a midwinter's thaw, chapter 80
Middle of the week time! Yay! Halfway to the weekend, and it's time for an update! (Holy mackerel. Eighty chapters. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?)
Title: A Midwinter's Thaw, Chapter 80
Author(s): w0rdinista and the Statler to my Waldorf, pagerunner_j
Characters: Alistair, Elinora Cousland, and a slowly-growing cast of thousands
Rating: T
Pairing: Cousland/Alistair
Summary: It's eight years after the Archdemon's defeat, eight years after Loghain's heroic death on the top of Fort Drakon, and eight years after Alistair stormed out of the Landsmeet, never to be seen again. It's five years since Elinora took up the mantle of teyrna of Highever after Fergus remarried and became King in the process. Now Alistair and Elinora are back together in Highever, with trouble brewing all around. The royal family has come to visit, three more Wardens are in attendance, and the Wardens' worrying dreams have returned, along with even greater troubles and tragedies. The battle is over and it's time to take stock of the aftermath...
The world looked different when Elinora woke.
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed, or what exactly transpired in between. For all she knew, it might have been days, or perhaps simply minutes. It felt as if she'd been dreaming for years. The specifics of her dreams all drained away the instant she opened her eyes, though, which left her feeling slightly lost as she extricated herself from her blankets.
She was doing so with bandaged hands, she noticed. Her ankle had been bound up again, too. Sometime while she slept, the healers had tended to her after all.
"Elinora," she heard, while she blinked her vision clear. The voice was rough and quiet, but instantly recognizable. "You're awake…."
She sat upright, reflexively wincing at a cramp in her back but not actually caring about it in the least. "Alistair," she murmured.
She could finally see him now, lying on a proper cot this time -- someone had exchanged it for the grimly improvised stretcher, making its very existence seem like a faded, improbable memory. He'd been dressed in a lightweight linen shirt, too, his old underclothes removed and his battered armor taken somewhere else -- for cleaning, she assumed, and repair. Elinora realized that she too was in a clean change of clothes as she briefly wondered where her own armor had ended up. Moving without it after that long, hard battle made everything seem too light, and strangely unreal.
Alistair's tired smile, though, grounded her. Although she could see the bandages beneath his shirt, he very nearly looked himself again.
"Saved from certain death and brought to your door again," he said. "I seem to be making this a habit."
Elinora pushed back the blankets and stood up, feeling somewhat wobbly but smiling nonetheless. She knelt down at his bedside and took his hand between her own bandaged ones, careful of his bruises as much as her own. "You could make things simpler on yourself, and just stay with me."
Alistair's eyes shone in the firelight. "As my lady wishes," he whispered.
Elinora bent down and kissed him softly, letting it linger. "I'm holding you to that."
"I hoped so."
They held onto each other for a long while. Elinora could see the faint glow of Alistair's sword nearby; it still seemed to be humming faintly, just at the edge of her hearing. Something else quietly grumbled there, too, but she couldn't identify it. Eventually she raised her head. "Where are the others?"
Alistair gestured behind him. "I think… Adeline took care of Anders," he said, smiling crookedly. "Some sort of potion…."
Elinora blinked. That was the source of the sound after all: Anders, curled up on another makeshift cot nearby and snoring quietly. She smiled and shook her head. He desperately needed the rest, but the idea that Adeline had had to con him into his own trick to get there….
"I don't know about the others," Alistair said, trying to prop himself up on his elbows to look around. Elinora eased him back down when the simple move made him grimace.
"I'm not letting you tear anything up while it's still mending. Lie back and rest." When he tried to protest, Elinora stopped him. "If you insist on treating this like there's some sort of debt to be repaid, you settled it and then some," she said, quietly but firmly. "Heal, Alistair. Take care of yourself. I won't go far."
"I'll hold you to that, too," he said. She brushed a kiss across his cheek before rising again and carefully crossing the floor, still mindful of her aching ankle, to find Adeline.
The healer, who looked tired herself but still determined, was still tending to the rest of the knights. By now, she was being helped by several of the pages and squires who served in the castle, who were bustling about through the chamber with supplies and with messages. Adeline wiped her forehead and summed things up for Elinora when the teyrna arrived. "I suppose you'll want a full count," she said somberly. "Two men at the wall died. One was… plucked up by one of those flying things and dropped into the courtyard. There was nothing I could do for him."
Elinora sighed and shook her head. "I understand."
"I saved a third from succumbing to his injuries, but only just. He'll have a long recovery ahead of him. The others… well." Adeline gestured at the room. "With respect, my lady, it could have been far worse. They fought bravely, and they seem to have fought smart. We'll have a few broken limbs and bruises around here, and a few hardheaded knights who need to be told that you can't simply bounce back from a concussion…."
Elinora cracked a smile. "I'll be happy to talk some sense into them."
Adeline smiled back, then sobered. "Your men may have the most trouble, I'm afraid. Ser Nathaniel…."
Elinora looked across the room. Nathaniel was sitting up in bed, his right arm held across his chest in a sling. Someone had brought him tea and a little food, but he'd left it untouched, and seemed to be staring off into the middle distance at nothing at all.
"He's barely let me look at it," Adeline said quietly. "Ser Anders, either. He has very little movement in his hand, and I'm afraid he might lose even that if he doesn't let us help…."
"He always was a stubborn, stoic bastard," Elinora said under her breath. "I'll have to speak to him first of all."
"Second, perhaps," Adeline said. Elinora peered at her. "Before that, I need your advice."
Adeline led her across the room, past young Allan, also asleep -- if she guessed right, Anders had put him out just as surely as he'd forced Elinora into slumber, so as to keep his unpredictable magic quiet for a while yet -- and to the squire's older brother instead. Elinora immediately saw the trouble.
Markham lay there flushed and feverish, and soaked with sweat. One of Adeline's helpers was trying to cool him down, but it was doing little good. Elinora's throat tightened when she saw the angry red blotches streaking across Markham's bared chest and shoulder, and even climbing up his own throat, as if they meant to choke him. "He wasn't like this before," she breathed, but then, she barely knew if that was even true. He'd kept the wound covered, even tending to his own bandages down in the caverns. Whatever was happening, it had gotten its claws in at that very first spatter of darkspawn blood, or possibly even before.
"I've never seen anything like this," Elinora said, feeling suddenly helpless. "This doesn't even look like what the darkspawn taint does. I don't know why he would react this way--"
"I have to ask," Adeline said. "When Ser Anders was brewing the darkspawn-resistance potion, he let me know what ingredients he needed help in finding. But I don't have the complete recipe… not the parts he had a large enough stock of already. Do you know the rest of the list?"
"I'm… not sure," Elinora said hesitantly. "We may have to wake Anders and ask--"
"If I didn't fear as much for his health as Ser Markham's, I already would have," Adeline said quietly. "But he must sleep. I've never seen a mage push himself as far as Anders has without causing damage to himself." She shook her head. "If you'll forgive me for saying so, you're lucky he's on your side. Such power in the hands of a lesser man…."
Creates men like Korath, Elinora finished, but didn't say aloud. She sat by Markham's side instead, trying to think. "Anders and Mikarra," she said -- and twitched at her own words, wondering how Mikarra fared -- "brought some of their own supplies, I think. I know they needed extra featherleaf--"
"Yes, I helped with that."
"And you know of some of the rest. But the base ingredients… I'm sure it was common components. The sort that goes into almost any potion."
"I was under the understanding this was a rare blend?"
"Yes, certainly." Elinora picked up a cool cloth and put it to Markham's forehead, unhappy at the way he twitched under her touch, not even recognizing her. "But there's elfroot in almost everything. Or deep mushroom--"
Adeline jerked upright, her eyes wide. "Deep mushroom? Are you sure?"
"It's possible…."
"Maker's blood," Adeline breathed; it might have been the first time Elinora had ever heard the woman swear, and it almost made her drop the cloth. "I should have guessed. It's been too long since I treated him -- it completely slipped my mind…."
"What did?"
Adeline laughed wearily. "He's allergic," she said, and Elinora sat back, so shocked all she could do for a moment was stare.
"You're telling me--" Elinora broke off, gaping. "This is an allergy?"
"Or something like." Adeline wiped sweat off her forehead. "Deep mushrooms can also be made into poisons -- like Soldier's Bane. And some people react badly to the very hint of it, even in restoratives. Just like this. Oh, Maker, I should have seen it sooner." She turned to her assistant. "Get me some fresh flasks, and the concentrator agent…."
Elinora stared at Markham, while the young man got up and scrambled off to fetch the supplies. "You mean you know how to fix this?" she said.
"It'll take a few doses with a reaction this severe, but yes."
Elinora put her head in her hands, not sure whether to feel relieved or stupid or simply to laugh. An allergy. After all of this--
"He'll be fine," Adeline said, her voice coming in a relieved sigh. "We'll have to work fast, but he'll be fine."
"Well," said a brooding voice by Elinora's ear. A quiet shadow passed over her. "At least some people get an easy solution."
Elinora looked up to see Nathaniel on his feet. She stood quickly, ready to help support him, but he shrugged her off with his good shoulder.
"It's my arm that's wounded," he said dryly. "I do still have the ability to stand."
Adeline frowned at him, already sorting out potions materials in her hands as she spoke "Still, Ser Nathaniel. You need to rest and recover. Don't overexert yourself…."
"Thank you for your advice, madam," he said, bowing his head with careful respect, "but right now, what I need is fresh air." He glanced at Elinora. "Would you be willing to walk with me? At least just outside?"
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Markham seemed to be better in hand, and there was no good reason to say no. Cool air actually did seem welcome. After Adeline nodded, tacitly letting her go, Elinora said, "Yes, of course," and turned to go with Nathaniel out the main doors, to stand on the steps and gaze out at the scene before them.
Her able-bodied knights were all at work cleaning up the mess of their battle against Korath's darkspawn -- both the literal waste of the hybrids' bodies, and the overall clutter of their own supplies, weaponry and paraphenalia. They had, she noticed, torn up or simply melted a good deal of the snow that had covered the grounds just a day before. Nathaniel leaned against the wall, watching it all with an unreadable gaze.
"I heard your brother went to see to the queen," Nathaniel said. "She's well, although the same can apparently not be said for the doors she barricaded herself behind. The darkspawn did their best to get through."
"Well," Elinora said, letting out a shaky breath. "At least the reinforcements I built around here were worth it--"
"After the last time, you mean?"
Elinora glanced at Nathaniel. He was obviously thinking of his father, and the last time this castle had come under attack. She reached up, ready to take his hand, but the one that would have been closest was the one in a sling. She settled for touching his shoulder instead.
"Start brooding about that," she said, intentionally keeping her voice gentle, "and I will break your other arm into a hundred pieces."
"Ah, and then I will be ever so helpful to you. Twice as much so as an archer with a useless arm already is."
"We will figure out something," Elinora said, more forcefully. "Adeline said she wanted to help--"
Nathaniel looked aside. "There are limits. And I know when to accept the inevitable, Elinora."
"Well, I don't," she snapped. "If I did, I'd have died in these very halls years ago, let alone during the Blight, or against the Architect, or the fight with Korath down below. And you'd be just as dead, rotting in a dungeon under Vigil's Keep, and of absolutely no use to anyone. Think over that if you must brood over something. And don't you dare slide into self-pity, or that arm will be the least of your problems."
Nathaniel, whose gaze had been wrenched right back around to Elinora at the start of her declarations, watched her a while in startled silence. Finally something almost akin to a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "Very well, my lady," he said. "I remain yours to command."
"I'm not your commander anymore. You know that."
"Couldn't tell from this conversation," he said dryly.
"Hmph. In that case, if everyone is going to continue to harp on that point, I command you to speak to a healer."
"I will, if I must--"
"You do," she said.
He tilted his head back, taking in a deep, bracing breath. "Yes," he said. "I probably do. But first--"
He focused again across the courtyard, and went suddenly still.
Elinora went just as silent as she saw what Nathaniel had. The solitary figure was moving slowly, taking careful steps with bare feet across the one clean path of snow that remained. Her gown fluttered in the gentle breeze, billowing around her tiny frame until she looked almost ghostlike, and her dark hair blew free, too, obscuring her face. Elinora held her breath, though, knowing who it must be -- and recognizing instantly what she held in her arms, something that looked like a sleeping cat --
"Mikarra," Nathaniel breathed, and raced forward before Elinora had even found her feet.
Title: A Midwinter's Thaw, Chapter 80
Author(s): w0rdinista and the Statler to my Waldorf, pagerunner_j
Characters: Alistair, Elinora Cousland, and a slowly-growing cast of thousands
Rating: T
Pairing: Cousland/Alistair
Summary: It's eight years after the Archdemon's defeat, eight years after Loghain's heroic death on the top of Fort Drakon, and eight years after Alistair stormed out of the Landsmeet, never to be seen again. It's five years since Elinora took up the mantle of teyrna of Highever after Fergus remarried and became King in the process. Now Alistair and Elinora are back together in Highever, with trouble brewing all around. The royal family has come to visit, three more Wardens are in attendance, and the Wardens' worrying dreams have returned, along with even greater troubles and tragedies. The battle is over and it's time to take stock of the aftermath...
The world looked different when Elinora woke.
She had no way of knowing how much time had passed, or what exactly transpired in between. For all she knew, it might have been days, or perhaps simply minutes. It felt as if she'd been dreaming for years. The specifics of her dreams all drained away the instant she opened her eyes, though, which left her feeling slightly lost as she extricated herself from her blankets.
She was doing so with bandaged hands, she noticed. Her ankle had been bound up again, too. Sometime while she slept, the healers had tended to her after all.
"Elinora," she heard, while she blinked her vision clear. The voice was rough and quiet, but instantly recognizable. "You're awake…."
She sat upright, reflexively wincing at a cramp in her back but not actually caring about it in the least. "Alistair," she murmured.
She could finally see him now, lying on a proper cot this time -- someone had exchanged it for the grimly improvised stretcher, making its very existence seem like a faded, improbable memory. He'd been dressed in a lightweight linen shirt, too, his old underclothes removed and his battered armor taken somewhere else -- for cleaning, she assumed, and repair. Elinora realized that she too was in a clean change of clothes as she briefly wondered where her own armor had ended up. Moving without it after that long, hard battle made everything seem too light, and strangely unreal.
Alistair's tired smile, though, grounded her. Although she could see the bandages beneath his shirt, he very nearly looked himself again.
"Saved from certain death and brought to your door again," he said. "I seem to be making this a habit."
Elinora pushed back the blankets and stood up, feeling somewhat wobbly but smiling nonetheless. She knelt down at his bedside and took his hand between her own bandaged ones, careful of his bruises as much as her own. "You could make things simpler on yourself, and just stay with me."
Alistair's eyes shone in the firelight. "As my lady wishes," he whispered.
Elinora bent down and kissed him softly, letting it linger. "I'm holding you to that."
"I hoped so."
They held onto each other for a long while. Elinora could see the faint glow of Alistair's sword nearby; it still seemed to be humming faintly, just at the edge of her hearing. Something else quietly grumbled there, too, but she couldn't identify it. Eventually she raised her head. "Where are the others?"
Alistair gestured behind him. "I think… Adeline took care of Anders," he said, smiling crookedly. "Some sort of potion…."
Elinora blinked. That was the source of the sound after all: Anders, curled up on another makeshift cot nearby and snoring quietly. She smiled and shook her head. He desperately needed the rest, but the idea that Adeline had had to con him into his own trick to get there….
"I don't know about the others," Alistair said, trying to prop himself up on his elbows to look around. Elinora eased him back down when the simple move made him grimace.
"I'm not letting you tear anything up while it's still mending. Lie back and rest." When he tried to protest, Elinora stopped him. "If you insist on treating this like there's some sort of debt to be repaid, you settled it and then some," she said, quietly but firmly. "Heal, Alistair. Take care of yourself. I won't go far."
"I'll hold you to that, too," he said. She brushed a kiss across his cheek before rising again and carefully crossing the floor, still mindful of her aching ankle, to find Adeline.
The healer, who looked tired herself but still determined, was still tending to the rest of the knights. By now, she was being helped by several of the pages and squires who served in the castle, who were bustling about through the chamber with supplies and with messages. Adeline wiped her forehead and summed things up for Elinora when the teyrna arrived. "I suppose you'll want a full count," she said somberly. "Two men at the wall died. One was… plucked up by one of those flying things and dropped into the courtyard. There was nothing I could do for him."
Elinora sighed and shook her head. "I understand."
"I saved a third from succumbing to his injuries, but only just. He'll have a long recovery ahead of him. The others… well." Adeline gestured at the room. "With respect, my lady, it could have been far worse. They fought bravely, and they seem to have fought smart. We'll have a few broken limbs and bruises around here, and a few hardheaded knights who need to be told that you can't simply bounce back from a concussion…."
Elinora cracked a smile. "I'll be happy to talk some sense into them."
Adeline smiled back, then sobered. "Your men may have the most trouble, I'm afraid. Ser Nathaniel…."
Elinora looked across the room. Nathaniel was sitting up in bed, his right arm held across his chest in a sling. Someone had brought him tea and a little food, but he'd left it untouched, and seemed to be staring off into the middle distance at nothing at all.
"He's barely let me look at it," Adeline said quietly. "Ser Anders, either. He has very little movement in his hand, and I'm afraid he might lose even that if he doesn't let us help…."
"He always was a stubborn, stoic bastard," Elinora said under her breath. "I'll have to speak to him first of all."
"Second, perhaps," Adeline said. Elinora peered at her. "Before that, I need your advice."
Adeline led her across the room, past young Allan, also asleep -- if she guessed right, Anders had put him out just as surely as he'd forced Elinora into slumber, so as to keep his unpredictable magic quiet for a while yet -- and to the squire's older brother instead. Elinora immediately saw the trouble.
Markham lay there flushed and feverish, and soaked with sweat. One of Adeline's helpers was trying to cool him down, but it was doing little good. Elinora's throat tightened when she saw the angry red blotches streaking across Markham's bared chest and shoulder, and even climbing up his own throat, as if they meant to choke him. "He wasn't like this before," she breathed, but then, she barely knew if that was even true. He'd kept the wound covered, even tending to his own bandages down in the caverns. Whatever was happening, it had gotten its claws in at that very first spatter of darkspawn blood, or possibly even before.
"I've never seen anything like this," Elinora said, feeling suddenly helpless. "This doesn't even look like what the darkspawn taint does. I don't know why he would react this way--"
"I have to ask," Adeline said. "When Ser Anders was brewing the darkspawn-resistance potion, he let me know what ingredients he needed help in finding. But I don't have the complete recipe… not the parts he had a large enough stock of already. Do you know the rest of the list?"
"I'm… not sure," Elinora said hesitantly. "We may have to wake Anders and ask--"
"If I didn't fear as much for his health as Ser Markham's, I already would have," Adeline said quietly. "But he must sleep. I've never seen a mage push himself as far as Anders has without causing damage to himself." She shook her head. "If you'll forgive me for saying so, you're lucky he's on your side. Such power in the hands of a lesser man…."
Creates men like Korath, Elinora finished, but didn't say aloud. She sat by Markham's side instead, trying to think. "Anders and Mikarra," she said -- and twitched at her own words, wondering how Mikarra fared -- "brought some of their own supplies, I think. I know they needed extra featherleaf--"
"Yes, I helped with that."
"And you know of some of the rest. But the base ingredients… I'm sure it was common components. The sort that goes into almost any potion."
"I was under the understanding this was a rare blend?"
"Yes, certainly." Elinora picked up a cool cloth and put it to Markham's forehead, unhappy at the way he twitched under her touch, not even recognizing her. "But there's elfroot in almost everything. Or deep mushroom--"
Adeline jerked upright, her eyes wide. "Deep mushroom? Are you sure?"
"It's possible…."
"Maker's blood," Adeline breathed; it might have been the first time Elinora had ever heard the woman swear, and it almost made her drop the cloth. "I should have guessed. It's been too long since I treated him -- it completely slipped my mind…."
"What did?"
Adeline laughed wearily. "He's allergic," she said, and Elinora sat back, so shocked all she could do for a moment was stare.
"You're telling me--" Elinora broke off, gaping. "This is an allergy?"
"Or something like." Adeline wiped sweat off her forehead. "Deep mushrooms can also be made into poisons -- like Soldier's Bane. And some people react badly to the very hint of it, even in restoratives. Just like this. Oh, Maker, I should have seen it sooner." She turned to her assistant. "Get me some fresh flasks, and the concentrator agent…."
Elinora stared at Markham, while the young man got up and scrambled off to fetch the supplies. "You mean you know how to fix this?" she said.
"It'll take a few doses with a reaction this severe, but yes."
Elinora put her head in her hands, not sure whether to feel relieved or stupid or simply to laugh. An allergy. After all of this--
"He'll be fine," Adeline said, her voice coming in a relieved sigh. "We'll have to work fast, but he'll be fine."
"Well," said a brooding voice by Elinora's ear. A quiet shadow passed over her. "At least some people get an easy solution."
Elinora looked up to see Nathaniel on his feet. She stood quickly, ready to help support him, but he shrugged her off with his good shoulder.
"It's my arm that's wounded," he said dryly. "I do still have the ability to stand."
Adeline frowned at him, already sorting out potions materials in her hands as she spoke "Still, Ser Nathaniel. You need to rest and recover. Don't overexert yourself…."
"Thank you for your advice, madam," he said, bowing his head with careful respect, "but right now, what I need is fresh air." He glanced at Elinora. "Would you be willing to walk with me? At least just outside?"
She opened her mouth, then shut it again. Markham seemed to be better in hand, and there was no good reason to say no. Cool air actually did seem welcome. After Adeline nodded, tacitly letting her go, Elinora said, "Yes, of course," and turned to go with Nathaniel out the main doors, to stand on the steps and gaze out at the scene before them.
Her able-bodied knights were all at work cleaning up the mess of their battle against Korath's darkspawn -- both the literal waste of the hybrids' bodies, and the overall clutter of their own supplies, weaponry and paraphenalia. They had, she noticed, torn up or simply melted a good deal of the snow that had covered the grounds just a day before. Nathaniel leaned against the wall, watching it all with an unreadable gaze.
"I heard your brother went to see to the queen," Nathaniel said. "She's well, although the same can apparently not be said for the doors she barricaded herself behind. The darkspawn did their best to get through."
"Well," Elinora said, letting out a shaky breath. "At least the reinforcements I built around here were worth it--"
"After the last time, you mean?"
Elinora glanced at Nathaniel. He was obviously thinking of his father, and the last time this castle had come under attack. She reached up, ready to take his hand, but the one that would have been closest was the one in a sling. She settled for touching his shoulder instead.
"Start brooding about that," she said, intentionally keeping her voice gentle, "and I will break your other arm into a hundred pieces."
"Ah, and then I will be ever so helpful to you. Twice as much so as an archer with a useless arm already is."
"We will figure out something," Elinora said, more forcefully. "Adeline said she wanted to help--"
Nathaniel looked aside. "There are limits. And I know when to accept the inevitable, Elinora."
"Well, I don't," she snapped. "If I did, I'd have died in these very halls years ago, let alone during the Blight, or against the Architect, or the fight with Korath down below. And you'd be just as dead, rotting in a dungeon under Vigil's Keep, and of absolutely no use to anyone. Think over that if you must brood over something. And don't you dare slide into self-pity, or that arm will be the least of your problems."
Nathaniel, whose gaze had been wrenched right back around to Elinora at the start of her declarations, watched her a while in startled silence. Finally something almost akin to a smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. "Very well, my lady," he said. "I remain yours to command."
"I'm not your commander anymore. You know that."
"Couldn't tell from this conversation," he said dryly.
"Hmph. In that case, if everyone is going to continue to harp on that point, I command you to speak to a healer."
"I will, if I must--"
"You do," she said.
He tilted his head back, taking in a deep, bracing breath. "Yes," he said. "I probably do. But first--"
He focused again across the courtyard, and went suddenly still.
Elinora went just as silent as she saw what Nathaniel had. The solitary figure was moving slowly, taking careful steps with bare feet across the one clean path of snow that remained. Her gown fluttered in the gentle breeze, billowing around her tiny frame until she looked almost ghostlike, and her dark hair blew free, too, obscuring her face. Elinora held her breath, though, knowing who it must be -- and recognizing instantly what she held in her arms, something that looked like a sleeping cat --
"Mikarra," Nathaniel breathed, and raced forward before Elinora had even found her feet.