oOo
Elissa was looking a lot like a very young woman shoved head-first into a world she barely understood.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, eventually your body won't be able to take the Taint. Most Wardens go into the Deep Roads for one final battle rather than just… wait. It's tradition."
She was looking at me but it wasn't really focused like normal, she seemed almost… dazed. She stared blankly through me. She looked like I'd just punched her in the gut.
One thing was for sure, she hadn't had a clue about the effects of the Taint. I felt responsible and bitter that it had happened this way. If I had thought about it more, I probably would have realised how unlikely it was that she knew all she should. I knew that Duncan had expected to survive Ostagar, had expected to be able to sit down with Elissa and explain to her, tell her how his time was coming fast, just as hers would, and that it was not so awful. And I should have known that he never had the chance.
I should have known.
Maker, what was wrong with me. I could excuse myself for those first few days after Ostagar, maybe, but all the days since? Had I been so wrapped up in myself I hadn't considered Elissa at all?
I felt a sudden worry that Elissa was under a lot more strain than I realised. She seemed so capable, so sure, a natural leader. But was I seeing what I wanted to see? I had ignored her hidden grief. Did I want someone else to know what to do, because I was terrified of having to take the lead? Was she actually really struggling, but I was ignoring it because deep down I wanted her to be handling it fine, for my own peace of mind? I tried to sort through my memories, think of moments when she'd showed strain, and all I could think about was her haunted face sitting by the campfire, how sometimes she just closed her eyes and sat, looking so tired, how everyone set up camp around her without a word. Like a terrible whisper, I heard her words in the back of my mind about her family and Highever, and I felt so ashamed. Even if she was handling it fine, she shouldn't have to shoulder the burden as much as she had. I'd called us a team but I hadn't been pulling my weight.
"Thirty years… Does the archdemon affect this?"
I brought myself back to the present.
"As far as we know, it only affects the dreams. Elissa, I'm so sorry; I should have realised, should have said…" I reached out for her before thinking better of it, and she didn't react for a long while as she looked down at my hand on her arm like it was a fish that had jumped out of the lake. Scalded, I dropped my hand and stepped back, running my hands over my face and trying to think of what to say. I opened my eyes in time to see her turn away and wrap her arms around herself tightly, taking in a breath as she examined our surroundings: the clearing we were in, a few dozen metres from camp in the centre of the Bannorn; the little flowers growing around the tree trunks; the beautiful starry sky; the nearby river... the overturned wagon where we had encountered bandits.
The path we were taking across Ferelden to Lake Calenhad was exhausting; it was the middle of summer and the humidity was stifling. We had been setting up camp before the sun had truly set for a few nights now. Elissa and I had stayed behind to clear up the mess while the rest of the party set up our tents and built the fire. It had seemed like the best time to broach the subject; no one around and no pressure to be getting anywhere.
I had been so short-sighted to have expected it to be a touch-up of what she already knew, rather than telling her everything for the first time. Even after Soldier's Peak, and so much talk with Elissa about Wardens and with how conspicuously basic her questions about the affects of the Taint had been… I was such a fool. A selfish, selfish fool. I almost wanted Morrigan to appear and chastise me.
"Alistair." My name brought me out of my thoughts, and Elissa was watching me expressionlessly, but there was something lurking in her gaze that put me on edge. I had seen Elissa when she was dangerous, and I knew the signs. "Is there anything else?"
I examined the ground as I thought and tried to convince myself it was to help things come to me rather than to avoid her gaze.
"The only thing I can think of is how Wardens find it hard to have children."
Her lips flattened grimly, nostrils flaring. "How hard?"
I shrugged and spread my hands; a gesture of helplessness rather than indifference. "All the Wardens I knew with children had them before their Joining. I don't think it's impossible, but it might also depend on the amount of time you've had the Taint in you. They just warn us to not get our hopes up, not that many Wardens want to have children anyway…"
She looked at me a few seconds, then walked away without a word. She sat on the nearby log and put her head in her hands.
I stood in the middle of the clearing, at a total loss, less sure than I had ever been.
Was she crying? No, no... This was not right. She didn't cry. Elissa did not cry. She was an unstoppable force, and she'd been forged in fire. Nothing could break her. Nothing. Except… maybe she'd always really wanted children. I wanted a family, didn't I? Hadn't I been crushed to hear that I would have to sacrifice that?
I took a hesitant step forward. Would she want my comfort? She'd moved away from me, would she rather I just left? I didn't… I didn't know, I'd never seen her like this before. I didn't know what would make her feel better. Was I brave enough to ask?
"Elissa, would you… like me to leave?" I asked her eventually, helplessly.
I waited, but she didn't respond, and I hesitantly took that as a no. I tried to be quiet as I stepped towards her. This seemed a fragile moment that any noise would shatter, just like that amulet I had had all those years ago.
I gently placed a hand on her shoulder. I waited, and she didn't shrug it off, so I carefully crouched and pulled her to me. It was awkward, her with her hands still on her face and both of us wearing armour as I continued to anxiously wait and try not to lose my balance.
"I had a plan, you know," she told me quietly. Her breath was warm on my collarbone. "The last thing I said to my parents was that I loved them and that I would try to live as they had taught me, that I would try to make them proud, that their sacrifice would not be in vain. I promised to live, to become a Grey Warden and do what is right. That was the first part of the plan."
She lifted her head now, but she didn't look at me. Her eyes were on the trees, and I leaned back but stayed where I was, hovering, my arms gently resting around hers, feeling unable to look away.
"Then my plan was to collect our allies with the treaties, unite the Bannorn against Loghain to stop this civil war, stop the Blight and kill the Archdemon. And then, once that was over, rebuild. Not just the Grey Wardens, but my… my family. I am the last Cousland to carry on the family line, and even if I cannot be Teyrna, even if Highever is lost to us, I refuse to let the Couslands end this way. I cannot let Howe get away with destroying us. Or at least, I thought I couldn't..."
She looked up at me, and the weight of what she was saying hit me. The weight of what she had sacrificed to become a Warden, without knowing, without having a real choice.
I had almost forgotten that she'd never gotten news of her brother. That it was… that by now she wouldn't have much hope left.
No, I had to be honest with myself. I had forgotten.
"Elissa..." I started, then my mouth closed as I failed to think of a way to say what I wanted to: how badly I felt for her, everything, that Duncan should have told her, that she should have known, should have been given a real choice, that I was so so sorry for not thinking about her sooner, how stupid I had been… My guilt and shock at hearing her speak in such detail about her parents had rendered me incapable of coherency. Her pain was still so difficult to approach even as an outsider, and it humbled me once again.
"My father told me that he trusted me to carry on the Cousland name. I promised him. I promised him."
Elissa began to cry. She cried silently, her eyes closed tight as tears leaked through anyway and her face reddened. Her fists were clenched and shaking, her lip bleeding where she'd bitten it too hard.
I'm so sorry, I thought desperately, frantically, knowing it wouldn't help. Apologies were useless. Useless. But I'm so, so sorry.
She drew in a long wheezing breath, and then pulled herself from my grasp and stood, looking away from me and into the treeline. I had finally lost my balance and was scrambling to my feet when she spoke, in a strangled voice that I wished never to hear again. "You could not have foreseen what this meant to me. I know that, but plea—" she cut herself off and tried again. "I would ask that you give me some space."
Without a further look at me she walked out of the clearing back towards camp. I stared after her, wishing I could run and fall to my knees and beg, apologise over and over again, but loathe to do anything other than what she had asked. So instead I stood there and watched her leave, trying to convince myself I'd had my chance to try and comfort her in that weakest moment, that she knew what was best.
I kicked the log viciously, my hands pulling at my hair. I hung my head and sighed in shame as I traipsed over to where I had piled my pack and helmet, picking them up and then dropping them again. I felt directionless.
All those times I had wondered what was holding her together. I had been wondering since I first met her, already knowing she should have been a broken woman. And slowly, after seeing her wake from her Joining and then betrayal and injuries at Ostagar, I'd realised the level of determination that drove her, the one thing she allowed herself to show back then. She had goals, she had things she needed to see done, and she did more than just cling to them. She had devoted herself wholeheartedly to her responsibilities, and as the weeks had passed I had only respected her more for it.
Then I had begun to see those glimpses into her grief, her anger, her guilt and shame - the other things that drove her. Terrible things that would corrupt a lesser person, things that she channeled into her resolve, her sense of purpose, her duty, as she called it.
She meant duty in the moral sense. To Elissa, if she failed in her tasks, she failed as a person, as a daughter. This monumental task ahead of us was even more personal for her than it was for me. Everything she had rode on this.
And now she knew that even if we got as far as stopping the Blight, she couldn't deliver on the promises to her dying father.
I circled the clearing, feeling so overwhelmed I was lightheaded. I'd turned her plans upside-down. I'd torn them apart in front of her eyes.
She had needed to believe that we could do this, that what we were trying to do was achievable. But now she knew that even if she smote Howe into less than a stain, she would likely fail in what she promised her parents. She would fail in the most important of rebellions against what Howe had tried to do, the line he had tried to erase.
How was she supposed to be so set, so sure in her course now? And it was more than just her, everyone else relied on her so much, too, to know what to do and where to go, to make all those choices without faltering.
Cursing, I forced myself to admit that I was still selfish enough to be thinking about how this would affect us as all. Throughout the whole agonising conversation, I had found myself thinking ahead and dreading the look on her face when she found out I was Alistair Theirin, and not simply Alistair. Now I hated the thought of having kept another secret from her, couldn't bear to fail her. I had to tell her, even if she no longer wanted nothing to do with me.
Most people would probably just call me a fool, taking for granted that Elissa and I would be close. That it would always be that way.
I'd never had a real friend before, someone I could talk to without fear of judgement, without fear for how they'd look at me if I were honest and said what I really thought… and now I'd lost her.
I kicked the log again, vicious curses I'd never say out loud running through my head and threatening to spill past my lips.
I paced, moving my feet so that I didn't start really breaking things and trying to beat up trees. Eventually I felt like I had given Elissa enough time to retire to her tent and avoid me. I felt choked as I put my pack on and collected a few logs for the fire, but I reminded myself that Elissa should be my focus now. Whatever she needed, anything to ease her task, I would do it. I returned to camp where all was silent; despite how the sun's rays were only just leaving the sky, only Leliana remained awake.
She didn't look angry at me, just upset. "Explain, Alistair."
That Leliana had noticed anything was testament to how upset Elissa was. I dumped the wood on the fire and let myself tumble onto the ground next to her. "Explain what?"
Playing dumb was still such a second nature to me, I did it even when I didn't really mean to.
"I can tell when a woman is near tears. I can't imagine what you did to make our leader cry."
I took off a heavy plate gauntlet bartered from Levi and rubbed another hand over my face, feeling tired.
"I can't explain it to you. But it's not what I did; it's what I didn't do."
I wondered if she thought I had rejected Elissa, a thought which nearly made me giggle in hysteria.
"What didn't you do?"
I sighed heavily and turned my head to look at the bard, whose face was fierce in the light of the fire. I knew she was loyal to Elissa, as were we all, to some extent or another, and that as a friend, she cared about her welfare almost as much as I did.
"Grey Warden matters."
Leliana looked curious and unsatisfied but she let the subject drop as we both fell silent and watched the flames eating the wood. I didn't move until it was fully dark, stretching out one leg and resting an arm on it. After a while I spoke.
"I will tell you that becoming a Warden means paying heavy prices, and that Elissa wasn't entirely aware of the sacrifices she would be making because of what happened at Ostagar." My tone was short and to the point.
"And you thought she knew."
Leliana sounded as exhausted as I felt, and she rose to her feet swiftly and turned her head towards me. I didn't look up, but I could see her shadowed face in my peripheral vision. I was gratified that she didn't think I had deliberately concealed anything from Elissa, but it was small comfort.
"She will forgive you, I think. She knows that you do not wish her ill."
Leliana couldn't really know what she was talking about because I had told her so little, but as I watched her back as she ducked into her tent, I realised that her words had lifted my mood ever so slightly, and that I almost dared to believe her. A man could hope.
oOo
