Written for the CMDA Valentine Challenge.
In a Perfect World
In a perfect world, Leonie and Duncan would have fought side by side, died in each other's arms or walked away and lived a quiet life far from Grey Wardens and politics and war. In a perfect world she would not have watched her life's desire ride away in the name of duty and she would not be standing watch in an encampment in Orlais while he battled darkspawn in an old Tevinter ruin.
In a perfect world…
News of Ostagar reached them just a week after the battle. From all reports, the vanguard of the Ferelden army, along with the Grey Wardens, had been massacred when Loghain had retreated early, taking the bulk of the army with him. How could that have happened? How could the greatest general in the history of Thedas, by some accounts, have allowed such a thing? Questions, drifting on the air currents around the camp, remained unanswered.
Grief was Leonie Caron's only companion in those first days, a sorrow that whispered cruelly in the bitter winds whipping across the barren fields; that howled with mournful abandon with the wolves each night beneath a sky made less dazzling by heavy clouds moving slowly across a diminishing moon. The news from Ostagar had darkened everything, casting a pall on the landscape and squeezing her heart in a painfully tight grip.
Through a haze of crushing despair, Leonie tried to reassure her friends, to listen and accept the words that were spoken to her in an effort to ease a pain that was resistant to any form of comfort. Hours drifted by as she stood in the encampment, awaiting permission to cross the border into Ferelden. Days and nights in which she sought comfort and found none, not even in Riordan's heartbroken, tear-soaked ramblings or heartfelt, bone-crushing embraces. They should have been able to ease the other's sorrow, but instead they seemed only to remind the other of what they had lost at Ostagar.
She didn't sleep, couldn't eat and, in the end, refused to obey orders. Pacing restlessly before her tent, she refused to cut her hair and toss it on a pyre, as was the custom of Orlesian women when their husband's died. She refused to go quietly, without a fight. She was Leonie Caron, the Lion of Orlais, and she would not be silenced by orders that made no sense to her. She would follow her heart, as she always had.
Riordan was only surprised that it took her a week to thumb her nose at Empress Celene and the First Warden. He had been ready days earlier.
"You'll be eviscerated for disobeying a direct order, lass," he warned, packing his saddlebag. For the first time since the news of Ostagar had arrived, there was a spark of life in his blue eyes, a hint of a wry smile on his lips.
"They will have to catch me first," Leonie replied, a grim answering smile coming and going so quickly that Riordan might have missed it had he not known her so well.
Like thieves, they left in the middle of the night, walking their horses away from the camp until, with a quick nod, Leonie pulled herself into the saddle and gave Vixen a firm pat on her neck, encouraging her to a gallop.
They traveled silently across the plains and then turned south, avoiding the major border crossing at Gherlen's Pass. Leonie was amazed at how easily they eluded the border guards. Riordan wore his sly smile as they evaded the final crossing and entered into Ferelden. "Have I ever steered you wrong?" he called as the horses picked their way along the rock-strewn path that led up into the Frostbacks.
The cold stole her breath and made her eyes sting with frozen tears, but Leonie felt the grief begin to unwind, trailing behind her like a woolen scarf unraveling as they rode on. The constant pain in her chest began to ease as they continued towards Ostagar, stopping only long enough to sleep for a few hours, huddled together for warmth. And comfort.
"He'll have my head if anything happens to you, lass. Or if I have my way with you," he added with a teasing grin.
"He'll have my head for ignoring orders and common sense. I won't mind, as long as we find him."
And she wouldn't, she swore to herself as Riordan's even breathing told her he'd finally drifted off to sleep. She lay within the circle of his arms, trying to keep her dark thoughts at bay. Duncan was out there. He had to be. Now that she was committed to finding him, she wouldn't allow herself to believe otherwise. Finally, exhausted, she slept.
"They'll have to chisel the ice off me," Riordan complained the following night. A great shudder passed through him and Leonie noticed how tired he looked, dark circles smudging the skin beneath his eyes, a weariness in his smile that seemed to go beyond his flesh to rest in his bones.
Lights from a village twinkled in the distance and the temptation to rest on a bed, to be warmed by a bath and fire was as strong as the wind howling up from the south. Leonie reined in and Riordan's horse, Gypsy, pranced beside her.
"No, lass. Best be safe and avoid populated areas for now."
She nodded wearily, her shoulders sagging. Instead, they built a shelter from pine boughs and ate cold rations, sharing memories and body warmth and hope. Went unspoken was the knowledge that Duncan had been nearing his Calling, that even if he was still alive now, he would not be for much longer, succumbing to the ravages of the taint and taking his final walk into the Deep Roads.
Still, if she could hold him and be held for even one more moment, to say her good-byes properly, this journey would be worth it. And if, Maker forbid, they found only his body, she would honor his death in the proper Orlesian way, with a funeral pyre on which she bestowed her final gift to him.
"This reminds me of that ride back from Weisshaupt," Riordan complained as they were pelted with sleet the next morning.
Leonie smiled over her shoulder at her companion, oblivious to the snow as memories tickled the edges of her mind, chasing away darker thoughts and emotions. "You, dear Peacock, complained the entire way, as did Duncan. Too cold, too windy, too this and that. You were like children, yes?" she teased, surprised at how much lighter she felt.
"Until nighttime and our shared tent," he responded, a wicked grin coming out to ease the weariness from his features.
"You live to shock others, Peacock."
"And you don't, lass?"
"Me? I am too busy following the rules to shock anyone," she protested with a laugh, remembering how many times she had been punished as a child trying to keep up with her Rivaini pirate and her peacock.
"Strange, I seem to recall honey and feathers in my boots one morning," he replied, his grin becoming broader.
"And I remember hearing about a man in a peacock blue wrapper and braids running through a packed tavern and then into the streets."
The laughter surprised her, light and easy and filled with bright memories. The day passed in a blur of stories and laughter, leading them ever closer to Ostagar. That night they ran into a band of darkspawn. The fight was quick and bloody, and served as a reminder of what they might find at Ostagar. Their lighthearted mood evaporated like fog caught in a bright sun.
A trip that normally took two weeks on horseback took them a week of hard riding and little sleep. They bypassed Redcliffe to the south and galloped across the Hinterlands, avoiding roving bands of deserters and killing any darkspawn that they sensed. They spoke little, as if even the best memories couldn't dispel the growing gloom at what they would find in Ostagar.
Leonie pressed on, offering Riordan words of comfort each night as she held him in his grief. She refused to believe that Duncan would not be waiting for her at the end of her journey, just as he had always waited for her, as she had waited for him. The last night, with the Tower of Ishal looming in the distance, they made camp, deciding that riding into Ostagar on a moonless night was too dangerous a risk to take.
She dreamed of the meadow at Jader that night…
Duncan sat, back resting against the oak, watching as she painted. A rare smile settled on his lips, his usually neatly bound hair falling on his shoulders in thick, black waves. He looked relaxed and happy and so handsome it was almost painful.
She glanced at him, her heart thundering in her chest as she recalled their morning's lovemaking and the longing for a lifetime of such mornings caused her eyes to well with tears. Why had she fallen in love with someone whose death was predetermined? And yet, she knew the answer, had always known it. Her heart could not have been captured by anyone else, she realized, smiling through a veil of tears.
She had loved him from her earliest memories, even when he had little time for her and less patience. He had seen her through broken limbs and broken hearts and broken dreams. He had held her hand and her heart from the first time she had launched herself into his arms from her vantage point in the old tree. And those emotions swept into her like water flowing through a sluice gate.
"I'll always be here, Lion, you know that," he said quietly, vanquishing her tears with his vow.
"I am more afraid that I will not be here for you," she whispered, her heart aching with the truth in her words.
His smile warmed until it touched her soul, burning away the cold fear that had coiled in her. He held his arms out and she flung herself into them, curling around him and allowing the steady rhythm of his heart to calm her own wild heartbeats.
"I have every faith in you, Leonie. I always have."
She woke with a start, heart thudding heavily in her chest. "Get up!" she cried, shaking Riordan's shoulder. "Get up, Peacock!"
In no time Vixen was saddled. Riordan, scrambling into his boots and grabbing up his weapons, was too sleep-befuddled to ask about the sudden urgency in her voice. Leonie was relieved because she wasn't sure she had an explanation, only a feeling that wiped away her ability to reason, so strong it overpowered any other need.
They were away within minutes of her dream, and the moonless night hung over them, heavy and unearthly still. Not even a nightjar, or raccoon, or wolf seemed to breathe as they headed towards the ghostly tower rising above Ostagar.
Dawn was washing the sky a brilliant salmon and gold when they cantered across the scarred bridge that led into Ostagar. The light added a strange red hue to the stones and Leonie shivered at the notion that it looked like blood splashed against the whiteness of bone.
Too busy maneuvering around the damage to look below at the battlefield, Leonie's fear began to grow until it became a living, breathing creature sinking its tentacles into every corner of her chest and squeezing until breathing was impossible. Riordan, his face as pale as winter, as pale as the stones of Ostagar, reached across his horse to touch her, to calm her. To seek her comforting touch.
"Deep breaths, lass. Steady as we go."
The carnage was staggering. Rotting corpses, so bloated even carrion ignored them, littered the encampment. Grave robbers and bandits had long deserted the battlefield, leaving behind desiccated and desecrated remains that smelled of destruction and death. Leonie felt the fear blossom in her chest and then reach beyond to chill her blood and marrow.
Nobody could have survived such devastation. Hope withered and blew away in the foul winds permeating the ruins of Ostagar. Sobs rose up, dry and painfully wrenched from her as she slid off Vixen and began to search the corpses for Duncan, wondering if she would even recognize him.
To her shame, she was sick, retching until nothing was left but bile and then retching some more. Riordan held her braid back, offering words as stark and bleak as the landscape was around them.
"Maker's breath," he whispered, standing beside the Grey Warden pavilion, now tattered and blowing forlornly in the gathering wind.
Driven by a need she could neither explain nor ignore, she made her way to the field hospital, searching for signs that someone had survived the battle, blinded by tears and staggering with grief for all those lost during the battle. Riordan's arm steadied and guided hers and it was his voice that rose above the shrieking winds.
"Look! These beds were used recently!" he shouted, bending down to examine a pile of bloodied rags. "The blood is still faintly sticky," he said.
The question of whether any had survived Ostagar was answered. A brief prayer of thanks rushed from her, replaced almost immediately by fear. She closed her eyes against the image of Duncan, wounded and alone, left for dead on the battlefield to the sounds of a retreating army. Shivering from cold and shock and grief, she pushed on, afraid of what she would find, but more afraid of not finding anything.
The battlefield was almost too clean, as if a tender rain had come and cleansed away the brutality of war. She paused, standing on a slight rise, trying to imagine what it must have been like and unable to do so.
They stood together, arm in arm, and wept for the loss of so many. Finally, nearly frozen from the wind, she moved forward, walking among bodies that seemed perfectly preserved from the cold, 'spawn and soldier alike. She expected the darkspawn were making forages to reclaim their dead, not for sentimental reasons but as a food source.
Three weeks. Who could have survived cold and hunger and wounds for three long weeks? Not even her beloved Rivaini pirate had that much strength. Still, she was determined to find him, and Riordan's firm grip on her arm let her know he was equally determined.
She noticed, for the first time, the endless prickling in her blood, the almost painful tug of it trying to escape her to find the darkspawn. She raised a brow at Riordan. "Do you feel them?" she asked, her voice husky from tears she didn't remember shedding.
"Aye, from the moment we entered the encampment. Hundreds underground, I think, but moving away. I suspect they've finished culling and are moving on."
She shivered at the notion, her stomach roiling as she pushed the image away. Without conscious thought, she moved down the slope and along the uneven ground, covered with snow turned grey by shadows, refusing to think of Duncan being carried away for food. She concentrated, instead, on the prickling in her blood, reaching past Riordan's sharp sting and the subtle stabbing of the retreating darkspawn, hoping for the sweet assault of Duncan's taint.
The ground shook and Leonie's eyes flew to Riordan's, her question unspoken.
"Earthquake!" he shouted across the snowy field.
The ground rumbled and shook, undulating and then opening before her. She felt herself falling, her scream dying in her throat as she landed with a bone-jarring thud…
Three weeks earlier…
In a perfect world, Cailan's command that the Orlesian Wardens and support troops join the Wardens in Ostagar wouldn't have been overruled by Loghain's paranoia. In a perfect world, Leonie would be fighting beside him, Duncan thought, warming his hands as he waited for Alistair and Surana.
In a perfect world, the Grey Wardens would be interspersed with the bulk of the army and not clustered around the king in a suicidal move. In a perfect world, Duncan would have fought against such insanity, but Loghain had already promised to eject every Warden from Ferelden if he didn't do what he was told. Duncan had no reason not to believe the threat.
In a perfect world he would have renounced his duty, grabbed his beautiful Lion and run to the warmth of Rivain to celebrate their love instead of allowing themselves only rare moments together. In a perfect world, he supposed he would even allow Riordan to join them occasionally. He smiled at the notion.
In a perfect world…
"Hold the line!" Duncan shouted, trying to stay between the impetuous king and the advancing horde. He allowed his glance to stray to the unlit tower again. Impatience warred with fear and impatience won.
"Get back, your Majesty!" he called, but Cailan, wearing the blood of his enemy and a triumphant smile continued forward.
"Elendar, cover the right flank!" Duncan shouted, watching two of his Wardens fall, followed quickly by a dozen soldiers.
He should have saved his breath. Cailan surged forward, fighting beside Duncan but without the fear, without the knowledge that their position was being overrun and the beacon remained unlit. "Damn it, Cailan, get back!" he shouted, but the shout was lost to the cacophony of battle around them.
Pushing beyond his fatigue, Duncan sliced through the line of darkspawn. He paused briefly, to catch his breath. The ground shook as he stood there, nearly knocking him off his feet. He turned, searching for the king and saw the hulking breadth and height of the ogre rumbling with deadly intent towards Cailan.
Before Duncan could call out, Cailan was swept off his feet by a massive hand and the ogre, roaring his victory, squeezed until Cailan hung limp and broken in his grasp. With another roar, the ogre tossed the king away.
Digging his heels into the ground, Duncan pushed off, gathering speed until he hurled himself, weapons drawn, at the massive darkspawn. With a satisfied grunt, Duncan pushed his weapons into the ogre, pushing through toughened hide and bone and sinew and muscle until he felt it slide into the creature's heart. With a roar of his own, Duncan twisted his sword and then his dagger before pushing himself away to fall to the ground, rolling out of the way as the surprised ogre gave a feeble grunt and toppled to the ground, shaking it as the darkspawn landed.
Duncan scrabbled for another weapon, pausing only long enough to check on Cailan, whose expression of horror was frozen on his face. Too tired and too busy to mourn, or even be angry at the foolish young man, Duncan grabbed up the king's sword and then rolled to his knees.
A Hurlock was bearing down on him, a bearded axe, dripping blood, raised above his head. Seconds seemed to stretch in some frozen tableau as Duncan watched and then the earth shook again, sending him tumbling from his kneeling position. A chasm opened up and swallowed him, along with the Hurlock.
He landed with a jolt of pain that ran through his right leg and up into his hip, around to his back, taking the air from his lungs and the cry from his lips. The Hurlock landed on his own weapon, just a few feet from Duncan. The look of surprise on the darkspawn's face would have been humorous under different circumstances.
Pain settled in his back and his leg and he sank into a dark oblivion without regret. He had no idea how long he lay there, or where 'there' even was, allowing the pain to remind him he was alive. The thought that he might see Leonie again was his only comfort as he lay in the dark, his body writhing with pain.
He was surprised to see daylight some hours later and realized that the gap that had opened up and swallowed him was still open. Could he climb out of his tomb? He grunted against the pain and tried to move, biting back the scream that rose when he tried to straighten his leg. He tried again, only to lose consciousness.
Days later he realized that it hadn't been an earthquake that had opened up beneath his feet, but the instability of tunnels that crisscrossed underground, the Deep Roads, as well as the tunnels made by thousands of darkspawn in search of an Old God. By the time he realized that, he had managed to drag himself along the rough ground, instinct guiding his slow progress.
If he didn't find a way out of the ground it wouldn't matter that he had survived the initial battle. He had tried to remove his cuirass but discovered it was the only thing holding several broken ribs in place. Instead he removed one of his pauldrons and caught rainwater, drinking like a greedy child, not even waiting for the mud and gore and blood to be washed away.
As the days and nights dragged by he recalled snatches of conversation with Leonie, moments of unadulterated happiness that he had taken for granted, and too many good-byes for him to count. In a perfect world they would be sharing a meal - and laughter - and he would see his sweet Lion's blue eyes lit from within, her joy spilling out to touch him, to raise him above the loneliness of his time in Ferelden.
He recalled the night she had finally allowed him back in her bed after her ordeal with Montran … the good humor and camaraderie of close friends sharing a meal, the teasing and stories, and then carrying her upstairs to celebrate a love he had never expected but couldn't imagine living without.
In a perfect world they would have children because her heart had been made for children – generous and warm. In a perfect world, they would not have become so caught up in duty that they forgot to celebrate their love every day.
By his reckoning a week passed and then another. He rationed his water and ate the few mushrooms he could find and lichen, and inched his way down his tunnel hoping that he would find his way out of the maze he'd landed in.
Another week drifted by and he was too weak to pull himself along the tunnel's earthen floor, too tired to do more than drift in and out of consciousness, his thoughts a jumble of wishes and memories.
In a perfect world, he would die in her arms, his love for her the last words on his lips…
The present …
"Riordan?" Leonie called, her voice shaking with her fear of dark places.
"Aye, lass, I'm going to run back to our horses for rope. Don't move, Lion!"
"No! Don't leave me!" she screamed, knowing in some black recess of her mind that she wouldn't survive alone in the dark.
She heard a noise … a low growl, a hoarse whisper of unknown things creeping around in the dark nearby, something feral and terrifying. "Please, please!" she shrieked at Riordan, her voice echoing in the dim tunnel, returning to her with a faintly mocking cant to it.
"Hush, lass, you're safe enough for now. I'll just be a moment."
But a moment became two and then three. Leonie whimpered, and the whimper returned to her in the form of a soft whisper of comfort. "Lion," it seemed to murmur, an oddly familiar sound that took the terror from her blood and replaced it with a warm caress.
"Who is there?" she called out and her voice returned, deeper and softer and so blessedly familiar she knew she had died in her fall.
"Lion, where are you?" came a trembling response, weak and wary as if he no more believed in such a dream than she did. But it was his voice, she would know it anywhere.
"Duncan!" she cried, scrambling in the dark, searching for the other half of her heart. "Oh Duncan, I'm here!"
"Can't move, so tired."
She reached out through her blood and felt the faint tickle of a Warden…her Warden, and then she was moving more quickly, oblivious to the pain as she tripped over obstacles, stumbling in the dark until the faint tickle was strong enough to make her own blood leap in her veins.
"Duncan," she whispered, kneeling, her hands seeking him in the dark, not quite believing, but afraid to voice doubt, even to herself. If it was a dream, if it was a trick of a broken mind, she didn't want to know.
"Leonie," he whispered back, disbelieving, knowing he could die now, happy to have this one last vision of her and then he felt her fingers brush along his shoulder and the pain from so soft a touch was real enough. His face became damp from her tears.
In a perfect world, they would have been living a joy-filled life, surrounded by children and laughter and sunlight. But they lived in an imperfect world, no less filled with love, but clouded by duty and war.
As they held each other, waiting for Riordan to lower a rope to them, they expressed their love in words broken by despair giving way to joy, the darkness illuminated by love.
The Blight awaited, they were together, and they would fight side by side to defeat it.
Their world was perfect … for them.