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The mud was up to the knee and ice cold. Clay-like in its thickness, it held onto Alistair’s every step with enough stubbornness as to make loud suction noises whenever he managed to rip his foot from its obstinate hold, and even sloppier gurgles as his boot heavily sunk back down. It was effort enough walking that although his breath shot out in big white puffs against the cold morning air, Alistair's back was still damp with sweat, linen shirt bunching up uncomfortably against his skin under the weight of his doublet and armour.
A charming predicament, truly.
“It’s all so clear, now,” Alistair muttered.
Shoving a big handful of thick reeds out of his way, he battled for a moment with the pointy stems getting stuck in the many straps and buckles of his equipment and swinging free only to poke or slap him in the face. When he finally managed through the accursed bush, Alistair shot a look at Morrigan, who was walking several feet ahead of him – or rather, prancing, really, seeing as the witch always seemed to find some rock above mud-level to jump onto and from, barely dirtying her boot up to the ankle while Cousland and himself drudged through the bog. Alistair sincerely wished it could have been as the saying went and that he could turn his gaze into a literal dagger to throw between her shoulder blades. Would serve her right for choosing this murky hell of a route.
“With such an agreeable place of birth,” Alistair kept grumbling, “it’s really no surprise she is the way she is.”
He’d spoken mostly to himself, out of habit, but much to his amazement, Cousland made a sound behind him that could almost have passed for agreement. When Alistair turned around, the Northman was helping his hound through a deeper puddle, whispering encouragements and helping the poor beast keep his muzzle above the mud. When the heavy Mabari finally found his footing and managed to extricate himself from the mire, he eagerly shook the mud stuck to his coat - abundantly spraying his noble master across the face with it in the process.
Cousland breathed in a slow, measured breath, before carefully wiping sludge from his eyes.
“Don’t,” he sighed, “make me say something I might regret about our guide, Alistair.”
Alistair stared at him in disbelief. Had he heard wrong, or was that almost a joke?
“Please,” Alistair said, smiling incredulously, “Don’t hold back on my account.”
Before Cousland could say anything more, however, Morrigan hailed at them.
“Would you two stop twiddling, back there?” she said, “We’d be faster if you moved your legs half as much as you run your mouths.”
Alistair’s eyebrows flew up. Now that was just too much.
“Twiddling?” he repeated, indignation making his voice go up in pitch to a rather worrisome degree, “We’ve barely spoken a word since dawn! We’ve been too busy slogging through this muck you’re dragging us through to even think of trying to twiddle.”
Morrigan shifted her weight onto her hip, leaning against her staff with a decidedly mocking grin curling her lips. The dog climbed by her side on the taller rock she was standing on, waggling his little stub of a tail, and Morrigan gave him a playful brush between the ears with the tip of her finger. Traitor.
“This muck you whinge about is the only safe way out of the Wilds,” Morrigan said, “Unless you’d rather go back to dryer land to face the Darkspawn? I seem to recall that didn’t go so well for you, last time.”
Alistair’s jaw twitched. The pains of Ostagar were much too fresh for him to be able to take well to such a joke. Perhaps Cousland sensed that, because he came up to his level, interjecting in body as well as in words.
“No, we’d rather not,” he said plainly, “Carry on, Morrigan. The sooner you get us out of here, the sooner you’ll get peace from all the whinging you so dislike.”
That was a long sentence, coming from him. Morrigan quirked her brow at it, before shrugging.
“I'm beginning to doubt I ever will, now,” she sighed.
She turned around, nonetheless, and started walking again, stepping wide past the dog to avoid brushing against his mud-coated hair.
“I thought Grey Wardens were meant to be serious,” Morrigan jabbed over her shoulder, “Stoic, mayhaps. At the very least, silent. But here you are instead, goofing around.”
Alistair let out a terse scoff.
“Ah yes,” he said, with much sarcasm, “Clearly, that’s what we’ve been doing. Couple of proper goofs, back here. Not a serious moment between us.”
He picked up his walking again too – well, his plodding, more like.
“I mean, come on, Aedan,” he went on, rolling his eyes even though Morrigan couldn’t see him do it, “You, especially. You’re being down right impossible.”
After all the talking Cousland had already done that day - more of it in the past few minutes than on the whole journey from Flemeth's hut so far - Alistair didn’t really expect an answer. Which is why it surprised him so, when it actually came.
“I am, aren’t I.”
Alistair turned around again.
Cousland was attempting to wipe more mud from his face, to little avail. His once close-trimmed hair had grown out enough by then that Alistair could see it start to form little curls on top. Funny thing, that, how there had been no way to tell, before. His beard was growing unkempt, too, and his green eyes were sunk. Alistair knew he was taking poorly to his Joining, and barely slept at night even before it. But right then, he was smiling.
Another funny thing, that: when he did, his mouth went up all sideways, right corner first, which gave his grin a most lopsided tilt. A tired, understated smile. But a smile all the same.
Alistair had never seen it before.
“How do you manage to deal with my incessant jesting, I wonder,” Cousland quipped, throwing him that tired grin, and it was all Alistair could do but to let out a helpless chuckle.
“I-I don’t,” he stammered, reflexively carrying on the joke, “There’s no dealing with it.”
There wasn’t much Alistair wouldn’t have done in that moment, he realized, to keep the corner of that lip raised. Despite letting out a few terse sarcasms before, Cousland had been the very opposite of cheery, so far, so much so that Alistair had come to doubt he even knew how to act otherwise. Not that the man had any reason to want to, of course. Their circumstances were shit enough that gloom was a – if not the– reasonable reaction to the situation.
Still, Alistair would much rather keep seeing Cousland with that expression on, as opposed to the vacant, hard, closed-off mask he’d seen him wear so far. It unnerved him, that look. Made him feel like his travel companion was often there only in body, while his mind was off someplace else - someplace scary. If only, Alistair thought in those moments, he could give Cousland even just a taste of what he himself had gotten, when he’d first joined the Wardens. That feeling of being welcomed, unquestioning, of being accepted, invited in, surrounded, then perhaps… Perhaps Cousland could come to maybe not love, but at least tolerate their circumstances? Alistair didn’t know. He was way overthinking this, he realized. Maybe Cousland was just too tired, that morning, to keep up his standoffish veneer. Maybe he was trying only for Alistair's sake. Maybe he never meant to smile again after this! Maker help him, Alistair was going to jump on that chance nonetheless.
“I’m telling you, you need to stop this nonsense behaviour of yours,” he doubled down, since that seemed to have worked the first time, “Morrigan's not wrong: it’s unbecoming of the Order. What will people think?”
Victory. The grin widened, uncovering just a sliver of bright teeth, looking all the whiter against the dark of Cousland’s skin. Light eyes gleamed at Alistair from under a quirked brow.
“Granted, I have heard that before,” Cousland said.
The lighthearted moment didn’t last much longer, but it had been enough. Even as the conversation ended up dying out, and Cousland’s smile faded, and his eyes lost themselves again to their usual middle distance, Alistair didn’t feel as uncomfortable with his expression as he had been before. He knew what that wonky grin looked like, now, and more importantly that it was still under there, somewhere. Within his reach.
Maybe - just maybe - Morrigan’s choice of route had been worth it, after all.