#speaking of arles i had really shit luck on my pulls so my thoughts on getting her weapon have gone down the drain

[masqueradeoftheguilty]

hoooooo doing the new remuria quest and its so gorgeous but also i need to take a break haha

[withthebreezesblown]

Too Dark to Read, Part One

Or read it on AO3.

Despite all Eamon’s warnings, despite the righteous anger Alistair has already endured from the man and the verbal thrashing (well, let’s be honest, thrashings) he will surely endure when the Chancellor returns, the Satinalia feast that he was told was suicide turns out to be the least unpleasant thing he thinks that he has had to endure since the weight of that damned crown settled on his head.

All along the row of mismatched tables dragged from nearby houses out into the cold under the leafless vhenadahl, people are smiling at him. And not those blasted, Blighted, flaming, fucking simpering leers that would have been directed at him by the mass of arls, arlessas, and banns if this feast had been held in the customary way, with the customary company.

Sure, there are a few open glares, and there are plenty of appraising eyes still tinged with suspicion, but there are also happy mothers feeding the children in their laps and whispering in their ears as they point toward him at the end of the table, glancing at him with eyes full of an appreciation that hits him far harder than all of the not inconsiderable venom directed at him combined.

When the food dwindles, five elves bring instruments and begin playing music that isn’t quite like anything he thinks he’s ever heard before. The redheaded elf who had sat on his right hand side during the meal, conversing as freely with him as with the elves on her other side, the one who still treats him much the same as she treated him when he was just a Warden rumored to be a King’s bastard during the Blight (well, the same as she treated him once she had determined the Grey Wardens weren’t exactly the kind of shem she was used to), sidles up to him with a decidedly wayward grin. “So, do you think you’ve given the proper gentlefolk of Ferelden enough fodder for one lifetime, or would you like to dig your hole a little deeper?” she asks, holding a hand out to him.

The slight smile that has been on his face for a while now fades as he gives her a look of earnest regret. “Unfortunately that will require you to make a choice of rather dire importance. Either we can jab at the hornet’s nest, unwise and satisfying as it will surely be, or you can keep your toes in tact and functional. It wouldn’t be right not to give you fair warning.”

He can’t help the laugh of relief when she rolls her eyes and pulls him toward the growing crowd of dancers. The irony does not escape him that here, among only servants, guards, and elves, is the first time he’s felt human in months.

The verbal thrashings he expects don’t come. He isn’t even aware that Eamon has returned to the Palace until a servant informs him that the Chancellor has already taken his dinner in his rooms and will not be joining the King.

For days the only conversations between them are the ones that can’t be avoided, and the cold, clipped nature of them makes Eamon’s point as clearly his silence. He isn’t sure he truly realized the extent to which, most days, Eamon is the only person who speaks to him without the entire exchange being framed as master to servant, king to subject. He is the only one who reacts to Alistair’s quips and sarcasm, and while his displeasure doesn’t exactly give the satisfaction that appreciation does, there’s a gratification in it, far more so than in the stoic silence of the servants, who seem to view his humor as some sort of test in which any reaction at all is failure, or in the forced chuckles of the nobles before they quickly change the subject without comment.

Eamon even forgoes their nightly chess match, started because he thought his King ought to get some practice strategizing. That first time, he’d even offered a wager to tempt Alistair–the King’s presence at the following day’s session of court: if Eamon won, he would attend as usual. If Alistair won, Eamon would judge in his place. Alistair had allowed the man to explain all the rules in detail, had questioned how every piece should move, had deliberated during each turn before taking it with a blithe uncertainty. And when, to Eamon’s stunned disbelief, he’d won, he’d raised his brows high. “No! Did I really? Beginner’s luck, I suppose. Well, do enjoy your day in court.”

The look of disbelief on Eamon’s face cleared with comprehension, and when he swallowed the last of his whiskey and set the glass back down, the expression left behind was either vaguely amused irritation or irritated amusement. In it there had been a touch of pride. “You little shit; you didn’t mention they’d taught you chess in the Chantry.”

Without the chess, without anyone who ever speaks to Alistair and not just the King, he feels like he’s disappearing. He feels more invisible than he felt in the dark and silent cell they locked him in for screaming in the Chantry’s halls. If he could find someone to enchant his clothes to walk around without him, he wonders if anyone would even notice he wasn’t inside.

After two weeks of this, a note comes from Teagan, requesting his presence in Redcliffe. He’s riding out of Denerim less than an hour after its receipt, well before the note he’s left for Eamon is delivered.

There’s a kitchen boy with hair tolerably like mine. I’ve left my usual outfit laid out. Give the boy a wash, and tell him not to speak. If he just smiles like a bit of an idiot and nods, I’m sure no one will notice he isn’t me.

“Alistair!”

When his sort-of uncle claps his arms around him in an embrace full of sincere enthusiasm, there’s a moment where he wants to cry. Being back here, in this stable, reminds him how as a child he’d thought there could surely be no fate lonelier  than being a bastard, disdained by the gentle-born, avoided or mocked by everyone else.  He couldn’t have guessed then how much more isolating it would be if the only people who dared to look at him at all saw nothing but the title and trappings and power of a King.

Beside them, a horse twitches its tail and drops a pile of excrement, and Maker is he grateful for it. Instead of dropping his head on Teagan’s shoulder and crying, he snorts as he steps away. “Ah, the fresh, sweet smell of my childhood home!”

Though Teagan is one of the only people he can rely on to be entertained by his always irreverent–and these days, more often than not, rather bitter–humor, the man’s smile is marred by a wince, and it’s only after that Alistair thinks perhaps it was a sensitive topic to joke about, given what the man had told him shortly after his coronation: “I should not have let my brother send you–either to the stables or the Chantry. He kept Maric’s secret well. I thought you were his. I thought it not my place.”

The arl shakes it off quickly, gesturing welcomingly toward the castle. “You arrived before I’d even expected Eamon to have let you make your evasion.”

“Ah. Well…” Rubbing at the back of his neck, an unpenitent yet vaguely guilty grin is all the explanation he offers, and it says enough.

Teagan’s smile is bemused. “He’ll blame me, you know. Not to say he won’t still blame you. But he’ll blame me too.”

Inside, he directs their steps toward the upper floor where the bed chambers are. “I have a bit of a dilemma, you see, that I was rather hoping you might be able to help me out with.”

When they pause outside the largest chamber, the one that had been Eamon’s, Alistair can’t help a cheeky smirk. “You know, fond of you though I am, I’m not sure I’m the person to help you out with a bedroom dilemma…”

Teagan just chuckles quietly before dropping his hand to the doorknob. “It sounds like they’re sleeping, but you’d likely still do well to brace yourself.”

The door has hardly moved a fraction of an inch before the first squeaky, high pitched bark rings out, and before it dies, there is a cacophony of yips, barks, growls, and scrabbling feet and claws against the stone floor. As soon as the door is out of the way, it’s like being rushed by a knee-high tempest. The writhing, wriggling brown bodies are so crushed together in their enthusiastic attempt to shove each other out of the way and get to the two men in the door that it takes a moment for Alistair to determine just how many mabari puppies make up the mob. Seven. Or possibly eight; there may be one underneath that one. Then again, that one there may have just swallowed the one beside it whole, so it could be seven.

Teagan sighs. “The servants have threatened to quit if I don’t either get rid of them or move them out to the stables.” The mother steps lazily over the little hoard to rub herself against Teagan’s side, and he squats down, scratching her ears and pulling her face close to his.

Alistair can’t help an amused acknowledgement of the fact that any Orlesian would be horrified that not only does this man, one of the most powerful in the country, let his dog sleep in his bed, he keeps her puppies in his room. It’s so very Fereldan, he can’t help finding it strangely touching. If he must be King, there are certainly worse peoples to be King of.

“But they’re Neve’s puppies. I can’t put Neve’s puppies in the stable.” He glances up at Alistair, then, and there it is again, that hint of guilt, before he continues. “So I am left either finding suitable homes for them or finding new servants. And I’ve been politely informed that if they all quit because of the dogs, I’m going to be blacklisted, and I’ll end up having to deal with all the chewed up rugs and broken porcelain myself. So I’ve had to come up with a list of those I would trust with my Neve’s pups. You are at the top, so I thought I’d give you first pick.”

Alistair can’t keep the surprise from his face. It’s not that he’s never been trusted–well, if he hadn’t been trusted entirely too damn much to do things he isn’t even capable of, then he’d never have ended up King to begin with, but she was raised in the Circle, and who could blame her for being half mad and, at least on the subject of himself, wholly foolish? Even now, even as King, no one but her has ever given trust to him so freely, and it catches him off guard. All he can manage is, “You want me to take one of these monsters?” but he’s sure Teagan must hear the thing he can’t keep out of his voice. It’s something like wonder.

If he hadn’t been squatting to get a better look at the puppies, all of them excited to the point of quivering like sausages in a frying pan, he would not have caught the words Teagan murmurs so quietly against the grown mabari’s ear, but he is, and he does. “He is a good and kind and lonely man. You tell them that.”

If he wasn’t positive before, he is certain then. He isn’t the one doing Teagan a favor. This is Teagan looking out for him, as he has so often tried to do since Alistair found himself being thrust down onto a throne he’d never wanted.

He ends up sitting on the floor with puppies crawling all over him, and for a while they are just soft, warm, and indistinguishable, until they begin to make their personalities known. There’s one that keeps biting the puppies beside her whenever they get between her and Alistair’s petting fingers, and occasionally biting his fingers if he seems to occupied with the puppy his other hand is petting. There’s one that, despite the nips from his sister, rather insistently keeps stepping on her head with his oversized paws in an attempt to get his turn with Alistair, though he tends to topple over as soon as his head is stroked. And there’s one that’s gone to sleep, despite the furious commotion all around it, with it’s head on his thigh, positioned just so that the patch of drool trickling slowly from its mouth is going to leave a spot that looks like he’s peed himself when he stands.

Eventually Teagan beckons him, and he rises, moving the sleeping puppy gently so as not to wake him, uncertain what he’s expected to do and a little reluctant to leave off being licked and cuddled against, which he was enjoying more than he should admit. “I’m… not sure how this works? Do you… do you think one of them imprinted?”

He just smiles and waves Alistair through the door. “Come on and we’ll see.” The moment he takes a step, the nippy one latches onto his pants and plants her feet. One day, this will be an effective method of stopping a grown man. For now, Alistair just chuckles as he carefully tugs, dragging the puppy across the floor rather than freeing himself.

“Well, then, it would appear–” Before Teagan can finish his sentence, one of the puppies launches itself toward the one attached to his pants, goes tumbling past both her and Alistair, and then scrambles to correct the overshoot, finally closing his jaw on Alistair’s other pant leg with a stubborn whimper.

Teagan’s expression is genuinely pleased. “It looks like you’ll be taking two puppies back to Denerim with you.”

He’s surprised by just how relieved he is as he bends to scoop them both up, one in each arm (Maker, he won’t be able to do this for long; they are already heavy). He supposes there is a part of him that will always be the boy who, before Duncan, was never chosen for anything. He can’t help grinning at Teagan. “Well, on the bright side, I’ve weeded out the defective ones for you. There’s obviously something wrong with them if they’ve imprinted on me.”

Teagan just shakes his head seriously. “Oh, no. That one there, she’s the brains of the litter, clever even for a mabari. Bossy, too. You’ll have your hands full with that one.”

They’re halfway down the hall when there’s a shriek from Teagan’s bedroom and frantic scratching at the door accompanied by increasingly distraught yips.

Teagan’s expression is amused. “Perhaps not two.”

He heads back down the hall and hardly has the door cracked when one of the puppies comes bounding out of it, making a beeline for Alistair and jumping up to put his front paws on his knee as he whimpers accusingly. He's certain it's the one that was sleeping on him.

It’s a struggle to get all three in his arms at once, but he’s determined if only on principle. After all, he’s already hurt the sleepy one’s feelings by nearly leaving him behind. The least he can do is carry them all downstairs despite the fact that they are entirely capable of doing it themselves.

Read Part Two here.

Full disclaimer, for purposes of fairness: @celeritassagittae​ came up with pretty much the entire plot of this. She also had to title it for me because I am Bad At Titling Things. If it wasn’t set in my universe, I really wouldn’t have had enough claim to write it at all, and I am incredibly grateful for her generosity.