Laeti had told him that she would not die as the Grey Wardens did. She hadn't asked him to kill her, not that Zevran could bring himself to even if she were at his knees and begging. She was his Grey Warden, his little Dalish. The one who never stood down from a fight, never settled on one side because the other was more in the wrong. She was the clever one, the smart one, the one who had always found the perfect way to settle a situation that left others pondering just why in the world they had not thought of it.

She was out of ideas.

The little Dalish belonged under the stars, under the sky where she felt the breeze on her skin, heard the symphony of mixed nonsense that made up outside the stone walls they stayed in for the night being. On their travels around Fereldon, hopping and dragging themselves across the land several times over, they very rarely stayed within stone walls, be it inn, or an ally's home.

Every time, she wouldn't come inside. She would stand in the doorway, pay for the room and board for her companions, then leave promptly after to camp alone. It had seemed ridiculous, dangerous, and strange to Zevran at the first time she had did it, though at the time he cared little for her and her acts of strangeness, for, you see, she so many. As time wore on, however, he grew uneasy to be from her side, and thus stayed with her in these strange fits of hers.

He could easily recall the first night she had described what she saw in the world to him, the beauty of all of it had striken him in awe for a mere moment. For her, to not feel the wind on her skin, to not hear the noises around her of a forest, felt wrong. In every sense of the word, she had told him that she didn't enjoy, didn't long for, didn't desire stone walls that surrounded her, crushed her, and filled her with a sense of cagedness.

And now, here she was, standing in the fire lit halls of the Redcliffe castle once more, the ghostly wisps of the previous visit haunting down the passages of her mind. Back then, Eamon's son had made a deal with a demon to save Eamon, and Isolde had demanded her life be taken to reclaim her son's. Back then, she had had a wise solution, to speak with the demon herself, to convince it to allow it's opponent time to repair itself, the city itself nearing shambles, she had convinced the demon to wait a few more days then it took for the circle mages to arrive.

It was the first time she had seen how far Zevran would go to protect her, disobeying her entirely, and when the demon had threatened her with a playful battle on it's part, it had been the first time she had dueled Zevran and got a taste of his proper skill without a party at hand. It had been the first time she had seen him, properly, without the clouding haze that came when one grew accustomed to one at one's side.

But it had not been the first time she had impressed him with her unpredictable tendancies, and wit. Nor was it the last.

Alistair was gone, having furiously disappeared, leaving his beloved friend behind him. She couldn't do it, couldn't become a man's executioner. Laeti had never been able to fight the unarmed, she simply never could. It was her center, her moral center. If she could not protect those who posed no threat to her, if she couldn't keep herself from killing the innocent, then what was she?

The man beside her disgusted her. Laeti longed for Alistair's quick wit, and laughing nature. Even as the news washed over her stunned frame. One of the three wardens had to die.

And it would be her.