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Entry tags:
closed.
WHO: Fiona, Zevran, Alistair
WHAT: Fiona would have gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling Antivan.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: (❁°͈▵°͈)
WHAT: Fiona would have gotten away with it if it weren't for that meddling Antivan.
WHEN: Nowish
WHERE: Skyhold
NOTES: (❁°͈▵°͈)
Alistair is still confused.
But now he's going to be confused with pasta, so that's nice. And he's indoors, in a room warm enough to roll up his sleeves. And Zevran is here, which is—suspicious. Maybe it's not actually better than being summoned mysteriously by Fiona alone; the potential for trouble seems to double when Zevran is involved. Until such time the extent of the trouble is revealed, however, Alistair will remain cautiously pleased that he's here.
Cautious is the key word. He has an easy manner even while nervous and suspicious. He's barely been there fifteen seconds before he's slumped crookedly in a chair with his elbow hooked over the back and his legs sprawled out ahead of him, expectantly bewildered gaze shifting unhurriedly between the two elves until one of them says something.
But now he's going to be confused with pasta, so that's nice. And he's indoors, in a room warm enough to roll up his sleeves. And Zevran is here, which is—suspicious. Maybe it's not actually better than being summoned mysteriously by Fiona alone; the potential for trouble seems to double when Zevran is involved. Until such time the extent of the trouble is revealed, however, Alistair will remain cautiously pleased that he's here.
Cautious is the key word. He has an easy manner even while nervous and suspicious. He's barely been there fifteen seconds before he's slumped crookedly in a chair with his elbow hooked over the back and his legs sprawled out ahead of him, expectantly bewildered gaze shifting unhurriedly between the two elves until one of them says something.
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He's still not happy. His voice still has sharp corners, his gaze is still returns to sullenly focus on his plate. But between bites, he says, "Thank you for leaving me in Ferelden."
Taking him to Ferelden? Giving him to someone else to take to Ferelden? He doesn't know the story. Regardless of the logistics, leaving is still the bottom line.
—anyway, the weak and bitter punchline is, "No one would take me seriously with an Orlesian accent."
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At this point it couldn't possibly make things worse.
"Ah, yes-" He starts, with a vague approximation of an Orlesian accent and a solid mimicry of Alistair's voice. "How terrible it would be to sound like this all the days of your life.'
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She raised her eyebrows first looking slightly outraged, she knew that she probably shouldn't be, but that was not what she came here for. To be yelled at for leaving him in Ferelden? Yes. For never reaching out to him? Yes. For a number of other reasons related to the mysteries surrounding his origins? Yes. This? This she would not sit here for and she slowly stood up, not seeming quite as small as before, the steel in her eyes only softened by the hurt.
"I do not expect you to be pleased with me for the things that I have done, but I cannot help what I am..." Fiona wanted to say more, but she thought better of it. There were some things that were harder to undo once they were said, but she'd also suffered enough systematic shredding by the razor white teeth of prejudices her entire life. Even if it was subtle and in jest it was a perception and one she'd spent a long time battling until she finally found some dignity in her own being, "...if you have anything to say to me about what I have done then I will gladly take it, my moorings are bedrock, not sand...otherwise I will be obliged to let you both finish your meal in peace."
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He misses Fiona's look of outrage, but not her slow stand. He raises one eyebrow without looking up from his attempt to make the pasta cooperate with his utensils, at first, then abandons that attempt to fix her with the expression instead. It's dubious, mildly confused, persistently resentful. He's offended her, he can see that much, but he doesn't think he's sorry. Alistair is no great patriot—he would have learned to be, if he'd taken the throne, but instead he's been in Orlais for ten years, cheerfully playing along with jabs about Fereldan food and women, or about his own intelligence and brutish klutziness, with friends and enemies alike delighted to inform him that he's a barbarian from a provincial backwater that would be greatly improved by reoccupation.
Jokes. He doesn't mind them. He teases back. Everyone pretends that cracks about accents and finicky habits and masks settle the score on near-sixty years of brutal subjugation—though the Orlesian nobility's treatment of its own peasantry was always a good reminder of what re-annexation would mean, just in case anyone is at risk of forgetting. And Alistair never ruins the the mood by telling anyone that his personal introduction to the lovely Orlesian accent was Lady Isolde putting him in his place, which was outside with the animals.
—so no, in conclusion. Not sorry. He looks back down at his food.
"'Do what you're good at,' they say." Leave.
Perhaps this resolves any outstanding questions as to how Alistair managed to make Eamon give up visiting him.
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"Alistair," Fiona began with a soft exhale, "I didn't leave you in Denerim with Maric by choice or because I had many options, you were unexpected. It is not often that Grey Wardens produce offspring. You were singularly the happiest experience of my life, but I could not keep you...I pretended for several months that maybe we would be okay in Weisshaupt and then I was expected to follow the trail of the Architect and Utha...and that meant Darkspawn. I couldn't very well induct you into the Grey Wardens before you could even speak, and at nineteen and a half inches you would have been the smallest. I left you in Denerim to keep you safe."
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They both likely had many other things on their mind and love, in the midst of all that? A complication that was likely worth cherishing.
"...You have to admit-" To Alistiar, now, whom he nudges with his foot. Be nice to your mother. "She did not have much choice."
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Zevran's interruption buys him time, (though it makes his nose wrinkle for other reasons), and he returns Zevran's subtle foot nudge with a gentle but unsubtle kick beneath the table.
"No one ever does," he says, but it's quieter than before. More sulky than steely. He shifts back in his chair to look at Fiona, challenging. But not dismissive. Maybe that's improvement. "I've been six feet tall since I was seventeen."
And he's been here for months.
And she's here because someone made her.
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She hoped the vaguest details were enough to satisfy that conversation.
"I had fewer choices in the circle. If I could have plucked you out of Redcliffe and kept you with me then I might have had you spirited away immediately...but what sort of life would that have been? Regardless it was impossible," and people often wondered why she was so belligerent toward the circle, she had her personal reasons on top of her moral ones.
"There was a time you were small and chubby...you were easy to carry around, but you were not much for sitting," Fiona's eyes fell to her hands, as though she could remember how small he was and how well he fit, "I would sit you up and you were fine for a moment or two and then off to one side you would roll, sit you up again and off to the other side."
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Here he was, trying to help. He was being helpful, why would Alistair hurt him? It was terribly sad, the face he made, all wide eyes and dowturned ears-
At least until Fiona began to speak of Alistair as an infant. That.
That warranted investigation.
"Get enough pints of ale in him and he tips over easily- so I would not say he has quite grown out of that." Attempting to imagine a tiny, chubby Alistair was difficult to say the least, but one that rolled over? He snorted into his wine, hard pressed to not.
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(He didn't want them to anyway. Except, you know, he totally did.)
So he flushes, tries to continue looking defiant, shoots Zevran a look for his snorting, and declines to be distracted.
"Duncan could have told me. You could have written. It's been a long time since anyone could have used you to hurt me." The elf-blooded son of a mage—he's not stupid. It would have made life in Redcliffe hard. It would have made life in the monastery impossible. But no one touches a Warden. "I would have found you."
It would have been a much less pathetic companion quest than the one he got.
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"I guess a small part of it was because you were a grown man, you didn't need me to kiss the bump on your head or scare the monsters out of your wardrobe. That my presence would have been more of a disruption to a life that you knew...these reasons are weak and I know it even as I say it," Fiona was pacing at this point and with nothing to do with her hands she used them to speak, to gesture. Not so much as a means to find words, but as to push the words out, "but I think the honest reason and the only reason that matters is that I was a coward."
She stopped pacing so that she could level him with a withering look. It wasn't an easy thing to admit either, it had been a long time since Fiona had been afraid of anything what with all that was out that trying to end her life--darkspawn, other mages, half-mad Seekers, "I was afraid of all the what ifs...if this would only be trouble for you, if this would only hurt you, if you hated me. So many what ifs made it hard for me to see the positives in all of the negatives...but my complexes are not excuses. Maybe you were afraid too...maybe I could have withdrawn from the politics, I could have helped you. Maybe things would have been easier if I'd been present long enough to ring Loghain's head like a bell. I don't know..."
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"Weeell," he says, "it's never too late for that."
No bumped heads to kiss, no monsters to scare, but Loghain could still stand a punch or two. (If he isn't dead in Orlais. Alistair can't quite hope that he is—not like that. He can die another way. Maybe in a ditch.) Dig at Loghain, five points; saying it was cowardice instead of more reasons why it was for the best, another five. But the thing that really softens the rigid line of his shoulders is remembering standing in front of Goldanna while she looked at him a lot like he's looking at Fiona now.
"What hurts is that you didn't try." He picks up his wine glass but doesn't drink, yet, only rolls the restlessly between his fingers. He glances at Zevran, as if to make sure he's paying attention: look, he's trying to be nice to his mother. "So you should sit back down," he says, "if you want to try."
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"I...am sorry, for whatever it is worth," it was really all she had, she couldn't give back 31 years and she couldn't take back her inaction on Alistair's part. She should have been more proactive in his young adult life, perhaps she could have spared him a lot of grief and some embarrassment. Fiona knew of Goldanna, just not the extent of her rejection of Alistair, "I...am not expecting anything from you, you have no obligation towards me and I have very little to give in return. Some of your childhood things, old letters from Duncan, a single portrait...and I think Arl Eamon had the amulet I left with you when last I was informed. I'll answer as many questions as you can think of or...I'll try to...I may not know the answers to everything. I would...I would love to get to know you and help you in any way I can...it's what I should have done a long time ago."
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"I don't know where you're from or... anything," he says, prompting, and finally takes that drink.
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She wasn't really eating, she was simply pushing the food around on her plate, making shapes, distracting herself, "we were...okay, well off than most...there was meat on the table. Enough for me to sneak a portion of it to a stray cat every night. My...father was protective of his family, his children...he wanted to spare us from as much of the world's horrors as possible. I was seven when I lost my family...a stupid little girl."
She couldn't eat, no matter how well meaning the gesture was in preparing the food. She still poked at it though, with her knife.
"I was cold and hungry, but not for long...I was taken in and given food and a warm bed to sleep in until I was claimed by a human noble who was also kind...and he took me away to stay in his home. My first impression was that it was so beautiful...like a glimmering palace. How lucky could a child be?"
She said it wasn't an easy story, but she would spare as many of the details as she could.
"But the Comte was a cruel and angry man under his smile and I never saw much of that glimmering palace outside of the dim cell he kept me in. He let me out only when he wanted to go to Val Royeaux without his wife...when I was about fourteen a woman in Val Royeaux noticed my magical gifts even though I did not. I had never seen the Comte so angry, though he didn't need a reason to do the things he did, he was simply a cruel person...but he wouldn't even release me from the pain of living under his cruelty, and the cruelty was constant after that day. Then I became angry..."
A very dark expression crossed Fiona's face, before she took the knife in her hand and viciously drove it into a piece of meat.
"How dare he!...It was all I could think before my magic manifested nearly killing us both...though it did kill him. I only wanted to bring that glimmering palace of his down on his head...fortunately I did not. His wife found me...and for some strange reason she did not have me killed, she did not call for the guard. It was the first thing she had ever done for me that wasn't in complete apathy of my situation. Grateful to me I expect, for making her a very rich widow and ridding her of a cruel husband."
She let the knife go and it remained standing upright where she skewered the meat. She released a sigh and some of the tension escaped her as well.
"From there I was transferred to the Montsimmard Circle where I excelled out of spite. I was the only elf, you see, and even then there was a hierarchy...I was at the bottom of that hierarchy. My teacher wanted to do everything in her power to turn me into a proper lady and I wanted to do everything in my power to defy her. Every step of the way."
And finally Fiona smiled, almost triumphantly.
"Then one day Genevieve came to the Circle. Warden-Commander in Orlais. When I laid eyes on her I knew there was nowhere else I wanted to be. It had to be better! She wouldn't take me at first, but no one else was volunteering and I pleaded...and I became a Grey Warden...and Genevieve was everything I'd dreamed...I wanted to follow her. She was brave and strong, stern and fair, she ploughed through obstacles as if nothing could stand in her way...and it didn't matter who I was or where I came from. She was larger than life itself...someone I wanted to emulate."
And with that Fiona ended her story, having gone on long enough she reached for her own glass of wine. It was a rattling experience, but Alistair deserved to know about it.
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And to stop eating. And to not look at Zevran at all, because there's no reassurance to be offered.
"I'm sorry," he says uselessly.
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Fiona wasn't at all sure how reassuring that would be, she'd made her own mistakes where Alistair was concerned. It was the truth as she knew it, however, extreme happiness even for a moment was worth it.