Author's note: Thanks for all the reviews, I just loved them! Thanks to the people who put the story in their fave or alert list, I'm glad you liked it!

And finally, thanks to my beta, the amazing Epiphany sola Gratia, for graciously making sense of this mess! ( I'm telling you, there were horrible mistakes in that one! Let's just say we owe her for Kallian staying in one piece and leave it at that, while I go hide my shame.) Enjoy!


He remembers the first time he heard her laugh.

They were in camp, just after Lothering, on their way to Redcliffe. He was sitting by the fire, his gaze lost in the movement and colours of the flames. He was still wrapped in his own cocoon of pain after Ostagar and was barely aware of what was going on around him. He fought, ate, slept, and fought again. Sometimes he stared into fires and remembered. Not too often, though. It was oddly comforting and painful at the same time.

Sten was standing close enough that Alistair was vaguely aware of Kallian walking up to the big warrior and asking him some questions about his people. He heard Sten's answer and his eyebrows shot up. He still remembers every word:

"People are not simple. They cannot be summarized for easy reference in the manner of: The elves are a lithe, pointy eared people who excel at poverty."

There was a stunned silence after that.

And then Kallian laughed.

It was such an unexpected sound that Alistair unwillingly turned his head to look at her. She was genuinely amused. Her eyes sparkled, her lips curved into a self-deprecating smile. It made his heart ache.

She was laughing at Sten?


"Do you want to talk about Duncan?" she asked, sitting on the ground next to him.

He didn't turn to look at her, keeping his gaze on the flames. He wanted to talk, and yet he wanted to be left alone. He wanted her to go and he wanted her to stay.

Grief really didn't agree with him.

"You don't have to do that. I know you didn't know him as well as I did."

She kept silent, and he risked a glance her way. She was staring at the fire as well, and her mouth kept opening and closing, as if she was about to say something but constantly changed her mind.

"I've lost people too, you know," she finally breathed. Her voice was soft, but he still heard the hurt tone beneath her sympathetic words.

She hugged her knees, pressing them to her chest, and she absent-mindedly ran her hands up and down her adorned leather boots. He caught a glimpse of a shiny, simple ring on her left hand.

"You're married?" he blurted out.

Her eyes snapped back to him, hurt and angry. She slipped her right hand over her left to cover the ring.

He closed his eyes and turned his head away. He felt like slapping himself across the face. She just told him she'd lost people. "Stupid, stupid…"

"Nice talking to you," she said, standing up.

"Kallian!" he called as she walked away. She turned to look at him.

"Did you really find Sten funny when he said that?"

She raised her eyebrows then shook her head with a sad little smile.

"No, only surprisingly, disturbingly accurate."


He remembers the first time she touched him.

They were approaching Redcliffe and he knew he had to tell her the truth about his lineage before they met someone that would tell her for him. So he took her aside and poured his heart out to her.

She listened without a word, arms crossed, and her expression was so unreadable he wondered if she understood him clearly. Her face was slowly getting paler, though, and he began to worry.

"You're a noble," she said at last, her voice flat.

"Well… yes, but no, not really… I mean, sure, in one way…"

He was looking down in embarrassment, trying to find the words to explain. That's why he never saw it coming.

She punched him, square in the jaw, so hard he saw stars.

On their way to the Tower, after Redcliffe, she approached him on the road and gave him his mother's amulet. She answered all of his frantic questions about the trinket with growing unease, keeping her eyes on the road before them. When he asked her if she had remembered him talking about it, she finally looked at him.

"I'm sorry," she blurted out, her voice rough. "I shouldn't have punched you. I'm not… it's just… I hate…" She sighed heavily, "Look, I know you're not like every other noble. I'm not stupid, I can see it. You just took me by surprise. So I hope the gift makes you happy," and that was that.

They didn't speak again until they got to the tower.

He had forgiven her long ago, of course; but she was kind of cute when she was babbling and remorseful, he thought to himself.


He'd never felt less like a templar in his whole life. Maker knows that was saying something.

It was easy enough to eradicate evil when it was rushing to cut your head off, when it was ugly and deformed and looked like it had a second face growing over the first one. Evil abominations were so weird. He was still trying to figure out why abominations ran barefoot.

It was a lot less easy to eradicate evil when it was young, blonde and female, dressed in very figure-hugging mage robes, staring at you in the face with teary eyes, begging you to let it go. He would have been the worst templar ever.

For maybe the hundredth time, he congratulated himself on making the tiny scary elf the leader.

He was standing behind Kallian, so he could not see her face, but it seemed to him she was taking a very long time to answer. She wasn't considering letting the girl go, was she? The "girl" was a declared blood mage. She just attacked them with blood magic. She only surrendered when it was clear she was losing.

All right, they did barge in brandishing swords… Still. Blood mage.

Then again, she had told the mage in the dungeons at Redcliffe castle (Jathan? Johann?) to go too, and he had poisoned the arl.

Well if she didn't kill the girl, he wasn't about to. Of course, that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

"You can go, but I'm not helping you escape," Kallian said at length, watching impassively as the girl hastily scrambled to her feet and hurried away. Alistair caught Kallian by the arm as she was turning away to continue. She stopped, looked at his hand on her arm, then up at him. He felt sweat forming on his brow and cleared his throat as his gaze fell on his own hand holding her.

"Well, would you look at what I'm doing? That can't be smart…"

Then he should move his hand, right? Why wasn't his hand moving?

She arched her eyebrows and he shook himself mentally. It was certainly worse if he grabbed her and then didn't say anything.

"Why?" he simply asked.

He could feel her relax under his fingers. No, not relax. She was… kind of sagging. She took a deep breath and met his eyes.

"I know what it is," she said, "to do everything you can, even turn yourself into a monster, because you feel the need to escape, because you need to save the people that are important to you. I know of the regrets it brings, and I saw them in her eyes: so she gets to go. We'll see if she can live with it."

There was a flash of something in her eyes that made his heart skip a beat. She moved to get out of his grasp, but he held on to her.

"Can you?" he asked, his heart in his throat.

This time she did relax, and he even got a smile… a whole smile, just for him.

"I'm getting there."


He remembers the first time she opened up to him.

They were waiting by Jowan's body. She had sent the blood mage in the Fade, to try and save the arl's son. Everyone else was scattered inside the castle, checking on Connor or on Eamon for signs of change. The Wardens were on blood mage duty. Alistair didn't ask, but part of him knew why she specifically asked for him to be there. His sword was drawn.

They were sitting in somewhat uncomfortable silence. Alistair was passing the time trying to figure her out. He felt he knew her a bit better since Ostagar, but his first reactions of her still seemed accurate. She was tiny. She was scary. She could fight… and yet all he wanted to do was protect her. There was suffering in her past, and it was shaping the woman she was becoming. There was a constant shadow in her eyes… and the way she constantly reacted to Bann Teagan, as if she couldn't believe he could be that nice to her… she could seem at the same time very confident and very self-deprecating. But when she fought…

"Do you think I'm scary?" she whispered suddenly, and he shook himself from his reverie.

Maker, could she read minds?

"Ah… why?"

"When you talked to Wynne, you called me the "tiny scary elf." You're scared of me?"

He remembered the conversation. He hadn't thought she could hear him.

Was he really? It was worth thinking over.

She could be scary at times. There was a darkness in her, sometimes an intense sense of focus in battle, as if she wasn't aware of her surroundings… or rather, aware of completely different surroundings rather than that of reality.

Maybe scared wasn't the right word, but she could be scary. She rarely smiled, almost never laughed. She seemed constantly surrounded by an aura of pain. He remembered what that felt like.

"Not scary," he finally said. "More like… haunted." He tried to explain to her what he meant. She listened with an unreadable expression on her face.

"That's… that's not who I am," she said at length. "That's not who I want to be. I don't want my past to shape my life. Not that past, anyway. I wasn't even aware it was."

She thought about it for a short while, then got up.

"It won't. I won't let it. Things are gonna change." She smiled at him hesitantly. "Will you… will you help me?"

She does need protection.

"Anything."

She nodded then left the room, leaving him all alone with the potential abomination.

"Change takes time," he smiled to himself.