Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.
Summary: A City-Elf/Bann Teagan collection of drabbles and one-shots based on a prompt table from an LJ-community. These will be more or less in chronological order with the faintest traces of added plot here and there. Will vary from drabble length to one-shot.
Author's note: Quick update but inspiration hit. A big big thank you to roxfox1962 for having the patience to read this over for me and making sure I wasn't going overboard with it ;x~
In this chapter: It is called denial, enjoy your stay.
042.
Cooking isn't fun. Not even close to enjoyable. In Cyrion's house, it had been his task until Tasha had reached an appropriate age to take over. But while both father and daughter were somewhat decent at it, they also shared a similar disgust for the task. It was repetitive, lacking luster and shine, lacking amusement and variety. The only way for the girl to put up with it on a regular basis had been to constantly draft one of her cousins to keep her company. They didn't seem to mind, seating at a corner while speaking was much better than having to take over her any time of the day. After leaving Denerim, the job had fallen to more enthusiastic hands – Sten was especially good at it, go figure – and Tasha had not attempted to regain her former job. That night, that had changed.
The cooks had retired an hour after she had made her appearance, staring at the woman with shrew eyes, as if she was just this close to rob their workplace. The elf doesn't bother to care. It is so easy to do that nowadays, to spare her annoyance – so close to the surface when near humans – for more important things – death threatening things – until a day when she can actually make them think twice before fearing anything due to her race.
This is easier, she acknowledges, smile and nod, allow them to make their odd conclusions and do whatever she wishes in the meanwhile. She is a Warden – as much as she rues it some days – and that has its perks. It makes her able to act as outrageously possible without too many consequences which might annoy her. Perfect, really.
Her mind tweaks slightly towards a different subject, a different problem before Tasha stops it resolutely. This night is hers, this time is hers. The rest of the world can wait until sunrise or until the Archdemon itself knocks at her door, she cares not.
Her hands more quickly following that thought, focusing her whole attention on the knife she is holding and the vegetables that need to be cut. The simple movement is comforting in its familiarity. Nothing special, nothing death threatening, nothing unusual. Just a simple blade and food and the Alienage and the house where she wants to live until she grows old and grey. This night is for make belief, to see Shianni on the other side of the table, staring at her while the knife goes up and down, while the food is slowly pilled neatly to the side and dinner will be right out, wait just a moment.
Tasha has no real awareness of time passing. It just does, runs like every night in Redcliffe seems to do when in her presence.
"May I?"
The stew releases her attention for long enough for the elf to see her own hand pointing at the newcomer, a large wooden spoon dripping sauce carelessly. It indicates a nearby chair and Tasha really can't bring herself to care about the intrusion. If it keeps silent, no complaints will be made.
"Any question about the battle," she begins imperiously somewhere to the food, as if she is in a battlefield and everyone around follows her without question. "I will answer after sunrise. Any question about the Wardens will be answered after sunrise. Anything else that doesn't have anything else to do with what I'm doing."
"Will be answered after sunrise. I seem to have noticed the trend." Teagan enters the room in slow steps, cautious ones like she is about to kick him out of his own castle. The elf spares him a small look when he sits down, wondering just what he's doing awake when the morning is so near. She is but she has reasons to do so and nightmares to avoid.
The man takes a long look at her hands, moving over the ingredients – makes her wish for a wooden wall, just in the middle of them – and seems to decide he doesn't care about whatever she is doing. One of her odd moments, he's probably cataloging it as, one of those quirks that come out of nowhere and Tasha knows to have. The knife continues its work and she's off in her little world.
"Shouldn't you be resting?" To be expected. Her hand beheads a carrot rather viciously.
"Not really."
"Sleeping, perhaps. I cannot see why…"
Tasha likes the man, truly, maybe a little too much than it should be wise. However, he is making sense – as he always is – and she truly doesn't need it.
The knife points directly at his form and the elf notices for the first time how the black smudges under his eyes really don't become him, the result of sleepless nights just like this one, the bloody hypocrite.
"After sunrise," she repeats tensely. "Until then, you are free to pretend this is all normal, the city is at peace, the darkspawn are mere maggots and it is perfectly acceptable for me to be here. Pretend."
Teagan was raised by Eamon and his ability to daydream and imagine seems to have been squashed into oblivion at birth. Right now it shows, his confused frown making the stains on his skin even uglier. It is like she has just asked him to slay the Archdemon with his bare hands. An idea which might just almost make her laugh if not for every serious thought, waiting patiently for the sunrise.
"Pretend?" His lips twist at the corner, almost dryly, yes, of course she's out of her mind, but seems to humor her.
"Pretend," she agrees, turning to the stew which demands urgent attention. It is still incomplete and the meat is just the slightest bit raw but the scent is familiar. Herbs caught in the back of the Alienage, dried in a corner of the house, packed away in small bags by her father. Cyrion liked these small things, the smell of herbs, the touch of spices, the daughter cooking while allowing him to do something else, all to his liking. He is on her mind when the sauce touches her lips, behind her when she stirs again and nearly smacks the utensil in front of the human.
Teagan would not stare at it if he knew his eyes crisscross in this really comic vision. Far from her from stopping him. "It is four in the morning. While I do thank you, I am not really hun…"
Her eyes narrow in an unspoken warning. It is not four in the morning, it is not time to sleep and it's definitely not the night before a battle, the night before danger, the last one, it is not.
"Pretend?" Now he gets it. Teagan takes the spoon from her – and is that a sigh? – before tasting the concoction warily – Maker help her, it is not that bad. The vestige of doubt shows again, something she would completely assume to be mocking had he been anyone else. "Should I pretend it is cooked then? It tastes slightly raw but, perhaps with some effort, I might manage."
Tasha wastes no moment to take the utensil back, shaking her head to the sudden urge to replace it with a knife. Maybe with a hammer. At any rate, something that might make the man stopping being so male. "I begin to understand why you aren't married." A small tinge somewhere in her chest, somewhere undetermined is cautiously pushed to the following morning.
Another turn of the spoon, a little more pepper, another turn and silence. It makes her raise her head in wonder. Silence isn't something that she's used to, not now, not ever. And especially in this task, especially when she after she has the touch of company, Tasha finds that she wants it to keep going. Her thoughts are not hers when voiced, they aren't serious or complicated, dark or dangerous.
The noble is looking at her, watching her every move. Serious face, blue eyes always light, always clear and shifting too much to be understood.
For some reason, Tasha feels she as just stumbled into something unknown. A false step, if nothing else. It is not a feeling she is used to. She is an Alienage elf after all, always looking over her shoulder, always seeing where she'll step and where she'll trip. She is a Warden, always planning, always thinking for three, four, a dozen hundred people even. The last time she had this feeling, she was insulting another human to his face, threatening him with empty words just before a blow cut them short. Uneasiness is the name of this feeling.
Teagan stands and is smiling now, slightly, very slightly and, in two steps, is right behind her, peering into the pan. When he speaks again, it is so normally, like they are back in the waterfall and nothing is wrong. He speaks of Redcliffe, of the days of his childhood, the odd and rare story about Eamon's failures, a touch of his presence in that kitchen, the box of cake always by the fireplace and the Mabari he had taught to sneak things out. The uneasiness fades slowly, her apparent blunder fading into the background of that camaraderie she presumed to share with the human.
"Can I taste it now?" He asks eventually.
"Not afraid I will poison you now?" Her lips turn, dry as his expression had been before. "Pretend I can cook so I will feel better?"
He's containing another sigh, she just knows it.
"You need to learn to accept things as they come," Teagan adds simply, tweaking the spoon from her fingers, his form tall, too tall above her. It shadows her. Makes her feel small and comforted all at the same time. "Is it done?"
A little too close, his habit since they had left the Alienage together, closer than most but still enough to let her breathe air which he hasn't touched, move without arms bumping or fingers coming near. While there is physical space between them, tonight it seems the other kind is absent, the one they build day after day to keep a possible future away. It doesn't exist nor does the wish for it to return just yet.
He doesn't wait for her reply to try it out. Leans over the pan, mixes the pieces of vegetables around – just like a little boy and that's the Alistair in him – before picking meat out of the sauce and sticking it in his mouth. And almost spatting it out immediately. "Hot," he coughs and splutters and this man is little more than ridiculous at times, she thinks, allowing herself to look at him for a moment and memorize the whole image for a later date. "Maker, you could have…"
"Warned a grown man about how food is hot just after being made. I will surely remember for next time."
Ridiculous and immature and helping her during a night in which Tasha knows she wouldn't sleep, cannot sleep, cannot even dare to close her eyes because she is too afraid to even try, cannot dare to lose that last breath and she's so afraid even when those thoughts invade her mind all over again that the fear she managed to hide from Riordan is just peaking around the corner.
"Is it rather good, dear." Until it is replaced by Teagan, tall and proud and smiling, lowering to touch his lips against her cheek in the faintest caress she has ever received. "You have my gratitude."
His face is red, – faintly, lightly – his eyes well above her head but his smile is steady, like everything he has just done is nothing less than normal for that night, for them and the world turned upside down and turned into the Fade and dreams. Tasha has to try hard to keep her jaw from falling overly much.
While he sits again in front of her, ignoring her current predicament, ignoring the lack of sense of his every action and extends his hand like any other male would when faced with food. "A plate, if you please? Before the others arrive and claim their share." He begins talking once more, begins laughing while Tasha finds herself puzzled and drawn into a conversation – a pretense – where sunlight plays no part in.
The endearment which makes no sense and the action which makes even less and they're not in the Alienage but they are somewhere else, a house or a home in her – in his – make-belief universe. He is not thinking, he is pretending. Slowly, her lips turn. Not a dry smile, not a false one but a simple, actually happy smile.
"You will be washing the dishes," Tasha declares, taking a seat by his side.
Somewhere in between, she stops pretending.