Thank you all for reading! Special thanks to suilven, my superlative beta!
In the light of dawn after a sleepless night, Alistair could have kicked himself. Lilias was right; what had he hoped to gain by running off after Morrigan? What could she tell him that would change anything? Leyden was gone. Nothing would change that. He had wasted ten years pining after her, and nothing would change that, either. He had made a tentative step toward a new start, toward putting things back with Lilias the way they had been, and now that had been destroyed as well, by his own foolishness.
If he was smart, which there was plenty of reason to assume he wasn't, he'd go home to Denerim, take up the reins of his country again, and become the king Ferelden deserved.
The only problem with that was that he wasn't the king Ferelden deserved. He never had been; there was every reason to assume he never would be. Worse, he didn't want to be. He should never have allowed Leyden to put him on the throne. He should have stepped up and said Anora would be better for the country and that all he wanted was to be a Grey Warden. If he'd been a Warden, maybe he could have stopped this mess with Corypheus, saved some of his brothers and sisters in the Grey.
Instead, he had been weak and done what he was told, chosen the easy way out, and continued to do so by letting everyone else tell him how to govern his country. He couldn't do that anymore—but he didn't think he had it in him to step up and govern for himself, either. What did he know about running a country?
One thing was clear—he had a lot of thinking to do.
Leliana was glad to be back on a horse, heading out of Orlais. Much as she loved the Game, it was tiring. She preferred life as the Inquisition's Spymaster, at least for the moment. Although one could not stay out of the Game for too long and expect to continue playing it well. If you didn't know the players thoroughly, it was all too easy to make a misstep and fall flat on your face.
"What an interesting event, don't you think, my dear?" Vivienne had caught up to her. The mage rode sidesaddle, looking every inch the elegant lady, but she managed the horse expertly. It did not do to underestimate Madam de Fer.
"Very. And the Inquisition came out of it quite well."
"A relief, indeed."
"I did not see your Bastien in attendance." Vivienne had been the Duke's paramour for quite some time. It had surprised Leliana a bit that she was willing to leave him for the Inquisition.
"He is under the weather. A minor thing; I am certain it will pass." But the lines around her eyes and the pinched set to her mouth belied the confident words. Leliana made a mental note to make some discreet inquiries about the nature of the Duke's illness. "Your Grey Warden made quite the impression," Vivienne said abruptly, changing the subject.
"He did well," Leliana agreed. She decided that arguing that Nathaniel wasn't "her" Grey Warden only underscored the idea in Vivienne's mind, preferring to ignore the phrasing instead.
"A Fereldan noble, I understand?"
"Yes." Leliana waited for the inevitable jibe, ready to bristle at it, but Vivienne nodded, instead.
"He's a credit to his nation, then."
Nathaniel was riding behind them; suddenly Leliana wanted to turn in the saddle and look back at him. She frowned at Vivienne. Had that been the purpose behind the conversation all along? Why would Vivienne want her distracted by a man?
Leliana frowned, and Vivienne smiled, spurring her horse ahead.
Thule had never been so happy to see anything as he was to see the stone towers of Skyhold appear on the horizon. He said so to Cullen, who was riding next to him, and the Commander agreed enthusiastically.
"If I never attend another ball, it will be too soon."
"But you were such a hit." Thule grinned. "All the girls will be talking about your curls and your shoulders and your … other attributes for months to come. Orlesian men will gnash their teeth, sick of hearing about the manly Fereldan who blushed so prettily."
Cullen grunted in disgust. "Don't remind me."
Lowering his voice, Thule said, "And who can forget Josephine's sister, flapping her handkerchief and promising to visit you in Skyhold. 'Oh, Commander, what a lovely night!'" he cooed in a parody of Yvette's falsetto voice and Antivan accent.
"If you keep that up, I will tell her you're making fun of her sister," Cullen snapped.
"You wouldn't."
"Well … possibly not," Cullen conceded. "Still, keeping in mind the dignity of the Inquisition wouldn't kill you."
Thule shrugged. "I had the dignity of the Inquisition drummed into me pretty thoroughly before the ball, and during. Now that I've saved the Empress and the negotiations and perhaps all of Orlais, I think the business of the Inquisition will be my focus, and the dignity can go hang."
"I think Josephine would find that even more shocking than your imitation of her sister."
He nodded. "You're probably right. And I don't think I mean it anyway. I'm just … tired. And relieved. And ready to put all of that behind me." He glanced over his shoulder at Cassandra. Ready to put everything behind him but the memory of a moonlight dance, he thought. That he would keep close to him.
As soon as she was off the horse and had stretched her sore muscles, Lilias went looking for Varric. She found him at his table in the main hall, quill poised over a piece of paper.
Exuberantly, she rushed him. "You are amazing!"
He frowned, then remembered, and smiled. "You liked the dress?"
"Liked it? It was perfect. Stand up, you."
He frowned again, tilting his head to look at her suspiciously. "You have that 'you're going to hug me' look."
"You don't get hugged enough, Varric."
"Is that my problem?"
"One of them."
"Well, I'm glad one of us knows what it is." He didn't make any move to get up, though. Lilias looked down at the paper in front of him, noticing for the first time that it was blank.
"Are you all right?"
"Me? Fine. Never better." But there was a thinness in his voice that only someone who had traipsed through the Deep Roads with him and spent countless nights getting drunk together and bled next to him in a thousand battles would recognize.
Lilias took the seat across from him. "You're alone again."
"Always."
"Well, I'm here, and I'm not going anywhere," she said firmly. "It'll be just like old times."
"I don't know if you've noticed, but these are decidedly new times."
"Maybe so, but they have to be better if we're together."
He smiled at that. "Maybe so. Let's go get drunk and find out."
Lilias gave him an answering grin. "I'll drink to that."
Cullen went straight to the Undercroft. If he'd gone up to his office, he'd have been buried in paperwork in minutes, deeply engrossed in the issues and problems of the Inquisition, all the things that had been done in his absence that he was going to want to comment on. He'd kept in touch by raven while he was in Val Royeaux, but that wasn't the same as being there himself.
But he wanted to speak to Dagna first, before he got distracted, so he resolutely refused to even look up at his office.
The main hall was bustling as always, and people kept catching him to congratulate him on how well things had gone in Val Royeaux. His first instinct was to deny having had anything to do with it—it had been Thule's triumph more than anyone else's—but that only kept people talking to him longer, so he switched to a muttered "thank you" and a restless tapping of the foot to indicate that he was in a hurry. Most people with the Inquisition were used to the Commander being in a hurry, so they got the message quickly.
At last he was pushing through the heavy door to the Undercroft, shutting it behind him and relaxing in the silence. Well, not precisely silence—Harritt's hammer rang and the fire of the forge hissed and sizzled and Dagna's merry voice rose above them both—but it was more peaceful than the buzz of voices on the upper floor.
He walked down the steps into the main work area, and couldn't help smiling at the way Dagna's face lit up at the sight of him.
"Cullen, you're back! We heard about Val Royeaux and how well you all did there. Was the ball very long? Did the drops work on your headache? Are you glad to be home?"
Cullen grinned at her enthusiasm. "Yes, the ball was long, and yes, the drops worked, thank you, and yes, I am very glad to be home. Next time, I'll take you with me, shall I?"
"Oh, I don't think I'd do very well at a fancy ball."
"I'm sure you would be fine; I've never seen a person you couldn't talk to."
Dagna laughed. "That's true enough."
"I only used the drops a couple of times, and I still have quite a bit left."
"Good." She tilted her head to the side, looking up at him with that faint frown that said she was thinking of her work again. Did he look like that when he was working, so utterly absorbed? he wondered. "Later after you've had a chance to catch up on all your work, maybe we can talk about the symptoms and how the drops worked—it'll help me finetune the design."
"Yes, thank you." He didn't understand how it all worked, but it pleased him to be helping her come up with a way to help other Templars. "And maybe a game of chess while we're at it?"
Dagna's smile lit her eyes. Had they always been that bright green? He couldn't remember noticing before. "Yes, I'd like that."
Once Hawke had gone to bed, thoroughly toasted from a night at the Herald's Rest, Varric settled back down in front of the fire. He'd get no sleep tonight, not in his empty bed. It was always like this when Bianca had come in and out of his life like a whirlwind. When she was gone, everything seemed cold and empty for a while.
Sooner or later, it would go back to normal—it always did. And when you came down to it, he wouldn't have wanted to miss the parts where he had her just to avoid the parts where he didn't. She was worth it all … and pretty good motivation, to boot. He wrote better thinking about her. Not that Bianca would appreciate that. If she ever actually read his stuff, she would tell him it was trash and that he could do better things with his life than that …. and maybe he could. But writing his silly little stories made him happy and gave him something to think about that took his mind off the end of the world that always seemed to be hovering just over the horizon, and kept him from wondering what Bianca and her husband were up to. Most of the time.
He thought about Hawke and the almost feverish brightness in her eyes, and the confused, longing, wistful, unhappy looks she had gotten all night from the King of Ferelden. There was a couple who needed him to write them a happy ending … but it wasn't going to be as easy as that, and that made him sad. Of everyone he knew, Hawke deserved happiness the most.
If he were writing her into a story, how would he make her happy? he wondered. He wouldn't write himself a happy ending because the narrator didn't get one, but he could write one for Hawke, and maybe he could even help make it come true.