faderift | Where There's Smoke Pt. 2

His socks are wet. It feels like home. So does the cold and the rain and the smell of mud with something probably rotting inside it--so Alistair in a good mood, all things considered, when they depart from the Inquisition camp and set out hiking toward the house where the Mysterious And Likely Dangerous Apostate's Friend Lemuel is staying.

He makes it maybe four steps before the sound of mud squishing underfoot is no longer novel enough to distract him from the sounds in his own head. He says, "I know not all Dalish elves are from the same clan," in case someone gets offended, "but are you?"

If Beleth knew Alistair better, and if it wasn't Gavin--Cyril perhaps, or Pel, someone that hadn't just had a whole big heap of issues dropped on the clan, she might have joked. Dalish? What Dalish--That Dalish? Never seen them.

But with the way that Gavin has already been avoiding the rest of the clan, she isn't going to take that chance. Instead, she glanced to Alistair--The Alistair™, who helped King Cousland defeat the archdemon. Hopefully he wouldn't realize she was the one joking to Zevran about his attractiveness to elves. "Ah. Yes, we're from the same clan. Clan Ashara. Um--" She glanced at Gavin. Help. "--There's a few of us, in the Inquisition."

After a few moments, she went on. "...I've met the man we're looking for. He's kind of...mean. He kept yelling at me. And! I mean. He hurt some other scouts! So that's pretty mean. Um. In my opinion..."

"Beleth, Pel, Cyril, Merrick and I are all from the same clan," Gavin affirmed, throwing a bemused look at Beleth. Since when had she stuttered every other word. "There are a few more in the inquisition that aren't, though, including someone named 'Twisted Fate' which is the strangest name I've ever heard, and one really cute one I keep missing." He'd seen her around, but they still hadn't had a conversation. Shame.

When Beleth continued, however, he looked at her honestly confused. In her opinion? 'Pretty mean'?

"You alright, Bel?"

"That does beat The Iron Bull," Alistair says, and decides, "I'm calling him Twist." Does he want to be called Twist? Will he stab Alistair through the neck for doing so? Only time will tell.

His boot sinks three inches into a spot of especially soft mud. Before he squelches it back out, he gives the ground a look that's very fond. Very nostalgic. This won't last more than a few minutes, but it's still the source of his smile when he looks sideways at Beleth--he doesn't have much to compare to to decide that stammering isn't normal.

"They wouldn't have sent you after him again if you couldn't take him," he says. "It will be fine."

"Sina," Beleth adds, looking up. "And her sister. Um--I never met her sister, but Sina is nice. There's also--Ah, Salem. I met him when I was at Skyhold between trips." You needed to take a bit off from this place, or the Mire would just...get to you. "He's pretty nice, too." Or at least, he was to Beleth. Maybe not to any humans, but. Oh well.

Gavin does, however, get a look when he asks if she's alright, and she decides to elbow him the next time Alistair isn't looking.

Beleth isn't too happy about the mud, either. One look at it, and she'd decided that she would allow her pride to take enough of a blow to wear the human boots. She could take snow and hard ground and a lot of things, but mud was where the humans finally managed to cross a line. They finally found a place terrible enough that the Dalish wouldn't go here if they had any choice in the matter.

"...I guess so. He didn't seem dangerous. Just old. And mean."

"Sina! That's the one I've heard is really cute." He declares, as if this was important information.

Gavin didn't seem to notice the mud at all. Maybe that's what happened when you spent a week digging latrines in the Fallow Mire. You became impervious to the grossness of mud. Nothing would ever be so awful as that again. So he just squelches and slops as if he's taking a stroll in a meadow. With the amount of mud on his feet, it was impossible to tell whether he was wearing shoes or not, anyway.

"So who is this guy, anyway?" He asked, having paid basically no attention when the were assigned to the mission, beyond 'you'll be heading out and going with Alistair and Beleth'. He figured Beleth would pick up on whatever he'd missed, anyway.

"Sina's a nice girl. But her clan--did you know--" She stopped, and remembered that she was about to gossip about clans in front of a shemlen. Guh. She doubted that Alistair would even understand half the intrigues that went on between clans. "--Well, her clan is a little odd, but she's nice." She'll tell Gavin more about it when she doesn't have a human breathing down her neck.

Luckily, Gavin managed to introduce a perfectly safe topic to discuss with everyone involved. She gave a little sigh, shaking her head.

"His house was on fire. So me and Merrick and a few others went over to help. Like. Hello, you probably want some assistance, right? But at first he just yelled at me. Then he told us that he needed a notebook inside, said that he was working on a cure for the plague. We tried to get more info out of him, but he kept yelling and waving his arms at me. We got him the notebook, but he wasn't very fun to deal with. Kept calling me names and stuff. Still...I thought that he was just kinda...not all there, but not dangerous." She shrugged. "I guess that's what I get for assuming."

"I think that's it."

It is Lemuel's house, that is a house forty paces away, in the Mire's standard state of dankness and disrepair. Alistair slows his steady march, then stops, considering the house and the rickety low bridge over the water separating them.

The reports didn't mention any signs that he was dangerous, or Alistair might have ask the elves if they wanted to hang back with their bows while he knocked, manfully, with his shield and broad shoulders and so on. But, really, they're only supposed to talk to him, and if there is a problem Alistair can probably block the door long enough for them to move to range.

The bridge, though. "I say whoever falls first has to sing one song on the way back for every corpse that wakes up," he says.

"So, you're basically saying, 'Gavin, I really want to hear you sing'," The elf in question said as he stepped up beside Alistair. His bow wasn't out, but that didn't mean he wasn't aware of where it was - or aware that he'd probably need it soon. But people tended not to want to talk, when you had arrows aimed at their face.

"You really could just ask, no need to be coy about it." He walked up to the edge of the bridge and gently put a testing foot down, but it seemed to hold his weight okay, so he stepped further out onto it.

"Gavin--!" Beleth grabbed onto the back of Gavin's vest, attempting to pull him back a little from the bridge. It's not that she doesn't trust you, Gavin. It's gravity that's the sneaky bitch here. "No one wants to hear you sing. No one. You'll rile up the old man even more, and the corpses will come out--" Wait, Alistair is still here, just like he's been. For a decent chunk of time. She will fuss at Gavin later.

"Let me go first, alright? I'm the lightest," Although Gavin was still an elf, he was a lot taller than most elves--and weighed more than she did, a petite noodle of an elf. And of course, then there was the human warrior with his human warrior armor and his broad shoulders that would make quite a splash if he went for a dip. "If anything can't hold me, it won't be able to hold either of you."

And, she was a lot more lithe than either of them. It'd be easier for her to pick out a path and recognize a bad piece of bridge before it fell.

Stupid men with their stupid manly plodding feet.

"I want to hear him sing," Alistair says over Beleth--or under Beleth, and mostly under his breath, looking mildly entertained by them both. But he isn't going to disagree with Beleth's strategy, however chivalrous it might have been to insist on going first. She's right.

"And you'll wake the fewest corpses," he says agreeably. "We're right here waiting to rescue you if you fall."

He was totally not about to fall, though Beleth grabbing him definitely almost did tip him over, and he made a sound that was a bit nasily and huffy but otherwise didn't complain as he was manhandled back behind her.

"Remind me and I will serenade you later," He says to Alistair, not looking at him, and instead watching Beleth as she makes her way onto the bridge.

"You don't have to make fun of my weight, Bel, I'm very sensitive you know." It would perhaps ring more true if he wasn't then grinning at her.

Beleth huffs right back at him, making sure he's secure on level ground, before turning to Alistair. "No, you don't." Then she turns to give Gavin a playful swat. What a loser.

Once everyone has agreed that she has the best plan, she nods, her lips quirking at Alistair's reassurances. "And they say chivalry is dead." She murmurs as she heads to the bridge. She starts picking her way across, tapping with her foot against the wood. When a spot creaks a little more than she likes, she reaches into the vials on her hip, and gently pours one of them onto the bridge, marking out the spot in a green paste. Then she moves on.

So far, so good--until the very end. By that point she's eager to get over this damn bridge, and gets impatient. She makes the final leap...only to slip as she lands on the final bit of bridge. Luckily for all involved, she manages to throw her weight towards the solid ground, and lands with a disgruntled noise, ungraceful but safe in the mud on the other side.

"Not a word." She shouts at them as she slowly rises, reaching up to wipe the mud from her arms. Or try. She might just be spreading it around.

"No words here," Alistair calls back to her. No words other than those three, which are delivered with a grin that's worth a few more. These elves are all very charming.

And it's good they don't actually need to be stealthy about this, considering all of the falling and shouting. Alistair starts across the bridge after her, looking back to invite Gavin to follow, and other than stepping too close to the creaky green rotting wood that she marked and breaking a board in half, he doesn't have trouble.

Gavin didn't speak but he chuckled to himself under his breath and then quickly followed Alistair, very nearly tripping over the half broken board, but managing to not go tumbling face first into the water. Good job!

Once on solid ground he strode right up to the door to knock on it with a sharp rap.

"Hello! Anyone home?"

At first there is no response. The house is still, but it's the sort of stillness that prickles at the back of the neck, unnatural, held too carefully to be real. Someone holding their breath in hopes the visitors will leave.

But they don't, of course, and after a twitchy minute or two there's the scrape of wood on the floor and a grunt, the sound of footsteps. The door opens a tiny crack and a lined face with an unkempt beard peers out from it.

"What do you want?" he asks, none too kindly, the words run and ground together in a thick Mire accent. He gives them a quick, squinty looking over.

Beleth waits fretfully by the bridge as she watches Alistair and Gavin fumble their way across the bridge. She's particularly on edge when Gavin crosses, tensed and ready to dive into the water to rescue her clanmate if need be. It's not that she doesn't trust Gavin--okay, that's exactly what it is. She only dares to breath a sigh of relief when all three are safely on the other side. She isn't looking forward to what the return trip is going to do to her blood pressure. She's too young for this kind of stress.

And then Gavin knocks on the door, and they wait. Beleth is just about to suggest they try a window, when the door opens up. The guy doesn't look very pleased to see them, but that's what Beleth is there for. Hopefully. It's not like she can play good cop bad cop when the most intimidating member of their party is a puppy that someone put Grey Warden armor on. You don't fool her, Alistair.

"Oh--! Hello, ser," The elf starts out, suddenly all sweet, nervous smiles and big doe eyes. "Um--are you Lemuel, ser? We were looking for you--well, um, if you're him, I mean...if that's alright?" She fidgeted with her scarf as she spoke, giving a nervous little laugh. Isn't she adorable. You should help her, look how cute she is. "We were looking for the Mage Widris--I'm one of the people who helped him when his house caught on fire!" She cheered up when she mentioned that part. "We were told you might know where he was...?"

The act makes Alistair's eyebrows do a thing—not quite a raise, because he's at least that good at keeping a straight face, but there's definitely a twitch. He's definitely going to grin about it as soon as they don't have an audience. Until then, he keeps it contained to a half-smile, more reserved, while he surveys the narrow strip of man visible through the door.

He can probably take him. Even if, expression-wise, he doesn't look like someone who wants to take anybody anywhere, thanks.

"Please," he adds. "We think he needs help."

Gavin, for his part, mostly just grinned in an amiable and slightly stupid way, stepping back to stand beside Alistair.

Beleth had this one in the bag.

Lemuel-- because the way his eyes narrow further when the name is spoken gives away that it is he-- seems taken aback by Beleth. It's quite an act, and big-eyed sweet-voiced elf girls don't turn up on a man's doorstep every day, especially not around here. His own eyes go a little wide themselves, and he glances from Beleth to her companions and back, mouth opening beneath his beard as if about to speak.

But he doesn't quite, catching himself right on the precipice and shrinking back again, eyes going even narrower than before. He strokes at his beard, fingers matting it down around his mouth in a calming, time-wasting gesture.

"And what's a sweet little rabbit doing looking for Widris?" he asks, casting a skeptical look back to Alistair and Gavin, "What help are the likes of you going to give?"

The smile freezes on Beleth's lips at the word 'rabbit', her jaw clenching to keep from any regrettable words slipping out. It's an act of sheer willpower to remember what Zevran told her about smiling through insults, and to keep talking to the man, instead of lobbing a couple arrows in the water, and running while the corpses shambled over.

But the Inquisition would probably frown on her having to submit a report that they not only failed their mission, but got the only contact able to let them complete it killed, because of an insult.

"Well, when his house was on fire, he asked us to get him his notebook that had notes on curing the plague," She told him calmly, smile firmly reestablished. "We got it for him, but later on, he contacted the Inquisition, and he...um. He seemed to think...something had happened to the notes? He, ah. Wasn't very happy." At least here, she could allow her smile to be a touch sardonic, because she suspected that Lemuel would know that was a bit of an understatement.

"So...we're looking into it! Making sure that no one has messed with his notes, seeing if we can figure out what the situation is," She tilted her head slightly, glancing away. "But...he disappeared. We were worried it might be related. So our job is to make sure that Widris is safe, and to try to ascertain the status of his relationship with the Inquisition--make sure that we're all being helpful."

Or if that status is very firmly 'violent and unhelpful', to make sure that no one else gets attacked by Widris. But, you know. Details.

This is why Beleth gets to do the talking, despite her long ears and the local(/global) prejudices: Alistair isn't even the one being insulted, but his smile disappears, rather than freezing, and it doesn't come back. He has enough sense not to open his mouth, at least, and the longer Beleth goes on without any outward sign that she's upset, the more his posture eases.

Gavin's smile only faded slightly - the only outward sign that he noticed the slur was a twitch of his ears. He was well used to it. As much as he wished he could keep Beleth and the others from it, he knew it was impossible. So there was no point letting it get to him. At least visibly.

"We feel responsible for his well being," He added, managing to look worried. Or maybe like he really had to go to the washroom. It's a fine line.

After the three of them fell into silence, and Gavin had not fallen into a bog in the last five minutes, the elf fell in at Alistair's side.

"Do you remember when you asked if I was asking you for a favour and I said no not exactly because it wasn't a favour for me? Can I ask you a favour that is for me?"

"You can ask," Alistair says—but cheerfully, without much skepticism.

"Well, you see - I have this friend." The word 'friend' has a slightly odd inflection on it, but what that inflection actually is, is hard to say. He goes on, and he starts at the end of the story rather than the beginning, because he's been mulling over this for days and sometimes he forgets that he doesn't just say everything he's thinking aloud to everyone, all the time, and thus forgets that they obviously don't have all the information he does.

And besides, starting with Zevran, when it came to Alistair, was probably a good start.

"And Zevran thinks I should just have his mother murdered, but I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be happy with me, if I did that. So I asked Sam too, and he mentioned the Wardens, and I thought - Oh! That's not a bad idea, I should ask Alistair, but I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to be a warden either, it just would help out a lot with his Mother and then maybe I wouldn't have to kill her."

There's a reasonably long pause. Alistair isn't stupid, whatever Morrigan thought or thinks, but sometimes he's out of his depth, and he tries not to open his mouth quite so quickly when that's the case. So he thinks, What?, and then he replays what was just said in his head in case he missed something or only needs to think about it harder.

Someone's mother might be killed. And that's possibly a good thing? And Wardens--

Nope. No sense.

"What?"

"Well Sam said - What about the wardens?" Gavin explained, not explaining at all.

"And I thought - yes, exactly! What about them? Because if they thought Maxwell was a Warden, they wouldn't keep trying to marry him off. Which would be easier than killing his mother, because Zevran said it would be too hard to fake his death and would probably come with complications anyway. But if they thought he was a Warden, then he couldn't marry, so they'd leave him alone."

It was then that he realized he hadn't actually started at the beginning and his ears drooped.

"Oh. Sorry. Um - my friend, he needs my help."

"Ah," Alistair says.

The drooping ears stem the immediate swelling tide of his annoyance. (He should probably talk to Zevran about not assassinating anyone's mothers over marriages, at some point--maybe over the sending crystals, so he can't droop his ears as well. Bloody elves.) Instead he sounds a little exhausted, and he rubs an eye to match.

"You want--advice? On pretending to be a Grey Warden? To get your--friend out of a marriage."

His ears didn't rise, the tips falling further as his eyes did, to the ground, as he tried to shake some mud off his shoe and only managed to splatter it onto his chest instead.

"They were supposed to leave him alone, because they were supposed to hate him for coming to the Inquisition," He said as he trudged along. "Disowned etc etc. But then they sent him this letter, and said that they were in marriage negotiations, and I've never- I've never seen him so miserable and I don't understand why humans have to keep forcing people to do things that they don't want to do and I promised I would help him. But he's very - well he's very... noble." That brought the slightest hint of red to the end of his ears.

"And I mean... noble in the good sense, not in the weird human Noble sense. So just killing his mother would probably make him angry with me, but I'd rather not kill whoever they set up his marriage with, because it's not like she would deserve it."

Alistair almost resents him for looking so pathetic. Almost. And there's a tickle of ohhh, he likes him at the very edge of his thinking, not yet strong or formed enough to be properly called a thought, but there. He'll probably acknowledge it hours later, or in the middle of the night when he's trying to fall asleep.

"To be honest," he says, as if he's really capable of being anything else, with his complete lack of Wicked Grace face, "I'm a little concerned that you think killing anyone at all is a proportional response. Is he part of the nobility somewhere? They do this sort of thing all the time."

"Yeah. Trevean, in the Free Marches. And I don't think it's that disproportionate - I was under the impression that assassination was a pretty common human noble thing, too."

He sighed.

"I have to do something, but you go and try to reason with a human noble" - he was careful not to say shem - "as a Dalish. 'Oh, hi, yes, you don't know me and probably wouldn't mind just having your guards beat the living daylights out of me, but I think you should probably just leave your son alone and ow, were knives really necessary?'"

"I'm not sure I could pass for Dalish," Alistair says lightly, stepping around a rotting fallen branch. "And I'm not sure assassinating your friend's mother because everyone's doing it makes it that much better. If everyone assassinated their parents when they didn't want to get married or be given to the Chantry or inherit a title, there wouldn't be anyone left."

A contemplative pause--not a serious one, though.

"But that doesn't sound so bad, does it?"

"If it meant we were rid of people who had children only to use them as political fodder? No. No, it doesn't sound too bad at all."

There's a real edge there, underneath - but it isn't for Alistair. The anger fades as quickly as it rose.

"I just... I thought, maybe, if the Wardens claimed him, then he could just stay here, and stay with us, and keep trying to close the breach and save the world, instead of having to leave just because some- some--" But there was no word there that was strong enough for what Gavin felt for Maxwell's mother, so instead he made an entirely new, but obviously obscene, gesture with his hands.

Alistair makes a noise that's a little dismissive, maybe, but also not quite disagreement. Arl Eamon is a good man--never machinated or tried to install a puppet ruler in his life, what a guy--and Teagan, too, but the rest of them Alistair doesn't care for. And he has the luxury of not having to care for them, because he's a Warden. He should probably check his privilege or something.

But:

"We're not even supposed to actually recruit people out of pity," he says, "let alone pretend to. If I said someone was a Warden, he could use that to take whatever he wants. Whoever he wants. I'm sure your friend is a good person and all of that, but I can't... Two of the men I came here with pretended to be Wardens, once, and when they were caught they were conscripted."

Edited (EAMON ISN'T DEAD AND I FORGOT TEAGAAAAAN) 2015-12-04 18:24 (UTC)

"Oh."

It's a single word, a miserable word. A deflation. A brief hope, dying. He'd known Wardens had treaties and special powers, but... They'd never actually been used, on his clan. Even during the blight, they'd been far from Ferelden.

There's still an idea there, but it's a desperate, stupid one, and he knows that even before he voices it.

"What if-- what if someone by the name Maxwell Trevean did join the Wardens, and we just... never clarified that it wasn't the same person?" He asked, his ears reddening again, and this time he looked like he was bracing himself to get smacked. "Even if that- that person happened to be an Elf?"

"No."

He says it before he looks back at Gavin, or he might not have had the stomach to sound quite so sharp about it, rough, like a mabari's quick warning bark. When he does look, turning his gaze away from the path(ish thing) ahead to make sure the answer took and there isn't going to be an argument, he softens almost immediately, because he's kind of a sucker.

"You've got a good heart, Gavin," he says, "and that is what I look for, but you'd be joining for a bad reason, at a very bad time. And you don't look anything like a Maxwell."

The answer had taken - technically it had taken even before Gavin had voiced the question - but the sharp answer still came as a blow, regardless. His ears were tucked tight and low against his head, and the misery that he'd so far managed to stave off was unfortunately obvious. When Alistair looked back, however, he immediately tried to regain something of a normal expression, and failed.

"No, you're right. It was a terrible idea. I definitely don't have the jaw for it." He tried to make it sound lighthearted, but again, he failed.

"I would have though worse timing would be, you know, during a blight, but I guess the end of the world due to a massive hole in the sky is pretty terrible timing too." He was grasping at straws - he had no ideas left and he had to think about something else before he just sunk into misery. So - obviously - let's talk about the end of the world. Far less miserable.

"Ha. During a Blight we'll take anyone," Alistair says, ruefully--because it reminds him that they took Loghain, and also because he feels like he has personally crushed every one of Gavin's hopes and dreams. "But your jaw would still be a problem, even then."

The ensuing pause is long enough to be awkward, maybe, depending on one's tolerance for silence. Alistair's is fairly low, at least when he isn't sulking.

Then, "I might be able to call in some favors or something," he says. "I don't know what favors. I don't know anything about anything." The nobility, he means. Politics. The Free Marches. "But the Arl of Redcliffe and the Queen's advisor are my uncles, kind of. They like me enough to let me say they are."

Since he was sulking (not in Alistair's direction, just in general), Gavin had fallen into the silence with absolute apathy toward it - focusing on his feet rather than the rest of the bog - but when Alistair spoke, his ears pricked upwards a little bit, and he looked up at him.

"You think they could do something?" He asks, because he doesn't know anything about anything either, and is not very surprised to learn that Alistair's sort of uncles are nobility, because humans seem to have a lot of those.

"Sure," Alistair says, then downgrades to, "Maybe. Dear Lady Trevean, As you may have heard we have a demon problem here in the south, and so on, Ferelden is very grateful for your son's assistance, something something, invitation to a party it would be inconvenient for you to actually attend, and thank Andraste for that, you sound terrible."

Despite himself, Gavin snorts - a half laugh through his nose rather than his mouth - and he gives Alistair a grateful, if unconvinced, look.

"Well it's worth a shot," He said with a lopsided smile. "Better than any idea I've come up with so far, though I doubt it will work." His face fell, and he frowned at the ground. "It would be different if he didn't mind, or if - if they found a match he wanted, but he says he doesn't want any match, so..."

He looked back up at Alistair and offered a sheepish smile. "Sorry. I've been rambling, haven't I."

"I don't mind," Alistair says, honestly. Even if Gavin were boring--which he isn't--he'd be better than silence, because silence is no longer just silence for Alistair. "But I don't think many people anywhere marry for love. The nobility marry for power and commoners marry to eat. It's all politics and status for dwarves. I don't know much about Dalish customs, but in the alienages marriages are arranged, too, from what I've heard."

He stops because one of his boots has sunk deep enough into mud that it requires effort to pull his foot loose, which also makes him think--"Maybe we should let Beleth catch up."

Where There's Smoke Pt. 2

tromping through the mire

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knocking on the door

Re: knocking on the door

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still tromping through the mire

why don't we have a sleigh

because the inquisition personally thinks you need exercise, alistair

that doesn't rhyme or fit the rhythm

aw man i always fail these tests

this all looks very dire, corpses all the way

yes but can't i have a little bit of peril

pointy elf ears droop, making wardens sad

what fun it is to - no it's not fun on any measure why are we even here why is there so much mud

OH FALLOW MIRE, FALLOW MIRE, BOGGY EVERYWHERE

YOUR DESOLATE WASTES CHEER US ENDLESSLY UNTO DEATH

... HEY!

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