I have absolutely no excuse for this chapter… I love it! I have nothing against Queen Cousland fics, but it gets very, very tedious after a while. I guess that's partly the reason why I'm a Team Zev girl – much more room for innovative ideas, less repetitiveness. Also, I found that it was very difficult to make fun of Bann Teagan – I guess I love him too much. Or he's simply that perfect, I don't know.
Anyway, I have a general idea what order the origins are going to go in – the ones I feel like writing go first. But if anyone wants to see a particular origin go next, feel free to let me know. The next one is likely going to be one of the dwarves. Originally, the ending was supposed to be a bit longer, but that lessened the punchline, so it was cut.
By the way, no one spotted the Monthy Python and the Holy Grail jokes in the last chapter, which makes me a sad panda. I only chose the name Kim to make the Some Call Me Tim joke... and, of course, Bel was supposed to make it seem like it was going to be a Twilight reference. Les Mis has the whole Marius stalks Cosette thing. Apparently, two hundred years ago, that was the proper way to woo someone.
o.O.o
Mirror, Mirror on the Wall
o.O.o
The third place he got teleported to was kind of a mix between the two previous; there were the majestic windows of the mage tower, but also the distinct lack of prison-esque atmosphere. That was always a plus; it made get-togethers rather bad from the start. Kind of like when you suddenly realized that one of the people on the snack party guestlist was a darkspawn.
It seemed to be day, as well, which was always a plus, though some of the light in his face was reflected off the… extremely shiny armor he was wearing?
Someone accidentally poked him in the neck with a piece of the cuirass and Alistair yelped both in surprise and the slightest pain. For something so shiny, the star-shaped motives on it were rather pointy.
Wait a minute…
"Alistair, stop fidgeting."
Now that, at long last, was a voice he recognized. Aside from the poke-and-prod person who really wasn't good at their job (as far as Alistair can tell), the richly furnished room they were in had another temporary resident. Alistair hadn't seen Bann Teagan for quite a while, but there was no mistaking his kind eyes, tired voice and quietly exasperated "aneurysm incoming" expression.
And his rather flashy hairstyle, of course. What was it with nobles and braids, anyway?
The prodding continued, though, which meant that most of Alistair's words were punctuated with ows and gasps.
"B- ow! This armor is itchy! And way too shiny, you know?" Come to think of it, he really remembered this from somewhere. It certainly wasn't his splintmail – any why in the Dark City was someone else putting it on him? "How are you supposed to move in this, let alone fight?"
"I doubt too much fighting will be required of Ferelden's king."
"Well I still-" It took just that long for Alistair's ears to successfully pass on the message to his brain, then have the latter inform his voice that now might be the time to properly freak out. "WHAT? King?"
Bann Teagan only smiled slightly in that diplomatic manner used by schoolteachers close to cracking and maniacs counting the number of ways they can rip your head off without the use of their hands. "Well, I suppose you could choose to be crowned queen, but that would cause quite a stir among the nobility… moreover, it would likely alienate your fiancée."
Wait, wait, wait. King?
King?!
Fiancée?
And why did they have another copy of that horrible armor lying around, anyway?!
Alistair felt momentarily light-headed, but the damned armor was so stiff that he couldn't even slouch properly. "I-I think I may need to lie down. This is a dream, right, just a dream?"
He certainly hoped it was, because there was no way any of this could be happening, unless… unless Cailan and likely a good chunk of the nobility was dead and the rest resenting him. Alistair felt rather like at the templar sparring team selection once again; always the last to be picked and always the one people stared at. It just came naturally, really.
"For many, it would be." Teagan noted with irritating calm. Apparently, he had given this pep talk several times already and was now just reciting his practiced lines. "You'll do fine, Alistair."
He sounded kind of like a healer ready to amputate one's arm without an adequate dose of sedatives. Needless to say, it wasn't entirely comforting.
"Who suggested this again?"Alistair was still rather dazed. In the previous encounters, he had been himself, at the very least, even if his possible co-Wardens had been… bizarre. But here, there didn't seem to be much Wardening to do.
Come to think of it, he was a Warden and a bastard – how come he was being made king?
"The marriage or your coronation?"
"Both?"
"Your fiancée and fellow Warden, in both cases." At least Teagan seemed relatively normal, if tired. The prodding person turned out to be an elven servant who was indeed fastening the armor with the moves fit for an assassin rather than a chamberlain or whatever function he had. "If you're getting cold feet now, I suggest taking it up with her... but I doubt she'll be pleased once she hears about it."
Considering that this was a place designed for him to meet this fiancée of his – and therefore a dream, it had to be a dream, unreal, unreal, fiction, Alistair chanted in his head – he doubted he could avoid it, even if he wanted to.
Alistair felt the cold gauntlets on his hand, though, and remembered the ring; it wasn't there. For a brief moment, he felt as if the archdemon had showed up with a very ugly set of china as a wedding gift and he had to refuse it in a most polite manner. Fortunately, this usually involved looking down at his feet for a moment, meaning that he noticed the golden chain around his neck (almost invisible atop the golden armor) and the ring it held.
Who made gold armor, anyway? Gold was way too soft to make an effectively protective shield. Moreover, bronze was too archaic… so was it plating only?
"I'll worry about that part –OW, Maker's breath, is this armor or a corset?!" No, it was definitely something else, although Alistair was glad for the small mercy of not being saddled with the same atrocious overgrown paper knife Cailan had carried. Again, it just seemed too big to be effective, but whatever one liked, he supposed. First things first, though. "Where is she?"
"She and Teyrn Cousland should be in the guest quarters somewhere."
"Right!" With impeccable timing, the elf managed to finish and jump away from the rather imbalanced king before anything could be done to his precise handiwork. Alistair felt like a doll, but tried to remember the name Cousland. It sounded somewhat familiar. "Ah… where would those be?"
"Two corridors to the left." Why Teagan wasn't surprised that the king didn't know his own palace wasn't really a concern, but Alistair really wondered how he could manage to look somewhat wistful. "I envy you, really."
The Bann Teagan Alistair remembered rejected almost every woman who hurled herself at him (politely) and preferred his celebrity lifestyle over the constraints of keeping up a stiff-lipped public image. However, if he was able to pull off the braid…
"Well, this armor might look better on you, so we might yet switch…"
"Not that, no, but your fiancée." Teagan corrected, which was somewhat calming; that meant she was likely going to be a bit saner than the rest of them. "She is a most remarkable woman."
"Remarkable as in she can knit sweaters for qunari or remarkable as in her glare makes cheese go sour?" But Alistair was almost out of the door by then, not really listening. The king business had shook him up somewhat, so it was time to find the woman who had had the bright idea of making him one.
Since Alistair was being so impolite with the whole waiting for an answer business, Teagan counted to ten, took deep breaths and, just in case, took another one of his tranquility pills (the seventh that day; no wonder he was calmer than a cardboard box.
"I would have gone for the loots corpses for shiny objects angle myself." The elven servant suggested as he put away the tools for shining the armor.
Scowling, Teagan took another of those pills. This was going to be a long day and he had only one bottle.
o.O.o
Alistair managed to get lost only once, to his credit.
This was why he actually preferred to let others lead; his sense of direction was abysmal. Also, there was no one to ask for directions, not that he was desperate enough to do that… yet. Fortunately, there was a completely different means of determining where the future queen might be – a very vocal argument, coming from the general direction of where Teagan had said.
At this point, Alistair could admit to curiosity. If he was to be – gulp – king and marry this woman, she had to be human; it was impossible for the nobility to accept anything else, he knew. And, of course, she had to be of noble lineage – one bastard on the throne might have been way too much to swallow for some anyway, let alone two pseudo-commoners. There was also logic to it; if a high-ranking noble was willing to marry him, no doubt that strengthened his claim on the throne.
Just because he wasn't a scholar didn't mean he was the dullest crayon in the box. And, anyway, there were far too many ways one could eavesdrop on Arl Eamon when small enough, especially when he tended to mutter about things like excellent pawn and move for the future and why couldn't Anora be an airhead like Cailan, now I'm stuck without a means of supplanting them when he thought he was alone.
Alistair wasn't entirely certain what that meant, but he managed to recognize the Arl's voice quite easily from a distance thanks to this training.
The door from where most of the noise was coming was half-open, revealing three figures. The one who Alistair noticed and recognized immediately was Eamon, though his hair was grayer, longer, and he had apparently taken to copying Cailan's hairstyle. Come to think of it, perhaps it was a symbol of loyalty to the crown or something; Maker knew Cailan was (had been, his panicky nature suggested quickly) vain enough to make a royal decree about that kind of thing…
Anyway, aside from that, he was apparently of the opinion that a long beard made him look younger, which couldn't be farther from the truth.
The other two were much closer to Alistair's own age and, even if they weren't bickering, he would have been able to tell that these were siblings. The tall man with sienna-colored hair had the same stance as the auburn-haired woman, similar gesticulation and, of course, both seemed to want the complete opposite of one another.
"Sari – Sari listen to me!"
Alistair was actually a little dazed; the noblewoman was beautiful, without a doubt, in a fresh-green gown and golden jewelry. There were no weapons within reach that made her seem intimidating, and even though she was scowling, there was dignity in that gesture.
"Nooo I don't wanna!" In fact, right up to the point when she stomped her foot and started pouting, Alistair thought the king business might not be so bad. "'s not fair, not fair not fair that that I always have to do the dirty work!"
The shrillness of her voice made him reconsider that stance. Almost.
"Hey, you weren't stuck in a Chasind voodoo doctor hut for a year." the man countered, obviously recalling the needles he had been forced to endure.
"No, I just had to trek through the icky mud and the cold and the mean darkspawn and stuff!" Sari whined, "Of course you didn't have it bad!"
"Remember that puppy we got for my fifth birthday? You started screaming and got him at once!"
"Nuh-uh, just because he didn't wanna imprint on you…"
Arl Eamon looked vaguely exasperated, but more annoyed than anything. "Eh, that's all well and good-"
"And when you were thirteen, you stole my hamster and made him your doll!"
"Keep Mr. Fluffikins out of this!"
"-but we really need you to be queen." Credit had to be given to how professionally Eamon managed to ignore all this childishness and get down to business. "Public relations, you understand – the whole hero business made you top story in the tabloids and if you don't tie the knot, well, a negative marketing campaign could ruin our tourney."
"Don't lie to me!" Sari huffed, pointing an accusing finger at him. She hadn't been brought up on Disney movies to be ignorant of terminology. "Princess-consort is the title, I know, I saw the paperwork! Just 'cause that peroxide Princess Leia-wannabe doesn't know when to quit, get a nose job and start over…"
"But that's just a title – meaningless, really." Eamon hastened to add. Besides, he'd casually try to stop Anora's food rations from getting to her in the tower anyway, so there shouldn't be a problem on the long run… "You'll have all the privileges of a queen."
Sari let out a most un-ladylike snort. "Hah."
"The king isn't a bad catch." her presumed brother chimed in, prompting his eyebrows to do the waggling equivalent of a tango.
Alistair carefully surveyed the potential queen now. Childishness aside – he was childish himself, he could admit that much – she hadn't yet showed any trait that would require severe attention. Besides, she was pretty… and if she loved him, then that would overcome all obstacles…
The noblewoman's nose wrinkled "Have you smelled him?"
Okay, that might be a problem.
"Eh, no?"
"And that cheese he always carries around?"
That was it right there; not only did she look displeased, her brother – and even the Arl, for Maker's sake! – waved their hands in front of their faces, as if to clear the air. Then it was personal, obviously. Alistair decided to make it his business to issue decrees about cheese-making that would make life miserable for all of them.
No one insulted the cheese. No one.
"Good point." the nobleman conceded, already running through his imagination for further ideas.
Eamon was quicker. "Eh, wealth and prestige?"
"Already have that." Sari waved a dismissive hand.
"I'd say admirers, but I shouldn't, really."
"Yup." She looked rather perky for a moment there, though, and Alistair was struck by the uneasy feeling that the future queen was likely to have other admirers anyway.
The Arl was now getting a little panicky, because there wasn't much else he could suggest, apparently. Fortunately the other nobleman was making wild gestures towards his sister's necklace and the golden embroidery on her dress. Eamon didn't get it for a minute or two, but then finally understood when subjected to a rather painful Snow White impression.
"Eh… a lot of sparkly jewelry?"
Sari's green eyes lit up immediately, like a lawyer that smelled fresh blood. "Sparkly? Ooooh…. Is it pretty and pink and glittering?" Her last semblance of maturity waved and left the door with a flourish.
"Yes… Ah, the Queen of Ferelden has only the best, being the representative of the country. We do want to look cultured, after all."
"You have to admit, that doesn't sound that bad…" Her brother personally went for the greasy oil salesman angle, giving her a broad grin that would have made any sane person back away, very slowly.
Sari pondered this deeply, thinking about the pros and cons. "Well, if it's shiny… shiny…. Precious… shiny… Alistair!" she squealed, spotting him in the doorway.
Curse the shiny armor, the unwilling king thought, gulping.
Fortunately, the other two men seemed just as embarrassed as he was about this, but much quicker on the uptake; they leapt into action at once.
"Alistair!"
"My liege!"
"Uh, ah… hi." This was the best Alistair could manage.
"What a coincidence!" the unfamiliar nobleman said, showing more teeth than a mabari breeding ground. "We were just talking about you!"
"Why are you wearing only half of your armor?" Eamon asked, critically inspecting the distinct lack of shininess. "Did Teagan try to teach you those clown routines again? I told him that he can't go found a dance-break or break-dance or whatever troupe he wants to, he has responsibilities!" the Arl grumbled, making a mental note to increase his brother's pill dosage. "You mustn't be so easily impressionable; he'll get over that phase."
"Right." Alistair deadpanned, refusing to get sidetracked this time. "Arl Eamon-"
Which was kind of hard to do when a young woman launched herself at you, inspecting the heavy armor you were wearing.
"Oooh, shiny!" she cooed, admiring the reflective abilities more than the reflection itself. Then, realizing something, her head snapped towards Arl Eamon, the look in her eyes pure spoiled brat. "Hey, why don't I get shiny armor, hah? Hah?!"
"Sari, please." Her brother rushed in to restrain her before she could try to throttle Eamon, once again flashing a too bright smile to Alistair. It was sort of marred by having to hold the struggling and whining woman in place. "Your majesty, we were just discusing the wedding plans. I think a short engagement sounds best, don't you? Reap the benefits of defeating the archdemon before the public forgets and all that."
Sari recovered, though, and wiggled her way out of the grip. She immediately rounded up on Arl Eamon once more, calculating. "Sooo if I marry the imbecil- I-I mean the dashing heir apparent, I get my crown, my own, my precious…" she muttered, twirling her fingers a little bit.
"Well, theoretically, it doesn't seem the monarch wears a crown in Ferelden…"
"Lost!" the pseudo-queen wailed, a step away from throwing accusations. "My precious is lost! Cousland! Cousland!" she coughed, sounding inches away from spewing her guts on the floor.
Alistair wasn't quite certain what to say to that. "Pardon? Eh, Gesundheit?"
"No, no, that's my name!" Sari scowled, because he was supposed to remember this stuff. "Cousland."
"I always thought it sounded somewhat Orlesian." Eamon noted before Alistair was forced to embarrass himself with some sort of reply. In any case, he voiced the very question Alistair was thinking, so there wasn't any denying that silence was golden. "Why do you keep saying it, anyway?"
"We couldn't pronounce it right when we were little, so Papa had the bright idea to lock us in a room with a parrot who could only say this word until we learned." the Cousland brother remarked, still maintaining that vaguely psychotic smile before coughing himself. "Cousland!"
"That's… disturbing. And sort of sad." For the parrot, it must have been downright traumatizing. Alistair found himself vaguely wondering if the unfortunate creature was still alive. And – oh, Maker – he'd have to meet their parents… "But what I wanted to know is-"
"We're handling everything, don't worry, your majesty." Cousland interfered, showing him a list of fabric samples, several possible wedding invites and two plastic cake designs. "From the guest list to the color of the napkins."
"Right, yellow."
"No, mauve!"
"I thought we'd agreed on green?"
"Not shiny enough!" Yellow was apparently only a compromise on Sari's part. "It needs glitter, glitter!"
"As you can see, we have things perfectly under control here." Cousland really did look like a psychopathic manchild when his left eye twitched and his smile looked just a little too wide…
Alistair, knowing that he couldn't do the reasonable action and back away slowly, tried to be diplomatic about this. "Obviously. Gentlemen, if it were possible, I'd like to speak with my… my bride. Alone. Without interruption." He added this when they made no move to vanish.
"But we haven't finished picking out the patterns on the bathroom curtains!" Eamon protested, very personally attached to this issue. "I still don't think ponies are fit for a king…"
Sari's eyes turned steely at this mention. "The ponies stay."
"I really think-"
"The ponies stay!" she roared, looking impressively royal at this point. "Gus, write down the first royal decree of Queen Abhisarika: pony curtains for everyone!" Her brother, an obedient sycophant, dutifully obeyed. Gleefully, even.
"Bu-but… they don't match the rest of the décor!" Eamon protested as Gus tried to drag him away. "They're not properly pink!"
Gus responded by knocking him over the head with the flower garland catalogue. "Silence, minion! You kids just keep doing what you're doing, leave this joker to me." He smiled brilliantly, mouthed neckline to Sari, and dragged an unconscious Eamon out of the room.
Alistair was vaguely beginning to think that he should have grabbed some of the pills off Teagan before vanishing.
"So, uh, Sari…"
"Naw, don't use that nickname." Oh, thank the Maker, she was almost normal with her brother gone! "Gus spent two years with Chasind, you know, plus he was never one to study cultures too much – he doesn't know what a sari is. Or an asari, for that matter." she added, chortling a little. Poor Fergus, stuck with a Nintendo when she already had an X-Box. More's the pity. "Abby's fine."
Normalcy. Alistair thought that he saw just a flicker of it, somewhere in the distance.
"Abby, this marriage… you really want that?" That was the serious question; Alistair couldn't really fathom that any woman would want to marry him; and with her, he even had doubts if he was just a way of getting what she obviously truly wanted. "Because I-I don't really know if you just want me or a crown. If forced to choose, you seem intent on picking the latter."
"Oh, don't be so silly. The precious and you come in one package. Unfortunately." she muttered, but then started coughing again, her voice vaguely squeaky yet broken. "Cousland, Cousland! And we must have the precious, yes. So anything goes, really."
"But… would you want me if I wasn't going to… be king?" One assurance would be enough, so Alistair gently prodded. "If you didn't know who my father was?"
"I thought we were past this phase." Abby frowned. "You have more secrets you conveniently forgot to mention? Aside from your royal father, your grubby sister and your Vegas show girl mother?"
Alistair was mortified, just like he had been when first told of what was commonly known as the Bellagio incident among those in on the public secret. "When did I tell you that?"
"You didn't, not really. You kind of talk in your sleep. And snore quite loudly. That's rather irritating, by the way."
"How would you- oh." Well, there goes that question. Alistair felt his ears turning red and the armor wasn't helping keep him cool. "So we have-ah, I mean…"
"You suggested it!" Abby accused, shutting her eyes tight for a moment. "I thought I was the traumatized one, Cousland, Cousland. Not even the precious could save me from that."
By this point, though, Alistair wasn't listening too much to those mutters; another thing occurred to him. He combined the words king and marriage to arrive at the logical conclusion.
"But wait. If I'm going to be king… that means I'll need an heir. You're a Grey Warden." At least, he thought she was. The squirrel spirit had claimed that these women were all to be potential Wardens; and Kea the ninja and Kim the pyromaniac had certainly matched the potential Warden standard. Not sure about Bel the templar-addict, but this woman… could she even fight? Alistair wasn't certain. But she nodded, so then she had to be. "You do realize that having an heir – us together, I mean – is next to impossible."
"You said so a few times." Abby nodded impeccably.
"Not that I want to appear, ah, impolite, but… why did I agree to this marriage?"
"I didn't ask you." Again, the green of her eyes shone brightly and the girl put two and two together. Not even the armor he was wearing could keep Alistair from feeling as if the finger she pointed at him accusingly was jabbing straight at his collar bone. "Hey, are you trying to weasel out of this?! You're not taking away my shiny, my precious!"
"Hey, hey, I didn't mean it like that!" Alistair recoiled quickly. Shouting, he could handle, but tears… tears were just beyond his capacity. "I'm just trying to figure things out here – if my w-wife is a Grey Warden, then the royal line has a very good chance of ending with me."
The word wife calmed her just as much as it unnerved him, so she actually thought about things for a moment. "If it bothers you that much, I could always get some young hot lover and get myself preggers that way."
"No, no, it just doesn't make any sense to me- wait a minute." Alistair remembered the I didn't ask answer. "Did I agree to this marriage?"
Finally, Abby flushed, looking rather adorable, in a caught-with-my-hand-in-the-cookie-jar kind of way. "Eh, I kind of sort of announced it… sorry about that." she muttered quickly.
"But then I'm not really engaged to you. I didn't agree to this, did I?"
"You didn't say no?" Abby suggested quickly, grasping at straws.
Alistair wasn't certain what caused him to forget that he could end this situation whenever he wished, but he found himself babbling, faced with a wide-eyed noblewoman. "What I mean to say is… this whole king thing… it's a little hard to adapt to and marriage is a big step… maybe we should wait a little longer, you know?" Didn't women usually give these excuses? LGet to see how we work together outside of a life-and-death environment, how out normal-life interactions play out… that kind of thing..."
He barely finished speaking when Abby started throttling him, a maddened gleam in her dialated pupils. "Noooo! They promised me the precious! The precious has to be ours!"
Her brother and Arl Eamon practically fell out of the doorway, not even bothering to hide their eavesdropping any longer. In particular, the Cousland brother didn't seem fazed at all, compared to Eamon's rather predictable babbling shock.
"Milord, you should have mentioned that your preferences run the other way!" Cousland still looked as much of a lunatic as ever, only this time, there was a vaguely familiar glint of depravity in his eyes. "If I may, I humbly offer to sacrifice my freedom for the sake of Ferelden – the marriage can be a formality."
Abby was quicker on the uptake than Alistair – or had more blood in her brain now than him, considering the minor throttling – and rounded up on her brother at once, leaving her fiancé gasping for air. "Gus! You're trying to steal my shiny!"
"Aw, come on, Sari, you got the mabari, lemme get the love interest!" Cousland whined, trying to get a good grip on his sister's hair. "My backstory is more tragic than yours!"
"Is not!"
"Is too! Dead ex trumps everything!"
Eamon had recovered by this point, the last shred of stabilizing influence in this bizarre vision.
"Well, that ends this plan." He then turned to the flabbergasted king, dignity still intact. "Alistair, we don't need any Cousland to legitimize your reign anymore, so perhaps… well…" It was the time for a rapid recalculation. "Seeing as Isolde was sacrificed in the war and I already intend to name myself your mentor… we might as well tie the knot." Eamon suggested, in all seriousness.
"W-what?" Alistair stumbled over every single word, unable to keep down the perplexing vision of Eamon in a wedding dress.
Would he shave his beard for the occasion?
Eamon, ever-willing to help the king, was very ready to sacrifice himself in such a profitable arrangement. "After all, we do know each other well enough, so that's not a problem… though if you want, you can always keep the Couslands as lovers and- Alistair?" The future king had mysteriously vanished – probably to get more of that foul cheese he was so fond of. That would be the first thing to go from this household when he was in charge, Eamon thought. Cheese gave him such wicked ideas of independence. "Now where did that boy wander off to…"
