A/N: The world and characters of Dragon Age belong to BioWare, and I offer that company my deepest thanks for encouraging community creations.
This is for MiliaTimmain, who plays Fergus on Warden's Vigil, a Dragon Age Roleplaying Community.
She is an amazing friend and a great person, and I wanted to thank her just for being her. Love ya!
Also many thanks to jenncgf for being my beta reader on this. I really appreciate it!
Fergus stared at his desk. Duty stared back at him, a taskmistress that hovered incessantly. Harsh, unforgiving, she never gave him any leeway, always there, always present, always a reminder of what he should have been, and what he wasn't.
He flicked the paper in his hand aside, barely noticing as it fluttered across his desk like a bloated albino butterfly. His good hand reached up and rubbed the right side of his face. Two fingers pressed into his closed eye, rubbing in circles to help relieve some of the tension building there. It didn't help. He hadn't really expected it to; it was a habit, nothing more.
The skin on the left side of his face was itching again, but not really. Ghost sensations, not real, and he knew from experience that if he rubbed the scars beneath the patch, he'd just feel pain, not relief. So he ignored it.
Opening his eye again, he looked at the paper he'd tossed away. A letter from an outlying bann, the third he'd received from the man, criticizing the teyrnir for not providing enough protection. Apparently some of his livestock had been fallen prey to wolves, and somehow this was Highever's fault. Why not? Everything was the teyrn's fault, wasn't it?
He'd never appreciated how much pressure was placed on the teyrn to run things just so. How had his father done it? He'd managed to keep everyone happy, all of his subjects loyal and content, and Fergus simply had no idea how he'd accomplished such a thing. He could almost see his father scowling at him as his thoughts turned in that direction; yes, he'd been trained to follow in Bryce's footsteps, but it had come too soon. He wasn't ready. He wasn't prepared for this.
"Your lordship?"
Fergus's head snapped up at the voice at the door. His seneschal, Donnell, stood there, a puzzled expression on his face. A matching frown creased the teyrn's face. "Yes?"
"You...have a visitor, your grace."
Fergus's frown deepened at the hesitation in the man's voice. Yet another bann, come to scold him, or plead for funds, or both? He sighed. "Donnell, I don't really—"
"It's the Hero, your lordship."
The Hero of Ferelden? Why in Thedas...? He rose to his feet, resting heavily on his good leg until his left was able to bear some weight. "Send her in, then."
Donnell bowed his head and his shadow left the doorway. Fergus made his way around his desk, his right hand trailing over it, rustling the papers that covered the rich, dark wood. Questions raced through his mind. Why would she appear, unannounced? Had something befallen Amaranthine? Was something about to happen in Highever? It had been more than five years since Alistair Theirin had slain the archdemon and died himself in the battle; surely the darkspawn were a thing of the past? That's what history taught. Without a tainted dragon to inspire them to greater things, the monsters stayed underground, an intermittent threat.
Fergus blinked in surprise as the Arlessa of Amaranthine walked into his study. He always forgot how tiny she was. Slender, petite; she seemed more suited to wearing dresses than the leathers in which she was clad now. Her long, blonde hair was caught in a simple tie at the nape of her neck, longer than it had been when he'd seen her briefly five years before, in advance of her formally taking up the reins of the arling. Her pale eyes were still her most striking feature: the lightest grey, they reminded him of a cloud-filled sky in the depths of winter. Cold, icy, unforgiving. Looking at her eyes, which held the age her body and face did not, he could no longer imagine her in a dress, nor did he think of her as a gentle maiden. This was the Hero of Ferelden, the woman who had saved the nation when no one else would, or could.
"My lady," Fergus greeted her with a bow of his head.
"Your grace." Her voice was just as cool and emotionless as her gaze. "I am sorry to intrude without notice, ser."
Fergus waved his gloved hand, as if her appearance was of no consequence. "It is not a bother. I won't lie, however; I am curious as to what prompted it." Curious, apprehensive, one word was just as good as the other.
"I..." Her voice trailed off, as though whatever she'd planned to say abandoned her at the last second. Lips thinned, then quirked a little, and she spoke again. "It is nothing to concern yourself with. I don't bear any dire news."
A tendril of relief wound itself through Fergus. "No?"
"No." A flicker of emotion crossed her face, there and gone too quickly for Fergus to determine what it was. "I'm simply taking a break."
He stared at her for a moment, sure he'd misheard. "A break?"
Her eyes narrowed slightly, and he could almost see her hackles rise. "Yes, a break. I think I've earned it, don't you?"
He held out his hands in a placating gesture, a small smile stretching his lips. As always, it was crooked, since the muscles in the left side of his face did not work well. "I did not say you hadn't, my lady, but it's rather sudden, don't you think?"
"No," she said, her voice softening. "I don't think it's sudden at all."
He considered her for a moment, considered her words. He supposed she was right; she'd done nothing but work for Ferelden for more than six years. There were rewards, surely, for what else could one call being awarded an arling? But still, he could only imagine what she'd sacrificed in order to be standing in front of him today. His brows dropped an iota as he recalled a rumor he'd heard circulating after the end of the Blight, that she and Alistair Theirin had been...involved. To his knowledge, she'd never confirmed it. Fergus himself knew nothing of the man save that he'd been the bastard son of Maric, who had been thrust at the throne by Eamon in the wake of King Cailan's death at Ostagar. But from what he'd heard after the fact, it had been the woman before him who had dashed that dream of Eamon's. She chose Anora to remain as Queen. He wondered how ill-suited this Alistair must have been, that the Warden would overlook his royal blood and choose to keep a commoner on the throne.
"Be that as it may," he said finally, "you are welcome to remain at Highever for as long as you wish, my lady. I shall arrange for accommodations befitting your station."
Her eyes widened, almost imperceptibly, and he wondered if she was taken aback by the idea of having a "station". How odd must all this be, still, after being raised in an Alienage? That thought reminded him of a missive from the Highever hahren, which dimmed his mood somewhat. Yet something else awaiting his attention. He needed a break himself, but that would not happen. And he didn't quite trust himself to not turn such a thing into a permanent vacation from his duties. How tempting that would be, to run off to the Free Marches, or...or perhaps to Antiva, to lose himself in memories.
"Thank you, your lordship," the Commander of the Grey replied, inclining her head.
"I assume you've left someone capable in your place, as proxy?" he asked casually as he made his way to the bell pull to summon Donnell.
"I have, your grace." Her back seemed to stiffen as he regarded her, and he had a sudden inkling that he was not going to like her choice. "Nathaniel Howe."
Howe. At the utterance of that name, adrenaline rushed through Fergus. His good hand flexed, as though readying itself to wrap around the hilt of a blade and strike...something. Anything. Preferably the man with that Maker-damned name.
Intellectually, he knew that a son was just as much to blame for a father's misdeeds as to be praised for a father's successes. But his heart heard Howe and remembered only the disarray to which he'd returned, the pain that had welcomed him. It was Howe who had massacred his family. Father, mother, sister, wife, child. Every single Cousland, wiped from Thedas by Howe's maddened ambition. And now a Howe was in power in Amaranthine?
"No." His voice was deceptively calm, like the stillness before a storm. Had Donnell been in the room, the seneschal would have quickly exited, knowing what would follow.
"Yes." The Commander arched a brow. "Would you prefer I left the apostate in charge, your grace? Or perhaps the drunken dwarf? As much as I value my Wardens and their skills in battle, only one has the capacity to be as skilled in the realm of the nobility."
"If that is your only choice, then I would prefer you not leave your post, my lady." The words were short, sharply spoken, each enunciated precisely. He made his way back to his desk, his good hand surreptitiously providing some support against the top.
"So I'm to be chained to the arling permanently, then, never to leave?" She crossed her arms over her chest, and he didn't miss the sparks entering her cool gaze. "That is unacceptable."
"No, what is unacceptable is you allowing the son of the man that was responsible for the siege of my teyrnir to rule the arling that was stripped from his family!" Fergus punctuated his words by slapping his palm against the desk. "There is a reason that arling was removed from the Howe family. They are dogs, not worthy of the title."
"He saved your life once!"
"And that erases everything his family did to mine? I think not!" Fergus's temper was fully unleashed now, the ochre of his good eye burning into the Commander's gaze. His voice dripped with contempt and hate, even as memories of the bandit ambush and Nathaniel's timely arrival rose unbidden. Who was to say that Howe had not planned the whole thing in order to achieve better graces within the nobility? It would not be the first time a Howe had proven manipulative and ambitious. "His father was best friend to my own. And he betrayed us, killed all of us, except for me. I was lucky enough to have left before the siege began. So don't you dare insinuate that I do not know what the Howes are capable of. I know better than you do, Commander."
"Nathaniel is not his father," she insisted.
"It doesn't matter!" He gritted his teeth. "You will send word immediately that he is to be removed from the position in which you placed him."
A muscle twitched in her own jaw for a moment before she spoke again. "The Grey Wardens do not answer to you, your grace."
"But the Arlessa of Amaranthine does." He gripped the side of his desk so tightly it was a wonder the wood did not creak.
"Well." She tossed her head, and he noticed spots of color had risen in her cheeks. Not nearly as calm and collected as she appeared to be, then. "It's rather a good thing I'm not Arlessa anymore, is it?"
Fergus stared at her, stunned. "I beg your pardon?"
"I petitioned the Queen to release me from that duty, and she has." Her eyes met his own, challenging him to doubt her word, or to doubt the Queen's. "She supported my nomination for my successor. Given his actions, he has more than made amends for his father's crimes. He has the skills, and the knowledge—"
"Son of a bitch," Fergus breathed.
"The Queen herself ventured to Amaranthine to install Nathaniel as arl." She cocked her head. "Am I still welcome in Highever for as long as I wish, your grace?"