He happened upon her sleeping in the glade.
It was the cliché of all storybook clichés, and he thought Leliana would agree. The Warden, an elf, lay nestled in the hollow of moss-covered roots. Dappled moonlight swept lazily across an inked cheek with a breeze that rustled the willow leaves above, and her hair tangled in the rushes by her head. From the thicket, a white moth fluttered in and perched on her knee, folding its wings open and close as though testing its comfort.
But all poetic notions dissipated in the slapping of fingers across a bare midrib to scratch at an itch there. The moth took off. The Warden grunted, smacking her lips as she shifted, facing the sky, and Alistair barely held back a snigger. The illusion of the wood was lifted; she resembled no otherworldly being now—she wore no flowing garb, but battle-tested armour, and the glint of metal studs on leather greaves caught his eye. Her ginger-blonde hair, sheared to the chin, stuck out at odd angles with bangs sweat-plastered to her forehead. He noticed tufts that were charred and frizzled at the ends.
She slept on.
It took him all of five seconds to observe this, for suddenly he felt shy and did not want to stare at her sleeping face anymore. Maker, who does that? That's just creepy.
Instead, he strode closer, the sound of his footsteps muffled by litter and the spongy ground. He kept his eyes averted, watching instead the play of light in the clearing. He was thrilled to find the night pleasant and warm, with the puckish smell of clover blooms in the air and cricket song overhead. A creek trickled merrily by, unruffled by the war unfolding across the continent. Undisturbed by the Blight's rape of the land.
Alistair's gaze flicked back to her. She, too, appeared wholly unperturbed by the horrors of the day. Since meeting the Warden all those months ago—how many has it been by now? Five? Six?—he wondered at how she could sleep this peacefully after standing in the frontlines of such a vicious crusade. Others, like loud and boorish Oghren, might pretend that they reveled in the slaughter, but even a well-intentioned campaign against monsters can eat away at one's soul. Fighting the darkness doesn't mean one is not stained by its gore.
He cringed at the melancholy of his thoughts, and again he turned his eyes away. Still, he drew ever closer, finally sitting on a root in the shade of the tree, with her. It felt like a world of its own under there, veiled in by the tree's draping foliage. It was warm, and his armor had been stifling. He thanked the Maker for the joys of cotton breeches as he leaned his head against the trunk.
Goodness, what was he doing? His eyes found the blackened tips of her hair. That's right. He had stormed into the clearing to give the Warden a piece of his mind, losing his fire when he found her slumbering.
Well, conscious or not, she was going to get it anyway.
"You stubborn clod," he muttered. "I told you to mind the emissary, didn't I? It was spitting lightning out from its behind. Charge it with metal dirks and guess who gets charged instead?"
She didn't stir from her repose, and breathed heavily and steadily on despite the chastisement. Alistair watched her for a few more moments and decided he wasn't done.
"I can see right through you, you know. You like us to think you don't look before you leap, but today you conveniently leapt when Wynne couldn't bring her guard up in time."
He recalled the resignation on the Wynne's face to the lightning spell aimed right at her, only for the Warden's interception to change it to alarm. The elf made it look like she tripped on rock. Her burns were smoldering when he'd plowed through the horde and cut the emissary down. In camp, Wynne had healed the Warden while scolding her for her carelessness.
Alistair rubbed a hand over his face. "People complain that I hide behind my humor, but you, serah, have the same success hiding your wiles with that ditziness of yours. That is so unfair."
Only the sound of crickets and running water permeated the glade for a long time after that, as Alistair contemplated the stars, the war, and the woman beside him.
"Still, you're a sly one. You really are. Your stealth is atrocious—not that I'm one to talk—but you find other ways to steal in and plunder and worry people to death when you get hurt like this…"
But she slept on. Tucked peacefully away into her dreams, in perfect repose from the responsibilities he and everyone else doubtless reminded her of when they rose each morning.
He knew of the Dalish being lifelong drifters, having mastered a nomadic lifestyle in the hidden reaches of their wild places, but he was sure she ached for her old ways. Although, she certainly didn't show it. He could imagine that familiar motions had taken up new meanings—setting up camp, hunting for food, taking up the night watch… all mired now within the goal of reaching the Archdemon somehow, and to hide from those who would stop them.
"Let's get out of here, 'Rys. Let's run away, you and I—" he paused as though interrupted, then waved a hand in acquiescence. "Fine, Dog too, if you insist—we can stick it out, out here. Live life on the run; we're fit for it, right? Think of the local gossip we'd incite, a pair of suave and smooth-talking highwaymen, striking at the reprobate bourgeoisie, alighting on gilded stagecoaches and ransacking luggage to spoil the poor."
He plucked a clover blossom from beside him, twirling it between his fingers. "That'd be the life. No more darkspawn for us. Grey Wardens or no, even the call of their blood in our veins doesn't make their ugly mugs easier to swallow, does it?"
And so he chuckled, whirling the blossom through the air as he dropped his eyes to her face. Her once-long lashes stood out dark and burnt against her profile, protruding like cropped feathers from her lids. He could hear her light breathing through the part of her parched lips. A lock of hair caught a sliver of moonlight, exuding gold as potently as any alchemic merger.
"Andraste help me," Alistair breathed. He swooped, no, swept down—there was enough swooping going on—bracing a hand against a gnarled root as he hovered above her, wondering if he would really steal a kiss tonight from the woman he adored and feared with equal parts of his soul.
Would it be her first, perchance? She had told him that she had not been with anyone before…
Blushing, he knew he wouldn't do it. He tried to think it was from a sense of honor—it ought to be noble to do it when she was actually capable of pounding his face in, no?—but he knew he was simply afraid. Was that not typical of him? He was afraid of the line that would cross, for him and for her, bringing to surface such devastating feelings he had for his comrade, his leader, his dearest friend in the world. Even if she didn't even wake to discover it, he knew what crossing that line would do to him. And with the future so bleak and uncertain… no, staring down the unconscious was as far as he'd let himself go.
That didn't change the lightheaded sensation he was getting from feeling her breath on his lips, however, and so he made to straighten himself to leave.
Of course, that was when he realized her eyes had opened. Maker, he should have seen it coming.
Grey eyes—silvered in the moonlight—were half-lidded, her gaze floating over his features as though in a haze. Then, as languid as her unseeing scrutiny of him, she stretched herself upward and touched her mouth to his.
It was merely a light press of lips and dizzyingly brief moment, but as casual as she ever was, Rirrys brushed away to the side with a misty smile and settled herself back to sleep.
.
.
It was half an hour later that Alistair found himself trudging through the wood again, hot despite the cotton breeches and desperately willing his heart to cease its hammering. What in Thedas was that just now? he wondered, working a wide circuit around her clearing. He had been comically frozen in place for several minutes after her flippant little move, and only now, away from her, did he dare try to set his mind straight.
That probably wasn't anything. It was obvious that she was more than a little Fade-tinged and might have been appreciating a memory's face rather than his own. He stopped in place and blanched. Or a demon's perhaps? He shook his head. No, she wouldn't be so weak even now to welcome a demon in dream.
Surely, surely, it wasn't anything. She would wake up the next day, loud and chipper and bearing rabbits for breakfast, unaware that she forced his first kiss on him the night before. Alistair groaned. The number of ways he unearthed to emasculate himself… It was truly getting tiresome (his heart's fluttering said otherwise).
He returned to the clearing some time after, gaze finding her immediately in a different sprawl than when he left. He narrowed his eyes at the Warden as he chose a soft-looking patch of moss beside a charred stump—a stone's throw from the willow—on which to recline. She was not likely to be chanced upon by bears or wolves in these parts, but bandits were everywhere and darkspawn, of course, popped up across the countryside like buttercups in Wintersend. Though she'd hardly need his help should they amble by, the last thing he wanted to do was leave her alone. Especially when she was out cold like this.
That makes one of us, Alistair thought resentfully. Now more than ever did he appreciate the value of letting sleeping things lie. He was in for a long night.