An Apology

Fremelda growled a bit to herself, she knew she had to stop being so bitter but it was hard when her pride was so wounded from being blackmailed. Still, she knew she had to make it up to the Cousland girl for her lack of cooperation. Fremelda sighed and then stood outside of Macha's tent, hoping she would be in so they could get this over with. "Cousland? Are you there?" She asked in a strained voice, trying to be nice but she just could not go back to using Macha's proper name until this was out of the way. Last time I called her 'Macha' was when we had met in Denerim in the Gnawed Noble. Heh. she thought to herself and sighed.

"She's not in."

A voice with barely concealed amusement came from just behind Fremelda, and a mighty bark accompanied it soon after. Macha stood, smiling wryly at the red-headed woman, lifting an eyebrow in silent question. For a brief moment, she stood like that, and then turned with the bundle of wood that was in her arms, moving it from one where it resting against her hip to hold in both of her hands. She looked back over her shoulder and motioned for Fremelda to follow, and then she and Argos walked off, not looking back to see if the former-assassin was coming after them.

The mabari stopped at the fire and waited for the two women to catch up, watching half-interestedly as Macha set the wood down by the burned-out pit. She straighten up and dusted her hands off against each other before setting them on her hips and turned to look at Fremelda. "Well, here I am. Was there something you needed?"

Fremelda's back tensed up as she heard the voice behind her. "Impressive. Not everyone can sneak up on me." she said and sighed, turning around and following Macha to the fire pit. Her hair was pushed back away from her face with a hand and she looked into Macha's eyes, and took a deep breath. "Alright... Spirits know this is a difficult thing to do... I've... come to realize I have been... not very accepting of you... ever since you blackmailed me into joining the Wardens. It's callous of me to carry on like this..." she said then cleared her throat to purge the awkwardness. "I know you don't warrant such an attitude so... I've come here to apologize to you..." she said and looked away, biting her lip.

Macha watched as Fremelda worked to get the the words out, raising an eyebrow at the continued mention of her 'blackmail,' but otherwise kept quiet. She knew better than most that it was hard to admit when you were wrong.

"There's nothing to apologize for," she said evenly, her eyes intent on Fremelda's face, even though the red-headed assassin was looking away. "You're a Warden now, and a part of this rag-tag family of mine. I did you wrong by not telling you everything about the joining, and for that, I am sorry. Your 'attitude', as you put it, has been nothing short of expected. I deserved it, plain and simple. I imagine that you wouldn't be 'you' if you'd forgiven and forgotten so easily." She glanced down at Argos, who was looking up at her, and then she looked back at Fremelda, shrugging a little. "I do appreciate the sentiment, however. I imagine that it wasn't easy to bring it up."

Fremelda felt an overwhelming sense of relief after the apology was out and accepted for the most part. Though it seemed that Macha was doing more apologizing. Fremelda turned back to look at the Cousland girl and bit her lip. "You were doing your job... can't fault that... Nor were you trying to kill me. So yeah... you don't need to sleep with an eye open anymore..." She said, and then looked down at the Cousland girl's dog. Argos, like most Mabari was big and threatening around those unaccustomed to seeing them. Fremelda, being native of Fereldan, was accustomed to them, so she wasn't bothered. Still, she knew Mabari were killers on command.

The awkward silence was building up again.

She turned to start settling the wood around the fire, fixing them out of the lump she'd dumped them down in. As she went about doing that, she glanced back over her shoulder with an amused look, an eyebrow raised inquisitively. "You were sleeping with an eye open?" she asked with a small measure of disbelief, then shook her head as if she'd only just realized that, yes, she could believe it. Argos gave one bark to signal his own amusement, but remained quiet, trotting off to sit with his back resting against a log by the fire, watching Fremelda stand of Macha with a wary eye.

"Why don't you come here and help me set up the fire for tonight, hm?" she suggested, this time not turning her head. Building fires was, admittedly, not one of her better camping talents, but she was better than some. Nygozy had always surprised her with being able to build good fires - coming from the underground tunnels, Macha wouldn't have thought they'd need fire, but once she'd given more thought about it, she realized that the ability to make a smokeless fire would be a great asset in Orzammar. She fiddled with moving a log into leaning against another without rolling away, and then sat back on her heels to examine her work.

Fremelda grimaced. She idly put a lock of hair behind her ear and sighed. "I said you don't need to sleep with one eye open anymore, Cousland." she said and then walked with Macha to retrieve some firewood that either Durbans or Guremi had gotten earlier. As Fremelda helped stoke the fire, she bit her lip as the silence mounted. She never trusted anyone before, she still didn't trust these people but she was willing to give Macha a chance now at least, to be a friend.

It was all so new to her, she didn't know what to do.

"I wasn't," she retorted, turning to look past her shoulder at the red-headed woman. Her amused smile reached into her eyes before she laughed and turned back to the fire she crouched in front of. There were, of course, several other, smaller fires about, but most of them were smouldering out, and this was the main pit. Keeping it lit most of the time was important, for both warmth and cooking, and finding good fire wood in this damp area was difficult. Of courses, a mage could have just lit it up like that, but Macha was no mage, so she had to make due with the old-fashioned way.

"Fremelda," she said after a long moment of silence, and she didn't turn her immediate attention away from poking a stick around the pile of wood, adjusting some of the pieces to better support a long-burning fire. "Please, do not mistake this for ingratitude. I really do appreciate it, your sudden change of heart. I'm not fond of being on someone's bad side, especially not someone I've grown to think of as family." She paused then, and did finally look back at the assassin, to show that, yes, she did consider the woman to be a part of her family (whether Fremelda wanted it or not). "But what brought on this sudden decision to apologize? I don't think I've done anything special to warrant it. Or have I just grown on you?" She added the small joke in at the end to playfully tease at the assassin, but really, she just wanted the other woman to be comfortable. The noblewoman turned Warden had no desire to alienate any of their party, and Fremelda most of all. If anything, she did feel responsible for dragging the woman into this life. She very well could have killed her, and it ate at her insides every night, knowing that she'd very nearly traded the woman's life for nothing. In a way, she felt like that with all of the initiates, but she had brought Fremela to the Wardens personally. She would have gone on with her life if the Joining had taken the assassin's life, but it would have added another face to her ever-present nightmares.

The Queen of Thorns regarded the noble carefully, hair on the back of her neck standing up a little. The question was a fair one, but not one Fremelda felt she had a satisfactory answer for. She sighed and averted her eyes. "Because I have come to accept my doom. The constant nightmares, for example. Dying young isn't a problem, no one in my family history ever died of old age. It's that my crusade against my parents will have to be put on hold." She said before sitting down, rubbing her temples with her fingers, as if nursing a headache. "I'll have my revenge someday."

Her eyes narrowed slightly at Fremelda's talk of revenge, and she turned back to poke at the logs, the fire in her eyes rather than in the pit. She was the very last person in Thedas that could judge someone for desiring their revenge, and that was precisely the reason for her turning away. Even if she'd wanted to do the right thing, to tell Fremelda that she could forget her feelings and turn to the life ahead of her rather than wallowing in her hatred, it would make her nothing more than a hypocrite, and she knew all too well that once that demon gripped you, it never let you go, not really.

"Are they bad?" she asked suddenly, not looking up. Her hand twisted in Argos's fur, seeing the comfort of her most loyal and beloved companion, and the dog turned his head to lick at her hand, reassuring and grounding her in the moment so that she wouldn't lose herself in her thoughts. "Your nightmares, I mean. They're worse for some than for others."

Fremelda stared at the campfire flames, stoking them with a stick. She was a long time in answering Macha's question, lost within her own inner demons. Revenge was what had kept her going through her tortured childhood in the brothel. Revenge was what drowned out the stench of musk and ale and rancid meat. Revenge was what kept her mind away from the grunts above her and below her. That hatred kept her from killing herself years ago.

The desire for justice.

"Dark, twisting shapes. Making me relive every moment I ever experienced in that stinking whorehouse tenfold over. Every time I see that....thing in the porcelain mask walking around camp, the dreams occupy my waking hours too." she said in a quiet tone, forcing back her feelings of dread. She hated The Shadow. Its presence made her sick. That it was a Darkspawn she could not sense made her edgy. She wagered the other Wardens probably felt that way around it too.

The noblewoman shivered, an unspoken verification of her own feelings toward the strange darkspawn that loitered around their campfires. She couldn't claim to have any love for the creature - not in the slightest - but despite the nightmares he invoked, Nygozy had chosen to trust him, and Macha refused to doubt the decision of their Hero. For good or for ill, he was there to stay, no matter how much he was driving the Wardens in their midst up the walls.

"I know what you mean," she agreed, belatedly realizing that Fremelda might not have noticed her silent agreement, staring at the flames as she was. "I'd say try not to pay him any mind, but it's difficult, isn't it? Maybe you should, I don't know, take up knitting or something. That would clear your mind." She looked over her shoulder to smirk at the red-haired assassin, flicking an ember back into the flames. "Or at least bore you to sleep. I don't think you could manage staying awake for long if you took it up."

For all of a jest it might have been, it was the best she could offer. Dealing with nightmares had never been a talent of hers, and giving advice seemed hollow if she couldn't even figure it out for herself. The Warden dreams of darkspawn and deep roads mixed with images of her parents, of Highever burning, of Howe's face until they all blended together. Every night invented a new way of combining them all into a sick pastiche of coherence, and she would have been impressed by her own imagination if she wasn't busy feeling sick to her stomach. There was really only one bit of advice she could comfortably offer. "You get used to it." That didn't make it better, but when half-sleepless nights and sweat-soaked sheets became the norm, it stopped mattering.

The assassin's mind was troubled by her nightmares, and the things they represented in her. She forced her discomfort not to show by keeping her facial expression neutral. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "It's like a hole in the world. You know it's a Darkspawn but it just doesn't register in your senses. It's-" When she heard the quip about knitting, she lowered her head slightly, her steel blue eyes giving an incredulous look to Macha.

"Could you see me actually knitting? I highly doubt it. I'm no lady. I'm a former whore-turned-assassin. Knitting is one of the skills I do not need."

There was no ignoring that one. She smirked privately at the fire and rocked back on her heels, standing up from her crouch to lay a hand on the redhead's shoulder. "Maybe a sense of humor is, though. I was only kidding - as if you'd be the sort to take up knitting." With a firm pat on Fremelda's shoulder, she continued walking past her, Argos silently rising to pad along at her side. There was still plenty to do to get the camp ready for nightfall, but setting the fire had been her only assigned task so far, and staring at it wasn't going to help things move along any faster.

"If you want to help out to take your mind of things, feel free. We always need an extra hand for cooking or sorting medical supplies." There were others who looked after those things, of course, but she wasn't lying when she said that help was always welcome in a camp their size. "Unless you'd rather sit around getting crocheting lessons from our Shadow friend." There was also the very real possibility that Fremelda would prefer to rest, especially if she was still feeling the after effects of her Joining, but Macha didn't take her for the sort that rested when they were supposed to. Keeping busy might even help keep the memories of her nightmares at bay, too - idle hands were a demon's playground, after all.

The assassin smiled slyly and shook her head. "Not much else I can do but help around camp somehow. And I refuse to go anywhere near that... thing." she said acidically about The mention of The Shadow. Still, she stood up straight and paced a bit. "Scouting... I could scout. I'm quick on my feet. But then, you probably have the thing doing the scouting. It never sleeps."

"Ah, I wouldn't be so sure about that," she called back as she walked a pace ahead of the assassin. "I don't know if Nygozy trusts him enough to leave the scouting up to him. Or, not all of it at least. I'm sure you could volunteer to be his babysitter, but from the way you talk, I'm sure that would pretty low on your list of priorities."

She stopped, turning to meet the red-headed woman face to face, and leveled her with a more serious, sympathetic look. "Fremelda, stop worrying about that darkspawn. Everything you say seems to go back around to him, and fixating on him isn't going to help you get over your nightmares. They're bad enough as it is." Argos made a growl of agreement, looking up at the assassin with the almost human intelligence of the mabari.

The Queen of Thorns sighed and relented. "Alright. I'll try and not to think about the creepy thing that we're supposed to be able to sense but can't." she said in her usual dry wit, although a tinge of apprehension behind her bluster. She scratched the back of her head. She cautiously scratched Argos behind the ears, unsure about whether the Mabari even liked her or not. She had little interaction with the hound even though it was usually hanging around Macha.

"Guess we should get going..." she sighed, staring off into the distance.

"No," she corrected, lifting her hand once more to rest on Fremelda's shoulder, bringing the assassin's attention back to her. "You're not going anywhere. You need some rest. Some real rest. I'm sure you'd prefer to wear yourself half to death before you lie down and face your dreams, but that's only going to slow you down when we really need you."

She patted her shoulder, and then let her hand fall to her side again, grazing Argos's head in a comforting gesture. "Go talk to Jezarine. I'm sure she has some herb or other that will help you get through the night a little easier. And no, I'm not saying she's going to drug you or anything, so don't worry yourself over that. We all deserve a good night's sleep every once in a while. I'll wake you if anything happens, okay?"

An eyebrow rose, stern and motherly, clearly reading that she wouldn't take no for an answer. With her hands perched on her hips, she made for a formidable figure, watching the redhead expectantly as she nodded her head in the direction of Jez's tent. "Go on, Ms. Thorn. Get some sleep, or I'll have Argos drag you off."