Wow, this took way too long to post. Please let me know what you thought!
Murtagh hated his scar.
He stood in front of the mirror, bare chested, trying to maneuver his body in a way that he could see over his shoulder to the thin, ragged line that ran down his back. He hated it for how it looked, for the judgment in people's eyes when they first saw it, for how it labeled him as that murderer's son. He hated it because every time he looked at it, he remembered the agony, the flash of excruciating pain, the suffering he had endured at the hands of the man he should have been able to affectionately call "father." Someone he should have been able to trust implicitly.
If there were anything he could do to remove it, he would in a heartbeat. Good riddance to painful memories. To weakness.
He soon gave up and pulled his tunic back on. He did not want be discovered. Nasuada did not approve of his unhealthy fixation with this mark on his back. He sighed and gathered the papers he was supposed to be bringing to her. She was overworking herself again, and he disapproved. They both had their obsessions, he mused. He did not think hers was any healthier, an opinion he kept to himself.
At the end of the day, they collapsed onto her bed, exhausted. They rarely had energy left for books or laughter, what remained they saved for quiet conversation during the last few moments of the evening. He removed his tunic and pulled her close. She shifted and moved her hand to the back of his neck and felt for the knot she knew was there. For reasons she could not explain, she found his scar to be oddly comforting. Perhaps because it reminded her that even when he seemed his most stoic, his most impassive, he was still vulnerable. Still breakable. And she loved him even more for it. She followed the line down his back to his opposite hip, fingers lightly tracing. She tried to picture this mature, serious man as the toddler he once was, childhood robbed from him at a young age by a moment of cruelty. She was overwhelmed with compassion. He never understood when she tried to put it into words—he was perplexed by her fascination with the scar on his back.
"It reminds me of who you are," she tried to explain. It did not make him hate it any less.
That night, he dreamed of violent fathers with long knives and cruel faces. Nasuada dreamed of endless paperwork and groveling emissaries. Both woke in a sweat.
Murtagh frequently thought that Nasuada was one of the strongest people he had ever met. She was able to persevere through every adversity and face any difficulty with grace and composure. He admired her confidence, her quiet dignity, her integrity in a position where dishonesty was almost expected among its members. As a man who had been badly mistreated and neglected as a child by people like these, he had come to despise corruption in every form. For him, Nasuada embodied every attribute he admired and shared his distaste for duplicity. He marveled at her strength of character and resilience at being able to work in such an environment without letting it affect her.
Still, there were days when it seemed like the world was crashing to pieces all around her and there was nothing she could do to keep it together, when everything she was passionate about seemed hollow and worthless, when she wasn't sure what was real and what wasn't. It was days like these when Murtagh wasn't sure there was anything he could do to make it right, when he felt more helpless than he thought he was ever capable of feeling.
It was a day like this that he found her, curled up on her bed, silent sobs racking her body, inconsolable. He felt her grief as his own, shared in her disappointment and hopelessness.
Then, without explanation, he pulled off his tunic and wrapped her up in his arms. He pulled her against him and guided her hand to his back, first to the knot on his neck and then following the mark on his back. Her crying ceased, and she rested her hand on the scar of the man she loved.