Before he realized what he was doing, Nate had Kya boosted up on her desk, papers flying haphazardly on to the floor. She had one hand tangled in his hair and the other trying to sneak its way under the hem of his shirt. He had her robe hitched up nearly to her waist and he was thinking, or not thinking perhaps, about forgoing any delusions of foreplay. He felt her hand creep around his laterals, along the hill of his hip, right above the waist of his trews. There were insistent fingers trying to untie laces.
She was a trembling, hot little thing under his hands and his brain clearly wasn't working despite everything else was working exceptionally well.
Nate closed his eyes as Kya's other hand reached down to help the first, fluttering fingers working at the knot he had apparently tied a little too vigorously earlier. He took a long deep breath as she took more initiative, her lips traveling down from the edge of his mouth to his chin. He felt the softness of her tongue against the line of his jaw, against the shadow of his stubble.
He wondered if she'd learned this trick from the King or the Hero.
It was a fleeting thought, just a quick stray thing but it was enough to turn the heat in Nate's blood to ice. He felt himself stiffen in her arms, stumbling back and leaving Kya sitting awkwardly on the edge of the desk looking confused and concerned. She frowned.
"What is it? What's wrong?"
And Maker, it wasn't like he just could admit the truth. How did he tell her, for a moment there I was just a man and you were just a woman and I forgot who we were - you a commander, a hero, lover of a King and the liberator of all of Ferelden from the occupation. And me, just a fool with a checkered past and an even more dismal future?
Nate tried to recover his composure. He reached down and re-tied what he could of the tangle of laces on his trews, smoothing the hem of his shirt down to cover the mess of a knot he was sure to have to cut open later. He looked back up at Kya, pulling down a veneer of artificial confidence to cover his self-doubt.
"This is a bad idea." He paused. Swallowed. "I can't be ... I don't have it in me to just take comfort and move on. Not with you. You're my commander ..." He looked pointedly over Kya's shoulder, refusing to meet her eyes though he could hardly help but notice the way the flush in her cheeks was rising. "I know the Wardens do not prohibit fraternization, but ..." He felt like he was rambling so instead of humiliating himself further, he closed his mouth and forced himself to finally meet Kya's gaze. He had no idea how to read her expression.
Her lips were a pale thin line in her reddened face.
"I, ah, didn't realize you thought this was just a matter comfort," Kya said, deadly quiet. But wasn't that what she thought this was? Wasn't that the point? Even Loghain has alluded to such as he left. In Nate's mind, it couldn't be anything but. He couldn't imagine otherwise. But she took a deep breath, letting the tight expression on her face relax as she continued.
"I don't claim to know what's in your head, and I won't use my blood magic to see your thoughts, even though I could. It's wrong." She gave him a little half smile from one corner of her mouth. "I never got the impression that's the kind of person you were; the type to just take comfort,was it? I can promise it's not who I am. I'm sure it's hard to believe, but loving one person doesn't mean you can't feel anything for anyone else."
Nate turned his back to her quickly. She had this oddly wistful look on her face, and it felt like a knife between his ribs. She didn't understand; she couldn't. Up until now, Nate had lived his life in pursuit of only one thing and it sure as the Black City wasn't love. He's strived to better himself, to change himself, to try to mold himself into a man that might someday make his father proud, despite knowing deep down that he could never do it. Nathaniel Howe wanted to be a good, honorable and worthy man, and he had been delusional enough to think that if he did it right, someday his father might respect him. Up until now, he'd never imagined caring about anything else.
There had been a woman here and there. A lovely thing for a few days in the summer; an elven servant; a sweet thing paid with cold coin...but never anything more. He shielded himself well from even the possibility. It hurt when his parents didn't love him; he couldn't bear even the thought of what any other form of rejection would feel like. He couldn't even look at her; he could feel a hint of what that might be like in the back of his head. It was a darker place than the Deep Roads, and it was somewhere he wasn't sure he had the courage to go.
"Nate, please," she said, her voice still quiet and calm. "Please, look at me."
He shook his head. "I can't," he muttered. "I can't do any of this."
He didn't give her a chance to reply. Of course she would try to stop him. It was what she did; taking in broken stray animals and trying to help them - the drunken dwarf and the 'dead' dwarf, the apostate who was equal measures of sexual deviance and indignation, the possessed corpse even...and himself; thief, assassin, pariah. She would hold him, she would try to put aside the king, the hero; those great men who were her lovers before, she would make love to him and she would think about what a disappointment he was the whole time.
Nate walked away, through the door he hardly remembered opening in his self recrimination, down the stone hall trying to ignore the sound of her soft but determined footsteps behind him. He made his way up the stairs and through the old guard halls, ignoring the pointed looks of the soldiers and servants making their rounds, holding his face in a perfect rictus of inexpression.
A quiet greeting behind him. "Good evening Commander," a man's voice.
"As you were, Harlan," a reply with faint humor, with sadness.
Nate headed through the heavy door out on to the wall. The sky was a riot of color; gold, orange with violet shadowed clouds. The hum of the guard changing; the clang of a blacksmith hammer in the last light of day; the voices of the dwarven masons continuing to fortify the keep. Finally, there was nowhere left to go, unless he leapt off the curtain wall into the courtyard. The little, abandoned child part of his brain encouraged it.
What's the point? What's the difference between dying without having to face her, or dying on a darkspawn blade? You're a coward anyway. There is no honor available for you. You came here to kill her and only did not because you failed. Delude yourself as much as you want, but you weren't coming to reclaim your heritage. You were coming to kill the Hero of Ferelden to avenge a monster. And now you thought she might want you? You actually thought she might want you for something other than to scratch an itch?
Who are you to compare to Loghain Mac Tir or to Alistair Theirin?
"Nate," Kya said tenderly. He strangled the little voice into silence. "Please." She was pleading with him. The voice threatened a comment, but he stamped it out. Slowly, he turned to face her.
"I don't know what you want from me," he managed, fighting to keep the tone of his voice even and cool.
"I don't want anything from you," she replied. She looked to be struggling a bit herself. "I just want you."
"I find that hard to believe," he snapped, more harshly than he intended. She recoiled but he persisted. "Look, I understand this whole 'about to die and lets be alive' business. But I just can't. I...feel...more than I should. It's not my way to let emotions get in the way of what I have to do. So it's better to not ..."
"Nathaniel," she interrupted him. The tone of her voice negated even the idea of continuing. She closed the distance between them. She looked like she was going to touch him, but then she thought better of it. She sat down on the wall instead. "We've been here before, haven't we? Up here on the wall, dancing around what's really on your mind?"
"About my father, you mean?" he asked, already knowing the answer. She nodded but kept her mouth shut. It was his cue to be honest, but it wasn't coming easy. He wasn't used to dealing with his own inadequacy. Usually, he just worked harder, longer, more diligently to overcome it. There wasn't a practice range for this sort of thing. He sighed, feeling an equal amount of trepidation and stupidity.
"It's the same thing, really if I'm to be honest," he admitted.
"I prefer honesty," she commented. "I am a lot of things, but dishonest isn't one of them."
"I know," he replied, realizing it was the truth. "I am so used to treachery that I am not sure how to deal with it. Or with you."
She chuckled. "That is not the first time I've heard that." Her smile fell and she was serious again. She looked up at him carefully, willfully. If he didn't know better, he would have thought she was using blood magic, because it certainly felt like she reached out and grabbed hold of him with her gaze.
Instead of fleeing as the derogatory voice in his head was screaming at him to do, he slowly knelt down in front of her. He tilted his face up to look at her. Somehow this position felt safer, less likely to make a fool of himself if she managed to put him more off balance than he already was.
"I'm not afraid of darkspawn or death," he said. "But you scare the shit out of me."
"Why?" she asked with perfect confusion. She really didn't know, did she? How could she not know?
"I...can't believe you wouldn't know why," he started. The mere idea of admitting his own failings so openly horrified him, but there was no other way out of this. If it was honesty she wanted, he supposed he could provide. "You do realize you are the 'Hero of Ferelden' right?"
Kya rolled her eyes. "So they tell me. Last I checked I was just an orphan apostate, trying not get killed." She sighed. "But do go on."
Nate wondered if he looked as sheepish as he felt. "It seems to me that I'm...you do know I was never really in line to take my father's place as Arl?"
"You might have mentioned that," she replied. "Not that I think that matters..." He cut her off.
"It matters," he said quickly. He wasn't sure how to continue. He was trying to avoid this; he tried to walk away and make this into what it ought to be; commander and warden and he'd let go of his dead father and she'd keep thinking about her dead lover...and Andraste, even his brain was rambling. This is why he'd learned to be close-lipped and had earned his reputation for being uncommunicative. It was well deserved, if not for the right reasons.
He was terrible at this, but Kya was looking at him expectantly, so he needed to come up with something.
"I could give you a long list of reasons why this is a bad idea," he finally said. "But in the end, the only reason that's important is that I can't stand in Loghain's shadow. I stood in my father's shadow for so long...it was a cold, painful place to be, not measuring up to what was expected of me. If I only wanted one night with you to celebrate being alive? I wouldn't care. But I..." And here was the worst of it. Laying his chest open in front of her, displaying his heart like a prize. Whatever soft emotions he had were about to be crushed into less than a memory. "But I'm an idiot, and I wouldn't be happy with that. It wouldn't be enough."
Kya looked down at him, blinked a few times. The tip of her tongue escaped between her lips for a moment and disappeared again.
"I could lie to you," she said, leaning forward a little. "But I don't do that. I'm not going to tell you that Loghain didn't matter; that he doesn't matter. Because he always will. Short though that was, it changed my life. He changed me. But he's gone, and I'm not going to waste what life I have hoping that feeling terrible and lonely and bitter is going to change that." She cocked her head, and Nate felt like she was gauging him, trying to read where his head was going with her words. On his part, there was a buzzing behind his rib cage and a strange stinging in the back of his neck, but overall, he felt like he was holding up pretty well. Kya seemed to come to the same conclusion, and she continued.
"It's not my place to tell you why, but the truth is, Loghain spent most of his life being resentful and lonely and bitter. It's what made him into the dark creature he became. Maybe it's why his paranoia overtook his logic during the Blight and he let the things happen...that happened. It's no excuse, and if he was here he wouldn't offer it as one. But it ruled his life and made him miserable." She smiled a little. "Then I came along. I refused to let him dash himself on the rocks. He offered to die for me and instead of me several times. As hard as it may be to believe, he also tried to run away. And every time I told him; letting the guilt over a wasted life make him waste what time he had left? Well, wouldn't that just be the most delicious irony? And for once in his contrary life, he listened to council. Loghain gave himself a chance to be happy. Just for a little while, true, but he was finally happy and free from the grasp of all his skeletons. He couldn't forgive, but he could move on with his life."
She reached out and tucked a loose piece of hair behind Nate's ear. She moved with such self assurance that it didn't even hit him how strange that felt until her hand was back in her own lap again.
"Before he left, he made me promise I'd learn from his mistakes. He made me promise I wouldn't be a fool and pine my life away, wishing for something I could never have. He...," she chuckled a bit, "Gave me permissionto move on with my life and steal what small happiness I could from this Grey Warden existence."
She looked down at her hands for a moment, twisting her fingers in her lap. It was only a moment, but it seemed like an eternity as Nate watched the play of her pale skin against the faded red of her robes.
"Please Nate," she said, looking back up at him. "Just let me..." She paused, looking so lost Nate hardly knew what to do with himself.
She was right.
Kya was right about everything. It occurred to him that she was, hero or not, a very young woman who had lived outside the mage circle for less than three years. How she got to be so sodding wise, he had no idea. But he was damn glad for it.
"Maker," he sighed. "I hope you're right."
"I am," she replied. "I just want you to believe me. I don't need...I don't need what was about to happen in my office, Nate. I need you; I need someone to have my back. Someone I can trust that won't run off half cocked for some reason or another. I wish you...I wish you would just let me love you."
All the bones seemed to disappear from under his skin. Nate was immeasurably grateful that he was on his knees. Of all the things he'd expected, even hoped for her to say?
"I," he started and stopped. He looked back up at her and swallowed hard as her hands came up slowly to cradle the sides of his face. He leaned into her touch, moving forward until his chest was against her knees, her lips soft against his forehead. He felt the warmth of her breath ruffle his hair and saw the last of the flaming sunset through his eyelids.
"I'll try."