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Duncan, Grey Warden Commander of Ferelden, was not at all surprised. |
Not that the past days had not held surprises aplenty. He had watched his new recruit methodically cleave her way through Arl Howe's soldiers as if fighting whole groups of bloodthirsty murderers was her daily bread. Which he knew for a fact it was not. He had been informed by her proud father, the Teyrn Bryce Cousland... |
Tears in the mail and padded jacket on her back, donned hastily over what was probably a nightgown, proved that lack of experience would likely have killed her, had she not taken the time to put armour on. But apart from bruises where armour had prevented worse, mother, daughter and dog had avoided injury while searchi... |
Sadly, their little group had not been enough to save the keep. The Teyrn had been wounded too gravely to be rescued, and his wife had remained by his side to keep off Howe's men and give Kiendra, Duncan and the hound enough time to flee the castle through a secret passage. |
Duncan had admired the girl's cool, controlled effectiveness throughout the whole ordeal. Not only had she demonstrated excellent fighting skill and the ability to keep a level head in a dire situation. What had impressed him most was how she had left her parents behind without crying or arguing with their decision, an... |
With all the gruesome events and then the excitement and danger of being hunted, pushing her emotions aside in order to function efficiently was laudable, but it was only a matter of time before the shock caught up with her. In fact, he had been expecting it for a while. |
That was why that evening, after they had made camp in the forest they had entered the previous day, hidden away enough to finally light a modest campfire, get out of the armour they had worn nonstop since their escape, and warm themselves after washing in the ice cold stream bubbling quietly just in hearing distance, ... |
Pity squeezed his heart while he finished his task of building a bedding by covering the leaves he had piled up with his gambeson. The poor girl – no, he chided himself, stop calling her a girl. When had he begun to label any person under twenty as child? He himself had been conscripted at an even younger age, and he h... |
Kiendra Cousland had in one night lost everything and everyone she had known and loved to one cruel, tracherous man's ambition. She had been torn from her safe environment and faced with life-threatening danger. And soon he was going to make her fight monsters, put her through a potentially lethal ritual, throw her int... |
In hindsight, maybe asking her dying father for permission for her recruitment had been unnecessary, especially since she herself had been willing, even eager, to join. Precious moments had been squandered for that, moments when the family could have exchanged proper farewells. When had he become so hung up on formalit... |
He wished his age and position would instead present him with a way to help his recruit. He opened his eyes and sighed when he saw she had not moved an inch. Even having had time to prepare, he had no idea what to say to her. Honestly there was nothing he could do or say at this point to make things easier for her. He ... |
He frowned with disgust. There he went again with the callous thoughts. Couldn't he simply permit himself to feel compassion for a while without bringing up The Darkspawn Threat? Maybe he couldn't. Maybe his duty was all that was left of him now. Maybe that was how it was supposed to be, for an old Warden. |
Grey Wardens were so closely tied to darkspawn, after all, that they became something similar eventually, if they didn't die as custom dictated. Images of Genevieve's decayed face were imprinted in his head and had plagued his nights as much as the Archdemon recently did. But even before that final transformation, the ... |
Only now, approaching his end, did he see it. Only now could he suspect that his current state of mind was not simply a result of a demanding life. Now he could hear it. He remembered old Wardens" descriptions of a song, but the voices he heard were not singing. Nor were they really voices, nor did he actually hear the... |
Which meant that his resistance had worn thin, and so the taint's gradual poisoning had begun to erode everything good and human within him until he was a hollowed, dried up husk. The husk may still look intact for a while, but its only purpose would soon be to hide the foulness it struggled to contain, a mind overwhel... |
Maybe that was why he relied so much on form, on duty. These were clear, rigid structures that could define him and keep him functioning when all else failed. Structures solid enough that they might even be able to outlive his sanity. |
He shuddered, snapping back to reality. His thoughts were going to places he really did not want to visit at the moment, or ever really, and anyway, now was the worst time for worrying about himself. He had a task, he reminded himself. A duty. Was there something he could do for his recruit? That was what he was suppos... |
His own methods of keeping himself together wouldn't do. He suspected a sermon about duty would not be well received under the circumstances. Or, which would be infinitely worse, it might be too well received. He wanted her to let her grief out, not to continue supressing it, or it would eventually tear her apart from ... |
Kiendra was still in the same place, and it became clear nothing dramatic was going to happen for now. She made no sound, and was too still to be crying, despite the tremor. Probably just staring into the dark in anguish, which he still shouldn't simply leave her to. He envisioned himself strolling up to her and... say... |
While he sat pondering, the canteen Kiendra was holding slipped from her hand and fell to the mossy earth with a thud. The sound startled the giant hound, who had followed on her heels. Duncan watched it prod her leg with its nose, whining softly. Her left hand absently stroked its head a few times, then suddenly clutc... |
Oh well, Duncan decided, he could at least offer his own presence and relieve the poor animal. |
He rose and walked up behind the pair, careful to make enough noise so as not to startle Kiendra. He need not have bothered. She was completely oblivious to her surroundings, the canteen she had dropped lay forgotten at her feet. One hand clutched a branch so hard the knuckles were visibly white despite there being bar... |
Kiendra Cousland, on the other hand, was very surprised. |
She had, after all, learned her lesson well. She had subjugated her emotions, had not allowed them to get the better of her for years. She had thought her control, after all the training she had subjected it to, absolute. And yet now she could feel it slipping through her grasp like oiled rope. Why now? She could not a... |
And what the blazes was this anyway? She had managed to keep a close reign on her grief when she found her brother's wife and son dead, when she left her parents in a rapidly growing puddle of her father's blood, so why did she feel like crying now, days later? |
It had started three days after their escape, after they had entered this forest and Duncan stated they were out of immediate danger. They had found an unoccupied hunter's cabin and pilfered several useful items, since none of them had had time to take anything from the castle except what they had on them. A faded tuni... |
Later, as she had chewed on the hard, salty meat, she had idly thought of the more tasty food she had been used to being served, and it had occured to her that she would probably never enjoy anything quite like Nan's cooking again. She had chided herself for mourning something as trivial as her cooking when the woman w... |
As she had wandered on, feet blistered and aching from the unaccustomed exercise of walking for days, she had suddelny remembered her soft Nevarran carpets, wondering if the bloodstains would ever wash off. She had felt momentarily amused at the sheer absurdity of the thought, then called herself an airhead for clingin... |
In the evening they had washed off the worst of the days old caked blood in a stream, and as she had watched the brown clumps she pulled from her hair dissolve and float away in the icy water, a melancholy had settled over her, and she had imagined she was watching her old life disperse in the cold and merciless flow o... |
And so, time and time again some unbidden thought or memory would worm its way into her consciousness, only to be squashed and pushed down into some back corner with all other thoughts and feelings she deemed unnecessary. |
But now, in the near-darkness between the trees where neither the light of the stars nor of the campfire reached, she suddenly found out that corner must be situated in her stomach, for something heavy moved, writhed within it. All she had repressed must have congealed into that one thick, cold clump which now crawled ... |
While she had of course been intellectually aware of all that had happened, only now did the knowledge fully connect with her. The impact of it made her stagger so she had to steady herself against a tree, and that was the last she actively noticed of her surroundings. |
In the dark her eyes provided no challenge for the images her memory painted in front of her. She saw again the corpses of soldiers and servants, men, women and children – oh Maker have mercy, her sweet nephew! - strewn across familiar hallways, burning rubble blocking her way to the fighting she could hear over panick... |
They were dead. Really dead. Gone forever. Horror and loss flooded her, stunning her completely and relentlessly battering at her defences as it forced cracks into walls that had stood tall and impeccable since she built them. Tears stung her eyes and she blinked rapidly, trying to somehow stem the tide, not knowing wh... |
The darkness around her was in motion, shapeless shadows intruding on her, whispering with the voices of the dead that she was alone in the woods, alone in the world, never to return home, because home was no more. |
Fergus. His name flashed a white spark before her inner eye. Her brother had not been there for the massacre, he may be still alive. She wanted to cling to that hope, to nurture it, but then she remembered that Howe had known very well where he was going, and which route he was to take, The spark died in flight, and th... |
She fought very hard to push the choking despair back, but the harder she pushed, the harder it pushed back. The effort made her body tremble, all muscles tightened and enlisted in the battle to not fall apart. Breathing became a labour, and she tried to use that to her advantage, to focus her full attention on it an s... |
She felt a hand land on her shoulder and her mind reeled in panic. Duncan! Of course he was wondering why she stood around in the dark, staring into space. What could she say? She could not let him see her like this. Blazes, she could not be this! Pull yourself together! Say something! Make him leave! Somehow sheer des... |
„Duncan...I'm all right, just give me a minute..." |
He didn't answer, but carefully pried her hand open to release something...Warg, she realized. When she looked down at the hound, at her only surviving friend, his compassionate eyes almost pushed her over the edge. With an impossible amount of effort she wrestled the tears back down and looked away. Her other hand was... |
Meanwhile Duncan was still standing right there, waiting for an explanation, no doubt losing patience with her weird behaviour. She sucked in another shaky breath. |
„I'm sorry. I suppose I just got...hit by all that happened..." She knew those were the wrong words as soon as the said them, for they summoned back the dreadful images. Her throat constricted further and choked her words off. There was no way she could speak when it was so hard to even breathe. Frustrated with her own... |
Still, Duncan sounded as neutral as ever. „No need to apologize. You have every right to be sad." |
Sad, yes, but not like this, bawling like an unreliable little girl. She had to get away from him before this got any more embarassing. Which it promptly did when he again placed a hand on her shoulder and pulled, trying to turn her around. No way. She would not let him see her face like this. But his grip was firm, an... |
Bitterly she wondered why she even bothered. Her dignity, her future, suddenly seemed insignificant against the backdrop of the tragedy she suffered and against the magnitude of her grief. A new wave of despair swamped her and she knew she was going to loose the battle. |
Duncan said something she did not understand due to the pounding of blood in her ears. But the tone was compassionate, not scolding or scornful as she had feared, nor did he push her away. He even wrapped an arm around her and patted her back. |
There was little height difference between them, but the position was enough to elicit memories of fatherly comfort, reminding her again that her father was lost forever. A few dry, erratic sobs escaped her, shook her inside the steadying grip. So what if she broke down right here on his shoulder? If Duncan did not pus... |
She briefly considered just pushing him over and running away, but the sheer idea of leaving his embrace, of being completely alone, sent a wave of fear through her that drowned all rational thought. The shadows renewed their whispered mantra of how forsaken she was, how small and fragile, alone and insignificant. Dunc... |
When he asked her whether he should leave her alone she was clinging on for dear life. Unable to speak, she shook her head violently. In response he firmly stroked her back. „It's all right, I won't leave unless you want me to." Faced with a lack of reasons for keeping up the fight, her last defenders threw down their ... |
A wail escaped her, then another, physically painful as it pushed through the constricions on her chest and throat. She only half realized that she was moving automatically, being led back to the fire, that Duncan manipulated her into sitting down, never once letting go of her. Right next to her ear, he murmured: „Go o... |
The gentle tone of his voice was the drop that broke the dam, and she wept. |
She wept like she never had before, tears running constantly down her contorted face, whole body shaking with powerful sobs, alternating between wailing and gasping for air, letting in everything she had tried to keep at a distance. |
First she wept for the dead, the scores of innocent lives lost, for the pain and horror of their last moments, for the sudden end to their hopes and dreams, for the horrid injustice of it all. Then she wept for rage, at Howe for his treachery, at his men for participating in such vile slaughter, at her own father for t... |
Lastly she wept for herself, for her own losses and the crippling loneliness she would now have to endure. |
It was a long time before the crying abated, less from the grief receding than having tired itself out. Kiendra drifted without thought for a while, feeling drained, weirdly disconnected from herself and the world. It was like she was floating on a sea of sadness, dark waters that had finally reached a brooding calm af... |
Heh. It appeared her mind had a tendency to make poetic metaphors involving water, when left unsupervised. Who knew. |
Slowly paddling towards reality, Kiendra began take notice of her body, and immediately wished she hadn't . |
Her abdominal muscles were still erratically spasming, which didn't help with the queasiness in her stomach. Her head hurt and felt clogged and heavy. Her eyes burned, the tissue around them swollen and sticky. Her throat was dry and sore. Underneath all that, several parts of her body, especially her legs and feet, pu... |
Duncan carefully leaned away from her, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly before he stood and left her alone. He rummaged around the campsite while her foggy mind still tried to assess her situation, and he made lots of noise walking to the stream and returning with the previously forgotten canteen. He pressed it into... |
As if to accentuate that point, all the air she had swallowed with her sobs came back up in a massive burp. Well, at least that reduced the nausea. Then she sat, at a loss what to do, staring at the rag. |
Warg was lying only inches away, gazing at her with that look of complete adoration dogs were so proficient at. When she turned her attention to him, his stubby tail wagged hesitaitly. She stretched out her arm and petted the large head. „I worried you, didn't I?" She croaked. „It's all good now, I'm fine." She was far... |
She marveled at how nice he was to her, how he was still willing to support her despite her display of weakness. Maybe he was simply such a nice guy, but he might be humouring her for some reason, though what reason that could be she could not fathom. It was too complicated a thought to follow at the moment anyway, so ... |
It was a good feeling, warm and solid, an anchor for her aimless soul. Timidly she settled into a more comfortable pose, planting her head on his dry shoulder, and allowed herself to be supported, allowed her befuddled mind a break from making sense of the world. So she sat for a long while, almost dozing, simply letti... |
She didn't register exactly when it happened, but gradually she became acutely aware of that warmth and of the flesh that was exuding it, of the heavy arm across her back, of the steady heartbeat against her chest, of the beard tickling her neck and of the warm breath softly moving her hair. |
The sheer bulk of his body had been a stone she could cling to against the tide, albeit a very warm, soft stone. Now suddenly, it ceased to be a stone. This was a man, a human being with his own grief and joy. A human she barely knew. A stranger, but one who had witnessed her ordeal, who had helped and supported her wh... |
She wanted, needed to make this man not a stranger, to forge a connection between them so she would not be so utterly alone anymore. She shifted a little to allow more contact, pressing her chest more fully against his. |
He smelled of steel and leather, sweat and smoke. It was a good scent, a real, earthy scent. Spontaneously, following the urge to know if taste matched smell, reins of rationality still absent, she licked a line up his neck towards his ear. He tasted salty and bitter, with a metallic tinge and a hint of odd, sickly swe... |
Suddenly the two layers of cloth separating them were too much. Duncan was warm, solid and she needed him like she had never needed anything before. |
Once again he noticed the change even before she did |
He observed how her heartbeat sped up, how she pressed her body against him, how her hands stopped clinging and started caressing. He smiled. This was a manner of coping with grief he was familiar with. And at last there was something he could actively do to help. |
It was completely inappropriate, but sod it, he was not going to put her through what was coming while she was crippled by grief. Having her drink from the joining chalice in such a weakened state simply would not do. If he could speed up her healing process by sleeping with her he would. |
Or rather, he was willing to, theoretically, if he could only convince himself. The fact she had yet to signal in any way that she recognized what was her desire gave him some time to work through his misgivings. |
Like the fact she was probably not entirely master of her own actions right now, and might not be happy with them once her mental capacities returned. On the other hand, it was just sex, and it wasn't like he could get her pregnant. He could live with her getting angry at him afterwards for taking advantage. Anger migh... |
What if the opposite happened, though, he mused while she shifted even closer against him. From what little he knew of her, he doubted she was sentimental enough to develop a crush because of one fuck, but he was far from being an expert on matters of the heart. |
Oh, he'd just have to deal with one problem or the other when it arose. Either would at least give her strength. |
Which led him to the most important issue: his own strength. Was he strong enough to withstand the now agitated whispers? The mere possibility of carnal pleasure set them off into a cacophony, unleashing a surge of perverted desires he had not yet experienced at such magnitude. But in a way, the sheer unfamiliarity mad... |
It helped that he probably reacted so strongly merely because of his own prolonged abstinence, and less because of any actual desire towards Kiendra as a woman. Her being so young as well as a potential recruit were partial reasons for that, but nothing had even stirred within him at the sight of her before he had acti... |
Her face was not exactly what was usually called beautiful, even in favorable lighting and not puffed up from crying. A long face with sharp cheekbones, a narrow mouth more prone to snarling than smiling, narrow, taxing eyes beneath thick, straight brows – the combination didn't make for an inviting picture. It was mad... |
Her straight hair was a light blonde without a tinge of red, so pale that it appeared white in the dim light. She artlessly gathered it on the back of her head into a short ponytail, which made her face look even more stern and somber. Her eyes, like the hair, were also very pale, more grey than blue. Along with her pa... |
Her voice didn't invoke erotic fantasies either, sounding strained and a little raspy. If he hadn't heard her speak before, he would have assumed that was an effect of crying, and naturally that had enhanced the effect quite a bit. |
Duncan had always liked athletic women though, and there she did not disappoint. Years of excercise had given her a strong, muscular frame that wore heavy armour with as much ease and grace as other girls wore dresses. He found that and the small, firm breasts pressing against him with each breath sufficiently arousing... |
Of course he had to admit to himself that feeling her like this, imagining her like this, anything human and breathing would have been enough to arouse him. It had been so long since he indulged in carnal desires, always busy, always upholding an air of dignity for the Order's sake. How liberating would it be to finall... |
And therein lay the danger. He could not allow himself to indulge, to be swept away by his lust, much less the deeper, darker impulses. Just thinking along those lines had allowed the whispers to grow stronger once more, and again he clamped down on them. Kiendra's well-being had to be his priority. As long as he kept ... |
He had to approach this like a task to perform, not a physical pleasure to enjoy. Which did not mean it had to be a chore. He could enjoy other aspects of it – the pleasure of giving comfort, the trust placed in him, his confidence in his own will. He could prove to himself that he was still human, still capable of war... |
When he felt her tongue against his neck, he was ready. |
„Feeling better?" |
Duncan's voice vibrated though his chest, and from there into her cheekbone. |
„Mmh." Kiendra could not bring herself to form words, much less a coherent sentence. It would involve setting her head back to work, and that was something she wanted to delay as much as possible. |
She did feel better though. She lay cradled in Duncan's left arm, revelling in his warmth, in the loose bonelessness of her own body, and in the intimacy that connected them now. The headache had retreated enough to be ignored, and all bad thoughts were drowned out by drowsy lethargy of both body and mind. She still fe... |
Absently she ran her hand through the thick, curly hair across Duncan's broad chest. How different this was, she mused lazily, from the handful of boys she had experimented with. Those had been soft and smooth to her touch as well as in the manner they touched her, reverently, softly, carefully. In contrast, Duncan had... |
And while he was gentle enough, he did not take special care not to touch her too roughly. Which was essential, because having him ask if she hurt every time he moved wouldn't have allowed them to get anywhere. Presently it was near impossible to find a place on her body that did not ache at least a little. She didn't ... |
In fact she now understood why she'd never felt inclined to let things progress with her little dalliances. All of them had been nice and considerate and made her feel cherished, but often in the manner of a precious but delicate vase. Probably her station, her gender, and inexperience, hers and theirs, had made her pa... |
Warm gratitude welled up as she pressed her hand flat over Duncan's chest to feel the pounding heart beneath. Even inexperienced as she was, she knew enough to appreciate how perfectly he had handled the situation. She had started out for a wild, quick and hard romp, but he had steered her towards something more contro... |
reasserted her place in her own body, in reality, in a present that offered something good despite all odds. |
Right now however, reality reasserted itself in a more prosaic way. |
Regretfully she disentangled herself from Duncan's arm. „I need to pee," she stated while she rose laboriously and staggered away on wobbly legs. |
After only a few steps, hearing Duncan's alarmed hiss, she whipped around, struggling to mobilize her worn out body into combat, but he was sill sprawled on the makeshift bed, propped up sideways on one elbow, looking her over with concern painted all over his face. It was a testament to her weariness that the tension ... |
„What?" She asked brusquely, irritated to be shaken from her state of relaxed contentment. |
„Are you injured?" Some answer came to him even while he was asking, and his eyes widened in shock. „Don't tell me you were... no wait, that's just...I'm sorry, I didn't mean to embarass you.. " |
While he floundered, her eyes finally followed his gaze to the offending smudges on the insides of her thighs. Oh, that. She shrugged. „I was." |
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