Turpentine, or Good Enough
by Cryptographic DeLurk

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AN: Warnings for misogyny, alcohol abuse, suicide baiting, implied incest, and general Oghren grossness. Read & Relax~

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Everyone in Orzammar loved playing pretend, and so that was what Oghren had done for a little while. Presents and kisses. Honours in the Deep Roads. The wedding around the roasting pit.

His mother had pulled him aside and told him that this was a good match – too good for him – and he'd better not ruin it. But it wasn't all that different from when he'd been small as a nug. His father had been out in the Deep Roads. His mother had unkeyed the cellar to a trove of stashed ale. She'd told him his father was gone and there were shoes to fill and Oghren wasn't good enough for it. Had been a mistake to begin with.

And that wasn't all that different from when they'd given him a hammer. He'd been pushed into the Deep Roads. They told him he hated the darkspawn. They told him to go down swinging.

That he'd come back alive to accept Honours for his service meant he'd failed.

He met Branka over a table in her parents' smith shop. Negotiations like they were trading bread and butter. Branka's face was soft and round – cute rather than beautiful. And the twin tail braids on the side of her face made her look even younger than she was. But part of him had wanted her – wanted to see if she'd look more aged once he'd mussed her up.

Oghren wanted her more when she opened her mouth. The bride-and-groom-to-be weren't meant to have time alone together before the wedding, but Branka opened her mouth and said, "Father, why don't you show House Kondrat the saddles we made for the Bronto pen." She didn't even turn away from Oghren as she said it, and the entire world capitulated to her. The others left the room.

She'd rolled her eyes when Oghren protested. "Don't be a bore." She took his hand and showed him around the smith shop. Every project she had a hand in. Grated furnaces. Freight elevator. Heat engine. Coal refining.

She talked at fuel and metal and dust, facing away from Oghren. He was like a wall she was using to bounce her own words off. Branka was already elsewhere. And Oghren didn't understand half of what she said. But, even before she made the very sensible suggestion that they get out of there and head to Tapsters, he'd decided that she was far smarter than him. Far smarter, in fact, than anyone he'd ever known.

And so he'd known even then that Branka was too good for him. And it wasn't supposed to be that way, was it?

Felsi was more his speed. Brash and firm and stupid. Not an original idea in her head. Full of stone sense instead of burning ambition. And still ready to piss away it all away going topside following the other merchants chasing the surface coin. She was infinitely closer to Oghren's level.

It was all backwards. You were supposed to marry the girl you could afford, and have your affair with the one you couldn't. Marry the stable one, not the one that set you alight with greed and passion and used you until you were a burnt out shell of coal dust. It was all wrong, wasn't it? Oghren asked Brosca.

Oghren remembered a few months into their marriage, when he could still pretend well enough. Hespith had come over with a basket of ironwork tools and charcuterie. And even though Hespith was born and trained warrior class, she seemed intrigued with Branka's work at the forge. Or at least in the woman herself.

"Thanks for having me over, Oghren." Hespith's golden hair was bright where her ponytail flopped over her shoulder. She was beaming and glowing like a coal set alight.

Oghren had wanted to go to bed, but Branka had worked herself into a frenzy talking about her latest project – a smokeless coal that could burn without leaving the Smiths to inhale black-lung. She was ready to return to her workshop.

"Are you coming, Hespith?" Branka asked brusquely. "Oghren?"

They both looked at Oghren.

Hespith's gaze was filled with something like trepidation, ready to spill any moment to despair or elation.

Branka just looked bored. She was a firecracker in the sack, and Oghren still wanted her. But she'd already burnt out whatever it was she'd found interesting about him, and he always knew she was too good for him. So he went to bed and let Hespith have her. He lay awake with his hand on his groin and thought about them tangled together and moaning and writhing.

Oghren told Brosca this, in disjointed streams of thought, over drinks at the Spoiled Princess. Felsi had made it patently clear that she was no longer interested, but Brosca clasped Oghren over the shoulder and asked if they shouldn't get a table. They were still paying customers. Felsi still had to serve them.

"Another," Brosca cheered, as he slammed his glass on the table. He wolf whistled, and waved for Felsi. "A few more refills over here, sweetheart."

Felsi frowned, but she approached. She poured another glass of brandy that tasted like turpentine, and as she leaned over the table Oghren ogled the generous swell of her chest.

"Hehe," Oghren snorted, leaning into her side. "You never could cook, but you always knew how to pour a drink."

She startled when Brosca reached to pinch the back of her thigh and, after a quick glance at the daggers he had laid over the table, Felsi slammed the brandy bottle down and stormed away without a word.

"Aww, we chased her off," Brosca narrated, as Felsi tugged her apron over her head and tossed it on the counter. "Love watching her go, though," he whistled.

"Yeah, she's got a right rump," Oghren said. "Perfect with a bit of sauce."

They both snickered, as they poured more brandy from the bottle. But even this many drinks in, Oghren was more melancholic than he ought to have been.

"You know," he told Brosca, "it's not actually smokeless coal. Branka used to get angrier than a raging bronco about that. It was charcoal bricks, not coal… Called everyone simpletons for not gettin' the difference… I started doing it on purpose, just so she'd knock me in the side with her iron tongs."

"Then we'll keep calling it that. Continue the tradition," Brosca toasted, "in her memory."

"Mmm," Oghren hummed. Really, he didn't want to think about memory or tradition. He downed another glass. Laughed after a moment. Changed the subject. "Bet you think there's something wrong with me, thinking about Hespith like that. She is my cousin."

He'd lost count of the number of times he'd jerked off to the image of Hespith naked, chest heaving as Branka went down on her.

Brosca laughed. "You don't know the shit I got up to with Leske, trying to sneak a peek at Rica." He flipped the brandy bottle over his glass and emptied the last of it. "Whoops! Another!" he called, waving at the bar counter.

It was the innkeep that came with another bottle. He uncapped it with a resigned expression. "No trouble from you two," he warned weakly, before returning to his station.

Oghren glanced around the tavern, now blurry and distorted like water and fire and spirits. He didn't see Felsi anywhere.

"Guess we really did chase her off," Brosca giggled. "Bitch."

Oghren eyed the daggers laid over the table. He decided with sudden self-interest, that he liked Brosca. Sure Brosca was a jumped-up casteless nobody. But what difference did that make now? Oghren was a casteless surfacer nobody, too. And even before then Oghren had gotten it. Hard not to, once he'd met Brosca's terrible shrew of a mother.

Oghren wondered if he'd met Kalah Brosca before, troving the slums for a Duster whore, after he'd had too many at Tapsters and could no longer use drink to bring himself any lower. Oghren wondered if he'd stuck it in her.

Oghren knew better than to ask Brosca that. But, really, that the scenario wasn't completely implausible was just another sign Oghren had been worth less than nothing for a long time. And now even Felsi was gone. And Oghren wasn't good enough for her anymore, and had never been good enough for her.

He thought about Kalah Brosca. And then thought about Hespith again, with her legs spread and Branka between them and Branka's behind waving in the air.

And it was better than thinking about Hespith in the Deep Roads, with her hair grimy and pale, after Branka had finished burning her out.

It was better than thinking about Branka, and the way her manic triumph broke and sputtered and the way her face sank, as Brosca pushed her off the edge and into the lava. With his words, if not his hands or swords.

Oghren was waiting for Brosca to do that to him too – to tell him he'd gone too far and didn't deserve to live anymore, that he was better off jumping off a cliff.

But Brosca didn't do that. Instead he laughed and pushed the bottle of brandy across the table for Oghren. And Oghren accepted it with both hands, drank directly from the neck and swallowed turpentine and taint.

Or maybe it was the same thing. Not a jump off a cliff, but good enough to get the job done.

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Fin.