Chapter Text
The night before they had gone to Minrathous for those excruciating final battles, Lucanis had reminded Zelena that victory didn't end with a final triumphant defeat of the enemy. It was walking, wounded and bloodied, into everything that came after. She hadn't fully understood what he meant then, but she had learned.
More than two months after the defeat of the blighted gods, she still felt a frisson of panic at waking to a cold, quiet room - some part of her certain that she remained trapped in the Fade. Nights spent alone without Lucanis's reassuring presence beside her often ended with uneasy dreams broken by nightmares that left her gasping for air, until she came to dread crawling into an empty bed in the darkness of her room in the Diamond.
And her bed was empty more nights than not as duties pulled them apart long into the night. While Lucanis and the other Talons made plans for combating the Antaam in the rest of Antiva and managing the new contracts expected from Tevinter, Zelena had begun taking teams of Viago’s Crows to act as backup for the teams of Veil Jumpers mapping the eerie maze of mirrors and islands.
Zelena had joked with Viago about needing a vacation, but neither she nor Lucanis would abandon their duties as Crows at such a critical tipping point for Antiva and the rest of Thedas. For the time being, both resigned themselves to a period of poor sleep and little time together - at least until the instability the gods had fomented began to recede. Based on their matching nods and miniscule smiles, Viago and Caterina both approved of this course of action.
During the moderately uncomfortable and unnecessarily formal family dinner they had all suffered through shortly after their return from Minrathous, Lucanis and Zelena had easily gone along with the plans hatched by their heads of houses to solidify their control over the Crows and to improve the guild’s standing with the rest of Thedas. Though she had never been one to follow orders without question, Zelena couldn't argue that she remained the best choice to maintain many of the alliances she had forged in her time as Rook while Lucanis focused on establishing himself as the new First Talon in more than name.
Spending her days in the Fade hadn't done much to alleviate her nightmares, but the exhaustion that dragged at her limbs each night bought her a few hours of uninterrupted rest. Occasionally she woke to Lucanis's gentle reassurances easing her back into sleep as his calloused hands stroked slowly through tangled hair. Most nights, though, she jolted awake to sweat drenched sheets wrapped so tightly around her legs that she felt trapped in the echoing silence of stone walls and fragile peace.
After two weeks of fruitless tossing and turning in her too empty bed afterwards, Zelena had started rising immediately after a nightmare. She was far from the only Crow to haunt the glittering casino and surrounding rooftops in the small hours when even the semi-nocturnal city slept. Teia had told her once, eyes sad and full of too much knowing, that the most dangerous jobs weren't the ones you didn't come back from but the ones that stayed with you. Like the darkspawn taint that lay in Wardens, most Crows spent their lives waiting for the worst jobs to catch up with them - one way or another.
Sometimes, when the fatigue pulled more strongly than usual and her sleep seemed nothing more than fractured horrors, Zelena thought she understood more fully why the Inquisitor might have longed to follow Solas beyond the Veil. The other woman had lasted almost a decade after saving the world from Solas’s first disastrous attempt to restore his fallen world. How many years would Zelena be able to go on with all of these nightmares on loop in her head?
Lucanis might have frowned as he surveyed the dark circles growing under her eyes, but he caved easily to her teasing that she still needed a few months to catch up to the brilliance of his own. She knew he had also been sleeping poorly on the nights he had spent in Villa Dellamorte after long strategy sessions and political lessons with Caterina, even if his truce with Spite let him stop intentionally avoiding sleep. With everything they had been through, Zelena wondered at times whether either of them would ever sleep peacefully again…or if they would both spend the rest of their lives breaking out of the prisons their minds recreated in sleep.
So things in Antiva had found a status quo that no one particularly enjoyed but that everyone could live with, at least for now. Except that, as usual, they had all forgotten to account for Teia. Where Viago and Caterina favored scheming and lever pulling behind the scenes, she had always been a woman of action. When the other Talons finally discovered the perfect solution to a problem after weeks or months of careful planning, they often found that Teia had already implemented whatever solution she had decided would most efficiently work long ago.
After weeks of watching Lucanis's jaw clench ever tighter under the scrutiny of his grandmother and the rest of the Crow hierarchy and of listening to Zelena's quiet creeping out of the family wing of the Diamond after another nightmare, the Seventh Talon had decided enough was enough.
Which explained how Zelena found herself in an exceptionally comfortable bed in a villa in Rivain as the reward for assisting the Lords of Fortune in ousting the Antaam from the port city that sat across from Treviso at the head of the Rialto Bay. She wished desperately that she could have seen Viago’s face when Teia informed him that Zelena and Lucanis would personally oversee the Crows sent to Afsaana at the request of their allies.
(If Teia and a certain pirate captain had bonded over the joys of sticking daggers in worthy opponents during the final battles for Minrathous, Viago's lover had not yet felt compelled to inform him of this fact.)
In less than two days, Zelena and Lucanis had gathered teams of the most battle-experienced Crows not on a current contract and set sail for one of the few open stretches of coastline between the two cities.
However Teia might have justified the decision to Viago and Caterina, Zelena knew a vacation when she saw one. Fighting regular Antaam not empowered by ancient mages and blight with some of her favorite people in sunny Rivain, she finally felt like herself again.
Jumping over the side of the boat as soon as her boots would find sand in the shallow waters, Zelena promptly found herself upside down at eye level with a grinning Harding from where she dangled over Taash's shoulder in what she suspected was meant to be a hug. Thanks to Harding’s quick reflexes, the Crow escaped sitting in the knee deep water when her friend casually tossed her back to her feet in order to scoop Lucanis up in a similar greeting.
Despite the weeks apart from each other, the four friends ensured that the streets of the port city soon reverberated with a symphony of magical detonations, witty Crow one-liners, fiery roars, and the crashing of stone being wielded like a weapon. They fought as seamlessly together as ever, the two Crows weaving in and out of the fortune hunters and other assassins in a deadly dance of blades and magic.
Perceptive as always, Teia had known exactly what Zelena needed to quiet the mute turmoil that had churned in her since the defeat of the gods. She and Lucanis might never again be the people they had been before the betrayals and the heartbreaks they had experienced, the horrors that they could never unsee… but that didn't mean there wasn't a full life left for the people they had become.
With each of the invaders that fell to their onslaught, Zelena could see the fearsome reputation they could build together one day - the kind of reputation that would keep them powerful and safe at the precarious pinnacle of Crow politics. The world might be broken and tilted on its axis, but her heart and her blade remained steady and in rhythm with the one person who made her feel whole.
After the battle, the Lords of Fortune sailed waiting ships into the harbor and somehow produced a spectacular feast in the hours left before sunset. As Lucanis admired Taash's new cape and Zelena listened to tales of Harding’s work in Kal-Sharok, a satisfied pirate captain smirked to herself at the sight of a flawlessly executed scheme.
~^~
By the time Zelena and Lucanis retreated to the villa they had been assigned by a grinning Isabela, the sun had begun to sink below the horizon of the Bay as stars shone in the darkening sky above. Bright laughter broke over the calling of a sea bird as Zelena raced up the veranda stairs, revelling in the giant open windows that admitted the warm ocean breeze into the large boudoir.
“You’ll have to go on without me,” she announced dramatically upon seeing the large bathtub that took up a whole corner of the room. “I’m afraid Isabela has won me over to piracy with the lure of gold and glory.”
Lucanis crossed his arms and watched with a raised brow as Zelena threw herself onto a lounge that offered a view of the sea on two sides of the room.
“Yes, well, I believe she will return you to us when she finds out you are the only Antivan I have ever met who cannot swim,” he pointed out pragmatically, waving away the scowl she turned on him that looked remarkably like one of Viago’s.
“You know I wasn’t born in Antiva,” she retorted.
“Every major city state in the Free Marches has a port!”
“On the Waking Sea or the Mianter River… No one is swimming in that water by choice!”
“Be that as it may,” he responded with a teasing glint in his eyes, “it means you are stuck with the Crows. We don’t care if you cannot swim as long as it does not stop you from finishing contracts.”
“How magnanimous of us,” she grinned up at him, feeling the last of the tension beginning to unspool in her chest.
As night fell in earnest over the villa, an air of quiet peace settled over the Crows inside. With gentle touches, they rid each other of the final layers of armor, literal and metaphorical, before slipping into warm bath water side by side. Despite their limited time together in recent weeks, the urgency of arousal couldn’t penetrate the warm blanket of contentment of the quiet evening.
After months of adrenaline that left her desperately wondering whether each time together would be the last, Zelena had been in a strange state of limbo since Minrathous that left her adrift without any of the routines she had developed over the past few years to ground herself. But now, tucked into bed next to Lucanis with the sounds of the waves soothing her tired nerves, she felt settled again.
“I missed you,” she confessed, timing her breathing to the slow, steady heartbeat under her ear. “I didn't expect killing gods to be the easy part of saving the world.”
They hadn't bothered dressing for bed in the warm night air, and the slide of cool linen against her back contrasted pleasantly with the warmth of his skin against her own where she pressed into his side.
“We have not made anything easier on ourselves either, you know. From now on, no more sleeping alone,” Lucanis told her firmly. “Not when we are in the same city, at any rate.”
“Are you ordering me into your bed, First Talon?” she teased, looking up at him through lowered lashes and grinning salaciously at the faint blush staining his cheeks at the suggestion.
“The Crows deserve our best, and we are at our best together,” he answered quietly. “Teia should not have to concoct schemes to get us out of Treviso to ensure we have rested properly.”
“Viago and Caterina won’t like me moving in before they get the chance to make an engagement announcement,” she reminded him. “They wanted more time to get a feel for how the other Talons would react before making any larger moves.”
“Well, Caterina did say she wanted me to begin using more authority as First Talon,” Lucanis said with an Antivan shrug that shifted Zelena’s head slightly on his chest. “Besides, I doubt there is a Crow in Treviso who has not gossiped about our relationship at this point.”
“Don’t remind me,” Zelena groaned. “I start checking my food again for one of the milder poisons every time someone brings it up with Vi.”
“Then it is settled. I do not want to have to duel Viago because he miscalculated the amount of poison in your coffee one morning.”
“You’re lucky we’re not in Antiva right now. I think he’d duel you at the barest suggestion that he might miscalculate the dose of a poison,” Zelena cautioned.
“I think I can take Viago in a fair fight. His bladework has always been mediocre.”
“Have you ever known House de Riva to fight fair? He'd poison you before the duel even started.”
“Hopefully you and Teia would avenge me,” Lucanis laughed before pulling her into a kiss.
Zelena melted into him, letting the languid warmth flood through her limbs like the feeling of coming home. Even as fatigue pulled at her, she couldn’t quite stop herself from pushing into the kiss until his skin slid tantalizingly against her own.
Without breaking their connection, though, Lucanis gentled the rising heat between them back into a simmering promise. When he did pull away after several minutes of trading slow, easy kisses, his thumb traced one of the dark smudges that had taken up residence under her eyes.
“We both need rest, querida,” he told her fondly. “For once, we have time.”
And they did.
Over the course of the night, she would ease him from the grip of a nightmare once while he returned the favor twice. The second time she startled awake, she found herself quickly wrapped in Spite’s spectral wings as Lucanis ran a soothing hand up and down her spine. With that reassuring presence and the sound of the surf, so unlike the echoing nothingness of the Fade, Zelena slipped finally into a dreamless sleep.
~^~
Blinking sleep from heavy eyes, she woke to the liquid warmth of the early morning sun caressing her bare skin and the bone deep certainty that she was safe.
On the pillow next to her, Lucanis remained peacefully asleep with dark hair haloed around his head. Although his hair and beard had been trimmed into a more fashionable style since they returned to Treviso, he still wore both longer than he had before his capture.
Zelena’s heart gave a confusing thump at the rare opportunity to study the man she loved as he slept, dark lashes fanning across high cheekbones that she struggled not to run her fingertip against. Once he began sleeping voluntarily again, Lucanis had turned out to be a frighteningly light sleeper - something he reported had been true even before his time in the Ossuary. Instead of disturbing him, she contented herself with tracing her eyes over the gentle lines that eased at the corners of his own in sleep.
Despite plenty of experience in using sex and seduction as both a weapon and a way to blow off steam, neither of the Crows had any history with this kind of intimate trust and familiarity with another person. It scared Zelena a little to realize how much she had come to crave the things he made her want.
Like the lightning she wielded so effortlessly in a fight, she had been electric motion since the first moment the Crows put a blade in her hand and taught her to make the world her own. She didn't know where to put this longing for stillness and the gentle caress of morning light.
“I can feel you thinking,” Lucanis murmured in a sleep-rough voice without opening his eyes.
“Good thing I don't do it often,” she joked easily, finally giving into the temptation to run a gentle finger across one of those sharp cheekbones.
His eyes opened, piercing but kind as they found her own and held them.
“You like to hide behind that sharp wit,” he said softly, “but I see you.”
Her breath caught at the seriousness in his face and the finality in his voice when he told her once more, “I see you, Lena.”
Zelena responded the only way she knew how - by diving headfirst into the thing that scared her. There was nothing graceful about how she closed the distance between them. Lucanis grunted softly as her body dropped over his, but he wrapped strong arms around her waist without hesitation.
As Lucanis ran his hands over her ribs and down to frame her hips, smiling up at her with no pretense or reservations, the last of the cocooning numbness she had been living with fell away from her to be replaced by something new and brilliant.
In the months since they had first leapt into the possibility that fizzed with each brush of a hand or shoulder, Zelena could remember times when each touch spoke of reverence, need, desperation… and love. So much love, present long before either of them had felt brave enough to name the fledgling emotion blossoming between them.
But this? This was joy. This was security and connection and the intoxicating rush of being not just known but celebrated - a fragile certainty that there would be a tomorrow and that it could be beautiful, despite everything.
Zelena laughed, a breathless startled sound that somehow didn’t feel at odds with the tears gathering at the corners of her eyes. She let them spill over onto her cheeks without any dampening of the smile that stretched across her face.
“What is wrong, cariño?” Lucanis asked softly before lifting his head to brush a kiss across the line of tears.
“Nothing,” she told him. “Nothing at all. Isn't it wonderful?”
Objectively, she knew it wasn't true. Thedas lay near shattered around them, still reeling in the chaos of a barely averted apocalypse. Lucanis's position as First Talon remained tenuous, and there would almost certainly be challenges to them both once the grace period of saving the world wore off. Caterina and Viago would find new ways to complicate their lives, probably by turning their wedding into some sort of spectacle - if Teia didn't get there first.
But they had saved the world, and they had at least a whole morning to luxuriate in a soft bed and warm sunlight. When the next fight found them, it would find them together. That was more than enough for her.
Leaning down, Zelena tried to pour all of the joy bubbling inside her into a kiss. If it was still a bit damp from her tears, Lucanis kindly didn't mention it.
His lips slotted perfectly against hers like puzzle pieces locking together, and she fell into the kiss with the same swooping in her stomach that usually came from jumping onto a zipline. With nothing but a tangled sheet between them, Zelena shuddered at the feel of her nipples dragging against Lucanis's chest as he shifted under her.
A groan rumbled through him in reaction, his hands tightening against her hips to pull them closer together. Although her hands were mostly trapped between the press of their bodies, she used the limited range of motion to stroke along the line of his shoulders. Feeling him relax into her touch made her giddy, the eddy of her own ambient magic rippling against Spite in the Fade as Lucanis trusted them both not to hurt him intentionally. She relaxed into him in turn, letting his hands smooth random patterns across whatever bare skin he could reach.
When a low whine tugged free from her throat as his hands kneaded closer to the juncture of her thighs, Lucanis ran out of patience. Gripping her thighs to keep them pressed together, he rolled them to the side to reverse their positions.
Or he would have, had they not both forgotten about the sheet tangled between them and around their legs.
They made it about halfway until the fabric seized their movements. Lying on their sides nose to nose and thwarted by a piece of linen, both Crows burst into uncontrollable laughter at the absurdity of the moment.
Zelena flopped onto her back as she ineffectually tugged for the loose corner of the sheets to free her lower body. Next to her, Lucanis appeared to be even more stuck where the fabric had wrapped fully around his legs during the most restless of their combined sleep the night before.
After a few futile seconds trying to unwind themselves through their laughter, the two simply slid the tangled fabric down their legs until they lay basking in the glow of the morning sun on their bare skin. Rolling over to lay beside her, Lucanis caught the last of her laughter in a kiss that felt as warm as the sunlight, easy and breathtaking in a way that she had never known to want before.
Her hands wound into soft black hair as his lips moved to explore the skin along her jaw and down the line of her throat like it was the first time he had tasted it. He lingered over the beat of her pulse and the curves of her breasts, watching with a teasing glint in his dark eyes as her breathing quickened into short pants under the treatment. When he slipped a hand between her legs to stroke lightly across the wet folds of her sex, she couldn't stop herself from bucking into the touch.
“That's it, amorcito,” he murmured, lifting his head to watch how her muscles flexed as her hips moved instinctually against his hand. “You are so beautiful when you let yourself go for me.”
“Lucanis,” she breathed, somewhere between a prayer and a sigh, as long fingers slid inside her one after another.
After months of stolen moments in the night or corners of the Fade, it stole her breath to see the wonder in his face as he watched her come apart under his hands in the bright morning light. Zelena ran her own hand up the corded forearm that lay across her lower belly, following the topography of his body over flexing tendons and the shadow of veins until she reached his chest.
Lucanis inhaled with a sharp hiss of breath as she ran her thumb lightly over one of his nipples to watch it tighten under her touch. He bit out a curse when the other hand still tucked between their bodies wrapped loosely around the erection pressing against her hip. She watched him bite at his lip in concentration as he focused on the hand that he was using to try to drive all coherent thought out of her mind as she tried to distract him with her own touches to his body.
“Tell me what you want, querida.”
She could hear the strain in his voice as he spoke, and it matched the tension coiling along her spine.
There were a million easy answers she could give him. He would let her back away from the weight of the moment if she wanted. But she didn’t.
“Love me,” she pleaded. “Love me like it will always be like this.”
“Oh, Lena,” he murmured gently, moving to pull her to him so he could kiss her.
“Mi corazón.”
Another kiss pressed to her cheek.
“Mi vida.”
And another to her mouth that lingered before he moved to cover his body with his own.
Wrapping her arms around his neck, Zelena marveled at the heat of sun drenched skin against her own as his weight settled between her legs. Like a cat, she stretched her legs along his just to luxuriate in the feeling, drawing a smile onto Lucanis’s face that she matched.
He kissed her again, opening so she could lick into his mouth as their hips moved lazily together. She loved that their similar heights let them slot so easily together until she lost track of where he ended and she began.
When Lucanis pulled away to kneel between her legs, she made a faint sound of protest that he shushed as he hooked his arms under her knees to pull her into position. Both moaned as he entered her, slowly and steadily until he bottomed out. Pausing there, Lucanis closed his eyes and breathed, obviously taking a moment to steady himself. Zelena seized the moment to roll her hips, drawing another curse from him.
“You are so much trouble,” he said with a thoroughly unthreatening glare. It was not improved by the kiss he pressed to her knee as he settled her calf against his shoulder, though the change in position did serve as retaliation as he slid deeper inside her.
“You like it, though,” she said with a gasped breath as he started to move.
“I love it,” he confessed. “I love you .”
For once, they had all the time in the world, and Zelena discovered that she very much enjoyed the easy, joyful way their bodies moved together - just bodies for once, and not the weapons they’d been made into. Though she felt the presence of Spite’s wings as she wrapped her other leg around Lucanis’s waist, the spirit seemed as intrigued by the new experience as the two humans.
She had worried at how they would all find a new equilibrium once they stopped constantly fighting for their lives, but it had been a moot point. Love, it turned out, required a lot of determination.
“I take it back,” Zelena gasped as his hand teased at her breast, the other bracing her leg against each thrust of his hips into hers. “Forget piracy. Let’s just retire and do this full time.”
“You would be bored in a week,” Lucanis predicted. “I have not seen you sit still for more than an hour since we met unless you were sleeping.”
“I’m not proposing sitting still,” she retorted with a very pointed wiggle of her hips as punctuation.
He responded by picking up the tempo of his movements, pulling a gasp from her as he repeatedly pressed against the spot inside her that made it feel as though her spine was melting. She ignored the smug smile and raised eyebrows he wore at the sound in favor of moving her own hand to circle her clit as she felt her climax rapidly approaching.
“So perfect, mi amor,” Lucanis groaned with a low growl. “Come for me.”
It took less than a minute for her to obey, shaking through the pleasure that flooded through her like the waves crashing outside the window. Just as it started to recede, the last rapid thrusts of him inside her as Lucanis reached his own peak tipped her over into a second smaller orgasm.
Pulling him to rest against her as she moved to wrap both legs around his waist, Zelena decided that getting up could wait. With his head laying against her chest, she stroked gently through the sweat damp black hair the way that he usually did hers, smiling as she felt his breathing begin to even out.
Later, he would help her into the bathtub again to rid them of stickiness and sore muscles.
Later, he would hold her hands as they waded into the surf, voice gentle as he eased her through the anxiety of her feet leaving the sand to float beside him.
Later, he would return to Treviso with her and announce that they would be taking rooms in Villa Dellamorte with such finality that Viago and Caterina merely exchanged exasperated glances before moving on to their next order of business.
Later, he would make sure she never woke to a too quiet, too cold room ever again.
But for now, Zelena would hold him while he slept. The man had killed a god for her after all… and she had too. If nothing else, that should at least earn them a nap.