I had no idea that there would be a character in DA2 named 'Aveline' when I named my Warden. My Warden looks nothing like her, and I have no idea if their personalities match up, but I am surprised nonetheless! So, um, pure coincidence, I swear.
The first thought Avi had upon waking was that she was very, very hungry. The second thought was that she should be dead, and being dead felt an awful lot like starvation. Truthfully, she hadn't been the best daughter and sibling in the world, but certainly she had not done whatever it was that made you exist in perpetual hunger for eternity.
But where she was laid down was soft, and warm, and smelled clean, and she very much did not wish to open her eyes and see where she was. It was unfamiliar enough to cause her worry, but her nose was just cold enough to tell her that giving up the body heat under the blanket would be a poor choice. And—Maker, she was in her smallclothes.
There was nothing that would get a woman out of a strange bed faster than realizing she was almost naked.
"Ah, your eyes finally open. Mother shall be pleased." That smooth, dark voice greeted her, sliding over her and announcing Morrigan. Avi suddenly felt even more embarrassed to be in her smallclothes in front of the woman, and apparently swathed in bandages. And there was some sticky gunk upon her face, likely where the burns had been before. She felt fine, healthy, whole, and not unlike having had slept for a full night, despite the ever-gnawing hunger. "Tell me, how does your memory fare? Do you remember mother's rescue?"
"I…no, the last I recall was…" Avi choked, remembering Alistair crashing to the ground next to her, riddled with arrows. "Is…Alistair? Rollo? The mage? Were they saved as well?"
"If one of those is a fellow Grey Warden with an incredible capacity to weep and the other a mangy hound, then they were recovered as well, yes. The mage you refer to, I suspect, was the one mother found headless, and thus beyond even her arts." Morrigan said all of this in an off-hand way. No comfort, no remorse. Conversation. "The rest of the army was massacred, as the man who was to respond to your signal quit the field."
Loghain…quit the field? Teyrn Loghain, general of legend, hero of renown…quit the field? Abandoned his son-in-law, the king, and allowed the armies of arls, banns and even her own to perish? As well as the Grey Wardens…
"Your friend is outside by the fire. I suppose it would be unkind to say he is being childish, with all his blubbering." Morrigan scoffed. "I shall help you back into your armor, if you like, and give you a rag for your face. The poultices should have done the work mother's healing did not. She wished to see you when you awoke."
Avi pulled herself from the bed, amazed at the amount of glop that had been slathered upon herself and then wrapped in linen strips. Had she really been so broken? She began removing them in fistfuls, revealing nothing but cream skin beneath. No scars, no lesions, no disfigurement to her face. It was if someone was playing a joke on her, slapping her with glowing red poultice slime for kicks and telling her she'd nearly died. Oh, how funny!
After wiping herself clean with the towel Morrigan provided, she slipped on the softer clothes to protect her from chafing, then allowed the witch to help her re-buckle into the chain mail. She noted that this armor had not been as well cared for as her skin and organs; it was missing vital chunks in certain areas, splotched with drying blood, and fit her poorly. She needed to replace it. Luckily, the few sovereigns she had were still tucked into a tattered section of the inner padding, though all of the smaller coppers and silvers had trickled out along the way, with a few in the bottom of her tattered, blood-stained pack. Two sovereigns could feed a man, a woman, and a dog, if they managed to be somewhat conservative, for a month, perhaps, if she did not replace her armor.
The rumbling in her gut was anything but conservative, however. How long had she been out, to be this hungry?
Distracted as she was by the thought, Avi did not remember to thank Morrigan until she was outside, facing Alistair and Morrigan's mother, Rollo covered in mud and looking as pleased as punch despite the circumstances. Apparently, he had caught a frog and it had been delicious. This more than made up for almost-death.
"You…you're alive! I thought you were dead for sure." Alistair's miserable face did nothing to make her feel any better. She wished, instead, he had done something well-meaning and inappropriate, mock-horror over her supposedly ruined face, only to tell her he was only kidding so she could punch him in the shoulder and she could stop remembering that everyone kept dying around her. She needed a desperate laugh. "Duncan's dead. The Grey Wardens, even the king…they're all dead."
She swallowed, in a haze as Alistair and Morrigan's mother, Flemeth, began to discuss the future, speak of what needed to be done and who needed to do it. She dimly remembered the treaties, but…Duncan had had them. How could they even use the treaties, when he held them?
Except…she thought. Had she ever actually given them to him? She had shown him them, and then they'd moved on to the Joining. Did she…? As they talked of archdemons, Loghain, Eamon, the shadows of men's hearts and uncertainty, she dug awkwardly through her pack, past miscellaneous poultices, medicines, and glowing blue vials, for…ah! She almost pulled them out violently, before stopping to remember that they were of no use tattered, ripped or otherwise mangled. Rather, she slid them out carefully, rolled as they were, and nearly unbalanced herself gracelessly trying not to dump her open pack and hand them off to Alistair at the same time. His face lit up, the first sign of anything other than depression.
"Of course, the Grey Warden treaties!" He looked almost as if he might hug her, and she took an involuntary step back as he reached for them. Flipping through them, he listed their allies off by name while Flemeth chuckled. The woman frightened Avi, deep in her marrow, in a way that made her determined not to show an ounce of it. "Can we do this? Gather an army, face the archdemon, end the Blight?"
"I…" Her voice cracked. There were two of them. How could they possibly…? "That…is what Grey Wardens do…and we are the only ones left. We have no choice." Couslands always do their duty.
"I would give you one last thing, to aid you." Flemeth's smile was haunting, making Avi tense immediately. But the 'thing' turned out to be…Morrigan, who, despite her protests, seemed to wish very much to come along.
"And you, Wardens? Do you understand? I give you that which I value above all in this world. I do this because you must succeed." Avi's head hurt from hunger, she was rapidly becoming somewhat terrified, and the anger was seeping back into her, for the unfairness, the ridiculousness, the insanity of the situation. She felt like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin and hide somewhere until everything was over. How much could a human mind deal with before shattering, honestly?
"I…understand. I swear to you, she will not come to harm with us." She said it before she thought about it, before the realization that they were going to fight an archdemon, a Blight, could cut in and remind her that such promises were hardly reasonable to keep. And as Alistair and Morrigan began bickering and they worked their way through the cold, stinking Wilds towards Lothering, she couldn't help but feel as if she'd been fooled somehow.
"Uck." Avi spat. She could hear in the back of her mind her mother making a horrified face at her child's manners, but somehow this didn't bother her as much as the taste of bandit blood that had splashed into her mouth. The sight of the templar lying dead beside them had been too much; she hadn't wanted to give them mercy, and she was now a sovereign and a half richer for her efforts.
And all of them, save Morrigan, was splattered with blood, making it likely that Lothering would be a fair sight less than hospitable towards them. Unless, perhaps, they believed that a man, two women and a dog could kill, what had it been? Five, six bandits? More?
She didn't remember. It had occurred in a red haze of rage. People were starving, dying, running in fear, and these men were squeezing silver from them, all with a jaunty, cavalier attitude and a flirty disregard for decency. They had deserved it.
Trying to wipe the blood from her face, she only succeeded in smearing it. Wonderful.
"Here." Alistair handed her a surprisingly clean white kerchief, pulled out from the inside of his pack. She stared at it dumbly for a moment before gratefully ruining it with the bodily fluids on her face. "While you look splendid in red, perhaps it's best if we not terrify the refugees completely." His face was remarkably clean, but then again he wielded a shield, her family's shield, and was kept much cleaner thanks to it.
"Thank you." She nodded, hesitating to hand it back. He laughed.
"You can keep it, for the next time. I think you'll get more use from it than me, anyway." He was grinning, an odd change from the walk through the Wilds, where his only words to her had involved apologies as he hustled her along when she tried to persuade them to look for her brother. The anger from that particular instance had cooled in the vented, severed hides of the bandits behind them, as well as the logical part of her that knew it would have been suicide to try.
"As touching as this scene is, tis a surprise you managed to not fall on your blade in grief by now." Morrigan's snark cut through the pair of them, causing Alistair to wince and Avi to sigh. So much for the momentary peace.
"Is my being upset so hard to understand? What would you—" Alistair started. Avi spoke up before it could go any further.
"This won't help. We are three people," Rollo butted against her thigh, "and one mabari against a Blight. Stop picking at each other." She snapped, peevishly. Alistair's mouth snapped shut and Morrigan scowled, but neither continued. "We need to get provisions and a map and repair armor. Tents, as well, and Maker knows what else. Let's just…get moving."
"Yes, ser!" Alistair replied brightly. He seemed to do better when given direction, which rankled a little. Shouldn't he be in charge?
Their approach was almost halted by a templar, trying to stop them to explain the lack of accommodations. She stormed past him without comment, having absolutely zero intention of wasting time talking with him or staying the night. The place was miserable, in obvious, sunken-eyed ways, where every person lamented a loss or a tragedy. This was not where one took time to shake the dust from their boots.
And it was not one where someone could get peace to do their errands, as no sooner did she find the only merchant in the village was she pulled into a ridiculous struggle over prices and fairness and charity. It was idiotic; the merchant was trying to pay her to run off an older priest like a bandit, charging ridiculous prices for goods that would not be sold because no one could afford them. There was good business sense, and then there was stupidity.
She was half a head shorter than the man, and obviously of the 'fairer' sex. But she had the advantage of being dotted by flaking blood and carrying an exorbitantly large sword, as well as being flanked by two others and a mabari who was very clearly requesting permission to sink teeth into fleshy, tender parts. So when she commanded that the merchant lower his prices, it was no small wonder to her that he obeyed with a squeak and a scramble. Morrigan tried her best to be offended that the group was interfering in meaningless squabbles, but the small, satisfied grin at the man's fear did not seem disingenuous.
She hesitated by the Chantry board. Answering some calls for help would yield payment, and money was a problem. But so was time, and running about killing…bandits, bears, and rummaging for corpses would take up an entire afternoon, an afternoon they needed to gather their supplies and leave.
As it would turn out, a great many things were determined to take up their time that day, intentions be damned.