(open) for all we know it's just a lie

[byblow]

WHO: Alistair + You
WHAT: Sleep deprivation and a long ride.
WHEN: Both vaguely before and vaguely after today.
WHERE: Skyhold (before today), the road to the Fallow Mire (after after).
NOTES: Vague starterish things because I don't like doing the same thing multiple times! If they're too vague and you want something more specific you can leave me a blank comment or something, it's cool.

I. AN INCOMPLETE LIST OF PLACES ALISTAIR FALLS ASLEEP IN SKYHOLD

1. In the stables with the dogs, usually. He only sleeps for three or four hours at a stretch, lightly and fitfully, but he never wakes up screaming. At worst he wakes up gasping and sweating, with concerned, wet muzzles nudging at his face. More often he times things well enough that he's woken in the still-dark hours of the morning by heavy boots or banging wooden doors, instead, and is already on his feet before anyone can reach him.

2. Draped over a table in the tavern still holding the handle of a tankard. He might look like a drunkard from a distance, but really, it's still three-quarters full.

3. Draped over a table in the kitchens with his arm curled protectively around a bowl of porridge or stew or whatever else the kitchen servants were willing to give him at the given hour.

4. Draped over a table in the dusty, cobwebby cellar library, with his arms folded on top of a book he couldn't force himself to stay awake for for very long even if the fate of the Grey Wardens and/or possibly all of Thedas is hanging in the balance.

5. Standing up and leaning against the back of a horse that doesn't belong to him, brush still in hand, until it steps away to search for something more interesting or edible and he falls right over.


II. AN EVEN LESS COMPLETE LIST OF THINGS HE FINDS ON THE WAY TO THE MIRE

1. Money. That's one good thing about wars and demons: there's more coin on the bodies than when roadside homicides are mostly the work of highway robbers. Alistair is a practiced looter, but a gentle, respectful one, too. If it were possible to close their eyes once they'd gone this stiff, he would.

2. A set of Ferelden figurines, mostly soldiers, half trampled by horses. He doesn't pocket them; he's not a child. But he takes the time to move the ones that aren't broken yet to the side of the road for someone else to find.

3. A temporary Inquisition camp full of travelers headed in the opposite direction. He doesn't consider himself one of them--he's a Warden, he's only visiting--but he hasn't found so much money on corpses that he won't borrow their fire or eat their spare food, if someone offers.

4. A Grey Warden, and not any of the Grey Wardens he was on his way to find. He recognizes the armor at a distance on the road, even in the cloudy half-dark. The sight makes his heart stop in the curious, still, emptied-out way it always does in the seconds before a fight begins. But the moment passes, and he keeps moving forward. Maybe he won't be recognizable, he thinks, now he's traded his griffon-and-blue armor for something simpler from Inquisition stores--

Or maybe it will be someone he's met before. Never mind. He raises a hand instead of his sword. The wave is a little sheepish.

Comments

[byblow]

There is no answering bow--bowing is way too formal, thanks--but there is an answering eyebrow raise. "I've heard of you," Alistair says. "You're..." He doesn't actually know what Michel is. But he's something, probably important, or Alistair wouldn't have heard the name. He doesn't pay enough attention to Orlesian politics to know the names of anyone otherwise. He gives himself a few seconds to try to place him before he shrugs and finishes the thought with, "Orlesian?" and a sheepish smile.

[disgracedchampion]

Michel doesn't expect it, their backgrounds are entirely different and being a chevalier required he handle himself honorably and with grace. In the Orlesian courts that often required bowing and formality died hard with him, though he doesn't begrudge Alistair's lack thereof.

"Top marks for such an astute observation," his eyes were a bit wider now, interested, he'd probably heard more of Michel than just the obvious fact that he was Orlesian, "I would not be wrong in assuming you are the Grey Warden, Alistair, who assisted the Hero of Ferelden?"

[byblow]

"Yes, that was me," Alistair says. "Personal assistant to the Hero of Ferelden."

Hints of bitterness, there, but mostly light; he isn't jealous of Cousland, really. He's just tired of talking about it. It's no fun peaking when you're twenty, especially when your peak mostly involved doing whatever someone else told you to do.

"And that's the first time I've ever gotten top marks in anything. Can I get it in writing?"

[disgracedchampion]

"Oh?" he offered Alistair a brief incredulous laugh for his trouble, "they tell a different story in Orlais, I suppose, but then again they often embellish in Orlais, for effect. They've written plays about you, I've seen them all."

Granted it wasn't his choice, but he wouldn't say they were bad either, most of them were hokey...at least the ones designed for the purpose of propaganda. Some were...pretty good, interesting, if there was any historical truth to it, and being young and idealistic Michel was easily influenced then.

"Here you are now, though, in a place that is trying to do something good."