It is time. She watches, heart hammering in her chest in an uneven rhythm, as Cassandra checks her armour, making sure everything is securely buckled and fastened. How can she be so calm, when Josephine feels like she might be sick with fright at any moment? Her stomach churns and seethes, her fingers shake, and she does not trust her voice at all, so when Cassandra, finally satisfied, turns to her she can only hold her close, hugging her tightly against the fear that threatens to entirely overwhelm her. She wants to beg her love to stay behind, not to risk herself, not to leave her, but she knows that Cassandra cannot accede to her wishes, and so she says nothing. There is no point in asking for promises that Cassandra cannot give. Besides, it feels as though there is no breath left in her body to speak, stolen along with her wits and her sense, and replaced with this all-consuming terror.
"I will come back to you, " Cassandra says solemnly, resting her forehead against Josephine's, " if the Maker wills it." Her gauntleted fingers cup her cheek with infinite gentleness that contrasts oddly with the desperation of her mouth as their lips meet. It is not so much a kiss as a conflagration, all fire and fury that burns and consumes and leaves Josephine bereft. With a final regretful smile, her lover dons her helmet and strides away to where the Inquisitor is waiting. She does not look back.
When Cassandra returns, alive and whole, Josephine thinks her heart might burst with joy. For once she abandons decorum and propriety to leap into her lover's arms, uncaring of their audience, twining her fingers around her neck and claiming her lips with an urgency born of mingled relief and happiness. Cassandra's hair is matted with blood from an ugly gash that begins at her temple and disappears beneath her hair, but her strength seems undiminished and Josephine finds herself almost crushed to her chest. She can barely breathe from the pressure, but she does not care. Thank the Maker, she thinks as she is wrapped tightly into Cassandra's embrace, thank you for bringing her back to me.
Later, they sit side by side in the infirmary, still holding hands, for Josephine does not intend to let Cassandra out of her sight for quite some time. A healer stitches Cassandra's head while she grumbles half-heartedly, too tired to summon her usual irritation at such fuss. Josephine is just starting to relax again, to feel the knots of tension unwind from her muscles at this wholly wonderful reprieve, when she feels Cassandra's fingers go slack against her palm. Her gaze is unfocused, her eyes rolling back in her head as she slides off the chair and falls to the floor with a clatter of metal, shockingly loud even in the bustle of the infirmary.
Either the Maker is as cruel as some of the Chants portray him, or he has a very twisted sense of humour. Josephine isn't sure which she believes, but either is better than the alternative, that she has sinned or transgressed in some way, and this is her punishment. To be shown that which she wants most of all, only to have it snatched cruelly away. To be left powerless once more, no more able to do anything to help her stricken love than she could have prevented her from joining the battle. She can only watch as the healers confer anxiously, worried looks on their faces, and the desperate nameless fear returns in full force.
Despite all her attempts to concentrate she cannot seem to fully comprehend the words the healers utter, battering against her ears in a confusing torrent before slipping from her grasp like water through her fingers, but she gathers enough to understand that Cassandra's head wound is much more serious than was initially apparent, and that there are three possibilities. That Cassandra will eventually wake and be as she was before, that she will wake and be permanently, irreversibly impaired in some way that the healers cannot specify, or that she will not wake at all. Josephine spends the next few hours worrying over whether the second or the third is a worse outcome, while desperately hoping for the first.
She spends the first day watching, waiting, wondering, worrying. Cassandra is still, unnaturally so, the only sign of life the almost imperceptibly slow rise and fall of her chest and the faintest whisper of breath between her lips. It is the stillness that unnerves Josephine the most. Cassandra is an object that is never at rest, always in motion, always changing things either by deed or by her mere presence. Even in sleep she is usually restless, perpetually shifting and turning, fists clenched against some unknown threat that invades her dreams.
People come to comfort her and murmur words that are supposed to encourage her, but instead make her want to scream and shout. They tell her that Cassandra is strong, that she is a fighter, as if she could be anything but. But how can she fight this, an opponent she cannot subdue through force of arms or strength of will? The healer tells her that it is just a question of when Cassandra's mind decides that it wants to wake up and she can barely stop herself from throttling him. She loves me, she wants to scream. She would find a way back to me across the very Fade itself, were both her legs broken and her hands bound. Instead she says nothing but Leliana, Maker-blessed Leliana, tactfully ushers the healer away.
By the evening of the second day, when it becomes apparent that Cassandra is in no immediate danger and that her condition is unlikely to change any time soon, Josephine is finally persuaded, mostly by Leliana, to leave Cassandra's bedside and return to her rooms. She is desperately tired, more from emotional exhaustion than physical exertion, but sleep is elusive. How can she sleep when the bed still holds Cassandra's scent and seems far too large for her alone?
She cries, hot bitter tears that do not soothe or heal, they just burn, their caustic sting corroding her grief and fear into her face for all to see, and when she finally runs out of tears there is just emptiness in the place Cassandra should be. She has accommodated her, shaped herself around her and without her there is a gaping void.
What, she wonders, is the point of love, if it serves only to make you weak? Before, she had been whole, strong, and beholden to no one for her happiness or her peace of mind. Now she is weakened, perhaps fatally, damaged in some way she cannot mend. Cassandra has taken some part of her with her into the blackness where she cannot follow, and without it she is lost.
She is tormented by phantoms, visceral body-memories seared into her that she recalls with all of her senses and not just her thoughts. A strong body wound around hers, hardness to her softness, edges to her curves. Callused fingers gently combing through her hair to soothe her to sleep, warm breath stirring the hairs on the nape of her neck. Josephine wonders how she can be haunted by the ghost of someone who is not dead.
The third day passes in much the same fashion as the first two, but eventually her exhaustion overwhelms her. She lays her head carefully against Cassandra's shoulder and squeezes herself into the space beside her. Josephine tells herself that this is no different to all the nights she has come to bed late to find Cassandra already sleeping, and slowly the steady heartbeat under her palms and the soft susurration of breath twine themselves around her thoughts, seducing her into slumber.
When she wakes, she finds a blanket has been carefully drawn over her, and Leliana fast asleep in the chair she had previously occupied.
On the fourth day, the healer suggests that perhaps familiar voices and stimuli might help Cassandra to wake. She tries to talk to her for a while, but words, usually such a dependable tool, will not come as if they have been stolen them away from her by the same thief that has taken the senses of her love. Josephine is briefly at a loss before she remembers Cassandra's love of books. Her own words may have failed but perhaps those of others can succeed.
She reads chapters of Cassandra's favourite romances, she reads Antivan sonnets and Orlesian plays, diplomatic correspondence and Inquisition reports, anything and everything, until her voice is hoarse and cracking. All the while she tries not to dwell on how Cassandra looks when she is reading, the way her brow furrows with concentration, the way she parts her lips, barely perceptibly, at the parts she enjoys or grazes her lower lip with her teeth at less pleasant passages, the subtle shift of muscles that betray her reactions. Every so often, almost against her will, she glances over to the still and silent form in the bed, hoping for some flicker of reaction. Each time she cannot help the crushing disappointment and tells herself she will not look again, but of course she does, and each time the pain seems to grow yet more acute.
On the fifth day, she decides that perhaps work can distract her. Clearly her presence at Cassandra's bedside is having little effect, and it is not as if she is left alone due to the constant stream of anxious friends and well-wishers who come to her bedside. It would perhaps surprise Cassandra to realise just how many friends she has in the Inquisition, she thinks.
Josephine retreats to her personal chambers rather than her office, not wishing to deal with the awkwardness of friends who do not quite know whether to offer hope or condolences, but even here she cannot escape the constant reminder of Cassandra's absence. It had always slightly bothered her how little impression Cassandra seemed to have made on the quarters they had been sharing for the best part of a year, but she had come to realise that the Seeker was a woman who put little stock in material things, and left to her own devices her lifestyle bordered on the ascetic. But now it seems everywhere she looks she finds things of Cassandra's: some hairpins and a volume of poetry on the bedside table, an arming sword resting by the door, a whetstone and an oiled rag on top of the chest, and quills and ink that are not her own neatly stowed in a desk drawer.
They may have defeated Corypheus but that does not mean the end of Josephine's work by any means. There are still letters to write and alliances to be maintained, and now that the war is won there is the peace to conquer. The Inquisition has the power and influence to reshape the world, but what that shape should be has still to be decided.
It is not something she and Cassandra have spoken about other than in the most general of terms. She knows something of Cassandra's ideals of course, knows the things she values and the wrongs she would see put right, but Cassandra has a soldier's reluctance to contemplate the future while there are still battles to be fought. Josephine dreads the idea of trying to direct the Inquisition that Cassandra founded without her forthrightness and steadfast support.
Their future of their relationship has been left equally amorphous. They have not put a label on what lies between them, defined it neatly in the words that Josephine usually relies on to navigate the world. Cassandra loved her, and Josephine loved her back, and they had needed little else to get them through the present. Yet both of them are women of noble birth, and while Cassandra sets little store by hers, Josephine is always uncomfortably aware of the duties and expectations that come with being the elder scion of house Montilyet. Perhaps the knowledge that her family will expect her to make a good marriage and produce an heir is what has held her back, perhaps it is the same reluctance to tempt fate. Either way Josephine wishes now that she had said something, had expressed to Cassandra the entirety of what she meant to her. I love you, and I cannot imagine ever being apart from you. The thought that Cassandra might die – she tries to snatch it back, to unthink it as if that might stop if coming to pass, but it is too late – that she might die with Josephine's deepest feelings left unvoiced, fills her with torment.
If you live, oh if you only live my love, I will tell you everything, I will lay my heart and my soul at your feet if you will only wake and smile at me once more.
Josephine does not get many letters written.
On the sixth day she prays, with a desperate fervour that feels entirely alien. Oh she has always considered herself to be a dutiful Andrastian, but she is also aware that she does not believe with the same intensity as Cassandra or Leliana. For her prayer and religious services are an obligation, a formality to be observed, and she has occasionally felt slightly jealous of the joy that Cassandra seems to find equally in silent meditation or in readings from the Chant.
On those occasions when her prayers are of a personal nature, she has been brought up never to ask for anything for herself. A prayer may be said for the health of a family member, for the success of a harvest, for the safe delivery of a child or the return of a loved one from a perilous voyage, but one should not abuse the Maker's grace for personal gain. Josephine hopes He does not mind her single lapse.
Maker, please do not take her from me. I love her, and I do not think I can ever be happy again without her. She completes parts of me I did not know were missing until I met her. Please, do not take her to your side, not yet.
She wonders why the Maker would take so devout a servant as Cassandra, but then remembers Leliana asking her much the same thing about Justinia after the disaster of the Conclave. The Maker is cruel, Leliana had said. Josephine prays that she is wrong.
On the seventh day, Josephine sits once more by Cassandra's bedside in silent vigil. She does not know what to feel any more. She is just numb, too tired for anger, too drained for sorrow, an empty husk of the woman she was just a week ago. Josephine wonders if she will ever feel normal again.
Her gaze lingers on Cassandra's face, on those familiar cheekbones whose edges she has traced with her fingertips so many times, on Cassandra's beautifully expressive eyes, eyes that can be as cold and stern as a marble statue one minute, but warm and soft and inviting the next. Now that copper gaze is a little confused, half squinting, and… Josephine only releases her tight hold when she realises that she is crushing Cassandra so tightly she can barely breathe. She pulls back, cheeks wet, not trusting herself to speak.
"I dreamed of a garden by the sea," Cassandra murmurs quietly with a voice ragged from disuse. "You were there, with a little girl. She had your eyes, and your freckles. There were rose bushes. It was a nice dream."
"Oh Cassandra," Josephine sobs openly now, and Cassandra reaches to wipe away her tears with trembling fingers. "I thought I had lost you."
Cassandra looks stricken for a moment, then she begins to speak, softly, and Josephine realises she is reciting. "The Light shall lead her safely through the paths of this world, and into the next. For she who trusts in the Maker, fire is her water. As the moth sees light and goes toward flame, she should see fire and go towards Light." Her fingers are light on Josephine's cheek, but her touch burns like a brand. "You are my light Josephine, the flame that lit my way back to you."
"I have been doing some thinking," Josephine begins. Perhaps this is not the right time, but if these past few days have taught her anything, it is that for some things there is never a right time, and that you never know how much, or how little, you have left. "Cassandra, I cannot be without you. Not now, not ever. I don't know why I never told you that. Once you are better, we are going to talk about the future, our future."
Cassandra's eyes widen, and then her lips twist into a familiar wicked smile. "Are you… proposing, Lady Montilyet?"
Josephine has missed that smile so much. "Of course not. When I do, Lady Pentaghast, it will be in a manner that befits a daughter of the royal house of Nevarra."
The smile is still on Cassandra's lips, but something in the weight of her gaze changes. "You said when, " she almost whispers. "When, not if."
Josephine just smiles enigmatically. She thinks instead of how she has been mistaken. Love does not weaken, it fortifies. It takes Cassandra's strength and tempers it with her own gentleness, it augments her cleverness with Cassandra's faith and purpose. It does not take away, it reveals, as the wind scours the soil to expose the rock beneath. She has been tested, and she has prevailed.
"Rest," she says eventually, kissing the top of Cassandra's head carefully and drawing the blankets around her. "We can speak of this later, when you have your strength back."
"Will you stay?" Cassandra asks, her eyes already heavy.
"I am not going anywhere," Josephine replies. "Not for a very long time."