The battle's done
And we've kind of won
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: the Musical
Elissa stands in the Palace courtyard, waving.
Waving. And smiling stiffly at a crowd that isn't decreasing in numbers despite the fact that the sun is about to set and she has been here for what feels like half her life, embodying what Queen Anora calls the spirit of Ferelden. It sounds a bit grim, considering Elissa was nearly dying not two weeks ago but the intention behind the words is well-meaning, she supposes.
Elissa is surrounded by knights from the royal guard, utterly untouchable, and yet she has the distinct impression that everyone is too close, that she will be overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the faces and voices and hands, reaching out to greet her. On her way through the crowd she is touched, her hands are held and her back receives pats like she's one of them, just another one who did something good. Yet their way of glancing at her – half terrified (they say she stood on the Archdemon and laughed, tore out its heart with her own two hands) and half envious (they say, too, that she has so much gold now that she can buy her own teyrnir back) – breathes nothing but distance, wide-stretched lengths of time and that solitude that makes her feel like a statue already.
"Fereldans! Citizens of Denerim! This is the Hero of Ferelden!" a town crier shouts, once more.
Elissa walks back up towards the main entrance; as she is looking at the crowd she's unable to rid herself of the feeling she has been trapped in time, somehow. She knows, because her father told her, that this is the exact spot where Prince Maric and Commander Loghain once greeted the newly liberated people of Denerim, riding into the city as saviours. She knows, because she can sense it in the things he never says, that Loghain, too, stood here with something close to dread building up inside.
Ferelden expects much of its heroes.
"Oh my lady is terribly brave!" The plump, steel-haired woman who Elissa recalls is the Queen's former governess stands with her hands clasped together and her face positively beaming with excitement, all but grabbing hold of Elissa as she returns inside. "The things they tell us of your battle! That night on Fort Drakon, my lady, it's simply marvellous!"
"I was not alone up there," Elissa says, smiling habitually by now. "But it's kind of you to say so."
The woman smiles back. It seems only good manners keeps her from pinching Elissa's cheeks or tousling her hair. An odd thing to do to someone who is rumoured to have devoured Archdemon blood, fresh from the corpse.
"They will want to commemorate this event with a set of tapestries, I'm sure, my lady!"
"Oh, of course," Elissa agrees without correcting her use of the title. She has never been this well-behaved in her life but the polite surface she's hidden herself beneath is thick tonight, offers comfort and protection.
"You might get to pose for the artist, even!" The woman grins even wider.
"Yes, that's... that might very well be true."
"Oh, do you think they will hang your portrait in the Palace? I think they will!"
"I... have to be on my way," Elissa waves vaguely into the little group of people where she can distinctly see Zevran's blond hair. Never before has he seemed like such a safe haven, she thinks.
If this announcement causes any disappointment, that too is carefully hidden behind the radiant joy of being close to the Hero of Ferelden.
"Of course, my lady."
And that night they partake in another feast.
At least this banquet is a more subdued occasion, free from vengeful nobility and forced dancing and Elissa feels closer to rest and relaxation than she has in long time, her entire body rejoicing in this transient sense of calm. Because of course it is fleeting. She knows that. It's in the way Anora looks at her, in the way the uninvited Wardens are approaching the city gates and the way she carries the new titles. The whispers of the future is already there.
But tonight they celebrate.
They sit at a long table in the great hall and take their supper that is as varied and plentiful as the previous night's but not quite as overwhelming, as the atmosphere is completely different. An odd blend of formal – they have the King and Queen present after all, even if almost no one calls them Majesty in this company – and casual, with Oghren conducting them all to join in on drinking songs so filthy they could make anyone blush.
Elissa sits in between a smiling Bann Teagan and a slightly tipsy Fergus who simply does not stop talking. At the other end of the table, Loghain is listening to something Leliana says without seeming to pay much attention. Elissa lets her gaze linger there for a moment. The times she has seen him without armour are so few it still surprises her: he wears an embroidered tunic and brown trousers and yet somehow he manages to look like he is dressed for battle; she smiles to herself. It's the stern posture and the stiffness in those broad shoulders. He's ready to attack. As is she, although an upcoming event where she is required to use her hidden daggers seem less probable with each sip of ale.
"Tell me, little sister, is she as marvellous as she appears to be?"
"Who is?" Elissa says, realising she has been listening to him for a while now without hearing a word.
"The Queen of Antiva," Fergus has bright red cheeks, like a little boy. "No more ale for you, apparently!"
"He was talking about your friend, the Orlesian woman," Teagan whispers helpfully.
"Ah." She smiles at him. "Thank you."
"They have been chatting all day," he elaborates, taking a sip of his drink.
Leliana is raising her goblet to Loghain and grinning at Elissa when their eyes meet across the tables. Of course. Leliana.
"If by marvellous you mean clever, cunning and strong enogh to take down an Ogre with her longbow, then yes, she is." Elissa turns to Fergus. "She was also a lay sister once, if that sort of thing strikes your fancy."
Fergus ears turns a shade of crimson. She can't remember if she has ever seen her boisterous older brother embarrassed before and the sister in her triumphs quietly into her goblet of ale. He doesn't bring the topic up again and Elissa devotes herself entirely to the warm sliced bread arriving along with the plates full of salted meat and smoked fish.
When she rises from the table afterwards, when all food is gone and she feels as full as Dog, ready to burst, Teagan follows her out into the corridor. Elissa comes to a halt in front of a large portrait of King Calenhad, glancing back at him.
"We had one of these paintings in the castle," she says, quietly. She wonders what happened to all their belongings once Howe and his men took over the grounds. If they were thrown out with the corpses he told her they burned. Shuddering, she forces that particular conversation out of her mind.
Teagan walks up to her side, standing with her in silence for a while longer, so close she can feel his shoulder against her own.
"You must miss Highever," he says eventually. He has a very comforting voice, Elissa thinks, letting herself rest in it for a moment. "It has been a long year for you, hasn't it?"
"One could say that, yes."
"I wanted to let it be known that Redcliffe and the bannorn of Rainesfere is more than willing to aid you in the future," Tegan looks at her, almost solemnly. And it is a kind of oath he offers, after all."We are forever indebted to you."
Elissa shakes her head. "No, you are not. I am glad I could help. It is my duty, after all."
"You went far beyond your duty for my family's sake, my lady."
"Please," she turns a little so she can look him in the eyes. "Elissa. I am no lady."
Teagan smiles at that, as though it seems amusing to him that she can sever the ties to a title so easily, toss it out the window. Then he puts his hand on her arm, very quickly and carefully.
"Then I offer you the service and gratitude of my bannorn, Elissa. You are always a welcome guest, no matter what your purpose for the visit may be."
"You say that now," she arches an eyebrow. "But when I have scraped your land bare of capable knights and soldiers you might regret this moment."
"I might." Teagan laughs. The tiny wrinkles around his eyes when he does that make her smile, oddly enough. Elissa withdraws.
"Thank you kindly, Teagan," she says. "I appreciate your generosity."
"Any time, Elissa."
She can't rid herself of the thought that he watches her intently as she walks away.
She walks upstairs. Outside. All day she has been in her full armour, carrying the Highever shield she rarely used in any battles but that she never once forgot in any camp site, waving with the family sword to the people. It's not a Grey Warden thing to do, which sends a rebellious joy through her.
The balcony offers peace.
Out here the chill and the light breeze pierce her tunic and trousers, very gently, and she closes her eyes for a while. Noise from the celebration feasts are rising, as a reminder of why there are here and what they have done.
In case anyone would forget.
Her eyes fall upon a candlestick made out of bright, polished gold that's seems almost immovably heavy where it stands in a corner. It stands on three feet, each of which is shaped as a snake slithering around a column. An odd item to find in the Palace, Elissa thinks, alluding to legends and myths she is unfamiliar with. She crouches down, a finger tracing one of the snakes. Its carefully detailed skin even has the slight scales she remembers from the time she has had to dispose of snakes in their camp.
Then there are steps behind her. She hopes, quickly and before she has time to filter her own thoughts, that it's not Teagan again; she is too exhausted for that studied way of talking she employs in his presence, the defence against his voice's promise of something more every time they speak. He's a good conversationalist, a polite and warm man with a good heart and everything he says has a taste of long afternoons in Highever where her mother, over tea or casually thrown over the back of a book she was reading would say the lovely Teagan, and always expect a different answer than last time.
But it's not Teagan. She doesn't feel Teagan like a low soar in her blood. Elissa relaxes back on her heels.
"That is an Orlesian treasure," Loghain says behind her.
"Oh? I tried to remember any myths that would explain its design."
"We saved a lot of their treasures when we drove them out," he explains, without waiting for her question. It must be a first. "Got us a decent amount of gold years later when we sold it back to Orlais. Maric... wanted to keep certain items."
"To remind himself?"
"In the beginning, yes I think so." Loghain's voice fades away.
"It's a rather gaudy candlestick." Elissa rises to her full height, adjusting her trousers in the process. No clothes fit properly any more. Where she had soft, supple fat she now has muscles and the once round curves are square now, tweaked into hard angles. It's as unfamiliar as being the hero of a whole nation.
Loghain gives her a half-smile. "It's Orlesian."
They look at each other, both very much aware of what the near future will bring. Taking a deep breath, Elissa steps away from the Orlesian treasure and walks further out on the balcony, so much that she can see the feast down on the courtyard where the servants have taken their meal. Lanterns and candles light up the night, giving off a gust of warmth even as the night grown colder.
"Speaking of Orlesians," she says, "I have summoned a meeting with them the day after tomorrow."
"Very well." He walks closer to where she's standing. "I take it you have invited them to your brother's estate?"
She nods, leaning out over the parapet; night-air in her lungs and ale in her blood, and that childish rush in her head and deep in her stomach – one more step, one more, a little further – when balance is upset and she can almost feel what falling would be like.
"Did you pose for artists?" she asks, returning to safety and steady feet on the ground.
The images of him in her head – the paintings of him in his cloak, in his silverite armour, with his black hair like a billowing mane; not to mention the paintings of him and Maric - bleed into the idea of him, the actual Loghain, posing for such things. She can't hold back a wide grin.
"Pardon?" He looks confused, even more so when he notices her amusement.
"Oh, nothing. I was confronted with... is her name Constance?"
"Madam Colette," he sighs, a bit weary but not unkind, like he's speaking of a friend. Odd as that may seem, considering their personalities. "Learned like you would never believe, speaking to her. My wife hired her as a tutor for Anora. She lived in Gwaren for many years, until she married a scholar from Denerim."
Elissa chuckles. "She seems to have high hopes for a wall of tapestries carrying my portrait."
"I am not surprised." Loghain snorts.
Below them a dance has started, ill-conducted and very loud; a whole crowd of men sit sprawled over one of the wells in the garden outside the main entrance. It's a small wonder nobody falls into it.
"Was it like this?" she asks, after a moment's silence. She doesn't have to explain further, she can tell by the way Loghain glances at her.
"Not precisely. We ended an occupation." He leans against a pillar, turning his back on the view. When she looks closely, his face seems different these past few days; he looks better rested and less pale than she recalls, possibly less gaunt, too. She wonders if the Warden appetite has finally set in."There were those who mourned the regime; most people had lost too much to care either way."
"Did you... feel like a hero?"
It's a laughable question, but Loghain doesn't laugh.
"Hardly," he says, his voice low.
There is so much she wants to ask, wants to pour out of herself and ask him to sort out for her, he who has lived this life already. But she can't. Not yet.
Resting her elbows on the parapet and looking down, Elissa wonders how late it is and if is expected to be here for much longer. Her entire body longs for the wide, luxurious bed Fergus has offered her in his fanciest guest room. As though Loghain has read her thoughts, he straightens up and looks at her.
"I was on my way home," he says. "I wanted to let you know."
"I'm leaving, too." She tries to rub off the dirt from the stone surfaces by brushing her hands against each other.
He gives her a sardonic little smile that touches upon bitterness, if only ever so slightly. "Not going to stay at your own celebration?"
"I waved for most of the afternoon, Loghain."
They speak no more on their way down, and with a simple nod Loghain is gone.
Elissa feels strangely alone in the great hall; her companions are standing in small groups, full of that kind of relief and happiness she certainly doesn't begrudge them after this horrible year. She watches Zevran and Oghren entertain Leliana; sees Eamon and Teagan talking animatedly to Wynne and Shale; spots Anora discuss something with Sten, who is looking charmed, to Elissa's surprise. He is as close to smiling as she has even seen him. Possibly drunk.
As she withdraws a bit, to stand in front of the windows behind the two elves who are playing flute and tambourines, she notices Alistair is making his way across the room to her.
She braces herself.
The weight of him is still heavy and thick in her heart, made worse by the sharp pangs of guilt at the thought of what she has done to him. Elissa swallows, hard. He stands beside her now.
"Look, we don't have to talk to each other," Alistair says, giving a disbelieving shake of his head, as though it amazes him he is there.
"No," she agrees.
"I understand Anora is giving you a private audience tomorrow," he says anyway.
"We will meet to speak of the future," Elissa responds, as carelessly as possible.
"Oh, of course." The fact that he's bitter isn't a surprise to her but the massive extent of his bitterness still overwhelms he. "The future. And I don't have anything to do with that."
"It concerned the Grey Wardens. So no, it is nothing that will affect you."
They both stand like statues in front of the windows; Elissa tries to contain her own emotions, force them inside her body by keeping a hand on the windowsill, pressing it so hard her knuckles whiten. Alistair stands motionless, arms folded across his chest.
"What did you do?" he asks. "With the Archdemon, I mean."
"Like I told you, we killed it."
"Just like that, huh? You just went after it and it fell? No bit about how its essence needs a new vessel and that it's supposed to kill the Warden who takes the final blow? Nothing like that?"
Elissa is quiet.
"How did you do it?" He repeats the question, looks hard at her. There is a glint of the king he will become in that gaze, and it scares her.
"I used a sword."
Alistair laughs a harsh, short laugh that is without any joy. "I see."
"You just left." Elissa feels it returning, the fury she felt at the Landsmeet, with lives in her hands and Alistair's voice, cutting through her thoughts. And his desperation afterwards, when her game of thrones tore the heart from his sleeve; she had offered this man something he never thought he would have and then, when politics demanded it, she gave him away like a convenient means of payment for an alliance with the Queen.
She has little right to feel fury. Yet she does.
"I became king." Alistair's voice is hollow now, washed out."Like you wanted, remember?"
"You left us. I know you fought in the city, but you left the Wardens on the verge of a Blight and we had no... we didn't... " She pauses, unclenching her fists. "Riordan died and Loghain and I nearly did, too. Don't you dare question me about how we dealt with the Archdemon when you left, your Majesty."
Alistair flinches, like she's hit him.
"Don't call me that," he growls. He paces the floor, restlessly, stopping once more at the window where the painted glass makes his features shift between blue and green and purple; Elissa can't look away. "You spared him. I know you did what you thought was right. But I couldn't. I just... couldn't."
"I know."
"And now he's going to be a hero and recruit people? He's going to do what Duncan did? How can you let him do that; how can that not bother you?"
Elissa sighs. There is nothing they say to each other any more that heals or soothes, all of their words merely separate, drive them further apart, and this, Elissa knows as she tries not to show it, this is what truly hurts.
"I don't think I can explain this so you will understand."
He laughs again, just as unhappily as before. "That's true, at least."
There's a trail of things she knows about Alistair, leading back from whatever place she has the memory of them buried; all the little things, so small when you first learn them but seem so large now, towering beside her. Like the fact that he sleeps on his left side. And the fact that he doesn't like beetles; that he takes his tea with milk and honey and has a sweet tooth; that he still prays almost every night but has never actually thought it makes a difference; that he is self-conscious about his height and that when he was six or seven, he was in love with a servant's daughter who locked him up in the kitchen storage.
There are so many things.
And she doesn't know what to do with the trail, the path. She can't follow it and it doesn't go away and when he looks at her now, she wonders when it will stop.
Alistair in her body, around her body, the same blood in their veins.
"I would have married you," he says suddenly, hurriedly like it's something he must say to get it out, over with. He still sounds so hurt. But he is telling her the truth, like he is always telling her the truth because he is Alistair and has a voice that still manages to slip under all defences and cut deep into her resolve. "And not because of politics."
"I know," she says, so quietly her voice doesn't even carry the words across the room.
With Eamon on their side and the Blight as a victory associated with her name, they could have been successfully introduced to the court. The truth - her truth that is dark and shameful and buried in the ashes of dreams they created during long, terrified nights in front of the fire - is that she didn't want to.
She gave Eamon plenty of good, sound, political reasoning and let the real reasons stiffen to steel in her chest.
Alistair finally looks at her, something new in his gaze. A hardness, a new edge. He understands what she doesn't say, what she never said because she thought it too cruel, too much. He has never offered her any space to breathe or fall apart; in their world there was no room for her to be anything other than strong, so she was strong, was everything he couldn't be.
He is the King of Ferelden now.
And perhaps, Elissa thinks as she walks away for what feels like the last time like this, on this particular path, he has finally freed her too.
A/N: Thanks to CJK for beta and hand-holding. And thanks to you all for reading and reviewing. 3