Chapter Text
She’s imagined their reunion so many times she’s lost count.
They are companions of sorts, these thoughts, although as far as companionship goes, not all of them seem to have her best interest in mind. Some days she’ll startle awake from dreams of falling into his arms, and nearly topple right off her horse. Thankfully, Briar doesn’t break her stride, only wickers in a way that – after months and months on the road with no one else for company – has started to sound like a scolding.
“So much for that last shred of sanity,” she laments wryly, and immediately imagines his response:
Last shred? I hate to say it, but I think you lost that long before the horse started voicing its opinion.
At the start of her journey she’d will his ghost away, stubbornly pushing aside thoughts of her court and her people, and her King holding it all together at the seams. But she’s older now, and tired, and allowing herself to indulge in silly daydreams is a small vice, when she denies herself everything else. And it beats the Calling anyhow, although she knows there’s no real respite from the Song.
But she’s imagined returning home – the hour before dawn, kicking off her boots and padding across the soft carpets of their bedchamber. She’s imagined finding him half asleep at his writing desk, fingertips stained black with ink. He’ll wake to the touch of her hand, and then her skin is the one with marks, kisses and fingerprints peppering her jaw, and she’s laughing like she used to, back when she remembered how.
She toes the border between dream and reality more often than not these days, but there’s always a keen knowledge underlying it all, sitting in every breath and heartbeat, that none of it is real. She’ll come to, slowly, stiff and cold and blinking blearily into the pale morning shadows to find his ghost lumbering in the corner of her eye, pushing through the underbrush with a familiar grumble about poison ivy and I swear this is the last time I go to take a piss half-asleep. But she knows – knows it as well as she knows the lonely quiet that waits ahead and trails behind her – that he won’t be there when she turns her head to look.
And it’s been so long since she stopped turning to look for him, which is why, on the day he’s actually there, whole and hale and in the flesh, heart beating against the plates of his armour and court regalia swapped with sword and shield, it takes her far too long to realise he’s not a figment of her imagination.
It’s not yet morning – it’s too dark, dark enough for Zev to keep coaxing the fire into yielding more light, more warmth, and Elissa doesn’t have the strength to tell him it’s no use, that she’s too cold to feel it anyway, and even when she’s not it’s a different heat she feels, a cloying, feverish thing that licks across her skin and turns her thoughts to mud.
She’s been walking close to death so long she wonders idly what it’ll take to finally push her over. It’s become a strangely mundane thing, like wondering when it will rain next, or when it was they last stopped for supplies.
“You are the worst patient in my acquaintance,” Morrigan declares as Elissa limps across the campsite. She’s alternating between shivering hard enough to make her teeth chatter and sweating through her shift, and the ground tilts unpleasantly as she tries to pick her way towards her pack without falling on her face.
“This isn’t your regular head-cold,” she retorts lightly, voice slightly hoarse. Liar is what she doesn’t say, because they both know who the worst patient is, but his name hasn’t left the witch’s lips, and Elissa wonders, in a strange mixture of sombre understanding and half-hysteric mirth, if Morrigan thinks it would be what finally does her in.
It wouldn’t – she thinks about him with every Maker-damned breath and she hasn’t keeled over yet, but she doesn’t tell her that. Zev knows, but keeps quiet as he continues to stoke the fire. Of course, Zev is the one who’s been holding her hair back every night when she wakes with a scream pushing up her throat, only to be emptied with the contents of her stomach.
She’s cold again, and sinks down next to where he’s seated by the fire, pulling her thick winter coat around her shoulders. It’s late summer and not nearly cold enough to warrant such a heavy garment, but she’s shaking so badly she thinks she’d give her horse for something warmer.
She wouldn’t, of course, but the dying are allowed their desperate thoughts, and Briar will forgive Elissa hers.
Silently, and with only the barest hint of silent judgement (which is no small feat, but then they’ve done this particular dance before), Morrigan settles down on her right, pressed too close to pretend she’s doing anything but offering comfort, although Elissa knows better than to point that out. But she’s dying a slow death, and the dying can take certain liberties – like tucking her head against a friend’s shoulder and not giving a damn if it disturbs her peculiar sensibilities.
Across the fire Kieran sleeps the heavy slumber of the unwearied, and Elissa watches the soft rise and fall of his chest and tries to remember what it felt like, to sleep like that, tucked close to her husband in a cramped tent, or under the velvet canopy of their marriage bed.
She doesn’t remember, but likes to pretend she can. It’s better that way.
“Give me an idea,” she says to the flames. They do this every night, like a ritual – like they did, once, when their enemy was a creature of flesh and blood and the Calling no more than the occasional, horrid nightmare.
It had started like this: Give me an idea, Alistair had said, grin flashing young and boyish. To defeat the Archdemon. The best suggestion will be awarded…my very last pair of clean socks. Which, having waded across a soggy marsh only the day before, leaving nearly everything in their possession soaked and smelling of bog-water, was not a deal made lightly.
My, what a prize, Morrigan had drawled, but offered her suggestion regardless – One of your unwashed socks should do the trick.
Ah, but who would bring it to the Archdemon? Zev had countered, not missing a beat. Who could be compelled to make such a sacrifice, for the greater good?
There’d been a pause, and – I would sooner take my chances with the Blight, Sten had remarked, deadpan, and the memory lures a trembling smile to her face now, sitting by the fire with the last of her companions, longing for another time, and a chorus of laughter she’ll never hear again.
But she tries – tries to recreate this one little thing that had kept her going back then, through the loss of her family, her home and her humanity. It goes a little differently now, but then there’s only the three of them – four, if Kieran is awake, but Elissa would spare him the gallows humour that seems to be the only kind she can manage these days.
This is how it goes: first, Zev will suggest an outrageous plan – something truly ridiculous and romantic (“Ah, mi amor, if I were a bolder man I’d seduce Death herself for your sake”), and Elissa knows it’s because he hopes it might inspire a smile. And Morrigan will pick the plan apart, one dry observation at a time, but with far less acidity than she would have offered, once.
They are small things, these little comforts they offer, but they’re given from hearts that know her better than most, and that alone is what has kept her going these last few weeks, Elissa suspects. Ever since they’d joined up with her against her better judgement, although looking back, she knows her protests had been half-hearted at best.
In the end, her heart is far more selfish than the stories would have the world believe.
“Blood,” Morrigan says then, when no one has spoken, and Elissa looks up from where she’s been dozing on her shoulder.
“What?”
The firelight dances in her eyes, turning them a molten gold, and the pensive press of her brow tells Elissa it wasn’t spoken in jest.
“There was a mage with the Inquisition forces,” Morrigan continues after a beat, choosing her words carefully, as though uncertain if they should be spoken at all. False hope is a dangerous thing, after all, for someone who’s begging the Maker for scraps. “If she is to be believed, she was once a Grey Warden.”
You’re a Warden to your grave, every Warden knows that. But – “Was?” Her voice sounds hoarse to her own ears, and her heart is a hammer-on-anvil against her skull. But that lone word stands out, along with the first.
Blood. Was.
Morrigan nods, slowly, eyes trained on Kieran’s sleeping form across the fire. “I am not certain she was telling the truth. However–”
“You think the cure might be in her blood?”
A shrug, feigning ease. “A great many things may be wrought from blood,” she says at length, a familiar warning echoed in her words.
Elissa swallows, and ignores it. She doesn’t look at Kieran. “Where is she now? The mage?”
“The College of Enchanters, if I should wager a guess,” Morrigan says, sliding her a look. “It might be nothing.”
Her heart leaps despite herself. It’s almost ridiculous, how quick she still is to grasp for the smallest of possibilities. It might well be nothing, but–
But.
“Well, it’s not like we have any other pressing matters on the agenda,” she says. Other than my slow and inevitable death. “So I vote we go–”
“Perhaps–” Morrigan presses her lips together before she can finish speaking, and Elissa blinks. Then – “Perhaps we should wait until you have rested,” she says, with a promptness that doesn’t brook any arguments, and Elissa is suddenly, sorely tempted to quip that she sounds very much like a mother.
As it is, she’s too baffled by Morrigan’s sudden reluctance to linger long on that thought. “Mor, it’s not like I’m getting any better. If this is a lead we should investigate.” While I still can is what she doesn’t say, but she knows they can hear it well enough.
“I am not usually one to advocate caution, but…waiting might not be such a terrible idea,” Zev says then, to Elissa’s surprise. “It is a long way to the College, no?”
Her head is throbbing, and she’s trying very hard not to think about the Song (if you think about it, it gets you; it’s a knowledge every Warden must bear), but something about their shared reluctance manages to push past her confusion, trickling with sudden clarity through the muddled chaos of her thoughts.
“Wait – why are you agreeing with each other?”
At least Morrigan looks like she wants to ask the same thing, keen eyes focused on Zevran now, and the naked suspicion on her face no doubt mirroring Elissa’s own.
Of course, an excellent liar, Zev meets their suspicion with a carefully blank expression. “Our concern for your well-being surprises you?” he asks Elissa.
There’s something at the tip of her tongue – a thought she can’t pin a name to; an inkling that tickles a thought just out of her reach.
In any case, she’s not given the chance to pursue it, interrupted by the sound of footsteps falling heavily beyond the ring of the firelight.
The Song has dulled her reflexes, but she is a Warden still, and she feels the pull in her blood – that curious tug just behind her breastbone that alerts her to approaching Darkspawn; to anything that contains the taint that clogs her own veins.
Blood, she thinks, thoughts racing to catch up with her heart, dancing a terrible staccato against her ribcage because she knows the taint like an old friend, feels it within her even now, always reaching out to kindred spirits as corrupted as her own, but this –
She knows this feeling, knows this calling, blood to blood, but it’s for an entirely different reason and an entirely different bond, and before her mind can catch up with her body she’s lurched to her feet, drawn forward by some invisible force that makes her forget her fever and the cold.
“And here I was beginning to worry you wouldn’t show,” Zevran announces, rising smoothly to join her, but she’s too shocked to register the words coming out of his mouth, eyes staring across the flickering flames to the tall shape stepping out of the shadows at the edge of their campsite. “And I, who sent such careful instructions of where to find us.”
And Alistair – her King, her husband – blinks.
Then, brows pulling down in an expression so familiar it strikes her like a blow – “Your ‘careful instructions’ would have landed me somewhere in Orlais,” he says – says, his voice as she remembers, gruff with mock annoyance and warmed by poorly concealed humour, and Elissa can only gape.
There’s a moment of complete silence, but before either of them has the chance to speak – “At least she included an actual map in her letter,” Alistair adds, gesturing to Morrigan, who doesn’t so much as flinch in response.
“Children respond better to visual aids,” she says coolly, as though it’s ten years ago and they’re at each other’s throats again; as though Elissa isn’t dying, and she didn’t leave her husband in the middle of the night on an impossible quest to cure the incurable. Except that it’s not ten years ago, it’snow and they’re here, the very last of what they were, and her husband is standing across the fire from her as though he’s not supposed to be anywhere else, except he is because he’s King and both of them can’t be here, there’s only room for one piss-poor monarch per royal couple and she’s already claimed that title for herself, and she’d specifically told them to leave him out of it and they’d agreed, the–
“Traitors,” Elissa breathes, but there’s no force behind the word – she can’t find her Warden-Commander voice, no matter how hard she looks. Instead all she finds is Elissa, the way she had been, her father’s pup with her strong-feeling heart, voice raw with betrayal and love and a desperate, almost breathless happiness.
She barely registers her companions retreating, giving them space – doesn’t see Zevran make for the sleeping shape by the fire, lifting it with ease, or Morrigan following suit towards the far corner of the campsite.
She only has eyes for her husband, standing less than three paces away and looking at her like she isn’t a dead woman walking.
He looks better than she does – unaffected, almost. Exhausted, perhaps, but it’s the tiredness of a long journey, of loss and longing, not the sickness that’s pulling her apart from the inside. And she wants to ask – how, why, because his Joining preceded her own – but she’s torn between confusion and that terrible aching relief that, if anything, her husband isn’t dying as quickly as she is.
He’s grown his hair long – he’s pulled it back, and it curls endearingly below his ears, a shade redder than she remembers from when they’d walk under the sun. There’s stubble on his chin, and a new broadness to his shoulders, no longer the boy-king she married, and it makes something unfurl in her chest, something that’s been coiled so tight it’s a miracle she’s been able to breathe past it.
Her throat feels raw, and she can’t shape her racing thoughts into words. But she doesn’t need to. Even after so many years apart, he knows her better than anyone, and, “Teagan,” Alistair says, before she can ask who’s keeping their kingdom from falling apart when he’s here, and “Elissa,” he breathes before she can ask anything else, ask what in Andraste’s name he thinks he’s doing, being here, now, after the lengths she’s gone to make sure he doesn’t need to carry this particular burden.
She has a thousand questions. She thinks she might like to scream her head off. But having him within arm’s reach after so many months spent trying to remember how it felt to touch him, and seeing him take in the sight of her, pale skin pulled tight across her cheeks beneath her sunken eyes and the Song in her ears so loud she’s surprised the rest of the world can’t hear it…it’s suddenly too much.
And so instead of screaming, she crumbles.
His reflexes are quick – a warrior to the marrow of his bones even though she can so easily see the King, too, in the proud set of his shoulders; in his back, spine straight and chin held high, but–
“This isn’t very kingly,” she says around a sob, the words pressed against his throat where his pulse leaps to meet them. He’s holding her weight, one large hand cradling the back of her head, and she can feel it shaking, even when he feels like the most solid thing in the world.
“No?” Alistair asks, light tone pretending at laughter, and she feels the drum of it against her chest. “Coming to my Queen’s aid – sounds very kingly to me. Spectacularly kingly, in fact. I imagine they’ll write songs about it. Betting on it, actually.”
There are so many things she should say, but what escapes her is, “Leliana wouldn’t dare. Not after the last one.”
He laughs – he laughs, and Maker it almost makes her forget about the Song. “If it makes you feel better, her letters said nothing about your whereabouts,” Alistair says, trembling fingers curling tenderly around the back of her neck, as though just mentioning her absence could make her disappear in a cloud of dust if he’s not careful.
The words die on her tongue before she can speak them – that Leliana hasn’t seen her in a long time, and that if she had – if she’d seen how close to death she’s been walking, what the Song has made of her – she’d have sent him a crow on the spot.
She doesn’t speak a single word, but somehow she knows he still hears what she meant to say. And there’s a moment of silence where he just holds her, and she wonders – because she has to, because she’s been walking this road for too long – when she’ll wake up.
She counts his heartbeats in her head, savouring every single one and holding her breath for when it happens – that moment he’ll slip from beneath her, leaving an imprint on her palms that she’ll almost be able to feel, if she concentrates. She’ll carry his ghost with her for days, like an ache behind her ribs.
She waits, but it doesn’t happen, and for a moment her confusion makes it hard to breathe.
“I’m not leaving,” Alistair says, as though he has a choice in the matter – as though a dream can have choices and make decisions. But it’s not to reassure her that he says it, Elissa realises. It’s a rebuttal. As though he expects her to try and send him back.
A dream wouldn’t care about that, she thinks.
She can still hear his heartbeat, although she’s lost count now of how many there have been. And he’s still solid under her fingertips when she slides her palms up his back.
She feels more than hears him draw a breath, and – “Give me an idea, love,” he says then, voice rough, and the words make her start, and – Smelly socks,she wants to say, suddenly, just to see if it’ll make him smile. And then – blood, she thinks, and wonders what he’ll think of the idea, of the woman who was once a Warden and the cure they’ve conjured from mere speculation.
She doesn’t question her sudden acceptance of his presence, or of his offered assistance. But then, she’s long since made peace with her selfish heart.
The Song is still there, but with the force of will that is her mother’s legacy she shoves it back, back into the dark corners it first crawled out from, and channels her focus towards the steady thump-thump of his heart, echoed in her own chest, until it’s all she knows and – “Okay,” she breathes, letting the word fall, not a surrender but a promise.
Okay, you’re not leaving.
And neither am I.
“Okay?” she repeats, a question this time, asking for confirmation, and she doesn’t even stop to consider the fact that she hasn’t exactly spoken out loud what she needs him to confirm.
But she doesn’t have to, and she feels his answer in the way his arms tighten around her, pulling her close until there’s no room for thought or doubt between them.
Okay then.
And so, decision made, she drags another breath through her nose, and reminds herself that she’s not dead yet. Because it’s surprisingly easy to forget, when you’re living half a life.
“You know, I’d imagined you angrier,” she hears herself saying, the words muffled against the thick fabric of his travelling cloak.
A huff of breath against her ear. “I can stomp my foot and yell if it’d ease your conscience.”
Her eyes are wet, and her cheeks are hurting from smiling. “Maker but I’ve missed you.”
That trembling touch to the back of her head again, and his next breath is a shudder she feels in her bones. “See now, when you say things like that you’re setting yourself up for some half-hearted foot-stomping.”
“But you’ll yell a bit?”
Another laugh, and he makes it seem so easy. Like she could do it, too, if she tried.
“For you, my dear,” Alistair says, shoulders shaking, and there is a tell-tale wetness against her neck that makes her heart ache. “I’ll scream myself hoarse.”
She doesn’t laugh, but she wants to, and that’s a victory in and of itself, Elissa thinks. There’s still an inkling at the back of her mind – a thought pushing against the newborn memory of his face, with no sunken shadows and no pallid gleam on his brow. His eyes, bright and clear and not clouded with fever, as though the Blight is no closer to touching him now than it was ten years ago.
Blood, she thinks, distractedly, but she doesn’t have the mind to consider in full the connection her memory is trying to make.
Tomorrow, she decides. Tomorrow they’ll follow that lead, wherever it takes them. Tomorrow she’ll be Warden-Commander again. Not the Queen of Ferelden, at least not yet. Perhaps never again, but–
But. Perhaps allowing herself to be her husband’s wife isn’t too much to ask.