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They leave Orzammar even as the dust settles.
There is no reason for them to stay, Romeo would say, were anyone to ask her about the pace she sets. No-one does.
Once they are underneath the sky, grown more familiar to her and yet so alien still, they set up camp. She avoids attentions and gazes, something in her unwilling to face another now. Her limbs, her head, and her heart all ache. It is strange, how accustomed she has become to another way of life entirely in such a short space of time. Her life has become divided into before and after. Once, she obeyed orders and swallowed down all her bitterness. Once, she embraced being feared, because then she could pretend that she was hated for something other than the nature of her birth. Once, she thought she would die as she had lived, in some back-alley fight, with few to mourn her. And then she won the Provings. She, Romeo Brosca, just another brand, just another of Beraht’s men, won. Without Duncan’s intervention, they would have killed her. But she survived. She has changed, but Orzammar is still the same. It was strange to walk those streets again. To be met with that same distrust, even as they gave her the authority to crown their king. She had not realised how accustomed she had become to respect. Though she still thrills in it, somewhere along the line, it lost the sheer heady joy it had held in the beginning. On the surface, no-one knows where she comes from. Her travelling companions knew her for only the present. Her past has been spilled out in front of them, now. Torn out of her and put on display. If she looked at her companions now, she doesn’t know what she’d find. Would it be pity or revulsion? She could not bear either. She sets her attention on the road ahead, and attempts to quiet her restless thoughts. There is more to do, still, so she must focus.
It is Morrigan, first, who tries to draw her attention, and she stares her down, hard-eyed, feeling herself slip back into the role of the uncrossable enforcer yet helpless to stop it. How else should she keep them from commenting? She has no defence from judgement but violence, the very thing which brings it. Each time one of her companions seeks her gaze, she avoids it. She cannot explain, cannot justify what she is and what she comes from. It would be easier if part of her didn’t still miss it.
She killed a Paragon. Does that make her more or less a hero? Is every legend doomed to die at the hands of another? Will she ever be herself alone? Just Romeo, not her parents’ child, not in anyone’s service. Plain and simple, Romeo. Or will people always see something else before they see her?