All things considered, it wasn't the worst tavern he'd ever walked into. The smells were manageable without inducing vomiting, the bartender didn't shift have a hidden blood stained alter, and even the resident Qunari ruled with a happy stupor on the ground floor. There was a bard, but no place is perfect.

Alistair dodged around flocks of the Inquisition faithful. Most stood around the tables, chatting about trivial things. Maybe the chantry outlawed the use of chairs while the sunburst throne sat empty. That sounded like the sisters, if we can't have the chair then neither can anyone else!

He wasn't in a socializing mood, luckily a table sat empty beneath the stairs to the third level. Placing down the flagon of 'whatever counts as Skyhold's best,' he pulled out the chair then paused. No Crows came slicing out of the shadows to cut him to bits, no Wardens burst through a door calling for his head. Not even a Chantry mother approached, ready to whack his knuckles for daring to sit while there was no Divine. Maybe it was the best tavern he'd ever been in.

Propping his legs onto the chair opposite, he leaned back and took a deep draught of what dribbled out of the tap. The beer had the piquant of swamp water drained through a Chasined's small clothes. "Ah, just like home," he muttered to himself.

Strings of the bard's lumbering song floated from below him. "Oh Grey Warden, what have you done? The oath you have taken is all but broken."

She'd been on that verse since he wandered in trying to find a refuge from his lonely thoughts. If he had any real coin he'd throw it at the bard and beg her to never sing that damn song again. Behind that mournful ballad clawed the whispers, a cacophony too far in the distance. He couldn't make out what they wanted but that didn't bother him. He dreaded the day he finally would understand.

Reaching into his pocket, he unearthed the letter, already re-creased and covered in a mustard stain. He'd read through it three times already, but just seeing her words kept the calling voices at bay.

"...safe, for now. Florian's been helpful, to a point, not that I enjoy relying upon him to watch my back."

She'd glared daggers at the man who started them down that rumor, a very absent minded dwarf who kept asking her to fetch him some tea like a good girl. Alistair feared he'd come back to find the dwarf in many little pieces, especially if he kept on calling her "sweet cheeks." He skipped around the letter, picking up favored sentences to soothe his turbulent brain.

"...I wish I knew more of Corypheus before you went on this quest, I'd been told more of some ancient magister in one of our prisons, but you know the wardens and their secrets. You say you're a Grey Warden? I don't believe you. You could be lying. You're not wardeny enough to be told this, so prove it. Show us your taint. Bah!"

He pictured her waving her hands in the air, pacing about in some ancient ruin's library while ranting aloud about the wardens, quill vibrating in her stained fingers. Abandoning Vigil's Keep had not exactly been her idea with Weisshaupt constantly breathing down their neck. Every few months another high ranking Warden would pop up in Ferelden just looking around, checking things out, making sure you really did kill that archdemon like you keep claiming. Maybe you missed it or something. Archdemon's are so easy to misplace, like socks. It could have fallen behind the cushions.

Alistair skipped over her detailed explanation of whatever very interesting archaic history she was ecstatic over. He could nod along later when they met up. "But you promise me. Swear to me you will not be the one to swoop down on Corypheus. Swooping is bad."

"Interesting reading?"

Alistair started, banging his knees into the table and rattling the half empty flagon. Spinning his head towards the voice he spotted a glimmer of chainmail and pink lips curled below a drawn hood. "Maker's breath, Leliana, you about gave me a heart attack."

"Sorry," she said and motioned to the chair beside him. He nodded, folding up the letter for safekeeping, "I did not mean to startle you."

"Sure you didn't. You crept up the stairs all sneaky like and stood just behind me so I'd be certain to see you."

She smiled, "You need not be on alert here. Skyhold is secure and my agents are on the watch for any of the Grey Wardens under Corypheus' sway."

"Sure, sure. If you had an entire order calling for your head I'm sure you'd kick your heels up and throw a fancy party to celebrate."

"Point taken." Leliana sat prim in the chair, the hood never wavering from her face. Shadows were her life now. She eyed up his mug and that porcelain nose crinkled, "You drink the liquor here?"

"I'll drink the stuff anywhere if it gets the job done."

"This calling..."

But he shook his head, "I'd rather not talk about it. How about we speak of cheerier things, like a darkspawn magister, or a giant hole in the sky, or the temple of sacred ashes blowing up? We go to all that bother to find the place, clean up any high dragons cluttering the front stoop only to have someone come along a decade later and BOOM, all gone."

"It is a dark time," her face crumpled into a frown and Alistair remembered the Divine caught in that big boom. Leliana didn't go into much detail about how she knew the woman before the big hat, but she'd gush about Justinia whenever they ran into her out on left hand duties. Which seemed an awful lot for them operating primarily in Ferelden while she worked Orlais, in retrospect.

"Yeah," Alistair nodded his head, "the blight, that was bad times. And mage rebellions, that's bad bad times. But these, these are some of those bad bad bad times."

"At least you escaped Corypheus' hold, as well as our mutual friend."

He laughed at that mutual friend. It was a silly code. Anyone with half a brain would know who she meant, but they still relied upon it in letters when talking about her. Not everyone came out of the blight on top and some were willing to tussle with the Hero of Ferelden for their due. Only Zevran referred to her by name, or the occasional "Grey Warden" if he was in a mood. She was THE warden not just to them but all of Thedas, Alistair was simply Alistair. Anymore, he wished he could be only that.

"I've never been more happy for her to be a country or two away from me," Alistair admitted.

"Did you see Morrigan is here as well?"

"Yes," he frowned, not wanting to elaborate on the hour or so he spent hiding in a closet to avoid the witch's castigating eye, "It's a big old family reunion here." Alistair tipped back his mug, trying to drown the thought.

"And her son as well?"

Sputtering swamp water past his throat and out his nose, Alistair coughed out a, "What?"

"She has a young boy with her she claims is her son. Kieran is his name."

"Oh?!" he asked through the fire burning his sinuses playing it off as smoothly as he did anything else. They never ever talked about that. It was one of those left in the past, out of our hands, never bring it up things. He brought it up only once after she tracked Morrigan to the Dragonbone Wastes, asking if there'd been a child. She drew her arms around herself and asked softly, "Do you truly wish to know?" He didn't then and he didn't now.

Leliana was either fully ignorant of the whole deal or played so as she turned her crystal eyes on him, "He seems a quiet and thoughtful lad, nothing like his mother."

Or his father, Alistair bit back the thought. "I'd rather snog a broodmother than pry into Morrigan's affairs," he said aloud.

"Truer words... Do you remember the night the mabari hound swiped Morrigan's staff?"

Alistair snorted, "We spent all night searching for the damn thing only for Sten to ask the stupid dog where he buried it. And she had to carry around a staff coated in mud and bronto shit for weeks until it got washed."

"I thought for certain Morrigan was going to kill the dog, but one glare from our warden and the witch left him alone. What ever became of that dog?"

"Oh he's off with her, probably farting at her feet. She wanted him to remain in Ferelden but he wasn't having any of it."

"Because of his age?" Leliana asked.

"Because, and I quote 'he stinks worse than the innards of a giant spider when you give him cheese.' She is right about that."

"Then why do you keep giving him cheese?"

"Have you tried saying no to a mabari? He outplays me at every turn."

"Thank the maker you were never put in charge."

"You're telling me? I'd have gotten us lost and we'd have spent a year circling Lothering. Missed all the really big important stuff."

Leliana tented her fingers, leaning into them, "How is she keeping on her mission?"

Alistair shook his head, he had a pretty damn good idea Leliana already knew (and probably enjoyed the racier parts of her letter), but she wanted to play civil. It was almost as if Leliana wasn't some spymaster of a heretical movement and he wasn't up to his eyeballs in shit. A bit of normal in the middle of the storm.

"She describes her situation as 'typical.' Which means she's probably already killed three high dragons, discovered and reclaimed a lost dwarven thaig, and invented a new form of magic."

"That sounds like her," Leliana said, then her vision drifted behind him. Alistair turned to find a dwarf sliding around a couple of human asses getting into a debate about the Inquisition's state of readiness (it seemed all anyone could talk about).

"I heard there was some old grey warden hero wandering around Skyhold. Never expected it to be you, Cheesy."

Alistair lifted his empty mug at the dwarf, "What are you doing here Varric?"

Varric rolled his shoulders, "Oh you know, where's there demons and fade shit and blood mages, there I am."

"Pull up a chair, come and commiserate with us," Alistair said, pushing one away with his boot.

"You two are acquainted?" Leliana asked, watching the dwarf join them.

"Something that slipped your net, spymaster?" Varric asked. He fished a small flask out of his pocket and dumped it into his smaller mug. "I assisted our friend here with a little matter. There were antivan crows, swamp witches, dragons, qunari, insane tevinter magisters."

"You know," Alistair shrugged, "typical."

"I could have done without the trip through the fade," Varric said.

"You're telling me," Alistair snorted. "My love and I spend so damn much time in the fade, I keep telling her we should get a summer home. Some place demon adjacent."

"Our mutual friend accompanied you?" Leliana asked, her eyebrows pinched.

"Of course. Who else would think to call up a pirate queen to help break someone out of prison?"

Varric laughed, shaking his head, "You three spent a lot of time 'below decks.'"

"We had a lot of catching up to do," Alistair said as smoothly as possible, but from Leliana's bemused focus he felt a blush still rising.

"She wasn't what I was expecting," Varric said, swirling his mug around but barely drinking.

"Oh?" Leliana asked.

"Most heroes you expect to be, well, like Blackwall. Serious as hemorrhoids, focused only on their shit, and prone to bouts of extreme do-goodness. You know, boring. But your hero wasn't anything like that. Actually, she kinda reminded me of Hawke."

"Hm," Alistair mused, "I don't see it."

"Come on..." Varric jibbed, "they both end almost every damn conversation with 'I should go.'"

Leliana nodded, "This is true."

"Lots of people say that. No one I can think of off the top of my head, but..."

"I've noticed the Inquisitor does as well," Leliana continued. "Perhaps that is the real secret behind cementing's one status as a hero."

"Ending every conversation with 'I should go?'" Alistair asked.

"I've heard stupider shit," Varric answered before raising his cup. "Here's to heroes who do all the hard shit so we don't have to." Despite his mug being empty, Alistair still banged his into Varric's.

As the dwarf drank and the warden rolled the empty mug in his hands, contemplating another round, a scout approached Leliana. He dropped a note into her hands and stood at full attention as she read it, her face betraying nothing.

Varric pulled his empty mug from his face and asked, "All right Nightingale, what's the word?"

"The siege weapons are in place, our troops are prepared. We march on Adamant tonight." The softness of her voice shattered as the nostalgia vanished. There was no point in reminiscing about the time they saved the world when it still needed saving.

"Great, great. You think we'll knock on the door and find the Warden's enjoying a giant hand of wicked grace instead? Yeah, that's what I figured."

"At least we won't have to deal with the fade," Alistair said.

"Great, now you just jinxed it, Cheesy. Come on, Bianca. We'd better go find Hawke," Varric jumped off his chair, patting his crossbow to find the Champion.

"Take this to Cullen," Leliana said to the scout, rising as well. Only Alistair remained in his chair, rolling his mug around his hands watching the few drops glint in the light. One more march. One more trip into danger. One more drawing his sword against those he considered brothers.

Sighing, he rose to his feet, checking the blade always at his side and Duncan's shield always upon his back. One more time saving the world and then he can see her, find her, and never leave her side again.

Patting the hidden letter he fell into the Inquisition ranks filing out of the somber tavern, ready for war against the Grey Wardens.