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"What happened?"
Hawke hadn't meant to go to Isabela.
Merely over the fact that the one rule Isabela posed was "no attachment". And yet, what she apparently did without really thinking better about it, was walk right into the Hanged Man, climb the stairs and knock at her door.
Was it sex, that she wanted? Some moments of bliss to forget everything else? On one side, it would have been nice. On the other, tho, and the side that weighted more…
Oh, she should have looked for Merrill. Merrill would have understood. If there was one person in Kirkwall that would have not blamed her, and possibly not thought she was needy, that was the elf. After all, it wasn't like Hawke was taken, right? They had made it clear that whatever there was between them, it was open, no?
And yet, Isabela stood on the door of her room, and was examining her. No boots, no corset, no bandana, meaning that-
"I should get back later." Raina said, turning to the side.
"You're wounded." The piratess remarked.
Was she? She didn't- Ah.
She looked down at herself, and sure, there was blood on her black gabardine, but it was dripping on the wooden boards of the floor. If it was dripping on the floor, it must be fresh. Weird, she wasn't feelng pain, and didn't remember being hit.
"I am." Hawke noted, blinking. "I'm sorry, I'll just-"
She stepped back, knowing she had to look for Merrill. Hating herself for it, because if there was one thing she wanted, was not to give the elf any false impression. Or well, they weren't exactly false, but…
"Wait." Isabela sighed, in front of her.
If Raina wasn't poignantly looking at her own blood dripping on the wood, drop after drop, she would have probably been able to duck. As it was, whatever company Isabela was entertaining before she interrupted, strode out of that room heavily complaining, calling the both of them names. She didn't hear the exact words, just the rough meaning of them.
But she felt his shoulder hitting hers, heavily.
Staggering at that simple of a thing would have made her instantly retaliate. Now, tho, everything felt quite unreal, and she didn't.
Everything, but Isabela's hand on her upper arm, pulling her gently forward.
"Come in."
She said, as she guided her into her room. She knew the space well, by now.
If Varric's room was spacious and had the look of a home, Isabela's had the look of the room o a person that is expecting to leave the next day. Some random baubles scattered here and there to distract petty thieves from the real things she didn't want stolen. Her clothes in the trunk at the foot of the bed, leaving the wardrobe empty. A table doubled as desk and vanity, and a metal stand held a full water basin and a towel.
"He forgot a sock." Raina noted, nodding on the abandoned item on the floor as she stopped in the middle of the room.
She really didn't want to sound that bitter, but in the moment, she cared little for it.
"And you're bleeding on my carpet."
Ah, yeah, the carpet.
The carpet that was really the only personalization of that room. It was rich, with geometric decorations in blue, cream and yellow and Hawke and Varric had borrowed it -so to speak- from Lady Harimann. It was from a cloak room in the foyer, and the only one who noticed was Sebastian, really. Surely the Lady would agree to a slight compensation for having saved her family. If she ever knew.
She didn't need a carpet, or in the case, she would have bought it. It had been just a petty revenge because she was pissed, and one that Sebastian never failed to remind her. She had gifted it to the piratess after she had found the mischief funny. How it was her carpet, now, and she cared to keep it clean.
So, Hawke moved to the side, before whatever was in her throat that prevented her brain to not be clingy with the one person who abhorred clinginess could escape. She mumbled an apology. The room was not big, but she found a corner of the wall where to lean against, and slowly drop to sit on the floor.
She knew she must have been feeling wary, but she wasn't. Maybe. Her body may say otherwise, since it felt so heavy when she tried to move. If it cared so much to stay on the floor, it was fine with her.
"Clothes off." Isabela ordered, kneeling on Hawke's wounded side. basin on one hip, before leaving it on the floor, a basket with her basic healing kit in the other hand.
"Not even some foreplay?"
"Maybe, if you'll be a good girl, now." She sniffed. "And take a bath."
"Did the other fucker bathe?"
She hadn't meant to ask. But right now, undoing the clasps that kept her gabardine closed with fingers that wanted to tremble for some reason or the other, it slipped past her lips. She concentrated her eyes on what her fingers were doing, not to see the look that surely the piratess was giving her. The "get out" would have been milder, if she wasn't looking, surely.
Nothing like that followed.
"Not as much as he said he did." Isabela laughed. "You know, men."
"That's why I don't want to know, actually."
"Not like you're the cleanest person in Kirkwall, either."
"More than one year living with Gamlen teaches you the importance of regular hygiene."
"But tells you that eating food that fell to the ground is ok?"
"There's the five minutes rule…"
"I'm pretty sure it was five seconds, if Anders yelling it at you is any clue."
She helped her getting undressed, in the end, without a single word on how long it was taking, with hands that stopped collaborating. Chatting of this and that, for a moment Hawke was smiling.
"I need to get it off, is that ok?" Isabela asked, when Hawke's bust was stripped naked saved for the bandages that kept her chest flat.
She kept saying it served to avoid boobs bouncing around too much in a combat, when she moved around, but the truth was that she felt better with it. She looked more like her in the mirror, in a way she couldn't really explain. Even if it was not the most comfortable thing ever. Isabela had always asked for permission, before taking it off, ever since she first showed up at the mansion and slipped into her bed.
Right now, tho, Hawke could see it was in the way.
Some motherfucker had stabbed her in the ribcage, cutting the binding too. It was soaked in blood, as her shirt that laid in a pile on the woodfloor, and the gabardine.
She grunted an affirmative, and Isabela got to work, carefully unknotting the ends and unwinding the fabric.
"You really should work on your defense." Isabela sighed, when she could take a full look at the wound. Just another in a wide arrangement of scars, really. "You always get wounded on the left side."
Hawke gritted her teeth as a wet cloth pressed on the wound, and the fucker burnt. Knowing full well that bending her arms to cover herself wasn't really helping, keeping the ribcage in tension, but…
"I'll get Anders out of work, if I do." She hissed, trying to ignore the cold, the pain when Isabela started to pass a cleansing pomade that smelled like Merrill's house, and… Everything else, really. The physical pain at least was a help in not thinking.
"Shouldn't you have gone directly to him?" She asked, frowning.
"… I didn't realize I was wounded until you told me." Hawke admitted. And it was true, with everything that happened, she climbed down there in a trance, not really paying attention. Maker, she hoped nobody cut her coin purse off.
"Mh." Bela hummed, concentrating on her work.
There was silence for a while, as she bounced between cleaning the blood thar rippled down her side before it reached her pants, and stitching the skin carefully. It hurt, but it wasn't enough to get her mind completely off tracks. The tension melted down, and her body started to feel heavy and sore in five other places, the shame and guilt crept in her chest, wrapped around her lungs, contracted her muscles.
If Isabela noticed something, she didn't ask.
"H-how come you're so good at stitching wounds?" Hawke asked, after a while, not bearing the silence anymore.
"The alternative on ships is usually the cook." She explained. "It was just quicker to learn a thing or two. If the knives had slipped between the ribs, I would be as hopeless as Aveline on a hookup."
Hawke snorted, but with little mirth about it.
"Varric hates me." She said it, the words dropping like three boulders on her heart.
Isabela snorted, not stopping her hands. "Tell it to someone else, you two are basically a married couple."
"He does, now."
She sounded pitiful, and she hated it. Hated it to bits. Hated it more, when Isabela's hands stopped, and Hawkecurled on herself more, looking poignantly to the side. She did bleed on the carpet, uh, there were red spots in a corner of it. Way to go, Raina.
"We found Bartrand." She explained, needing to get it out. "He was… Not himself. The servants were scared out of their minds, he hired thugs. The idol did some tricks to his mind, and then-"
It slipped out of her lips tasting like bile, acrid and scorching, and it made everything taste the same. She was heaving, hands clutched tight on her head, holding locks of black hair as if her life depended on it. She had felt disgusting in her life, but this time? This time there was no rational part of her telling it wasn't her fault. This time it was. Word after word, she told Isabela the whole story, what they saw in that mansion, the horror, how Bartrand didn't sound, didn't feel like him, and then… Not all the blood on her clothes and hands was hers, and she was pretty sure that Bartrand's blood wouldn't have come clean so quickly. As much as Carver's never really left from under her nails, and for her brother it hadn't been done on purpose.
"He hates me. He should." She concluded her tirade, squeezing her eyes closed, dreading a reaction, desperately needing one.
She should have searched for Merrill, replacing guilt for guilt.
She was hugged, instead. Dragged to the side, a hand on her shoulder the other on he head. The world smelled like sea and a slight tinge of orange flowers.
"It was merciful."
Isabela said, instead, voice heavy. Her fingers in her hair were soft, soothing, her hand on her shoulder warm, and she smelled good. She always did.
"I am a murderer." Hawke croaked.
"Aren't we all?" Isabela snorted. "How many people did we kill, just this year? I lost count."
"But this time…"
"Was there any hope?"
"Garret said he couldn't do anything. But maybe Anders…"
"Anders can't do miracles. And you told me that Varric asked you to."
"But-"
"If you keep saying you're horrible, Hawke, I swear. It's never fun, not even when there's no Anders challenging you to who can hate themselves the most. And this evening is gloomy enough."
Hawke kept complaining, vomiting words and self-hate and self-pity. Isabela acted annoyed, but kept holding her, making every single complaint sound silly and boring, not believing for one minute that Varric would have blamed her. She could have asked, next morning. No place had ever been as comfortable and cozy as that floor, in a small room with the only window so high up the wall it really felt like a cell.
After a while, Isabela kissed her, took her hands, and guided her to the bed, to kiss her lips and to straddle her thigh. Sweet bliss to forget, at least for a while, all the rest and the contempt.
And for the first time, Hawke -no, Raina was sure that what they made that evening wasn't just sex.
Fuck.