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She was never one for overt displays of emotion; she didn’t cry when they took her from her home, when the Wardens expelled her from their midst, or when she gave away her child.
So when word came back from Adamant that the Inquisitor’s party had left Alistair behind in the Fade, Fiona’s eyes remained clear and dry, her lips pressed into a firm line. She would not weep. It would serve no purpose, would not bring him back and he probably wouldn’t appreciate her tears; she had given up her right to grieve as his mother the day she had wrapped him in a warm blanket with a symbol of Andraste pressed next to his heart.
Even so, something must have shown on her face as Leliana paused and asked, gently, “Are you quite all right?”
“I’m perfectly fine,” she said, her own voice sounding distant and hollow to her ears. “Just a touch of headache.”
“Perhaps you should go lie down,” Leliana suggested.
“Don’t be absurd, my dear girl. There’s too much to do.”
Leliana slightly raised a brow, but said, “As you wish.” She paused as she passed Fiona on the way to the stairs and said in a low voice, “I am sorry. He was a good man.”
And that almost broke her control, but after a short, sharp inhale Fiona was able to reply in an even tone, “I'm sure he was. A pity I never knew him.”
The day to day running of a Circle, or what was left of it, kept her attention focused the rest of the day. There was the curriculum to decide upon, assigning the few enchanters capable of teaching to the even fewer novices, and listening to the never ending stream of demands and complaints.
“...and then he had the nerve to say that he’s Silence me if I didn’t - Grand Enchanter?”
Fiona shook her head and focused. “I am sorry. Woolgathering. Commander Cullen said he’d Silence you? Whatever for?”
The mage glanced down at his feet, then said, “I was rather upset and possibly had some lingering energy at my fingertips.”
She processed that for a moment before speaking. “You’re telling me that you went to complain to a former Templar, one who’d been tortured by malificar, with lightning flashing from your hands? No, I don’t wish to hear it,” she said, holding up a hand to stop his stuttering protests. “I swear, some days I can’t help but wonder if the Chantry wasn’t right to lock us up when a grown man has no more self control than a two year old. Leave me.”
Alone, she gave a report a cursory examination, then set it aside when the words blurred in the dim candlelight. I should go to bed, she thought, but remained seated until the last of the candles flickered out and the only light was the ghostly glow of the full moon.
There was a whisper of movement in the darkness, a sliding shadow against the window that resolved into the shape of a young man. Cole, she remembered after a moment’s thought. The boy that stayed in the tavern. He stared at her for a moment, then said, “You could not have saved him or stopped him. It was not for you to decide.”
“How do you,” she began and then stopped herself. “What are you talking about?”
“Alistair,” he said said simply. “You hurt and it called to me. I can help, or at least try. If you’ll let me.”
“I have no idea what you’re-” she started to protest, but he interrupted in a soft, sing song voice.
“Proud, practical, pained you let him go. He can never know his mother was an elf, a mage. Better to be a bastard of a scullery maid, better to be human. Let him grow up without shackles, scorn, shame. Let him be happy, my beautiful golden baby.”
“Stop it,” she said, her throat tight.
“He was. He was happy with the Wardens, with his Warden.” His voice changed, became older, clipped and he said, “Fought her way through the Arl’s estate, a trail of blood and corpses behind her, killed the Arl’s son and he wished he could have been there, could have spared her, saved her, but she was the one who saved him. So fierce and beautiful, she’ll be so angry with him, Maker, please let her understand.” He cocked his head and added in his own voice, “He never cared that she was an elf. Nothing mattered except that she loved him, wanted him.”
He couldn’t possibly know these things, she thought, but somehow knew it was true. And so she asked, needed to know, “Would he have loved me?”
The boy shrugged. “Who can say? He loved his mother, the idea of his mother. When he had to sleep with the dogs he made up stories that she would come back, somehow, someway, someday and wrap him up in a blanket, hold him.”
Fiona closed her eyes and pressed her lips tightly together. Stop, she wanted to say again, but did not trust her voice not to break.
“He kept this," he said and gently pressed a small ceramic disc into her palm. "But then left it for his son, the child with an old soul, wished he could have made it be different, made it better, but Morrigan is different soft, serene, sweet; a good mother. Still,” he added in that clipped voice, “the boy should know his father thought of him, wondered if he was well, hoped he was happy.”
Her fingers curled around it and traced the face of Andraste, marred by cracks, but still familiar.
The boy let out a breath and said, himself again, “I am sorry.” Then he stepped forward, tentatively took her in his arms and murmured, “Sometimes words aren’t enough to let the pain out. It’s all right.”
She stood for a moment, stiff and unyielding. He waited, his arms a loose clasp, easily broken. His breath against her ear was warm, and he hummed faintly, an Orlesian lullaby, the same one her father used to sing. Plaignons l'infortune de ce malheureux, he used to sing. Fiona clenched her fist around the symbol, then pressed it tight to her breast. And wept.