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"Well that wasn't awkward," Anders dropped himself into the chair opposite her desk, and she stepped out from behind the screen, dressed in her breeks and tunic, drying her hair.
"Which part, the part where you just walk into my bedroom or the part where I just got out of the bath?"
"Huh?" He craned his neck to look at her. "No, not what I was talking about. Though if you put the desk in the office, you know, where desks go, then I wouldn't be just walking into your bedroom like this," he pointed out, and looked around, examining the meager decorations. "I was talking about our resident displaced nobleman."
"The woman was his governess as a child and the closest thing he had to a mother when he was a young man. You can't expect he would have taken it well."
"No. I suppose not."
"All this killing is easier when they don't have faces," she said quietly, and slid into the chair behind her desk.
"Not a fan of killing in general, me, faces or no."
"Is that your way of finally giving me an answer?" She raised an eyebrow, appraising him, and he seemed taken aback for a moment.
"Thought you said when we joined the Wardens, we left our pasts behind us?" He was trying for lightness and mostly achieved it.
"Have it your way."
"Thanks!" he said brightly, and then sobered. "But really. Can you trust him? I know there's..." he waggled his finger at her, "something between you, but can you trust him?"
"I'm putting an awful lot of trust in all of you, considering the circumstances and that I don't know you all that well. Except Oghren. Drunkard or no, he's earned it in spades awhile back."
"And Nathaniel, who gets special treatment and no one will tell me why."
"Why are you harping on me about Nathaniel? Didn't I give you a cat so you'd leave me alone?"
"I could say something very uncouth right now. But I'm not going to, because I have this feeling one is not supposed to say such things to their commanders."
She snorted. "I'd wager I've heard worse, but yes, that…would be inappropriate."
"So you bought me off with a tabby. Secured my loyalty with a conversational furball."
"Yes," she nodded once decisively, and he rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically. "You're so full of it, it's coming out your ears," she pointed out affectionately.
"Are you going to talk to him?"
"Why?"
"I don't know. Someone should. And you have been unanimously volunteered."
She raised an eyebrow. "By whom?"
"Well, me, actually. Oghren is…not an option, and I don't want to. If you'd tell me why you two are so childishly awkward around each other, maybe I'd consider changing my mind."
"I wonder, sometimes…" she started, and cocked her head at him, smiling.
"What I look like naked?"
"Whether you know who's in charge here?"
"Well that would be you, but you need some advice steering the ship, now and then. This is where I give that advice."
"And now I'm required to talk to him about it?"
"Or something. You could cut the tension with a knife, and with so few of us, it's…well, it's getting uncomfortable."
"Who are you, the union rep?"
"Yes. Warden's Union For Less Uncomfortable Silences And Awkward Moments Between Our Commander And The Guy Whose Father She Killed," he deadpanned, slouching in the chair and steepling his fingers together.
"I hate you sometimes."
"I know. In the way that means you really love me."
"Get out of my bedroom." She pointed her finger towards the door, and he popped up out of the chair. With a dramatic, flourished bow, made his exit, his robes swishing. She chuckled, wondering how she managed to surround herself with such people. It was almost starting to feel normal again.
# # # # # #
She wasn't quite sure how this should work. It was an awkward limbo, and it was all her fault. She had indeed complicated the hell out of it.
He did not speak to her unless it was absolutely necessary. Meals were raucous as a rule (give Oghren drink and put him within shouting distance of Anders and asking for all hell to not break loose was asking for a personal favor from the Maker), and often she was pulled into the frivolity. But one look down the (new!) table at where he sat, away from the rest of them, was enough to sober her. He ate quietly, did not carouse with their small group of Wardens (or with anyone else, for that matter), and went to bed. Interactions in the field were limited to his scouting and capability with his bow. He followed orders and did his duty, so there was little to take issue with.
There was one particularly awkward moment when she could not get a chest open (after killing some very ill-informed bandits who thought the Wardens were pushovers), and after cussing several body parts, weapons, and frilly underthings of the prophet, he shouldered her out of the way with a terse 'let me'. His toolkit was far more expansive than her own, and he got the chest open with minimal effort. He opened the top, and said 'does this please you?' only to pause suddenly and stride away without another word.
"What was that about?"
"Nothing."
"Didn't look like nothing."
"Drop it, Anders."
"Fine, fine," he said, hands up and backing away. "You know, for such a small group, one would think we'd know everything about each other by now. I know there's something you're not telling us."
"Because it's none of your beeswax."
"Oh, excellent. I haven't heard that since I was a child."
"I like to pay homage to the classics."
"So, not going to tell me then?"
"You are so right sometimes it unsettles me," she said with a disarming grin, and began to hand him trinkets to stow in his pack to sell back in the city.
She approached him later that evening before she retired.
"You know," she started, trying for a casual tone that wasn't at all coming naturally, "I'm not saying we pretend like the last three years didn't happen, but you don't have to avoid me like plague."
He turned his head to look at her for a moment and then went back to waxing his bowstring. "I...Elissa, you have to let me alone. I can't do this, play nice with you. I do my duty and earn my keep, and I'd prefer to keep it that way. Nothing more."
Her shoulders sagged a little, and luckily he did not see it. "I apologize. Good night," she offered and was gone before he looked up again.
He clenched his teeth together, because those words had been so hard to get out, and he hated that something that should have been so simple hurt so much. He was at war with himself - he had vivid memories of her, of them, since they were children. Some…more recent memories were downright visceral and had provided distraction many a night in the Marches. Everything after that, everything causing his confusion and heartache, were things he'd been told, things he had no real grasp on. It was as though these things could be forgotten, as though they had never happened, while at the same time, the weight of them suffocated his fonder memories. He had not seen his father in nearly two years when he began hearing tidbits of news. His father had become the teyrn of Highever because the Couslands were working with the Orlesians to overthrow the king. He had no letters from Elissa after that, and the only word about the Couslands was of Fergus's death at Ostagar.
He had grieved for a very long time. It was hard to believe the affable, patriotic Bryce Cousland could have been a traitor, and it was worse to think that Elissa had not known his true loyalties, and would likely have defended her own father to her death.
He had kept all her letters for nearly a year before he burned them. All but one.
My beloved,
How silly does it sound to start a letter in that way? It is not as if you have changed your name and are no longer Nathaniel. And when you return from the Marches, you may actually still consider marrying me. I am fairly certain my mother still thinks you a little touched in the head, to be honest. Don't know if that's an insult on you or me.
I find myself daydreaming about the very things I have scolded other girls for wasting their time on for years. It is almost too embarrassing to admit, even like this, but I hope you will forgive me so long as I promise not to be so silly ever again? I wonder if we shall live in Highever or Amaranthine. I wonder, Andraste forgive me, what my wedding dress will look like. And I know if it's far too early to be thinking on those frivolities, it is even more so to think on other aspects of being your wife. I have wondered what I shall look like pregnant with your son. Mother caught me trying to decide which of my dresses might be let out if I find myself in such a delicate condition, and she laughed at me! Discomfiting, to say the least. I blame you, as I am sure will become our way. You will forgive me though?
One of mother's friends insists I will have to put away my swords and armor, as it will not be befitting of me once we are wed. I informed her that you would not ask me to do such a thing, that you liked me in armor or covered in mud, and you liked that I could hold my own in a fight. I daresay that some of the things they replied are not fit to commit to paper. I am no idiot, but I think I blushed more that day than any other in my memory.
Two years seems such a very long time, and I am saddened that we had such little time together before you left. Surely you will have to make it up to me when you return?
Missing you,
Your Elissa
It was shortly after he burned the letters (all but the one, which was still with his things, tucked away) that he had word of his father's death at the hands of the Grey Wardens. He managed to discover that it was the leader of the Grey Wardens who did the deed, the Hero of Ferelden: she had slain the archdemon, the queen's regent and his father all in a space of a month.
It took him several weeks to get back home, and soon as he discovered his family's holdings had been handed over, he was determined to take back what was theirs before the Wardens set up shop. The part about threatening the Warden's life was, well, it would have been an added bonus, but was hardly the entire point.
Discovering Elissa was the Warden he had sworn retribution against was…confusing, to say the least. They were…different people now. She had a hardness to her that had not been there before; he could see it in her eyes. Her loud barking laughter had not changed, but now it came with…questionable table manners and language he knew her mother would not have approved of. He doubted those were the only things that had changed.
But he was different too - half a year on the run, a traitor's son, living off vengeance and not much else. The young man who cleaned his best boots and bought a new tunic specially to visit her and find out if his marriage request would be well-received no longer existed.
He didn't know what to do.
So he obeyed orders. It was one of the few things he knew he could do well.