And Fall: Epilogue

Six months was not so long at all, but it was long enough that the ride across Ferelden to the keep at Amaranthine without a sword at her side felt unbearably strange. Her skin was chapped from the harsh winds of the mountains, her hair longer and threaded with braids that she didn't care to take out just yet, her skin traced with scars from hard labor. But her back was straight and her mind was clear.

The beast was gone from her; long days and nights of work, food shortages- none of it had drawn fur and claw from her again. She was herself. And in six months, she had made her decision.

To the Grey Wardens she rode, proud and determined, and thinking only sometimes of the man that waited for her there.

He didn't meet her at the gate, but he was there when she put her request before the current Warden-Commander, a woman she didn't know who had replaced the Hero. He was there, too, those hours later when they brought the chalice filled with blood. He stepped close enough while they prepared to lay a hand on her shoulder and to murmur in her ear,

"You've taken a beast into your blood before, and defeated it. You can do the same now."

His voice had echoed in her ears as they recited the oath of her new calling, and as she lifted the chalice to her lips and drank deep, the blood not just thick and coppery but rank and foul, she remembered too his words,

And now you are fed, and it is finished.

Her eyes rolled back and she gave herself over to the flood of wrongness that took her, trusting that they would catch her when she fell and she would rise, a bargain made that she would stand by for however long it lasted.

She woke up on her side, with Nathaniel flush against her back and breathing slowly. She was shivering, though the bed was piled with more furs than was necessary for that time of year in that part of the country. Her head pounded. Bits of dream came back to her, screeching nightmares and the memory of running through the dark, searching for the dead.

Groaning, she rolled away from the solid warmth of him and stumbled out of the bed, pressing at her eyes and cheeks. They were all as they should be.

The bed creaked. Nathaniel's breath shuddered, and his voice was rough and quiet when he asked, "How do you feel?"

"Exhausted," she mumbled, taking a few awkward steps and then turning to face him. "Horrific headache, unpleasant dreams..."

But her mouth, at least, was not coated in blood. There was no copper tang. She wondered if they had given her water while she slept; she could taste no trace of the Joining.

"You took it better than most," Nathaniel said, sitting up and running a hand through his hair. "Most have screaming nightmares. You just shook a little and muttered curses." He chuckled quietly, his smile soft. "... I would have weathered any of it, though, to know that you're alive."

Cauthrien frowned. "To know that I'm alive," she repeated. "... Nathaniel?"

He cleared his throat but didn't answer.

Her frown deepened, and she ducked her head to try to catch his suddenly elusive gaze. Sore limbs and an aching skull were easy to ignore in the face of an unexpected brush with mortality. "You didn't tell me I could have died," she said.

He thumbed at his mouth, then shrugged, hands out as his sides. "And should you perish," Nathaniel said, then rubbed at the back of his neck. "It's something we don't... tell recruits. But it's always a possibility. That much darkspawn blood..."

"And you encouraged me to drink it?" she asked, coming to sit lightly on the edge of the bed. The furrow in her brow eased with each passing moment, each heartbeat that reminded her that even if she could have died, she hadn't.

A part of her had known, anyway. His words had been hint enough, and she had lived through a Blight. It wasn't as much a surprise as it could have been. Her pulse only quickened at the thought that he had invited her to it.

He still didn't meet her gaze, and his voice was quieter still. "I was fairly certain you would live."

"And if I hadn't?"

"Then I would have led your funeral." He took a deep breath, then lifted his head and reached out to touch her shoulder. "I offered you a purpose, and you came. I knew that if you came, it wouldn't be for me - it would be to join the Wardens. I've only ever been a treat on top of it all. I knew you weren't risking death on my behalf."

Cauthrien said nothing. He was right, in his way. The specter of death didn't seem so terrifying as it should have.

"... Forgive me, Cauthrien?"

She lifted her head with a small smile. "I never faulted you for it."

"I would have hated myself if you had died," he said, voice dropping as with a touch he led her back onto the bed in full. "I would have mourned you. I-"

Cauthrien quieted him with a kiss, and a raw laugh started from his throat as his hands settled tentatively on her hips. She moved close enough to wrap her arms around his shoulders, to relearn how he felt against her. It was a far cry from her run down home in a backwater town, desperate in front of the fire for any measure of connection with another person, any moment of peace granted in another's arms, and she found herself smiling against his lips.

There was no demon in her veins to spur her on or to tempt him with visions of what could have been; they tangled instead with nothing between them but air and clothing. He was warm as he pulled her down to the furs and kissed a path along her jaw. "But you're here," he murmured, sound against skin. "You're alive." His kisses moved lower and he loosened the laces at her throat. "And there's always a home for you here, if you want it," he breathed, lifting his chin to gaze at her.

She thought of smearing kaddis down his nose with shaking fingers, or of streaking his skin with scented war paint. The lines had guided her through the woods and out of the darkness, and reaching out, she traced where they had been. He caught her hand in his and pressed kisses to her palm and fingers, no claws to stop him and no fur to deaden the feeling.

"I've missed you," he said. "Stories aren't nearly enough, you know." He dotted each fingertip with a brush of his lips between words. "Not even the stories of us together that I tell myself. Of the time I met the great Ser Cauthrien and she helped me defeat a great evil while I helped her destroy the darkness threatening to consume her."

Cauthrien couldn't stop her laugh, her shake of her head. "You make it sound so romantic."

"Stories aren't always true," he reminded with a kiss at her throat. "You are no dragon. You are no demon. And," he murmured, settling beside her and kissing her lips, "you are no beast."

"Am I not?" she asked, and she had enough distance to growl low in her throat, to pull her hand down his side, blunt nails scraping. It drew an answering laugh from him, and he pulled back enough to look at her, thumb stroking over her cheek.

"Were your eyes always golden?" he murmured, and she blinked.

"No. I- always thought they were grey."

"Then maybe there is a little beast left in you," he chuckled, then brushed his lips against her brow. "But they're beautiful."

"Flatterer," she said, but she couldn't help her laugh. She canted her head and leaned into him, a smile on her lips and her headache and nightmares forgotten.