A/N: I have no title creativity, obviously. If you followed this from the Gakuen Alice fandom, turn back unless you also like Dragon Age. This is a fandom exchange for silksieve on livejournal, and you should all join the nathaniel_howe community because he is awesome.

I hope this is somewhat alright... :S

Talking Is Good For You

xx

It was strange. Vigil's Keep, Amaranthine, Ferelden – it was all at once familiar and horribly unsettling, being back here again. Eight years in the Free Marches would have been enough for a return to his childhood home to disconcert him, but he hadn't reckoned in his father's death, his brother's death or the complete and sudden loss of his family's long-held titles, lands and possessions.

Nor had he expected to be conscripted into the Grey Wardens – under the command of the very person who had murdered his father, who had now taken over his family's lands, who he had tried to kill mere weeks ago - or forced to reconsider his entire view of the father he had once hero-worshipped.

So it was to be expected that he spent most of his time pacing his old bedroom in an effort to get his thoughts straight.

Eight years was a long time if you thought about it. He had only really been a child when he left the country, or how could he not have seen what his father was to become? Had he really been that blind to it all? From what the Commander and Delilah had told him, and from all those old letters and whispers in the Vigil, he supposed that he must have been. But even so; if he had come back earlier, if he had rushed home as soon as news of King Cailan's call for arms had reached him – surely he would have been able to save them. (He wasn't quite sure who 'them' was – Father, Thomas, Delilah, the Couslands, them all – but there was guilt there nonetheless.)

And instead, this. He had been a noble with a proud heritage and a respected surname, servants and money and tenants on the land, a future arling in his name, and now he was... well, that was the problem. What was he meant to do now?

"Hi there!" said Sigrun practically skipping into the dining room.

Nathaniel looked up, distracted from his rather heavy thoughts. "Is something happening today?"

"What? No, it's just... a nice day. You could cheer up a little more yourself, you know," she said. She sat down opposite him.

"I'm fine."

"You've been saying that for the past month and none of us have ever believed you," Sigrun said bluntly. "Sorry, but someone had to tell you."

"Well, thanks... I think. It's nothing that I need to talk about, Sigrun."

She shrugged. "Okay then. But you're always welcome to chat if you want to." She took out a dagger and started to sharpen it on Nathaniel's whetstone. It took him a few moments to realise.

"Isn't that mine?"

"Ha! It might be, actually! Sorry about that. I was going to tell you that I borrowed it last week, but then... can I use your whetstone to sharpen my knife please?"

"Of course."

Sigrun grinned and continued. The pair sat there in silence for a while, the only noise being the hum of the dagger as Sigrun worked on it.

"Really, I was going to tell you," she said.

"Pardon?"

"About your stuff. It was just that I really needed to get my handaxe in some sort of working order and it was just sticking out of your pack right there. And yes, I know stealing is wrong, but..."

"Old habits die hard?"

"Yeah," she said, sheathing the dagger and holding out the whetstone to him. He took it. "It feels weird to actually be able to buy stuff nowadays."

Of course, thought Nathaniel, perhaps being brought out to a ceiling-less world for the first time in your life and being denied your suicide sentence would be more disconcerting than simply finding new owners for your old house. "Do you miss being underground?"

"What? Miss being treated like nug vomit and under the thumb of an evil crime lord, you mean?"

"It must be very different here than in Orzammar and the Deep Roads."

She laughed. "Different in a bad way? I don't know, I rather like having a proper bed and people who are more like 'Ooh, really short tattooed woman!' rather than 'Ew, casteless bronto poop!'. But... well, how about you? Do you miss the Free Marshes - or wherever it was?"

"Marches," he said automatically. "A little, I suppose. I miss the old Amaranthine that I knew as a child more, though, when my family were still alive and not in the business of betraying Teyrns," he continued before realising what he had just said.

"I knew you'd open up eventually!" said Sigrun triumphantly. "Er, I mean, I see. How horrible."

"Hmm," Nathaniel grunted.

"You know what?" Sigrun said after a while, when it was clear that Nathaniel was not going to elaborate. "Actually, I do miss Orzammar. I might not have been worth anything to that city, but it was my home. And I did have family there, and good times... Well, I suppose you'd miss your childhood no matter where it was spent."

"It feels like a strange nightmare, being here," admitted Nathaniel after another short pause. "It's as if I'm... a servant of sorts, in what used to be my own home. Especially when my new Arl and Commander was the same man that my father shared that history with."

"You could do worse," said Sigrun perkily. "Like dead. Or Legion of the Dead dead. Being up here is rather more cheery than those darkspawn nests, you have to admit."

"Are you still part of the Legion, then?"

Sigrun seemed to consider this for a moment before she answered. "I don't know. If I were really still in the Legion, I should be down there with my comrades fighting the darkspawn, not sitting around talking to ex-noble humans in grand dining rooms."

"But you are happy being a Grey Warden, so you don't want to go back to your old life?"

"We fight darkspawn from time to time, sometimes it's almost like the same thing," Sigrun said, shrugging. "But, maybe there's not much point worrying if I'm still dead or not. As long as there's still an afternoon of genlock-stabbing to get on with, it doesn't matter what I am. That's what I decided last week."

"I think I see," said Nathaniel. He was a little surprised at this almost-eloquent description of her epiphany. "What do you mean, last week?"

"Oh, Velanna and I were talking. I said that we've both been kicked out of our homes and everyone else here seems to have had that done to them too – even the Commander! Still, we're all Grey Wardens now..."

"The Commander killed my father," said Nathaniel, frowning at the table. "It was the just thing to do, it's true, but sometimes it is hard knowing that it happened."

"Oh." Sigrun already knew about that incident, of course, but it was another thing to hear him admit it. She pursed her lips and wondered what to say to that. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's in the past now, I suppose," continued Nathaniel, talking more to himself. "Even though the Commander hasn't been exactly what I had expected, I can't help but remember it..."

"You should probably be talking to him if you have problems being under his command then, not me," said Sigrun, feeling a little awkward. "Is that the real problem?"

"Pardon?"

"As in," Sigrun furrowed her brow, trying to think how best to put it, "what you just said about missing your old Amaranthine, that's a different problem from knowing about your father, and that's a different one from the Commander."

"Is there a point to this?"

"Er... no?"

Nathaniel scowled and continued to look moodily down at the table. Sigrun sighed, frowning at herself.

"I meant," she said after thinking quietly for a while, "if the first problem about not being who you were before is the worse one, then if you talked to us then we could help."

"If you say so," said Nathaniel, not sounding very impressed.

"Like I said, everyone here is in something new, so you shouldn't feel as if you're completely alone," said Sigrun, ignoring him. "You're a Grey Warden."

"Yes, yes, I know." It surprised him a little, but of course he did already know that. He had thought it not even a few minutes ago; how Sigrun was really much more out of place than he was, how Velanna had been rejected by the very family she had fought for, how Justice had been forced into an alien universe – and how the Grey Wardens were their identities now.

Well, maybe not Justice, but it had given the spirit a purpose – which was the real point.

"That's good to hear," Sigrun said warmly. "How about your family?"

Nathaniel inwardly winced as the mental image of Anders sniggering and saying, 'Howe about your family?' crossed his mind. "What about my family?"

"Your father, I suppose," she said. "You're obviously still thinking about it."

"Of course," he said, scowling. "So my own father turned out to be a cold-blooded murderer. Obviously it's very easy for me to forget all about it."

"Nobility is never nice," said Sigrun with a sigh. "There was an exiled noble in the Legion once, and he said some... not very nice things about the Diamond Quarter."

"Huh. Maybe Delilah had the right idea."

"Who? Oh, your sister? Did she get along with your father then?"

"She saw through him before I did."

"You weren't in the country! And you said that you hadn't seen your father since... a long time ago. So... don't go blaming yourself and then brood about it for the next year."

"I could do that," said Nathaniel, raising his eyebrows.

"And this is why I keep telling you to cheer up. It's good for you!"

He waved off the suggestion. "I suppose there's nothing more to do now, except for make it up by killing darkspawn; if it can ever be made up for, that is." He sighed heavily. "At least Delilah is happy now."

"That's the spirit." She counted off something on her fingers. "Last thing – how do you feel about the Commander?"

"I –what?"

"He killed your father and took all your things," she said rather matter-of-factly. "Or did you mean something else? Heh, I mean, it must make things a bit strained."

"Yes, and my failure of an assassination attempt."

"... No-one told me that."

"Obviously I didn't make it, so there's nothing to talk about."

"Oh, well, that's a bit anticlimactic."

He didn't reply to that, instead being deep in thought. Of course he knew who he would be, who he was – part of the Grey Wardens, dedicated to making the Howe name great again. Of course he could live without the arling of Amaranthine – after all, if Delilah could marry a shopkeeper, then he could definitely survive (and he remembered that he was happy to be surviving at all, after the news of Thomas).

The Commander was a good man and Nathaniel even thought that they were getting along rather well these days, but still-

"Yes, things are strained," he said to Sigrun.

She jumped. "What? ...oh. Well... I've never been in that situation before either," she said. "Maybe you just have to let things blow over. Or talk to him about it."

"You know," said Nathaniel. "I don't think I'll ever truly forget about something like that."

"Still, just as long as it's not always on the surface..."

"Hmm," grunted Nathaniel, not entirely convinced. "I doubt that that would be healthy."

"I guess not. Even so, you're not going to be forever in Amaranthine or under his command."

"This still doesn't seem like a good way to resolve it by simply waiting it out."

She held up her hands. "I have no idea!"

He sighed again and stood up. The Commander was still a tricky issue – though the rest of his thoughts were surprisingly clear. Perhaps talking really did help. "Thank you for talking to me, Sigrun," he said. "It was very helpful." He picked up his bow, and left.

"... You're welcome," said Sigrun as the door closed, more than a little confused. She shrugged to herself and sharpened her spare dagger on his whetstone.

xx

aka complete and utter pointlessness. Sigrun was chosen because it was going to be either her or Anders, and if I did Anders this would have turned into a homoerotic subtext-fest. Shipping was probably not the point of the dialogue.