Chapter Text
To them, she was the Warden Commander. Tough, loud, bloody scary at times.
To him, she was Solona, his advisor and his friend, and she was looking at him like she'd just discovered a new Ferelden.
"Look," she said, sitting up and taking her feet off the desk. "Look what it says!"
He moved to stand behind her, frowning as he read the parchment over her shoulder. "Revka... Leandra... Oh." He raised an eyebrow. "And?"
"He's there. Kirkwall," she reminded him with a sigh, seeming uncharacteristically nervous. "Garrett Hawke. The Champion. My..." She swallowed. "My cousin," she finished softly, still digesting it.
The only piece of family she had, he realized suddenly. What with the Tower and the Blight, there had never been much time to check the records, until now. This was all so... new.
She put a palm to her mouth, leaning an elbow on the desk. "I want... I want to meet him. I think I need to. But... what if it's like Goldanna?"
He shut his eyes for a moment, exhaling slowly - Maker, that had been... awful - then opened them again, resting a hand reassuringly on her shoulder. "Can't be as bad. As I recall, Hawke actually has money." His lip twisted, and she looked up at him in concern. "Sorry. It's still a little raw."
The Blight was barely over. The memories of the two of them standing outside that little house, her desperately trying to reassure him with absolutely no knowledge of the situation... They were still fresh. Still more than a little painful.
He'd been in a state; instead of his usual... well, rambling, he'd been silent, sullen, only looking up from the floor as he realized that she'd pushed him into the Gnawed Noble. Oh, great. The place where principles came to die.
She led him to a seat, left him there, and come back bearing two large tankards. There had been a loud clak of metal against wood as she'd put it down a little more loudly than necessary before him, muttered, "Here."
It hadn't been long before he was grinning, gesturing wildly with his hands, brimming with humour and incredibly interesting stories. Well, to him, anyway. "And then... then Little Langdon..." He trailed off, having lost his end of the story. "Ah, never mind."
She leaned back in her seat, lookied at the ceiling, then at him. "Look, about this whole Goldanna thing..." She cleared her throat. "Frankly, I've no bloody clue. Never had a family before. But I do now."
He frowned at her, silent, uncomprehending.
"I'm a Warden now. And you're my brother. And it feels that way." She paused."You have a family, if you want it. I'm here."
He'd been so drunk that this speech, at the time, had seemed to make absolute sense, and not surprised him in the least.
He'd lost a sister (well, a half-sister, his mind corrected him, pedantically).
But he'd found one that day, too.
"If you want to meet him... just go."
She interrupted him. "I'm scared, Alistair. I've faced down a fucking Archdemon, and I'm scared of meeting one man. He's... he's all the family I have left, and if he doesn't want to know me..."
He remembered her speech in the Gnawed Noble, what it had cost her, and tried to give her words back to her. "Then there's me," he said firmly, sitting on the guest's chair. "There's always been me."
"But..."
"This is a chance to know who your family are, Sol. It might never happen otherwise." He stopped, words deserting him. "It will go well," he told her, trying his best to be soothing, voice hardening as he added, "Or he'll have me to answer to." Grey Warden. Trained templar. King (Why was that always last on his priority list?). Yes, that should be impressive enough.
"You'll be here... kinging," she countered, dismayed. "There's nothing you could do."
"That's the thing," he said, beaming. "I've been thinking. It might be time for some royal travel..." He paused, thought back to his schedule. "Don't I have a meeting with Kirkwall's lovely Knight-Commander that needs arranging?"
She looked at him, wide-eyed and strangely vulnerable in her surprise. She had been, for once, open all through this talk, and he was still waiting for her to laugh it off, try and kick his arse for him, be her usual stubborn-to-the-end self.
Eventually, after some thought, speech seemed to return to her. "You're Ferelden's ruler. That usually means you need to be in Ferelden, not dashing off for a quick holiday. You're not Cailan."
He couldn't stop the tiny, almost invisible wince - anyone else, anyone who hadn't had to share his company for a year, would have missed it.
She bit her lip, obviously knowing it had struck home, but stared him in the face and made no move to apologise.
She was trying to change the subject (with a low blow), and if he let her, she'd bottle it up. He'd simply never hear of it again. But he knew her. She'd wonder and regret and resent until her last breath, because she was Solona.
He sighed, looking at her with his best "trust me, I'm reasonable" face, all earnest honesty and just a small, subtle dash of "I do rule a country, you know". It tended to work reasonably well on the nobles. "Listen," he said, slowly and calmly, "I haven't been out of the grounds in..." He thought back, and muttered a low, "Maker's breath." A disbelieving pause, and then he continued, "In a month. I honestly think I prefer darkspawn to paperwork. It's not exactly like I've been seeing much. Or..." He rolled the word round experimentally in his mouth, trying it out for size. "... 'Kinging'."
She glared at him. "Stop using the puppy eyes on me. It won't work."
Damn. Wait, his cunning grasp of diplomacy was now "puppy eyes"?
"Solona..." he began, exasperated. He saw her start to watch him warily at the use of her full name, a habit only of the Circle's templars, the royal guard, and Wynne - who was possibly more formidable than either of the above. "You'regoing. And I'm coming with."
After a long, deliberating silence, her face softened, and she nodded. "But if this goes tits-up, I'm blaming you." She looked him over. "And please, introduce yourself as king, not... yourself."
He still frequently forgot to. He was always "Alistair" in his head, something he doubted would ever change, and it kept somehow falling out of his mouth. The "King" apparently supposed to go in front of it was still alien in his mind, and he just couldn't introduce himself as "King Alistair". Talking about himself in the third person was far too... Flemeth.
"I.... think it gives me an appearance of honesty with my subjects," he protested weakly.
"Hmm." Her voice was sceptical. "'You see, this bloke Al, he's sort of king. Nice enough fellow, good to go down the pub with, couldn't hold a Landsmeet to save his life.'" She shook her head. "If you do that with Meredith, she'll eat you alive. Have you heard what the Marchers say about her?"
He nodded wearily, raising a hand to his brow. "But look what the Fereldans say about you."
She looked at him with a smile he could only call, well... wolfish. "Oh, they just don't know about my sweet centre."
He raised his eyebrows in silence, the words not needing to be said.
She looked away, biting the inside of her lip, as she thought. "Meredith, however..." She trailed off, her tone serious. "Nothing but steel there." She stood, shuffling the pile of parchment on his desk and putting a few aside that seemed to catch her eye. "You have another meeting with Alfstanna." She looked up, eyes mischievous. "I think she has her eye on you."
He stared at her in horrified surprise. "She... what?"
Solona coughed into her hand, smile never falling, then looked at him as if he were an idiot. "The excuses to come here? The sudden Orlesian dresses for meetings?" She rolled her eyes. "The same way you missed Leliana's advances compl-ete-ly."
"What 'advances'?" he asked. "There weren't any, or I'm pretty sure I would have..."
She cut him off, adopting a low, surprisingly accurate Orlesian accent. "'Oh, I should have known. You have Cailan and Maric's looks, how did I miss it?'" A pause for thought, and she continued, "'I always thought that training at the Chantry was very... strenuous. The templars must have been in fine shape to carry on in such a way...'" She wiggled her eyebrows comically, and he grimaced.
"I just thought she was... asking a question... And..."
She shook her head, patting him reassuringly on the shoulder as she moved to leave. "There, there. You'll learn." She walked on, with a quiet, muttered, "You'll have to, if Ferelden has any hope of a royal line."
"I heard that!" he called after her, his tone one of false outrage.
"I know," she replied. "I'm taking lunch in Denerim. You know where to find me."
He turned his eyes heavenwards with a sigh. Never mind the sumptuously supplied palace kitchens, the food even from Antiva; the Hero of Ferelden was one of the Gnawed Noble's most valued customers."Good for noble gossip," she'd called it, adding as an afterthought, "Ale isn't bad either."
He watched her go, worried despite himself. She had good enough chances against an ogre, but the chance of a family?
He let out a breath of epiphany, raising his head from his hands, as it came to him, and grabbed a piece of papyrus.
Hawke, he began.
No, too informal, even with the subject matter; he crossed it out, frowning and chewing his cheek.
Champion -
Yes, that was more like it.