Dwarves are the best.
Technically it's their ale that's the best. The strong black brew made of fungus gets her drunk quicker than any wine made from frilly Ferelden vineyards. Amell giggles and rests her head on the bar and many of the Orzammar denizens in the pub seem enchanted with her tales of darkspawn slaying. They've killed many darkspawn themselves, of course, but the fact that she is tall and beautiful is perhaps what makes her stories different. That and the fact she's wearing one of the 'Indecent Cloth Demons', as Alistair so fondly calls her low-cut robes.
Zevran takes it upon himself to walk her back to the inn.
They're going to set out after Branka in the morning with Oghren, who Zevran thinks a smelly, rather enchanting oaf. It's not such an uncommon title - Zevran also thinks this of Sten, Alistair, and the dog, Duncan. Anyone in their party with dangly bits between their legs, really.
He believes himself the most refined man in camp – the others bash and bite and can't throw a dagger in a graceful arc to save their life. Neither can they seduce. Duncan did manage to woo a passing female mabari in Denerim. Zevran gives the dog credit for the daring location (the public marketplace, of all places!), and quick dismount.
As he walks into the inn, Amell draped over his back with her feet dragging, Alistiar starts up from his place at the table and storms over.
"Where was she? What did you do?"
"I did not poison her, if that is what you're implying. She is simply a lightweight who drank far too much dwarven ale."
Alistair shakes his head and motions to hand her over. Zevran shrugs her off and watches as the templar carries her into the room she's sharing with Morrigan.
"Should I leave the premises, or am I to be allowed the pleasure of watching?" The wilds witch drawls, flipping through a book with feigned interest.
"If nugs could fly, Morrigan. If nugs could fly." Alistair grumbles. He places Amell on the bed, and Zevran leans in the doorway as he and Morrigan watch Alistair inhale sharply a few times.
"Should I help you? I'm quite well versed in relieving others of the garments. And their lives. But mostly their garments." Zevran raises a fine gold eyebrow. Alistair flinches.
"She'll be fine like that –"
Morrigan rolls her eyes. "Shrink any further into yourself, Alistair, and we'll be looking for you among the bread crumbs on this filthy floor."
"For once, could you just –"
"I will do it." The witch stands. "Get out, both of you."
Alistair flushes and closes the door behind him. He makes his way stiffly to the table, where a half-finished plate of bronto steak waits. Zevran joins him, drinking from his water skin.
"Our lovely leader was in quite a state of disrepair."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Alistair says moodily, stabbing the bronto a little too hard.
"There are only two reasons a woman like her, who has never touched a drink in her life and has refused to on many occasions, drinks herself to blackout in a back alley Orzammar tavern alone; She's hard trying to forget something bad, or she's hard trying to remember something good."
Alistair doesn't say anything. Zevran smiles and shifts in the Antivan leather boots she gave him earlier that day.
She has given gifts to so many, but they do not often know what to get her. Most everyone at camp saw Alistair present her with the rose that was then unceremoniously thrown into the bushes by the contrarian templar himself, but that's the extent of it. Wynne has given her a lovely mage cap she knitted herself, and Amell wears the hideous purple thing like it's the most stylish Orlesian cap in the world. Leliana cringes every time the two loose flaps wave about the mage's face.
Sten has given Amell the title of kadan, which, whenever the qunari says it, sends a wave of light dancing across the mage's face. Morrigan acts as her mentor and almost-sister, and the attachment in itself speaks volumes – the witch hates every single one of them save for Amell. Leliana has given Amell enough makeovers to have the mage's face looking new every day. Oghren has only given her lewd comments, and Shale has managed to be scathing enough to make her laugh loud, something she rarely does.
Zevran has not given her anything.
This doesn't bother him as much as it should. He's cared for no one enough to give them presents. But she keeps showering him with the small silver bars that he loves so much, and managed to find both a replica of his mother's gloves and a pair of genuine Antivan boots. He's not sure if she's a darkspawn-slaying Grey Warden or an eccentric treasure hunter.
He gives her a shortbow he found called the Mage's Eye. It's a bow designed for combat mages, and he knows that she is something called an arcane warrior – Wynne tried to explain the fine points of what it was once, but he was far too busy staring at her wonderful bosom to pay attention.
She smiles and thanks him with that calm, cool, delighted smile.
The Deep Roads are stuffy.
Their leader has a massive hangover, and she moans and clutches the stone walls every so often for support. She vomits once – doubling over the lava gutters and watching as her puke hits the molten rock and instantly turns to ash.
She wipes her mouths and straightens. "That's handy."
Oghren laughs. "Why'd you think we keep that shit around the city? Does a better job of cleaning up after a dwarven binge than a bronto with a sweeper skirt on."
"A...what?" Alistair looks confused and lost.
The Deep Roads are laced with lyrium, and when they stop for a lunch of moldy bread and hard cheese, Amell touches Alistair's shoulder gently.
"Are you alright?"
"Yup." He suddenly takes great interest in crumbling the cheese.
"I just...there's a lot of lyrium, and templars get addicted so easily, even from the vapors –"
"I'm fine." He sniffs.
He is not fine. He starts sweating, wobbling. They meet a young dwarf addled by lyrium, and he points and laughs at the templar.
"You...you're getting full of blue sparklies! Just like me!"
Alistair's eyes roll into the back of his head and falls nearly on top of Oghren, who just manages to sidestep the impact. The sound of armor hitting stone is screeching and terrible. Amell rushes to set up a small apothecary set.
"Oghren, give me your ale pouch."
"Woman, do I look like a barmaid? This ale is for me –"
"Give me the pouch." Her voice doesn't raise a single notch, but in fact lowers. The deadly quality is dark and evident.
"I would, if I was you." Zevran smirks over at the dwarf, who grunts and does so.
"Zev, do you have any deathroot on you?"
"Oh, are we killing him now? Lovely. I've waited for this day for a long time." The elf fishes dried root from his side pack. She takes it and pounds it into the bit of ale with a mortat and pestle.
"This poison will bind with the lyrium in his blood. It will take a few minutes, but it won't be pretty. In the meantime you two should scout ahead, see where the darkspawn are and plot a course around them to the thaig."
Zevran nods. "That is a sound plan. If you would accompany me then, my darling drunkard?" He looks to the dwarf, who growls and hefts his axe a little higher.
When the two are a safe distance away, Oghren grunts.
"So does she baby that kid like this all the time?"
"She babys no one, least of all him. Lately, though, she has seemed to take a great interest in his well being."
"She wants to bone 'im."
"I would assume so."
There's a comfortable silence as they watch the darkspawn scurry around a fire in the distance.
"He's King Maric's bastard son."
"Is that so?"
"A teryn has plans to make him king."
"Well isn't that something."
The silence stretches. Oghren shakes his head.
"Don't you upper worlders hate mages? You stick 'em in those tall stone buildings, right? They can't marry or have families."
"Right."
"She's a mage."
"Yes."
"And he's gonna be a king or somethin'."
"Most likely."
"They should hurry up and get to humpin', then."
"You, my dear dwarf, are quite the master of eloquent deduction."
Alistair sneezes and fights back another round of vomit. Amell borrows a crude bowl of Ruck's, and the dwarf watches with great interest in their interactions from afar. Alistair hurls into it and wipes his chin.
"As usual, Alistair," He mumbles to himself, "You have fantastic timing."
"This wasn't your fault." Amell reminds him. "I should've warned you sooner –"
He hurls again. She passes him a cloth and he takes it with a flushed kind of shame.
"You don't have to stay."
She smiles. "I want to make sure you get better."
"Well you don't have to watch me puke my way to it. In case you didn't notice, it's foul smelling and sort of disgusting and I'm sort of embarrassed about it."
"Oh." She stands in sudden understanding and turns away.
The sound of his retching subsides a little, and between spasms he watches her back as she talks with Ruck. The dwarf smiles and plays with her hair – so far gone in the head from darkspawn taint that he sometimes can't form words and has to gesture instead.
His mother is waiting for him back in Orzammar, and Amell promises, at Ruck's teary insistence, to tell her he's dead.
"I liked the rose."
Alistair stops. Everything in him stops – the spasms and his breathing and his thinking.
"I just...didn't know how to react. A rose is the traditional symbol for love and friendship. That's what the botany textbooks say, anyway. It was quite stupid to assume you were giving it to me for the former reason. I realized later you were giving it to me as a friend."
Everything in him sinks.
"Thank you." She smiles. "I'm honored that you think of me so highly."
When they fight the broodmother, when they hear the haunting song of death and rape, her blood freezes. She grows subzero. She tries to numb herself to the horrible realization that when she turns in thirty years, she'll be this grotesque thing squirting out babies that will kill and pillage and scour the world as another blight.
Alistair will become a Hurlock.
How many Grey Wardens are among the darkspawn they cut through now?
Branka is insane in the most practical of ways. Amell is also a practical woman.
She still destroys the Anvil.
Carridan gives her a crown to take back, and she anoints Bhelen. Even when Bhelen orders the execution of his rival Harrowmont, she does not doubt her choice. Bhelen may be ruthless, willing to kill to set things in motion, and calculatingly clever, but so is she. She is no different.
Oghren comes with them. He stops before the doorstep, looking out into the vast snowy sky like a child seeing the world for the first time. She puts a hand on his shoulder and he grins around his fiery red beard.
He falls asleep at the fire in camp, drunk and mumbling Branka's name as tiny tears squeeze from his dreaming eyes. Zevran covers him with a blanket.
The journey back to Eamon's is long. He promises to meet them in Denerim to set the Landsmeet up, and urges them to finish any last minute business they might have.
She finds Sten's sword Asala, reunites Oghren with an old love, helps Wynne find her long lost pupil in the woods of the Dalish.
When Morrigan approaches her to slay Flemeth, she does, but not because Flemeth is evil, as Morrigan thinks. Amell does not do it because Flemeth is a dread witch or an immortal demon, and she does not hesitate just because Flemeth saved their lives on the Tower of Ishal.
She kills Flemeth, because in Flemeth she sees the same hollow darkness she saw in the broodmother's eyes – the desire to die.
The broodmother was suffering. Flemeth has more power than any other mortal being in the Fade. She is not suffering. She wants to 'die' so she can start over, gain more power.
Amell understands.
When Alistair rolls off the dragon's head and pulls his sword from Flemeth's iridescent skull, he hears Oghren whoop and hug Wynne as she hugs him back in celebration. Amell runs up to Alistair and checks him over for wounds.
"Are you alright? Are you bit? Did she –"
"I'm fine." He smiles – the first real smile directed at her in a long while, and it makes Amell's heart do a funny little jump. "I was more worried she'd singe off my perfect hair, actually –"
He looks down and notices her eyes are full of tears. She's crying.
"I was...I-I was worried." She sniffs. "When sh-she had you in her mouth...chomping on you like you were some kind of...of..."
"Better me than you." He smiles crookedly and motions at his armor. "I'm more of a canned meal."
She gives a watery laugh. The relief of the intense battle and its end floods over them like a wave, and she's just a little surprised at herself how much she wants to stand on her toes and kiss him.
She doesn't. She can't. He's going to be king.
He's going to be king.