Burn (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

Unless Something Drastic Happened

Rosalind Trevelyan trudged along in the line of her fellow mages, her thin boots sinking into the sludge created by many feet on newfallen snow. In the grand scheme of things, she wasn't too unhappy to be at the Conclave—it certainly was better than the Circle. But couldn't they have held it somewhere warmer? She itched to use her magic to thaw her chilled fingers, but they had all been warned to keep away from that temptation. No sense asking to be smited, after all.

She wondered what life would look like if she could just be herself, not living in constant fear of what the Templars would do ... or of being turned Tranquil if she couldn't toe the line. It had been a near thing more than once in her training, and only her family's money had saved her. She'd learned that much by listening at doors.

Inside the building at last, she stepped to the side and knelt down to take her shoes off, wriggling her cold, wet toes. By the time she had discreetly broken the rules and warmed her shoes enough to dry them a little, the doors into the main chamber were closed. Well, she hadn't wanted to sit through a boring meeting, anyway, Rosalind thought, and set out to explore the Chantry.

*****

Mina Hawke stepped into the tavern, turning down the hood of her cloak and ignoring the mutters of the patrons she spattered with raindrops in the process. For once, she didn't worry about being recognized. Here in the northern frontier of Orlais, she was fairly certain no one was looking for that mysterious figure called the Champion of Kirkwall—a personage who had never existed anyway, Mina thought.

Except, of course, at the tip of a pen. Damn Varric, anyway, she thought with weary affection. She'd have traded every word in the pack of lies he'd published to be able to be with him right now. How long could a person live when their heart was halfway across Thedas?

She shook herself. Thinking about him did no good; that life was over, and she was never going to be able to go back to it.

Straightening her shoulders, she made her way between the tables toward the stairs, moving up to the room where her contact waited.

******

Alistair recognized the code knock on the door, but his heart leaped into his throat anyway, and he counted ten breaths to calm himself before reaching out with his mind and determining that the person on the other side didn't have the taint.

To think it had come to this, that he had been forced into hiding by his own brothers and sisters in the Grey—that they wanted to kill him because he didn't agree with them. No amount of his arguing had been able to convince them that this was what an Archdemon felt like, not the Calling. Even though he had been at the top of Fort Drakon the day Hamish Cousland ended the Blight, and thus could have been expected to know what he was talking about, his fellow Wardens had been able to feel nothing but panic ... that and the siren song tugging at their blood and singing through their veins. Alistair felt it, too, when he was too tired to guard against it.

He brought himself back into the present and went to the door. The woman who stood on the other side was tall, with glossy black hair in a single braid down her back and green eyes that might have been beautiful if they hadn't been so hard and suspicious.

"Hawke?"

"Warden Alistair?"

Satisfied, he opened the door to let her in, and then she told him the real story of what had happened to Kirkwall, and about the red lyrium idol.

*****

The Iron Bull squinted at the parchment in front of him. The Ben-Hassrath were continuing the process of infiltrating the royal entourage in Ferelden, finding it harder than they had anticipated. Hamish Cousland, the queen's consort, was cannier than expected, and kept catching them spying.

As far as the Iron Bull was concerned, the Ben-Hassrath were wasting their time in this cold backwater of a country. He missed Seheron—the heat, the fighting, the feeling of urgency that came from working somewhere so embattled. Never mind that Seheron had come within a hair's breadth of breaking him. He tried not to think about that part of it.

And he did love some things about this decadent southern living. His tent was piled with luxurious furs, he had been able to put together his own crew of cutthroats and killers, lovers of every stripe considered him exotic and bedworthy, and in his second-in-command, he had found that rarest of all things: a truly trustworthy right arm.

Yes, he could manage to stick this assignment out as long as those were his orders. And after that? He would go where he was sent.

*****

Leliana dug through the pile of reports on her desk, looking for the list of mages expected at the Conclave that Dorothea had asked for. In the process, a piece of parchment slid off her desk and landed on the floor.

Frowning, she bent to pick it up, and was about to discard it on the top of the pile when two words leaped off it. "Grey Warden."

Her heart stopped. For all the Grey Wardens she had met in her life, for everything she knew about them now, the two words together always meant only one person at first glance: Alistair.

Hastily, she scanned the parchment, her lips moving soundlessly as she tried not to hope. A Grey Warden in Ferelden, near Redcliffe. He might have gone there; it might be him. It would be like him, to go home, but not to let anyone know he was there.

"Leliana?" It was Cassandra at the door. "Dorothea says they are about to open the doors to the Chantry and let the members in. It is time."

Time. The Conclave was beginning. Leliana said a hasty prayer to a Maker she was no longer certain she believed in that their last-ditch attempt at making peace would succeed, and she tucked the parchment away to consider later, when there was time to think of things like lost loves.

*****

Maker's balls, it was cold, Varric grumbled to himself. He'd heard Hawke's stories about how cold it was in her beknighted homeland, but he had never actually believed there was a place as miserable as Ferelden was turning out to be.

The fact that he was still a prisoner, despite the Seeker's protestations, didn't help. After he wouldn't shut up on the boat, they had finally brought him something to write with, and on, and he was back to scribbling his stories, but they still wouldn't tell him what he was here for, or when they were going to let him go home.

He'd managed to charm the woman who trained the crows they used for messages and had sent two birds winging into Orlais—one to Bianca and one to Hawke, letting them both know where he was. Not that he expected either of them to come rescue him. In fact, he had specifically told Hawke to steer clear.

Visions of the one night they had spent together came to him, and he closed his eyes, reveling in them for a moment before he pushed them away. That life was over now. Hawke was gone, and he was here, and unless something drastic happened, that was how it would stay.