Who: Leliana & Gale with Zatanna as a guest appearance What: Leliana dreams about the alternative reality of Redcliffe, Gale gets a half-dead girlfriend for Christmas When: Early, very early Christmas morning Where: Gale & Leli's house Rating/Warnings: Blood, mentions of torture Status: Complete!
Sharing a bed with Leliana was like sharing it with a ghost. Or perhaps even your own shadow. Always quiet, never a snore or whine, barely even any hints of restless tossing and turning. Even amidst the nightmares, even throughout every single terrible thing endured in that second lifetime, worlds away, there had never been even much of a peep - at least aside from the quiet breathing. Skin contact confirmed her presence, as she was often pressed up against the towering man who also called this room his. There was warmth, too. Usually.
Tonight, not so much.
Cold skin. Sickly, white, with scars that had never been there before. Methodical incisions that never healed right. Their sheets were damp by something warm. Not sweat, no - sweat wouldn’t stain them so darkly, or smell so close to iron. Things were sticking out of her. Wooden things. Arrows. Two of them lodged in the front - shoulder and side - keeping most of the blood plugged, though it still trickled down her skin like crimson streams. It hurt, everything did, even the wounds that were closed or didn’t even carry over. Phantom pains that set fire to her black veins. Black, due to their experiments.
Leliana had died.
It wasn’t how her dreams originally came to a close, no - those ended with Corypheus being put down like the rabid dog he was, the tear closed, her official election as Divine Victoria. Taking the reigns of the Chantry to do a complete overhaul, her mission to eradicate inequality and erase the hate and fear it so strongly taught throughout the centuries. These were different. A timesplit, an alternate version that had existed due to rifts in time. Redcliffe had been infiltrated, they had prepared to take down the Tevinter mages - until the Inquisitor vanished, and everything had gone to hell. She’d heard about it. Knew that she’d died in this alternate reality; a sacrifice to help the Inquisitor and Dorian to make sure this future wouldn’t come to be.
Yet she didn’t think she’d ever see it for herself. To see that year crammed into a single night’s sleep. A body for them to mutilate, to experiment with, to torture. A guinea pig for Felix’s cure. Blight sickness, she could feel it under her skin - it was why the veins were dark. No, she didn’t turn into a dark spawn, wasn’t she lucky? Her body had a natural resistance no matter how much they tried and tried and tried, and nothing could feel more satisfactory than her handler’s neck being snapped between her thighs.
It made waking up, however, very uncomfortable. Tonight, she did make a sound. Something like a quiet whimper through the dead silence of the night when she forced herself upright, fingers trembling through the air until she wrapped them around the arrow embedded in her shoulder, right in the very bone.
Merry Christmas.
Gale was on Panem repeats now. Not exactly the best situation, because everything about that world trickled and bled into the same pile in his head until it all expanded into a swell of hot, festering wounds - he hadn’t ‘gotten over’ what his ending was, hadn’t moved past the loneliness and sense of betrayal he felt by the person he loved, whom he called his best friend. The same person who looked at him like he was a monster.
A ruined country, stained with the skeletal remains of the travesty known as the Hunger Games - they would pick up again and begin anew, but it was all horrible nightmares he saw. And wretched dreamscapes. No color, life was long, it was lonely and bleak - eventually he’d probably begin to enjoy the misery like an addict. Sadness felt as good as his anger did. That was what he was trying to avoid here, but after the debacle with his fake death, he found that he was...content. With Leliana and their animal family, that was where he was happiest. Her, the nugs, Bella Nutella, the plants in teacups that he’d picked out just for her.
He wasn’t a heavy sleeper. It was why he noticed her pain first and foremost, heard her whimper - and he was awake immediately. “Leli - “ The blood, fuck, the blood, it was like he knew right away this was going to be a crock of shit and when he turned on the bedside lamp he got a good glimpse of the mess.
Nope, he wasn’t wrong.
“What happened? Fuck - “ He made a choked sound, like he was swallowing back the bile, and even though he’d seen worse it was her; that made it worse than just about anything by default. “Don’t move, okay, I’m just...”
Two arrows. Shoulder and her side. Gale could tell right away that the shoulder one met bone, which meant it would be difficult to get it out because it was in deep. If it wasn’t, it’d be a matter of widening the wound and removing it. Now, he’d have to use wire or something to brace himself and yank. “We’ll get them out, it’s going to be okay.”
Whiskey. He needed something strong for her. They’d have to do this the old-fashioned way, and then heal the wounds the magical way - he still had her friend on speed dial.
Leliana’s mouth opened to talk. Nothing coherent came out, only pained croaks, vocals trying to formalize some kind of thoughtform. Metal was a taste in her tongue, lips cracked and filled in wet red. Those arrows were meant to kill, she wanted them out - so much she visibly scowled, anger etched in the details of her face. Which was not pretty. Not tonight.
A cough rattled her throat - it was an attempt to talk and eventually, words formed. “Different future,” she rasped, the accented voice uncharacteristically hoarse. Rough surfaces scratching and rubbing together, like nails scratching down her esophagus. “War prisoner. Get it out.” It hurts, it hurts, those goddamn arrows needed to get out. Even if it meant opening the dam to let the flow of blood free, she didn’t care. Maybe she’d be lucky enough to pass out for the rest. It’d be easier for her, wouldn’t it? Embrace the darkness behind her lids, but she couldn’t - wouldn’t - put Gale through that.
Awake, blinking eyes, even writhing in pain. It meant life. It was a good sign.
War prisoner. Gale hated those words - and he hated whoever had done this to Leliana. He didn’t know who it was, but those pesky emotions were whiplashing back and forth as he was catapulted out of dreamland and rocketed into the land of hellish reality - still, he kept it together by finding the whiskey for her. Sweet, strong, and delicious. A sinister, old-fashioned anesthetic. He’d done similar things on the battlefield when they were seemingly shit out of luck - he’d sewn crude wounds and patched skin together, pulled out debris and shrapnel. He could do this too.
“Drink,” he told her, and she was upright already. Literally, from the bottle would do. They had to work quickly. “I’m gonna get them out, Leli, I promise. I promise I won’t let you down. It’ll hurt a lot, but...”
His grey eyes were as reliable and tough as steel, his resolve unbreakable. “Trust me.”
The one in her side first. Fingers slid around the arrow wound on her skin to hold it there, to prevent it from opening up into too big of a gash. Then his other hand snapped a pair of tweezers, the biggest they had, and rooting around for the arrowhead he got traction and pulled. Pulled hard.
“I do,” she said, words spoken with a certainty that scraped the back of her mouth - and she drank that whiskey. Guzzled it, really, even if she didn’t find the taste delicious in the slightest. It seared her tastebuds, burned all the way down but the feeling was pleasurable in comparison to waking as a human pincushion. Some spilled, joined the stains of gore on her nightgown, where it’d been ripped with the shaft sticking from her side.
Gale knew what had to be done. Leliana did too, even through the haze of physical agony, and appreciated the speedy response - rip it out, rip it quick, it was the only merciful thing to do. And even though she’d braced herself for the removal (it would be far from painless), the scream had been instinct. Short and abrupt, enough to startle the ravens and have their wings flap and their vocals squawk. It only served to frighten the hiding nugs even more. Hands groped the best for the sheets to press against the open wound. Pressure. Add pressure, keep the blood loss to a minimum, stay awake.
One down, one to go. The second one would surely be worse - the first one had been in soft tissue, this one was in bone. “I’m -” A swallow, the aftertaste of whiskey tingling. “I’m okay. You’re doing fine.”
Unlike in the movies, you couldn’t just grab the stick part and give the protrusion the ol’ heave-ho. That would make things worse, but luckily Gale did know how to correctly remove these suckers - he’d shot enough to know, had pulled enough free from his kills without breaking or wasting precious, hand-crafted arrows. He also knew it would hurt, and it did, so while he too may have prepared for Leliana’s scream that didn’t mean he felt nothing. There was wincing, face contorted briefly at the idea of being the one to cause her pain - yet it had to be done, no other choice was available right now.
“You’re okay,” he repeated, both for her sake and his. “This one’s gonna be quick. Drink more if it helps.” Hell, if she passed out, he wouldn’t blame her. Even he would need a stiff drink after all this.
Pressure applied to the wound on her side, and he pressed gauze there, cotton and other makeshift bandage supplies (you’d be in an idiot to live in the OC and not have at least the bare bones of a first aid kit in your house). But he couldn’t keep doing that, he had to use both hands to remove the damn thing in her shoulder. Sweat beaded on his brow, it felt about a million degrees in here despite how he was shirtless and wearing just pajama pants, but he dug in with those tweezers again and - using all the strength in him - wrenched the arrowhead free from where it was lodged in her very skeleton.
More whiskey was tempting. Aside from the anesthetic benefits, she could certainly use it - but she opted not to, to focus more on pressing the gauze against her side. It was a duller twinge now. Like a pulse it throbbed, though the expectation of what was to come next seemed like a sufficient distraction. It all seemed like child’s play compared to the next step.
Her breath sharp, labored and anxious. Leliana wasn’t a stranger to pain. There’d been stabbings (Marjolaine, you darling), there’d been shootings, all of it fairly brief before extraction from the mission came. There was nothing to compare this to, and when Gale had pulled her body went with it effortlessly. She was light, the weight of a feather, she didn’t have the strength (especially right now) to jerk the opposite end but -
There it was, the second high-pitched piercing cry that came with being freed from projectiles buried in her. Relief, too - it was very much present - and all that tension from held from the embedded arrowheads bled out (literally). Perhaps that alcoholic elixir kicked in more, too, or the pain had fried the senses into a state gradual numbness.
Not that she’d complain.
She fell back against the headboard. Conscious, blood vessels still visibly dark underneath that pallid skin. Everything in her line of vision looked blurry, even Gale, and blinked bleary eyes. “I’m not dead,” she hoarsely deduced, brow furrowed. “But I died.”
Well, hold a mirror to her and she’d very much argue she looked dead. But that’d be something to bitterly muse about later.
The arrow, bloodied and a nice gory souvenir, was dropped beside the bed with the other one and Gale wanted to pull Leliana into his arms and kiss the hell out of her - maybe pretend that everything was fine, but it wasn’t. They weren’t out of the woods yet. “You died there, but you’re not dead here,” he said firmly, brushing some of that sweaty ginger hair from her face and leaning in to plant a kiss on her forehead - the most he would allow himself, but the adrenaline was pumping and he had to push through, to ensure that those nasty wounds from where arrows were literally ripped out of her didn’t infect her or something.
Not to mention how it looked like she’d been injected with ink - all that darkness thrumming beneath the surface of ivory skin was foreboding.
“I’m guessing that they tried to poison you too,” he noted, with a worried glance, brow furrowed as he reached for his cell phone. “Keep the pressure on all that, I’ll call your friend. The same one who healed me, right?”
Gale’s mouth to her forehead could have generated steam. He felt like an inferno, and she was ice. Clammy. Sickly. “Blight disease,” Leliana whispered, purplish eyelids cutting her sight for several seconds. “According to their findings, I have a natural resistance.” Very nice of them to tell her, no? “It will pass.” No death, not even a risk of becoming an unsightly dark spawn. It was odd, but she supposed it was best to count her blessings.
Her entire body hummed with an ache, a subdued vibration in her flesh and bones. The shoulder wound, along with the one in her side - they’d flare with a twinge but overall that swimmy feeling helping drown out the discomfort was almost pleasant. Dull, tired eyes flickered to the cell phone. Zee. He’d call - merde, what time was it? Christmas morning?
This place had such rude timing.
“Zee,” she eventually nodded. With guilt, a smidge of it, but Zatanna would come without a second thought. And lecture indignantly for any uttered apologies, no doubt.
Ho, ho, ho. This wasn’t exactly how Gale intended to wake up on Christmas morning, but the Fates had other plans. Oh, well - he hadn’t set out cookies and milk for Santa, or carrots for the reindeer; instead, he and Leli were going to probably have breakfast in bed and just enjoy the bliss of doing nothing and watching cheesy holiday, feel-good movies. There was no work for Gale today, and he was glad for it - sometimes having two jobs was difficult, but he managed.
“She’s coming,” he told Leli, hand going to her forehead - and unnerved with how freezing she felt. Like she had rolled around in that freakish snow dusting their yard and the plants they attempted to salvage with sheet coverings. But Gale had just barely gotten the words out, and that was when Zatanna showed up.
In the room. No puff of smoke, just a slight shimmer and ripple of the air like a force field. A pop of magic. And she was in her pajamas, so she hadn’t wasted any time.
“Now that is...not really what I would recommend for a Christmas holiday, you being stuck with arrows,” she spoke with an eyebrow raise, then shifted to sit beside the hot mess known as Leliana. “...what’s all this?” Her hands hovered over the wound on the redhead’s side, but she meant the black tint to her skin.
“Some type of Blight disease, it’s bullshit. She’s going to be fine, right?” Gale was concerned, to say the least.
Zatanna nodded. The arrow wounds, the torn flesh and tissue, that she could heal easily. She wasn’t certain about foreign diseases, but she could try. The flesh wounds first, however - those began to close and seal up with a murmur of backward-speak.
Leliana managed to chuckle sardonically. “Certainly not what I’d recommend, either,” she smirked, barely. She looked exhausted, teetering the line of consciousness. Almost corpse-like too, if it weren’t for her heaving chest, blinking eyes and beating heart. Blight sickness wouldn’t take her. Those arrows would have, if it weren’t for the soldier in her bed.
But the presence of the mistress of smoke and mirrors was soothing; she always had that air about her, didn’t she? Could also be because she knew about the perks of her gift, the healing magic those hands worked - it meant the pain would subside. Relief from it. Air sucked in for a deep inhale, she curled her hand around one of Gale’s to squeeze. “It...was another reality. A time split, from magic.” Her voice sounded a little stronger. “Some of us were captured. Experimented on, for a year. My sturdiness surprised them, I suppose.”
Maker, she remembered - all the red lyrium. It grew everywhere, infested Redcliffe castle like a disease. Cassandra, Blackwall, Bull. All three of them were infused with it, ill from its effects, voices contorted. Corypheus had won. Yet Alexius continued to find a cure for his son, and she’d been the body they’d used to test things. There were scars to prove it. Scars that were never there.
“Time splits are always dangerous,” Zatanna stated gravely, satisfied as she watched the arrow wounds heal - like they hadn’t been there, however the old bloodstains on Leliana’s nightgown and the sheets still lingered. “But...I am glad that this alternate reality is just that, what could have been, and not ultimately your fate.” Magic, time magic that is, was powerful stuff. She’d moved time and space enough in other world Gotham to know - it had ended up saving the world, though that type of power was still daunting to her. The preference to leave it to her dream self was very much there, but as always, Zee would do what needed to be done regardless of preference anyway.
Gale provided support for Leliana, so she could rest against him as he held her hand, not wanting to let go. She was looking better to him, obviously not so war-ravaged and plagued with holes, more color and a flush to her skin. But this disease... “Can you heal what she was poisoned with too?” he wanted to know. She said she had a resistance, sure, but if he could get her to the point where she wasn’t walking around with toxins in her veins then all the better.
“Let me get you a healing potion. It might be something you need to drink, for the internal effects,” Zee said after another murmur of backward-speak, the bottle appeared in her hand - summoned right to her.
Magic was warm. It flowed through the blood and revitalized every weakened cell, helped those open wounds stitch flesh back together, gave her back some semblance of strength. That pulsating ache waned, and soon all that would be left was a whiskey-induced haze. “Alternate, perhaps, but still very much a reality,” she snorted. It existed. A time and place where all of Thedas was lost, where they all perished and the sacrifice helped only another timeline, not theirs. Still, she’d do it again, she knew she would - one existence like that was far too many.
As for the potion, that was also appreciated. Blight sickness still had its effects; sluggish and sickish things, nothing fatal, and she’d rather not sit around and wait it to pass like a case of the flu. Gale had been distraught pulling wood and steel out of her, she didn’t want him to concern himself over her being ill. A step closer to putting this incident behind them. Cork pulled from the bottle with a pop, she downed the concoction like water. A tingly, almost airy liquid that hit her tongue and spread inside. Not entirely flavorless, but she didn’t have the wits to dissect the medicinal ingredients.
“I will happily take the help you’ve both provided as a Christmas present,” she breathed after the swig. Better, yes. Not so much paleness. Her cheeks were returning to that natural rosy color. Those veins had even started lightening too. One vessel at a time. “Thank you.”
Elaine was the Guild’s potions expert, ever since Snape moved away. Zee hadn’t really spoken to her in awhile (she seemed to be busy with her...stalker and/or paramour), but a few weeks ago she had stocked up their magic club with a lot of supplies which was kind of her. Still, it was no trouble and Zatanna would always do what she could to help her friends. Especially after one particular friend woke up with sharp things sticking out of her.
“I might bring by someone else I had planned,” she grinned, a soft expression. “If nothing else, a bottle of wine. But you two certainly go on and enjoy your holiday.”
The cautious, solid mass of soldier cradled Leliana to him carefully, as if he was afraid that jostling her too much would negate the effects of the healing that had just taken place. “Like you need to thank me,” he scoffed - this was what people in love did for each other. “But thank you to the one with the magic. It’s been a long night.” Definitely the most eventful Christmas Eve he’d had in awhile.
Making sure she didn’t slowly die from bloodless was a gift in itself, but alright, Leliana wouldn’t say no to wine. Not after all this. A twinkle returned to those sapphire eyes - they weren’t so dismal anymore with the jump start of a little extra life Zee’s magic gave her. “Blizzard allowing, I will see you soon,” promised the redhead. There was a present she had for the magician anyway, something neatly wrapped and accented with a bow. There’d be an exchange when she wasn’t so caked in her own blood. Bright red was technically festive, but it wasn’t how she wanted to celebrate this jolly holiday. At all.
Made for a memorable night, at least.
Coldness began leaving her skin. Gale helped with that; she hadn’t really considered the drastic difference in temperatures until they were close. He was hot (in more ways than one, tee-hee) and in her complete gory grossness, she nestled into him. Or melted into him, more like it. A melding of bodies that desperately needed a shower.
If Zatanna was wearing her magician’s hat, this would be where she tipped it in a show-woman’s goodbye. She never lingered after she healed someone - it wasn’t exactly polite, for one thing, and the last thing she wanted to do was overstay her welcome in a place where emotions were running high; her work was done here, that was all. “Soon,” she agreed, then with a cheeky little wink, she took her leave. Not really a dramatic exit, just a blink and another one of those magical pops - and she was gone, the phrase emoh em gnirb her ticket back to her own bedroom.
Gale breathed a sigh of relief, shifting so that his arms slid under Leliana and he could lift her off the mattress - no hardship for him, barely even a flex of muscle. She didn’t weigh much. “Come on, let’s get you cleaned up,” he said, doubting she wanted to go back to sleep all bloodstained and looking like a macabre porcelain doll. He’d also change the sheets, since it was necessary.
Anything stained wasn’t salvageable. The sheets, nightgown included. It could all be tossed in the trash. Or perhaps even a bonfire, wouldn’t that be nice? Sitting around an open flame, drinking hot gingerbread chai, appreciating the burning of bloodied linens during their white Christmas. “You make a very efficient nurse,” she told him, arms around his neck, nose rubbing along the outline of his jaw. Leliana could have probably stood, walked herself to the bathroom even - but Gale’s arms felt nice. They always did.
“You need a bit of cleaning yourself, soldier, you’re a bit messy.” It wasn’t even the good kind of messy. He’d get cleaned up with her, she’d insist. A brush with death (if he hadn’t acted as quickly as he did, it was a very possible outcome) created a craving for closeness. “I can...stand, don’t worry.”
That year of consistent torture was a near-constant simmer at the edges of her mind, taunting and haunting - she could see the devices reflect the dim light of torches in her memories, the sound of neck bones cracking between the pressure of her thighs when Dorian and the Inquisitor interrupted their little session. Gale hadn’t seen her that battered and damaged before; and she knew what it was like, to see someone you loved injured. He’d woken up flogged, people in her own circle had made attempts on his life (and almost succeeded), it was not the best feeling.
“Nurse Gale to the rescue,” he smirked, gently setting the precious cargo down on the tiled floor in their bathroom. And he wouldn’t be opposed to hopping in the shower - the hot water would probably feel good for the both of them, soothing and calming. It would help untwist all the knots of tension that had formed in his shoulders and back, at the very least. Because no, seeing and hearing everything he just experienced - it had completely blindsided him, the effects of it now beginning to creep up on him in the aftermath. Once he’d pushed through it all, and was no longer relying on quick thinking and the rush of adrenaline.
The spray of water was turned on, and he placed clean towels on the bathroom counter for them before getting rid of the pajama pants he was sporting. “What do you say we just lie around tomorrow?” he suggested. “Christmas dinner can be Chinese food.” Not like he was up for cooking anything elaborate - if friends wanted to drop by, then so be it, and he’d probably Skype his family in West Virginia but that’d be the extent of it.
Into the shower he went, arm slipped around Leli. “Hey? I love you, by the way. I’m glad you’re fine.” He didn’t know what he would have done otherwise.
This bathroom had a particularly feminine touch to it, with light shades of lilac and silvery gray, scented candles and organic soap. Flowery smells that contradicted Gale’s musky masculinity, of course, but it was meant to soothe. Aromatherapy had its benefits. They both needed to be put at ease.
“I think I might actually wear sweatpants all day,” Leliana drowsily giggled, drenching the purple bath pouf with body wash. She had one pair. Only one, stowed away in the depths of her French provincial inspired dresser. It’d be one of those days. Chinese sounded splendid, too. Anything did, really, as long as she had the option to stay inside and not deal with others much. She preferred to keep her distance when things happened.
Gale was the exception. His arms anchored her, his words giving her pause, and she meshed their very much naked, slippery wet bodies together. Standing on her toes added some extra height (not that she was exactly short, but her beau was abnormally tall), she went nose to nose with him. An affectionate little rub from her to him. “I was in good hands, was I not? I had you, I wasn’t particularly scared.”
It was trust. He did what he had to do. Leliana would have done the same, if it meant his life.
Not like Gale was an expert on what a pouf was, after all this time sharing a space with someone of the girly variety, but he at least made the connection that - hey, soap, body wash, smelly stuff, goes on here and you use it. See, he was learning though. So he took it and ran it over Leliana’s back for her, kissing the tip of her nose after those eskimo kisses and then her lips.
“I was a little scared,” he admitted, not too proud to do so. “Just because...it was you. I’ve seen shit like that before, mostly with bombs going off and shrapnel caught in people, and bullets, but...” He shook his head. Yeah, it had been scary then too, but now - in the dead of night, arrows literally coming from nowhere - it seemed amplified a lot, when all they’d been doing was trying to get a few winks in.
But of course he’d do what needed to be done, always. He was pragmatic in that way, he’d make hard decisions and stick to them - that was what a soldier was meant to do, which was why he knew that some of his friends didn’t particularly understand his choice about how to help carve a new path for he and Leliana. It was for the best, the big picture, so he couldn’t get caught up in how it individually made them feel - that was a military perspective.
Nothing wrong with admitting it. They were humans. Mortality was their reality, and the fear of losing someone you loved - especially to events from another realm - was a terror specific to those like them. In the spray of water from the showerhead, steam and warm, she her hands slid up the back of his neck, fingers in his hair. That kiss to the lips was resumed, her mouth flavored by a little magic, a little whiskey.
“Not the Christmas present I had in mind, I promise,” Leliana sighed. Her body felt the weight of exhaustion, but she wouldn’t sleep - she didn’t want to, didn’t even think she could if she tried, not after that latest episode. All she’d see would be that chamber of torture devices, and red. From the lyrium eating away at everything. “I’d known about it. This alternate...reality - I was told I had died, but I didn’t think I would ever see it. An oversight, I suppose.”
Dreaming of another alternate reality wasn’t uncommon. It came slow, didn’t it? Another version of another life, but this had been the same events up until that one crucial moment - and it only spanned a year after that, until the end was met.
“We never can predict what will happen to an exact science. What we’ll see and what we won’t,” Gale sighed, his hands stroking down Leliana’s sides as the water spray rained on them. It was doing its job, all hot and steamy and relaxing. “Some shit carries over and some doesn’t. Don’t blame yourself for this.”
It frustrated the hell out of him sometimes, living here and just not knowing the mechanics of how things operated - not to mention when they were all fucked with. He tried to take it in stride, make the best of things (like turning into a woman?), because the last thing he wanted was to be so angry all the time like his other self - but fuck if it wasn’t difficult.
Blood washed down the drain, along with the soap. “After this, we can just put a movie on or something,” he offered. “Something mindless, if you don’t want to go back to sleep.”
No, they couldn’t. Leliana had honestly forgotten all about that Redcliffe adventure. She’d read about it in the Inquisitor’s reports after recruiting the mages to their cause, but after that it’d been pushed to the recesses of her mind, overwhelmed by other pressing matters. Considering Haven had been taken by Corypheus shortly after, there wasn’t time to dwell.
And she tried not to dwell. Not here. Nothing they could do to change what happened there, no? Focusing on the now was best, all wrapped up in her soldier’s arms. All cleansed now, but the scars couldn’t swirl down the drain with the soap and watery red wisps. Leliana knew they were there, she just didn’t seem to particularly care. “I think I’ve slept enough,” she insisted. So, yes to mindless distractions. Something low-key that didn’t demand much of them. Gale still seemed grumpy, too - she tried kissing that away. Little flutters of affection to clear that haze of concern. “You can always fall asleep on my breasts, you could use the sleep.”
Him, and cuddle puddle of animals surrounding them. It was a simple luxury to look forward to now that arrows weren’t sticking out of her.
He actually laughed a little at that (Gale also had it in him to be perpetually grumpy - it was pretty much part of his DNA). “Those are the softest pillows, I’ll be out like a light,” he grinned, turning the water off. Those fluffy towels he had for them were grabbed, and he draped one around Leliana so she could dry off. Him too, since it would do no good to drip water all over their nice things.
One fresh pair of pajama pants later and he was feeling better - feeling ready to definitely faceplant into those comfortable, dreamy chest clouds. He didn’t know what Netflix had available, but they’d find something. A B-rated romcom, even he would take that right now if it meant mindless distraction.
Now that there was less screaming and less stress that filled the empty spaces of the house, the nugs had resurfaced from their dwellings underneath furniture. With some hesitance, a couple of snuffnuffs here and there, Tella to join them too. Leliana dressed herself in that elusive pair of sweatpants buried underneath all those little pieces of silky nightwear, snatched one of Gale’s sweatshirts to comfortably drown in and for now, and wilfully ignored the mess in their bedroom.
They’d burn it later, maybe when the sun actually rose if there was any daylight peeking through those wintry skies. And there would be gingerbread chai. She made herself comfortably on that soft, marshmallow for a sofa first - then pulled Gale to her, between her legs so he can mostly rest on her (again, she was sturdy, Leli could take the weight) so his face could faceplant into that bosom. “Je t'aime,” she said, the French response to his little declaration of love in the shower. “And because I do, I won’t make you watch anything too nauseatingly romantic. Even if The Notebook is currently streaming.”
“Je t'aime aussi,” Gale responded, and he knew a little - the useful French phrases. Like where to ask for the bathroom and ‘how much’ and obviously declarations of love. They’d be all set, if they ever went to Paris (or not). “You almost died today, I think that entitles you to Nicholas Sparks shit.”
So The Notebook it was, streamed just for them and put on. But with Gale so comfortable where he was, resting on the finest of chest pillows, that meant he was out like a light - true to his word, there he went, a goner. Saying goodnight to the world, and gladly leaving this day behind - only to face the next one tomorrow, like they were meant to.