from the lowest slaves to the highest kings
Summary: a meditation on hands, loss, the Circle, and duty, featuring our favorite star-crossed "lovers."
Notes: So I don't know what it says about me that since the election, I've been living in more of a Dragon Age world than an MCU one, but I've been just writing little one-shots and drabbly things in the Dragon Age universe recently, so I figured I'd post them.
Her gaze was fixed on her hands.
They were smooth, unlined, soft.
Her knuckles were well-defined but not too obvious; her fingers slender, graceful, and dexterous. They moved fluidly and with ease, nuance and control in the smallest flicks, taps, or pinches. Clean, silky, fragrant; elegant, even, with oval fingernails lacquered (at the moment) a soft blue-green, all even lengths with well-maintained cuticles. Her palms were soft, smooth, dry. The subtle bump, slightly rougher than the rest of her skin, on the middle finger of her right hand was almost impossible to detect – an unfortunate consequence of spending much more of her time writing than she might willingly admit.
They had changed.
When she was a girl, her hands been constantly covered in grime. They were rough, with short, ragged nails that frequently had dirt under them, the skin three shades darker than it was now, thanks to the sun. Scarred in a thousand places from splinters and fights and overzealous pets. In the winter, if she was lucky, she found and made use of fingerless gloves for climbing, cleaning, or other work around the alienage.
Her hands had been like her mother's, though smaller and not yet as callused.
Strong, too – she'd held on to her mother's arms with all her might when they came for her. Her mother had clung to her at least as tightly, and for weeks after, she'd practice aligning her own fingertips with the tender spots Mama had left on her skin, imagining she could reach through that last ghost touch to return to her.
Years later, it occurred to her that she must have bruised her mother almost as deeply.
The newly-minted mage devoted perhaps more time than average considering her hands – grooming them, maintaining them, and sometimes, just looking at them, as she was now. They were nearly a lady's hands, now, and if one caught her before she'd cast the customary cleaning spells, certainly a scholar's – ink-stained and smooth but for the texture practice with staves gave them. But she liked the subtle friction it created. Hands that were never used ended up damp, sweaty, almost slimy.
And she never could abide clammy hands.
Her assessment of her hands was interrupted by the subtle, masculine clearing of a throat. Her harrowing was done and she was sitting on her old bunk in the apprentice quarters, trying to muster the motivation to get up, walk through the tower, and climb up the stairs to her new room when the vital task of assessing her hands had distracted her. And now, she was distracted from her distraction.
She blinked and looked up to see a broad, armored frame, ginger hair, and kind, hazel eyes.
She smiled.
"Hello, Cullen," she said, warmth in her voice as it went just a touch higher than she would have preferred.
He cleared his throat again, and his lips seemed to curve shyly, boyishly, against his best attempts at earnest knightliness.
"Oh, um, h-hello, Enchanter Surana," he said. The curve of his lips increased just a little as he did. "I, uh, am glad to see your Harrowing went smoothly."
Her smile widened a bit, too.
"Thank you," she said. "It was a bit… harrowing."
She pressed her lips together, her eyes widening slightly in mortification. Was she punning at Cullen Rutherford? Fortunately, he seemed determined to bring his own brand of awkwardness to the table.
"Th-they picked me as the Templar to strike the killing blow if… if you became an abomination."
Her eyes widened and her lips parted slightly.
"I-It's nothing personal, I swear!" he rushed to amend. "I-uh, I'm just glad you're all right. You know."
She looked at him for a moment, the fluttering warmth in her chest sinking, cold, to the bottom of her stomach.
"Would you really have struck me down?" she asked quietly.
"I would've felt terrible about it," he replied. "But… but I serve the Chantry and the Maker, and I will do as I am commanded."
She rose from the bed where she'd been sitting.
"I shouldn't distract you from your duties," she said, still quiet. Still polite. Her perfect nails were pressed hard into her perfect palms.
"Uh… uh, yes. Maybe we can talk another time." There was almost a question in it – a request. She pretended not to hear it.
"Maybe," she said. Her belongings had already been packed before the Harrowing, and by now were probably upstairs. They'd only brought her to the apprentice quarters, Jowan had told her, so that she could wake up in a familiar space. But the time for familiarity, it seemed, was over. "I should be going."
With that, she moved toward the door; he was a moment later in shifting so that she could pass than would have been graceful, but she didn't look at his face; simply waited as he moved, then proceeded to leave him behind her.
Looking back, it would seem there was little time between that moment and when she found herself being escorted out of the tower by Duncan. Cullen was there, his jaw tight, his lips pressed into a line, his gaze burning a hole into her, or so it felt. She had resolved not to look at anyone; what she had done, she had done in good faith. She had believed in Jowan's innocence, and she had always bristled under the yoke the Circle and the Chantry had settled around her neck – around all mages' necks.
Her mother had been Dalish. She remembered, when she was small, tracing the vallaslin that curved across her Mama's beautiful face with small, chubby fingers – after she'd washed them, of course. On her knee, or in their bed, or as they washed or swept or wove or sewed or built, Mama would tell her how they kept the old ways, including magical ones. How those gifted with magic were accepted as the part of the clan, not locked away in some far-off tower. It was one more example, her mother noted, of how the Dalish were free.
Blood magic – that, she knew, was a bridge too far. Secretly, she did not fully trust in the Circle's terror of it. She had spent much time reading on the subject, and while it was clear to her why it was a controversial topic, and that the potential and history of abuse of it was far too great to dismiss, that did not mean that the practice was inherently evil. In the Circle, however, it was ill-advised to even speak such thoughts, much less put such theories into practice, and what Jowan had done was not only dangerous, but so, so stupid.
Setting aside the fact that he'd lied to her.
And now, for what she'd done out of loyalty, out of friendship, out of her belief in justice, she was being exiled. Her resolve not to meet anyone's eyes as she left – to look straight ahead until she and Duncan were out the door and on the skiff to the dock – was weakening, however, when Cullen came into her peripheral vision, when she felt his gaze on her.
She did turn to look at him then, if only briefly, expecting fury and disgust, perhaps the cold that accompanied his duty.
Instead, while there surely was some rancor, when she did look at him, something in his eyes softened, as did the line of his lips. It nearly undid her; what was she seeing? What did he feel?
Something in her eyes must have shifted, too, because his hands curled into fists, his lips parted, and she felt her eyes well up.
She turned away then, raising her chin, exhaling as the tower doors opened before them.
She did not look back.
Notes: If you like, you can find me on tumblr at something-pithy :)