In League With The Wolf - The Elves of Fen'Harel Book 2 (Dragon Age)

Together

Marcus was staying in Varric's old home. It was palatial, Tilda thought, standing in the square before the colossal manor. She knocked on the door, alone. Merrill had gone home, and Varric was still working. He had offered to escort her, but this was something she needed to do alone.

She was frightened, shivering in her green dress, huddled in a cloak that Varric had pilfered from somewhere, staring up at the door. What if he didn't want her? What if he'd moved on? What if he was angry with her?

It had started to rain, turning from a mild drizzle into heavy sheets of water that lashed against the hood of her cloak.

Just ring the bell, Tilda, she told herself. Stop being an idiot.

She rang it, and waited.

After an excruciatingly long time, the door opened, and she braced herself. But it was not Marcus's face she saw. Instead, an older man stood there, a human who looked down his nose at her, standing there on the front step. "Do you have an appointment?" He asked after a long silence. His eyes looked her up and down.

"No..." She trailed off, getting steadily soaked. "I'm here to see Marcus. Is he here?" She looked behind him, half expecting to see her old lover running towards her.

"Oh." The man's lip curled, taking in her bedraggled appearance in the old cloak, her pretty dress getting wet underneath, her elven ears poking out. He saw just another elf, a poor elf, a beggar perhaps. He saw someone less than him, because of her race, never daring to dream that she was just as intelligent, as real, with the power to send him flying with the flick of a finger and a spell.

This was what they were fighting for, she realised. The more she saw of the real world, the more she understood. Solas was right. They needed to change.

Maybe she should never have come.

"You must be one of Master Octavian's pet projects from the alienage." The man said contemptuously. "He's not here. He has business to attend to today." He paused. "It might be better for you to go."

She took a step back, stricken. She'd been a fool to come. She should have stayed with Solas and the other elves, where she was wanted, accepted.

The Marcus she had known wouldn't be living here, with servants.

"What name would you like me to leave for him?" The man drawled.

"I..." She stopped, and then reached into her cloak, pulling out a pouch of black velvet. Within it was Flemeth's, Mythal's, necklace. She hadn't been able to bring herself to wear it again, after everything, but she kept it close. Marcus would know it. "Give him this pouch. He'll know what it means."

The man frowned, but took it, slamming the door shut. Her reception would have been different if Varric had been with her, she knew. It just proved Solas's point, Greer's arguments, Nanin's grievances.

She fled into the rain, not knowing the city well enough to have any idea of where she was going. For hours, she roamed the streets, now quiet thanks to the driving rain. She climbed the walls and stared out at the churning sea.

It would be easy enough to leave, if she could find her way back to the alienage. She could go back through Merrill's eluvian, get back to the mansion. But for now she would wait...just in case.

****

Marcus Octavian strode out of the rain, banging through the front door of what had strangely become his home in Kirkwall. It was miserable out there, he thought, the wind piercingly cold. He'd seen to Varric's affairs on the dock that day. There'd been evidence of sabotage over the past weeks, but Marcus had put a stop to that.