Work Text:
CAMP
Ashleigh stares at the cave before her, the entrance just barely visible from the flickering flames of her camp fire.
She pays attention to the sounds around her. Alistair asleep in their tent, Zevran walking the perimeter of the camp. Venadrin settled down next to her, the mabari grumbling and looking for danger from his position.
Sten and Leliana discussing something in a corner of the camp- cookies no doubt. Morrigan in her makeshift hut that she manages to take down and put up constantly with ease she envies.
Wynne… doing whatever she’s doing in her tent.
And of course Oghren, belching like the annoyance that he is. She still doesn’t know what compelled her to agree, to let him come along.
You know why
She sighs. Sympathy did. She saw what happened to him, after the events of Orzammar. It broke him as much as it broke her. Just a few days away from it all, and she left that place as numb as him. Grateful that Alistair was there for her, when she couldn’t mentally be there.
Oghren didn’t have anyone to help him through his heartbreak and numbness. As much as she can barely stand him, his world was upended.
“Staring very hard at the cave, my delightful warden, no?” Zevran’s voice murmurs so close to her right and she glances over to see the elf standing there, looking amused.
“Sure nothing’s in it?”
Zevran laughs softly, and comes to sit beside her. “If there was, your hound would have done something by now,” he gives Venadrin a pat. “Sten has taken over watch, Warden.”
She nods and just takes out the cloth and rubs her sword down. She glances at the mug handed to her and she raises a brow to Zevran.
“What, after all this time, no trust?” He teases.
“I trust you.” Her words are firm, final, solid. Truth. She watches as that seems to hit the assassin next to her, his eyes blinking quickly a couple times and he clears his throat looking away. She takes a tentative sip from the mug, not smelling ale and then feels the flavor of it hit her tongue and something about it seems… familiar.
“Why does this seem…”
“It is a beverage from home. I did not expect Bodhan to have it but he does,” Zevran grins. “A mixture of apples, oranges and some spices. I have to say I am not surprised that such a dour country as Fereldan does not carry it. But you seem to know it?”
“My sister by law…” Ashleigh hesitates, feeling the pain of the loss of her family slice through her but she forges ahead, “she liked to have her favorite foods and drinks sent to her. She always said she’d find a way to convert Highever to the finer tastes of Antiva.” She takes another sip, closing her eyes at the taste, the pain of being reminded of home like a sharp comfort now.
Another thing lost to her. Another person taken from her life. By Howe.
“Did she?”
Alistair’s question jolts her out of her combined grief and growing anger, soothing it almost. She looked over at Zevran, and he smiles, pats her arms and gets up, ambling towards his own tent.
Alistair takes the opportunity to sit beside her. He’s out of his armor, like her, and he leans over to kiss her cheek, and he brushes her cheek with the back of his hand. “Did she?” He repeats.
“She was definitely trying,” she admits, setting her sword down and leaning against Alistair, letting herself relax, letting herself be vulnerable. Neither wearing their armor, neither of them in their tent, this was a rare moment for them.
“Thought you were going to spar with the big man.”
“He’s currently occupied by Leliana, who’s regaling him with recipes and tales over baked goods.”
Alistair nods, and he slides an arm around her as she rests her head on his shoulder, feeling his support. Over the months, it’s changed. Him needing the support and back up as he dealt with his own grief, while also trying to help her with hers, to him slowly gaining more confidence and being her second in command and getting used to making decisions, to now being her pillar of support after everything that shook her in Orzammar. Zevran told her how he took over after… after that encounter with the Broodmother, when she just shut down. How Alistair went against Branka,refused anything to do with her.
He told her in the nights after that Bhelen going after the Harrowmont line wasn’t her fault. But in the end, she felt like it was. A family line, being wiped out, because of a choice she made.
Her gaze drifts back to Oghren, who is of course, still drinking and belching. A choice made by someone in his family, wiping out his House and line.
She wonders if Howe, who was considered family by her father, had the same mindset as Branka.
Sacrificing relationships, sacrificing people, sacrificing everything, to just get what they feel they must have or want.
So many questions on the why.
Oghren tried to ask Branka why, but she was too far gone in insanity to make sense.
Will Howe be like that when she finally confronts him? When she finally gets a chance to see her family avenged, will he be insane or will he be rational?
She doesn’t know which would be worse.
“Alistair?”
“Yessss?”
She can’t help but chuckle at his playful drawn out answer.
“Do you hope for the chance to ask Loghain why he betrayed the Wardens?”
She feels him stiffen against her, she glances at him to see the clenched jaw, the anger that flares in him and she reaches up to cup his jaw, and he looks over at her, pain in his blue eyes and she strokes his cheek. He relaxes after a moment, the pain receding and he gently places his forehead against hers.
“I don’t know,” he sounds young here, like when they first met in Ostagar, or when she woke up from the aftermath of the battle… “A part of me wants to know, did he do it with a rational mind or was he on the verge of insanity, like what overtook Branka?”
“And the other part?”
He exhales, wraps his other arm around her. She lets go of her sword, and they wrap each other up in their own embrace, arms around each other. As if holding each other is their way of supporting the other.
“The other part of me doesn’t care. Doesn’t want to know. Just wants justice. Duncan, the Wardens, they became my family. And he took them from me.” He sighs. “Are you having the same thoughts about Howe?”
“Yes,” she whispers.
“Funny how seeing Branka falling so far into her madness makes us think of the two people in our lives that took from us, what she took from Oghren. From her own people.” Alistair muses, his hand stroking her arm as she rests against him. “Never thought I’d have something in common with that obnoxious drunk,” he adds dryly.
“I don’t remember much of our interactions with Branka…”
“She was lost,” Alistair says firmly. “Drowning in that justification that what she did, throwing her House to the Darkspawn while trying to find Caridin, that sacrificing her people was necessary, a means to an end that would help her save her people. But she was wrong. Her mind was broken, she was cruel and sadistic, and she showed Oghren how much of a monster she was on her own. Oghren got to see exactly what the woman he thought he loved, thought of him and did to their family, their House.” He sighs. “I’m not surprised he’s living in ale.”
“We’ve gone through similar betrayals though and we’re not.”
“We have our ways of coping. Me through humor, thoughts about cheese and arguing with Morrigan,” he grins, those blue eyes twinkling. “And well, falling in love with a beautiful woman that is a force to be reckoned with, who is currently in my arms.” He kisses her softly, tenderly, the bond between them almost like a comforting blanket.
And she’s coping by killing her way through darkspawn, focusing on the mission before her- because a Cousland does their duty. Because her dream had been to become a Warden, and here she is one.. At a cost she had not been nor ever will be, prepared to deal with.
But as she sits here, as she and Alistair discuss this, she never thought she’d have something in common with Oghren. Oghren, who she somehow recruited through basically being numb from the events in Orzammar. Who somehow managed to join them through the clouded haze of trauma and exhaustion.
As much as she doesn’t really… like him, she understands him.
She understands why he reaches for the alcohol.
Because it’s the only comfort he has.
She’s lucky in that regard. She has Alistair, Venadrin, her friendships with Leliana and Morrigan, a bond with Sten. Even Wynne, as annoying as she is.
And unlike Oghren, she has two goals- the first, the Blight. Second? Howe.
She will have her vengeance, even while doing her duty. Same with Alistair.
A Cousland always does their duty. So does a Warden.