Alistair's eyes opened, quite against his will. After all that had happened – Ostagar, his injuries, Flemeth's rescue, losing everyone he had ever cared about – he should be exhausted. He was exhausted. And yet, for some reason, he was awake. Why? Darkspawn…but no. He sensed none of the monstrous creatures any closer than when he had retired for the evening – it seemed that Flemeth's trick still functioned on their behalf. Traveling with two women who hated every fiber of your being had some benefits, it seemed. It couldn't be his watch yet, Amelia would never have let him sleep on. She'd likely take great pleasure in waking him at sword point if that's what it took.
How the Maker must delight in torturing him, to deprive him of his newly found surrogate family to leave him with the likes of that swamp witch and the haughty new Warden recruit. As if the monastery hadn't been enough. Or maybe this was his punishment for being so eager to leave the life of a templar behind. There was a thought. His salvation from the life of service to the Chantry had become quite the nightmare – the fate of all of Ferelden, maybe all of Thedas, depended on his incompetent self and a Warden who hated everything about being a Warden. Maker, they were doomed.
He was just about to roll over and try to get what little sleep he could before his watch started when a noise caught his notice. An anxious whine from that mabari of Amelia's. That must have been what had awakened him in the first place. He resolved to speak to her in the morning about it – they couldn't afford to lose sleep for a dog, not with the threat of darkspawn looming ever closer. He closed his eyes to attempt sleep again, but caught another noise. A stifled sob.
That captured his attention. Not Morrigan. He doubted the woman was capable ofcrying. That left Amelia, but why? She'd shown no exceptional grief for the lost army at Ostagar, not for the King, or the other Wardens, not even Duncan. He turned his thoughts away from that immediately. That wound was too raw, too deep to explore in such unsympathetic company. The temptation to ignore her was strong, but she was a sister Warden, if an unwilling one, and the Chantry had raised him to be a gentleman, even to unappreciative women.
He sat up, trying not to groan. The hard ground was a terrible place to spend the night. Worse than the stables at Redclifffe even. The sooner they got to Lothering to purchase supplies and bedrolls, the better. Though with what money, only the Maker knew. Time for that later though.
A quick glance showed the new recruit by the small fire they had made. Alistair watched for a moment, still hesitant to disturb an obviously private moment. Wheat blond hair fell to her shoulders, loose from the practical bun she always wore it in. She knelt, arms around her great hound, her face buried in the dog's fur, shoulders shaking with silent sobs.
Now that he was listening, he could just make out her whispered words. "Oh Fen, Fen, they're gone, they're all gone. What am I supposed to do now?" That decided him. He rose and quietly made his way to her side, glad for the lack of heavy, noisy armor. He guessed neither of them wanted Morrigan's caustic intrusion. Though armor might be useful if his fellow Warden decided to run him through for catching her in such a vulnerable state. That was a cheery thought, but too late, he was committed now.
"Amelia?" he asked softly, reaching her side. He reached a hand out to touch her shoulder, but the woman startled violently at the sound of his voice. Her mabari crouched aggressively, growling at the intruder to his mistress' distress. Perhaps this had been a bad idea after all…
She overcame her surprise quickly enough though. She threw a glance at her hound, staying him with an outstretched hand and using the motion to try and dash the tears away from her eyes. "Fenhar, enough, it's okay." The dog huffed and settled back on his haunches, but continued to glare at him suspiciously. The young woman turned back to him.
"What do you want, Alistair? It's not your watch yet." He had to commend her, her voice was quite steady, full of command even. If he hadn't seen her moments before, hadn't known to listen for the slight quaver in her voice, he might not have known she had been in tears just minutes prior. Though the red in her otherwise blue-green eyes might have given her away still. She had beautiful eyes, he thought for just a second, before dismissing the thought. Not the time, but it would be just his luck to fall for a woman who hated his guts, wouldn't it?
"I, ah, overheard, and just wanted to…." Maker, why did he always get tongue-tied at the worst times? He didn't know how to deal with a woman in tears, much less a woman who didn't want him to know she was in tears. He gathered his thoughts and dropped to a crouch next to her with a sigh. "Is everything alright?"
"I'm fine," she said curtly, turning her face to the fire again, away from him. "Go back to bed. You still have an hour or two left."
"Oh yes, I always burst into tears when I'm perfectly alright." He couldn't quite hide the sarcasm in his voice – this is what he got for being nice to the woman. "I just thought maybe you'd like to talk, but I can see I was wrong. I'm sure the dog's better company anyways." He rose, intending to return to his makeshift bed. He couldn't have made it worse even if he'd tried, it seemed.
"Alistair, wait." Her soft voice stopped him, and he turned. He met her gaze, a confused look on her face. "Why do you care? I haven't exactly been very nice to you."
"No, you haven't," he agreed. He shrugged then. "You're a sister Warden. We're going to be travelling together. Stopping the Blight together, apparently. Should I need more reason than that?"
"You still think of me as a Warden? As a….sister? Even though I tried to leave you back there?" She sounded so vulnerable, so uncertain. Quite different from the angry young woman he had met in the ruined temple at Ostagar and led through the Korcari Wilds. He turned, dropped to the ground to sit a short distance from her. She had turned her face away, refusing to meet his eyes, one hand buried in her hound's rough fur.
"Being a Warden's not something you can just stop doing. You can't just quit your family. That's what the Wardens are – a family of a sort. A blood-drinking, darkspawn-killing family, granted, but a family nonetheless." He glanced at her, but it seemed the quip had fallen short. "So, will you tell me what's wrong? They say that grief shared is grief halved."
She remained silent, watching the fire as it crackled and popped before them, quietly petting the hound. Just as he wondered whether he should he should go back to bed after all, she spoke again, quietly. "You said the Wardens were your family. Did you have anyone else?"
Not the subject he wanted to talk about. Maybe he should have gone with another description. A team, a pack, anything but family. "No…I….No. They were all I had." He was not going to break down. He was not.
"Ah. I'm….sorry." She actually did sound sorry. After a brief pause, she spoke again. "How much did Duncan tell you about me?"
"Duncan?" He thought for a moment. "Not much. That you were from Highever..." Now that he thought of it, there had been rumors around the camp. About an attack at Highever. It was a Cousland sigil on her shield, he was fairly certain. Had she been there? A guard at the castle, perhaps? Or the daughter of one?
She nodded. Hesitated. "My name is Amelia Cousland." Emphasis on the family name. His eyes widened. She met his gaze this time, saw that he understood. "Teryn Bryce Cousland's daughter, yes. I was there…when Howe…when that bastard came into my home, and killed my family and…" The tears were falling again, and now he understood. The brave front, because a front was all it was, to hide just how much she was hurting inside. Hurting just as much as he was.
"I'm so sorry. I don't know what to say." It seemed so inadequate, but what did you say to something like that? What did you do?
"Duncan made me go. Made me leave them all behind. Told my father he'd save me only if I joined the Wardens." The revelation made his head spin. Duncan?
"He wouldn't…not Duncan. He's a good man, surely…."
"Surely what? I misunderstood? I was there. I was there when he told my father, as he was bleeding to death. When he pulled me away and left my mother and my father there to die and he did nothing to help!" She was shaking now, not crying, and he couldn't rightly blame her for being angry. What could he possibly say to her that could make this better? So he sat back, and was simply quiet.
"And the worst part?" she whispered harshly. "The worst part is that he was right. He was right." Alistair was surprised again, it was the last thing he expected her to admit. His sister Warden sighed, and it was like she deflated there before his eyes, all the anger bleeding away. "There was nothing we could do. Father was dying, and Mother would never leave him. If we had stayed, we would have died with them." She sounded so very hopeless.
"So Duncan saved you then?" he offered, a bit hesitantly. He still wasn't sure how volatile the situation was, if she might still blow up at him for suggesting it.
It was a long moment before she nodded in reply, her voice full of regret. "He did, and I was so awful to him in return. I was so angry and hurt and I just wished he had let me die with them. I should have died with them." It was a terrible revelation, one that should have shocked him. But he felt the same way.
"A part of me wishes I had been on the battlefield with Duncan. I feel like I abandoned him," Alistair admitted. "But then I'd be dead, and it's not like that would make him any happier."
He saw the empathy, the acknowledgement in her eyes. "It wouldn't have made them happy either. Father was so set against me being a Warden, but he agreed to it to save me." She paused, unhappiness written upon her face and in her posture. "I don't think I would have gone, but someone had to tell Fergus. He was already on his way to Ostagar when Howe…betrayed us."
Fergus. The brother she had mentioned before, the one she had given him a letter for, should she not survive the Joining. And that before she had known just how lethal the Joining could be. Alistair wondered for a moment what it would be like to have a brother that he cared for that much, or a sister who cared for him so. He barely dared to think what his own sister, whom he had never met, would think of him.
"He's somewhere out there," she gestured vaguely into the wilderness about them, "and I can't even try to find him because of the horde. What good is being a Grey Warden if I can't fight the darkspawn to find him?" The frustration in her voice was a palpable thing and the mabari at her side whined in response.
"It's not that easy," Alistair replied. "That's what got us into this mess in the first place, Cailan thinking that a handful of Wardens could defeat the Blight. If it were that simple, then none of this would have happened, and Duncan…Duncan would…" He couldn't finish the sentence. Duncan would still be here.
She looked up at him then, sympathy in her eyes. "You were close, you and Duncan?"
He didn't know how to answer the question. Duncan had been like a father to him, his savior from the Chantry, the only person who had ever really cared about him. Saying the words out loud would be acknowledgement that he was gone so he nodded instead.
Her gaze waved for a moment, and she breathed out, as though resolving herself. "They say that grief shared…" she ventured.
Alistair had to smile a little, having his words returned to him in such fashion. But he shook his head. "You don't have to do that. Anyways, your watch is surely up. You should get some rest."
"I don't think I'm going to sleep anymore tonight," Amelia said, shrugging slightly. "Please." She had been willing to confide in him, perhaps it was only right that he do the same. So he told her a little bit of his past, being born the bastard son of a serving girl at Redcliffe Castle, how the arl had taken him in and then shipped him off to the Chantry, how Duncan had saved him from life as a templar and conscripted him into the Grey Wardens.
They traded stories – of training with the Wardens and growing up in Highever, of mischief in the dormitories and slaying giant rats in the larder and somewhere along the way the stories became less sad and more full of fond memory and laughter. And before he knew it, the sky was lightening and the sun was coming up. And he found his own heart a little lighter as well.
Alistair looked to his companion, who was scratching her sleeping hound's belly, a smile still upon her lips from his latest jest. Perhaps it was true, what they said. Maybe shared grief was indeed grief halved. And just maybe the world was a brighter, if not a better, place for it.