Leliana

I could feel the look in Salem's eyes, even though I was not looking at them. They were cold, with a desperate fire behind them that feared its own heat, its own passion. They held a depth that feared to reach its bottom. Such a look could consume me, and had. It was her eyes that had told me that her love was real, that had convinced me that she did not play at words, or simply seek a warm body to pour her tension and frustration into during the Blight.

I let her arms wrap around me, securing me inside the only fortress that had ever protected me without turning me from its gates. Yes, the actions she had taken to stand before me could have dire consequences. Yes, within the thirty years her warden lifespan allowed, Ferelden and Thedas both might be washed in another overpowering wave of evil. All of these things could happen. It did not mean that such a future was certain.

Thus, it does not matter. She is alive and, try as I might to moralize, I remember that night in Redcliffe Castle...before the battle. After she succumbed to slumber, I cried myself to sleep. I have not done so since the first night Marjolaine showed me her brutality. And after that, I swore that nothing would bring me to so great a grief again. But I wept that night because I would lose her...I need not shed such tears now. As ever, she has torn down my defenses and shown me that I am strong enough without them.

What she did was a desperate measure, and I am happy that she took it. I am glad that she is standing here, with me, alive. I am glad that I did not have to watch funerary flames consume her body. I do not care. I do not care that she made a deal with that vile witch. Morrigan's time of judgment will come, whether it is at Salem's hands or another's.

"Well," Salem spoke and a smile lay in her voice, "somehow I imagined this going much worse."

I laughed through the tears that had begun to form in my eyes. I backed away and shoved at her playfully.

"Is nothing sacred to you, Salem?" I glowered at her, but grinned so that she would know I did not speak in earnest.

Her eyes narrowed as she struggled between her dark humor and the seriousness of what we had just discussed.

"I killed a god." she waved a hand, flippant. "The sacredness of things has since been lost on me."

Her strange sense of humor won out and I stared at her, incredulous. However, I softened as I saw the mirthful gleam in her eyes, a light that I had witnessed all too rarely. I wanted to see more of it, to find out what would bring it into existence. I wanted to know more of her.

The battle is over, I realized, warming to the sacrilegious words she had spoken. The war is done and we are free to explore who we are outside of bloodshed, terror, and the fear of loss. We are, all of us, going to change with the times.

"What is it, dear heart?" she asked me as tears of a different sort welled in my eyes.

Joy. I am weeping for joy.

"You are lovely when you smile." I ducked my head as a blush crept over my cheeks, as I realized that the desperation that had held us would soon be gone.

That desperation would be replaced with new feelings, new emotions. Softness. Calm. Uncertainty. I had met Salem at the point of a sword, her body still in pain from old wounds, her spirit freshly minted from a battle in hell. Now, here we were, in a time when weapons could be laid down, when the rare moments at the fireside in cap would become more common. Fear crept into my heart once more and I quickly stamped it out.

No. There is no reason to be afraid. In those rare moments of calm, I discovered the true wealth and expanse of her heart. Those rare moments were when she began the arduous task of chipping the masks from my soul. Those were the moments in which we fell in love.

Salem's hands, now both scarred by the acidic blood of monsters, framed my face. I felt the difference in the textures of her skin, the calluses built from a lifetime of wielding weapons...the hands of a true noble. I would never equate a soft hand with high birth ever again. Her lips met mine with a softness they had never before possessed; that they had never before been allowed. My heart fluttered in my chest as she kissed me with painstaking care, as the strength of her arms folded around me as though they had been forged for that purpose alone.

I lost myself, closing my eyes, returning her kiss with ardor, without the frenetic frenzy of the desperate passions that had fused us together. I allowed the changes that would come to wash over me, infusing me with a greater hope than I had ever known. Salem trailed her lips across my cheek and down my neck, finally resting her forehead against my shoulder.

"If that is the case," she smiled into my skin, and the warmth of her breath against my skin sent shivers down my spine, "I will never cease to smile."

I moved away from her, holding her at arm's length, taking the time truly see her as I had never been able to before. Her face was all angles and planes, as sharp-edged as the land she was born from. The high cheekbones were more prominent now because of the weight she had lost during her recovery. She still possessed the pallor of an invalid, but even that could not distract from her beauty. Her nose would have been perfect; the straight line of a noble profile, but it had been made slightly crooked from having been broken twice.

Once for me...in Howe's dungeons.

Her dark hair, the color of freshly tilled earth, was soft against my hand. Streaks of silver ran through it now, the signs of age come too soon. She now looked as though she deserved the wisdom that surpassed her years. I traced the indigo and scarlet scar on her cheek with my thumb, feeling the incredible softness of the healed skin. All of her other scars, from battles, from torture, could be hidden. But not this one. Every time she saw her reflection, she would be reminded. Reminded of the days spent covered in blood and filth, an impossible burden on her shoulders...the wreck of her body that had once been strong and unmarked.

She lowered her eyes beneath my scrutiny; hiding the eyes that had been scarred by looking across mortality and into eternity. They were a shade of blue I had seen in no other, like a winter sky, crisp and clean, swirling into a radiant silver at the center. I had seen these eyes blinded for my sake. I had seen these eyes hold love and compassion, kindness and sorrow, the wrath of the heavens.

But never, never, had they held fear.

"You are...so beautiful." I whispered, my voice choking with emotion.

"No." she shook her head, unable to see what I witnessed.

A woman of impossible strength who had managed to retain her soul. A woman who had made decisions that would break anyone else with questions and anxieties. A woman who had decided the fate of races and kingdoms without compromising her emotions or beliefs. A woman who had seen the horrors of war, and retained the ability to feel.

"Darling, I have stood before kings, queens, and princes." I told her, cupping her chin with my finger and pulling her eyes to mine. "I have sat in the place of honor in marble halls and ostentatious palaces. I have been covered from head to toe in silks and finery. I have seen the beauties of the nations parade before my eyes, proud of their grandeur, gazing down the height of their noses at those whom they thought were lesser."

"Then you know what true beauty is." she worried her lower lip with the edge of her teeth.

"Yes." I nodded, inwardly laughing at how very wrong she took my words. "I have witnessed the shallow hearts and dim perceptions of mankind, who gaze at a face decorated with paints and potions, every hair in place, body shaped to perfection by corsets and ridiculous heels and lust after it, not realizing that the so often the resonance within that soul is hollow and vapid and vain. I lost my heart to such a woman, once. Because I was young...because I could not recognize..."

I trailed off, remembering when I had been entranced by the frippery and vanity of the world Marjolaine had opened to me. Remembering when I had been one of the hollow, painted faces in a sea of similar creatures who defined themselves in the petty thoughts and attentions of others. Remembering my shattered soul when I first looked upon the body ruined by a fortnight of torture and thought it forevermore worthless. That same body, scarred and damaged, that soul, broken and afraid, Salem had accepted. She had set fire to me with her kisses, held me close in the night, ignored the scars and saw the potential of the tarnished soul beneath. She had taken the time to erase the soot and the stain and let the light come through once more. She had changed me forever.

"What?" my warden asked me, voice tremulous and so, so gentle. "What could you not recognize?"

"What beauty truly is...what you have shown me, Salem." my voice shook, but my words did not desert me. She needed this truth as much as I needed to give voice to it. "It is a soul that has great burdens forced upon it and does not look with anger upon the one who should have lifted those burdens. It is a heart that hears a tale of preposterous fantasy and listens without mockery. It is someone who discards their noble name and high birth and walks through life humble; who shows compassion to the less fortunate and does not deride the weak. It is a body that has been through hell...it is a woman who looks her torturer in the face and says 'I forgive you'. It is a woman who rails against her own countrymen who have richer blood and higher title for how they have treated another race; a woman who risks her own title and name and reputation in defense of those who cannot take up arms."

There were tears in Salem's eyes, and her lips quivered with words she could not say.

"It is a woman," I I continued, fighting the lump in my throat, "who takes a poisoned blade for the one that she loves...who endures the torment of blindness...and never holds it against me. It is a woman who has watched me walk away from her so many times...and each time takes me back, never flinging my past mistakes in my face. It is you, Salem Cousland. You have changed me, my love, in ways I never dreamed that I could be altered. I have seen true beauty, and I wish never to look at anything else, ever again."

She smiled, shy, abashed, looking like a stranger, a young woman who did not know the meaning of war. "I did what most be done." she whispered. "Nothing more, nothing less."

I sighed, exasperated...but this was what I loved most about her. That in the light of her heroism, in the glittering grandeur of her accomplishments, she would prefer to remain in the shadows. She asked for no credit. She asked for no recognition. She simply asked that those she helped remember the strength that brought them up, and use it to help others.

But this is why bards came into being, I smiled, realizing the depth of my calling at long last, to sing for the heroes that have died. Or for the ones too humble to bask in their greatness. I said before that I could not bring myself to write a tale for you, my love. I lied. I will tell your legend...I will proclaim to the world the beauty I have seen.

"We should go." I wrapped my arm around her waist. "Alistair is probably shredding the curtains with his teeth by now."

She laughed and the sound of it echoed, foreign to my ears. My heart skipped a beat and I pulled her tighter to me.

As we left the muggy comfort of the baths, arms around each other, the Divine's letter scraped against my chest, burning. Secrets had been revealed to me of a painful and possibly destructive nature. I still harbored my own. This was not the time...not yet.