Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except what I most humbly create. While, at times, I will take verbatim from the game, I mostly use the events of the Dragon Age games, expansions and universe as a loose structure around which to construct my re-imagined tale. If you are looking for a strict canon piece, I have no desire to offend, and so I warn you upfront!
When reading this tale, I hope you can easily imagine it being told by the very best of storytellers in Varric (from DA:2). In my version of events, Varric meets "The Hero" (my Elissa Cousland) in Kirkwall during the time period of DA:2. I mention this only so that readers can understand his connection along the way, and so I don't have to mention and rehash it again and again as I make my way through the tale.
A/N: Sometimes things just have to break to have any hope of being repaired.
Thanks to my readers, followers and reviewers; and to my ladies beta artemiskat and Snarkoleptic. :)
Happy Reading!
-Frayed One
Chapter Twenty-Six: Coming to Terms
No matter how clear Elissa was about Alistair's support of his release and in spite of her repeated assurances that Eamon would come nowhere near him during their time in the city, Jowan was understandably reluctant to stay within the walls of the Royal Quarter. Even if they stayed restricted to the Warden Enclave, the proximity to the man who had once been so adamant at seeing his end would have made it impossible for the mage to rest comfortably. This left Elissa with little alternative but to seek rooms in one of the seedy inns that seemed to spread across Denerim like the pox.
"A whorehouse? You've boarded us in a whorehouse?" Velanna was indignant, and two hairs shy of stomping her foot against the carpet in her frustration. "I was under the impression you played bed-warmer to the king when you weren't off menacing people with knives. Shouldn't we warrant rooms within the castle, or are you that bad at keeping your male companions happy?"
"Oh, Velanna. Just because I don't keep the girls bouncing in the breeze according to what I can only assume to be the pinnacle of Dalish fashion, doesn't mean I'm in any way lacking when it comes to keeping a lover's attention." To an outsider her smile may have appeared sincere, but as she finished paying the subtly chuckling innkeeper and turned toward the door, those who knew what to look for could easily read the venom in her eyes.
Anders was settling Jowan into his room at Elissa's request, and the dwarves were carousing at the bar with several of the regulars. This left Elissa trapped in the company of the two people she least wished to find herself with as she waited for Zevran to finish his errands so they could leave.
"I suppose I have you to thank for relaying that particular bit of information." Elissa sneered, narrowing her eyes on Nathaniel as she paced past him. "I find it hard to believe that the Dalish keep abreast of the sex trade within our capital city." She laughed at her own pun when The Archer merely huffed his annoyance in response, and pressed it further in the hopes it would push the man to simply go away. "Oh, now that was funny. Did you see what I did there – got in another jab at her breasts? Well… not literally because, yech… never gonna go there."
Velanna disappeared down the hall, refusing to stand there and subject herself to any further humiliation. This turned the smile on Elissa's face genuine and prodded a response from Nathaniel.
"You are unnecessarily cruel to her."
"If her skin is so thin, she should probably wear more to cover it." Elissa snorted, rolling her eyes and settling at the table by the door when it became obvious that Zevran wouldn't be appearing any time soon. "It would appear she's attracted her very own knight in shining armor, though, I suppose your armor isn't all that shiny anymore."
"Get it out, Elissa." Nathaniel settled himself opposite from her at the table, folding his arms and resolving to take anything she launched in his direction. "Whatever it's going to take to get us past this I'm willing to bear."
"What if I require that payment in flesh?" her eyes flashed with anger, gone back to the darkness of the tower depths and the things she now knew the man in front of her had once been party to.
"Then take it."
"I imagine you'd enjoy offering up that payment quite a bit more than you should." Her subsequent laughter was cold.
"And I imagine you'd enjoy taking it quite a bit more than you should." He watched the muscles in her jaw twitch and knew he'd pushed too far.
She stood up and stalked over to the door. "Tell Zevran I'll meet him at the castle."
She was gone after that, and Nathaniel knew better than to risk following.
Alistair waited on the balcony of the royal suite focusing his gaze down on the newly transplanted roses in the private garden below. The bushes came from the same stock that had produced the flower he gave Elissa many years before. He'd given her some seeds of her own to root in Amaranthine, but he doubted she had taken the time to plant them. It was more likely they lay buried beneath the piles of unanswered correspondence and old dusty tomes that littered the ancient desk bolted to the floor of her study. Her new life and the resurgence of her old one left little time for sentimentality and he felt himself getting lost in the shuffle along with his gifts.
When he heard the door open and close behind him with no announcement from the guard to follow it, he knew she had finally arrived. He cleared his throat and painted on his most genuine of smiles, bracing himself for the ground they had to cover with regard to her newest recruit and the conversation about her latest indiscretion that would follow.
"Where's Zevran?" It was unusual not to find The Assassin at her side even when his presence hadn't been requested, but it seemed particularly curious that he would allow her to travel alone with the current price on her head.
"He had some business to attend to in the Market and I got tired of listening to the various complaints about my decision to book our rooms in a whorehouse, so I came along on my own." Elissa replied. Her voice was light and she offered up a smile but it was clear there was more to it than she was saying.
"A whorehouse? Why haven't you settled in at the Enclave? I didn't refurnish the whole thing so you could spend your time at The Pearl." His tone relayed nothing but concern, but he was more than a little frustrated that she would choose not to spend any time she could manage within the palace walls.
"I wasn't planning on spending any time at The Pearl unless you're saying you don't want me staying here." Elissa replied, holding his eyes until his expression softened with the realization it was the Wardens she had seen to, not herself. "I've only booked the rest of them there because Jowan was reluctant to come within sight of the Palace District."
"You've told him he has nothing to fear from me?" Alistair looked horrified that the mage would be afraid of him. Once the full picture had become clear he had been every bit as adamant about finding a way to see to his release.
"It's not you, Alistair. It's Eamon. He's terrified that if the man sees him again he'll be shipped right back to the tower. I tried telling him I'd gut the man before I saw that happen, but he still wasn't convinced." She laughed at her own joke and it was unsettling to Alistair how little apology there was in the smile that accompanied it.
"That's not funny, Elissa." The smile faded, but he couldn't erase the memory that it had been there.
"I remember when you used to have a sense of humor." She rubbed the tip of her nose with a flick of her fingers. It was a gesture Alistair recognized all to well as a sign of growing annoyance. "I have no intention of doing harm to your uncle unless he forces my hand in the matter, but Jowan has every right to be concerned. Once Eamon finds out, Chantry retribution will be the least of our concerns."
"I thought you managed to avoid conscription?"
"I did, thus my concerns are not tied directly to Kinloch Hold; and more to the Chantry en masse. This is not the first time I've slipped quarry from their grasp. Add to that our time with Morrigan and the templar I was forced to kill in Amaranthine… it's only a matter of time before they come after me directly." Elissa drew in a long, slow breath, leaning forward against the solid stone railing. "When that time comes, you will need to distance yourself from me politically."
"No." Alistair's assertion was so resolute it gave her no room to argue. "If this is how I make my mark as a king, so be it, but I won't step aside and let you take the fall for this alone."
"Support the decisions, Alistair. Support the cause. But you must separate yourself from the crimes I have committed in the name of the greater good, and if it comes down to it, you must condemn those actions and push for a peaceful solution."
Alistair had learned enough from the time spent training in the ways of nobility and politics to understand that she spoke nothing but the truth, but it didn't make it any easier to accept what he would one day have to do.
"Do you think the possibility for a peaceful solution remains?"
"In Kinloch Hold, maybe. I certainly put the fear of the Maker himself in them if they thought to go back to those ways in any fashion." Elissa shrugged her shoulders as she turned to face him. "But the initial letters from Cullen have taken from me any hope that we may find one on a larger scale. The things he's seen in Kirkwall have gotten to him, Alistair. You and I both know what he went through with Uldred, and after what I saw in that prison, the evidence left on Jowan's body… If it's upset him already, I shudder to think what may be going on in the Free Marches."
Alistair rubbed at his face with both hands, longing for the simplicity of his time with the Grey Wardens. Even in the chaos of the Blight, he had never felt so helpless and alone. He'd give anything to lay down this burden and return to that life; but he knew the time for such rash decisions had long passed him by.
"Were you able to retrieve the volume Avernus requested?" He shifted topics; unable to push his weary mind any further along their current path.
"I was. You'll want to send Swiftrunner back with it as soon as you can manage." She pulled the tome loose from her pack and pressed it into his hands, watching him turn it and inspect the spine.
"Guarding Your Mind: How to Prevent Possession? I thought we'd agreed there was no sign of anything demonic… what would he need with this?" Alistair's features twisted into a mix of confusion and fear.
"Avernus said he couldn't sense anything definitive, but the progression has been increasingly aggressive and he has to adapt to that. Treating this like an invading force could help provide a barrier to slow its reproduction, and Avernus is confident that, at the very least, learning to better control it on an intellectual level can only work to our benefit."
"Do you think this could be demonic?" His brow furrowed as he leaned in toward her, and Elissa desperately wanted to offer him the blissful white lies of reassurance that had come so easily in their past, but she could not.
"I don't know anymore, Alistair." She shook her head and reached up to tug at the end of a loose curl. "I'm changing… on levels beyond just my physical body. I can't ignore it or deny it anymore, and Avernus' tonics do what they can but there are times I can feel myself slipping further into that darkness and I don't always have the strength or the inclination to fight it."
"Is that what happened in the Fade?" The question was out before he'd even realized it was coming, and he watched her flinch in response to it, her green eyes turning up and seeking out the amber of his own.
"Someone told you."
"Don't hold him responsible. He should never have had to carry that secret. You should have come clean, Elissa. How could you stand there and lie to my face again? How could you let me take you to my bed knowing you'd merged your souls?" He was furious and hurt, and Elissa could hear every bit of that beneath the calm facade he was wearing.
"I didn't lie…" She listened to his angry snort as he threaded fingers into blonde locks and paced away from her. "I didn't… I… you asked if we'd lain together. Physically, we had not. That is what I told you."
"You're very good at that, Elissa. At saying things that are nothing more than an evasion of the question that's been asked so you can paint yourself in the guise of truth at the end of the day, but it's all illusion. The truth is, whether in body or soul, you took another man as your lover… and I cannot see past this, not this time." He paced back over to her and waited for her to meet his eyes again before continuing. "You have bonded yourself to him on a level that I cannot touch, no matter how hard I try, and when you add to that your constant physical proximity to the man I am left with little choice but to force this decision. I said I'd give you time to process this ghost from your past, and I believe that I have been more than patient. So now, I'm asking you to make your choice. Him, or me?"
"You expect me to make this decision now? Right this second?" Elissa was indignant. She did not like being backed into a corner and Alistair was well aware of that.
"I do. If you wish to remain with me, we commit - here and now – to a date for the wedding."
"Everything you know about our darkspawn troubles, everything we've just spoken of with regard to the disgusting practices of the Chantry, everything you know about my personal struggles… and you… and you, what? You want me to forget about all that and come play house with you?" She was seething, chest heaving as she fought to control her temper.
"That wasn't my intent, but it is interesting that you would choose to refer to our relationship as playing house." His own temper had risen with her accusations, and though he did his best to rein it in, he could feel his control slipping.
"Is that not what it is? You're asking me to put aside my duty, my oath to see to the greater good, and come back here to put on a pretty show for the nobles so your ego can recover from whatever slight you've imagined this time."
"Imagined! I didn't imagine it. You slept with another man for the second time since you promised yourself to me, and then lied about it! I don't care what plane it was on!" He was yelling now, he could only imagine what the servants were thinking as he knew now how well sound carried within the palace walls. "I'm asking you for nothing more than keeping the promise you made to me when I took the throne at your behest – setting aside my own happiness in the process. I've done nothing but acquiesce to your needs since I got here, Elissa. I am asking you for one thing, one thing, of my own. Can you not give it to me? I'll go right back to being a marionette at your whim tomorrow."
"I can't believe this is happening…" Elissa was fraught, fingers threaded into her hair as she paced back and forth across the balcony. "When Nathaniel said you'd try to collar me with this, I thought he was insane… but you've actually gone and done it."
"Now you're discussing our relationship troubles with him?" he barked out a cold burst of laughter, seeing things spiraling rapidly out of his control but unable to do anything to stop it. "What else are you sharing? Has it gotten physical yet? Has he known you on every possible level?"
The crack of Elissa's palm across his face was audible, and it snapped his head to the side with such force he knew he'd bruise from it later.
"You want to give me an ultimatum? Force a decision? Fine. You have it." She yanked the Theirin signet off her finger and tossed it to the ground, turning to leave both him and the conversation. "I promised to marry you because I love you, but I'll not follow through when you make it into an obligation. If you ever decide to stop treating me like a possession and remember that I'm an actual person, you know where to find me."
Alistair dipped down to retrieve his ring as Elissa disappeared back into the hallway and out of his reach. He'd known that pressing her was likely to result in a certain amount of resistance, but she'd gone completely round the bend and he had no idea what had driven her there nor how to go about repairing it. Fretting with his hair one last time, he tucked the ring in the palm of his hand and returned to the letter he'd been writing to her brother. If he was to salvage this, it would call for more drastic measures.
By the time Elissa made it back to The Pearl, all of the rooms she had not already booked were now in use, which left her biding her time in the darkest corner she could find until one of them was free again. She leaned back against the wall, thinking of the last time she'd sat in this spot and the company she'd been keeping then.
Isabela… she chuckled low in her throat at the memory. What would the pirate think of her now? Tucked away in a corner so far into her cups she'd long lost count of them, twirling an already half empty vial in her fingers and contemplating downing the rest of it now that Zevran had provided her with the most reliably replenishing supply he could manage. She longed for something to give her one night free of sorrow, free of regret, free of… herself.
"Being queen not all it's cracked up to be?"
That's not going to do it… she thought, watching Nathaniel settle into the chair at her side with a mug of his own.
"I doubt I'm every likely to know." She replied, holding her hand up and doing a quick waggle of her fingers to draw his eye to the spot made recently vacant.
"Lover's quarrel?" He knew better at this point than to assume that the loss of the gold band meant anything beyond it. She'd taken it off and he'd taken it back before, and somehow it always found its way back onto her finger.
"Did you tell him?" she finished off the last of the ale in her mug and dropped it hard to the table, gesturing to the nearby barmaid to bring another before leaning back against the wall.
"Tell him what?"
"You know what." Her eyes were narrowed and completely devoid of patience. "He knows what we did in the Fade, and I certainly didn't tell him."
"I was tied to a bed and confined to a room of my own until they brought me in for your big revelation. If he was given that information, it didn't come from me." Her eyes read into him across the newly filled mug now settled in front of her, but he was unafraid. He could not draw her ire for this indiscretion. "In light of that, I think we both know where the information came from."
Elissa did know, and she'd address that issue later. For now she would reveal nothing of her feelings with regard to it, not to Nathaniel. His jealousy toward The Mage was already apparent though the two had only newly forged the bonds of their friendship.
"I'm going to cover this once, and then I don't want to speak of it again for awhile. If you want to sit here and drink with me for however long it takes me to get a room or pass out, then fine, but I'm not opening a dialogue here and I'm not looking for a debate. Can you agree to that?" She waited for him to nod, which he did, folding his arms across his chest and motioning the barmaid to refill his own empty glass.
"I can make peace with your past, Nathaniel, for a list of reasons I'll not go into now because I simply don't have the strength to wrench it out of me. There is a darkness in you I have seen in your father, and also in myself. To condemn you for the very things I would have done myself had I believed you involved in… well, that would make me quite the hypocrite wouldn't it?" She chuckled, downing the entire contents of her mug in one long pull and gesturing to the barmaid again when she was done. "At the end of the day you stood there beside me in that tower and I saw you flinch at it. I saw your disgust at what you'd seen, your fury at what those men had done to someone defenseless against it. So what if I know that you have done some of those things in your past? I also know that you now falter in the face of it. That you question your ability to redeem yourself in light of what you've done and yet stand there at my side willing to take the fall for the war we've started regardless… and all that has made something very clear to me, Nathaniel."
She took the last mug the barmaid brought her, noting that the innkeeper had found her a free room, and tossed it back again before pushing to her feet and laying her hand on his shoulder. "Some of the same darkness remains inside you. I can no more deny it than I can deny the presence of my own. But when all is said and done, you are not El Sombra Cinzenta, not any more than you want to be. That man would have seen no fault in the crimes perpetuated within the Chantry Circles. That man would never have volunteered to bear the burdens of my own sins while being forced to revisit his own. That man, Nathaniel, would have had no problem owning up to his title; he would have taken pride in it. Somewhere inside you, the man I fell in love with still remains. I can see that now. You should too."
She was gone before he could even begin to process what she'd said to him, which was just as well as she'd made it clear she sought no discussion from him on this or any topic. He knew his work was far from over; this was but a small victory in the history of a long-standing war – if it was even that.
Still, he couldn't help but hope that if she'd found some way to forgive him for these his most grievous of sins, she might someday find a way back to his arms. She'd said that the man she fell in love with still lingered somewhere inside him. She'd used those words; there could be no confusion. Now it was up to him to find a way to make her see she loved him still, and thankfully The King had granted him the perfect opportunity to do it.