A/N: I'm sorry about the mess with the previous chapters over Christmas. Somehow I uploaded the wrong chapter and it took half a dozen messages and reposting the chapter 3 times -- each of which takes about 4 days to be approved or refused -- before I could convince them to fix it. But it's done, and we're moving on -- the final battle approaches!
In response to some reviews: yes, this will continue into Awakenings and DA2, though obviously some things have changed -- it's going to go seriously AU from here. I'm contemplating Inquisition, so it's possible I'll make it there too. But things will be different -- Sierra won't be living in Kirkwall or working directly with the Inquisition, so it won't be in nearly as much detail as Origins was, fair warning.
Also -- these chapters have been posted as quickly as they have been because this site was catching up on a backlog of chapters already published elsewhere. It is now almost caught up. Once it does, updates are going to slow down dramatically -- like one chapter every 2 weeks, not 2 chapters every week. Just so you all know.
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Chapter One Hundred Seven: Aftermath
After the Landsmeet, things moved quickly. Cailan --
it's really weird to call him that again
-- moved into the Palace, and offered rooms for the Grey Wardens, our companions, and Nathaniel, so we all transferred from Eamon's. It was nice, having more space and not having multiple people crammed into one room. It was also nice to no longer pretend that we weren't married -- Alistair and I were given a large, lavish room in the family wing near Cailan's rooms, and Aedan and Zevran were next door. Everyone else had their own rooms down a long corridor, and he assigned us a small dining room where we could meet and share meals.
Denerim's Palace was enormous, but surprised me somewhat with its utilitarian style. The walls and floor were mostly stone, nicely done and sometimes painted, but there were no marble frescoes or whatever else I might have expected in a royal palace. There were beautiful tapestries on some of the walls depicting moments in Fereldan history, few of which I recognised, but most of the walls were bare except for sconces.
I supposed I shouldn't have been surprised -- in the game, Fereldans were always described as practical and not overly ostentatious, unlike the Orlesians. The only thing that made the palace truly grand was the scale -- it was, by far, the largest building I'd been in, on Earth or on Thedas.
There were multiple guest wings, no less than four enormous ballrooms, half a dozen huge dining rooms and many more small ones. There were sitting rooms, map rooms, gardens, armories, and rooms just for displaying statues of famous Fereldans. And all of them were done in a lovely, but minimalist style. However, the bedrooms had beautiful, thick rugs, and beds so soft you could get lost in them, and the family wing had bathing rooms attached to every bedroom with tubs and soaps and bottle after bottle of sweet smelling shampoos. If they'd only had indoor plumbing, it would have been perfect; as it was, my little shower head worked marvelously, and the staff were thrilled not to have to haul hot water -- especially given how frequently I tended to bathe.
Cailan fired most of the upper-level staff that had worked for Anora, providing some sort of severance package, then had Kallian help him replace them with qualified Alienage elves, for the most part. Blake stayed on as his manservant, of course, and there were chamberlains and seneschals and Maker knew what other sorts of staff that I didn't even try to get to know that Cailan hired. I met the maid responsible for cleaning our rooms, a young, nervous elf named Noni, and the three responsible for serving food in the Warden dining room, and figured they were probably the only ones I needed to know by name.
Duncan put Loghain and Wulf through the Joining the night of the Landsmeet, and both survived. Both were given rooms at the palace, which surprised me, but Loghain was apparently to be invited to the strategy meetings and having him stay somewhere else just didn't make sense. Cailan apparently treated him as though he didn't exist most of the time, which was probably for the best, though I heard that one night there had been quite a bit of yelling coming from the direction of Loghain's room. No one knew what, exactly, was said, but apparently Loghain was much subdued after that.
Personally, I avoided Loghain like the plague. Most of my friends had seen some horrible things done at his behest, but I'd seen Thedas with Cailan and Duncan dead. Despite knowing, and approving, of his conscription, I still wasn't sure I'd be able to avoid getting into it with him, and one way or another, that wasn't going to end well. We were supposed to be hiding my origin from him -- we didn't need him telling the Orlesians when he was transferred to Jader -- so staying away seemed the best policy. And Aedan wouldn't even tell me the things he said -- like any explanation for the stupid things he'd done since Ostagar -- because he figured I'd be unable to resist going to talk to him.
Duncan had apparently offered the Joining to Kallian, but she declined. I learned that Cailan had been talking with her and had her convinced to stay and work with him to improve the lives of the elves in the Alienage; I wondered if she'd eventually end up as Bann instead of Shianni.
Her temperament might be better suited to it, actually...
We hadn't seen Shianni at all since our visit to the Alienage, and I wondered what she would do if she didn't become the Bann.
Aedan, Alistair, Duncan, Cailan, Loghain, and Eamon spent most of the next few days closeted in meetings to determine the strategy for fighting the darkspawn; the rest of us were left to our own devices, for the most part. Some of us accompanied Kallian to the Alienage again, recruiting fighters for the King's new military unit, The Night Elves, named after the elves who'd fought with Maric and Loghain in the rebellion; Leliana dragged me to the market district to window shop for shoes; we had Master Wade make a set of armour for Wulf which was far superior to his old, cobbled together junk. Boring, but necessary.
A messenger came to the Palace one night for Wynne -- Gorim's wife was giving birth, and the midwife was concerned it wasn't going well. Leliana and I accompanied the mage as we hurried to the small house in the Market District, willing to help in whatever way possible. Wynne disappeared into Riana's room, leaving Leliana and I to console an overwrought Gorim. We heard talking, and then a rather loud argument; the midwife, a chubby middle-aged woman with an impressive scowl, stormed out and left the house, cursing mages to the Void. Leliana and I exchanged fearful glances, interrupted by Wynne bellowing for help.
Soon I was boiling a large pot of water and scouring cupboards for clean towels and linens, while Leliana went into Riana's room to aid Wynne. They did something -- I couldn't have said what, for which I was thankful -- and Riana screamed like the world was ending. I had to hold Gorim back as he tried to throw himself at the closed door, talking quickly and trying to convince him that Wynne had everything well in hand. I wasn't sure I believed it myself, but it seemed to calm Gorim some and he slumped back into his chair.
At Wynne's shout I grabbed the water and a huge armful of clean linens and went in, shocked by the blood pooled on the bed and splashing down onto the floor. It looked like someone had been murdered, and violently at that. Leliana was holding Riana down, a strip of leather between the dwarf's teeth to bite down on; Wynne had what looked like one entire arm up inside Riana, the aura of healing magic suffusing the room. I set down my items, uncertain how to help, just as Wynne slumped and fell heavily to her knees, pulling a very bloody arm out of the petite woman.
"Got it," she sighed, looking happy though incredibly weary, then levered herself to her feet and began scrubbing her hands in the hot water, while I used towels to soak up some of the blood. When Riana squealed again, Wynne turned back, tiredly, and bent over the end of the bed again.
"Push now, my dear. You can do it."
