Vir Lath Sa'vunin Chapters Forty-Seven and Forty-Eight

[lenna_nightrunner]

A Dalish-centric AU gen fic featuring two Mahariel Wardens, one bastard prince, and lingering ghosts.

Title: Vir Lath Sa'vunin (We Love One More Day)
Rating: T
Authors: twist_shimmy and lenna_nightrunner
Post Word Count: 2680
Summary: When their parents died, Tesni Mahariel was left to raise her brother Caerwyn with the help of the rest of their clan. True to their penchant for getting into trouble, Caerwyn and Tamlen went hunting one day and ran afoul of a mirror, of all things. The next thing Tesni knew, Caerwyn had been recruited by the Grey Wardens. As if she’d let some shemlen just take her brother away! Determined to keep Caerwyn safe, Tesni goes after them, and antics ensue. She’ll stop the Blight to protect her family, Caerwyn will help--grumbling all the while--and Alistair will do his best to bond with his tattooed and bristly new brethren. When all is said and done, the blurred lines between friendship and blood bonds will draw them down a path that will change all three of them forever.


In which sleep and patience are difficult to come by.

Chapter Forty-Seven: Within the Heat of Passion's War, Lust is Spilled Upon the Floor, Staining Red the Wasted Metaphor--the Selfish Need For Something More. (Birthday Massacre)

TESNI

For the next week or so, I counted the passage of time in pain. My would-be captor had broken my sodding nose, but Zevran counseled against trying to find a healer.

"Elves with bruised faces are common, my Warden. Elves who can afford healers are not, and we do not want to ruin your disguise so soon, hmmm?"

"We’re not exactly elves who can afford healers anyway," I admitted. And so I grimaced, and let him care for me, thinking all along that I’d been ruined by Wynne.

Every morning Zevran would wash off my lip, and every night he would spin the sodding stitches. "The skin will grow over them if we do not do this, especially as quickly as you are healing."

Of course Grey Warden healing would make stitches problematic.

Then the excruciating pain of removing them, which Zevran was kind enough to dilute with more of the Pearl’s cider. By then the swelling behind my bruises had gone down, and I just looked... yellow. Yellow, and very angry about it.

Zevran, I learned, had been following Templars while I made friendly with the guardsmen. By now, he had a short list of high-ranking members of the order who enjoyed lyrium rather more than they should.

"I think now we can keep watch on our mages, yes?" he said with a smile, sitting beside me on the bed. "People will do many things to feed or hide a bad habit."

That seemed like a better plan than the one I’d managed, which mostly involved introducing myself to the Knight-Commander of Denerim and hoping for the best. When I admitted as much to Zevran, he laughed until I blushed.

"Fine, fine!" I smacked him in the ear. "I’ll stick to raising us money."

"And if we run out of errands to do for our Sergeant Kylon?"

I shrugged. "The Dalish aren’t above stealing from shems."

He gave me a candid stare. "In that case, my Warden, a word of advice. Stop wearing armor."

It took him the rest of the night to convince me that was actually a good idea, and a small chunk of the morning to goad me into a simple dress. It would have taken even longer had he not been able to prove to me that a dagger could reasonably be hidden in the ridiculous girdle laced around my waist.

"Now, drop your shoulders." When I didn’t, he shoved at them until I felt hunched slightly forward. "If you stand like that and never look a human in the eye, no one will look twice at your tattoo, tesora."

Idiocy. I didn’t believe him until we’d made it to the market and I walked right past Sergeant Kylon without him recognizing me. I decided as I stood nearby that I was finished doing errands for him and his watchmen; as far as they knew, the Warden still had armor and red hair, and that worked out in my favor should someone else with money come asking after me.

Hiding in plain sight still seemed wrong, but I was beginning to believe that it was possible. Zevran and I spent the day liberating customers of their coin and seeking a merchant who traded to the Bannorn with regularity so we could begin sending messages to Alistair. Elgar’nan slinked through the crowd, watching us from a distance, which made me feel safer than I’d expected.

Shale was in a foul mood when we returned that evening. "Did the icy elf have fun gallivanting about outdoors? I believe the paint may have peeled slightly while it was away."

"I have a present for you," I replied, and watched my golem become instantly less morose.

"Oh? What is it?"

"Something we found in a magic shop." I unwrapped a series of slender blue crystals from the cloth the Tranquil had packaged them in. "You can use these, right?"

Zevran and I spent the next few minutes installing them in slots on her shoulders, and he stared and crossed his arms while she filled the room with a soft blue glow. "This does little to make her less noticeable, you know."

I shrugged. "So she’s some mage’s golem, and we’re the knife-ears meant to keep children from poking her with sticks."

Shale chuckled. "I like this idea."

Zevran was less impressed, but had enough sense not to say so in front of Shale. He brought us dinner from the main room while I finished my letter to Alistair with this city is terrible and I miss you. While I ate, Zevran read it over, and then to my horror tossed it into the fireplace.

"What!"

He shook his head at me. "Too much information, my Warden. Do you want anyone who reads that letter to know where to find us?"

I buried my head in my hands. "Why did I learn to write? What is the point if I can’t tell people anything?"

"Write it again."

It took three more drafts before he declared it safe, and I went to bed covered in ink and more than slightly annoyed at letters. Alistair was going to read that and be convinced that I hated him.

A poor thought to have before bed, as it turned out: the archdemon spoke in my dreams for the first time in days, and I woke cold, sweating, and missing my brothers. When I opened my eyes, I saw Shale looking over at me from her post at the window.

"What will the icy elf do without its fellow Wardens to pile upon?"

I sat up and looked for my trousers. "Go for a walk."

The main room of the inn was nearly lightless, but as I walked toward the door a soft voice stopped me in my tracks. "My Warden? What are you doing awake?"

I turned my head toward the sound. "The archdemon and I got into another fight."

Zevran stepped out of the shadows and shook his head. "Tsk, tsk, he is so rude, your archdemon. Still, I think walking alone in Denerim at night might not be the best solution."

Oh, Creators’ sakes. "You wouldn’t say that if you could--" I closed my eyes and forced the harshness out of my voice. "I need my brothers."

He moved closer and put his arms around me, running a hand down my hair. "Relax, tesora."

I did. His blood didn’t soothe mine, but he was warm, and his arms around my waist felt nice. I pressed my face into his chest and took several deep breaths, waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal and the last of the nightmare’s memories to fade. Eventually, I realized that I had been about to head outdoors unarmed, and spent a few seconds silently thanking Zevran for his timing.

"What does tesora mean?" I mumbled into his chest.

There was a long silence, and I had just resigned myself to the fact that he would never tell me when his hands slid forward and took me by my wrists. "The first time, I thought you asked me to be cruel. Now, I simply think that I am never going to be able to make you see on your own."

"...What?" I tried to pull my hands free, but he tightened his grip on my wrists, then pressed his forehead to mine.

"Tesora means treasure," he murmured. "A darling thing. I call you this because it is what you are."

I could feel his breath against my cheek, and dropped my head. "Zev."

"Look at me." When I kept my eyes pinned on the floor, he shook me by my wrists. "¡Mírame!"

"Let me go!" I pulled my hands away and turned for my room, but his hands were on my shoulders, and no matter how I twisted, he stayed with me. Several steps later I had slammed into a wall, and he had me by the arms again. I closed my eyes and wondered that none of the shems had heard our scuffle. The darkness of the room made his breathing sound disconcertingly loud, and beneath it all my heart was racing.

"...Tesni."

My eyes came open and I stared at him in shock--months, and he’d never once used my name--and then his lips were against mine, and his hands were in my hair, holding me close to him. My heart thudded once, twice, and then I was overwhelmed by all the sensations I’d forgotten came with being in the arms of a warm, strong elf whose patience had run out.

Idiot. How had I not seen?

I knew I should stop him, and that we should talk, and so I twined him in my arms and opened my mouth for his seeking tongue and let my blood deafen the last few startled thoughts coursing through my mind.

---

Chapter Forty-Eight: On Sleepless Roads the Sleepless Go. (Jimmy Eat World)

CAERWYN

Dirt. Rocks, and ruins, and more dirt. Everything was grey and brown and that orange that clung to my poor Chat’len’s beautiful fur. It was probably for the best, though; his white would’ve made us more visible to the relentless onslaught of darkspawn, demons, ogres, overgrown lizards, and Creators knew what else.

I hadn’t appreciated not having to deal with the burning in my blood that meant darkspawn when we were running errands for the alas’len. Now that we were cutting our way through them in these sodding tunnels I felt it almost all the time.

Then I realized that it wasn’t receding anymore when we weren’t fighting darkspawn. There was always at least an unpleasant prickling, and the further we got into the caves, the worse it got. Soon it wasn’t even prickling anymore, just burning all the time. I couldn’t understand it. Why would it be so bad if we weren’t fighting that many more darkspawn at a time than usual?

Darkspawn live underground, Caerwyn. The dwarven empire has been losing ground to them for centuries.

And we were walking right into the place they’d had to abandon. Great.

It became almost as bad as Ostagar. I couldn’t see most of them, but they were there, all around. My ability to sense them nearby became useless and I got sick of them sneaking up on us. Between that and the constant burning, my patience was wearing thin by the end of our first week in the caves. Well, we thought it was about a week. There was no sun to tell us for sure.

We spent what might’ve been our eighth day cutting through what seemed like hundreds of those sodding lizards, and I’d had enough. We hadn’t even seen any darkspawn since the previous ‘morning’ and the burning in my blood was worse than ever.

After the last lizard in the latest group of them was sliced in half by Oghren’s axe, I snapped. The air was close and stale and hot from that liquid rock we saw sometimes and my veins felt like they were on fire. I was coated in a mixture of sweat and lizard blood that made dirt cling to my skin and my bangs stick to my face. I couldn’t take it anymore.

The sound of my helmet hitting the stone wall I’d thrown it against echoed more loudly than I’d expected. Leliana made a startled noise and Oghren raised one of his bushy eyebrows at me. I dropped one of my daggers near my feet, gathered my bangs in my fist, and with an angry shout sliced through the hair with my other knife until it was half as long.

"Caerwyn!" Leliana gaped at me.

"It's too hot," I growled in frustration, grabbing at the next hank of sweaty hair.

"All right," she said, and rushed to pull my hands away. "All right, but you can’t just hack it off like that! You’ll hurt yourself."

I snorted. As if my reflexes were that bad.

"Maybe we should make camp here," she suggested, eyeing me warily.

The area was actually a good spot--an alcove with only one entrance and a little stream of fresh water running along one side of it. I’d never thought there could be water underground, but it was lucky there was, because our waterskins wouldn’t’ve lasted as long as we needed them to.

I glared at the blood-matted hair that lay on the ground at my feet. "Fine."

An hour later I was sitting with my shirt off in a ring of cut hair, wondering how there’d actually been that much on my head to begin with.

"There," Leliana said, putting her knife down and brushing off my shoulders. "I wish I had some proper scissors. Daggers aren’t... ideal for this."

My hair was too short to run my fingers through when I tried. Weird. Leliana told me to wash up, and when I came back she rubbed at it with a cloth until it was mostly dry.

"How does it look?"

Leliana cocked her head to one side, appraising me. "It makes you look... older."

"Good?"

"Yes. I like it." She smiled. "You look like a leader.”

I didn’t feel like one.



Then the nightmares came. I’d been having them every now and then like I used to when I was with Tesni and Alistair, but this was different. He was there, in my head, worse than ever, screaming and commanding me to come to him. Furious that I wouldn’t.

At first I hadn’t wanted to sleep because of the nightmares, but soon I couldn’t. It didn’t seem to matter whether I was awake or asleep. The archdemon was always there. Everything was green when it should’ve been orange, and even if we went days without seeing darkspawn my blood still burned.

And I’d thought magic’d been bad.

Leliana noticed almost right away, but I tried to hide it from Sten and Oghren for as long as I could. If they knew, they might not listen to me anymore, and I began to think they’d be right if they decided not to. The longer I went without sleep the surer I became that Tesni'd made a mistake thinking I could do this. We were going to die down here in this stupid, dirty hole, and it was all my fault.

“Caerwyn.” Her voice against my ear. “Wake up.”

I hadn’t been asleep. I was never asleep. Just unconscious.

When I stirred I felt Leliana’s hand rubbing over my chest soothingly. Sitting above me, watching me ‘sleep.’ “What is it?”

“You were just....” She tried to hide her worry. “It’s nothing.”

But her eyebrows were drawn together. I tried to force a smile.

“Liar.”

She opened her mouth to respond, but I pulled her down for a kiss. When it broke, I kissed her again, and tugged at clothing that felt rough to my stinging nerves. Then skin, and her hair sliding between my fingers, and her breath, and her touch, and when it was over I started it again, because she could drown out the archdemon’s screaming and mask the darkspawn’s burning, if only for a little while.



“Sore?” Oghren said to Leliana with a knowing smirk when she struggled to shoulder her pack the next morning. “Not surprised.”

I gave him a warning look, but he only chuckled. “You’re not foolin’ anyone, sweet cheeks. You make more noise with your girl than you do talkin’.”

When I didn’t say anything, his smirk widened. “Exactly.”

Oghren spent the rest of the day chuckling lowly whenever Leliana winced or made a misstep while fighting, and when I noticed Sten giving me what seemed like disapproving looks, I began to feel guilty. He probably thought it’d been stupid and irresponsible of me to ‘injure’ a warrior like that.

Even though I knew he was right, that didn’t stop me from silently asking her to distract me every ‘night.’ It was selfish and made me a bad leader, but I didn’t care. And, Creators smile on her, she never denied me.

Er'asha, I thought when she’d try to sing me to sleep afterward. Emma er'asha. My bard. Please, make it stop.

Leliana noticed almost right away.