Response to the Cheeky Monkey 'Consequences' challenge: Feynriel, Oghren, Denerim, "Do you think that was intentional?"
Intention
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"Nate and Carver should keep their thumbs up their own arse and out of my business." Oghren's voice cut across the vendors' chorus. Feynriel shrugged.
"They thought I could help." He lengthened his stride to keep up with the dwarf's determined progress through the crowded marketplace. "It's virtually unheard of for a dwarf to find himself in the Fade."
"You think that was intentional?" Oghren snorted. They stopped to make way for a stream of trotting mabaris, identical and each carrying a human infant by the seat of the pants. "I got yanked into the sodding unnatural place in the Blackmarsh on account of the company I keep. Same thing happened to Tahti during the Blight. You mages, always having to complicate things with your smoke and sparkles."
"Yes. Because it's such fun to have an entire religion determined to run a sword up your arse, and to have demons trying to possess you, and everyone you meet think you're some kind of terrifying freak." Feynriel tapped himself on the chest. "Do you think that was intentional?"
"Heh. Point."
They stepped over a trash-clogged gutter where a nearby crowd of sickly elves harangued a Tevinter magister and his bodyguards. Feynriel pulled the edge of his hood forward.
"Except now you'd think someone left a door open in my head." Oghren kicked a charging bandit's knee out, spinning his axe and chopping down without breaking stride. "Might as well be hallucinating, only without the fun of getting drunk beforehand."
The mewing of the seagulls blended with the laughing enticements from the ladies of the Pearl, and human nobles lined the balconies, waving their arms and shouting in their unceasing, banal contention.
"Deshyrs. They're the same everywhere." The dwarf's pace slowed, came to a stop. "Well. Not all of them."
The armies milled in the field, a clanking, roaring mass against Denerim's smoking backdrop, swirling around a bubble of stillness at the gates where a small group made their final plans.
Bade their farewells, one by one.
"She was the best that ever came out of the Aeducan line, you know." Oghren spoke quietly, his gaze fixed on the Warden. Her white-gold hair, cropped helm-short, flashed in the ruddy light; even at this distance one could see the emerald glint of her eyes behind crooked nose, twice-broken and proudly scarred.
"She'd have been a shit queen. She knew that. Didn't want it but no one believed it. No, she was a warrior. Always a fighter, in everything, for everything."
"She was your friend."
"She had faith in a broken drunk who'd lost everything. Made me remember the man I can be. Tahti got it, you see. What it's like when it all falls apart. At least I told her that much."
"You wanted to say more."
They watched her grip the Qunari's forearm as an equal, regardless of the disparity in their builds.
"Maybe. I wanted to, sure. I could have told her I—but we were going into battle." He straightened. "I held this gate for her. Swimming in guts and blood, and not a single soul under my command lost. And I knew she'd win through. This was Tahti Aeducan, sod it! Time to say what needed to be said after, right?"
"That you loved her."
Silent, Oghren watched the Warden ruffle her mabari's ears.
A shadow passed over the two men as the Archdemon soared overhead.
"She did it. Like I knew she would, she butchered that damned lizard like the Stone warrior she was. Only it took her with it, and then—there was no more time. No more words."
A tiny figure fell tumbling from the heights, over and over again.
"You could tell her now," Feynriel said gently. Tahti gave the dog a final pat and looked in their direction, meeting Oghren's eyes, and the old warrior caught his breath in pain.
"I—" He took a step, hesitated. "Is there any point? This," his gesture encompassed the field, "It's all just inside my head."
"Yes, it is." Feynriel put his hand on the other's shoulder. "But ultimately, that's the one place where we need to speak the truth."
.o0o.
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