Thanks as always goes to finding_marie.

Alistair stood in a small clearing just behind the inn in the grey light of dawn, watching as it brushed the tips of the trees, and his breath hung heavy in the crisp morning air. It was not cold enough for a frost outside, but the dew that had collected on the long grass was every bit as chilled where it seeped through the heavy wool of his winter trousers. He had left his armor behind this morning, opting instead to come outside and work through some basic forms with sword and shield, for exercise more than for practice. He needed some physical activity, needed to sweat the conversation with Zevran and the questions it had raised during the night out of his pores.

He moved smoothly through guards and stances, cuts and thrusts, the movements born of memory grafted into his muscles. He could feel the jittery exhaustion of a restless night tatter slightly with the slicing lungfuls of chill air he sucked in.

A small sound broke him from his thoughts and he paused, midswing with his shield held high to look around the clearing. He peered through the dimly lit trees at his back, the rising sun on the dew sending wisps of fog rising from the grass to haze his view. This far south, it could be Darkspawn or Chasind, and he wasn't about to be taken by surprise. There was no motion to catch his eye, nothing crept into sight, and he soon dismissed it as the normal sounds of the forest.

"Practicing?" The voice was pitched low, just at his ear, and he nearly fell over as he started violently. Regaining his balance he spun to watch as Ophelia flowed into view at his shoulder, pulling back the cloak of shadows she was able to draw around herself, a broad grin on her face and her eyes dancing with repressed laughter.

"Maker's Breath, woman." He grumbled, lowering sword and shield and trying to slow his galloping heart. "I only have twenty-seven years left. Try not to make that time any shorter, please. You nearly scared me to death."

"Sorry," she replied in a tone that said she really wasn't, and crossed her arms to lean against a convenient tree. "So what were you doing? Practice seems unlikely, with you not wearing any armor."

"There was this particularly evil looking squirrel I saw out in that oak tree from my window earlier. I figured I'd come out here and try to prevent him from making any mischief, with a fearsome and intimidating display of my combat prowess." She arched a skeptical brow and he shrugged. "Or I could just be exercising."

She pushed off from the tree to drift closer, plucking at his tunic sleeve. "You know, I think I've seen you out of your armor more these past few weeks than I have in all our time prior."

He leveled a look at her. "You've seen me out of my armor plenty of times, Ophelia. You've seen me out of my clothes too, or did you forget that part?"

She dropped the fabric from between her fingers with a short hasty motion. "There's a difference between forgetting and trying not to remember, Alistair."

He tried to swallow past the hot lump in his throat. "It was that bad, eh?" He trailed the point of his sword along the ground at his feet, heedless of how it might dull the blade. "Compared to Zevran, I'm sure I must have seemed a fumbling idiot."

The words slapped her across the face, and her eyes widened in shock. "What did he tell you?"

"Nothing. Forget I mentioned it." Alistair bit the words out, shaking his head sharply and looking away. "It was wrong of me to bring it up."

"Alistair," she said, touching his shoulder, her voice growing insistent at his refusal to meet her eyes. "Alistair."

"What?" He ground out, grudgingly holding her gaze.

"You are a beautiful man." As a blush began to stain his cheeks she continued. "And you know it. But you're also the most insecure person I've ever met. How anyone who has been through what you have, has overcome his own past and failings to become the best kind of man possible and can still think so little of himself, I will never understand."

His eyes searched hers, and when he spoke the undercurrent of loss threatened to sweep her away. "Then why didn't you come back?" His sword tip came to rest on the ground at their feet, the hilt sliding loosely from fingers gone numb. "If that's truly what you believe, then why were you so quick to take the opening I gave you and run as far from me as you could?"

His words pulled the air from her lungs, and she couldn't seem to draw breath again. "Is that what you really think? That I saw an easy out and took it? Oh, Alistair." Her humorless laugh shattered across the clearing.

He stammered in confusion, trying to rearrange sounds into words. "I-I don't know? I did. But now I don't know what to think. I never do around you, Ophelia. I thought that would improve over time but..." he trailed off, and a smile of self-mockery twisted his lips. "That doesn't seem to be the case." He reached down to pick his sword off the ground, feeling the weight of her eyes heavy on his back until he straightened up. "Talking with you is like playing catch with a hedgehog for a ball. It doesn't seem to matter how careful I am, I always come away bleeding."

Her rueful smile cut through the worst of the tension roiling around them. "Catch is a two person game, don't forget."

"That's true," he conceded.

She shook herself free from the last of the lingering tension. "I didn't come out here intending to be so melancholy, though - maudlin should wait until after breakfast at least. I wasn't sleeping all that well, and noticed you out here. I thought I'd come and see if I could join you, if maybe you wanted to spar a bit with me."

"With you? Why not, I could use the practice. I've always been weak against you small quick types, and I figure we're far enough away from the inn to keep from waking anyone up." He glanced at her armor, missing only a helmet and gloves, and couldn't stop a cheeky grin from spreading. "You have the advantage on me though, being armored. Although I have no idea how you're not frozen out here, in that little leather skirt." He could sense her hesitation and took on a goading tone. "Only you would choose to wear armor that looked so girly."

"What's that supposed to mean?" she growled, willingly rising to his bait. She stepped back and dropped into a ready stance, drawing the two dirks on her back with a soft hiss of steel. "I'll make you eat those words, Alistair."

He laughed as he brought his longsword and shield up. "Well, I haven't had breakfast yet, come to think of it."

He watched warily as she waited, tension humming in the line of her limbs. He knew she would strike first - she always did. In a blur of motion she darted to his left, trying to get behind him, and he raised his shield just in time. A light blow fell against the scarred aegis, more of a test than a true strike. He spun and brought up his sword to block the second blow he knew would come from the blade in her other hand and she melted away, dancing back out of the range of his longer reach. He surged forward, pressing his momentum, and she stumbled backwards offbalance. Ophelia righted herself and ducked low, under his shield too quickly for him to react, and she slammed an elbow into his gut, stomping his instep in the process for good measure. He grunted, and brought the edge of his shield crashing down on her right forearm as she tried to snake it around toward his kidney.

They backed apart, he gasping for his breath back and she shaking a nerveless hand. "I had almost forgotten how dirty you fight."

"You think that was dirty?" She laughed, and beckoned him mockingly. "I haven't even begun. I'll show you what filthy fighting looks like." She flitted forward, looking to repeat the performance, but he was ready. As she went low he pushed forward, crashing downward with his shield onto her shoulder and bringing his sword down from the other side, forcing her to block his slash with her crossed blades as she knelt on the ground. In a flash she was out, tucking her head down and rolling forward away from of his attack, rising to her feet behind him. Her face was slashed with a fierce grin and her eyes were lit with a grim humor, and Alistair couldn't help but grin back.

She fell on him again, raining sharp staccato blows down at his shoulders and head that he easily batted away with sword and shield. They were an unlikely sparring pair, she the unstoppable force and he the immovable object. Even without his bulky armor he felt like a tortoise around her, as she darted in and out with the speed of an angry wasp. Eventually she relented, the flurry of blows slowing, and he relaxed his stance for a moment to catch his breath. She saw his pause, and struck.

He wasn't sure what happened. One moment he was upright, drawing his weapons forward as he saw her approach, and the next she had slammed into him, sweeping a leg behind him at the back of his knees and bringing the pommel of her right blade down hard on his left shoulder. He had a moment to flail before they both crashed to the ground in a tangle of limbs and clattering weapons, and he was left staring at the sky with the weight of her pressed on his chest where she was sprawled inelegantly.

"I think I win," he gasped out between fits of laughter.

'What?" She stirred and poked at his chest indignantly. "I think ending up on the ground below me, disarmed, counts as losing the match."

"Perhaps," he replied, with a grin. "But I think ending up on the ground with a lovely woman straddling you counts as winning in most men's books." She glanced down at their position and a rare flush spread across her cheekbones.

Alistair's gloveless hands were resting on the bare skin of her thighs and he couldn't seem to drag his eyes away from the contrast of his darker hands against her paleness. He moved them slightly, not pulling them away but settling them more firmly, smoothing his palms against the soft chilled skin. He dared to look up and saw her staring down at him with grey eyes gone wide, so much like the fog wisping around them in the dawning light. Had it really been so long since he had been here last? He wondered if he would ever find his way out of of her, or if he would spend his life stumbling, a man lost in the mists.

With a muffled groan he slid his hands upwards, so slowly he could feel each individual bump as gooseflesh broke out along her skin. A shudder passed through her, and the soft strangled noise she made deep in her throat flowed like warm honey over him, sweet and thick and dangerous. She leaned into him, ever so slightly, and his restraint crumbled under the languid weight of her. His hands clenched convulsively around her leg, fingers digging deeply into the soft flesh of her upper thigh, just shy of painful.

With an effort he tore his hands away and they flew up to her shoulders, beyond his ability to rein in or control. She fell forward, into his grasping arms, and he crushed her to his chest with the weight of memory riding heavily upon the both of them.

Ophelia lifted her head from his chest, lips parted to speak, and Alistair knew that he couldn't bear to hear what she might say, to have the moment broken before it had begun. With a swift motion he rolled them both over, heedless of the scattered weapons around them, and pinned her legs beneath his own. Her cry of surprise was muffled as he slanted his lips across hers.

He expected her to hit him, maybe to pick up one of her discarded knives and stab him in the back. What he didn't expect was for her to open beneath him, to part her lips in welcome. He followed her breath in, chasing it into the dark secret behind her lips to sweep across the roof of her mouth, the edge of her teeth, the soft heat of her tongue. He wanted to trail it all the way, to lose himself inside the dark warm depths of her and never find his way out again.

She surged up, pressing back against him to tangle her arms around his neck and he was undone. He broke away from the kiss to trail his fevered mouth along her jaw and she tipped her head back, the heedless abandon in the smooth white line of her arching neck driving him to the brink of madness. He brought a hand up to trace along her cheek, down that achingly slender throat to feather his fingers across her collarbone.

"Stop," she said, the words a ragged whisper in his ear.

He pulled away, confusion clouding his face as she struggled beneath him.

"Stop, stop!" she insisted, squirming out of his arms and rising to stand before him in disarray, with a wild kind of fear in her eyes.

He picked himself painfully up off the ground, the morning much colder than it had been moments ago. "What? What happened?"

"Nothing, nothing happened." She blew out a ragged breath, running hands through her hair to smooth it, and her next words were tempered with sadness. "I just remembered who I am, and who you are."

"And who am I?" he asked softly, the color in his face bleeding away with the fading memory of her lips.

She smoothed her face into a pale blank mask. "Exactly the same man I knew before."

"Is that such a bad thing?" He held himself with a careful stillness. He already knew the answer, and he feared it might splinter him into a thousand tiny shards of grief.

"It is when I'm not the same woman. You haven't changed a bit, Alistair. If your hand is forced, duty will come first. Long ago, I was willing to fool myself into thinking otherwise. But I'm not that same woman, who foolishly believed that love would fix everything. And I will be damned if I give you a second chance to turn away from me again.""

A small sound limped out before he could crush down on his voice, and her face crumpled but she braced her shoulders and plunged ahead. "The me of long ago would have continued that kiss. But you were right the first time around, about us. Without the possibility of an heir your rule is weakened, by your short life and your lack of relatives. Your death would mean years of struggle to settle the right of succession. How can you ask me to knowingly plunge this country into civil war, after we did so much to save it?"

She stopped, and a frown ghosted across her brow. "I've had a great deal of time to contemplate the nature of what you taught me about duty, Alistair. And you were right to send me away, to force us both into doing what was right for our country. I talked you into shirking duty once, out of my own shameful selfishness. And look where it has gotten us." She swept a hand towards the treeline, the damp dripping pines. "In the middle of winter, dragging ourselves through a boggy forest, chasing a fiend that we might have created, that might be killing innocent children." The anguish in her cracked voice scrabbled at his ears. She was pallid and cold, and the blankness of her stare set worry curling through his chest.

"Come here." Alistair beckoned, and growled at her hesitation. "Maker's Breath woman, I'm not going to accost you, you've made your postion on that very clear. But can I at least comfort a friend who looks like she needs it?"

At her slow nod he closed the gap between them and folded her in his arms. She took a deep shuddering breath and then relaxed, her arms slowly coming up around his back.

"Thank you." she murmered. "I tend to forget that I have those, sometimes."

They stood in silence, taking comfort in a moment of fleeting familiarity.

"Well, isn't this just a touching scene." The scalding words took them both by surprise.

Ophelia straightened in Alistair's arms, drawing composure over her face as easily as she pulled on a helm, locking away all traces of emotion with an eerie speed that terrified Alistair. Faster than he could follow she had snatched her discarded blades off the ground and dashed into the treeline. In the shade of a large fir tree he could see an indistinct shape, hear a dry humorless laughter.

"You." Ophelia hissed as she slid to a stop, like an angry cat spitting at shadows.

"How fortunate that it was I who found you smothering each other, and not my mother." The shadows parted and Morrigan swept into the clearing, bedraggled and travelstained. There were grim lines around her mouth, and her golden eyes were flat and hunted as she glanced around the clearing.

"Your mother?" Alistair struggled with the words as they clung to his tongue like burrs.

"Yes, my mother. Shall I speak slower, and in smaller words, Alistair? Perhaps you remember Flemeth. Supposedly she died in agony at the hands of Ophelia. Only that doesn't seem to be the case at all, does it?" The venom in her tone coursed through their veins, freezing them in place.

"Your mother?" Alistair repeated, his brain unable to move past that phrase. "But I thought..."

Shards of recollection fell together to form a seamless truth. Ophelia had refused to take him to Flemeth's, opting instead to take Shale, Leliana, and Wynne. And they had returned, suspiciously clean and lacking the stench of battle. "You never killed Flemeth, did you?" he asked Ophelia, the words coming out flat and dull, his breath ragged. He pointed at Morrigan with a trembling finger. "I don't even like her, but she deserves better than that. From you, especially. She trusted you."

"I had to lie," Ophelia whispered, her mouth a grim slash as she pressed her lips together, refusing to look away from Morrigan. "I've done a lot of things that I'm not proud of in the name of saving this country. I had to choose - risk losing Morrigan if I refused her request, or risk someone dying in an attempt to kill Flemeth. I decided to...compromise."

The mage inclined her head in a slow nod, a humorless smile twisting her lips. "So very calculating of you, Ophelia. I would not have thought you to have it in your nature."

Ophelia narrowed her eyes, brushing off Morrigan's bitter compliment. "You're alone."

The iron that had been stiffening her spine leached away, and Morrigan drooped slightly in its wake. "Yes, I am. My son is gone, stolen by Flemeth almost two months ago. And before you ask, no I don't know why. My theory..." her flat tone hitched slightly before she continued. "I assume that she has decided not to bother with me, and is instead looking to him as her future host. Or perhaps she is trying to use him as bait, to get me to return." Morrigan broke off, her jaw working as she struggled with the next words and she refused to meet either Warden's eyes. "I do not know, but when I heard the rumors that The Grey Lady was on the move near the Korcari Wilds I came looking for you, to ask for your assistance." Morrigan looked up, a feral kind of desperation in her eyes as she struggled with the foreign words. "I fear what Flemeth may be capable of, if she has him. Help me find my son."

Ophelia's wary stance softened. "You mean you have nothing to do with the disappearances around here?"

"What disappearances?" Morrigan drew her brows together in confusion.

"Children have been going missing in the night in villages surrounding the Korcari Wilds."

"What care I for other children? I am out here on account of one missing child - my own," she said dismissively.

Ophelia's mouth worked for a moment, before she bent stiffly at the waist towards Morrigan in a smooth bow. "Then you have my apologies, Morrigan. For suspecting you were the cause."

The witch blinked, and was silent for a moment as she studied the other woman with hooded eyes. "Very well. I accept your apology, Ophelia. And I am coming with you."

Alistair twitched. "What?"

"I...am...coming...with...you. Was that slow and enunciated enough for you, Alistair? I assure you, I'm just as thrilled as you are about the arrangement." Morrigan crossed her arms. "However I am realistic, and it would work best if you tried to be the same. I can't save my son alone, and unless you plan to defeat this evil by rattling your swords at every shadow...you will need my help, too. No one knows Flemeth better than I do."

"No. Just - no. A thousand times, no." Alistair shook his head furiously.

Ophelia's glare singed the air between them. "And why not, Alistair? Either she's innocent and I owe her assistance, or she is a part of this somehow. If that is the case I'd rather have her where I can see her than chasing the ghost of her all over southern Ferelden."

He sputtered, grasping for words before lapsing into resignation. "Fine," he muttered unhappily.

"How interesting," Morrigan mused. "A King now, and he still asks 'How high?' if she tells him to jump. Will you ever tire of following others, Alistair?"

He glared at Morrigan darkly. "Forget it, you harpy. You can't bait me."

"A pity," she sighed. "It would make this unpleasant arrangement much more bearable. I shall wait for you both inside the inn." Morrigan turned away and began picking a path through the long grass towards the squat building.

"Morrigan." She paused without turning around, and when he spoke again Alistair's voice was flayed and raw with emotion. "Can I ask...what is his name?"

She bent her head, still facing away from them, and the silence lapped at their feet for so long that Ophelia felt sure she wouldn't answer. When she finally did, the hoarse words carried to them as she began moving purposefully toward the inn.

"His name is Hessarian."