#cococs

Cooking- quiet, minimal, unintrusive- was an art she’d perfected over nights spent scurrying like a mouse with its scavenged scraps down the plush halls of Chateau de Caron. Her bubbling pot of soup carried no ingredients anyone would seriously miss- carrots, peas, a sprig of sea-salt, and the potatoes she was dicing into little cubes at the counter.

Valentina couldn’t tell if it was force of habit, carried over from knowing that Madame Caron’s sneer and the swift slap to her wrist was not worth reaching for butter, or biscuits, or venison.

It hardly made a difference. The scent alone, warmed her extremities, washing through the tiredness building in her limbs.

“Commander.”

Setting down the ladle she’d scooped to taste for salt, Valentina paused. It wasn’t unusual for recruits to take to hunting the kitchen at odd hours to sate their newfound appetite.

But this voice, low and raspy, rougher than usual from exhaustion, crept up on her with the faint thrill of smoke, making her hair stand on end from something other than the chill.

“Nathaniel.” She replied, amicably enough, forcing herself to meet his eyes.

He dropped his crossed arms, inclining his head. Nathaniel’s long hair was tied back, a few dark tendrils clinging to his forehead, falling into his silver-grey eyes. All at once, Valentina was acutely aware that he was in armor, and she was not.

He cleared his throat. “I smelt cooking. I didn’t mean to intrude.”

“The kitchens aren’t for me alone.” She turned her level gaze back to the soup. “I can work in another portion, if you’re hungry.”

“I-“ Nathaniel stared at her. “Can’t ask you to do that for me, Commander.”

“It’s no trouble. But I understand if you-“

He stepped into the kitchen as she did, hesitant, looking around as though waiting for permission. It was such a marked difference from how he moved otherwise, quick as an arrow, confident, with a hunter’s grace, lean muscles flexing beneath his armor-

Valentina caught her breath. What was wrong with her?

“Allow me to help, then.” He was closer than she expected, the sharp tang of leather and metal as he took over the abandoned cutting board, one hand laid expectantly on the knife’s handle. Valen nodded, scooting aside to stir at the soup.

They worked in a silence far more comfortable than any Nathaniel was accustomed to.

In Amaranthine, pointed silences meant a bated breath, eyes burning holes into his back as he walked away, or a whisper, soft but vicious: “What are we to do with you?”

Swallowing hard, he looked over at the Commander who had left the soup to boil as she fished through the pantry for a spot of plain bread.

Out of its usual severe bun, her black hair fell in waves down her back, and when she turned, the dim light outlined her tall, proud sillouhette, cutting stark shadows against her fawn skin.

Maker, forgive him. It wasn’t the first time he’d let his eyes linger where they shouldn’t. And it didn’t look to be the last.

Nathaniel decided to focus on less alarming things. “Did the Order teach you to cook for yourself?”

Valen shrugged, tipping a drop of soup to her palm. “Why do you think that?”

“You are nobility, are you not?”

“As are you, Nathaniel. “

He winced. “I was- away from home. But I understand Orlesians take their stations more seriously than we do.”

His distaste drew a rare smile out of her. “Orlesian nobility doesn’t typically offer their own to the Grey Wardens, either.”

“No..” He snuck another, wayward glance. “I hear they offer them to the Chevaliers.”

“They did.”

“Oh?” In Ferelden, Chevaliers were the stuff of sneering pub songs and two-lined jokes, an aftermath of the bitter history Orlais had inflicted upon them. Nathaniel tried to imagine her marching about in gleaming armor and bouncing feathers. He could not.

“Madame Caron had only one son of her own, and she didn’t want to risk losing Theodore in training or battle. She sent me to the Academie instead.”

Nathaniel hesitated. “But you left.”

A shadow crossed her face, too subtle to have been noticed if he weren’t so familiar with it.

Valentina sliced the bread, holding it over the fire. “L’Academie was steeped in what they called the Great Game. I did well in training, and a rival house weren’t happy with the reputation I could bring. They pulled some strings to make it seem that my claim to nobility was falsified. It’s a crime punishable by death, and there was never a question of me returning.”

“Andraste’s blood! And it wasn’t true?”

“No.” There was no sadness in her voice. That wound, like many others, had scabbed before it had even bled. “Maman was Fereldan. Papa angered a lot of his family to marry her. Uncle took me in out of little more than charity when they died. My link to the Carons was tenuous, but it wasn’t false.”

Nathaniel reached across to swipe more vegetables into the pot. Their shoulders brushed when he settled back, leather against cloth. His hand hovered over her back for a moment, and Valentina couldn’t help the inexplicable disappointment when it dropped to his side.

How long had it been since anyone had touched her outside of necessity? She had trained herself into staving off the sharp sting of tears when healing hands hovered over her skin, to where she no longer mourned the loss of that touch when it left.

And yet, Valentina felt that silly, girlish grief rise to her throat as she wondered how his callused palms would feel if they ever found their way to her.

“And you were conscripted instead?”

Valentina blinked. Right. L’Academie. Crime. Wardens.

She nodded. “Luckily, my family never wanted me enough to risk protesting it.”

Was it that that gave her this self-possession, a matter of growing so accustomed to pain that she barely felt it’s sting? Where he toughened his shell, she had numbed hers. “Luckily,” she says, speaking of being cast away like a ragdoll without even flinching.

Nathaniel sighed. This was never supposed to make him grow fonder of her. For a woman so precise with her planning that she calculated journeys to the minute, his Commander- the Commander- he corrected himself- certainly liked to veer him wildly off course.

“You don’t resent them?” He asked. “Not even a little?”

“Why?” Her dark eyes were clear, forest pools touched with moonlight beneath her angular brows. “I’m of more use in the Order than I am resenting them.”

I’m of more use in the Order.

I love my father.

Kitchens, midnight soup, convenient half-truths. Lonely children shared such strange, sacred rituals.

“Then allow me to say this, Commander.” I resent them. “You have far more honor than your kin deserved to hold.”

Valentina looked up abruptly, brown skin darkening at her freckled cheeks. There was no pity in his eyes, only a sincerity as intense as his focus, a softening of his sharp features- understanding.

“So do you.” She whispered.

Nathaniel’s palm slid across the counter, and her wrist grazed his. This time, there was no mistaking how he held his breath, how his gaze wandered over her as though he was reading words on a page.

If she were mad, truly mad, if she could forfeit reason and and abandon all her senses, she could take his hand, lace their fingers together.

But she was not. She was his Commander, and he still her subordinate; anything- else- between them would be suspect at best.

But a voice, one she’d sworn she’d smothered a hundred times, buried it with Maman, cast it out of the chateau's windows in the sad little room they’d spared for her, washed it away with silent tears and soup, chirped stubbornly at her heart like a bird at a season’s end.

You won’t be his Commander forever.

This silence was charged as thunder, taut as his bowstring, but not unkind, not demanding him to shrink or lash out but to touch, if only once, feel the scar at the edge of her jaw, and every freckle, or only her hand, if that were too much to ask, only how her hair rustled in the breeze, only an inch closer, if closer is all it would get him.

“Oh, you’re here!”

The moment burst like a bubble, crashing them back to the present. Valentina coughed, hiding her blush in the crook of her arm, and Nathaniel ducked his head, rummaging noisily through the cabinets.

Sigrun stood at the entrance, an uncertain smile playing across her lips. “Starving, Commander. Am I allowed to-“

“Help yourself, please.” Valentina assured her.

“Alright.” Giving her a swift salute, Sigrun practically skipped across the kitchen, still not rid of her habit of swiping single portions to fill her arms. When his mind cleared, Nathaniel noticed that the dwarf was perkier than usual, whistling tunelessly under her breath.

“Weren’t you off duty?”

“Uh, yes. I was at the tavern.” She said through a mouthful of bread. “It’s a nice tavern.”

“I…see.”

“Never mind me.” She waved the loaf of bread in the air. “What were you up to?”

“Making soup.” They replied in unison. Their eyes met across the table, and Valentina nearly dropped the pot.