Meeting Carver in the Deep Roads here was so unsatisfying in-game.

References Elizabeth Cousland, my Warden from DAO (told in my fics 'My Dark Haired Fereldan Beauty' and 'The Woman With a Dragon's Heart').

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Carver

There was more fighting up ahead; Reid spun his staff and sent out an entropic cloud swirling among the darkspawn, then took a closer look at the warrior surrounded and outnumbered in their centre. "Carver!?"

"Fuck off!" he heard Carver call back.

"I mean, I can! Leave you in this pickle! You daft twat!" Reid struck a darkspawn behind Carver with a lightning bolt. Fenris was already slamming through the flanks of the enemy, joining up with his brother, and between Reid, Merrill, Varric, and Nathaniel, the darkspawn fell nearly before their could raise their swords again. Which was just as well. He would not have liked Carver's odds on his own.

Carver, still breathing heavily, made his way over, saluted Nathaniel, and glared at Reid. "What are you doing here?"

"I was asked to find Nathaniel," Reid said. "You're not with Stroud anymore?"

Carver ignored his comment, still giving him a venomous look. "Just like always, no cause is too small for you to stick your nose in. I have this under control!"

"I don't know you were the fuck here," Reid shot back. "Give me a fucking break."

Nathaniel raised his hands for peace. "You know each other?"

Carver relaxed just the tiniest bit. "He's my brother."

"Oh..." Nathaniel looked back and forth between them. "Yes, I see. Forgive me."

"It's the hair colour," Reid said. "I got Mother's hair. The twins got Father's."

"About the only thing I got from Father," Carver muttered.

Reid folded his arms. "You know, the average person saves a life, they might expect some gratitude."

"I've seen too much of the world to be impressed by you," Carver said.

"Well, that's kind of sad," Reid said.

"What is?" Carver asked, curious in spite of himself.

"That your world has stayed so small."

"Fuck off."

"You too." Reid huffed. "Look, Carver..."

"Darkspawn approach," Nathaniel snapped. "We don't have time to bicker now."

"Right," Reid said. Nathaniel was senior Warden, wasn't he? "Where do you want us?"

They faced a small tide of darkspawn, seemingly endless, with a few ogres thrown in just to be a pain. Reid nearly ran out of mana, nearly had to go for his back-up lyrium, which he hadn't needed since he'd fought the Arishok... But just when he was thinking he needed to fall back, the tide ended, and Varric and Nathaniel seemed to be having a good time keeping score. Which was probably more even than Varric and Reid keeping score; Varric couldn't summon thunderclouds.

When the last one had fallen, Nathaniel smiled for the first time since Reid had met him an hour ago. "For the first time since I've been down here, I don't sense a single darkspawn. We've won." He turned to Reid. "Because of you, I will see my sister and nephew again. Please, take this with my blessing." He handed Reid a very fine knife.

"Thank you," Reid said. "It's been a pleasure. Stay safe."

Nathaniel hesitated. "Did you want to... talk to your brother?"

"It's fine," Carver said, a bit too loudly. "We should go, Nathaniel."

"Carver!" Reid let his anger spill out, just a bit. "I haven't seen you since Kirkwall almost burned to the ground, for like two seconds, and this is all I get from you?"

"And you made out rather well from that, didn't you?" Carver snapped back. In the background, Varric was waving the others away. "Oh yes, even the Grey Wardens have heard the tales of the Champion of Kirkwall. Slew the Arishok in single combat, huh? Big fat hero, huh?"

Reid's temper erupted in a low hiss. "You think I wanted to be Champion? Fuck, it's shit! All I did was smack him in the head with a lightning bolt and suddenly the city thinks I'm the most interesting person in it. Now I'm outed as a mage, due to the, I don't know, lightning bolt in the head thing, and Meredith completely has it out for me; ironically, only being Champion has saved me from getting locked up in maximum security. You want to be Champion? I'll trade! Gladly! You can have the stupid fancy house and everything!"

"Fuck no!" Carver shot back, meeting his intensity blow for blow. "If you fucked up, that's your affair! I want nothing more to do with you or your shit - I almost died in your shadow, and I've spent every waking moment trying to get out of it since I was old enough to see it!"

That stung, deeply. Carver had insisted on coming on that expedition, against their mother's wishes, even. "All I wanted," he said, trying to hold on to his thoughts, "was to make life better for my family. And that plan's gone completely to shit. I couldn't protect Bethany. I couldn't protect Mother. Fuck, I couldn't protect you. The only person left to connect with is fucking Gamlen - and he's not as bad as he used to be, but he's not..."

"Yeah, why should I stick around with the person who can't protect anyone?" Carver demanded. "It's not all about you. It never has been! I finally have a life of my own - and still, you still keep fucking with it!"

They glared at each other in silence for a few seconds, tension snapping between them.

Reid crumbled first, which surprised Carver; in the past, Reid had always stayed arrogant right to the end of the argument; had always maintained his superiority, his rightness - even when he wasn't. The prerogative of the older sibling.

But now... "Carver. I'm tired. It was never about me. It was always all of you. I miss you. There are so few people left in my life. I don't want to fuck with your life. I don't want to fight with you. Can we not be like Mother and Gamlen, and never talk for twenty years?"

"Which one of us is which?" Carver said, already softening.

"Well, obviously I'm Gamlen, I'm stuck in Kirkwall while you're out doing your own thing."

"Or maybe you're Mother, since I'm still fucking single," Carver joked. "Grey Wardens are considered sexy but it's really hard to have a stable relationship when I'm running across half of Thedas."

"Well, and you grew up not half-bad looking, little brother," Reid said, ignoring the part where technically he was pretty single. "I'm surprised there isn't someone. You've at least gotten laid?"

Carver flushed. "Shut up! Of course I've been laid! Loads of times!"

Reid smirked. "There's nothing more unbelievable than 'loads'."

"Shut up."

"But seriously, Carver..." He sighed. "I wish..."

"Don't start," Carver warned him. "I wish things too. But dwelling on it won't change the past."

"Peace?" He held out his hand.

"If you have to," Carver grumbled, but took it with a firm shake.

"Anything else you want to get off your chest, while we're here?" Reid asked.

"You're trying to connect with fucking Gamlen? Really?"

"He's not as bad as he used to be, honest. I think he's even lonelier than we are."

Carver was silent for a minute. "You have lots of friends, though. I have my own friends now, thanks, but you've got Varric and Isabela-"

"Isabela betrayed me, the bitch." Reid growled. "Turns out she could have gotten the Qunari out of Kirkwall... well, before things came to a head. But she didn't. And when I asked her to, she ignored me and ran off. Haven't seen her since."

"Ouch."

"I'm so pissed at her. She's smart to not come back."

"What will you do?"

"I don't know." Reid rubbed between his eyes. "I'm already neck deep in mage-Templar politics, and I can't get out, because that's all the city's talked about since Dumar's death. Meredith really is absolutely nuts - not stupid, but a zealot who won't even listen to a whisper of compromise. I'm pretty sure she has extra people spying on me to see if I do anything particularly monstrous. So Isabela's really a minor concern right now. But people died because of her, and I won't forget."

"And you have your elf. He's still got your headband."

"Not 'my' elf," Reid said. "Partly because I really don't want to remind him of the slavery thing, and also we're... not together right now, headband notwithstanding." Fenris had disappeared for an entire month after Danarius's death, returning only a day before Delilah Howe had approached Reid for help. But he'd willingly agreed to help; had seemed... grateful, that Reid wasn't brushing him off, or something? Why wouldn't he ask him? He'd always asked him before.

"Really? The way you look at him..."

He'd noticed in the thirty seconds the whole group hadn't been fighting? "Yeah, we haven't talked about it. It's fine." Carver frowned skeptically, but Reid moved on. "It's not easy right now; he doesn't think Meredith's all wrong, even if he has a knee-jerk protective reaction when it comes to me personally, thankfully. But he's with me. Yes. He's one of the few I really trust." Merrill was too naive. Anders was up to something. Sebastian was an asshole. Varric... Varric he could probably trust. And Aveline, even if she didn't like him, he could trust her.

"I hope that doesn't come back to bite you."

"And you? Tell me about your friends."

"Well, getting to know Nathaniel has been really interesting. I'm not always with him, I'm still mostly with Stroud, but he's come out on some special missions and they assigned me to go with him. You know he served with the Hero of Ferelden in Amaranthine?"

"Makes sense - Rendon was Arl of Amaranthine."

"Yeah, but Rendon killed Bryce Cousland, so you wouldn't just expect Elizabeth Cousland to welcome him with open arms. And then she killed Rendon, so he wasn't too thrilled about her either. But Nathaniel says they eventually got over it, and they're good friends now."

"And the girl? Girls?"

Carver flushed again. "Her name is Marie, and we... Well, I haven't seen her in six months. She's probably moved on. She's in a little village in the north of Orlais. She's blonde and has the biggest brown eyes, and she was completely head-over-heels for me." Carver smiled a little. "After all the girls in Lothering - and Merrill - having eyes for no one but you, it was... a new experience."

"Good," Reid said, softly. "Carver... Are you happy, as a Warden?"

Carver shrugged. "I'm alive for longer than I would be otherwise, which I'm glad of; I wasn't ready to die on our Deep Roads expedition. And being a Grey Warden is important. We do good work. It may not be glamorous when there's no Blight around, and it's dangerous as hell, but I can be proud of it. And it's got nothing to do with you, so you finally can't show me up at anything." Reid waited. "I don't know that I'm... happy. Not right now. There's too much shit in the world. But I'm happier than the alternative."

"That's... enough," Reid said. He didn't like the sound of 'for longer than I would be otherwise' but Carver's voice told him not to ask. "Now stop being a dick and write to me more than once a year. I could use the support." He had been making sure to write every few months since their mother had died, but Carver had not returned the favour.

"You're a selfish, greedy-"

"Or the not-support, if you're going to be that way. I want to hear from you, Carver. We may not get along, but you're important to me."

That crumbled Carver's defences instantly. "Wow, Kirkwall must really be in deep shit if it changed your tone that much. Fine. Asshole."

"Thanks, dickhead."

"Can we finally get out of here?"

"Lead the way, swordie."

"Fuck you, handwaver."