I'll just be over here in my little corner of shame, don't mind me!
They took the Imperial Highway north to avoid the worst of the rampaging Darkspawn horde. Refugees poured in from the south, carrying with them the scent of smoke and death and taint. With them too came the bandits that preyed on them – and Elissa preyed on the bandits.
At night, they camped beneath crumbling archways and took shifts guarding their valuables from the hungry and the desperate. As the others slept, Elissa sat on a collapsed pillar and worried after her thoughts like a mabari to a bone, wearing them down to splinters. She glanced at Alistair's broad back as he slept and bit her lip until it bled.
She heard her father's voice; "You shouldn't toy with boys like that, pup. Your mother wouldn't approve."
Elissa didn't think her mother could care very much, now.
"What are you thinking about?" She jumped and bit back a curse as Alistair suddenly sat beside her, yawning and rubbing a hand over his hair. "You look er – strange."
"Thank you ever so much," she drawled. Then she answered honestly over his sputtering, "I was thinking about my parents." It wasn't a lie, not really. Elissa was very good at half-truths.
For long moments, the only sound came from the hissing, damp flame. Alistair fidgeted and shifted around and finally cleared his throat until she looked at him.
He was holding a rose. Elissa stared at it as though the delicate petals might suddenly erupt into demon-fire.
Alistair scrubbed his hand through his hair with his free hand and said, "Well ah – do you know what this is?"
Befuddled, she could only stare at him. Then, slowly, painfully, the Elissa-that-was raised her voice. "Is that a trick question?" The words tasted strange on her tongue now but she remembered a time when she'd been clever and witty – and worthy.
He laughed and somewhere in his declarations, she thought he called her beautiful. Elissa touched the uneven ends of her hair where she'd cut it. Before, it had been long and beautiful. After, it had been devoured by fire.
Alistair tucked the rose behind her ear. In the back of her mind, she heard her father sigh.
He didn't like the elf. Alistair attributed that mostly to the life-and-death battle they'd fought against each and only slightly to the way Zevran stared hungrily at Elissa's back whenever she turned her attention from him. His only consolation was the rose she kept tucked into the front of her breastplate and the way she'd occasionally raise a callused, bandaged hand to touch the petals as though it might vanish into the Fade at any moment.
Sometimes, he'd catch her smiling. The sun would flash across her eyes and they wouldn't seem quite so flat black. She never smiled at the assassin like that. It made Alistair hate him a little less.
He was still checking all their evening meals for poison, though.
Haven was cold. The people were as bitter as the weather. Later, all Elissa would remember is hot blood against frigid air and steam – steam from the bodies, steam from her breath. They carved their way through dragon cultists – dragons! – and followed the icy caverns through an ancient labyrinth.
Elissa pried her blade from Kolgrim's spine and armor with a screech of metal on metal.
The Ashes were here. Andraste was here. Part of her felt sick at the revelation. Who was she to look upon the remains of the Maker's bride?
She choked down the panic and gripped the hilt of her sword tighter. It didn't matter anymore whether or not she was worthy; she was the only one left. Andraste couldn't afford to be picky.
"Do you think you failed your parents?"
Elissa hadn't realized how quiet the void in her chest had become until it tore open at the Guardian's words. The gaping maw grasped hungrily at the peace she'd managed to find and swallowed it up, making way for the sucking grief that always lingered right beneath the surface.
"Yes," she choked out, "and I will not fail them again. Howe will pay for what he did."
The Guardian watched her dispassionately. "Vengeance is poison to the soul."
She nodded. It was a poison she would gladly swallow.
He moved on to the others. Leliana and Wynne handled his questions with enviable confidence while Elissa struggled to feel anything other than the crushing tightness in her lungs.
Alistair touched her shoulder. She barely felt it through the thickness of her pauldron, but it was like breaking the surface of deep water after drowning. She snapped around in time to hear his answer.
Some distant part of Elissa had realized he must carry the same burdens as she – that he held the same regrets. Now, hearing it aloud, she felt a cold deeper than Haven's chill.
This man was familiar, somehow. Alistair recognized the slope of his nose, the cut of his jaw, perhaps even the set of his shoulders, but he couldn't quite place it –
"Father?"
Oh. It took several heartbeats for that to sink in.
She crumbled in on herself all at once, like a little broken doll, and hid her face. "You died," she rasped in a voice that was as quiet as it was broken. "I watched – the fire – the soldiers – and mother," she stuttered and spit the words like poison.
The eerily familiar specter traced his hand over the uneven ends of her hair. "Oh pup," he murmured, "you know that I am gone."
She whispered something too quietly for Alistair to hear but from the way her body shook and heaved, he didn't need to.
"You did more than anyone could have asked of you. No one blames you but you."
Elissa whimpered and her fingers hovered around the ghost's, passing over and through him when he cupped the curve of her jaw.
"We are so proud of you, little Elli."
And just like that, her father disappeared like morning mist.
Silence pressed in around them, broken by little gasps and shaking breathes. Elissa didn't turn around, didn't speak. She looked as substantial as the sputtering brazier flames.
Leliana nudged him but he was already moving.
He approached her loudly, shedding his gauntlets as he went. She tilted her head towards him, enough that he could see the red-rimmed eyes and wet cheeks under the shadow of her hair.
"I'm sorry," she said, hollow and echoing a vast emptiness.
Alistair wasn't good at words – at this – so he wrapped an arm around her back and drew her in close to his body. Their armor crashed together and it wasn't comfortable but she curled her fingers into the neckline of his breastplate and leaned her forehead against the cold metal.
He dropped his chin to rest against her hair. She cried silently, unmoving and unspeaking, but Alistair felt her falling apart between his hands.