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“Caught Merrill making eyes at you the other night at the Hanged Man,” Varric says, offhandedly, in that way of his. His thumb strokes the edge of a tattered set of playing cards that he always keeps with him.
Aeron narrows his eyes at those cards, just as Varric absently begins to shuffle them.
Everyone had their nervous habit, and that was Varric’s.
“Varric, I told you…”
“I know, I know,” the dwarf says, hurriedly, “Anders ruined it for ya.”
Aeron huffs, the gust of air billowing out of his mouth in a misty cloud. The cold doesn’t seem to bother Varric, but Aeron’s huddled in his fur hood, shoulders hunched to his ears, as they wait for Isabela to emerge from the Rose. Waiting inside without partaking of the goods had stopped becoming an option after too many dirty looks from the Madam.
”Anders didn’t ruin anything. I just… don’t want to get involved with anyone. Not like that. Not… now.”
The truth is, he cannot look at Merrill without seeing Bethany — in those large, expressive eyes, in the way she unquestioningly trusts Aeron, in her penchant for green things. And wherever he sees Bethany, he sees pain, white-hot behind his eyes, a wrench of his heartstrings, a dig of his fingernails into his bruised palms.
“She’s a nice girl, Spike.” Aeron scowls at the nickname, a reference to his bristly hair. “Think about it, at least.”
Isabela comes out then, laughing, her arm thrown around a furiously blushing Merrill, and the conversation is conveniently forgotten.
—
“Fire or ice?” Merrill asks, and Aeron grunts questioningly.
“Fire,” she repeats, a small lick of flame appearing in one of her hands, “or ice?” A fine film of ice appears on the other. “Which is your favourite? I don’t like either much, to tell you the truth. I like my roots, and my ivy.”
Disarmed, he looks down at his hands. “Uh.” Bethany was good with water. Too good, sometimes. ”Fire.”
“You have a fiery heart,” she comments with a firm nod, nervously twisting the ring on her right hand, round and round. “It’s usually warm, like a hearth, but sometimes it’s—”
Aeron clears his throat and pushes to his feet, suddenly uncomfortable. “I ought to get back soon, actually. Mum’s up at the Keep, and I don’t like leaving Carver and Gamlen in the house alone…”
“Did I say something wrong?” Merrill is all twisted-vine and quivering leaf as she jumps to her feet. “I- I’m sorry, I only meant—”
Aeron smiles quickly, too quickly, so that the gesture looks more like a wince. “It’s not you. Really.” It’s me. ”I just… forgot. That I wanted to get back. That’s all.
I’ll visit again. Soon.”
“Will you?” Her voice, hopeful but sad, follows him into the Alienage, follows him back to Gamlen’s, follows him to his pallet as he tries to sleep.
Will you?
—
“Merrill says you haven’t been to see her—”
“Damn it, Varric, what are you trying to pull?” Aeron wheels on him in frustration, even as the dwarf holds his hands up and tips his head downward in that placating way of his. “It’s like you two are… ganging up on me, or something! You’re worse than my mother!”
“No one’s worse than Leandra,” Varric replies matter-of-factly. “Just the other day, in fact, she asked me if I had any connections in Hightown. I thought she was still thinking about the estate, but turns out she wanted to know who in the nobility had daughters.”
His former frustration forgotten, Aeron gapes. “How often do you talk to my mother?”
“More often than she tells you, apparently.” Varric doesn’t bother hiding his amusement. “I don’t think she’d mind Merrill and you too much, even though she’s not nobility. At long as she gets her grandbabies.”
“I’m not— I—” Spluttering, the mage throws his hands up in the air. “Everyone’s conspiring against me!”
“Speaking of, we’re here.” Varric had brought him out of Gamlen’s hovel with the promise of a good deal at a shop Isabela recommended, and Aeron, nonplussed, had gone along.
It turned out to be Jorman’s Apothecary.
Isabela bursts into laughter as soon as Aeron storms into the Hanged Man, the hilariously embarrassed and furious look on his face saying all.
—
A year passes. They go into the Deep Roads, Varric and Bartrand and Aeron and Carver and the damned Grey Warden — former Grey Warden. Carver is handed over to the actual Wardens that Anders sniffs out of the Stone, the Blight-sickness a grey and blue pall over his shrinking flesh, his eyes unfocused and rheumy but still fierce as they cast one last look back at Aeron.
Merrill, jubilant, starts to run up to him when he returns to Kirkwall, but stops short at the look in his eyes.
Anders is distant and businesslike. Varric is busier than usual, trying to find Bartrand out, trying to evade the Merchant’s Guild, trying, always trying. Leandra serendipitiously meets Ser Thrask and suddenly spends more evenings out.
And so Aeron slips into the Alienage, once again.
“You’re here because no one else is around, right?” Merrill asks glumly, in that accidentally astute manner that is her trademark, her hands curled around a cup of questionably murky water that she hasn’t even sipped at. Aeron’s is forgotten as well, in front of him, his hands stiff in his lap. “I’m the last-resort friend.”
“That’s not true,” but Aeron can’t even inject conviction into his voice.
“Am I not good enough?” He is shamed at her frankness, at the way her eyes bore into him, demanding the truth, demanding dignity. “Is that what it is? Is it because I am an elf?”
“No!” he almost shouts, and she frowns disbelievingly. “That’s not… look, I just…”
“I don’t recall ever asking you for much, Aeron.” Her fingers go to fiddle with the ring on her right hand, pause, then settle. “I asked if you would visit me sometime, that’s all. And maybe… I don’t know. Maybe I’d hoped, but…”
She sighs, at the same time he does, and the coincidence makes their eyes dart towards each other.
“It’s cold outside, you know,” and she isn’t talking about the weather. “You… have a fiery heart.”
—
When she gets up to tend the fireplace, Aeron calls fire to his finger, a delicate lick of it, and etches a crude daisy into the wooden table. His lips twitch in a bemused sort of way. Never could resist, could I. Not since the beginning.
—
She still reminds him of Bethany, sometimes, but less often. She tells more dirty jokes, for one — most of them repeated from conversations with Isabela. And she sings better, and in Dalish. Aeron falls asleep to the sound of her singing, just once, and finds that he cannot sleep well without it from then on.
“Mages,” Fenris mutters once, “always seeking to bewitch someone,” and perhaps he has a point.
Aeron minds less and less as the months wear on.
Waiting for Merrill to fussily tidy up, Aeron drifts over to the wooden table that still takes up one side of the room, and finds that a small picture of a flame has been etched next to the little daisy, and the daisy etching has somehow grown taller, as if fed by the flame.
—
“Caught Aeron making eyes at you the other night in the Hanged Man,” Varric says, offhandedly, in that way of his, and Merrill lightly punches his arm even as she smiles, brilliantly, in that way of hers.