Leliana
This is not happening. This cannot be happening. How did I let him gain the upper hand? How was he so strong? How did he use both hands? I broke his wrist…I heard the bone snap…I broke his wrist.
I struggled with my thoughts, desperately attempting to follow them to their ending. I needed to keep my mind, not let the pain take over and render me useless. I could not be useless. I had seen Cassandra when we tended Tristan. She would need help, guidance, but it was taking all of my willpower to remain on my knees. The entire left side of my body was made of fire, and the blood pouring out of the holes in my skin felt like lava. I wanted to give in to the burn, to the pain. I could not give…
"Leliana!" I had heard alarm in Cassandra's voice before, but never panic. I heard panic now.
I never want to hear it again. It is so desperate, so broken.
"Leliana, look at me!" Cassandra's hands were on my face, warm and solid, but I could feel her worry in her touch.
Her left cheek had been cut. It needed to be stitched. I needed to get my pack. Needed to stop the bleeding. Facial lacerations, if untreated for long, could scar worse than many other wounds. Cassandra had lost so much…she did not need to lose her beauty. My pack lay on the stand near the bed. If I could reach it, I could help her. I attempted to reach it, but cried out as pain ripped up my side, under my arm, shredding through my stomach and spreading to my heart, making it stutter-kick in my chest.
I felt myself falling, and braced for the impact with the hard wood of the floor. Instead, I met with the soft embrace of strong arms, full breasts, and the sturdy body of a warrior.
"Stay still." Cassandra's voice shook, but it sliced through the bleary fog in my mind; made me brutally aware of the pain that had begun to rule me. "For the love of the Maker, Leliana, stay still."
I followed her orders, collapsing and sagging in her arms, feeling more blood pulse out of the gravest wound and sheet down across my stomach. Kathyra would lose her mind. She had said she knew something terrible would happen. I should have trusted her intuition; should never have taken off my armor. I should have…
"Have to…" I gasped, struggling to keep my thoughts centered, focused. "…stop the…bleeding."
"I know." Cassandra's voice was soothing, steady, and stern.
I understood now why people followed her into battle, why Most Holy had given Cassandra the authority and power of her right hand. However, I had seen those hands shaking not candlemarks before, struggling to function and help the wounded.
Kathyra, darling, how I wish you were here. Maker, please, please help me. It hurts…it hurts so very much.
"Leliana, try not to move." Casandra ordered. "I'm going to lift you onto the bed. You are going to be all right. Stay with me." she pulled me tighter to her, almost a desperate embrace. "Stay with me."
I gritted my teeth. Casandra rolled me over and my mouth opened, a scream tearing out of my throat. Breathing became an ordeal, the hardest thing I had ever done as agony fissured my gut and my lungs. Cassandra held me behind my shoulders, her other arm fitting beneath the bend of my knees. She lifted me up and I screamed again, hoping that this pain would give me clarity, that I might stay cogent long enough to…
A horrific, pained sob tore out of my throat as Cassandra eased me down on the bed, cradling my head on a feather pillow with a gentleness I did not know she possessed. The soft surface of the bed felt like the warm embrace of death, and I began to be afraid. Afraid of the comfort. Afraid of the softness. Afraid for my life.
I'm going to die. I thought. Maker's breath, I am going to…no. I can move through this; I can survive…I've not known this manner of pain since the Blight. Something…something inside is very damaged.
"Elevate…" I lifted my hand, waving it in the vague direction of my feet, "…my legs."
Cassandra moved with alacrity, snatching the pillows from the second bed and stacking them atop each other. She took a moment to reach out, pressing two of her fingers to the pulse point at my neck. I knew she would give me the truth. She did nothing else.
"Your heart is beating too fast, Leliana. You are losing blood too rapidly." she looked at me but I could barely see her. My eyelids were fluttering; my fingers were freezing. I wanted to sleep. I could not fall asleep. "Hold strong."
Cassandra lifted my legs and agony struck. My hands flew to the wound I could feel, the worst of them, the one where I had felt the knife enter, twist, and leave. My eyes flared wide and my lips parted and, once again, I heard my voice shredding out in a wretched cry of pain. Warmth and weight settled across my legs as Cassandra laid blankets across them, doing all that she could to prevent me from going into shock.
The world took on soft, blurred edges. The pain dulled. I knew what was happening to me. I had seen it too many times; felt it too many times. Blood loss. Not lethal…not lethal yet. My hand went slack over the worst of the wounds. I could feel blood pouring out with every thready beat of my heart.
"Cass…" I managed to rasp, drawing her eyes to mine. They were so beautiful and fierce. How had I never before noticed their beauty? I fought to lift my fingers from where they lay over the injury. "Pressure." I whispered. "Here."
The Seeker nodded and she reached into my pack, rummaging through it, returning with a wad of clean bandaging…all the bandages that we had left after treating Tristan. The bandages would not be enough in their own right. I had to speak. I did not want to speak. It hurt so much…it hurt so much and I was so tired.
"Poultice." I forced myself to speak and Cassandra began rifling through the bag, searching yet again. "Shepherd's purse…and elfroot. Helps…"
"Stop bleeding." Cassandra cut me off, her voice tight in worry, not in anger. "I have had more of those strapped against my skin than I care to recall." her search through the satchel became all but frenetic. "Oh, thank the Maker." she breathed as she pulled free a few of Kathyra's carefully prepared poultices. "We haven't many left." she informed me. "Are you injured anywhere else?" Cassandra looked so pale, even beneath the drying blood from the cuts on her face. "Is there but the one wound? How many times were you…" she seemed to be unable to articulate the last word.
I managed to lift three of my fingers. They were stuck together with drying blood. Cassandra looked even paler now, but the outlines of everything were made of soft, black fuzz. I could have been imagining. Dreaming.
"You were stabbed three times?" she asked, her voice tight, and I nodded as best I could.
The knife went in three times. I remembered the fight. Twice beneath my left arm…once in my stomach. It does not hurt a much as it should, and this is a bad thing. A very bad thing indeed.
Cassandra's lips were moving, but they said nothing that I could hear, and my vision was too unfocused to read them. I wondered if she was praying…I hoped that she was praying. Maker…everything hurt. I did not understand how this could have happened. How the man could have been so strong. Why he had come to take his vengeance alone, instead of with the support of others. So much of this did not make sense. I belonged to the Maker. I had been called by her to do her work on Thedas but…but now it seemed that I had been abandoned.
Why have you forsaken me? I asked the god I served. Why have you let me be harmed? Is it not enough that I serve you, that I have given up everything to serve you? Now I must suffer for that service? Why, my Maker…please tell me why.
My shirt moved up, Cassandra's hands shaking as she revealed my wound. Her eyes went wide as she saw thick, crimson blood surging up from the ragged tear in my skin. Gentle, she set the poultice over the wound and I felt the subtle stinging of the herbs.
"Leliana, I…" she wiped sweat from her brow, "…this is going to hurt." she warned me, but I already knew.
I gritted my teeth as Cassandra rested both hands atop the poultice. Even the slight pressure hurt, but when she bore down, I shrieked in raw agony and pure anguish. Cassandra's eyes split apart, becoming the stars in the heavens. Darkness swallowed the stars.