AN: this chapter has one of the worst jokes I've ever written in the middle of a very tense conversation. I'm keeping it in after council from friends, who said "its a reminder that Cailan is related to Alistair" which is a great way of saying MY bad jokes are just like *his* bad jokes, which feels like a personal success.

Chapter 30 - Blood-magic, Bath and Beyond

"Everyone shut up and get out of the bathroom!" Cinna snapped, shoving just about thirty servants, guards and attendants out of the room before they could make things worse. She nearly caught a poor man's fingers in the door as she shut it, and shouted through the thick wood, "You all better stay there when I get back out or else I'll personally see you all suffer for it! No running and gossiping!"

There was a suffering of feet and a series of muffled, confused and terrified cries. "B-but!"

"No moving, no talking!"

"Y-yes ma'am!"

Cinna made a sour face. That was almost worse than lady- it was like being called an old lady. And... by the state of her prematurely greying roots... no, ma'am wouldn't do. "It's doctor, to you!"

She turned her back on the door and towards the source of her current greif. Cailan, sitting up to his shoulders in his bath, fully fucking nude, awkwardly glanced her way. "I can explain."

"I- you can fucking- goddamnit Cailan!" She covered her eyes with her hands and blindly walked into the room because she wasn't a bloody peeping-tom. "Why are you like this?!"

"I can assure you, this is the first time a lady has ever run screaming from my room after seeing me naked."

Cinna spluttered something unintelligible and just about tripped over a bucket of water. "C-Can you shut the fuck up?"

"I just think it's funny, is all," he sighed, leaning back in his bathtub, like a snob. "The moment I get a second's peace, I'm reminded once again how awful this all is."

Cinna couldnt even see him as she edged further into the room, but she could hear water moving and she imagined him lounging back, eating some grapes or something, like a prick. his tub was probably gold plated. He probably had a crown of olive leaves around his head. A toga draped over the bath, obscuring his legs- wait why was she painting a fucking picture of him in her head? Why was she actually trying to picture him looking better looking in a bathtub than the reality in front of her? what the hell was wrong with her?

"Are you going to remove your hands or are you just going to stand there like this the whole time?" He asked, innocently, as if they were just two bros sitting in a hot tub, fully clothed and- "...What happened to your hair?"

"NOTHING!" Cinna laughed, and dropped her hands to her sides. Which she honestly really regretted doing right after, and she quickly turned around and hid her glowing face. Honestly it was... way more than she ever wanted to see of him. Like honestly, more skin than she had wanted to see of a dude who allegedly ran the country. Sure, she had seen... skin, or whatever while she had healed him, but that had been when his ribcage had looked like a crushed Coca Cola can.

Now he was... anatomically correct. With some spindly black veins around the puncture wounds on his abdomen, which undoubtedly was the reason the servants went running when they saw it- it was an ugly series of wounds, for sure. But like, he had an abdomen now. Which was great in retrospect considering how he was supposed to be six feet under, but really sucked at the moment.

"I can see you blushing even though your back is turned," Cailan said, and he was so... fucking smug about it... Cinna wanted to scream.

Cinna closed her eyes and tried to picture her happy place.

"I am not." She took a deep breath and schooled her features. "I'm not blushing."

"What do you think I'm going to do, Cinna? Prey on you while I'm stuck in the tub? How lowly do you think I am?" He huffed, and slowly... slowly, Cinna cast her eyes to the floor and turned around. When she finally faced him, Cailan sighed and turned his gaze to the ceiling. "To be quite honest, I actually forgot I was dying of the blight for a while."

"You're not dying of the blight," she said, keeping her eyes on the ground as she approached the tub. "I'm going to cure you eventually."

"As fantastic as that sounds, you're not going to be able to give me transfusions forever."

He pulled himself back up, so he was sitting properly in the bath, and offered up his arm and wrist to her.

"Nobody's cured the blight. Not a single person in all the hundreds of years that it's existed. You'd have a better job fixing my spine, and even then I'm resigned to admit I may never walk again." He drew in a sharp breath and sharply looked away when she broke the skin on his wrist and started giving him blood. "Maybe it's a good thing."

Cinna stared at him. "What, dying of the blight?" He made a noncommittal shugging motion, and she gaped at him. "Cailan that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard."

"Why? What makes you think living a painful, agonizing life laying down is any better than dying on a battlefield?" He still refused to look her in the eyes, and squirmed, looking like he wanted to cross his arms or shift away from her, even though they were basically locked at the wrist. "I don't even know what I'm going to say to Loghain when I see him. Or Eamon. I haven't spoken to him in a year."

Cinna knelt down beside the tub and sat beside him, focusing on controlling her magic and quietly struggling with her own anger at the idea that Cailan seriously, legitimately had a problem with being alive. "Why... haven't you talked? He's your uncle, isn't he?"

"Yes," He huffed, and the sound of sloshing bath water echoed in the room. "I just... It's complicated."

"Well we're in a pretty intimate fucking situation now, so if you want to lay things out even more bare than they are-" Cinna blindly gestured to all of him while she stared at literally anything else. "-now's as good a time as any."

Cailan was silent for a good, long moment. And Cinna honestly didn't even think he would say anything, until he eventually did and broke the silence that stretched on.

"He wanted me to leave Anora for someone else."

"Oh-" Cinna blinked up at him, frozen in place. "That... is complicated."

"Yeah." He glanced over at her and grimaced. For a moment she even forgot he wasn't wearing, like, anything, and this was extremely inappropriate and uncomfortable. "And I know.. my marriage isn't your business, or anyone else's, but it's just- frustrating... and with Loghain stoking fires and talking ill of me and my peace talks with empress Celene, I wonder more and more what Anora must think of me."

It was Cinna's turn to be quiet for a moment. "You love her, right?"

"Of course." He sounded like he wanted to scoff, but was too weary and stressed to do so.

"Then what's the problem?"

He sighed heavily. "It's... politics. When we married she was five and a half years older than me, and we basically grew up together. I know you have just about the same amount of respect for royalty as you do for a frog on a bump on a branch on a log in a hole in the bottom of the sea, but please, try to think of it from my perspective..."

Cinna gave him a deadpan stare. "Was the nursery rhyme really necessary?"

"I have no idea how your mind works. Are you paying attention at least?" He asked, and cinna made an ugly face at him. "Good. Anyway, it's not like my marriage has been without troubles."

Cinna tried to resist the urge to facepalm, and sighed. "Right, yeah. I know... the Theirin line needs an Heir. Even though you have that in Alistair..."

Cailan gave her a sharp look. "But nobody else knows that. You have no idea how taxing it is to have every advisor and nobleman hounding you about your marriage, disapproving, waiting for news that doesn't come. It's a nightmare."

Cinna pursed her lips. "Is that so?"

"When I last spoke with my uncle, he spoke like discarding Anora would fix things. Like making a public statement that she wasn't fit to be queen just because she couldn't bear me an heir would make everything right. It was outrageous!"

Cinna kinda wanted to say something, but listening to him prattle on about politics and heir this and heir that just was starting to give her a headache. "Mhm?"

"And maybe I did care a lot then about the future of my bloodline. Maybe I still do, maybe I did more back when I wasn't infected by the blight and things were fine and I had hope for the future and Celene was whispering in my ear about a political coupling-"

"Wait what the hell?"

"-but the thing is, my marriage is nobody's business but my own. and I'm here, dying of the blight in a bathtub, and I can't even get out of it properly."

Her eyebrow twitched. "I don't know how that explains why you're such a floozy though."

Cailan's eyes snapped over to hers, staring at her with an aghast expression on his face. "Cinna did you even hear a word I just said?"

"YES, I heard all of it, you prick. What I don't get is why you keep making passes at other people- namely me, currently- when you're clearly married and don't want to leave your wife!" She said, and snapped her hand away from his wrist, cutting off his transfusion.

He yanked his arm away as well, and pulled it to his chest. "Why am I supposed to be the one with all the answers?!"

She gaped at him "Aren't you supposed to be the ruler of this country?!"

"Why do you think we're on the brink of civil war, Cinna?!"

"I don't even know anymore!" She shouted, pushing herself far, far away from his bathtub, sloshing a great deal of warm water on the floor. "God, if this all boils down to an angry father in law mad that his daughter's being cheated on..."

"It's so much more complicated than that."

"...I'm going to lose my entire fucking mind."

Cailan laughed, and covered his face with his hands, sinking lower into his bathtub. "How do you think I feel?"

"Why... do you do it then?" Cinna shook her head at him, almost pitying him, though she knew better. "What is it with you pompous royals and your adultering?"

He gave her a flat look. "You're referring to me and... my father now, am I right?"

Cinna squinted at him. "Of course I'm talking about you and Maric. He formed a whole other person by accident. You can't even look Alistair in the eyes, and you keep making advances on me like... like what? Like I'm not self aware enough to hear the warning bells?"

"No…? I don't know..!" Cailan groaned and covered his face with his hands. "Maker's breath, this is such a mess."

"Welcome to the club!" Cinna cried, running a hand through her prematurely greying hair.

For fuck's sake, maybe it actually suited her better than she actually thought. She felt three hundred years old at this point. This whole bathtub scene had aged her. Cinna looked down at Cailan for a moment longer and actually felt kinda bad for being so harsh with him. She sighed.

With age… comes wisdom, right..? Ugh…

Cinna sighed, deeply, and cast her eyes to the floor. "I'm sorry... for snapping."

"No, I think I deserved that," He sighed, still refusing to look at her properly. "I... deserve a lot of things that you say to me. You've very good at making me see the point. And very rude. Like, incredibly rude."

"So I've heard," she rolled her eyes. "If you want, I can accompany you when you talk to Eamon later."

"I'd... appreciate that," he said slowly.

"And I can... council you more. On the marriage thing, if you'd like," she huffed. "Though It honestly feels like you need like, an actual marriage counselor for what you and Anora are going through."

"It must be amazing to live in the world you've made up in your head," Cailan snarked. "Do they have counselors for other things too? Dogs? The meaning of life, perhaps?"

"In the world in my head..." Cinna repeated, because holy shit he had no idea how on the mark he was with that one throwaway line right there... "Right. yeah. The fictional world I've made up... I'll write you up an imaginary doctor's referral, right now, to get help, Cailan. Because you need it. I'm writing one myself now too, actually, because I need it after this conversation is done."

He scratched his cheek and looked up at her. "I'll... take your words into consideration. Thank you... uh, for this." He lifted his arm out of the bath water and waved his wrist at her. "And for the blood."

"I am going to cure you," she said seriously, staring down at him. "And your back, if I can figure it out properly."

"I'll take anything at this point," he said quickly, earnestly. Eyes wide. "I don't want you to think I don't have faith in you Cinna. I want you to cure the blight. I want you to try... It's just..."

"Complicated?" she shared a wry smile with him. "Yeah, I know. There's no hurt in trying at least, right?"

He snorted and shook his head. "Yeah, sounds about for coming to my rescue... again."

"What are friends for?" she shrugged, stepping backwards into the room, until her heel hit that bucket again, and she froze, immediately casting her eyes to the ground. "...and I just realized I've been staring at you naked for like, way too long now, so I'm just gunnaaaaa go..."

Cinna quickly turned on her heel and marched robotically over towards the door. When she flug it open, the same thirty servants stood, cowering before her, and looked over her shoulder to get an eyeful of Cailain inside.

She stared at them, while they stared at her, and the king, and... everything else.

"I'm actually really surprised you stayed through all of that," Cinna said, dumbfounded. She struggled for words for a moment. "How... much of that did you all hear?"

"Just the parts with the yelling," a short elven woman squeaked, terrified as if Cinna would bend down and rip her tongue out for speaking or something.

"Oh, so all of it?" Cinna laughed, embarrassed, while she distantly heard Cailan making splashing sounds trying to listen in.

"Are you really going to try to cure the blight?" Another servant asked, and- when Cinna turned her head to search out the person who asked, it was the chubby woman who she had pushed out of her bathroom. She felt a pang of shame. "To save the king?"

"I'm gunna try," she nodded, ignoring the lump of dread in her stomach. Because saying it out loud to the group was one thing-they already knew she was a dumbass- but saying it to regular people?

she could see the spark of hope in their eyes and the fervent desire for her to just... pull a miracle out of the air like it was nothing. Even though it involved so much guessing and testing, Cinna didn't even know where to begin. A cure was the sort of thing people dedicated their lives to... and she wasn't even planning on sticking around for longer than a year. Was it even possible, or was she just lying to them all? was she giving them false hope?

What if it didn't work? What if she had no idea what she was getting herself into, what if she let everyone down in the process?

"Can someone close the door?" Cailan called from his little bath.

Cinna smiled and kicked the door closed behind her as she was surrounded by the caring, hopeful eyes of Teagan's people. They all looked at her like she knew the answers to everything, like she really did have a chance at doing this.

No pressure, right?