What they should have realised sooner was that Alaina was too curious to let the stories drop. That was how it started with Solas: "You must have some interesting stories about the Fade." After two hours and one minor emergency that went unheeded, Cullen and Cassandra finally tore her away with a promise that yes, they were going to let the apostate stay and no, they weren't going to kill him for offending the Maker or some such thing.
Varric wouldn't tell new stories, just the ones he wrote. She knew the Tale of the Champion because that had been the text Threros had used to teach her to read the common tongue. "Pulp," he said, "easy, simple, quick to understand. It will make sense to you sooner than the books written to teach children." And that taught her to read. Unfortunately, the writer proved to be tainted by his experiences and whatever the lady Seeker had put him through: he wouldn't write new things, or tell new stories. Not at that point.
Cullen and Cassandra were the same, and lady Nightingale and Josephine, whose only stories were of wines and things Alaina could find in any city, though that didn't prevent her from listening eagerly to them. Solas told more stories, and finally Mother Giselle mentioned the small library that must be in the bowels of Havens' Chantry. Needless to say, the Dalish woman tore through the tomes like a madwoman, devouring them with her eyes.
Then came the Iron Bull and Krem and stories that became gorey and messy. A fight with a Tevinter soldier caught on each horn, flailing and screaming the entire time. Growing up in a Qunari world, no, not in Par Volen, that wasn't all there was to the world under the Qun. Surviving re-education, the price of affection, of disinterest, of vanity and inflexibility. More stories for her to listen to, biding her time outside Haven.
Cole was next, the peculiar boy who was neither spirit nor demon, not truly. He was too real for that, too present, and she adored him for it. He saw fractions and glimpses of others' minds, but he never questioned it. He recited the words like a mantra or chant, biting, constant, doubtless. They made sense to him. He must have known that the little snippets helped her, too, because she latched onto them like a babe to its' mother, finding stories of grief and pain and heartbreak and healing, all at once, in brisk sentences clipped with alliteration and echoing sounds. Inspired by him, she began to make up her own.
Then Haven fell and Dorian arrived, and then a long, lonely march through the snow. The only thing that kept her alive through all this was the insistence of her mind, and then, and then, and then, like a spell keeping her on her feet. There was the light of fire far ahead, she could see it, biting into the sky like a beacon. In her mind, stories fragmented and came apart, but they remained encouraging, not disillusioning: heroics and victories, against all odds. Stories are what saved Alaina Lavellan's life that day, and would many more times in the future.
Unfortunately for her, by the end, there would be more than one story she knew and wouldn't tell.
Word count: 554
A/N: Threros is one of the hren of clan Lavellan, a teacher for the little ones.
