#❪ ⊱ — ❛ my trigger fingers would only hold your heart to break it. ❜ ┊ALISTAIRE LENNARD. | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

laurelsofhighever · 5 years ago

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Chapter Rating: General Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU - No Blight, Romance, Angst, Friends to Lovers, Slow Burn, Hurt/Comfort Chapter Summary: Revelations come in the aftermath of the attack on the Circle.

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Fifth day of Firstfall, 9:32 Dragon

Tendrils of golden mist wove through the courtyard that enclosed the templar barracks of Kinloch Hold. Frost whorled away across the flagstones, thick as a coating of snow, silvering the summer’s cobwebs and the dainty, bone-thin ends of the birch that had been planted in the centre. As Rosslyn trudged across from the room she had been shown to the night before, a blackbird warbled in its upper branches, as if boasting of its triumph over the winter night, as if there had not been a slither of demons pressing like a boil against the skin of the world only the day before. She paused to watch it scrape its beak on the branch, her breath a thick white puff that vanished into the fog, and stuffed her hands into her armpits to keep her fingertips from being bitten. It was always so after a battle. The small things in the world returned to their normality, unconcerned for the scars left by human action, for the hollow remains of victory’s thrill through the blood.

Shaking herself, she walked on, drawing her cloak more tightly around her shoulders. The spare clothes the lay sister had left her were too thin for the weather, but she was grateful for them nonetheless. Her only other option would have been the shirt and gambeson she had worn to storm the tower, still stained with sweat and blood and ichor, and all the memories of what she had faced with it. She tried to turn her mind from it. The demon’s fantasy had been nothing more than smoke, and yet it had let her see her parents again. She had spoken to them, heard they were proud of her, seen them approve of the man she loved, and she ached so much for their arms around her again she hardly cared that it wasn’t real. And yet, when she closed her eyes, she didn’t see their faces, only heard the slick rasp of steel through flesh, a gasp, the heavy sag of a body as it crumpled to the floor.

Voices raised around the corner. She wiped her eyes, straightening into her general’s façade as footsteps approached and halted, the tail of the argument lashing with voices she recognised.

“Karyna, please –” Cullen begged.

“You said mages aren’t people,” Amell snapped. “How can you expect me to be reasonable after that – what does ‘reasonable’ even mean?”

“You saw the damage in there as well as I did, so many dead –”

“And most of them mages. My friends. They died because they chose that over becoming abominations.”

“You said yourself they would have attacked anyone who came into the tower!”

The enchanter snarled a curse. “What would you have done in their place? Greagoir was planning to slaughter them! We obey, we keep our heads down, we keep our magic locked away, and yet none of that loyalty is worth anything. We really aren’t people to you, are we?”

“It isn’t the same,” the templar stammered. “You –”

“The Right would have had us all murdered, with no reprisals. If I’d been in there, and the oh-so-valiant knight-commander had told you to strike me down, would you have done it?”

“I – that’s not fair.”

“See? You can’t even answer the question. I don’t think I want an answer.”

“Karyna!”

The mage’s footsteps didn’t slow as she hurried around the corner, blind to everything beyond her unshed tears. Rosslyn let her go. Sympathy tugged at her, remembering the drift of ash above Highever, but whatever her own misgivings about the Chantry and what she had seen of the Circle, the grief was still too present, and it was not her place to offer shelter from it. Instead, she gritted her teeth and stepped out from the shadows, ignoring the instant of panic that lit Cullen’s features crimson.

“My presence was requested in the knight-commander��s office,” she said. “Which way do I go?”

“Oh… it’s the second on the right down that corridor, Your Ladyship.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Did you…?”

“As you were, Lieutenant,” she huffed, already marching past him.

She arrived at the door to Greagoir’s office to find Alistair already inside, backlit by a spitting fire, leaning over a map with his weight pressing through his knuckles into the desk. The deep crease of his brows made her hesitate in the doorway. The Fade vision had seemed so real, and afterwards she had been too lost in her own thoughts to even consider the effect it might have had on him, to hear platitudes from the false stranger who had called himself his father. His skin was paler than it should be; dark circles bruised glazed, bloodshot eyes, and the gaunt twist of his mouth hollowed out his cheeks like paper.

A floorboard creaked beneath her heel. The sound startled him out of his reverie, and when he looked up, the fatigue that made her heart ache brightened into welcome, a smile all soft corners that lifted as he breathed her name.

“Good morning,” he murmured, reaching for her.

She smiled her reply as she took his hand. “It is now. How are you?”

“Tired,” he replied, shrugging. “But considering the alternatives, I’ll take it. how did you sleep?”

“Not well, if I’m honest.” She dropped her gaze, well aware of the blush stretching across her cheeks.

“That’s not surprising.”

A gentle hand rose to cup her face, and for a moment she let herself sink into the comfort, eyes closed and breath a soft huff mingling with his.

“It wasn’t just the dreams,” she said. “I missed you.” She pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist. “I kept waking up and you weren’t there.”

Wordlessly, he pulled her into a hug, squeezing tight as she buried her head against his shoulder. “I know what you mean.”

“I’m sorry about Maric.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t realise how much I wanted his approval. All those years I thought I put it behind me, but now I just keep wondering…” he sighed. “But it was all the demon. He was never interested, not even when I left Redcliffe.”

Rosslyn’s hand curled against the back of his neck. “We can’t know why he did what he did,” she soothed. “But really, does it matter? What you made of yourself is entirely down to your merit, and nothing can change that. I’m proud of you, if that counts, and you should be proud of yourself. I couldn’t have made it out of there without you.”

“It does count,” he told her, breaking the embrace so he could look at her. “There’s nobody whose judgement I trust more.”

She leaned in, drawn by the intensity of his gaze, but remembered at the last where they were and turned to glance at the doorway. The empty corridor stared back, draughty and silent. And Alistair was there with his fingers brushed against her jaw, ducking the last few inches to distract her with a kiss.

The instant his lips touched hers, a jolt of foreign heat sank low in her belly. Her hand rose of its own volition to bring him closer, the desperation thrilling through her echoed in the flutter of the pulse beneath her fingertips. They had almost died; they had encountered horrors and monsters and walked the veil-thin line of tension to the top of that cursed tower with no room for any thought but survival – and now that tension snapped. Alistair groaned as he pushed into her mouth, as she rose on tip-toes and wrapped her arms around his neck to banish every bit of space that separated them. The movement overbalanced him. He had to throw out a hand to save them from the edge of the desk, but he never faltered. Eventually they parted, breath sharp, giggling for air, just far enough to dart back in for soft presses against every part they could reach. She never wanted to stop.

“What is it?” he murmured, ghosting another kiss across her lips.

Her hands cradled his face. “The worst thing…” She swallowed and tried again. “I keep thinking – I know it wasn’t real, but it might have been, and… I wish they could have met you.”

“Oh, love…” He pulled her in again with a swift brushed kiss to her forehead. “We’ll get through this.”

“If it ever ends.”

“Hey now,” he chided. “Where’s my indomitable warrior goddess? Everything will be –”

The echo of footsteps in the corridor interrupted him. Clearing his throat, he withdrew to a respectable distance, though his touch lingered at her hand.

“Everything will be alright,” he repeated, and dropped her hand as the door banged back against the wall.

Cailan entered, with Irminric on his heels. The king shone his usual puppyish smile as he greeted them, but Rosslyn had spent long months in his company, and knew him well enough to see the brittle nature of his resolve; his cheeks bloomed with their usual rosy colour, but his eyes were bloodshot. How long had he tossed and turned thinking about Loghain’s reach, that it extended even as far as a tower in the middle of a lake cut off from the rest of Thedas?

She knew better than to bring it up. Instead, she crossed to Irminric and wrapped him in a hug.

“It’s good to see you alive and whole, couz,” he told her. “For a moment there, I thought I’d sent you to an untimely end – Alfstanna would’ve been furious with me.”

At the sound of her old playmate’s name, Rosslyn brightened. “How is she? I heard there were twins.”

Irminric nodded. “They gave her a lot of trouble before the end. The bairns are sickly, but the healer says they’ll all make it through.”

“When this is all over, you’ll have to go back to Waking Sea and play Uncle properly,” she replied, and realised the others were waiting politely for the pleasantries to be out of the way. “But until then, what are you doing here in a war council?” She had expected Greagoir himself after the revelation that Uldred’s rebellion was triggered by outside events.

“I’ve been given a new assignment,” he told her with a shrug. “It seems the knight-commander wants someone to oversee the distribution of the supplies he’s donating to the cause, in exchange for saving everyone in the Circle.”

“You mean he’s sending you away in almost-disgrace for going against orders,” Alistair supplied with a wry tilt of an eyebrow.

“A small price for what you managed to do.”

“Just about,” Rosslyn groused.

“What’s the plan now, then?”

With the call to business, Cailan grinned and stepped up to their borrowed desk, shuffling papers away to expose the northern stretches of Ferelden on the map. Counters purloined from the knight-commander’s chess set had been laid out to represent the location of their forces, though some slipped their place in the tidying. As the king righted them, he talked. The Highever Guard with Eamon in tow was still somewhere around Lakehead, a strong enough force for a skirmish, but not for a pitched battle.

“We’ll cross to the eastern shore today and catch up with the bulk of the army,” he explained, still moving counters. “After, we should all arrive in Aeylesbide around the same time – Bann Ferrenly is expecting us. From what his scouts report, activity in the north has slowed as the cold weather has set in, and aside from a few outposts, our enemy has retreated to the strongholds already in their possession.”

Rosslyn’s heart quickened in her chest. “If we’re gathering our entire force at Aeylesbide…”

Cailan nodded to her. “We’re going to take back Highever, yes, and not a moment too soon.”

He paused to let her absorb the swell of emotion, the anticipation leaping like a deer through her veins at even the distant prospect of seeing home again. She had missed the rugged coastland, the cliffs and the sea breeze and the pastures of long grass rippling like silk in the wind. The fields would be barren now, laid bare for the first snow, and no doubt Howe had taken the dragon’s share of the harvest to bolster his own forces through the winter, leaving her people with scraps for food and nothing but rotting twigs to feed their fires. In the dream, she had returned a hero, with the sun shining, her parents proud on the steps of the keep to welcome her, the people happy and healthy and cheering her name. And that was the knife that truly made the demon’s tricks twist in her gut – even if she succeeded in taking back the city and the castle, even if she caught Howe and got her revenge, it wouldn’t bring them back; it wouldn’t make the fantasy real. A small part of her mind enjoyed the irony of the situation, that the goal for which she had yearned for almost a year was now within reach, just as she lost the stomach to face it.

I’m counting on you to see them safe, her father had told her as the dust settled over Glenlough. No matter what.

She felt the shift of weight beside her, Alistair lending her strength even though their company meant he couldn’t touch her. She exhaled a shaky breath, grateful, and turned her attention to Cailan once more. He had been waiting for her to continue.

“Your victory at South Reach has taken the last foothold away from Loghain,” he said. “And now we must cut off his retreat. The Bannorn is ours, and once the North follows suit we’ll be able to march on the capital without fear of being caught in a pincer movement. Once we’re mustered at Aeylesbide, we can finalise the details.”

“You’ll have a contingent of mages as well,” Irminric added, with a grim twist of his mouth. “We’ve nowhere to put them now until the tower is fully cleared, and with the number of templars killed we don’t have the resources to send them all to other Circles, either.”

Alistair scowled, but held his tongue. Meddling in Chantry politics was not a battle they could afford in the moment. “We may be able to finish this before the spring, if we don’t end up with a siege at Denerim,” he said instead.

Cailan frowned. “If Loghain is still a man of the people, he wouldn’t put them through that.”

“I’m afraid we cannot take that for granted,” Irminric replied. “Not if he’s become an abomination.”

“I thought only mages could become abominations?”

The knight-captain folded his arms, stroking the trimmed edge of his beard. “Only mages can summon demons from the Fade, it’s true, but once in our world the creatures may work on the minds of anyone they choose, usually someone with whom they find an affinity – an emotional connection. It’s possible Loghain’s allied magisters were the ones to perform the summoning, though whether it came before or after the Landsmeet, I cannot say.”

“It doesn’t matter for the moment,” Cailan decided. “I have faith in your abilities, Knight-Captain, but we have yet to reach Loghain before we can free him of the demon’s influence. No, first we must take Highever, and quickly.” At the questioning glances sent his way, he let the last of his cheerful façade drop into worry. “The queen has been sent there from Denerim, and we haven’t heard from her since. It’s possible he suspects she’s been aiding us.”

The implications settled over them like the fog outside, wrapping them in silence. Of them all, Rosslyn was most familiar with the aid rendered by Anora’s intelligence, regardless of her motives for betraying her father, but so far, her position had allowed her to avoid being used as a pawn. If her safety were threatened, however, Cailan would have to capitulate or risk losing the goodwill he had built up in his months in the field, and Ferelden’s entire future along with it.

Alistair was the one who broke the silence. “Why wouldn’t Loghain send her to Vigil’s Keep? That’s far less exposed if he wanted her out of his way.”

“He wouldn’t want to give Howe that much power,” Rosslyn answered in a low voice. “He’s already shown himself capable of betrayal.”

His hand fell to her arm. “Still, it’s rather convenient, don’t you think?”

“We don’t have a choice,” she answered bluntly, without looking at him. “And my people have suffered enough.” And I’ve spent too long wanting Howe’s head on a spike to back down now. “You know, Your Majesty, if you had told me this sooner, I might have outlined a strategy for you already.”

Cailan fiddled with one of the counters, suddenly uncomfortable. “Well, my dear…” He pressed his tongue between his teeth, looking for the right words for whatever he wanted to say. “I would have, but I had hoped you would be persuaded to take a step back from this one.”

“Why?”

The frostiness in her tone blanketed the whole room, so even the fire seemed to dim. Cailan shrank away from it with a sigh, trying to deny the flush in his pale cheeks, and nodded to the rest of their company. Irminric obeyed the silent order and bowed out of the room with a mumbled excuse, but Alistair, sensing what was coming, stubbornly refused to take the hint.

“Brother, if you might…?”

“Your Majesty, what is this about?”

Defeated, Cailan sighed. “Some might deem it inappropriate for you to have a part in Anora’s rescue, considering the circumstances.”

“What circumstances?” she asked, though her eyes had narrowed. “Anora’s presence in Highever changes nothing but our approach, and it’s my home. Would you sit in the supply lines while we took back Denerim?”

“I… no. I would not.”

“Then please don’t tell me this is some misguided act of chivalry to try and protect me from the worst of the fighting.”

“Maker, of course not!” the king cried. “My lady, you have proven yourself time and again, on the field and off. The matter is… more delicate than that.” Sighing again, he turned to pace across the confined length of the room, either gathering his thoughts or trying to work out the frustration evident in his voice. “It has become clear to me that, for the good of Ferelden, whatever existed between Anora and myself may no longer be… supportable. And so I find myself facing the possibility of a future where I am a king alone – in need of a queen.” He paused, took in her posture, cleared his throat, and dropped his gaze to the desk. “I… was hoping that, in time, you might consider being that queen.”

Her stomach turned. Despite what Alistair had said to her the other day in the meadow, and the sense it made once she knew everything Eamon had done, part of her had not believed Cailan really had plans for her. He turned that hopeful, guileless smile on her now, uneasy but not discouraged by her blank, silent shock, and stepped around the desk to take her hand in both of his. She felt the warmth of his skin, the callouses on his palms, and it was surreal.

“I had also hoped that, uh, circumstances would have allowed a more romantic proposal,” he allowed, with a self-conscious glance at Alistair.

“Your Majesty –”

“Cailan.”

She shook her head and extracted her fingers. “Your Majesty. I have no desire to be queen – I’m sorry.” Her heartbeat felt thready. “I would have always refused you… even if my heart didn’t already belong to someone else.”

Cailan blinked. “Someone else? Who?”

For a long moment, embarrassment stopped her tongue. Heat crawled across the back of her neck and pulsed behind her eyes, until she finally gathered the courage to lift her eyes to Alistair’s. He was smiling. She couldn’t help but return the expression as relief washed over her, too aware that even though they agreed they would bring their relationship into the light, the expectation had been something more controlled, planned, and definitely not straight off the back of another man’s proposal. When his fingers brushed against hers, however, she laced them together instinctually, finally remembering to breathe as his fingers squeezed their reassurance.

Cailan glanced between them, bewildered.

“If it makes you feel better we were planning to tell you,” Alistair said.

“This… well.” The king shook himself. “How long?”

They paused, unsure of the answer. For Rosslyn, at least, the love had grown so slowly, through distractions and misunderstandings and distance, and yet as she searched through her memories even that first morning, when he had stood enshrined by the dawn light and offered her his blanket and shared her breakfast, was touched with a sense of belonging too big for her to describe.

“From the beginning,” he offered, raising her hand to kiss her knuckles.

Her breath caught.

“And you’re happy?” Cailan asked.

She blinked, drawn back to the present, and smiled at him even as the revelation overwhelmed her. “Very.”

“Huh… You really are in love, aren’t you?” A puff of air blew through his cheeks, giving way to a wry chuckle at his own mortification. “Well then. In that case, little brother, you should be congratulated on winning the esteem of such a fine lady! You’ll have to tell me how you did it, eh? And you, my dear,” he added, turning to Rosslyn, “be sure he treats you as you deserve, or I may have to start another war to defend your honour.”

“As you will, Your Majesty.”

“The two of you… honestly.” He laughed again. “Who else knows of this?”

The warmth in Rosslyn’s chest cooled, feeling Alistair tense at her side. She cleared her throat. “About that – there’s… an allegation we have to make.”

“Allegation?”

“Against Arl Eamon,” Alistair supplied. “He intercepted letters between Rosslyn and me, to try and separate us.”

“Surely not…”

But Cailan listened all the same as they told the story, both what Eamon had done, and the ways he had tried to cover for himself once he was caught. It was unclear whether the initial idea was his, since King Bhelen was obviously so keen to be rid of his sister, but it was clear enough that the old arl had not acted under duress. When they finished, still leaning into each other for support, they watched as Cailan reeled back to lean his weight on the desk as if winded, his mouth pulled down at the corners and his brows knitted in a frown that added years to his face.

“Thank the Maker Teagan is with us already,” he murmured. “I will have to look into this. In the meantime…” He sighed, and fixed a smile in place. “We must continue as we are. We still have a campaign to plan, don’t we? It would be very poor sport if this one setback inconvenienced everything.” He glanced down at their joined hands and looked away, clearing his throat as he returned his attention to the map.

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