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laurelsofhighever · 4 years

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The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 59 - The Storming of Castle Cousland, part 1

Chapter Rating: Teen Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Action/Adventure, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Canon-Typical Violence, Cousland Feels, Hurt/Comfort

Read on AO3 or start at Chapter 1

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Second day of Haring, 9:31 Dragon

It was a bronze dawn. Curling threads of smoke rose from the city of Highever, too few for such a large settlement, but stained bloody all the same by the first peek of a red sun over the eastern hills. All lay quiet. Frost silvered the grass, clung to the whiskers of the horses as King Cailan and his chief aides lined up at the edge of the Marl Plain with the entire force of the royalist army behind them. The king had raised a glass to his eye as soon as the halt was called, and his mouth pulled down as he scanned Castle Cousland’s walls.

“The Bear is still flying,” he said out loud. “And the gatehouse is still being patrolled by Amaranthine soldiers. Whatever they’re doing, the alarm hasn’t reached the curtain wall yet.”

“Don’t count Her Ladyship out yet, Your Majesty,” Commander Gideon replied. “She’ll get it done.”

Beside him, Arl Teagan nodded his agreement. “We ought to give her every chance we can. We did prepare for this eventuality.”

“We did…” The king lowered the glass and turned to Bann Loren on his left. “Is it certain Loghain’s army is still a day away?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

He nodded. “Then we go ahead all bells a-ringing. We’ll be snug and warm inside the bailey by lunchtime. Prepare your units.”

A chorus of assent met his words as his aides turned their horses away, but he remained, casting one last look over the distant walls. Whatever worry lingered in his expression melted into his usual genial grin as he noticed Teagan had yet to leave his side.

“It’s natural to worry for them, Nephew,” the arl said gently.

Cailan loosed a harsh bark of laughter. “Ho, you think so? If we haven’t been led a wild hunt, three of the people dearest to me in the world lie within those walls, and I have little hope of reaching them.”

“Trust Her Ladyship, and His Highness.” Teagan smiled. “He would never let anything happen to her, and she would never stop, not until every last inch of that castle could be called hers again.”

It was sound advice, but Cailan only frowned. The heart rarely succumbed to the logic of words, even in situations where the mind could not afford to be clouded by emotion. Here, all he could do was turn his horse away and play his part, and pray to the Maker that Rosslyn and Alistair had made it into the keep.

The light grew slowly in Rosslyn’s cell, entering through a small drain at the bottom of the wall that had been drilled directly into the cliffside, so dim the feathered breath of every exhale might have been imaginary. She had stopped shivering hours ago. Maybe she had slept, or maybe the combination of numb cold and pure darkness had warped time, like the water-damaged pages of a book, and she had been imprisoned for days already.

When they had pushed her in, and slammed the door behind her, she had raged. She had thrown herself against the door until the hinges creaked, kicked it, howled like a demon until her voice had cracked, until her shoulders were bruised and her bones aching, and the taste of blood had dried in her mouth like dust. And once exhaustion had calmed her, she had concentrated on freeing her arms from behind her back, still thinking to fight and wanting to level the advantage as much as possible for when they came for her.

And then no one had. Without a target to fuel it, the ember of rebellion flickered, shrank, and at some point the ambush she set in the corner behind the door became true huddling, hiding against the plummeting temperature, and the echo of her breath against the walls, and the darkness that robbed her of all chance for distraction from her grief.

Cuno, gone. Alistair, gone. Before her fingers lost their circulation she had hugged herself tight, brushing an absent rhythm along the length of her neck in poor imitation of how he might have offered her comfort, but nothing warded off the ache in her chest. Whether her eyes were open or shut, her mind’s eye remained a canvas upon which she saw him painted, the blow that knocked him down, the sickening way he just… crumpled, like a puppet with its strings cut. She knew even a simple-looking injury to the brain could kill – Canavan had waxed lyrical about it enough times in her lectures on wearing your helmet – but she couldn’t stomach the idea of him falling to something so easy, so lacking. Had they executed him? Had they known who he was before they did it? She tried to force her mind away from such speculation, to hold on instead to their brief time together, to his kisses pressed against her lips and the warmth when he held her, but she had lost the energy for such feats of imagination.

She tried singing sea shanties to distract herself instead, to purge the sound of Cuno’s last snarls from her ears, but got stuck on the third verse of ‘The Soldier and the Seawolf’, and after the fourth or fifth repetition, fell silent altogether. She drifted. Her stomach growled and her throat baked with thirst, her tongue swollen and heavy in her mouth. She wondered distantly when they would come for her, if she would fight them when they did. After all, who was left for her to fail? The battle would be over by the time she was freed, Cailan and his army destroyed, the royalist cause nothing but churned mud and scavenged bones.

Something changed, though her fogged mind roused to it only slowly. Frowning, she blinked away from her contemplation of the veins of marble the growing light had revealed lacing the wall of her prison and cocked her ear to the steady beat of footsteps in the corridor, too quiet for one of the guards. Whoever it was halted outside the door of her cell, and the grate of the key in the lock screeched bold as a carnyx after so many hours of silence. Lantern light spilled over the hewn floor, stinging her eyes.

“My lady?” a tentative voice called.

Recognition stirred, but only to give her enough strength to turn her face to the wall. Graela was dead, just as the rest of them were dead. The Veil must be thin this far below the castle walls, in the ancient Alamarri tunnels where the sun never shone.

“My lady,” her maid said again, kneeling at her side with a waterskin proffered in her hands.

“Leave me be.” She was too cold, too tired, too lost, and turned her head further away. Even when Graela reared back in a telltale portent of a scolding, she wished merely for darkness again.

“There’s still fighting to be done – there isn’t much time,” Graela tried. “What would your lady mother say if she could see you given up like this?”

“She’s dead,” Rosslyn replied, without feeling. She had nothing left. Heat pricked behind her eyes, vision flashing with the view above the western gate – the crossbow raised – a shield smashed against an unprotected head. “They’re all dead. It’s my fault…”

“My lady –” The waterskin was pushed towards her again. “Please…”

“He was going to come here,” she remembered. “We were going to…” She closed her eyes against the onslaught, warm sunlight and birdsong in the meadow – We. Us, together – the feel of his lips, the hitch in his breath as she touched his bare skin. A tear escaped beneath her lashes when she thought she had none left to weep. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Oh don’t you dare!”

Before she could react, Graela’s arm snapped towards her, snakelike, and pinched the top of her ear. She jerked away with a yell, face contorting into a snarl as she batted away the offending hand.

“So there is some fight left in you,” the elven woman said.

For a moment, Rosslyn could only stare, so off-balance by the sudden resurgence of emotion her mind refused to function. It truly was Graela before her, her sandy-brown hair tucked behind her slender ears and her freckles almost obscured by the indignant colour that always appeared when her charge was being stubborn. Her eyes flashed in the reflected lamplight as she all but shoved the waterskin into Rosslyn’s hands.

Her fingers were too numb to drop it. “I said to leave me alone,” she snapped instead, and tucked her knees closer against her chin. “I can’t help you.”

“All those stories were just stories then.” Graela made a noise of disgust. “Or maybe you just cared about the rest of Ferelden more than you cared about us.” She stood, plucking up the lantern so that her shadow swung wildly about the tiny space. “Stay here and rot with your shame, then, but Andraste help me, someone has to end this nightmare.”

She lingered for a moment more, heaving a long breath as if startled by her own daring, but pursed her lips nonetheless and stalked out to leave Rosslyn alone in the darkness with her incredulity. The venom in the other woman’s tone formed a hard lump at the back of her throat, a taste of bile made worse because perhaps she hadn’t cared enough. She hadn’t thought anyone would be left for her care to matter. Part of her still wanted to refuse the call of the open door, to curl away from any further sting to her already battered heart, but her ear had yet to stop hurting where Graela twisted it and the instinctive outrage at being manhandled by a servant lit an unexpected spark in her chest. Alistair would not have approved. The thought pierced her like a shard of broken glass, but she could not shrink from it – his disappointment in her would have been greater for that. And yet to shelve her grief again, to go on alone like one of Bann Ferrenly’s unfeeling clockworks, seemed impossible.

To steel herself, or perhaps merely as a distraction, she fumbled with the cork of the waterskin and took a long swig. The water had been warmed enough that it didn’t kick her in the guts on the way down, and even if it did nothing to thaw her extremities at least her tongue felt less like sandpaper. She looked up towards the door again. The light from the corridor was steady, and she heard the click of the key in the lock of one of the other cells, and Graela’s voice an indistinct murmur to whoever was inside.

Curiosity piqued, she stumbled from her prison, supporting herself on the wall. She heard a male voice now, raised in urgency, and the clatter of chains falling to the floor, and as she made it to the open door a figure barely skin and bones lurched into the light. Rags hung off his frame, too faded with dirt to be a recognisable colour, and what little of his face could be seen was streaked with grime beneath the overgrown tangle of his hair and beard. He smelled like a sty. And yet, when he grabbed her arms, off-balance, to try and right himself, the sea-blue gaze that locked on hers could not be mistaken, nor the tilt of his shoulders, nor the disused rasp of his voice when he said her name.

“Fergus…” she breathed.

A hand, stiff with swollen knuckles and torn fingernails, reached for her cheek. “It really is you.”

“You – you fell. Father said…” She remembered again the moment she had stood before him at Glenlough, the tightness of the embrace that spoke in place of words.

“I was injured,” he explained as he drew her into a hug. “Captured, then used as bait. I’ve spent every day cursing Howe since then.”

Rosslyn’s wrists were still manacled, her hands closed around the waterskin despite all its sharp edges, but his arms went around her like it didn’t matter. The last time she had hugged her brother he had been shining and strong, not wasted away and trembling from the effort of staying on his feet.

“The rumours…” she tried, clinging to him as best she could, eyes clenched shut. “I thought you were dead, I thought…” How many more ghosts would return to haunt her? “I let Father leave at Glenlough, I – if not for me – I’m so sorry.”

“No,” he choked, and held her tighter.

“I should have protected them.”

“I…” He shook his head. “Don’t talk about it, not now. You’re here, You’re –” He hissed a breath through his teeth. “It’s good to see you, little sister.”

“Fergus –”

She dropped her head against his shoulder, for the moment so lost in the whirl of emotion they stood back on the steps of the keep drenched in winter sunshine, surrounded by rippling blue banners and the polished ranks of Highever’s army. When she opened her eyes again, however, the illusion blew away into rough stone walls and the steam of their breath in the low, grubby light of the lantern. A pair of boots appeared in her line of sight. As she glanced up, all feeling drained from her limbs and her heart stuttered in her chest. Alistair watched her, rubbing his wrists where his own restraints had cut into the skin, with the brief flash of a smile beneath his worry when she caught his eye, a reassurance that while he was glad to see her, he had no wish to intrude on such an important moment with her brother.

She moved towards him anyway. He was supposed to be dead. Her steps dragged as if through deep water. A small, detached part of her mind chided her for believing Howe at all, for letting him taunt her with her worst fears, anything to control her, make her capitulate – but it was drowned out by the rushing in her ears, the echo of her breath on the stone, the sob that tore from her lips as she threw her still-bound hands over her lover’s head.

He caught her, and a sigh ruffled against her cheek as his arms folded around her waist, over her back, bringing her close enough to bury his face in her hair.

“I thought they’d killed you,” she whispered to him, afraid that anything louder might scare away the illusion of him, and leave her holding nothing but the empty air.

“It’s alright.”

“I thought I’d never see you again.”

He shook his head and hushed her. “I’m here – I’m alright. I’m – I was so worried.”

She had no response but his name, the comfort of it cut short be a polite cough from Graela, who was still trapped in the cell behind Alistair’s bulk.

“There isn’t much time,” she reminded them.

Rosslyn heard the blush in Alistair’s voice as he reluctantly pulled away. “Of course. We should –” He frowned at her, lifted his hand to her face. “What –? Let me see.”

She flinched away from his touch, remembering the blood and the bruises only as the tender flesh reacted to the pressure of his fingertips. “It’s nothing.” She didn’t want to go back to that room, to the rotten smell of Howe’s breath, the crossbow rising. “They didn’t hurt me. It’s not my blood.”

Alistair steadied himself, his hands gentle on her shoulders now, knowing what she really meant. It was enough to leave her trembling, to break the dam of her shock and make the rest of what had happened spill from her like meltwater.

“They wanted to, but I got to Howe first. I… He wanted be to beg, but I wouldn’t.”

“What aren’t you telling me?” he asked as her gaze dropped to her feet. “Rosslyn –”

“They shot Cuno.” The words rang through her, hollow as a dry bone. “I wouldn’t do what Howe wanted so he ordered them to kill him.”

“He would have done it anyway,” Fergus interjected, coming forward with the waterskin in his hands. She didn’t remember dropping it. “That’s what he always does. We’re going to end him.”

Graela edged forwards, holding up her keys. “My lady – your hands.”

The cuffs fell away with a clatter, half-missed as cold air rushed in to sting her chafed skin. Alistair pressed close as they turned and filed out of the dungeon, leaning against her with his fingers resting lightly on the small of her back as if the smallest break in contact might leave her to vanish in the darkness. After so many hours in the cold, the warmth of his body felt like a furnace, and she snaked an arm around his waist to draw him closer. Leading the way with the lantern, Graela glanced at them over her shoulder every few steps, her expression unreadable in the gloom, but Rosslyn hardly cared. She refused any space between them until they reached the stairs that wound up into the entrance hall of the keep, and only then to look back for Fergus. He was still bracing himself on the wall, struggling to keep up, and now he paused, a rueful tilt to his chin as he looked up at the distance they still had yet to travel.

“What’s wrong?” Rosslyn asked, with a step towards him.

He grimaced. “It’s my legs. They were broken, and beyond keeping me alive to gloat, Howe didn’t much care how well they healed.”

“Why didn’t you say anything before?” A look passed between her and Alistair, and without a word he crossed the space and lifted Fergus’ arm under his shoulders to help support him up the stairs.

“And interrupt such a charming scene?” Her brother shot her a familiar rakish grin, but it held a haunted edge that she had never seen before. “Never. Did you know, Your Highness, there was a time she actually pretended to twist her ankle to avoid talking to any of the young men at Arl Leonas’ Summerday feast? Mother was scandalised.”

Heat surged into her face, never mind that she was ahead of them on the stairs. “Not as scandalised as the time –” and bit her tongue. It had been Oriana he was caught kissing in the gardens.

“It’s not like you to leave bait half hooked,” he teased. “What were you going to say?”

Light cracked ahead of them as Graela peered through the door to check for prying eyes.

“We should be quiet,” Rosslyn said.

The entrance hall was unnaturally silent, too still in the grey winter light. Even in the darkest hours of the night, she had always felt the castle warm, lived in, but creeping through it now as a stranger in her own home, that familiarity fell away, and the hollow that was left echoed like the held breath before a summer squall. A distant roar reached them from beyond the barred main doors as they filed into the once-familiar space, its uneven ebb and flow uncanny until the familiarity of it clicked into place and sent a jolt of ice through Rosslyn’s veins: the battle had already been joined.

“Where are Howe’s soldiers?” she asked.

Graela’s response was clipped. “Taken care of.”

Rosslyn remembered what Gareth had said, about Commander Lowan being the only one with a set of keys to her manacles, and let the matter lie. Guilt already twisted into a hard enough knot in her stomach without the added reminder that before the long reach of the war, her lady’s maid would have been incapable of violence, let alone relished it.

They reached the kitchen down a side corridor that led off from the entrance hall, and as they approached, the sound of voices resolved itself into a crowd of people crammed around the large, scoured tables serving as workstations for the cooks and scullery maids. Rosslyn spotted Gareth, and other faces she recognised from before the war, all in dark blue surcoats bearing the Laurels. A shock of red hair flashed to her right, and she barely had time to turn before Leliana swept her into a crushing hug, with the dozen survivors from the beach arrayed behind her in various attitudes of relief. She pulled away quickly, eager to make sure Fergus was seen to, but before she could give the order, the crowd parted for a short, slender woman with thin features, golden hair, and a gaze every bit as piercing as that of her father.

“Your Majesty…” Rosslyn breathed, and bowed low, feeling Alistair and Fergus imitate the gesture behind her.

“Food for these people, immediately,” Queen Anora called, in a clear voice not used to disobedience.

A couple of servants disappeared back into the throng at the same time the queen called for Amell, and watched Fergus settled at one of the tables. She was dressed in one of the splintmail suits used by the Amaranthine guards, either as a disguise or for extra protection while moving through the castle, but despite the ill-fit of the metal plates she held herself with the cool authority of one born to privilege. Rosslyn eyed her warily, unsure how to deal with the woman she had only ever known by reputation, at a distance, and as a potential rival despite the difference in their ages. The queen was shorter than her by a good five inches, and while her face was settled into the neutral mask used by so many nobles in mixed company, signs of age had started to make themselves known on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth.

“Teyrna Rosslyn,” she said, “I do not believe we have had the pleasure of being properly introduced. Fergus, I already know, of course. Though they are late, please accept my condolences for what happened here.”

Rosslyn stiffened. She saw Fergus clench his fist on the table. The servants returned and laid crocks of thick wheat broth in front of them, dotted with herbs and pieces of bacon, as well as a flagon of small-ale, a bowl of apples, and slices of buttered bread. Their last meal aboard the Windcaller had been almost a full day ago, but even though her stomach growled mutinously, she ignored the rich, savoury odour and faced Anora.

“Your Majesty is gracious,” she said, and gestured. “This is Prince Alistair, His Majesty’s younger brother.”

The queen flicked her gaze to him, a guarded, appraising look that reminded Rosslyn of a dog watching a shadow behind the door. When she spoke, however, it was in the same sweet, measured tone as before. “It is good to meet you at last,” she said. “I have heard much about you.”

“Uh…” Alistair paused with the spoon halfway to his mouth. “And so have I, Your Majesty. About you. Good things, of course. Um.”

Rosslyn stepped in. “Your Majesty, I’m afraid there’s little time for conversation. The castle is under attack and Cail– the king is outside the walls as we speak, relying on us to open the gates.”

“We must formulate a plan,” Anora agreed.

“Eat something first,” Fergus interrupted. “There are three bowls, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“Your brother is right, Your Ladyship.” The queen laid her hand on Rosslyn’s arm. “Please do not stand on ceremony on my account – I doubt Arl Howe was as generous with your rations as he was with mine.”

Alistair pushed one of the bowls towards her as she sat down, and pressed his knee against hers under the table. She returned the touch like it was a lifeline, hoping he understood the warning in it. Anora was not her husband; she had no bloodline to secure her position, no war record, and her father was a traitor, which gave her every reason to be dangerous.

“Who knows the state of things beyond the walls?” she asked to the room at large. “Where is Howe?”

Gareth shuffled forwards, but Anora cut across him, with the first touch of a frown in her features. “Surely His Majesty is our first concern?”

“My first concern is the liberation of this castle, a task King Cailan entrusted to me,” Rosslyn replied evenly. “I appreciate your concern, Your Majesty, but the guards on the walls still follow Howe’s orders, which makes him the primary obstacle in any counterattack. Gareth?”

She ate as the young guard talked, absorbing the information without feeling. Howe was on the field; the keep was theirs; the upper floors had been cleared and the doors barricaded against any intruders. And someone had even climbed the tower and seen the royalists pinned against the walls, hammered hard by Loghain’s forces and the castle’s artillery, waiting for rescue.

Gareth straightened as she polished off a final crust of bread. “We have over two dozen Cousland loyal ready for your orders, my lady.”

“That’s not including us, ma’am,” Riley added next to Leliana. “Just give us the word.”

The food sat warm in her belly, inviting sleep after so many hours of deprivation, but she shook the feeling away. Instead, she pushed to her feet, the hazy swirl of her plans settling into solid form with the new information.

“We need to take the towers,” she decided. “If we make the barbican, we can offer the king a route to safety, and turn the ballistas on Loghain.” Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the sour twitch of Anora’s mouth, but ignored it in favour of a hasty construction of the curtain wall from cutlery and spare scraps of food.

“We’ll split into two teams, one for the east wing, and one for the west. Enchanter, you’re to come with me along the east wing so we can deal with any guards left in the barracks. Whoever leads the west will have to disable the portcullis over the western gate to stop any attempts by Howe’s men to get back in that way, before moving on to make sure the armoury is secured.”

“I’ll lead them,” Alistair said. His gaze met hers for a long moment over the impromptu map, but eventually she nodded, and continued.

“The grooms among you should follow us to the stables and tack up every trained horse that’s left in case we have need of them. We won’t know until we see the field first-hand, but be ready when the Laurels fly over the barbican.” She paused, frowning. “Everyone not in the fight will stay here. Bar the door. If you hear fighting outside, you are to take the queen back through the pantry and to the Windcaller. Get her to –”

“Am I to have no say in the matter?”

Rosslyn kept her expression neutral. “My concern is for Your Majesty’s safety.”

“And your concern is admirable, but I am no shrinking Orlesian violet who would faint at the sight of blood,” the queen replied. “My father has gone mad, it is true. I didn’t want to believe it at first, but he is gripped by a paranoia so severe it prevents him from seeing sense, and the people suffering the consequences are as much mine as yours. I can fight, and I have had enough of being carted from one end of Ferelden to the other as if I were nothing more than some pretty trinket with no greater use.”

If Rosslyn were better rested, without a war going on outside and grief still threatening to overwhelm every conscious thought, perhaps she would have found the change from Cailan’s easy manners easier to meet, but her day had already been long enough without having to bite her tongue into the bargain. And yet, she was outranked. An open confrontation with the golden Dove of Gwaren would go badly. Aware of the sudden turn in mood, their audience of servants and soldiers looked on in complete silence as the moment stretched, with only the occasional sideways glance or shuffle of feet to betray their discomfort.

“Your Majesty,” she began eventually, once she could be sure of her voice, “every moment spent arguing here increases the danger faced by the king. There is already one battle that must be fought today, I would rather not start another.”

Anora weighed her. In her immediate favour, Rosslyn had the strength and the allied forces in the room to carry her point, but only at the later cost of having Cailan learn she strong-armed the Queen of Ferelden into submission. After Eamon’s accusations, the political consequences of such a move would dog her, and perhaps even Alistair as well. The question, in the end, would be whose side the king would take.

At last, Anora turned aside, only a tiny movement of her head, but enough to show defeat. “You will have need of space for the wounded once the battle is done,” she said. “I will have the stores inventoried for healing herbs and bandages, and anything else that might be useful.”

Rosslyn nodded. “Thank you, Your Majesty. Leliana, I want you to stay here as well. You’re best experienced to slow any pursuit, should it come to that, so you’ll be in charge.”

“Understood, Your Ladyship.”

After that, they wasted no time dividing their forces. Tension hung thick in the air, nor quite the usual anticipation that came before a battle, but something sharper, harder, because they were the fulcrum that could lever freedom for the whole of the North, or send it tumbling unchecked into ruin with the rest of Ferelden if they failed. As Rosslyn directed, two of the Windcaller’s crew hauled in a heavy chest containing both her and Alistair’s armour, and Gareth disappeared only to return with their weapons, snaffled away before Howe could get his greedy paws on them. Servants brought fresh gambesons while Amell tended Rosslyn’s bruises, and then what little talk was left died away as they gathered water canteens, strips of died meat, and injury kits from the ship’s stores. Amell counted the swirling blue vials of lyrium on her belt.

When the last strap on her vambraces was buckled into place, Rosslyn glanced around the party for one last check that all was ready, and Fergus caught her eye. He struggled up from his place at the table, half of his food still uneaten in the bowl, and jerked his head over to the large, empty space by the hearth where they might talk with some semblance of privacy. Alistair noticed the gesture and brushed a gentle hand along her arm for reassurance.

“We’ll wait for you,” he murmured.

“I’ll catch you up.” She squeezed his elbow, then turned to follow her brother to the fire. “Last time it was you leaving me behind,” she pointed out to him as she approached.

He frowned at the flames. “It didn’t work out so well. Make sure you come back.”

“This is just another battle.”

“All it takes is one lucky shot.”

“I’m luckier,” she assured him. “Besides, I still have to make you jealous about all the places I’ve been.”

“And all the growing up you’ve done,” he mused, with a wry glance in the direction Alistair had gone. “You’ve got good taste at least.”

She followed his gaze, heat beyond that of the fire on her cheeks. “I know – but you can tease me about it later, when there’s time.” She swallowed. “Lady keep you safe, Ferg.”

She felt his eyes on her back all the way up the stairs. The soldiers were already pulling back the first of the heavy oak beams that had barred the door, with the grooms waiting behind them, their hands gripped tight around daggers and longknives in case of any resistance they might encounter in the stables. For the rest of them, the fastest way to the barbican lay along the guard route from the terrace at the top of the keep steps, then through the tunnels built into the curtain wall. The narrow passages had blinds built into the corners of the towers to help defenders during invasions and limit the advantage of numbers, but as difficult as the fighting would be, their small company had surprise, and they would be attacking from the keep itself, which would automatically put Howe’s soldiers at a disadvantage.

“So that was Anora,” Alistair said as they waited.

“What did you think?”

A long, heavy breath puffed through his cheeks. “Well I don’t think she likes me very much. But she’s not quite as scary as you, and at least you like me.”

She laughed. It always amazed her how easily he could draw humour from her, even at the worst times. The last bar thudded against the flagstones and the bolts snapped back in their gates, and Rosslyn drew in a steadying breath as she donned her helmet.

“Be careful,” she told him.

He turned into her touch on his arm and placed a delicate kiss against her mouth, careful not to bash his noseguard into hers. “I love you.”

She wanted to say more, but their soldiers hauled the door open. Cold air rushed in with the distant churn of battle. They blinked in the pierce of daylight and had no time for looking back.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair theirin #rosslyn cousland #alistair x cousland #cousland #the falcon and the rose

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ramblinganthropologist · 3 years

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N7 Challenge 25 - Lost

Summary: The Shepards get lost on a strange planet. So, like the siblings they are... time to ask how it’s going with your love interest I guess?

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“Some N7 you are...”

“Hey, you're lost too you know.”

“Yeah but I'm not the one with the hyper-modded omni-tool.”

Ok, fair... but at the same time, no.

Alistair sighed as he tapped his omni-tool. All he got out of it was a lot of static and a headache blooming behind his eyes. He would have taken his helmet off to massage the pain, but... well, they weren't in the atmosphere for it.

Oh the joys of on-planet missions going to shit.

“I think the storm's causing interference.”

Bo, also in full armor, snorted as she crossed her arms. “Of course it is.”

At least they weren't being exposed to the elements. Instead, they were in a ramshackle building that had probably been an outpost for the illegal mining setup they had been sent to investigate. It might not have been the nicest, but it was built to withstand the elements. Right then that was a bonus, because outside was hell on earth.

He had heard the planet had super concentrated acid rain, but the report had stated it was a rare event. How shitty was his luck?

“Maybe the guys we're looking for got caught in it and are out melting there now.” Bo peered out the window. “Nope... don't see any melting corpses.”

Alistair shook his head as he kept trying to get his omni-tool to connect. “We probably would've heard them screaming first. Acid isn't a pretty way to go.”

“Eh, don't ruin my daydream with facts.” She waved her gloved hand in his general direction. “Whatever, here's hoping they pick up our signal soon. I don't know how strong this roof is, but I'm pretty sure our armor can't hold out long.”

Actually, it could hold out five minutes... though the joints were the weakest part of that. Not that he had tested it or anything...

In the end, he gave up on his omni-tool. With any luck, it would clear up when the storm did. So until then, they were both effectively grounded in the small building they had sprinted towards when the skies had opened up. At least it wasn't anywhere animals could get to – this was the perfect opportunity to get eaten by a bear.

Given they had both survived a thresher maw, that would've been really embarrassing.

“So... since we're stuck here... what are you planning to do to Saren once we catch up with him?”

Alistair picked up his head. Bo was still leaning against the wall, glancing out the window in the hopes of spotting the storm clearing up. Outside there really wasn't much to see as the colorless rain fell. Rocks got pitted, the puddles were toxic, and anything organic caught outside that wasn't native was going to get a nasty surprise. Basically it was like regular rain, only more toxic.

So it was boring to watch.

He shrugged his shoulders as he took a seat on a somewhat run down chair that barely held his weight. “Turn him in, I guess? Though I doubt he's going to go quietly, especially since he's been working with the Reapers.”

Bo snorted at his assessment. “God, you're such a boy scout.”

“Oh, and what are you planning to do to him, headbutt him into a paste?” He chuckled. “Maybe that'd knock the implants out of him.”

He could almost picture Saren splatting against the wall like a cartoon character once Bo got a hold of him. If he really closed his eyes and focused, seeing his implants go flying was almost comical. At the same time... probably wasn't going to happen.

But it kept him busy.

“No, I'm going to rip his carapace off and beat him with it until he stops breathing.” She made the motion of cracking her knuckles, but the effect was impossible with gloves on. Maybe she realized that, because she frowned as she looked down at them. “It's the least that bastard deserves.”

Alistair nodded at this. “It's going to be hard to get his carapace off with the implants, though. You might tear it.”

“I'm not trying to pop him out in one piece, I just need a big enough chunk to beat him over the head with. That part on the back of the neck should do just fine.”

Apparently, she had been studying turian anatomy in her spare time. Good to know, maybe it would prove useful when they actually caught up to the rogue ex-Spectre and took him to task. Of course, that felt like light years away as they sat there, watching acid melt rocks and turn dirt into a biohazard.

At least the rocks were in cool shapes...

“So, speaking of turian anatomy... you got a plan on how you're getting into Vakarian's jumpsuit or what?”

Bo's sudden question rose above the hissing of the acid outside. Alistair's face immediately turned crimson, and he was glad for his helmet's visor hiding that. No doubt it showed on his body language, though – he was shit at hiding that.

“You know, I should really be focused on if the weather c-”

Bo snorted at his response. “So that's a no.”

…

Yeah.

Her brief bark of laughter rang out across the small room, which made his face burn even hotter. Even worse, he didn't have an omni-tool to dick around with to help process that. Right then, he was getting his XO at full power.

And he hated it.

“He's part of the crew, and we're barely ok with each other. I should respect that.”

The other Spectre in the room shrugged that off with one of her patented bored gazes. “He's not part of the Alliance, so if you're worried about fraternization you're good.”

Yes, but that wasn't the point. He was still pretty sure the turian hated him, and more importantly they were trying to nail another turian to the wall before he fucked the entire universe over. Whatever he had going on, it was secondary to that main goal of catching Saren before everything went to hell. After that, maybe, he could consider it.

But like... shit, how?

“We've got other stuff to worry about right now.” He tapped his omni-tool. “Damn it, come on. It's only a little acid rain, why are you so fussy?”

His XO rolled her eyes as she shifted her position. “You said that the last time and then our entire unit got eaten by a thresher maw. If that's not an indication you should jump on a situation, I don't know what is.”

Proof the universe hated them? Alistair didn't know, and he didn't care to question it as he sat there, praying his omni-tool would finally connect so he could call the Normandy. Anything would be better than this, possibly even getting hit by acid rain.

Yeah... that was how much he hated discussing his love life or the lack thereof. Maybe that was why he was single.

“Proof that I shouldn't even consider this until I'm out of the military.” He shrugged. “Besides, I could ask the same thing to you. How are things going with Tali?”

Not that he hadn't seen plenty of awkward moments between the two before this moment. After all, he hung out in engineering plenty when he had nothing better to do. Maybe that made him a massive nerd, but it also made him the perfect audience for watching human and quarian interactions play out in a military ship.

So... yeah he enjoyed it a little bit. Just a little.

Bo's posture shifted a little. “Fine.”

“Why does it sound like you're at the same impasse I'm at?”

She shot him a blank look. “Your problem is a combo of generalized anxiety disorder and a possible curse by the universe on anyone you have a crush on. My problem is that I'm scared I'm going to break her in half or breathe on her too hard and give her the flu.”

He was pretty sure that last one wasn't going to happen, quarian enviro-suits were well supported to keep nasty humans from giving them the flu. Once the visor went up, he didn't know. Quarian biology wasn't his specialty.

The former... well... he was going to think the best of her.

“You have good control, and she's pretty healthy.”

Bo groaned at that. “Yeah but I keep freaking out about it! I know she can handle it, she's tough and gorgeous and smart as hell but it's always in the back of my fucking mind that I'm going to get her killed!”

And this was why he kept trying to get her to go -

“I know what you're thinking and fuck off, if I didn't go to therapy after Akuze I'm not doing it for this.”

Apparently she was also a mind reader. He made a mental note of that as he checked his omni-tool one more time. It was still not working, but the static wasn't nearly as bad. It was probably due to the rain – there was a little less hissing. Maybe it was passing over.

Excellent, they could get out before they delved too deeply into each other's pathetic excuse for a romance resume.

He shrugged off her attitude regardless, though. “You already know my recommendation there, I'm not going to say it. But I think she knows what she can handle.”

“I know...” another groan. “Is this how you feel all the fucking time?”

Alistair checked his omni-tool again. “Worried about things with logical answers? Yeah, pretty much.”

“Well it fucking sucks and I want off the ride.”

That made two of them, which was why he took medication for it. It didn't always work because Saren had replaced quite a few things as his top anxiety producers over the last couple weeks, but it helped. It wouldn't help her, though – he didn't even want to think of the dosage she would need at her size.

Did pills even go that high? Maybe he'd ask the doctor about that the next time he saw them if he got out of this alive. Talk about motivation.

After that little outburst, they were quiet. The rain was definitely starting to slow, though. Even better, the sky was beginning to clear up as the sudden storm began to pass the area. It wasn't completely safe yet, but they were getting there.

“Is that thing working yet or what?”

Someone was testy. Alistair gave her a shrug as he tapped it one more time. Much to his relief, this time the static cleared. He could hear something on the other end beeping softly. A connection had been established.

“Yo is anyone out there? Matt, Waters? You two better not have fucking died out there, I swear-”

Nope. That wasn't Joker.

Bo's eyebrow lifted as she looked over at her CO. “I feel like a little stress relief, how about you?”

“I mean, we did come here for a mission.” Alistair was already working to locate the source of the call. It was probably nothing, but at least it would keep them busy until the Normandy could dock safely to pick them up. Maybe they could finish this mission after all.

At the very least, running around would clear both their nerves a little. He was feeling more than a little twitchy, and no doubt his XO felt the same. Maybe a little head smacking would help them settle down for the ride back.

If not... well, they'd work that out before she got back to Tali. It wouldn't do to accidentally break her in half or anything.

#n7month #ramblinganthropologist's writing #Alistair Shepard #Bo Peep Shepard

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briannaswriter · 4 years

Text

I was told I should take the high road. I should just accept that Hillary refuses to speak with me again. I shouldn’t expect answers from someone who won’t give them - has never given them. At the same time, I don’t feel like I can genuinely let this go without talking about it in a format that isn’t DMs.

This is really long, sorry? But I wanted to get all of it out because I want to be free of it, I don’t want it to keep being an ache in my heart whenever I think about it.

tl;dr at the end. Feel free to reply, idc, I’ll get back to it tomorrow.

I met Hillary in a group called @/heroesrpg in about 2012. While I was there, I operated under two pseudonyms: Miranda/Isa and Bea. The why for that is a long story. I have nothing negative to say about Hillary here! She was a great friend who taught me a lot about writing and challenged me to become a better writer. I don’t think I would have gotten this far without writing with her. When I left heroes in about 2013, we didn’t keep in touch. I didn’t really stay in the RP world so I didn’t pay attention to it.

In 2014, I was invited to join Ashbourne at her behest. I don’t recall the specifics of how I found it, I think it was simply me reaching out to her again and finding out she was in a group which she invited me to join, too. I ended up playing a woman named Nadeya Khan who was in a ship with her that was later discarded. Later I picked up Shiloh Morgan, the best friend of her character, Adam, and later Mira Lowell, the elder sister of her character Meyer.

I won’t lie, these dynamics were a lot of fun and I enjoyed playing them.

I was upset that my ship with Nadeya and Adam was discarded (I have a distaste for Adam and the FC Ben/edict Cumberba/tch now, I’m petty, sue me), but I think it was more sucky when all threads with them trickled to a halt. To me, it felt like my character was no longer important because it wasn’t a ship, even if a friendship dynamic would have been just as interesting. I ignored this feeling.

I was sad to leave the group, but I was uncomfortable with an interaction from another player and feeling pushed aside in favor of other ships so I made the decision to leave.

I did keep in touch with Hillary, or I attempted to, but once we were no longer in a group together, we just sorta drifted. We didn’t talk for the longest time here and I forgot her url for a long time. Frankly, I’m not sure how I found it again!

We started interacting again in about September 2018 when I think I reached out to her. This eventually ended with the creation of @lethe-rpg where we could write about old time favorite characters - and we wrote so much in Lethe’s run. Everything from romances, to long-lost parent, to siblings, to best friends, to unrequited loves. We wrote nearly twenty characters each and over ten ships in the time Lethe ran from September/October 2018 to June 2020 when it closed. Or, I should say, we wrote all of these things in theory and a lot of it happened behind the scenes in DM’s between us. When we did write things, they would frequently reach only a reply or two before we had to move onto the next one because she didn’t want to finish the one before. I’ll fully admit that I found this frustrating after a while - but I found it difficult to say no to her about anything, or to speak out against her.

Not only was she my friend, but I very much looked up to her. I considered her a mentor as much as a friend, and her approval meant a lot to me. It meant agreeing with dynamics I didn’t enjoy

pushing for a ship between my character Wesley and ANY of hers. Even if it was already mentioned to her that I had an ongoing connection with another character. If I tried to make this dynamic a friendly connection instead, it was promptly dropped altogether.

trying to get a ship between Gemma and Nate when I mentioned point blank that I didn’t want a pre-planned romantic thing with him after his other one failed.

the fact that Gemma and Lily didn’t get like any interactions completed together until I relented a little on Gemma/Nate. Any mention of them was largely forgotten. Half the time, Lily was treated like a child who hadn’t experienced any pain. Not just from Gemma, but from Gabe and from Hillary herself, who seemed to think that my young FC meant nothing compared to the history I had written for this character. Lily in general was ignored until she brought Lachlan along and prodded him into a ship with Lily. Do you know how many starters I wrote on Lily that were ignored?

the fact that Pat/Kate were the oldest ship in the group but they had like one completed thread the entire time lol.

the fact that Odette/Kate were the oldest family dynamic in the group who had like three NOTES between them.

the fact that Odette/Orion became a ship later who were just... never written. I can be honest now, I found them boring and I’m wondering if she felt the same, or if the lack of writing made me dislike them. Either way, Orion became a drain on my Odette muse, just as the lack of Kate/Odette was.

most stuff with Odette makes me sad. I feel like I had really good connections for her that... didn’t work out, and maybe I took to long to address it.

Mira/Andreas is a dynamic I blame myself on. I did feel sorta like I wasn’t getting anything written with her old ship, and I think me and the mun were drained on it, so while Mira was on hiatus and the mun for her last ship, Clark, was debating letting him go/killing him off, I didn’t mind discussing a new ship. I wanted this ship to be a slow burn, I wanted proper closer on the last one because it was a good ship and the mun is a good friend. This was handled with so little tact on her part, we were instantly hitting ship dynamics from the beginning and I found it callous. I dragged out replies just to avoid it. A shame, because I loved the dynamic, but the way it was handled put a bad taste in my mouth

she wanted an August/Delilah ship? Which I didn’t really want, but she’s really good at convincing you bit by bit that it’s a great idea. When I finally jumped onto this ship and flung myself into it, we got like two notes into it and nothing. Are you seeing the theme yet?

I got nothing against Arthur/Cora because I loved writing them, the only thing I did dislike is how rushed they were and how little I got to explore some of the Riverborn aspects of Arthur’s story with Cora. Also a pregnancy happened hella fast.

But I did have something against the Meadowes dynamic altogether: we had so many pieces of it to use that were never written. I failed sometimes on my part, but a lot of it was Hillary getting easily distracted by something else. Cora/Faolan were rarely written beyond the first reply to a thread. Gabe/Faolan were often two notes in and done. Faolan/Alistair lasted a bit longer, I was impressed. Gemma/Lily was mentioned above, but I’ll also mention how often she tried to take pieces of Faolan’s history and twist it to be her character’s pain without any consideration to previously discussed lore or connections. It wasn’t even about a connection anymore - it was about making her character the focal point. Look at how the Daniel Bisset, Aurelie, and Gabe things turned out: half of the plots were twisted to benefit Gabe’s momentum in the story, and the pieces of angst that should rightly lingered on Aurelie were shifted to the side. I didn’t even write that ship, and sometimes looking at them made me feel like a discarded sweater, but they were cute. Anyhow, this is long, moving on.

Faolan/Saby. I literally almost forgot about them, but like... Legit, I’m glad this ship ended because Saby was wholly too dependent on Faolan’s feelings for her, which he couldn’t even acknowledge because he was still in love with his two centuries deceased wife. Was this handled gracefully, did we get to slow-burn some of their stuff in writing? Sometimes. But again, they weren’t really written, and the ship was pushed and pushed, even when I wasn’t really interested in writing it because I didn’t want a ship for him yet.

Aliza/Tien was twisted out of me piece by piece, prodding at the parts of the Aliza/James connection I found uncomfortable (like the murder, like how difficult it was to plot after a point) until Tien seemed like the best answer. This was late enough into Lethe that I woke up enough to cut the ship off and drop the dynamic. In hindsight, I regret letting this even get so far.

Jonas. Just... most of the things written with him lol because he was constantly pushed onto my characters and others. Jo was hinted as a thing, Wesley was hinted as a thing, I think Nate was at one time. It definitely opened my eyes to the fact that she wanted a ship and that dynamics outside of that were largely ignored.

Do you know what it was like to put your heart into a character / story that was ignored ENTIRELY because she didn’t ship with them? Do you know what its like to be excited about a friendship or sibling or parental dynamic that... stopped getting written because your friend only wrote the character for a ship and the next shiny thing attracted her attention and instead of letting the character go, she made you think the next reply was right around the corner? Do you know how many threads we wrote that didn’t go anywhere, and how thrilled I was to write them still because I thought each time it would be different?

TL;DR: if it wasn’t a ship dynamic, it wasn’t written. If it was a ship dynamic, it was sometimes written. If you weren’t doing any of those things, you were ignored.

TL;DR 2: Do not misread this, please. I understand that RL comes first, I understand that dynamics change, that you’re allowed to change your mind. But do you realize how often I was strung along, or how often I was shoved aside? How hard it was to keep a character going sometimes because their big connection was only important for about a week?

and biting my tongue when my own feelings were callously ignored

when we wrote a ship between Selene/Gabe which was later discarded for a ship with Aurelie which had a much better chemistry, but was handled with little tact for my own feelings as I received constant updates on how their ship progressed, and also how the friendship we developed between Selene and Gabe was just dropped altogether - as it was with Adam/Nadeya so many years ago - instead of revamped to fit a changed dynamic as we discussed ooc.

when I would message her and be ignored unless it was about one of our ships

like the fact that I became an admin in Lethe to help her out and eventually the burdens of handling it were on my shoulders. I don’t mind this, but when it came to asking her for help on simple matters (sending me the psd for banners when I switched computers and no longer had it, posting a bio, skimming a post so I could verify it was okay to post, plotting out future events, posting unfollows/follows for people) or asking if she could write something from an admin post, getting a “sure! I’ll do that later!” and then finding out it wasn’t done for a week until I sucked it up and did it myself. We addressed this eventually, but Lethe ended shortly afterwards.

So. That’s how the last two years have gone, and lord knows how much I’ve forgotten. Hillary and I wrote so much over the last two years, and we definitely grew close. I thought we were beyond just writing friends, that we might have been real friends (after all, we sent christmas/birthday gifts to each other. Hell, I still use the mouse pad she gave me).

I ignored the way she ignored me if we weren’t writing something interesting. I ignored the way she didn’t care about my characters even passively until I shipped with her in some form. I ignored how it felt when entire sections of a back and forth DM was ignored if she didn’t care about the character. I ignored how she refused to write with other people because she disliked their FC, or she didn’t want to write with the mun, or she found the character boring. Half the time, she found a character boring because she didn’t bother learning about them, and the moment she did read about them, they were intriguing. I ignored how she belittled my other ships with other players because “oh I don’t think they click” or “imo that one is boring” or tried to poach those characters to one of her ships. I ignored how she made me feel like a part-time friend sometimes and her best friend other times.

I ignored the way she didn’t help with admin problems even when she knew admin duties were taking a toll on me as people demanded more and more from me. Not even when we discussed ways to handle things on both our parts to make it easier and promptly ignored them the first chance she got.

She made me feel so important when we would headcanon things. It felt like my characters were important, and that I was a good writer with clever ideas and intriguing characters, and that writing her was reaching a pinnacle that others couldn’t reach. She never said this, I’ll give her credit for that, but I have to admit, I felt like my characters didn’t work out unless I had a connection with her.

The last few months were eye opening. I had already spent the last year frustrating from her lack of leadership as an admin, and anger for the way she ignored people’s feelings even when it was pointed out and gave the bare minimum when interacting with other people, and sadness for the fun dynamics we had discussed but never wrote beyond the posted biography. When Lethe ended, I was ready to let it go and move on, I said my peace about my admin things and letting the characters go meant a fresh start. To me, we were friends REGARDLESS OF BEING IN A GROUP TOGETHER OR WRITING TOGETHER. You don’t talk about ooc things and ic things as much as we did only to stop talking the instant you’re done writing together, right?

Wrong. She didn’t even help us close the group that she created, or helped us discuss things with members who weren’t sure what was happening. I gave her time, just short messages about random things because I wanted her to know that I didn’t hold Lethe’s end against her, that we were friends anyway. Those messages were ignored. I gave her more time and then after nearly a month or maybe two, I finally messaged her on tumblr with a brief snippet on how thankful I was to know her because she helped me as a writer, and apologized if I implied Lethe ending was her fault (which I still agree that it wasn’t entirely, it was a situation handled callously and frankly I still think people should have considered that Hillary was barely 3% of the admin team at the time since Ally and I were shouldering the burdens of everything else). I mentioned how I felt like our friendship was being ignored because we weren’t writing together, and how I had thought after nearly two years of talking that we were friends enough to chat once in a while at least, but if we are only RP friends, let me know so at least I don’t have to fucking think about it.

Do you think that got a response?

It didn’t. She didn’t log into discord to chat about it or something else, she didn’t respond to the message, nothing. She quietly unfollowed me and then blocked me. She unfriended me on facebook, I feel like that’s answer enough.

I’ve known her at least eight years and while some of those times were brief, the last two years were most certainly not. And not only does it make me angry that I’ll never know whether she just dislikes me, or whether I made her uncomfortable, or what, I’m also just... really upset that I lost an eight year friendship. There’s only one person I know longer than her and I had hoped that, if not real friends, then we would still be able to meet up in another group together someday. Now it’ll never happen again, and it devastates me. I can count my friends on one hand and I thought, you know, that she was one of them. It feels like a physical blow whenever something comes up on the dash that involves her. I feel so stupid for thinking we were friends when she showed me her priorities in Ashbourne, when she showed me in little pieces here and there throughout Lethe. I feel stupid for writing this entire thing and crying about it. I feel stupid for assuming.

And I don’t know how to talk about this in a way that’ll let me say goodbye to it because I do need to let it go, but I’m afraid that if I do, I’ll lose my ability to write because she’s been such a big part of the writing journey for me.

So here it is. Eight years of friendship summed up in however long this is and here I am, trying to let go - and still a little part of me hopes she’ll see it and reach out about something, anything. And a bigger part that’s angry and doesn’t want to talk to her ever again because I don’t want to do this another time.

tl;dr:

I miss my friend Hillary, but also she’s kind of a shitty friend who only seems to care about people when they are writing with her and I’m an idiot for thinking anything else when I’ve had eight years to learn it. Likely if she did find this post, it’ll be misinterpreted in every way until I’m not only an idiot, but also I’m a bully who didn’t give her time and space, who pushed things on her she didn’t want, who she pitied. Because it just occurred to me now how easily she can warp the truth, how she can prod things bit by bit, until it fits just how she wants things to look that’ll benefit her the most. I love my friend, but I’m done. No matter how much I miss her, I deserve more than to be the butt of whatever joke she wants to say to make this sound cool.

#shush mira #I was gonna post this later but fuck it #long post #like.... really long post

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black-emporium-exchange · 4 years

Text

2020 Pinch Hit #3, hollyand -- CLAIMED

This pinch hit will be due at the same time as assignments, August 31st at 8 PM EDT. Please leave a comment here (comments are screened), send a message to one of the mods, or send an email to [email protected] to claim.

Requested Relationships:

Carver Hawke/Merrill - Fanart, Fanfiction

Alistair/Bethany Hawke - Fanart, Fanfiction

Ashaad/Saemus Dumar - Fanart, Fanfiction

Bianca Davri/Varric Tethras - Fanart, Fanfiction

Bethany Hawke/Sebastian Vael - Fanart, Fanfiction

Bethany Hawke/Isabela - Fanart, Fanfiction

Arishok/Male Hawke - Fanart, Fanfiction

Letter: http://hollyand-writes.tumblr.com/blackemporium2020letter

Request #1:

Carver Hawke/Merrill

Fanart

Fanfiction

My ultimate OTP! (I mean, given that I run the Carvermerrill Tumblr ship blog, this should surprise no-one, LMAO.) Forever sad that Bioware teased us with this ship in-game, and even indicated that they intended for it to happen until the third DLC got cancelled. But this is what fanfic and fanart is for!

I am happy for any AU or canonverse/canon-divergent scenario - I love any and all scenarios with this pairing and can never get enough! Warden Carver, Templar Carver, Act 1 Carver, AU Carver, it’s all good with me.

Would prefer no mention of background ships in fic, although if you do want to mention any then the ones listed in my letter are fine.

Smut is most welcome, if that’s what you feel like writing! I don’t really have many squicks except for the kinks mentioned in my “do not want” list.

I feel like this pairing has as much potential for pain as it does for pleasure, so if you want to write darkfic, I’d love it; but if not, I’m sure I’ll love it anyway.

DO want:

- Carver and Merrill being together in some way by the end of the fic. As long as you have them doing more than chastely holding hands I’ll take it!

Would be happy to receive any of these, but none of them are a must:

- forbidden love, size difference/kink, PWP, slow burn, healthy or unhealthy relationships, A/B/O with mage omegas, cum kink, pining, mutual pining, fluff, romance, humour, requited love/attraction, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, pregnancy sex, breeding kink, slice of life, established relationship/marriage, meet-cute, arranged marriage, first times, friends-with-benefits, hate-sex, angst with a happy ending, angst with a porny ending, domestic or work scenarios, historical AUs, modern AU (with or without magic), mundane AU, Soulmate AU, one-night stands, "dirty spells", sex pollen, forced to fuck, Merrill not seeing Carver as inferior to his sibling, Merrill being adored by Carver... really I'm good with most things involving these two.

Do NOT Wants:

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - Body piercings - Mpreg (fine with it generally, just not for this pairing) - High School AU / College AU - Hawke/Merrill, past or present - OCs - Sexual infidelity - Bashing past partners - Mention of any characters that do not appear in DA2 in any way (so please no DA:O or DA:I characters) - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

Request #2:

Alistair/Bethany Hawke

Fanart

Fanfiction

I love this pairing and there is just not enough of it. I feel like Alistair’s humour and general laid-back-ness would suit Bethany’s personality and character very well, and she would organise him and he would be very reliant on and appreciative of her intelligence and competence. Plus, he’s royalty! And Bethany would LOVE to be a princess! I feel like they would work so well together, be good friends as well as lovers, and he would adore her like she’s meant to be adored.

DO want:

- Pairing being in love by the end of the fic. Canon-verse, canon-divergent and AUs all accepted. Smut is great but not required.

Do NOT Wants:

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit, blood) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - Body piercings - High School AU / College AU - Coffeeshop AU - Background pairings (except for those in my letter) - OCs - Infidelity - Bashing past partners - Mention of any characters that do not appear in DA2 in any way (so please no DA:O or DA:I characters) - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

Request #3:

Ashaad/Saemus Dumar

Fanart

Fanfiction

I love them and I am so sad that they could never be together because Ashaad was killed. Would love smut, but it’s not required. Give me the happy ending they deserved!

DO want: - Pairing being together in some way by the end of the fic.

Would be happy to receive any of these, but none of them are a must:

- forbidden love, size difference/kink, fluff, romance, PWP, slow burn, slice of life, A/B/O with Saemus as omega, pining, mutual pining, requited love/attraction, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, breeding kink, healthy or unhealthy relationships, meet-cute, arranged marriage, first times, friends-with-benefits, cum kink, hate-sex, angst with a happy ending, angst with a porny ending, sex pollen, forced to fuck, discussions of the Qun, initiations into the Qun, canon-divergent or AU, Saemus and Ashaad in a cave (could be just talking, could be more - up to you!)

Do NOT Wants:

Request #4:

Bianca Davri/Varric Tethras

Fanart

Fanfiction

I feel as if Bianca gets treated unfairly by much of the fandom for a scenario and relationship that (I feel) is not mainly or even mostly her fault, so no Bianca-bashing for this prompt please. I’d like to see something about their relationship, whether that’s a one-shot in better (or worse) times, or some sort of exploration of her relationship (or her "forbidden love"/secret love) with Varric. Optional prompt, if needed: How did it start so well, and how did it all go wrong?

DO want: - Pretty much anything - one-shots, full-length multichaptered fic, whatever you fancy!

Do NOT Wants:

- Misogyny / Bianca being blamed or held more responsible for what went wrong than Varric is / Bianca being beaten up or slapped or physically attacked in any way due to “how she treats Varric”

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit, blood) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - Body piercings - High School AU / College AU - Background pairings (infidelity from Bianca and/or Varric themselves is OK - I mean, they’re both canonically unfaithful to the other) - Mentions of, or endings involving, other Varric ships - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

Request #5:

Bethany Hawke/Sebastian Vael

Fanart

Fanfiction

I love them and I love their flirtation in-game and I am so sad that Bioware could not take the romance they teased us with to the conclusion they indicated they intended to happen. To quote David Gaider: "I like the idea of Princess Bethany (and so would she)." Give me the happy ending they deserved!

DO want: - Pairing being together in some way by the end of the fic. As long as you have them doing more than chastely holding hands I’ll take it! Would love smut, but it's absolutely not required.

Would be happy to receive any of these, but none of them are a must: - forbidden love, fluff, romance, PWP, slow burn, slice of life, pining, mutual pining, friends-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, enemies-to-friends-to-lovers, weddings, arranged marriage, first times, angst with a happy ending, angst with a porny ending, sex pollen, canon-divergence, historical AU, royalty AU, modern AU (mundane or with magic, I don’t mind), Soulmate AU, canonverse, Queen Bethany, Sebastian adoring Bethany

Do NOT Wants:

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit, blood) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - Body piercings - High School AU / College AU - Background pairings (except for those in my letter) - OCs - Infidelity - Bashing past partners - Mention of any characters that do not appear in DA2 in any way (so please no DA:O or DA:I characters) - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

Request #6:

Bethany Hawke/Isabela

Fanart

Fanfiction

Ever listened to their interactions in-game? Yeah, I ship it.

DO want: - Pairing being together in some way by the end of the fic. I don’t mind whether you make it smutty or not, as long as both ladies are happy!

Do NOT Wants:

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit, blood) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - High School AU / College AU - Coffeeshop AU - Background pairings (except for those in my letter) - OCs - Infidelity - Bashing past partners - Mention of any characters that do not appear in DA2 in any way (so please no DA:O or DA:I characters) - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

Request #7:

Arishok/Male Hawke

Fanart

Fanfiction

My guilty pleasure. Was once asked to write a crackfic for the ship, I laughed and wrote one, and now oh dear here I am.

DO want:

- Smut - Crackfic - Humour - Prostitution AU - Size difference/kink - Cum kink - Humiliation - Any or all of the above

Do NOT Wants:

- Romance or romantic fluff

- Any kink involving things that go in a toilet (i.e. no scat, watersports, vomit, blood) - Daddy kink, mummy kink or ageplay - Vore - Biting - Body piercings - High School AU / College AU - Mundane AU (i.e. I would like the Qunari to remain Qunari regardless of AU) - Background pairings (except for those in my letter) - OCs (except other DA2 Qunari) - Infidelity - Bashing past partners - Mention of any characters that do not appear in DA2 in any way (so please no DA:O or DA:I characters) - Animal play - Necrophilia - Choking/breathplay

#be_2020 #be_pinch

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antivan-beau · 4 years

Note

Will you do headcanons for OCs? Because I want to know more about Beatrice Cousland.

BLESS YOU for asking me about my OC.

Ah, Beatrice. Not actually my canon Warden, nor a character I’ve even played, but I adore her.

General Opinion: Beatrice is an affable jock. She loves her friends and big swords. Painfully earnest. Strong Cousland sense of Duty and Obligation. Has a straightforward, lawful good sense of right and wrong - so simple that it tends to get her into trouble, because it’s hard for her to see nuance or both sides of an issue. She tends not to explain herself and just does her own thing.

Sexuality: Bisexual with a slight preference towards women.

Gender: Cisgender woman.

A ship I have with said character: Beatrice and Morrigan have an unlikely romance. They start off as purely platonic tent-mates because they find they sleep more soundly together than apart. Morrigan is very private. Beatrice is an open-book. They have frequent miscommunications. Although she plays it cool, Beatrice actually falls in love quickly - Morrigan is intelligent, capable, beautiful, and has a really strange worldview, which makes Beatrice relentlessly curious to figure her out. Morrigan grows to respect Beatrice’s conviction and resolve. After months of sleeping in the same tent, deep late-night conversations by the campfire, having each others’ backs in the thick of battle, etc, Beatrice just assumes they’re dating, while Morrigan experiences it as an agonizing slow-burn of trying to understand all these feelings, ugh. Morrigan has some comphet to work through. I’ve written fic about the earliest phase of their relationship :)

A BROTP I have with said character: Beatrice and Leliana have a very sincere friendship. They’re both deeply moral, but Leliana is more worldly and pragmatic. On the road, they get into pun riffs or singalongs that drive the rest of the party insane. Initially, they actually bond because Beatrice believes in Leliana’s vision.

Besides Leliana, Zevran is Beatrice’s best bud. They hooked up for a bit when he first joined the party, but they turned out to be better friends than lovers. Physical touch is important to both of them, so their friendship includes lots of sparring, braiding each others’ hair, back rubs, being bros who hold hands, etc. (Zevran/Alistair is eventually canon in this worldstate.)

A NOTP I have with said character: Beatrice and Alistair are like siblings. Before the Landsmeet, they ponder the idea of a purely political marriage, but they just can’t bring themselves to go through with it.

A random headcanon: After defeating the archdemon, Beatrice becomes Warden-Commander for a few years. Once the Grey Wardens are rebuilt enough to be self-sustaining, she disappears one day to try to find Morrigan. They live together in Orlais, with Beatrice keeping a low profile, and raise Kieran together.

#beatrice cousland #warden cousland #my ocs #asks #hawkeward original

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shannaraisles · 5 years

Text

The Rose In The Crown - Chapter 4

Summerday is always a day of joy, a day of marriages made and love affirmed. And for Ferelden, this Summerday is one to be remembered. King Alistair, ten years a king with no heir in sight, will finally marry his chosen bride.

The last chapter of the romance between Alistair and Felicita. Featuring Marguerite Dujardin and Namari Lavellan, courtesy of @puddle--wonderful and @savvylittleminx!

[Read on AO3]

Chapter Four

"To the King! To the Queen!"

Cups were raised, smiles were shared, and Alistair could have sworn he had never been happier than he was today. The feasting hall in the palace was livelier, happier, than he had ever seen it. Not even the celebration after the archdemon's death had been so bright as this, with nobles he could have sworn didn't actually approve of him at all bowing and raising their cups in cheerful toasts to the long future of his marriage. And for once he didn't care that their congratulations might not be wholly genuine. He was happy, for the first time in years. That made all the difference.

Beside him, Fabs was bright and shining, her hand curled into his even as she spoke with Anora. Both women were animated in their discussion, a sight that warmed his heart. He was glad to see that his wife - and how he loved to just think those words - that his wife had good friends among the Fereldan nobles already. She was so beautiful. I am a lucky man, he thought to himself, smiling as he absently raised her hand to his lips.

The kiss drew her attention back to him, her body leaning toward his in their carven seats as she smiled. Those soft eyes of hers were so warm, touched with a playful tenderness he could hardly believe was for him.

"Yes, mi amor?"

"Oh, nothing," Alistair said breezily, grinning at the soft laugh she gave him for humming those words against her fingers. "Just reflecting on the day."

Something wicked flickered in her gaze as she leaned closer, touching a kiss to the corner of his mouth that seemed to burn for a moment.

"Perhaps you should be reflecting on the night to come," she murmured, winking at him with impish mischief.

Well, Zevran had warned him that Antivan noblewomen weren't sent into marriage with their eyes closed. He hadn't expected his Fabs to be able to summon up quite that level of innocently wicked teasing with just a few words and a look, however. Alistair cleared his throat, shifting awkwardly in his chair under her smile. Surely she doesn't actually know what that look does to me?

"Are you uncomfortable, your majesty?" Fab asked softly, pressing her smile to his palm in an unexpectedly open-mouthed kiss.

Alistair's eyes narrowed. "You're a sly minx, your majesty," he informed her, leaning close to let his breath play against her ear as he whispered. "And you will enjoy being punished for it later."

To his delight, his wife blushed, displaying a rather sweet innocence in the same breath as a husky laugh for his ears alone. Sweet Maker, I am not going to survive my own wedding night. But he was grinning, pressing a gentle kiss to the dimple in her left cheek before drawing away.

"So, would this be a bad time to ask if I may dance with the beautiful queen?"

Alistair felt his grin fade just a little at the sound of Zevran's familiarly honeyed tones. There, in the back of his mind, was that annoying insecurity that quietly feared the affect the charming, confident assassin would have on his new wife. It wasn't that he didn't trust Fabs, not at all. It was more that a lifetime of being the second thought, at best, made him question why she would choose him over a man like Zevran.

Fabs, on the other hand, seemed utterly oblivious to these unnecessary worries racing through his mind, turning her eyes to Alistair with a hopeful smile. He forced himself to answer her smile, tilting her chin toward him to claim a slow kiss.

"Of course you may dance with him, sweetheart," he promised her, rewarded with a gentle nuzzle of her nose to his.

"I may dance with him, but it is you I love," she murmured in answer, her thumb stroking his cheek as he flushed.

Not so oblivious, after all, he mused, nodding to Zevran as the Crow whisked Fabs away to the cleared space before the musicians. Alistair wasn't sure whether he should be pleased or alarmed that she had noted his insecurity, finally choosing to be pleased as he watched her laugh and dance among others in the hall to the beat of an old Antivan tune.

She was lovely, though he was clearly biased. The music was given over to a fiery tempo and sultry movement, but the dancers themselves were laughing and talking as they whirled about the floor. Alistair had to admit, Zevran was a good partner for Fabs in those moments, graceful and lithe, and swift enough to catch her as she whirled past. He wasn't entirely sure he would ever be able to partner her in a dance like that - at least, not in public. He might try it in privacy, if she was inclined to teach him.

"Your majesty."

He tore his eyes from the dancers, smiling to find Lady Marguerite Dujardin curtsying to him. One hand rose, waving away the formal pleasantries.

"There's no need for that," Alistair declared, waving her toward Fabs' empty seat. "Please, my lady, sit. Be comfortable."

Marguerite's gaze flickered to the seat he indicated, an amused denial of a smile touching her expression.

"With respect, your majesty, I will not sit in the queen's chair, and certainly not on her wedding day."

Alistair blinked, glancing at the chair itself for a moment before comprehension dawned.

"Oh, yes ... fair point." He offered up a sheepish grin, watching as she slipped to his other side to sit down. "Fabs is very happy to have you here, you know. I hope you'll visit us again."

"Oh, I should be delighted to visit whenever you feel you have time for me, your majesty," Marguerite assured him through her smile. "But I wished to thank you."

The shadow of confusion crossed his face, his head tilting curiously toward her.

"Thank me?"

"Yes." Marguerite's smile warmed as she spoke. "I have known your wife through letters and gifts for almost a decade. I have been privileged to be privy to her innermost thoughts and emotions. Yet I have never known her to be so open, so happy, as she is in your company. You have uplifted her heart just as she was losing any hope of a happy ending, and for that, Alistair, you will forever have my undying friendship."

As gratifying as her words were, Alistair found himself focusing on one part in particular.

"Losing hope?" he queried, glancing at the dancers with concern that faded into a grin at the sight of his wife and queen laughing with Zevran.

The Orlesian lady's smile softened as she followed his gaze.

"Indeed, yes. For a royal princess in Antiva to survive to her age and not be wed is nothing short of a miracle," she explained in a gentle tone. "If she had returned to Antiva, she would have been married off to one of the older merchant princes by now, whether she wished it or not. Such a marriage would be the only way to keep her from coming to the sharp end of her brother's ambitions for the throne."

Alistair stared at her in shock. "Her brother would have had her killed?"

"Not willingly, I do not think," Marguerite mused. "They are close, I believe. Felicita saved his life once, when she was young. But she is known to be her father's favorite child, and to be popular with the merchant princes as well. Her mere existence was a threat to his ambition ... up to the moment when you married her. Now he can be her brother once again, and not fear her being elected to the crown when their father dies."

"She did say something about not wanting to be the queen of Antiva," Alistair murmured, only now tying together all the disparate hints and clues peppered in Fabs' behavior and speech. She had been trying to tell him all this without stating it outright. "I should learn to pay closer attention when she is being cryptic."

Marguerite laughed, patting his arm. "I am sure she will delight in being a riddle for you to solve at such times," she promised him. "But perhaps it is time for you to claim your wife for a dance before she retires for the night? You cannot allow Master Arainai to have all the fun, surely?"

Alistair blinked in surprise, glancing out through the tall window to take a look at the moon high over Denerim. It's that late already. I never even noticed. He grinned to himself as Marguerite curtsied and moved away. Not long now before I'm well and truly married. But the Orlesian lady was absolutely right - it was time he danced with his wife before they slipped away to their bedchamber to celebrate alone.

Rising to his feet, he felt the familiar tug of quiet embarrassment as the music stopped abruptly with the king's movement. The whole court revolved around what he was doing during festivities; it could be excruciating at times. Yet at this moment, he found it easy to set the embarrassment aside, his eyes fixing on the delicately flushed smile that adorned his bride's face as he approached her.

"Terribly sorry, old chap," Alistair told Zevran in an off-hand manner, "but I'm claiming my wife for our last dance of the evening."

Zevran chuckled at the deliberate display of nonchalance, only too happy to give up the queen's hand to her husband's grasp.

"Oh, I doubt this is your last dance of the evening, Alistair," the Crow murmured teasingly as Alistair drew Fabs into his side with a smile. "But certainly the last with curious eyes to watch it."

Alistair cleared his throat as Fabs laughed, rolling his eyes at his friend.

"Yes, thank you for pointing that out," he muttered, raising his head to nod to the musicians. "A pavane, if you please, for my wife."

A smattering of applause crossed the hall as the music began, as the king and queen took their places alone in the middle of the milling group to dance the slow processional in celebration of their own marriage. Alistair could feel Fabs giggling under his arm as they began, lowering his lips to her ear with a smile.

"If you keep laughing, Anora's going to accuse me of not knowing how to please a woman again," he warned, which only served to make Fabs laugh harder.

"Cariño, why did you choose a pavane?" she managed, sobering as she passed in front of him.

"What, you don't think my clumsy charms are graceful enough for it?" he asked with a grin, knowing perfectly well that graceful was not a word that could easily be applied to him.

She drew in a breath, pausing as her own smile lifted into a grin. "I think that Lady is more graceful than you when it comes to slow dances," she informed him.

Alistair chuckled, kissing her hand as he turned. "Then I should think it really is just as well that I don't have to move much during this dance, don't you?"

It took a moment for that to sink in, a moment in which he got to watch the comprehension dawn in the form of one of the most adorably suspicious smiles he had ever seen. Fabs rolled her eyes at him, unable to retaliate except with a kiss to his chin as she twirled under his arm to his other side.

"Very sneaky, your majesty."

"I'm glad you liked it, your majesty."

As they processed around the room, sharing a smile that was entirely their own, Alistair could hear the commentary from the nobles and friends who were watching them. Nobles who had supported him from the start telling those who had only just chosen to support him to mind their manners was always entertaining; better was the sound of Divine Victoria informing King Fulgeno of Antiva that if any harm came to the new Queen of Ferelden, she would personally deal with it. Demelza, nodding in agreement; Zevran, raising his glass in a teasing toast to the newlywed couple as they passed him by. Catching sight of Fergus stealing a kiss from Ceri in the shadow of the hearth; Callista's wicked wink from where she was wrapped in her own wife's arms; Ciara and Anora smiling brightly in their own distinct ways. Then there was little Maria, half-asleep but determined to stay up at least until Queen Felicita retired, clinging to Namari Lavellan's hand and demanding a step-by-step explanation of what it was like when Dalish elves got married. The Dalish First didn't seem to mind that the little girl had decided to cling to her, thank goodness, but perhaps tomorrow Maria could be convinced not to smother their Dalish guest too much.

The music slowed and faded, and Alistair bowed over Fabs' hand, feeling a sudden rush of nervous excitement as she rose from her curtsy with a tempting promise in her eyes. She drew close, close enough that he could smell the lemon and rose scent of her hair and skin, feel the heat of her breath on his lips.

"Do not keep me waiting too long, cariño," she whispered, pressing a gentle, open-mouthed kiss to his knuckles.

Alistair groaned softly, fighting against the urge to drag her close and steal her breath with the hungry kisses that had always been kept in check in days past. She was sweet temptation, and she was his at long last.

"I love you," he whispered back to her, drawing callused fingertips along the line of her jaw for just one self-indulgent moment.

To his delight, he felt her face warm beneath his touch, watching the blush creep over her cheeks as she clung to his hand for a long moment. Then she flashed him a sweet smile, drawing back at the touch of Anora's hand at her back. The Teryna of Gwaren smiled mysteriously at Alistair over his wife's shoulder.

"It is time to excuse yourself, your majesties," she suggested. "Preferably before your lingering looks grow too intimate for such a public setting."

Alistair bit back a complaint, knowing perfectly well that Anora could and would smack his hand in front of all the nobles and guests if he grumbled about being sent to bed. And, if he was honest, he wasn't that upset about it. He would much rather spend what remained of the evening with his new wife than with the nobles who had known him far longer and still knew less about him than the smiling beauty on his arm.

"Well, in that case ..."

As Fabs kissed Anora's cheek, Alistair raised his hand for attention, smiling as the musicians stopped and every eye turned to him - eyes belonging to old friends, new friends, nobles and Wardens and elves and dwarves alike.

"Everyone, my wife and I ..." He trailed off, offering Felicita a rather goofy grin. "Actually, that's all I really wanted to say."

A ripple of indulgent laughter crossed over the hall, punctuated by a slightly dirtier laugh from the knot of Grey Wardens by one of the hearths. Alistair's grin deepened as Fabs leaned into his side, letting her hug his arm to her chest as she giggled.

"My wife and I are very pleased to have celebrated our marriage in the company of so many friends and allies," Alistair went on, taking a goblet from the servant who offered it. "I can honestly say that today has been one of the happiest of my life. And it's not over yet," he added in a smiling murmur to the young woman at his side, snickering as she pressed a kiss to his lips.

"Get on with it, cariño," vibrated into the kiss to the tune of her laughter, earning her a kiss to the tip of her adorable nose before he turned back to the company around them.

"That said," he declared, "as much as I like you all, you pale in comparison to the prospect of spending the evening alone with my wife. So make merry, and make a lot of noise, because we're leaving now."

It was Demelza's cackle of laughter that reached his ears first, swiftly joined by the laughter of everyone Alistair could confidently call friend. Then the Wardens, Fab's parents and friends, and finally the rest of the guests were offering chuckles - however forced in some cases - raising their hands to applaud as the King and Queen of Ferelden left the feasting hall arm in arm.

Fabs was still giggling when they reached the royal floor, the room that now belonged to them both.

"I cannot believe you said that," she declared in that warm laughing tone as Alistair pushed open the door, letting out a low squeak when he bent to lift her up into his arms.

"Wasn't I obvious enough?" he asked innocently. "Should I go back down and make it clearer?"

"No!"

Her denial came with a strong clutch of her arms about his shoulders, drawing another laugh from him as he kicked the door closed behind him. His nose touched hers, circled hers, breath mingling with hers as he felt her tremble just a little in his arms. The kiss seemed to last an eternity; a slow, tender exchange that brought him quite literally to his knees, setting her on the bed as he sank down.

"I love you, Felicita."

The words came without being bidden, murmured with absolute certainty, offered with almost disbelieving confidence that the sentiment was not only returned but embraced as fully as she physically embraced him. Her fingers teased through his hair, plucking the crown off his head to set it to one side, hers laid beside it a moment later. Then, and only then, did she draw him onto the bed with her, arching up to press a kiss to his lips that stole his breath in an instant. Her kiss, her hands, her arms ... Alistair had never felt anything so wonderful, so safe, so wholly wonderful, as being in the arms of the woman he loved.

For years, he had resented his place in the world, his title as king and the duty that came with it. For years, he had lived isolated among so many, a leader constantly afraid to make the wrong decision. He had grown to hate the gold that encircled his head, and yet, without it, he would not now have a wife who loved him. Fabs might never know it, but she had raised up far more than a lonely man's spirits in loving him.

Finally, there was a rose in the crown of Ferelden, and the promise of little buds to come.

#the rose in the crown #alistair theirin #princess fabs #alistair x fabs #last chapter #wedding reception #dancing #friendship #fluff #lurve #it's OVER

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lokidiabolus · 5 years

Text

Offline Age - Chapter 1

Fandom: Dragon Age Origins

Pairing: Alistair Theirin x Elissa Cousland

Summary: Alistair was never really a lone wolf or anything, but having a place only for himself had its appeal. He didn't plan on taking responsibility for anybody in upcoming years, until one fateful night his doorbell decided to wake him up at 2 AM and show him he was so, so wrong.

How Alistair subconsciously harbored mother hen tendencies towards completely unknown person in five minutes and then fell in love so hard it almost broke all bones in his body.

Warnings: Slow Burn, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Tons of overused tropes, Prequel to Online Age

Can be found on Ao3.

Notes: No beta, we die like men!

I blame it all on the so called trailer for Dragon Age 4 that made me: 1) Feel the need to write for Dragon Age again; 2) Realize I left Online Age in disarray; 3) Re-read it and get horrified of the sheer absurdity of the middle part and so many absolutely pointless dialogues; 4) Spend a week editing it; 5) Start playing Dragon Age Inquisition again and romancing Cullen again; 6) Feel a heart ache when seeing King Alistair showing up in Redcliffe being flawless; and 7) Start to write randomly about him while playing Dragon Age Origins (because I hate myself. And Deep Roads).

So yeah, all the trailer's fault. And idk, I just really love Alistair, okay :(

Also a note: so many tropes here. SO MANY.

And another note: This is connected to Online Age, but it's sort of a prequel (aka about uh several years back, 5 or 10 or something), this time about (super young) Alistair and his one-day-to-be-wife-he-would-gush-about-to-everybody

It was precisely 2:12 AM, Alistair checked when Hell called, telling him they want their bad puns back. The coherence of apprehending the situation dropped to its lowest around midnight and dragged onward, he was glad he made his legs and arms cooperate enough to lift his sore, sleepy body off the bed, walk it to the main door of his flat and reach for the handle on the third try.

He didn’t really expect anything in particular, a half of his half functioning brain was still sleeping, so when he opened without checking first and saw a small, head to toe drenched girl shivering on his doorstep, nothing came from him apart from huh?

“Hi,” the girl greeted him with chattering teeth. Her blond hair was plastered over her forehead and around her neck and shoulders and there was an undeniable moment of oh crap, this is why I should not watch horrors late at night before Alistair woke up enough to realize the girl was not a ghost but a real, living person. Standing in a puddle, in pyjamas?

“Are those pyjamas?” his brain farted out and the girl opened her mouth, stopped, closed it, looked at her clothes consisting of plaid pants hanging on her lips too loosely and a shirt with Pooh Bear on it, and then back at him.

“Yes,” she said after. “They had them on sale.”

“K,” his brain supplied unhelpfully. “Hi then.”

“Yeah, hi,” she repeated the greeting and the shivering multiplied. “Sorry to bother you. But didn’t you, um. Left your water on or… your washing machine or something?”

“Not that I know of,” Alistair turned back to the innards of his flat, and the only noise that greeted him back was the clock on the wall, ticking its minute way through the dial. It showed wrong time but he was not able to correct it for about year and half. He looked back. “Why?”

“Why do you think?” she stared at him in the dark corridor, water dripping from her Pooh Bear shirt and Alistair could swear he saw the loading icon in front of his eyes for a second, before he raised a hand and went back to the flat to check on the bathroom.

No leaks, everything was quiet and peaceful. He double checked the taps and toilet and when nothing looked even remotely broken or dripping, he returned back to the door, now almost awake.

“Nope,” he told her with a shrug. “All dry up here.”

“I see,” she stared some more, then slowly nodded. “Sorry to bother you. Thanks for looking.”

She turned around and started padding from her puddle to the elevator, leaving wet footprints in her wake. Back to the flooded flat or something? Alistair shook his head, quickly grabbed his keys and followed her.

“Wait a sec,” he dropped his voice as low as he could to be still hearable but not enough to alert the neighbours, and she looked at him with a frown.

“What.”

“Lemme look at the leak,” he insisted despite her unhappy scowl. “Maybe I can help.”

The frown deepened and the elevator dinged, the light from it when the door slid open almost blinded him. She got in, crossed her arms on her chest and sighed.

“Fine,” she motioned for him to follow her, so he did. “But since it’s not from your place, there’s no point, really.”

“Story of my life.”

She looked even more pitiful under the artificial light and unusually pale, almost sickly. He refrained from commenting on it, but it took lots of his self-control, especially when she looked at him like he had lost his mind.

Her flat was on the lower floor right under his, which made her a lucky lady, since he was rarely at home to make any sort of noise that would bother her, at least from above. The name on the bell read Cousland and when she unlocked the door and opened, the smell of wet paint hit him right in the face. It took them only few steps inside towards the bathroom and he already saw the flood from there, dripping from the wall behind the bath, ruining the red coloured wall and tiles.

“Uh oh,” he let out, stepping in to assess the damage and the water under his feet splashed too loud in the otherwise quiet flat. “The pipe must have broken above there.”

“Oh no,” she walked in as well, her face horrified. “So, it’s not from somebody’s flat, it’s somewhere inside the construction?”

“Yep,” he stood up on the edge of the bath, pulling himself higher to the ceiling to see any cracks. “For now, let’s just turn off the water here. And in the morning, we call a landlord about this.”

“He’s going to kill me…” she buried her face in her hands and Alistair stepped down again to find the water lock hidden in the wall behind the toilet.

“Nah, it’s not your fault,” he said for the record, “This is an old house. He should let it checked anyway, the construction is ancient enough to remember dragons.”

“Are you a plumber or something?” he heard her asking behind him and it made him snort while closing the water with a quiet hiss. The wall stopped gushing out and he closed the lid and looked at the distressed owner.

“Wish I was, I heard the pay is good,” he shrugged, wiping his wet hands to his shirt. “But I know a thing or two about house stuff. And few other things around. And lots of things completely unrelated.”

“Right,” she shook her head and looked around at the mess on the floor. “Thanks for the help. I better start cleaning before it soaks to the neighbours…”

“Want help?” he offered faster than his common sense kicked in and that’s how it all began.

***

“-tair. Alistair!”

He almost fell off the chair when a slam on the table startled him from the definitely-not-dozing-off moment, just sheer luck managed to keep him balanced enough from meeting the floor.

“I wasn’t sleeping!” he announced in self-defence and then Duncan’s unhappy face came to his view.

“Didn’t I tell you not to stay up past midnight?” Duncan crossed his arms on his chest and Alistair realized it was already past eleven when he looked at his watch, and he somehow missed two hours. By totally not sleeping.

“Yeah, sorry,” she rubbed his eyes and fought down the yawn that threatened to overwhelm him. He still must have made weird face since Duncan’s scowl deepened.

“Wipe the drool away at least,” the dark-haired man sighed, handing Alistair a napkin out of nowhere, like an ultimate mum he was sometimes. “I’m making the roster now, you want the long shift this week or another one?”

Alistair was completely sure he did not have drool anywhere, but still used the napkin for Duncan’s satisfaction. For his defence he did go to sleep around eleven, but after the debacle with the flood he didn’t get back to sleep at all. When they were more or less done (actually less than more, the flat was in super bad shape, since apparently the leaks weren’t only in the bathroom) it was already six in the morning, so he just went home for shower and to brush his teeth and then kicked himself out to work. His eyes barely held up open during the morning meeting and he thanked whoever was above him for not dragging it for too long, or continue with a drill. He would fail so hard that Duncan would probably disown him on the spot.

“This week,” he mumbled, but then his hand shot towards Duncan’s forearm to stop him from leaving. “No, next week. Totally next week. Can’t this week.”

“Okay?” the older man glanced on the hand gripping him and then back at Alistair’s face. “Will write you up for a short one then. Something happened?”

Well, to put it mildly. The landlord was going to bark on a wrong tree, he was sure, and the girl would let him, probably, not really knowing where the real fault was. So he had a plan. Or part of a plan, at least, making it up as he went.

“Do we have my house’ construction plans by any chance?” he asked and when Duncan cleared his throat while pointedly looking at Alistair offensive hand, he finally eased off his grip with an apologetic quirk of his mouth.

“In the archive,” his mentor nodded towards the estimated location, then crossed his arms on his chest. “Why?”

When Alistair was looking for his own flat, Duncan helped him with choosing between three possible places by finding the construction plans, because if he could be labelled by anything, it would be precautious. Old houses are the best, he would say. So they dug into plans, found the ones that looked the best in Duncan’s opinion and Alistair moved in with light heart. No problems until yesterday, but then again, not really his problem, so that counted for something.

“Just want to look up the piping,” Alistair dragged himself up from the table. “I’ll be there if anything.”

“Do I look like your secretary?” Duncan hollered after him, but Alistair was already out of the room and only hitting his shoulder against two doors on his way. It was a small, meaningless victory, but victory the same.

***

He got out on the floor under his own because of some strange, unexplainable calling he heard in the back of his mind (or maybe it was his stomach because he was hungry). He wanted to stop home at first, take a shower and eat, but somehow his hand pressed the lower button in the elevator instead of his and he was glad for it, because when the door opened, he heard the angry voice of the landlord all the way to the cabin.

“Here we go,” he huffed, packing the copied plans under his arm and taking long strides toward the offensive voice that rang through the hallway so loud it was probably illegal.

“-for two months and you already flooded it?!” the landlord kept on barking, up until he came into Alistair’s view, standing in front of opened doors of the compromised flat, his stance all wide and up in arms. Alistair internally groaned.

The girl stood in front of him, dry for the first time he saw her, in a hoodie and khakis. Her hair was in a messy bun and she looked even more tired than Alistair felt.

“I didn’t flood anything,” she was saying the moment he finally stepped close enough for them to notice him. “I- oh, hey.”

“Hey,” Alistair gave her small salute and nodded towards the landlord. He saw him about twice since he started living here and kind of doubted the man even remembered his face. “Afternoon.”

“Are you here because of the leak?” the man gestured towards the flat, his eyes a little confused. “I’m sure I didn’t call firefighters though…”

Oh right, Alistair realized. He was still in the uniform, since he shot out of work without changing. Well, that worked too.

“I’m familiar with the situation,” he elaborated, making a show of looking into the flat like he was assessing the damage. He already did yesterday though and could tell it sucked balls for the repairs needed. The landlord was so not going to like it. “Looked over the construction plans, the pipes are damaged in the proximate area of the bathroom and living room. The wall needs to be torn down and the piping repaired.”

“Torn down?!” the landlord probably only by small margin avoided heart-attack, judging from his red face and the vein popping on his forehead. Alistair was glad he had the ambulance on quick dial.

“The bathroom one definitely, the water damaged it. I’d advice to have them checked as it is in the whole house, but of course that can be done through stacks for that part,” he handed one of the plans to the landlord who reluctantly took them and had to applaud himself for actually sounding serious so far. “The piping is old and rusty, random breaks happen all the time. I can point you out to a company dealing with these types of problems, though since the Christmas is coming, I’m not entirely sure how fast it’s going to be.”

The landlord opened his mouth, and then closed it. He repeated it two more times until it was apparent no words were going to come out, and then he settled on a nod.

“Great, glad we came to an understanding,” Alistair gave him a broad smile. “I’ll send you the company’s number in a text, in case you wanted to use their services. Happy to see landlords are taking care of their houses and tenants.”

Another nod from the poor man and then he was out of the hallway like a wind. Alistair wondered if he thought firefighter could actually send him to jail for disagreeing but he wasn’t going to try his luck.

“Huh,” the girl stared after the landlord even after he disappeared around the corner. “That worked like a charm. Good idea with the uniform.”

“What can I say, I aim to please,” Alistair commented and then took a step further to take her appearance in. “You’re dry.”

“Yeah, shocking,” her mouth quirked up in a smile. “I can do that sometimes.”

“I feel like I don’t even know you anymore,” he sighed dramatically but then it hit him. “Wait, I really don’t know you. What’s your name?”

“Elissa,” she introduced herself just like that, in her khakis and a hoodie and looking like she went through hell and kicked her way back, and somehow Alistair expected her to have tougher name, like Boulder or Killer.

“That’s a fine name,” he gestured towards her, to her whole appearance and the abundance of the puddle under her feet. “I’m disappointed it’s not something waterier though.”

“Waterbenders don’t have water names, you know,” she shot back and Alistair crossed arms on his chest.

“Elissa,” he tried her name and she mimicked his posture like a mirror. “As a waterbender… I gotta say, after what I’ve seen tonight, you suck at it.”

“Still learning,” she opposed. “Next time the pipe breaks, I will be ready.”

“I hope there is no next time,” he nodded towards the flat. “Don’t think it can take any more.”

That made her lose the posture as she followed his gaze and her shoulders sagged. It was a sad image, really.

“This suck,” she uttered. “It had been just two months. I have the shittiest luck ever.”

“As long as you don’t wind up somewhere without your pants, you’re still alright.” He took a step closer to the door, the smell of paint still hanging in the air. He noticed a packed bag resting in the hallway with a suitcase next to it and several shirts lying on the floor, soaking the moisture from it. The hallway itself looked super bad, the water completely ruined the laminate flooring, made it look like a skateboard park for snails. “Oof.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” she stood next to him, staring at the mess. “When I need a quiet place, something naturally has to go wrong. And expensive. Hope it won’t take long.”

“Yeaah, about that,” he offered her an apologetic look, even though it was not his fault, or hers, or anybody’s, and she must have understood since the groan she let out had enough frustration to lit up a town.

“You mean it’s going to take long?” she whined so loud he heard a door opening at the end of the hall, probably to look what the ruckus was.

“Well. It’s almost Christmas. And if you take in the state of the flat – and the piping – and the walls… That’s gonna take at least two months,” he checked once more, stopping at the floor. “And the flooring. And tiles in the bathroom.”

The majority of tiles fell off during their night cleaning, and most of them naturally broke in half. Elissa didn’t comment on it back then, but she definitely stomped harder when carrying the empty bucket to fill it up again.

“Okay,” she sagged even more, almost to her knees. “Alright. Okay.”

Alistair didn’t like that. Sure, he saw tons of misfortune in his life already, majority of it tied to his job and some of it not, but he couldn’t really do much about complete strangers losing their homes to fire. All he could do for them was to pat their back and wish them luck. When all of their stuff was gone.

Elissa’s stuff was not gone, but she was in similar situation. If she could at least go back to her parents or something, he’d be able to rest easy.

“You have a place to stay?” he asked in a softer tone and she nodded. Then took a deep breath. Shook her head. He took a step closer and crouched next to her. “Not even your parent’s place?”

“No,” her words were barely hearable. Then she cleared her throat and shook her head again. “I’ll manage.”

“You can stay at my place, if you want,” his mouth said.

Huh.

“What?” she looked at him as if he’d gone mad (rightfully so).

“My place,” his mouth repeated. Huh. “I’m not home that often, it’s better than nothing?”

She had big, blue eyes. She used them in full force now, staring at him so hard he was afraid a fist was going to come out of them.

“You don’t need to do all this,” she said finally and Alistair thought yes, I don’t need to do all of this. But I do. Because you look like somebody just died, good grief.

“You woke me up at ass o’clock in the morning and kept me up all night cleaning, now I feel emotionally invested in it. Sorry, I don’t make the rules,” he responded instead, light-hearted and nonchalant, and it was the first time he saw her genuinely laugh.

#dragon age origins #alistair x cousland #offline age #alistair theirin #female cousland #female warden #modern setting au

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spindlethief · 7 years

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cold starters - "Just think warm thoughts"

Thank you sweet anon for your prompt, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything fandom so I figured this would make for a good challenge. I’ve been replaying DA:O in an attempt to romance Alistair (since I played an elf in my first ever playthrough and BOY did that backfire something fierce).

Pre-Romance (basically that slow-build anguished-pining trash gives me LIFE )

—-

Alistair had just about run out of patience for this weather. It had been snowing for two whole days now, and it only seemed to get worse the further on they traveled. Of course he knew they had to continue, he was only imagining how much- or rather how little- of his feet would make the journey back. He was certain that he was about to lose a toe, or perhaps the end of his nose, and if he couldn’t get dry to sleep tonight his ears were done for. The cold had sunk deep into his bones and chilled him to the core, threatening to leave a layer of frost on his usually cheery mood.

To make matters worse, he seemed the only one really bothered by it. Wynne and Morrigan had bundled up half as well as he had and seemed perfectly comfortable. Though he was grateful that Wynne seemed to fare rather well in the cold, Morrigan’s smug grin every time she caught him shivering had only rubbed salt in the wound. And Avery? She hardly seemed to notice, and neither did her ever present mabari. The two of them strode side by side through the snow as if it weren’t even there. Always- almost adamantly- keeping a short distance ahead of everyone else. Together they bounded up over a snowbank in a few short steps. Their strides confident enough that he forgot he was hardly half as nimble as the mabari. He managed to get up to the top just fine, but the way down left him sprawled, snow up past his knees. Stuck halfway through his fall between the stiffness of his armor and the packed snow. He stood there defeated as he felt icy water start to work its way down into his boots.

“There must be some trick to this you all aren’t telling me.” Alistair proclaimed, while working himself free and attempting to remove as much snow from his boots as he could in the process. “What is it, some sort of spell? Oh! Or is it a potion? Enchanted socks of ‘Maker please let me keep my toes?’”

Gregor padded over and offered him a reassuring bark, but no other advice followed. Morrigan hadn’t even tried to stop laughing yet. Even Avery was stifling the end of her giggle. Unable to contain a smile that just about made the embarrassment worthwhile. At least someone other than Morrigan found amusement in his suffering. And he was half certain the air got a little warmer when she was smiling.

“It’s really not all that bad.” She teased, strolling over to him as she fished a small steel flask out of the pocket inside her cloak. “I don’t have any potions, or magic socks, but this will help a bit.”

He read to much into the way her fingers lingered on his when she handed him her flask. She was still smiling as he unscrewed the lid and took a cautious drink, hit square in the face with the distinct burn of hard liquor that seared a path down his throat. It sent a shiver right down the centre of his spine, making him shudder and cough to avoid gagging.

“Ugh that’s horrible. You can’t possibly drink that for fun.” He handed it back, this time she hardly let their fingers touch. She knocked back a swig of her own before tightening the lid and slipping it away.

“Not especially, but it does help a bit with the cold.” She teased, a chuckle setting root in her ribs.

Alistair almost resented that being true. It did feel a little warmer. At least in his chest, and he could almost feel his fingers again. Though he wasn’t sure if that was the drink or just her. It has been days since she’d spoken to him like this, having gone nearly silent after leaving Redcliffe, after finding out who he was- and who he wasn’t. He couldn’t blame her really, everyone else changed when they found out, it wasn’t her fault he’d hoped for something different. It was only that, before she knew, he’d really thought they might be friends.

Now he had the coals that remained of that hope suddenly rekindled to a flame. Just from a smile and a sip of liquor. Wynne and Morrigan had continued ahead, Avery still shifting her weight from foot to foot in front of him, her hands fidgeting and looking for somewhere to rest.

“Any other advice for the cold, my lady?” It sounded more eloquent in his head, out loud it seemed foolish. At first he thought she was laughing at him when the tone of her grin shifted, her tongue could be as sharp as Morrigan’s when she wanted it to be, so he prepared himself with some witty response to whatever cutting comment she was preparing. He’d desperately missed their little duels, so much that he couldn’t possibly have stopped himself from preparing to jump in.

“Just…” she punctuated by taking half a step towards him, so close they could almost touch. “…think warm thoughts.” It rolled out of her throat in a husky purr. The corners of her lips twisted in a smirk. Her affect was almost instant, a fierce heat came to life in his gut and turned his nose and ears a distinct shade of red.

“You- um- I, ah that’s-” what had he been saying? He’d felt prepared just a moment ago. “Rather-ah…”

“Rather what?” Avery opened her eyes wide and repainted her smile as innocent. “I only want to help keep out the cold, Alistair. If you’d like, I could tell you some of the thoughts that warm my bed at night.”

Something between his thoughts and his tongue failed its duty, leaving him unable to string together enough thought to form words. She was laughing, her smile stretching from ear to ear, bright and happy and warm. The snow didn’t stand a chance against his racing heart.

Avery kept her smile as she turned to continue on the road, her eyes staying on him a little longer, long enough that he wondered in the flash of red across her nose was from cold or something else. His mind was still struggling to catch up with the rest of him, while he jogged to catch up with the group.

#dragon age #alistair x warden #drabbles #prompts #thank you anon #pretty sure this is awful but hey here we are

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spilledinkscribe-blog · 6 years

Text

Almost Broken: Chapter Two

Going back was like a dream. She barely remembered packing or leaving her apartment or getting into the taxi. She barely remembered the drive to the airport or standing at the ticket counter to check in. She was merely floating along, a puppet guided by Alistair’s strings. She sat beside him in the terminal, her eyes downcast, silent. When Alistair slid an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, she could barely repress her shudder at his touch.

“You’re quiet,” he said. “After half a year apart, don’t you feel like we have a lot of catching up to do?”

She just shrugged. She didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to be there, with him. She just wanted to be back at her job, taking calls from irritated and complaining customers and sharing stories of the particularly bad ones with her co-workers. With Alistair next to her, it already felt like that had been another life, one that happened a long time ago, to someone else. She could feel his eyes on her, watching her, and she glanced towards him.

He was as handsome then as he’d been the first time she’d seen him in that university lecture hall. He’d been sitting in the back of the room, laughing at something someone had said, and when she caught sight of his smile, she couldn’t help but stare. She’d thought she’d go unnoticed, it was a large, crowded room, after all, but she must have been more obvious than she’d realized, because his blue eyes caught hers and she quickly turned away, her cheeks starting to burn an embarrassed pink. When she dared to glance back again, he was still looking down at her with an intensity that made her shiver. He smiled, then, a small expression that just barely turned up the corners of his mouth, and Phee ducked her head, embarrassed.

She tried to rush out as soon was class was over. Part of her scolded herself, telling her that it was silly to get so flustered over a stranger who happened to catch her checking him out, but the rest of her was saying to run, that she’d made enough of a fool out of herself and it would only get worse if he did end up wanting to talk. She’d made it halfway to the door, stuck in a stream of slow moving students, when she felt someone tap her lightly on the shoulder.

“Excuse me?” Said a deep, rich voice from behind.

It matched him so perfectly that she didn’t have to see him to know it was the guy she’d been staring out. Phee almost couldn’t bring herself to turn and debated whether it would be too inconspicuous to just keep moving and act like she didn’t hear or feel him.

“Hey,” he said, and there was a note of amusement in his voice.

Phee bit her lip and peeked over her shoulder. He was taller than she’d expected, standing easily a full head and shoulders over her, and when he knew he had her attention, his sharp features lit up with a grin.

“Yes?” She asked, trying to keep it nonchalant. She hadn’t stopped moving, hoping that if she could just get out of the class, she could make her escape before he asked her to explain why she’d been ogling at him.

“I don’t think I’ve seen you before. Are you new?” He was keeping step with her, making it awkward for her to hurry ahead.

“Uh, no, well, yes, it’s my first year, but I’ve been in class all semester,” she said. For feeling like her tongue was twisted, she sure was managing to ramble a lot.

“Right. Guess it’s hard to notice everyone right away with how big the class is.”

She nodded and turned around again, praying that that would be the end of it. Phee wasn’t exactly a social butterfly and small talk had never been something she was good at. Even if he hadn’t been so good looking, she’d still have been flustered with this sudden attempt at conversation, but adding his good looks into the mix was a recipe for disaster. She tried unsuccessfully to put some other students between herself and him, but he never seemed more than a step or two behind her.

“What’s your name?” He asked as they finally (and mercifully, she thought) neared the exit.

“Um, Phee,” she answered over her shoulder.

“Is that short for something?”

Why was he being so persistent? Surely he’d caught girls giving him a good once over before. It wasn’t like she’d been doing anything particularly noteworthy, no flood of drool, no beating hearts where her eyes should have been. It was starting to feel a bit like he was toying with her. The more uncomfortable she became, the more delight he took in it, was that it? Phee shouldered her way past a pair of particularly slow walkers and practically burst out into the open air corridor. Fall was fast giving way to winter and she hugged her jacket tightly around herself to ward off a chilly wind.

“Well?”

She winced when she realized he was still behind her.

“Huh?” She said dumbly.

“Your name, is it short for anything?”

“Ophelia,” she said, bustling along down the hall and hoping he’d get the point.

“Oh, like from Hamlet?”

Apparently not.

“I guess?”

The bus stop would be coming up soon, she would have to stop to wait for it. A quick look at her watch told her she’d have about five minutes before the next bus pulled through. He wasn’t just going to stand at the curb with her and wait, was he?

“Alistair,” he did indeed come to a standstill once she’d stepped under the cover of the bus shelter. “That’s my name, in case you were wondering.”

She might actually have been wondering that if her thoughts weren’t already preoccupied with how close he was standing. She could smell his cologne, fresh and clean and masculine, somehow, and she had to resist the conflicting, but equally powerful urges to take a deep, long breath or to run away. Without registering that she was doing it, she had backed herself into the corner of the shelter and was pressed against the glass. Alistair had remained in front of her, coming so near that they were almost touching, and had leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest. Suddenly, she found herself feeling quite warm despite the cold.

“Are you ok?” He asked, one brow raising slightly.

“Yeah, fine. Uh, is this your bus, too?” Was her voice always so high pitched and squeaky? She cleared her throat and tried to shuffle off to the side, putting some much needed space between the two of them.

“No,” he chuckled, “I was just following you. I saw you looking at me in class.”

“Oh, sorry, you just looked like someone else,” she hoped it sounded more convincing to him that it did to her.

“No, it’s fine. To be honest, I’m glad I noticed. Like I said, I hadn’t seen you before, which is odd. Usually I’m quick to spot a pretty girl.”

He delivered the line so smoothly that it took Phee a moment to realize what he’d said and, when she did, she had to try and hide her surprised snort in her hand. Ok, now she knew he was just messing with her. While Phee didn’t think of herself as ugly, she also didn’t think she was attractive either. Plain jane, girl next door, that was her aesthetic. Besides, that was so cheesy sounding that it was hard to take him seriously anyway.

He smiled again at her reaction, a touch of self deprecation in the expression.

“Did that come that badly?” He asked, rubbing the back of his neck. “I guess I’m a bit out of practice.”

“No, it’s, um, well, thanks,” she said, unsure of what else to say.

“I promise I’m not always so off,” Alistair said and she didn’t doubt him. Even when he was trying to act self conscious, it was coming off with a touch of confidence, like he knew even if he weren’t saying the exact right thing, it didn’t matter. “Well, when all else fails, it’s best just to be straightforward. So, Ophelia, how about giving me your number?”

Her blush returned in full and she stammered, trying to make herself form actual words instead of just nonsensical noises. Alistair just smiled and waited for her to be done before pulling a scrap of paper and a pen out from his pocket and offering it to her. She stared down at it a moment, hesitant and still wondering if he was just playing around with her, and then took it. She scrawled her number down quickly, before she could second guess herself, and practically threw it back at him as the bus pulled up. She hurried on to it, leaving him standing in the bus shelter, watching her go with her number held in his fist.

The first thing she’d done when she got home was call Cat, who demanded to know every detail about her encounter with Alistair. For Cat, who had married her high school sweetheart as soon as they turned eighteen some months before, this was the closest she was going to get to reliving the excitement of a new potential romance. They’d giggled and discussed the possibilities, even the less than pleasant ones wherein Alistair turned out to an ass who was just having some fun with a dumb freshman, and Phee found herself getting just a tiny bit excited despite all of her reservations.

A gentle shake of her shoulder snapped Phee out of her reverie and she found Alistair standing over her. The airport was busier now, filled with luggage laden people trying to get from one place to another as fast as they could. A line had formed at the attendant’s desk and people were slowly shuffling down the boarding ramp.

“They called out row,” he said, holding out a hand.

She stood up without taking it and stepped around him. His arm snaked around her waist, however, and she was once again tugged against his side.

“Don’t be difficult, Ophelia,” she could feel his warm breath on her ear. “We’ve only just been reunited. Can’t we just enjoy it for a while?”

The way he tightened his hold on her, his fingers digging almost painfully into her waist, was warning enough. She nodded once, stiffly, and allowed him to lead her towards the airline agent, who tore their tickets and welcomed them to first class.

Phee got one final look over her shoulder before she was swallowed up by the ramp and then the plane. One final look at how far she had managed to come before he’d found her. One final look at freedom.

#romance story #romantic story #love story #chicklit #romance #romantic #love #story #writing #romance writer #writer #love triangle #abusive relationship #controlling #possessive #please read #writing community #writers on tumblr

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laurelsofhighever · 4 years

Text

The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 56 - A Long Day Later

Chapter Rating: Mature Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Action/Adventure, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Cousland Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots In Love

Also read on AO3 First chapter

---

Twenty-sixth day of Firstfall, 9:32 Dragon

Rosslyn stirred from sleep, rising from unconsciousness with the faint impression that something had roused her. Yet all was quiet. The world remained dark behind her closed eyelids, frigid beyond the cocoon of warmth that the blankets wrapped around her body, and it lacked any appeal that might entice her curiosity. It must not be important. She shifted, intending to find the tipping point back into oblivion, and became aware of a heaviness in her limbs, an ache in her muscles that spoke of exertion and made her even less eager to move. A tiny moue of sound escaped her lips as she exhaled, and in response came a wordless mumble against her hair, the tightening of an arm across her waist as the solid presence behind her pressed closer along her back. Remembering, she smiled and fumbled for Alistair’s hand. The murmur against her skin grew into a path of lazy, half-formed kisses along her shoulder as her fingers threaded with his, a leg nudged between and folded around hers as she leaned into the touch.

“G’morning…” he rumbled, the low, sleep-scratched pitch of his voice raising gooseflesh along her spine.

She stretched. “S’not morning yet.”

“Shall I leave you be, then?” he teased, and chuckled as she made a disgruntled noise and followed the retreat of his hands, seeking the lost warmth, until he relented and tangled around her again like a briar. For a long moment they lay together, suspended between waking and sleep, breathing together and content to have their limbs belong to each other.

“How are you feeling?”

She hummed when her slow mind processed that she hadn’t dreamed the question, reached backward to wind her fingers across the back of his neck. “Good. What about you?”

“You wore me out, woman,” he answered, with another laugh and a slow flex of hips that pointedly suggested otherwise.

A slink of heat knotted itself in her belly, anticipation that brought a sly smile to her lips. “It doesn’t feel that way. Maybe –”

Someone knocked on the door.

“Your Ladyship?”

Rosslyn tensed. “It’s Morrence.”

“Don’t answer,” he breathed, running fingertips over her waist.

She shook her head with huffed laugh, calling the command to light the glowstone, and picked herself from their tangle of limbs. As she sat up, she secured the covers under her arms to keep them in place, as if a bared chest would be her biggest problem if her captain chose to break in and found Ferelden’s Crown Prince in her bed. Cold air seeped across her exposed skin, held at bay where his hand still circled her waist. In the harsh light cast by the lyrium enchantment, he stretched against the pillows, all bleary eyes and mussed hair, and her stomach fluttered as she tracked the darker line of fuzz down his chest, trying to remember when he had removed his shirt again.

She had slept with him. He had stayed. The bashfulness that had been entirely absent the night before squirmed in her gut, the heat in her cheeks blooming into a furnace under the tender smile curving his mouth, until the feeling became too much and she had to tear her gaze away.

She cleared her throat. “What is it, captain?”

“You said you were to be woken at dawn, Your Ladyship,” came the reply through the door. “Clara came to me worried when you didn’t answer.”

The covers shifted, the mattress dipped behind her, but she tried to not be distracted.

“That’s alright,” she called out. “What’s the state of the company?”

“Being roused now.” Morrence paused. “Clara tried the door, she said it was locked.”

“Yes, I –”

Light fingers brushed her hair away from her shoulder, then began a slow, appreciative trail down the length of her back.

“Make her go away,” Alistair complained, muffled as he pressed his mouth to the skin just below her ear.

Her eyes slipped closed. “Uhm…”

“Should I stop?”

It took all her concentration to shake her head.

“Your Ladyship?”

“I locked it,” she managed.

“Why?”

“Is it my door or not?” she snapped, and pinched the bridge of her nose. Carrying on a half-shouted conversation through a door struck her as entirely undignified, but the floor would be cold and the rasp of Alistair’s unshaved chin continued to be a distraction along her neck, and all in all, she really didn’t want to move.

“I’ll be ready to ride in an hour,” she said finally. “See to it everyone is ready.”

“Aye, Your Ladyship.”

She listened for the creak of the floorboards as her captain turned away, and when she was sure of safety, twisted to capture her lover’s face so she could kiss him and vent some of the frustration he had been building in her so deliberately. A giggle escaped as an arm snaked around her waist to draw her back under the covers. Alistair, as her lover – it felt unfamiliar still, but she liked the sound if it, liked more the way his mouth slanted over hers, the way he touched her as if amazed by every inch of her.

“An hour isn’t much time,” he pouted, turning his attention along her jaw.

“It’s –” A scrape of teeth over the sensitive spot he knew too well already. She tugged on his hair to make him pause, smirking. “It’s plenty for you to sneak back to –”

“Your Ladyship?”

Her gaze snapped to the door. “Y–yes?”

There was a pause, and she imagined Morrence running her tongue over her teeth. When she did speak, the words held a deliberate air of nonchalance. “His Highness’ valet mentioned he wasn’t in his room this morning,”

“Uh… What do you mean?”

Next to her, Alistair bit his lips together, burying his head against her shoulder to stifle his laughter. She poked him in the ribs. He nipped her collarbone in retaliation.

“He said he found Cuno sleeping on Prince Alistair’s bed, but it didn’t look like His Highness had been there himself.” Morrence paused again, far too casually. “Should I raise an alarm?”

“That won’t –” Rosslyn tried, and realised she should appear at least a little concerned about the supposed disappearance of a member of the royal family. “His Highness has probably gone for a walk to clear his head before we leave. If he doesn’t turn up by the time we’re ready to go, we’ll call a search, but I see no need to worry yet.”

“That’s so callous,” he chided in her ear, grinning. “Anything could’ve happened to me, I could be freezing to death for all you know and you’re all tucked up and warm…”

“She’ll hear you,” she hissed, cheeks flaming, with another light prod to his side.

“She already knows I’m here,” he pointed out, but settled next to her with an apologetic brush of lips along her cheek nonetheless.

“Where is Cuno?” she asked her captain.

“I convinced him to the kennel for breakfast,” Morrence replied.

“That’s good, I’ll collect him before I leave. That will be all.”

“Aye, Your Ladyship.”

This time, she held her breath until the corridor outside fell utterly silent, and let it out in a rush of air as she shielded her eyes with the back of her arm. Already, Alistair was sliding limpet-like into the thin space between her body and the covers, half around her and half on top of her, propped on his elbows as if out of worry for pressing her too closely.

He hummed as her touch feathered blindly over the back of his neck. “I thought she’d never leave.”

“Don’t smirk.”

“What makes you think I’m smirking?” he asked.

“I can hear it in your voice,” she replied, though she pulled her arm away to check, just in case.

“Even if I am, why shouldn’t I?” his smirk widened. “I’m in bed with the woman I love, and who told me only a few short hours ago that she loves me, too. Oh, and she’s very naked,” he added, with a sly glance downward.

“Those are all things that can change if you’re going to be so glib,” she retorted.

He laughed and leaned closer. “I get it, I get it – You talk too much, Alistair, get to the kissing already.”

She rolled her eyes, but pulled him down all the same. “If you’re offering…”

“For you?” he asked as their lips met. “Always.”

She might never tire of his mouth. He moved languidly, unhurried, letting his hands wander, and the sounds she took from him, the little gasps and moans as she explored in turn, fired through her blood and settled deliciously between her legs. Blunt nails skimmed her side so that she arched upwards, clung harder, squirmed against the hot weight of his erection pressed between them. One of those same hands found its way behind her knee and helped guide it over his waist, coaxing her to follow him so they lay, side by side and face to face, somehow more intimate that before.

“I wish we could stay here all day.” He leaned towards the corner of her mouth, and paused. “What is it?”

She dropped her gaze to her hands, watching the shape of her fingers in the glow of the light as they carded through the hair on his chest. A reply lay on her tongue, but the taste of it grew ashen as the ever-insidious shade of the future rose to break the careless peace that had settled over them.

“When we reach Highever, we won’t be called away,” she said at last. “At least not for a few days.”

His nose nudged against hers, drawing her gaze. “You’ll have to give me a tour.”

“I don’t know how much of it will be left,” she admitted, as her mind turned to memories – the view from Harrowhill, the demon in the Fade wearing her father’s image as if it were nothing more than a mask in a mummer’s play. “I don’t know if I’d even recognise it.”

“We can rebuild it,” he replied. “This war won’t last forever.”

“And you’ll be needed in Denerim.”

“Oh, Rosslyn – that wouldn’t matter if… if you needed me in Highever.” When she still refused to look at him, he sighed and wriggled closer, his hand splayed warm against her back. “You don’t have to do this alone.”

Her breath faltered. Even in the artificial light, conviction shone in his eyes, bright enough that she lost herself wondering how he found it so easy to burn away her doubts, how loneliness lost its grip in his arms.

“I…”

“Yeeeeeeees?”

Her grin spread like certainty across her face. “If – well. If you’re going to stay, you’ll have to have a room.”

“Really?” he asked, with a sly quirk of his brow. “I think I already know which one I want.”

“You haven’t even seen any of them yet,” she reminded him with a playful tug on his fingers.

“But surely yours is the nicest?”

She gasped. “Rogue! And where, pray tell, am I supposed to sleep if you take my bed?”

She saw the pounce an instant before his arms twined around her waist. Laughing, she let herself be pulled onto his chest, until she straddled him, braced on her arms bare inches from his face with their hearts beating erratic rhythms against each other. Her hair got caught between them, but he helped her tidy it away, twisting it over her shoulders so her skin wouldn’t chill where the covers had fallen to the small of her back.

“You’ll sleep right next to me, my love,” he purred, as his hands trailed a lazy path to the base of her spine. “Every day, if I have my way. Especially with a view this good.”

“You like this position, do you?” she asked.

“Mmmhm.”

“Good,” she answered, leaning down to hide her blush in a kiss. “Because so do I.”

The sun still had yet to peek over horizon when Rosslyn gathered in the stableyard with Leliana and the troop of soldiers hand-picked for the assault on Highever, her breath fogging in the freezing air and the horrid taste of the tea lingering on her tongue. She had added enough honey to turn it from bitter to sickly, but she wouldn’t call it an improvement.

Only a lone blackbird called. Most of the camp had yet to stir, and wouldn’t move for a few days yet, but whatever stillness they might have enjoyed for the time being was ruined by Lasan, who had realised he was being left behind and decided to make his dissatisfaction known by kicking his stall door to splinters. His bugling did little to agitate the horses they were taking, who dozed under their rugs while the riders stamped their feet and blew warm air into their gloved hands to try and fend off the cold. Satina’s bright disk still hung in the sky, its pinkish glow a rival to the dawn. If they didn’t get going soon, they would waste what few hours of daylight they could use.

At the end of the line, Leliana straightened. “Here he is.”

Rosslyn turned to follow her gaze to the door of the keep, where Alistair tripped down the stairs still trying to fit his helmet over the padded cap that would help keep him warm as well as distribute the helmet’s weight evenly over his head. He was in splintmail, as she was. It would make for an uncomfortable ride, but the Westmoreland breed used by the relay messengers were too lithe to carry riders in heavy armour, and their plan relied on avoiding recognition.

“It’s good of you to join us at last, Your Highness,” she said in clipped tones as he puffed to a halt beside her.

He blushed deeply enough as he took his horse’s reins from her that it made a beacon of them even in the low light. Fortunately, she was able to hide the colour growing in her own cheeks behind her scarf as she turned and led the way towards the gate. The guards who hauled open the doors for them saluted as they walked through, but nobody else marked their passing.

“We have a lot of ground to cover, and not much time to do it,” she told them as she checked her horse next to the mounting block that had been left for them. “We’ll walk to warm the horses up but if we’re to make the checkpoints the rest of the day will be spent at canter. I understand this won’t be easy for all of you, but speed is key, and the king is counting on us. There’ll be plenty of time to nurse your backsides once we’re out at sea.”

There were nods and a few low chuckles as she gathered the reins and vaulted up, then guided her horse aside to fix the girth strap and adjust her stirrups. The volunteers she had taken from the infantry had all been schooled in horsemanship during the camp at Aeylesbide, and had been given the quietest mounts, but still she watched with a critical eye as each of them clambered into their saddles with only the barest shade of grace and turned their mounts to the road.

They left the blankets over the horses’ quarters as they started off, following the dim line of the road west so that the rising sun cast long shadows in front of them, and set a blaze on the surrounding hills where it struck through the trees to bare clearings of winter bracken. A small herd of deer led by a grey doe paused on the path ahead of them, curious, before vanishing once more ghostlike into the brush, and once, a fennec barked, but aside from the growing chorus of birds in the hedgerows, the steady clop of hooves encompassed the only sound in the world. Despite the brisk pace she set, Rosslyn let herself enjoy the peace, the fleeting break from duty, watching as colourful gangs of finches darted among the bare, berry-laden branches of a nearby rowan.

There had been many mornings like this when she was growing up, camping and following loggers’ trails through Highever’s ancient countryside – and many more that had dawned wet and cold and miserable, and weren’t half so fond to remember. Her father had insisted. Adamant that a ruler should be intimately familiar with their domain, should know how to work with the land and not against it, he had taken both his children into the wilds and made a play of hide and seek through the trees, teaching them about game and mushrooms and the best place to find shelter. And she would never forget the black night in deep Harvestmere when she was ten years old, when he had poked the embers of their campfire and woven a story about his upbringing as an exile in his own country, caught between the desire to keep his people safe and the knowledge that every day he fought for their freedom they only suffered more. He had wanted them prepared to face the same tough choices.

She shook the memory and called a halt to prepare the horses for the run. If their blankets were left as they were, the animals might overheat, or spook when the material flapped in the wind, so each saddle had a strap attached to the cantle that allowed the rug to be folded up and stored like a bedroll, and it was far easier to use if the horse was standing still. Alistair was having trouble twisting around far enough to secure his in place, so she nudged her own mount over to him and casually batted his hand away.

“Thanks,” he said as she fastened the buckle for him. His hand brushed her shoulder to steady her as she straightened again.

She glanced to the others still securing their horses. “It’s a beautiful morning, don’t you think?”

“Almost worth getting out of bed,” he agreed, smirking, and even though his voice was low enough not to carry, she had to look away. Her horse’s tail swished.

“How are you coping so far?”

He shrugged. “My feet are frozen, but that’s all. I’m sure I’ll have some fascinating bruises later, though. The pace you set, If I can walk after I get off, it’ll be a miracle.”

She shot him a chiding look. “You know you could’ve stayed behind if you –”

Someone snickered behind her. She caught the words ‘hard ride’ and nothing more, but the audience of guilty looks when she whirled to face the perpetrator told her everything she needed to know about the rest of the sentence.

“Do you have something to say, soldier?” she demanded.

The man avoided her gaze. “No, Your Ladyship. It wasn’t –”

“In that case, I’d suggest you keep your mouth closed in case one of the horses decides to shit in it,” she snapped. “If I didn’t need every body I can get for this mission, I’d send you back to Deerswall in disgrace to gossip with the rest of the washerfolk. As it is, you’re taking middle watch every night until this is over. Am I understood?”

“Yes, Your Ladyship,” he answered, still with his gaze on his horse’s withers.

She waited a moment longer to make sure her point had properly struck, determined not to be embarrassed even though she could hardly be surprised at the flavour of the comment. Soldiers, after all, were worse than servants for rumours. Alistair tried to catch her eye as she ordered them back onto the road, but every moment was precious; discipline had to be maintained. She couldn’t regret the night they spent together, the sighs and touches that still ran hot in her blood so many hours later, but her authority required a distance already drawn in by the necessities of their mission, and she couldn’t afford for it to slip further.

They travelled quickly. At the waystation they reached just after midday, they paused only long enough to relieve themselves and change to fresh horses, without even a break for food. Instead, they took hard rations straight from the saddlebags as their new mounts warmed up and ran for the rest of the afternoon until the quick winter fall of night made it too dangerous to go any faster than a walk.

Rothsbridge came into sight a few hours after sunset, its lights sparking like jewels nestled in black velvet. As the bottleneck for trade coming from the Waking Sea into the central Bannorn, it had grown wealthy in the decades of peace since Maric became king, and had outgrown its defensive walls years before, spilling wealthy streets of well-appointed villas into the surrounding countryside like apples from an overturned sack. The mayor still liked to keep up appearances, however, and so the gatehouse had stayed, complete with a burly porter who saw the party coming and halted them with a raised lantern.

“Who goes there?” he called, muffled through a thick, knitted scarf.

“Soldiers, in service to His Majesty King Cailan,” Maddow replied at the front. He kicked his horse forward and offered him a writ bearing the royal seal. “You are to let us pass and complete our business here.”

The man squinted at the parchment, frowning as his mouth laboriously formed the outline of each word, then looked up to pass a leery eye over the rest of them. Wary of being recognised, Rosslyn and Alistair hung at the back, but their layers of splintmail and fur hid them well, and they garnered no comment from the gatekeeper.

When he was finally satisfied, he handed back the document and shuffled away to unlock the gate. “Sorry to keep ye, lads. Canna be too careful these days.” he coughed. “If yer looking fer a place, Crow’s Head’ll have stabling room, and a good hot meal fer ye an’ all.”

“Thank you, serrah,” Maddow replied as he replaced the writ in the message satchel. “We’ll take your recommendation.”

“It’s on’t left after Silver Street – big sign,” the gatekeeper supplied. He waved them through with his lantern and quickly fell behind them, lost behind the first of Rothsbridge’s tightly-packed rows of terraces.

The Crow’s Head inn lurched into view a few moments later, under a sign of a painted black bird’s head on a pale blue field. It presented a narrow front to the main street, stone foundations with timbered walls on the upper floors, warm light glowing through the swirled windowpanes, and carved rosettes of painted flowers on the lintel of the front door. A sign for stabling pointed down the alleyway next to it.

Rosslyn dismounted. “Hobbs, see to it the horses bedded down while His Highness and I ask about rooms.”

“Aye, Your Ladyship.”

“Meet us in the taproom when you’re finished.”

She handed off her reins and stepped out of the road, and with Alistair following at her heels, pushed open the door into the inn’s welcoming interior. Paintings of river boats dotted the walls between lengths of signal flags hung like bunting, lending a festive air to the array of mismatched chairs and scrubbed, beerstained tables. A stuffed raven eyes them from its perch above the bar and several patrons glanced at them as they passed, but either their weapons discouraged attention or strangers were common, and they went unchallenged.

“Is this about what happened earlier?” Alistair asked as they picked their way between tables.

“We should have been more discreet,” she said, and stopped. Her hand reached for his arm. “Don’t think for an instant that I regret it – any of it – but until this is over, maybe a little distance would be best.”

He sucked in his cheeks, disappointment clear, but nodded, robbed of a response as the innkeeper put away the glasses he had been cleaning and rapped broad knuckles on the bar.

“What’ll it be, sers?”

“We’re a party of fifteen, with horses,” Rosslyn answered. “The keeper at the north gate recommended this place. We need dinner and rooms for tonight – we don’t mind sharing.”

The innkeeper scratched at his beard in a pondering sort of way. “I got two dorms, twelve beds each, int’ attic. Not got anyone in ‘em. Men and women to be separate, mind.”

“That’ll be fine.”

“Breakfast int’ morning?”

She shook her head. “We’ll be leaving early.”

With a grunt, he retreated around a stand of ale casks to call for someone to go and air out the dorm rooms, before disappearing into a back room that smelled of herbs and savoury roasting meat. While they waited for him to come back, Alistair leaned his elbows on the bar and heaved a long, put-upon sigh.

“This distance thing means not even kissing, doesn’t it?”

She sighed too, and bumped her elbow lightly against his side. “I’m sure you’ll survive.”

“I’m not. I’ll waste away, I tell you, and then when I die of not being kissed you’ll miss me very much.”

“Maaaaybe. Why don’t you save them all up and give them to me when we reach –” She bit her tongue to hold in the slip. “– when we get where we’re going?”

“There’ll be a lot of them,” he warned.

“I can manage that.”

“And if you don’t mind,” he added, leaning closer until his face hovered barely an inch away from hers, “they won’t all be on your mouth.”

He was grinning, tempting her to ignore her own words and sway just that little bit forward to stop all the space between them, but it was a game two could play, even if her only lessons in allurement had come from trying not to watch Oriana flirt with Fergus. She licked her lips, drew the bottom one between her teeth, watching him all the time until with an easy breath out, she leaned away.

“Don’t lose count,” she advised, and folded her hands primly on the edge of the bar.

“Did – you –”

“That’ll be ten silvers,” the innkeeper interrupted, wiping his hands on a cloth as he came whistling back from the kitchen. “Of and find a seat, I’ll bring food out when all’s settled. Beds’ll be ready in a mo’.”

“Thank you, serrah.”

With a nod, the man ambled off to see to one of regulars, leaving the two of them alone once more. As soon as nobody was looking, Alistair so leaned close his lips brushed the shell of her ear.

“Just so you know, that’s five already. I’m going to be merciless.”

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age:origins #da:o #alistair theirin #rosslyn cousland #alistair x cousland #cousland #the falcon and the rose

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laurelsofhighever · 4 years

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Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins Chapter Rating: Mature Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Demisexuality, Cousland Feels, Hurt/Comfort Chapter Summary: Having arrived at Deerswall, plans are made for the push to Highever, but Rosslyn has a lot on her mind.

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Twenty-fifth day of Firstfall, 9:32 Dragon

“Something isn’t right.”

Alistair pulled his gaze from the vista before them. “What do you mean?”

Under a brief easing of the weather, the king’s army stood outside Deerswall, massed on the flat plain that had once fostered so many refugees. Rosslyn sat at the front with Alistair, Cailan, and the senior officers of their guards, wrapped up in furs to ward off the wind as they studied the high, closed gate of the fort and the eerie quiet of its walls. A pair of crows hopped across the top of the eastern watchtower by the gate, but nothing else moved.

“They’ve abandoned it,” she realised. “There’s no one here.”

“Would Howe give up such an advantage so easily?” Cailan asked.

“He knew we were coming. It’s probably part of some larger plan, snake that he is, but we’ll still be better off inside than out until we’re ready to move again.”

“Or maybe it’s more simple than that,” Alistair replied. “Maybe it’s an ambush and they’re waiting for us to get too close so they can poke us with a lot of arrows.”

She nodded slowly; she had considered it. “Gideon?”

“Ma’am?”

“What is the size of the garrison here?”

The old commander shifted in his saddle. “Scout reports put the number at forty to sixty swords – what was left of the Red Iron after Wythenshawe.”

“Mercenaries have horses,” she murmured, and pulled down the scarf that covered the lower half of her face. Icy air stung her nose but she breathed deeply nonetheless, and marked the claggy, stale odour of mud and water, without a hint of smoke or animal dung to taint it. Beneath their feet, a trail of hoofprints led away from the gate, with lumps of manure scattered here and there at least three days old. The emptiness reminded her of Harrowhill, the cold, the quiet, even the blank walls fluttering with the Orange and White of the hated Bear. She turned from the banners with a curl of her lip, aware of the army at her back and Lasan’s nervous shift beneath her. Back then she had trembled, a lost girl stripped of everything she had ever known.

“Should we go up and knock?” Alistair asked, to fill the silence.

“That’s not a bad idea.”

“Wait –” His hand shot out as she slipped from the saddle. “I didn’t mean to actually do it!”

“We need to know for sure if there’s anyone in that fort,” she replied easily, unslinging her shield from the saddle and buckling Talon to her waist.

“Then let someone else go.” He had dropped to the ground beside her, stepping around the groom that had come to take their horses’ reins. “Cailan –”

“You think I’ve the power to persuade her from this?” The king shook his head. “I trust Her Ladyship’s judgement, and her skill.”

“I’ll be careful.”

But Alistair moved closer, heedless of the ranks watching them, and laid a hand over hers. “We talked about this,” he murmured. “You – taking risks.”

“Would you have me send one of my soldiers to do something I wouldn’t be willing to do myself?” she asked.

“The problem is, you’re entirely too willing.” He attempted a smile. “The first sign of anything –”

“I’ll come back,” she promised, and squeezed his fingers. “Just try and stop me.”

She felt his eyes bore into her back as she started across the open ground with her standard bearer at her heels. Howe’s forces had been busy in the months left to themselves, bolstered the defences with stone bracing at the base of the palisade, and set a ditch in front of the main gate. They had even built a bridge over the lumpy, half frozen sludge at the bottom, though the only thing left of it now was a charred skeleton of pilings and planks doused by the rain before the fire could fully take them. It made a great delaying tactic.

Mud sucked at their boots. Their progress was slow, hampered by the search for caltrops under their feet and movement in the crenelations above, and as they crossed the invisible line that put them within arrowshot of the walls, Rosslyn raised her shield just a little bit, ready in case Alistair’s worry proved true. The moat stopped her reaching the whole distance to the gate, so instead she stopped at the lip of the bank and planted her feet as if she were exactly where she wanted to be, waiting for her standard bearer to raise the Laurels at her back.

No sign from the walls. The crowd stopped their preening to watch as Maddow opened his mouth to speak.

“Hail to Her Ladyship Teyrna Rosslyn Cousland, Falcon of Highever, Commander in the North, right hand of His Majesty King Cailan Theirin, true and just ruler of Ferelden, defeater of the traitor Loghain and the snivelling polecat Howe who waits on him!”

Rosslyn’s brow quirked. “Laying it on a little thick, aren’t you?”

“I thought we were trying to bait them, ma’am.” He shot her a grin, which only widened when she rolled her eyes and nodded for him to continue.

“Enemies of His Majesty! You are called on to surrender yourselves, this fortress, and its environs immediately to the grace of Her Ladyship, or else it is decreed to a one you will suffer a most painful death!”

Unimpressed, the crows resumed their business and let the last echoes of the challenge rebound off the palisade, but nothing else moved. Rosslyn counted to ten, and when no arrows came streaking from behind the walls, let go of the breath she had been holding and half-turned back towards her lines, a grin wild and triumphant across her face.

“What do you think?” she called to them. “Should I blow a raspberry?”

A chorus of jeers answered her, meant for the ears of whatever forces might be hiding behind the gate, and when even that met only silence, she nodded, once, and gestured for Maddow to follow her back to the ranks, where Gideon was already waiting.

“I want to be in there by nightfall,” she ordered. “The ground looks solid enough to put a bridge in, so get the carpenters to work on it – utility only, no flourishes. It needs to get everybody across and hold up until we leave. In the meantime, sweep the whole place for traps and anyone that might be hiding, groups of three at the least so alarms can be raised.”

“Aye, Your Ladyship.” The commander bowed, and turned to bark orders to the unit of scouts already waiting for orders, leaving her free to return to Alistair’s side.

“And now we wait?” he checked.

She huffed and went to loosen the girth strap on Lasan’s saddle. “And now we wait. It’s surprising how much of that there is in battle.”

“I see.”

“What’s that look for?”

“Uh…”

With a cough and a quick glance to make sure all attention was elsewhere, he sidled up next to her, settling his hand on the small of her back to keep their conversation close enough that no one could overhear. The touch barely reached her through all her layers of metal and cloth, but its tenderness, the clarity of his gaze, sent a lick of heat shooting along her limbs nonetheless, and she had to turn her face into her horse’s flank to avoid being overcome. She could see Loren and Franderel in the distance, guiding their horses over from the wing, but still too far away to trouble them yet.

“I’ve never seen you command like that,” Alistair said, with the slightest tinge of pink at the tips of his ears. “Not even at Lothering – when you swooped in and saved me, remember?”

“Does it bother you?” She had grown up hearing comparisons between herself and the more elegant ladies of the court, the ones like Anora who kept to their arms training as a formality only and never tried to go to war.

His touch rose to the back of her neck, playing with the loose strands that had fallen out of her braid. “I wouldn’t say it bothers me, at least not in a bad way. It just makes me wonder what you would have been like raising horses on the coast – if you hadn’t had to deal with all this.”

“Would I have met you, then?” she asked.

“Of course,” he answered, and brushed his lips against her forehead. “Blight wolves couldn’t keep me from such beauty.”

A smirk lifted the corner of her mouth. “And you think a line like that would have worked on me?”

“Ohhhh you? No, I’d have better lines for you. Trust me.”

“Such as?”

“Well, let me think…”

“Your Highness, Your Ladyship!” Franderel reined his charger sharply to a halt and dismounted, with Loren not far behind. “I trust everything is going well?”

“Fine,” she replied, leaning back out of Alistair’s reach as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “We were just about to join His Majesty in his pavilion.”

Her vassal nodded, either oblivious or choosing to ignore it, and gestured towards where servants had already posted the War Dog standard and offloaded the tent canvas from its supply cart. “Shall we, then? It will be good to finalise the details of our campaign to the north, even if we may have to face the prospect of getting underway before we can fully claim Deerswall.”

“Why don’t we keep the doom and gloom until after lunch?” Alistair made the suggestion with a smile, but he kept close to her side, gaze narrowed at the elderly bann.

“Of course, Your Highness.”

“His Majesty has sent outriders to establish a perimeter,” Loren offered, interposing between them, “so if we are forced to stay outside the walls tonight, we won’t be caught unprepared.”

At a stalemate for the moment, they left their horses with the grooms and weaved through the ranks of soldiers being kept busy with menial tasks while the carpenters and the advance worked on the bridge and on clearing out the keep. Others still had been sent into the surrounding forest for firewood, and on the few cookfires already established here and there, the rest lined up for their midday meal. It would likely be nothing more than thin meat stew bulked out with vegetables and hard bread, but on such a cold day with damp nipping at the fingers, it would provide welcome warmth for a few hours, and the smell was already rising through the camp.

“How are your lands coping with the refugees, my lord?” Rosslyn asked Franderel, to distract from the cavernous feel of her stomach.

“Many moved on to the west where fighting was less likely to spread, Your Ladyship,” the bann replied, falling into step beside her. “Those who stayed have been a mixed blessing – extra mouths, but also extra hands to help with the harvest. And extra eyes to watch the northern border for trouble.”

She nodded. “Highever will not forget the generosity shown to its people.”

“West Hill is only glad to offer assistance when called upon. And…” He allowed a smile. “I am also relieved to see our worst fears turn to smoke. I knew your father, fought with him. It seems you’ve inherited his talents.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

She decided not to push the issue, despite her suspicion over his apparent sincerity, and only nodded her acknowledgement as Cailan waved them over to the table he had set up by the supplies, already in attendance with Teagan, Knight-Captain Irminric and a bevy of servants swirling around them. He had decided to forego the entire pavilion, choosing optimism instead, and had directed the servants to pitch only a windbreak and a roof over his map table in case it rained. The openness of the arrangement allowed a view across the entire camp, with Deerswall as a backdrop and a fine detail of cartography splayed across the war table readable in the daylight.

“Ho!” the king called. “Are we on track?”

“That depends on what surprises the Red Iron left for us,” Rosslyn answered.

“Tch, cowards. Although in fairness, I doubt I would dare brave the Falcon’s wrath waiting inside a wooden fortress!” He greeted the others and ushered them around the table. “In an ideal world, the keep is perfectly safe, and we will be in it in time for a decent night’s rest, which means we will have limited time in the morning to prepare for anything but an immediate departure. As you can imagine, if the rumours of the queen’s presence at Castle Cousland prove true, we must reach it – and take it – as soon as possible. Since we can do nothing further to aid us in that for now, we should solidify our plans.”

Loren bowed. “We stand ready, Your Majesty.”

“Good. Now then, the spear of our attack will come from two fronts.” Cailan rearranged the maps to find one of the northern coast, which he smoothed out and weighted at the corners. “One group, led by Her Ladyship and Prince Alistair, will travel along the coast and infiltrate the castle to secure the queen and the gates ahead of the army’s arrival.”

“Castle Cousland’s walls are nigh unpassable,” Franderel scoffed. “And there can be no certainty that any within those walls are yet loyal to the Laurels. How many are you taking for this venture?”

“Enough,” Rosslyn replied. “Our strength will be my knowledge of the castle, rather than numbers. Without the help of a dragon to breach the curtain wall, the keep could never be taken in time to ensure Queen Anora’s safety.”

Cailan sighed. “There is no ideal solution to this, but no better. The second force will approach as if for a traditional siege, with as much fanfare as we can muster. This main force will be both diversion and bait to try and draw out Howe, and once we have him, Loghain will have nothing left behind which to hide. You have thoughts, my lord Loren?”

The bann startled out of his frown. “What of Loghain’s forces?”

“If this is a trap, then we will turn it against the trapper. We have surprise on our side. He will expect to face an army with nowhere to run, with a castle for his defence, when in fact, thanks to Her Ladyship’s actions, the opposite will be true.”

“I see.” Loren stroked a hand along his chin. “It might still be wise to send an advanced guard ahead, in case the teyrn is not where he is expected to be.”

“That’s unlikely,” Rosslyn interrupted. “Loghain is an experienced general, and for the first time, our forces outnumber his. He’ll want every advantage he can get, which means having Castle Cousland at his back.”

“Still,” Irminric reasoned, with a glance in her direction. “It would not hurt to be wary, if we could find a unit suitable for the task.”

“I would like to volunteer,” Loren said, and at Rosslyn’s blink of surprise, drew himself up. “I have spent months watching the border, hearing of your successes, and I wish for an end to this as wholeheartedly as any of you.”

“How will Your Majesty know if this… infiltration force has succeeded?” Franderel asked.

“We are due to meet in six days after Her Ladyship leaves for the coast,” Cailan replied. “Once Howe’s colours are struck from the tower, her party will open the gates to the rest of our forces, and we let our enemy beat itself to exhaustion against the walls.”

“Most of the mages will stay with that force. We expect the most casualties there, and if Her Ladyship does not manage to reach the gates it in time, they will make the greatest difference in fending off an attack. Given the lack of templars, they will need a guard.”

“Would my knights be suitable, Captain?” Teagan asked. A slight hesitation shook his voice, but he had adapted quickly to the idea of being Arl of Redcliffe in his brother’s place, with all that entailed.

“They will, my lord.”

The jangle of mail alerted them to the arrival of a messenger in blue, who bowed low, cheeks flushed pink as she started to speak.

“Your Ladyship, Guard-Commander Gideon said to inform you the bailey and upper battlements are clear for occupation, and the bridge will be completed to standard in an hour.”

“Thank you, corporal. Have units start to move across as soon as possible, and draft more people into the search of the keep to speed the clearance.” Rosslyn waited for the messenger to leave before turning back to her audience, her back straight and her voice steady. “One question remains before we set out. My volunteers are ready, but what about the ship we commissioned?”

“It’ll be waiting for you at Rothsbridge, Your Ladyship,” Franderel replied. “Supplied and ready, as per your order.”

“Good.”

Despite the mask of confidence, nerves jittered beneath the surface, turning her stomach and shortening her breath no matter how many times she forced her muscles to relax. The prospect of finally going home lurked at the back of her mind, pushed aside for as long as the council discussed troop placement and travel times, but every detail only added to the weight of reality pressing down on her, and would not be ignored forever. This was the campaign for Highever. The end she had wanted for so many months was suddenly in sight, real, complete with the very real consequences they would all suffer if she failed.

Even once darkness fell and the last of the army had squeezed through the gate, and the Amarathine banners were torn from the walls, her mind wandered, dwelled on what she might find, how little might remain. Without people to occupy them, most of the rooms on the private floor would have to be shut up, the furnishings covered with dust sheets to ward off damage. She would be expected to move into the big room at the front of the house that had always belonged to the teyrn, never mind the sea view in her own chambers, or the fact that she could never think of the big room without hearing her father’s jokes and her mother’s deep, rich laughter.

What had become of her parents’ things – the dressing sets and the lifetime of trinkets? Oren’s toys? How much of her whole life had been thrown aside, or melted down for coin to fund the ransacking of the rest of the teyrnir? The more she tried not to think about it, the more she dreaded having to walk the halls again, accompanied by nothing but draughts through ancient corridors, the echoes of her own solitary footsteps. The heat of battle forced her mind to other things, but once the war finished and everyone went back to their lives, what could she do?

She lay awake for an hour trying to get comfortable, trying to put it from her thoughts, until her patience snapped and she threw back the bedcovers hard enough that they half-buried Cuno. He opened one bleary eye, but she soothed him with a murmur and he stretched out with a doggy sigh that took him back to sleep. Nobody would bother her at such a late hour. She threw on shirt, breeches, and a gambeson for warmth, and headed to the stables.

Alistair would have to go to Denerim, to fulfil his duties as heir apparent. She scowled at her boots as she dwelled on the idea. It was one thing to have their affection for each other made public, but to live together without any formal arrangement between the two of them would cause scandal in the court. Anora would never allow it. And she would never ask him to shoulder such a burden.

The horses greeted her with soft snorts and sweet breaths. As she slipped into Lasan’s stall with a grooming kit on her arm, he turned to her with a low nicker that eased her worries away. Spending time with the large, graceful animals always calmed her, and after topping up her charger’s supply of hay and water and discarding her gambeson on a hook outside, she lost herself in in long strokes of the dandy brush, working from neck to haunch until even the thickest parts of his winter coat gleamed like marble. She spotted burrs in his tail and teased them out with a comb, then looked for anything else the grooms might have missed, details that might keep her mind focused just a little bit longer. She couldn’t take him with her, after all. Her mount for the morning run to Rothsbridge stood further down the line in the narrow barn allocated to the geldings of the messenger service.

A hoof stamped in the straw.

“I’ve overstayed my welcome, huh?” she asked, coming up to stroke her horse’s ears.

He pulled his head away from her, swishing his tail and giving a meaningful tug on his haynet.

“I see I’m dismissed.” She shook her head and left him with a final pat. “Don’t bully the hands too much while I’m gone.”

A rustle in the straw alerted her to another presence as she bolted the stall door.

“There you are.”

She smiled and turned, and found Alistair leaning against the post by the door. “I thought you’d be asleep.”

“You definitely aren’t,” he replied.

Whatever response she might have given died under the soft scrutiny of his gaze. He was already moving forward, reaching for her, warm and solid, a strong heartbeat to calm the tempo of hers.

“The plan will work,” he told her as her arms slipped around his neck.

“It’s not the plan,” she breathed. “It’s after.”

A sigh, the embrace tightening about her shoulders. “We’ll face it together.”

“I’m glad you’re going with me.”

He loosed a chuckle above her ear. “We both know you just need someone to carry the bags.”

She snorted, because he said it to make her laugh, but she pulled back nonetheless, just enough, and threaded her fingers into his hair. “That isn’t true.”

He searched her face. She nudged forward, drawing him down, until he leaned the last little distance and kissed her first, starting with a hand feathered along her jaw, the tiniest of steps to eliminate what little space remained between them.

“Is anyone else here?” he asked, without breaking away.

Unable to speak, she merely shook her head. The kiss deepened, they moved. Alistair’s hand stretched out to brace them both as her back met the wall, while hers roved, pulling him closer at waist and neck. The press of his body trapped her, all strength and safety like she had never known with anyone else, and when a groan tore from his throat with an involuntary stutter of his hips, she took it, and answered, and followed him when he turned his head to pause for air. For a moment they stood, sharing heavy breaths, unmoving save for the whisper of hands across cloth, the slight sway as their senses righted and reminded them of the ground beneath their feet.

“We, uh, never got to finish our conversation,” he managed, voice rough, fingers soft as rain as they slipped beneath the fabric of her shirt and wove delicate, distracting circles across her back. “I’ve been thinking about it – about what might have happened if we weren’t interrupted.”

She leaned into him, grinned as her touch on the back of his neck made him shudder. “So have I. What… what would you have said?”

“That…” He swallowed, untangling her fingers so he could take them in his. “I want you, and I’ve wondered – imagined – what it would be like for longer than is probably decent. And I want – I’m willing to wait, until the perfect time, the perfect place, until you’re ready, and it’s what you want.”

The words held a practiced air, as if he had rehearsed them, scanned them for any misinterpretation, and now he held himself before her, all brittle hope as he waited for a response. Rosslyn’s doubt all but bled away, her uncertainty not for what she wanted, but that the lack of wanting before might show itself in the moment, in other ways. She tightened her hold on his hand.

“You think it would be worth the wait?”

He sighed, disbelieving. “You’re worth everything already, but that… it would be special.”

A bright knot of tension coiled beneath her ribs, expanding around her heart until her breath stalled and her limbs shook, but in its suddenness the strength of her yearning defied mere words. Her silence drew his brows together, however, and the purse of his lips as his gaze dropped to their linked hands was unacceptable.

“I love you so much,” she told him at last, laying her free hand against his cheek. “I’m just… not sure how to explain it. I haven’t changed – what I am is the same, and my feelings for you don’t…” She stopped, biting down on a growl. “I don’t see you and desire you like I’ve heard other people say. But I feel you, and this isn’t close enough, and I want – I want to be with you for that. I want to touch you and never stop, I –” the words were tumbling out too rushed, an embarrassment buoyed by disbelief that such an admission was hers at all. And she was too easily distracted. Alistair’s spare hand still lay at her waist, still turning circles against her skin with the blunt edge of a nail. “I don’t want you to stop doing that.”

It took him a moment to work out what she meant. “You like that?”

“Mmhm.” Her eyes closed to better concentrate on the trail of his touch, but when she tilted forwards, he dodged the kiss and let his mouth run the length of her jaw instead, all the way to the pulse point at the top of her neck. There, he paused, the tip of his tongue flicking against her skin as he wet his lips.

“I want to learn every inch of you by heart.”

She realised her lungs had stopped working. A snide part of her wanted to deny the rush of heat through her limbs, the tingle low in her belly, as merely a reaction to the road ahead or some vain hope that this might finally be the cure to whatever ailment had left her cold all her life. Terror gripped her through that tiny instant of doubt, but Alistair stood ready to lead her away from the precipice. His eyes darkened to the rich, sweet hue of spiced mead as he looked at her, his fingers careful as they left her waist to play with the wispy hair at the back of her neck.

“Breathe,” he reminded her, with a fond twist to his usual cocksure grin. It faltered. “Would – what I said, is that alright?”

She caught his face again, her focus slipping to his mouth. “As long as you let me do the same with you,” she answered.

The shudder that ran through him wiped away any hesitation about claiming his lips again. He pushed her back into the wall as he opened to her, smirking at the noise the movement startled from her throat. Deliberately this time, the cover of his body rocked forward, a slow, cautious push against her hips. His head dropped to her shoulder.

“Is this alright?”

All she could manage was a strangled hum and a nod. She knew enough to recognise the long, hard line trapped between his body and hers, and thought of it made her stomach flutter. She kissed his neck, cradled his head in her palm. Every nerve sang like a plucked string. In the stalls around them, the horses shifted in their sleep, a small noise amplified by the darkness and the need for discretion.

She squeezed his arm. “Someone will find us here.”

“And we can’t have that.” He chuckled and dragged himself away, though his hands lingered. They followed invisible tracks along her sides, as if memorizing the shape of her ribs. “It must be getting late – we can’t stay here all night.”

Without losing each other, they wandered from the stable and paused at the trough to wash their hands of dust. A thin rime of ice lay like a skin over the water. Rosslyn threw her gambeson around her shoulders like a cape as she broke through with a bucket to fill the washing station, grateful for the extra layer and for Alistair’s warmth huddling next to her. He fished stray wisps of straw from her hair as he waited for his turn with the horsemaster’s caustic soap, and smiled at the way she blushed, which only encouraged the spread of heat across her face.

Nobody bothered them as they picked their way around the sea of canvas tents to the keep steps. The only movement came from the guards on the battlements, and without the light of either moon to lessen the darkness, the night closed around them like a curtain, allowing them the privacy that came so dearly in daylight. Tucked under Alistair’s shoulder, with his arm around her trying to stave off the chill leaking through her still-open gambeson, Rosslyn almost allowed herself to believe they were like any other couple, leaning into each other, stealing each moment as they found it, all but inseparable, and barely caring what the royal guards thought of them as they passed.

The highest floor of the keep had been set aside for the king and his closest companions, and it was deserted. They halted awkwardly as they came to Rosslyn’s door, limned by the low, harsh light of the storm lantern in the alcove opposite, and stood with hands still linked and eyes averted in a vain attempt to prolong the moment before they had to part. Her heart thumped a harsh rhythm in her ears, but before she could say anything, Alistair caught her chin and with the smallest hesitation leaned down to tilt a kiss against her mouth. She reacted instinctively, closed her eyes, stretched upwards to make it last. He stroked her face as he pulled away.

“Goodnight, my love.” His smile turned self-conscious. “Just think, the next time we’ll be sleeping in beds, we’ll be in Highever.”

“Alistair.” She kept hold of his fingers as she glanced to her door and back. She felt her mouth twitch in a brief, reassuring smile, but nerves quickly stole it away.

“You…” His glance mirrored hers, eyes wide. “When I said – down in the stable, I didn’t mean for any of what I said to pressure you.”

“I know.”

“And… you’re sure you want me to – to spend the night? With you?”

Every fibre of her body ached towards him, the feeling too strong for words. She loved him. She wanted to know what it was like.

“I was under the impression that it’s not the done thing to leave – after,” she tried, and winced when the nervous, joking tone fell flat. “I… we wouldn’t have to do anything, but regardless, I don’t know if I could sleep without you, not tonight.”

To her surprise, he giggled. “Woman, do you know how many nights I’ve had to bully myself into not knocking on your door because I thought you’d turn me away?”

“I won’t,” she promised. “I want this. If you do.” She barely had time to raise her eyes to his before he came crashing down to meet her once more.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair theirin #alistair x cousland #cousland #rosslyn cousland #the falcon and the rose

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laurelsofhighever · 4 years

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The Falcon and the Rose Ch. 48 - No Rest for the Virtuous

Chapter Rating: General audiences Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn Chapter Summary: Someone is waiting for Alistair and Rosslyn in camp, and he has bad news. Featuring Karyna Amell and Cullen Rutherford

First chapter on AO3 This chapter on AO3

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Rosslyn and Alistair returned to the camp just as the last light faded. Following from the previous night’s attack, the perimeter of their temporary settlement had been marked with torches, and sentries nodded to them as they passed through the boundary towards the picket lines. They were met under the canvas by Cuno, who wriggled over to his mistress with almost his old level of enthusiasm, and he gifted her with a wide, lolloping smile as she bent down to scrub his ears. Alistair, standing next to her with a hand on the small of her back, was granted a brief, dismissive glare, and then a polite sniff when it became clear he wouldn’t be shooed away.

“I think I’m forgiven,” he chuckled as the dog licked his fingers. He nudged Rosslyn’s shoulder. “You’re quiet.”

“I suppose I’m just still…” She sighed and leaned closer to him. “You don’t mind.”

“You thought I would?”

She dropped her gaze, smoothing her hands over Cuno’s ruff. “Feared it, I think. After all we’ve been through, if this was the thing that made me lose you –”

“Hush,” he said, and pressed his lips to her forehead. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Whether it was the words or the gesture that calmed her, she relaxed and tilted a smile up at him, turning so she could loop her arms around his back. “I’m so glad I met you.”

He grinned at that, the part of him wanting to tease overwhelmed by her confession, and her warmth, and the glint of merriment in her eyes as they fluttered shut to steal a kiss against his neck.

“I wish we could just stay here, and let the world pass us by,” she murmured.

“There’s too much to do, love,” he answered, with the unfamiliar endearment tingling on his tongue.

The curve of her smile played against his skin, her fingers winding tighter into the fabric of his shirt. “You didn’t have to point it out.”

“You’re right, how cruel of me. However will I make it up to you?”

She hummed and began a trail of kisses up the line of his pulse. “Let me think about it.”

“O–oh? I hope my lady won’t –”

Cuno chuffed a warning. They pulled apart, just in time for the hurried clatter of boots to resolve itself into the shape of Lieutenant Hobbs skidding to a halt in the doorway.

“Thank the Maker you’re back,” he panted. “There’s a templar just come in – nearly killed his horse – says there’s a problem at the Circle and you’re needed.”

Rosslyn glanced at Alistair. “The king has no overview of the Circle.”

“All the same. He’s up at the prince’s digs, Your Ladyship.”

After a moment, and a parting squeeze of the fingers, they followed at brisk walk after Hobbs, once more donning the mantles of Prince and Teyrna. The camp was quiet, most not on duty seeking an early night in preparation for the march in the morning, and it was a relief to see that whatever the templar’s urgent news, it had yet to spread and rouse panic among the soldiers.

When they slipped past the royal guard into Alistair’s pavilion, they found the templar seated in one of the chairs, accepting a cup of water from a servant while Eamon looked on with his brows knitted into one creased, hoary line. The young man’s gaze stared glasslike through the haze of his fatigue, but he looked up when they entered, startled. Rosslyn recognised him. He looked smaller and younger, in only a gambeson and with several days’ worth of dark stubble on his chin, but he was undoubtedly the same man she had met outside the infirmary on the first night after West Roth.

“Your Highness,” he croaked. “Your Ladyship…”

“This man is Knight-Lieutenant Cullen,” Eamon supplied, without even a cursory scowl to ask where the two of them had been.

“No need to stand,” Alistair told the young man as he struggled to his feet. “You look like you need the rest.”

The templar nodded and sank back into his seat, slumping as he dragged a hand down his face.

“What’s happened?”

He shook his head, fatigue in ever line of his face. “I don’t – the Circle was – Maker’s breath they’re all…”

“Lieutenant!” Rosslyn snapped.

Cullen jerked upright.

“You will answer our questions,” she commanded.

“Yes – yes, Your Ladyship.”

“Good.” She softened. “Now, who sent you?”

“Knight-Captain Irminric, Your Ladyship.”

“And you came from the Circle?”

“I did.”

“What happened there?”

Slowly, she teased out the story. The Circle, overrun by blood mages, had been barred shut by Knight-Commander Greagoir, to await the Right of Annulment. Irminric had tried to persuade his superior to take a unit in to limit the damage, but the knight-commander had remained firm.

“He said he didn’t want to send in any more of his own men after the ones already locked in the tower.” Cullen curled his hands into fists. “If the alarm had sounded an hour earlier, I would’ve been – Maker, I’d just come off duty…”

He looked up and stuttered to a halt when another figure appeared in the doorway. Enchanter Amell’s round face flushed when she met the templar’s eye, but she turned and bobbed a curtsey to Rosslyn, asking permission to say.

“Someone said I should check him over,” she explained.

Rosslyn nodded and returned her attention to Cullen.

“What did the first Enchanter have to say about the Right?” Alistair asked.

Amell’s hands froze on the stopper of a reviving potion.

“First Enchanter Irving is… missing,” the templar admitted. “He was in the tower. Please – the Knight-Captain is certain not all of the mages have succumbed, but if the Right reaches the tower before other help does, then any who have survived this long will be killed for certainty’s sake.”

Grim silence met this pronouncement. Even now, the Right of Annulment, the edict viewed as a viable last resort by many, might already be racing to Kinloch Hold, ready to give the waiting templars free licence to slaughter all within. The only source of reprieve might be that, with the grand cleric out of reach in Denerim, Greagoir would have had to send for permission from Orlais or Kirkwall, either of which would take at least a week to reply. In the meantime, however, it still left hundreds of mages in thrall to an army of unbound, hungry demons.

“Not every templar would risk so much to dispute the Right,” Rosslyn said eventually. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because –” Hopelessly, he glanced around, first to Amell and then to everyone else when she refused to meet his gaze. “Templars are meant to protect mages, from themselves if necessary, but from demons first of all. If some of them can be saved… that’s what the Order is for. And there are templars locked in the tower as well. If… if they haven’t been killed, then they will be trying to stop whatever blood magic has taken hold of our charges.”

“I don’t believe it,” the healer said quietly. “The first enchanter would have stopped it.”

Eamon huffed. “I don’t recall asking for your opinion, healer.”

Nobody paid him any attention. Instead, Amell turned to Rosslyn, her dark eyes wide.

“Please, Your Ladyship. The Circle is – it’s my home, and I can’t believe everyone there has turned to blood magic. Asking them to sit and wait to be slaughtered is – it’s monstrous. There are children there.”

“The Circle operates independently of the Crown,” Eamon said. “We cannot –”

“There are children there,” Alistair interrupted, with a flat glare. “Children who have magic, who might be, oh, I don’t know, around ten years old, whose families weren’t well-connected enough to send them out of the Chantry’s reach?”

The insinuation drained the colour from the old arl’s cheeks, and though his mouth twisted in a barbed retort, it remained unspoken and he turned away.

“The Chantry might control the Circles, but it is the crown’s concern if there are demons pouring out over Fereldan soil,” the prince declared. “What, will the grand cleric slap us on the wrist for stopping more people getting killed?”

“if the Knight-Commander believes the circle lost, then surely there isn’t much to be done,” Eamon replied, rallying. “Let the Order handle it. They are better equipped, and the war effort will not fall apart if any of them are lost.”

“But they don’t want to help.”

Rosslyn stood up, cutting off Eamon’s argument. “We can’t deal with mages gone rogue,” she pointed out. Her expression hollowed. “I saw the carnage unleashed in South Reach by one blood mage, and even though he was a magister I dread to think what would happen if the templars failed and we had to face dozens of abominations. We’ll help as we can,” she decided, with a nod to where Cullen was still sitting. “But we’ll need to be careful in our approach. We can’t go in with an army.”

“May I remind you we are due to rendezvous with the king.”

“Are you so eager for that meeting, my lord?” she asked in a mild tone.

Once again, the old man dropped his gaze, and in the silence, she called for a servant to fetch a map of Lake Calenhad from the chest in her pavilion. While they waited, another pair of servants carried a desk over from the corner of the space and unfolded it into a large square, preparing it not only for the map but for the food ordered from the quartermaster. It was only bread and a kettle of thin meat broth, nowhere near as pleasant as the picnic Rosslyn had shared with Alistair only hours before, but it kept hunger at bay and would fuel them through the hours to come. As the stew was ladled into bowls, Amell sidled close to Rosslyn, her hand hovering as if she wanted to touch her arm but lacked the courage.

“Please Your Ladyship – and Your Highness – whatever you’re planning, I’d like to come along. I can help.”

“That might not be wise,” Cullen said from the other side of the table.

Amell frowned at him, stung. “You’ll need someone who knows the Circle, and who can dispel any barriers or harmful magic –”

“A templar could do that just as well.”

“Maybe,” she snapped. “But by now the enchanters will have figured out about the Right, and they’ll probably attack any warriors who approach them to try and defend themselves. Especially if they’re wearing the Sword of Mercy.” Remembering who she was talking to, she straightened and folded her hands in front of her, watching her fingers twine together as she continued in a more restrained voice. “They’d respond better to a mage, and they know me.”

The servant returned with the maps and nudged her out of the way, but she didn’t leave.

“If you want to save people, you’ll need someone who can calm them down.”

“No. it’s my duty to protect you.” Cullen’s scowl was a hard counterpoint to the light curl of his hair. “You would be safer staying here.”

“I don’t care.”

“I –”

“The longer you argue the longer it’ll take to get help to the Circle,” Rosslyn interrupted. “We’ll use you both. But for now, you’re dismissed. Go and get some rest.” Turning from them and whatever look passed between them, she helped the servant lay out the maps, overlapping them so the western edge of Ferelden fit against the corner of Lake Calenhad, then fished in the box handed to her for the two sets of markers.

“And my lord,” she added to Eamon once the pair had left, “We will need to leave as early as possible in the morning. Please go and see to it that provisions are packed and ready, and that horses will be saddled in time.”

“Your Ladyship, this is folly,” the arl insisted. He stood with his arms folded, glowering at the obvious dismissal. “You cannot believe that interfering in a Chantry matter is worth the risk when we are so close to victory against Loghain. I assume you intend to go yourself? What if something happens to you? Would you leave Highever without its champion?”

Her glance cut at him, but Alistair stepped up beside her and answered first.

“You heard her,” he said. “Best catch the horsemaster before he turns in for the night, don’t you think?”

For a moment, the old man stayed frozen, but his upbringing as a noble asserted itself under the combined weight of their disdain, and at last he cleared his throat and limped towards the doorway. On the threshold, he paused as if to say something further, but his lips pursed and with a shake of his head he trudged out into the night. It left only the two of them in the pavilion. Guards were stationed outside, of course, still within earshot, but even that small amount of space, the brief interlude before Eamon returned, allowed fatigue to creep in at the corners. Rosslyn busied herself arranging the markers for Cailan’s last known location. Alistair’s hand had once more found the small of her back.

“If I asked…”

“I’m not letting you go in there alone,” he said.

She sighed. “It’s my duty as a subject of the Crown to at least point out that Eamon isn’t mistaken when he says it’ll be dangerous.”

With gentle fingers, he caught her hand and raised it to his lips. “My duty is to you.”

“Not ahead of the kingdom,” she breathed, unable to resist leaning closer.

He chuckled and kissed her hand again. “You already do such a good job taking care of that, it makes more sense to have someone taking care of you, don’t you think? You know I’m right,” he added, when she opened her mouth to retort.

“Kiss me and I’ll forgive you for it.”

“Ha! That’s just an incentive for me to be right more oft–”

He had to keep in mind that Eamon might return at any moment, that even if his feelings for Rosslyn might be common knowledge, having the camp know about their relationship and having them see was a distinction with monumental consequences. It didn’t mean he had to enjoy the moment when he pulled himself away, but cutting one kiss short would always be better than never getting to kiss her again. He coughed. There were footsteps outside, and he didn’t trust himself to look at her.

The maps. Yes. Right. The maps.

“So, uh…” he started. “How are we going to do this?”

The party caught their first glimpse of Kinloch Hold’s tower on the third morning, having left at first light carrying only bare provisions and bedrolls. Eamon had arranged to take the rest of their force north through Lakehead, and then meet up with them and the main strength of the army in Aeylesbide, where Cailan was waiting for them. Each had led a spare horse, and changed mounts first at the waystation at the mouth of Gherlen’s Pass and then in Ridderby, where Rosslyn also sent a raven on to the king. As an unaccustomed rider, Amell had tired the worst from the hard journey, and she slept soundly now in the hold of the ferry they had commissioned from the small port that served the western shore of the lake. Rosslyn, however, had been too restless for sleep, and with propriety overriding the urge to crawl into Alistair’s arms, she had emerged onto the deck to let the chill of morning wake her fully. Ice clung to the forward rail, catching the first of the late-autumn light as it crept over the water.

“Happy Satinalia,” said a voice behind her.

“What?”

She watched Alistair duck under the beam and edge his way along the slippery deck towards her, his arms open wide to catch her from behind and enfold her in the thick material of his cloak. He pressed a kiss against her hair as she leaned into the comfort of his chest.

“It’s Firstfall,” he said. “So, happy Satinalia.”

“Already?” She huffed, leaning back against him. “I didn’t realise.”

“If someone had told me this time last year that I would be spending the day battling a tower full of abominations and mad mages, I wouldn’t have believed them.” His arms squeezed her coser. “And I especially wouldn’t have believed the part about you.”

“Neither would I,” she answered.

Had it only been a year? There had been so much laughter in the hall; Gilmore had complimented her new dress, turning his ears as red as his hair; her mother had rolled her eyes as her father raised the traditional mistletoe over her head; and Oren – Oren had refused to let go of the soft toy mabari his favouritest aunt had made him, no matter its lumpy stuffing and the wonky set of its eyes.

“Hey…”

She found Alistair’s fingers and wound them with her own. “As long as we don’t make the demon-fighting part a tradition,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Oh, I don’t know…” He pressed his cheek against hers. “It beats sitting by yourself, counting coals in a chilly guardhouse.”

Frowning at the forced brightness in his tone, she turned into him and snuck her hands under the outer layer of his gambeson. A sharp inhale answered the sudden chill brought by her fingers, but a moment later he relaxed and tightened his hold on her waist.

“It’s a good thing we have more than those two choices, then,” she murmured.

They watched the dawn grow behind the Circle spire until details could be picked out on the buildings and the vegetable patch that clustered around the base of the tower proper and their intimacy could no longer be hidden by the darkness. Figures stood at attention on the rocky shore, stonelike but for the gleam of their armour, and as the ferry drew closer to the low pier on the southeastern end of the island, some of the templars retreated from their posts to dart up the steps to where Greagoir no doubt waited for word. Silence engulfed them, a kind of pressure like the change of altitude that renders all sound distant, which grew heavier the closer the came to the tower.

The others were already awake. Grimly, they nodded to Rosslyn and Alistair as they pulled on their armour, checked their weapons sat easy in their scabbards, and climbed up to the deck to wait for the slow bump of the hull against the dock. The crew had barely skipped to secure the ropes when they spotted a full complement of templars clanking down the steps towards them. Greagoir marched at their head, his hand tight on the hilt of the sword at his side.

“Irminric told me what he was doing,” he growled when Rosslyn and Alistair stepped onto the dock to meet him. “I will speak plainly. You have wasted your journey here, Your Highness. The tower is not under our control, and my knight-captain has led you on a fool’s errand.”

“We came to help,” Alistair replied. “You would refuse it?”

The knight-commander shook his head. “Abominations and demons stalk the tower’s halls – we were too complacent, and it would be foolish to send anyone in without the Right to back them.”

“That would be the case only if every mage in the tower were corrupt,” Rosslyn pointed out. “Do you have evidence of that?”

“Your Ladyship, I appreciate your desire to help, and I know your relatives among the Clayne believe magic is not a temptation – Knight-Captain Irminric holds the same misguided opinion – but the tower is overrun. There is no alternative – everything within must be destroyed so it can be made safe again.”

With a growl, Amell pushed forward, ignoring the restraining hand Cullen lay on her arm. “How can you just give up like that? There are hundreds of people in there – your people too! How can you abandon them?”

“What are you doing here?” Greagoir turned to Cullen. “Knight-Lieutenant, all mages were to stay on detachment with the king’s army.”

“Why – so you could avoid having to look any of us in the face? I came here to help save my home.”

“I’ll not throw the demons another bit of fodder. I suggest you all leave immediately.” He shrugged, and the veneer of calm slipped to reveal the tiredness beneath. “Once I have confirmation of the Right from Val Royeaux it will all be over.”

Rosslyn glared at him. “And what will you do in the meantime, sit here and polish your armour? Every moment you delay means more lives lost, people who could have been saved if you had chosen to act – unless,” she added with a cold smile, “that is part of the reason for your hesitation, a hope that by the time the Right arrives everyone in the tower will have killed each other off and given your men an easier time of clearing away the mess.”

“What – how dare you!”

“Your Ladyship, please,” Cullen muttered beside her.

She ignored him and stared the old man down.

“I assure you I do not take this matter lightly,” Greagoir grunted. “But I will not risk more of my officers.”

“You would not be risking your officers.”

He laughed. “No, only the goodwill of the king and any standing I have within the Order.”

“And you value your position over the lives of the people in your charge?”

The force of Alistair’s quiet disapproval, standing before him with arms folded brows drawn in like thunderclouds, defeated the bluster already winded by Rosslyn’s argument. The knight-commander sighed, defeated, and gestured for them to walk with him up to the hall that served as the tower’s entrance. The ranks of templars stepped aside to let them pass. Some turned curious glances on Cullen, and followed after Amell with hostile whispers, but nobody stopped them.

“If you succeeded, I would owe you much,” the knight-commander admitted. “I can let you in, but I will not open the doors again until I know it is safe, not until First Enchanter Irving stands before me and tells me it is so.”

“Very well,” Rosslyn answered. “if you have any provisions to spare, they would be welcome, since we don’t know exactly what we’ll face.”

“The quartermaster is over there.”

“I’m going too.” One of Amell’s hands rested lightly on the staff she slung over her back, not quite enough to be a threat, though Greagoir seemed to mark it as one. “I’m under His Highness’ supervision and you can’t stop me.”

Before the knight-commander could do much more than frown at the defiance in the mage’s eyes, Cullen stepped up next to her.

“I would like to volunteer as well, Ser,” he said.

“You were one of the lads on the last duty shift,” Greagoir realised.

“Yes, Ser.”

For a long moment, his superior said nothing, grinding his jaw as he weighed the options set before him. The guards on the door fidgeted. Eventually, he threw up his hands in frustration, barking a command for the quartermaster to add a spare set of armour and some fresh robes to the list of supplies he was rooting for in the storeroom.

The time waiting for rations and water gave them enough time to check their weapons again and glance at a rough map of what lay beyond the door, as if that alone might prepare them. Rosslyn napped on Alistair’s shoulder, having grown into the soldier’s habit of snatching sleep where she could after such a restless night, and he kept fiddling with the straps of his gauntlets to resist the urge to hold her hand. By the time they were ready to leave, the sun was streaming full through the window at the far end of the hall.

“Remember,” Greagoir warned, “Irving’s word is the only one I will accept.”

“We understand,” Alistair replied.

“Then maker turn his gaze upon you.”

The illuminated image of Andraste on her pyre overlooked them all as they trudged to the door, painting bright shadows over the ceiling. At a nod, the guards drew back the wrought iron bolts on the tower door and hauled on the capstan chains to open it, while yet others stood with ready swords in case an abomination lurched out of the darkness before they were ready. But nothing moved. The corridor was empty. As one, the party strode forward, Rosslyn and Alistair in the lead, and the heavy doors closed behind them like a trap.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #alistair theirin #alistair x cousland #cousland #rosslyn cousland #cullen rutherford #amell #posting this to make myself feel better

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laurelsofhighever · 4 years

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Chapter Rating: General Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort Chapter Summary: Revelations come in the aftermath of the attack on the Circle.

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Fifth day of Firstfall, 9:32 Dragon

Tendrils of golden mist wove through the courtyard that enclosed the templar barracks of Kinloch Hold. Frost whorled away across the flagstones, thick as a coating of snow, silvering the summer’s cobwebs and the dainty, bone-thin ends of the birch that had been planted in the centre. As Rosslyn trudged across from the room she had been shown to the night before, a blackbird warbled in its upper branches, as if boasting of its triumph over the winter night, as if there had not been a slither of demons pressing like a boil against the skin of the world only the day before. She paused to watch it scrape its beak on the branch, her breath a thick white puff that vanished into the fog, and stuffed her hands into her armpits to keep her fingertips from being bitten. It was always so after a battle. The small things in the world returned to their normality, unconcerned for the scars left by human action, for the hollow remains of victory’s thrill through the blood.

Shaking herself, she walked on, drawing her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. The spare clothes the lay sister had left her were too thin for the weather, but she was grateful for them nonetheless. Her only other option would have been the shirt and gambeson she had worn to storm the tower, still stained with sweat and blood and ichor, and all the memories of what she had faced with it. She tried to turn her mind from it. The demon’s fantasy had been nothing more than smoke, and yet it had let her see her parents again. She had spoken to them, heard they were proud of her, seen them approve of the man she loved, and she ached so much for their arms around her again she hardly cared that it wasn’t real. And yet, when she closed her eyes, she didn’t see their faces, only heard the slick rasp of steel through flesh, a gasp, the heavy sag of a body as it crumpled to the floor.

Voices raised around the corner. She wiped her eyes, straightening into her general’s façade as footsteps approached and halted, the tail of the argument lashing with voices she recognised.

“Karyna, please –” Cullen begged.

“You said mages aren’t people,” Amell snapped. “How can you expect me to be reasonable after that – what does ‘reasonable’ even mean?”

“You saw the damage in there as well as I did, so many dead –”

“And most of them mages. My friends. They died because they chose that over becoming abominations.”

“You said yourself they would have attacked anyone who came into the tower!”

The enchanter snarled a curse. “What would you have done in their place? Greagoir was planning to slaughter them! We obey, we keep our heads down, we keep our magic locked away, and yet none of that loyalty is worth anything. We really aren’t people to you, are we?”

“It isn’t the same,” the templar stammered. “You –”

“The Right would have had us all murdered, with no reprisals. If I’d been in there, and the oh-so-valiant knight-commander had told you to strike me down, would you have done it?”

“I – that’s not fair.”

“See? You can’t even answer the question. I don’t think I want an answer.”

“Karyna!”

The mage’s footsteps didn’t slow as she hurried around the corner, blind to everything beyond her unshed tears. Rosslyn let her go. Sympathy tugged at her, remembering the drift of ash above Highever, but whatever her own misgivings about the Chantry and what she had seen of the Circle, the grief was still too present, and it was not her place to offer shelter from it. Instead, she gritted her teeth and stepped out from the shadows, ignoring the instant of panic that lit Cullen’s features crimson.

“My presence was requested in the knight-commander’s office,” she said. “Which way do I go?”

“Oh… it’s the second on the right down that corridor, Your Ladyship.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Did you…?”

“As you were, Lieutenant,” she huffed, already marching past him.

She arrived at the door to Greagoir’s office to find Alistair already inside, backlit by a spitting fire, leaning over a map with his weight pressing through his knuckles into the desk. The deep crease of his brows made her hesitate in the doorway. The Fade vision had seemed so real, and afterwards she had been too lost in her own thoughts to even consider the effect it might have had on him, to hear platitudes from the false stranger who had called himself his father. His skin was paler than it should be; dark circles bruised glazed, bloodshot eyes, and the gaunt twist of his mouth hollowed out his cheeks like paper.

A floorboard creaked beneath her heel. The sound startled him out of his reverie, and when he looked up, the fatigue that made her heart ache brightened into welcome, a smile all soft corners that lifted as he breathed her name.

“Good morning,” he murmured, reaching for her.

She smiled her reply as she took his hand. “It is now. How are you?”

“Tired,” he replied, shrugging. “But considering the alternatives, I’ll take it. how did you sleep?”

“Not well, if I’m honest.” She dropped her gaze, well aware of the blush stretching across her cheeks.

“That’s not surprising.”

A gentle hand rose to cup her face, and for a moment she let herself sink into the comfort, eyes closed and breath a soft huff mingling with his.

“It wasn’t just the dreams,” she said. “I missed you.” She pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “I kept waking up and you weren’t there.”

Wordlessly, he pulled her into a hug, squeezing tight as she buried her head against his shoulder. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry about Maric.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t realise how much I wanted his approval. All those years I thought I put it behind me, but now I just keep wondering…” he sighed. “But it was all the demon. He was never interested, not even when I left Redcliffe.”

Rosslyn’s hand curled against the back of his neck. “We can’t know why he did what he did,” she soothed. “But really, does it matter? What you made of yourself is entirely down to your merit, and nothing can change that. I’m proud of you, if that counts, and you should be proud of yourself. I couldn’t have made it out of there without you.”

“It does count,” he told her, breaking the embrace so he could look at her. “There’s nobody whose judgement I trust more.”

She leaned in, drawn by the intensity of his gaze, but remembered at the last where they were and turned to glance at the doorway. The empty corridor stared back, draughty and silent. And Alistair was there with his fingers brushed against her jaw, ducking the last few inches to distract her with a kiss.

The instant his lips touched hers, a jolt of foreign heat sank low in her belly. Her hand rose of its own volition to bring him closer, the desperation thrilling through her echoed in the flutter of the pulse beneath her fingertips. They had almost died; they had encountered horrors and monsters and walked the veil-thin line of tension to the top of that cursed tower with no room for any thought but survival – and now that tension snapped. Alistair groaned as he pushed into her mouth, as she rose on tip-toes and wrapped her arms around his neck to banish every bit of space that separated them. The movement overbalanced him. He had to throw out a hand to save them from the edge of the desk, but he never faltered. Eventually they parted, breath sharp, giggling for air, just far enough to dart back in for soft presses against every part they could reach. She never wanted to stop.

“What is it?” he murmured, ghosting another kiss across her lips.

Her hands cradled his face. “The worst thing…” She swallowed and tried again. “I keep thinking – I know it wasn’t real, but it might have been, and… I wish they could have met you.”

“Oh, love…” He pulled her in again with a swift brushed kiss to her forehead. “We’ll get through this.”

“If it ever ends.”

“Hey now,” he chided. “Where’s my indomitable warrior goddess? Everything will be –”

The echo of footsteps in the corridor interrupted him. Clearing his throat, he withdrew to a respectable distance, though his touch lingered at her hand.

“Everything will be alright,” he repeated, and dropped her hand as the door banged back against the wall.

Cailan entered, with Irminric on his heels. The king shone his usual puppyish smile as he greeted them, but Rosslyn had spent long months in his company, and knew him well enough to see the brittle nature of his resolve; his cheeks bloomed with their usual rosy colour, but his eyes were bloodshot. How long had he tossed and turned thinking about Loghain’s reach, that it extended even as far as a tower in the middle of a lake cut off from the rest of Thedas?

She knew better than to bring it up. Instead, she crossed to Irminric and wrapped him in a hug.

“It’s good to see you alive and whole, couz,” he told her. “For a moment there, I thought I’d sent you to an untimely end – Alfstanna would’ve been furious with me.”

At the sound of her old playmate’s name, Rosslyn brightened. “How is she? I heard there were twins.”

Irminric nodded. “They gave her a lot of trouble before the end. The bairns are sickly, but the healer says they’ll all make it through.”

“When this is all over, you’ll have to go back to Waking Sea and play Uncle properly,” she replied, and realised the others were waiting politely for the pleasantries to be out of the way. “But until then, what are you doing here in a war council?” She had expected Greagoir himself after the revelation that Uldred’s rebellion was triggered by outside events.

“I’ve been given a new assignment,” he told her with a shrug. “It seems the knight-commander wants someone to oversee the distribution of the supplies he’s donating to the cause, in exchange for saving everyone in the Circle.”

“You mean he’s sending you away in almost-disgrace for going against orders,” Alistair supplied with a wry tilt of an eyebrow.

“A small price for what you managed to do.”

“Just about,” Rosslyn groused.

“What’s the plan now, then?”

With the call to business, Cailan grinned and stepped up to their borrowed desk, shuffling papers away to expose the northern stretches of Ferelden on the map. Counters purloined from the knight-commander’s chess set had been laid out to represent the location of their forces, though some slipped their place in the tidying. As the king righted them, he talked. The Highever Guard with Eamon in tow was still somewhere around Lakehead, a strong enough force for a skirmish, but not for a pitched battle.

“We’ll cross to the eastern shore today and catch up with the bulk of the army,” he explained, still moving counters. “After, we should all arrive in Aeylesbide around the same time – Bann Ferrenly is expecting us. From what his scouts report, activity in the north has slowed as the cold weather has set in, and aside from a few outposts, our enemy has retreated to the strongholds already in their possession.”

Rosslyn’s heart quickened in her chest. “If we’re gathering our entire force at Aeylesbide…”

Cailan nodded to her. “We’re going to take back Highever, yes, and not a moment too soon.”

He paused to let her absorb the swell of emotion, the anticipation leaping like a deer through her veins at even the distant prospect of seeing home again. She had missed the rugged coastland, the cliffs and the sea breeze and the pastures of long grass rippling like silk in the wind. The fields would be barren now, laid bare for the first snow, and no doubt Howe had taken the dragon’s share of the harvest to bolster his own forces through the winter, leaving her people with scraps for food and nothing but rotting twigs to feed their fires. In the dream, she had returned a hero, with the sun shining, her parents proud on the steps of the keep to welcome her, the people happy and healthy and cheering her name. And that was the knife that truly made the demon’s tricks twist in her gut – even if she succeeded in taking back the city and the castle, even if she caught Howe and got her revenge, it wouldn’t bring them back; it wouldn’t make the fantasy real. A small part of her mind enjoyed the irony of the situation, that the goal for which she had yearned for almost a year was now within reach, just as she lost the stomach to face it.

I’m counting on you to see them safe, her father had told her as the dust settled over Glenlough. No matter what.

She felt the shift of weight beside her, Alistair lending her strength even though their company meant he couldn’t touch her. She exhaled a shaky breath, grateful, and turned her attention to Cailan once more. He had been waiting for her to continue.

“Your victory at South Reach has taken the last foothold away from Loghain,” he said. “And now we must cut off his retreat. The Bannorn is ours, and once the North follows suit we’ll be able to march on the capital without fear of being caught in a pincer movement. Once we’re mustered at Aeylesbide, we can finalise the details.”

“You’ll have a contingent of mages as well,” Irminric added, with a grim twist of his mouth. “We’ve nowhere to put them now until the tower is fully cleared, and with the number of templars killed we don’t have the resources to send them all to other Circles, either.”

Alistair scowled, but held his tongue. Meddling in Chantry politics was not a battle they could afford in the moment. “We may be able to finish this before the spring, if we don’t end up with a siege at Denerim,” he said instead.

Cailan frowned. “If Loghain is still a man of the people, he wouldn’t put them through that.”

“I’m afraid we cannot take that for granted,” Irminric replied. “Not if he’s become an abomination.”

“I thought only mages could become abominations?”

The knight-captain folded his arms, stroking the trimmed edge of his beard. “Only mages can summon demons from the Fade, it’s true, but once in our world the creatures may work on the minds of anyone they choose, usually someone with whom they find an affinity – an emotional connection. It’s possible Loghain’s allied magisters were the ones to perform the summoning, though whether it came before or after the Landsmeet, I cannot say.”

“It doesn’t matter for the moment,” Cailan decided. “I have faith in your abilities, Knight-Captain, but we have yet to reach Loghain before we can free him of the demon’s influence. No, first we must take Highever, and quickly.” At the questioning glances sent his way, he let the last of his cheerful façade drop into worry. “The queen has been sent there from Denerim, and we haven’t heard from her since. It’s possible he suspects she’s been aiding us.”

The implications settled over them like the fog outside, wrapping them in silence. Of them all, Rosslyn was most familiar with the aid rendered by Anora’s intelligence, regardless of her motives for betraying her father, but so far, her position had allowed her to avoid being used as a pawn. If her safety were threatened, however, Cailan would have to capitulate or risk losing the goodwill he had built up in his months in the field, and Ferelden’s entire future along with it.

Alistair was the one who broke the silence. “Why wouldn’t Loghain send her to Vigil’s Keep? That’s far less exposed if he wanted her out of his way.”

“He wouldn’t want to give Howe that much power,” Rosslyn answered in a low voice. “He’s already shown himself capable of betrayal.”

His hand fell to her arm. “Still, it’s rather convenient, don’t you think?”

“We don’t have a choice,” she answered bluntly, without looking at him. “And my people have suffered enough.” And I’ve spent too long wanting Howe’s head on a spike to back down now. “You know, Your Majesty, if you had told me this sooner, I might have outlined a strategy for you already.”

Cailan fiddled with one of the counters, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, my dear…” He pressed his tongue between his teeth, looking for the right words for whatever he wanted to say. “I would have, but I had hoped you would be persuaded to take a step back from this one.”

“Why?”

The frostiness in her tone blanketed the whole room, so even the fire seemed to dim. Cailan shrank away from it with a sigh, trying to deny the flush in his pale cheeks, and nodded to the rest of their company. Irminric obeyed the silent order and bowed out of the room with a mumbled excuse, but Alistair, sensing what was coming, stubbornly refused to take the hint.

“Brother, if you might…?”

“Your Majesty, what is this about?”

Defeated, Cailan sighed. “Some might deem it inappropriate for you to have a part in Anora’s rescue, considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” she asked, though her eyes had narrowed. “Anora’s presence in Highever changes nothing but our approach, and it’s my home. Would you sit in the supply lines while we took back Denerim?”

“I… no. I would not.”

“Then please don’t tell me this is some misguided act of chivalry to try and protect me from the worst of the fighting.”

“Maker, of course not!” the king cried. “My lady, you have proven yourself time and again, on the field and off. The matter is… more delicate than that.” Sighing again, he turned to pace across the confined length of the room, either gathering his thoughts or trying to work out the frustration evident in his voice. “It has become clear to me that, for the good of Ferelden, whatever existed between Anora and myself may no longer be… supportable. And so I find myself facing the possibility of a future where I am a king alone – in need of a queen.” He paused, took in her posture, cleared his throat, and dropped his gaze to the desk. “I… was hoping that, in time, you might consider being that queen.”

Her stomach turned. Despite what Alistair had said to her the other day in the meadow, and the sense it made once she knew everything Eamon had done, part of her had not believed Cailan really had plans for her. He turned that hopeful, guileless smile on her now, uneasy but not discouraged by her blank, silent shock, and stepped around the desk to take her hand in both of his. She felt the warmth of his skin, the callouses on his palms, and it was surreal.

“I had also hoped that, uh, circumstances would have allowed a more romantic proposal,” he allowed, with a self-conscious glance at Alistair.

“Your Majesty –”

“Cailan.”

She shook her head and extracted her fingers. “Your Majesty. I have no desire to be queen – I’m sorry.” Her heartbeat felt thready. “I would have always refused you… even if my heart didn’t already belong to someone else.”

Cailan blinked. “Someone else? Who?”

For a long moment, embarrassment stopped her tongue. Heat crawled across the back of her neck and pulsed behind her eyes, until she finally gathered the courage to lift her eyes to Alistair’s. He was smiling. She couldn’t help but return the expression as relief washed over her, too aware that even though they agreed they would bring their relationship into the light, the expectation had been something more controlled, planned, and definitely not straight off the back of another man’s proposal. When his fingers brushed against hers, however, she laced them together instinctually, finally remembering to breathe as his fingers squeezed their reassurance.

Cailan glanced between them, bewildered.

“If it makes you feel better we were planning to tell you,” Alistair said.

“This… well.” The king shook himself. “How long?”

They paused, unsure of the answer. For Rosslyn, at least, the love had grown so slowly, through distractions and misunderstandings and distance, and yet as she searched through her memories even that first morning, when he had stood enshrined by the dawn light and offered her his blanket and shared her breakfast, was touched with a sense of belonging too big for her to describe.

“From the beginning,” he offered, raising her hand to kiss her knuckles.

Her breath caught.

“And you’re happy?” Cailan asked.

She blinked, drawn back to the present, and smiled at him even as the revelation overwhelmed her. “Very.”

“Huh… You really are in love, aren’t you?” A puff of air blew through his cheeks, giving way to a wry chuckle at his own mortification. “Well then. In that case, little brother, you should be congratulated on winning the esteem of such a fine lady! You’ll have to tell me how you did it, eh? And you, my dear,” he added, turning to Rosslyn, “be sure he treats you as you deserve, or I may have to start another war to defend your honour.”

“As you will, Your Majesty.”

“The two of you… honestly.” He laughed again. “Who else knows of this?”

The warmth in Rosslyn’s chest cooled, feeling Alistair tense at her side. She cleared her throat. “About that – there’s… an allegation we have to make.”

“Allegation?”

“Against Arl Eamon,” Alistair supplied. “He intercepted letters between Rosslyn and me, to try and separate us.”

“Surely not…”

But Cailan listened all the same as they told the story, both what Eamon had done, and the ways he had tried to cover for himself once he was caught. It was unclear whether the initial idea was his, since King Bhelen was obviously so keen to be rid of his sister, but it was clear enough that the old arl had not acted under duress. When they finished, still leaning into each other for support, they watched as Cailan reeled back to lean his weight on the desk as if winded, his mouth pulled down at the corners and his brows knitted in a frown that added years to his face.

“Thank the Maker Teagan is with us already,” he murmured. “I will have to look into this. In the meantime…” He sighed, and fixed a smile in place. “We must continue as we are. We still have a campaign to plan, don’t we? It would be very poor sport if this one setback inconvenienced everything.” He glanced down at their joined hands and looked away, clearing his throat as he returned his attention to the map.

#dragon age #dragon age: origins #dragon age origins #da:o #alistair theirin #rosslyn cousland #alistair x cousland #cousland #king cailan #ferelden

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