Chapter Text
A Templar and a Circle mage run off to stop the Blight—
Well, Alistair supposed he’d find a way to tell it as a proper joke, someday. Maybe when he’d figured out what the punchline was. For now, the whole thing was just rather draining.
There were several problems with being on the run with mages. First, that they couldn’t cook. Well, Morrigan could. He knew that from an offhand comment she had made at her mother’s hut. Still, she refused to help them make any meals. Rather, she preferred to take the form of a giant spider, and devour the flesh of newly killed animals in plain sight. As for Amell…
Amell was certainly something. Something, but not a good cook. Alistair had to spit out the first stew he made, retching.
“Are you trying to deliberately poison me?” Alistair asked. “What even is in this?”
Amell scowled, took a bite himself, and then his face scrunched up even more. He spit it out.
“I thought salt made things taste good,” he muttered.
“Maker… salt?” Alistair asked. He remembered Amell picking up a package of seasonings from the wreckage of some merchant’s cart that had been abandoned on the way. “How much of the bottle did you put in?”
“Half?”
Alistair laughed until he was wheezing. “You—half the bottle? Andraste preserve us, do you not know anything about—”
He got a bowl of stew tossed at him, and barely managed to dodge, and then Amell was pacing around, yelling.
“Well, maybe if the damn Circle taught us—but nooo, we can’t learn anything that would help us survive outside, now can we? That might help us escape or become independent, wouldn’t it? And I’m not going to be laughed at by some damn Templar, when—”
He could go on like this for hours.
That was the second problem with being on the run with mages—they hated him. Alistair had realized this early on, back at Ostagar when Alistair had mentioned his Templar background and Amell had immediately turned hostile. Now, Alistair couldn’t look in his direction without Amell shouting at him to ‘mind his own damn business.’
Morrigan, on the other hand, seemed to merely hate Alistair as a person. The two of them got together at night, Morrigan telling Amell tales of how her mother used to deal with Templars.
“And then,” Morrigan said, relating one story to Amell, “I heard a shriek from the bushes! Mother came out, all bloodied, and the bodies of the Templars lay limp in her jaws. She tore off their heads, and stripped them for their armor.”
Amell laughed and clapped. Both of them managed to somehow sneak pointed looks at Alistair, who decided to turn away and ignore them.
He had Duncan’s death—all the Grey Wardens’ deaths—to weigh on his mind. He didn’t need to get into it with either of them. He decided, instead, to go off on his own and--enjoy nature? Look at some flowers? Anything to give him some peace.
(He found, outside of camp, that the grass was dry, the trees shriveling, and that every flower had withered and died, as though in preparation for the Blight.)
Amell was the only other surviving Grey Warden. That should have meant something, made some sort of bond between them. Instead, Amell seemed to want nothing to do with him.
So instead, Alistair had to put up with all his charming qualities. And there were many of them.
Amell never seemed to know how loud he was. He was shaped like a twig and his ribcage looked perpetually collapsed, and yet he managed to make his voice boom like he had the biggest pair of lungs in Thedas. Especially when he was excited. Or angry. Or angry specifically at Alistair—which he seemed to be, fairly often.
(He didn’t bark at Morrigan every time she made a joke at Amell’s expense, Alistair thought glumly.)
Amell also seemed to like the outside a lot. Too much, maybe. He rolled in the grass and shouted loudly about how wonderful and ticklish it felt, only to be wheezing and coughing thirty minutes later, eyes watery and red. A grass pollen allergy, Morrigan informed him gleefully, laughing when Amell spat at her.
Somehow, knowing he had an allergy didn’t stop him from getting his face and hands in every ‘new and interesting’ plant they came across. Along with running around in the rain, jumping in puddles, insisting on jumping in some river rapids because they looked ‘exciting’ and having to be pulled out by Morrigan in bear form. Several bouts of hypothermia and assorted allergy symptoms later, Alistair caught him staring at some intricate vine. A poisonous one, Alistair was fairly certain.
“Hey,” he said. “After the last time, do you really think you should…?”
Amell cut him off. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
The resultant rash had Amell on the ground and cursing the Maker, and halted their travel for a full day.
“Well,” Morrigan said, outside of the tent where she and Alistair could still hear Amell cursing. “At least one of us is having fun.”
“Fun?” Alistair sniped. “Is that what this is?”
Alistair thought back. Amell hadn’t looked anything like someone having fun during any of these shenanigans. He’d been glowering, jaw set. Like he was fighting a battle every time he jumped into some new mess against all logic. If anything, he seemed grimly determined to do these things, rather than actually enjoying any of them.
Right outside of Lothering, they were beset by bandits. Amell stared at the cooling bodies for a moment, before taking one of the less bloodied ones by the legs and dragging it off towards the woods, huffing at the effort.
Alistair narrowed his eyes. “What are you doing?”
“Going to have some fun, I presume?” Morrigan said.
“None of your business,” Amell snapped.
He disappeared into the woods. Alistair listened to rustling in the bushes, and shuffled uncomfortably. He looked at Morrigan, but her face was blank.
“What…?”
“Go see for yourself, if you are so curious,” she scoffed. “’Tis none of my business.”
She went off to loot the other corpses. Alistair waited, growing more nervous by the second. Duncan had mentioned having to conscript Amell from the Circle because of some incident involving blood magic. Maker, had Duncan recruited a blood mage? And not told Alistair?
He gave up, and ran to the woods.
“Amell,” he said. “Are you--?”
He just saw a flash—the corpse stripped down to the smallclothes, and Amell pulling his robe over his head. Before Alistair could finish his sentence, Amell had stripped, caught sight of Alistair, and was snarling furiously, throwing the robe in his face.
Alistair tried to explain. “I was just—”
“Out! Out! Go away!”
Alistair did as told. When Amell came back out, he was wearing the bandit’s clothes—all bloodied and torn. He was hopping, struggling to fit on one of the boots as he came out.
“Fucking—” Amell hissed, “Mage robes--! I’m not gonna spend a single more day in them! Not one more!”
Alistair stared. He understood, he realized. To not want to be immediately identified, to want to purge all visible traces of what had made the world decide he needed to be locked up. Alistair would want the same thing, were their situations reversed.
“What are you looking at?” Amell said, snapping Alistair out of his thoughts.
Alsitair sighed. “You do realize you put the shirt on backwards, right?” he said. “And the pants are inside out.”
“I can wear it however I want, Templar,” Amell told him, stalking off. He proceeded to go to the rest of the corpses and pull off any jewelry, shoving the rings on his fingers and the rest into his pockets.
Amell’s bloodied, inside out and backwards clothing drew the stares of enough villagers that Alistair started to feel uncomfortable. Still, Amell just about ran through the town, unaffected by the stares and the general misery and aura of doom.
“So this is a town!” he boomed. “It’s so small! Smaller than the tower!”
Amell was too excited to stick with them, as well, and decided to slip away and go off on his own. Alistair had to run around looking for him, finally finding him in a tavern, clutching a mug and laughing wildly to himself.
“This stuff is great!” he was shouting, voice reverberating. “I can’t believe—I’ve never? Had this before? What’s this stuff called again?!”
There was no one talking back to him, but he kept on, ranting loudly and earning some nervous looks from the other people in the tavern. His cheeks were red, eyes shining—and then he looked at Alistair and his mood dropped instantly.
“What are you laughing at, Templar?” he snarled.
Alistair had, in fact, been grinning. He couldn’t help it. Amell was just so—but Alistair had to pull it together.
“You ran off,” Alistair said, attempting to scold. “With all our money, too. And without telling us what in Andraste’s name you were doing!”
“I don’t need to tell you… shit,” Amell said, bristling. “I don’t need to fucking, report on where I am every second! Not anymore! I don’t need you watching me—I’m never going to let anyone—not again…”
His face collapsed for a moment. Alistair sighed, stepping forward. “Look,” he started.
“I’ve got rights now!” Amell yelled, standing up, staggering. He was really drunk, far drunker than Alistair had thought. “You better realize—I’m a Warden, same as you! I can do what I want and drink what I want and have things and—I’m a fucking Grey Warden, okay?!”
Dead silence throughout the tavern. “Shout that again, why don’t you?” Alistair sniped, hushed. “I don’t think Loghain could quite hear you in Denerim.”
“What’s this?” a voice said from behind them. “Grey Wardens?”
In the brawl with the bounty-hunters that ensued, Amell managed to set a table on fire and blacken half of the tavern wall with a particularly harsh electricity spell. The tavern patrons all ran out screaming, regardless—well, all except for the actual thugs. Alistair and a rather helpful Chantry sister had to knock them out instead.
Afterwards, Alistair just collapsed at the table. Amell stared at him, tensing, looking like he was waiting for… something that wasn’t good. Maybe a reprimand. Alistair thought of several mage-related jokes, but instead opted to gesture towards the mug.
“Can I have some of that?” he asked.
Amell stared, and then shoved it towards him. Alistair took a swig, and grimaced.
“So,” he said, not sure where to begin. “Circles. They’re kind of fucked up?”
“Kind of,” Amell muttered. Was that shame Alistair detected? Perish the thought.
“Didn’t get a chance to really work at one,” Alistair told him. “Watched one Harrowing once. Made me realize I really, really didn’t want to be in that line of work. It was bad.”
Amell still looked suspicious. “Harrowings,” he echoed. “Bad.”
“Honestly,” Alistair said. “I don’t see why they can’t tell you what you’re in for ahead of time. Make it, you know, easier to fight the demon.”
“Right?” Amell asked. “Man. Fuck the Harrowing.”
“Fuck it,” Alistair agreed, taking another swig. “I’m so glad I’m a Grey Warden and not a Templar, now.”
Amell was looking at him carefully. “Did you want to be a Templar before?”
“Pfff,” Alistair said. “Of course. Aren’t the uniforms just smashing? Who could resist?”
Amell scowled.
“No,” Alistair admitted. “No, I did not. Got dropped off at a Chantry when I was little. Didn’t have much choice after that.”
Amell nodded. Alistair pushed the mug back to him, and he took a swig himself.
“So,” Alistair said. “Do you think you could stop calling me ‘Templar’ all the time?”
Amell grunted. “Fine.” A pause. “Alistair.”
“Hey, you remember,” Alistair laughed. “What’s yours again? Like, your first name. Not ‘Amell’ like I’ve been calling you.”
“None of your business.” But Amell didn’t sound as angry this time.
They took turns drinking. By the time Morrigan found them, they were both giggling and Alistair had decided maybe Amell wasn’t such a terrible person to defeat a Blight with, after all.
He found the rose by the edge of town, right where they had to slay some darkspawn. It was untouched, untainted—perfect even though every plant around it had withered or been trampled.
He did not entirely understand what he felt seeing it—not then, at that moment—but he plucked it while none of his companions watched, and pressed it delicately in his journal.