The question asked, Kahrin sat on the stone ledge of the window and stared at the King in front of her. Very much an uninvited guest to her misery here in Weisshaupt, of all the people she'd expected to walk through the door, he was not one of them.

"I think I'm the King, in case you forgot that favor you did for me. Someone had to come up here to remind the First Warden what Ferelden thinks of political prisoners."

"I'm not a prisoner, Alistair, I'm fine." she hissed slightly as she pulled back the ladder made of her shredded bedding.

He snorted. "Clearly. That's quite the clever plan you had there. Well thought out as usual I suppose." He held up her weapons and stated the obvious. "I have your swords. I thought you'd like them, and then we can leave."

"You can't just swoop in here," she hopped off of the ledge and reached out her hand expectantly into which he placed her family sword.

"Yes," he drew it out like he always did, "swooping is bad. At any rate," he looked at the other blade he still held, turning it over, as if the runes along the flat were fascinating, "we should leave now before your gracious host changes his mind."

Glowering at him again her face was incredulous. "I'm not telling them what they want to know, I'll not betray my family."

"Family," the derisive sound that came from him was a mixture of a snort and a laugh. "I heard you were married. Thank you for the invitation. I'm sure you're very happy."

"It was going to happen eventually," her icy voice shot back at him. "Should I have hand-delivered an invitation? Would that have pleased you? It was a rather quick occasion. You probably couldn't have fit it in."

"You had a family once," he spat. "You still do. It's been waiting for you to make up your mind. And now I see you have." he turned for the door, still holding her sword.

Sighing, she followed behind him, almost running into him when he stopped. "May I have my sword, please, Your Majesty?"

"Why not? I already gave it to you once. What's one more time, for old times' sake?" He held it out to her, pommel first, clamping his fingers over hers when she grabbed it. "I guess we never mattered to you, we've been waiting for nothing."

"You have your family, and I have mine. Let's just go back to that." Kahrin struggled to keep composure in her voice, but it had been so long.

His eyes narrowed and danced with rage that she should have seen coming. "Dammit, Kahrin. You know what I have. A miserable marriage to a woman who loathes me and a beautiful little girl who is very much yours. Ours."

"It was for the best, it-"

"It's always 'this is for the best' with you! Did you ever stop to consider what I wanted? Out of all of this?" If anyone was in the hallway they were certainly getting a good show.

Looking up into his face, she narrowed her eyes. "You said "pick me". I asked, and that was what you said."

His voice boomed in response. "Me, with you, together. That should have been obvious!" Alistair ran a hand down the back of his head and glared at the ceiling. "I would have followed you into the Void, Kahrin. Dammit! I still would. I didn't have to be a king, Kahrin, you knew that." He paused for several beats and then laughed without humor. "Or, you could have kept your promise."

She winced visibly, the barb that he was always able to jab a little further tearing the wound fresh. "I wasn't ready. I was not right for the job." She hugged her sword to her chest and looked away from him.

Quieter now he walked back toward her. "I didn't think I was right for this job, but you convinced me. If I was wrong, maybe you were too." He laid a hand upon her cheek and looked at her long and hard. "Maybe you still are."

Every muscle in her body tensed when he touched her, making a million thoughts explode in her mind. "Alistair..."

"What is it, Kahrin?" She could feel him behind her, so close yet the only connection was his hand on her tattooed cheek.

She was quiet for a long time, keeping her breathing measured, not trusting her instincts to react for her. Everything about that simple gesture was familiar and inviting, and she clenched her eyes shut hard.

"We can't, I mean I …"

"I would have given you the world." He took a quiet breath. "I still would. You have to know that. You can't tell me that you never felt like that about us." He looked at her long and hard. "Kahrin? Tell me."

What did he want from her? If he didn't know by now, then that was on him.

"What did you think was going to happen, Alistair? That you'd come in here, like a heroic knight and I'd just fall into your arms? Forget my husband and let you whisk me away to your castle? Maker's sodding cock, Alistair, we've been over this." She shoved her hands into her hair and yanked hard.

"You, you have been over this. You never asked my opinion Hawke. Just go back to your new, better, family and forget about us. Should be pretty easy. You've been doing it for ten years."

Kahrin turned her face away from him, refusing to meet his eyes while tears stung hers.

"That's not fair, Alistair."

"Tell me something I don't already know." He dashed tears away from his own eyes and turned away from her, embarrassed to be reduced to crying. "Get away from me. So I don't have to look at you. Go back to your new life with Hawke and Howe and whoever else." He spat the last word.

"I turned a country on its ear for you, you arse, and you have the nerve to act as if I don't care for you."

"Yeah, well, you'll excuse me if I don't ask you for anymore favors. For either of us."

Taking a deep breath Kahrin stared at him. "She was never mine, Alistair. Did you think there was some bond that transcends the Void itself that would connect us over a girl that I-" she stumbled over it, and regained the lie. The lie that would do what she couldn't. "That I feel nothing for?"

His red, swollen, eyes flashed fury at her. "You don't mean that. You … there's no way you can mean that." Kahrin knew her words had landed the full effect of the blow she'd meant to throw, disowning the girl he loved more than anything in the world. Elyssa was everything to him, and she knew it.

Pushing ahead she dragged the lie out further. "I do mean it, every word. The night I placed her in your arms was the first time I ever touched her. She means nothing to me." And she would keep telling them both that until she actually believed it. "You can keep looking at me like I'm a monster, Your Majesty, but it isn't going to ch—change anything."

"Maybe you are a monster, Hawke." he growled, his tears drying.

Glaring at him, she remembered everything they had done, everything she had begged him to do, thought it had eaten a hole straight through her heart. "Perhaps. I did terrible things to keep you safe. I even lived so that you wouldn't die."

"I never asked you to do anything like that for me, so excuse me if I'm not exactly grateful, Kahrin."

"Well, that's a mistake I can correct easily enough." She turned from him and her words were cold as she began crying in heavy sobs. "Is that why you came here? To … to make me feel like shit?" She spat and then threw Maric's Blade at his feet with a shriek, tears streaming down her face. "I don't need this shit. Not from you. You were never like this before. How did I ever love anyone so cruel?"

Those words seemed to take the wind out of whatever he was about to say, and the King's shoulders slumped as if defeated. "I don't know why I came here. Not to fight." Crossing the room he sat on the edge of her stripped bed and stared at his hands. "You loved me?"

She turned about and looked at him incredulously. "Of course I did. How could you … even think otherwise?" She'd told him before, right? He had to have known. After everything.

"You never said it. Not until just now." The silence following his words was heavy enough to crush her chest.

"Surely that's not … is it?" she looked at him, wiping her eyes and he nodded almost imperceptibly. "Don't worry about the rest, though, it's one mistake I can fix. You'll never have to look at me again. I promise that."

"Yes, Kahrin, because that's what I want. The woman I still love to be dead. That will fix everything." He turned his head away from looking at her. "That will solve the problem, right there." Sighing he looked back to where she was standing. "You loved me once. I suppose that will have to be enough."

She moved hesitantly, then sat lightly upon his knee, and he reached an arm around and began rubbing her back awkwardly. It was as familiar as the steps of any dance or any form of templar training they had shared, and they both fell into the moment. "Of course I did … uh, do? I don't know, exactly. I … don't think that is the kind of thing that ever goes away, Alistair. I would have taken that final –" she choked on the last word, swallowed and went on, "without … the other stuff we did instead. And sometimes it hurts still, so much that I just … want it to all be over."

Alistair was quiet for what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few moments as he pulled her head to his shoulder and ran fingers through her hair again. "Those things you just said to me? The first part? Please don't say them anymore. I … don't give me hope. But for Maker's sake, Kahrin. Don't die." His voice caught slightly, "I can't make myself stop caring to where that won't kill me."

"You can't save me, Alistair. It will happen to me eventually." She shrugged, "we still don't know about you." She sniffled and ran fingers through his hair just above his ear. The one he always tugged on when he was nervous. "I'm sorry that I never told you sooner. You deserved better than that from me."

She couldn't believe she'd never said it, not once, all of these years. Not once during all the months of the Blight. Not once during their affair the year after. Not even when she'd left their daughter with him.

"Yes, well, I guess we can't always have what we want, can we?"

"Perhaps not, but you shouldn't have had to ask." She looked up at him, her eyes still as wet as his as they both still cried but tried to blink it back.

He looked down at her hazel and green eyes and swallowed once, clenched his eyes shut, and then lifted her lightly off of his lap with two hands around her waist. Setting her on the floor on her feet, he stood up. "I guess maybe that's why I came here. I needed to know, one way or the other." He looked for a moment like he might reach out for her again, but didn't, and continued quietly. "We should probably … get back to our lives now. Outside that door."

Kahrin nodded once, walked over and picked her sword up from the floor. Regarding it for a long time, she spoke without taking her attention from the ancient blade. "It was tempting. Just so you know. It really was. It was … the second most difficult thing I've ever had to do." What she wouldn't say was that the top of that list had been leaving the night she'd given him Elyssa. The night she walked out of both of their lives.

She turned around and squeezed his hand once and smiled sadly up at him, and he took that same hand and kissed the back of it lightly.

"Commander Cousland Hawke. Goodbye and be well."

"For what it's worth, thank you for coming for me." Kahrin lifted up on her toes and laid a light kiss on his damp cheek. "You and your daughter do the same. Goodbye, Your Majesty."

They both walked out the door and went, again, their separate ways.