Freely We Serve (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

Camp

Judith and her crew were camped outside the little hamlet of Haven, deep in the southern Frostbacks, about a month later. Their quest to retrieve Andraste's ashes had been successful, and they were heading back toward Redcliffe Castle in the morning. Despite the cold, there was an atmosphere of celebration in the camp. Oghren had contributed some of his truly terrible ale, Leliana had brought out some fine Orlesian wine she was saving, and even Wynne had dug out a bottle of mage-made spirits. Everyone had imbibed freely and they were now laying around the campfire, lazily passing the last bottle of wine.

Sitting a little apart from the rest, Judith managed to skip most of the bottle's rounds. The rest of them deserved the chance to relax, and she was happy to give it to them, but someone had to stay relatively alert and on watch. And she didn't feel particularly merry. She was still, after all this time, surprised by how much she missed Daniel. Unbelievable, really—after two days of knowing each other, she found even now that she turned to make a comment to him as though she expected him to be there right behind her. More often than not, it was Alistair or the elf assassin, Zevran, there instead. She turned the bracelet on her wrist, sighing.

"She's mopin' again," Oghren brayed.

"Thinking of her long-lost lover." Even Zevran's accented tones were slurred by now, and he took a swig from the bottle, his eyes gone all misty with some kind of memory. At any other time, Judith would have been tempted to probe into that memory. Zev didn't let his true feelings show that often.

Leliana giggled. "I think there are certain things that have to happen before you can be called—"

"A lover," Alistair chimed in, parodying Zev's accent horribly. Judith frowned. Alistair was like the brother she'd never had—equal parts warmly protective and deeply annoying. She was particularly irritated by his assumption that sharing a tent with Leliana for a few months made him experienced in the ways of men and women. It didn't match years in the Tower, where the combination of magic, proximity, and the forbiddenness of it all had made amorous activity the rebellion of choice among the apprentices. Judith had seen entirely too many of her former lovers either lying dead in the Tower or turned into abominations, and she could still feel the dagger she had thrust into the stomach of Jowan, her first, as though she'd stabbed herself along with him. There had always been something in Jowan that was a little too weak, a little too eager to find the easy way out. It shouldn't have been such a surprise when he turned out to be a blood mage. And looking back on it, Judith suspected it hadn't been a surprise to the First Enchanter.

Looking up, she caught Wynne's sympathetic gaze across the campfire, as though the older mage had been following Judith's thoughts. Rumor had it that Wynne's own youth had been quite wild, even by mage standards. Judith wondered how many of Wynne's lovers had been turned into abominations, how many she'd seen taken down by the Templars, how many had succumbed to the temptations of power and pleasure offered by the misuse of magic.

The party was winding down, Leliana half-dragging Alistair back to their tent, Oghren snoring where he had fallen, his ale mug cradled in his arm. Sten, the qunari, and Morrigan, the apostate mage, were nowhere to be found. Neither was particularly fond of fraternizing with the rest of the company—and the feeling tended to be very mutual. As long as they were there for the fighting, Judith didn't much care where they went at night.

She watched with some amusement as a tipsy Zevran made yet another of his constant attempts to get at Wynne's bosom. The mage waved him off like a gnat, nowhere near drunk enough to give in the elf's cajoling.

At last, they both went into their tents, leaving Judith alone in the chill night, staring up at the stars and twisting the bracelet on her wrist.