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The name had been a part of her nearly all her life, as familiar to her as her own. When it had first appeared - glowing golden script on her inner arm - she had been fascinated, spending hours upon hours staring at it, tracing the letters with one finger, dreaming about the kind of person her soulmate might be. The name was strange to her, not Nevarran or Orlesian or anything she had heard of, but that had only added to the mystery and excitement.

His name had appeared on her skin at the time of her first flowering - one more marker on her path from girlhood into womanhood. If she had been the sort to go to school and have friends, it might have been the kind of thing to giggle over with the other girls, to shyly hide away, only to shriek in feigned indigence when her sleeve was playfully pushed up and the name finally revealed. As it was, Cassandra learned from tutors, and rarely had contact with other children. The name, like her beloved books and dreams of dragon-hunting, became a solitary escape, a daydream of a better life.

Both had faded, in time, as such things do. Fantasies of true love and romance had been replaced by the realities of work and duty (though Cassandra had never quite been able to let go of her fondness for romance, if only entirely fictional ones). And the name on her arm had faded from a bright gold to something duller and duller as the years went on, until it was something that could not be seen at all except in the brightest light of day.

(The longer it took, they said, the more your soulmate's name faded, the less likely you were ever to find him at all. And this one - an unknown, foreign name, one belonging to a man who clearly lacked either the interest or the means to seek out a soulmate with the name Pentaghast, well...)

Cassandra herself couldn't say exactly when it was she had stopped expecting to find him. Certainly it had been nothing overnight, no sudden revelation. She had simply woken up one day, no longer a girl in her twenties eager to make the world her own, but a woman in her late thirties - accomplished, certainly, perhaps even fulfilled - but utterly alone, and more and more likely to stay that way.

But the name is still a part of her, as much as it ever had been. And so it is that when she hears it spoken aloud for the first time, she doesn't even blink; hearing the words she had whispered so reverently to herself for twenty-five years is as natural as breathing.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi." She nods sharply, focused on her work, ignoring the tiny voice in the back of her mind that is urgently whispering something, something is happening, this is important - She holds her hand out to shake - her arms, as they always are these days, fully covered by long sleeves that meet her gloves, the barely-visible name securely hidden from even the most prying eyes. "I am Seeker Cassandra Pentaghast."

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"It does take patience," He isn't expecting her to break so fully from the stern, cold Seeker's persona-- it catches him off-guard and Obi-Wan is exhaling on a chuckle before he knows it. Her frustration is something he knows well, and his smile has sympathy mixed in equal measure with their shared chagrin-- and no small amount of admiration for her own forbearance, "I've been here long enough, I think I might not be able to handle reasonable people, even if we had any. It can get to feel like you're the only sane person in the madhouse."

It was nice to know that someone here saw how ridiculous this all was.

"If it's any consolation, they were being considerably more attentive than usual. Last time, it was only the one witch she'd seen-- the number seems to change."

Cassandra makes a disgusted noise, dragging herself reluctantly up from her slumped position as the carriage prepares to move. "Patience has never been one of my strengths," she admits. "If they are normally even less attentive than that..."

She trails off, shaking her head. There's something like a joke on the tip of her tongue - a wry do you mean to say that I am unreasonable? - but she bites it back. It is too soon, and though the day had gone smoothly enough (the locals aside), it's too easy, now that they're back in the carriage, to remember all the tension and discomfort of the morning's ride. She falls quiet again, frowning slightly. The thought of another awkward, silent ride back to the Circle is not a cheerful one.

His smile fades slowly, as the genial mood does. For just a moment, that hopeful bubble had reinflated itself again, only to deflate again, painfully, behind his heart.

"Let's just say, they like the sound of their own voices," He hesitates on the sarcastic observation, at least you get to leave then discards it as too cruel. Too unfair, "It's a quiet place, not much happening, we don't even have a local Chantry, except for the one on the Circle's grounds. Some people would rather invent trouble than be bored."

She glances over at him, trying to gauge the tone behind his words. Does he appreciate the quiet? Resent it? She does not envy his position, but then, few would envy hers, if they understood the work that went into being the Right Hand.

Perhaps she should not be too quick to judge. Perhaps he likes it here. It's not so unreasonable, is it? Far from the demands of the Chantry, the troubles of the world, nothing more pressing than a few bored farmers and one burnt-down building in which no one was hurt...

"It is...peaceful," she says at last, unable to keep the skepticism fully out of her voice as she glances out the window. She pauses, watching the sun dip closer to the hills on the horizon. "And beautiful."

Well. Perhaps not beautiful, but...nice. A good enough place to make a home, she supposes. She falls quiet, her heart conflicted and unhappy once again.

She's not wrong, of course. The scene before them is nothing less than pastoral, complete with a warm, soft-edged sunset and a winding brook through rolling hills. Here and there, little lines of trees, smudges of bracken growing with unfounded hope in fallow fields break up the monotony. It might have been painted by an artist's hand, and at this distance seems somehow pure, utterly at peace, despite the truth.

"Yes," He said, with only half a thought for the sunset, "Beautiful."

When he was a boy, he imagined the woman with the endless name to be the kind of fine lady who featured in tales, with impossibly long wind-tossed hair, and a wardrobe of silk brocade. Growing up, even after joining the Templars as an initiate, he'd wondered how the Maker could think someone like that well-matched with him. He was replaceable, utterly, and someone like that was as fine-hewn and precious as diamond. That made it safe, somehow. No point in trying to measure up to a fine lady, when it was impossible.

The implacable reality of Cassandra Pentaghast was so much worse, and so much better than he might have imagined. A rich and well-coiffed princess was one thing, but the stories one heard about Seeker Pentaghast were right out of a completely other kind of tale, the kind that Obi-Wan had always liked to imagine himself starring in. But then, they weren't just tales, they were reality. She was reality, as sharp-edged as a sword, strong features, strident voice, but so real. Undeniable as a force of nature, and he wondered if it was only the mark on his arm that drew him to her-- it seemed to him that he would have admired her, whatever their circumstances.

She was sitting here, a few feet from him, lit red-orange in profile and stunning in her strength. He looked out at the farmlands instead and only just managed to stifle a sigh. So what was the use of ambition, after all? Nothing. It all came to nothing.

"It's not my intention to..." He stopped, searched for the right word, then bulled on, gracelessly, "...It's not my place to have a right to any answers. But tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after, I imagine your duties will take you elsewhere, while mine will remain here, at least for the time being. If no... We may never see one another again."

Duty, that was the crux, wasn't it? He could not meet her eyes, and his voice seemed somehow remote, quiet and somehow vulnerable. He watched the last sliver of the sun slowly narrow as he spoke, wavering in the last heat of the day on the horizon.

"Is that, what you want? I won't trouble you again, if that's-- whatever your answer."

Cassandra whips her head around, staring at Obi-Wan's bowed head. First with a sudden, focused intensity, her heart tripping over itself in her chest - she had not expected him to bring up the subject, had had no idea how she herself might broach it, still does not know what she might say or what she hopes to hear - and then in something like shock.

"We cannot - "

The idea is unthinkable. The soulbond is beyond revered; it is sacred, the core tenet on which society is built. Soulnames have started wars, and ended them; the soulbond overrules differences of nationality, class, politics, and race. Duty to one's profession is nothing compared to the duty to one's soulmate, even for those who have sworn oaths to the Chantry and its various orders as she and Obi-Wan have.

To walk away from him, to act as if they had never met at all -

But - can't they?

No one else knows, after all. Certainly she had not spoken her soulmate's name aloud in years, or allowed the mark to be seen, and she suspects the same is true for Obi-Wan. She has no close family left, no one to look for him on her behalf or care if she ever finds her soulmate at all. And it's not as if they're likely to run into each other ever again. She could leave tonight, return to the Grand Cathedral, and never return to this small, nondescript Circle or its stubborn farmers and rebellious templars again. She could leave him, and neither of them would ever breathe a word of it to anyone.

The thought makes her heart twist painfully and then drop, leaving her chest feeling empty. She stares wordlessly, her voice, when it comes, a hoarse whisper.

"Is that what you want?"

"No."

He thinks, first, that he should lie. Give her some assurance, somehow, or at least not influence her choice in the matter. It seems unconscionable that he should try to coerce her. But Obi-Wan knows, that if he did lie, or demurr which was as good as lying, he would regret it, for the rest of his life.

No. No, he doesn't want that. The idea that she could turn away, and leave him, that she might still do that, that... that even now, the last he'll ever know or hear from the name he's borne for a secret lifetime, it fills him with a terrible dread. It makes him think of the things a man could do, to forget-- drink, and lyrium, endless work to mask the future days marching ahead, each alike to one another, a life as bland and as tasteless as mash until the day the Maker finally took him home.

"But my life isn't the only consideration. Yesterday, your reaction... that was honest. I could never ask you to bind yourself to someone-- or to anything, you wouldn't freely choose. I would never want to."

So, even if it breaks him, he'll calmly watch her go, and keep the fallout as private as he may, and never breathe a word. Let that sin stand between him and the Maker, if he could be forgiven for it. He knew full well what sacred ground he was trespassing on.

Cassandra drops her head, her cheeks burning in shame. Of course. How else could she have expected him to interpret her reaction? She had blanched as soon as he had said her name, had run out on him and never offered a word of explanation. Of course he would think that she hated him, that she couldn't bear the idea of being his soulmate.

She's such a fool.

"I must apologize for my actions yesterday," she says stiffly, to the floor. "I..." She what? She had been shocked? Afraid? Unsure what to say to him? She shakes her head, at a loss.

"I have no explanation."

"You don't need to explain," he said, quietly miserable, "Or apologize. I understand."

Or, he thought he did-- her lack of an answer, was an answer in itself. Her stiff formality its own recognition of distance, holding him at arm's length. But he had promised, both to himself, and to her, so he resolved to say nothing. Instead, Obi-Wan focused on each breath, and then the next; stay alive, that was all that mattered.

"It's quite alright."

"It is not all right," Cassandra says sharply, her eyes narrowing. "And if you understand so well, perhaps you would do me the courtesy of explaining it to me, because I - "

She cuts herself off, breathing hard, and shakes her head in a quick, aborted gesture before dropping her head into her hands. "I...I am not good at this," she admits finally, quietly. "At...explaining myself, or dealing with...this." She drops her hands helplessly.

"But I do not want to simply leave."

He has to blink, at that. First at the idea that she could be floundering just as badly as he was, and then again that she could falter at all. And, when had that happened, when had he put her up on some pedestal like that? Now he was staring.

But, she didn't want to leave. Or, at least she didn't want to call it nothing, and leave, which was enough to set his heart beating just a little too quickly.

"I come from a family so poor, that they gave away three of their children to the Chantry, because they couldn't feed us. And I didn't know much about Nevarran royalty, but it was a fantasy, to think we'd ever meet-- I might as well have had Celene Valmont on my wrist, or nothing at all, for how realistic the idea was. I gave up hope. And then I never picked it up again."

Oh. Her expression closes off again, and she draws back. This is exhausting, honestly. Just when she thinks she understands him, or herself, or anything that is going on -

"If you have spent your life dreaming of a fairytale princess," she says carefully, each word dropping into the air like lead, "I am afraid you will be disappointed." She sweeps her hand down her side, gesturing to herself. "I am blunt, and bad-tempered, and rash. I have little use for court niceties and less for the name of Pentaghast. I am not," she takes a breath, shaking her head, "graceful, or delicate, or feminine - "

Or any of the things one might expect Cassandra Allega Portia Calogera Filomena Pentaghast to be. She can hardly blame him for whatever fantasies he might have spun about her - how often had she done the same, tried to paint a picture of the mysterious Obi-Wan Kenobi in her mind? But it's awful, all the same, to hear him speak so eagerly of his fantasy of Nevarran royalty, and to realize just how far she might be from his idea of her. His ideal.

"I know," His smile is wry, and Obi-Wan shakes his head in the face of her self-denigration, "No, but it would have been easier to put it all aside if you were a-- a fairytale princess. I could hardly imagine any life less well-suited to my own. But when I learned of the exploits of the real Cassandra Pentaghast... Well."

Right Hand of the Divine, leader among Seekers and Templars alike, heroic, bold, the woman who crashed one dragon into another, saved the life of the Most Holy. A thousand songs and stories with her name still circulated.

"I think I'd have been half in love with you even if I hadn't known your name. You're so damnably competent, it makes me feel like a stumbling child by comparison."

Edited 2016-08-02 04:56 (UTC)

She shakes her head, rolling her eyes, but her cheeks turn rosy, and she can't stop her lips curving up in a tiny smile.

"They exaggerate," she murmurs, for what seems like the millionth time to the millionth admirer. "The stories...there is hardly any truth to them."

But there's no heat behind her protests. She's learned better than to think anyone will listen (and has had one too many people demand to know the truth - did she ride one dragon into another and save the Divine, or did she not? - and has had to admit, one too many times, that yes, that is more or less what happened).

She looks up at him, studying him with new eyes, and something that is not conflict or crushing disappointment stirs in her chest.

"I did not know what you might be," she says quietly. "Where you might have come from - the first idea of where to look." She pauses, her forehead pinched in remembered worry. "But I thought you might find me. I thought you must - that you would seek me out." It's not as if she would have been hard to find, after all.

"When you did not...I did not know what to think. That you were dead, perhaps. Or that you did not care - or were somehow incapable of coming to me." She looks at him, not bitter or judgmental, but curious. He may not have had the resources she did, but neither is he a cripple, or so destitute as to be incapable of traveling at all. If nothing else, they have the Chantry in common - he could have sent a message long before now.

"I have no excuse. We were both in the same position, more or less, but while I'd done little more than get by, and you'd become... Remarkable," The he admires her is no secret, and he does not try to hide it, "I... I didn't see how you could want me, except for obligation. They don't tell the stories about all the times it goes to ruin, because however well-matched your souls are, the rest of you can't fit together. I was a coward. I knew I should have contacted you, but I never did."

The fantasy was perfect, in a way that reality never could be. Even the fantasy of her rejection was pleasant, in its own way, because he could imagine himself as noble and true and that she would go on and find some other love. And then he could go back and imagine it again, happier, and never put reality to the words. But it was all just pretend; no deeds suited his imagination. The blank pages were impossibly wide, and the letter never got written, and he never had to face true rejection, because he never let himself be vulnerable to it, and...

"And now, here we are, just the same. It seems the Maker had a different plan."

She wants to reassure him, to offer him comfort, if she can. Isn't that her role as his soulmate, the gifts they are meant to offer to each other? Comfort and reassurance and acceptance?

But the words stick in her throat, refusing to spill free. It is too much to tell him how she feels - how the thought of one day joining her soulmate, whoever he might be, had never been one of obligation, but the most joyous, privately indulgent fantasy of her life. The one dream she had carefully kept hidden away and preserved, even as the rest of her life swept by out of her control.

She can't say it, even knowing that she should - that he deserves to hear it. But she's guarded her heart for so long, and the thought of making herself so vulnerable, even to him -

She swallows, instead, her expression grave.

"Here we are," she agrees, and dares - cowardly though she is - to meet his eyes. "Truly, it was the Maker who sent me here, who brought us together after so many years."

Which is all very fine and romantic, but does not answer the question of what they are going to do next.

Obi-Wan meets her gaze, feeling very much like the young man still learning to hold his sword, told to stand up straight and look me in the eye when you give your report. But for Cassandra, he tries for a smile, and finds it feels neither false nor strained.

"So. If neither of us wants to leave this behind, then..." He trails off, thinking, "Perhaps I should put in for a transfer, to Val Royeaux?"

He meant it to sound resigned, or at least certain, but some part of him still craves it, the affirmation of her intentions. The sliver of hope.

And just like that, suddenly it is real. Not half-admitted feelings, or reflections on their histories, at once entirely separate and irrevocably tied together - but solid plans for the future. Action, rather than dreams.

She blinks at him, suddenly nervous, not to mention entirely surprised at the suggestion. "You...you do not want to stay?" She gestures out the window, at the fields and hills beyond, the last rays of the sun now barely clearing the horizon. "Your peaceful Circle..."

It would have been easier, perhaps, simply to take him at his word, and accept his willingness to so eagerly sacrifice, to uproot his life for this. But she finds she cannot do that. Not to him. He had admired her from afar, as so many had, and already it is strange that he knows so much about her, had followed her life from afar, while she still knows next to nothing about him. Not disquieting, perhaps, but...she is at a disadvantage, and she knows it.

If she simply accepts his offer without question or concern for his own desires, she fears it will set a terrible precedent.

"Oh, please, I've been looking for an excuse for years," the smile widens a little, somewhere between a smirk and a grin, "My superiors think they're clever, but I'm not stupid enough to notice that they rotate all the greenest, most arrogant upstarts out here because it's boring and there's no trouble for them to get into. I'm tired of babysitting."

It's strange, how suddenly the words had altered his perception. It wasn't him against circumstance, it was suddenly... real. It was the effort of a team.

"It is peaceful here, yes. And I've worked hard to keep it that way, but the only thing to recommend it is how unlikely one is to be killed. Any decent Knight-Commander could stand in my place. Surely the Divine has more need of you than this Circle does of me."

She smiles back, relieved and - finally, without so many uncertainties or unknowns to get in the way - tentatively happy. It never occurs to her to doubt the truth of his words; they ring far too true, and surely he would not lie.

"There are more exciting places," she admits. "If you think that Val Royeaux would suit you." She studies him, curious once more. Still a stranger, but the sort of man who would patiently spend years dealing with the Templar Order's most unwanted - sticking to his duty and producing excellent results, even knowing that in so doing he doomed himself to more of the same. Yet also a man brave enough to leave everything he knows behind for somewhere - someone - new and unexplored.

Romantic enough, perhaps?

She pushes the thought aside. Easier to focus on logistics, for now.

"That is settled, then," she says, her stomach lurching only a little at how suspiciously easy it had been. "You - if you are certain - you will request a transfer, and I will...I will make the necessary arrangements. When you arrive in Val Royeaux..."

She trails off. When he arrives, there will be all the trappings and traditions that come along with a new set of soulmates. Her own sparse quarters will be emptied out, and there will be a celebration. A bonding ceremony. And a shared set of apartments for them both, with all the intimacy that implies.

"...They will make a fuss, won't they," He finishes, for her, seeing the difficulty only now that she's pointed it out. Obi-Wan sees the situation again, from another angle, and the problem that might have presented itself, "If you're not ready for that, there's no need to formalize this immediately. No one but you and I know about this."

He remembered with painful clarity, the way she'd leapt up and practically fled from him, in the first moment that they had recognized one another. Divorced from the memory of his own confusion and despair, he saw her apprehension in a clearer light, and reached for compassion.

Infatuation made a man want to tell everyone how he felt, but patience, and prudence, had ever been Obi-Wan's hallmark.

"I've had longer than most, to get used to the idea. You deserve a little breathing room. If you want it."

Cassandra bites her lip, eyes shifting away from him as she thinks. The problem, of course, is that it will not remain between them forever. The first meeting and the usually immediate joining of soulmates is something celebrated by the whole community. If someone discovers what they are, and that they had kept it hidden...

Not that Cassandra had ever allowed anyone else's expectations to dictate her actions. But this -

It is something she had anticipated her whole life, first with excitement and certainty, and then with the faintest hope, clinging to an ever dwindling possibility. If she ever did find her soulmate, she had thought, the rest would be easy. They would announce their good news to the world, would be bound to each other, and then they would, naturally, fall in love, discovering who the other was along the way, and delighting in it. Everything would be easy.

Now that she's actually faced with the possibility, it seems so much more uncertain and daunting. He is her soulmate, but he is a stranger. Without even realizing it, she has grown used to being a spinster. To being alone. The thought of opening up her heart, her home, and her bed to someone else...

It's thrilling. Exhilarating. And terrifying.

"I have never - " she begins, then starts over. "There was a man, once. Really, hardly more than a boy. He had no soulname. He wanted...He loved me, or said he did, and I might have loved him. But we were young, and..." She turns her arm over, palm up, and slides her other hand slowly along the material of her sleeve. "...The mark had not yet faded. I still hoped...I was still certain that it would be a matter of months, a year at the most. That I...that we were on the verge of finding each other."

She had rejected Galyan's gentle advances, and, Maker bless him, he had understood. But time had stretched on and on with no sign of her soulmate. And now it has been years, decades, her entire life alone, and she is utterly unprepared.

For the second time in as many minutes, he finds himself staring, wondering again at the conundrum that is Cassandra Pentaghast. Does she mean to say that she's never.... that his would be the only hand who ever touched... The idea is ridiculous, impossible, and he is amazed, in the oldest form of the word; stunned by wonder, by the implications. She could easily have said yes to this young man-- or to any other number of them, if she pleased. The idea of it is overwhelming, ice chased with fire, hot then cold again.

"That's... Very romantic of you," He's so charmed, truly, and his hand is halfway to reaching for her hand before he remembers and checks himself. No gloves-- they had come off in the heat of the day as the questioning went on. But despite promises and words, they had yet to touch, something that would turn what had been spun out of intentions into unavoidable fact. He hesitated, torn between politesse and feeling, "...I..."

The words beneath her hands and the fabric of her sleeve were still as transparent as gossamer, and would be, until they did. He wasn't so certain about his own.

She glances up at him quickly, eyes searching his for any hint of scorn or mockery. Romantic could well mean foolish, after all. What sort of person chooses solitude for so many years, passing by real opportunities for happiness in favor of waiting for some dream that may never come to fruition? It's pathetic, when she thinks of how old she is, and how inexperienced. A wasted youth if ever there was one.

But there is no amusement or derision in Obi-Wan's expression. He gazes at her as if seeing something miraculous, and she drops her eyes, uncomfortable under such close scrutiny.

Her gaze falls on his hand, still outstretched and frozen in place, and she swallows, gathering her courage. Overthinking this now will do her no good at all, and so she doesn't. She reaches out, sliding her hand into his - large and warm and somehow still soft beneath and between the rough callouses that speak to honest work - and squeezes tight.

It absolutely is wishful thinking, but the heat of her hand in his seems to travel up his arm, following the imagined lines of script there. The moment lies quiet between them, with all the anticlimax of a cat which, having ignored all bribes and cajoling, finally saunters over and leaps into your lap, but only after you'd completely given up on it.

Obi-Wan offers her a smile, warm and real, and a deep, cleansing breath to settle it in place.

"You know," he says, only half to himself, still in that place of wonder and surety, "I think it's going to be alright."

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