The last couple of weeks had been unpleasant, to say the least. Duncan was not the sort of man to offer empty condolences, nor did she want any. She'd had no interest in conversation, had trudged, sullen and broken, behind him on the journey to Ostagar. There had been a heavy tension between them for the entirety of the journey.
She blamed him. For taking her from her parents, for not allowing her to die defending them. She blamed him, if only because he was the only available vessel for her anger. After enough time wore on, exhaustion crept in. The blame subsided, and the anger faded to a quiet burn. By then, the silence had persisted too long and it became too awkward to try and break it.
When they finally did arrive at Ostagar it was to a greeting from the bloody king himself. Her skin itched with her desire to escape. He was just so excited to meet her, so excited about the upcoming battle, so excited about everything in general. It was suffocating her. She hid her discomfort behind forced pleasantries. Every polite "Your Majesty" acted as a shield against his questioning about her family. She thanked him when he vowed to bring Arl Howe to justice and hoped he was too caught up in his grand battle to notice that his words were empty.
The sight of the king talking about a darkspawn horde as though it was a boring family dinner had left her feeling unsettled. She hadn't joined the Wardens with any true interest in fighting darkspawn. But if she knew anything about them, it was that they were not a force to take lightly, true Blight or not. She was so thrown, that when Duncan spoke of his own misgivings, she had called the king a fool before she could think better of her words.
Her mother would have been appalled.
But her mother wasn't here.
Duncan was not impressed, either. He had sent her off to search for another Warden named Alistair, telling her to leave her hound with him while she explored the keep. Hessarian was not pleased at this development, and gave her a piteous whine as Duncan led him away towards his camp.
And now she was standing in the middle of a strange camp, alone, without the faintest interest in her surroundings. She wanted Fergus.
He was her reason for agreeing to join the Wardens in the first place. If it would get her to Ostagar, to his side, she hadn't cared what she'd had to agree to. He was all she had left and she couldn't look at Castle Cousland without feeling ill anyway. And now she was here, and he was off in the Wilds and it was all she could do not to run out the gates and scream for him until he was by her side.
She ran a shaking hand down her face, feeling altogether overwhelmed and exhausted beyond words.
She forced her legs to move, bypassing the tents of the King and Teyrn Loghain without a second glance. Perhaps she could find a cot and simply sleep for an age. As if Duncan wouldn't find her and drag her back to his cause.
The camp was full of life, and she found herself surprised at the groups the King had managed to bring together. Chantry mothers, mages, Templars, Ash Warriors and Grey Wardens, all coexisting in peace to rally behind the King's banners. It was impressive. She gave the mages a wide berth, watching them from the side of her eyes as she hurried past them. She could see some of them enveloped in odd, wispy clouds, and a few others looked as though they were in a deep trance. It sent a chill down her spine and caused her hair to stand on end. She had always found mages to be creepy, and to see so many of them gathered together was disconcerting, at best.
In her search for the Grey Warden Duncan had mentioned, she found her fellow recruits. The first was a twitchy-looking rogue named Daveth who was in the middle of irritating a female soldier with bad lines when she found him. He seemed nice enough, but she told him in no uncertain terms that if she caught him staring at her hindquarters even once, she would feed him his own eyeballs. The second was Ser Jory, a knight from Redcliffe, who was kind but rather uninteresting. She found herself surprised by both of them. Ser Jory seemed capable enough, but not the type to stand out in a crowd, and she found it hard to picture him facing an archdemon. And she found Daveth to be a bit of a fool. Were the Grey Wardens really so desperate?
It left a sour taste in her mouth. When Duncan had first proposed her recruitment to her father, she had aggressively supported the idea. She had never been happy to sit at home and embroider and gossip the way other noblewomen did. Since she was old enough to lift a sword, she had haunted the training yard, practicing with the younger guardsmen and recruits. It had been quite a few years since a recruit had beaten her, and even Ser Gilmore had to be at his best to beat her in a sparring match. She had known for a long time that she would never be content to become the spoiled wife of some highborn lord. To produce equally spoiled lordling babies until she grew old and complacent. And then she would have to find excitement in gossip and illicit affairs. It was an extreme version of the truth, to be sure. After all, her mother had been a fair fighter in her day and seemed quite happy with the life of a teyrna. And she would hesitate before calling her mother complacent. But she wanted more than that. She wanted to earn respect from her deeds, not the blood that flowed through her veins.
She had been so furious when her father would not let her join him at Ostagar. She understood the logic, knew it wasn't out of coddling but out of necessity. She had to be present at Highever in case anything happened to them. But it didn't stop her from resenting him for leaving her out of the action. At the time, joining the Wardens seemed a good way to get herself into the fray, and whether she had truly meant to join, she no longer knew. It no longer mattered.
Now, to see her fellow recruits, to see how… average they were, it made her wonder. Had Duncan truly wanted to recruit her because he thought her worthy, a good fighter? Or were the Wardens so desperate for recruits they would accept anyone with enough of a death wish? Her mouth twitched downward at the thought.
She'd had enough exploring. This was giving her too much time to think, and her thoughts were beginning to rebel. If she thought any more on how she'd gotten here, she might find herself a high tower and fling herself from the top of it.
She made her way toward the back of the keep, where she could hear a heated argument between a surly enchanter and a man her age in Warden splintmail. She presumed he was the one Duncan had told her to seek.
Had she met him a couple weeks earlier, everything would have been very different. He was tall and broad, muscular in all the right places, so much her type. Add to that his easy grin and boyish charm and – well, she had left more than one guard recruit just like him in her wake back at Castle Cousland.
But that was before. Before Dairren. Before Arl Howe. Before she had seen what her callousness had wreaked and before Duncan had all but dragged her from her tearful parents.
The mage's angry voice drew her from her darkening thoughts, and she stopped short, eyeing him warily. "What is it now?" the mage snapped at the young Warden. "Haven't Grey Wardens asked more than enough of the Circle?"
The Warden looked as though it were taking every muscle in his body to be polite as he responded. "I simply came to deliver a message from the revered mother… ser mage." His nose crinkled at the title, but his insincere smile didn't falter. "She… desires your presence."
"What her Reverence 'desires' is of no concern to me!" the mage responded angrily. She raised a brow at the man's ire. "I am busy helping the Grey Wardens – by the King's orders, I might add!"
The Warden's smile slipped from his face as he dropped his polite façade. When he spoke again, his voice had lost all sense of entreaty, replaced by a sardonic edge. "Should I have asked her to write a note?" The mage snarled.
"Tell her I will not be harassed in this manner!"
The younger man's eyebrow arched into a point. "Yes," he drawled. "I was harassing you by delivering a message." She couldn't help the snort that escaped her at his words, and he tilted his head to glance at her. His face broke into a ridiculous grin upon meeting her gaze.
The mage noticed, and scowled. "Your glibness does you no credit."
Feigning great offense, the Warden brought a scandalized hand to his chest. "And here I thought we were getting along so well! I was even going to name one of my children after you." His lips pursed and he let his hand fall to his side. "The grumpy one."
With a dramatic roll of his eyes, the mage shook his head. "Enough. I will speak to the woman if I must." He turned and stalked past the other man, bumping him roughly with his shoulder as he did so. "Get out of my way, fool."
The Warden shook his head and gave her a wistful sigh, turning toward her with a genuine smile. "You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together."
The unhindered laugh that flew out of her in response caught her by surprise. It was the first time she'd done so since she'd left Highever. She crossed her arms over her chest, fingers clasping tight to her arms. "I know exactly what you mean," she replied wryly.
His grin grew wider, and her eyes followed that spectacular eyebrow as it arched once more. "It's like a party! We could all stand in a circle and hold hands. That would give the darkspawn something to think about." His head tilted to the side, and the gesture made him look rather like Hessarian when he was listening for rabbits. He was looking at her as though he were only just now seeing her. "Wait – we haven't met, have we? I don't suppose you happen to be another mage."
She raised a brow, resisting the urge to scoff. "Am I wearing robes or wielding a staff?"
He smirked. "You never know, these mages sneak up on you." Realization dawned on him then, and he snapped his fingers. "Wait, I do know who you are. You're Duncan's new recruit, from Highever! I should have recognized you right away, I apologize." She waved away his apology and offered a small smile instead.
"And you must be Alistair."
He seemed to perk up a bit. "Did Duncan mention me?" There was that eyebrow again. "Nothing bad, I hope?"
Her brow furrowed. "Just that I should find you for the ritual."
Alistair nodded. He seemed to grow pensive as he studied her. "As the junior member of the order, I'll be accompanying you when you prepare for the Joining."
She looked to the longsword and shield on his back. There was an assured rigidity in his broad shoulders, and she felt comforted by this information. He had the build of a defender, and his stance told her that he was a skilled fighter. If she was to have a babysitter, at least they'd provided one who was easy on the eyes and knew what he was doing.
She gave him the best smile she could muster, holding out a hand for him to shake. He reached for it without hesitation, and she could feel the warmth of his skin even through the leather of his gloves. His hands were large enough that the calloused fingers poking out of the end of his gloves touched against her wrist.
"Pleased to meet you," she responded, hiding annoyance at the blood she could feel creeping into her cheeks. "I'm Olivia."
NOTE: I want to preface this story by saying that I have no intention of creating another cookie-cutter spoiled noble who has to learn that life is hard, you can't always get what you want, etc etc. because people just aren't that simple. I really want to explore what it would mean to grow up as member of the third most powerful family in Ferelden and then to suddenly have nothing, and how that would translate to becoming one of the only people who can truly stop the Blight. So while this fic was born from an obsession with the Cousland/Alistair romance and will predominately be about that, it's turned into a vehicle for me to explore an interesting vengeance arc, as well as Cousland's relationship with her companions.