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The words hurt.
Your mother was particularly dear, Anora says. And that hurts. The balm Elissa reaches for to keep her expression neutral: Alistair, pulling faces, trying to imitate their companions, and failing utterly to represent Sten, declaring it impossible. Elissa is better at impressions -- far better -- and it is Alistair’s mirth, Sten’s stoicism, the strength she draws from both, that allow her to keep her expression placid in front of the queen of Ferelden.
(Fereldan Anora may be, but it would be a very grave mistake to assume Anora incapable of playing the Orlesian Game. Loghain Mac Tir’s body lies cooling somewhere, and his blood still streaks Elissa’s armor, and Anora and Elissa both know that Elissa is not sorry. Your mother was particularly dear; those words are an open-handed slap, disguised as balm.)
Because of course Anora was close to Eleanor Cousland. Anora has the correct amount of both melody and steel in her voice. Anora's posture reflects the correct angles for both power and femininity: desirable traits in a young queen. Anora's braids are perfectly coiled, as a Fereldan noblewoman's should be. And Elissa has no doubt that if Anora has been trained to arms (though her hands, with their elegant, tapered, uncalloused fingers suggest otherwise), she chose Elissa's mother's weapon: the bow. The bow, with arrows raining down cool, clean destruction, while the archer stands apart from the fray untouched.
That was never what Elissa wanted.
When Elissa moves, she is aware of her self as a weapon, as a blunt object, a sapper, a ram -- wholly improper for a dual-wielder, but it’s always felt so right to her. It feels right to shoulder her way into her enemies before she stabs, using stealth to weave and dodge and appear where she ought to have no right to be. It feels right to get close enough to taste the foul breath of her opponents before moving away again, using their own force against them. It feels right to make them see her as she wants to be seen: power, flickering; blood-letting; death, hovering, unleashed by her own choice.
--
After she is old enough to spend most of every morning in the practice yard, every visitor to Highever talks marriage.
Dozens of banns. A handful of arls. Two teyrnirs. And one monarchy.
One king's son. And two teyrn's daughters.
When Elissa reached thirteen, Eleanor came to her in her room -- a rare occurrence -- and sat on top of a chest like the raider she used to be, and told her daughter that there were now some grave and serious decisions to be made.
Eleanor laid out the situation as a master tactician would before a battle. Prince Cailan was young and impressionable. The selection of his bride could be influenced, and there were benefits for the crown with either girl. Selecting Anora would mean strengthening Loghain Mac Tir's claim to a teyrnir, legitimizing the Mac Tir family as Fereldan nobility. It would cement the lifelong friendship between King Maric and Teyrn Loghain, and provide continuity and thus stability into the next generation of Fereldan rule -- and, presumably, if Anora did her job, into many subsequent generations. It would show that House Theirin honored what was good and fine in the common folk, and given how pretty Anora was, the royal couple would be well loved by the people.
Selecting Elissa would mean uniting both teyrnirs under the crown -- friendship with Mac Tir, marriage with Cousland -- and showing the banns and the arls that despite House Theirin's time among romantic (but dirty) rebel camps, the crown honored Fereldan tradition. Given Elissa's proclivities, it was not unlikely that they might present both Cailan and Elissa as warriors, which would go over well with the folk who had lived much of their lives under Orlesian occupation.
The question is, Eleanor said, leaning forward, do you want this, Elissa?
When King Maric made a formal visit to Highever two years before, bringing his household, Cailan had been golden. Everything about him shone in the sun. He seemed aware of it, too. Not rude, never rude, but with the expectation that even as a very young man, his desires and commands meant a great deal, and everyone would take heed. But he was kind, and courteous, and considerate, and by the time the king’s household left, Fergus had been eyeing his sister like he thought she might be a changeling. How else to explain his sister, who was interested in knives and how to use them and little else, existing moon-eyed on the battlements, watching Cailan Theirin leave?
In her room in Highever, facing her mother in a strategy meeting for the first time, Elissa’s eyes were wide.
It will mean that you will be the mother of heirs, which is something different than what you've known in your life. You know that Fergus will be teyrn one day; it will be like that, but you will not be quite so free to pursue some of your interests. You must stay healthy, and safe -- no adventuring. Your job will be to have children, and help Cailan, while Cailan gets the credit. But you will be loved by all. And you will be taken care of, all your life, by all of Ferelden.
That sounded to Elissa like the worst thing she'd ever heard. Only later did she think to wonder if that was how her mother felt about marrying her father. Songs were songs, she knew, and stories were stories, and the Seawolf was her mother and the Soldier was her father and she’d never seen them as anything other than they were: her parents, the teyrn and teyrna of Highever. The idea that her mother, the dreaded raider, famed harrier of the Orlesian navy, had given up anything to be Elissa’s mother --
I don't know, Elissa said finally.
And Eleanor nodded, got up, and was the Seawolf no longer -- mother, teyrna, châtelaine once more. Nothing's to be decided today. Come, we've orders and requisitions to reconcile. You need more practice with the household accounts.
--
She met Cailan anyway. He’d grown more handsome in the last few years. His manners were even more gracious. But clearly Anora Mac Tir got there first.
Elissa was relieved.
And it's not as though Elissa didn't think she could have had him, had she wanted him. Had she chosen a path more like Anora's, more like her mother's. Elissa thought about that, when she met King Cailan in all his splendor at Duncan's side, in Ostagar.
It had surprised her, how kind Cailan was that day. Overconfident, to be sure. Perhaps even foolish. But kind, nonetheless. In the middle of the battle, recognizing Elissa’s pain, promising he’d do whatever he could to give her justice. More golden than ever, was the King of Ferelden -- and she could still see in him the boy who loved hawking, who’d held a bird for her to stroke so that she could feel its sleek feathers, watching carefully to make sure the hawk was safe, that she was safe.
But at Ostagar, the kindness in his eyes did not reach her heart. There were strangers at her side, because those who actually belonged there lay slain on the stones of Highever.
--
Alistair sneaks up on her.
It's something, that he can make her laugh, that he can confess so readily that he's willing to beg her not to leave him alone in this. That he likes making people laugh. That he admits to feeling lonely as a child, on top of being forsaken. Duncan wanted him. Duncan was the first to want him for something, and Alistair stepped into a ready-made family of Grey Wardens who drank and laughed and teased and cared, and it was the greatest thing ever to happen to him.
And Elissa never tells him that she could have been his sister, if she'd just tried a little harder. Why should she? What Cailan represented -- what Rendon Howe's son represented, what all the young noblemen dangled at her represented -- was a game that only ended one way: the mother of heirs.
(Elissa, who has grown to like Morrigan, thinks that she shouldn’t tell the witch about this, either. It is fortunate that her mabari is such a good listener.)
The only game Alistair plays with her is Xs and Os in the dirt, by the fire in the camp. He flings his arms in the air when he wins, pouts comically when he loses until she shoves an elbow in his side and he proclaims that tickling is illegal, if you can call that tickling since he barely felt it. And when she smiles, even laughs, once, feeling the air puff out of her like a creaky, unused bellows -- Alistair seems to light up, beaming at her for a flash of an instant before recommending a tickling academy he’d heard about in Denerim since she seemed to need assistance if she had any hope of vanquishing her foes, and since this was a grave matter of honor --
Elissa, a trueborn Cousland and (like as not) rightful teyrna of Highever, has sore muscles, vile nightmares, an appetite that won't quit, no family, and no future.
Elissa loves Alistair's game.
--
She and Alistair never talked about Cailan. Not even when they returned to Ostagar. They did not talk about Alistair’s own history with his brother, or whether it rankled that Cailan learned to hawk, to court, to shine, while Alistair slept in Redcliffe’s kennels. They did not talk about Eleanor Cousland’s strategy session with her daughter, years ago, or that Elissa could have been -- had she wanted to be -- a serious contender to be Queen of Ferelden.
They did not talk about what it meant to see Cailan’s body hanging broken on the bridge. Elissa felt it like a blow, and for once did not try to hide it on her face. Alistair did not offer her comfort, nor did he seem to need any. Not on Cailan’s account, anyhow.
--
Morrigan and Alistair are constantly at each other’s throats. It would be one thing if it were the gentle teasing Alistair is so fond of -- but with the two of them, the words turn into weapons. As though it weren’t bad enough skirmishing with Loghain’s men and darkspawn and demons and the undead, the two who are supposed to be guarding her back instead choose to skirmish with each other in their own war of attrition.
Outside a village, trying to consider whether they should risk entering for supplies, trying to avoid thinking about stepping in the pools of Oriana and Oren’s blood in the family chambers at Highever, Elissa stops in her tracks -- something neither Alistair nor Morrigan expected, and they nearly run into her.
I can’t do this if you can’t be civil, she says, finally, feeling her voice about to turn thready and fighting it with everything she has. Please. Help me. Please be civil. Please.
Morrigan’s gaze shifts away from her.
Alistair, after a moment, brings his fist over his heart, and bows his head.
In camp that night, Elissa curls up in her tent with her mabari and gives in, just a little, to self-pity. The wardog whines as she cries; at least for tonight, she is past caring whether her companions can hear her. She had to hear them all day -- and the day before that, and the day before that.
It doesn’t last long. Self-pity never did anyone any good. And it won’t bring her family back -- or save Duncan, or change Flemeth’s mind -- nor make these last few weeks go away.
Some time later, Morrigan’s voice outside her tent: I’ve first watch. There’s stew that will go to waste.
Elissa sits up, wipes her eyes, and eases out into the night. She knows enough of Morrigan to know a peace offering when she hears one -- just like the stories of her upbringing by Flemeth, and being a child in the dread Korcari Wilds, are a peace offering. More so than Morrigan knows, even: it is something soothing that she didn’t know was possible to know that the daughter of the Seawolf holds certain very important things in common with the daughter of the Witch of the Wilds. They are capable daughters of legendary mothers, and they are alone here, turned loose.
The next day, and the day after, the barbs that Morrigan and Alistair aim at each other are clinging burrs, or a cat’s claws. Elissa pays them no mind.
--
One thing that happened after they started sharing a bed is that every night, when the armor comes off, Alistair spends time rubbing the soreness out of her shoulders, her neck.
She shouldn’t need it -- but as good as her training was, her days as a Cousland of Highever did not require her to march league after league in her armor, much less fight roving bands of wolves, darkspawn, demons, and bandits at least three times a day. The increase in her appetite, the loss of muscle mass, the constant fear: she knows she is thinner, and she is all too painfully aware of the aches that develop from bearing so much weight, real and imagined, on her shoulders.
Neither of them ever manage to have first watch. Elissa suspects Leliana’s hand, or perhaps Wynne’s, behind that. What that means is that when the camp retires for the night, Alistair waits for her to take down her hair before asking her to lie down. His hands, even as they ascend into the highlands and the nights become chill, are somehow always warm.
In the kiss he places upon her nape, every time, before settling next to her, Elissa feels his silent apology. It isn’t right that he should relinquish command without even asking her, and they both know it. It is an extra burden, and they both know it. As little as they are aware of Grey Warden secrets of defeating archdemons, Elissa knows the least -- and they both know it.
As her second, then, he makes his apology every night with his hands, telling her silently that he has her back -- literally. And his ministrations allow her to slide into sleep quickly, feeling safe, loved, cherished --
-- You’ve experienced none of the good parts of being a Warden, he’d told her. --
-- and even amid the darkspawn nightmares, when they wake her, either Alistair is already awake and ready to commiserate (usually by making her laugh), or he pulls her to his chest, mumbling something soothing and unintelligible. And at dawn's light, every day, she can continue to find it within her to press on, at the head of every column, as the deciding voice of every conflict.
--
How many tits is that? Elissa thinks as she stares at the broodmother. It’s the only thing she can think. How many tits can one thing have?
Her stomach turns. She hunches, trying to sheathe her daggers before she retches, but only succeeds with one of them. The other clatters on the stone before squelching into a puddle of viscera. Sten, she knows, is likely scowling at her, at this further evidence that the Grey Wardens are weak and that women do not belong in war. This knowledge does not stop her from sinking to her knees.
The true abomination, Elissa hears in Hespith’s monotone echoing against the stone, is not that it occurred, but that it was allowed.
The echoes are in her mind. She’s pretty sure about that. Hespith wouldn’t stick around to say the same thing twice. Is she underground or underwater? Alistair is beside her, shaking her shoulder, shouting something, but she can’t quite make it out. His voice ripples in front of her vision, banners from a tower, a young girl’s ribbons in the breeze.
The true abomination --
Her mother’s voice: You will be the mother of heirs.
-- is not that it occurred, but --
Alistair, a lifetime ago: It just occurred to me that there have never been many women in the Grey Wardens. I wonder why that is?
-- that it was allowed.
She will die down here, one day. She will die down here and this is what they will do with her: every line of Hespith’s little song. No more swinging daggers, shouldering her way through countless enemies, wiping trickles of sweat from her brow as she turns her face to the sun. Perhaps the taint will make it easier. Of course Alistair wouldn’t know -- why would he? And of course everyone else is dead, of course Duncan wouldn’t have said and now he’s safely with the Maker, or within the Void, and that thing in front of them is a body mined to produce the things that will kill her and blight Ferelden and it was a woman --
Crack.
Elissa sees stars. She blinks, raises a rough, trembling hand to her cheek.
Morrigan hauls her up to her feet. Not here. The witch’s yellow eyes are bright, almost feverish, and her voice could chill the hottest summer day. I know what you see, Grey Warden, and not here. Not you. Not today. Will you swear it to me?
Dimly she can hear Alistair protesting something about how slapping people never actually works.
Will you swear to me that you will not let me become that thing? That you will kill me first?
Elissa swallows. Her mouth tastes terrible. It takes her a long moment to find her voice. I swear. So thin, so weak.
And I swear the same to you. You have my word. Morrigan releases her, snatches the waterskin from Alistair’s hands. Drink. And we move on. Yes?
Yes, Elissa whispers, and fumbles with the stopper. Alistair has a hand pressed to her back; Elissa allows herself to sag against him for just a moment, even as she braces herself for whatever he might say.
He says nothing.
--
And not once while they are underground does either of them acknowledge the best case scenario for their short lives: they return to this place beneath the earth.
They die alone.
--
One selfish choice. Elissa wants one selfish choice out of all of this, before the end. One thing that she might keep for herself, because this isn’t fair. None of it is fair.
Elissa’s choice: to keep Alistair. Yes, Anora wants the crown. Alistair does not. And perhaps Elissa should have tried harder to convince them to marry and rule together. It would make things easier, provide Ferelden more stability, with a Theirin on the throne and a woman who can manage the accounts at his side (and a little behind). As though none of this ever happened. As though she could watch, passive, as her life slips by her, choice by choice, one more time.
Elissa did not want Cailan. She wants Alistair. Anora will not have him -- no matter what that might mean for Ferelden.
Bryce Cousland’s little spitfire. White-hot heat pools in her stomach at the memory of Rendon Howe’s words. All grown up and still playing the man.
She wants Alistair. She means to have him -- has him already. The arl’s Denerim estate is asleep; nevertheless, Elissa moves in stealth toward Alistair’s room, slips inside, murmurs it’s me as she curls around him. She presses a kiss to his bare shoulder -- and holds still as Alistair, still half asleep, turns to face her, gathering her close.
No smart comments; no sweet ones, either. She knows he is awake -- his steady breathing tells her that much. It’s that steadiness as much as anything else that soothes her.
Is this what my mother felt for my father? Elissa wonders. Could this be what convinced her to leave the sea for him?
She will never, she realizes, know the answer to that question. Not ever. She and her mother never discussed it -- never had cause to discuss it, because until the day her mother died Elissa loved her knives, her freedom, more than any suitor trying to land a teyrn’s daughter.
He told me -- Abruptly, she realizes she’s speaking.
Howe? Yes. Alistair is awake, and ready, and for a moment Elissa thinks her love for him might drown her.
Howe. He told me that -- he made my, my mother kiss his feet, and it was the last thing my father saw.
Alistair strokes a rough thumb across her cheek, as though patrolling for stray tears. No doubt because Elissa’s voice is not entirely steady.
Alistair. I need you to tell me he lied.
She feels a soft huff of breath on her brow. Slow, and thoughtful, Alistair says, It seems likely. I mean, we know he’s a liar. And a blackguard. And a murderer. But more important -- if there’s anything of the daughter in the mother, anything at all… you’d die first.
Elissa’s breath hitches. She nods, her throat full.
He lied to you, Liss. Lips, feather-light, on her forehead. And he’ll never tell another. You did it.
--
After that it’s as though a dam bursts -- everything she’d assumed he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, understand, spills from her lips. She tries to explain about what it's like to hear Hespith, Branka, the Broodmother. She tries to explain what it's like to know that if she makes one slip, every part of her body that he knows and loves, that she knows and loves, that she uses to love him, that she uses to launch everything hard and sharp and deadly in her with a perfect rhythm at their enemies -- every part of it will go to feeding someone else, while she endures, immobile, unfeeling, full of poison.
The closest she gets to mentioning Cailan is telling him that the expectation had just always hovered over her as a child -- that one day, she would be the mother of someone else's heirs.
And we're already like the darkspawn. Her voice is flat, lest it tremble. The light of the candles at their bedside warms over the angle of his jaw. Elissa tucks herself in closer, until her nose presses against his throat. It never came up, did it. What female Wardens do when the Calling comes.
No. The single syllable is quiet, and a little hoarse, and Elissa thinks, savagely, good.
After everything we're giving up -- can you try and see -- after all that, what it means to know you're, you're the mother of that?
Her fingers have fisted on his chest. Alistair covers them with his hand: I've got your back, the gesture says, and Elissa knows. She knows.
Which is why it surprises her so when, tentative as the first crocus shoots after a long winter, Alistair says, I can try.
--
The fire in her room is low. Elissa cannot bring herself to stoke it. She should be in bed, trying to sleep before their forced march back to Denerim at dawn, not imagining what is happening behind another door nearby --
Elissa is surprised (but gratified) to hear the door squeak; as well-maintained as Redcliffe Castle is, she'd expect silent hinges.
Then again, she also didn't expect him to come to her, after what she asked him to do.
She rises from the low seat by the fire, wrapped in her light robe. She can tell Alistair's washed: his arms show signs of vigorous scrubbing, his hair is damp, he smells of some flowery Orlesian soap -- Isolde’s doing, no doubt, placing that in every chamber.
He won't meet her eyes.
She approaches him, measuring the angle of his head, the tight set of his shoulders. The way his hands clench and release, grasping at something he can’t reach.
Alistair, she says softly. Is he angry? Angry with her?
He turns his head away to the side, and she realizes that what she is seeing is shame.
A sigh, quick like the wind, as though someone knocked the air out of her. The whole arrangement with Morrigan -- sheer desperation, borne out of her trust for Morrigan and her fear of losing Alistair -- the whole thing is a whorled tangle of traps, places dangerous to tread, but the thought that it would make Alistair ashamed --
He’s the father of heirs, comes the thought. Heirs to the archdemons. She bites her lower lip hard, lest she break into hysterical laughter, or something worse.
Instead Elissa reaches cautiously for his hands. When Alistair doesn’t pull away, she raises them to her lips. Come to bed, love.
He comes.
This time Alistair is the one seeking shelter, Elissa the one giving it to him, one arm snug around his back, her other hand stroking his cheek, her chin tucked snug against the top of his head.
I can hear your heart, he says once, soft, distant, surprised.
It never came up, what female Wardens do when the Calling comes. Elissa prays, quick, fervent, that Alistair might never know what the child might become. Perhaps she should have prayed that Alistair might never understand what it was she tried to tell him that night in Denerim.
It is yours, she tells him. Yours. No other’s. As long as we live.