They spend almost every night together and have for a long time, but it's always been in front of the campfire, or on watch, never sharing a tent.
Sometimes it's been calm and quiet, sometimes they stay up sharing stories and laughing uproariously. Sometimes, more often than she wants to admit, actually, it's just really awkward, because neither of them know what to say, because the wrong word can leave them angry at each other for days, each afraid to set the other one off.
And then there are the nights when that they refuse to spend together at all. And those nights... hurt. She dreads them, and she can tell by the way he flicks not-subtle glances at her all through the following days that he hates them too. It makes her heart race and when they come back together again, through some agreement that doesn't need words. She curls up next to him (and when did that start? She doesn't even remember). He wraps his arms around her and he feels warm and strong and safe.
She is not supposed to feel safe with him, he is a templar.
He isn't though.
Because if he was, she wouldn't feel safe with him. She wouldn't want him, so desperately, she is so sick of being alone.
She's never felt like this in her entire life. Not even with Anders. She hates that she has to admit it, but she never felt safe or really comfortable with him either. It wasn't his fault, but he had to try too hard to joke, to cover the truth, to make her relax, she was always looking over her shoulder, and there was too much worry and pain mixed up in everything about him. Anders was - is - her best, best friend. But he isn't this.
The night is cold, and even when their watch is over she can't bring herself to leave him to go spend another night not-sleeping all by herself. Even in the Tower, she could always hear other people breathing, moving around in their sleep, flickering firefly-lights through their fingers when they knew they wouldn't get caught.
"Stay with me," she whispers, as Alistair turns to leave after walking with her to the tent.
He reacts like a thirteen-year-old, all stammering and adorable. Somehow he manages to choke out enough of a protest for her to be shocked and still kind of amused and worried all at the same time.
"You've really never...?"
The way he blushes is all the answer she needs, and it stuns her.
She knows about the templar vows, of course, but she also knows how rare it is to find one who actually keeps them.
The Circle Tower is a looming shadow in the middle of a very large lake, purposely built to be nearly impossible to get into or out of. But still, people have needs. That will never change, no matter how remote their prisons.
The better men had availed themselves of the whores at Calenhad's dock.
The others... well, they used what was on hand. They had their pick of innocent children who couldn't resist or escape without marking themselves for death.
She'd heard them crying in the night, seen the way they flinched away from any touch, the way they forcefully avoided looking at the templars who were everywhere in that place, as though by ignoring them they could make them go away, make what they did go away.
Some of them even went to the chapel, confessing their sin to deaf ears.
The Maker doesn't forgive mages. They're cursed, and whatever happens to them happens because they deserve it.
They'd never done it to her, and she supposes she should consider herself lucky. But she doesn't know why, and that almost makes it worse.
What was she supposed to say to the little girls who wondered why this was happening to them while she was safe? How was she supposed to explain that nothing she did could protect them?
"I guess I was just raised not to take this sort of thing lightly," Alistair tells her.
Me too, she thinks.
And shouldn't just those memories be enough to push him away again?
She doesn't, though. She takes his hand and she won't let go of him because this, more than anything, proves he's not a templar.
He doesn't want sex, the way most of the Circle's apprentices had sex all the time, whenever and wherever they could find a few moments of privacy, no matter how much the templars frowned on this sort of behavior and tried to shut it down when they saw it, because when you throw a bunch of teenagers together, lock them in a place with the same people for years, and no possibility of escape, what else could happen?
Anders, for one, had lots of meaningless sex and she'd had some too, but never with each other because it would hurt too much. They'd both know that worrying about her would have held him back from any chance at escape, and staying in the Tower would have crushed him. She refused be the reason he gave up. And she refused to get too close to him because when he did get out, and leave her behind, even though it was her choice, she couldn't afford for it to break her heart. She was broken enough already.
But she looks at Alistair, feels his touch against her body, and she doesn't feel as broken. She feels a thrill run through her as he fumbles with unbuckling her armor. She's honestly surprised at how right and natural it feels, like they were always supposed to do this. The logical part of her brain that's getting easier to silence with every passing moment nags that this should feel like some kind of betrayal, of Anders and of herself and of everything she knows about how the world is supposed to work. But it doesn't feel like a betrayal.
She knows somehow, that Anders wouldn't want her to feel guilty because of him. "Go live your life," he'd told her. "Don't be scared."
She sure as hell knows he'd never stopped to think about her when he was out "living life" in the brothels and haylofts and back-alleys of Ferelden, and she'd never blamed him for any of that.
And Anders isn't here now. Alistair is.
"I guess... I just wanted to make sure you... really want to," Alistair stammers. He looks like he's ready to break and run at her command and pretend this never happened.
But underneath that, she sees the man that wants this, wants her. The man who kissed her when he wasn't stopping to thinking about all the reasons why he shouldn't. And the man who silently waited after she pushed him away, until she was ready to come back to him. The man who waits for her to ask, who stops in the middle of undressing her to make sure.
She nods, pulling him closer to her, refusing to let him run away or change his mind.
"Of course I do, Alistair. I wouldn't have asked if I didn't."