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Alistair knew a good deal about tranquil, at least, more than your typical warden would. He knew the rite terrified mages, but sometimes, secretly, it was a relief. He understood the shape of the brand and how the rod felt in an applicant’s hand, though he’d never had to apply it to another. He knew how it felt on the other side though, contemplating how easily he could sever a person from themselves and then consequently fretting over whether it was really his right to do so.
And while he knew more than the average person, it was still all theoretical knowledge thanks to Duncan. It was for the best, really. Alistair would have been a rubbish templar. He couldn't envision himself wielding the rod. He had shivered when he held it just as he shivered now at the sight of the young Inquisition agent across the courtyard, her brown hair held back behind a pointed ear. She bent over the Inquisitor’s garden and spoke calmly at her plants, a pair of sturdy work gloves protecting her hands. An ideal caretaker, he supposed, immune to laziness thanks to the pattern burned into her forehead. He wondered with horrid interest whether she'd been terrified or relieved when it came down on her brow. With all his supposed knowledge, he wasn't sure which would have been worse.
***
The Inquisitor's Felandris needed tending. If left to its own, the spikey shoots would grow unwieldy, sabotaging the neighboring Crystal Grace. Avexis kept an eye on the Felandris daily, sometimes twice over, to make sure its barbs kept to the confines of its own pot.
Not long after reaching Skyhold, the Inquisitor had decreed herbalism a priority and set Avexis to the task. It was a routine assignment with regularity she managed; though on occasion the exotic plants the Inquisitor found in their travels needed coaxing and special management. She conducted research whenever a plant became unruly or poorly, visiting the lower level of the keep where the musty books and cobwebs reminded Avexis of the hidden library in the White Spire. There, her research had been termed “dangerous” by the First Enchanter, far more so than any poisonous plants.
But that was then, before the templars and mages decided to fight. Avexis didn't prefer one field of research over another. Just as she had no preference for the Spire or Skyhold. Her brand had allowed her to navigate the upheaval quite easily.
She knew many mages struggled—templars alike—but she was so far removed from any feelings of discomfort or distress that the change had become expected in a way. Detached from emotion, she could see things for what they were before others came to voice their conclusions.
She still felt pain though, and as one of the thorns of the Felandris pricked through her gloves, Avexis voiced her surprise. The poison took effect swiftly, causing her pointer finger to stiffen unnaturally, warmth radiating from the spot. The traveling warmth shot up her forearm and she removed her glove to examine the poison’s progress, rising to her feet to seek help. Her head spun though and she sat down hard, jolting her closed jaw. She knew she needed assistance, but her body wouldn't respond. She could not call out or move a hand or a toe, even if she wanted.
The queer sensation was familiar. Long ago as the blood mage’s thrall, she'd had no free will of her own, and now, arm growing stiffer by the moment, body refusing to move, Avexis had no recourse. It was not a welcome memory.
***
The tranquil elf raised her voice from a whisper to most people's normal speaking volume to say, “oh.”
Not, “Oh!” in excitement, but a gentle little observation of something irregular. Alistair frowned, watching her attempt to stand only to sit back down again, examining her ungloved hand. She moved her arm slightly, looking at something intently, until she froze so unnaturally solid he felt something had to be wrong.
There were plenty of folks milling around the garden, but none seemed to notice the tranquil immobilized in the grass. Alistair took the two steps of the gazebo in a single stride, carrying the momentum forward to cross the garden in a near-heartbeat. The elf was lilting now, about to fall over herself if someone didn't pick her up, and he did, just before she could crash and smash her delicate forehead against a large stone slab.
“Easy,” he said, feeling foolish as he’d done it, recognizing she wasn't a frightened horse. She wasn't frightened at all.
“What did you get yourself into?”
He lifted her glove-free hand. Blood welled from an angry red pinprick on her slim finger. Even through his gloves Alistair could tell her hand was far too hot. A line of tainted blood swam upstream beneath her pale skin. It didn't take an expert to guess what had happened.The offending plant looked like the fingers of an undead witch, bursting through the dirt with malice. Alistair shied away as unease crept up his spine from being near it. He was more familiar with the type of plants that grew in the deep roads, but this one seemed macabre. Judging by the little elf's lack of response, she needed a healer, and quick.
Alistair scooped her off the ground. She weighed next to nothing in his arms, but still was unwieldy as a cow with her sharp elbows and knees and inflexible posture.
“Let's get you to a healer, shall we?” He grunted to himself as he adjusted his grip. “Please, erm, don't die on my watch.”
The spirit healer’s tent sat next to the surgeon’s. Alistair was coated in a fine sweat by the time he reached it, having run down multiple flights of stairs. He wanted to push off the task of explaining to someone else, and keep himself just to the heroics, but there was no one else. And in her current state of sleep (or coma?), the elf wasn't going to be any help.
“Hellooo?” He called impatiently, waiting for a spirit healer to pop out of the air. One did, stepping out of her tent instead, eyes hard and cold and wan hair spun up in a bun. “Yes? What is it?” she replied impatiently, and Alistair did his best not to twist his lips in annoyance.
"This woman she— I found her mid-slump and, well, it's obvious she pricked her finger, but I'm not sure what it's called—” he tried to picture the plant in the pot she'd been in front of— “spikey, mean, like something already dead.”
“Felandris,” the healer said. “She should have been wearing gloves.”
“Yes, yes, obviously she was,” Alistair grumbled, annoyed on his charge’s behalf. Clearly she still had one glove to show for her caution. Besides that, the tranquil weren’t known to be foolish. Suddenly he had a terrible thought, that this mage wasn’t going to help the elf because she was tranquil. Alistair watched the healer’s eyes narrow in distaste and had it with being at all circumspect.
“So? " he shouted, “are you going to do something!? Because I bloody well can’t!”
***
Avexis opened her eyes and blinked normally. The planks of wood above her head were slightly uneven and familiar, with a notch missing in the center of the furthest left plank and a large, dark knot at the center of the grain in the middle-most board.
She was in her bed, and without a recollection of getting there. Her last memory was the paralytic poison working through her limbs.
Beside her a man mumbled a soft greeting. Based on the pattern, color, and insignia of his armor, he was a warden. When she returned his open gaze, his cheeks darkened.
“Do you know what happened?”
“No, well, yes—” he said, rubbing his neck with a hand.
“Was that a yes or no?” she asked, checking her limbs for subtle movements. She wiggled a toe, then a heel, and finally her full foot, before being convinced of full recovery.
“Yes,” he replied, fidgeting. “I heard you shout and saw you weren't… right. Then I brought you to the healer. She did her magic and now you're back. So, that's been my day.”
Avexis blinked again. She would not have shouted, but she recalled making note of the pain. It was fortunate then, that a person had heard. “You stayed with me all day? Do you not have your own tasks to accomplish?”
“Ha, no.” He grimaced, shiny teeth bright in the low light of the barracks. “I'm… waiting… for the Inquisitor to return. Meanwhile there's nothing for it but to make terrible jokes at Morrigan and bother the kitchen maids for food.”
She did not know who Morrigan was, nor did she see the point in eating outside designated meals, but she tipped her head and studied the warden. Avexis couldn't imagine a day without her plants, without her schedule. Without a job, she would be useless, but this man, who smiled easily, appeared to enjoy his freedom? Even if it embarrassed him to admit it. Most of her memories from before the rite were hazy. Perhaps it was the lack of emotional ties to those moments, or simply something unexplainable in the process of becoming tranquil. But as far back as her memory went, Avexis could not conjure a time where she had been free to do as she wished.
The realization did not alarm her, for nothing could touch her pulse, but did provoke a question. A question that many years ago would have been relevant to her secret work in the White Spire.
Tranquil rarely asked questions beyond the realm of their current duties, but the possible connection seemed informative. A sense of possibility came to her as she considered his role as a warden, knowing the information would scratch the inexplicable itch in her brain that had never been satisfied, not when the mages rebelled and her musty tomes and "dangerous" experiments were left behind.
She could not sense whether this stranger would react poorly to examination. The feeling relished the opportunity to exercise their emotions at every provocation. Avexis tried to study his face for a clue, but all his expression had room for was the wide grin.
So little had engaged her mind like her studies of blood magic, and magic of the blood. Now she could attempt an answer to the question she had tried to solve for years.
“Does becoming a warden make your blood sing like lyrium,” she began to ask, unable to recognize the fleck of panic in his eye, “or is it an entirely different sensation altogether?”
***
Alistair shifted uneasily. What had brought this on? He plucked his collar, sweating at the fearless curiosity of a tranquil. He didn't even have her name yet and she wanted to know the Grey Wardens’ most protected secret and thereby one of his most protected secrets.
“I'm afraid I can't answer without having to kill you,” he joked, smacking his forehead immediately upon finishing the comment. “That was a joke, in case you couldn't tell. And of course you can't tell, you– you–”
“I have no sense of humor,” she replied, deadpan, somehow infinitely more humorous than most Orlesians he knew.
“But I really can't say,” he repeated. “It is nothing against you, I'm sure you're perfectly—nice—, and not a gossipmonger, but uh, all Warden feelings are sacrosanct. Even the terrible ones, like bad indigestion.”
"I understand secrecy," she replied, folding far too soon. He knew she would, but he couldn't help but feel disappointed, as if she'd just tried to pop the cork that kept his true feelings from spilling forth and failed after the first attempt.
He was not the right person for conversing with a tranquil. Alistair huffed, smiling through his unease, watching placid acceptance too easily cross her delicate features. She was a pretty thing—he felt he could admit that to himself now that she was well and not a frozen lump in his arms—and it was a shame she was… the way she was. But, he supposed, it would have been much harder to deny her curiosity if she was a feeling soul.
“I'm Alistair, by the way,” he said, reaching out a hand. Her eyes were as blue as the Crystal Grace she'd been trying to protect from the mean, spikey, demon plant. “And now,” he teased, her none the wiser, “you share your name…"
“My name is Avexis,” she replied, taking his hand at last. And maybe it was simply the heroics of the day or her inability to frown at his humor, but Alistair felt a shock of current go up his arm and interest flood his chest.
He thought he knew a lot about tranquil, and everything there was to know about himself, but this connection, this was a surprise
"What else can I tell you instead?" he said, wishing to be known.