A/N: Thanks again for all the kind words of encouragement. We're back to the realm of canon, now. This chapter follows Josephine's romance plot-it is triggered immediately after the player character speaks with Josephine (who tells you to speak with Leliana) and then has a conversation with Leliana. I may have done it a bit differently if I was going totally off-canon, but I think I can still work with it as it happens.
Either way, I hope you enjoy it. I had to revise my prose quite a bit in this one-it came out a bit clunky the first time around.
Though she believes she understands the Inquisitor better than most at Skyhold, Josephine finds her frustratingly impenetrable at times. Ellana's face has a habit of smoothing over into a calm blankness and her eyes often seem to wander to the horizon, seeking something there that Josephine cannot fathom. She wonders, sometimes, if the other woman is searching for her clan, or at least for an approximation of that feeling, and so her gaze wanders to the natural world outside the stronghold, longing for something just out of reach.
Josephine doesn't really know, though. And so when the Inquisitor walks in and shuts the door behind her, Josephine doesn't expect anything, at first, taking in the blank face. She assumes she has just returned from discussing whatever Inquisition matters Leliana felt urgent, but the other woman stands silently for long moments.
This has happened once or twice before, the Inquisitor escaping into the quiet of Josephine's office, the eye of the storm just off-center from the fervent activity of the hold. So the diplomat continues with her papers, allowing the other woman to gather her thoughts.
Several moments pass in silence, only the unpredictable snapping of the fire penetrating their small moment of calmness. Finally, footsteps scuffle across the floor. They are worn and hesitant, almost tired. Josephine glances up expectantly, but the Inquisitor's face is quiet. Yet, underneath the surface, there is a windy sort of chaos in her eyes—Josephine can't help but notice her eyes, beautiful and remote and unpredictable—at once crinkling slightly in amusement, at once stormy, at once bright in the firelight.
"Well," Ellana says, and her voice cracks on the word, betraying the strange combination of amusement and distress in her eyes. "Leliana just gave me quite the speech."
Josephine feels her face go numb. Leliana. Speech. "What about?" she asks, rather calmly, she thinks, but somehow she already knows the answer. The fire pops and she jumps, but the Inquisitor doesn't notice, her gaze looking somewhere just above Josephine's head, as though trying to memorize the titles of her volumes.
"About us."
Us.
Us.
The word drums in Josephine's ears like a frantic, little hovering hope beating against the walls of her mind.
Is there an "us" to talk about?
But she allows the fluttering hope to beat itself against the walls futilely and instead focuses on her rising ire. How could Leliana do this? How could she expose her so? What had she said? Josephine's mind reels and, forcing herself to respond before the Inquisitor begins to assume something, anything. She sighs in aggravation.
"Oh, she is impossible," Josephine groans. Casting about for some way to buy more time to think of something to say, to somehow salvage the situation, she suggests, "Might we discuss this somewhere more private?" Her voice has gone irritatingly husky and she clears her throat, realizing, too late, how that might sound. How she might want it to sound. Somewhere more private.
Maker.
Panic begins to overcome her, not unlike that day on the road when the bandits had attacked, and she finds herself on her feet without really knowing how she got there. Time is doing that thing again, where it frustratingly refuses to move at a normal pace, inching forward both slowly and frighteningly quickly. The Inquisitor is studying her with a calm, penetrating gaze and Josephine looks anywhere else, her eyes wandering to the nearby window, but the noble horizon of the mountains only reminds her of that day they'd spend on the Inquisitor's balcony. And, worse, Ellana suggests they go to her quarters, and a warmth that is not entirely embarrassment overcomes Josephine.
Somewhere private. That is all she means, Josephine tells herself. Privacy. They will agree Leliana has surely overreacted to harmless flirting that was entirely…well, mostly, anyway…one way. Just harmless flirting from a charming woman who needs some way to relax.
She finds herself on the stairs up to Ellana's quarters and the realization causes her to halt midstep, the toe of her boot catching on the edge of the next stair. A warm, sure hand reaches from above to steady her, and, when they resume climbing, she counts the stones in the wall. Anything to avoid looking at the strong line of the other woman's shoulders, the quick surety of her step, the graceful arch of her spine, the noble sweep of her ears…
"Josephine?"
Her name is honey on the other woman's lips and it is so, so sweet.
She realizes they have reached the top of the stairs and when their eyes meet, time slows again, and Josephine wants to hear her name again, wants to hear anything at all, really, in that lilting voice.
Mentally shaking herself, Josephine firmly repeats in her mind that this is simply a way for them to address Leliana's ridiculous notions and move on without potential awkwardness. It still baffles her, though, she thinks as they move into the Inquisitor's quarters and in front of the fire—why did Leliana feel as though their interactions posed such a threat?
They sit on the couch and Josephine ensures that there is a respectable distance between them. It is getting dark, and it is silent, except for the fire, and she allows the looming night to hang heavy over them. It feels safe, somehow, and again she wonders what Leliana could have had to fear. The panic slowly begins to leave her, though it leaves behind a nervous clamminess that she subtly attempts to press away on her clothes.
When she looks up, Ellana is studying her with that same face, paradoxically calm but stormy, expectant, somehow.
Josephine takes a deep breath. The Inquisitor may be very brave, and very courageous, but it is Josephine who does the talking, after all. And the sooner she gets this over with, the sooner she can finally get those idle daydreams and memories of chevaliers and horses and hand kissing out of her mind.
"So," she says, or at least attempts to, but it turns out her throat has gone dry and maybe she isn't really as calm as she thinks. Clearing her throat, she tries again. "So," she says, and pretends the heat in her cheeks is from the fire. "What did our omniscient, omnipresent Spymaster say, exactly?"
The Inquisitor shifts a bit, looking for a moment like the lanky, awkward teenager Josephine imagined earlier that day. It makes her smile, for a second.
"She said," Ellana starts, looking around at the fire, into the dark of the ceiling, out to the balcony, then back to Josephine, "that I have been paying you a lot of compliments." Well, Leliana might be correct there, Josephine thinks, but Ellana compulsively compliments everyone. "And that…you were here to be a diplomat, not to be toyed with."
That makes Josephine pause and her hands clench around the silk of her dress. "What?" she gasps, and the Inquisitor gives her a sort of wide-eyed look of concern that might have been comical in any other situation. "I—toyed? Like some—some object? A child's plaything?" Did Leliana think so little of Josephine that she'd believe the Ambassador would allow such behavior?
"And," Ellana hurries on, as if worried Josephine might conjure some sort of dark magic purely by the force of her rising rage, "that you may know the courts, but you are innocent in love."
Shame and anger prickle up her spine and into the back of her head, a red haze dripping down into her vision. She begins to move, gets to her feet, paces frantically across the floor, trying to shake the sharp sensation out of her head and trying, most of all, to avoid the other woman's gaze. "Leliana said I was an innocent in love?" Leliana said "love"? No one had said anything about—feelings—or—or anything other than compliments and flirting and suddenly she was bringing love into it. Or Josephine's rather embarrassing lack of experience, for that matter.
Any attempts she'd ever made at it had failed—
Red covering her hands at the bottom of a stairwell, confused faces pulling her away, thanking her for stopping the other bard. She hadn't loved him, hadn't really liked him all that much, but he had made her feel special, for a few moments, anyway.
Or the other time—
Her eyes burning as she watched a slim figure dash by, holding hands with a larger one. "I could never—I'm betrothed." The other girl's words from the week before rang in her ears and when it began to rain, she heard it over and over again each time a rain drop splashed down onto the cobblestones of the street. She didn't understand, didn't see how their late study sessions together could have been anything less than what she'd imagined, filled with long looks and overly convenient brushings of hands. And that one time she had leaned in, bravely, to see how the ancient poems tasted on the other girl's lips. The words had been dusty and hesitant against her mouth and made young and new again in the long moments of their embrace. Then, suddenly, a letter from home, and Josephine had been forgotten along with the lost tomes of a bard no one knew the name of…
There were more, too, but Josephine's memories are cut short by the somewhat amused voice of the woman in front of her. "More or less." There is a tiredness in the statement too, and Josephine suddenly feels sorry for her, having been dragged into this by an overly protective friend.
Still, though, she cannot believe Leliana would, even after their earlier conversation, believe Josephine thinks this is more than it is. That Josephine has somehow, once again, placed her heart where it would surely be crushed. Josephine learned her lesson years ago, on the streets of Orlais, and Leliana should know that by now.
And so she turns in frustration to the mountains slowly darkening in the late evening, gazing at them with a longing she can't let the other woman see, before a helpless frustration over comes her and she realizes that she cannot put it off any longer. She must address…this, whatever it is they have, though it is silly and harmless and something that exists only in these stolen moments between time, in darkness or starlight or in the quiet of the mountains.
"Of all the…" She stops, words failing her for a moment. "I am quite capable of understanding our association!" she says finally, her voice raised and pinched at the end, her breathing erratic. Association. It makes it sound like a business contract, but she can't take it back now, and Ellana is staring at her again, her eyes shuttered like a forest canopy, calm and patient but wary.
Josephine forces herself to breathe, to at least attempt to explain her erratic thoughts—anything to stop the rapid beating in her chest. "I've…never thought your intentions were overly romantic, Inquisitor, I…I assure you." She sees the other woman start at the title, and Josephine feels guilty at having used it, particularly after what it had cost them to become familiar in the first place, but she needs it, needs to be able to distance herself some way in the quiet intimacy of the approaching night.
Most of all, she needs to give Ellana—the Inquisitor—an exit, a way to graciously, and charmingly, leave the conversation and acknowledge Leliana's flights of fancy.
There is a long pause as they gaze at one another, Josephine waiting expectantly, almost wishing for the final end to her silly little daydreams. The other woman leans forward, her eyes asking a question of Josephine's, looking for some answer just like that night all those months ago. This time, though, whatever she finds makes the shutters drop away.
And, miraculously, a familiar little light enters those eyes, the fire casting once again a mischief over the handsome face.
"Would my intentions be unwelcome if they were romantic?" the other woman says, her voice low, low like a whispered name in her ear, low like a hopeful prayer given to the coming dark. Low like fire in the wind, like the voices of trees. Low in Josephine's abdomen, where they settle and burn, kindling for a thousand tiny hopes that fragment into a thousand dizzying thoughts.
"What?" she blurts out, then realizes how that may sound and she doesn't want to ruin whatever this might be, but she also worries it's too good to be true, this moment, this woman, this frustrating and noble and courageous and rather unfairly attractive woman who is really so terrible at flirting and Josephine can't really tell if she means it, even now. "Oh—no…that is…" She casts about, feeling rather woozy, looking to the stones in the wall again for assistance before realizing that they can't really help her this time. "We've only just…" We've only just met.
She stops herself, thinking about all these half-moments together, hidden like gasps in between the great yawning chasm of their battle against an everlasting night, and realizes time is no measure for anything. So she starts again: "I didn't want to presume you…harbored any…tender feelings for me." Tender feelings? (Really, she thinks, she must throw away those chevaliers tales.) It's not something she's ever really let herself consider, not until her disagreement with Leliana—it's something she's left fluttering in the roots of her heart where it grew and grew, quietly, unseen by anyone. The fragile hope that maybe this web of moments, this shifting tide of advance and retreat, might mean something. The moments in between the terrible flirting, the ones besides the seemingly harmless compliments. But…what if that hope had been right, all this time?
The Inquisitor, rushing in headstrong and noble and foolish, defending her from a stubborn noble in Haven even though Josephine could handle it.
The Inquisitor looking to her for an answer, maybe an escape, the night Haven burned to the ground under the force of a dragon's terrible anger.
The Inquisitor giving her the most convenient and comfortable room.
The Inquisitor stopping by more and more frequently, sometimes to talk, sometimes to gaze pensively out of her windows.
The Inquisitor laughing with her after a long, impossible time in the Fade.
The Inquisitor arguing with Leliana, choosing Josephine's convoluted plan over a more efficient one.
The Inquisitor's desperate fear at her near-assassination.
A pair of trembling prayers: Josephine. Ellana.
Josephine and Ellana.
All of the stolen touches.
The fragments of hopes descend on Josephine all at once, nearly staggering her as she realizes this may not have been merely fun at all. But the sudden ocean of hopes and daydreams is frightening, paralyzing, and—
"I won't deny a certain captivation, Josephine."
Josephine. Josephine…and Ellana.
It is the sweetest thing Josephine has ever tasted in the air and she wonders what her name tastes like on the other woman's mouth, and knows it would not taste dusty or worn like an old bard's poems.
Her mind catches up with the rest of the sentence, replays it frantically, and her heart stutters, rages against the hesitant walls she's placed around it, and she finds there's not enough air, again, may never be enough air. She wonders how the other woman commands the world around them so well, makes it bend and flow and curve so that this moment seems to stretch on and on into the waiting night.
She realizes she has walked away, suddenly desperate for distance, suddenly nervous that maybe it's the Inquisitor who has entertained too many daydreams, that maybe it's the Inquisitor who may not understand. She turns to face the Inquisitor who looks frustratingly calm, still. "But we haven't even known each other a few short months. How can you declare this liking for me—" (liking—there is no better word—she doesn't know what "captivation" means, really—she doesn't know what any of this means) "—after such a brief time together?" Josephine asks feebly, desperately, knowing as the words leave her throat that they are weak, that months or years between any two other people could not have created the forest growing between the two of them.
"I've never met anyone whose presence affects me like you do."
Anyone?
The word ignites a thousand more tiny hopes in the recesses of her mind.
Ellana is smiling slightly, her eyes warm and lit with something other than fire and Josephine is warm too, lit from the inside, a hundred thousand thoughts and daydreams igniting into this one real, blessedly real moment.
"Perhaps it just means I'm a hopeless romantic," the elf says, looking almost embarrassed as she shrugs, but her eyes don't leave Josephine's face. "But…there you have it."
And it may as well be daylight to Josephine because there is warmth and light everywhere, from her fingertips to her eyes, coloring everything in reds and oranges and magnificent blue, the blue of the other woman's eyes that are no longer stormy, no longer shuttered or hidden or mysterious.
Perhaps they are both hopeless romantics, Josephine thinks, but her strict strategic mind repeats their conversation: I won't deny a certain captivation.
So she tempers her unruly heart, tries to navigate her way through the forest sprung up between them because there's still a part of her that worries Leliana may be right. That maybe she, or both of them, will only be hurt in the end, that the endless night might swallow them whole in a breath of fire.
She settles on a nearly neutral statement. "I won't object to a…closer relationship between us," she says, but still she can't help herself, can't keep back the rising tide of warmth and humor and adoration, and so she flirts: "…my lady." And barely, just barely, she stops herself from bowing and kissing Ellana's hand because really, that would be too much, and her voice is already low and husky again and she mentally blames the fire for drying out the air. "If that sounds agreeable to you," she finishes, attempting to reclaim some of her dignity as a diplomat.
"Nothing would make me happier."
And then the Inquisitor is stepping close to her again, this woman who is both legend and person, elf and symbol of hope and strength, this woman who is noble and selfless and brave, beautiful and handsome…and, somehow, unbelievably, interested in a bard-turned-diplomat from a flailing noble family. Josephine can't help but feel her eyes close slightly, can't help but lean forward, anticipating the other woman's presence, needing her to be close, needing the dizzying happiness threatening to drown them both.
"Well, then…" she murmurs, deftly placing responsibility for what happens next on Ellana.
"Josephine…" the elf whispers, this time less a prayer than an invitation, a plea, one Josephine is powerless to refuse, and then both of them are leaning in.
When their lips touch she feels herself crumble into fragments until all that's left is Josephine Montilyet, not a lady, not a diplomat, but a person with a trembling heart. A person being kissed by, perhaps, the most attractive person in Thedas, whose lips are incomprehensibly soft, whose sudden, fervent attention nearly sends them both backwards. There are arms around her, and the Inquisitor's lithe frame is pressed against her own, and the low, low heat in Josephine's abdomen spreads all the way to her toes until, of its own volition, her leg pops and she steadies herself on the strong frame. It is all she can do to keep their pace steady and slow, a huge, rising passion nearly making her frantic, but she contains herself. She wants to savor this moment, savor Ellana, lose herself in the slow and steady softness against her lips because she knows the night will come eventually.
Maker help me.
Josephine learns that her name tastes like sunlight shining through leaves and that it is, indeed, the sweetest taste in the world.