We'll Bleed For This Cause
A/N: Sorry. I've had this mostly written for about half a year but got lazy and it was never finished. Today I decided, nope, gonna get this done, and after reading all your wonderful reviews for motivation I did just that. There shouldn't be too long a wait now for the last two chapters- we're on the home stretch!
ALSO- I recently just finished participating in the Dragon Age Big Bang! It was a tough road, and I had two artists drop out on me and have therefore been left with no accompanying artwork (One artist dropped out half way through the event and my second emergency artist has also appeared to drop out. Seeing as I was using the potential of accompanying art to motivate me it's meant that I'm a little bummed out by the whole thing now). What I did accomplish was a 28k word fic featuring my Inquisitor and her crazy family though, so if you like my writing go check that out and let me know what you think!
Chapter 11: Coughing Blood
"I hate this," Elissa groaned, butting her forehead against the side of Alistair's leg. Once again she'd managed to draw the short straw when it came to who's turn it was to have a moderately serious injury, and once again Alistair had volunteered to sit by her while she dealt poorly with the fallout of said injury. Not that she'd call it an injury, not in the traditional sense anyway. She hadn't been stabbed, or punched, or shot even. Instead she's simply inhaled at the wrong time.
It all started with their trip into Denerim. For some reason or other every time they stepped foot into the city someone was trying to kill them. And by kill them she meant kill them, as in, Elissa or members of her party specifically. It was an interesting change from the random bandit shakedowns or darkspawn they usually encountered.
The first time they ran into some thugs in a back ally. The thugs had talked themselves up but in the end it was Elissa and her companions who came out victorious, as usual. Not that back ally thugs were much of a threat or challenge after some of the crazy battles they had fought on the road.
The second time it was personal, sort of. A wannabe hero and his buddies had somehow figured out, and by 'figured out' Elissa meant guessed, that she and Alistair were Grey Wardens and they wanted the bounty on their head. That had ended very quickly too.
Third time wasn't really their charm however, when some old assassin 'friends' of Zevran's had cornered them in a side street. After establishing that Zevran wasn't going to leave with them the assassins had, to the surprise of no one, attacked them.
Being the sneaky assassins they were, however, their opponents had brought more than just traditional weapons to the fight.
Elissa had just dealt with her current opponent and turned around to face the next, recognising him as the leader. She lunged forward to attack only to have the assassin throw a fine powder into her face before he darted off to the other side of their impromptu battlefield, leaving Elissa stunned and disoriented. It was only afterwards that they found out it was a little more than just your average dirty fighting trick.
Elissa had been coughing, trying to get whatever it was she had inhaled out of her lungs and throat when Zevran suddenly dumped a bucket of water over her head.
"Hey!" both she and Alistair had shouted at the same time. "What was that for?" Elissa asked before Alistair could jump in and throttle Zevran, which it looked like he wanted to.
"We don't need anyone else inhaling that," Zevran replied. "Or in your case, any more."
"Inhaling what? A bit of dust? Dirt?" Elissa brushed some of her now sopping wet hair out of her face.
"That was an assassin's weapon," Zevran explained as he returned the bucket to the nearby well, "designed to get into the lungs and throat. It works fast and is fatal if not treated promptly and properly."
"Oh." And now not only did Elissa look like a drowned rat, she looked like a very pale drowned rat.
"You know how to treat it though, being an assassin and all?" Alistair asked, having dropped back into an intimidating arms-crossed-over-chest pose.
Zevran mimicked his pose, managing to look just as intimidating while standing almost a head shorter Alistair. "Yes. I do."
"As nice as all this male posturing is, can we perhaps do something about the potentially fatal powder I just inhaled?" Elissa kicked Alistair's ankle for emphasis, knowing if she could get him to back down Zevran would too.
Eventually they had decided it would be best to get back to camp to begin her treatment with the magical assistance of Wynne. It was half way back to the camp was when Elissa started coughing up blood. They weren't too worried about that until they reached the camp and found out that Wynne had left on an errand with Leliana and the pair wouldn't be back until the following afternoon.
Which brought them to where they were now, with Elissa suffering though the non-magical remedy for her predicament because no one trusted Morrigan with healing magic unless it was a last resort.
"I can't breathe," Elissa said into the side of Alistair's leg. "I feel like I'm going to die."
"Oh don't be so dramatic," Alistair said, gently massaging the back of her neck with one hand. "Zevran said you'd be fine. It's just going to be hard without the magic, not fatal."
"Uuuggghhh." There was a sympathetic squeeze on the back of her neck that made Elissa smile. The smile quickly faded however when she was overcome by another coughing fit. She quickly pushed Alistair's hand away and rolled to her side, raising herself up on one elbow so she could spit out a glob of blood onto the grass. The lingering coppery taste in her mouth made her gag and she spat once more on the ground before flopping back down on her back next to Alistair.
"Don't look at me," she groaned, reaching up to turn his head away but he caught her hand before she could.
"I've seen all kinds of battles, most of them with you. I think I can handle you hacking up a little of blood- even though it is a tad unsettling."
"A lady does not spit!"
Alistair laughed. "And who told you that?"
"My mother." She coughed again, followed by a wheezing breath in. "A lady does not lie down either, unless it's on a bed or chaise lounge."
"It sound's like there are a lot of things a lady should not do. How stifling."
"It wasn't so bad. I also think she was mostly joking." She sighed lightly, but that brought on another coughing fit. She pulled her hand from Alistair's and rolled to her side to once again spit on the ground. This was followed by another groan as she turned back to Alistair and curled in on herself, hiding her face from view.
"Are you alright?" Alistair asked. For a moment the only response he got was wheezing breathing and he worried she might have passed out, but her answer came eventually.
"Not really."
A small smile quirked at Alistair's lips, but was tempered by his sympathy for the state Elissa found herself in. He couldn't imagine it would be comfortable.
"Can you do me a favor?" Elissa asked suddenly.
"Anything."
"Unbraid my hair for me?" Her body was wracked with another wet sounding cough. "I'd do it myself but…" she half raised and arm before letting it fall back down to her side as explanation.
"Of course."
At his acceptance Elissa slow sat up, moving slightly she was sitting in front of him and he could easily access her hair.
When Alistair looked at her hair he was reminded, not for the first time, just how intricately she appeared to style it. "Umm… I'm no Leliana but I'll give it a shot."
"It's easier to take out than it is to put up, I promise."
"If you say. Just don't blame me if this goes wrong," Alistair said, before finally setting to work on her hair. Despite his worry he worked easily to slowly take down each braid before removing the tie at the end and unraveling it with careful fingers. Not once did he catch his fingers in her hair when she had to lurch away from him to hack up some more blood either.
Thankfully it wasn't that much longer until Zevran made his way over with the remedy. In his hands was a small bowl of steaming hot water, brewed with elfroot and some other herbs or plants Elissa hadn't really been paying much attention too. Zevran seemed to know what he was doing regardless so she had stayed out of his way while he worked on her cure.
He crouched down in front of her and handed over the bowl. "Breathe it in, don't drink it," he instructed. Both he and Alistair watched as she curled over the bowl sitting in her lap and breathed in deeply. Elissa's breath out was a soft sigh.
"That did nothing," she said, glancing up at Zevran from under her loose hair.
Zevran just rolled his eyes, noting the small smile she had been trying to hide. "It takes a little longer than that for the remedy to kick in." He patted her cheek before standing up. "Just keep breathing it in, and let me know when it starts to go cold, I'll heat up some more."
As Zevran made his way back to the center of camp Alistair shuffled along the ground so he was sitting next to Elissa. He gave the concoction a tentative sniff, much to Elissa's amusement. "At least it doesn't smell terrible," he said.
"Small comfort," she managed to say before another coughing fit struck. Alistair grabbed the bowl before she could upend it in her lap. "Thanks," she said when the coughing had subsided and he handed the bowl back to her.
"Maker knows we don't need you scalding your legs on top of this."
Elissa laughed quietly, trying to not aggravate her lungs any more. "Very true." She bent back over the bowl, taking deep, even breathes. "It's probably going to be a long night for me," she told him after some companionable silence. "You don't have to stay you know?"
"Bah, nonsense." He brushed off her offer, having not even considered it. "I've got nothing better to do. Besides, you're the only one next to Oghren who isn't going to punch me or set me on fire if I talk to them. I can go and see how long Shale can stand me if you really want me too."
Elissa smiled again, making Alistair smile. "No. You can just stay here then if you can't stay out of trouble."
"Fantastic. You keep on breathing and I'll just keep on watching you breathe, and yes, I did just realise how creepy that sounded but I assure you I meant it in the most non-creepy way possible."
Elissa couldn't help but chuckle quietly.