Thankfully, it was raining out, which wouldn't make it seem unusual when she didn't lower her hood upon entering the inn.
Jader was rougher around the edges than most Orlesian cities on account of it being nearly in Ferelden. On wet days like today, one could almost smell the scent of dog wafting across the border. But despite the relative laxness of the otherwise strict Orlesian norms here, Jader was hardly safe from prying eyes.
If anything, there were more eyes here, in order to keep track of who was mixing with the dog lords. Fiona had enough problems navigating certain places as it was being a Grey Warden without being labeled as a Fereldan fraternizer. So any excuse to remain discreet was an excuse worth capitalizing on.
The bell on the front door of the inn jingled quietly as she entered and heads turned as she quickly pulled it shut to keep out the rain and the midnight chill. She kept her chin tucked down into her chest, which helped keep the long, loose hood shadowing her face.
It was bad enough they'd be able to tell she was a woman just from the shape of her body despite the oversized cloak she donned.
It was unpleasant to know that she was already marked by who knows how many people in the common room, who would be casually eyeing everything she did and watching to see who she was meeting.
It would be unfortunate if any of them hazarded a guess that she was a Warden, if somehow they caught a glimpse of the griffon heraldry on a piece of armor she wore tucked under her cloak or perchance stole a glance of the blue and white tabard she wore.
It would be dangerous if any of them were to spy her pointed ears tucked under the flap of the hood and to wonder what a solitary elf was doing wandering around the city's inn at such a late hour.
But worst of all would be if someone, somehow, discovered she was a mage. Even under the protection of the order of the Grey Wardens, nothing created such an instantaneous level of unease as for normal, Maker-fearing people to realize they were in the presence of one of those types outside of the Circle.
With her head down and the gnarled staff out in front and tapping the floorboards as if it were simply a walking stick of a dirty, wet traveler, she crossed the common room as quickly as she could without looking more suspicious than she already looked.
She moved purposefully toward the stairs on the back end of the inn and stepped up them slowly, but not too slowly. She reached the landing at the midpoint of the staircase and quickly turned, making sure she didn't expose her face as she did, then quickened her pace up the second set of stairs.
When she reached the top, looked both ways down the hall, and saw no one, she exhaled for the first time. Hopefully none of the patrons would come snooping for her. That never ended well for them, or for her, either.
If you looked like you knew what you were doing and where you were going, more often than not, people let you be. She hope that held true tonight.
Fiona turned left and paced down the hall, looking at each of the doors as she passed them, checking to see whether any were cracked open. None were, thankfully. She wasn't paranoid enough to stop and bend to see if there were any eyes peering out of the keyholes. Not yet, at least.
She reached the last door in the hall, glanced over her shoulder to double check that there was no one else there - there wasn't - then tapped the door twice with her knuckles, jiggled the handle on the locked door, tapped the door once more, waited two seconds, then tapped three more times.
Fiona waited, waited for what was an agonizing long time that was, in reality, probably only three or four seconds, before she heard footsteps at the door then the click of the lock. The door popped open just a crack and she quickly pushed it wide enough to slide inside then quickly but quietly pressed it closed behind her, engaging the lock again.
She exhaled again, loudly this time, as she let her forehead bump lightly against the door. She placed the staff gently against the wall, making sure it wasn't going to fall. Only then did she reach up and pull the hood back off the top of her head and turn around.
"You know, you don't have to be this secretive."
Duncan crossed his arms over his chest as he cocked his head to the side, looking at the muddy and sopping cloak she was wearing, then at the staff leaning against the wall. "If you were going for woodland hermit, you nailed it," he added with a smirk.
"Shut up," Fiona said, annoyed, as she shrugged off the soggy cloak and let it fall to the floor in a damp heap. She swept her hand back through her hair and pushed it behind the points of her ears. "And I suppose you just waltzed in without a second thought about who's watching?"
He shrugged. "The boys downstairs might have paid for my dinner and about, three - no wait, was it four? - yeah, four beers last night. Five beers, maybe." At Fiona's continuing glare, Duncan dipped his eyes and turned his head slightly like a scolded puppy. "Fine, eight beers. And a second chicken. And a pie. Don't even know where they got the pie. It wasn't very good, anyway."
Duncan stepped aside and pointed toward the back of the room and the small, round dining table. "But, at least I'm a thoughtful host."
On the table was a waiting glass of red wine. Nevermind there were also two plates piled with greasy bones and a tankard that she was pretty sure had been topped off at least a couple times earlier in the night.
Fiona rolled her eyes and groaned as she marched toward the table and past Duncan. "Was one of those plates supposed to be mine?" she asked as he followed her.
"You're going to be upset with me no matter what answer I give to that," Duncan said as she swept down into the chair in front of the wine and he plopped himself down roughly into the other.
He reached down toward the floor and lifted up a small rectangular wooden box and placed it in front of her, then lifted off the handled lid revealing a few assorted cheeses inside. "Huh, not bad, right?"
Fiona glanced into the box - a few pieces appeared to be missing - then looked back up. "How long have those been sitting out?"
"Not long enough to make me sick from eating them," Duncan said as he set the lid down and lifted his beer mug to his mouth and gulped deeply.
It's the thought that counts, Fiona figured, as she ignored the cheese and lifted her glass. She glanced at the window behind Duncan. It was dark and obscured by the continuing rain. She wished he had pulled the curtains on it, but didn't make a point of it. Fiona lifted her glass to her lips, sipped and swallowed.
She placed the glass back down and gave a little nod. "It's… not bad." She couldn't, in good faith, call it "good," but considering it was drinkable and that Duncan had picked it, she didn't want to sound ungrateful.
Duncan reached down and produced a green glass bottle, then set it on the table and turned the label toward her. Clearly more than one glass had been poured out of it, she noticed.
"Chateau Monfort Nord, Pinot Noir, 9:13. Young, sweet and innocent, like a bucolic maid chance discovered upon the road, with a beauty bold enough to shake the hearts of every Comte at court, if only she had been born to noble blood and not to the land," Duncan said, reciting word-for-word whatever nonsense tale the vintner had spun for him in the market.
Fiona couldn't resist letting a small grin across her lips while Duncan emoted as he made the pitch to her, looking and sounding utterly ridiculous. "Translation, you paid three times more than you should have for a garden variety vintage put out by some farmer who makes it in his barn."
Duncan chuckled and shrugged. "It was either this or 'bold and rugged like a willful stallion fit to carry any proud chevalier should the man be noble enough to earn its respect,' but I was worried it might literally have horse piss mixed into it."
Fiona swirled the wine in her glass and gave into a full smile. "You and I both know the thought of a busty country girl was enough to sell you this bottle."
"I admit to nothing," Duncan said, feigning insult.
It had been five years since they had all plunged through the Deep Roads under Ferelden together, since she had been rescued from the grips of the demon in Ortan Thaig and since her and Duncan had parted ways, him to Ferelden and her to her continuing mission in Orlais.
They had merely been children back then. It had only been five years since, but every year spent with the taint in their blood was equal to several years for everyone else who walked without it. They were both still physically young, still so new to the Wardens, yet she felt like she and Duncan had lived and been friends for decades longer.
And yet, she knew, that the taint quickened within him every day that passed, while it did not within her. Some day, when the Old Gods called to him and he could no longer resist the lure, would he think of her with nothing but disdain? Would he be angry that she had sidestepped the Wardens' ultimate grim duty by some stroke of chance and dumb luck?
"So you're doing the beard now?" she asked as she placed her glass back down after another sip.
Duncan ran a hand across the scruffy beard that now covered his cheeks, chin and neck at her mention. With his dark, deep eyes, his sun-bronzed complexion and now the beard, he not only looked years older but far more foreign than he once did. Maybe that was the point, she thought. If he was already forced to be a Warden among men, why not fully embrace the mantle of the stranger?
"Keeps my face warm," he joked. "If you think Ferelden is cold enough in winter, try a Ferelden Deep Roads tunnel in winter. If the Joining hadn't made me sterile already, I'm pretty sure the weather has."
Fiona scooped up her glass and drank uncomfortably while Duncan laughed to himself. He meant well, she reminded herself. He was only trying to enjoy himself.
"You know, I think if I grow out my hair a bit more and then pull it back and tie it back back here," he said, holding his hand behind his head as if he were clutching a ball, "That would really bring the whole thing together. Some slick-looking silverite armor, maybe like a chunky leather belt right across my chest here, then like two or three belts around the waist. You know? Make people ask themselves, 'What are those belts even for?'"
Fiona shook her head. "I don't know I've ever met another Warden so hung up on how he looks."
Duncan shrugged. "Hey, I'm the one who has to walk around trying to convince people that joining the Wardens is going to be really glorious. So it helps to not look like I just crawled out of some darkspawn anus. Which reminds me about this nest I uncovered-"
"Stop," Fiona said holding up her hand. "I don't want to hear this story. Ever."
Duncan leaned back in his chair and hoisted his tankard. "Your loss." He tipped the mug back and gulped from it until it was nearly vertical over his face, clearly empty. As he pulled it away, he stood up and went to the back of the room where he had his small ale keg set up on top of a cabinet.
"How is it going, in Ferelden?" she asked.
"Well," he started with his back turned to her as he fiddled with the tap, "Considering I'm one man trying to cover an entire kingdom, I'd say pretty good. No taint sickening villages. No blights. No crazy, talking, Old-God-hunting mage darkspawn trying to convince me to join his team. All in all, things could be worse."
He turned around, his tankard now full with a frothy head puffed up on top of the mug. "And you? Any sign of our manipulative friend?"
The Architect had turned Bregan, Genevieve and Utha to its cause and it had escaped the battle at the Circle Tower. No doubt it was hiding somewhere, continuing to advance its plan. The Wardens had given her the express mission of locating the emissary.
Five years later and she still had as little to show for it as she did on day one.
"No," she said simply and left it at that.
"It's a waste of time," Duncan said as he sat back down. "He might have died from the wounds he took in the battle. They have you spelunking all over the world looking for a darkspawn that's probably long dead."
Maybe, she thought, but she wasn't sure she believed that idea herself. The Wardens never would. They weren't going to release her from her duty until she found him, alive or dead. And if it just so happened he had perished and his flesh melted into some kind of putrid, gooey, tainted pile of bones in some hole somewhere, well, Fiona knew she would have to search the world over until she could scoop that pile into a sack and return it in person to Weisshaupt.
"You should ask to be reassigned," Duncan said. "Get them to send you to Ferelden. Maker knows I could use the help. And I promise I won't play the 'I'm the Warden Commander' card on you. Not that I'd expect you'd take orders from me anyway."
"I doubt they'd let me," Fiona said sounding deflated. She couldn't disagree that it might be nice to be paired up with Duncan again. Well, it would probably be nice to be paired up with anyone, or at least to be on an assignment where she could feel like she accomplished something at least once in a five-year span.
Even if the Wardens offered her such an opportunity, she knew she would never be able to accept it.
"How is the King?" Fiona asked, drumming her fingers nervously on her leg. She shouldn't have asked, she scolded herself internally, wishing she could claw the question back.
"Fighting the good fight and winning it, most days," Duncan said. "The Teyrn doesn't like me hanging around the palace and makes it very clear to me and Maric. Loudly. So I try not to spend any more time in Denerim than I need to."
"And Cailan?" Fiona asked. She shouldn't have asked that, either. She didn't want him to tell her. She didn't want to know that he was happy and healthy and loved. But the questions dragged out of her against her own will, tugging her down a road she didn't want to walk.
Duncan chuckled. "I probably never should have told the boy any stories about the Wardens. He's completely obsessed. His tutors are not happy with me that he runs around proclaiming how some day he's going to be Warden Commander and fight an archdemon instead of studying. He's a good kid, though."
"And how is…" Fiona quickly snatched her wine glass from the table, wrapping her fingers around the stem. She held it tightly in hopes that it would keep her hand from trembling. It didn't, as the wine vibrated as the glass shook in her hand.
She tried to force the words down, but they wouldn't be suppressed. "How… how is…"
"Alistair?"
Her fingers clenched so tight she was surprised she didn't snap the narrow glass stem. She suddenly couldn't breathe, her lips pressed together tightly to make sure no sound snuck out between them. Her heart raced, each beat hurting in her chest as it thumped around like she had a dagger stabbed through the center of it.
Fiona still had nightmares often, reliving over and over the day when she passed the blanket-swaddled child over to Eamon. The moment the chubby baby boy had fully left her fingertips, it felt like an unending chasm had opened between her and him, one that she had thrown herself into and was falling, falling to this day, never to hit the bottom.
His name. His name was Alistair.
It was a good human name. She had given it to him for that reason, so that no one might ever look at him and suspect that she was his mother.
Her lip quivered and she nodded short and quick, not daring to open her mouth now for fear of what might come out of it.
Duncan paused for a moment, maybe thinking about what words he wanted this time as opposed to just blurting out whatever came to mind. He opened his mouth slowly as he locked in what he wanted to say.
"Alistar," he started. "Is a perfect five-year-boy. He's safe, healthy and happy. Eamon raises him as if he were his own."
Fiona held her hand across her mouth as tears began to stream down her cheeks. She dared not to blink or make a sound, for fear that she might miss something. Duncan's words tore her in two, between her rational mind that swelled with happiness to know that she had made the right choice for him and her aching heart that throbbed in daily agony that she had been forced to make it in the first place.
"He runs around Redcliffe swinging a wooden sword and carrying a shield. He says he wants to be a knight when he grows up. He loves to listen to stories about darkspawn, although the arlessa hates when I tell them," Duncan said.
Duncan hesitated, swallowed, then decided to continue, "He asks about you, sometimes. He sees the other children and their mothers and wants to know where his is."
Fiona could bear it no longer as she wine glass in her fingers trembled so much that wine began to spill over the edges. She tried to place it on the edge of the table, missed, as the glass tipped over and fell to the floor, breaking.
The cry crept up her throat, a weak, shrill wail just barely audible as it squeaked out of her mouth. She clenched her eyes shut and lowered her head so that Duncan didn't have to look at her like this. When she went to breathe in again, the air wouldn't seem to go down, instead bursting back out of her mouth almost like a cough.
She had been freed from the Warden's duty of her eventual Calling.
But the pain she had replaced it with was far deeper, blacker and more virulent than the taint ever was.
She could feel Duncan's arm wrap around her and hold her as she wept. Her hands clutched his shirt in bunches as she crawled and burrowed into his chest, trying to bury himself from the pain as she sobbed into him.
Duncan didn't say a word more, only held her, his hands gently rubbing her back as she expelled the torment she held inside of her since the last time she had made this exact trip to Jader, to exchange the same meaningless small talk and to hear the same report about her son until it sheared her apart.
She let herself be held by Duncan until she forced the last sobs out of her, as she clutched to him, a single bit of solace in a world that was cold and corrupted and wicked beyond repair. It was a world that had toyed with and kicked her since she was a child, one that showed no signs of relenting so long as she lived.
Fiona sniffled, wiped her eyes and her nose crudely with the back of her right hand even as she stayed pinned to Duncan's chest. "What do you tell him? When he asks about me?"
Duncan answered almost immediately. "I tell him that his mother died bringing him into this world," he said, repeating the lie that had been concocted to protect his true parentage.
Duncan gave her a squeeze, then his chest moved as he quietly snorted to himself. "But, I also tell him that I knew her, and that I know she's always thinking about him and that I'm sure she's proud of him each and every day."
Fiona might have started to cry again, if there were anything left inside her to flush out. Instead, she sniffled again, smiled and nuzzled deeper into Duncan.
"I am," she agreed.
"I know," Duncan said, stroking his hand across the top of her head as if he were petting a cat who had crawled into his lap. "You should travel to Redcliffe. You should see him."
"No," she whispered, almost whimpered, as she closed her eyes, letting herself relax under Duncan's gentle touch. "It's too risky."
"I never knew you to be one to shy away from risks," Duncan said. "He's young. He won't remember you."
Fiona groaned. "That doesn't make me feel better," she complained.
"You know what I mean," Duncan said.
"I do."
The older he got, the more likely he would be to remember that other Grey Warden who came to visit Redcliffe with Duncan. Maker forbid that he would remember her name, or ask about her, or try to seek her out some day. Duncan was right. If ever she wanted to dare to see him herself, she would have to do it soon.
She wanted to see him.
She wanted it more than anything.
She also didn't want it more than anything, because she might never be the same after.
"I'll think about it," she offered.
"I'm glad," Duncan said.
"And you'll continue watch over him?" she checked.
"Always."
"Thank you," she said. "I don't know why you do, but thank you."
"Because I love you."
She froze at his words.. He must have noticed, because the hand running through her hair and over her shoulders stopped.
He had said it so plainly, so nonchalant that it felt like something he had repeated to himself over and over to the point that it had become a simple fact of his life, one of many burdens he bore with him every day.
"You, love me?"
"Yes," Duncan said, still with a plainess that, to her, seemed odd. "I think I have, ever since my Joining, ever since you made feel like maybe I could belong with the Wardens. I felt so out of place back then, but, I think, you always felt out of place, too. It's silly, I know, but it was the first time in my life I felt like I wasn't on my own."
Fiona sniffled again, but didn't say anything as she tried to take it all in.
A Warden's life was sacrifice, so much so that the sacrifices they made became simple facts of daily life. They learned to bear it, to compartmentalize it and shove it deep down inside of themselves, where it would not conflict with their duty. Every Warden had to learn it, or else they would be torn apart by their own madness.
Alistair was her greatest sacrifice.
Perhaps she was Duncan's.
"I'm sorry," Duncan said. "I shouldn't have sprung that on you like this. This wasn't the time or the place for it."
She told herself she should get up, to sit back up her in own chair and let him go back to the other side of the table, where maybe they could pretend none of this has happened and instead share stories about their adventures since the last time they had come to Jader and she sobbed uncontrollably in front of him a year ago.
She didn't want to go. She wanted to stay.
He had needed her once, without her even realizing it.
"It's fine," she said softly, making no effort to move. "Just hold me a little longer."
She needed him, now, even if she hadn't realized it before.
"Please, don't let go."