Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

She’s beautiful, objectively speaking. Bold red hair flowing down her back and plush mouth always too eager to smile as she saunters to and fro. He’s caught people turning heads in the ripples she causes, on occasion.

Viago would prefer it if she was a little less eye-catching, less prone to receive attention. But this, he supposes, he can make use of as well.

Truly, he knows not how they can’t see it, the smile that is simply a little too full of teeth, the sway of her hips that is less sensual and more like a prowl. She’s always retained something a little wild about her despite several attempts at domestication— but maybe that’s why people find her charming: it doesn’t feel too practiced, too polished. And so, her partner lets themself be distracted by the flutter of her lashes and lazy charisma, by her penchant for the dramatics, her love of song and dance and the way she can make people laugh. She doesn’t have to put much of a show— only rein in the most contrarian aspects of her nature, for a moment. And the worst parts of her sense of humor.

(She never reins those in for him. Perhaps she would be less of a daily headache if she was trying to kill him.)

Her partner drinks poisoned ale as she appropriately nods and giggles at whatever was said to her— is she actually interested in the conversation? She is actually interested in the conversation. What a ridiculous notion.

What a ridiculous woman.

She’s beautiful, objectively speaking, and she knows it, which makes her unbearable. One of the things that make her unbearable. Along with her tendency towards stubbornness, her permanent restlessness, and the strange compulsion she feels to make everything as difficult as possible for all parties involved (but mostly him.) 

Rosa de Riva casts her eyes about the room and finds him, despite being under the shadow of a hooded cloak. If she’s surprised to see him, it doesn’t show on her face as she continues her conversation. Viago would like it if she wrapped up her conversation. 

He makes a subtle gesture with his hand, motioning her to hurry. 

Soon after, she stands, says her goodbyes, and approaches his way. He joins her in the direction of her walk, not too close, looking around discreetly to make sure they’re not being followed.

“You took longer than necessary,” he says, without preamble.

“Oh, hello Rosa,” she says in that quiet, raspy voice of hers, “how are you? We haven’t seen each other in two weeks. Yes, I missed you dearly as well, did you enjoy your contract?”

“How many times do I have to tell you not to take unnecessary risks?”

“Just the one more, probably. And then the one more after that.”

They weave in and out of streets together, keeping their pace swift, but not so much they look suspicious. Viago lets her guide him through alleyways and around corners, joining the throng of people in the local market in the hopes that they can get truly lost among the crowd. There are very few things he dislikes as much as being surrounded by all these tightly-packed people— and this she knows, so she leads them out soon enough to avoid prolonging his suffering.

(She never prolongs his suffering— not unless she’s the direct cause.)

“And, well, also—” she says after a while, picking up their previous conversation, “they’re going to be dead in about three hours, so the very least I could do was offer a nice conversation.”

“How sentimental,” he says, dispassionately.

“Perhaps I am in a sentimental mood.”

“You are always in some kind of mood or another.”

“Well, yes. This is generally how the spectrum of human emotion works for normal people, Viago.”

“How do you know?” He throws her a quick, doubtful look, “have you asked a normal person?”

Her laugh strikes quick, even as she climbs a stack of empty crates in order to reach the rooftops. “Now that is not fair— you’re not allowed to be funny when you’re berating me.”

“You don’t tell me what I’m not allowed to do. I tell you what you’re not allowed to do.” 

“Yes, yes, one of your favorite activities.”

She never backs down from him— she never backs down from anything, and that’s another item in the long list of her issues. She’s always too eager to take everything as a challenge she needs to rise to meet, always so willing to pick a fight. Sometimes he feels like all he’s doing is constantly grabbing her by the back of her clothes just to stall her— how difficult it is to simply get her to stop — before she does something stupid.

(It’s always half on his mind. A knife into her side, hands pressing into the weeping wound, her smug expression, see, I was right, see, this is why you should keep me around as her face pales with blood loss.)

They’re quicker on the rooftops. It still leaves him with a mild sense of amusement— no one ever really looks up. 

“Over there,” she says soon enough, pointing at the inn she’s staying at. “Second floor, third window. Keep watch? Roof is just wide enough to stand there.” 

She rarely experiences the need for keys or lockpicks of any kind. Instead, as Viago leans his back against the outer wall just beside the window, she cups one hand around her mouth and leans in to whisper— something . He catches a stray word or two (outrageous, whatever she’s saying) and then the lock— pops open , the window lifting a few centimeters on its own in a sudden motion.

He arches an eyebrow.

She shrugs.

“Eager to please,” she says as an explanation, and opens the window further to slip inside the room.

(Not all locks open for her when she asks, but enough do. All of his do. All the time. It’s infuriating. It’s nigh impossible to keep her out of places if she wants to be in said places.)

With a quick motion of her fingers the candles light up, illuminating the small room she rented. A narrow bed, a chest for her possessions, and a small desk with remnants of her correspondence neatly stacked on top (he sincerely hopes she didn’t leave anything of importance unattended while she was away). The space is not stylish or luxurious by any means— the lack of a proper wardrobe for garments that should be hung and not folded makes him gnash his teeth together— but at least it’s… unassuming. Not likely to draw much attention.

 It will do.

Sitting at the desk, Viago takes a small notebook out of an inner pocket, and reviews the list of potential suspects. It’s a long list, with no immediate way of narrowing it down. 

Beside him, Rosa takes a spot on the floor, facing the closed door, legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, her back resting against his leg. A quiet string of  metallic sounds— clink, clink, clink — catches his attention briefly; she’s fiddling with something in her hands.

“What is that?” Viago says, eyes scanning his list again. He finds a quill and inkwell, dips the nib, adds another name to the list. 

“Puzzle. Dwarven-made, I think.” More clinking as she continues to fiddle with it. “You’re supposed to figure out how to separate these two shapes without warping the metal.”

“Can’t you ask them to separate?”

She leans her head back against his knee, looking at him from a strange angle. “It’s a knot, not a lock. I cannot unknot a knot like I do with a lock when I talk. And this is fun anyways.” Taking a hand away from her puzzle, she brings it under her hair, gathering the bulk of it between her fingers, only to throw it over Viago’s lap.

With an annoyed huff, Viago sets his notebook down, momentarily, and arranges her hair neatly over his thighs, gloved fingers carefully detangling knots like the ones she claims she cannot talk to. It’s one of those idiosyncrasies of hers, keeping it loose at all times, no matter how inconvenient it might be. He can feel her sunset-pink eyes on him, but he only watches the thick stripe of red across his lap, and thinks. There are too many possibilities, too many people that could be behind it, and at the very least two motives: his lineage and his advancement through the ranks being the most obvious.

“What do you want, Rosa?” He speaks slowly, without meeting her eyes.

“What, right now?” There’s more clinking as she fiddles with her puzzle, but she doesn’t look at her hands, “this is fine.”

“No. Out of… life, I suppose. What do you want?”

“Ah— my answer remains the same.”

“What,” he gives the room a quick glance, distaste coloring his tone, “ this ?”

Silence stretches. When he dares to meet her eyes, he finds them sparkling in the way they do when she thinks she’s being clever, when she’s laughing at everyone, including herself. She never takes anything seriously, except when she takes things too seriously. Sometimes he truly believes when death comes seeking her, her very last words will be some variety of but it is kind of funny, no? And then she will bleed out somewhere and there will be peace and quiet in his life.

(It is perhaps too easy to imagine it: a pool of blood, lifeless eyes, a frozen grin. His throat feels tight. Viago loosely twists her hair around his gloved fingers.)

“No, Viago. That is not what I mean.” The line of her neck is vulnerably exposed with her head tilted back like that. “I am content with my life.”

“And you don’t want anything else?”

“Well,” her smile carries that edge that makes her look a bit like a fox, “I should like to maybe take a contract on a king, yes?”

Viago doesn’t disguise the surprise on his face. 

“Any specific king?”

“Not particularly. I mostly feel that my face suits the word ‘regicide.” Her hands spring apart suddenly, and she lifts her head to look at the two pieces of metal she’s holding. “Ah, tits. I didn’t see how I did that.”

“Idiot,” he says, without much of a bite.

Hers is an infuriating mix of great potential and very little personal ambition. 

“Why do you ask?” She says.

He makes a noncommittal, ambivalent sound.

“Viago?” She tilts her head back again, “are you alright? You seem… more tense than usual.”

For a moment, he watches her face. She’s beautiful, he supposes, subjectively speaking as well. Like a favored knife, finely crafted, its edge well-maintained, its grip comfortably familiar.

“I am tired.” He says, eventually.

“Take the bed. I can sleep on the floor.”

He takes off only what’s strictly necessary: his boots, his outermost layer of clothes. He stashes away the glass vials he carries on his person, as well as his weapons. Most of his weapons— one knife he shoves under the pillow, and finds another one already there. 

The bed isn’t particularly comfortable, the mattress is on the side of a little too stiff and the pillow a little too thin, but the sheets aren’t scratchy, and everything is clean. 

The bed smells like Rosa, like— ozone and smoke, and whatever scented oil she likes to wear. Something sweet, almost unbearably so, like fruit about to turn. It reminds him of peaches in summer, the ones that are more trouble than they’re worth: flavorful but messy, with sticky fingers and stained shirts. The scent is familiar, if nothing else. Has been familiar for years.

He can see her moving around in his periphery, arranging extra bedding for herself on the floor, taking off her clothes— her relationship with civil attire is informal at best in private: unlaced corsets and open shirts and rolled up trousers with bare feet. If it’s particularly warm it can get worse. For all the layers he needs between himself and the world, she behaves like her skin yearns for constant touch of wind and sun and rain. Like being comfortable with the physicality of reality is the simplest of truths to accept.

(“Cover yourself,” he’d bitten off, more exasperated than embarrassed, looking away from her. Most people, when indicating their guests can enter, imply a degree of decency.

“Why,” she’d replied without paying him much attention, “it’s my room. It’s just you. It’s just… Flesh.”

“Rosa.”

She’d sighed, but had pulled up the shoulder of her shirt and had thrown a blanket over her bare legs. He’d turned only once it was safe to do so— to find her curled up on the window seat, looking out. Under her cushion something stuck out: the corner of a hastily-hidden book, leather-bound in dark brown. He’d arched an eyebrow.

“They say bodies are just vessels, anyways” The back of her neck had been suspiciously flushed.

“Who says?” He’d asked.)

Rosa blows out the last of the candles, and Viago closes his eyes. He rolls to his side, his back to her. Moonlight filters in through the thin curtains, bathing the room in cold, pale light. There is a spot on his back, between his shoulder blades, he’s keenly aware of— not quite an itch, not quite a knot. As if a phantom had a single fingertip pressed to that spot, as if it was marking him. You.

He feels uneasy, still.

After a moment of internal debate, he calls her name. Those two syllables sound loud in the quiet.

“Yes?” She answers.

“Come up here.”

There is a moment of hesitation, but she slips under the covers soon enough, and then there they lie, back to back. She’s warm. She’s always so warm, right at the edge of unnaturally so, even through layers of clothes. She’s warm against his spine. Solid. It lessens the awareness of that spot between his shoulders.

A quiet, raspy laugh interrupts his thoughts.

“What?” He asks.

“Nothing. This is…cozy. I used to sleep like this, with the girls.” Her tone is fond, almost wistful. “Especially when it was cold.”

He frowns, unseen. “You don’t speak much of them.”

Viago can track the motion of her shrugging against his back. “If I think too much about them then I’ll start… Wondering. There are not very many hopeful endings for those kinds of girls, and you know how much I dislike tragedies.”

“You’d rather live with the unanswered question?” 

She laughs again at the distaste on his voice, hoarse— hoarser than usual, just the smallest bit. He was right, she talked too much with her target.

They fall quiet for several moments; long enough he gives up on getting an answer from her. Long enough he believes she might have fallen asleep.

But her voice calls again: “Viago?”

“Yes?”

“Why did you come here?”

He sighs— does the best to roll his shoulders, but the tension remains. Everything is so fragile: plans, alliances, positions. A gust of wind and everything can fall down, no matter how hard he’s worked for it, fought for it.

(At his back, he can feel Rosa’s heartbeat.)

Eventually, he says: “someone left a dagger at my desk.”

“...What?” He can imagine her expression— the stubborn pout of her mouth as she tries to follow his line of thinking, “what kind of dagger?”

“Antivan. Fantastic craftsmanship, dawnstone embellishments on the handle. Clearly, someone is sending me a threat.”

Rosa shifts behind him, until he can feel the weight of her stare. Sometimes, in the dim, if he looks too quickly he’s always so sure that her eyes reflect the light in the dark like a cat’s— but whenever he goes back to check, the effect is gone. A trick of the light.

“You haven’t figured out who yet?”

“No. But I’m sure more than one person has objections about my recent promotion.” 

“Perhaps the dawnstone is a clue. Or an insult— It’s supposed to be a bad metal for crafting weapons, is it not? But—” Rosa hums, “if it’s only embellishments on the handle…”

“They left nothing of note that could identify them. I tested the blade but it’s not laced with anything.”

“Did you bring it?”

“No, I left it locked inside my study.”

“Can I keep it?”

“Why?”

“You said it’s nice.”

He twists to catch her eye. There is no feline reflection— just the familiar hues of sunset-pink.

(The bed is too narrow for two people, it’s uncomfortable. They’re too close. It is still preferable to the alternative.)

“Do you not have enough knives?”

“You said it’s nice .” She repeats.

“Do you not have enough nice knives?”

“Not that nice.”

He scoffs. She shrugs.

“But… What if it… Is not a threat?” She begins, haltingly. “What if someone left it there as a gift? For your promotion to Talon?”

Silence.

And then:

“Sciocca. Do you hear yourself? That has to be the stupidest idea—”

“Fine, fine, see if I try to be helpful ever again—”

“ A gift? Without a note, left on my desk for me to find? What kind of person would—”

“Maybe someone who is quite terrible at gift-giving, maybe there was a note but something happened to it—”

“Every day you manage to surprise me somehow with the depths of your foolishness—”

“Oh, I should have let you get stabbed!”

“And I should have left you in that cage!”

They’re close, so close it’s nearly unbearable. They clash like this, sometimes. He can see, in the dim, that stubborn pout to her mouth, that proud angle to her jaw. 

A bead of sweat forms on his temple— his nerves, the number of layers he’s still wearing, her warmth, it’s not a good recipe— and the wild, mad notion gets into his head that she can see it in the dark, can track it as it falls down the side of his face, can taste the salt as if it was on her tongue.

After a moment, they both lie down again, back to back. She shuffles— stretches her spine, as if she could match his height by willpower alone.

(A shadow.)

“If you don’t give me the dagger I shall cry,” Rosa declares.

“I have never seen you cry, not even once.” Viago replies.

“Then I shall pout very hard.”

“I have seen you blush when you’re embarrassed. It’s awful. It clashes with your hair. But never cry.”

“Viago.”

“It is.”

(It hadn’t been one of those sordid, explicit, poorly-written novels. Instead, hidden under the cushion, was a copy of On the Spirit Immaterial: A Meditation. Rosa had refused to look at him, bright pink and embarrassed, unwilling to acknowledge an interest in philosophy.)

Now Rosa snorts, and his frown lessens. “I know,” she says, “it is quite inconvenient.” 

Perhaps he’ll manage to catch some sleep tonight, despite the uncomfortable, overcrowded bed, and the heat, and the looming threat within his mind. Rosa shifts again— hooks her foot around his ankle. 

“Do you want me to start sniffing around?” She says.

Her voice is scratchy, but oh so very sweet, like she wants to convince him to put her to use, and he can see her without looking— all fluttering lashes and syrup smile, a cat bringing home a dead thing as a present, wanting nothing in return but a scratch under her chin and a comfortable place to curl up and nap. 

“Perhaps later. For now— don’t wander far.”

Time passes, a month, then two, three, and no specific plots to end his life are uncovered (for the moment). 

Eventually, Rosa gets the dagger.

Years after this, it becomes her favorite knife, despite the protests from two people.

She should not be there.

Rosa was very explicitly told not to be there— by him, several days ago, then several hours ago, just to remind her. She’s supposed to leave for a contract— by his estimations, her ship should be departing in four hours or so. And yet here she is, at a function she was never invited to, approaching him, arm in arm with Teia. At least Rosa had the sense to wear a hood and a mask. 

Viago exhales through his nose, but manages to keep the depth of his irritation off his face. That will come later, when they are not surrounded by people who would latch onto the first sign of weakness like blood in the water.

Beside him, Lucanis Dellamorte turns to greet Teia, then turns his attention to her companion in curiosity.

“And this is—” Teia begins

“A fledgeling from my House,” Viago interrupts. No one important, he tries to project.

The look he sends her is cold, chastising. Behave, he commands with his eyes. She knows how to act in public, he knows she does— which only makes it more grating whenever she chooses to pretend she does not. Or maybe she does that because she resents his reminders— they can get stuck, sometimes, like that, in unhelpful loops.

But she must be able to read the rigidity on his frame: Rosa keeps her space, keeps quiet. When she speaks, it’s with her hands, not her voice, in that language they adapted when she couldn’t talk.

I wanted to say goodbye before leaving , she signs.

“Alright,” he says, dispassionately, “now leave.”

And that should be that.

Except—

She turns to Lucanis Dellamorte (why) and though he cannot see her face, she tilts her head, considering—

(He knows that gesture well enough.)

No. There is absolutely no reason why Rosa should be considering the First Talon’s favored grandson. Anyone else— anyone else within reasonable standards— fine.

“Leave,” Viago insists.

Whatever quality she finds in his voice, it’s enough to make her listen and go.

There is no reason why this should develop into a problem. There is no reason at all— and it wouldn’t be particularly difficult to ensure it. Lucanis is a busy man, and one not particularly social, at that. If Viago fine-tunes Rosa’s schedule a little bit—

There really is no reason why this should become a problem.

Rosa finishes her contract. Her fifth one in a row without major issues, clean as death can be. He still believes there is room for improvement— if she only thought about things more thoroughly, if she didn’t have that penchant for improvising…

But results? She gives him results.

Rosa finishes her contract, and there is no reason why she shouldn’t be considered a full member by now. She’s older than most, and far more skilled than many— not that he will ever tell her, she’s arrogant enough, charming as some people seem to find it. 

He cannot stall forever.

Viago would love it if it was not his decision.

(He would not tolerate it if it was anyone else’s.)

Rosa finishes her contract, and Viago makes her a full member of the Antivan Crows— and really, she has been one in all but official documents for some years now. But still she smiles widely, sweetly, her leathers smelling still faintly of blood. 

(A lifetime and a half ago she had smiled the same way, a dead body in between them.

“What” he had said.

“I was useful,” she had answered.

“You like being useful?”

“Yes.”

“That is… good. Useful Crows live longer than useless Crows.”)

Rosa finishes her contract— and Teia insists on celebrating in the Diamond. It is at times like these that Viago is reminded not to trust anyone. Particularly when Rosa can barely stand without holding onto the walls, and Andarateia just happens to make herself scarce after blowing him a (slightly inebriated) kiss— he can feel his face go warm—, and now it falls to Viago to deal with the drunken mess of his wayward protégé.

She’s laughing. She’s been laughing the whole way—except for when she stopped to retouch the glossy color on her lips— as he tries to herd her into the general direction of her room with a hand firmly set on her shoulder to pull her when she tries to wander and push her when she begins to fall behind. 

She wasn’t stumbling earlier, when she danced and danced and danced and danced and he watched, sipping from his glass of (dutifully tested) wine, back straight and a ways apart from the hurricane Rosa de Riva is. She wasn’t stumbling when she danced and danced and danced and danced with Teia, all swishing skirts and liquor smiles and easy flirting. 

But knots are not locks and dancing is not walking, so now she stumbles, chatting incessantly about something he’s not fully paying attention to. About two or three lifetimes ago she didn’t speak at all— for long enough he believed the damage to her vocal cords was too severe. For long enough they had to figure out a way she could communicate with her hands. And then at some point she must have decided to start talking and never shut up. Or something like that.

(It does seem fitting that the first time he heard her voice was when she laughed. She had been holding a vial of poison, staring intently at the label— before she had laughed. You’re funny , she had said, and had nearly given him a heart attack.)

“Can you manage stairs?” Viago asks, standing just before the first step. It’s two flights until they reach her borrowed room. Just two flights of stairs. It shouldn’t feel like this impossible task— but when he looks at Rosa she’s a little pale, perhaps even a little green. “Nevermind. But if you vomit on me I’m leaving you here to suffer the consequences of your actions alone.”

It’s not an empty threat.

He picks her up.

Rosa’s arms wrap around his shoulders loosely, distractedly— she keeps staring at the steps, eyes a little hazy, a little unfocused. “The floor is… far.” 

“You are usually a lot closer to it, yes.”

“Fuck off,” she says without bite. “I mean. I mean— it’s new. This. New. You know?”

“No.” 

At least it’s late enough that no one is out in the hallways to see the mess she’s insisting on being. She chose to wear her Crow leathers (Teia had pouted) for the night, which can only be detrimental to their reputation if someone were to peek out their door.

 Viago moves quickly, just in case. No need to maximize the risk of exposure.

He carries her all the way into her room— no need for keys again, she just touches the door and it unlocks and flies open before them—, he carries her all the way to her bed, means to lower her carefully—

“Thank you,” she says, and presses a quick kiss to his cheek.

So of course Viago just drops her unceremoniously on her bed.

“Oof.” She says.

Her kiss leaves a thin, sticky residue on his skin. It’s a good metaphor for her, Rosa— sticks .

(Except when she doesn’t, when she’s slippery and hard to pin down, when she disappears for several hours without a trace. It’s… frustrating, not knowing what she does, where she goes.)

Viago moves with efficiency, catching one of her ankles and pulling her brusquely until her foot rests on his chest and he can use both his hands to unlace her tall boot. Gloved hand cupping her heel, he pulls her boot off and drops it next to the bed— Rosa sighs in contentment, curls her toes, then plants her other foot squarely on his chest. 

He cannot help the quick exhalation that escapes through his nose.

His fingers catch on the second knot, it slips a couple times before he can take it apart— perhaps he drank one too many glasses of wine as well, the night was long—  

“...You know you don’t have to do that, yes?” She says, a lopsided smile curving her glossy lips.

“You’re in no state to do this yourself and you’ll ruin the bedding if you sleep with your boots on.” Laces loose, he slips the second boot off her leg, drops it next to its match. 

“I had fun tonight,” she says, shifts, makes space beside her.

“I saw.”

“Lots of fun.”

A sudden bout of nausea rolls in his stomach. Yes, perhaps he did overindulge after all.

“And with Dellamorte the Lesser no less—”

“Oh, mean,” but she laughs, throaty and delighted, “just a little kissing, nothing more.”

Another spell of nausea— Viago sits down at the very edge of her mattress to wait it out. 

“Was all that flirting you do with Teia not enough fun for you?”

“Oh!” Rosa laughs again, all teeth and sharp joy, “oh, you are so close to calling me a whore— it’s in my blood, yeah? Do it. Go on.”

He doesn’t. He feels— a bit lightheaded, actually. And his heart rate is quick, and— 

Sticky.

Viago lifts a hand to his face, wipes off the glossy residue.

Ah.

“Did you poison me? You poisoned me.” He’s not sure if he’s more offended or proud. He did not see it coming— but was it whim or plan? There’s the difference: a simple stroke of wild luck or a true thought-out endeavor. Only one of the two would actually impress him.

“Just a little bit,” she says, looking still a little green, and maybe more than a little smug. Her long hair is half over her face, one of her arms thrown carelessly above her head. 

“Did you poison yourself just so you could poison me?”

“Just a little bit,” she says. “Lie down with me for a moment.”

He… he should lie down, just for a small moment. Just until it passes.

Viago moves slowly, carefully. They haven’t done this since that one night at the inn— this bed is much wider, wide enough they can lie on their backs, side by side. It’s not particularly uncomfortable, and the warmth she radiates is pleasant in the cool night. 

“I cannot believe you poisoned me.” He says, frowning. “I cannot believe I fell for it.”

She laughs again.

“Rosa de Riva sounds so nice, doesn’t it? And I know where I want my tattoo— but I think perhaps only the main symbol? And a little stylized. I have some ideas, I will show you later and you can help me pick.”

Viago closes his eyes. Just for a small moment. 

“Viago?” Rosa calls.

“Yes?”

“There is this scholar, yes? Sister Costa. She wrote Meditation— it does not matter, it was a bit hard to read. Complicated language. But—”

“Since when do you read?” He says, as if he’s not aware of her guilty pleasures. 

“Since you taught me, actually—”

(They had been younger, a hundred thousand lifetimes ago, and one trainer had accosted him on a hallway, gesturing wildly, a shiny new burn on the back of his hand. You brought that wild animal he had yelled, you’re responsible for her!)

“And I thought that was traumatic enough for all parties involved so you decided to never ever read again.”

“Oh, alright, quick question: how dare you?” That earns her a snort. “I am trying to say something.”

“You are always trying to say something.”

“Yes, and it is all very important so, so— one day I might be gone and you will be so sad you did not pay more attention to my nonsense.”

“So is it nonsense or is it very important?”

“There is this scholar—” She is relentless, truly. Never stops, never backs down, always pushes through or finds a way around. It’s exhausting, and— admirable. “I thought at first, when I actually understood what she was trying to say, that she was another one of those self-righteous Chantry— but no, there are… blanks.”

He opens his eyes to look at her— finds her eyes in the dim. They don’t glow or reflect the light— they’re soft, half-lidded, made so by liquor and her thoughts. Some hair is on her face still, so of course he needs to reach out and push it away—

Rosa catches his hand before he can retreat, laces their fingers together with more coordination that he would have thought she had.

Her skin is warm, warm, it seeps through the thin leather of his gloves. 

“See, she would have been censored, so she had to sort of— write around things. But it’s obvious once you actually know what to look for, yes? In the spaces, in the… silences. You know?”

“No,” he says once more. He is only half listening to her. They are to depart back to Salle in the morning— realistically, it will be closer to noon. “I am not inside your head.”

“An oversight if I ever saw any. Who do I complain to?”

She has small hands. Deft fingers— quick, calloused, stronger than they look. Perhaps a little twitchy when she gets particularly restless. 

“What is it that you are saying?” He asks when he cannot bear to look at their joined hands any longer.

“I do not know. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps that you are my favorite person in the world.”

(When he wakes, Viago will realize two things: he stayed more than he meant, and he never took off his own boots.)

Chapter Text

It’s midafternoon when Rosa walks into his study— just walks in, no knocking, no respect— and demands:

“Spar with me.”

He has no idea when she got so entitled, if this was something she carried within her already or if she developed it over the course of her training. 

“No,” he says. 

He has things to do. There is a stack of fulfilled contracts on his desk he still needs to review, sign and seal before their second half of compensation is released. Then he needs to focus on the second stack: incoming contracts, most of them unassigned, but some requesting a specific Crow. After he’s done with that he would like to go over the debriefs he received on the newest batch of Fledglings, and then if he has some time left he wants to test the acting time of a new paralyzing toxin he managed to get his hands on— he’ll call Rosa then, when he actually has a need for her.

Speaking of— she hasn’t left at all; instead she remains standing right in front of his desk, in comfortable trousers and a loose shirt, sleeves rolled up and unlaced at the front. If he looks— he’s not looking— but if he looks, he can see the black head of the small snake on the center of her chest. 

Stylized. 

(The rest of the snake continues down her sternum in asymmetrical loops. He knows this because she showed him when she first got it, when the skin was still pink and inflamed and she had pulled down her collar without much of a warning. He knows this also because this is the symbol of House de Riva.)

“Spar with me,” she insists, undeterred, “please?” For further effect, she angles her face down, looks at him all meek and sweet, lashes fluttering, the most harmless of lambs.

(How mercurial she can be, this wild, unpredictable creature. He has seen her snarl through a mouthful of blood, has seen her steal from people before their corpse cools down without a single shred of shame, has seen her pick fights and throw rocks and bite and scratch and growl and burn and burn and burn.

How mercurial she can be. How contradictory. Out of the corner of his eye he swears, swears the ink on her chest shifts, the snake playfully darting its tongue out to taste— the air? Her skin?)

“Do you not have Fledglings you can scare if you’re bored?” Viago says.

“Oh, no, yes, I have been doing that all morning. Apparently I derail their training and make them lose focus with all sorts of lies.”

“Do you?”

“They’re fun lies. And they should learn how to spot a lie, anyways— make a note of that in your… notes.”

Viago sighs through his nose. 

“Then find a contract in the pile that interests you,” he is certain he saw a few that might catch her attention, so he reaches for the stack— Rosa moves lightning-quick, pressing her fingers to the topmost paper before he can begin rifling through the pile. 

“Maybe later?” She says, then takes her hand away, “I’m— ah, Andraste’s tits, sorry Vi, I did not mean to.”

Soot. Where her fingers had pressed, sooty prints remain. They don’t smell of smoke, she didn’t actually burn through the paper— this time. That had been a headache to fix, but now he can still make out the grooves of the wording under the blackened parts.

Still, he shoots her a chastising glare.

Rosa wipes her hand down her thigh: again and again she leaves dark streaks of soot, not running out of the substance. “Shit,” she says, “shit. That… is probably going to stain.”

Sometimes she… spills. Overflows. And if he looks at her with more attention— there is a tension to her jaw that distracts from the practiced ease of her posture. There is a slight tremble to her fingertips.

Control had been a cornerstone of her training, a necessity. But there is no excess of mages among the Crows, and delving into magical theory had never seemed to help her. Control , her trainers had told her, and he had told her, then repeated it again and again, and then she had mouthed it, sounded it out, like she was being faced with the word for the first time in her life— but she still overflows, from time to time, like too much water in the canals and not enough space for it to flow properly. 

(You brought that wild animal. You’re responsible for her.)

None of his obligations are particularly pressing. 

“How about a duel?” He offers.

“Oh— a proper one? We haven’t done that in ages.”  

Rosa usually prefers the courtyard, for this sort of thing, he knows. She likes the drama, she likes showing off, she likes the sunlight and the wind and the stone under her feet. He takes her to an empty training room instead, somewhere he can close the door, lock it, keep distractions at bay. She’s unfocused as it is, no need to add an audience and make her act like a complete idiot.

Viago grabs two rapiers from where they’re hanging on the wall and hands her one. They haven’t done this in a while, but they used to, often enough, when no one else wanted to go against her ( she bites, Viago, who even does that?). Fools and cowards, the lot of them— and blind, so blind to what she could be turned into.

(And it has always been particularly satisfying to bruise her ego, to beat her enough times in a row it begins to frustrate her— so maybe she would feel the tiniest bit of what she does to him constantly.)

“First blood?” She asks from her spot on one side of the room.

“Naturally.”

“Any rules?”

Viago arches a critical eyebrow, his tone is flat. “Why do you ask if you never play by them?”

“I like to know which rules I’m breaking.” Rolling her shoulders, she settles into an opening stance. “Do you not need to stretch first? You have been spending quite lot of time at that desk.”

He should, that’s just good sense. But sometimes— sometimes he’d rather sprain something that give her the satisfaction of being right. 

“I’m fine.” He says.

And that is that. There is no signal to start, Rosa just goes at it— always so quick to go on the offensive, magic wrapped around her limbs to make her faster than a regular person would be, always demanding his full attention if he doesn’t want to get caught up in the tangle of her storm.

Rosa just goes at it, forcing him to be in a defensive position right away, demanding his full attention, no distractions, no mercy, no room to breathe. If he wants to think he needs to do it faster than she can move, he needs to do it between the bouts of parrying-deflecting-dodging-parrying-deflecting-dodging.

She doesn’t go easy on him, and he doesn’t go easy on her. They would both be offended if the other ever did— Viago made that mistake only once, years ago, and she had been young and furious and hurt in ways she couldn’t even begin to unknot and explain to him. I can take it, she had demanded— begged— about everything and anything, with so little personal ambition, but always more than willing to rise to the challenge.

(That had been it, that had been the thing that made him go, oh, that’s the trick to her. It took him longer than he’d liked to figure out, but a controlled lift of his shoulders and a if you do not think you can do it… work wonders on her. Stubborn idiot.)

They spring apart, circle each other slowly, measuring, looking for any sign of weakness. She’s faster than him— faster than most people— but she lets her guard drop far too easily, gets too caught up in the blood rushing within her veins. And he knows her.

Sangre del Hacedor, he knows her too well.

(There is something there, some elusive thing within his mind. Something there— their weapons are sharpened, if he falters even one moment she could hurt him badly, and the reverse is just as true. Viago does not like to take unnecessary risks as a general rule; the risks he likes to take are calculated.

There is something there—)

She lunges for him again.

They travel the length of the room, metal on metal on metal on metal— a muscle on his leg twinges, but he cannot afford to take his attention off Rosa and her constant attacks. She’s implacable, relentless, tireless; she keeps her eyes on his the whole time, all of that natural intensity sharpened to a lethal degree. Her off hand crackles with electricity, trying to find an opening— he knows that trick too, and if she touches him then it’s all over, his muscles will seize and spasm and he will collapse in a rather unpleasant manner. 

They spring apart once more.

He catches his breath, she blows her hair away from her face. How stupid that she insists on wearing it unbound.

“Tired?” Rosa taunts, mouth twisted in half a smile. Oh, he can understand perfectly why her opponents rush her sometimes, why they get riled up and become careless, furious, seeing nothing but the cocksure slant of her lips.

( Such a pretty face, someone had said, but the moment she opens her mouth you want to punch her. Viago had agreed internally, and then slipped something quite nasty into their drink.)

“What would make you think that works on me?” He replies.

And she lunges again.

But she’s— unfocused. He can tell she is, and all of that impressive speed cannot make up for the million little mistakes she’s making, so when she overextends her reach— it’s enough for him to trip her, and she goes down with a curse and the clatter of her sword on the floor.

Viago stands above her, expression inscrutable, the tip of his rapier just under her chin. 

“We said,” she’s still full of that restless energy, her fingers twitch where they’re pressed to the floor, “we said first blood.”

She demands, demands, like it’s her prize to keep, like it’s her right to have her blood spilled by his hands. Like an offering of some kind for an ancient, thirsty god. Like all her agitation can leave her body only through her split skin.

Viago does it quickly and not unkindly; he runs the tip of his blade upwards, opening a shallow cut on her cheek. She does not flinch, she does not look away— if anything, her eyes go soft and relieved as tiny red drops bloom on the small wound. What a strange creature she is. 

“What?” She says quietly, in that raspy voice of hers, and Viago realizes he must be making some kind of face to have her tilting her head in curiosity like that. 

He shakes his head. “It’s like you can’t do anything without pain. You could have yielded.”

“We said—”

“I know. Get up.”

“Give me a hand?”

“Why, so you can pull me down with you?” He knows her tricks.

She snorts, but does not defend herself.

Viago hangs his sword again as she’s busy retrieving her own weapon and picking herself off the floor. He turns to her after, crossing his arms over his chest, appraising her with a critical eye. 

“You were distracted. Your footwork was shoddy. Go through your forms.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

Straightening her posture, she begins a series of attacks on an invisible opponent. Step, step, lunge, fall back—

“Stop. Slow down and try again.”

Rolling her shoulders, she starts once more, step, step, lunge—

“Stop. Slower.”

She begins—

“Slower.”

She takes a step—

“ Stop .”

Rosa is all coiled tension and energy ready to burst, he can see the rapid rise and fall of her chest, the trembling on her legs, dying to spring forward and slash at something, anything that gives her resistance, that will satisfy whatever craving it is she can never fulfill.

Her tongue, pink and wet, darts out to moisten her lips— she follows him with her eyes when he walks in a slow circle around her, turning her head as he begins to disappear from her periphery. 

Behind her, Viago reaches over her shoulder, gloved fingers taking firm hold of her chin, mindful of her wound, and turning her head to make her face forward again. 

She does not fight him despite the tension he can feel beyond the leather of his gloves. 

“Stay,” he commands.

He can hear the quiet, startled little laugh she lets loose. 

“What,” Rosa says, “like a dog? Are you going to snap your fingers and see if I come bounding to you?”

Viago can’t help but ask—

“Would you?”

(He had seen her penchant for violence, her mean streak, her magic. Those had not been surprises— she hadn’t flinched, skinny, dirty thing she used to be, not when she saw him, dark and deadly, despite the bruising around her neck and the bars of her cage. She hadn’t flinched when faced with assassination right in front of her, had only looked at Viago with the same fascination she shows her little puzzles, and kicked the dead body at their feet in a fit of spite, and followed him out in silence. 

Viago had seen all that and thought— they could always use more mages. And there was some quality about this child in a cage, something… sharp. Some kind of potential that could be honed. That had been enough to make up his mind.

What he had not been expecting was her peculiar brand of fidelity.)

Rosa says nothing.

“Forget about—”

“I might. I—” He can hear the smile in her voice. “It would be funny, I should think. Try it sometime.”

No, he had not been expecting her peculiar brand of fidelity. But it’s not without reason, it’s not… unearned. Whatever her reasons may be— she can be surprisingly cagey about certain things, hiding behind wit and snark— she is far too willful to accept anything she hasn’t chosen for herself. 

“You do this sometimes.” He lets go of her face— she stays. Viago pushes on her shoulders, corrects her posture. She lets him. “Compare yourself to a pet.”

“Maybe it feels easier.”

“Than?” He moves her elbow next. She lets him.

“I do not— I am allergic to self-reflection and if I break out in hives I shall blame you.”

Her shoulders lift back up— he pushes on them once more. She lets him, and lets him, and lets him.

“You’re tense,” Viago says, like a hypocrite. “And you need to widen your stance.”

Rosa shifts her weight, spreads her— no— but it’s still not right, not completely. She’s out of balance, and it bothers him enough he doesn’t realize what he’s doing until his hands are on her hips— she lets him— and he’s correcting her angle. 

(He cannot pinpoint when the idea took root in his mind, but he’s so certain that if he were to touch her without gloves something would catch fire. He dislikes not knowing when he began to think like this.

There are layers to… this. Her. Complicated layers. Familiarity. Guilt. Affection. Frustration.)

“Try again.” He says, and lets her go.

She goes through her forms— and every single movement is executed to perfection without her stalling or rushing through anything. It’s maddening, truly maddening when she picks up things so easily, because it means that she could be doing this all the time.

And he is aware she stopped making so many mistakes the moment he was named Talon, which means she was just not trying hard enough before. Infuriating woman.

“That is a little better.” He tells her. 

“Right,” she says, “I can keep going by myself. Thank you.” 

“You’re certain?”

Rosa nods without looking at him— she’s focused now, eyes on that invisible enemy, slashing, stabbing, moving with impeccable footwork. Controlled, even if she might still be leaving traces of soot on the sword’s handle.

“Yes, yes, leave. Shoo.”

Viago scoffs. “Need I remind you wayward Crows with attitude problems don’t get to dismiss their Talon?”

“First of all I am delightful, thank you very much. And second of all— go away.” And she still won’t look at him. 

“If I’m leaving it’s because I’m busy and you disrupted my afternoon enough as it is.”

“Then go back to your desk and leave me to whatever the opposite of self-reflection is.”

So he scoffs and tells her to tend to her cut, and then leaves her to it, and doesn’t think about the leftover warmth he feels on his palms. 

(Viago isn’t there to see the way she touches the shallow wound on her face, the knot between her eyebrows, the slow reverence of her fingertips. He does not see the way her mouth twists into an angry snarl as she says shut the fuck up at nothing anyone can see, because Rosa de Riva hears honeyed words and empty promises and feels that insistent push-push-push of something that has been hovering around her for the past several hours but she refuses to let it in. 

Instead she focuses on the pulsing pain— it’s barely more than a scratch, he was humoring her at best, really— and thinks and thinks and thinks woof.)

She finds him again later— and he still remembers how taken aback he had been when they had been younger, and he had been irritated and confused and demanded to know why she insisted on spending so much time with him and what she had to gain from it and she had rolled her eyes and signed I like spending time with you with her hands while swearing at him with her damaged voice.

She finds him again later—

“If there is anything fun in that pile you were looking at earlier— maybe we could work on something together. So you don’t get too comfortable with this desk of yours.”

He stares.

“Maybe we could work on something that might require the presence of a third. Like, say, someone from another House, to— reinforce alliances. Like say, House Cantori, just to throw a wild idea.”

He stares.

“Oh— will you just find something for you and Teia and me?”

“I will think about it.” He says, particularly proud of how detached and even his voice sounds— and a lot less proud of how his heart rate picks up.

Chapter Text

Asariel is warm and humid at this time of the year, which only serves to aggravate him further. Their information was either incorrect or late— their target left the city only a handful of days ago, but they haven’t been able to ascertain in which direction she left. Viago cannot be sure if the Altus was informed of the contract against her life, or if this was simply poor luck for them.

He does not like not knowing these sorts of things.

Viago is currently in Teia’s room—he has rented a different one, because he hadn’t wanted to assume, among other reasons— sitting on a high-backed chair, one leg crossed over the other, a glass of wine in his gloved hand and a slight frown between his brows.

“This is taking awfully long.” He declares, the fingers of his free hand drumming a rhythm on his arm

“You can’t hurry beauty, Vi,” Teia calls over her shoulder with a disarming smile.

Rosa is— good at what she’s doing. Lounging. She has this innate capacity to lounge. No matter the time or the place, she can project this image of relaxation in a way that Viago never could; his posture is always straight, his shoulders hold a permanent tension he can very rarely get rid of. Like you’re always expecting a blow, Rosa told him once. Perhaps I am , he had told her. She’d rolled her eyes and made a rude gesture with her hand.

And Teia is— Good at what she’s doing too. 

As it stands, she’s oh-so-very-casually straddling Rosa’s lap, a small brush in her hand and a pan of makeup in the other. She dusts soft, pale golden dust on the other woman’s eyelids, and Rosa lets her and lets her and lets her, lounging on the couch, her legs just barely parted, her hands settled on Teia’s hips to keep her balanced. 

“We should do this more often,” Teia says.

“Which part?” Rosa asks her.

“Yes,” Teia says.

Viago sighs. Why is he here? Why do they need him here? Right— because their target is gone, but there’s a first cousin who frequents this place, who, as luck would happen to have it, has been heard commenting on women with red hair. If Rosa gets him talking— she probably will, either by charm or affront— then they might be able to get a direction, and then she can slip the sleeping drops Viago gave her in the man’s drink. 

“All done,” Teia says, but doesn’t move from her perch. Instead she takes careful fingers and uses them to turn Rosa’s face in Viago’s direction. “What do you think? Doesn’t she look pretty?”

(Rosa watches, passive, patient, blinking slowly.)

“You look— soft .” Viago declares. It’s unfamiliar. He’s not sure it settles well in his stomach.

Rosa makes a face.

He knows she prefers her make up to be more dramatic than this. Dark shadows around her eyes that emphasize the sharpness of her gaze, dark, smoke-berry colors on her lips. 

“You don’t like looking soft?” Teia asks her, a laugh caught in her voice.

“If it was entirely up to me,” how arrogant she looks, lounging so artfully like that, in that deep green dress— Teia’s doing as well. “I would be seven feet tall.”

“Really?” Teia says.

“I feel like while it wouldn’t solve all of my problems, brawling more efficiently would solve several of them, at least.”

“What problems?” Viago asks.

Arrogant, so arrogant how she looks at him. “I was not aware you were a part of this conversation.”

Teia laughs—

They’re awful, both of them. And sometimes, sometimes they huddle close and whisper and he knows, knows they’re talking about him— or worse, they’re talking about anything else and just letting him think they’re talking about him. Because he knows they know he’ll think they’re talking about him.

“I think you look lovely,” Teia tells her.

“Thank you.”

“I would kiss you if it wouldn’t ruin your makeup.”

“Ah. How tragic, my love, that fate pulls us apart so.”

“Perhaps later.”

“Perhaps, perhaps. Were I allowed—”

“Allowed?” Teia echoes, something sharp and delighted in her tone. She sounds like that just before she chooses to torment him— Viago braces, uncertain who her victim is meant to be. “Oh, allowed, you hear that, Vi? She needs to be allowed. Maybe you should give her your permission, no? Given you’re in charge of her?”

Viago thinks— hopes— he can pass the furious red tint to his face as nothing more than a byproduct of choking on his wine— which is not much better, but he thinks it’s marginally so. He clears his throat.

It sounds much too loud.

And Rosa— doesn’t even react, except, perhaps, for the barest twitch of her fingertips. She watches Teia from under half-lidded, golden eyelids, smiling in a way that seems— closed. Restrained. Defiant, in refusing to give her a reaction— for all the strength of her blush, it never comes at these sort of things. Perhaps having lived in a brothel for the first twelve years of her life has something to do with it.

Instead, she pushes Teia gently off her lap and onto the couch, stands, and announces:

“I am going to do my job, now.” 

And leaves.

“She can be surprisingly hard to read when she wants to be,” Teia says, smiling at the closed door. “And surprisingly slippery. Must be a House de Riva thing.”

“Teia…”

“What, Vi?”

He swallows. 

“What are you playing at?”

She unfolds from the couch and makes her way towards him, all of that devastating beauty solely trained on him. She knows exactly what she does to him— she must know, surely. And when she drops herself onto his lap, he knows he isn’t lounging, but sitting much too stiffly. 

Halla-gold eyes and a sharp smile are all he can see as his hands naturally gravitate towards her hips— is that residual heat, or is it his imagination? She lifts a hand to touch his face, to run fingers delicately down his jaw— and Viago sighs and sighs and sighs, the softest of exhalations and entirely at her mercy, like he’s been since that adder in the closet— and before that too.

“I am not playing,” she says, her voice even. Sweet. 

The fingers of her free hand bury themselves into his dark curls— his eyes fall closed at this sweetest of benedictions— and then she leans in to press a kiss below his ear, and another, and another, lower, lower.

“I imagine she kisses sweetly,” Teia murmurs against his skin.

Viago— laughs , startled, having nearly forgotten what they had been talking about and almost dropping his wineglass in the process. He takes a moment to compose himself— or try. Teia steals his glass, takes a sip, then places it safely on the side table.

“Obviously,” he says, “she bites.”

“Obviously?” There goes the topmost button of his silk shirt, and then the next one, and the next, “so you have thought about it.”

He can do nothing but pull her to his face, kiss and kiss and kiss her to shut her up, to maintain these wicked words and thoughts at bay— she laughs and laughs and laughs, his beautiful fiend, but takes pity, and doesn’t push any further. Not at the moment.

They get too busy to talk soon enough anyways.

Two hours later, when he’s dressed and mostly put back together, Rosa returns.

He doesn’t, doesn’t think about how she could have walked in at any point. He doesn’t, and doesn’t quite look at her in the eye, instead just stands by the open window— the weather has turned more and more oppressive, there is no current to alleviate this humid heat. 

“Minrathous,” she says, “we can depart in the morning.” Then she stands for a moment and— breathes in, lips barely parted, only a hint of pink tongue. “It’s going to storm.”

She says that, sometimes. She’s always right, even when there aren’t any clouds in the sky. Now, however, the skies are dark, and heavy, like a thick blanket. There are no gaps to see the stars.

“I wish it would hurry,” he complains mildly, “then maybe this Maker-damned humidity would ease off.”

Rosa— hums. She tilts her head, and runs the tip of her tongue over the edge of her top row of teeth, canine to canine, and then walks to the window in that green dress— it has a slit up her thigh, he sends a disbelieving look in Teia’s direction over Rosa’s head; Teia just winks, and—

Something—

Happens.

(Palm up, bare and eager, she leans on the windowsill, eyes closed, searching. She can taste the storm on her tongue, the hint of lime, the sweetness of familiarity, and if Rosa de Riva is to be anything at all then she is a conduit, an open channel. Through her, through her. She searches, searches, an old friend that’s never too far—)

The silence is deafening and neither Viago nor Teia seem to be able to break it. They feel— something, a displacement of air, the crackling of energy as it shifts and builds and builds and builds and coils —

(What is she doing? What is she doing? The hair on his arms is standing on end. Something catches— in his throat, in his chest, in his stomach, tight, tight, tight—)

Tendrils of lightning dance across her face and over her hair and escape from her fingers in vertical lines. There is the barest hint of a frown between her brows as she focuses, focuses , “come on,” she whispers lightly, a small, teasing smile on her face, “come to me. come.”

Lightning strikes the earth, loud and bright and leaving him dazed for a moment, and not a moment later heavy rain begins to fall in sheets and sheets and sheets.

His tongue feels— heavy. He swallows.

Rosa sighs, content and at ease with the release of the storm.

“There we go,” she says, then moves away from the window.

And Viago— swallows, again, trying to coast this undercurrent of something, feeling as the frustration mounts, and mounts—

“But wards are hard?” His voice is sharp, cutting.

Rosa is always too willing to meet him halfway when he sounds like that.

“Do not start with me,” hands on her hips, she is implacable, furious as a storm and just as ruinous.

“You can pull down a storm—” He pushes— he always pushes her— 

“Wasn’t pulling —”

“But wards are hard?” And the other million and a half things she claims are too difficult, that go over her head. Maybe I’m just a bad mage, she had shrugged, unbothered. And then she goes and changes the weather just like that.

Impossible woman.

“I told you,” she gesticulates as she talks, she usually does, sometimes it means something, sometimes it’s just emphasis. Fuck you, she throws carelessly with her hands— they are more honest than her tongue sometimes, “that wards are to rigid for me. They don’t listen.”

She turns and makes to leave— but not before grabbing the abandoned wineglass from earlier and drowning the last of its contents. They never brought out a second glass, or a third— Viago tries not to get stuck on that meaningless gesture.

“Where are you going?” He says instead.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” she says (he resents this), “but there is a bard downstairs and I wish to see how many drinks I can buy him until he performs dirty songs.”

And then she leaves, like the hurricane that she is.

The storm goes on, and on, and on.

“Can you believe her?” Viago says, “but no— wards are hard.”

Teia— so quiet until then, watching with wide eyes and heat on her cheeks— is in his space all at once, clever fingers working his belt quickly,sneaking into his trousers “complain about the stars next time and see if she rearranges them for you.”

He twitches in her hand and she smiles, triumphant. 

“Teia,” he says. It’s a heady, heady feeling, all that power— under his command. 

“Bed,” she says, “now?”

If he goes with it a little too eagerly— 

(Come on. Come to me. Come.)

Well. 

Rosa doesn’t come back that night, but she’s there in the morning, in Crow leathers. They depart at first light, and no one says anything about what they got up to the previous night, or what words might have been said, or what might have been admitted under… duress. 

And maybe, as they go out, the bard winks at her— and Viago grinds his teeth.

In Minrathous, the following conversation occurs:

“Rosa.”

“Viago.”

“Are you stuck?”

“What, me? No, I walked in here on purpose.” There is a shimmering wall around her, and glyphs on the floor. 

“I see.”

A tense silence follows.

“You can’t get out, can you?”

“I know not what you mean.” She’s defiant, prickly, looking away in derision, “I’m choosing to be here.”

“I’ll leave you to it then.”

She does not ask him for help and he does not offer it, so instead he simply walks out of the room. They still have a contract to finish— this was supposed to be a political thing, quick and easy. He can come back for her later— if she doesn’t figure out how to free herself in the meantime.

Viago walks out— and ten minutes later she hears footsteps that aren’t familiar, so naturally Rosa grins at the newcomers. “Ah.” she says, palms up and against the shimmering wall, “suppose you wouldn't believe I am simply at the wrong place and wrong time?”

Their target is not here either. When Viago and Teia make it back to the room Rosa got stuck in—  she’s gone without a trace. 

“She probably got out on her own and she’s following a lead,” Teia says. “I’m sure she’ll find us later.”

Viago feels a headache coming.

Things become… hazy. She remembers— the wards coming down and some sort of powder being blown onto her face (Viago will be so annoyed with her that she could not identify it right away.) She’s… slumped on the floor, her back against an unforgiving wall. Rosa swallows with a tongue that feels too heavy— tries to focus on something, anything, so she doesn't feel scattered in a million directions.

She can breathe. It’s shallow, and rapid, but she is breathing without localized pain. The space between her nose and her top lip feels wet. Sticky. Is she bleeding? there is something heavy on her wrists, something cold— chains. 

Rosa opens her eyes to greet the dark.

“You’re awake,” a voice says. He sounds tired. She empathizes.

Worlds are created and destroyed in the time that takes her to swivel her head and find the owner of said voice. An elf, pale, with dark hair, chained to the opposite wall. Something glints on his clothes, something… Small. Some kind of metal charm. An animal? Perhaps a dog. There is a needle on his arm, and a series of clear tubes rosa follows with her eyes until she finds the drip, drip, drip of his blood into a metal recipient.

She licks her lips, and feels the overwhelming need to share her opinion.

“...Terrible way to kill someone.” Her voice is quiet and raspy as ever, but it sounds so loud between her ears. “Too slow.”

“Oh, they’re not trying to kill me. They don’t need that much blood, so they just take some every few days.”

“...What for?” 

“The standard. Power, immortality.”

Something is… wrong. She’s so certain of this, but she can’t manage to pinpoint what it is. Something feels off, wrong . She blinks, slow, and unsettled.

“So… Boring. And not even with any flare?” 

“You know shem. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“What would be flare, to you?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps… a giant skeleton with glowing eyes?”

“Ah. Yes, perhaps.”

Rosa swallows again— it’s too loud, the working of her throat. It hurts. It feels like fingers are tightly wrapped around her neck— but no, no, that was over a decade ago. This is now. Not then. When is now?

How long has it been?

“Why is it so… quiet?” She asks.

“That would be the powdered root. It sunders your connection to the fade while it remains in your system.”

“Oh.”

It is… quiet. It’s so quiet. There are no things hovering around her, no empty promises and sweetened words and playful fingers dragging down her spine. Nothing taunts her, calls for her, offers her power in exchange for nothing more than letting them eat her whole. 

It’s so, very quiet.

(It’s deafening.)

There is a void inside of her, something empty that should be filled, that threatens to devour the rest of her, suck her inwards into that gaping maw of nothingness. It’s so loud, so loud— she’s too aware of her heartbeat, of the noise she makes when she breathes and her head hurts — blood trickles down her nose again. Rosa tries to curl into herself as much as she can— it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, bring back the noise — and loses track of time.

(Like the drip, drip, drip of blood.)

Her teeth hurt. She thinks, maybe, she’s drooling— but she can’t tell, can’t tell, her head feels too full of cotton, too slow and unfocused and dazed.

“Can I… die from this?” She asks her companion at length. Maybe it’s ten minutes later, maybe it’s ten years.

Chains jingle— the elf shrugs his shoulders. “Maybe. I’m not a mage. Don’t worry, though, once he gets rid of the Veil this probably won’t be able to happen again. So even if you die, this won’t happen to anyone else.”

She’s not following this conversation— it’s too quiet, too quiet, and she begs the locks but she has forgotten the language they speak. Please, she thinks, but her chains remain, and she’s stuck, stuck, stuck, again trapped in a cage of silence and she cannot scream because someone took her voice and now they took the pulsing storm that lives inside her.

(Fury, fury, fury, fury.)

“Who?” She gasps.

“Worry not, it doesn’t concern you.”

Her body lies still, but her spirit is thrashing against invisible bars, pounding restlessly. Let me out, let me out, let me out, it begs. Bring them back, all those voices, I like to fight them. 

(It’s cold, so cold, she might be shivering, she can’t tell, she needs to get her temperature up, burn this thing inside her, fire cleanses, she learned that at the brothel, one of the girls was superstitious, she used to burn things in a little metal plate, scraps of paper, trinkets, and in hindsight that might have been some kind of altar, but she never asked which god was it that took fire as offerings—

It’s so, so cold.)

Time moves sluggish around her. Her consciousness drifts. She blinks— or faints, and minutes or hours or days go by. 

“I’ve never seen anyone react so poorly to that.” The elf says. There is something in his tone— empathy, though not much. Maybe he’s one of those that dislikes humans on principle alone; well, she won’t blame him for that. Her experience with humans hasn’t been exactly stellar either.

(She used to be a child in a cage—)

Rosa groans. “Thirsty,” she says, despite having a mouth full of saliva. She spits out, but there is more, and more, and more.

(But there is something. There is something, she can almost feel— elusive, out of reach. Something— this voice isn’t saccharine sweet or sad or seductive, it’s distant like it’s trying to speak from a great distance, but clear like ringing metal, and it’s mean .

Is this really all it takes to bring you down?)

“Apologies. I can only offer this bowl full of my blood, though there is the matter of you reaching it, I suppose.”

(She used to be a child in a cage—

She cannot remember if there had been any voices there. Why? Why? An untrained mage trapped like that, the feel of those fingers around her throat, at the mercy of demons that would devour her, but she can’t remember at all, it’s all jumbled and out of order, this murky pool of no, thank you, until this young assassin with his cold eyes (pretty pretty pretty storm greyblueviolet) opened the lock—

It doesn’t make sense, does it?

She used to be a child in a cage—

Why is this voice familiar? So mean, so mean, like being pulled by the ear when she tracked mud inside the brothel—

Fuck you, she thinks. Bitch. Get that condescension and choke on it until you die.

That’s more like it, the voice says. 

“Much obliged,” Rosa says (growls?) at the elf. “Don’t mind if I do.”

“Hah,” the elf says, and a moment later, “wait, what.”

She’s been gone for days. Days.

She just disappeared, out of thin air, just like that, like she was never ever there in the first place, ashes blown away by a gust of wind and—

(He walked away.)

But he doesn’t have the time to dwell on things, to let himself feel. No matter how Teia keeps throwing him concerned looks, how she wraps around him tightly at night, nails scratching gently at his bare chest.

“There has to be something,” he says.

“We’ll find her. But Vi, if—”

“Don’t.”

(He walked away.)

There hadn’t been anything to track, besides the name of this Altus that keeps evading them. Nothing until they run into this shadow organization that eventually points them towards an abandoned building. It’s ironic that they struggle with locked doors— see? She’s never where she’s supposed to be, infuriating creature that she is, she would probably laugh at them if she were there, open the lock with a few whispered words, flip her hair over her shoulder and say what, like it’s hard?

(She’s not there. He walked away.)

They open the door, and the next, and the next— it’s quiet, eerily so. This could be another red herring, and then they need to find another lead—

The stench of blood is so strong he recoils as they step into the basement, and then he stands rooted to the spot, watching— he counts seven dead bodies strewn around the room like ragdolls. And an eighth in the middle of it all, and sitting on top of it, straddling its hips in morbid mimicry of intimacy, one hand pressed to the dead woman’s chest—

Rosa looks up.

Viago—

Breathes.

Strange creature that she is, all jagged edges, all that barely contained ire that bubbles up from time to time. For a moment, such a brief moment, it’s all in plain sight— the most honest he’s ever seen her. And then she tilts her head, just outs her chin in that arrogant way, swathes herself in snark and wit and ill-timed jokes, curves that plush, lying, abrasive mouth of hers into a slanted smile—

(Blood on her mouth, on her teeth, all over the front of her shirt.)

“Contract fulfilled, Fifth Talon.”

She makes to stand— sways, falls into Teia’s waiting arms. 

“Maker— What happened?” Teia asks her, hands on her face, looking for injuries— but the blood doesn’t seem to be hers. Rosa’s pupils are dilated, she’s breathing hard, nearly panting, turning her face to nose at Teia’s leather-clad hands. 

“There was… an elf,” Rosa blinks, and blinks, she licks her teeth— licks blood— “I don’t… it’s all a bit hazy. The elf went on his way. Don’t know his name. Had this— charm. Like a… dog? I hate weird cults.”

Viago moves. Long strides take him to them quickly— he’s breathing now, he can breathe— and he takes a hold of Rosa’s jaw— she whines when he moves her face towards the light. Her eyes are bloodshot, unfocused, there’s sweat on her forehead, all the telltale signs— 

“What did they give you?” He asks. He’s not sure if he has anything on hand to flush her system, to contrarrest whatever toxin might be coursing through her veins— but if she knows what it is then surely he can distill something quickly enough, they cannot have found her only to watch her succumb to some unknown poison.

And Rosa— rolls her eyes. Like he’s annoying him with his concern (he walked away).

“‘S’not… Just… Messes with my, um, magic. Feels cold. Quiet.” She wrinkles her nose, indignation written all over her face, “I don’t care for it.”

Rosa is asleep. Curled up with Teia, she’s been sleeping for the past hour at least— she has been sleeping a lot as the drug works its way out her system. Their carriage is spacious, but Viago takes the opposite seat to them regardless. 

His eyes keep going back to their interlocked hands. Skin on skin, they both have small hands, quick fingers, the kind that promise trouble when they get out of sight. Rosa mumbles in her sleep, her brow furrows— and Teia turns her head, absently pressing her mouth to the side of her head, where it rests on her shoulder.

(Rosa has the strange capacity to sleep anywhere, no matter how uncomfortable, provided she perceives a degree of safety. She can sleep on the floor, curled up in strange corners, and one time— sprawled in the bushes. One of her boots had been peeking out. She might have been drunk.

She used to sleep under his bed too, just for a week. Maybe too. Scared him every time he woke up and saw a skinny little hand right there.)

“Vi,” Teia speaks quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping mage, “come on.”

He looks at the empty space at Rosa’s other side.

He does not move.

(He walked away.)

He cannot move. Arms crossed over his chest, he’s tightly wound and can’t figure out a way of uncoiling himself. There is— guilt, among other things, perhaps far too many to catalogue. Relief, anger. Fear. The rest form a muddy mess of tangled knots inside his mind.

(Inside his chest.)

Teia sighs. 

“You two keep making this so much more difficult than it needs be.” 

“Do we?” He says, dispassionate, distant. “You just want to get in bed with the both of us.” 

He knows it’s the wrong thing to say right away and winces. “I did not mean—”

Her eyes flash in anger, everything about her expression sharpens. They keep doing this, this cyclical, eternal fight, broken by moments of tender happiness that they can’t seem to make last.

“I would scream at you if she wasn’t asleep,” Teia says. “You know it’s not just that.” 

Viago looks out the little window.

The rest of the trip is tense, until they part ways— Teia for Treviso, Rosa and Viago for Salle.

Rosa walks with a straight back when they enter the de Riva’s estate, her head held high, barely just a step behind him. Like nothing happened. Like the liar she says upfront that she is. 

They run into one of the Fledglings— an adolescent, barely so— who stops in his strides, caught eyes wide.

“Yes?” Viago says.

“Um— nothing.” The boy says. “Sorry, I mean, sorry Talon— welcome back.” He does not address Rosa whatsoever, and scurries away, avoiding her eyes.

“What are you telling these children?” He asks her.

She snorts. “Nothing you want to know. Now, if there’s nothing else you need of me—”

Later— in his personal residence, the one only two people in the world other than him know the exact location to, with no staff, Viago wakes up in the middle of the night. He sighs, running a hand down his face. What a mess.

Viago casts his eyes about the dark room— and oh, of course, there is Rosa on his chair, all limb over limb over limb, wrapped in one of his cloaks. She wasn’t there when he went to bed, she just wanders in— like a cat, in and out the window (there are doors, but no, he knows her habits.)

At least she’s not under his bed this time.

He watches her, for a moment, studies the rise and fall of her shape in the dark. Breathing. Safe. As contradictory as ever.

Looking away, he lifts one of his hands— bare. At least he chose to wear a shirt and trousers when he slipped— collapsed— into bed. He keeps thinking about it, her and Teia holding hands like that. The thought leads nowhere, there is no conclusion to it, it’s simply something that snags his mind. Skin on skin.

(He’ll catch fire.)

He’s tired, exhausted really, but wasn’t managing more than fitful bouts of sleep. Slowly, he rubs his middle and index fingers together, letting his mind wander aimlessly. When he looks back at her— his breath catches in his chest in a silent gasp. She’s already looking at him, a sliver of her strange eyes glinting from the confines of his dark cloak. In the dim, her eyes, half-lidded and more gold than sunset rose, wouldn’t look out of place with vertical pupils.

Viago watches her, and she watches him, and they watch each other for a long while in silence— and then her gaze travels down his arm, focuses on his hand (ungloved, ungloved). It’s a near physical thing, her eyes on him, and the heat it spreads along his skin. 

The tension coils. Builds. Builds. Builds.

Whatever he could possibly say— perhaps an apology? That would be a good place to start— catches inside his mouth; Viago chews it, swallows it back down. He can’t shake the notion that she’s waiting.

Like a predator, like a patient thing (her? When?), all teeth and claws and hunger.

(Complain about the stars next time and see if she rearranges them for you.)

It’s been tempting, so tempting, ever since she made that off-hand comment. Sometimes he finds himself rubbing his fingers together and wondering just how far she would allow him to push her. 

(Contract fulfilled, Fifth Talon.)

If nothing else, she gives him results.

And everything else. She gives him everything else too. Makes him fight for it, certainly, but she rarely tells him no.

(If there’s nothing else you need of me—)

It builds and builds and builds and Viago—

—snaps his fingers.

Rosa uncoils at once, moves like liquid smoke, like a big feline, until she slips under his covers to lie next to him— she leaves some distance between them, and it doesn’t feel unlike when she walks half a step behind him

(Complain about the stars—)

He’s not wearing enough layers to fend off her heat, but at least no part of them is touching each other.

It is no concern of his to think her beautiful (he walked away.) But he does— he’s not sure when it started, when he began to look at her and saw more than a favored, familiar weapon. She’s that, very much so, but there is… More. 

Standing by the window, palm upturned—

Over a decade ago he found a child in a cage— and then they grew twisted around each other like the way she folds herself in chairs, limb over limb over limb. Rosa let him— take her apart piece by piece, rebuild her in ways much more suited to both their tastes, though not without friction. 

She made him fight for it. Prove his worth, or something enough like that. Test the limits of his patience more like.

He put effort and time and now he’s left with this… creature. This impossible force of nature, with her sharp tongue she wields inclemently and her wit she wraps herself in like armor, with all her tightly-wrapped anger and her love of animals and tales and song and dance and the lamb eyes she makes when she wants to get her way. And all of that, all of that at his command.

It’s not unearned. He has scars. And so does she.

(He snaps his fingers and she comes to him.)

If she’s beautiful— that is none of his concern. 

So why does it feel like a storm is brewing, atmospheric pressure pushing on his skin? Why does it feel like it’s only a matter of time before lightning strikes and the rain finally falls? Why does it feel so—?

“That wasn’t so bad,” she chimes up in the dark.

Impossible, impossible.

One of her wrists is broken. She had reacted little when they immobilized it, be it the drug in her body or their collective tolerance to pain. She doesn’t remember what happened exactly, but he looked at the bruising on her skin, the hard, straight edge of the dark coloring and could only think about a chained animal pulling and pulling and pulling and pulling—

Until something gives or snaps.

“You will learn how to deal with wards.” He says.

She laughs, a tired little sound. “yes, alright.”

“And…” Viago closes his eyes, breathes deep (smoke and ozone and peaches in summer), tries to rearrange his thoughts. There are so many things, things he wants to say, things he’s terrified of voicing, but they all get twisted inside his mind, strangled by the vice of his steely self-control. 

“And,” his voice sounds tight with the rapid rise and fall of his chest, “and you’re not allowed to leave my sight for a month at the very least.”

She shifts, curls on her side, until her forehead is pressed to his shoulder. Thankfully, thankfully her skin doesn’t touch his. There are small mercies left in the world. 

“Yes,” she says, and he can feel her smile through his thin shirt, “alright.”

(—inevitable?)

Chapter Text

Despite Teia’s teasing, Viago and Rosa aren’t attached at the hip. Oh, she’s always around in some capacity or another, and if not her then the tracks she leaves behind: the lingering smell of ozone, the missing articles of clothing that resurface among her things, the— unasked-for, but sometimes useful— commentary she leaves at the margins of his notes. 

There is no denying how much time they have spent together over the years, how much time they spend together still. He contributed to an extensive part of her training— he held her under heat and hammered out the impurities, he sanded and folded and honed until he was happy with her edge, sharp enough to cut through a falling leaf before it reached the ground.

(Molten down and forged anew as many times as it was needed. She has always been resilient.)

They are not attached at the hip. They have aspects of their lives that do not involve each other— Viago tells himself he doesn’t resent this in any capacity, he does not find himself wondering where she is during those hours where she disappears without a trace nor feels entitled to manage every moment of her schedule.

They are not attached at the hip. 

But they spend so much time together, more and more, it feels like, and now some nights too— not every night, it’s not enough to make it a routine, Maker forbid. But they spend so much time together already it does not feel like much of a shift when, sometimes— it’s not a routine— she sleeps in his armchair by the corner, on the floor by the door to his bedroom.

In his bed, but never without invitation— not at first. Sometimes he’ll see her in impossible positions, folded over herself in her strange ways, asleep half-sitting against a wall, half-sprawled on the floor and he'll feel irritation welling up within his chest— she never complains by the next day, but he knows her body must, and if it does not, it should.

Sometimes, when he sees her like that, he’ll call her name in a single, sharp breath— he wouldn’t dare to wake her by touch, she’s way too primed to retaliate against being startled awake. Sometimes, he’ll call her, watch her wake at once— she has a tendency to wake at once, eyes blinking quickly at his call— before he tells her to get in bed if she’s going to insist on potentially injuring herself like that, his tone coated in mild disapproval. 

She always goes when he calls. Back to back, side to side, the heat of her inescapable. 

(There is one time— one time he must have felt particularly vexed with her, when she must have been particularly difficult, or committed the affront of taking too long on finishing a contract, unsettling him with her prolonged absence. 

There is one time when, instead of calling her, when he wakes to find her sitting against his bed, arms crossed tightly and head tilted towards her chest, he snaps his fingers instead— how she breathes in sharply, moves to climb in beside him before she’s completely awake, and falls asleep right back, in the all in the space of a minute and a half. His fingers tingle afterwards.)

They are not attached at the hip. But she has been his constant companion for over a decade, and if nothing else, there is comfort to be drawn from familiarity.

(There should not be anything else.)

The hour is late when Viago hears the telltale tapping against the glass— a quiet warning, or a greeting, a rhythm he recognizes as hers, though he cannot be sure if it’s meant to be for him or the window itself. He stays still, lying on his back with his eyes closed— the hour is late. Rosa barely makes any noise when she comes in through the window— but stumbles at the very tail end of her intrusion, a small, breathless laugh escaping before she gets it under control.

Viago stays still, with his eyes closed, curious enough about this to let it play out. 

He remains still when he feels the mattress dip under her weight as she sits at the very edge to take her shoes off— and however many articles of clothing that follow. It’s strange to think this is a familiar sound— the whisper of clothing as Rosa takes off layers, overheated and constrained, treating her body as a fact and nothing else.

A moment later she stands once more, and he hears the slight creak of his wardrobe being opened. Sticky fingers, that one. He sighs in perfect silence. Nothing is ever safe from her.

It is a feeling of mild surprise that quickly rushes through him when, while he’s still lamenting the unavoidable loss of whatever she took for herself, Rosa slips under the covers, by his side, without being told to. 

There is some space between them, though he can still feel as she moves into a full-body stretch, from her hands, stretched far above her head, past the pillow she sometimes claims, to the very tip of her toes. She holds herself there for a moment, muscles tense to the point of trembling— she holds herself there long past what he thinks most people would, long enough to make him begin to tense up as well— before letting go all at once, allowing her body to turn soft and boneless, deeply at ease.

A small sigh— quiet, but riddled with so much satisfaction Viago has no alternative but to replay it multiple times within his mind.

She smells like that fruity, summer-like scent she prefers, and a little like the sweet wine she likes — and under that the salt of sweat. 

Viago grinds his molars together, a feeling he doesn’t wish to examine catching in his throat.

“Do you even know what time it is?” He says quietly, evenly. He congratulates himself on sounding nothing beyond vaguely displeased. This is how he normally sounds when talking to her, is it not? 

“ Shit —” her surprise quickly morphs into laughter. “Sorry, did I wake you?”

“No,” he says, and a moment later, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, “how was the bard?”

“How did you know?”

“I did not. But you like bards.”

She laughs again— pure joy decanted in the sound. Viago knows she likes to get away with things; but, sometimes, she likes being called out even better. Or perhaps she’s just in a particularly good mood, given her nightly activities.

(Conflicting feelings tangle together within his chest at the thought that she came here right after, without even washing up, unashamed of the salt on her skin, of whatever the state of her smallclothes might be— he will not think about that, nothing good lies down that path. Perhaps she did not think him important enough to warrant fixing herself up for.

Then again, the idea that as soon as she was done she came to him with no delay keeps the worst of his irritation at bay.)

“Am I so predictable? How tragic,” Rosa says. He cannot see her very well in the dark, but he can hear the smile in her voice.

“Perhaps to me,” he answers honestly. 

They spend so much time together. 

“It is not that terrible if it is only to you, I suppose.”

The things she says, sometimes— Viago knows he should be used to the way she’ll sometimes sink a knife in his gut without warning in the relentlessness of her affection, in the sincerity of her loyalty. She’ll sink a knife in his gut, twist it, and leave him bleeding on the floor.

“Why bards?” He asks.

“They have stories. I like stories.” She pulls her shoulders into an easy shrug.

“You do realize they are likely lying to you?”

“Do I realize—? Obviously. ” Viago never needs to look at her to know when she’s rolling her eyes. He just knows. “And I lie right back— I know this, they know this, it can be a game. Besides, things do not need to be real to make a pretty story. Things…” Rosa lifts one of her hands to make a vague gesture, deft fingers moving to pluck words out of thin air. He cannot quite make out if there is purpose behind the gesture. “The world is dark enough, no? Let me have my pretty lies.”

“ Cazzo , Rosa,” the things she says, sometimes. “You can be so bleak.”

“Then why do you ask for my thoughts if you do not wish to hear them?”

“You are being difficult on purpose again.”

“Oh— you do not like it when I lie, but you do not like it when I tell you the truth either, so what does that leave me? Vague, half-sentences? No, you dislike it when I ‘speak in riddles’ as well—”

“Perhaps if you ceased in your constant endeavor to be as off-putting as possible—”

“And you’re so well-adjusted?”

“A constant thorn in my side—”

She starts laughing. 

“What?” Viago asks. “Is it so funny to you to cause me endless pain?”

Side by side they lie, the heat of her inescapable.

“No— I simply… Ah.” 

If there was any light, he would use it to confirm if Rosa is blushing again in that ridiculous way she does, embarrassment triggered by the strangest of things sometimes; as it is, in half-shadows, the only way to know for certain would be to touch her face, feel for the telltale warmth. Viago will not allow himself the impulse, even if not knowing, whenever it concerns any matter regarding her, fills him with profound dissatisfaction.

“I…” Rosa begins, loses track again. “I had not realized how much I missed this. That is all.”

“What? Arguing?”

“No— sleeping next to someone. I had forgotten how… comforting it can be.”

Viago would be lying to himself if he pretended he does not draw some kind of comfort from this as well— from her . How strange the way Rosa, for all her faults— which are not few and could fill several lists, were someone to ask him— manages to steady him by being nearby. Over a decade of companionship— it must be familiarity’s fault.

It must be related to hours upon hours upon hours— not unlike limb over limb over limb.

(The most infuriating creature he has ever met.)

Back to back. Side to side. Her heartbeat against his spine, a flash of red at the edges of his vision. Half a step behind him. The eyes in the back of his head, eternally keeping watch.

(Leaning over his shoulder, uncaring for his personal space, reading documents not meant for her eyes, saying things like ‘ no, those two are fighting, they might kill each other before finishing their contract’. Viago does not question her anymore— she knows things about people, by charm or affront. She’s useful like that, able to cover his weak spots, although Viago does not know the degree to which this is nature or nurture— if he goes down that line of thinking, he may not find his way out of the labyrinth. 

Whatever the answer, he will make use of her skills regardless.)

“Comforting,” he echoes, not knowing what else to say.

“More than you know.”

This is enough to make him turn towards her, a disapproving eyebrow already in its customary place, because even if she cannot see it, he knows she will be able to tell regardless. Familiarity’s fault. Patterns.

“Tell me,” he commands her, in that flat tone— cause and effect. It usually works, unless she’s particularly angry. 

He is counting on her bards having sated her enough to keep her anger at bay.

“You will call me bleak again.”

“Tell me,” he insists.

She laughs— quiet, amused, but gives in. It is rare that she refuses a direct order, even when being particularly contrarian. She will argue, but she will not tell him not, simply perform to the best of her capabilities— while keeping up appearances that she is being incredibly lazy about it, while exploiting whatever loopholes she can find in his commands so as to forever keep him toeing the line between pleased and vexed.

(Sometimes, sometimes, when she riles him up, provokes him past the limits of what he thought himself capable of feeling, when she insists on dragging him down to her level again and again and again— this is when she strikes, when she gets under his skin best. She has a nose for blood and a taste for it— sometimes, sometimes , when he sees her tilt her head just so, he believes she’s able to hear the minute changes to his heartbeat across the room. 

Sometimes, sometimes— she riles him up, provokes him past his limits, and then she turns deferential, then she truly performs for him (or is she dropping the pretense of performance?), without a single misstep, a single error, disarming and disarming and disarming whatever opponent he puts in front of her. 

This is, of course, the best and worst thing she does to him.)

“I told you I used to do this, before. When it was cold I was fought over. It was a little funny. I suppose I have missed it.”  There is something tender, if a little melancholic to her tone. “Like when you do not notice how thirsty you are until you begin to drink.”

“And what else?”

“You know I like to feel safe when I go to sleep. Most people do, I believe.”

“Rosa.”

“ Ay — what do you want from me, my heart on a platter so you can dissect and label it?” Oh— that idea should not be as alluring to him as it is, “Maker’s fucking blighted blood. I was still asleep, it was stupid early. When that shifty Templar took me away. There . So yes, this is fucking comforting to me and I will keep doing it. More often now, because you pissed me off. Fuck you. Suffer me. I was just taught the first few stanzas of Tyrdda Bright-Axe in the lute and I am terrible at it, I will terrorize you.”

Familiarity, that is what he blames it on when he smiles in the dark. Familiarity, and the trust that comes as a byproduct of spending— not attached at the hip— all that time together.

(This will not end well. They are tangled together as it is— and she always overflows, overspills, exceeds whatever boundaries and neat labels he tries to create for her, defiant in perpetuity. This will not end well, not when he cannot help but think of the lingering scent of sweat on her skin, when he cannot help but feel smug at the knowledge that she does not sleep with her bards, not like this.

And what is she doing, fucking someone and then coming to him? Is this meant to be a taunt? Is she laughing at him for all these recent times his gaze keeps sticking on her when it shouldn’t? Is this provocation? Is she not thinking at all? Does it mean nothing at all?

This will not end well.)

Viago blames it on that familiarity— he will blame it on that familiarity, perhaps forever. For so many years now he’s gotten used to the flashes of red on his periphery, to the barely-there sound of her footsteps, to her coming and going— opening all his locks and disabling his traps and causing him more stress headaches than he ever thought possible with her barely thought out plans that seem to work regardless of how close they come to failure.

He blames it on being busy too. Quite preoccupied with Teia’s rocking astride his lap, with her deft hands insistently pulling at his clothes (still mostly on, though not for long, while her shirt and breast band have been entirely discarded on the floor behind the couch), on the various sounds being made. He blames it on having his eyes closed.

So no, Viago isn’t aware of Rosa slipping through his window until she’s halfway across his sitting room, until Teia gasps a startled little laugh and stops her motions at once. 

He opens his eyes— 

“What are you doing?” Viago manages, panic distilled into anger and indignation as he tries to pull his shirt closed again— Teia isn't being particularly helpful in this task, not at all.

“Don't mind me,” the worst decision he's ever made oh-so-casually says as she purposefully rummages around his personal belongings without asking, not even gracing them with a single look thrown their way. “I think I left a knife here some days ago.”

She’s a constant headache in his life. She’s infuriating, unmanageable, entitled, stubborn, lacking even the most basic idea of common sense, believing she should be able to do whatever she wants because she wishes it to be so and thus the entire world should accommodate her—

Viago does not like to think of himself as a hot-tempered man. He likes to think things through, and then think them through again, and then the one more time. He doesn’t fall prey to senseless anger, to impulse, to the promise of a thrill. He likes to catalogue his emotions in a detached way— analyze them, label them, then put them away in boxes to never be opened again unless dire need should demand it so.

He likes to take calculated risks.

He detests how easily these two can rile him up, particularly if they decide to work together against him.

“Has your stupidity gotten in the way of you grasping even the most simple concept of privacy? Or is it that you are in a constant quest to reduce me to indignity just so you can have your petty laughs at the expense of—”

Rosa rolls her eyes, the most aggravating creature that has ever stood under the sun, like he's being unreasonable , then produces a very small dagger from under a chair at the far end of the room. She slips it into the folds of her clothing quickly— how jarring that he admires her dexterity, that said admiration tangles with everything else he’s feeling, but he knows there are layers to this, like limb over limb over limb, all knotted and folded together. 

(He doesn’t even know how to begin to classify the mess of emotions she elicits on him. He doesn’t know that he wants to do it— it would be easier to shove the entire, twisted disaster into a dark corner, never to look at it again.)

“Brothel girl, Vi, remember? Seen enough sex that it feels mundane now. Like folding laundry. Calm down, I shall leave you to it.” And she’s still not looking at them, not purposefully looking away either, but simply not finding them important enough to give them her full attention.

He’s furious at her. Furious. Calm down, like she’s allowed to be wherever she wants to be, regardless of closed doors and locked windows and all his grievances about it, acting like she belongs wherever she chooses to be— and she chooses to be there, always, half a step behind him or sitting at his feet or fluttering about in his periphery or—

(His trousers, half undone, feel as tight as ever. This should be a clue to something. He doesn’t want to think about it.)

Viago is ready to say more scathing words when Teia covers his mouth with her warm palm. On reflex, he kisses it, but he still glares at her. She has a telltale sparkle in her eye, the one she gets when she's about to make his life harder than it should be—wretched women, these two— and his fury is quick to change into cold, cold fear that slithers down his spine.

“Too mundane to be interested in it?” Teia asks, bare from the waist up and entirely unashamed. 

Rosa shifts her weight, purses her mouth, keeping this casual air about her. “As in, in general?”

“If you want. Or as in right now, with us. If you want.” The invitation is just as casual.

Viago feels his skin erupt into goosebumps, feels his chest constrict with a strange cocktail of emotions. Of all the things to say— she must be trying to kill him. Or this is a terrible joke with him as the punchline. He wouldn’t put it past these two to invent new and different ways with which to cause him the most mental anguish every day he still draws breath.

It’s not that the offer is surprising, exactly; Teia has made clear what she wants— with him, whispering wicked half-thoughts into his ear once in a while, working her hand around him as she does her best to find the frayed edges of his want and untangle it from the terrible knot with Rosa’s name. And maybe once, 

Or twice,

Or thrice,

(Or more. She’s good, so good at making him lose his mind in the sweetest, most dangerous of ways.)

Perhaps he’s admitted to something, not in so much as full sentences, but in breathless, hopeless, gasping repetitions of yes, yes, yes. He has thought about it, about her, about them, this added layer to their already complex relationship new enough to be still profoundly unsettling.

Or maybe that’s just Rosa’s effect on her environment— profoundly unsettling is something she excels at when she wants to.

(“If you won’t talk to her then do something about it.”

“Say what? Do what, Teia?”

“Why is it so difficult for you to admit your wants ?”)

He makes a sound beneath Teia’s palm, something accordingly indignant and embarrassingly high-pitched, and Teia simply looks at him, unbothered, smiling like spring, like a saint offering benedictions. She purses her lips, blowing him a kiss. Viago scowls, but there’s not half as much heat to it as he pretends.

(His heart beats prestissimo within his chest as they look at each other. Absolutely not, he thinks he should be answering for all of them, there is no need to be looking for trouble. Wayward Crows from house de Riva who act as a constant test to their Talon's patience don't get in bed (couch) with said Talon. He could make a list, he could make several lists of why that would be a remarkably bad idea, and he would very much like to share all of these items in descending order of importance with the two demons in the room with him, if only Teia would remove her hand. 

She does not, not yet.)

Rosa hums of all things— the sound causes his head to turn sharply in her direction. Fury and fear wage war in his bloodstream as he watches her consider Teia’s invitation, head tilted and brow barely furrowed— what a mockery, as if she ever thought about anything ever. At all. Ever. 

(He clings to the hope that she’s not interested, because no one actually asked her outright before, and Teia is correct when she says Rosa can be surprisingly cagey on occasion. And she doesn’t flirt with him— she flirts a little with so many people, in that ridiculous, dramatic way of hers that’s just a little too silly to be believable, that makes people smile, and she flirts so much with Teia in sudden, unexpected bouts, but never with him. She won’t say yes. She won’t say yes. She cannot be actually interested. She must see him as this— sexless creature she’s surprisingly fond of despite all his faults, which is how he saw her until recently (when? When did that change?). She will not say yes. Rosa runs the tip her tongue along the edge of her top row of teeth—)

“Sure, I could go for it.” She says and panic flares within Viago’s mind as she takes her shirt off in one fluid motion— the shirt which is his, by the way, antivan silk, expensive, requiring a very specific cleaning method, that she probably only stole to piss him off ( it works ) because no matter how many times he changes his locks all his doors keep opening whenever she asks . The shirt she will most likely ruin, and only then return to him, entirely unapologetic.

She takes her— his— shirt off in one fluid motion, and then stalls. He knows she’s looking at him— he knows Teia is still looking at him as well— but he can’t quite manage to meet her eye, his focus jumping from one spot of golden, dangerously bare skin to the next until it catches—

She has a scar.

She has many scars. They are Crows, and she carries the proof of their profession proudly on her body, on her face. Viago has seen her cuts and bruises and blisters and broken bones, has pressed makeshift bandages against her side to staunch the bleeding— she’d taken a knife for him — 

(The idiot had not managed to learn any healing spells somehow, and she still hasn’t. These, she claims, don’t quite like her tone of voice, the playfulness of it. They are too earnest for her. None of that makes sense, of course.)

But she has a scar, on the side of her breast— a stray thought goes to them in the same quick dispassionate way he catalogues his environment whenever he walks into something unknown, takes note of shape and size and theorizes about perceived softness. But these are distant thoughts.

Distant thoughts.

(Nearly a decade ago she had held a mirror in front of her face, back when she had still been caught in the later throes of her adolescence— what a terrible, violent time for everyone involved— and had declared:

“I think I am getting rather beautiful.”

She had not asked for his opinion, deeming it entirely irrelevant, and instead kept busy turning her face this way and that, getting acquainted with the new sharpness of her jaw and the fullness of her lips.

“I can make it work, I believe,” she had mused, and he hadn’t asked if she’d rather not be beautiful, because there had been aspects of her he had been so ill-equipped to handle they simply had not talked about them at all. 

Viago had let two drops of varghest spit mix into a vial of his latest concoction and said:

“Are you going to make this a problem for everyone around you?”

Rosa’s lip had curled at the corner, forming that smirk that made it look like she was going to eat someone upon minimal provocation; she had looked at him over her shoulder, humor dancing in her eyes. “I will not lie to you, Viago.”

She had said nothing else, going back to the mirror.

Viago had pretended he wasn’t nearly as half amused as he was, feeling a distinct pity for the fools that would get caught in the deceptive softness of her mouth.

“Here,” he had said instead, swirling the contents of the vial in his gloved hand, “let me know if this tastes bitter.”

Fifteen minutes later she had been writhing on the floor, all thoughts of vanity postponed.)

Nearly a decade later—

She has a scar.

A scar old enough to have faded to a silvery color.

A scar Viago hadn’t known about.

This is unacceptable in a grand and all-encompassing way. This is wrong. He supposes, logically, that he wouldn’t know about this one, since (thankfully) (somehow) Rosa has managed to wrestle enough sense of decorum to avoid parading around truly nude, despite her informal relationship with clothes when she’s not in armor (she should always be wearing at the very least two layers of thick, hardened leather) (she was not wearing anything else under the shirt.)

She takes his shirt off in one fluid motion and then stalls . 

“Is this alright with you, Vi?” Rosa asks, the sharp layer of wit she layers on her words absent for once.

(It’s good that, as lightly as she’s taking this, she’s not turning it into a joking matter. Or maybe that’s bad, actually. He cannot be sure.)

Teia removes her hand.

He opens his mouth.

No , he wants to say, absolutely not, and here are the seventy-two reasons why, and later I will bring you the other two-hundred-and-five, and I shall have them tattooed to your forehead so you can always see them every time you look at yourself in a mirror (and so I can see them every time I look at you.)

But all Viago can truly think about is how wayward Crows from house de Riva who act as a constant test to their Talon's patience aren’t allowed to have scars said Talon doesn’t know about. She’s not allowed to— if she keeps insisting on opening all his locks, then she’s not allowed to keep her scars private, she’s not allowed to have parts of herself he knows not about.

He knows her tricks— he needs to know her tricks, in a way he cannot explain and won’t even try, a way he finds more possessive than he’s willing to admit.

She takes his shirt off in one fluid motion and then stalls and she has a scar he doesn’t know about and he cannot stand it.

He cannot stand it.

Cannot stomach it.

Cannot allow it.

His fingers tighten on Teia’s hips— she gasps, quiet, perhaps a little excited— and says, with a disapproving arch to his eyebrow, “if you are to do something, simply get it done.” Which is, of course, the opposite of what he always tells her— stop, and think before you act, for once — and he knows it, and she knows it, and he knows she knows and so on and so forth, bouncing between them for eternities to come.

Rosa throws her head back and laughs, that low, raspy sound he knows too well. And then they make space for her on the couch.

Teia gasps and seizes in his arms, head tucked into his neck. He holds her tightly, she’s writhing— and Rosa kneeling on the floor between her (their) legs, relentless in this as with any other thing she does. He’s reminded, in the midst of this madness, of the way she duels him, all the tricks and cheats, always on the offensive (except when, except—)

She licks up slowly, with the flat of her tongue, the entire lower half of her face shining and slick, and Viago watches, nearly out of himself with the sight, with Teia rocking against him— he’s spent already, but his traitorous body twitches again in interest—he watches as Rosa licks up slowly, sees the thin tendrils of lightning dancing on that wicked tongue— now that is just an unfair advantage, but he did teach her to exploit every advantage she can get, while keeping something up her sleeve in case of need— 

Her eyes open, sunset-rose and sharp as ever, and find his, and for a moment time stops still.

Rosa holds herself there, maintaining her position, her tongue barely brushing over Teia, unwilling to look away from him, some kind of curiosity shining in her eyes. She holds herself there, waiting for something— this feels, somehow, more intimate than anything else. Always on the offensive, except when she sits by his side, sometimes for hours on end, always watching the door, when she lets him move her to correct her stance, or drinks whatever he gives her despite knowing it will be an uncomfortable experience, or when or when, or when—

Rosa holds herself still, waiting, and the only thing Viago can think of doing is to reach out with a hand— he had refused to take his gloves off— fingers sinking into her red, red hair as her eyes flutter shut once more. She leans into his touch, just the slightest bit, and flicks her tongue with delicate precision and a spark of magic that has Teia arching her back, digging her fingers into Viago’s forearms with the strength of her release.

When Rosa picks herself up in that feline way of hers, she tilts her head and looks up at the ceiling with a small frown between her brows. She hums, and nods, more to herself than to anyone else, like she’s just decided something.

And a little while later—

Teia lies languid and satisfied, with her head in Viago’s lap, and a mottling of bruises on the inside of her thighs— he did warn her Rosa would bite. She’s bare still, beautiful, maybe a little stunned, watching Rosa with half-lidded eyes as she finishes dressing up. Viago was the first to get dressed— he did not get undressed more than what was necessary in the first place.

“Why laundry?” Teia asks, a small smile on her face. “That seems oddly specific.”

Rosa buttons her pants, blows her hair out of her face. Her shirt (his) is half-unbuttoned, and Viago winced when she dragged one of the sleeves over her mouth, smearing everything around more than effectively cleaning anything.

There she goes, that is ruined now.

“I used to fold a lot of laundry,” Rosa says. “Back with the girls. I supposed I still associate the two things. It can be… grounding, still.”

“Folding laundry or sex?”

“Yes.” 

Viago furrows his brow, not quite looking away from where his hand is buried on Teia’s hair, twirling it slowly around his fingers. 

“You fold my linens sometimes,” he says.

“She does?” Teia says.

“I do,” Rosa says.

“With those little bags,” he continues. The first time he caught her and asked what she was doing she shrugged, and said making you ask, clearly, but still had thrown the fragrant little bag at him, made out of old, worn clothes. Inside he had found nothing harmful— rosemary, cloves and orange peel, so he had seen much issue in allowing her one more of her strange idiosyncrasies. 

The scent had been enjoyable, anyways.

“With those little bags,” Rosa confirms, but offers nothing else on the matter.

Instead she tucks her (his) shirt inside her breeches, busies herself with the task of lacing up her tall boots. 

“So what was that knife for?” Teia chimes up again, eventually. “Rather small for anything useful.”

“Oh— I…” Hands on her hips, Rosa shoots them one of those smiles, the ones that make Viago think of a fox. 

He remembers being young, before so many things, before he was given the option to become a Crow or leave. He remembers being in a house in the countryside, owned by the Crown, for a season. He remembers wine-stained teeth and the beginnings of resentment— he remembers looking out the window and seeing a fox with red fur stained a darker color around its muzzle, carrying the limp corpse of a rabbit. He remembers the fox put down its meal for a moment, and turned to look straight at him, its head tilted in curiosity, its expression resembling something close to a smile, its eyes strangely intelligent.

(His mother had a cape with fox fur trimmings. It was a gift.)

The fox had waited for a moment, simply looking at him, but Viago could never figure out if it wanted him to go outside to play or if it was looking for the next throat to sink its teeth into. 

That is the thing about wild animals. You can never tell.

“Well,” Rosa smiles like a fox, and laughs one of those quiet, raspy sounds, “I carve all sorts of vulgar insults under Vi’s desk when I’m bored.”

“What.” He says, his tone flat, his eyebrows low over his eyes.

“Yes— since I was sixteen and furious at you about some matter long forgotten. I started with a table, I believe. Did you truly never notice?”

Teia laughs, always so delighted at whatever nonsense Rosa gets up to. They can be each other’s worst enablers— at times, at his expense.

Viago runs his palm down his face. 

“Go away,” he says, “you are giving me a headache.”

"Hah," Rosa laughs again, "head."

And now he will need to replace his furniture.

(But he will get busy with some thing or another, and he will never get it done.)

Rosa shrugs, unbothered, and turns to leave the same way she entered— through the window.

“Wait, wait—” Teia calls before Rosa can take more than a few steps away, “one more question—” She moves away from Viago’s lap, kneels forward on the couch, elbows on the armrest. 

“All questions today, are we?” Rosa’s gaze dips for a moment.  Viago can’t blame her.

“The thing with your tongue— not the lightning,” Teia’s smile is wide. “The thing you were doing before; what was that?”

Red, red hair catches the light as she tilts her head in a playful manner.

“Why,” she says, “spelling the Chant of Light, of course.”

Teia laughs, Viago arches a disbelieving eyebrow— her sense of humor can truly be outlandish sometimes. 

Rosa simply smiles in that fox-like way of hers, like she’s the only one in on the joke.

(Like the whole world is the joke, herself included.)

“Magic exists to serve man, and never to rule over him,” she says, making her meandering way to the window, “foul and corrupt are they who have taken his gift and turned it against his children.”

Still reciting the Chant, she leaves with silent footsteps.

It’s difficult not to stare at the space she left behind.

And now that he knows all his scars, now that he’s satisfied that there is no aspect of Rosa unknown to him, there is no need for this to happen again.

This cannot happen again. He can tell it will not end well. The risk is greater than he’s comfortable with.

This will not happen again— but if it does—

Rules need to be put in place. For himself, mostly; rules he cannot voice lest either Rosa or Teia (or both) take it as a challenge.

This will not happen again, but if it does—

Teia needs to be in between them at all times. 

He cannot touch Rosa without gloves on (he will catch fire.)

He will not kiss her either. 

Not that it matters, because it will not happen again. He just likes to be prepared. To mitigate potential damage.

But it will not happen again.

It happens again.

And again.

It keeps happening— not often enough to turn it into a routine, Maker forbid. But it keeps happening, again and again and again—

They do not plan for it— Viago certainly does not plan for it, at the very least; still, somehow, they keep landing in bed together, all three of them. And sometimes in places that do not have beds. 

It is not a routine. But there are patterns to it.

Rosa never stays long after; in fact, she leaves almost immediately, always smiling, always claiming it was fun and that she will see them later.

It keeps happening, again and again as days turn into weeks turn into months—

And again.

And again.

(And then the one more time, and the one more after that.)

He abides by his own rules.

Until he doesn’t.

The problem with Rosa—

No.

One of the many problems with Rosa— 

(Yes, that feels more accurate.)

She never knows how to defuse a situation, only escalate it further and further. She pushes and prods and pulls and pulls and pulls until something gives or snaps — it matters little how these things start, a minor disagreement, a few mean words exchanged, it’s all an excuse anyways.

How he wishes he could say he does not find her alluring in moments like this as well, panting like a dog, with those eyes of her intense and furious. How he wishes he didn’t find her rage beautiful, her ire as volatile as awe-inspiring. She gets so sharp, all teeth and claws, temper and thunder and edges all too easy to get caught on— all of that, in his service, might as well be one of the most beautiful things to exist, but against him—

(‘ Whatever I am that you hate so much, you made me so.’)

Rosa has a nose for blood, knows how to find the soft underbelly of an issue, knows how to sink her teeth and rend flesh like the hungriest of beasts. What talent she has for riling him up— she makes him fight, always, always , demands he matches her fury, demands to be pushed back, if only to understand where the limits of her eternal storm lie. 

(That is what it is, is it not?)

Viago cages her against the wall of his office, isolates her from the rest of the world with his body. They pant in each other’s faces, breaths mingling— this close he can smell ozone and smoke, he can nearly taste the sweetness of peaches. 

Teia isn’t there to mediate between them this time.

“Like you cannot do anything without pain,” he says, tense, irate, frustration mounting higher and higher with no place to go other than the woman before him.

She bares her teeth, this beautiful, half-domesticated creature. Bares her teeth, takes fistfuls of his shirt— does not push him away, even though she could. Pushing him away wouldn’t sate this eternal need she seems to have— violent, reckless thing, unable to stomach peace and quiet without steady gulps of blood to wash it all down. What a mistake from nature that she was not born with the capacity to growl, with sharp teeth and wicked claws.

(Sometimes, sometimes, when he sees her out of the corner of his eye—)

Viago does not back down. She would never forgive him if he backed down.

“I would not have been able to make you into anything you hadn’t allowed yourself. You are far too willful,” he says, reminding them both that her words are not entirely true, that he can tell when she means to hurt— him, her, both of them, like she can’t help herself. 

(But he did forge her, even if he had to suffer her constant input on his methods and results. When he looks at her, he can see the marks he left— in her stance when she fights, in the straightness of her spine, in what good care she takes of her knives. Anyone would find it difficult to look at her and not associate them immediately— or is that wishful thinking on his part? Is it that covetous, possessive thing that rears its ugly head from time to time (more and more often), such as when she performs admirably well, when she pulls feats no one else could manage— Teia says he preens— and he thinks, unbidden, unwanting of this want, ‘ mine’?

There are layers to his guilt. Guilt over not feeling guiltier, for one.)

Rosa scoffs— infuriatingly arrogant, constant headache— “ more criticism? Do not let me stop you.”

“Stubborn,” he says, each of his words laced with over a decade’s worth of grievances, “reckless. Arrogant. Making a joke out of everything— no common sense, no respect. With this constant need to fight —”

It’s painful, this thing between them— whatever it is that refuses to be named, these feelings all tangled up and wrapped around each other like overgrown, unattended vines. Just like Rosa, they overflow— the boundaries of definition, they spill into several things, refusing to be constrained to a single name. It’s simultaneously too much and not nearly enough.

“—and things somehow still work out for you, no matter the depths your self-imposed idiocy takes you to. You are infuriating. You are the most irritating thing I have ever had the disgrace of crossing paths with. You are…” So close, close enough he can nearly taste the sweetness of peaches, and bitter soot, and the spark of lightning; so close he can feel the heat of her body against his. So close he can count her eyelashes, see the delicate, golden flakes in her eyes.

(Whatever she’s made of, is something malleable— in the half-shadows of night she can look cold, unyielding.

But in the light of late afternoon she always seems to glow.)

“You are…” Whatever Viago means to say escapes him—in his endeavor to recapture the thought, he stumbles against honesty instead.   “You are … Beautiful.”

He says the word with reluctance, with gritted teeth, with a glare, with his want refusing to be kept under wraps, with his heart beating madly in his chest.

Rosa never, ever backs down— but her eyes widen, and she inhales, sharp like a stab wound. She never backs down from anything, like it goes against the very fabric of her being, but maybe, Viago thinks, if she was not backed against a wall, caged in by his arms, held upright by his body; maybe she would try for the very first time.

“What?” Rosa asks— snarls — and, oh, something pleased unfurls inside his stomach at having caught her off guard, she who moves just a little bit faster than everyone else.

“Are you going to bite me if I kiss you?” Viago asks in turn.

Silence.

“Rosa.”

“Well— now you have put the idea in my head.” Her shrug is casual despite the heat in her eyes, the fury he can still read in there.

He loathes when she does that— and how good she is at it; pretending nothing moves her, touches her, wrecks her. She wraps herself tightly in overlapping layers of humor and dark pragmatism, makes herself into a creature as infuriating as unreachable, as if nothing truly matters to her. A shrug, and a grin, and a joke, and a knife between the ribs, and that is that, no big deal.

He taught her that too, in a way. To never show her hand before she plays it— but Viago had not expected how she would twist the general idea into something that would serve her, tailored specifically to her own nature. He had not predicted how good she would become at it, how often she would use it against him.

(Sometimes he wonders if there are things that have worked the other way around as well. If someone looks at the way he holds himself, or chooses chairs with armrests strong enough to resist inevitable perching, or how he sometimes scowls at sunsets for no reason other than daring to exist, and associates them as well. These are not comforting thoughts.)

“Do not bite me,” Viago insists— stern as ever with his wayward pet.

“I won’t.” Rosa promises easily.

He leans in, measured, careful, controlled . One of them has to try, at least.

He leans in, leans down, until he can taste her breath on his tongue— stops. It’s easier, so much easier, when he has something she wants; and she wants , begins to lean in, to close the distance herself, not knowing how to get her hands on things other than reaching out for them—

Viago pulls back. Rosa bares her teeth again, kept in place by gloved fingers twisting into the hair at the back of her head. If this hurts, she does not show it— what bothers her more is the indignity of being made to stay still against her wishes.

“Do not bite me,” he insists, again .

“I won’t,” she hisses.

Up until now, he has managed not to kiss her. Up until now, she hasn’t tried either. He cannot tell— Teia is right, Rosa can be surprisingly cagey when she puts her mind to it— if she is respecting an unnamed boundary— which would be somewhat surprising— or if it is all the same to her, nothing ever moving her, touching her, wrecking her. As if him kissing her or not is entirely inconsequential, as if she’s beyond all the things that make him hesitate, as if anything and everything is meaningless unless she decides it’s not, and she is the only one who knows and will not tell anyone else what she has decided.

He doesn’t want to want . 

But he does want. He has been wanting. No matter how many times they have fallen in bed together— he has, very purposefully, not kept count— the feeling does not seem to lessen.

And perhaps, on occasion, the way out of things is right through.

(That always seems to work for Rosa, doesn’t it?)

Viago leans in again— stops . Lets her strain against her leash, lets her gnash her teeth and stew in her rage, a hair’s breadth away from her prize but not allowed to get closer. 

“Do you want me to kiss you?” He asks.

Rosa swears at him— in antivan, in tevinter, in what he can only estimate to be an obscure dwarven language. She loves words but hates reading, she loves talking in spite of her damaged vocal cords— she loves talking to spite her damaged vocal cords.

“Yes or no, Rosalie?”

“Oh— full name? I am in trouble, then.” Panting like a dog, like it’s difficult for her to remember how to be a person, like she does not want to admit to anything either— ‘ slippery thing’ , Teia calls her every time Rosa leaves them, ‘ easy to catch but hard to hold’. “Fine. Yes.”

“Then do not bite me.”

“I won’t!”

Viago leans in to brush his mouth over hers—

She bites him.

He’s never met anyone who could make him so furious so easily, who could find new and tortuous ways to test the limits of his patience.

“You said you wouldn’t—”

“I lied.” Her smile is all teeth, nothing but teeth, this fox with a dead thing in its maw.

(Why are they angry with each other? How did this start?)

“Do that again and I’m walking away.” This is not an empty threat. He would never do her the disservice of empty threats.

“Just kiss me,” she says, entitled as ever.

“You don’t even deserve—”

“I know, I know, I’m difficult . Just kiss me anyways.”

Both hands in her hair now, he surges towards her again, compelled regardless of the alarms going off inside his mind reminding him this is a bad idea, there is a reason— there are multiple reasons— why he has made a point of not kissing her so far.

(Viago cannot seem to remember what those were at the moment, either.)

She doesn’t bite him, not this time. Instead, she kisses him like she hungers, she kisses him like there is something inside her that needs to be calmed, quelled, fed— a mess of teeth and spit and tongue, the inside of her mouth unbearably warm.

“Biting like an animal,” Viago speaks against her mouth, “like you cannot control yourself.”

“Control is too hard.”

“Hard like wards?” He groans when she rakes her nails through his hair.

“Harder. The hardest thing, sometimes. Do it for me?”

The things she says to him, sometimes.

(The concept is not entirely new, it is merely a rearranging of past things, a twisting of what once was, layered with this newer glaze of shifting emotions. ‘ Reading is hard’, she had said, more than once, frustrated, bored, looking like she might start picking fights again or setting books on fire if she was made to sit still and quiet for a minute longer, ‘ do it for me’? 

Contrary to what she may want everyone to believe, Rosa de Riva is not entirely lacking self-awareness. Whatever she cannot find within herself, she asks to borrow from him. Patience. Focus. Direction.)

Do it for her.

He can do that.

Her mouth— plump and spit-slick and her own worst enemy— remains half-open like a lure which beckons, relentless.

Viago cannot pose it as an order this time, or as a question, because that is simply a provocation waiting to happen. He does not know where she gets this need to fight for everything, even the things that are being offered freely to her— but he needs not to know where the impulse originates in order to know how to work with it.

He knows her. He has known her for some time, her odd moods, her strange idiosyncrasies, her patterns of unpredictability.

“You are not going to bite me,” he says calmly, evenly, despite the blood rushing in his ears, the thrill of danger that comes with putting one’s hands inside an animal’s mouth. 

All reds and pinks, inside and outside. All reds and pinks, like blood, like blush, like the tongue he’s pressing his thumb against. If she finds the taste of leather unappetizing, she says nothing— Rosa only hums, and lets him press her mouth wider, something between curiosity and humor caught in her eyes.

Viago can hear her voice inside his head so clearly— like checking the teeth of your dog before a hunt.

“Shut up,” Viago tells her.

Rosa does that thing she does when she laughs without laughing at all, when it’s all in her eyes.

“You’re infuriating,” Viago tells her, and pushes harder on her tongue.

Her teeth should be sharper, he thinks, as he slowly drags the pad of his index finger over her molars. He was half-expecting them to cut through leather easily, to look different than regular, human teeth. He does not entirely understand how her canines are not proper fangs, how her tongue is not forked and covered in poison. 

Like this, allowing him to explore her mouth, with spit collecting at the corners of her lips, she looks almost domesticated. 

It’s heady, the knowledge that she’s not, the knowledge that he only gets to do this because she lets him, lovely, stubborn thing that she is. She makes him fight for everything, but when she gives in—

(She bit him once, hard enough to break skin, to leave him with a scar. He had not been thinking— that one trainer accosted him in a hallway, ‘ your responsibility’, he had said, so he had gone to find this strange, angry child he had collected. 

He had not been thinking— he had seen the bruising around her neck, months before, but he had not been thinking when he moved to grab her, much like grabbing an unruly kitten. How quickly she had moved, how ruthlessly she had lashed out, teeth firmly sinking into the flesh between his thumb and forefinger before she had moved back just as quickly. Viago had held his injured hand close to her chest, and Rosa had watched him, wary creature, with clever eyes and mistrust. 

Slowly, she had brought three fingers together, uncertain at first of the sign— no, she told him. And then again, and again, no, no, no. More stunned than angry (at first, at least), he had nodded, and kept his distance, and watched as she rummaged in her pockets— sticky fingers, this one.

She had shown him elfroot— where did she steal that from?— had waved it on his face, angrier and angrier at his lack of understanding. 

“What?” He had said.

She had rolled her eyes, and shoved the root in her mouth, chewing furiously.

He still blames his surprise— what kind of child bites like that, is that his blood on her teeth— for the lapse in his reflexes that allowed her to grab his hand and spit chewed elfroot on his wound. He remembers the feeling still— disgusting, slimy, strangely warm; not something he’s willing to endure ever again.

“We have potions,” he had said, needing her to know this is not acceptable behavior and she cannot be spitting on people.

She had rolled her eyes, and he had immediately cleaned his hand, mouth curled into disgust. The crudest of methods— enough to numb the pain, at least. An apology, of sort, if he had to guess, but it had not saved her from his lengthy lecture and ensuing punishment.

He had not tried to touch her without gloves again, nor he tried to come even close to her neck.)

Now Viago tears off his glove in order to fit that old scar against her teeth, following an impulse he does not quite understand— they both inhale sharply at the contact, but he does not catch fire despite the inside of her mouth being so impossibly, unnaturally warm. Something happens, her gaze softens all at once (oh, when she gives in, when it feels earned—). The lightest press of teeth feels so much sweeter than the way she was kissing him. 

“Don’t bite,” he reminds her, softer than he means to say.

It catches in his throat, the way she looks at him, sunset-eyes half-lidded, content with letting him do whatever he wants. Mercurial as ever, his most loyal, most irritating, most beloved of—

(His. Just his.)

With his teeth, he pulls the glove off his other hand as well, in order to trace along the edge of her jaw. Viago uses the hand still in her mouth to push her head back, to expose the deceptively vulnerable line of her neck. 

“Trust me,” he says, asks, pleads, demands, as he tilts her head up and up and up.

(For how she refuses to let anyone even remotely close to her neck, she never wears particularly high collars. Rosa claims to overheat— Viago thinks that this is, at least partly, just a taunt against the entire world, an endless challenge of try me, try me, try me. )

Her chest heaves with the quickness of her breath, but she allows the movement— for now, for now. Will there be a moment when she revokes his right? He cannot bear the thought— she makes him fight for everything, every inch to be gained with her is an inch to be fought for, but she rarely, if ever, tells him no.

(Come here, go there, fix this, kill for me, kill for me, kill for me—

‘Yes, Fifth Talon. And would you like me to reverse the tides as well, since I am already heading that way?’.

One of these days he might say yes. Just to see what happens.)

Viago tracks with his eyes as she swallows, made to hold herself in this deceptively vulnerable way— so drawn to violence, his little beast (his) , but for him (for him) she becomes so pliant when she wants to be.

Skin on warm skin, Viago traces along the edge of her jaw. Her breath catches as he reaches the spot below her ear, a small sound escaping her throat. Tense, tense, primed for something— 

He removes the hand still in her mouth, just in case, brushing down her flank, gentling this animal.

“Do you think I will hurt you?” He asks, more curious of the answer than he’s willing to admit.

“No,” there is no delay in her reply, there is so much conviction in that single word, even if her pulse runs rabbit-fast beneath her skin, under that single point of contact. Such fidelity, such belief . “You’d never— not in any way that matters.”

He hums a wordless question, lets his fingertip rest there for a moment. So warm, no matter the number of layers they’re wearing, her heat will seep through all of them— he’s not catching fire now, but it seems inevitable, inescapable, that he might at some point.

He does not put his gloves back on.

“You—” She swallows again, wets her lips. He can see the tension in all her muscles, how tightly she’s coiled, fighting against her own instincts. “If three drops of something might kill me, you’ll give me two. You never ask for more than I can give.”

What delicate balance she takes as universal truth. It’s no one’s fault but their own for being like this— what an art he’s made of knowing just how far to push her and not the smallest of fragments more or less. What faith she places in his ability to handle her. All of it built so carefully, so gradually—

She’s beautiful, so beautiful, holding herself still, her throat bared. She makes him fight for everything— but oh, when she gives in—

“Then know this will not hurt you,” Viago says, and begins tracing down her artery, skin on warm skin. 

Rosa gasps— coiled so tight, so tight, her pulse jumping beneath his fingertip, eager to meet his touch. 

It’s not that he’s incapable of hurting her. He knows she knows just how dangerous his hands are, how capable of violence— he’s the one who taught her how to be the same, after all. 

It’s not that she’s a sweet little lamb either. But she still chooses to sit by his feet as he works, as he plays with her hair. Like a dragon lying belly-up, just because it chooses not to be dangerous despite being made to be so.

This is what makes it worth more.

“Oh,” there’s a knot between her brows, her eyes tightly closed against the unfamiliar sensation, “that is… rather nice, actually. Do it more.”

Viago cannot help the low chuckle that escapes him. “So entitled,” his finger reaches the hollow of her throat, and he reverts its slow path, tracing back up, “wayward Crows do not get to tell their Talon what to do.”

Her laugh is breathless, “maybe so,” she tilts her head backwards, bares more of her throat in offering, “but I am special.”

“Are you?”

“Are you not my favorite person in the world?”

He cannot help, cannot help the pull on his lips, the somewhat confused, somewhat charmed little smile, entirely too rare. “Still?”

“Still.” And quieter: “perhaps forever.”

He has never met anyone this loyal, this faithful— by choice, always by choice. What a gift she is.

(He’s not sure if he deserves it. He’d kill anyone who tried to take it from him. He cannot tell if he would be able to let her walk away.)

Slow as all his motions have been, the rest of his fingers join the one on her artery, they splay and spread until he can wrap them all around her throat— he doesn’t squeeze, he would never; he remembers still the hue of her bruises, dark and mottled purple on a too-thin neck. He doesn’t squeeze, just lets the natural weight of his hand rest there, skin on warm skin.

She makes him fight for everything, but when she gives in—

All at once, Rosa goes boneless in his hold, all that tension escaping her, defiance nowhere to be found. What a mistake from nature that she was not born with the ability to purr.

“That,” there is a tremble to her voice, a certain undercurrent of fascination, “how are you doing that?”

“Doing what?”

“Making me all…” that knot remains between her brows, like she cannot do anything without pain. “settled.”

It is simply the weight of his hand. It is the resignification of threat turned trust. Nothing more, and nothing less.

(He should have desensitized her to it years ago, but somehow, he managed to train her in ways both harsher and softer than he ever meant. Still, at the moment, Viago isn’t particularly inclined to argue with the results.)

For a moment, he is content to let her exist like this— held in his palm, thumb petting her flank through her clothes. And she lets him, and lets him, and lets him.

“I might wish to stay like this for an eternity or two.” She says.

“Just like this?”

“Well,” she pushes into his hand, relishing this makeshift collar, “you can do more, if you so feel inclined to. If— if Teia would be alright with it?”

Viago huffs, “she’s the one who keeps suggesting it.”

It is not very difficult to lean in again, to take away his hand— she whines— and replace it with his mouth. Uncharted land— a heady thought. A responsibility. A gift.

Rosa giggles— oddly girlish— “I think I’m a little ticklish. I did not know.”

Viago only hums. If she needs something else to distract her from the sensation, he can only offer what he has readily available. Her breeches are unbuttoned without lifting his head, his fingers slip into her smallclothes, only to find her drenched in want, slippery against his skin, and so unbelievably warm. 

They make some sort of sound, the both of them, a chorus of pleasure.

“My problem lies within language,” she says, breathless, bucking against his fingers, in that way she has of beginning conversations right in the middle— or picking up the remain of dead ones to resurrect as she sees fit.

“Yes,” he replies drily, kissing her neck, “giving you the tools to communicate was the worst mistake of my life.”

She laughs— 

“I mean alliteration.”

“Always your riddles,” teeth and lips and tongue, resignifying ancient bruises, taking the scraps of violence and forging it anew.

“Alliteration is the repetition—”

“I believe I taught you what alliteration is. And then you weaponized it.”

Again, again, in perpetuity, she laughs— gasps when he curls his fingers inside her. So warm, inside and out, he will, inevitably, at some point, catch fire.

“Right, so you know. They get all mixed up— fighting, fucking. All… release.” 

He supposes that makes sense for her. The way she fights, as close as possible, the way she prefers to kill, looking her target right in the eye, when professionalism allows her the space. She’s a romantic in a strange, twisted way.

“Intimacy,” he murmurs the word as he moves to the other side of her neck.

“ Oh—” Her head tilts the other way, “are you finally inside my head?”

“No. But we were fighting,” what about he has no idea, “and you are soaked.”

“Not my fault. When blood beckons, you must go.”

Always half-riddles, half-songs. She does spend too much time with bards— it’s too easy to imagine her as someone’s muse, this elusive thing that refuses to be captured, that would haunt someone for years to come. It’s too easy to imagine her tongue loosened by substance or activity or her own nature, tangled in sheets, tangled in her own hair, weaving heresy and poetry together as someone strums along to her convoluted musings.

He bites harder than he means— but she only whines, always willing to take more, as long as it’s no more than she can take.

Rosa comes like that, with his fingers inside her and his teeth on her neck and his body something she can hold on to. Only then, still trembling, her wicked fingers— the kind you cannot trust unless they are in plain sight— find their way under his clothes, work him quickly, without teasing.

Viago comes like that, with his fingers still inside her, and his teeth on her neck, and the incandescent brand of her body against his.

(Perhaps he is already on fire and has not noticed.)

Minutes later, with space between them and clothes in their rightened states, Rosa picks up old threads once more.

“It’s not pain,” she says, simply. “Or— well. I suppose that can be grounding, sometimes, but it’s not pain on itself.”

He waits her out— for her to finish untangling this thought, for her to leave, as she always does.

“It’s… conflict, I think. As if I can only understand anything through conflict. You know?”

Eternally rattling against the bars that separate her from everything and everyone else. Viago files this information— alone, later, he will examine it closely, analyze it, come to the proper conclusion and act accordingly. There is a trick to her— there are several tricks. He might have found one that works well.

Too well.

How she writhed against him, not to be set free, but to know where the boundaries between herself and the world lie. Perhaps she had been right, she ought to have been seven feet tall— perhaps her spirit is too big to fit correctly inside this small body of hers, and this is why she spills, and overflows, why she needs a constant pushing of boundaries: to define herself against what she is not. Too permeable. Too open.

More thinking on this subject is required.

( ‘She uses herself as a conduit. It’s strange— it should hurt her more.’

‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Well.’ The mage had pulled a face. ‘If it is of any comfort, in my professional opinion, she’s too stubborn to fall prey to a demon easily. So there is that, at least.’

‘But?’

‘She is, sort of, the textbook definition of everything dangerous about apostates. Or she would be, in the eyes of some— someone like her, it’s easier to make her tranquil than trying to deal with all of her…’ A vague gesture, but one Viago understood intrinsically. ‘And she is in desperate need of control if she is to be useful at all. This is a risky gamble.’

‘If it works, she’ll be an implacable asset.’

‘If it doesn’t, she’ll be an uncontrollable, destructive force. She’s dangerous. Are you willing to take the blame?’

‘It won’t come to that.’

‘But if it does?’

‘Then I will take the blame.’)

“Careful,” Viago says, lightly “this is dangerously close to self-reflection. You might break out in hives.”

She laughs— and not a shred of anger is left in the sound.

“Be sure to remind me, from time to time, yes?” Rosa asks.

“Of what, your inexistent allergies?” He says.

“No— that you know me.”

The things she says, sometimes.

She readies herself to leave— but stalls, before she reaches the door. He does not have to tell her not to be seen, does not have to remind her how dangerous speculation can be— she never hurts him in the ways that matter either.

Head tilted, half-listening to something only in her head, she turns again.

“Beautiful?” She asks, quiet, curious.

“Like a storm,” he admits.

“Destructive.”

“Sometimes.”

Rosa chews on this answer, accepts it. 

“I have mentioned— Meditation, do you remember?”

“Yes. Once or twice.” Her very important nonsense that she insists on making him suffer through. 

“Yes,” she says. “Yes.”

And leaves.