid themselves and buckles flew apart, shimmying out of her clothes and tossing them to one side.

“If you wanted me naked, you needed only to ask,” she purred, and straddled Wynne again, deliberately grinding herself down against Wynne’s belt buckle. Her eyes fluttered with pleasure and her mouth parted round a long, unabashed moan.

“Enjoying yourself?” Wynne asked her, amused, and Leliana nodded breathlessly, whimpering when Wynne thrust up slowly against her.

“Oh, oh, yes…!”

She would never get rid of that belt buckle, she decided, watching Leliana’s flushed, smiling face, even if the belt itself fell to shreds of leather.

Having her bare was terribly distracting, and Wynne could hardly decide where she wanted to touch her first. She cupped Leliana’s smooth firm breasts and thumbed her nipples, enjoying her eager mewling and the way she pressed into Wynne’s touch. Wynne kissed her neck, hot darts of her tongue laving the ridge of Leliana’s collarbones, a scar on her breast, a constellation of freckles over her shoulder.

She traced the scars she found, remnants of a past life, and wondered at their stories even as she kissed or stroked them with sparks of healing magic, like that would reach back in time and soothe the memory of pain from these long-gone wounds.

Leliana’s blood hummed, a crushing concourse of pulsing brightness that made Wynne almost dizzy. She swore, impossibly, she could feel it, like lyrium whispering to her from the flasks on the hips of templars, promising power, freedom, and the Fade. The spirit inside her uncoiled, rising to the surface of her skin and caressing the underside of her flesh, limning her body with light. It was a spreading, encouraging and pure embrace from within, and Wynne felt tears lump in her throat at the sensation of the spirit’s perfect love, its approval of Leliana, of Wynne, of the two of them together.

Gripping her cheeks, Leliana pulled Wynne’s head up to face her, her brow furrowed with lust even as her eyes melted with concern. “Wynne, are you all right?” she said, and Wynne kissed her with all the affection she could muster.

“I am fine,” she reassured her, smiling from the heart, and suddenly, badly needed some way to express her thankfulness and appreciation, to share the passionate benevolence she felt.

She slipped a hand between them to feel Leliana’s heated wetness, kissing away her shaky gasp. It was an awkward angle, though Leliana as soon as she realised what she was about, sat back to give her wrist more space to work, but it was worth it to see her face, the flutters of her expression as she held herself, tensely, in delicious anticipation.

Lightly, Wynne dragged her finger through Leliana’s flushed, soaked folds, gathering her wetness and spreading it evenly. Wynne avoided her clit, already hard and peeking out of its protective hood as it was, to give equal attention to each swollen lip, tracing her fluttering entrance and teasing the possibility she might go inside. Every time Leliana rocked towards her hopefully she pulled her hand away, keeping her caresses light and explorative.

Leliana was searing hot and slick against her fingers, breathing shallowly as her grip slowly tightened into bruising on Wynne’s shoulders, quaking with the repressed urge to squirm to get Wynne to touch her where she needed it. She found a good spot to the right and below Leliana’s clit that made Leliana bite her lip. Slowly, Wynne rubbed back and forth there, savouring the way Leliana’s body clenched and grew wetter under her hands, and her breathing grew rough and irregular.

“Your hands are so much softer than mine,” Leliana panted, tossing her head back, “Your skin – ah! – feels like silk.”

“A perk of being a mage living in a tower with little beyond books and polished staves to roughen them,” Wynne murmured.

“Are there others I might enjoy?” Leliana asked, her eyes cracking open all glittering and mischievous, and Wynne chuckled.

She flicked Leliana’s clit just to see her shudder and gasp, only for her to swear foully in Orlesian when Wynne pulled away again and returned to toying with her, massaging the pad of her finger against the sensitive nerves right around her entrance. She pressed her fingertip in and out, sighing as Leliana’s body squeezed and a muscle jumped in her thigh, desperate for sensation.

“Of all the things-!” Leliana bit off, cheeks flushed and grinning despite her clear frustration, “I never thought you’d be such a tease!”

“I knew you were listening in when that dwarf was asking if I knew spells of … a certain nature. Thought about this often, have you?” Wynne asked her, fondly.

“I didn’t want to embarrass you by encouraging him,” said Leliana, “But yes, of course I’ve thought of you, Wynne… a distinguished, handsome woman like yourself, who wouldn’t?”

“My dear, I am much too old to get embarrassed… or to be flattered,” Wynne said, and had to turn her blushing cheek away at her compliment regardless.

Leliana’s lovely voice quavered up a register when Wynne slid a finger home inside her to feel the fluttering of her laughter. She took Wynne easily, so easily that Wynne added a second finger and curled them in a gentle come-hither motion, searching for the rough spot inside her. Searching her face, Wynne watched for the moment Leliana groaned and her velvety walls pulsed around her fingers. She targeted that spot remorselessly, using her thumb to seek Leliana’s clit. With a shattered moan of delight, Leliana’s body convulsed when Wynne nudged her thumb against her clit, and Wynne’s fingers were coated in an abrupt rush of her desire.

Using her hips to give a bit of extra thrust, Wynne pumped her fingers in and out of her, relishing the slick, wet sounds and Leliana gripping onto her, her tight, high cries. She ran her thumb over Leliana’s clit, again and again, chasing how her body lifted and lurched like it was being yanked by a puppeteer when Wynne circled her clit and then flicked it. Leliana grabbed onto Wynne’s shoulders, rising onto her knees to give Wynne better leverage to move inside her, and buried her face in Wynne’s neck, her lips moving in frantic, feverish kisses against her neck.

Wynne kissed her sweaty temple. Leliana shuddered and whispered her name, and Wynne had never felt so tender, so ardent, in her life.

“You are not that old!” Leliana got out eventually, breathing hard and hips thrusting into Wynne’s hand, “But - is this you saying you do know naughty spells, Enchanter?”

There was something filthy about the way she breathed the title against Wynne’s ear, and Wynne felt a deep, internal tug to rise to her expectations, to please her, to have her come on her hand gasping Wynne’s name.

“Perhaps,” said Wynne, slyly, and gave Leliana just enough time to allow an impish curiosity to steal across her face before she gathered magic into her hands and cast.

It was only a modified force spell, really, no more concentration than picking a lock, but it did the trick, and was popular in whispers between Circle mages for exactly that reason. It also took barely any magic and was, as such, particularly difficult to detect, and easy to keep going for as long as the mage’s focus held out.

Eyebrows shooting up in shock, Leliana’s hips rose right off Wynne’s lap as she cried out a guttural, vibrating groan of sheer need Wynne felt right between her thighs. Her body jerked as Wynne rolled the buzzing spell over her clit in smooth, circular motions, paying attention to what made her rock forwards and what made her twitch away.

Leliana tried to speak a few times, but what came out was mostly breathless whines, poorly-choked wails of pleasure, and broken stutters about how good Wynne was at fucking her. Some choice swear words, some in Orlesian that Wynne didn’t know but felt the filthiness of regardless, slipped out, and she clutched at Wynne like a drowning man to a life raft.

Wynne had to focus on maintaining the spell, closing her eyes and laying her cheek against Leliana’s chest. Desperately, Leliana rode her hand and gripped onto Wynne’s head, her hair, her shoulders, any part of her she could reach. She thrashed in Wynne’s lap, veering into a cracked sound that was nearly a scream, even as her body pulsed and tightened like a vice, and her wetness spilled out over Wynne’s hand.

“Stop!” Leliana wailed, “stop! Stop!”

Wynne dismissed the spell and Leliana sagged limply against her, quivering with aftershocks. Carefully, Wynne extracted her soaked hand and wiped it on the scratchy bedsheet, encouraging Leliana to lean against her and breathe. She rubbed her sweaty back soothingly, feeling pleased, protective, and honoured.

“That was incredible, Wynne,” Leliana rasped, hoarsely. “By the Maker.”

“You are incredible,” Wynne said back, a little foolishly.

Leliana smiled at her. She still looked dazed, and when she tried to roll off Wynne her trembling legs cramped and she had to be helped to lie down, laughing breathlessly all the while. She kissed Wynne sloppily, her shaking arms around her neck, smiling so wide she could barely do more than press their mouths together and pant.

“That spell is lethal, no? I feel like my soul has come loose,” she joked, after Wynne took pity and fetched her some water from their packs.

Looking down her nose at Leliana, Wynne folded her hands together piously and drawled, “Magic is meant to serve man.”

That set Leliana off into another laughing fit, and she nearly dropped the waterskin and spilled water all over the bed. Grabbing their clothes, Wynne joined her, smiling with an abundance of caring at the way Leliana reached for her instinctively, cuddling close.

“I’d let you rule over me any day, with magic like that,” she said, still chuckling, wiping the tears from her eyes. She blinked at the sight of Wynne shrugging into her robes, and touched her wrist, gently, just as she had so long ago, to halt her. “Wynne, I want to make you feel good, too. Will you let me?”

Pausing, Wynne eyed the door. She estimated they’d taken some time, enough to push it. Surely the landlord would be around soon to check on the rooms, or someone would be by?

“Wynne,” said Leliana, easing the robe off her shoulder. “Please.”

“Yes,” Wynne said hesitantly, but she went when Leliana’s hand on her chest lightly pushed her down onto her back, and her dextrous hands undid her belt. Leliana leant in to kiss her again, and she responded, thankful for something easy to do with herself.

“Shh, shh,” whispered Leliana against her mouth, her clever touch dancing over Wynne’s shaking shoulders, the trembling hollows of her chest, tracing a path for her pillow-soft lips. Wynne tilted her head back and shook around an exhale.

“There are no Templars, here, Wynne, no one is coming. We can take our time.”

She climbed over Wynne, and kissed her again with slow, skilled passion. A bard’s kiss, clever and sensuous, her palm spread over Wynne’s chest to hold her down. Wynne breathed into her touch and tentatively, fondly, tucked a long lock of red hair behind her ear. Leliana’s cheeks crinkled up in her happy smile.

“I want to take my time, chérie,” she rephrased, “May I?”

“Of course, dear,” Wynne breathed, but it was still a wrench to stop kissing her, even if Leliana laughed like the ringing of bells at how Wynne frowned when she pulled away.

Kissing her way down her body, Leliana lavished attention over her chest, her ribs, the knobbles of her hip bones. She parted Wynne’s thighs and lay between them, scattering love-bites and suckling deep marks into the sensitive skin that made Wynne’s legs twitch to close around her head. The fourth time this happened, Leliana wrapped her archer’s arms around Wynne’s thighs and simply held her spread open.

She smiled against Wynne’s thigh at the embarrassing whimper Wynne made on feeling the strength in her unyielding hold defeat her reflexive tremors. Her breath against Wynne’s hot, wet flesh made her chest seize. A faint fear of exposure warred with the chills that raced down her spine at the hungry look in Leliana’s eyes when she saw the clear, glistening evidence of Wynne’s excitement.

Leliana licked her lips, and asked in a rough, low tone that had Wynne’s hands fisting in the bedsheets, “Are you ready, Wynne?”

“Yes,” she gasped, and there was no hesitance this time.

She had never been readier, even as the first, gentle lick made her hips jerk against Leliana’s tight, sturdy hold. She kept a firm grasp on Wynne the whole time, preventing her from bucking into her mouth and bruising herself against Leliana’s teeth. Her tongue lapped at her and her dark blue eyes stared at her, full of hunger and desire, like Wynne as she writhed with a tongue on her clit was the most beautiful, arousing thing she had ever seen.

In the end, it did not take long at all, though she was not the Lady Catarina Leliana had once spoke of, able to tie knots in cherry stems with her tongue, she was quick and eager and clever, and it had been long, so very long.

Clamping her hands over her mouth out of sheer habit, Wynne’s eyes rolled back into her head and she shuddered. Risking Wynne’s legs snapping closed, Leliana reached up, tugging Wynne’s hands away from her mouth. Her head bobbed as she swirled her tongue and licked, and her eyes were so attentive when Wynne jerked and gasped and gripped onto her hand.

Wynne squeezed her eyes shut and made an effort to trust Leliana, letting her mouth open and trying not to choke off her raspy breathing. Her uncertain, quiet moans were dreadfully lewd to Wynne’s ear, but she focused on the pulsing need and false starts beneath Leliana’s tongue over a lifetime of caution.

The spirit beneath her skin swam through her eyes, glitter-gold and curious, reaching through her body to explore the world. She became aware of a faint light shining on her eyelids around the same time as Leliana grunted in unmistakeable surprise, her tongue faltering for a brief second.

Wynne looked down at her and saw the reflection of Faith’s shimmering light in her wide, wondering eyes. Ropes of spirit’s gold looped like the coils of a vast and strange snake around their joined hands, intangible and luminous. She felt Leliana, through the spirit, through herself, felt her awe and the drumbeat of her heart gathering speed, the desire and pleasure and warmth, the trust she had for Wynne that even with the spirit inside her manifesting, not once did she fear being harmed.

Faith sang in her heart, and she felt the quick burst of the spirit’s crooning joy. Some intent purpose in her eyes, Leliana bent her head and licked her, hard and fast, and then those plush lips closed around her clit. Talented tongue teasing her all the while, Leliana shattered her world with a tender suction that had her arching off the bed, crying out as she came.

Leliana’s eyes met hers, bountiful with love, and then her lips, tangy with the taste of Wynne. The spirit ebbed around them both like a frolicking wave, inhuman and delighted, tasting the lyrium-shimmer of Leliana’s blood beneath her skin, her saliva between Wynne’s legs, like it empowered it, strengthened it.

“Now,” Leliana whispered, as Wynne reeled from the force of her orgasm, “You are ready for me to take my time.”

—

Inexorably, the morning after came, and with it the outside world pressed in again. It was strange to dress beside her when she wanted so badly to lie skin to skin and never get up, sharing tea that Wynne heated in her hand like she had after the Temple of Sacred Ashes, so neither of them had to tend a boiling kettle. They drank, and though Leliana was sweet and doting against her, there was a subdued air.

Breakfast had brought news of the Landsmeet’s ruling, and the final ally the Warden needed against the Blight sealed. Wynne felt the premonition of fate closing its jaws resounding all the way through her to the core where the spirit resided and knew that Leliana felt it too by the way her face crumpled, and she clung to Wynne.

“But what happens after?” Leliana’s tears were radiant with lyrium shimmer. Wynne kissed her cheeks, and felt it spark on her tongue like lightning. “What happens after the darkspawn are gone? Faith will only sustain you so far. Will I be alone?”

“It’s no guarantee that either of us will survive the coming battle,” Wynne replied, as compassionately as she could.

“You will come back, if you can?”

Wynne clasped Leliana to her chest, fiercely. She was no stranger to being port in a storm, though with the changing of the dawn and the Blight come to an end, who knew where the future would take them? But… “I will try, Leliana. If you do, as well.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Do not fear for me,” said Wynne, softly. “Death will take us all when it wills it, and until then…”

“We shall live,” Leliana whispered, and pressed her forehead close against Wynne’s. Her perfume of Andraste’s Grace and the tea they’d shared mixed with the memories of warmth and love on her breath, on her lips when she kissed Wynne. “We shall truly live.”

#wynne #leliana #dao #da #dragon age #dragon age origins #hero of ferelden #inkwrites #leliwynne #black emporium gift exchange #black emporium exchange #black emporium #the title to this fic is taken from a christina rossetti poem #when i am dead my dearest

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