The Seasons Of Our Day
"Commander."
"Come in, Lieutenant Mhairi."
It was late fall, four months after Ostagar, and the weather in the Bannorn had already turned chill and damp. The field tent had a fire burning in the center, smoke curling up to the vent along the middle pole, but it was still nearly unbearable. Ser Cauthrien sat in only undress - arming jacket and wool leggings - and Mhairi looked for signs of shivering. She saw none.
The tent flap fell closed behind her and her breath fogged in front.
"Speak freely," Ser Cauthrien added without looking up from her folding desk. Her quill scratched over parchment and her thumb held it taut against the wood.
Mhairi hesitated. She had rehearsed this for days, and her commander was almost a friend - but she was also a knight, commander of Maric's Shield, and acting head of the army while Loghain ruled in Denerim. She served Ferelden. She was everything Mhairi wants to be.
Or she had been.
The doubts that drove her to this tent extended even to the soldier before her, proud and diligent and strong. Mhairi lost her voice and was silent for long enough that the older woman's quill stopped and she looked up.
"Lieutenant?" the knight asked, voice quiet and almost gentle.
It was enough to break through. "This mission-" Mhairi blurted out, then frowned and glanced back to the tent flap. She dropped her voice to a near-whisper. "I have my doubts, commander, as to why we're here."
She waited for a reprimand, a correction, but it didn't come. Instead, the knight only sat back. Mhairi watched with nervous fascination, worrying at her lower lip until she caught herself and straightened her shoulders.
And then Ser Cauthrien sighed.
"I understand those doubts," she said, and she rubbed a hand over her face. "Take a seat, lieutenant, unless that is all you wanted to say."
It wasn't all that she had wanted to say, but this wasn't what Mhairi expected, either. A few quick, forceful strides (to convince herself as much as to move) brought her to the folding stool by the fire. She drew up her fur-edged cloak around her and focused on the licking flames instead of her surprise and uncertainty, looking away from them only when Ser Cauthrien sat down across from her and offered her a flask. Mhairi waved it away, and she set it aside without a sip for herself.
"Speak to me," Ser Cauthrien said as she settled, legs apart and elbows braced on her knees.
"Commander-"
The soldier lifted a hand. "Cauthrien. This is a conversation we have outside of our positions." She smiled as she says it, but it was grim, thin and taut.
Mhairi had never imagined her without her armor, her sword, her loyalty, and now those absences began to feel dangerous, thin and uncomfortable. Letting her defenses down left her unsteady and vulnerable; she couldn't begin to imagine what Cauthrien felt with it removed, her rank and her honor set aside for even a moment.
"Cauthrien," she said, and the name filled up her mouth with the wrong shape. It joined the clogging gravel in her throat. To question might be to commit treason. To question was to doubt Ferelden, or at least its greatest hero and his sharpest sword. But Cauthrien was all too human in the fire light, and her expression was so worn, so exhausted, that Mhairi found in it the courage to ask, "How many more fields will we have to burn?"
"Too many," Cauthrien responded, shaking her head. Her gaze grew distant for just a moment, focused on the glowing and crumbling wood. "As many as we can burn before they surrender. As many as there are to burn. I fear, sometimes, that we will have burned the whole of Ferelden by the time the Bannorn submits."
I fear. Mhairi laughed, a hoarse and rough thing, and dug her heel into the ground. "This isn't what I signed up to do."
"Neither did I. But we do what must be done in the service of our country." There was pride there, pride and loyalty, but it was fractured by- disappointment? Sadness? Cauthrien's shoulders had sagged and she pressed her hands together, thumbs rubbing against her skin. "I do not fault you for your doubts, Mhairi."
"I joined to protect Ferelden, not destroy it."
"So did I." Cauthrien looked up, finally, and met Mhairi's gaze. The pain there was undeniable without armor to shield it, and Mhairi nearly reached out. But she stopped, twining her fingers together and pressing them to her knee.
"Then why do we do this? Why did we run at Ostagar? Why-"
It was Cauthrien who leaned forward, who reached out, who settled a hand against her wrist. Mhairi looked up, startled.
"Because," Cauthrien said, "we do more to serve our country by fighting for it than by retreating or railing against what we cannot change. And because Loghain Mac Tir will lead us through this. Ostagar was a tragedy, but it was necessary. If we had charged- if we had saved the King - so many of us would be rotting on that field now that Ferelden would have nobody left to protect it. We do as we must."
"And the guilt?" Mhairi breathed.
"We swallow it down and live with it as best we can."
On Feastday, Cauthrien refused to let the army march. They rested, and in her tent, Mhairi sat and repented and tried to remember how to laugh as she drank from Cauthrien's flask. Cauthrien unearthed old smiles in turn.
"It won't be so bad from now on," Cauthrien murmured when the sun had set and they both sat close to the fire, boots off and wrapped in furs. "Every harvest is in. We can burn fields and take away nothing."
"That doesn't make it easier to see," Mhairi said, stretched on her stomach and toying with a small ring of braided straw, rolling it between her fingers. She had made it at the last town they had passed through, salvaging the straw from the ashen fields and braiding it at night while she stood watch. It was easier to look at then the fire, and easier still than Cauthrien, whose worn expression made Mhairi want to soothe the crease in her brow with the pad of her thumb.
"I know." Cauthrien's hand was warm and broad on her shoulder, and Mhairi looked up. Her smile was sad but true. "Still, it is the most I can give to you. I hope it's enough."
Mhairi flushed. "Oh- it is. It is. And this is, too." This companionship. This closeness. This warmth in a late Ferelden autumn. Worrying at her lip, she held up the ring. "This is all I can give in turn."
Cauthrien looked at the ring for a long moment, then took it carefully between her fingers, rolled it around her palm, and then slipped it onto one finger. "I used to make these as a girl," she said, soft and distant, with a faint smile on her lips. It eased the dull ache in her eyes.
"So did I," Mhairi said, fighting down the giddy smile that threatened. "So did I."
And when Cauthrien looked up, her smile grew. "Thank you," she said, and when she clasped her shoulder again it was warm, firm, accompanied by the stroke of a thumb.
"Happy Feastday, Cauthrien."
"And to you."
Winter in Denerim; cold, unforgiving, and lonely.
There was a knock at the door of her office and Cauthrien looked up, bleary-eyed from too little sleep and too much stress. "Come in," she called, and though she cringed at the hoarseness of her voice, it was so common that it passed off quickly. She sat back and waited for the door to open, running through who it might be: Loghain did not knock, Rendon liked to talk across the wood, and her guard rapped four times by her own request.
The door opened.
Mhairi. It had been two months since she last saw the woman, and for a moment she imagined the lines of soot and ash still streaked on her hands and face and clothing like they had been that one night in her tent, the remnants of a day's atrocities and sacrifices. Now, though, she was polished and cleaned. Her hair was a little bit longer. Her lips were still worried raw.
"Take a seat," Cauthrien said in greeting, and the other woman closed the door behind her and went to the chair beside her desk.
"They made you guard captain," Mhairi said, and Cauthrien couldn't tell whether the other woman wanted to laugh as she said it, cry, or stare her down. It all seemed wrapped up in the way her jaw tightened, her gaze went for just a moment to the floor, her lips quirked.
"They did," Cauthrien said with a shrug. "It's a lot more paperwork."
"Less field-burning."
That made her wince, but she moved her chair forward, around to the edge of her desk, and leaned forward. "Yes. Less of that. Why are you in Denerim, lieutenant?"
"Just Mhairi, please." Mhairi pushed a hand through her hair, then shrugged. "I'm delivering messages from the field. ... I just thought I would stop by."
Two months ago, they had spent long nights sitting together by the fire, talking about doubts and building up each other's faith. It was Mhairi's strength, even in her uncertainty, that bolstered her when she nearly faltered. It was what made her stick to her orders. It was what had brought her here, to this office, and encouraged her not to give in or to give up, but to fight as best she could for Ferelden even while the world seemed determined to fall apart around her ears.
Now, Mhairi's faint smile drew one from her in return.
"I'm glad you did," Cauthrien said. "I don't get many visitors these days who aren't being dragged in in chains. And you're a far sight better than any of them."
That brought a touch of color to the younger woman's cheeks, and Cauthrien watched as she rubbed at the back of her neck. She opened her mouth as if to speak, then closed it, swallowed, sought words. It always took time for her to find words. Cauthrien was willing to give it.
"I wish you were still out there," Mhairi said at last.
"Mhairi-"
"Sometimes I doubt that the new commander feels even the slightest bit of guilt. It's lonely out there, not knowing anybody else who wants to fight for Ferelden and not on orders. It's-"
"Mhairi," Cauthrien said, reaching out to touch her knee. "There are others. We do what we can. We follow orders and in that loyalty, we do what we can."
"I know," she said, brow furrowing. "But this isn't what I joined to do."
Cauthrien nodded. "I know. Trust me, I know.
"I joined because I saw a man on the road attacked by my age-mates, because they thought he was rich and Orlesian. I would have been betrothed in another year, but when that man I went to the aid of - when Loghain Mac Tir asked me if I would join his armies - there was no doubt in my mind. And now I find myself here, on his orders."
Cauthrien smiled as she spoke, the memories still dear to her even with the pain and doubt that now clung to them, to any thoughts of Loghain. She didn't notice Mhairi had moved closer until she felt her fingers brush over her hand, teasing at the worn straw ring she still wore.
"I was already betrothed when I ran away," Mhairi said, softly and with a laugh in her voice, a happiness that Cauthrien was so unused to that it made the world stop for just a moment. Everything became focused on the way Mhairi ducked her head, smiled, even blushed a little. "I didn't like him. And so- I ran away to the army. I'd always loved stories of knights and kings, and I thought I could be one."
"You could certainly be a knight," Cauthrien murmured, turning her hand over and catching Mhairi's in her own. "Do not doubt that."
Mhairi's blush deepened, and Cauthrien nearly laughed at it. The younger woman had never turned such a brilliant shade of red in her presence before, not even at ribbing from the men in her company. She had always been controlled along with her good humor and her dedication. But here, now, she blushed and even shifted her weight in her chair.
"Do not doubt it," Cauthrien repeated.
But instead of a thank you or a do you really think so? she responded by canting her head, then pulling her lip between her teeth and nibbling at it.
"Say what is on your mind," Cauthrien prodded, fingers tightening around Mhairi's hand almost unconsciously.
Mhairi swallowed, her throat bobbing, and then nodded, licked her lips, spoke. "... Did you want to be married? Before you met Loghain? Did you ever think..."
"That I would be a mother and a wife?" The question finally drew from her the laugh that had been building in her throat. It was unpracticed and rough around the edges, but it was also much needed, a joy, a relief. "I thought about it. I didn't know if I wanted it, then. But now, sometimes I look back and wonder what it would have been like. I think I would have liked to have children. To have worked the land. But I like this just as well."
Mhairi had leaned forward, enraptured and utterly focused, her bottom lip worried to swollen red. "And have you- since you are unmarried-"
Cauthrien's smile faltered in uncertainty. Since you are unmarried. She quirked a brow.
Mhairi coughed. "Ah. That is- do you ever have relationships?"
"... Not with my men," Cauthrien said as the realization dawned. Heat touched her own cheeks, settled in there and refused to leave, and she reached up with her free hand to run a hand over her head. "And I know few others."
"Oh."
Cauthrien looked down at their joined hands, then inhaled slow and deep. No; she had taken no lovers since she had joined the army. But Mhairi's hand in hers was warm and comforting, her earnestness everything Cauthrien craved, and she was beautiful. She was almost like a younger Cauthrien, but more free, more willing to speak and more determined to be heard.
"But," she said, slowly, "you are not under my command right now."
"And I am not a man," Mhairi murmured.
"No," Cauthrien said. "You aren't." And then she slid from her chair, going down on one knee before Mhairi and pulling her close enough to kiss.
They had no time. Cauthrien had a patrol before the hour was out, and Mhairi would leave in the morning. But for just a minute, Cauthrien let herself fall into her, closing her eyes and dreaming of a world where they had come together through something other than guilt.
Cauthrien wrote her from Denerim, and Mhairi received a letter every week. It was not a conversation; those letters they marked with finer paper. But the updates were soothing, and they reassured Mhairi as she marched on a field she didn't want to march on. Cauthrien's spelling was atrocious, her letters strained and over-formal, but Mhairi cherished each one.
And then, in Bloomingtide, they stopped coming. But by then, the news had come that the Warden, a near-mythical figure, marched on Denerim with the support of Arl Eamon of Redcliffe, and Mhairi had taken a horse and ridden hard for the capital.
By the time she arrived, Loghain Mac Tir was dead and the Warden had left to return to Redcliffe. The rumors said the darkspawn massed there, and that the Blight would end. She barely cared. The war is over was the only thing she thought - that and where is she?
Mhairi found her in her palace apartment, her doors guarded. The guards let her pass after she gave up her short sword, and the moment she stepped through the door and it was closed behind her, she sagged in relief against the wood.
Cauthrien looked up from the desk she sat at. There was a stack of parchment and a half-written sheet before her, and she stared as if she saw a ghost.
Mhairi found a smile for her. Cauthrien was worn and drawn and the circles beneath her eyes were darker than they had ever been before. She wanted nothing more than to go to her, plant kisses on her brow, and do her best to finally soothe the woman she had grown to care so much for between guilt and duty and the vagaries of fate. Instead, all she said was, "Hi."
"Mhairi," Cauthrien said. She sounded as if she was a mere second from breaking.
Mhairi could only nod.
"I didn't think I would see you again," Cauthrien said as she pushed herself out of her seat. She limped, and a new, bright scar traced a path across her left cheek. The Warden, Mhairi thought, and then tried to push it away. She had no time to worry about the other injuries she couldn't see, the hurt and loss. Loghain was dead. That Cauthrien lived still was a blessing in itself.
"But I'm here," Mhairi said as Cauthrien crossed the space between them.
"You deserted."
"I did." She rubbed at the nape of her neck, where her hair had grown long enough to tickle at her neck. "I did. But the war is over."
Cauthrien stopped where she was, looking down as pain shot across her features. "Yes," she said. "Yes, it's over."
Mhairi took the last few steps, reaching up to touch her chin, to trail her fingers across a jaw she had barely gotten to learn the feel of. "It's over."
Cauthrien closed her eyes, throat bobbing in a harsh, forced swallow. "Yes. And here I am."
"Under house arrest," Mhairi said, and she tried to laugh. She smiled. She rested her other hand lightly on Cauthrien's hip.
The other woman didn't respond, didn't move except to say, voice quiet and flat, "It's a polite way of saying that my execution has been postponed."
The world stopped. The world stopped, but it wasn't like the moment when Cauthrien had taken her hand in hers. No, the world stopped like it had the first time Cauthrien had ordered her to set fire to a man's fields. The blood drained from her face to pound hard in her ears, and she could barely feel the stone beneath her feet.
She heard herself whisper, "Don't say that. It's not true. That's not true." Mhairi tried to pull Cauthrien closer, but the taller, older, stronger woman held back. "The Warden just can't make that decision now, what to do," she tried again. "So much is happening. There's not enough time-"
"I know what their decision will be, Mhairi," Cauthrien breathed, gaze focused on the small window on the far wall. "I knew it the moment they let me step aside outside the Landsmeet doors. The Warden did not cut me down there to save his blades - and to allow me to stand before the law and repent my failings publicly. And then I will die."
"Don't say that," she whispered.
"You need to know it."
The pain and guilt and duty etched in the lines of Cauthrien's face were too familiar. It was all she had been for as long as Mhairi had known her, had filled even her happy letters, had flavored even the kiss they had shared those months ago. And like every time before, it called out to a similar but smaller, fresher feeling in her.
And like every time before, she moved close to soothe them both, rising onto her toes to kiss Cauthrien. She enfolded the older woman in her arms and drew her down against her. The kiss began soft- slow- experimental, because it had been so long - but soon it was frantic and needy, Mhairi tugging out the tie in Cauthrien's hair so that she could bury her hands in it and keep her close. Cauthrien only reluctantly embraced her in return, but as soon as her arms were around Mhairi's waist, they tightened, a half-cry coming from her throat.
More time. That was all she'd wanted. More time, to peel away the duty and guilt and agony that bowed Cauthrien's shoulders and haunted her eyes. She had wanted to find in her an echo and an equal, the woman who knew what it was to be a farmer's girl, to join the army, to laugh and cry with the other soldiers, to love her country. And she had wanted to find the farmer's girl herself, wanted to rescue her. Ser Cauthrien didn't need to be rescued.
But the woman in her arms cried out for it.
In that room, in the narrow bed that barely fit the two of them and was no softer than a bedroll, she learned the planes, valleys, peaks of Cauthrien, her body and her mind, the last holdouts of honor and dignity in the wake of the ravages of war. She kissed her until her cheeks turned wet with tears, moved with her until there was nothing but movement and heat, the undeniable living of body against body. She sought that rescue.
She found it in soft cries and murmured thank yous, in the way Cauthrien slept without nightmares for what she later said was the first time since Ostagar, in the way they fit in that room. She found Cauthrien, and it was enough.
"When this is all over," Mhairi said, naked to the waist and curled up in Cauthrien's narrow bed, "I'm going to join the Wardens." Her fingers stroked over the straw ring on Cauthrien's hand, followed it around to her knuckle, down the line of it to the calloused tip, and then all the way back up.
Cauthrien pressed a kiss to her shoulder, then bowed her head, hand stilling where it played patterns on Mhairi's stomach. "Will you?"
"The army won't have me back," she said with a small laugh. Her smile was lopsided, and Cauthrien rose up along her body to kiss her brow. "And I want to protect people. I want to make up for what I did." Her eyes sought Cauthrien's, her smile turning sad and tight for just a moment. You understand, it said.
Cauthrien said nothing about how it had been her orders which had brought Mhairi so low, her guilt which had infected her. Instead, she rested her cheek against the top of Mhairi's head, fingers playing with her hair now grown long enough to fall in her eyes. She twirled it in small locks, as if to set each away from the rest, to put in order what she had thrown into disarray with the path of her fingers, the heat of her breath.
"I have heard," Cauthrien murmured, "that it is not the same as running away to join the army. You might die in the attempt."
It might have been her own acceptance of her death, but Cauthrien's voice did not tremble, did not crack, as she spoke. Mhairi turned and curled an arm around her.
"Then I will see you at the Maker's side," she murmured, lips brushing lips, "and we'll have all the time in the world."