With many apologies to Pink Floyd…
Her hair spills over her shoulders, a crimson wave against cream as he hooks her undergarment closed. She'd turned it around backwards to do it herself, a very Ferelden gesture. She smiled when he offered and she giggles just a little when he sets to work, bottom first, his lips caressing the back of her neck where the wave has parted to reveal flesh beneath. She sighs and leans back against him as he slips hook after hook into its eye effortlessly. He tries to force each motion into his faulty memory, to fill the emptiness Danarius burned into him as surely as his lyrium markings.
"You're good at this," she says. "I always screw up."
"I've had practice."
"One of the times you don't remember?"
"Hadriana."
She whips around, her eyes almost elven-large. "What? What do you mean?"
"The duties of a slave…"
Before he finishes, she's on him, the half-done undergarment flaring forward like a Dalish land-ship sail beneath the weight of her breasts. He clings to the memory of their salty taste, her dampened skin as she grinds the garment's bones into his chest. She seems unaware that tightening her arms around his neck has caused discomfort. He ignores the jabbing as he loses himself in two pools of emerald green that have become far too surrounded by red.
"He made you…" she says, but chokes before she can finish.
"It doesn't matter. Hadriana could never lace herself properly after—no woman of standing in the Imperium could."
"I suppose I should be laughing."
She brings her lips to his and he tastes their union, musky and sharp. He remembers her explorations, tentative and soft, the tickle of heat almost unbearable in the explosion she enkindled. The burst of pure memory that blew away the moment she shrieked his name. She pants when she releases him and stares at the red indentations her underwear has branded upon him. He feels nothing but the remnants of the heat her arms left behind as her eyes widen.
"Are you?" She shakes her head, ripples in the thick ocean of her hair. "I didn't…"
"Hurt me? Never." He doesn't want to lie to her; she has, but in ways he could never explain.
He reaches for the back hooks but she pulls back and yanks the garment backward. She shakes her head again, and her fingers slip on the first hook.
"Maker's breath," she mutters as he covers her trembling hands with his.
"Let me."
"No! You…"
"Andra." He loves her full name, of course, as exotic as it is for the simple Fereldens. "Lysandra" has its own charm, but the strength of the name is in what he's always called her in his mind. Andra, his Andraste, risking her life twice to keep him free of the Tevinters.
"No!"
"I want to do this. I need to." To replace Hadriana's sneer, and Danarius' skull-faced leering with the sound of her gasps, and the sight of her lush lips parted at his touch.
She senses something in him; he can tell by the way she drops her hands and bows her head.
"Just promise me, if we ever meet that damned bastard, that you'll let me gouge his eyes out before you gut him!" Her eyes narrow as she raises her head, and he sees the same fury that took her when she slashed away at Hadriana. She had glared down on the begging mage and he'd seen in her eyes that she would gladly deliver the final blow if he didn't.
"I… promise." But what good is the word of a slave? Nothing, if you asked Hadriana.
"Good." Usually, her gaze is soft and steady, but he has seen that hardness more than once when he was in danger.
He catches her nipples in each hand and watches them grow. He circles them with his fingers, taking in each of the tiny bumps of her flesh and remembering their taste. The texture is far different than the rest of her, not the sleek silk he never wants to stop caressing. Except for her hands, working hands. Ferelden hands, calloused from tilling fields and gripping blades. She hasn't had an easy life, but it's a respectable one, not the sniveling, backstabbing ugliness that is the daily struggle for power in the Imperium. He feels a faint resistance as her hands travel up his spine, just enough to tingle. Her lips part, and she throws her head back with a sharp breath. He allows her the gasp before he sets to work in sealing her forever from his view. He can't think of allowing his hands to wander, even if there is nothing they would rather do, or to let his own thudding heart accept the gift she's extended him. For now, he enjoys what she is, but tomorrow, or even later tonight, he can't, even if she could burn all of his hatred away with her warmth.
'Wealth never seemed to matter to you.'
'No, not really.' She sits next to him at the fire they managed to light in the oppressive gloom of the Deep Roads. She sits nowhere nearly as close as either of them would like.
'Why the expedition, then? You can live a long time on the coin you earned.'
'For Mother. To protect Bethany. They both gave up so much...'
'What would you have done if your sister hadn't been cursed with magic? If you'd been alone?'
'Cursed with magic? Beth wasn't cursed!'
'A poor and sloppy choice of words. I'm sorry. If you were alone, what would you do?'
'I never thought about it. Really. I suppose I wouldn't be here, indebted to some loathsome dwarf. Maybe I'd be washing some noblewoman's dainties in Denerim, or become a sellsword. Join the traitor's army and kill darkspawn…'
'Doing something less worthy, then.'
'Worthy? All of those things would be a hundred times more honest than raiding an ancient monument and stripping it for gold. I'd return a hundred whores' shawls over this, if I had a choice.'
He lies beside her in her ridiculous bed, all intricate carvings, opulent canopies and endless layers of silk sheets. She fits here, somehow, her hair a match to the pillowcase beneath, even if she doesn't believe so. She smiles, half-drunken at him, her eyes unfocused as she traces the markings on his chin, his neck. She sighs and her hands flit to the back of his arms where she traces patterns of her own. If he tries, he can almost imagine her leaving behind his markings in a soft and ghostly flutter, rather than the searing agony of Danarius' ritual. She fits best in memory, in this mansion and this city that seems almost unreal when he thinks of Minrathous. If only she could seem more real, more solid than the memories he'd felt and lost. The touch shouldn't be gentle, the tracery, soft. It should be the clawing of Hadriana's sharpened and manicured nails, the rending of Danarius' teeth. He would proudly wear her tracings for the rest of his life, if he could.
Her lips part and even as he tries to resist, he meets them and lets her explore, though she moves slowly and her tongue no longer pierces him as it did when he'd pushed her. Her eyes close and she slows even more, perhaps on the edge of sleep. She tickles him even so, and stirs the madness he thought he'd put to rest. He holds back from shoving her legs open and shredding her dainties to ribbons. She stops, her eyes mere slits beneath heavy lids, and smiles.
"So beautiful," she says, and goes limp in his arms.
He wonders if what he intends would be easier if she had just been speaking of his looks, but she has always found good in those who any rational being would have long since dismissed: the idiotic Dalish bloodmage, the amoral pirate and the hypocritical abomination. What she might see mystifies him, a past-less former slave consumed by roiling flames of hate. An empty shell, carved out by fused lyrium and contempt, seasoned with perpetually fresh hatred, but for the one small hint of brightness she's brought him. She rolls over, and he frees his arms. It's easier now that he can't see her faint smile and know that she smiles because of him. She shifts with a small grumble.
"I love you, Andra." He hopes she can't hear his whisper, and he starts when she seems to mumble something.
He kisses her bare ear and dresses. He wants to slink off, but she deserves far better than that. Far better than him. The least he can do is to try to explain, even if she won't understand, or if he can't understand himself. He watches as she sleeps, and he clamps down hard on the urge to smooth her hair away where it twitches in peril of falling between her parted lips. If he touches her, he can't leave, and if he can't leave… His heart clenches at the thought of regaining everything and losing it over and over again.
She wakes and she says everything he would if she'd been the one backing away. He turns, because he can't bear the hurt in her eyes, and it's only as he walks off that she throws her dagger dead into his heart.
"I love you."
Love is the gift of an equal. No matter how he deludes himself, he isn't free.