Likely Alliance
Chapter 10: Doesn't Seem Right
Adahlen didn't speak for days.
Fenris had taken her back to the mansion, and Aveline came to help wash the blood from the Dalish woman's skin; Ada had seemed more than content to leave it there, though perhaps content was the wrong word. She just sat, and stared, hands folded in her lap, vision fixed on a point only she could see.
Occasionally, Fenris would approach Adahlen in her chair and kneel before her, looking up in to her eyes. Sometimes he would ask her if she were alright, sometimes he would push her hair out of her eyes. He would wake in the middle of the night and glance over at her; only twice had he caught her sleeping. Even in the small hours she kept her eyes fixed and open, he presumed, until her body could take no more, and she would nod off, but he never saw her fall asleep, and he never saw her wake.
Near dusk on the fifth day, she seemed to ask the room, "But what do I do now?"
Fenris had been at his table, struggling over a book Hawke had lent him, the preceding silence so pervasive he at first thought his ears were deceiving him. But slowly, he lifted his head and turned his tired gaze toward the woman who had become a fixture and saw that he was no longer just looking, but that she was looking at him.
"Adahlen?" he asked, still not entirely sure she had actually spoken.
"What in the Maker's name am I supposed to do now?" she breathed, her voice dirty with disuse, and she trembled in the firelight.
Slowly, Fenris rose and went to her. He wanted to offer her advice, or condolences at least, but who was he to say anything? His eyes flicked from Ada to the stone walls within he lived, the walls owned by his own deceased master, the walls he had refused to give up. He sometimes told himself he stayed because it was familiar, because it was near to Hawke, because it was better than any Lowtown dive he could himself obtain assuming he would even be that lucky. But what was the truth? Did he stay because he chose to, or did he stay because it was the only link he had left to his past, a past that made him who he was, no matter how painful, how strange? Could that be his choice? Or was Ada right? Was it never over?
"You can do... whatever you want," he said noncommittally, still sweeping his surroundings with his eyes.
"Just like that," Adahlen murmured, and it wasn't a question, but Fenris confirmed, "Just like that."
She looked up at him, her brown lips pressed thin in concentration, and remarked, "It doesn't seem right."
He could have shaken her. "Doesn't seem right?" he breathed, blinking quickly. Right? What was right, then? Being enslaved, or being on the run from a slaver? What was right, having to fight for your life and stay hidden even when you thought you were safe? He could have shaken her, if he didn't know exactly how she felt.
Fenris had never born any love for his captors, there was no association or understanding between them. He imagined Adahlen felt the same, but he remembered those first moments, hours, days, after Danarius was finally gone, and Varania with him, and Hadriana too. He remembered how he felt, how shaken, how uncertain, how exposed. His purpose was gone. He'd never thought of a single thing but ridding the world of the man who had inflicted such horrors on Fenris and how many others. How long had it taken him to apologise to Hawke for his words and actions, even though all Marian had done was exactly what he asked, and given her full support, even of his more questionable decisions. She protected her precious mages, but she'd never doubted Fenris either. And he had been so cruel.
And here was Adahlen, who had no Hawke, no help, had nothing and no one left at all -
Except, perhaps, for Fenris.
"No," he muttered. "It doesn't seem right at all."