Chapter Eight

Tough Love

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"You're not friends. You'll never be friends. You'll be in love until it kills you both. You'll fight, and you'll shag, and you'll hate each other 'til it makes you quiver, but you'll never be friends."

~BTVS

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Alistair had never been so aware of how many things he could feel at once, each emotion battling for control only to give way to the next as his thoughts dove and scattered, possibilities and accusations spiraling until he wasn't sure which to hold on to. The shock of Leliana's words still had not settled into fact, the concept that Daniel... it was too foreign to wrap his head around. He knew the combination was making him truly dangerous, but that it was all aimed at Elissa—Elissa—gave the scene in the chamber a dreamlike quality that made it hard to think. He could hear the cutting edge in his own voice as he stared down at her, her blue eyes wide in shock.

"Well?" he asked, his fists clenched so tight they were past hurting. "I'm dying to hear the Elissa logic behind this one."

"No!" Leliana said and jumped up, grasping Elissa's hand to drag her out of the chair. Elissa didn't even resist; she still looked too stunned to care she was being herded. "No—you will not do this here, not where Daniel may wake up and hear you."

"Fine. Where would you suggest? Is there a chamber set aside for screaming?" Alistair kept his eyes glued to Elissa, even when Leliana began pushing him out the door. His vision was bright and sharp in his rage, calculating every flick of her eyes, and so he saw when her stubborn defenses awakened, when her spine stiffened and her eyes flashed before resting accusingly on Leliana.

"There's no way he snuck up on you. You knew he was there, didn't you?"

"I do not make it a habit of listening particularly closely when I am in the safety of my own home," Leliana answered, shoving them both into the hall and closing the door behind her. "And you agreed to tell him, yes?"

The thought did nothing to temper his anger. Alistair reached out and grabbed Elissa's wrist, yanking her around to force her to look at him. "Is this why you and Morrigan have stayed in contact?" She jerked free of his hold with a twist of her wrist and shoved him back. He barely noticed. "Comparing notes, were you?"

"Alistair!" Leliana scolded, putting her hand on his chest and pushing as she tried to maneuver him into the room across the hall.

"I needed her." Elissa's voice was low and tight, refusing to give him even the satisfaction of screaming at him. "You have no idea what it was like—"

He reached out and caught her shoulders, dragging her near enough that she had to tilt her head to look at him. "Trust me, Elissa," he warned quietly, "right now the last thing you want to be doing is pointing out things I didn't know."

Leliana stepped between them to force them apart before gripping Alistair's arm to turn him and push him towards the room while she tugged Elissa along behind her. Maryn, Thomas and Darren all jumped up at the unexpected sight of their king being manhandled by the bard.

"Your Majesty, what—?"

"It's fine," Leliana said, panting, and released Alistair to dedicate both hands to dragging Elissa, who seemed more reluctant to comply once she realized they were in Alistair's room. "There is nothing to worry yourselves over."

"What were you doing, eavesdropping?" Elissa glowered at Alistair, her focus on him ruling out anyone else in the room. "I thought you ordered me to stay away from you."

He felt his eyes widen at the sheer ridiculousness of that reply, leaving him so incredulous he forgot for a second he was furious with her. "Oh, because this is entirely my fault!" he shouted, regaining momentum. "I'm so sorry that was coming to apologize, and instead I overheard that you were keeping my son from me!"

There was a stunned silence, before Darren hurriedly got to his feet. "I think that's our cue to leave."

"I'm not doing this in front of your watchdogs," Elissa said through clenched teeth. Alistair wanted to snarl that she wasn't going anywhere no matter who was in the room, but if there was ever a time for them to do this, it was now, and he was sick to his soul of her holding out on him.

"Get out," he said over his shoulder.

Maryn hesitated, clearly uncomfortable with the idea of leaving him alone in the room with a furious woman who was reputably quite capable of harming him. "Your Majesty, please—"

"I said get out!"

"Alistair—" Leliana tried to begin as his guards scurried past her, but he didn't want to hear anything from her, either.

"Did Jaedan know?" He gripped the back of a chair to keep himself from reaching out and shaking Elissa. For a blink of an eye, he saw the pain flash across her features, quickly replaced with rage. The rational part of him, cowed and nearly silent in the corner of his mind, objected that he was being cruel, but he had spent too many years pretending Jaedan didn't awaken something ugly and raging and jealous in him. He didn't know why it still hurt, only that it did, and he was in no condition to pretend otherwise. "Did he know that Daniel was my son while you were busy tangling his sheets for him?"

"How dare you, you bastard," she said, her arms rigid at her sides and her hands curled into fists. "You think that I went around trying to find someone to manipulate into raising my son? Sorry, but we've been fine without you."

"Is that what you've been telling him? That I left?" Red webbed in his vision and fury swelled around the pounding blood in his ears. "Did Daniel think Jaedan was his father?" She set her mouth mulishly and his grip on the chair tightened, his knuckles going white as he resisted the urge to throw it across the room. In that moment he hated her. "Did Daniel think he was his father, Elissa?"

"No, damn you!" she shouted at him, her eyes filling with angry tears, and some sadistic part of him rejoiced in her loss of control. "You leave Jaedan out of this! He had nothing to do with Daniel or you! Your pet mage was the one who showed up and assumed I had betrayed you somehow, and I had to just choke down her judgment of me. Jaedan was there, not you. You don't get to say anything about him!"

"So help me, Elissa, if you kept Daniel from me because of your cursed wounded pride I may very well strangle you. You left Denerim without a word, carrying my son, and I want to know why!"

Elissa whirled around like she planned to storm out, but Leliana was firmly planted in front of the door.

"I will lock you both in if you force me to," she said, uncharacteristically stern. "It's long past time you both saw this finished." She opened the door and stepped out before turning back at the last moment. "To avoid bloodshed on my walls, I will say that the result of all of this is a sweet little boy, who was born because you loved each other once. Perhaps it would not be amiss to remember that?"

The door closed softly behind her.

He jerked himself around so he didn't have to look at Elissa anymore, a hundred hostilities fighting to tear through him and spill themselves all over her. One fought harder than the rest to escape, and he heard himself blurt without conscious thought, "You let me send you away." It was heavy with accusation and he wasn't surprised to hear Elissa suck in an angry breath.

"I don't remember having much say in the matter." The words were bitter, tinged with something other than anger and he glanced back to see her standing with her arms crossed, her eyes narrow slits on him.

"You stood there and listened to me go on about duty and responsibility, about the need for an heir, and you didn't say anything." The anger was fading and he battled to hold onto it, desperate not to give into something else that was tight and suffocating. He ran his hands through his hair and leaned forward, bracing his hands on the table for support before he lifted his gaze back to her. "Were you that eager to be rid of me?"

"Because that's exactly what a woman wants to hear for a marriage proposal. 'Oh, so you're fertile after all? Never mind... you'll do.'"

He laughed, but there was nothing happy about that sound. "So let me get this straight. We talked about how making me king would make it nearly impossible for us to stay together, and you agree. I beg you not to make me king, and you do it anyway, because the country is more important than us, you say. Then you find out you're pregnant, and that doesn't change anything, in your mind." He threw his hands in the air. "Oh, I see it now, this is clearly my doing! How stupid of me!"

"You don't have any idea what it was like for me!"

"You're right, I don't—because I wanted to marry you. You turned me down, remember?"

"I had to!"

"You didn't have to leave!" Old pain he had thought long dead was welling in him, and his voice was unsteady when he said, "You didn't even say goodbye. I didn't do anything to deserve that, Elissa."

"You told me to! I didn't know what else to do! You just disappeared after the Landsmeet!"

"Disappeared? I've been in Denerim where you left me, thank you. You're the one who spent the past five years doing everything in your power to avoid me. Not a word about anything outside of the Wardens, not so much of a 'hey, glad you're still alive.' What was I supposed to think?"

She gave him a steely glare, her eyes rimmed in red with tears she was fighting to hold back. "You told me to stay away from you. You said there was nothing left to talk about. I thought that we came to the decision together, that we would still be able to stay friends, or at least pretend to be. You didn't say two words to me after the fight with the Archdemon—you didn't even check in while I was recovering!"

"Oh yes I did! I was there the whole time. You would have known that, if you had even bothered to try."

She tossed her hair, shaking the tears out of her eyes. Alistair felt himself backpedal a step when she advanced on him. "I had no intention of going anywhere until you told me to, and then you did. I'm terribly, horribly sorry, Your Majesty, if I didn't realize that was Alistair speak for 'keep trying until I can figure out what I want!'"

The verbal arrows found their mark, and sunk deep. He recalled every word he said, the cool and distant demeanor he had to adopt so that he could deal with the separation, and something dark and twisted began to grow within him.

He laughed miserably. "Maybe I should have added a disclaimer. I just thought you mentioning that you were going to have my baby would have been obvious."

"I didn't know!" She seethed like he should have figured it out by now. "I was already in Amaranthine by the time I realized..." her voice trailed off and something trembled through her before her fingernails dug into her arms and she collected herself. Hurt flashed behind the anger in her eyes. "I tried to tell you."

He straightened up and stormed closer at that. "You did not." He struggled to control his voice over the tumult inside him and it came out in a growl. "I waited. I waited like an idiot for any sign that you wanted to see me! Instead you send a message to Wynne. Tell me where the part where you tried to tell me comes in."

"I wrote to you as well," she said, and the cold seemed to spread over her entire body, hardening her as if to shield herself from him and his nearness. He got the impression there was something he was supposed to be gathering from that bit of information.

"I watched for anything from you! Why wouldn't I..." He stopped, painful disbelief stealing the rest of the question, and he felt like a man who draws his sword with flourish only to find it broken off at the hilt. He leaned back against the table, turning his hands to grip the edge, dazed. "Eamon."

"Got there, did you?" The words were dripping with venom and he flinched in spite of himself. He didn't want to think of Elissa not being able to reach him, being turned away and treated like a problem that needed solving when she needed him. It was too much.

"I'll deal with Eamon." He was slightly calmer now, numbness settling in place of the anger, leaving him empty. "But it still doesn't explain the stack of letters of letters I have on my desk in your handwriting that contain absolutely nothing about the fact that I have a son." It was the first time he'd uttered the words, and the truth struck him like a bolt of lightning.

He was a father.

He grappled with the knowledge, something he had always dreamed as an impossibility, his mind skittering between joy at the news, tempered by grief that he had missed so much already. From Elissa, there was only silence.

Long silence.

He finally lifted his head to look at her and for the first time, he saw guilt, thick and heavy around her. Pain began churning beneath the preferable numbness and it was evident when he demanded, "You didn't get an answer so you just gave up? Did you honestly believe I would have just abandoned you?"

"I didn't know what to think," she said, sounding strangled, and that hurt, worse than anything else she had said to him. "You were so different, and I got no answer, and... I don't know how many pregnant women you've had the opportunity to be around, but I wasn't thinking clearly at all..."

"No," he said, first a denial and then louder, "No. You knew me! You knew that I would never… how badly I wanted..." The storm within him reached its catalyst and he didn't know what he was trying to say. He closed his eyes and swallowed against the rising lump in his throat. "How could you keep this from me?"

He was thrown completely off balance but how suddenly she changed, her grip loosening from trying to restrain herself, shifting into the stance of a person trying to hold herself together. "I'm sorry." She was going to cry, having lost her own internal battle—he could see it in the shake of her shoulders. "I was scared," she said, and it sounded like a plea. "I didn't know what to do, and then he just kept getting older and I didn't know how to tell you... I'm so sorry."

She grew quiet after that, ashamed when the first real tears gathered and spilled over. She wiped at them impatiently and he turned away, shaken and confused that even after all this, he still couldn't harden himself against her. The sight of her tears still tore away at him, left him raw and needing to shoulder her pain for her.

His own guilt was palpable, because no matter how underhanded Eamon was or stubborn and selfish Elissa had been, her reluctance to come back rested solely on him. He had taken everything they were and shattered it, ground it underfoot in a desperate attempt to get her out, out of a heart and mind that floundered without her there to make it make sense.

He should have gone to her after the fight with the Archdemon. He should have made some effort to salvage something of what they had. Instead, he had waited for her to warm to him, stupidly accepted her cool demeanor and hoped that she would make the first move. Even after he had let her go, he had still expected her to fix it, to tell him what to do.

It was no excuse. He could argue for years that she knew better, that she was being stubborn and unreasonable by not telling Wynne the truth simply because she was mad at her, but Elissa already knew that, and he had never seen her so anguished over anything before. She was genuinely grieving that she had done this to him. He could ignore that, leave her the quivering mass before him and hand down her verdict like the king she had made him... or he could grasp this opportunity to be Alistair again, to take this one last chance to try to repair what was broken between them.

One glaring fact rose above the chaos—he was tired of being angry. Over all of it. He had never stopped missing Elissa, never stopped wanting her in his life in any way he could have her, even if it meant they couldn't be together. And now… they were a family, albeit a broken one. He couldn't stand to be the one to put another crack in it.

With a deep breath like he was plunging into water, he turned around and looked at her. Her head was lowered and her body was shaking, fearful of what he would do. Cautiously, afraid she would shove him away, he slid his arms around her and drew her against him.

His forgiveness was more than Elissa could stand. She began to cry in earnest, clinging to him when it overwhelmed her and her strength abandoned her, and he sank to his knees, holding her tight against him.

"Elissa." He swallowed hard. "Don't keep him from me anymore."

"No," she managed to say around her sobs. "I never meant to. I was such a coward..."

"I find that hard to believe," he said quietly. He felt her relax against him, sniffling quietly and soaking the shoulder of his shirt with her tears.

"I should have gone to you in person," she said. "After Wynne—you know how I was back then. Stubborn. Childish." She drew in a ragged breath and forced herself to quit crying. "I knew, when I saw you again, I had to tell you. It's just been so..."

"Weird?" he supplied after a few seconds.

A laugh burst through her tears, and for a moment, she was just Elissa, a shadowed remnant of the girl she had been all those years ago, back when she needed him.

"I wasn't with Jaedan," she said unexpectedly. "At least, not then. It took years... I... I just wanted you to know, it's not like I just f-forgot..."

"It doesn't matter," he murmured, but he tightened his arms around her, and the snarling animal within him sank back into slumber and left a fragile, timid hope in its place, so delicate he was afraid to reach out and grasp it.

She hadn't forgotten him.