Kathyra
"Forgive me." A quiet apology. "My...my hands will not seem to stop shaking."
"Quite all right." I wondered how it was possible for Leliana to smile, but I could hear that expression in her words; see it even though my vision blurred. "If I am not mistaken, that was the last of them."
"Thank the Maker's twisted grace." Kestrel heaved a sigh and set aside a small, sharp knife. "Bandaging?"
"No need. The wounds are inconsequential. So long as the splinters are removed, they should heal fine." Leliana reached out and took the templar private's hand. "What did I tell you about resting, Kestrel? You look exhausted."
"I tried." The young templar shook her head. "Nightmares...it...it isn't safe, Leliana. Please understand. I'm too afraid, too close...I can't be tempted."
Leliana's brow creased and the blue in her eyes turned to that of a faraway sky. She made it appear as if she looked into a different life, a different universe years and seasons away from where we were.
"I do understand." Her voice held a soft tremor, the unintended vibrato of a violin with shivery strings.
How many nightmares have you endured, Leliana? I wondered, amazed at the look of composure that never left her face, the tight calm in the set of her lips. Did you...did you have someone near you kind enough to wake you from them? Or were you alone?
"How does Kathyra fare?" Kestrel's soft voice broke my moment of reverie.
A cool hand pressed against my forehead and smoothed back my hair in a gentle motion. "Her temperature has not risen." Leliana answered, and I could hear the tangible exhaustion in her words. "But this is a brief respite in a losing battle."
Grief caught in my throat as I heard her words, the first doubts that crossed her lips. Tears began to gather behind my closed eyes, but I did not allow them to fall.
"Leliana, surely you..."
"Of course not." She interrupted. "I refuse to shy away from the truth of the matter, but I have also seen miracles, Kestrel. I have seen so many losing battles won...by those who stood no chance of victory."
Grief shone out from the templar private's eyes and her voice rose barely above a whisper, "You wish the warden were here?"
The shadow of Leliana, cast by the oil lamp, nodded. "Yes. But I believe that we all have those that we wish were here, hale an hearty, full of their strength and comfort."
Yours still lives.
Sorrow filled me and, for the first time, I forced myself back into my memories. They were kinder than the present, full of hope...and death of the same.
"You have one day left, Sister Giselle." Mother Dorothea's voice comes from the open doorway, taunting, haughty, not at all like a leader of the Chantry should speak. "Have you found your new apprentice?"
"Not as of yet, Revered Mother, but I trust that the Creators will provide."
"There will be none of your heresy beneath this roof." Dorothea hisses, heat in her voice.
I cower beneath the covers, dreading the confrontation soon to come, as it has every day, from one source or another. Watching Giselle struggle to merely keep her place, to practice her hard-learned art, to help those less fortunate, had torn at my very soul. She remained remarkably kind, mindful of my needs, keeping her hands separate from my body unless absolutely necessary. Her touch had begun to burn less, but I still feared it, though I hated my body when it rebelled, my heart as it beat faster, my gut as it twisted in dread.
"Do you hear my complaints of your blind fanatacism for your Maker?" Giselle asks, all innocence and a sweet smile. "No? I thought not. Do me the courtesy of the same."
"You are in the house of the Maker!" Dorothea thunders. "Still your heretic's tongue!"
"Why must I?" Giselle asks another question. "None would hear my heretic's tongue beneath your verbose bluster, Mother Dorothea. Would it be an imposition to ask you to lower your voice? My patient is still recovering. She needs her rest."
"And I need my chief healer to attend to her duties." Dorothea's voice is ice, though much quieter. Giselle has won a small victory, even though neither woman realizes it.
"Have I been absent from the Chantry's clinic?" Giselle places a finger against her lower lip in pretend contemplation.
"No." The word is a growl. "But you cannot allow a single patient to divert your focus. Your mind is split in two directions, Sister Giselle, it does not behoove you to separate yourself from your self-imposed 'calling'."
"I am following my calling." Giselle's voice remains even, as it must when dealing with humans...humans who despise her for a heritage that is not her doing, not her fault. "If you are too ignorant to see..."
"Cease those words before you earn my further ire." Dorothea warns. "And your day is gone. Find a new apprentice by sunset, or you will begin training Cyril de Montfort once again. I will prove that your Creators..."
"Are as silent and ineffectual as your Maker?" Giselle questions.
Dorothea flings the door shut before Giselle can utter another word. Silence stands for a moment.
"Unctuous bitch!" Giselle slams the side of her fist against the door.
I push the covers aside and Giselle turns to me, alarm in the eyes that I have come to regard as beautiful, though the care and concern I see in them terrifies me to no end. Marjolaine had worn those emotions in her eyes, once. She had taken care of me when I had returned to Leron with minor injuries. She had sung me to sleep when I awakened from a slumber filled with nightmares.
"Kathyra! Andraste's ass, did I wake you? You're so pale..." She steps closer and I draw the sheets about me as though they offer protection. Giselle sees the movements, minute as they are, and stops short. Her lips purse in a frown, her eyes fill with anguish. "I...I'm sorry, Kathyra. Do forgive me."
"It...it's all right." I stammer, unused to apology from any quarter. "Do not...do not worry over me."
"I do worry for you." She sits at the edge of the bed and stares at me with those intense, fiery eyes. "You are my patient, and I..."
"You cannot put so much importance on one human life...especially not mine." I shake my head. "You said two days ago that I am healed enough to leave."
"I said that, against my better judgement, you were healed enough." Giselle counters. "And I can place importance on whatever life I so choose. You...you will not listen to a word I say, will you?"
I draw my knees up to my chest, wincing at the slight pain, pain that has faded under Giselle's expert care. "I do not know if this is any consolation, Giselle, but...I do listen. It is...it is the believing that is difficult, and..."
"And not your fault." Giselle places a hand near my feet, close, but not touching. "You have been hurt, Kathyra, not just in body, but in your mind and soul. Can you believe me when I say I would appreciate the opportunity to mend those as well?"
My body begins to tremble from a different sort of fear. Fear that she is telling the truth, that, if I allow her, Giselle will continue in her myriad kindnesses, her comforting words, her beautiful intentions. She is a woman unlike any I have ever known, and there is a tender, bruised part of my heart that wishes to accept her words as truth. There is a part that wants to believe that she acts as she does with no ulterior motives, no underlying causation that makes her be as she is.
"I...I want to." I breathe.
"That is enough for me." She smiles and I see a new light in her eyes, so bright and damning that it causes me to fear my own decision; question the rightness of it.
I wanted to believe Leron when he offered me and Marjolaine shelter, food, a family, and a life. Security. I wanted to believe that Marjolaine was kept safe from the horrors of the bardic world by my actions. I wanted to believe my little sister when she embraced me...the last time we saw each other...the last time I failed her.
"Oh, Gisellllllle." A haughty, arrogant voice sing-songs and the door bursts open. I remember that voice from the night of my injury.
Cyril de Montfort saunters into the room and I glance outside the window, watching as the sky begins to take on the rosy hue of sunset. Giselle rises, alarm in her eyes as she squares off against the man who is not only taller and stronger, but a blooded noble, the son of a man too powerful for his own good.
I once met Duke Prosper de Montfort, and found him an imbecilic waste of humanity. I could not imagine that the son he fathered would be anything unlike the man who raised him.
"Get out of here, Cyril." Giselle orders, standing firm, casting a figure of command and confidence. "I am in the midst of consultation with a patient, and your presence is not warranted."
"Oh, I think it is." He says, snide. "Mother Dorothea told me of her agreement with you. The sun is setting and I am to return to my place as your pupil, though it will be under different circumstances. For the first, you will address me as Lord de Montfort, as you should have from the beginning. Second..."
"You will seal your lips and Get. Out." Giselle commands, and the steel in her tone is frightening. "The sun has not yet set, and I have not yet failed."
"You think I will continue to listen to the snubs and jibes of a half-elf?" Cyril demands. "It seemed a game at first, but I have long since fallen out of love with your invalid superior attitude towards me. It. Ends. Now. Giselle."
"It ends when I say it does, and not a moment before!" Giselle's eyes are fire, green and radiant and terrifying. I continue to shrink away, until Cyril commits a further transgression.
His hand lashes out, catching Giselle across the cheek, his heavy signet ring breaking skin. The physician falls to her knees from the impact and Cyril looms above her, kicking her in the shoulder, leaving her sprawled on the ground.
"This is as it should be." He claims. "With you in a position of submission and fealty before me. You are not fit to lick the dirt from my boots, Giselle. Stand up." She does not comply, instead breathing heavily and placing her hand against her bloodied cheek. "Stand. Up." The lordling orders again.
Giselle remains motionless and Cyril reaches down, grasping her lovely golden hair and wrenching her to her knees. Fear settles in the pit of my stomach and coils to a knot of wrath and fire. I had known a stronger person's blows, their fists in my hair, their body invading where it had no right. Cyril lashes out with his booted foot, kicking Giselle in the stomach. A cry of pain turns into a dry heave and Giselle goes limp, hanging by her hair. Cyril raises his leg again and I burn with rage.
No one deserves such treatment. And I...I will not watch as the one person who has shown me any kindness suffers at the hands of another.
I grit my teeth and rise from the bed with fluid, bardic grace. I curl my hand into a fist and plant it with as much force as I can muster at the base of Cyril's breastbone. He grasps and his hand releases Giselle as he falls to his knees, struggling to breathe. I bring my knee up under his chin and snap his head backwards, rendering him confused, but not unconscious.
My lungs sear with breaths that are too heavy. "You," I rein in my voice, feeling my tone drip with black ice, "will not lay a hand on her."
"Do you...know...who I am?" Cyril rasps, attempting to get to his feet, falling on his backside instead.
"Yes." I go to one knee, looking him direct in the eye, knowing that my gaze is filled with the blood I have shed and the deeds I have done. "I kill your kind."
Blood drains from his face and he scrabbles backwards. I rise to my feet, shaky, following him as he flees the room and slams the door behind him. I lean heavily on the door, breathing in ragged gasps, watching black stars burst before my vision. My muscles spasm with the pain of too much activity, too much exertion from a body still so damaged. I collapse against the door and slide down it until I am crumpled on the floor in a ball of pain and tremors.
"Kathyra?" Giselle cries from across the room. "Kathyra!?"
I hear her get to her feet and run to me, the rush of air over her skin as she kneels down at my side. "Are you all right? Kathyra, look at me. Are you all right?"
I stare at my shaking hands as bile rises in my throat, thinking of how easily I had, even wounded, driven Cyril to the ground and instilled in him a fear for his life. It is my one skill, the taking of life, the inspiring of fear. It is all I have to turn to the moment I leave the Chantry and embark on life anew.
"I do not want this any longer." I whisper, watching as the setting sun paints my hands the scarlet hue of blood.
"Kathyra?"
I look towards the sound of her voice, to the light in her viridian eyes, the absolute purity shining from her, despite her bruised and bloodied cheek, her tousled golden tresses.
"Gi...Giselle." I push myself further against the door, hissing through my teeth as the pain returns. "L...let it be me. Teach me...apprentice me."
Tears line the bottoms of her eyes and one falls, cutting a clear path through the blood on her skin...purifying it again. "Yes." Her voice is filled with quiet joy. "Of course, yes. But you should be in bed, Kathyra. Please, let me help you."
I meet her gaze and see the pallor of her skin, the cut on her cheek. "Are you...all right?" I question, knowing the pain of a kick to the gut.
"A little tender, but otherwise fine." She answers, smiling. "I'll care for myself once you are in bed and fully examined. Please, let me help you."
"Very well." I accept, knowing that the favor I ask of her will require more touch between us, her hands on mine, teaching, guiding.
Giselle fits her arm around my waist and I stand on watery legs, staggering towards the bed and collapsing onto it with a groan. The physician eases me into a comfortable position and pulls the covers over me. Her movements are swift and efficient and before long the pain of movement is dwindling and I am able to breathe easier.
"Thank you, Kathyra." Giselle takes advantage of the moment and smooths my hair away from my face with a quick, though tender, movement.
Do not thank me, Giselle, I want to tell her the truth, that I have not been fair in asking this favor of her. I have asked you to do something that none have never managed...nor ever will they.
Save me, Giselle. Please, please save me.