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kaoruyogi · 7 years

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How to Win Wars and Influence Nobles (Ch. 17)

Rating: E for Explicit/NSFW Content!

Check it out on AO3!

You’d think a video game lawyer could just drop into a pseudo-medieval universe filled with magic and demons and be totally okay with it, right?

Nah.

In the wake of her brother, Spencer’s, disappearance, Belle dropped into Thedas with luggage, but without a clue. After a brief but memorable panic attack, she resolved to be the best goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. Even if she was the only goddamn lawyer Thedas had ever seen. And even if that obstinate asshole, Cullen, wouldn’t stop giving her the side-eye every time she walked into a room…Or every time he walked into a room with her in it…Or every time they walked into a room together…Or–Fuck it. You get it.

Chapter 17: War is Hell (And It’s Not Just a Fucking Cliché)

Forced marches could suck a fucking dick. Better yet, they could suck two dicks and a left nut.

Belle’s entire body ached from tip to tail. Her head ached more the further south they marched because, apparently, there were still allergens in Thedas to compress her sinuses. Her neck, back, ass, crotch, and thighs ached from riding in the carriage and riding on horseback. She walked when she could, but she almost snapped her ankle on the third day and had to stop trying.

It was a small mercy that Eudora had decided to come along with the other healers. She patched up Belle’s little cuts and bruises, though they were less numerous or frequent than Belle thought they might have been. The healer’s best balm for Belle was to be a much-needed lifter of spirits. The woman was, after all, a noisy and unashamed rabble-rouser. “Maker, this cart is rattling my bones from arse to tits,” or, “I never could master that twirly-whirly, spinning nonsense with my staff when I was in the Circle,” she would say. The latter made Sera laugh, too. Eudora was also Sera’s favorite healer, surprising no one. The two women had a lot in common, including boundless snark.

Dorian would ride alongside the women, putting in his two cents about Eudora and Sera’s colorful commentary on “the modern mage.” The phrase made Belle chuckle each time she heard it. The modern mage. She envisioned magazine covers with too-thin models draped in Chanel or Alexander McQueen robes, arms wrapped like boney serpents around Tiffany staves. Maybe it would be more like a family magazine, and the cover would bear images of happy little mage families or couples decked out it matching polo shirts and playing catch with fireballs. The articles inside would range from “How to Find the Best Necromancy Preschool for Your Tot,” to “Fifteen Ways to Thaw Your Ice Mage in the Sack.” Belle nearly toppled from her horse, she laughed so hard.

Max had gifted Bull a battlenug because the Qunari was just this side of snapping a horse’s back, even the drafts. The battlenug was somehow both hulking and snuggly with a face like a squishy rhinoceros and horns like an ancient mountain goat. Bull named him Mertam—an exercise in irony, according to Bull—and the two were perfect for each other. Bull spoiled the giant thing rotten the whole march, sneaking him vegetables and the odd fruit every time they stopped.

“You treat that drooling animal better than you treat me,” said Dorian one evening at their campfire.

“I treat you just as sweetly when I’ve turned you into a drooling animal, kadan,” said Bull. Dorian shut up after that.

Varric wrote everything down, even while he rode. When Belle asked him why, he said with all seriousness and conviction, “Counselor, someone’s got to tell this story to everyone who wasn’t here. Some of the things that happen along this march will be legendary one day. Incidentally, what do you think would be a good title for the book? I’m thinking, ‘All This Shit is Weird,’ by Varric Tethras. Or maybe, ‘No One Listens to the Dwarf’ with the subtitle, ‘The Story of How Thedas Almost Burned to a Crisp Six Thousand Times.’” Belle picked the second option.

Vivienne, Leliana, and Josephine spent most of their time in one of the carriages. When Empress Celene surprised an entire army by joining the march with her forces, the four women were all but inseparable. Belle spent what time she had to with the empress, kissing ass and licking boots, but preferred to be away from the onslaught of noble horseshit the woman spewed on a never ending basis. Belle was not Vivienne, who seemed unable or unwilling to stop appearing unreadable and superior. Belle liked to shut her superiority off after a few hours of use. It was too exhausting to spend the whole day looking down her nose, and her glasses weren’t suitable for accommodating the adjustment.

Morrigan likewise lingered near Celene, though she could also be found arguing with Solas about something related to magic or elves or just about anything. On rare occasions, she rode with Max, though he seemed to tire of her company after fifteen minutes. He didn’t care for her. Her presence was a means to an end, he’d told Belle. The witch, he’d said, knew something.

When Solas was not arguing with Morrigan, he could often be seen riding in silence, a pensive stare glued to his face. Belle liked the elf well enough, though he may not always have liked her. The way he’d spoken about her unceremonious arrival in Thedas sometimes sounded like chastisement. Other times it had sounded like he felt a personal attachment to the incident. He had become less apt to ask her about it in recent months, but everyone had become less apt to ask her about it in recent months.

Cole lingered near everyone at one time or another. He had become more…corporeal lately. Belle noticed him more, and he surprised her less. His personality had not changed—he still said odd and invasive things—but he seemed happier, in a way. It was in his tone and on his face in tiny increments. She might even have heard him laugh once, though the sound was so short and came as such a surprise no one could be certain.

Blackwall, as everyone agreed to continue calling him, marched with the soldiers. He was no more fit to ride than any one of them, he’d said before they set out. The soldiers began to accept him again as they marched. It was a slow process, but Spencer helped, choosing to sit next to Blackwall at meals and march with him for several days. Spencer chastised some of his fellow soldiers for their judgments and accusations, reminding them how many of their own lives Blackwall had saved. Belle could not have been prouder of her brother for championing the beleaguered man. Spencer was one of the good ones.

Cassandra alternated between riding and marching, always near the front of the forces. She was a galvanizing and powerful presence for the soldiers, never showing weakness and always understanding of their struggles. She made sure boots were kept dry and shields were kept high. She and Cullen often rode side by side, locked in intense conversation or in complete silence. Casualness between the two warriors was a rarity.

Cullen had withdrawn from Belle in degrees too small to cause her to worry until midway through the march. It started the day Max told everyone they would soon be marching to the Arbor Wilds. Cullen spent that night with Belle, but he had refused to leave his office for dinner. He started refusing to leave his tower for lunch. He started refusing to leave his tower for any meals. He stopped spending the night in her tower.

She tried to be understanding. He was under immense pressure to plan a successful march, a successful attack, and a thousand successful contingencies. The Inquisition’s cause and his cause had to be one and the same. She understood. She was a workaholic before being sucked into Thedas, even a bit of one thereafter. She tried not to mind the dark circles under his eyes or the way he would ignore food when it was brought to him. She tried not to pay attention to the way he snapped at people more than usual or pinched the bridge of his nose. She tried not to feel hurt at his continued absence from her bed or his constant answer of, “There is too much work to be done,” when she asked him to join her. She tried, but it wasn’t working.

As the troops marched on, Cullen grew ever more distant. Belle had hoped that they would share a tent, and they did. She would creep in after dinner to find him already hunched over some document or another, writing or reading by dim candlelight as he held his forehead in his left hand. The muscles of his neck and shoulders were stiff and knotted, as if a pack of overeager boy scouts had gone to work on him in pursuit of a merit badge. Belle would dig her hitchhiker’s thumbs into those knots, squeezing and massaging them until she thought her fingers would snap at the first knuckle. She was nearly brought to relieved tears when he finally dropped his head and groaned at her ministrations, but that only happened once.

She was brought to tears after the first week. She began massaging his shoulders, and he reached back to lift her hand away. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said.

“I’m not troubling myself. I want to he—”

“I will join you in bed shortly.” He didn’t look at her when he said it.

“Fine.” It came out exactly as harsh as she meant. Still, he did not turn to look at her.

He was just under stress, she told herself. He had not intended his words to be cruel. He was Atlas with the world on his shoulders, and he was Achilles with an arrow in his heel. His withdrawal symptoms were flaring up under the pressure of thousands of lives resting on his judgment. Constant headaches, flop sweats, she may have heard him vomiting once.

Belle laid down, tearful, angry, and terrified. It took almost an hour for her to fall asleep to the sounds of Cullen’s scribbling. She drifted off with her back to him, her arms crossed over her chest, and her hands balled into fists.

She woke up alone.

She had her own tent set up the next night. It wasn’t because she was angry at him. It wasn’t because she needed distance from him. It wasn’t because she thought he needed to be alone. It was because she could not watch him do this to himself again. She could not watch him kill himself under the yoke of his workload a second time, and she could not intervene. It was not her place to tell him not to plan or not to work. The strain on him, his tension, was justifiable. The fate of an entire fucking continent depended on his strategy. The weight of that would have broken a lesser man. She only hoped it would not break him.

She had barely seen Cullen during the last leg of their journey. He walked alongside soldiers and he rode at the head of the army as he had done, and he slept or didn’t sleep alone in his tent. His skin went sallow and his eyes seemed to sink into his head to be surrounded by yellowish, blueish, purplish circles. He was worn down and ragged, yet he managed to appear composed in front of his men. He looked almost regal with his tired head held high and his tired gaze held firm. Even at his worst, he was a fucking sight to behold.

When they finally reached the Arbor Wilds, Corypheus’s forces had already entrenched themselves in the network of groves nestled in the vast woods. Hundreds, if not thousands, of Red Templars and Tevinter mages calling themselves “Venatori” sat between the Inquisition and some magic mirror in a temple. Belle would have been lying if she claimed to have full comprehension of the importance of this magic mirror, but it was important to Max and it was important to Cullen and it was important to Josephine, so it was important to Belle.

Cullen approached Belle after dinner that night. The attack was to happen at dawn, he had told everyone upon their arrival. They all had one more night to rest, he’d said. The irony was not lost on her.

She had been forced to join Celene’s party for some eve-of-battle pow-wow that didn’t include anyone actually involved in the battle or its planning. It was an excuse for the empress to gather those she considered kindred close to her while she was afraid. If the battle was lost, there was a very good chance that Celene would no longer be empress by the time she returned to Orlais, if she returned to Orlais at all.

A gloved hand came to rest on Belle’s shoulder. The touch was gentle, like a nervous little boy trying to get the attention of the teacher he thought was beautiful so he could hand her an apple. When Belle turned, Cullen’s weary face looked back at her with a kind of doleful affection. “May I speak to you for a moment?”

She nodded, turning back to her esteemed company to bow her head. “I beg your pardon, your majesty, but I must excuse myself for a few moments.” Celene cast an appraising glance at Cullen before issuing a silent decree with a flippant wave. Belle clenched her jaw to keep herself from sighing as she stood. She bowed her head again before following Cullen to a quiet spot among the trees.

“I apologize for interrupting your meal,” said Cullen. His voice was soft and sad. The same doleful affection still rested on his features.

“It’s okay. It was begging to be interrupted. I hate having to sit up straight and pretend to be interested for that long.” She really did. “I don’t mind you stealing me away from the pompous bullshit.” She really didn’t.

“I—Uh…” His hand found the back of his neck, his sore neck he wouldn’t let her massage. His enervated eyes wandered to where the stars would have been had the trees not been so lush and so numerous.

His other hand lifted from his side. In it was a simple black leather scabbard with an equally simple black leather belt beneath it. The hilt of the dagger in the scabbard was also simple in its way. There were no gems or shining adornments, only deep azure leather embossed with a Celtic or Norse-looking design. It was Fereldan, without a shadow of a doubt.

“I want you to have this. I want you to wear it tomorrow—until the battle is done.” Cullen held it out in the too-substantial space between them.

Belle seized the opportunity to close the distance. She stepped forward, taking the dagger in one hand and locking his fingers in the other. “Okay.”

His gaze was uneven. The little lines on his forehead contorted into an upside down horseshoe with his apparent worry, spilling his imaginary luck down the bridge of his nose. His nose that was bent ever so slightly in the middle. His nose that had probably been broken at least once. His nose that she would gamble would be passed on to his children. “I know you’ll stay in the camps, and I know you’ll be protected, but I need you to wear it. I need you to stay safe.”

“Okay.”

“I need to know you’ll stay safe, stay alive.”

“Okay.” Belle’s hand unclasped from Cullen’s, and she moved her palm to his jaw. Her thumb traced a tiny blue vein down from his cheekbone until it met with her other fingers. His eyes that had seemed nearly as pale as his skin were once again warm as honey whiskey. They roved over her face, scanning every mole and freckle as if to memorize them.

His lips crashed into hers without warning. It could not have been called anything but a crash. It was a reckless collision of flesh, a desperate meeting not to be averted by any force in any universe. His arms flew around her waist to press her to him, though his breastplate forbade the closeness they sought. His mouth opened once to close around her lower lip, and again to close around her upper lip. His tongue tasted her, teased at her skin, but did not beg entry at first. When it did, there was a kind of glory to it. It was brilliant and bright, his every movement a subtle devotion. He paid his penance, tucking it away in the corners of her mouth for safekeeping. Her hand squeezed at the back of his neck, and his hands squeezed at her waist. It was the kind of kiss meant to end all kisses. That, she would not allow.

Difficult as it was, it was Belle’s turn to withdraw. She watched his lips, pinker from the press of her own, then followed his scar up toward his eyes. “I need to know you’ll stay safe too, you know. You’re not allowed to just kiss me and run off in the morning to die. You have to take care of yourself.”

“I will do what I must to ensure the Inquisition is victorious,” said Cullen. His fingertips still burrowed into her in the spaces between her corset’s bones. Their lips were nearly touching.

“Man, fuck that,” said Belle. She dropped the dagger onto the weedy and leafy ground so that she could surround his face with her hands. “Fuck that noise, Cullen. You think the Inquisition’s going to be any good without you? You think someone else can just pick up your sword and go, ‘Oh, hey, yo, woah, I’m your Commander now,’ and that’ll just be all sunshine and rainbows? No. You live. You do what you must to ensure you live. I’m not hanging around in fucking Thedas if you’re not here. I’m not. So you better goddamn well live.”

There was a ferocity in his stare, a determination. “I do not plan to die.”

“Yeah, well, don’t just not plan to die. Plan to live, okay? And for the love of God, will you please stay hydrated?” Belle ran her thumbs along his cheekbones. “It’s really obvious you haven’t been drinking water. You��re not taking care of yourself.”

Cullen’s intensity turned to mild amusement. His mild amusement turned to adoration. “Alright. I will try to take care of myself, and I will do everything in my power to return to you.”

“That’s better.”

He kissed her again. There was less hopelessness in it, less fear. It wasn’t a kiss to end all kisses. It was a kiss to show his love. There didn’t need to be anything else to it. He would take care of himself. He would survive the fight. He would come back to her. That was all.

Belle told herself it would be alright, despite the pit in her stomach and the reminders screaming and clawing at the back of her mind that nothing was ever alright. But it had to be. It would be.

*****

Two days. For two days, the fighting dragged on. Belle did not see Cullen at all, though she heard from returning scouts and incoming wounded that he was fighting with everything he had. She heard that he saved one soldier’s life, then another, then another. She heard that he was pushing the Inquisition’s troops forward. She heard that he was pushing the Red Templars back. A tentative kind of pride swelled in her at the thought of his courage and compassion, and she would rest her hand on the dagger she wore beneath her light surcoat or the coin she kept in her deepest pocket.

Max had gone out with the first wave, but had been drawn back for his protection several times. Cassandra, Blackwall, and Iron Bull were helping Cullen with the push on the front lines. Cole and Sera ventured out past the front from time to time to set fires whose smoke could be seen from the rear camps, and Varric followed to lay traps for anyone who should not have been behind them. Dorian, Morrigan, and Vivienne fought among the warriors while Solas acted as a protector and healer, leading out whatever the mage versions of battle medics were to aid the injured.

Of course, Belle received all of this information second and third-hand. She was stuck at the rear camps with Celene and Josie. Leliana and a line of archers and mages stood at the edge of camp, decimating anyone foolish enough to approach.

Belle split her time between sipping tea with Empress Celene and helping Eudora with the arriving wounded. Belle had learned enough in all her time in doctor’s offices and emergency rooms to know how to triage. Crush wounds, stab wounds, blunt force trauma wounds, fatal wounds. Most were easy to discern. There was blood, or there wasn’t. There was bruising, or there wasn’t. The soldier was conscious, or they weren’t. The soldier was alive, or they weren’t.

While Belle sat with the Empress, she penned triage signs in secret. She wrote large numbers—one through four—on pieces of parchment as if writing short updates to the nobility. One was meant for those whose injuries were mild and non-life-threatening. Two was meant for those whose injuries were severe and bore non-imminent threats of death. Three was meant for those who needed immediate attention if they were to survive. Four was meant for those who could not be saved. Belle hated fucking four. She wanted to stop writing four for the rest of her life by the first evening. There had been too many fours. One would have been too many.

In the early afternoon on the second day of fighting, someone approached her. She was all but breaking her fingers, tightening a tourniquet around the arm of a hard-faced woman with a deep gash in one arm and a piece of parchment with a two in the other. Belle thought she heard her name, at first, but couldn’t be sure with the choir of the wounded crying out around her.

“Lady Dolan,” an Orlesian voice said again. She glanced up to see a man she may have recognized as one of Celene’s servants. The ubiquitous masks they wore made it difficult to be certain who was who in the zoo.

Belle grunted out a “Yes?” as she pulled the fabric a final time. The wounded woman beside her whimpered for the first time.

“Empress Celene has requested your presence, at once.”

Belle looked up at the man. His arms were crossed over his chest and his foot tapped the ground in a dramatic show of impatience. “I’m a little busy, in case you hadn’t noticed. And, you know, I just left her.”

She stood to move to the next cot. A man in his forties sat up, an eerie red shard sticking out of his lower abdomen. She looked over the wound, putting her hand near the shard as she did. The air around it felt hot. Something about it made nauseated her. She’d seen a great many shards like these since the battle began. Red lyrium. Varric told her not to touch it before he left, so she didn’t. She handed the man a three.

“That may be so, but she has requested your presence again. The Empress is not to be ignored in favor of these…common soldiers.” The Orlesian’s accent made his words sound even more laden with disgust than they might otherwise have been.

Belle wanted to tell the man to shove it up his ass, to shove himself up the empress’s ass so she wouldn’t feel ignored. “There aren’t enough healers here. I just relieved some of them. Somebody could die if I leave.”

As if on cue, one of the healers she relieved, a young Qunari man, trotted back into the tent. “I took the liberty of retrieving him,” said the Orlesian. The Qunari touched Belle on the shoulder and gave her a small smile. He nodded toward the exit of the tent.

Belle sighed through her nose, trying not to look too petulant as she stood. “Fine. Let’s go.”

As they walked through the camp, she swore she heard an explosion and felt the ground quake beneath her feet. No one else seemed to notice, as everyone kept about their business of mixing potions, making arrows, and cleaning and repairing blades. She thought about the one on her hip, concealed from the world like her worry for Cullen was concealed from the world. She hoped he was drinking water.

“We just passed Empress Celene’s tent,” said Belle as she watched it fall further and further behind her. Calling it a tent was doing it a disservice. It was more of a portable multi-room structure, like a rambler made of canvas. It sat among the other tents, cream colored where they were maroon, massive where they were tiny, and stately where they were shabby. It was a feckless display of wealth amidst those fighting for the welfare of the world.

“She wishes to speak to you where there are fewer eyes and ears.”

Belle was not about to sleep with Celene. Fuck diplomacy. Maybe that was what it was called when people did that. “Fuck Diplomacy” sounded like an archaic negotiation tactic. “Okay,” said Belle, knowing full well that she might lose her job if this little tete-a-tete took a swerve. She might lose her head while she was at it. No pressure.

The man held up the flap of a far flung tent and gestured for Belle to enter. The tent was tiny, likely erected to keep sensitive supplies dry. That would explain the smell of salted meat and the large crates. What it would not explain was the absence of anyone else in the tent. “Where’s Empress Celene?” asked Belle as she turned to look at the Orlesian.

No sooner than she had closed her mouth had he rushed her. She gasped and flinched, as was her way when she was startled. She felt cold metal against her throat and wood against her back. The foulness of the man’s breath had no room to dissipate before crawling up her nose. Every detail of his mask was visible to her, each dent and ding immediately suspicious. His ice-blue eyes bore a smugness that made her angrier than the thought of the blade meant to take her life. There was nowhere to escape, nowhere to run but through him. She leaned her head back as far as she could without causing him to take notice.

“This is what happens to cunts who tear down noble families for sport.” The man spat as he spoke, peppering Belle’s lips and chin with his rank spittle.

Belle’s right hand crept up her thigh. Her dagger was tucked away. He didn’t know she had it. Even if he did, he didn’t know she’d learned to use it. “I’m sorry,” she said, feeling the smooth bottom of the scabbard. “I have no idea who the fuck you’re talking about.”

The man hissed a wet breath through gritted teeth, pushing into her and knocking her head against the crate behind her. “Perhaps you know my name then? Does Asselin sound familiar to you, you foreign bitch? Neville Asselin? Mallory’s brother? The man whose future you fucked when you ruined her marriage?” He spat again.

Belle’s fingers found the hilt of the dagger. Her fingertips grazed the design stamped into the leather before closing around it to withdraw the blade from its sheath. She took it out slowly as she said, “I didn’t fuck your future. You should blame your sister for that. If she could’ve just moved on and not stabbed me in the middle of a crowded room—the same crowded room as the empress was in—maybe your family wouldn’t have lost everything.” The tip of the blade swayed in the air when it came loose. She turned it upright as he spoke again.

“My sister is not at fault in any of this! You ruined her life! You ruined all of our—” Neville stopped short when Belle jammed the blade into his chest. Between the third and fourth rib and up to pierce the heart. That was the way she’d practiced with Cullen. They had practiced it for days. Her wooden practice blade had never entered his body, never pierced his flesh or his organs, never killed him. Every blood vessel in her body felt as though it was flowing with ice. Every muscle was tense. Every breath was shaky as it came in or out. Her thighs ached. This was fight or flight. She had the urge to do both.

Neville’s eyes went wide. He let out a thick cough as his blade dropped away from Belle’s throat. She jerked the hilt of the dagger to make sure she hit something vital, and he coughed again. When he finally went limp and heavy against her, she let him fall to the dirt in a heap.

Her hands trembled even after she balled them into fists. Her breaths were noisy, in and out of her nose. Cold in, cold out. He was dead. She had to be sure he was dead. She reached down, seeing her bloodied hand for the first time and not minding, and ripped the blade from the body. She stabbed him in the heart again, down instead of up. Neville didn’t move. He didn’t breathe. She checked for a pulse to find none, not even the faintest thump against her index and middle fingers.

Belle was overwhelmed by the compulsion to get away from the corpse she’d made. She’d always thought that if she had to kill someone to stay alive, she would say something afterward. “Fuck you,” or something. Maybe something quippier, she was never really sure. Instead, she took her dagger from the body and left the tent in silence. She thought about sheathing the blade, but decided she didn’t want to get any more blood on her clothes or ruin the scabbard. Banal practicality in the face of crisis was ingrained in her bones. She almost laughed at the way her mind worked, but she’d just killed a man and she thought better of it.

She wandered over to Celene’s obscene tent, aware that her surcoat and pants were splashed with blood. Celene’s servants balked when Belle entered. “Josephine? Are you in here?”

“Belle?” said Josephine’s voice from behind a wall of cream colored fabric. “I thought you were aiding the healers fo—” She rounded the wall and stopped in a stiff motion. “What in the Maker’s name?” She walked a couple of hasty steps to meet Belle in the center of what passed for a foyer. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah. I mean, I guess? Neville Asselin just tried to cut my throat.” Belle gestured with her bloody knife in the direction of the tent containing the salted meat and the corpse. “I killed him first.” Her matter-of-factness made her a little dizzy. It seemed dumb.

Celene’s voice rang out in shrill tones from where Josephine had been. “Is everything alright, Lady Montilyet?”

“All is well, Your Majesty. I shall return in a moment.” Josephine lifted Belle’s chin to examine her neck. “We must get you to the healers to have your wound tended.”

Belle shook her head. “He didn’t get me, though.”

Josephine’s dark brows knotted together, her blue-hazel eyes quizzical. “Belle, you have a two-inch cut along your throat.”

“I do?” Belle started to reach up to feel her neck, stopping once she remembered the upward-facing dagger in her hand. “He cut me?”

“Yes, and you are still bleeding. Come with me.” Josephine ushered Belle out of Celene’s quarters and toward the healers’ tents.

“Goddamn. Adrenaline is a hell of a thing.” Belle started to feel the sting of the wound when they reached the halfway point. “Ow. Now I know it’s there. Shit.” She reached up with her left hand to touch the tender skin around the cut. She was, in fact, still bleeding.

“Are you alright?” Josephine asked again as they entered the dingy red tent.

Exhaustion began to wash over Belle the moment she sat on an empty cot. Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “I dunno. My neck hurts now. But someone should really go get that dead guy. Like, secure the scene for investigation or something. I dunno how you guys do shit here. I dunno.”

The same young Qunari man she had relieved and had relieved her in return approached. “What happened?” There was a distinct measure of consternation in his voice.

“I know, right? I just left here all not bloody and here I come a few minutes later all…bloody. That guy tried to slit my throat. I guess he did a little. Did he say anything to you?” Belle pointed at the young man with the hand she’d forgotten was still clutching a dagger.

He was gentle with her when he moved her bedaggered hand away. “About killing you? No. You can put down the knife, though. You’re safe now.”

Belle’s fingers would not loosen. Her nails dug into the bloodstained blue leather. “Um.” She willed herself to let go of the knife, but her fingers were not to be moved. “I can’t.” She tried again. “Nope. I can’t.”

Josephine’s hand came to rest over Belle’s, and the muscles began to relax. When Belle’s fingers loosened enough, Josephine slipped the dagger away. She laid it down on a small table next to the cot. Belle’s jaw was set tight while she watched. Her nails had left little crescent indentations in the blue leather, and she could see the spot where her hand had been—the only part of the grip that wasn’t coated in rapidly coagulating blood.

“I do not wish to leave you just yet, but Celene—”

“No, yeah, dude. Go ahead. Handle it. We got this.” Belle gave Josephine a weak smile as she pointed back and forth between herself and the young man. Josephine gave her one last baleful look before leaving the healers’ tent. Belle sighed an unsteady sigh. “Yeah. We got this.”

Some kind of horn sounded outside while the man, whose name Belle learned was Ash, twinkled his magical fingers around her bleeding knife wound. The feeling of tissue knitting itself back together was eerie, and a bit squishy. “Battle’s over,” said Ash absently, looking down at Belle’s still-healing neck with an appraising eye.

“Is that what that horn thing meant?”

“Yes. Have you never been to battle before this?”

“No. This is my fir—” She gasped as the last jagged bits of her cut reconnected. “First battle.”

“Well, well,” said Ash. “First battle and you didn’t even have to leave camp to kill a man. Well done.”

“Doesn’t feel well done. Feels shitty.”

“I know, but it happened. Stay here for a moment, I’m going to get you some water. You look a little pale.”

Belle couldn’t stop the little puff of laughter that left her nose. “I always look pale. But I guess this is the ‘no blood in my body’ kind of pale, huh?”

“The very same.”

Ash came back with a small cup of cool water a moment later. Belle drained it, and he went to fetch more. They went through this two more times before her thirst was slaked. “You should have brought me a bigger cup.” They both laughed a bit. She felt nauseous.

He told her to lie still for a while before she tried to get up. She knew that her body need time to make more blood, and she complied. She couldn’t keep from looking at the ruined dagger. Could daggers get ruined? They were intended to spill blood. That was their raison d’etre. How was she meant to clean the dried blood from the leather so she could use the thing again? Was she supposed to use it again? Would she have to use it again?

Hullabaloo and ruckus outside pulled Belle from the whirl of her thoughts, and she blinked her dry eyes. She was still conscious. She reckoned she would still be conscious if she stood to see the cause of the fuss. Testing her theory, she rose inch by inch from her cot, inhaling the whole time. Dizziness when standing was, after all, most frequently caused by lack of oxygen flowing to the brain.

Belle stepped out of the tent and glanced around. Entering from the edge of the camp where Leliana had been holding the line, Belle made out Spencer and his friend, Aldridge, dragging something on a makeshift half-stretcher. On closer inspection, the thing they were dragging appeared to be an unconscious man. Dark, greasy hair lay in a messy mop around his head and face, and some of his veins seemed to glow red. Bits and pieces of silvery armor clung to the fabric of his gambeson, but they looked as if they had been shattered.

Following close behind the stretcher, to Belle’s shuddering relief, was Cullen. She stepped toward him, though she was a good distance from the entrance to the camp. He was all in one piece. He looked tired and irritated, and someone had opened up his eyebrow with a well-placed punch, but he seemed alright. His posture was straight as ever, his head held as high as ever. She could have cried at the sight of him. She did cry at the sight of him.

Then he saw her. The fatigue and irritation on his face melted away into joy before dissolving into apprehension. His pace quickened until he was jogging toward her. She imagined she looked rather stupid the way she was holding her arms out long before he reached her, though it was worth every ounce of embarrassment the moment that he did. She wept into his neck when he embraced her, not caring for what seemed like the hundredth time that his armor pinched and pushed at her. Every bit of everything she was feeling rushed out of her eyes in globulous tears and out of her mouth in muffled sobs. He lifted her feet from the ground and carried her somewhere. She didn’t care to look where.

Cullen laid her down in the cot from which she’d risen. She supposed she had not gotten very far from the tent. When Belle allowed him to pull away enough to see her, he asked, “Whose blood is that?”

“Some of it’s mine. This guy—the chick who tried to kill me at the Winter Palace, y’know—her brother. He tried to kill me.” Before she could finish, Cullen lurched away.

“Where is he?” His voice was dark and robust when he spoke, filled with rage and something like desire.

“The rest of it’s his blood. He’s dead. In a supply tent somewhere that way.” She pointed, making aimless shapes in the air with her uncertain hand. “Or maybe not in the tent anymore. I told Josie. Maybe they took him out already. I don’t know. Did we win?”

Cullen’s face had become a battlefield. Worry and happiness and fury and weariness warred within his features. “In a way, yes.”

“Was that Samson that Spencer was dragging in?”

“It was. Though, Corypheus has not been defeated. Not yet.”

“That sucks, I guess. But yay, you got Samson. That’s good right?”

Cullen removed his glove to run his knuckles across her cheek. She reveled in the sensation of him. “It is. Are you alright?”

“I don’t know. I’m alive and Ash was kind enough to put my skin back together, so…I guess in that sense, I’m fine. But…I don’t know.” There were too many thoughts vying for top billing in her mind for anything to coalesce into something clear. “I should thank you for the dagger. And for all the training. I would be much less okay without those.”

“Maker’s breath, Belle.” Cullen enveloped her in his arms again. It was the first time she’d felt safe since the battle began. “Thank the Maker you’re alive, my darling. I could not bear it if you—If—”

“Shh, no. No, no, no. None of that bullshit. We’re both alive, and we’re both together. That’s enough right this second. Okay?” She felt him nod into her neck and shoulder. “Is Max okay?”

“He is alive, but he went through the eluvian with Morrigan and a few others. He is likely back at Skyhold. A few of us must leave as soon as we can to get home ahead of the march.”

Belle let out a heavy breath into his skin. She swam in the scent of him for a moment, spiced herbs and soft powder and the little something that was just him. She could take the time to cope with everything later. In that moment, she wanted to remain where and as they were. “Can we sleep first? We’ve both had a rough couple of days, one of us more than the other. I’ll let you pick which one.”

Cullen chuckled, letting his warm breath splash across her neck and through her hair. “Yes. We can leave in the morning. I would like to stay in your tent tonight, if that would be agreeable?”

“Pfft. Agreeable. Of course I want you to stay with me. I’ve missed you so fucking much I can’t stand it.”

“I’ve missed you, too.”

“Well, thank God for that.”

#cullen #cullen rutherford #commander cullen #cullen x belle #belle dolan #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #fanfic #mgit #modern girl in thedas #self indulgence au #htwwain

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