Author's Note: There are references to things that occurred in "Wisteria Cousland, The Hero of Ferelden: Vol III" but for the most part this story should stand on its own. This story does start dark but it is always darkest before the dawn.

Visions and Passions

Teagan always had a talent for painting. After the Orlesian occupation he studied with well-known Ferelden artists. He was a fair portrait painter and his landscapes were decent but his passion had always been for painting battle scenes. They were dark and bloody and more than a few hung in halls around Ferelden. He had been working on one for quite some time that he had not been able to finish, "Death of the Archdemon". He hadn't seen the Archdemon until after it had died, or seen exactly how it died. But he did hear accounts from the survivors. The only part of the painting uncompleted was her, Wisteria Cousland.

Alistair he thought he had captured fairly, delivering the killing blow to the dragon, but he could never seem to quite picture Wisteria there. What would she have done? He always wanted to ask her how it had happened but he thought it would be a painful thing for her to relive. Someday perhaps he could find out.

But now a new vision was burning inside his mind. A vision of death and beauty. The way he had seen her, tumbling into the engagement party, fighting the palace guards, covered in blood, her hair and eyes wild, her face pale, the unnoticed slash on her arm. The moment he knew he was in love with her and would die for her. Or he would die of her.

She did not love him and he could not stop himself from seeing this vision. If he could just paint it, perhaps it would be removed from his mind and he could find some peace from the ache in his heart and the memory of her leaving, her riding off, towards Highever with the man she did love.

The canvas stretched in front of him and he began sketching his vision on it with charcoal. He worked until late in the night, drinking heavily. In his mind it was not a ballroom, with broken glassware and silverware scattered about. It was the Deep Roads and there was broken rock, ruined dwarven architecture and she was surrounded by darkspawn, fighting for her life. It would be the picture of a wounded warrior queen. One where the viewer wasn't sure if she would survive or not.

A Ball

Long deprived of sufficient sleep, he finally dreamed of her at the ball after the royal wedding. The deep red of her dress was like the blood of the guard she had slain. Always he saw her in red in one form or another. His right hand on her slender waist and his left enfolding hers as they spun around the floor. Those blue eyes danced too, looking into his. Her lips sculpted into a sweet smile. Her hand in his was not small and delicate. It was strong and calloused, trained to kill. It contrasted so completely with her elegant beauty tonight. He wondered what the rest of her looked like.

He spun her out of the ballroom to the balcony and kissed her. His hands encircling her waist. She blushed shyly. Then she dissolved, replaced by a scene of pastoral beauty. He stood looking out over a valley filled with flocks of sheep and he heard a simple mournful melody played on a horn the shepherds played to call their sheep. An answering melody came from across the valley. It filled him with peace. Some of the sheep began to leave the valley, to return to their home for the night. The sun was setting in glorious shades of scarlet and the valley was tranquil. Again came the first part of the mournful melody and a few moments later, the response from across the valley. It was like a conversation between lovers. Finally the first part came again as the sky began to finally darken into deeper blues. There was no response this time. It left him feeling bereft for some reason. The last of the sheep began to leave the valley and the sky was consumed by deep blue and then black.

Eamon wandered into Teagan's studio, late in the day looking for his brother. He found him snoring, smelling like a distillery, on the divan. There was another new canvas. Yet another painting of Wisteria Cousland as she had looked on the night of the engagement party. Eamon shook his head. His brother was obsessed with the woman. So much so he was becoming worried. Teagan drank too much, ignored his Bann, ignored everything but painting another picture of the woman. Teagan had tried to hide the obsession from his brother but Eamon found a stack of paintings. Each one depicting her, as she was at the engagement party, dressed in black leather, covered in blood, disheveled and beautiful. The paintings had gotten progressively more bizarre, with stranger colors, more blood, more death.

March to the Scaffold

A wreath of bitter smoke hung about the place. It was the place he came to dream. He paid his coin to the man and they handed him a pipe. He inhaled the opium and his limbs went heavy and reality tattered and frayed.

She crawled onto him, like a big cat. Her lips so red in her pale skin, her ebon hair dragged across his cheek as she breathed his name, Teagan. Her lapis eyes, half-open, held his own. Her first kiss was always soft, the next one bruising. He moaned. His own kisses were delicate, gentlemanly, appropriate. But she never was appropriate and soon he lost himself in her carnality. He drowned in the exquisite sensations from her hands, mouth, body. She took from him, with brutal disregard of his respectability, and she gave the same in return.

Then slowly the dream dissolved and he found himself thrusting into some slattern who wasn't her, grunting and moaning as he clung to the wisps of his dream. Sometimes the dream wouldn't fade until she lay in his arms, sated and sleeping, and he wouldn't have to see who he had just emptied himself into thinking it was her. Tonight he was not so fortunate. He threw money on the bed and told the woman to bring him more opium. He wanted to chase the dream further.

They were back in the Ballroom and he was kissing her again on the balcony. Her eyes sparkled but her lips were twisting with scorn. She laughed at him and pushed him away. Behind her stood the elf, dressed in black, his handsome face looking at her hungrily. The elf's hand curled behind her neck and he turned her to him and pulled her in for a kiss that bespoke ownership, possession, familiarity of the sort Teagan did not have. The elf looked up at Teagan, his eyes cruel and mocking and plainly saying "She is not yours".

Teagan felt a fury he rarely had felt. "Then she will not be yours!" He roared and stabbed her through the back. The red of her dress grew darker with another red. Her knees crumpled and she fell to the floor at the feet of the elf. Her eyes found Teagan's one last time and they held reproach. Her mouth made one last sound, "Why?" she whispered. Then she moved no more.

His breath reverberated through his body and echoed in his ears. With each breath he drew, his perspective changed.

(Out)

The soldiers led the man to the scaffold. There was a crowd gathered to watch the murderer of the Hero of Ferelden. They jeered and threw things at the monster. He peered closer and recoiled in shock. It was him.

(In)

A rotten apple hit him in the middle of his back. His hamstrings were torn on the rack and he could barely walk. His shoulders dislocated. Death would be relief from the abuse he suffered while waiting his final punishment. Still nothing could erase the sight of her blood pooling under her and her final unanswered question, not even his own execution.

(Out)

The man walking to the scaffold stumbled, he looked haunted. Death would be a mercy. They forced him to kneel, his neck stretched over the block of wood, the basket waiting. An executioner dressed in black, his face obscured by a black mask walked out to the cheers of the crowd.

(In)

Teagan's broken body screamed at the position. It would end soon. Perhaps he would see her soon. He could explain his madness to her, why he had done it.

(Out)

The executioner drew back his axe and the crowd fell silent. It fell, striking true. The head fell into the basket and the crowd screamed with release.

(In)

He thought of her, with his last thought. Her beautiful face as he held her close, carrying her into the palace, her scent and the sound of her laughter.

Witches Sabbath

The opium he smoked wasn't done with him yet. The doxy he had paid had left him senseless to all but his dreams while she serviced other men.

It was his funeral. But no one came. They had dug a hole in the ground to put his corpse. A murderer's ending, not the blazing pyre Andrastian's expected. His body lay beside the hole, he observed this as an outsider. A haggard old woman came and mumbled words over him, shedding blood. Suddenly his consciousness slammed into his corpse. He rose and stood, feeling whole once more. His body no longer broken. The hag laughed and began to dance. Others came to dance with her. Horrors he could not described joined in the dance. Darkspawn, abominations, demons all circled around him. A tune he recognized as one played at funerals was warped and contorted into the music they danced to.

Then they stopped and turned towards the dark where she strode towards him. Clad in only some shimmering blood red robe that parted to reveal her legs as she walked. She lay down upon his grave, now filled with dirt and covered with grass, unmarked, long forgotten. She writhed here, her robe slipped off and pooled around her like blood. She beckoned to him and he lay down on top of her and possessed her again. The demonic dance began around them as he took her upon his own grave. He found release in her and she evaporated from under him, and he was face down on top of his own grave, his mouth full of dirt and grass.