Chapter Text
“We think… his claim might be stronger,” Arl Eamon said. “If he… well. If he had the support, of a prominent noble family.”
Ismene Cousland kept her mouth shut, staring back at Eamon through her serene noblewoman’s mask. The one that she thought she had left smashed in the dust of her estate in Highever, and which she had been forced to pick back up and put in place upon entrance to Denerim.
She did not speak. If this man was going to do this to her, he needed to have the balls to say it himself.
“We… well. If Fergus was here, perhaps his pledge at the Landsmeet would be enough,” Eamon continued. “But Fergus isn’t here… and with no man at the head of your house...”
Ismene blinked at him again, face blank as an unmarked canvas. The silence dragged on, and she let it. She wasn’t about to help Eamon on his way - she wanted every step of this journey to hurt. She would offer him no evidence that would allow him to convince himself that she wanted this. That he wasn’t the villain, forcing two people into something they didn't want to do.
“Anora has no husband, and no heir,” he said, inching closer and closer to the target he wanted her to hit. “It would be… advantageous. If the person laying claim to the throne… had some way to guarantee the bloodline. It would earn a degree of goodwill, from the nobility who remain on the fence.”
Such a shame we’re both sterile then, isn’t it? You fucking bastard.
“You and Alistair are… close.” By this point, Eamon looked physically uncomfortable, fidgeting in his chair like he had fleas lining his breeches. It gave Ismene an ungodly amount of pleasure. Of the few, scant things she thanked her tutors for, reducing a man to a jellified mess of nerves with a single look was one skill she was always grateful to possess.
The aim of her tutors had been seduction. Ismene had… improvised.
“You are friends. It really wouldn’t be the greatest imposition, if you were to…”
Ah, yes. Not an imposition, to give up her hand and her body and her home, for the good of the country. Because that’s what she’d been trained to do, was it not - as both a woman and a Warden? Did Eamon truly expect her to be grateful, at the idea of tying herself merely to someone she didn’t detest? It spoke volumes for a woman’s place in the world, that such a thing was considered a boon.
I thought I’d left this behind, she thought, in the dark, rebellious place in her mind that had, in recent months, been allowed to expand its borders. Now, it was shoved back into a recess, to rant and rail behind a beatific, impassive smile.
At age thirteen, Ismene Cousland had been paraded in front of King Maric and his seventeen year old son. She’d had no claims to womanhood - still a gawkish array of awkward flat angles that caught on each other clumsily. But its makings within her had been clear. Pale skin. Blue, crystalline stare. Cupid’s bow mouth. Her dark mantle of hair. Barely out of childhood, it had been made clear to her, by her mother, that these tools that she barely knew how to use and frankly baulked at picking up were supposed to secure her a crown.
She’d had one awful, stilted dance with Prince Cailan, in which his breath stank of alcohol she was not yet old enough to drink. And the next day he was engaged to Anora Mac Tir. She’d been barely able to withstand the relief.
Only, she soon learned that it would’ve perhaps been best, had she actually committed to ensnaring the King. Six years later, he was dead. And that had been six years in which her family continually threw her into the path of a wide variety of men, in the hope she would make an advantageous match. A four year age gap had been a generous starting offer, to say the least.
I thought I was free.
And now she was here again. The irony was not lost on her, that she had another shot at a crown she did not want. This time, it was handed to her on a silver platter. Through someone whom she…
Well. Her mother must be pleading at the Maker’s feet in the afterlife. Kissing the hem of whatever holy robes Ismene imagined He must be wearing.
She had been counting down the days to this conversation. Her tutor in politics had been, of all things, Orlesian - that alone was probably why Loghain had let her whole family be slaughtered. She knew the Grand Game, and she knew the sum of the equation she and Alistair made together was greater than its component parts. Ismene had sensed the familiar makings of the trap begin to close around her ever since encountering the assessing stare of Bann Teagan, when she and Alistair arrived in Redcliffe side-by-side. It was a stare she knew well - it had simply taken her too long to realise that the man had not been thinking about himself.
And now, she stood here like a misbehaving school child under Eamon’s gaze. Once more a pawn, to be moved in small steps, orderly lines, and sacrificed when needed.
She should’ve poisoned Andraste’s ashes when she had the fucking chance.
No. She couldn't think that. This man was important to Alistair.
“What I’m saying is,” Eamon said, with exasperation, as if she was the one leading him on a merry chase, and not his own guilt. “Is that with you as his Queen, Alistair would do well. His claim would be legitimised, and no doubt considered all the more beneficial to the country.”
“You want us to announce a formal engagement?” she asked, innocently, smirking inwardly when he winced at the naivety of her pronouncement. “For the sake of appearances at the Landsmeet?”
“I… child.” Eamon sighed, “the nobility would see through such a ploy, if you throw in your lot but do not wager anything against the stakes. I want you to marry him.”
Fuck you.
Alistair was waiting in her chambers, dithering about with one of the figurines she’d uncovered from a nondescript piece of rubble and handed to him on their journey. It was still odd to see him in civilian clothes, particularly ones so fine. His jawline was becoming more pronounced with the evening's worth of stubble, and his honey warm hair was rumpled all along one side, like he’d been nervously running his hands through it while he waited. He startled and jumped to standing when she entered, his face a picture of guilt. So. As always, she’d been the last person to be consulted on her own nuptials.
“Maker, I’m so so so sorry, Ismene. It really, really wasn’t my idea.”
“I know,” she told him flatly, dropping her cloak from her shoulders with a sigh. Maker, she missed armour already. It was so much easier going through the world as a sexless, metal lump. When the protection was physical, and not a series of imaginative exercises in which she pretended not to notice the way people looked at her.
They’d been in Denerim not yet a week. Eamon’s seamstresses had not achieved forcing her back into dresses, but even shirts and breeches left her feeling vulnerable, aware of how much of her figure was on show. It had changed, over months of fighting darkspawn and delving Deep Roads - it was thickset and muscular now, where once it had been dainty and frustratingly breakable. But even now, when she should’ve felt strong, she pretty much saw ‘childbearing hips’ written in the eyes of everyone whose stare trailed down her body.
The first time Alistair had seen her without armour, he’d looked stunned. Almost like he’d forgotten that his companion was a woman, underneath all the formless chainmail.
“I told him,” Alistair said, dragging her to the present. “I told him that there’s no way I’d do it, if you didn’t want to. Maker, I’m not even sure I want to be king. Now that he’s got you even more tangled up in his scheming - you know I don’t expect this from you, right? I would never expect this of... of anyone. It… it isn’t fair! It’s far too much to ask of you!”
Something - something that she’d been trying to ice over for months now, to transmute into a dead, leaden rock - fluttered in her chest. But Ismene quickly tamped it down.
Boiled down to its essentials, what Alistair was actually saying was that he’d done what he always did: absolved himself of any responsibility. Left the big decisions to her. Oh, he didn’t want to marry her, but he would… if he had to. He’d follow her lead, as he had every step of this journey.
He didn’t want her. But he’d settle for her. Not much choice. She was the only Warden left. The only eligible noblewoman, now, too. Or at least, the only one who held a teyrnir.
“I said yes,” she said, busying herself with hanging up her cloak, and then brushing invisible dirt from her shoulders.
When she looked up, he’d frozen where he stood, hands limp at his sides. Mouth agape.
“It makes sense. It’s… expedient,” she continued lightly, holding his gaze until his jaw abruptly snapped shut. “I want revenge too. When I’m queen, I might not be able to cleave Howe’s head from his shoulders myself, but I suppose there is a certain pleasure in ordering the deed to be done.”
“You… you want to marry me.” Alistair said numbly. “For murder.”
“Why do you want to marry me?” she challenged, “because Eamon asked you nicely?”
He blushed and stuttered, “well… I… I don’t really…”
I don’t really want to marry you. Iz finished the sentence for him in her head.
Well, he’d probably expected the luxury of choice, she supposed. That’s why she was taking this better than him. She’d never even been allowed to even entertain notions of that.
“Don’t worry, Ali,” she interrupted. “I imagine it’ll be pretty much the same as we are now, really. We’re already bound together. Joined. Attached at the hip. Sharing in the mutual joy of darkspawn dreams. A marriage contract is just another obligation, on top of all the ones we already have. And unlike the archdemon, it probably won’t kill us.”
“An… obligation?” he echoed.
“Oh, well, I suppose that’s quite harsh wording. There’s really no need for you to feel burdened by it. I won’t make it difficult or awkward. I imagine the crown will be heavy enough to wear without me exacerbating the issue. I will hardly expect presents. Or canoodling.” She took a breath, before saying, “you can even keep Leliana, if you’d like.”
Alistair frowned.
“Um, aren’t you the one who technically hired her? I thought she followed you.”
Ahh, so they were still talking around the issue, were they? Ismene didn’t have the energy for directness, so she said. “Well, if there was any reason, any reason at all, for keeping her on, you only need to let me know.”
“...Riiiight,” Alistair said, looking shifty in a way that told her he was definitely still trying to hide the fact he was fucking their friend. “So, you really think we should do this? You think we should… make a bid for the throne? Get married? Rule... together?”
Ismene looked at him. He looked a little lost, a little yearning. Like he wanted a certain answer from her, that certain answer he always expected her to somehow be able to give. What he probably wanted was for her to say no. Then, he could hastily back off out a marriage he didn't want without ever actually having to be cruel enough to directly insult her, something she wasn't sure he was actually capable of doing. He could run to Eamon with his tail between his legs, and blame everything on the Mean Cousland Lady, who had no such qualms.
Poor Alistair. He was always so hesitant, so uncertain. That first night, when they’d been shell-shocked and reeling from the slaughter at Ostagar, she’d had to practically interrogate him, coaxing his plan that he didn’t think was quite-a-plan out of him. But it had been a plan. A plan that had, until this point, worked. He’d had a great many ideas that formed into brilliant strategies.
He just needed someone to convince him that they were worth listening to in the first place.
And as she’d watched him throw himself into danger, time and time again, for the sake of the ideal the Wardens represented - that Ismene wasn’t even sure she believed in - she’d begun to realise. Alistair was a fundamentally good person. Not like her, who had pasted her virtuous exterior like a varnish across an angry, bitter girl who relished the taste of other people’s blood in her mouth. He actually believed he could make the world a better place. He actually wanted to be a hero - and he didn't even want to be one for the glory, or the money, or the women. He just wanted to help people.
She didn’t know how well a man like that would do if placed on a throne - she didn’t think she’d ever seen such a man on one, in her lifetime. But, in that selfish, chaotic way of hers, she wanted to do it, and see.
“Oh Ali,” she said quietly. “I don’t think we really have a choice.”
The conversation became stilted after that, because there wasn't really anything else to say. Their wedding wasn't theirs to plan, after all - Eamon would take care of everything, according to his vision. As Alistair left the room and she stood there alone, Ismene was hit by another image: the one she’d started building up over the last few months, in those dark, untouchable places in her mind. The two of them, together, in the once abandoned fortress of Soldier’s Peak. Both in sky-blue armour, laughing over meals with the friends she’d found and recruited for him, ruling their own little kingdom of soldiers side-by-side. Fighting together, protecting each other, not needing anything more because that was already so much. A friendship. A blood pact. A life bond.
She tried to add a throne to the image. A crown. But as soon as she took her future-self's sword away, nervousness and nausea bubbled in the back of her throat.
It won’t be so different, she thought, and she prayed she wasn’t lying to herself.