— inspired by Mari’s OC Kiss Week, I’ve written two small pieces with Hope and @luciferesque’s Zaída.
A whisper of footsteps on the stone of the battlements announced Hope’s arrival. Mouth set in a thin line of concern, arms hugged to her stomach and elbows cradled in her hands, she approached the young elf. She’d heard about the death of almost all the elves in Wycome, including the entirety of the Lavellan clan, from the ambassador and left her chambers to wait for the Herald’s return from an expedition to the Emerald Graves almost immediately after; the moment Cole told her that he felt her hurt as strongly as if she were standing in front of him, she’d left the tavern to seek her out.
Hope tasted the promise of a harsh winter on her tongue when she took a deep breath, settling against the mortar.
“Zaída,” she murmured with a careful half a smile, a well-intentioned weapon against the elf’s harrowed appearance.
“I failed them,” came the quiet, hollow reply without further prompting. “All of them, dead, all because I thought I could… because…”
Hope placed a hand on a shoulder that curved, stepping in close as Zaída was made small in the face of her grief.
“You didn’t. They’d be proud to know that your heart was in the right place, that you were looking out for your people…” She lowered herself to Zaída’s height as she wrapped an arm around her trembling shoulders, placing a soft kiss on the top of the elf’s bowed head. “I’m proud to be standing beside you, knowing that. You fought well, Zaída.
You did well by your people.”
And a bonus scene, with warnings of fluff and cookies,
Hope took in the state of the kitchen, a small voice in the forefront of her mind reminding her that she’d been expecting the flour on the floor, the dough on the walls, and the apologies she’d have to make to the servants and cook. Plates of cookies were on the table in front of them, and both Sera and Zaída were smiling as they decorated them; the sight of them together, getting along and laughing after everything, softened the edges of Hope’s concern.
Surely the cook would forgive and understand the need for a distraction, to feel normal when circumstances were anything but.
“Who’s that supposed to be?” Zaída asked Sera, head tilted at the mess of creamed sugar on what one could assume was the bottom of the cookie.
Sera giggled. “Come off it! It’s a beard!”
“That’s supposed to be Blackwall?”
“Oh, right. Because your cookie looks sooo much like–wait. Shite. What’s that?”
“It’s a halla, Sera,” Hope said and placed her elbows on the table. She bit into one of the fresh strawberries in the bowl beside the plates, hiding a smile at Sera’s good-natured groaning at the fact that Zaída had, in her words, gone elfy over cookies.
That’d been when she noticed the smear of sugar on the Herald’s cheek.
“Zaída, you have a little…” She trailed off when the elf turned to her, eyes wide and curious and glittering with delight from their afternoon together; from the corner of her eye, she made note of the way Sera puckered her lips in a teasing fashion—a dare, that’s what it was, and Hope knew it.
With a small shrug of her shoulders, Hope leaned in and brushed her lips against Zaída’s cheek. The response was instantaneous: Zaída’s eyes widened further and her face darkened with a blush, all while Sera fell into a fit of giggles peppered with snorts. Hope herself did little more than lick the sugar from her lips and took another bite of her strawberry.
“You had something on your cheek.”
