faderift | Where There's Smoke Pt. 2

"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

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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