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Wynne is the only one of his old companions still left in Denerim when Avrian returns, six months after the end of the blight. She greets him with a broad smile and a hug before looking him over in a critical, motherly way, eyeing his hair loose from braids and cut shorter, curling over his ears, and the new scar along his lip. “Antivan bar fights,” Avrian says as explanation, when Wynne takes his hands and asks him how he’s managed to keep finding trouble. He adds something about how it’s not his fault, he isn’t the one finding trouble but Zevran is the one dragging him along, but Wynne’s eyes have fallen along his hands, skin browner from the northern summer sun, and Morrigan’s ring that he still wears.
Avrian waits for the question, or the scolding, the I-told-you-so-way-back-when, but Wynne just pats his hands and tells him that Leliana left for Orlais a month ago to gather resources for a Chantry expedition back to the Temple of Sacred Ashes to deal with the dragon still swooping about the mountain peaks, and Oghren seems to have settled down somewhere along Lake Calenhad. “How is Zevran?” she asks, and Avrian tells her about his ambitious plan to dismantle the current leadership structure of the Antivan Crows, before he finds a map and traces out the meandering path that he and Zevran took back through Ferelden, briefly into Orlais, before heading up through the Free Marches into Antiva.
“I must confess,” Wynne says, over tea that doesn’t taste familiar to Avrian anymore after having spent time away from Ferelden, “I didn’t realize the two of you were so close as to go traveling together.”
Avrian shrugs. “We weren’t,” he answers, twisting Morrigan’s ring on his finger. But when everyone gathered together for the last time, they found that they were the only ones without plans, the only two without a future to see, and neither wanted to stay in Denerim. “He heard that I was leaving and asked if I wanted company.”
Avrian hadn’t thought the arrangement would last for more than a few weeks, but Morrigan left no trail, and the search for her quickly became aimless wandering. It felt more like home than anything had in a while – always on the move, not planning on settling, a clan, even of two. Not that clans settled in bug-infested inns and were chased out of towns on the heels of barfights, but it felt good to not have a goal, a destination, an endgame, like they did during the blight. The pressure was only for them to survive; not for them to have to help everyone survive. “We did manage to track down my clan, outside of Kirkwall. Keeper was thrilled to hear that we’ll have land of our own someday down in the Hinterlands. I had to promise to keep everyone updated on how it’s recovering from the blight, let them know as soon as it’s livable land again.”
“I hope they are proud of you,” Wynne says, and Avrian nods and doesn’t meet her eyes. It was too strange, returning; he had long dreamed of running from the wardens and rejoining his clan, but too much had changed. He didn’t tell anyone - of finding Tamlen, not even Merrill. Some sort of wall had risen between them, something insurmountable, when their little trio was split and split again. He didn’t tell anyone of Morrigan, Asha’Bellanar’s daughter, either. So when Zevran said that really, it has been fun meeting your family, but I should like to go on to Antiva, I presume you will be staying, Avrian shook his head and said, actually, lethallin, I should like to come with you.
They say you can’t go home again, Zevran had said when they left Kirkwall and the coast behind. I do not know who they are, and as I have never tried to go home again before, I cannot say if they are correct; but you, my friend, have the look of a man who has just learned it to be true.
“When you said I’d never have a normal life, that if I ran and ran it’d still catch up to me, I still don’t think I believed you,” Avrian confesses at last, looking back up at Wynne. Her face is soft and sad. “I thought I would go back to my clan after the blight, go back to the way things were.”
“You have been through too much,” Wynne says quietly. “You are, above all, a Grey Warden now.”
Avrian snorts. “I still don’t know what that means.” There is a history to it, honor, a legacy, that he never learned and truthfully does not really care to. “Alistair’s trying to find out, at least.”
Avrian sent a letter back from Antiva, to Denerim, to Alistair and Wynne and whoever might be left, and so a few weeks later a letter found him, from Alistair, asking if he would be willing to return to Ferelden and take up the mantle of warden-commander. I’ve been in touch with the Orlesian wardens. They want to meet with one of us to discuss what happened and chase down the last of the darkspawn and work on rebuilding the order here in Ferelden. They will send one of their own to do the job, but since you’re still somewhere out there, I thought I would offer the position to you, first. I’m sure everyone in Ferelden would like to see their hero in charge rather than some Orlesian. You’ll be in charge of the arling of Amaranthine, too. You could probably move your clan in if you wanted. I don’t mean to pressure you – I know you’re thinking “Alistair can’t you do this” but you know how I don’t like to lead, and like I said, the Orlesians want to see me, in Orlais. They’ve got more wardens than Ferelden ever did. Maybe it should be you heading over there, since you never learned anything about what being a warden is like. But instead I’m asking you to be in command of wardens. I don’t know. I just thought I’d ask you first. You’re a natural at being in charge; honestly I don’t think the Orlesians could do better than you. Just, think about it, please? I’d appreciate it.
Wynne nods. “I wondered if you were back because you got his letter, and decided to accept.”
“I would have liked to have stayed in Antiva,” Avrian admits, “but Alistair asked me for help and I couldn’t really in good conscience refuse him when all I was doing instead was helping Zevran assassinate assassins.”
Wynne frowns. “I was really bad at it, too,” Avrian adds, and he’s baiting her for a reaction, now, like he used to scold Tamlen for doing to Ashalle or Keeper. “Probably more of a liability. Zevran was worried I’d get us both killed.”
Zevran told him once that being an assassin is less of a skillset and more of a mindset, but Avrian, who tried to look at it like hunting with a cold eye and an arrow from a distance, thinks that there is also some other skillset, and that he lacks it. He worries about leaving Zevran with no one at his back, and he worries about Zevran being lonely, because he doesn’t not know how to worry – he is worried about Alistair too, that even if hehas comrades to watch his back he’ll be lonely, that none of the Orlesians will like him and think that his jokes are terrible without appreciating the artistry behind their terribleness – but he thinks, honestly, Zevran might have been a little relieved to be on his own, finally, and that he’s better off like that. (Even if his only other experience working alone was that job that brought him to Avrian, as Avrian knows now, after Zevran told him the story of Rinna, and Taliesen.)
“You are not an assassin, my dear,” Wynne says with a sigh. “You are a Grey Warden.”
“I’ve noticed,” Avrian says. “It’s why I’m back here.” Sort of. He isn’t here for the wardens at large. He’s here for one specific warden, Alistair, because he asked. He sent the response to his shemlen brother, I’ll take the job, I’ll be in charge, and the last he heard from Alistair was that he was headed for Orlais, and that the Orlesians were going to send some of their wardens to Avrian to help him out, so come back as soon as possible, I’ve informed Anora. Sorry but you can’t back out now.
Apparently he forgot to tell Wynne, though.
“I presume you will leave for Amaranthine soon, then?” Wynne asks.
“Tomorrow, I think,” Avrian says. With the rest of the day’s light he planned to return to the Grey Warden armory in the market district and find some armor that isn’t burnt and shredded by the archdemon like his was, but he’s not sure he’ll get to that today. He has to at some point; he doubts an elf can march up to the warden outpost and call himself commander without something to bolster his appearance.
He sets his teacup down and taps the finger with Keeper’s ring against the porcelain. Whatever Alistair may have thought, leading a scattered handful of friends during the blight and existing to be a figurehead to some real armies that had their own commanders is a far cry from the position he is going to hold in Amaranthine. This was a bad idea and it’s starting to sink in. He’s spent his life running after people: after Tamlen, after Duncan, after Alistair, after Morrigan, after Zevran, and now after Alistair again. The Dalish never stay in one place and don’t have a choice about it; but Avrian is marked as a Grey Warden more than Dalish. He could – he could –
Tap tap tap goes his ring against his cup. He could do anything, but his loyalty puts him here, for Alistair, like his loyalty sent him after Morrigan. Where next? Who next?
“I am glad to see you return,” Wynne says, like she knows Avrian’s silence is doubts. “I feared that you would simply disappear, spending your life running after what will not return.”
“I’m Dalish,” Avrian says. “That’s what we do. Chase the past.” He clung to Tamlen’s ghost until he found them and let the ashes slip through his hands. He wears Morrigan’s ring, still, come and find me he asks her until he can find a trace, a hint, and then he will make good on his promise, I will find you, Morrigan, I swear it. She has a child, his child; and when Avrian was born his father was dead and his mother followed, and Avrian will not abandon his child the same, he will follow. Six months, it’s been. Morrigan isn’t really planning on giving birth all alone, somewhere in the wilderness?
Amaranthine will welcome her home, should she choose it.
“I know,” he says when Wynne sighs. “I’m a Grey Warden above all.”
“It’s the living you owe service to,” Wynne adds. “The present, not the past.”
Let me go, Tamlen said, and Avrian couldn’t, not then.
I must go, Morrigan said, and Avrian can’t let her, not now.
I want to go, Avrian said to the wardens, and he can’t. The taint in his blood calls him back more than the ink on his face or the ring on his hand. “Mahariel, Commander of the Grey.” The words don’t sound right. He doesn’t know who he is – he isn’t Avrian, hunter of Clan Sabrae anymore – but this isn’t it either.
“You will make a good commander,” Wynne assures him, and Avrian lets out a shaky breath. Does Merrill feel like this, contemplating a future where one day she will be Keeper?
“I hope so,” he replies. He hopes a lot of things. It’s always there to cling to. “Better than I’d be as an assassin,” he adds, and Wynne sighs but the fond smile on her face betrays her.
The thought, not a better commander than I would be a father, betrays Avrian’s resolve, and he knows, days before ever first arriving in Amaranthine, that he will not stay; he will run, again, and see what returns.