Thorns of Memory
Crimson blossoms on white. Velvet buds unfurl, stemless, against the snow. First one, tender and perfect, then a handful, then still more, blanketing pristine crystals in rich, dark red.
Heartsblood.
Elissa raises her head, following the shower of fluttering petals. Spears spring from the earth in a tangled thicket, stained near-black beneath their burden. Despair rises in her throat, choking the breath from her lungs.
The reddest of roses bloom at his breast, clenched around the protruding shafts. Loose petals tumble free, cascading over bare flesh to open anew upon the bitter snow. Cold, bright blades gleam like distant stars. Each cradles a bud poised to open - or fall.
Pressing a hand to her lips to stifle a whimper, she lifts her eyes to Cailan's face. The sob tears free, harsh as thorns in her throat, driving her to her knees. Hands claw toward the ruined figure, but her legs won't hold her, and he is too far, spears towering out of reach.
Not Cailan.
Alistair.
In his hand, a splash of green. A single stemmed rose, drooping and withered. Soft blue eyes that once held her own so lovingly now stare, blank and empty, into the cold.
You left. Silent words reverberate in her skull like drums. You left me, hung me on a throne, and let Ferelden's Court set upon me like wolves.
No! It wasn't like that! I had faith in you! And you're becoming a fine king!
But his words march on, relentless. Trembling, Elissa curls in on herself, crushes her face into the biting snow. Tears freeze on her cheeks.
A vice-grip closes on her shoulder.
"Commander?"
A hurlock looms behind her, grinning through its misshapen face. Rank, tainted breath washes over her.
These creatures killed Alistair! Choking back bile, she scrambles for her daggers, for Starfang. Her fingers close on emptiness.
"Commander, wake up!"
The hurlock grabs her around the shoulders and hauls her backward as she scrabbles for purchase, digging furrows in the bloody snow, raising a cloud of scattered petals. Guttural, incomprehensible snarls fill her ears. It's so much larger than she is - she cannot break the inexorable pull.
She throws an elbow back, yelling hoarsely for help beneath the dead eyes of her former lover. She connects solidly, and the darkspawn's grip falters.
"Ouch! Elissa, you're safe - wake up!"
Strong hands rouse her with a rough shake.
#
Her eyes snapped open. For a moment, she was blind, mind so full of white snow and red blood and dull, empty blue she couldn't see what was in front of her. Even as the dream-haze lifted, it left in its wake only darkness.
Another shake, gentler than the one that freed her from darkspawn clutches. "Eliss - Commander?" Dim red light limned the angles of a face, pulled a profile from the surrounding night. Glowing coals from the supper fire sketched torso, arms, hands, holding her upright.
Shame burned in her gut, a few butterflies wending through it, at being caught in her fear. "N-Nathaniel."
The grip on her shoulders eased, but she imagined the odd note in his rough voice might be worry. "You were dreaming." Light reflected wetly off his lower lip as he spoke.
"I had a sodding nightmare." She reached toward his face, hesitant, staring at that faint line to avoid his eyes. From across the camp, Oghren's snores pierced her daze. Her fingers curled back without touching, afraid of getting too close. "You're bleeding."
"Probably. You've decent aim, asleep." He rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth, and the glimmer smeared away.
"I thought you were a hurlock." The grinning, broken visage, eyes full of gleeful malice, surfaced in her memory clear as a brand. She shuddered, suppressing a moan.
"Nightmare, indeed," he murmured. He started to stand. "I should get Anders."
Panic knifed through her - leave her alone? How far off had Anders gone to stand watch? Nothing between her and Cailan's corpse wearing Alistair's face, bleeding out his devotion like roses… She pitched forward, tangling her fingers in Nathaniel's shirt. "No!" Tremors rippled through her. They wouldn't stop. She stared at her arms like they didn't belong to her. "P-please, don't leave. I'll be all right in a minute."
Nathaniel gently pried her hands free. "He can help you sleep."
She swallowed hard. Tried not to think of what she'd see if she slipped from wakefulness. "I know."
For a few moments, he did not move, and silence stretched between them, full of crickets and singing tree frogs, the blurble of the stream they'd camped beside and the whispering of the ancient trees of the Wending Wood. And Oghren, sawing away. Far in the distance, a wolf howled, lonely and mournful.
Sighing, he sat on the foot of her bedroll, tugging her hands to draw her closer. He settled her between his knees and cradled her to his chest like a child. Too stunned to resist, as most of their exchanges remained barbed and bitter, Elissa let him arrange her as he wished, but her heart throbbed in her ears, loud enough to drown the chirping crickets.
Beneath the ear pressed to his breast, his beat louder still.
"Nathaniel?" She didn't - quite - squeak. "What are you -"
"Hush," he answered, not unkindly. "Unless you would prefer to huddle in your bed and shake."
Huddle and shake? The nerve! She tried to recoil, but his hold tightened until she relaxed again.
After a while, he added, quietly, "Delilah suffered night terrors as a child." He offered no further explanation for his behavior. He didn't need to.
Elissa only vaguely remembered his sister's episodes. She'd been very young when the older girl had grown out of them, but she did remember the weeping, thrashing, and feeling utterly helpless in the face of such unreasoning fear. He must have experienced the same, many, many times. Well, if he wanted to be useful now, soothing her nightmare away, Elissa wasn't about to complain.
Though she wished her stomach would cease somersaulting, and her skin stop tingling where it met his. Even knowing he barely tolerated her, and after dreaming so heart-wrenchingly of Alistair, she still… Had anyone told her, in her first days as Warden Commander, that her heartache at leaving the new king, at his anger that she could turn him aside "so easily," would fade at all, let alone be slowly superseded by an intense resurgence of her childhood fascination with Nathaniel, she would have said they were mad. Her heart still ached for Alistair. Not all her dreams of him her nightmares. But more and more, memories of their time together, their nights together, entwined with curiosity. Alistair was a sweet, conscientious, and charming young man, beneath his endearing uncertainty. What would Nathaniel be like?
Arrows riddling the chest, rather than spears, dull eyes paling to steely grey in a sharpening face. Hair darker, longer. Blood in the snow…
This time, Elissa couldn't stifle the gasp that wrenched from her like a sob.
Nathaniel rubbed her shoulders. "Would talking about it help?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. What if she did tell him? Could he - would he - somehow use it against her? He'd been far less disagreeable lately, ever since the stormy night he'd crept into her room as if plotting murder and left after barely crossing the threshold. For days afterward, he'd been…almost reluctantly apologetic, until they settled into their current, occasionally fragile sufferance. But she hadn't forgotten the arrow that had flown almost close enough to brush her cheek before finding its mark in a darkspawn, and how narrowly she avoided serious injury the first time they sparred.
"Oh, yes. And you can finally see what brings the mighty Warden Commander to her knees!" She spoke lightly, half in jest, half afraid she meant it.
Snorting, he lightly swatted the top of her head. "Don't be absurd. You -" He broke off, and she tried not to flinch from the frustration in his voice. With a deep breath, he continued. "What you've endured, I have likely only heard the barest fraction of. But with even that much, it's a wonder you ever sleep. You're entitled to a few nightmares."
He sounded so sincere! Maker, but she wanted to believe him. More than that, he was warm, and solid, and here. Whatever he thought of her, surely, just this once, she could pretend everything was right between them. That he was her friend again, and maybe -
No. Best not to get ahead of herself.
She tried to relax, but the tremors still wouldn't stop. Her hands shook. Though she couldn't see them in the firelight, she could have mapped the tiny, round scars on her right hand, memories of porcupine quills she'd been speared with once, years ago. Quills Nathaniel had removed, holding her much like this.
"There were roses," she said, finally, "blooming in the snow. Only they weren't -"
She imagined incredulity radiating from him like a palpable force, but he showed no sign of it beyond silence. With Nathaniel, silence could mean almost anything. Someday, she would relearn how to translate.
"They - ugh. Did you -?" Sighing, she leaned away, and this time he didn't stop her. The embers of the fire winked in the dark, like darkspawn eyes. She wrung her hands. "You heard about Cailan - how we…found him."
His breath caught, and a hand covered hers, stilling them. "Oghren mentioned it, briefly. It was -" He hesitated. "I did not want to listen." The words slipped out with the weight of apology, or regret.
"No. Hard to blame you, the way you three were." They'd been close growing up, Nathaniel, Cailan, and her brother. They'd gotten into more trouble…and now everything was broken. Who wanted to be reminded of that? She buried her face in her hands, blotting out the campfire glow. "I dream of it, of finding him. Often. More than anything else. You'd expect home, wouldn't you? Or the Archdemon. And I do, sometimes. And Ostagar, and broodmothers. Broodmothers are almost as bad as…as Highever." She didn't like to mention Highever. It was too much like an accusation, a reminder of what his father had done. Of her retaliation that brought him back to Ferelden with murder in his heart. "But that image of our king hanging desecrated is branded in my memory like…like it's still happening. Like it's always happening. Everything else, all the horror and pain, seems squashed into that one moment. Because it isn't always Cailan I dream of." Tears burned her eyes; she rubbed them away before they could trace the tracks of grief inked into her skin.
He tugged her hands from her face, caught an escaping tear with his thumb and brushed it away. "And this time?"
"Alistair. He…he was bleeding roses all over the snow, and -" The tears came faster. She curled in on herself, wishing she could disappear rather than let him see her cry.
But his compassion - or whatever it was - chipped relentlessly away at her pride. "And?"
"He hated me," she whispered. "He was so angry. I talked him into taking a crown he didn't want, arranged for him to marry Queen Anora, and then left." When Nathaniel drew her against him again, she rested her forehead on his shoulder, trying to breathe without sobbing, focusing on the pine and woodsmoke smells that still clung to him from the campfire. "Of course he would hate me."
"Shh…it was a dream, Liss." Lightly, he stroked her hair. "I'm sure it isn't true."
Oh, but he'd still been in the Vigil's dungeon when the new king had come to the keep. He hadn't heard the tightness in Alistair's voice, or the deliberate distance. Hadn't seen how he could barely look at her.
When her tears and trembling ceased, Nathaniel ventured another question. "Why did you not become queen? You clearly still…care about him a great deal."
She pushed herself upright, hands braced on his chest as she tried to study his face, but the glowing coals had dimmed almost to nothing. She could see only his eyes, glinting in the darkness. Why would he ask that?
An abrupt, trumpeting snore from Oghren made her jump, and Nathaniel squeezed her forearms, distracting her. "Easy."
"Ugh. Stupid."
"Too tightly strung."
"Yes, that too."
He chuckled. The sound vibrated through her fingertips and thrilled along her spine. A nice change from weighted silences and scoffing. She'd forgotten how much she loved his low, rumbling laugh.
Belatedly, she remembered her hands, and oh-so-casually lowered them into her lap. "A-Alistair was - is - a good man. Yes, I care about him. Leaving…hurt. Now, I'm sorrier for the loss of his friendship. And anyway, someone needed to rebuild the Wardens."
"Surely you could have done both."
"Been queen and Warden Commander? Perhaps. But the Wardens deserve my full attention, and Ferelden the king and queen's. Besides, Anora has the experience to make up for what Alistair lacks. She's a good queen. I never wanted to rule."
"Neither did His Majesty," he reminded her.
She bristled, but held tight to her temper. "No. But he has a responsibility to his bloodline - if I could have taken that burden from him, I would have. And he'll be good for Ferelden, I think. His thoughtfulness and…and kindness…will hopefully keep Anora grounded and balanced. She was a little too eager to stay in power for my liking."
"As you kept command of the Wardens?" He spoke without mockery or rancor, but she'd had the same guilty argument with herself a hundred times and snapped back against her own accusations as much as his.
"Father gave me to the Wardens. Service was the price of my survival!"
He shifted away, into another impenetrable silence. Shock? Disbelief? Would his expression tell her more if she could see his face, or would his stoic mask still defeat her?
When he spoke again, his voice shook. Just a little - Elissa might not have noticed had she not been listening so closely for some reaction. But whether it was from anger or surprise or whatever else, she just couldn't tell; he was so damned inscrutable! "You…didn't want…"
"What I wanted was Highever! To study under Father's guard captain and seneschal and support Fergus when Father passed the Teyrnir to him." She took a deep, shaking breath. "Don't even think to tell me I abandoned Alistair to the throne while I went traipsing off to do what I wanted. My duty is here," she snarled, "and I'll damned well make the best of it. Since what I wanted went up in flames!"
Nathaniel never tried to interrupt; he let her shout herself out.
Nearby, Oghren slept on, still snoring fit to wake the dead, and Anders didn't come running back from wherever he was keeping watch, so she mustn't have yelled too loudly. Only the nearest crickets paid her outburst any notice, going as quiet as the Howe sitting on her bedroll.
She shuddered, imagining, for a moment, his father's face staring blankly back at her.
Careful not to touch her, Nathaniel slowly stood. "I'll get Anders," he said, gently, too gently, and disappeared beyond the dull, ashen remains of the campfire.
Elissa pressed her face into her blankets, moaning. She'd been doing so well! Neither of them had more than obliquely referenced his father's treachery or the fall of Highever and her family for a long time. Why did he have to prod that wound, and now, when she was already barely holding together?
How could anyone be so enthralling one moment and insufferable the next? And how long would she keep hurting others over her own wounds?
Footsteps rustled through the underbrush, wary of hidden impediments, and a pale light slowly poured over her. "Elissa? Li - oh, there you are." More footsteps, surer now. They stopped beside her, and a sudden pressure startled her, before she realized Anders was rubbing her back in soothing circles. "Goodness, you are a mess aren't you? Nate said you had quite the nightmare."
The nightmare.
Alistair. Blood-roses blooming on snow. The hurlock. She'd almost forgo -
Elissa bolted upright, staring in the direction Nathaniel had gone. Her fury had loosened the dream's talons in her heart. Even the still-vivid image of Alistair hanging, lifeless-but-hateful, in Cailan's place induced little more horror than the real memory. No more racing heart and violent trembling.
Untroubled by her silence, Anders kept talking, encouraging her to lie down and murmuring an incantation for sleep when she didn't protest.
Had Nathaniel…intentionally…?
The Fade reached through his spell and unfurled around her in ephemeral petals. She drifted off, still wondering.