Written for LJ's 10iloveyou challenge. Table: Opposites, Prompt: Strangers.
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"Leske! It's great to see you!"
It's funny how a few words tell an entire story, Leske thinks. She's changed, completely and utterly. So he calls her out on her fancy speech, but she only offers a shrug and a nervous smile, a smile that Leske is only able to recognize as such because he's seen it on Rica a million times before. Natia Brosca is never nervous, for any reason, not even when a drunken Everd revealed her true nature to the crowd that briefly adored her at the Proving a few months back. She had a fire in her eyes as she continued to defy everything the dwarven nobility finds sacred in the Proving with her declarations that a brand is worth more than they want.
That fire is lost now. It's been replaced with fancy new armor and fancy new daggers and a fancy new title. She's more than casteless, or a surface dwarf, or a condemned woman for desecrating the Proving Grounds. She's a Grey Warden, and he can tell.
She is not Natia Brosca, and every word she says pounds this into his chest harder and harder.
"Just hoping to catch up with you," she answers when he asks what she's doing back in Dust Town. No insults, no name-calling?
He shrugs it off, and he lies. No, he's not in the carta anymore, Jarvia wants both of them dead. He's been in hiding, because that's the best he can do. It's what the Grey Warden wants to hear, so she believes it.
Natia wouldn't believe it. She would see right through his lies, and he would tell her the truth. Maybe she would bring him with her to the surface, and he would be free of Jarvia forever. But he cannot bank on the Grey Warden letting him accompany her, even if to give him a chance to escape the clutches of the carta.
He is surprised when she tells him that she is looking for Jarvia. What, is she looking for her death sentence? He reconsiders sending her into the old Brosca home. Yes, Jarvia is ready to drive a dagger into his back if he fails this. She told him that she prefers something more straightforward than all this sneaking around, because Leske knows that she knows that this is a way out. He can still change his mind.
Leske considers changing his mind, until the Warden tells him that she is here under Prince Bhelen's request. Bhelen, who stole Rica away from Dust Town. Bhelen, who impregnated Rica with the Warden's nephew. Bhelen, who has given Rica a chance he could never hope to give the Brosca sisters.
He scowls and wonders aloud if the Warden is allowed to do that.
And then, briefly, Natia returns.
"If I get to kill Jarvia," she says, fire flashing in her eyes for the briefest of brief moments and a smirk tugging at her lips, "I don't care who asked it."
Leske is relieved that Natia is still hidden in there, somewhere, beneath the Warden armor. But it's too late. No matter how this ends, she is now Bhelen's man, just like Rica is now Bhelen's woman. And he still has to make sure Jarvia doesn't kill him in his sleep, one way or another, even if he makes himself far too vulnerable by sharing her bed.
He has no options. He has no choice.
And he hates that she does.
Leske hopes that someday Natia forgives him for this, before the Warden takes over forever.