A/N: This takes place before Alistair and Solona begin any kind of relationship, but Alistair is already madly in love with her, so like after the Circle Tower, Redcliffe, and possibly Haven, but before the Dalish camp and Orzammar. I went into this thinking I would try my hand at writing something light and sweet. Didn't exactly happen. The second I used the word "carcass" I knew was doomed.

Lemon Tree

When he found her, she was sitting beneath the braches of a lemon tree, encased in a fallen halo of the browning carcasses of overripe fruit. Tucked in on herself, her knees were the frosty peaks of small mountains as she leaned studiously over the pad of parchment piled upon her lap. He had discovered quite some time ago that she liked her quiet places, preferring the gentle bird song of nature long denied to her over the cacophony of a town or the raucous company they held in camp. It was one of many things about her that had entranced and bewildered him, as he himself didn't know what to do with the quiet. To him, silence was a tomb, one that whispered of his failings and should-have-done's. It made his skin itch.

Silence with her, however, was different. Solona had this way of bringing bubbling boysenberry magic into a moment without so much as lifting a finger. If he hadn't met so many mages so unlike her in spirit, he might have thought that the simple existence of the power in her veins had bewitched the air around her, soaking his lungs and muddling his mind. Perhaps it had. So long as it were her he could hardly complain.

Alistair coughed lightly, shifting in his boots, his cheeks warming to a degree he knew must have been visible. Taking a moment to steady himself, he stepped free from the pebbled path to wade through the sea of weeds and yarrow surrounding her sanctuary. If she heard him approach, she didn't show it, enraptured as she was in her work. Her arm sailed out in an arc, fingers nearly as black as her hair, dusted with fallout from the charcoal gripped in her palm. She hadn't been reading or writing like he had assumed, Alistair realized, craning his neck for a better look at the parchment. The familiar black and white beginnings of eyes and a dimpled grin peered back at him.

"Would it help if I posed for you?" he laughed as he settled down beside her, his expression mirroring that of his twin's upon the page. Solona jumped, nimble fingers burying her work at the bottom of her stack in mere seconds. When she eventually looked at him, her cornflower eyes were wide and uncertain, half obscured by a veil of obsidian tresses. How rare. He couldn't remember the last time he'd caught her off guard, if he ever had. Or anyone else for that matter.

"You know, you really should be more aware of your surroundings," He teased, "I could have been a darkspawn. Or worse, Morrigan," Solona smiled bashfully back at him, cheeks flushed a heavy rose.

"I used to draw a lot in the Circle," she sighed after a beat of silence, sitting back and resting her head against the rough bark behind her, the tension steadily fluttering free from her frame, "Sometimes I would have so much free time that I didn't know what to do with it. I kind of miss it."

"Huh. I think that's the first time I've heard a mage say they missed the Circle." Solona shook her head, a small smile still tugging at the corners of her lips, only now more wistful than shy.

"It's not the Circle that I miss, but the peace of it. I miss being warm and clean. I miss feeling like I was safe, whether or not that were actually true." Her smile faltered and she laughed, low and bitter, fingers worrying the edges of her parchment as her legs sank straight across the ground, "I must sound so entitled."

"Hardly. What I wouldn't give for a pair of fresh socks," Alistair watched her face, waiting for a laugh that never came. She simply hung her head, hair pouring like water across her slumped shoulders. Alistair frowned. While Solona wasn't the most exuberant woman, and he wouldn't quite call her chipper, he had never seen her so morose. She was like a butterfly, subdued yet beautifully vibrant. She was the soft-spoken breeze when the sun was high and the gentle crackling heat of a campfire on a frozen night. Sadness didn't suit her. Before he was aware enough of himself to hesitate, his hand was in her hair, shoveling ebony silk away from the flushed ivory of her cheeks.

"You are far from entitled," he spoke in a near whisper, coaxing her gaze up to meet his own, "You put your life at risk every day just to make the world even the slightest bit safer. If anything, you are dangerously selfless."

"But I didn't choose this," Solona lamented as Alistair brought up another hand to cup her cheek, "If it weren't for what happened with Jowan, I would never have left the tower. I would have ignored the blight until it reached me."

"No, you would have stood with Wynne as the Circle fell. No matter what you believe, you're not someone who can turn her back on the people who need her." Solona's eyes fell from his, absorbing the vast greenery that extended out for miles behind his shoulders. She bit at her bottom lip, pearls upon rose petals, and he was lost. Beneath his breath, his own lips tingled, a phantom of the sensation he'd longed for since the moment he first set eyes on her. Maybe he could just…

"We should head back," Solona breathed, pulling free from his arms, his palms left cold. Shoving her parchment into the small brown pack at her side, she stood, eyes sparkling liquid gold in the sweeping twilight. She smiled ever so slightly as she reached down to grasp his forearm, hauling him up to join her. They walked back to camp in silence, her fingers like rain upon desert-blasted skin, falling and drenching as they coiled tightly with his own.