Kathyra

"Kestrel?" The name crackled through the air the raspy tremor of a lilting Starkhaven accent, a devilish smile and snapping black eyes. "Kes...you there?"

The faint flicker of light in the corner of the room moved, and I could hear the weariness in the templar private's footfalls as Kestrel walked across the cabin and sat down beside her wounded comrade.

"Where else would I be?" She asked stroking her fingers through the tangled mess of Rylie's curls. "Do you need anything?"

"I need," Rylie shifted and groaned, a sound of pain that made me hurt. My heart ached with the knowledge that I could not help ease the pain of the young warrior's first grave injury. "I need...someone to tell me...that...that this isn't the world. That it isn't all...all waiting and grief and barely concealed fear. Please, Kes...I feel so weak...I'm not...not used to it. Tell me this changes."

I watched the light dance in Kestrel's eyes, witnessed the war in the young woman's heart. She knew that there would be more blood, that war had come once more to Thedas, and that, for a time, there would be little else but suffering and fear. And yet...those eyes...those eyes too much like Giselle's...they lit up and sang.

"It changes, sweet girl." Kestrel whispered, pressing the faintest of kisses to Rylie's brow. "It changes. I promise."

You are lying, Kestrel. Nothing changes. I swallowed my bitterness and breathed, feeling pain fire through me once again, though less, much less than before. Life is nothing but moments placed between excruciating times of waiting...as we wait for our ship to drag itself across the sea to safe harbor, as the Divine waits for the answers of our mission, as Kestrel waits to declare her love, but no to show it...as Leliana waits and prays to be reunited with her Salem...as Giselle waited...so patient...so beautiful...so strong.

My heart broke as I wondered if Giselle were still waiting for me, on some unseen, hoped for other side...or if I had left her alone too long.

"You are staring out the window again, trickster." Giselle's eyes flutter open for the fourth time since my revelation...the unspoken thoughts between us...that death...no.

She said she would fight, and I have to believe her. I have to trust her. After all, I turn my eyes from the window and savor the sight of her hair aglow in the ambient light of the sun, she fought the death that would have come for me in this tiny room. If she can make such an effort for a stranger...of how much more value is her own life?

"How do you feel?"

"Like those four words should no longer be strung together in any variant of sentence." She teases, but the last of her words are faint...breathless.

Giselle shifts and attempts to sit up. I place my hand on her shoulder, the tension in my body easing somewhat as I feel that her temperature, while still too warm, is no longer a raging fever.

"You must keep still." I advise her. "The Viper's Kiss is still running through your veins. You'll do nothing but aid the poison's spread by moving overmuch."

She purses her lips together in frustration and my heart beats a fraction faster at the petulant defiance in her expression. "I do not like lying here." She tells me, keeping her voice low. "There is so much to be done, people who need help, who need..." The words die on her lips and I fix my eyes on hers, seeking knowledge in the silence, finding nothing. The veneer of her strength begins to crumble as tears line the base of her eyes like floodwaters kept at bay. "I am lying to myself again." She whispers. "There are none...there are none who need me, are there, Kathyra?"

I need you.

"What would possess you to think something so imbecilic." I ask, and there is a fire building in my hands, a need, a force, a driving pull that I ignore as I have so many times.

"None have come to seek me." She lifts her uninjured hand and dashes the tears away before they fall. "None have probably even thought to ask."

"That is not..."

"Do you think I do not hear the whispers?" She asks, and her tone rises, carrying an edge upon it like a well-kept, unused blade. "Do you think I do not see the looks? There is no need of me save for when there is need...and no one heals the physician, and no one cries for the lonely soul, and if tears are prayers then there is no god for me in this world, for mine have gone unanswered and unremedied.

What are you saying? Do you not see the good that you do? Do you not trust the strength that has let you defy those who would be the voices of god in this time?

"I do not understand." I confess, extending my burning palm, hoping that there is a use for it.

Giselle ignores my offered hand and continues to look into my eyes. I sense that she is seeking something, and I know that what she looks for will not be found in my eyes. I have nothing...nothing to render, nothing to give, nothing to repay her.

"You told me once...that you were a bard. A teller of tales and singer of songs."

A crafter of lies, an architect of demise, a thorn in Destiny's paw.

"Among other things."

"Is there a song for the lonely heart, Kathyra?" She asks. "Did one of skill and a follower of beauty ever take pen in hand and write of one who has no world for them? Did my father and mother know that when they mixed their blood that the thing they created would die of the poison in its veins?"

"Giselle, you are not dying." I tell her, firm, frightened as the pallor of her face and the frailty of her body do all they can to convince me otherwise.

"I am always dying, trickster." She counters, coughing into her hand, breathing in shuddering, shallow inhales. "So long I have been content with my calling and my books and my herbs and my skills...never indulging the thought of another life because I have been given...more than I deserve."

You deserve everything, Giselle. You deserve more than what I could give you, if I even dared to try.

A feather-light whisper of skin on skin draws me from the thoughts that venture to dangerous places. Giselle traces the lines on my palm with her fingertips, hesitant, more afraid than I have ever seen her, but it is not the same fear as mine. My fear stems from knowing all too well the consequences of entwined hands and lustful hearts, nakedness and whispers in the dark. Her fear is...

"I have never known a lover's touch." Giselle confides. "For who..." She tucks her hair behind her delicately pointed ear, "...who would desecrate themselves with such a thing as I? From the moment I took breath, I have been unclean, Kathyra. And never did I think to mourn the lack but I...I am not human, and I am not elven, but still...still...I am mortal, am I not? Is it not mortality that craves love? Am. I. Not. Mortal?!"

Her desperate cry catches in her throat and she begins coughing again. I pull her into a sitting position and she grasps me for support as her body trembles like a willow tree in the midst of a storm. Her tears burn into my shoulder and at last her coughing eases and she collapses against me, spent and fearful and...

...lonely. Another heart walking in darkness. How do I make you see, Giselle? How do I make you understand without sundering your beautiful heart? For I...I have ungentle hands and a tangled spirit not fit for realms of beauty. I shrink away in fear at the touch of another...a touch you have not known...a touch I can never give you, no matter if we both desire it. The shadow you cast is too holy for me to stand in.

"I dream of it." She whispers against my neck and my nerves spark and a shudder ripples through me, unbidden. "I dream of hands that search, and lips that crave, and warmth that longs to be shared. Before, it had no form, and no distinction beyond a phantom of my want. But lately...my dreams...they craft your hands. I see your frightened eyes at last at peace...I am tired of those who have need of me, Kathyra. I simply desire...to be wanted. But you...you are...you could never want me, could you?"

Her words lash at me like a maelstrom as I ease her back against her pillows, cushioning her body with my eternally stained, unworthy hands. I know what it is to be wanted, and there is nothing more terrifying, nothing more brutal than when that precious illusion is stripped away. When those who whispered of want spoke from the deep pits of their own desires and let their errant minds run rampant and stole what might have been offered.

Do not dream of me, Giselle, my heart kicks in my chest like a stallion tearing at his bit.

The physician's eyes flutter closed and her shallow breathing deepens and evens as confessions and poison and illness sing her back to slumber with their slick lack lullabies. I want to give her all that she desires, and yet I am not fit to do so.

"My Giselle." I whisper, knowing that she cannot hear; that I am safe to speak. "If only...only I could. I do...I do want you and if...if I were worthy, beautiful girl, I would love you."