She won't wake up.
The Lady Cousland—Ailis, he tastes it on his tongue, Ailis, Ailis, he's never dared called her that to her face before, and now he might never get the chance—lies comatose on a bed in a hut in the middle of nowhere, the last of two Grey Wardens in Ferelden. The last Cousland, probably.
Her chest rises and falls regularly, her wounds are clotting, and none of them are infected. But she won't wake.
"Head trauma," Flemeth informs him. "Took a hit to the noggin just as I was flying in. Lucky it wasn't a sword through the gut. That was almost you—dagger through the lung. You're welcome."
He stammers out his thanks, earning him an eye roll from Morrigan, and goes back to staring at nothing in the distance.
Maker preserve them. There are only two Grey Wardens in all of Ferelden, the country is being overrun by the Blight, and Teyrn Loghain betrayed them. Is smearing the Wardens' good name everywhere. Alistair feels rage bubbling up inside him, churning beside the terror and fear. What is he to do? What is there to do?
And then she wakes.
xxx
"You can't possibly mean to desert!" he yells at her.
"It's not deserting if your order is decimated!" she yells back. "The order is gone. Your precious Duncan is dead. It's time for the retirement plan, and my retirement plan is reclaiming Highever!"
"Is Highever all you care about?!" he shouts. "What about Ferelden? What about the Blight?"
"All I know is the greatest general Ferelden has ever had left the wardens to die, and that blackmailing, heartless bastard is dead with them!" she screams back. "I will gather my army and take back my teyrnir, and then I'll send troops against the Blight. On that you have my word," she adds.
"You swore!" Alistair is so angry he feels tears coming to his eyes. "You swore to fight the Blight!"
"And Duncan extorted a promise from a dying man to sacrifice his last child," she says back mercilessly. "I'll fight your goddamned Blight. But as a teyrna, not as a warden. I want nothing of this order!"
They stand there, glaring at each other. He's in full plate and weapons, and she's in a flimsy nightgown and still bandaged up. The only thing she has is Champion of Swords at her side. But if it came to blows, Alistair's really not sure who would win.
Flemeth and Morrigan are just watching the two warriors scream at each other, Morrigan looking hugely entertained. But it's Flemeth who ends the stalemate.
"Loghain supported Howe's betrayal," she says, and everything quiets.
The Lady Cousland stops and turns to her, breathing heavily.
"How do you know this, my lady?" she asks.
Flemeth cackles. "Such manners! A true noblewoman, this. But yes, well, as an apostate—" she throws a dirty look at Alistair—"I know many things through my scrying pool. I do take an interest in Ferelden's affairs, you know.
"It's simple, really. Your brother took an Antivan to wife. Loghain took this as a sign that your family might be getting cozy with foreigners. Come Howe saying Bryce Cousland consorts with Orlesians, and poof! He agrees to Howe's rebellion."
The Lady Cousland grips the hilt of Champion of Swords, not to draw it but as if for support. "Have you proof, my lady?"
"Physical? There's none to be had, my girl," Flemeth says, almost fondly. "But go to the towns, listen in the villages. You'll hear it: they're in cahoots."
"Then my mission is to kill Loghain and Howe," the Lady Cousland says.
Flemeth cackles again. "You and what army, my dear?
"No, no. Turn your priorities around. Defeat the Blight first, and the kingdom will be so thankful they will bring you Howe's and Loghain's heads on platters.
"Your vengeance will be delayed, but ah, little Cousland, unless things have changed, Couslands always do their duty, don't they?"
xxx
Alistair is still furious at the Lady Cousland, and it doesn't help that she and Morrigan have struck up a fast friendship. It's warm enough now that they can sleep in the open, and Alistair has to listen to the two murmuring to each other about herbs and venoms, poultices and poisons, and whatever foul things one can get up to with plants.
Alistair has no skill at potions or poisons, but it seems noble ladies learn the art, because soon the two are spending evenings by the fire, grinding herbs and chattering away. He swears he even saw Morrigan smile once, and the Lady Cousland smiles often.
It grates. He's only managed to make her smile once, but that Witch of the Wilds does it often!
"Jealous?" Morrigan asks one day, as the lady goes ahead to scout out a safe camp. They're only a day away from Lothering, now. "Have I taken your favorite warden away from you? Oh, but—there's only two left, isn't there?"
"Shut up, apostate," he snarls impotently, and stalks away.
He's angry, but it's hard to remain so when she finds a lamb and exclaims over it, patting its head and admiring the pink ribbon tied around its neck.
"Dinner," Morrigan proposes, but she shakes her head.
"The bandits must have stolen it from a child," she says, referring to the bandits they drove off near Lothering. "We'll see if we can find its owner among the refugees."
They do, and the lamb is duly handed over along with fifty silvers pressed furtively into the elven father's hand, as if doing good should be done in secret.
xxx
For someone who only wanted to fight the Blight because it was in the way of her vengeance, she does a fantastic job of it. Alistair doesn't regret handing over the reins to her.
She drives off Loghain's lackeys, promising vengeance; kills bandits; clears out deadly spiders. Alistair watches her, and remembers how she didn't want this life, and aches because even if he's angry with her, he's glad she's with him.
He doesn't regret it, even as she verbally flays a lay sister of the chantry in a way that makes him want to cower in fear.
"An Orlesian wants to defend Ferelden against the Blight?" the Lady Cousland says, politely incredulous, and Alistair has to admit, the notion is a little odd. "Wouldn't you rather—" her smile is razor-sharp, "wait for us to die off and then reclaim your province?"
She finishes off with a sweet, sharp smile.
The Orlesian lay sister splutters and stammers, which is something that Alistair can sympathize with. Eventually, though, it all comes out: a vision from the Maker, a checkered past that includes being an excellent archer, and an impassioned plea.
Alistair never does figure out what the Orlesian lay sister says to convince the Lady Cousland, but eventually she joins them and tells them her name is Leliana. The Lady Cousland regards her with sharp eyes and sharper smile, and Alistair remembers Bryce Cousland fought against Orlesians not thirty years ago.
All in all, it's hard to stay angry at her. Finally, he can bear it no longer.
"I'm sorry I called you a deserter," he says outright, one night at camp.
They hadn't dared stay in an inn in Lothering, not after some townspeople took it upon themselves to try to kill them for a bounty. Their little band had hit them with the flats of their blades and the pommels of their swords, trying not to kill them, but it had been close for some of them. It just wasn't worth the risk.
She looks up from where she's been sharpening Champion of Swords.
"I'm sorry for your loss," she says after a long moment. "You loved Duncan very much."
"I did," he says. "He was a good man."
She looks away. "Maybe in peace time," she says.
"What did you mean, when you said he was a blackmailer?"
She takes a deep breath, and lays it out for him.
A castle under siege. A dead sister-in-law and nephew. A friend knight barring the door even through grievous injuries—and now he understands, a friend knight who wanted to become a Grey Warden. A mother on her knees.
And a father, who was told, "Swear your daughter into service, or I won't save her life."
"I never wanted to be a Grey Warden," she says, dry-eyed. "That was Ser Gilmore. But I lived, and he—I don't know. Maybe he died defending the doors."
Alistair feels sick, thinking of the lengths Duncan went to, to recruit this impossible woman. He wishes there'd been another way, any way, other than extorting a promise from the father Lady Cousland loved very much. Ferelden needs wardens, this warden especially, but the cost…
Alistair thinks of facing the Blight alone, without her, and he just can't. He couldn't. He'd die of fear before the first week. Oh, the battle part he can do, that's easy, but the leading…
They're the same age, almost, he and the Lady Cousland, but she's different. She commands.
And he thinks again of Cailan and Ailis that night long ago, and he shivers.
xxx
"Absolutely not," she says. She is livid. When Alistair touches her hand, it's ice-cold, and her eyes are glittering blue fire.
"Why leave him to be eaten by darkspawn? Show him more mercy than that," Morrigan argues.
They are standing a little ways away from a cage in Lothering—a cage holding a giant, scowling qunari. Morrigan, surprisingly, is advocating releasing him, while Lady Cousland is digging her heels in and refusing.
"He's a child-killer!" she says. "I let him free and then what?"
"To be caged and eaten by darkspawn—no one deserves that, not even a murderer," Leliana says in that low, soothing voice of hers. It's completely the wrong thing to say. The Lady Cousland stiffens even further.
"I absolutely will not free him. Free him if you wish, but I shan't."
"The Maker will credit it unto you as righteousness," Leliana tries again.
"This murderer follows the Qun, sister," she ripostes. Alistair only notices because he is standing behind her, but she is shaking near-imperceptibly.
"You can't leave him to the darkspawn, my lady," Alistair says suddenly. He's been staring at the qunari, and he can't bear it—giant though he may be, he's gaunt and his eyes are haunted. "You fed that one deserter once. Why not this one?"
"He killed a whole family," she hisses.
"Are you not better than that?" he says.
"No. No, I am not," she snarls.
Her eyes are sparking blue fire and Alistair wants to say, Yes, yes you are. You gave a lamb to a little girl. You gave a young boy a last keepsake from his mother. You wear a locket around your neck with your family's likenesses within…
"You are," he says. "You can have mercy. You're better than this."
She throws up her hands and walks away.
xxx
Later that night he wakes with a start. It's a Grey Warden thing—due to the taint within, he knows where the Lady Cousland is at all times. He sees her sneak past Leliana and Morrigan, Calenhad at her heels.
He can't follow her. He knows this. She'll know if he stirs from his bedroll. But he can follow his presence, and he knows she stops just outside the cage where the qunari is being held.
She comes back after a while, and he feigns sleep. He feels her pause at his bedroll on the way to hers, and she says,
"I told him to thank a man named Alistair. I told him 'That's who you owe your life to.' "
"No," he says, eyes still closed. "He owes you. Ailis Cousland."
He thrills a little, at that forbidden name crossing his lips.
Later, in the morning, when they walk into the town to resupply for the last time, he sees it: a single, beautiful, blood-red rose growing on a gnarled old rosebush beside the chantry. Before he can think better of it he's plucking it, and storing it into his pack, thinking all the while of a blue-eyed, blue-blooded woman with so much anger and yet so much light, still.