Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

When the sight of Denerim greets her beyond the rise, exhaustion is already tugging at her limbs, heavy and stiff from hours on horseback. The grey dawn-light paints the scenery in dull colours, but the distant sky bears a rosy tinge heralding the rising sun. She'll make it to the castle before the city is fully awake, and better that, than cause a stir by riding through the morning market.

Her mare snorts, restless beneath her, and she digs her heels in with gentle care. They've got some ways left to go, still, but the sight of home has stirred new vigour into her weary bones, and when she draws her next breath, Elissa Cousland Theirin feels – excitement. Or trepidation, she's not entirely certain which. 

Her hair is tangled with something nameless, but she hasn't had a mind to deal with it yet. Her last bath was three villages ago, but the dirt and dust of the journey and the general state of Ferelden's roads has seen to it that the memory of cleanliness is long forgotten. Her uniform looks more grey than blue now, but that's probably for the best – the fewer who make note of her passing the better, at least until she's reached the castle.

A click of her tongue, and Briar answers with a soft whinny, and they're off down the slope. There's a shiver in her soul, the thrum of slowly building expectation, and she wonders if he'll be happy or angry with her. It's been a while since she's had news on the state of her King and country; there's a letter in her pocket, folded with care. Fergus' latest word, but that was a few weeks ago, now. She doesn't know what's happened since, other than the odd rumour she's gathered in the villages she's passed.

Denerim is still asleep upon her arrival, that gentle doze just before waking, and she hears the whine of doors pushed open as she rides past, the familiar sounds of the early risers who have no more mind for the lone rider making her way across the square than she has for them.

The first living souls she sees cast familiar figures against the gate. The two guards spot her coming from a distance, but there's no recognition in their eyes as she approaches, but the wary manner of their greeting makes her smile. If anything, her husband has been well protected in her absence.

“A Warden, at this hour?” She catches the surprised murmur. For all its wear and tear, the uniform is still recognizable; the griffon emblazoned on the front draws their eyes away from her face (or so she tells herself, unwilling to admit to the alternative, that her face is a forgotten memory in the minds of her people). But it's a young guard who's spoken, and in a voice she doesn't recognize. She tries not to dwell on it, but the simple lack of recognition becomes an ache she had not expected. 

“State your business, Warden,” the second guard demands, then – an older, grizzled man, and it's with a rush of relief that she realizes she knows this voice.

There's a tremble in her words she can't hide when she finally opens her mouth to speak. “Your eyesight giving you trouble in this cold light, Marron?”

A long pause greets her words. Then – a surprised oath. “Maker take me – your Majesty!”

The younger guard blinks once, twice, lifts his helmet a little to peer up at her face, but Elissa is already dismounting, feet hitting solid ground with a pleased sigh. There's an ache in her legs, and she feels the sudden urge to run, to break off at a full sprint until she's shaken off the last ounce of unrest that clings so persistently to her soul. But – she's Queen now, here below the grey Fereldan sky, and so she tucks the feeling away for a later time.

The gate is opened without flourish, but the guards hover at her back as she enters, visibly flustered by her arrival, and they follow at her heels as she directs Briar towards the stables.

“Is Jolan awake?” she asks, to direct her mind elsewhere, back to a sense of normalcy and away from the disbelieving eyes trained on the back of her neck, but finds herself instead wondering if they've exchanged the horsemaster in her absence. The thought makes her feel...strange. Uncomfortable, like preparing for a ball and finding your dress an ill fit. Her hands tremble, and she grips the reins to keep them still.

But by their response, there's at least one thing that's still the same as when she left. “O-of course, Your Majesty! We'll see to it, right away.” Marron is the one who speaks, unsurprisingly – the younger guard looks unsure of where to put his feet, and at a look from Marron, startles out of his daze with enough force that he nearly trips over his boots.

“R-right, I'll get 'im!”

He's made it two paces before she stops him. “Actually, if you could fetch my husband instead, that would be preferred. I'll see to this old girl myself.”

They exchange looks, before a meaningful glance from Marron sends the younger recruit fleeing into the interior. Marron – gruff and grim-faced Marron who'd seen her off all those years ago for what he'd thought had been a simple outing – lingers at her side, seemingly unable to remember what he's supposed to be doing. She feels a rush of fondness at the display, and wonders not for the first time, how her absence has been felt.

She's at the stables without realizing it, Marron a few paces behind. She's tempted to point out that the gate remains unguarded, but finds she doesn't have the heart to. Briar echoes her unease, and she makes a soothing noise as she directs the mare towards the stables. It's quiet, this early in the morning, save the soft rumble of its slumbering occupants. Jolan won't be up for another hour, if the young guard doesn't rouse him on his way to the King.

“Are you...home to stay, Majesty?” comes the question then, softly asked and wary in its voicing, as she sets about loosening the straps of the saddle.

Her hands still, and she remembers the day she'd left, the word of luck granted at the gate, and her promise of a swift return, lest her husband worry. Years ago, now.

She's about to answer, the affirmation a considerable weight on her tongue, but she's interrupted by the sound of the stable doors thrown open, the hinges groaning with the strain, and the force of it sends a tremor through the walls. Briar startles, whinnies her discontent, and her reply to Marron flees her mind for a calming word, but she's not given the chance to speak because –

because her husband is rounding the corner, hair tousled and out-of-breath, familiar bulk nearly knocking over the nearest wooden stand in his haste. 

She's almost surprised he's not in his smallclothes, but the sight is no less welcoming, and Marron snaps to attention so fast it's a small miracle he doesn't keel over. The younger guard – the one whose name she's yet to learn – stumbles in after the King, who's come reeling to a halt.

He's put on a little weight since she left, she notes, and something pushes against her throat – a sob, she realizes, and find herself surprised. She hasn't wept in years, hasn't allowed herself to feel the full strain of separation, driven solely by her private quest. But now – now she feels it, every ounce of it, raw and unrestrained, a force building in her breast like a small storm.

“Good morning,” she says, voice thick. 

There's a pause – a lull so profound she wonders if time itself has come to a stop, but then Alistair exhales, and her own breath follows, an explosive surge that makes her feel light-headed. Her King looks at her – looks at all of her, tattered blue uniform and mud-drenched boots, her hair tangled and her tired eyes. He looks at her, and it's that first day at Ostagar, it's their victory at Fort Drakon, and it's their wedding day, and suddenly she doesn't know whether she's Warden or Hero or Queen, or neither. Is she something else now? To him, to her kingdom?

He doesn't respond, but she hasn't expected him to. Instead, she's there when he sinks to his knees, already moving, arms sliding beneath his, a steady weight pushing against his even as he sags against her. He's warm and heavy and familiar, but his returning embrace is an uncertain thing, hesitant where he's used to be bold, wary of her sudden appearance and she doesn't blame him. The blame is hers to bear, even now. 

She vaguely makes note of the guards making their silent exit, but her thoughts are for her King, now, knee-deep in hay and horse manure, half-dressed and so – so every ounce the man she married, she does not hold back the next sob when it builds in her throat, pushing against defences she hasn't realized she's put up. Something cold is slowly thawing behind her ribs, and it hurts – it hurts, and she welcomes the feeling with an urgency she can't explain.

“Have you come home?” The question is gruff at her ear, asked from a dark place, a terrified place he doesn't often venture. “Elissa, are you home?”

“Yes,” she breathes, and when he holds her now it's in earnest, the honest weight of his relief so staggering she nearly loses her balance. Briar whinnies softly at her back, but her mare is a patient creature and Jolan will arrive soon to tend to her. They'll be King and Queen then, but now, now they're simply them, titles forgone in the brief moment of respite there on the hay-strewn floor of the royal stables.

“The kingdom is still standing,” she murmurs against the dip in his throat where she's rested her head.

Alistair laughs – a tired, disbelieving sound. “Well, you know. Should have seen it last month. Castle was barely standing, riots in the streets, the economy on the brink. They've done a great job cleaning it up.”

She pulls back, looks at him, this time, her tired King. “And you, my love? Are you still standing?”

His answer isn't immediate, and she wonders not for the first time, of the things not mentioned in Fergus' letters.

“I might need a hand,” he says then, and when a smile follows her happiness is a living thing, wild and lovely in her heart. “If you've got one.”

Her fingers curl around his wrist, pressing a promise against the beat of his pulse. Whether or not he understands the full weight of it is unimportant, and she has years yet to prove the truth of her return in more than trembling gestures.

There are words in her heart and in her throat and she wants to speak them all at once – to confirm the success of her quest, give the reason for her absence validity, plead his forgiveness for her selfishness – but there's a raw quality to his movements, an old grief still present in his red-rimmed eyes that curbs her tongue. Now is not the time, she knows. It'll be a while yet, and – and she's fine with that.

There are roses on the castle wall, climbing upwards, relentless against unyielding stone. They weren't there when she left, and this small evidence of the passage of time burrows a hard knowledge deep into her marrow from which she can't escape now, here beneath the morning sky of her kingdom, her home. In the days to come she'll wonder if it was all worth it, her quest, her absence, her sacrifice.

And it's in the long and quiet years to follow – no Calling in their souls, no dark whispers in their ears – that she'll know her answer.

Chapter Text

(she comes with the dawn)

He's fast asleep when the first knock sounds – a hesitant, barely-there rap-rap-rap – but the noise succeeds in drawing him from the heavy warmth of an exhausted slumber to the cool, musty air of the royal chambers.

For a moment he doesn't move, conscious of the lack of light filtering in through the heavy drapes, which means the sun has yet to rise and which means, in essence, that anything short of a Blight or Orlais on their doorstep does not require his immediate, kingly attention. But – the knocking persists, and there's a frantic note to the sound now that tells him the knocker does not belong to his usual staff. His no-nonsense head housekeeper would never have bothered with such a tentative approach (not to mention, she wouldn't have bothered knocking in the first place, the vile woman. No sense of privacy whatsoever).

The groan is lost somewhere between the pillow and the mattress, and on whoever is behind the bedamned door, because the knocking doesn't cease, but rather seems to intensify with each second that he fails to respond.

“Maker, there better be a war.” Lifting his head from the pillow, the King of Ferelden considers the door, the knocking that won't stop and – whether it's too early for a King to retire at thirty-five to spend the rest of his life sleeping in some remote hut in the Hinterlands.

“What,” he snaps. The knocking stops abruptly, and the perverse thought strikes him that maybe an assassin lying in wait had had enough of the bloody noise and taken matters into his own hands. Granted, that's probably bad for him, as he's no doubt next.

But a moment passes and there's no assassin kicking down his door, and as the last remnants of sleep clear from his mind, the hostility follows suit. Then again, he's never been one for undue anger, anyway.

“What is it,” he tries again, in a calmer tone, though he can't keep his misery quite contained. But it's too bloody early to be polite, even if he is King.

There's a pause. “Your Majesty.”

Alistair sighs. “Yes?” It sounds like one of Vera's boys, although why one of the junior staff would be at his door at such an ungodly hour escapes him. Although to be fair, anyone of relative high rank is probably still asleep in their beds, as they should. As anyone should, really, and with the thought he feels the stirrings of irritation again.

The pause that follows the question drags on, and Alistair feels his patience thinning by the second. “Well, spit it out, man. If it's Orlais, you can tell them to invade at a bloody reasonable hour, people are sleeping.” (He is only partly joking, of course – he doesn't actually think it's Orlais, but he can't imagine what else it could be that should require his attention before breakfast.)

“It's–” the speaker hesitates, and Alistair is already halfway on his way back to sleep. “It's the Queen, Your Majesty. She's – well, she's back.”

He's out of bed so fast he nearly forgets he's in his smallclothes, and doubles back to grab a pair of pants, and succeeds in pulling them on without fully stopping (though he nearly trips over the carpet for his trouble). The young servant responsible for his early awakening jumps at his sudden appearance, and has to leap out of the way so as not to be run over by the half-dressed King, who hasn't acted quite so un-kingly since before his coronation.

The guards stationed some ways down the corridor startle at his passing, not used to seeing him up so early, no doubt, but Alistair has no time for their salutes, too busy trying to remember the quickest way to the stables. 

He probably should bring a guard, the thought strikes him halfway across the royal wing – it could very well be a trap. On closer thought, it is very likely a trap, but he so very, very much wants the news to be true, for once he forgoes common sense (and common dress, he should probably find a shirt), because if she's back –

There's a young guard – one of Marron's – loitering by the door to the royal wing, who jumps when he appears and who looks like he might say something but isn't given the chance. But he moves to follow, and Alistair decides that will have to do by way of protection, in case it's a trap, or a really bad joke, in which case he'll need someone to dangle threateningly over the castle wall.  

He succeeds in thoroughly startling two more guards, a maidservant and the cook, who shrieks and nearly whacks him over the head with her ladle before she realizes just who the half-dressed wastrel running rampant through her kitchens is. He might have to apologize later, but there's a desperation in his movements that won't allow for care, and by the time he's pushed out into the Fereldan morning, the cold air sharp enough to sober his enthusiasm enough for him to realize he's barrelled into the stables like a common drunkard, it's too late for regrets, because –

because she's there, busy unsaddling her mare like she's just returned from a ride, and not like she's been gone for years – so long that he'd almost given up hope that she would come back at all; that he'd ever see her again before the Calling finally came to claim him, to be his sole companion on his last visit to the Deep Roads. 

The years have deepened the lines at the corners of her eyes, and there's a new scar by her nose that's still got a pinkish tint. And she's at once familiar and foreign to him, there in the stable, Alistair feels every year of her absence in the span of a single breath.

“Good morning,” she says, like it's any other day and not this day – this day where she's returned, no letter no word no warning in advance, and – and Alistair doesn't find it in himself to be angry, and it drains away with whatever strength he'd dredged up to run the length of the castle interior without a thought.

And then he's in her arms, or she's in his, he doesn't know but does it matter? 

“Have you come home?” He almost doesn't recognize his voice as he asks, belonging to the boy he'd once been, who'd been sent away from home and who knew separation with the keen familiarity of one who's lost and who doesn't know where to return – or if there is anything to return to. She's the lost one now, not him, but he feels like the boy, not the King, and she's his fragile home grasped so gently between his fumbling fingers – the single rose in a Blight-riven land. The flower he'd given her has long since wilted now, but she hasn't, and he grasps the knowledge close with trembling urgency. “Elissa, are you home?”

“Yes,” she says, and it's not a dream, and he's not in bed, silk sheets and one side left empty. It's hay and horse-shit and – and it's her, whole and hale and home, finally. 

She smells of Ferelden and the open road, of dark earth and dog piss, and he's never loved her more or with fiercer ardour than in this moment.

“The kingdom is still standing,” she says, and – he laughs, a tired but genuine sound because of course she'd say that – of course she would – and oh, he's missed her, grieved her, feared for her, fiercely and honestly. He wonders if she knows just how much.

There are tears in the dip of his throat, and he doesn't need to wonder long.

“And you, my love?” she asks then, the voice that has commanded hundreds wavering. “Are you still standing?”

He is – has been for all these years; her absence hasn't made him any less of a King, or reduced his responsibilities in any way. And he has been a King; he's stood alone. But – he doesn't want to stand alone anymore.

And so, “I might need a hand,” he tells her, and he feels her relief like his own. “If you've got one to give.”

She does, and this time he doesn't let go.

.

.

.

She goes missing again around dinnertime – the panic surges, like an old friend, uninvited and foul, and the grief is quick to follow – and he realizes how hurt he still is, by how quick he is to jump to conclusions.

He checks the stables first, but her horse is still there, and it grants his mind enough rest for him to widen his search to the library, and his – their – chambers, but with no luck. He thinks of her mare, reminds himself that she wouldn't leave it, and has to take a moment just to question why it is he thinks that, and not that she wouldn't leave him.

He's angry, then, and the anger is his companion as he checks the gardens. It's calmed down somewhat when he reaches the kitchens, and by the time he's searched the throne room it's dwindled back to something along the lines of regret, but for her sake or his, he doesn't know. He thinks of the years that have passed, and asks himself when it was he turned so suspicious, and when he's made his way back around to the royal wing he's sobered enough to feel the rush of guilt for what it is.

In the end, he finds her – by accident, more than any deeper knowledge on his part – in her dressing chamber.

“Elissa?”

He lingers in the doorway, hesitant where he'd once freely invited himself. She's on a chaise, a dress in a heap on the floor, another gathered in her lap. There's a pair of impractical shoes tossed haphazardly on the carpet by her feet, forgotten.

She doesn't look up as she speaks, fingers running gently, hesitantly, over the fabric. “I've missed dinner, I'm sorry. It's–" she laughs, breathless. "It's been so long since I've worn a dress, I couldn't decide which one to wear.”

It's such a harmless utterance, but it breaks his heart all the same. Because she's the Warden Commander still, out of uniform now and in a silk dressing robe, but the bath and the change of clothes haven't chased the soldier from her bones. Her shoulders are rigid beneath the thin fabric, wary like she's spent too many nights keeping watch for her own sake because there was no one else to share the burden. Her hair gathers at her jaw, now – she's cut it since her arrival – and the ends curl with the leftover moisture from her bath.

She'd been Queen, once – had handled the role with more grace than Alistair had ever managed, before or after her disappearance. She'd been the diplomat, the easy smile and the polite laughter at banquets that earned more favours than his attempts at peace talks had ever done. She is Queen, still, but he can tell she doesn't believe it – not yet. But Queen or Warden Commander, she is still his wife, her absence notwithstanding. And he vows she will know that much, if nothing else.

“The grey one,” he says, after a lull.

She looks up, eyes wide in her face, and Alistair finds his smile comes easily. “It's the one you wore to dinner, the day before you left.” Her face falls at the words, but he continues, “I like it. It suits your eyes.”

She doesn't rise as he approaches, and when he kneels before her she lets the fabric fall, running trembling fingers instead through his hair. It's an old gesture, and it brings back memories of early mornings at camp, the sun filtering through the tent-flap and the rare silence that precedes the inevitable dawning of a day's troubles.

They sit like that a while, long past the dinner bell. There's some foreign diplomat attending, Alistair knows this somewhere at the back of his mind where he's a King, but right now he's a husband first, only, and he couldn't have cared less if the Empress of Orlais was sitting unattended in his dining hall.

They'll eat later, straight out of the larder, whatever she wants and more besides. And he'll stay with her until she finds rest if it takes the whole night and Maker take whoever dares knock on his door tomorrow morning. And he'll let her tell him – everything, or nothing. Because she's home.

And all these years, he's never wanted anything else.  

Chapter Text

(her crown is heavy on her head, her thoughts like stones in her heart)

In the weeks that follow her return, she tries to make herself at home – tries to get back to a semblance of normalcy, whatever that means here, now, when the world's been through so much and she no less. She's up before the sun, before the servants, even, unused to the luxury of sleeping without the need to be alert, and so she spends the first few hours of her mornings watching her husband sleep.

He still favours sleeping on his stomach and oh it's a dear sight, but he doesn't reach for her in his sleep anymore – not like he'd used to do, in those early years of their marriage. She'd used to find it a small annoyance, but endearing in her husband's way, but now she feels the significance of their years apart keenly every morning, when she finds him on his side of the bed, face buried in the pillow and snoring softly. It's familiar, and in this new world of the unfamiliar, she keeps these small things with her as she rises to don her old mantle as the Queen of Ferelden (or is it new? she honestly doesn't know anymore). 

She wears impractical shoes that make it hard to walk (to fight, to run, because old habits die very, very hard), and dresses. The fashion has changed since she was at court last – there are more ruffles now, and skirts so voluminous she wants to laugh (or cry, she doesn't quite know which). Without her armour she feels exposed – naked, though there's lace at her collar and her bodice alone weighs more than her Warden coat. She'd spilled wine on the grey silk dress during her first official attendance at a diplomatic dinner, and none of the others feel right, even the blue one her handmaid picked out for her – 'blue, like your uniform, Majesty' she'd said with such an unbearably fond smile, and Elissa had not had the heart to decline it.

She feels – wrong, like her skin's stretched too tight, or that's she's grown out of it, somehow. But Alistair smiles at her like she's a sight to behold, and she tries to feel it – tries to imagine herself Queen again, the way she'd been, once. There'd been a time when she'd relished in the bustle of courtly life, but her journey has been a long and lonely one, and she feels like she's underfoot, now, always in the way of some servant, or that there's no space for her, anymore, though the castle is as vast as it's always been. She escapes to the gardens when it gets to be too much, and her husband allows her room to move about – more so than is usual for him, and she loves him for it, fiercely and sadly all at once.

She tries to ease her way back into her duties. She attends meetings (no balls yet, thank the Maker, and she suspects Alistair has had something to do with that), and dinners. She smiles and offers polite small talk. There are many questions about her return, but not of her absence – another thing to thank her husband for, no doubt. Instead those she greets pretend she's not been gone more than a week – as though she's just come back from an extended holiday. And she bears it all with a patience the years have given her, though a scream builds in her throat that she can't swallow past.

But for all her attempts at regaining her footing, her coronet weighs heavy on her head, and there's a pounding behind her brow as she sits by her husband's side in petty court. It's making it hard to focus, and she hasn't noticed just how quiet she's fallen until there's a hand on her arm.

She starts at the gentle touch, but there's only concern he shows her, bright in his kind eyes.

“Want to go lie down? I can handle things from here – I've had practice.” He says it with a grin, and she knows – oh, she knows he tries to make light of it for her sake, but the implication falls heavy between them either way. He's had practice because he's been forced to. Because she'd been gone, and he'd been left with the responsibility. 

She knows the moment he realizes his mistake by the softening of his eyes, and his smile disappears. She's quick to replace it with one of her own, though it feels strained even to herself, though she has no mirror but the expression on his face.

“No – no I need this, I think. And it's just a little while longer. I'll get some rest before dinner.” She needs to feel like a Queen again, and she can tell he understands, even if the furrow of his brow also tells her he'd rather she tend to herself before her subjects.

In the end, she doesn't manage to sit through the entire session, because the pounding becomes too much to bear and she's ready to scream by the time Alistair discreetly nods towards the back door. Her handmaid is there, a worried frown on her freckled face, and for all her stubborn resilience Elissa cannot escape quickly enough.

It's a short walk back to the royal wing, but her feet ache and as there are too many people around to simply kick off the bedamned shoes, she endures it at a slow pace. Ella trails at her elbow, sympathetic if unable to do anything to aid her, and Elissa's fingers itch to remove the headpiece pressing against her temples.

They are almost at the royal wing when she hears it, 

“–in court today. And here I was thinking they were going to hide her away. The whole thing almost made me wonder if the news of her return were exaggerated servant's gossip.”

There is a trio of ladies by the main staircase, talking quietly (but not quietly enough), and though she's endured worse slights than being talked about behind her back, she feels the words like a slap. It's – unexpected, and despite her better judgement, she lingers. Ella stops, curious, but doesn't question her behaviour.

Another voice, this one high like a bird's chirp, raises in answer to the first. “Oh, but did you see? That posture, how dreadful!”

“Well what do you expect, with her traipsing about Maker knows where all these years?”

“But she's back now,” the third interjects, not unkindly.

There's a harrumph. “She wears a crown, but she could not have been more a soldier if she'd worn mail. I'm surprised she didn't slouch like a man! You'll see – she'll be gone again before long.”

A soft gasp. “But you don't think – what about His Majesty? She wouldn't leave him, surely.”

“She already left him once, did she not? And she's given him no heirs, for all her efforts to ensure her place on the throne. Perhaps when she leaves again he will finally consider looking elsewhere. Maker knows there's not a lack of wiling women.”

“There might be an heir," the third speaks up. "Perhaps she'd have less of an incentive to leave if there was a child.”

There's – not a snort, because it would be unladylike to call it such, but it's a close thing. “Oh yes, one might think, but do you not find it odd there was no child in the years of their marriage before she left? If you were to ask me, I'd say there was something wrong from the start. There's no cure for a barren womb, not even time.”

Ella hovers, visibly appalled now. “Majesty–”

Elissa doesn't answer, but she doesn't stay to listen, either. Instead she picks up her skirts, and her pace. Her feet hurt, but something is pressing against her throat and she will not lose her composure here, she will not.

She's glad of Ella's discretion as they finally reach her dressing chambers, for the tears are heavy and warm against her throat, soaking into the lace collar, and the girl doesn't ask questions as she sets about loosening the elaborate knots at the back. The room feels too hot and her humiliation burns in its own right, and it's only when the blasted bodice falls away that she feels she can breathe again.

“I'll go get you something to drink, Majesty,” Ella murmurs, and is gone; quick-footed like a doe as she disappears out the door, and Elissa is left by the chaise. She's on the floor, clad in her thin shift; the dress a heap of fabric bundled around her legs. Shaking fingers tangle painfully in her hair in an attempt to remove the coronet. She'd cut it – she'd had to, for the state it was in after her journey – and Ella had pinned it into a murderous updo to keep it in place.

An oath falls from her lips, then another, and the third dissolves into a sob as the crown finally comes loose along with her hair. She doesn't toss it, though she very much feels like it. Instead she holds it before her – this gilded symbol of what she was (what she is – she is Queen, she cannot be anything else, she won't), knuckles white with a phantom strain. The chaise would be more comfortable, no doubt, but she does not have the strength to get up, and Ella does not come back.

That's how he finds her some minutes later, and by his quickened pace as he rounds the doorway she knows it was not water Ella had gone to fetch.

He takes only a single step inside before he stops, and she can't make herself look up to meet his eyes. But he doesn't ask her to – instead he shuts the door behind him, and his footsteps are muted by the thick carpet as he comes to kneel before her. He doesn't touch her – not at once, and when he speaks it's with a gentleness that breaks her. 

“Ella told me what happened,” he says. “Are you alright?”

She looks up now, finally, and her smile is a weary one. “Yes. I – I should have expected it, to some extent. Not all our subjects will be quite as accepting of my return. I was just surprised, and...it's been a long day.” She does not tell him everything – that her heart aches, because no one desires a child more than she (but has she earned the right to want one? Can they even conceive? Old questions to which she has no answer)

“Doesn't give their tongues the liberty of wagging like a dog's,” he says, and there's no humour in his voice, only an old grief for what she suffers. His fingers close around hers, warm and familiar, and with her next exhale she loosens her grip on the coronet. But he doesn't take it from her.

She thinks, then, of what she'd overheard, and of what fears still lurk in his heart even now, weeks after her return. But – no, there's no suspicion to be found on his face, in his eyes (in his heart), only an honest trust she doesn't know how she's earned.

“I'm not leaving,” she tells him then, not because she feels he needs to hear it, but because she needs to say it, for her own sake.

Alistair smiles. “I know.”

“It's just...it's taking a little longer than I'd thought it would, getting used to this. Being back, being...Queen.” Being yours, she doesn't say, but she knows he hears it, by the softening of his brow.

A hand on her cheek, then. “Elissa.” But she's smiling through her tears this time, and when she holds it towards him, he takes the crown from her hands, putting it to the side where her wretched shoes lie. She's practically in her smallclothes, and the room is not as hot now as it was, but his hands are as he helps her to her feet.

“Want me to ask Ella to draw you a bath?”

The coy smile comes with surprising ease, and she speaks before she thinks, “Only if you'll help me.”

He grins – bashful, boyish, and in that moment the years haven't changed him a bit, and he's the fumbling young man holding a rose in his large, gauntleted hands, speaking of Blight and corruption, and of beauty in the midst of everything.

He takes her hand, and she steps out of the heap of fabrics. The soles of her feet feel raw even against the soft carpet, but her shoes are forgotten – she doesn't need them. There's no crown on her head, no sword at her hip, but she does not feel exposed when he looks at her now. Her previous hurts she tucks deep into her soul, to visit at a later time, and she focuses in stead on the warmth of his hand in hers, and the familiar curve of his smile.

This – this she knows. And this person, the one he sees when he looks at her so fondly, this is a person she can be, fully, wholly. It's a start, and she makes it, feet bare and her hair all a-tangle, like a chasind wench and won't that be a story for the court to gossip about? But – she finds she doesn't mind what they call her, because even if she doesn't fully know who she is, he does. She suspects he always has.

And for now, it is enough.

.

.

.

The next morning she wakes before the sun again. The grey dawnlight that heralded her arrival so many weeks before seems to be her companion now, in these earliest hours while the castle still sleeps.

Her husband is snoring, and – she notes, with a swell of something like joy – he's shifted closer to the middle of the bed. It's not quite on her side, but it's something – hells, it's everything, this small but significant detail amidst a well of affectionate gestures. She does not think he's aware of its meaning, but it does not matter.

The hours pass at a lazy pace, the grey dawn painted with soft yellow light, and she thinks about children. It's a familiar path her thoughts take (girl or boy, his eyes or hers, insufferable cheek or a patient soul), and the desire rests like an ache just below her heart. What would it be like, to be woken not by the sun or of her own accord, but by the sound of small feet in the corridor? A weight on the bed, and clever fingers in her hair?

She swallows, an idea forming – a want, familiar and compelling as she considers the bare curve of his back, the criss-crossing of pale scars and the dusting of freckles on his shoulders. She thinks about the Warden, the King, and – what he would be like, with those small things, those unbearably precious things, the little feet and the little hands curling in the crook of his neck.

She only hesitates for a moment, and then her touch is feather-light against his neck, thumb brushing his hairline, the shell of his ear. He hums into the pillow, and she smiles. An old, tender feeling unfurls behind her ribcage, and when she breathes next she chucks her worries like she would an ill-fitting garment. 

“Are you awake?”

He turns his face to look at her, and there's a wry quirk to his mouth. “I am now.” But he must have seen something on her face, because a moment later he's lifted his head, concern sharp in his tired eyes. “What's wrong?”

And she smiles, because – because for once, there is no sense of wrongness. For the first time in weeks (in months, in years) she feels right. Devoid of both her Queen's coronet and her Warden uniform she is simply –

simply herself.

She inhales, gathers her courage like armour and – takes a leap. “I'd...I'd like to try for a child.”

She says it softly – not hesitantly, but quietly like a secret, something that's just between the two of them, though the speculations are on everyone's lips. She watches his eyes widen, the sleep chased from their corners, and when he breathes next it's an explosive exhale that she feels in her own soul, and –

and then there are arms around her, the embrace rough and earnest and nothing like the gentle touches he's bestowed on her so far since her return. And he's laughing, voice hoarse from sleep, and the sound is loud and lovely in her ears.

He pulls back and her chest is filled to the brim with her own joy – a giddy, childlike mirth and in that moment she does not think of impossibilities but of small hands and small feet and a legacy that is more than her crown, her soldier's sword and shield.

And it's in his answering smile (impossibly wide and bright and hers) that she finally feels like she's truly home.

Chapter Text

They try for over a year with no success.

In the beginning hope is what drives them, and they’re young again, like newlyweds without their years on their backs, and their enthusiasm runs wild rivers in old veins. Their touches are frequent – his hand on her waist and her fingers tangling with his under the table at dinner – and their secret smiles visible to the whole court. But when he tugs her into strange corners between duties she meets him with laughter and kisses, and their joy curls like a slow warmth through the castle corridors, to put hums in the throats of the kitchen staff and smiles on the guards’ hard faces.

But with months passing without change their enthusiasm dwindles, trickles to a few drops as they are visited by old ghosts, and old fears that first saw the light of day on their coronation in the quiet lull between their victory and their new duties. But Couslands are of a resolute sort, and she does not stop hoping or praying, though she wonders more often than not if there is anyone listening.

Then one day, on a chilly morning between one season and the next with cold hands pressed against her belly – 

“Aye, My Queen,” the healer says, a clever twinkle in eyes that have seen kingdoms fall. “I am sure.”

Coiled like a snake in her breast, her relief unfurls with a warmth that settles, stays. She carries the news with her for a week, a secret she hides along with her smiles from all but Ella, who finds her one morning bent over the chamberpot. Her husband is away on business in Redcliffe, and the castle is quiet without his bluster. She is the calm one; the steady hand holding the sceptre to his lopsided crown, and an odd pair they make and always have. And she feels his absence keenly in the people around her; the staff and the guards, the stableboys and the court attendants. 

She wonders if it felt this way, the years she was gone, but these are not thoughts that linger long, and she busies herself with her duties and the news resting warm beneath her breast. She will not worry – not yet. For now she will be Queen, her coronet a comfortable weight on her head once more, and as she lifts the silk of her frock with hands worn rough from the hilt of her sword, she will weave fancies of motherhood from memories of her own mother; her gentle hands and her lovely laugh. It is a mantle she will learn to wear, though she has no one to teach her, but she has learned other arts by no other grace but her own wits and steadfast heart, and this will be no different.

Except that she is not alone, now. The thought makes her smile, and she spends the days of her husband’s absence imagining his reaction to the news, and how she will tell him when he returns.

But mostly she daydreams, of little feet and little hands, and of castle corridors not near so quiet as they are now.

.

.

.

A crisp morning sees her back in the saddle for the first time in weeks, surveying the sight of her home in the distance with eyes that feel new to her heart. It’s not the best day for a ride, as Jolan had pointedly told her when she’d come by the stables to fetch Briar. A heavy fall of rain in the night has the scenery at the bottom of the hill looking like a canvas of smeared oil paint, a blur of greens and browns marking the sparse forest curving around the rise where Denerim lies, shrouded in a cold mist heralding a hard winter. The sky above is grey and dreary, the air moist and thick with earthly smells, but her own hands are warm where they lie tucked within her riding gloves. A small comfort as the cold seeps through her leathers, but with each breath she feels a girl again, like she were back in Highever on her pony, watching the autumn rains wash across the Wilds.

The news sit in her mind, fresh still and with giddy jitters she can’t hold back, that make her want to laugh at odd moments; she’s had to curb her strange grins behind teacups and glass rims these past two weeks. Her brother knows – she had to tell someone, with her joy like wild birds within her breast and no one but Ella to speak to. It’s too soon to tell everyone, and there are so many things that can go wrong – more than her heart can bear thinking about, and though she tries not to, Elissa knows better than most that nothing is ever set in stone.

Fergus’ latest letter lies tucked behind her wool tunic, safe against her heart and hidden from the tender mercy of the weather. ‘I am most happy for you, baby sister’ the familiar scrawl conveys his fondness, but she wonders if he feels some sadness also. So many years since the Blight and his lost boy, but the Couslands are hearts that feel strongly and she does not doubt he still carries the loss. And she longs for his smile (their father’s smile, with their mother’s warmth), and the hugs that lift her feet from the ground. But she doesn’t dare make the journey, not in this weather and not with her new and frail little hope now in her keeping.

A drop of rain lands on her cheek, prompting a smile. Another follows soon after, and another, and soon she’s standing in the downpour, her leathers soaked through and her hair clinging to her face. But it’s a passing shower, and soon it’s receded to a soft drizzle, leaving her feeling oddly cleansed. It’s a sensation that feels new, after so many years of living with the taint, like a coating of grime along her veins, a remembrance with every heartbeat pumping her lifeblood through her system that she lives on borrowed time. Now there’s nothing.

Well, not nothing, at least not anymore. There’s something else within her now, something pure and new – almost unbearably so. She wants to laugh again, feeling oddly reckless in her own joy. 

She hasn’t been gone long when company approaches, and she knows it’s him before he even clears the top of the rise. She doesn’t know how she knows; a remnant of her Warden’s sense, perhaps. Or perhaps it’s because he’s breathing like a pack mule dragging an over-laden cart to market.

“You know,” Alistair pants as he clears the top of the rise, and she turns to find a familiar, rueful smile that reminds her of poorly timed jokes around a campfire at night. “Next time I find the need to go chasing after my wife on horseback, I’ll make sure to check the bloody horse myself.”

He’s on foot, leading his gelding by the reins, a massive, regal beast that looks about as pitiful as its rider, thick mane made a scraggly mess from the rain. And his fine riding leathers not having borne the wrath of the weather any better than his mount, her husband looks less like a King and more like a highway wastrel down on his luck. 

“Did you walk from the castle?” she asks, unable to keep the amusement from her voice.

Alistair gives her a long-suffering look, and nods to the horse. “Blighter cast a shoe halfway.” Giving the creature an affectionate pat, he adds a muttered, “Useless beast.”

Briar snorts, as though in understanding, and Elissa loosens her grip on the reins as her husband closes the distance between them. The rain has turned his hair dark, droplets gathering in his absurdly long eyelashes, and when he ducks his head to catch her mouth it’s in a wet, grinning kiss.

“Missed me?” His nose presses, cold against hers, and his stubble familiar under her questing fingers. He has not shaved since returning.

Elissa hums. “Were you away? Must have slipped my notice.”

“Cruel woman,” he murmurs, tucking a soggy lock of hair behind her ear. “And here I was up every night, unable to sleep.”

“Mmm. And would that be after you were done drinking the Arl under the table?”

His grin is a quick, wicked thing. “Teagan will learn one of these days. Can’t keep making the same mistake, but you know what they say about old dogs and new tricks. Or…something like that, anyway. That might actually be completely wrong in this context, now that I think about it, but I’m sure there’s some dog-related idiom that fits.”

She does not bother to hide her amusement now. “Oh he’s the one who never learns, is it? This from the man who’s found himself in the wilderness in nothing but his smalls on more than one occasion.”

“Ha,” he says. “A fair point, my darling wife. And what would I do without you to so graciously remind me?” He shakes his head, sending droplets flying. She’s tempted to make a mabari comparison, just to see him scowl. “I helped end the Blight and this is my legacy. Pantless in the woods. Our children will be so proud.”

Her breath catches despite herself at his words, so casually uttered, and for a moment her secret becomes almost unbearable.

It must show on her face, because his brows furrow with a worry she knows well, before he takes a step closer, a hand warm despite the rain coming to rest against her cheek. “Everything alright?” Something flickers in his eyes – open concern now. “Did I say something?”

She breathes; finds her foothold in the earth and the rain of her home, and her smile is an easy, lighthearted thing. “You know how we’ve been trying for some time now…?”

She doesn’t say more than that, because she knows it won’t take long for him to put the pieces together – to connect her words to her smile. He’s got an expressive face, her husband, and it’s a small victory in itself watching as realization settles; to see the widening of his eyes, the parting of his mouth. And then, like sunburst through a cover of clouds–

A guffaw, true an honest, and arms around her waist, lifting her up. Briar shuffles away with a disgruntled whinny, but Alistair is laughing, laughing as he spins her, and her vision becomes a dance of silver raindrops and a grey Fereldan sky.

And it’s not her brother’s earnest embrace but her feet are off the ground, and she might well be a girl and not a woman with grey in her hair as she swings to the tune of the rain and a laughter she knows as well as her own. 

“I can’t believe it,” he says, the words lost in her throat. “I can’t believe it,” he repeats it, again and again, before his laugher overtakes him once more. 

She laughs too, and though part of her wants to worry – that being out in the rain might not be good for her health, that she should be inside, resting – her joy is too bright a thing for old fears to douse it now. And so she lets herself feel the full extent of it, because she deserves this, Maker take her. They both do. She will worry tomorrow, and the day after that, if need be. 

Today she will dance with her King in the rain.

.

.

.

The winter passes in a haze of near-suffocating boredom, a flurry of banquets and feasts and endless hours of tea in the library, her fingers pricked from needlework and a scream building in her throat as she longs for Briar’s weight beneath her; of tracking deer in dark forests and the hoot of owls in the night her only company.

Alistair is called away on occasion, and the weeks in his absence are long and cold as her belly grows, a marvel wide and round beneath gowns that feel like tents more than anything else. Fergus visits, and Zev, and a new letter arrives by crow every other week from Leliana, but for all these things she feels a restlessness so startlingly at odds with her lack of energy, which renders her incapable of completing strikingly mundane tasks, like climbing the castle’s stairways unaided. 

Court is a simple affair now, at the very least, and she’s found a new ease, in her husband’s absence as well as seated beside him. And she becomes well acquainted with sitting still as the babe grows and grows in her belly, and her restlessness settles somewhat as the year comes to an end.

The castle thrums with excitement and preparations for the birth, and no cruel whispers follow at her back now, though she suspects that is her husband’s doing, and Ella’s. Instead there are whistles in the kitchens and songs heralding the coming of spring. There’s Ella’s quick fingers stitching flowers on a slip of gossamer fabric – “For a dress, Majesty” – because she’s carrying low, and as the midwife believes it will be a girl so does everyone else. And so there’s Jolan’s whiskers curving with a pleased grin when she comes to visit Briar in the stables, showing her their newest foal, young and slender-legged with a soft, pale coat. “Good for a wee lass, Majesty,” he tells her, and it’s enough to keep her smiling long into the evening, enough to make her husband enquire about it when they retire for the night, only to receive the shake of a head and a curious laugh.  

She has dreams of the Calling sometimes, and she’ll wake, her nightgown slick with her own sweat and her heart in her throat, but it is always to silence, blessed silence, and on her waking the whispers fade with only a few breaths taken. And she’ll lie in the quiet, listening to her husband’s soft snores and the howl of the wind against the castle walls as her hearts settles. Then there’ll be a kick against her hipbone, and her breath will catch for another reason entirely, and she’ll smile against her pillow and plant kisses on his back until he wakes, grumbling softly, but his hand will be warm against her skin and when the babe kicks next he is the one who peppers her with kisses.  

“She’ll be taught the sword,” she says one afternoon, lounging on a chaise in their private chambers. The cold has slowly begun to release its grip on Ferelden, heavy rains turning the roads soggy with mud, and her stomach is so large she has trouble standing up. It curves a wide arc beneath the folds of her dress, and she strokes gentle fingers over the swell in wonderment. “And embroidery.”

“Swordsmanship and embroidery?” Alistair looks up from where he’s seated on the floor, head tilted back against the chaise. The crown sits on the vanity along with her coronet, their duties foregone for the day, and his hair is a charming mess beneath her free hand. “Any reason for this very specific training regiment?”

Elissa shrugs. “I never learned; Mother hadn’t the patience for it. And Zev says needlework is a good teaching technique for deft fingers.”

“So she’ll be a pickpocket,” Alistair says. “Wonderful.”

“I seem to remember you singing a different tune, once. That time we’d had all our coin stolen and nothing left to eat. What was it you said? Oh, yes.” She alters her voice, making it deeper, and a little ridiculous. “‘We could try picking that guard’s pockets. Well, I would if I could but I can’t. Sausage-fingers’. And then you wiggled them, like this.” She illustrates by waggling her own fingers before his face.

He makes to grab her hand, but she pulls it away, laughing. “Maker’s breath, Lis, is there anything you don’tremember?”

She grins, and allows him to grab her hand now, feeling the brush of his mouth against the inside of her wrist. “Alright then,” he says. “She’ll be a pickpocket, a master swordswoman and an expert at needlework. What else? A bard?”

“She’ll learn to ride, and she’ll have a mabari when she’s old enough.”

Alistair groans. “Don’t we have enough dogs?”

“Hush, you adore them. One more will make little difference.”

“I wonder if you’ll remember saying that when you’ve got a small, mud-drenched beast jumping into our bed every morning.”

She pulls at his ear playfully. “Pups will be muddy, it’s the way of things. Ours will be no different.”

“Should I be worried that I can’t tell if you’re talking about our child or a mabari?”

She laughs, strangely delighted. “My father called me ‘pup’, you know. I think it’s endearing.”

Alistair is silent a moment, before a warm hand lifts to find hers again. He doesn’t say anything, only squeezes her fingers, and she drifts off into old memories, of tumbling into the dirt, practice sword at her hip and her mabari’s delight as loud as her own, drowning out her mother’s groan and her father’s laughter. But the memory does not bring her grief now.

Not when she imagines another little girl, hair a little lighter, perhaps, eyes a honeyed brown, not grey. And the laughter she hears is their own, immeasurably fond in the face of the legacy their hardships have earned them at long last.

.

.

.

Their child comes at the cusp of Bloomingtide, along with a spring shower that turns the air damp and their chambers too warm for comfort, and Elissa finds herself longing for winter when she’s on her back, legs spread and tangled in sheets drenched with her own sweat, and yelling blasphemies into the velvet canopy.

It’s a lengthy affair, but she keeps a level head in this as in anything else as her husband paces, wonderfully useless though he’d kept enough of his wits and kingly persuasion to pointedly refuse to be chased from the room. But she has no mind to offer words of encouragement, too busy running through her memory for a time she might have felt worse, and realizing belatedly that for once, she finds nothing. 

Their no-nonsense midwife offers little in the way of sympathy, but rather sure and steady hands and a level voice, and as the hours crawl by Elissa clings to what little she can – the repeated “Breathe, My Lady” and “There’s a good lass”, and finally, sweet Andraste, “Push, now!” And then –

– it’s over. A heartbeat passes, and then a sharp wail pierces the air, a whole and hearty sound, and in her daze she remembers Oren, a small, squalling little thing in Fergus’ over-large arms, and of her own, disgruntled remark that he’d looked like a piglet. And Fergus had laughed, and her father had smiled and told her that ‘oh my dear pup, one day you’ll see with brand new eyes, and ‘piglet’ will not be the word that comes to mind’.

Her eyes sting now, and her hair curls against her temples, the hollow of her throat, but as she gathers her breath back into her lungs she finds the midwife before her, a small, blanket-wrapped bundle in her arms.

“A princess, My Lady,” she declares, a rare smile breaking across her severe face. “A wee spring rose. The first bloom of the year, I reckon.”

Elissa laughs, a thick, wet sound from the bottom of her throat. She can’t help it, and in her happy delirium she wonders at the strange alignment of things. “Rose,” she says, accepting the babe with trembling fingers. “Yes, that’s a good name, isn’t it? Fitting.” Oh, but it’s more than that. Maker, but it’s almost too fitting, but she cannot bring herself to mind overmuch.  

She looks at her husband, silent now in an awe she cannot name; she has never felt anything like it in her life. She wonders if it has a name, the happiness that seems to expand behind her breast, until it feels like there’s no more room left to breathe, to think or even speak.

Yes, she thinks; knows, suddenly, with staggering clarity. It does.

“Rose,” she repeats. Then, “Rosie.” She grins up at her husband. “That’s for us.”

Alistair steps closer, and she holds the babe for him to see. A small pink face lies between the soft folds of the blanket, a tiny nose above a pair of red lips pursed like petals, a perfect arc. Perhaps her hair will be light. Perhaps her eyes will be grey. Perhaps she’ll play with swords and needles, wear spring flowers in her hair and twirl the skirts of a new frock at every feast, hiding mud-covered soles beneath lace-trimmed hems and daggers in her boots. So many possibilities in such a little shape, small enough to lie snug in the crook of her arm, and her heart swells even further with the thought of it all – the many years ahead that are theirs to discover, to live and to cherish, made real now with the soft breaths of their daughter. 

A hand comes to cradle the small head, unfathomably large in comparison, and when he breathes it’s with a wonder she loves with her whole soul.

“Rosie,” he muses, and in the name he holds the future, like he once held a flower towards her between shaking fingers. And it becomes a promise in the way he utters it, disbelieving but fiercely, still. A promise of little hands and little feet, of mud and mabari and swords and embroidery, and of long, long years.

And lush, green things in a once barren land, made new by the rain.