howtoactfereldan | (no subject)

"I got lucky enough to find someone who thinks I'm funny."

He tucks a stray curl of hair behind Cullen's ear, smiling.

"Better together, as you've said."

"We'll see if it's still true after our twentieth spider," he murmurs.

Alistair snorts out a tiny laugh.

"Are you worried we'll squabble over who chopped off which leg?"

"No," wry, "I'm worried you'll get your fill of spiders and curse me for asking you to come along."

"Were I going to yell about being sick of spiders -- "

He returns to smoothing his hand over Cullen's hair.

" -- it would've happened in the Deep Roads with Warden Cousland ten years ago."

"...you can't convince me that didn't happen."

"All right, look, there are a lot of spiders down there -- "

That's as far as Alistair gets before dissolving into laughter.

Cullen, grinning, stretches, and starts shrugging out of his coat in order to shed his armor. "I knew it."

"Never go to the Deep Roads if you can help it," says Alistair, shaking his head. He leans to stuff the journal into his rucksack. "Darkspawn?"

He makes a dismissive noise.

"It's the endless spiders that're truly the worst."

"That I believe." Vambraces gone, greaves gone. Cullen starts work on the pauldrons. "Two legs are much preferable to eight."

"Precisely."

As Cullen works on one pauldron, Alistair reaches to unfasten the other one.

"Fewer eyes as well. Easier to sneak up on a darkspawn."

(...Well, aside from that bit where darkspawn can sense Wardens as easily as Wardens sense darkspawn. Oh well.)

"With ranged weapons, ideally," he murmurs, and starts on his breastplate. Nearly there. Then he can stretch and sulk in freedom. "Better than spiders isn't saying much at all."

"True."

He unhooks one of the breastplate straps.

"Ideally, the Deep Roads would be filled with nothing but puppies."

"...you'd consign them to that fate, would you?" Cullen sneaks a glance at him while working on another. "Cruel, Theirin. Very cruel."

"Ideally," says Alistair, serene, "the Deep Roads would also be full of sunlight and flowers and steaks as far as the eye can see. They'll be fine."

"...at which point, they couldn't rightly be called the Deep Roads any more. Just roads."

He shrugs off the breastplate, and adds it to the neat stack along one of the walls of the tent.

"So what you're suggesting is to get rid of the Deep Roads altogether?"

"Yes." Firm. "Erase them completely off the map. No spiders, no darkspawn, no Blights -- "

No Calling, he doesn't dare say aloud.

(It's not as though Cullen doesn't know. Hasn't thought about it. There's also no guarantee he stopped the lyrium in time to preserve his mind. And there's also no guarantee Corypheus won't destroy Thedas tomorrow, or some other eldritch nuisance too vain for sanity.

Cullen made his choice. And he doesn't regret it.)

"Only a handful of dwarves might object, really," Cullen muses.

"So it's settled, then."

He slips an arm around Cullen.

"We replace every map of the Deep Roads with lots of violent scribbling and overturned inkwells."

"And that will fill them all with steaks and flowers, will it?"

"Of course. Everyone knows that."

He grins against Cullen's hair.

"Each time you cross something off a map, a field of daisies and a butcher's shop instantly spring up."

"Mind teaching that trick to Leliana's cartographers?" He leans heavily against Alistair. "We could use it."

"I'll get on that immediately, Commander."

He squeezes Cullen, lightly.

"Thank you," he murmurs. "Steak for breakfast, then."

A small, contented sigh. "I can think of nothing better."