Title: Indisposed
Fandom: Dragon Age
Rating: G
Length: 2,063 words
Content notes: No content warnings apply.
Author notes: Written for the ‘spoon’ challenge in fan_flashworks.
Summary: Leandra is preparing for their first formal dinner in the reclaimed Amell Estate when Sara returns home with company.

***

She was just laying out the last spoon when the front door banged open.

“Bodahn?” she called out.

“It’s just Messere Hawke, my Lady,” he called out. Leandra smoothed down the napkin by her hand, then left the dining room and moved into the atrium. Finally. Sara had left precious little time to get dressed and ready to greet the guests. They would be arriving within the hour.

Sara was indeed home – but not alone. Covered in blood and limping, she was supported through the doorway by that tattooed elf, who had her arm across his shoulders and his arm around her waist.

“Has anyone seen you like this?” she gasped. She looked to Bodahn, “Quickly, Bodahn, water and a cloth!”

Sara just gave a guttural groan, her eyes rolling back in her head, and collapsed, only half-sitting, onto a nearby bench.

“I’ll get Anders,” said a female, dark haired Dalish elf that Leandra hadn’t seen trailing along behind. With that remark, and without so much as a glance in Leandra’s direction, the elf walked past her and through the door into the cellars. Leandra stood there looking after her. Wasn’t this her house?

“Stay awake, Hawke,” the white-haired elf said, squatting down on the ground in front of where her daughter sat. He was trying to catch Sara’s eye, but when his gaze flicked to her daughter’s abdomen, Leandra noticed the chunk of wood embedded in her side. It looked like it had once been part of a longer piece but had been hacked shorter. Blood was trickling down Sara’s armour and dripping onto the bench.

“What happened?” she demanded. Bodahn appeared beside her with the cloth and a basin of warm water. Leandra grabbed the cloth, and moved closer, kneeling down beside her daughter to wipe at the blood.

The elf glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, not bothering to turn away from Sara. “Tal-Vashoth,” he said.

“Excuse me?” It sounded like a foreign curse.

“You might know them as rebel Qunari,” the elf said. Then he reached forward and took one of Sara’s hands. “Hawke, stay awake,” he said, lightly shaking it.

“We need a doctor,” Leandra said. “Bodahn, see if Messere Comte is still practicing.”

“Yes, my Lady,” Bodahn said, and left through the front door.

“We have better,” the elf said with a slight grunt. “Merrill has gone to get him.”

The dismissiveness of his tone infuriated Leandra.

“And what were you doing while my daughter was getting injured? Aren’t you meant to be protecting her?”

Now the elf did turn to her. Letting go of Sara’s hand, he swivelled on his bare feet to face her.

“I-” he started, but broke off as the door to the cellar opened behind her.

Leandra turned to look, and saw a man with a scraggly feather coat, long hair and a five o’clock shadow walk through the door. He also held a staff, and Leandra instantly knew what he was.

“We can’t have a mage in the house,” she hissed at the elf, for lack of a better target. “I have guests coming!”

The elf turned his eyes back to her. “Sara needs him,” he said, expression implacable, and Leandra reluctantly nodded.

The mage stopped and surveyed the situation. “We need to get her upstairs,” he said, and the elf obediently leaned down to scoop his arm beneath Sara’s knees and arms. She was barely conscious, her eyes white beneath fluttering lashes.

“Hang on a few minutes more,” he said underneath his breath, then picked Sara up off the bench. He was stronger than he looked. The elf started up the stairs, the mage following along behind.

Leandra followed.

The elf manoeuvred her onto the bed as the mage poured water into the basin on her toilet stand and washed his hands. Leandra wanted to get a towel to put under her – all that blood would be so difficult to get out – but she didn’t want to leave Sara in a room alone with two strange men.

“Wash your hands,” the mage said to the elf, who instantly turned to obey.

“What are you going to do?” Leandra asked as the mage walked over to the bed.

He took a knife from his belt, cut away the ruined gambeson around the entry point, then knelt down to inspect the wound more closely. After a moment, he spoke without looking up.

“They did well to leave the javelin in,” he said. “The pressure helps to reduce the blood flow. We don’t know yet if it has hit a major organ or not. I will remove the javelin, staunch the bleeding, and put her on the path to healing.”

He sounded so assured, so confident, that it reminded her, for a moment, of Malcolm. She nodded, almost despite herself.

Taking that as permission, it seemed, the mage put his hands on either side of the wood – the javelin – sticking out of her daughter’s leg, and a glow emanated from his hands. Then he beckoned the elf over.

“I’ve reduced the swelling and numbed the area,” he said. “But this may be difficult. Can you hold her down?”

He looked up at Leandra. “Messere Amell, you may not want to be here for this.”

“I’m not going to leave two men alone in a room with my unconscious daughter,” she said indignantly.

The mage nodded and turned back to his task. He looked up at the elf, and some silent communication seemed to pass between them. The elf put his hands on her daughter’s abdomen, above and below the protruding javelin, and pressed down. The mage cast some kind of spell on his hands, reached down and took hold of the rough and broken end of the javelin. Grasping it with two hands, he began to pull it.

Leandra watched, transfixed. Her daughter’s flesh seemed reluctant to give up its intruder; it almost seemed stuck to the shaft, rising with it and pulling it back down whenever the mage let up a moment’s pressure. But slowly, slowly, the javelin was pulled from her side. When it came free, a gush of blood followed. The mage held his hand over the gaping wound and closed his eyes, and the flow of blood slowed, then stopped. He opened his eyes and looked at Leandra.

“Could you please ask your servant to bring some clean towels?” the mage said.

“Bodahn is… on an errand,” Leandra said weakly. She could try to ask Sandal, but there was no guarantee he would understand or comply.

The elf removed his hands from her daughter. Sara’s blood had spilt across the white tattoos that extended across the backs of his hands and down his fingers, making their whiteness even more vivid against the ruby red.

“I will get them,” he said. “Tell me where they are.”

Leandra felt something like shame. “No, no… I will get them,” she said. She turned and left the room, moving to the linen closet and rummaging through it blindly, grabbing whatever towels she could.

When she returned to the room, she paused in the doorway. The elf was kneeling by the bed, holding Sara’s hand. The mage was standing next to him, working over Sara. His eyes were closed, blue light was emanating from his hands and, as Leandra watched, the skin was rebuilding inside the deep hole in her side. She clutched the towels, feeling like she was invading some kind of private moment.

Sara moaned and thrashed on the bed. The elf took her hand and squeezed it. Perspiration appeared on the mage’s forehead. Blood and pale yellow fluid ran out of the wound as the flesh re-knit itself inside of it. Although Malcolm had not been a specialist healer she had seen him take care of a few wounds, but she had seen nothing like this. Mages were generally good at rejoining skin that had been cut, or healing skin that had been burned, it was something else entirely to regrow flesh on this kind of scale.

When he was done, the blue light subsided and the mage seemed to sag. He wiped his brow and sat, somewhat unsteadily, on the end of the bed next to Sara’s legs. Sara lay limp and pale against the cushions, but her side was whole, the new skin a soft pink circle. Blood and fluid coated the bed beneath her.

“Towels,” Leandra said weakly. The mage lifted his head to look at her, and for a moment they looked almost blue, but it passed. It was the elf who got up from his knees to come over and take the towels off her.

“Thank you,” he said, and walked back to the bed. He gently began to use one of the towels to wipe the mess from her abdomen then, when that was clean, to dab at the coverlet.

As the elf attempted to clean the blood, the mage spoke. It was clear that healing Sara had cost him. He seemed to still be catching his breath.

“The javelin missed the artery but had entered her spleen. I have repaired it and regrown the damaged tissue. She should be gentle with it for a few days, but after that she will be completely fine.”

“That was.. amazing,” Leandra said. “What you did, I've never seen anything like it. And I've lived with two mages.”

The mage rubbed the back of his neck. “I had good teachers,” he said. “Healing was always my speciality.”

The door opened downstairs, and two pairs of feet walked in.

“Lady Amell, I have brought the doctor.”

Leandra looked up at the mage then stood and smoothed her skirts, checking to make sure that no stray drops of blood had landed there. Then she walked out onto the landing above the hall.

A dark-haired man was standing in the hall next to Bodahn. He was holding a bag, and bowed deeply when she entered.

“Lady Amell,” he said. “I believe you knew my father.”

“Serah Comte?”

In answer, he bowed again. “Jules Comte,” he said. “My father was Baudet Comte.”

“I apologise, Serah Comte. It was a… false alarm. I will of course compensate you for the time and trouble.”

“No need, my lady. It was no trouble, and my father remembered you fondly.”

Leandra inclined her head in acknowledgement of his graciousness.

“Good evening, Lady Amell.” The doctor gave another bow, turned on his heel, and left.

Leandra headed back into her daughter's room. Sara was sitting up in bed now, propped up on some pillows. She smiled wanly at Leandra as she entered.

“Sorry I was late, mother,” she said. “We ran into some trouble.”

“She needs to rest,” the mage said. He looked a bit better now too. There was more colour in his cheeks.

“I will tell the guests you are… indisposed,” Leandra said.

Sara grimaced. “That will set tongues wagging,” she said. “I think I can manage-” She went to swing her leg off the bed, but the mage arrested her movement with a hand against her shoulder.

“You need to rest,” the mage repeated, pressing her back into the pillows with an exasperated fondness that set alarm bells ringing in Leandra’s mind. “At least until tomorrow. Don’t undo my hard work.”

“I… Yes, okay, Anders,” Sara said, mumbled.

The elf stood off to one side, arms crossed. “I should go,” he said.

“You'll need to leave by the servants’ entrance,” Leandra said. “I’m expecting guests to arrive at any moment, and it wouldn't do to have a strange, blood-stained elf greet them.”

Sara grimaced, but the elf just nodded.

“Fenris,” Sara said. “You could stay. Until after the guests leave.”

The elf – Fenris – raised his eyebrows. At least he had some sense of the impropriety of her daughter's request.

“Out of the question,” Leandra said. “If Sara is out of danger-” here she paused, until she received an affirming nod from the mage - Anders, “then she should get her rest. Alone.”

Sara looked imploringly, first at Anders and then at Fenris, but they both looked away.

“I will check on you in the morning,” said Anders. He looked as though he wanted to say, or do, something more, but contented himself with nodding. He took up his staff from where he had left it against the wall, and Leandra shepherded the two of them out.