AN: This is the chapter that's kept me updating so frequently just so i could get it out of my drafts and into the world. It's my /favorite/ even though its VERY stupid and /so/ dumb. regardless, the plot will /sort of/ return after this, but you can expect a lot more stupid incoming :) enjoy!

Chapter 28 - The Baguette Solution

"It's working," Cinna said with awe, amazed herself that she somehow pulled it off. Smoke rose from the little fire they had made at the base of the oven, but what had them all crowded around the stove was the slowly cooking dough mound sitting on the shelf seated above it. "I'm a baker."

"Congratulations," Duncan said, patting her shoulder. She preened at the compliment, and beamed up at him, covered in soot and grime, but dazzlingly happy, nonetheless. "You've worked hard over the last few days, you should be proud of yourself."

They had slept on the floor for the first few days after Duncan and Carver had cleared the main room. The bakery had been closed for nearly half a decade when Cinna had met the owners, so nobody was in danger of walking in on them. After the first three days had proven a handful, she had talked the old couple who owned the place into buying them fresh rags and cleaning supplies to better deal with the gunk that had built up between the cracks. Carver had taken it easy, much to Cinna's threats of knocking him out cold (could she do that? Carver didn't actually know how powerful a mage she was...) and busied himself with dusting corners and cleaning whatever the king couldn't reach himself. The noble had a strange air about him when he finally lowered himself enough to pitch in. He was listless, slightly out of it, and horrible at actually getting the job done, but after Cinna had come out of the kitchen, dyed black, head to toe with soot, and stared holes through him for not cleaning the counter properly until he figured it out in the end.

Carver still didn't know how to act around the king. It helped to think of him more as a rich, blonde dandy with an unfortunate spinal injury rather than the man who controlled the country and unintentionally lead so many of his fellow people to their deaths. But really, while they were forced to work together on the same level, Carver tired not to think of it at all and tossed a fresh rag over at the guy. "Head's up."

He didn't react quick enough, and the rag hit Cailan right in the face. "...thanks."

Carver had to admit, he was curious. When would he ever get a chance to talk to the king of ferelden? He quit wiping down an old wooden shelf and glanced over at him, tryint ot hink of the best way to break the to just ask what he really wanted to know that beat around the bush, right? "So… whatever happened to that shiny gold plated armor of yours?"

"Torn apart by darkspawn," Cailan answered, frowning. He'd been quite sullen since they started cleaning, and there was a streak of dirt across his face that he couldn't quite seem to wipe off. "Why, are you trying to make me feel bad?"

"Nah, just curious," he said, getting back to work. A moment later, he asked, "What about the sword? The one King Maric carried."

Cailan's frown grew. "Lost to the horde."

"And the shield?" Carver coked his head to the side, explaining, "Saw' you walking round' camp with it strapped to your back when I first joined up."

"I forgot about that one," he said, in a fake cheerful voice. "I also lost that. Thanks for the reminder."

Carver pursed his lips and paid extra special attention as he wiped the same spot over again. Yikes.

When sister Leliana finished up with her duties organizing texts in the chantry, she joined them for suppertime. She poked her head through the door that evening, rainwater dripping from her hair.

"Something smells good." She smiled, making her way inside.

"Cinna's 'experimenting," Cailan quoted, gloomily wiping an old tin cup with a wet rag. "Maker save us all."

When the chantry sister rounded the counter and stepped into the kitchen, Carver and Cailan very clearly heard her exclaim "Oh sweet heavens!" and they looked at one another.

Carver followed after her and caught Cailan sigh, alone and abandoned, "Yeah, okay, I'll watch the.. register... or something..." but it was far less important than what was going on in the kitchen.

Cinna sat with a spoon in her hair, surrounded by dirty bowls and cutlery and flour spilled every which way, face speckled with powder and sugar. "Uh... hey... guys..."

Carver stared down at her while the chantry sister tried not to laugh. "What... are you doing."

"I'm making doughnuts," she said innocently, but the murder of all their hard work was far too telling. There was something dripping off the counter, and flower was splattered across the countertops and across the floor. "It's a really fun and simple recipe, why don't you both help me?"

"This... Cinna this is a disaster," Leliana laughed, plucking the spoon out of Cinna's hair. "What were you planning on accomplishing?"

"Some really good and tasty doughnuts, Leliana. God, were you even listening?"

"Oh, I see now," Carver said, reaching over to move a precariously perched jar of... really bad smelling milky water. Gross. Carver wrinkled his nose and went to pick it up and throw it out.

"Don't you daRE," Cinna snapped, eyes wide. She pointed to a rollin pin at him threateningly until Carver slowly backed away. "That's the yeast, I need it to RISE."

Leliana gave her a skeptical look. "Is it really going to be able to do that in a jar of water?"

"It's fermenting. Touch the sides, it should be warm," Cinna murmured, setting the rolling pin down and idly scratching at a patch of congealed dough off her face.

Leliana cooed when her hand cradled the side, and she gestured for Carver to do the same. He shot her a dirty look and shook his head. "I'm not touching that thing again."

A moment later, Duncan walked in the back door with an old, floppy hat on his head, soaked with rainwater. "The mule's been fed and happy. How are you doing in here?"

"Just fantastic," Cinna said, smiling maniacally over her shoulder. At the end of the room, the oven popped and let out a pathetic wheeze of smoke into the room. "Really great."

"I see..." the commander said, eyebrows raised. His eyes drifted to the door leading to the main room. "Is the king on his own?"

"You left him on his own?" Cinna looked at them, wide-eyed.

Duncan crossed the room and carver shared an accusatory look with Leliana. "I thought- He's fine!"

The three of them stared at one another in silence when they heard a soft bang, and then they all turned and bolted towards the main room.

"He poked his head in for three seconds and saw me and ran!" Cailan exclaimed, visibly rattled. "What do you think he's going to do, you think he's going to get Loghain? are we going to have to run because I can't run, I can't do anything, I couldn't even do anything, Duncan, he saw me and RAN!"

"Please, your highness, breathe for a moment-" the commander said, raising both hands to try and calm him, to no avail.

"If Loghain sends his soldiers after us I can control them with blood magic and chuck them into the lake," Cinna said, but that only seemed to make thing worse.

Cailan looked at her wide-eyed. "You-you think that'll help? You think publicly doing blood magic in the middle of the town square will help? Maker, if you get taken to the circle I will literally die. If I don't get killed by Loghain in five minutes. WHY DID YOU LEAVE THE DOOR UNLOCKED LELIANA?"

"It doesn't have a lock!" she defended, sweating.

"Wh-what kind of store doesn't have a lock?!" He demanded, forcing his chair to turn so he could glare at the door. "What kind of idiots are we working for anyway?!"

"Sal and Edna are very sweet old ladies, you leave them out of this!" Cinna took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. "And we'll be fine. I doubt he even got a good look at you anyway. You think your unshaven, grungy mess of a face is going to be a dead ringer for the squeaky clean golden boy Loghain has framed above his toilet? No. You're fine. Everything is fine. Why don't you come help me make some doughnuts?"

Cailan's eyes were unfocused as they gently carried him into the kitchen and sat him down at the counter, in front of a nice pile of dough. "I... I can't..."

"Sure you can," Carver said, handing him a rolling pin.

"I'll go see which way he went," Leliana sighed, reaching for her cloak. Duncan nodded by her side and the two made their way out the door.

"See, this is calming." Cinna smiled, reaching over to sprinkle flour on the counter in front of him. "Baking is a nice calming thing to do."

Cailan gave her the most wretched look imaginable, and Carver suppressed the urge to cover his face, for lack of a full working pair of hands.

"I used to bake all the time with my mom and my sister," Cinna said cheerfully, stirring a bowl of honey glaze. It smelled good. Carver reached over to dip his finger in it, and she slapped his hand away. "Pig. Go wash your hands first."

He wrinkled his nose. "My hands are clean."

"I just saw you scrubbing the floor, you don't know what you're talking about, farm boy," she snarked. in their peripheral Cailan finally, slowly, made the arduous task of rolling out the dough. "And you're still sick with the blight. We're not making tainted doughnuts, jeez."

Okay, maybe she had a point. Carver dried his hands on a nearby towel and hung back, away from the food. A moment later she had grabbed a spoon and thrust it into his hands, guilty. He smirked-sweeeeet.

"As I was saying. Baking is stress-free." Their heads turned when something made an ugly spitting sound by the fire and she jumped out of her seat, swearing. "My croissants!"

"Stress-free?" Cailan asked, somehow having gotten flour speckled across his face and down the front of his shirt. Carver grabbed an apron and flung it at him, decking the golden boy right in the face again. "Will you quit it!"

"Sorry," he said, sucking on the spoon, not quite meaning it.

"Baking is... a mostly... stress-free hobby..." Cinna said, poking at the half-burned bread rolls with a pair of wooden tongs. She had pulled the whole tray out of the oven and tossed it onto the main table with a defeated aura. She poked at the longer, more oblong shaped bread creations, which oozed a strange jammy substance which had seeped out onto the rest of the pan. They knew where the hissing came from now. "Shit... okay, I can salvage these... Alistair doesn't even know what a doughnut is, I can wing it."

"...Is that right?" Cailan winced as she threw the more blackened croissants and doughnuts into the trash. He had the apron on backward, and an arm through the wrong hole.

"YES! Carver, hand me the glaze, I can fix this, I haven't lost her yet." She had the concentration of a surgeon, carefully digging a knife under the Boston creams. "Come on... come on..."

"Don't you think-" Carver stopped mid-sentence and tensed when he heard a noise skittering to his right. "What was that?"

"What was what?" Cailan was looking around now too, and raised his rolling pin in the air. "Loghain?!"

"No, it sounded like..." Carver trained his eyes on a grey shape moving about on the stone floor and grimaced. "A rat."

"A WHAT?!" Cailan said, all but clawing his way onto the table with his bare hands. He hung off the side at an awkward angle, but he had surprising upper body strength, knocking pots and pans into the ground as he hoisted himself up.

"What do you mean a-" Cinna froze when he saw it too, and she abandoned her plate of burnt desserts in favor of crawling up onto the table on autopilot. "WHAT THE HELL?"

"It's big," Carer said, carefully edging closer to it, hoping to scare it out the door. He held the spoon out in his one good hand in the hopes that maybe it'd smell the trace of honey left behind after he had licked it clean. He wanted to lure it into a false sense of security, so maybe he could stomp it or something if it didn't run away like he and Garret did back on the farm. "Here mousie mousie mousie..."

"That is not a mouse," Cinna hissed, stabilizing Cailan both hands. They were streaked with flour and kneeling in dough, but Carver ignored them. "Mice are cute! that thing has red eyes and teeth the length of railroad spikes."

"Don't be so overdramatic," Carver huffed, edging closer to the rat.

Actually, she was kinda right, it was pretty nasty looking. The rat's whiskers twitched as he grew nearer. For a split second, he made eye contact with the creature, saw its crimson eyes and the delicate swish of its long, scaly tail, and then saw it move towards him. Faster, then-

Carver flailed backward as the rat full-on charged him. "What the f--"

Cinna and Cailan were screaming by the time Carver had joined them up on the table, and the old wooden legs threatened to give out from under their weight as they struggled to remain upright. the rat- the creature, demon, thing- circled around their safe haven and started chewing on the legs and they started crying louder.

"WHY IS THIS HAPPENING?" Cailan cried, clinging to the two for dear life.

"I DON'T KNOW!" Carver shouted back, actually genuinely fearing for his life. He had never seen a rat so big or bloodthirsty before. "Cinna, do something!"

"Why are you looking at me?!" She stared at him wide-eyed.

"You're the blood mage! rip it apart!"

She looked down at the ground as the table tipped and sobbed. "I don't know how to do that! I'm not that kind of blood mage!"

"WHAT KIND OF BLOOD MAGE ARE YOU THEN!?"

"THE CAREFUL KIND!" she hissed. "THE KIND THAT ONLY DOES SHIT LIKE THAT IN AN EMERGENCY!"

"THIS IS AN EMERGENCY!" both boys yelled at once.

"FUCK YOU!"

Carver grabbed the first thing he could reach and tossed the rolling pin down on the floor in the hopes of hitting it. Cailan swore at him, and almost lost his balance trying to get it back. "What are you doing?!"

"Trying to distract it! better it eats whatever we throw down on the ground instead of us!" He shouted.

"Finally a good idea for once!" Cailan grabbed the next thing that was closest and tossed down one of Cinna's burnt croissants.

Cinna gaped at him "Hey I worked hard on that!"

"You can make more when we're not rat food," Carver snapped, grabbing another one, and then another. "Look it's working, it's going for your trash!"

And soon enough, the oversized, demon-possessed rat made off with two large pastries clenched between its iron jaws, and it wiggled back into its den in a crack underneath the fireplace.

"I can't believe that worked," Cinna said, dumbfounded, as she held them both up on the table. "It... just wanted something to eat."

"I can't believe Redcliffe has rats the size of raccoons," Carver muttered, those red, beady eyes lingering in his mind. they were so cold, so devoid of life... he shuddered.

"I can't believe-" Cailan was cut short then, by the sound of a door opening and footsteps clattering about the main room. They had enough time to look at each other, terrified, and Carver armed himself with another baguette as the kitchen door swung open and the three of them were greeted with the sight of Duncan and Leliana, flanked by a horde of Redcliff guards. Cailan blinked and recognized a face within the crowd of people clogging up the door. "Teagan?"

"Cailan?" And then the sea of soldiers parted, and a very fancy nobleman stumbled his way into the kitchen to witness the most peculiar and embarrassing display he had ever seen. "What... are you... doing on the table... I thought you were dead?"

The king of Ferelden opened and closed his mouth, not sure what to say.

Bann Teagan took in the rest of his nephew, and his eyes somehow widened even more, as if the man had discovered a long-lost ability to be even more shocked when he had reached his previous capacity. "Why... are you... covered in flour? Why are you wearing an apron like a cape?"

"This isn't... how you're supposed to wear it?" The kind asked, genuinely, earning a tiny startled laugh out of carver, and then from Cinna, and then from Leliana, watching them from the doorway.

and then it spread through the room- not a single person cared about Loghain or the king drenched in flour or the horrifyingly large rat poking its head out of its den to snag another croissant or even the civil war brewing. Because for one moment, it was all just so ridiculous, they couldn't help but laugh.