Behold! My Warden Surana in a golden dress proving once and for all that she doesn’t need a staff to slay. Thank you for this amazing piece of art, @ambellinaleander! It’s simply stunning and I’m going to be busy gazing at it for the forseeable future.
Hey you know that I love you! ???? You are awesome !!!!
Awwww, wow, thank you for the compliment and all those lovely words! I love you too and am so lucky to know you on tumblr. I don’t know what I did to warrant this wondrous ask but hey, I’m not complaining. I’m going to welcome it! <3
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Chapters: 46/?
Fandom: Dragon Age: Origins
Chapter Rating: Mature
Relationships: Alistair/Female Cousland
Additional Tags: Alternate Universe, Fereldan Civil War AU, Romance, Angst, Slow Burn, Mutual Pining, Demisexuality
Chapter Summary: Alistair and Rosslyn greet a new dawn, but there are still obstacles waiting for them. THIS CHAPTER HAS ART, CHAPS
The morning light was gentle against Alistair’s eyelids. He became aware of it at the same time as the warmth that cocooned his body from the chill mountain air, and from that hazy, floating sensation came an awareness of his limbs still heavy with sleep, a draught caught in the small of his back where the blanket had shifted in the night, and the awkward, tingling numbness of pins and needles in his left hand. The canvas above his head shivered in the faint breeze and scattered drips where the rain had collected in the night. A guard ambled past. Armour clinked and boots squelched, but the sound faded, and the brief flare of his consciousness dulled with it.
A breath fanned against his arm.
Wakefulness shocked through him at the foreign sensation, but as his eyes snapped open his memory of the previous night returned, and his half-conscious panic slid away in the face of Rosslyn’s slumbering form, real, safe, and still fast asleep with her head pillowed on his wrist. She lay facing him with her hands tucked against her chest, her hair a black tangle loose of the braid she had worn to bed, her lips parted and brows unknotted of the usual cares that burdened her during her waking hours. At some point in the night, the covers on her side of the narrow pallet had slipped down to her waist and exposed her to the shiver of the cold air. Careful not to disturb her, he leaned over and eased the blanket back up to her shoulders. She didn’t stir. After enduring so much the day before, she deserved as much rest as he could give her. His arm might fall off from lack of circulation in the meantime, and now that he was awake and aware of what he was doing he didn’t know if it would be appropriate to rest his free hand at her waist again, but those were things he could live with.
He marvelled at her, fascinated by every detail. There were so many mornings when he had roused from sleep in the guts of Bhelen’s palace, heavy with the knowledge that she had forgotten him, that there would be no new letter tucked inside his pocket to gird against the deshyrs’ daily politics. Sometimes he dozed, and wished for gentle hands on his skin, running through his hair, for murmurs of greeting and soft presses of lips danced across his face as her strong body moulded to his. Sometimes, he gave in to the fantasy and rolled out of bed afterwards hollow and brittle as a winter reed, and his loneliness would stalk after him for hours, chastising him for continuing to hope for something so far out of reach.
But she was here. She had asked him to stay, sought comfort and security from his embrace in a show of trust that might have burst his heart if it weren’t already so stricken by the relief that she was alive, that she still cared, that all of Eamon’s meddling had come to nothing after all. His gaze fell to her shoulder, where the strap of her nightshirt had snagged on her bicep and fallen down her arm and half-revealed a patch of skin that even against her pale complexion stood out white as bone. As he brushed her hair aside, intrigued, he realised it was the scar from the crossbow wound she had suffered on the night they met, a jagged burst of tissue smooth as silk under his fingers, depressed into her flesh like the echo of a star.
An incoherent mumble pulled him from the memory, and he smiled as she wrinkled her nose against the intrusion of the day.
“Good morning,” he murmured, pushing her hair back so it wouldn’t catch on her mouth.
She grunted and stretched, but kept her eyes squeezed shut. “‘S too early…”
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he offered, subtly trying to work blood back into his arm now that she had lifted her head.
An eye cracked open. “Watching people sleep again?” she grumbled. “That’s a bad habit.”
He remembered the jibe. He remembered everything about that morning. “If something happens twice it’s a coincidence, not a habit,” he pointed out. “Although if…” His courage failed him. Next time, he almost said, as if he had any right to expect such a thing, as if he could be presumptive enough to think one night of reassurance could be carried forward.
“Coincidence…” She hummed, smirking as if she didn’t believe him. Her eyes had closed, drifting beneath their lids.
He took a chance, and reached for her hand. “My lady will have to forgive me.”
“Mmmm?”
“Mmmm. I was…” Wynne would have said enraptured. He brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “I’ve never seen you so peaceful.”
A smile blossomed at that, one side hidden where her face was still smushed into the pillow, but he caught it. When her eyes blinked open again, dry and scratchy and dark in the low light, she regarded him with such softness he felt it like a shield bash from a qunari, and anything clever he might have said vanished clean from his thoughts. He kept still as she shifted closer, held his breath as the hand in his turned and traced a line along his jaw.
“Thank you – for staying.”
“I…” What could he say that wouldn’t sound foolish, or opportunistic, or just downright lecherous?
But her face fell; her gaze drifted away from him and for a moment he worried his awkwardness had spilled out and ruined everything, but she was leaning closer still, tucking herself within reach of his arms, and his heart swelled with gratitude to be allowed such intimacy.
“And thank you for last night as well,” she murmured into his shoulder, so quietly he almost missed it. “You didn’t have to help with Cuno.”
He stroked her back. “I didn’t? So Brantis was lying to me then – he told me it was always a prince’s duty to help beautiful women in distress.”
“Ha.”
“He’s going to be alright, you know,” he offered, though the patterns she was sketching against his chest were making it difficult to concentrate. “The horsemaster said he was treated in time to make a full recovery.”
“I don’t know what I’d do if I lost him,” she confessed. “He’s all I have left.”
“I –” He frowned. “You have me.”
Her fingers stilled on his collarbone. A pair of soldiers tramped past the pavilion, so close their conversation tumbled through the thin canvas, their shadows a long intrusion on the wall and on Alistair’s forgetfulness that they weren’t the only two people in the world. Slowly, her head lifted to look at him, and he cursed the new line of tension in her shoulders, the petulance that put it there.
“That sounded –” He swallowed, loosened his hold so she could push him away if she wanted. “I know it isn’t the same thing, I’m sorry, I just –”
He saw the kiss coming, in the way she tilted her jaw, how she pulled him down to meet her, and to his relief his body responded before his mind had time to involve itself. He opened to the taste of her instinctively, to the scent of sweetgrass wrapping around him like a cloak. It was awkward, with the two of them lying side by side – his nose got in the way, their bodies trapped her hand between them – so he pushed up onto his elbow for a better angle, relief and joy and desire making his fingers shake as they trailed up the bare skin of her arm. She cradled his face as she eased onto her back, holding him close, and the slant of lips gave way to tongues and a too-enthusiastic clack of teeth. She arched into him. Her hair ran like silk through his fingers. And through it all his lungs forgot to give him breath, his heart beat in his ears, his blood sang with the near terror of knowing he had come so close to losing such sensation forever.
“I love you,” he whispered against her mouth. The words slipped easily from his mind, like they had so many times in his dreams, and only when she stilled and pushed against his shoulders did he realise he had spoken out loud.
He panicked.
“I didn’t mean that!”
Confusion tightened at the corners of Rosslyn’s eyes.
“I mean, I did,” he tried, and winced at how insincere he sounded. “The words – I meant the words, only…” With a sigh, he rolled over onto his back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”
She sat up. “You are aware that sounds worse?”
“Yup. Ugh, Maker’s breath… Have I mentioned that when I’m around you I feel like my head’s going to explode?” He grimaced and smacked his hand against his forehead. “In a good way! In the ‘I can’t stop thinking about you’ kind of way that apparently makes it extra easy to shove my whole foot in my mouth. I definitely imagined this going differently.”
A long, weighted silence followed.
“Did you mean it?” she asked quietly, finally, facing away from him as she twisted the blanket between her fingers.
“What, that I… that I love you?” He reached for her and felt the swell of her ribcage as she hauled in a deep, steadying breath. “How could I not?” The pallet creaked beneath him as he rose next to her to brush a kiss against the tip of her shoulder. “But… You went through so much yesterday, dealing with everything, I thought it would be better to wait, and not dump that on you, too.”
He held his breath as he waited, willing the words to be right, an eternity in which it seemed even his heart stopped beating. And then she turned to him with a smile that shone like a light on a dark road, and one of her hands slid into his, the other a faint brush against his chin, and he found he could breathe again.
“Alistair…”
His name, whispered through lips swollen with his kisses… He leaned in, torn between the need to let her say whatever was clearly on the tip of her tongue, and the compulsion to touch, to seal up that last little bit of space and banish any lingering doubts. He had missed kissing her so much.
Before she could say anything, however, a familiar voice interrupted the crisp quiet, low but insistent, dousing the giddy flutter of his stomach in a flare of rage. His fingers tightened around Rosslyn’s. Every instinct screamed for him to see off the intrusion, to shield her from the man who for months had made a misery of both their lives.
“I’m afraid Her Ladyship is indisposed,” the guard said, his voice muffled by the canvas. “It is still rather early, my lord.”
Eamon’s reply came stiffly. “There are important matters I must discuss with her as soon as possible.”
Alistair nearly snorted. Rosslyn tugged on his hand, both a silent reassurance and a reminder not to grip too hard.
“She is not to be disturbed,” the guard insisted.
“And why is a royal guard stationed here and not outside the royal pavilion?”
“Uh…” The guard cleared his throat. “Those are my orders – they come from Prince Alistair himself, my lord.”
There was a pause at that. Through the thin wall Eamon’s shadow shifted its weight. “And where exactly is His Highness?”
“He… uh. I mean, that is to say, I don’t know?”
Rosslyn chuckled, and only smiled wider when Alistair turned an incredulous frown her way. “Your man is doing a wonderful impression of subtlety,” she teased.
“You do realise why he’s here, don’t you?” he asked. “He’s probably come to sell you some lie, to try and keep us apart –”
“Do you think it’ll work?”
“I –”
Her thumb brushed over his lower lip, distracting.
“That’s not the point.”
“I know.” Her gaze flickered down to his mouth, her cheeks blooming with the curve of her smile. “But here we are, after everything…”
All he could do was shake his head, disbelief and wonder crowding out the space in his chest where his lungs were supposed to be. How was it possible for her to both calm and excite him all at once? She gazed at him with such confidence, her grey eyes fierce, mouth set, and her whole body radiating warmth as she leant towards him, inviting in a way that made the perverse corner of his mind very grateful for Marjolane’s attempted assassination. He kept it to himself.
“Can we just stay here today?” he asked instead, nudging closer, with only the briefest dirty look in Eamon’s direction as he tucked her hair behind her ear.
She smirked, accepting the kiss. “And what about all your princely duties? And the army waiting on us?”
“I’m sure they won’t mind a day off.” He teased her, flicked his tongue against her lips and then retreated, smiling when she followed.
“I shouldn’t be encouraging this.” Her fingers tangled in his collar. “There’s too much to do.”
“More important than kissing me?”
“Wouldn’t you get bored if we just did that all day?”
“I’m sure we could entertain ourselves somehow.” The suggestive tone was meant as a jest, but something froze in Rosslyn’s expression.
“It’s probably not fair to keep Lloyd out there facing down the dragon by himself,” she pointed out as she pulled away. A small frown marred her features as she swung her legs over the side of the bed to reach for her dressing robe, confusion warring with resignation and something else that he didn’t understand. Cursing himself, he followed, careful not to get too close or to touch her.
“Did I… do something wrong?” he asked.
She huffed and shut her eyes. “It’s not you. But… we have our duties, and it would be a bad idea to ignore them.” She offered a weak smile. “No matter how tempting it sounds.”
There was still a mote of hesitation in her expression, in the way she lowered her gaze to unstick her hair from where it was caught beneath the collar of her robe, but she was still smiling at him as she laid it over her shoulder, proud and lovely in the morning light.
She was also in night clothes. Her toes peeked out from the bottom of the too-large trousers he had borrowed for her from the quartermaster, and though the robe now hid it, her shoulders were all but bare, with only the thin fabric of an undershirt between her skin and the draughts seeping in under the edges of the canvas.
“You’re right, of course,” he admitted, hurriedly averting his eyes. He cleared his throat. “I should, um…”
Eamon was still arguing with Lloyd outside.
“Boots! That’s what I’m after.” He cast around for them, and for the jerkin he had discarded on the back of her desk chair, acutely aware of her moving around the end of the bed – the bed they had slept in together – and the moment’s pause before she sank into the space beside him. His valet would roll his eyes at the clumsiness of his laces later, but his fingers wouldn’t work, because when he glanced at Rosslyn out of the corner of his eye, he found her watching him, wistful and soft, so that the thought of leaving hit him like a kick to the gut.
“Can I kiss you again?” he asked, giving the last knot up as a bad job.
She bit her lips together to control her grin. “You may.”
This time, he took care not to push too far, only meeting her in a chaste press of lips that nevertheless lingered, and even when the kiss ended he didn’t pull away. Her hand laced with his as she leaned in and let her forehead fall against his.
“We should talk later,” she murmured. “Properly.”
“I’d like that.” He brought her hand to his lips, and sighed. “I should probably go.”
“Mmm. Alistair?”
“Is something wrong?” he asked, alarmed by the hesitation in her voice.
Smiling, she shook her head. “No, it’s…” She pulled back, searched his face. “I love you.”
“You – What?” The inflection had been different when he said it, though he couldn’t work out how, or why it worried him. And now her smile was shifting into a smirk, and one eyebrow had risen, waiting patiently for him to process his panic. “You did say that, didn’t you?”
“I may even have meant it,” she teased.
“Am I going to live that down?”
“You should go. I’m rather sure you have things to do.”
“Ohhhhh no, not until –” A horrible thought occurred to him. “You didn’t just say it because I said it, did you? Because I wasn’t expecting – I mean, you shouldn’t feel like you have to, if you’re not sure, or –”
“I love you,” she repeated, more forcefully this time. The grip on his hand tightened almost to the point of pain. “I have since – before I wanted to admit it, really. I… I needed you to know.”
Again that wistfulness crept into her voice, the echo of some heavy preoccupation that would swallow her if it weren’t chased away. He stroked his thumb across the back of her hand.
“Well now I don’t want to leave at all.”
“Go,” she nudged, with a roll of her eyes. “I have an arl to deal with.”
“And clothes to put on,” he teased.
“And letters to read.”
“Oh, right. Yes.” He had forgotten about those.
For a moment, neither of them moved, content with the connection between their hands and the way their knees touched, unwilling to let go of the peace that had been missing for so long. And yet, the sooner he left, the sooner he could see her again. And in the meantime, Eamon might rip open the door and find them. Yes, he should leave.
“Love you,” he whispered, with a final, brief kiss that left her giggling.
Squeezing her fingers for one last bit of reassurance, he rose and dragged himself away, only just avoiding a collision with one of the tent poles. She was already reaching for the collection of letters discarded on her desk as he made it to the entrance, but watched as he shook himself out of his distraction, squared his shoulders, and stepped forward to meet Eamon, as if walking out of someone else’s pavilion so early in the morning weren’t an entirely scandalous act.
When he was gone, taking the balm of his smile with him, Rosslyn sighed and shivered against the doubt that lurked in her chest like a wolf at the edge of a winter hold. She could still taste her confession on her lips, offered as a gift, and because despite the warmth of Alistair’s hands, his brightness, the flutter of her thoughts when she woke and found him so close, she had no other way to keep her fear at bay. Having given him up to duty, it was easy to live with her shortcomings – she had stepped back from the precipice, from the conflict of desire – but now, faced with him again, in the joy of his touches, she had to contend again with Oriana’s voice in her memory, telling her such intimacy was only ever a prelude to something more. That it was expected.
Life in court had taught her how to spot partiality; Alistair did want her, she wasn’t fool enough to think otherwise, but when the time came as it must, and she could promise nothing more than kisses, would he be satisfied? He had said he loved her. That he had missed her. When she had curled into his side the night before, with the low hum of his voice in her ears and his fingers brushing the length of her arm, contentment had sunk into the deepest part of her bones. She never wanted to be anywhere else. Half-asleep, she had wanted… had toyed with the idea of sliding her hand under the hem of his shirt, scraping her nails over his hip, tracing the muscles she had so admired in the practice ring at Lothering as if she had a right to the feel of his skin under her fingers. In truth, such boldness terrified her.
With a sigh, she shook off the thought and pushed forward, dressing mechanically in work clothes without calling for her maid. Her hair would do in a basic braid for now, and while she rummaged in her strongbox for a tie, she called for Lloyd to ask if Arl Eamon was still waiting for her.
“He is, Ma’am,” came the reply through the wall. “What should I tell him?”
Her fingertips brushed cold metal. Alistair’s amulet lay half hidden under a spare scrap of velvet, tucked in the corner where she had thrown it in her fit of despondency. She would have to tell him; that way there would be no illusions, no drawn-out false hopes for the future, even if it meant all she would have to hold onto afterwards were a few sheets of paper sealed with a Rose in burgundy wax.
“Tell him he can come in.”
She shut the box and turned.
“Your Ladyship,” Eamon started, even before he fully stepped inside, or bowed.
“My lord,” she replied. “You seem out of sorts.”
He narrowed his eyes. “I am well, Your Ladyship, though somewhat concerned by Prince Alistair’s emergence from this pavilion at such an early hour. I understand that you were shaken by events last night, but that does not mean you can forget your circumstances, or the position you hold, and taking it upon yourself to toy with His Highness’ reputation –”
“His reputation?” she repeated. “Forgive me, my lord, for speaking bluntly, but I fail to see how matters between His Highness and myself are any of your business.”
“Matters concerning the crown become my business, Your Ladyship,” the arl replied loftily. “Especially as I was appointed Prince Alistair’s guardian by King Maric himself.”
She gave him her most cutting smile. “Aside from the fact His Highness is now in his majority, your record during his childhood includes making him sleep in the stables and trying to cart him off to the templars at the soonest possible convenience, so I wouldn’t count it as a particularly solid defence. Did you think I didn’t know?” she asked, when he blanched. “Perhaps you were worried Alistair would find time to give me these?” The letters, incriminating for their absence, waved in her hand, and she watched with catlike satisfaction as the little colour remaining in the arl’s face drained away.
“Your Ladyship, if I may –”
“You may not,” she snapped. “What news do you have for me? There must be a reason you came here so early.”
His brows drew down over his eyes, but his tone retained the proper deference as he relayed the report from the scouts sent to investigate Marjolane’s camp.
“There was a saddled horse with some basic supplies, a map with a rendezvous marker, and this.” He handed her a letter with a blank, broken seal. She scanned the lines, the orders for her own kidnapping, promises of reward for her deliverance to the arranged meeting point, and at the end, though there was no signature, a stamped Chantry crest that she had seen many times before.
“Mother Berit.” She cursed. “Have you informed the king?”
“I sent our last raven not half an hour ago.”
“She was speaking with Baudrillard last time I saw her,” she recalled. “I wonder which one of them came up with the idea.” Easing out a breath, she set the paper down on the desk, resisting the urge to march outside and cast it into the first fire she saw. After all, it would be foolish to accuse a revered mother of conspiracy without evidence to back up the claim.
“Sweep the camp,” she ordered. “I want to know how she got past the guards and I want a plan for how the watch can be tightened to ensure it doesn’t happen again.” Having failed once, Baudrillard would be unlikely to try again, but they were still too close to the border and now she had Alistair with her, presenting an even bigger prize for anyone who might hope to harm Ferelden and steal some influence for themselves.
“What about our rendezvous with His Majesty?” Eamon checked.
She shook her head. “Tomorrow will be soon enough to set out. Now that Rillside has capitulated, he can spend a little time making peace across the Bannorn.”
“As you wish. Will there be anything else?” he asked, with another nervous glance at Alistair’s letters.
“No, my lord,” she replied, turning away to draw the first of the quartermaster’s reports towards her. “I have no need of you. But if you could inform the soldiers not involved in the camp search that they should inventory and drill in preparation for the march tomorrow, it would save me ordering my captains to do it. Have them pack up all non-essentials.”
Beneath the grey beard, the old man’s jaw clenched, but he kept his temper against the menial assignment. “As you wish, Your Ladyship.”
She returned his bow with a courteous nod and watched him leave, already feeling the tension bleed from her limbs. Taunting someone as well-connected and politically savvy as Eamon was not something to be done lightly, but her anger allowed nothing less. Let him lash out and weave his own story of her conduct for Cailan; she had the letters, and she had Alistair, and though the situation would need careful handling, she would make him pay for trying to separate them.
The thought brought her full circle, back to Alistair’s words, the feel of his hands on her skin. Even after a night’s sleep and the confirmation of her own eyes in daylight, her mind refused to take in the magnitude of the change from the world the day before. He loved her. He had been writing to her all along. He had slept beside her and woken her up with kisses. He loved her. In a few short hours, all the promises contained in such wonder might come crashing down, but for now, no matter how hard she tried to school her thoughts, they turned back to the pleasant squirm in her chest and the grin she hid behind her hands.
text overlaid atop the dragon age logo that reads "@ambellinaleander is an amazing artist! Her Alistair drawings give me so much life. I am so glad she's a part of this fandom."
