Zevran went to sleep numb and empty, but he did not wake up that way. His heart was sore and raw, fluctuating between denial and anger.

The previous morning she was in his arms, smiling and placing affectionate kisses on his bare chest. He had made love to her. Playful and intimate, heated lazy kisses and slow moving hips… it was perfect. This made no sense!

No, this was his fault, and it made perfect sense.

He shouldn't have made love to her in the first place. She had been so pained, so desperate for comfort, he should not have kissed her after he felt her lips brush his throat as sweetly as they did. He did not mean to prey upon her, he was just so… taken.

Still, how could he think it was okay, and so soon? Nyla, I'm so sorry.

As far as Zevran could tell, he was as bad as Alistair. Using her for his own happiness, inconsiderate of how he might leave her aching and broken in the end.

Zevran felt as though he understood Alistair a little more, and the anger towards him softened. There was something about her, so utterly inviting, so damned disarming. Zevran had no idea he needed to look out for this, and he should have.

All Zevran ever wanted was to make sure she was safe. When he found his Warden, she pushed him away, hard, and she even struck him. Finding her, finally, after years of following a trail that fluctuated rapidly between hot and cold, she looked like Nyla, but the light he cherished was extinguished from her eyes. She was lost and needed help. He only wanted her to be okay. He simply wanted to give her everything.

Sitting in front of Nyla's Deep Roads grave, he ached all over and faced his greatest fear.

Zevran allowed another woman to touch something within him, and clumsily, he had been the death of her.


Exhausted, Nyla curled up with her pack under her head. Body battered, hunger pains in her hollow belly, her mouth parched, the cold settled in her bones and she prayed not to wake. Ill equipped for the Deep Roads, she was still completely blown away by how she even got there. With a sleepy whimper she shivered herself into a restless slumber.

With the rumble of earth and a blast she covered her head. Curled up on her side as tightly as she could, holding her head, she screamed.

"Zevran please, please help me, I don't know what I have done. I don't know what is happening."

When the earth stilled, light and and the sound of footsteps caught her attention and she slowly unfolded and sat up.

"You forgot the last of your gaatlok." Zevran stood above her, glaring down angrily with his arms folded across his chest.

All she could do was tremble pathetically under his glare. She would have been relieved to see him, if it wasn't for his obvious disgust with her.

"If you wanted to leave, wanted me to leave, you did not have to do it like this." He turned away from her, ignoring the abject pain in her face. Ignoring the childlike fear in her eyes, the loneliness she must have been feeling.

Nyla woke with a startled cry and intake of stale air, a desperate apology lingered on the tip of her tongue. She shivered from the cold, limbs numb from sleeping on dirt and stone.

Time was lost on her after waking from her restless sleep. She felt like it must have been days since she left. Snippets of her dreaming haunted her, and try as she might to shake them off, her heart felt constricted as they drifted in and out of her thoughts.

The darkness was stifling, she knew only from the subtle decline that she was going in the right direction; down further into the earth, away from Zevran. Why? Why had she done this? You left because your love kills people. He was too close.

She shook her head hard, fending off the stabbing grief that accompanied the thought. Creative and poignant words from the self-deprecating voice in her head clung to her, slowing her steps. What was it that Zev had said to her about creativity? He said everyone has it, but is it like hers? Does this creativity make everyone want to crawl out of their skin? Feel useless and broken? Does it ruin their lives, too?

She cringed, face contorted with tears as she faced what she had done. You abandoned him, Cousland! He believes he failed.

Zevran had taken her hand and pulled her from the depths of the dark world where she had been lost and wandering. He was a friend when she needed one and she left him behind without a word of thanks or goodbye . She could not catch him. She did not have him. Zevran was alone.

"It was for the best." She insisted. "Alistair was my one, I have nothing left to offer Zevran. What the fuck is he going to do with a broken woman?" Laugh, love… make love. You know, the shit you were doing. Or you can break the both of you. That's fine too.

"I didn't break anyone." She tried to reassure herself, limping along faster as if she could run from what she had done. With her hand dragging along the wall, she followed the curve of the path beneath her feet.

Zevran had come so far, faced so much, overcome so much, just to feel what came so easily to Nyla. Warm tears spilled down her cheeks as her mind spun and a headache blossomed behind her eyes. Zevran is fine. Zevran is wise and strong. Resilient. He's had worse. I didn't break anyone.

She had to run away from him. If she stopped to speak with him, it would have given her pause. She would have questioned everything and curled into his arms to forget it all.

Maker, she should have stopped to speak with him.

She trudged along, her blood warming and limbs loosening. The darkness loomed on and the same thoughts looped over and over. She growled in frustration at the seeming futility of everything she had ever done, including this. Futile, Lady Cousland, Killer of Kings.

"That's not fair, that's not what I had wanted, " she growled through tears as the insult sunk into the very center of her heart.

Alistair's entire life was unfair. He didn't even have parents. He lived as an unwanted fucking orphan, and the result was that man. Alistair. Precious. So perfect. A smile that lit up a room, a soft, cheery way of being that brought levity to any darkness. Brave and dutiful to the last, he was the epitome of goodness. So innocent, through and through. A perfect partner. A king among men, and somehow she had his love.

His end was worse than his life. The bravery of the final blow. The courage and integrity of meeting her eyes to say goodbye, and then running toward his demise; he possessed more bravery than she could ever aspire to attain. And to think at one point she thought she was worthy of him.

Every waking and dreaming moment since Alistair's death had Nyla staring the burden of his sacrifice square in the face. And now, there is another man that you have completely failed on all counts.

Alistair deserved the best of everything, and she would have sacrificed everything, including her very soul, to see him have it. Perhaps those were Alistair's thoughts as well, when he made his choices. ' I knew this was going to be my fate, and the only thing that concerns me right now is hers.'

And when all was said and done, he sent her exactly who she needed, and it befuddled her how he could possibly have guessed- 'I was under the impression that the two of you were romantically involved.' ...or maybe it wasn't a mystery at all.

Alistair had handed her a second chance at life and she treated it as a burden. He sent her a second chance at love, either on accident or by design, and she had thrown it away.

She began walking again, shaking from emotion and cold, exhaustion setting in. She was sweating. All of these thoughts, these realizations, had come far too late. Or maybe the Maker wanted me to die with some semblance of peace.

Her hand ran out of wall to follow. She stumbled and spun, arms outstretched to grasp her position and get her bearings. The path split into a T, she could go left, or right. It was the most exciting thing to happen to her in… several moments. A literal fucking crossroads during this entire line of thinking is un-fucking-fair.

After her brief spinning, she stumbled to the ground and held her pack close. She needed food badly, feeling faint with hunger.

Her pack was, as she suspected, filled nothing but tools. Random useful things she found she had needed in her travels . It couldn't hurt to check, though. Her hand landed on a leather drawstring pouch that felt unfamiliar. Opening it, she reached in and felt the familiar crescent shape of a cashew, Zevran's favorite. She didn't care how it got there, and it took all of her self control to ration the other half for later. Terribly thirsty and with a deep sense of calm, Nyla leaned her head back against the wall and began drifting off into sleep. If this is where I die, then it would be a death befitting a Warden.

Nyla let herself rest, half-asleep and shivering, sweating, she was not well. Her thoughts spun with sadness and denial, she was lost and lonely. Imagining she was leaning back against Zevran brought her some semblance of peace. Maker, she missed him. Ached for him. Perhaps there was no such thing as soulmate. Perhaps there was no one person for her. Or maybe it was Alistair, maybe it's Zevran… either way, it didn't seem to matter anymore. She loved Zevran, and admitting it to herself finally came with ease. She loved him.

And now she could die. This was stupid. Nyla wanted her life. She wanted Zevran. Not because she needed him to chase away the nightmare she was living. Not as a lost and broken thing acting at random and clamboring for any semblance of comfort, but as the solid woman he deserved. The solid woman he was trying so skillfully to bring out in her.

She wanted to feel him near her, hear his voice, see those soft eyes, perfect ears. He might be angry, he might curse her, and that's okay, s he told herself gently, I will catch him.

She stood and made her decision; an educated Grey-Wardeny decision involving wind resistance and the tilt of the ground.

I'm the Hero of Ferelden.

I'm the Hero because I lived to tell the tale.

I'm the Hero because I have allies.

And I'm the Hero because I loved and lost time and time again, and I can still love.


Of all shirts for Zevran to grab at random, it had to be the very shirt Nyla wore. The one permeated with the mouth-watering scent of her; familiar, comforting and making his chest ache for something to hold. Like raspberry leaf and pepper, the sweet smell of woodlands after a storm. You make me think in poetry, my Warden.

It had been two days since she had gone. He had considered leaving, it just seemed easier to wait for the Crows to track him down and put him out of his misery.

Feeling foolish at the memory of how much he enjoyed seeing her feminine frame in his shirt he wondered, what was I thinking? It was this, among other things, that chased her off. He should have taken such strong desires as a cue to slow down, or back away… but no, instead, in her fragile state, he fucked her.

It was perfect, it changed him for the better, and he could not fathom how something so beautiful turned out to be such a disaster. It brought him little comfort that Nyla had also chosen; Nyla was not well. She was vulnerable and relying on him. How he had failed her… so completely.

So much surrender. If there was anything else he could have surrendered to Nyla, he could not imagine what it was. He discovered he enjoyed holding hands, he told her his secrets, wept openly in front of her. She cried in his arms and trusted him, he trusted her... he felt so fucking safe. He had released inside of her several times, and it was the most erotic and intimate thing he had ever experienced. With her, Zevran learned what it meant to make love, he learned nuances of receiving, refined his understanding of intimacy, and then shared in it with her, celebrated it with her, revelled in it; it was fucking beautiful! Was this truly not enough to live for?

Zevran only vaguely knew these things existed until he had them, and now they were gone.

His one ally, the one person he could ever trust to hold and comfort him was gone.

Zevran pulled the shirt off to get away from her scent, but it was still subtle on his skin. How he burned to do everything differently. Just like with Rinna, heartbreak and regret twisted his heart, wishing that somehow he could have just chosen something else.

He stood up, and squinted in the sunlight of another beautiful afternoon. Walking barefoot in only his black leather breeches, he stalked to his pack and sifted through parchments to find his picture.

The picture was his most prized possession; a charcoal drawing Wynne made just for him. He was sitting next to his Warden. She was smiling and looking at him with that keen attention he cherished so much. In the picture, Zevran looked like he may have been laughing, and his hand was aloft as if speaking something. Initially, the picture almost didn't make sense to him. His face didn't make sense. This man didn't look like an assassin. This is not what the mirror showed him. Where were the stern lines? The cold eyes?

The picture was of a simpler and happier time; during the Blight.

He hoped that his Warden's memories of him were beautiful, and as she closed her eyes forever, remembered all they had shared and felt comforted.


Nyla felt very clear, on-task, and in a hurry. Accidentally hitting the ground and taking an unplanned nap had cost her a lot of valuable time.

Her cashews were gone, and as she moved along, she heard a trickle of water and drank her fill from a little puddle. The grit in her teeth told her it was filled with sediment, Maker knows what else, but it was far better than dying of thirst. She splashed some on her face and felt more awake. Finding water, though; she must not be that far underground.

Apart from the total blindness, this wasn't that bad. Easy, really. Most things are never this easy. Of course she would have that thought right before she picked up on rapidly approaching darkspawn.

"Maker's balls," she muttered, hobbling faster with a pained grimace. "Un-fucking-believable."

Nyla could feel their attention on her, an unpleasant sensation in the back of her eyes, like looking at herself from the outside with a mindless bloodlust. It felt odd to have the urge to stab yourself and then eat your own flesh. Unsettling, but nothing she hadn't encountered before.

It was only a matter of time before they made a move. A lone, injured Warden wandering their territory. If she were being a good Grey Warden, in good health and in any shape for fighting, she would have annihilated them before they had the chance to come for her.

This terrified her. It wouldn't be difficult for them to overpower her. Nyla could hold her own… just not right now. Getting killed was the least of her concerns.

What if they were those darkspawn, the ones that captured and drained her blood to awaken more darkspawn? What if they were those other darkspawn, wanting to do that broodmother thing? She wasn't even sure Grey Wardens could become broodmothers, and she wasn't about to find out either.

The urge to draw her weapons was strong, but that would mean slowing down and letting go of the wall. The air was clearer, she had to be near the exit. She had been in enough underground places to know. And damn this subtle incline slowing her down. Her heart beat hard in her chest from trotting along the wall through the pain while calming her mind, reeling in fear.

Her vision faded from black to blue, and just like that, she was outside in open air. It was startling, the loss of the cave wall sent her tumbling flat onto her face, and she crawled. The world seemed too bright, her eyes burned, it was disorienting. At the sound of a familiar blood-curdling roar, she realized they were literally right behind her. The darkspawn.

With a horrified shriek she grabbed for her daggers. They hadn't struck her down, they were grabbing for her. Dragging her by her ankle, Nyla cried out in pain and fear. She couldn't fight, she couldn't even see and she will be damned if they were going to take her alive. I will not be a broodmother!

Without a second thought she pressed her dagger to her own throat, her wrist was quickly snatched away and she… just couldn't believe this was happening. She was okay now… she was going to find Zevran and make it right. Each one of her limbs held, she struggled and twisted with everything she had left.

Suddenly dropped flat on her chest with a loud grunt, the wind was knocked out of her. The sounds of fighting was too close, and she made it to her elbows and on one knee, she crawled away. Her leg didn't want to work, she could barely feel it. Breathless and lightheaded, her stomach lurched and rejected the wealth of water that took her what felt like days to find. She only barely noticed the silencing of the fray.

"Commander?" A surprised and concerned voice rang out.

"Name and rank." Nyla demanded, rolling onto her back and sitting up. Sitting was painful, and she hissed, grit her teeth and let herself fall back on her elbows. Blinking, she could vaguely see the hooded figure coming toward her and her eyes were watery and burning. She pushed herself with her arms to back away, dragging the dead weight of her leg.

"I am an ally." He whispered, laying a glowing blue palm on her chest. She fell back with a pained grunt.

The warm glow of magic washed through her and the relief from pain was so overwhelming, she wept. Exhaustion set in, and she succumbed to it.