Perfect

Through a blood-red fog, she watched him move, almost unrecognizable, smaller without the protective metal and dragonbone. She would watch him like this forever, moving toward her … so very slowly.

Bree had seen, briefly, the curved edge of the darkspawn shield that had rattled off her skull, snapping reality in two. But she couldn’t remember it now.

Chaos.

Screaming.

That seemed … unreal.

The only thing real was Alistair’s painfully slow progress in her direction. He was getting taller. Or, perhaps, she was getting smaller.

Rocks cut ragged holes in her knees.

They had been asleep, curled into each other’s warmth with chaste touches, mindful of exhaustion but unwilling to lie apart.

And then the screaming had started. Leliana. She’d woken them with a cry to arms. Alistair had been on his feet and gone before the first call had faded through the hills.

O Maker, hear my cry:
Guide me through the blackest nights

Bree had staggered upright, shaking her head to clear sleep’s cobwebs that had been clinging to her concentration, to the words of magic. And then …

Madness.

The darkness of her sanctuary erupted in a seething mass of hatred and putrescence, filth-laden bodies of rot. Darkspawn.

Brianne’s head lolled to the ground, the muscles in her neck weak like poorly spun thread. But she kept her eyes up, locked on his form as he moved. On his face as he shouted at her. But she couldn’t make out any words; only the fear in his eyes, and it ripped her apart. So much fear, my love?

The words had come to her. The magic had come. There were darkspawn bodies around her, frozen, burnt, eviscerated. The electric tingle down her arms and fingers was still there, even as something slammed into her shoulder and the world closed around her head and tilted sideways. The icy whiff of metal, sharp metal above her short wine-red curls was noted and then ignored. Deep furrows dug their way above her eyes as she squinted, clinging to the image of him. Closer.

He was getting closer.

Ah, he’s so beautiful in the darkness.

Torchlight wound through his sun-bright hair and caressed his face as he spun, sword crackling with ice in one hand, shield raised high in the other. His body rolled and flexed with power and darkspawn bodies flew from him like the child’s pantomime of Andraste’s March she’d seen so many years ago, with puppets that sailed boneless and limp as the hand of the Maker brushed them aside.

Unstoppable.

Blood spattered over the muscles of his chest and belly, trickled through the ridges and corded tendons of his arms. It blended and shone with the sweat that poured down his shoulders as he cleared the path between them.

He was coming for her.

But something was terribly wrong. What is wrong?

He moved differently. Smooth and graceful, but differently. Lighter. She could see and admire the push and pull of muscle as the vivid streak of his blade fell and rose again, blooded but undimmed. And then all she could see was sky, and the jagged arc of a genlock’s axe spinning through her vision, descending toward her chest … to stop, braced against the familiar sight of a red tower against white cliffs of Arl Eamon’s coat of arms.

A wet thump stole her attention and she watched dispassionately as the genlock’s head rolled freely away down the slant of the landscape.

Two long legs towered over her, straddled her body. Close to her eyes, a soft linen cuff fluttered against his ankle as those legs contracted, twisted, and bent, but never moved, never shifted from the protective cocoon they created over her. Brianne smiled in the firelight, but remembered. Something’s wrong.

What. Was. Wrong?

She twisted her head to the side at a sound, so incongruous amongst the clang and clamour above her. A whisper of a sound. A minuscule shuffle stepping closer. A blade in the darkness behind the broad back above her. The strong, steady back, heavy with muscle and ridged ribcage perfect for dragging her fingers over. That naked back.

“Alistair!”

The world snapped back into focus, with all the noise, and stench of blood and smoke. Nerve-grating screeches tore through her mind as the spider-limbed form of a darkspawn assassin thrummed above her. Three of the broken-faced hurlocks in front of him, Alistair could not turn in time. To Bree, his un-armoured flesh seemed to call the knife’s edge speeding toward it.

She clambered to her knees, but could not stand up in time. Instead she launched herself forward, wrapping the shriek’s feet in her own limbs. It fell on her, all claws and scraping. Bree lost track of where she began and ended, breaking fingernails on the hard-shelled skin she clung to. She pulled and wrenched, tearing at the long, spindly legs. Alistair’s whole, beloved back in her mind’s eye, where her fingers found purchase, she would not allow them to release. She used her hands, her arms, her teeth to grab and confound, mindless of the blows the creature rained down on her.

Don’t let go. Don’t. Let. Go!

She closed her eyes and held tight long after the shriek stopped moving. When gentle hands slid over her fingers and pried them apart, she screamed and cursed and searched for new places to hook and grip in their twisted embrace.

She felt herself lifted, even as she tore at the solid body against her. Soft words she couldn’t understand buzzed against her ear as she railed through a ragged throat. The world moved around her, blazing fire, glistening metal and blood, and was blocked away in a breeze of cool air and canvass.

Shooting a dark glance at the concerned stares of the rest of their companions, Alistair carried Brianne’s small form easily. And though she began to calm inside the familiar confines of her tent, she continued to struggle against him.

He wrapped his arms around her and compressed as gently as she could, but still she fought until each breath came in violent, heaving gasps.

“Bree! Brianne! Stop!...stop, Bree. It’s me.” Alistair was frantic. His blood still churned inside him, the memory of her eyes as she’d slumped to her knees in the firelight replaying through his mind again and again. “Shhhhhh …My love, stop. Please, Bree. It’s Alistair.”

Gasps shifted into sobs, no less violent. “A...Alistair?”

Oh, praise the Maker! “Yes, my love.”

All her terror seemed to wash through her, culminating in an angry wail. “You bastard! You … you’re … you’re not wearing any armour!”

His arms slackened and he drew back to stare at her filthy, tear-stained face. “I’m what?”

“Oooohh, Elgar’nan,” Bree groaned into his chest, clinging to him again with no less desperation. Her eyes were still soft and unfocused, and she stared up at his face, and wiped away at the damp trickles he could feel sliding down his cheek. Her questing fingers found a rent in the skin of his shoulders and she flinched in his arms when he hissed. Whether the wound came from a tainted blade or Bree’s struggles, he couldn’t tell.

His own breath still coming in soft hisses, he sank clumsily to the ground, taking her with him and pulling her into his lap. Her hands shook with palsy as she cradled his jaw and pressed her trembling mouth to his. When he sighed and responded, opening his mouth and drawing his tongue between her lips, she cried out and pulled him to her, touching his face, his shoulders – his back – as if unconvinced of the reality of him. She licked blood from his collarbone, sweat from his neck and he, in turn, buried long fingers in her crimson hair and pressed his cheek to the top of her head.

And, as the pull and pulse of battle left him, he began to shake with her. He tightened his grip on her hair and pulled her head back, exposing her throat to his mouth. He breathed in the scent of her, of sweat and smoke. The rasp of his cheek reddened her skin as he tasted dirt and tears.

And blood.

Alistair froze beneath her, pulling his hand away from her skull. He stared in horror at the red stains on his fingers, as if the very colour of her hair was clinging to his skin. “Dear Maker. Bree, you’re injured. Stop. You have to…”

“No!” A low, feral growl hissed from between her teeth. “No.”

She clawed at the thin shift she’d fallen asleep in only hours earlier. “The only thing I need, Alistair, is you. Inside me. Now.”

“Bree. You’re bleeding."

“So are you.”

The torn material slid from her shoulders, exposing her small, high breasts. She grabbed his hand and placed it over one of the hardened nipples and he shuddered. Of their own accord, his fingers pressed and pulled at her breast, and his mouth lowered to the other. She bit him – hard – at the juncture of his shoulder and throat, and gave a small moan of triumph as her hands found evidence of the effect she had on him.

Alistair closed his eyes to regain some measure of control, but his vision only returned to the memory of her falling. Falling, surrounded by darkness and filth, and him too far to stop it. The memory of his heart stopping dead in his chest.

His eyes flared open again and this time, when her clear blue gaze met his, he pulled her hard into his body as if he could protect her here and now from the injury he’d allowed earlier. Her small fingers, splayed out over his chest, burned to the touch, branding his skin and the thrum of his blood beneath. She buried her face in him, rubbed her cheek against him like a cat seeking warmth. Her mouth wouldn’t stop. Her teeth caught at his neck, his ear, his lips, and she pushed him backwards onto the jumbled pile of blankets they’d only recently abandoned.

Her hands shaking too much to untie the knot at his waist, she pulled and ripped at the material of his breeches until they tore beneath her fingers. Only when she reached inside to stroke the aching length of his shaft did he reach up and hold her by the shoulders.

“By all that’s holy, Bree! Look at me.”

And she did, tears spilling over from her brilliant eyes. Her body shaking in his grasp. “Alistair.” His name was a low prayer on her lips. “I saw that shriek and …” Her breath hitched on a sob. “Please, Alistair, let me feel you.”

Groaning in surrender, he pulled her down on top of his belly, wrapped his fingers around her hips and thrust once, burying himself fully in her hot centre. Almost instantly, she convulsed around him. He heard his own hoarse cry as he withdrew and arched again, feeling her slide, hot and wet over his erection. She rode the hard push of his body with a rising tide of gasps and whimpers that reached down into his chest and clawed at his guts with desire.

The slick glide of her flesh on his tightened and pulled, drawing on his lungs and his head until neither thought nor breath had any purpose but to live inside Brianne. He watched her hair, a shadow of red in the dark, and her smooth, white skin above him and ground his hips up, losing himself in her.

He knew he was losing control.

Didn’t care.

Suddenly Brianne tensed, her body bowing backwards, adding a new pressure to the raging storm. His belly clenched and shook beneath her. Her cry of release was guttural, primal, and the pulse of her climax splashed over his cock and his mind shattered in a rough shout and a million tiny explosions along his spine. She cried out again as he thrust into her once more, spilling sticky hot into her, and down again onto his own skin.

She collapsed on top of him, her small frame heaving on his chest was so slight he could barely feel the weight of her. Still fully sheathed in her body, he wrapped his arms around her shoulders and inhaled the musky scent of their joining. He stroked the deep fire of her hair with coarse, trembling fingers.

“Alistair?” His name was muffled, her face buried in his throat.

“Yes?” He was amazed he could speak at all.

“I love you.”

He closed his eyes on a shuddering breath, struggling with a strange pressure that seemed to have set up shop in his chest.

“Alistair?”

“Yes, Bree?”

“Did you hear me?”

He didn’t open his eyes. “No. I think you need to say it again.”

She laughed in a small gasp, and stroked her fingers down his face in a way guaranteed to drive him mad. When he finally looked up at her, her face was serious, intent, and she locked her gaze on his.

“I love you, Alistair.”

He reached for a quip, a joke to deflect the weight gathering inside his heart. Nothing. Left defenseless, he reached up to brush a strand of wet hair plastered to the side of her face. “I … Oh, sweet Andraste’s garters, Bree!”

Alistair sat up abruptly, setting her naked body down on the mess of blankets, and lurched to the pack he had carefully stored on the far side of the tent. Fumbling in the dark, he dragged the pack back over to where she sat, confused and blinking. With a vocabulary that Revered Mother Anais would have switched him for, he tried – and failed – to light the small wax taper he’d dug from his pouches. Before his rather limited supply of curses dried up, Bree leaned over and extended one finger. A tiny spark flew to the wick and the candle sputtered to life.

Despite the anxiety roiling in his gut, Alistair couldn’t help but smile at the satisfied grin she shot him over the dancing flame.

“Come here. I need to look at your head,” he commanded roughly, carefully setting the candle in an engraved metal lantern. “Maker’s breath, I’m a monster, Bree. I can’t believe I…that I’d…”

Her head bent obediently under his gentle fingers, Brianne reached up to touch his mouth. “It’s ok. I’m ok,” she insisted. She shot him a sly glance from under thick lashes, and her lips quirked. “Much, much better than ok, in fact.”

His hands stilled. “Really? I…no. You won’t distract me that easily. Again.” He glared at her. “You see this? This is my serious face. Serious face means I’m serious.”

“Yes, Alistair,” she whispered meekly enough to rouse his suspicions, but she only sighed and leaned into his body as he cleaned dried blood from her scalp and her face.

“Ah, I see. Yes. Small enough, but a head wound will bleed, won’t it?”

She nodded against his chest and burrowed deeper into his warmth.

“Hey. Hey, Bree!”

“What?”

“Don’t go to sleep. Not after a knock in the head. Stay awake. Talk to me.”

“About what?”

“There are a number of topics we could discuss, my dear. How about the benefits and drawbacks of Orlesian aquaculture, or Brother Aeliotti’s dissertation on the third commandment of the Chant, or the fine quality and texture of Nevarran …”

“Why don’t I just tell you how much I love you?”

“..cheeses… Oh! I, uh, suppose we could come to a meeting of minds on that particular discourse.”

Brianne drew his arms around her shoulders and settled into his lap. “I hope you’re prepared for a long talk, my love.”

“I shall endeavour to endure.”