Strange. Usually, in her dreams, she was the one doing all the touching and instigation with limbs and lips that knew no sense of shame. Time and again, she'd been tickled and teased with spirited, yet feckless imaginings of collarbones tasted, hips held, and toes curled. Acts performed in urgency, wanton ideas skimmed from the surface, impulsions completed before she'd a moment to actually enjoy them… These flights of fancy only served to curb the craving of a lascivious mind left otherwise starved.
The slow, steady hands that had her lazy features now were a remarkable change of pace. Something original wept her senses, for once, and wasn't stolen verbatim from the lines of smuggled smut kept stashed beneath the mattress. This degree of realness though...
She'd have applaud her subconscious for its turn of ingenuity. Later.
Perhaps a degree of exhaustion had burrowed its way into this reverie, leaving her listless and content to lie there. She wanted to sleep as much as she wanted someone to pull the pearly buttons on her blouse loose in a succession of tiny, tormenting pops. To trace and chart the line of each uncovered curve, every crevice of her ribs. To leave behind only a map of pretty marks, trails from tests of teeth.
Well, maybe not just as much... It was a close tie.
Her arms hung limp, too heavy to lift as they became enveloped by long, firm fingers. The short length of her legs remained too lodged in the pliant bedding for anything more than pleasant, anticipated stiffening and the flex of one unruly knee. An amenable weight pressed against her person, she reveled in the welcomed attentions. So long as it wasn't asked of her to move.
Not yet at least. Not without a few more indolent minutes of a well-earned, well-deserved catnap. But... she'd never been above a teensy bit of bribery.
"Please…" A beautiful, breathy word. Barely more than a beseeching whisper fell from his lips. "We don't have much time."
Chiyo's back arched as warm air skimmed along her neck and ear, brisk and baited with a rush of excitement. Her skin all but melted where each lovely syllable slipped over. There was a pleasure in and of itself in being wanted, desired, sought after, any term of need.
"Mmm, why rush?" She yawned with a deep stretch, sleep's sluggish spell broken by her own drowsy purr. A hand reached up and slid across the plane of a broad chest, the robust heart within pounded. And… rattled.
His pulse had the most peculiar cadence of jingling metal against solid wood…
An awful lot like the shuddering of slender chain looped against the doorframe.
With eyes split open as her body was urgently shaken awake, the fantasy world broke into a thin gray morning with a darkened figure hunkered very much on top of her. Sure enough, it was Solas, but the frantic beat above her fingertips could not be matched by the hard knock beneath the peephole or the violent twist of the knob that left him flinching.
Of all the thoughts and questions that should have immediately come to mind, only one surfaced. Why wasn't she screaming?
Not a single word escaped her dumbstruck mouth as Solas turned his wide-eyed stare away from the only entrance and down upon the baffled face below. The warning look said it all, with no instructions needed as to what she had to do next.
Run.
"Open this door or we'll break it down!" The hammering continued, growing louder and harsher with each added bang. The pale painted wood heaved in its hinges as the attacks escalated with pummeling fists and blunt kicks.
In a flash they were up, shoving loose belongings into bags. Her journal was collected, first and foremost. Everything else was secondary once her beloved dawn lotus robe was secured from the back of the chair. Boots were forced onto her sock-less feet, the laces left untied for haste, merely rammed behind the tall tongues.
Solas only lurched to grab his camera bag before thrusting the window wide open and knocking out the flimsy mesh screen. One leg nearly outside, he cursed and darted back to the washroom to snatch up almost forgotten film.
"Leave it!" She hissed in a low objection and didn't wait for his choice to be made. Pitching her rucksack down the half-story drop on the inn's built-up backside, Chiyo wasted no such precious time.
Out she went, with no qualms about trivial losses. The elf forsook several replaceable personal effects. She wouldn't have any use for an old hair comb or toothbrush if she were dead. Or worse.
Her heels hit the ground first, and then her ass with a hard thump on the grass as she rolled away from the fall. A bath sheet knotted into a ball and stuffed with crinkling, processed pictures plopped against her shoulder. She looked up to see her fellow renegade clinging to the windowsill. Solas pitched something back inside the hotel room. Glass shattered, and then she caught the spark of a match struck against the brick before it too was tossed.
Down the wall, he dropped as the room above billowed with dense smoke and the curtains burst into flame.
There was no time to shake off the tumble or even dust himself as they took to the street in a sprint towards the only quick escape available for miles around. Back to the trains and far, far away from whoever had stalked them to their rented quarters.
Distance was the only source of protection with swiftness standing as the lone safeguard for their lives.
She ran until her lungs scorched with each breath drawn in acidic gasps. Wild white hair clung to her sopping wet forehead and cheeks. Her sprinting feet burned hot as the soles tore into the backstreets, leather seems further rubbed them raw and blistered.
A sleepy town passed by in a blur of pavement, closed doors, shuttered windows, and first light's fishmongers. They slowed for nothing until coming to an abrupt halt at the back end of the country terminus, circumventing the main platforms entirely.
The first passenger lines were an hour or more from boarding or departure. But there were still left plenty of loaded cargo containers lined up and waiting for clearance.
Slipping through the wire fence with their fair share of gut-wrenching snags on knotted barbs and humble crawling with bellies to the ground, the pair skittered out onto the criss-cross of iron tracks and railway cars. A handful of bleary, yawning workers maintained the backlot, most were more fixated on the contents of their lunch pails and thermoses than the reflective eyes of elves watching them from between the gaps of cars.
Solas tugged desperately at every door they slinked by, but most were hopelessly locked. They hugged the shadows of the quiet yard, waiting for any opportunity to arise with hearts throbbing in their heaving chests.
One came to them as a hatch left ajar just enough to wedge a few slender fingers into. It took four desperate hands tugging in tandem to pull open the rusted, squealing piece of junk on a freight line pointed east. They entered as stowaways and with a great heave, the corroded door was closed as snug as allowed. Then, they were gone, without a trace.
Neither had said a word throughout the entire debacle once outside the hotel and the silence remained until the first few rocky lurches pulled the box forward. Only when the vibrations picked up speed did either find the air to speak clearly over the coarseness of their ragged throats and lungs.
"Let me guess…" Chiyo wheezed as she pressed her drenched back to the stiff boards of a crate. Hot beads of sweat poured from every inch of over-exerted flesh and dripped from the sodden curls about her ears and neck. "You skipped paying the room's bill?"
"This is no time for jokes." His skin shone slick where the sparse cracks of the sun could reach him. Solas dropped his depleted body onto the limited floor space before her, finding what little room he could to stretch his legs.
He began to untie the hurried knots from the towel and salvage what he could of his film, inspecting for damage and smoothing out any creases. It seemed he wasn't much the early morning person either as a few embers of a temper flared. "For years I've known relative peace and only mild disturbances for my research. And now twice in one week I have had to flee for my life. Untold pieces of evidence, lost through carelessness."
"Oh no. You are not blaming me for this." With a wince, she pried the shoes from her feet and cringed at the sight of scarlet toes and blister-torn heels, wet where the welts had broken. "I've done nothing compared to half the stunts you've pulled. If even only a sliver of the story is true, you can't run from stuff like that forever. Trespassing a military base, in Korcari of all places, you'd've surely been imprisoned or executed for that exploit alone."
"Had I been identified, yes. But my habits have not changed, my explorations have been almost minuscule. And I've done nothing recently to warrant this besides conspiring with you. I have been honest, can you say the same of yourself?" Solas shot her a narrowed look, his eyes shone sharply blue inside a reddened scowl. "Where, exactly, did you investigate before coming to Qarinus? I need to know sites. What you saw. Who you spoke with. Did you touch or take anything? You must have poked the hornet's nest hard for them to go this far."
"For a moment there, I would have sworn you were almost paranoid enough to accuse me of working for the Chantry too." Chiyo's lips pursed with a whistle of pain while stroking the fresh sores on her ankles and heels. She suppressed the terrible urge to pick at the watery bubbles beneath paper-thin layers of skin.
"Now that would be a most inaccurate judgment of character." She felt her own eyebrow elevate while he spoke. It was a curious confidence his words bore after only knowing her a week. "I do not see an ounce in you of the guile and insidiousness required to play such games of espionage. You would have used your pawns more adeptly if you were a spy instead of relying so heavily on a single rook and a cornered queen."
The leather boot by her hand would have made an excellent projectile if her shoulders weren't so sore.
"How flattering, I'm to be assessed solely on a game of chess. That one loss is going to haunt me forever, isn't it?" It had already cost her the coin for dinner and no small amount of pride. He'd manipulated the board calmly, always a step ahead with subtle shifts to place her pieces exactly where he wanted them. Her unpredictable, wildcard tactics had worked for awhile, but the ultimate lack of strategy had been Chiyo's downfall. "I'm sure your opinion of me will change after a few rounds of Diamondback."
Taking care not to place excess oils on the shining ribbons of black tape, Solas began the tedious task of winding each roll back into individual canisters. "You're still evading my prior questions."
"Fine," She huffed, combing finger through her damp hair. "For your information, my last piece was centered around the 'heretical' elves. They were protesting certain religious doctrines in a little town at the base of the Frostback mountains. Haven, if you've ever heard of it. It's a miserable, pious wayside en route to the more popular Temple of Sacred Ashes."
"I've heard of no such recent dissent," He spoke around a small cap bobbing between his teeth. "The media is usually so rapt on those events. Outrage sells, I'm sure you agree."
"Of course you wouldn't. Because all reports were strangled in the cradle and any involved were removed." Unpublished and uncompensated except for a small stipend, she had been ordered to turn in all of her notes and erase every recording. Which she'd done, on paper at least. There was a surviving copy tucked behind a set of dishes in her kitchen cabinet.
"You didn't hear this from me, but…" Chiyo leaned forward, offering up a second pair of hands for the task after first wiping them with the corner of the towel. With a given nod, she copied his methodical motions. "No one in the Chantry wants any word being spread about a growing cult of Shartan."
"And just why are you still hobbling about like an old biddy?"
Dorian peeked over the top of his book at the elf shuffling across the carpet. He sighed as the small woman paced, her sore feet forged a path through the sitting room lined with shelf after shelf of leathery texts and curios. Yet not even his collection of slivered fossils, articulated bones, and various preserved bits of rare animals could distract her current focus.
With nothing more than a shrug and mumbled acknowledgement over the pen-nib pressed against her lips, Chiyo kept her eyes fixed to the copy of her latest draft.
"I should don a white sheet over your head and dub you the manor's new haunt." She paused by the draped window with a miserable groan and then back-pedaled around the plush lounging sofa.
With a snap of the opened halves, Dorian set the novel aside, his eyes tracking her around the room. "Please, though, keep the moaning noises to a minimum during daytime hours. I do have a business to run and I'd prefer my clients not to fall into fainting spells. Are you even listening to me?"
"What was I thinking… they'll never let me publish this…" Frustrated enough to halt the hapless march, her hips pressed into the seat's back behind Dorian's shaking head. She turned the next page with a heavy sigh and began to massacre the words anew with red ink. Doubt had taken root on her original idea, sapping that first instinctual drive to expose the truth.
For the days since returning to the protected confines of the Pavus estate she'd done little more than work, other than to soak her mashed toes in salt baths and rise at terribly late hours. Having spent her nights tearing the article apart at the seams and stitching it back together, the journalist had awoken for the third morning in a row with shredded bits and crumpled balls of paper littered over her bed. And every time she began to read the newest rendition birthed in the wee hours of the day, she hated it even more than the version before.
"If this doesn't get posted, I'm ruined." But by some miracle, it survived to printing...
It was a haphazardous piece without the extensive censoring needed to protect the parties involved, herself notwithstanding. However, lacking all the nitty gritty details, her work felt commercial, pedestrian even at best. And a desperate fabrication at its worst. Subject matter was only the beginning of her problems, any story could be spun into something of interest if done correctly. The stress and hurry she'd placed herself under was leading to a plethora of egregious errors though.
Nothing less than perfect would suffice for submission. She couldn't afford another debacle or time lost on a lengthy stay at the corrections desk. Every verb was placed under scrutiny. Run-ons were ruthlessly punctuated. And the dreadful commas splices… she'd certainly choke for sheer number if they were all plucked from the pages by the publisher and shoved back down her throat.
"My my. You're just as awful as that fiend holed up in the wine cellar. At least you'll grace me with your presence now and then. How does such capricious company find me, and I'm a generous host too. Let's have a look at what's worth skipping breakfast and lunch for, shall we?" Chiyo sneered when the dog-eared stack was snatched away, embarrassed by its boundless defects, yet there was a small relief in being rid of the wretched thing.
She watched with color building in her cheeks as the project's first reader skimmed through, his moustache twitching as he pantomimed a few phrases.
He hates it, of course he does. You couldn't string two sentences together to save your life, let alone your job.
"What do you think?" Her quiet request sounded almost sheepish as she pressed in closer, gauging Dorian's reactions by every pursed puckering of his lip and roll of the eye.
"I'm sorry my dear. This simply won't do."
She wasn't good with knots, but a hangman's noose couldn't be that difficult to tie under duress. Wasn't the drop more important anyways? So long as it killed her before the shame of failure ate her alive…
Hack writer. Without purpose. Died without accomplishment. That will sound great on your tombstone.
"There isn't a single detail describing the immaculate style of my person in here at all. I don't dress like this to be self-effacing." He tsked with a tongue to his teeth and tossed the whole corrections-bludgeoned lot onto the open space beside him on the sofa. "You've only seen a single facet of Solas' boring tale and have missed entirely all the more colorful details of mine."
Chiyo slumped in a defeated lean against the furniture and pressed her ink-smeared palms over her eyes. "I don't have time to start over, or for more interviews, especially not spurious ones. Not when I should have mailed this yesterday."
"Well, then that's a right shame." Dorian collected a delicate snifter from the side table and treated himself to a sip. The passing whiff of pungent brandy that skirted beneath her nose was strong enough to raise her head from its droop. "I'd so hoped you'd be joining us in a few days for the festivities."
"Festivities?" She repeated while reaching for the castoff papers, only to have her fingers swatted away.
His dark lips, wet with liquor, turned into a frisky smile. "You've come to Tevinter ahead of its spookiest seasons after all. A little early for All Soul's day, though here it's nearly a month long event. But if you'd rather go home then accompany me to attend a most spectacular private séance and swary, I understand. And I'm sure your employers will accept this bland, incomplete entry just fine."
"I don't see how a party is going to help my article on lyrium conspiracies." Chiyo's hair shook with the worried ache building behind her brow, her hands cupped around the nape of her strained neck. Writing was a full-bodied experience, exhaustive of all energies and tiresome on the bones.
"You've never been to one in Minrathous then, have you?"