Archive of Our Own ^beta

9:22 Dragon, Vigil's Keep

Elissa Cousland fought the urge to curse as she felt the telltale prickle of tears in the corners of her eyes. She was too old to let emotions get the better of her, and she knew it. She might technically still be a maiden, but she was on the borderline of becoming a woman in the eyes of the world, which meant she was far past the point where she should let her mask slip in such an obvious manner.

Ferelden's version of The Game might not be at the same level as it was in Orlais, but it was no less cutthroat in its own way. She couldn't afford to let herself start developing such bad habits, no matter the reasons behind them.

"When do you leave?" she asked, forcing her voice to stay as level as she could. There was a hint of a tremor in it that she couldn't quite hide, but she thought that she'd done a fairly good job at coming across calm and aloof.

Judging by the knowing look Nathaniel was shooting her, though, that might have been an overestimation on her part.

"Not for a fortnight," he said gently, and a part of her hated him for talking as if she was some delicate Orlesian flower who he thought would shatter if he were too blunt. He'd known her since she was a slip of a girl following at his and Fergus's heels, climbing trees and shooting a bow alongside them both. How dare he treat her like she was made of glass?

Elissa straightened, shoving the myriad of complicated emotions rushing through her into a tiny box and burying it as far inside of her as she could. "That's not long," she said, trying her best to sound nonchalant. As if his answer didn't matter to her in the least bit one way or another. "I suppose you'll be too busy making last minute preparations between now and then to properly entertain me the rest of our visit?"

The look on Nathaniel's face was a familiar one, and Elissa had the feeling that he was reading her like an open book. It wasn't that surprising. He knew her almost as well as she knew herself. Possibly even better at times, since she expected he was doing a better job at her at holding emotions at bay where they belonged. He'd probably guessed that she wouldn't take his news as well as she should.

They'd agreed when their romance had started that nothing would come of it in the long-term. Both of them knew that their fathers had different plans for their futures, and neither man was known for changing their mind once it was made up. It was her own fault for daring to hope for more than could possibly be given.

She should have known better. Only fools held onto dreams.

"The last I heard, there's still another week before Teyrn Cousland plans to return home," Nathaniel said slowly. Carefully. As if it was almost spring and he knew that he was treading on thin ice that might very well crack under his feet. "It would be quite unworthy of me to leave you to your own devices for such a long amount of time, especially when I'll have another week afterwards to make arrangements for my own departure."

Elissa stared at him for a long moment, a thousand and one thoughts all rushing through her head. Then she nodded in acquiescence, the corners of her mouth tugging upwards despite her best efforts at the relief she saw flash on his face.

One week. Seven days. That's all that they had before she returned to Highever and he boarded a ship to the Free Marches. It could very well be years before she saw him again, if she ever did. The future was always in motion, and one never knew what it might hold.

Still, a week. They had one last week to be together.

"I certainly hope you have plans to make it a memorable week," Elissa said, her words teasing even though her tone was deadly serious. He knew her well enough to know what she meant even if she didn't say it out loud.

Nathaniel studied her face for a moment. She wasn't entirely certain what he was looking for or what he found, but his expression softened as he leaned forward to brush a loose strand of hair out of her face. "Of course," he said. "I'm at your call." He paused before adding so softly that Elissa almost thought she had imagined it: "Always."

Damn him. She could feel her eyes threatening to begin watering again.

"I hate you," Elissa said, not even trying to hide what she truly meant with her tone of voice.

Nathaniel's mouth twitched, just slightly, before he pressed a kiss against her cheek. "I know."

9:30 Dragon, Kinloch Hold

Anders had lost track of time.

It wasn't unexpected. He always lost track of time when he was in solitary confinement, and this time was significantly longer than any of the previous bouts. Still, he might not know exactly how much time had passed, but he knew it had to have been months and months and months. Maybe even longer. He didn't think they'd keep him in solitary for over the year that Greagoir had sentenced him, but you never knew with templars.

Especially since he'd done a fair job of pissing them off royally his first few weeks back. Really, they needed to buck up. One tiny insinuation that their cocks were less than well-endowed, and they acted as if he was an abomination out to kill them all.

He hummed to himself, running his fingers over a familiar rough patch on the wall of his cell. The shape of it reminded him of a cat, albeit one with two heads and three tails. Still, it was definitely cat-like, and it was comforting to at least pretend that he had a cat to pet.

It was the little things.

He missed Mr. Wiggums. The cat might have been the most ill-tempered creature he'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, outside of some of the templars of course, but he'd been good company. Well, he'd been company at least, which was more than Anders had nowadays.

At least he'd taken a couple of templars out with him when he went. That's how Anders hoped he went out. Well, not the "possessed by a rage demon" part, but the "setting templars on fire in his last moments" bit had promise.

Of course, that all depended on whether or not they ever let him out. Maker, he hoped they let him out. He'd always hated solitary confinement, and Greagoir knew it, which was probably why he'd given Anders that as a punishment in the first place.

Anders glanced around the room, making sure there weren't any templars around. He knew there weren't, since they showed up as little as possible, but still. Better safe than sorry.

Then he snapped his fingers, watching as electricity danced along his hand. They hadn't dosed him with magebane for a while, apparently convinced he'd been scared into being a good little mageling who wasn't going to try to murder them all if they got too close. Still, Anders had been careful not to use any magic around them even though he had it back. With his luck, it would be enough to prompt them to change their minds, and it was a lot easier to sleep at night when he actually had mana to help protect him from the demons that wandered the Fade.

Somewhere above him, a door opened.

Anders made the sparks disappear immediately, lowering her head and doing his level best to make himself look as small and unassuming as possible. It was probably just one of the recruits who'd drawn the short straw coming down to bring him his latest unappetizing meal, but he'd learned the hard way that it was easier to play along and make them thing they'd finally broken him. Even the youngest templars could do some damage if they wanted.

"Well, I have to admit, this is a sight that I never thought I'd see," a familiar voice said. "Anders actually being quiet and respectful for once."

Anders's head jerked up at the unexpected sound of the Knight-Commander's voice coming from just outside his cell. Greagoir was standing there with a thoughtful look on his face, studying Anders closely. There were a few other templars behind him, some of the older ones who actually knew what they were doing rather than the green kids who usually came down to gawk at him.

That either didn't bode well or was a very good sign. Anders wasn't entirely certain which one it might be.

"Knight-Commander Greagoir," Anders said, his throat suddenly dry. Had it been a year? He hoped that it had, that they were there to finally let him out of his cage. Well, his tiny cage, at least. He'd have to work at getting out of the big cage himself, but he'd done it six times already and he'd be damned if he wasn't going to try for a seventh.

If it hadn't been a year, then it didn't bode well at all that the Knight-Commander had come to see him personally. They couldn't make him Tranquil, not now that he'd been Harrowed, but that didn't mean they didn't have the option of dragging him to the gallows if they decided keeping him alive wasn't worth the trouble.

Greagoir didn't say anything. He just kept watching him.

Anders was careful to keep a contrite expression on his face, his eyes focused deferentially lowered rather than meeting the Knight-Commander's gaze straight on. Greagoir knew him too well for him to successfully fool him otherwise, and if the man was there to set him free... well, Anders didn't want to do anything to risk him changing his mind.

"It's been a year," Greagoir said suddenly. "Have you learned your lesson?"

"Yes, sir," Anders said, his voice quiet. The words tasted like ashes in his mouth, but he said them anyway. Getting out of the dungeons was his only chance at possibly escaping the Circle.

There was a long pause. Then Greagoir snorted, although there wasn't any amusement in it. "We'll see," he said, and his voice was grim. "If you run again, you won't have the chance to try an eighth time. Do you understand?"

Ah. So they had moved onto the "threatening the mage" part of things. That was familiar, at least.

Anders nodded. "I understand."

And he did. The next time he escaped was going to be his last, one way or another. He just hoped that he got to take a few templar bastards down with him in the end if things didn't go in his favor.

9:30 Dragon, Lothering

It hadn't even been a full week, and Alistair was thankful beyond measure that Cousland had survived Ostagar alongside him. She was everything he wasn't, beautiful and smart and beautiful and talented and beautiful and a natural born leader. He would have been lost within an hour without her.

Although he probably needed to stop thinking about just how pretty he found her. It was already hard enough for him to have a conversation with her without blushing, and the last thing he needed was for that to get worse than it already was. Especially since there was little to no chance she hadn't already noticed his crush considering that even Morrigan of all people had commented on it.

If Duncan had been there, he'd have been laughing his head off by now.

Then again, if Duncan had been there, a lot of things would have been different.

But he wasn't. The only Wardens left were Alistair and Cousland, and despite any seniority he might have had, Alistair had no interest whatsoever in being the one in charge. Which only left Cousland, and so far she was doing a more than adequate job at not getting them killed. Much better than Alistair could have done, that's for certain.

Honestly, if Duncan hadn't mentioned it, Alistair never would have guessed that she was only a scant handful of years older than him. She looked young, of course, but she didn't act like it. She acted like the noblewoman she was, the daughter of the Teyrn of Highever with a bloodline almost as storied as his own.

Not that anyone actually knew that part, of course. Cousland included . And, well, he honestly preferred it that way.

Alistair sighed, reaching up to run his fingers through his sweaty hair. Cousland had gone off with Morrigan and the dog, and she'd given him instructions to gather up whatever provisions he could get his hands on. She wasn't going to be happy with him if she returned to find out that he hadn't managed to find almost anything.

Maybe he could try to threaten that merchant into lowering his prices. The man had just laughed at his last attempt, but he was starting to get desperate. Surely that counted for something?

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Alistair muttered. "If nothing else, maybe it would make me feel better if I punched him."

His mind made up, Alistair abruptly spun around to start walking back in the direction he'd come...

... only to crash right into a woman who'd been walking past him.

The woman staggered in place, but she didn't fall. She shot him an irritated look, and for a second Alistair would have sworn that he saw her eyes flash. Actually flash, kind of like how Morrigan's did occasionally when she was very, very annoyed with him.

The magical kind of flash.

Alistair's eyes widened before he could stop them, his gaze suddenly drawn to the walking stick the woman was holding that didn't look nearly as much like a walking stick as he'd thought now that he was looking more closely at it.

Considering he was currently a fugitive and all that, though, calling out an apostate mage seemed like a somewhat shitty thing to do.

"Sorry," he said, biting his lip. "I wasn't watching where I was going."

The woman he'd ran into didn't even acknowledge him, although he was pretty sure that he caught a flash of fear dance across her face for a moment when she noticed his gaze on her staff. She hurried past him, pulling her cloak up over her head as she did, leaving him with nothing more than an impression of dark hair and something red smudged across her face as she disappeared into the crowd of panicked villagers.

Oh, well. At least he'd tried to apologize. It wasn't his fault that running from the Darkspawn took priority over social niceties for most people.

Still, there was a part of him that couldn't help but wonder what an apostate mage was doing in Lothering of all places.

9:30 Dragon, The Deep Roads

The instant that the remains of the Anvil were out of view, Elissa stopped and just breathed for a long moment. Maker, but she was exhausted. It felt like she had been running nonstop ever since she'd left Highever, rushing from one impossible set of circumstances straight to the next, and every time she thought the worst was over something else came up to prove her wrong.

Once upon a time, she'd thought that saying goodbye to Nathaniel was the worst thing that could ever happen to do her. That was long before she'd found Oriana and Oren's bodies growing cold on the floor of Fergus's rooms. Before she'd been forced to run from the only home she'd ever known and leave her parents behind her to die. Before she'd drank darkspawn blood and watched Ostagar go so very wrong and gone on the run to save a country that thought she was trying to destroy it and... and...

"Now she does feast, as she's become the beast."

Elissa shuddered for a moment, her mind flashing back to the broodmother they'd fought earlier, and she knew without a shadow of a doubt that image would be joining a variety of others in her nightmares.

"Cousland?" Alistair's voice was quiet, hesitant, like he knew he was interrupting something and wasn't quite certain whether he wanted to or not. "Elissa? Elissa, we should probably keep moving. I feel more darkspawn heading this way."

Her mask was slipping, and she knew it. She could practically feel the cracks forming in it, and she had no interest whatsoever in mending them. Not just then at least.

Oh, eventually she'd have to put the mask back on and safely hide everything she was feeling and thinking behind a careful façade like she'd been trained to do from childhood onward. Ferelden would need her to be The Warden. Ferelden would need her to be a Cousland. Ferelden would need her to be more than just a person.

But for just a few minutes, it wouldn't hurt for her to let the mask fall. To just be Elissa, no more and no less.

The Elissa Cousland of six months ago would have been horrified by it, but that woman hadn't been through even a fraction of what she'd been through. That woman had a home and a family. That woman had been the younger child. The spare. The one who would marry well, most likely to someone her father wished to make an alliance with, but until then had no pressing concerns on her time or her energy.

Sometimes Elissa didn't even remember what it was like to be the Elissa Cousland of six months ago.

"Elissa?"

"I'm coming," Elissa said, her voice barely more than a whisper. "You're right. There's more coming this way. We should move while we can."

A hand grabbed hers, squeezing it tight, and she couldn't quite hold back a surprised gasp as she looked up and met Alistair's gaze. He's come up beside her while she'd been preoccupied with her woolgathering, and there were a dozen different emotions shining in his eyes. Concern and fear and anger and love, oh so much love, like she was the most important thing in all of Thedas to him.

Impulsively, she leaned forward and kissed him right on the lips. It wasn't the first time they'd kissed, and she hoped more than anything it wouldn't be the last, but they usually weren't so public about it. The others knew that they'd finally stopped dancing around each other, neither of them had been that subtle about it, but years of keeping her affairs private had trained Elissa not to make a spectacle of herself or her lovers.

But that had been Elissa Cousland, daughter of the Teyrn. Elissa Cousland, noblewoman. Now she was simply Elissa Cousland, Grey Warden, and Alistair was the same. And who cared what two Grey Wardens did with their lives? She wasn't a noble any longer, and Alistair had never been one. For the first time ever, the future could be whatever she wanted it to be.

Well, as long as they survived the Blight.

Alistair blinked at her as she broke the kiss, his mouth opening and closing as if he was trying to say something but couldn't quite come up with the words. She smiled at him a bit impishly, her fingers still intertwined with his.

"Come on," she said. "Let's get back to Orzammar. And then we'll head to Redcliffe like you wanted."

9:31 Dragon, West Hill

Anders kept his head down as he hurried towards the small room he'd been renting out for the past few weeks, careful not to draw any attention to himself. He'd been more careful than usual this time, trying his best not to let anyone find out that he was a mage, but – like had been the case in every single village, town, and city he'd been through since he'd ran from the Tower – he couldn't just stand by and do nothing when he saw someone who needed healing.

Especially not this time. She'd been a child, just a little slip of a thing, and he'd known the moment he saw her that she wouldn't last the week without magical intervention. The poison in her leg was too far spread for there to be any other outcome. If he hadn't interfered, she would have died. End of story.

He didn't think her parents would turn him in. They'd been shocked, and there had definitely been some fear mixed in when they realized that he was a mage, but it had been all but entirely replaced with gratefulness once they'd realized what he had done for their daughter. They didn't understand magic, but they knew enough to tell that he'd saved the girl's life. That stood for something.

Still, he couldn't risk it. All it would take was one wrong word to one wrong person, and he'd been screwed. And not in the fun way.

No, it was time for him to move on.

At least the Blight was over now, or so they claimed. There were still rumors about darkspawn wandering around, and from the way people talked there were plenty of bandits and other assholes out there trying to take advantage of the chaos even now that the worst was supposedly over. He'd been avoiding templars for years, though. Surely it couldn't be that difficult to avoid trouble if he stuck to the road and kept a low profile?

The question was where he should go. Highever? No, he'd heard rumors that things weren't great there, what with the Teyrn being murdered back before Ostagar. The man's son was apparently back in the city now and trying to pick up the pieces, and his daughter was the Queen and a Grey Warden and the Hero of Ferelden, so who knew just what eyes might be on that area?

No, Highever was probably somewhere best avoided for now.

Maybe Amaranthine? It was a decent-sized city, large enough for a single mage to disappear into for a while. And, if things went poorly, it was on the coast. Surely he could find a ship willing to take him somewhere across the Waking Sea.

Yes, that would work. Amaranthine. He'd set out for the coast, try to avoid any templars or other unwelcome eyes, and see what the future held.

He had a good feeling. Maybe things were finally looking up for him.

9:31 Dragon, Kirkwall

Nathaniel stared at the letter in his hands, reading it through for what felt like the thousandth time. The words hadn't changed, and yet they still seemed just as impossible now as they had the first time he had read them.

His father was dead, murdered by Grey Wardens and declared a traitor in the aftermath of his death. Vigil's Keep had been seized by the crown and given over to the same Grey Wardens who had murdered its previous inhabitant. And not just any Grey Wardens, but their leader was Elissa Cousland of all people, who had somehow joined their ranks in the years since he'd last seen her.

It made no sense. None of it. What they were saying about his father, what they were saying about Elissa... it just didn't seem possible.

They claimed that his father was a murderer and a traitor, that he'd killed Teyrn Cousland and most of his household in their beds, even Fergus's young son who couldn't have been more than a few years old. It had to be a lie. There had to be more to the story. His father was – had been – a hard man, but he wasn't the monster they were trying to make him out to be.

Rendon Howe and Bryce Cousland had been friends for years. Nathaniel and his siblings had grown up alongside Fergus and Elissa. It wasn't possible that his father had done what the letter claimed he had done. Nathaniel couldn't believe it. He wouldn't believe it. It had to be a lie.

Maker, he hoped that it was a lie.

He'd already said his goodbyes to Ser Rodolphe and booked passage on a ship heading out of Kirkwall towards Amaranthine. It had been easier than he'd expecting finding one headed that way. The Blight was officially over, based on the stories spreading far and wide, but refugees still poured out of Ferelden. There were more than a few unscrupulous captains still carrying boatloads of people across the sea, despite the fact that they knew Kirkwall and most of the other city-states of the Free Marches had long closed their doors.

Nathaniel couldn't quite force himself to care. As long as they took him back to Ferelden, it wasn't his problem nor his responsibility what a captain did after he left their ship.

A burst of laughter and the sound of distinctly Ferelden accents caught Nathaniel's attention, drawing his gaze away from the letter that he kept reading and re-reading for just a moment. There was a group of mercenaries gathered around a table on the far side of the room, a dark-haired man and woman who looked similar enough that they had to be siblings standing slightly to the side. New members, perhaps, ones who hadn't yet found their place in the hierarchy of the group.

The woman did a quick onceover of the room, and for just a moment Nathaniel was struck by how much she reminded him of Elissa. Not physically. Her hair was black and cut short, while Elissa's long red hair was usually pulled back in tight braids. There was something about bearing that caught his eye and held it, though, a hint of familiarity in an unfamiliar form.

"Damn it," Nathaniel muttered, pulling his gaze away and turning it towards the letter in his hands. "I haven't had nearly enough to drink to be this introspective."

He reached for his still half-full mug, downing the remaining ale in it. He needed to start thinking about what he was going to do once he made it back to Ferelden. It's not like he could just stroll right into Vigil's Keep, not with the current state of things.

No, he was going to have to be sneakier than that.

9:31 Dragon, Denerim

"Are you really going to leave me all alone to rule the country?" Alistair asked from where he was sprawled on their bed, his eyes as wide as Barkspawn's. "Don't you think that's a bad idea?"

Elissa walked over to the bed, leaning down to press a gentle kiss on his forehead as he pouted up at her. "Yes, I think it's a terrible idea," she agreed. "Unfortunately, I went and helped make you king of Ferelden, so there's not a lot I can do about it now."

Alistair shot her an overly dramatic hurt look. "I told you it was a horrible idea to put me on a throne," he said. "Now look at where we are. You're leaving, and I'm going to be the sole ruler of the country while you're gone. Isn't there some type of law that the queen can't abandon the king? If there isn't, can I make that a law?"

She didn't even try to hide her smile as she shook her head and went back to packing her bags. "You're acting as if I'm going to the Anderfels or Par Vollen or somewhere else ridiculously far away," Elissa said lightly. "Amaranthine is just up the coast. It's only a day's travel by ship and a few days by road. If there's an emergency, I can be back in less than a day on a fast ship."

"But you're leaving me in charge," Alistair whined, sounding all the world like a child instead of the twenty-year-old man he actually was.

Elissa rolled her eyes and dropped down beside him on the bed. "Yes, I am," she said. "Alistair, I love you, but you've been depending on me too much since the Blight ended, and you know it. This is your chance to learn what it truly means to be the king. You need to find your own feet."

Alistair didn't argue with her, and his silence said more than any words possibly could.

She reached down to play with his hair, allowing herself a brief respite. "What is this really about?" she asked after a few minutes of comfortable silence. "I know you well enough to tell when you're making a fuss about one thing to hide that you're upset about something else."

He glanced away from her, not meeting her gaze.

Elissa just sat there patiently. She knew her husband well enough to know he'd give in sooner rather than later.

It took longer than expected, but after almost five minutes of silence Alistair finally let out a sigh. "You spent a lot of time in Amaranthine and Vigil's Keep when you were younger, didn't you?" he asked. "I mean, you said that Howe was like an uncle to you until he... well, you know. And you mentioned that you spent a lot of time there. With his son. The one whose, uh, lamppost you licked."

Her eyes narrowed a bit at that. "Nathaniel?" she asked a bit incredulously. "Alistair, I haven't seen the man in over eight years. I don't even know if he's back in Ferelden. The last I heard, he was still in the Free Marches somewhere."

"But what if he's there?" Alistair blurted out. "What if you meet him, and he wants to pick back up where the two of you left off, and—"

Elissa reached out and put a hand over his mouth, cutting off his increasingly worried babbling.

"Alistair," she said firmly. "Calm down. You're panicking over nothing." She met his gaze. "I'm going to move my hand now. Are you going to stay quiet?"

He nodded.

She slowly moved her hand, uncovering his mouth. "Now," she said, " to answer your question, if by some twist of fate Nathaniel comes back into my life, the two of us are probably going to be a bit more preoccupied with the fact that his father killed my family and I killed his father than we are with anything that may have existed between us almost a decade ago."

Alistair opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

"Feel better?" she asked dryly.

He nodded. Then he blurted out: "I wouldn't mind."

Elissa tilted her head a bit in confusion. That... wasn't what she'd been expecting him to say. "What exactly is it that you wouldn't mind?"

"You told me about him, remember?" Alistair asked, his mouth twisting into a bit of a lopsided smile. "Your first love. The one you alway wondered 'what if?' about. And now you're going back to his home, the place where it all happened."

Elissa sighed. "I told you all that back when we were still just friends," she pointed out. "Before we were together. And that's not an answer to my question. What is it that you wouldn't mind?"

Alistair reached out to brush her cheek with his hand. "I don't want to be the one you chose just because of the timing of things," he said quietly. "If you did meet him again, I don't want you to always wonder 'what if?' just because you met me before you met him again. I don't mind sharing."

She stared at him for a long moment, a million different thoughts rushing through her mind, but not a single word coming to her tongue.

"I'd like to point out yet again that I don't even know if he's in Ferelden," Elissa pointed out finally. "This entire conversation is based on a hypothetical that very well might never happen."

"I know," Alistair said. "I just... I wanted to make sure you knew. I love you, I do, but I want you to be happy."

Elissa rolled her eyes. "I'm very happy with my husband," she said. "The one sitting beside me in bed right now. Maybe you've met him?"

Alistair snorted. Then he bit his lip. "But what if—"

Elissa let out a tired sigh before shifting position so that she was straddling his lap rather than simply sitting beside him. If providing him with a well-reasoned argument wasn't enough to calm his worries, she'd just have to resort to other means.

9:31 Dragon, Vigil's Keep

"Congratulations on not dying!" a light-haired man who Nathaniel was fairly certain he'd never met before said brightly as he plopped down on the foot of his bed. "Mind if I call you Nate?"

Nathaniel blinked, his mind still a bit muddled from however long he'd been unconscious since going through the Joining. Then, for good measure, he blinked again as he pushed himself up into a sitting position. The man sitting on the bed with him looked vaguely familiar, but he had no idea just who he actually was.

"Do I know you?" Nathaniel asked. Then his mind caught up with the second question, and he frowned. "And, yes, I mind."

If anything, the man's grin grew a little wider. "You were probably a little preoccupied at the time, but I'm one of the Wardens who was wandering around behind the lovely Commander Cousland. The name's Anders. It's nice to meet you, Nate."

"It's Nathaniel, not Nate," Nathaniel said, his voice a little sterner than he intended. "Where's Eli—" He cleared his throat. "Where's Cousland?"

Anders shrugged, although his eyes narrowed slightly in a way that made Nathaniel certain that he'd picked up on that little slip of the tongue. "In bed, probably," he said. "It's the middle of the night, so that's where most people tend to be."

Nathaniel stared at him for a long moment before his gaze drifted towards the dark window on the other side of the room.

"I'm hurt that you didn't just take my word for it when I said it was late," Anders said dramatically, bringing his hand up to rest on his heart. "You're going to have to make it up to me."

"If it's the middle of the night, why are you here?" Nathaniel asked slowly.

Anders shrugged. "I was up anyway, so I thought I'd pop my head in to see how you were doing." He winked. "I'm a healer, you see. I'm always up to give you a full physical inspection, if you'd like. I just finished giving a lovely little kitchen maid one, and she seemed to enjoy it fully."

Nathaniel stared at him.

Anders stared right back.

"Are you... always like this?" Nathaniel asked slowly, not entirely certain the entire conversation he was having wasn't just a dream. Or maybe a hallucination.

"I get asked that a lot," Anders said cheerfully. Then his somewhat manic smile faded a bit into something more akin to that of a regular person. "I really am a healer, by the way. Let me know if you need me to take a look at anything. I know the Joining takes a lot out of you."

Nathaniel reached up to rub the bridge of his nose.

"I get that a lot too," Anders said lightly. Then he reached out and rested his hand on Nathaniel's shoulder.

Before Nathaniel could react, Anders's entire hand lit up with a light blue glow, and a rush of warmth rushed through his entire body. The headache that he hadn't even realized he had faded, as did the faint nausea he'd been feeling.

Like magic.

"You're a mage," Nathaniel said, his eyes widening a little as he stared at the man still sitting on his bed.

Anders held up his hand and wiggled his fingers in his direction. "Guilty as charged," he said. Then, without warning, he bounced to his feet. "Now, you should get some more sleep. Healer's orders. See you in the morning, Nate!"

He was already out the door before Nathaniel had a chance to react. Or protest the shortening of his name by someone he didn't even know. Again.

Nathaniel stared as the door closed with a soft click. "What just happened?" he asked the world at large.

9:31 Dragon, Kirkwall

The door slammed shut in their faces.

"This is your fault," Carver muttered under his breath as he stared at the door that Gamlen had just closed on them, the sounds coming from the other side making it obvious that the man was barricading it with the meager furniture inside the room. "You know better than to smart off to him when he has a hangover. It never ends well."

Marian shrugged at him. "Gamlen always has a hangover," she pointed out. "What am I supposed to do? Not talk around him?"

Carver shot her a Look. She could practically feel the capital letter. "Have you ever thought about toning down the sarcasm? Would it really kill you?"

Marian flung her arm around his shoulder. "Look on the bright side," she said cheerfully. "At least this way we're not going to have to deal with Gamlen's cooking tonight. That's sure to add at least a few years to our lives."

Carver shot her an incredulous look. "Would it kill you to be serious for a moment? We just got kicked out of Gamlen's house! Which, I'd like to remind you, is the only place we have to stay!"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Mother will be home from doing the shopping within the hour," she said. "Do you really think Gamlen has the balls to even think about telling her that she's not allowed inside after admitting to her that he gambled away their parents' estate?"

"That—" Carver trailed off before giving her a reluctant nod. "You're right, that's a fair point."

Marian grinned as she reached out to tweak his nose. "I'm always right," she said as he batted her hand away from his face. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"

He narrowed his eyes. "You're pushing it, Sister."

"Come on," Marian said, shaking her head. "Let's go for a walk. Maybe we can find Mother in the marketplace and follow her home so that we don't miss the show."

Carver looked towards the door again. "I really wanted a nap," he grumbled. "We're going to be out half the night dealing with whatever mess Meeran wants us to look into, and by the time Mother bullies Gamlen into letting us back inside it's going to be time for us head out."

"It'll be fine," Marian said. "That's why the Maker invented tea." She paused and tilted her head. "Well, and coffee, but I don't have to coin to spare for that. All of the merchants here in Kirkwall apparently think it's made of gold instead of beans considering how much they charge for it."

He shot another longing look at the door.

"We could go that tavern nearby," Marian suggested. "The Hanged Man or whatever it's called? If you don't want to wander the market, I've got a few copper to spare. I can buy us drinks."

"Isn't that the place that kicked you out for starting a bar fight?" Carver asked skeptically.

A thoughtful look appeared on Marian's face for a second as if she was considering it. Then she shrugged. "Maybe?" she said, an upward tilt at the end making it sound more like a question than a statement. "I mean, I've been kicked out of more taverns that I can count at this point. As long as you have coin, most of them don't care if you come back another time."

Carver stared at her for a long moment before sighing. "Fine," he said. "Let's go get some drinks while we wait for Mother to come home and eviscerate Gamlen."

Marian grinned at him. "That's the spirit!"

9:31 Dragon, Amaranthine

"Fucking templars," Anders muttered under his breath as he carefully healed the stab wound in Cousland's shoulder. "Thank you, Commander. For not—"

He trailed off, not quite certain how to say "thank you for not handing me over to people who want to kill me even though it's going to cause a lot of trouble for you with the Chantry" in a way that wasn't going to remind her just how many complications the last twenty minutes or so were going to spawn.

"Just, you know, thank you," he said finally after a pause that was definitely long enough to start becoming awkward.

Cousland gave him a gentle smile before reaching up to poke at her newly healed skin. "You're a Grey Warden, whether they like it or not," she said. "The Templar Order doesn't have any authority over you now, and the sooner they learn that the better." Her smile faded as her expression shifted into a harder one. "Don't worry, I'm about to go have a long talk with the Revered Mother about the fact that Ser Rylock tried to pull this stunt in the first place."

Anders flinched at that despite himself. "Don't you think that will cause trouble for you?"

"The last time I checked, I'm still the Queen of Ferelden," Cousland said dryly. "I feel like that all but guarantees I won't be the one who gets in trouble over this whole mess."

Nate stepped up behind her, joining in the conversation for the first time since the fight ended a good ten minutes earlier. "I'd like to point out that, since you are the Queen of Ferelden, starting another war with Orlais should probably be something you at least try to avoid."

Cousland shot him an annoyed look that Anders could tell in a heartbeat didn't actually reach her eyes. "I'm not going to start a war with Orlais," she shot back. "I'm just going to remind the Chantry what they are and are not allowed to do when it comes to Grey Wardens. If they have a problem with that, they can take it up with Weisshaupt."

Nate shot her a skeptical look. "If you're certain..."

"I am," she said sharply, cutting him off before he could finish whatever else he was going to say. "I'm not the girl who'd rather stay quiet than cause trouble anymore, Nathaniel. A lot has happened since you left for the Free Marches."

"Clearly," Nate said dryly. "If you'll excuse me, I'm going to head to the tavern to see if I can find our wayward dwarf while you... have your talk with the Revered Mother."

Cousland narrowed her eyes, clearly reading more into that slight pause in the middle of his sentence than he'd actually said. Anders didn't know either of them well enough to know just what it meant, but there was clearly some additional meaning mixed in there.

Anders looked between the two of them, his gaze moving slowly from one to the other and then back again. The tension in the air was thick enough that he could almost see it, and if he hadn't already figured out that the two of them used to be involved he definitely would have gotten it after this round of arguing.

"I'll head to the tavern with Nate," he said, clapping his hands together. "No offense, Commander, but I don't see it going well if I head to the Chantry with you."

Nate sighed, but he didn't even bother arguing. Anders counted that as a win. It was a clear sign that he was wearing him down.

The look that Cousland shot him made it clear that she knew exactly what Anders was doing, but she didn't call him out on it. "Go," she said. "Just, go. Try to find Oghren if he isn't at the tavern, but I'm sure that Nathaniel's right about finding him there. I'll meet you all there once I'm done at the Chantry."

Anders glanced around the room one last time, his eyes lingering on the armored bodies sprawled on the floor near the back. Then he turned and headed out into the open air.

9:31 Dragon, Deep Roads

Elissa gnawed worriedly on her lip as she knelt down beside Nathaniel's still form, his hand held in her own. Anders's hands were resting on his chest, regular pulses of glowing light pouring from them and fading into Nathaniel, and there was an unusually serious look on his face as he focused on healing the deep gashes under his hands.

After what felt like a lifetime but was probably significantly less time, the light faded from Anders's hands. He wavered in place, and pure instinct had Elissa reaching out to steady him. He glanced over and shot her a tired smile of thanks.

"How is he?" she asked quietly.

Anders's eyes darted towards Nathaniel for a moment, his smile fading. "He'll be fine," he said. "We'll probably need to rest here for a day or two, though."

Elissa glanced around them, taking in the surroundings including the pile of darkspawn corpses on the ground nearby, before grimacing. "Does it have to be just here?"

"I see your point," Anders agreed as he followed her gaze. "Somewhere nearby at least. It shouldn't hurt to move him a little, but he really needs at least a day off his feet. Magic can only do so much when an ogre is involved."

A shiver went down her spine, and for a moment she could see the whole fight in her mind's eye again. The moment the ogre had hit Nathaniel in the chest with its weapon, sending him flying into a nearby wall and crumbling unmoving to the ground, was going to be one of those scenes that she relived in her nightmares. She just knew it.

"Does he know?" Anders asked softly.

Elissa stiffened before glancing over at him. "Does who know what?"

Anders shot her a thoroughly unimpressed look. "I'm not blind, you know," he told her. "I see the way you look at him sometimes."

She felt her cheeks grow warm, and for what might have been the first time she was thankful that they were in the Deep Roads. At least the red glow from the lava flowing around them gave her an excuse.

"I have no idea what you're talking about, Anders," she said. "Also, I'd like to point out that I'm a married woman. My husband is the king of Ferelden, remember?"

Anders snorted. "Oh, believe me, I remember," he said. "I met the man. He was quite impressive. Reminded me of me."

"I'll make sure to tell him that in my next letter," Elissa said dryly.

He grinned at her, the expression on his face suave and cocky and nothing at all like Alistair, and she couldn't help but smile. Then her gaze darted towards Nathaniel again.

"Does he know about how you feel?" she asked pointedly.

In his credit, Anders didn't even try to pretend that he didn't know what she was talking about. He simply shrugged. "I've propositioned him seventeen times at last count, so I'm pretty sure he's gotten the point by now." He let out a theatrical sigh. "Not the point that I'd like him to get, but still."

Elissa's eyebrows went up. "That's a 'no' then?"

Anders opened his mouth. Then he closed it, shooting her a wry look. "It's not as much fun when someone else is being perceptive about you, you know."

"You really should tell him," Elissa said, ignoring the jab. "He deserves a little happiness."

The expression on Anders's face softened. "He does, doesn't he? Pity no one's told him that. Or, if they have, he didn't believe them."

Elissa let out a quiet huff of laughter at that. "He's a stubborn one," she agreed. "You get used to it after a while."

The two of them sat there for a minute or two in companionable silence, looking down at Nathaniel as his chest slowly rose and fell.

"Alistair said he wouldn't mind," Elissa said quietly.

Anders snapped his head in her direction.

"I never would have even considered it," she said, not even glancing in Anders's direction. "I've always been taught that marriage is sacrosanct, no matter what your heart might want. And then Alistair had to go and tell me that he'd be glad to share me with someone else if that's what I wanted."

Anders tilted his head. "I mean... is that what you want?"

Elissa glanced at him, an unreadable look on her face. Then she glanced back towards Nathaniel without answering him. Which she suspected was probably an answer of its own.

"I sent a letter to him a few weeks ago," she said quietly. "I didn't include details. I couldn't, not without risking someone else reading it. I simply said that I remembered our conversation from before I left, and I was considering the offer he'd made back then."

Anders's face was carefully expressionless. "And?"

She snorted, a thoroughly unladylike sound. "He replied back to tell me that he was happy for me," she said. "I honestly think he means it. And I have no idea what to think about that."

There was another long silence between them, this one a bit more fraught than the previous one. There was a tension in the air that hadn't been there before, a secret both shared and kept close at the same time.

"Come on, Commander," Anders said finally, pushing himself up to his feet with his staff. "Sigrun and Oghren should be back from scouting at any minute. Let's see if we can figure out how to move him without doing any more damage than the ogre already did."

He reached his hand down and offered it to Elissa. After a moment's hesitation, she took it and let him pull her to her feet.

"Elissa," she said. "If we're going to both be in love with the same man, I think that's more than enough to put us on a first name basis."

Anders flushed bright enough that it was noticeable even in the reddish light of the lava-flow around them, but he didn't argue. He just nodded. "Elissa then."

9:31 Dragon, Denerim

Alistair's eyebrows went up the further he got in the most recent letter that Elissa had written him. She normally kept them brief and as vague as possible, leaving everything to the imagination due to some misplaced fear that someone would steal the letter and spread horrible rumors about Ferelden's monarchs if she included any scandalous details.

This... wasn't vague. In fact, if anything, Alistair would call it downright explicit. In more ways than one.

He paused for a moment, studying the letter a bit more closely, before letting out a startled laugh. He knew Elissa's handwriting as well as his own by that point, and – while it was clearly her who'd written the letter – it wasn't as neat and orderly as her letters usually were. She'd either been drinking when she wrote it or had been very preoccupied.

Either way, he didn't disapprove. Maker knew that he didn't take things nearly as serious as he should, and he probably needed Elissa to counter him on that front, but sometimes he thought that she needed to lighten up from time to time. And, well, it certainly seemed like she was.

Or, at least, that she was considering it.

Alistair's smile faded a little as he carefully folded the letter back up and slipped it inside the locked drawer where he kept everything that Elissa sent him. Then he walked over the balcony at the far side of the room, his gaze drawn towards the sun setting in the distance that was currently giving off a reddish glow that reminded him of the color of Elissa's hair.

If someone had told him a year or two ago that he'd be married to the most amazing woman in Thedas and had given his blessing for her to sleep with someone else, he would have laughed in their face. Then again, the same would have been true if they'd told him that he'd be married in the first place, or that he'd be a Grey Warden, or that he'd be king of Ferelden, or...

... well, the him of a year or two ago was a very different man than the current him, that was the point.

There was a part of him that was a little surprised that Elissa was taking him up on his offer, despite everything. She'd been skeptical from the beginning, and in her first letter to him – where she'd had to admit that, yes, he was right and she was wrong and Nathaniel Howe really was there at Vigil's Keep so stop crowing about guessing right – she'd given no sign whatsoever that anything remotely romantic was on her mind. If anything, she seemed a bit concerned that Howe might try to stick a dagger between her ribs if she gave him half a chance.

Then again, fighting darkspawn side-by-side together was surefire way to force bonding. Alistair had seen that for himself back during the Blight.

Well. If Elissa was asking for his blessing yet again, despite him already giving it to her both verbally and via letter multiple times, he supposed that it wouldn't hurt to do it one more time. Especially since it sounded like this Nathaniel person had found someone else of his own who enjoyed putting on a bit of a show, so it was technically a little more than they'd previously discussed that she was asking about now.

Still, it wouldn't hurt to fight fire with fire, so to speak. Considering just what details she'd included in her letter to him, it couldn't hurt for him to be very clear as to just what he was fine with. Very, very explicitly clear.

And if she wanted to punish him the next time they were together, well, Alistair supposed that would only be fair.

9:31 Dragon, Vigil's Keep

Not for the first time in the last few months, Nathaniel wondered just when this had become his life. He shifted in place, propping himself up on his arm so that he could take a better look around his moonlit bedroom.

His and Anders's clothes were spread out on the floor where they'd let them fall earlier, the two of them too preoccupied with undressing each other to worry about putting them properly away. Anders was sprawled out in the bed beside him sound asleep, his hair looking like spun gold in the dim light coming in through the window.

The man really was unfairly handsome. Not that Nathaniel was complaining, considering the circumstances, but still. The point stood.

Nathaniel glanced towards the fireplace along the far wall, not surprised to see that the chair that had carefully been placed beside it earlier had been abandoned. The fire still glowed a warm red and gold, though, that made him think the chair hadn't been empty all that long.

He closed his eyes for a moment, letting his mind wander, and for just a second he could see Elissa sitting in it again, her eyes dark as she watched the two of them and touched herself under her leathers.

She never did more than watch when Anders was there, and she'd been hesitant to do even that at first until Anders had made it explicitly clear that it was more than welcome on his part. Well, and until she'd gotten a letter from her husband. Nathaniel still wasn't certain exactly what it had said, but it had made her face turn bright red when she read it, and that very night she'd joined them for the first time.

The nights he joined her in her bed were different. More private. More intimate.

They didn't happen very often, what with her often being busy with running the Arl until late into the night and both of them being in agreement that keeping Anders distracted as often as possible so he didn't get into trouble was a wise decision. Still, they did happen. That was the important thing.

There was a creaking sound over by the door, and Nathaniel's gaze darted in that direction. The door had opened just a little, enough for someone to slip through, and a familiarly-shaped shadow was disappearing through it.

Elissa paused as she turned around and noticed him staring at her, and the corners of her mouth twitched upwards into a smile. She reached up and blew him a kiss, like she used to a decade before, and Nathaniel couldn't help but smile back at her.

Then she gave him a small nod and, without a word, closed the door behind her leaving him and Anders alone in his room.

9:31 Dragon, Kirkwall

"Murder is wrong," Marian said without a trace of irony in her voice despite the fact that Carver knew for a fact that she'd killed at least three people earlier that same day.

Carver's eyebrows went up even higher than they already were. "I'd like to point out that you're the only person here talking about murder."

Marian rolled her eyes. "I'm sure half the people in this bar are talking about murder, Carver."

Carver sighed but didn't argue with her considering the fact that she probably wasn't wrong, what with it being Kirkwall. "Fine," he agreed. "You're the only person at this table talking about murder."

"Technically, you're talking about murder right now too," Marian said innocently.

He glared at her.

"Don't give me that look," Marian said. "Besides, all I'm saying that murder is wrong. Justified killing, on the other hand—"

"I'm done," Carver said, grabbing his mug and downing the rest of his ale in one go. "That's it. This is me leaving before someone overhears you talking about killing Meeran, tells him about it, and we both end up dead."

Marian took a large swallow of her own drink. "I'm not actually going to kill him," she said. "It's just a daydream. You know, like finding buried treasure or having sex with a man who actually knows how to make a woman orgasm."

Carver buried his face in his hands. "If I buy you another drink, will you please never talk about your sex life in front of me again?"

She grinned at him. "I'll never turn down a free drink," she said, pointedly not agreeing to his terms.

"Believe me, I know," Carver grumbled as he pushed himself to his feet and headed for the bar. "Try not to kill anyone before I get back."

Marian shrugged. "No promises."

Carver paused mid-step before shaking his head and continuing onwards.

Her mouth twisted into a grin. It was so easy to get a rise from him. She threw her hands up over her head, stretching until her she heard her back pop and then brought them back down again.

Behind her, Marian heard the tell-tale sound of heavy armor coming in the door.

She picked up her mostly empty mug and swallowed the rest of the ale in it before shifting so she could see who it was making the sound that she'd heard. She had her suspicions, but maybe...

... no, her luck was about as bad as it always was. It was a handful of templars, all of them young enough that they were probably still recruits or newly knighted. They'd made a beeline for an empty table the moment they came in the door, and one of them was heading towards the bar.

Carver walked right past the templar on his way back towards her.

Marian put her empty mug back down on the table, her gaze still focused on the templars. None of them were even looking in her direction. She'd left her staff at home, and the only weapons she had on her the cheap daggers she'd bought as soon as they managed to get through the city gates. They worked as a focus in a pinch, and they drew a lot less attention than a giant stick from her experience. As long as she didn't start blowing things up with her hands, there wouldn't be anything to give her away.

And yet she couldn't help but feel a twinge of worry at the back of her mind, just like she always did whenever templars got too close.

"Don't do anything stupid," Carver said quietly, putting another mug down in front of her before sitting back down.

Marian shot him a grin that she doubted made it all the way to her eyes. "You know me."

"Yes, I do," Carver shot back. "Hence the warning not to do anything stupid."

She picked up the mug he'd put in front of her and started quaffing it, ignoring the exasperated sigh coming from her brother's direction. As soon as the mug was empty, she put it back down, not surprised to see Carver downing his own drink almost as quickly as she had.

"Come on, Brother," she said, pointedly not glancing in the templars' direction. She could hear them talking about some mage they'd killed earlier, laughing about "that silly boy who'd failed his Harrowing to the surprise of absolutely no one," and she knew herself well enough to know she'd do something everyone would regret if she stayed there a moment longer. "Let's find someone else to drink. This place is too crowded."

9:31 Dragon, the hold of a ship on the Waking Sea

Anders couldn't sleep.

It wasn't anything new. He'd barely slept at all in the four days since he'd left Amaranthine, his skin humming with Justice's magic and his mind abuzz.

How had everything gone so wrong?

He'd been a little worried when Elissa had left, called away on important business that couldn't be avoided, but she'd sworn to him that everything would be fine. She'd made promises to him, and she'd made threats to Rolan, and Anders had been foolish enough to trust her. She was the Warden Commander, and she was the Hero of Ferelden, and she was the fucking queen of the country that Vigil's Keep was located in. Who would be stupid enough to go against her?

Rolan, apparently.

Anders had to give it to the former templar, the man wasn't a complete idiot. He'd bided his time, waiting until Elissa had been called away and Nate was in Amaranthine for a night or two dealing with nobles in the city. That's when he'd struck.

And that's when the life that Anders had made for himself for the past six months or so had come crumbling down around him.

He'd ran, of course. He'd boarded the first ship he could find that was headed out onto the Waking Sea, and it had felt like fate when he'd found out that it was going to Kirkwall. Anders might have lost the Wardens. He might have lost Nate and Elissa, because how could they ever trust him when they found out what he – what they – had done, that he'd merged with Justice despite all of the many concerns they'd shared with him about the idea and immediately killed... killed...

Maker, how many people had he – they – killed?

Anders had lost them, he had to have. But Karl was in Kirkwall. And, well, if Elissa and Nate could find each other after years apart, maybe he could have that too. A fresh start with an old love.

And Nate... Nate had Elissa, at least. She'd be back eventually, once she was done with whatever secretive mission she was on, and then the two of them would have each other, and she'd have her king, and they'd be happy. Probably even happier than they had been with him there. They wouldn't have a blade hovering over their head without him there.

It was better this way. It was. Anders was sure of it.

Now if only he could sleep, if just for a little while. He knew that he needed to, that it was going to cause problems soon if he kept not sleeping.

But how could he sleep when all he could see was Nate's disappointed face in his mind whenever he closed his eyes?

Anders hadn't even said goodbye. He wished that he had a chance to say goodbye.

9:31 Dragon, Denerim

A gorgeous, delicate-looking vase that was probably at least a century old slammed into the stone wall of Elissa's private quarters and shattered into a thousand tiny shards.

"She's taking the news better than I expected," Nathaniel said quietly, his gaze focused on Elissa as she stormed from one wall of the room to the other.

She was cursing quite fluently in multiple languages, including a few that he knew for certain she didn't actually speak. It was somewhat impressive.

"I expect it's because this Rolan person is already dead," Alistair said just as quietly from beside him, his own attention focused on Elissa as well. "She can't murder him herself, so she's having to stick with breaking crockery."

A bowl joined the vase in shattering as she threw it at the wall. Both men flinched.

Elissa spun towards the two of them, a furious look on her face. "Please tell me you at least have an idea where he's run off to."

Nathaniel swallowed, surprised to find a bit of a lump in his throat at the seemingly simple question. "I'm afraid not," he said. "Knowing him, I doubt he'll be able to keep a low profile for too long, but for now? He could be anywhere."

She stared at him for a long moment before letting out another string of curses and storming off towards the balcony.

Alistair and Nathaniel shared a look, the reality of having to deal with an angry Elissa quickly getting them over any lingering awkwardness stemming from their first face-to-face meeting.

"Considering how she's reacting," Alistair said slowly, "should I ask what kind of shape your quarters back at Vigil's Keep are in after you got the news?"

Nathaniel let out a snort of laughter despite himself. "I've always kept a tighter hold on my temper than Elissa has."

Alistair's eyebrows went up just a little. "Don't think that I didn't notice that wasn't an answer to my question," he pointed out. "I'm the king, you know. I'm pretty sure that I can order you to tell me."

"I'm not quite certain that's how that works," Nathaniel said. Then he sighed. "There may be a few less vases in the Keep as well."

Alistair nodded knowingly. "I thought as much."

"Come on, your majesty," Nathaniel said, gesturing towards the balcony with a nod of his head. "Let's see if we can calm her down before she does anything that she'll regret."

"Or that we'll regret," Alistair added dryly.

Nathaniel nodded. "That too," he agreed.

9:33 Dragon, Kirkwall

Marian jerked away, not entirely certain if the scream echoing in her ears had actually happened or if it was simply in her dreams.

The room lit up with a golden glow. "What's wrong?" Anders asked as he jerked up beside her in bed, a ball of light hovering over his open hand. "Are you alright?"

Well, that answered that question.

"Fuck," Marian muttered, dropped back down onto her pillow. "I hate nightmares."

The panic on Anders's face faded into something gentler. More knowing. "Ah," he said. "Want me to go make you a sandwich? I hear they make everything better."

Marian snorted. "I'm never letting you go down to the kitchen in the middle of the night again," she said. "The last time you went down completely naked, and Mother never—"

She cut off abruptly, a flash of her mother's face from her nightmare echoing in her mind. Tears started to well up in her eyes, and she hurried reached up to rub them away. Marian refused to cry any more, damn it. It had been months now, and she needed to... to...

"Hey, hey, come here," Anders said, wrapping his arms around her, and Marian couldn't help but bury her face in his bare chest as she furiously did her level best not to cry.

Anders never tried to tell her that everything would be fine and things would eventually get better, not like the majority of her friends kept doing, and she loved him more than anything for it. He understand more than most that sometimes things didn't get better, not really. You moved past them and you did your best not to think about them, but they didn't get better.

She'd learned that lesson after Father died. And again after Bethany died. And now Mother. At least she still had Carver, although who knew how long that would last now that he'd joined the fucking Templar Order?

How many times was she going to have to learn the same damn lesson?

Marian let out a shaky sigh as she finally pulled away from Anders's chest.

"Come on," Anders said after a long moment of studying her face, "let's put on some clothes and go see what kind of goodies Orana has down in the kitchen. It will make you feel better."

Marian let out a snort of laughter that came out more like the depressed cross between a sob and a sneeze. "You're just using me as an excuse to try to fill that bottomless pit you call a stomach."

"Guilty as charged," Anders said brightly, although his eyes were a bit too knowing and his smile a bit too forced for her to buy his levity at face value.

"Fine, fine," Marian said as pushed herself up and slid out of the bed, "but we're both going to keep clothes on this time. I don't trust Bodahn not to kill us both if he walks in on us having sex in the kitchen."

Anders laughed. "I'm having a little trouble picturing Bodahn as the killing type, love."

She wrinkled her nose as she picked up her discarded clothes from the night before. They were still on the floor where she'd dropped them, and the shirt she was holding smelled of... well, she wasn't certain what it smelled of, but that wasn't uncommon after spending any amount of time traipsing through Darktown.

"I'm rethinking the no nudity rule," Marian said, dropping her clothes right back onto the floor. "This smells foul."

Anders rolled his eyes as he stood up as well, making a beeline straight for the wardobe. "Luckily, you have more than one set of clothes," he pointed out. "In fact, if I'm not mistaken, you have more than one dozen set of clothes."

"So you're against nudity?" Marian asked, already following him towards the wardrobe. "That's a first. I suppose that means—"

Marian cut off abruptly as he spun around and caught her in a surprise kiss, little bolts of electricity jumping from his fingers as he rested his hand on her breast. Her breath caught in her throat as she closed her eyes and enjoyed the kiss.

Then she let her own hand slide downwards, a bit of electricity dancing between her fingers as well. Two could play that game.

9:35 Dragon, Vigil's Keep

"And this Stroud's certain it was him?" Elissa asked, her hands braced on the edge of her desk as she met Nathaniel's gaze head on.

Nathaniel nodded. "He seemed to be," he said. "I don't think he knows the whole story, just that Anders was one of ours once upon a time, but he confirmed that he's run across him in the Free Marches a few times over the last several years. Always near Kirkwall."

"Kirkwall?" Elissa repeated, finally dropping down into her chair. "You spent time there, didn't you?"

He nodded. "Off and on," he said. "That's where I was when I got the news about what happened with my father. I caught the first ship heading back."

Elissa watched his face carefully, not quite certain what she was looking for but looking for something nonetheless. It had been years since Anders had fled, and they hadn't heard anything from him since then, not even a single letter. If she was honest, she'd wondered if he'd finally gotten in over his head and died somewhere, alone and forgotten.

She'd never been happier to be wrong.

"I think that I got a letter about Kirkwall a while back," Elissa said slowly. "Something from Weisshaupt. Let me look."

Elissa pushed her chair back from her desk so that she could open the drawer where she kept the various non-urgent letters that Weisshaupt sent her way, the ones with orders that were worded in such a way that she felt she could justify interpreting them as suggestions rather than commands. If they wanted otherwise, they should have done a better job at wording their letters.

Nathaniel was being almost worrisomely quiet, and she spared a second to glance over at him. He still looked like he was almost in shock, as if he couldn't quite believe that they'd finally gotten news of any kind about Anders after so much time. There was a spark in his eyes that she hadn't seen in quite some time, though.

It still surprised her after all this time just how much of an impact Anders had on him considering they're only been together a scant handful of months before everything went to the Void. Then again, she wasn't exactly one to talk. She wasn't even sleeping with Anders, and he'd had a similar effect on her. He was just the type of person who got into your heart and never left.

"Ah, found it," Elissa said, pulling out the letter she'd been looking for. It was one of the rare ones that actually was a suggestion, nothing more and nothing less. "Apparently a woman named Hawke went on an expedition into the Deep Roads a few years back, just after the Blight, and managed to get farther in than Weisshaupt even thought was possible."

Nathaniel's eyebrows went up. "What does that have to do with us?"

Elissa shot him a quicksilver grin. "They heavily implied that they want a few Wardens to try and retrace the expedition's steps to see what they can find," she said. "It sounds like the Warden Commander in the Free Marches essentially told them where they could stick it, so they decided they'd try me instead."

If anything, his eyebrows went even higher. "They don't know you very well even after all this time, do they?"

"Apparently not," Elissa agreed. "So, how do you feel about an expedition into the Deep Roads?"

Nathaniel opened his mouth. Then he closed it.

"Don't give me that look," she said, already reaching for a quill. "We both know you're going to hop on a ship to Kirkwall within a fortnight even if I don't give you permission to go. This way, you'll have an excuse, and it might actually buy us a little goodwill from Weisshaupt for once."

After another moment or two of silence, Elissa glanced over at him. It had been a long time since she'd seen such a lost look on Nathaniel's face.

"Do me a favor and tell him 'hello' for me," she said gently. "And make sure he knows that he always has a safe haven here in Ferelden no matter how much of an idiot he is."

Nathaniel let out a shaky breath. "Have I told you lately how much I love you?"

"Yes," Elissa said gently, "now let's get you to Kirkwall so that you can remind Anders just how much you love him."

9:36 Dragon, Kirkwall

Five years was a long time in the grand scheme of things. Nathaniel should have expected it, should have guessed that Anders would have found someone else to give his heart to, and yet it still caught him off guard.

"Anders?" Nathaniel repeated, taking a sip of his ale. "And who is he?"

The templar he was speaking with took a drink from her own mug. "He's a mage," the woman said, sneering a bit. "Everyone knows it. He's fucking the Champion of Kirkwall, though, so the Knight-Commander turns a blind eye to him for the most part. Trying to go against Hawke would cause too much trouble, at least for now."

It didn't take nearly as much effort as Nathaniel would have expected to keep his face expressionless. Maybe it was because he was too surprised to know exactly what he was feeling. Maybe it was the opposite, and he'd been expecting it without realizing it. Whatever the case, he simply took another sip of his drink and nodded.

"Thank you for the information," he said. "It will be quite useful for our expedition, knowing exactly who was involved in the original foray into the thaig."

It wasn't even a lie. The Wardens had provided them with some basic information that they'd gotten from one of the dwarves involved with it, a Bartrand Tethras, but he had apparently been committed into a sanitarium at some point so getting additional information from him was all but impossible.

Admittedly, that hadn't been Nathaniel's main reason for finding someone to interrogate about Marian Hawke and the company she kept, especially when he'd found out that the initial Tethras expedition had gotten assistance from a Grey Warden. Still, it was part of it. And, considering the answers he'd gotten, he supposed it was probably better if he pretended it was the main reason.

If nothing else, it might help keep him from having to deal with a broken heart.

"Anything for the Grey Wardens," the woman said, raising her mug in Nathaniel's direction. "I'm from Ferelden originally. My parents brought me here to escape the Blight, and we never left. The Grey Wardens always have my respect."

There was a part of Nathaniel that wanted more than anything to throw out that the mage she'd been insulting just a few minutes earlier was one of those Grey Wardens that she respected so much, just to see how she reacted. Anders clearly wasn't advertising the fact that he was a Warden, though, so as much as he wanted to say something he kept quiet. He didn't want to unintentionally make Anders's life more difficult.

Besides, Nathaniel was more than aware that his own opinion of templars was less than positive after everything that had happened with Rolan. Knowing him, he'd cause himself problems if he kept the conversation going for much longer.

"Thank you again for your assistance," Nathaniel said, finishing off his drink and pushing himself to his feet. "My fellow Wardens and I are heading into the Deep Roads within a few days. I'm certain that things will go much more smoothly thanks your help."

The woman flushed with pride. Nathaniel gave her a nod before heading for the door.

Still, his mind was racing as he headed out into the street.

Nathaniel had planned on finding Anders first thing, before he ever headed into the Deep Roads. Honestly, he hadn't even been certain he would go there in the first place. Elissa had made it clear that she wouldn't say a word if he decided it was a fool's mission and simply spent some time in Kirkwall, reacquainting himself with the man who'd stolen his heart before disappearing with it.

Her words, not his.

But now... well, things had changed. Kirkwall had already broken his heart once, when he'd read a letter in a crowded dockside tavern and suddenly discovered that his entire world had been destroyed without him even knowing.

It was fitting that Kirkwall was where his heart broke a second time.

9:36 Dragon, Deep Roads

The first thought to run through Marian's mind upon meeting Nathaniel Howe for the first time was that he was a very handsome man, even with that nose. It should haven't surprised her, not really, considering she had close, personal knowledge of Anders's tastes when it came to people of various genders. And yet somehow it still caught her off guard.

Although, judging by the look on Howe's face when Anders's way of greeting him was a thorough snog, she wasn't the only one caught off guard. She suspected his reasons were probably very different from hers, though.

Her second thought was that if she'd known just how interesting a view it was watching Anders make out with someone who wasn't her, she would have offered to share him with someone else ages ago. Maker, maybe she'd just been punishing herself all this time by repeatedly telling Isabela "no."

Her third thought cut off abruptly when a genlock suddenly threw itself at the group while they were preoccupied with staring at the lovebirds. Between Anders's flames, her lighting, Howe's and Varric's arrows, and Fenris's greatsword, though, it only took a moment for that distraction to come to a sudden and painful end.

"Well, this is fun," Marian said, clapping her hands together. "There's nothing like the Deep Roads to bring people together."

Anders snorted, all but tucked up against Howe's side. For his part, Howe kept looking at him like he couldn't quite believe Anders was there, although his eyes also kept darting towards her in a way that made her think that he'd definitely heard about her and Anders being together. She recognized that look. It was the look of someone who was more than a little worried that a mage was going to set them on fire.

She got that look a lot, actually, but usually it was for different reasons than she suspected it was this time.

"I assume you're Nate?" Marian asked cheerfully. "If not, I have some questions for my boyfriend, because I specifically said he was allowed to make out with someone named Nathaniel Howe and only Nathaniel Howe." She paused for a moment and glanced over at Varric. "If I see a quill come out, I will hurt you."

Varric held up his hands, an innocent look on his face that she didn't believe for a second. Beside him, Fenris looked like he wanted to be anywhere else, but – then again – he looked like that a lot when he spent too much time around Anders. Or her. Or people in general. Considering the only other person who'd been free for this little jaunt into the Deep Roads was Isabela, though, Marian would take Fenris any day.

"It's good to see you, Nate," Anders said quietly, his voice more than a little hesitant in a way that Marian wasn't used to hearing come from him. "It's been... that is, I... it's good to see you."

"Elissa wanted me to remind you that you're an idiot," Howe said, and there was no mistaking the gruff fondness in his voice for anything else.

Anders flinched, just a little. Before he had a chance to say anything in reply, though, Howe had swept him up and was returning his kiss.

Marian tilted her head and decided that, for the time being, she would just enjoy the show.

9:36 Dragon, Kirkwall

It was odd, being naked in Marian's bed with someone other than her. She'd insisted quite strongly that he and Nate take the master bedroom for the night, though, and Anders knew better than to even think about arguing with her when she'd made up her mind on something.

He'd tried it once. It didn't end well.

"You didn't even say goodbye," Nate said softly as he ran his fingers over Anders's face as if he was memorizing it. Maybe he was. "You could have at least left a letter. Or sent a letter later."

Anders flinched, just a little. "I, uh, assumed that there might be a negative reaction considering I'd just merged with Justice and killed..." He trailed off. "You know, I'm actually not sure just how many people we did kill."

Nate shot him an exasperated look. "Elissa was upset that she didn't get to kill them herself, you know."

"She—" Anders blinked at that. "Wait, she what?"

"She was absolutely furious," Nate said, and his eyes looked a little distant for a moment as if he was thinking back. "I think she threw a good dozen or so vases and the like at the walls before Alistair and I decided it would be safer for everyone if we hid all of the breakable things."

Anders could feel his eyes watering a bit at that, and he quickly looked away long enough to blink them repeatedly.

"Alistair, huh?" he asked, trying his best to put as much innuendo as possible into a single name as he looked back towards Nate. "Most people would call him 'your majesty' or 'your royal highness,' but here you are on a first name basis with the king of Ferelden. Is there something I should know?"

Maker, he hadn't realized just how much he missed the look of exasperated fondness on Nate's face.

"Being in love with the same woman is a very good excuse for being on a first name basis with someone," Nate said dryly. "As you well know."

Anders couldn't help but smile a little at that. "Yeah," he agreed, "I suppose that I do." He paused for a moment. "Hawke's first name is Marian, by the way. She's going to insist that you call her that, so you might as well prepare for it."

The corner of Nate's mouth twitched, as if he was trying very hard not to smile. "I can't help but notice that she reminds me a great deal of someone else."

"What can I say?" Anders asked. "We apparently have similar tastes in women."

Nate stopped fighting it, and his mouth twisted into a smile of pure amusement. "The thought of the two of them meeting is a terrifying one."

Anders laughed. "It is, isn't it?" he asked. "Hopefully I won't ever have to take Elissa up on her offer of sanctuary, so Marian will stay far, far away from her."

The smile on Nate's face grew a little bittersweet. "Far, far away."

There were a million and one different things that Anders could say to that, but he was fairly certain none of them would truly fix it. Sometimes actions spoke louder than words.

And sometimes words weren't needed at all.

"I love you," Nate whispered, the words barely more than a breath of air, and yet they seemed to echo in the stillness.

Then again, sometimes words were the most important thing there were.

Anders leaned forward and kissed him, short and chaste but with the promise of so much more to come.

"I know," he whispered back. "I love you too. Always."