Seeing Beneath Your Masks

Title: Seeing Beneath Your Masks
Words: 1,256
Series: Dragon Age
Characters: Alistair Theirin, F!Brosca
Summary: Just a little drabble that came to me whilst I was finishing up the Orzammar/Deep Roads section. His fellow Warden has never been one to share her checkered past lightly except with him so Alistair is rather distracted when they head to Orzammar to settle the old Warden treaty with the dwarves.

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When they passed through the gates of Orzammar, Alistair's eyes strayed from her so little that he almost tripped over his own feet several times. He caught Wynne smiling at him a few times - though he was a little wary to call it 'grandmotherly' anymore thanks to some things she'd said to him - and Zevran ramped up his suggestions of how he could 'improve' himself for her. Both attitudes made him want to scream but he held his temper as well as his tongue in check purely for her sake.

Everyone they traveled with knew she was casteless - that was blindly obvious thanks to the brand that covered her right cheek and eye. There were some things though...some details of her past that she hadn't shared with them. These were things that had only been spoken in the darkness of their now shared tent, secrets of her life that she only wanted to share with him.

She said it was because she didn't want to seem weak to the others.

It was Alistair's opinion that she was ashamed of the person she had been and she didn't want them to know. Why she wanted him to know that side of her was a mystery to him but he accepted it as readily as he did everything else. He knew full well that she was no longer that person - and given how disdainfully she spoke of the things she'd done for the carta, the person she had never truly been at all.

Those secrets spoken in the dark were the reason he watched her. He knew what setting foot back in Orzammar really meant to her and what she was going to have to face after having been gone for so long. And he knew too that whatever pain she felt, whatever hurt was brought to the surface during their time in the city, that she would not allow it to show until they safely had the stones to their backs.

Alistair's heart ached for her far too many times as they moved through the city.

When she flinched just that slightest barely noticeable inch when one dwarf refused to look past the brand on her face, he warred between the need to wrap her in his arms and run the idiot through with his sword.

He stared beyond the outer facade she threw up as Bhelen's man Vartag confirmed that the papers they'd been given were forgeries, seeing the pain underneath that mask as she realized that the politics of the noble caste were just as twisted as those she had dealt with in the carta. If he could have spared her that realization, he would have but Alistair knew that truth all too well himself. That was one he couldn't protect either of them from.

Then there was the rage that he saw revealed only in the subtle shift of her hips when they learned how likely it was that the Prince had orchestrated the murder and exile of his elder brothers that led to the death of their father. Zevran had given him a lecherous smile when he'd caught him watching but Alistair only felt sick at his stomach. She had been happy for her sister before then but now he knew that she could only see the blood on Bhelen's hands and that stain spreading to her sister and nephew.

He had wanted to take her away from the city when they had gone after the carta and she had discovered the betrayal of her friend Leske. The cold, detached look upon her face as she had stared down at his corpse made him want to leave, dwarven allies or no, because that wasn't her. That look didn't belong to the rough-tongued yet bright and kind woman he had started falling in love with out in the wilderness. It belonged to the woman she spoke of fearing and who he had sworn he would never let her turn into - but he knew better than to approach her now. If he did she would crumble and there was no time for that with the Assembly in such an uproar.

When they entered the Deep Roads, Alistair had to war with his need to keep his eyes on her. Focusing on the Darkspawn was far harder than it should have been, his worry was so great to her, and it took him three days of travel through those ancient tunnels before he was able to focus the impotent rage he felt at being unable to help her towards the monsters.

As they stumbled across Hespith and learned what had become of Branka and her House, he almost thought she was going to break right then. She held it together, however, and delivered a blow of mercy not only to the twisted broodmother but later to the Paragon herself as the insane smith fell in battle. He saw her hands shake though after she dropped the hammer that had destroyed the Anvil of the Void and knew that her mask wasn't going to hold for much longer.

When Bhelen ordered Harrowmont executed and she bellowed that she had not thrown in her vote with him for him to be a tyrant, Alistair felt his own world crumbling with hers. He ignored Zevran and Wynne's curious looks as he stepped up next to her, resting one hand lightly on her shoulder. The shiver that ran through her then was felt even through armor just as heavy as his own and he leaned down to say over the roar of the Assembly, "Let's go."

They fled after a short goodbye to her sister and a promise that the old treaty would be held to and neither of them could seem to move fast enough. No one spoke as she came into the camp outside the city like a thunderstorm and he followed on her heels into their tent, knowing what was about to come.

She held onto the mask as they both stripped out of their armor but the moment the last piece of each was laid aside, it slipped. Tears welled in her green eyes and Alistair was finally able to wrap his arms around her as he had wanted to so desperately during their weeks in Orzammar. He sat down on their doubled up bedrolls and pulled her short, sturdy frame into his lap as a sob escaped her lips, breaking open the dam she had held it all behind. There was no stopping her cries of agony from escaping after that and every one broke his heart anew until he ended up crying along with her.

When her sobs finally faded, she touched his face with rough, dirty fingers and he turned his head so he could press a kiss against her palm. And as she tried to breathe out an apology, he stopped her words by pressing his fingers against her lips.

They were too exhausted physically and mentally that night to do anything more than lay next to each other, her smaller frame enveloped by his as he lay snugly behind her. As he toyed sleepily with her short red hair, though, she asked in a soft voice, "How did you know?"

Alistair didn't need to ask what she was talking about. He merely smiled and pressed a kiss against the back of her neck before he answered quietly, "You know how, my love. You're the one that made be able to see beneath your masks after all."