A/N: Trigger warning for sexual assault. Reviews are deeply appreciated.
outoutoutout
Imaginary scar tissue festers over Leliana's jugular.
The night before The Betrayal, Marjolaine decided yes for the both of them—shoulders pinned, breath gone, teeth on flesh and Leliana frantic and pushing and trying to think of a way out but there wasn't, just spit and tongue and hot hot heat, behind her eyes and between her thighs and Marjolaine, over and around and on—and then the other woman pulled away, laughing. And she said, Maker, you can be a bore.
But that is dead and gone, like the bardmaster herself. Leliana kneels in the brook thirty paces from the edge of the campfire and scrubs Marjolaine's blood off her blade. Her neck is burning with the five hundredth echo of the kiss-that-wasn't and her hands are shaking and she can't turn her head to the right because of corporeal pain from an imagined wound lancing through her throat like nettle grafts, like tick-trails, centipede stings—Leliana swears, tosses her dagger away, and curls forward. The grass smells like dog.
"I'm sorry. Truly."
She didn't hear Zevran behind her. She is acutely aware of how dead she could be, or worse (hands on arms on her, pinnedpinnedpinned). She shields the side of her neck with her palm.
"You'll need this, I think." Zevran is sitting, cross-legged, two feet away, cleansing the rest of the blood from the blade of her dagger. When he notices her staring, he winks, obscene as ever. Morrigan would tell him to try and fit the blade down his throat, too.
The elf takes her flat stare in stride and proffers her the dagger, hilt first.
She stands (her neck screams in protest). Zevran doesn't look a thing like Marjolaine, in any of her incarnations. Marjolaine, sneering smiling singing dancing (her eyes bright as stars), Marjolaine plush lips sucking bruises, Marjolaine soft hands tight grip long fingered. Marjolaine, mouth open eyes rolled back seizing Maker—you're so—good, fuck—Leliana, you're— Marjolaine, mouth open eyes rolled back dead, bleeding out on Fereldan floorboards. Marjolaine, in velvet and leather and nothing at all. Marjolaine ruining her dress with a pint of her own blood.
It's then Leliana throws up (Marjolaine's expressions in death and orgasm were terrifyingly similar). Zevran jumps back quick enough to avoid dirtying his boots.
She wipes her mouth. "Please don't think too lowly of me. I am rarely this weak."
"But of course. It's this Fereldan food. Unsettles the stomach, absolutely dreadful. Torture—all kinds... such requirements are necessary for entering the Antivan Crows." For a moment he is looking past her, but then his eyes refocus on her own and he grins. "But nothing—not the taste of unwashed cock, not the rack, could have prepared me for Alistair's cooking. If you ever want an in, I'll recommend you. You can cut past the initiation nonsense, I think. I'll just serve them a bit of our Dashing Young Templar's stew and tell them you lived off of it for eight weeks."
He laughs and she smiles and turns the dagger over and over again in her hands, the dagger that smells like metal and blood, the dagger that kissed Marjolaine from the inside, out—she remembers to exhale. "The nightmares, do they go away?"
He kisses her on the cheek, and she is acutely aware of the five inches between cheek and throat and she flinches and he, bless him, does not ask why. "The memories blur," he murmurs in a way that heavily implies no. "I can fuck you better if you'd like."
She shoves him, and he lets her. "Lecher."
He grins, bows, and struts away. Leliana breathes out. In. Her pulse drums against her throat, the phantom spiders crawl. Out. In. Out.