Of Married Men and Trees
[Alistair + M!Tabris]
"You were almost married?"
"I like to think that I actually was." Darrian Tabris's smile was tight as he leaned back against the tree he sat up in. Alistair watched him from below, sitting on the ground with his legs bent at the knee. His feet were swollen and he was grateful for Darrian's suggestion of stopping for a long break, but he hadn't meant it to go quite like this.
Speaking of childhoods and homes had led somehow to how Darrian had been recruited into the Wardens, and Alistair wasn't sure he liked where the story was going.
But Darrian didn't seem inclined to finish it. The tree held his attention more. They are a week out of Redcliffe, a month out of Lothering, but they had just recently reached a place where the trees were easy and safe to climb. Darrian spent more and more time up in them whenever they were stopped. Leliana had taken to teasing him, and Alistair had made more than his fair share of comments, but slowly, he was coming to understand.
There were no trees in the Alienage, none except the one Darrian called vhenadahl, so of course Darrian wanted to know what they were like. Alistair had scraped his hands and calves on tree bark as a child even living in Eamon's home, had fallen out of many of them. Darrian hadn't had that.
He'd had a lot of pain; that was what Alistair understood.
He felt foolish, so foolish, for asking half the questions he's put to the elf. This was only the latest of a long string of placing his foot firmly in his mouth. Perhaps, he thought, he should take up praying again, if only to ask the Maker to plant his toes firmly on the soil and out of any orifices.
"I'm sorry," he tried. "We don't need to talk about it. At all, really, if you don't want. I mean, not that I wouldn't listen, but-"
An acorn, green and half-grown, dropped onto his head and he looked up just in time for another to hit him squarely on the nose.
"Hey!"
Darrian laughed, a rare sound from the man but a welcome one all the same, a genuine one. "Apology accepted," he said, hopping down the larger branches until he had to clamber down the trunk, long fingers wrapping around smaller handholds. He added nothing about his past, about talking, about wanting to be heard.
Alistair scratched at the back of his head, thinking of all the times that Darrian had asked him to go on, had said that his ramblings were okay. It didn't seem fair.
"Right, well," he tried, but Darrian shook his head and clapped a hand on Alistair's shoulder as he passed.
"How are your feet? We should get moving again."
"But it's only been an hour!" he complained, feeling like a little boy even though he knew that Darrian was a good two years younger than he. But the man, for all his slight, young features, is large blue eyes and pale red hair, his quickness and his lack of brute strength, was becoming a strong leader, a powerful one, and Alistair knew he would follow no matter if he had to crawl from lack of available feet.
Darrian knew it, too. He grabbed one of Alistair's wrists (his other hand holding a bunch of leaves, a few more acorns) and hauled him up to standing. "Half an afternoon. The sun is an hour's trip from the horizon. Only three months away from Denerim and evenI know that."
"The wisdom of a married man," Alistair said, and then winced.
But Darrian only grinned. "Exactly."
