#and he likely knew the story about garahel and that he was an elven warden hero but that’s as far as his knowledge went

[greyswarden]

i love how after showing duncan to his quarters ariel immediately bombards duncan with questions like “👁️👁️ so what’s happening out there. what can you tell me about the grey wardens. what were irving and greagoir fighting about i won’t tell anyone” + with that said i do think he genuinely wanted to be a grey warden if he was asked what he thought about becoming one, but not really for the right reasons. he saw it more as a means to leave the tower and not have to spend the rest of his life there, but he was so unaware of what it means and what it takes to be a grey warden

[carterhaughs]

vir lath sa'vunin

The end of the Fifth Blight heralds a new dawn for Ferelden and her peoples, but consolidating support for the young new king will not be easy, and rebuilding would be an arduous task even without the threat of residual darkspawn and fresh new horrors lingering in the wake of the Archdemon. Aelinor Surana and Alistair Theirin will need all the strength, savvy, cunning, and knowledge they can muster if they are to heal their country's hurts. With help from friends new and old and their love for each other, they will face down adversity as they always have: together.

Read @ Ao3

Note: "Vir Lath Sa'vunin" is a line from Leliana's Song - the one she sings to the warden after Zathrian and/or the Lady of the Forest die during the Nature of the Beast quest line. It is an old elven song that Keeper Lanaya may share with you in the form of a codex entry. The line means "we love one more day."

Chapter 1: The Vhenadahl

The Denerim vhenadahl budded with new growth in the low summer sun, slathered with a new layer of pale red paint that reflected the light of the candles at its base as they flickered in the evening breeze. Aelinor Surana stooped to pray there, smiling as she quietly thanked Andraste for having seen the alienage through the Fifth Blight and for suffusing it with a life that had all but left it under Loghain’s tyranny.

She remembered another oak tree bent double on itself in the cramped confines of the Lothering alienage walls, aching to stretch its limbs but holding itself back, for their sake. “As a mage, you are like this tree,” her father told her when the templars came to take her away. “You always held yourself back, that you might remain with us. Go now, and learn all you can of it so nothing can confine you.” She was seven years old and the Alienage’s best kept secret, outed as a mage when she had frozen a drunken human solid mid-assault on the elderly Hahren Elora for her daring to ask him to leave the elven quarter. Her father’s words had held more truth than he could possibly have known. If only he had lived to see them take shape.

Aelinor stood up and smoothed out her traveling robes, fine enough that she could wear them in court and unobtrusive enough that she felt comfortable wearing them among the common people of the city. The mark of her order was evident without ostentation, a griffon emblazoned in detailed stitching on the back, pale grey on dark blue. The man at her side dressed simply enough himself, though the leathers he wore were of obviously fine make. His short-sleeved jerkin and linen tunic were hardly the garment of kings, however, and of course that is why he chose to wear them. She turned to him.

“Why is it that we meet here today, Your Majesty?” Alistair winced at the formality, but he knew that she was determined to make their relationship as professional as possible in public.

“There’s someone here to see you. Two someones. Shianni arranged lodgings for them in Cyrion Tabris’ old place.” She raised her eyebrows at him, sorely tempted to peck him on the cheek. She still couldn’t believe Fereldan had a king who took such an active interest in elven affairs the likes of which the country had never seen in living memory. He knew the names and history of nearly every family here now, more so than she herself did given how often she had to range far afield in her duties as a sort of Warden ambassador in the aftermath of the Blight.

“Who might they be?”

“You’ll see.” He smiled, eyes lit by the spark of mischief she’d missed so dearly when she’d been away. Aelinor followed him to the house and knocked. After the Blight, the home of the well-respected Tabris family had become a sort of community center as well as a memorial, the better not to let a good living place go to waste after the Tabris daughter had died in the uprising. Aelinor had not given up hope on tracking down the Denerim elves sold into slavery under Loghain’s regency and had sent Zevran and some other covert operatives to follow up on any leads they might gather as to the whereabouts of Cyrion Tabris and the other captives she herself did not arrive in time to rescue during the Blight. They had been gone for months, but would send word by raven should they locate anyone who might be saved. In the meantime, however, his niece Hahren Shianni assured the alienage that this is what Cyrion would have wanted.

The door opened and Aelinor, not knowing what to expect, wasn’t quite sure who the tired, greying elven couple who answered her knock was at first. But one look at the man’s shaggy mane of red-gold hair and the woman’s bright green eyes, so like her own, and she knew them for her parents. She could not move, unable to believe her eyes, and for a moment, neither could they.

“But...Lothering was destroyed...y-you couldn’t possibly be–” Her mother took her in her arms and embraced her tight enough to hamper her breathing, though that might’ve just been the rapid beating of her heart. Over his wife Oriane’s shoulder, Ilven Surana took Aelinor’s face in his hands as carefully as if she were made of porcelain, as if he held her too ungently she would disintegrate.

“Aelinor. My daughter. You are here, and you are free. I hadn’t dared to hope...”

Her mother wept openly and stepped back, the better to take in the sight of her. “Our child, a woman grown, and the Hero of Fereldan! It wouldn’t matter how we got you back, but to meet you in such a way...!”

As if breaking out of a trance, the two of them abruptly turned to Alistair and bowed low. “Your Majesty, how can we ever thank you? For the return of our most precious daughter we owe you our lives.” Alistair chuckled.

“Believe me, I should be the one thanking you. But we can talk more inside, sers, so shall we?” He clasped Aelinor’s hand firmly in his own and opened the door wide to admit her. She flushed at his sudden gallantry, hardly unexpected given his typical chivalrous behavior but somehow a surprise to her every time.

He closed and latched the door behind them, and Aelinor embraced both of her parents herself this time, tears coursing down her cheeks. “I prayed every night that I might find you. Every night in the Circle I clung to what memories I had of your faces, lest I lose what little the Circle hadn’t managed to take from me. And when the Blight began and Lothering was lost, I thought you gone forever...”

“So you did,” said Alistair. “And I knew it was a comfort to you, to think they were well and truly gone. As a mage and a warden you knew nothing but loss, and uncertainty only makes the hurt that much keener. I know the feeling myself, and you helped me work through it. Doing the same for you was the least I could do.”

Her father stepped back and held her at arm’s length, still clinging lightly to her sleeve as if she might dissipate into nothing were he to let her go. “Lothering elves lived at a crossroads, Aelinor, and we often heard more than the humans that passed through there, or perhaps we just listened harder. We knew which way the wind was blowing and even though a Blight was never our prediction, we knew that whatever the outcome of the fight, the first refugees to suffer are always the elves. So we took to the road well before Ostagar and lived as hired hands and servants wherever we could. News traveled slow and as you know, we cannot read and would have found it difficult to find a literate elf to dictate our letters to in order to reassure you we still lived. But His Majesty sent a red-haired young woman to look for us, Leliana was her name. I half-remembered her as a storytelling lay sister at the chantry who sometimes visited the alienage and sang about the old tales to the children there. She even knew the lays of Garahel and Ser Aveline. You keep good company.” He beamed at her proudly, grasping her shoulder. “And you have your friends to thank for this reunion. I don’t know how, but she found us on the road and brought us here.”

“Mother, father...I don’t know how much of my story you know the truth of because there are so many wild tales about me now, but I should tell you first and foremost of all that Alistair and I have tried to keep between us.”

Her mother smiled at them, though her brows creased with concern. “Is he...? Are you...?”

“She is the love of my life,” Alistair affirmed her mother’s unspoken assumption in no uncertain terms. “I owe her everything. I can’t even begin to explain how much. If it weren’t for her I wouldn’t be alive, much less a king. She taught me my own worth and never forgot her own and it got us this far. I have no reason to doubt it will ever fail us.”

He reached for her hand again and clasped it tight. Ilven frowned slightly.

“That is all well and good. You’re one of the few humans of any caliber who’s proven himself friend to the elves, that’s for certain. But you are Ferelden’s king and she can never be your consort. Not in this nation, or any nation in Thedas.”

Aelinor met her father’s flinty gaze with her own, steadfast and sure. “We are loyal to each other in all but marriage. Before we moved forward with our plan to unite the nation as best we might through Alistair’s claim, we spoke of this.”

“I will never love another woman as I do her,” he said firmly. “Though I may have to marry, I won’t under any circumstances other than the purely political. She has my heart, and that will never change. But someday perhaps Thedas itself might, and I can marry her in earnest, though she doubts it.” He smiled wryly at her. “Aeli, my dear, you hardly know what you’ve started.”

“It’s true,” her mother said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “What the two of you have done for Ferelden, for our people...never think it goes unfelt. Your father and I can walk in the marketplace without half so many of the leers and sneers we were so accustomed to, and it has been months since the alienages in so many towns and cities lacked for sufficient food. Perhaps marriage between two people who love each other isn’t too much to hope for.”

Ilven raised an eyebrow skeptically but nodded. “That’s always possible, if unlikely. What I will say of the matter is this.” He looked Alistair up and down and extended a hand to him, which Alistair shook in all seriousness after looking briefly nonplussed. “I trust you with her heart. But you must swear in Andraste’s name never to break it.”

“You have my word, ser. She is my comrade-in-arms, my closest advisor, and my wife in every way that matters. I’d never have it otherwise.” Oriane Surana placed her hand over both of their own. “May Andraste bless your union and keep you both. If it’s not too presumptuous, ser, we hereby take you into our own family. From this day on, you may call us parent, and we will call you son.” Alistair was left speechless for a moment, and looked to Aelinor with a softness in his eyes she thought she understood. She squeezed his hand, the four of them united bodily in that moment through their hold on each other.

“During the Blight, we neither of us had family. We were more than content to find that in each other, but it seems that out of the infinite generosity of Andraste’s grace, she saw fit to give us even more.”