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WHO: Fern Doirnáin, Alistair, any other Wardens who want to be around to witness this sad scene + OPEN
WHAT: One elf tries in vain to convince a Grey Warden to let her join their ranks.
WHEN: Directly after this thread with Anders.
WHERE: The Grey Wardens' office; directly after, the ferry pier.
NOTES: The scene with Alistair is open to other Wardens only; the second scene is open to anyone!

I. BADGERING ALISTAIR

There are so many twists and turns and corridors that lead to no where in particular in the Gallows that it takes Fern--already keyed up and anxious and fighting back frustratingly childish tears--longer than she'd have liked to find the office used by the Grey Wardens in Kirkwall. If nothing else, the time spent walking herself in circles does give her a bit of time to dry her eyes and regain her composure, which means when she finally stops in front of the closed door and raps on it, she only looks like she's fighting off a cold, rather than recovering from crying like a baby ten minutes ago.

Waiting for the door to open, she waits outside and picks at her nails, bouncing on the balls of her feet to release some nervous tension.

II. THE GALLOWS DOCKS

She's dealt with disappointment before in her short life, but somehow, it's never quite hit her like this.

Regardless of how her conversation with the Grey Warden went, by the time she's left the Gallows and made her way outside again, her disappointment has transformed itself into an all-consuming, despairing ache in her heart, and the tears she'd thought she'd finished crying before are threatening her again in earnest. Humiliated and furious at herself--what a stupid thing to think she could do in the first place--she finds an isolated part of the pier and sits down on it, face pressed into her hands.

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Oh. That's what his face says: oh, eyebrows raising, head tipping forward as if he isn't entirely sure he heard her correctly. And then he looks over his shoulder into the room, because he, too, would like to discover someone responsible and respectable and not weird she can speak to. His luck isn't any better than hers, though. Room's still empty. Damn.

"Well, I guess that counts as a compliment," he says as he looks back to her. "Come on in."

When he steps back into the room he leaves the door open, wide. He knows things, and among those things is that full-grown human men don't bring nervous young elf women into private rooms and shut the door behind them, unless they're the sort of full-grown human men Alistair likes to put the fear of the Maker into when he sees them. There's nothing in the room that Inquisition eyes can't see, anyway. There's a map on a wall, stuck with pins tied with different colored ribbon, books and notes and a few locked storage chests. No vials of Darkspawn blood anywhere.

He leans on the desk instead of sitting down behind it, but there are other chairs if she wants one.

"How old are you?"

This is breaking every single one of her Aunt Lorna's rules, walking into a room, alone, with a shemlen man--but he seems fairly harmless. Kind of annoying, like her brothers. That's not a bad thing--and he can't help being human.

She shuffles across the office threshold after him, nosily eyeing the map on the wall with wide, appreciative eyes. But Alistair recalls her to the present: "How old are you?"

Fern fidgets. "...Twenty-four," she lies. (She's a terrible liar.)

Alistair gives her a long look, sort of squinty. He's not stupid. Or trusting. But he also doesn't argue with her. It's not as if he can demand she produce birth records. She can be twenty-four if she wants to be. The suspicious look melts into a friendlier smile without comment.

"Can you fight?" he asks. The no is coming, he's getting there, but for now that's a genuine question. "—and do you have any plans to rule your own country? Because we've had quite enough of that lately, I can promise you. We're going to start screening for it."

He must be joking about the whole 'ruling your own country' thing, she decides, because he's got eyes, he has to have seen the ears sticking out of her messy hair. She'll be lucky to run a sheep farm in a few years, let alone boss a bunch of dumb shems around.

"I can fight," she blurts out, seizing on that opportunity, because it's the only thing he's said so far that doesn't sound like complete gibberish. "I can swing a sword, and I'm a mage, too, my aunt taught me now to make a fireball." The words run out of her in a hasty string, and she bites down on her lip to quiet herself before she sounds even more desperate.

"Oh, a mage," he says, with a hint of wistfulness. "We do love mages."

Damn useful, and usually happy to be there—or they were when their other option was the Circle. Maybe not so much now that there's a chance of freedom that they don't have to bargain their lives away to earn, which is in its own way not freedom at all...

Not relevant. Not currently.

Alistair looks at her for a long moment, genuinely considering it. He wanted to be a Warden, too, when he was the age he currently doesn't know she actually is. He wanted it so badly, he both prayed and meant it. He'd like to be able to say yes, the way Duncan said yes.

"Are you in some sort of trouble?" he asks. Partially it's a stalling tactic. He doesn't want to say no. But there are so many miserable Wardens here already, who swapped their problems elsewhere for a life they now hate, it's probably good to check.

"Are you in some sort of trouble?"

Yes. In a manner of speaking, anyway--she'll be in for the tongue lashing of a lifetime once her parents eventually find out where she's gotten off to, and what's happened to her in the process. Nervously, she tugs at the worn old gardening glove that she wears over her left hand to conceal the anchor mark in her palm there. "No," she insists in a small voice. "Not--you know, with the law, or anything."

She looks up at Alistair, her eyes at last becoming pleading. "I came--I came here to join up, it's the only reason I left Ansburg in the first place, to come join the Wardens. I'm Fereldan really, you know, I was born right outside Denerim." Like that should count for something, right?

"Right," Alistair says. Ferelden. Denerim. Together with the look on her face, that's enough for him to get a decent read on the situation. And it's a pity. If she'd been running from the law and didn't really want to join, maybe he could have helped. If she had the corruption or something inescapable he could have said yes, because being a Warden is still better than being dead no matter how troubled they are—not that he's going to point that out and give her any ideas. Instead he has to be an asshole.

He stalls a little longer, rubbing his mouth with his hand, and then makes a helpless sort of open-handed gesture next to his face, like he doesn't like the words that are about to come out of it either but can't stop them.

"This isn't a good time." His reluctance makes the words quiet, but they're still firm. "This is our mess, you know. Corypheus. But we can't fix it. That's why we're here, and not out stabbing him and throwing fireballs. We're not the right tool for this problem. We're part of the problem, actually. You can do more to help if you aren't one of us."

"This isn't a good time."

Her ears hear the rest of what he says, but it doesn't sink in. Somehow, even after what Anders told her in the herb garden, she'd convinced herself that if she just had the chance to put herself in front of the Senior Wardens, if they just had a chance to see her and see how badly she wants to serve, that would make everything else fall into place. Even now, a loud voice in the back of her mind insists that this is wrong, this isn't how it's supposed to go--

Her eyes are wet again without her permission. She takes the tiniest of steps towards him; her chin trembles. "Please," she repeats, but whatever words she had prepared for him, she can't make herself say them without losing her composure. Still, she begs, her hands clasped together in front of her chest. "--please--"

So, he thinks as he looks at her big sad eyes and wobbly chin, his own voice very clear in his head, this is the definitely worst.

He doesn't say it. He doesn't say a number of other things, either. He could try to be more helpful, more hopeful; he could say that they aren't what the world needs right now, and being a Warden is about sacrificing yourself to the needs of the world, so she can consider this good experience for later, and she can come back when Corypheus is gone and try again, he'll say yes then, he'll sign something saying so for her right now if she'd like—

It doesn't seem like the right moment. It seems like she would only cry, or else take it as an opening to plead her case further, and in either case prolong this whole thing, which is, as previously stated, the worst. Maybe he'll find her later and try to make her feel better, but for the moment he only shakes his head and says, "I'm sorry. I really am."

"I'm sorry. I really am."

Fern lifts her tightly clasped hands to cover her mouth; the heartbreak, when it happens, is all in her eyes, which at last can't keep the tears in anymore. They're visible to Alistair for all of two seconds, before Fern sucks in a shuddering breath and turns, walking quickly out of his office without another word.

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