Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except what I most humbly imagine. 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 Tethras (from DA:2). In my version of events, Varric meets "The Hero" (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: Antivan Translation: Lady Death.
Thanks to my readers, reviewers and followers and to my ladies beta artemiskat and Snarkoleptic.
Happy Reading!
-Frayed One
Chapter Thirty-Five: Reconciliation
"I need to make a trip to Amaranthine." Elissa was buckling up the last of her armor as she spoke to the elf who leaned casually against her door frame. "Accompany me, would you? I have no desire to listen to yet another round of 'you shouldn't travel alone' from any of the likely sources."
"You need only ask, my Warden." Zevran sketched a slight bow with his response, his casual smile keeping the constant churning of his thoughts well hidden.
It had been several days since Elissa had severed any sort of relationship she might have had with both The Mage and The Archer. Both had sought her out in the aftermath, hoping to mend what had been broken or at least to understand what had happened to bring them where they were. Elissa had been civil and respectful in her treatment of them, but completely unwilling to bend on her decision to distance herself from anything personal and focus entirely on her role as Warden-Commander.
Anders and Nathaniel had been visibly shaken by her sudden withdrawal, while Elissa seemed focused and steady. It was easy to see how an outsider could believe that she was cold and unphased by what had transpired, but Zevran knew better. He shared her living space and walked the paces of her daily routines. He saw the sorrow etched hard into her features when she thought no one was watching, and heard the mutterings of nightmares that had little to do with her reawakened connection to the taint.
He wondered if she was truly making the kind of progress in taming her personal demons that she showed to the world, or if this was yet another of her well constructed illusions destined to fade with the first test of its strength. He chose to believe the former. With a new war looming on the horizon, the other possibility was simply too terrifying to consider.
Zevran stood outside the small, nondescript room at the Crown & Lion, offering what privacy he could to the two women speaking in hushed voices just inside the half closed door.
"Keenan always said he joined the Wardens to give me a better life," the woman snorted, her words a mix of fury and grief. "Was it really better for me to be alone in a country I did not know? Was it really better for me to wait, knowing one day this news would come? I deserved a husband who was here, I deserved a family, I deserved… I deserved better than this!"
"To keep our world safe… To keep those we love safe, we must all make sacrifices." Elissa's words were measured, logical, but Zevran knew her too well to believe there weren't a number of emotions churning violently away beneath the surface. "None make one greater than that of the Grey Wardens. I am sorry for your loss, Nida – but know that your husband died for the greater good. He died so that—"
"My husband made that sacrifice willingly, never asking if I felt the same, never considering if I might have needs of my own." The woman turned her back on Elissa, effectively ending the conversation. "Love can only take you so far."
Elissa stood a moment long, staring at the woman's back as though she wanted to say something more, but the words would not come. Eventually she took her leave, pulling the door shut softly behind her.
"So, Doamna Mortii… do you subscribe to this life of ultimate sacrifice yourself, or were those merely words fashioned to serve your purpose for a time?"
When Elissa had asked to be accompanied into the city, Zevran would never have guessed she'd come to return the wedding band of a fallen Warden – especially when she had practically spat on the man in the last moments of his life. Now that he knew, he found himself even more puzzled over her ever more mercurial mental state.
"I assume you're asking due to my most recent… decisions… with regard to my personal life," Elissa said, eyes shifting subtly in his direction as they made their way back out of the inn to retrieve their horses. "You've certainly never shown any interest in my philosophies before, unless it was of use to you in inserting yourself where Alistair was vacant."
"You wound me, my Warden." Zevran flinched and clutched at his chest, using his comical exaggeration of the gesture to disguise how much her words actually hurt him. If she could still believe him so shallow after all the years they had spent together it made him wonder if she'd ever really known him at all. "I have ever looked out for your well being, though I might not have inquired with words on every occasion. Of late, you seem to have regained some of the focus you had when first we met—"
"When first you tried to kill me." She smiled, and the elf couldn't help but return it.
"Ah, memories." Zevran sighed, turning to enter the stall that held their horses. "But, you distract me with your flirtations. Even the best-forged steel will break, my Warden, and I have seen you near to breaking so often since we traveled to this horrible part of the country I fear… There is a war coming. You have said this yourself."
"I am ready, Zevran. My mistake was in believing there was anything left for me beyond the reach of my blades. I know that now." There was no sadness in her words, merely calm resolve. "I should never have involved myself with any of them, even Alistair. I am a Grey Warden, the Warden-Commander, and that is all that I am."
Zevran doubted the subject had been put to rest with the finality that her words should have given him, but he could now move forward refocused with the belief that, at least for now, the storm had passed.
"What is this?" Nathaniel demanded.
The bow clattered against Elissa's desk, sending the stack of missives she'd been sorting through fluttering to the floor in the puff of air that followed. She looked up at Nathaniel who stood, arms folded, glaring down at her as though she'd put some creepy crawly in his tea like she'd been known to do as a child.
"It's a bow," Elissa replied.
"Yes, Elissa, I can see that." He was not amused, though she had not intended her response to be humorous. "The problem with that is I have a bow, a perfectly good bow. Which means this is an unnecessary extravagance."
"It was no extravagance. I had Wade craft it from the heartwood we salvaged from the Ancient Sylvan we were forced to kill in the Wending Wood. It seemed too much a tragedy that his sacrifice be for nothing." She ran her fingers over the silvered wood with sadness. She knew from her conversations with Lanaya how few of the old ones remained. It had been hard for her to take another one from the world, even if it was tainted beyond redemption. "And I am not insulting the quality of your grandfather's bow. It has served you well, but I know how much you value it. I thought perhaps you might wish to retire it for sentimental purposes, and wield this one instead."
Nathaniel reached down to retrieve the bow, his posture softening as he accepted her words at face value. "This gift will not buy my favor."
"Nor was it intended as such," Elissa assured him, her face and voice unaffected by his casual mention of their recent indiscretion. "I requested it be crafted some time ago. That it was finished and delivered to you now was merely a poorly timed accident."
Nathaniel held her eyes for a moment longer, searching for any sign of hesitation that would give her away as a liar, searching for any sign that she cared at all – but there was nothing. She looked back at him with the eyes of the Warden-Commander. Elissa, his Elissa, the woman who had lain in his arms a few short days ago, was all but gone.
"Do you have a moment?" Elissa stood just outside the door to the space Anders' had claimed for his clinic waiting to be acknowledged.
"That depends on who's asking," Anders replied, looking up from the stack of documents he'd been thumbing through with regard to incoming medical supplies. "Is it you wanting to speak to me, or the Warden-Commander?"
It was too soon for her to be here, Elissa knew that. These wounds were too raw, too sensitive – but she had to speak to him with regard to the preparations being made for the coming war, and she knew better than to send a messenger in her place.
"I am the Warden-Commander, Anders. Either way you look at it, it is me requesting to speak to you," she replied, taking care to choose her words with as much decorum as was possible. "I didn't come here to pick a fight. I came here to inquire as to how the supply of poultices and potions was coming along and to make sure there was nothing more you needed from me in that regard."
"The last of the supplies I requested should be coming in tomorrow." His answer was as measured as her own, each word – each sound carefully chosen to hide whatever emotion lay behind them. "We are well stocked on a variety of poultices, and our lyrium stock is up to a much more acceptable standard now that we have multiple mages who require it. I'm a bit lower on bandages and the ingredients required for certain… other… concoctions than I might like, but that should be corrected with tomorrow's delivery."
"Very well." Elissa nodded her head, shifting with the intention of taking her leave. "If there is anything you require, send word and I will ensure that you have it."
"Is this how it's to be now?" Anders watched her turn back, the slow flick of her eyes onto his revealing none of her thoughts or emotions. "Speaking only to each other when our vocation requires it of us? Pretending there isn't anything else between us? Pretending there never was?"
"For now, yes. It is better this way." Her eyes moved with him as he paced closer to where she stood, and she fought the urge to increase the physical distance he was closing. "Perhaps in time—"
"Perhaps in time? Perhaps in time what?" He stopped close enough to touch her, but did not reach out to do so. "Everything else aside, Elissa… I miss you, just you. I miss my friend."
"I'm sorry, Anders. I can't afford the loss of focus that would come with trying to be your friend right now. Not after everything that's happened." Elissa moved away, pausing in the shadows of the hall to look back one last time to where he stood in the warm light of his clinic. "But for what it's worth, I miss you too."
Her face was concealed in the darkness of the long hall, but he could hear in the sound of her voice just how much she meant it.
You must be ready, my Grey Lady… The Mother, she is coming for you…
The words echoed through Elissa's mind, even as The Architect's image faded with an insistent pounding at her door. She tossed back the blankets and tugged on a shirt, verifying in a glance out her window that it was still a few hours shy of dawn.
Cecile stood outside her door, her usual nervous habits amplified by whatever had sent her running to her commander's door in the night. "C-commander, Varel sent me to collect you. One of the forward scouts has returned with reports of a darkspawn army gathering some distance from Amaranthine."
"Let me dress. Tell Varel I'll be along momentarily and have him wake the other Wardens." Elissa watched the small blonde scuttle away to relay the message, falling back against her door for a moment when she'd closed it once again. And so it begins…