He dreamed. Red hair and green eyes, and a laughing smile. Playing in the dust outside the door to the one-room hovel that was home, where everyone he loved was – his mother, his sister. Food, coarse and in small quantity but warm and filling, and made better by his mother's smile as she cooked it for them. There was no table; they sat in a circle on the floor, around a common pot, and ate from that with fingers or bits of flatbread as their only cutlery. He wanted a better life, he remembered that much; not for him, but for them, the two he loved. Freedom, which would mean a better place to live, and more food to eat, good food, not just whatever their mother could cobble together out of scraps and leavings and the double handful of grain or beans or dried peas that was her daily portion.
Mother was usually gone at night, cleaning the more public areas of the master's house in the quiet hours when they were unoccupied. His sister and he shared a bed then, a narrow pallet against the wall in their hut, little more than a folded blanket stuffed with old rags and bits of dry grass, curled up together under a much-patched worn-thin blanket with his sister's arm hooked comfortingly over his waist. They would sometimes talk then, on the edge of sleep, talk of their present, their future, their dreams and fears. He could see her face so clearly, in that dream. Hear her voice, smell the warm scent of her skin.
And then he woke.
For a moment he felt confused, dream and reality blending, going as he did from a dream of sleeping in his sister's arms, to waking in Alistair's. He jerked and gasped, waking the other man.
"Mmm?" Alistair groaned questioningly.
"Nothing. A dream. Go back to sleep," he whispered.
Alistair snorted, and smacked his lips, rolling partway over on his back to peer through slitted eyes at the nearest window. "Almost morning anyway," he said, then yawned hugely. He rolled back, frowning at Fenris. "Must have been some dream. You're shivering. Nightmare?"
"No," Fenris said, then sighed. "I dreamed of my family. My mother, my sister... it's the first time I've ever remembered anything about them."
Alistair nodded understandingly; he already knew that Fenris remembered nothing from before when the lyrium marks were being etched into his flesh, a process so painful it had driven his prior self away. "What did you remember?" he asked sleepily.
"Our house. My mother and sister; they both had red hair, green eyes. Eating, sitting around a pot on the floor. And sleeping; my sister and I used to sleep just like this," he said, shrugging one shoulder slightly so his side moved under Alistair's arm, to indicate what he meant. "Wanting better for them than what we had. It fades so quickly... I can remember their hair and eyes, my mother's smile, but not their whole faces, not their voices, not anything they ever said."
He was shaking now, and badly. Alistair drew him closer, hugging him tightly. For a moment he felt on the verge of tears, and then he had an especially strong full-body shudder and that too passed away, leaving him limp and tired and empty-feeling. Only fragments of the dream remained. Impressions, more than distinct images. A stray thought occurred to him.
"Before I killed her, Hadriana told me that I had a sister. Varania. That she was still alive, servant to Magister Ahriman." He paused a moment, thinking. "It didn't bother me before. I couldn't remember anything about her. Now... I don't know. I want to know more."
Alistair nodded. "Have you ever thought about trying to contact her?" he asked. "To write her maybe?"
Fenris bit on his lip, then sighed. "I do not know how to write," he confessed. "It was not a skill my master felt I needed to know."
"Oh," Alistair said, and fell silent for a little while. "You could tell me what you want to say, and I could write it for you," he offered. "And if you want to learn to read and write, I can teach you."
"You'd do that?" Fenris asked, feeling a little surprised.
"Of course," Alistair said. "Why not?"
Fenris considered that for a minute. "Why not, indeed. Thank you. Yes," he said. "I would like to write to Varania. And I would like to learn to read and write as well."
"Good," Alistair said, then yawned again. "Later though. Right now I'm thinking breakfast would be good. I think there's still cheese and bacon left, and some bread that isn't too stale."
Fenris laughed softly as the other man rolled over and got out of bed. "We'd better buy more groceries soon. You're a bottomless pit for food."
"Yeah, well, Grey Warden. Comes with the territory. Along with nightmares and a greatly-reduced lifespan."
"I haven't seen you have many nightmares," Fenris pointed out as he too got out of bed.
Alistair shrugged. "No Archdemon around, and very few darkspawn either. Put me near either and I'll be waking in a panic on a regular basis. Oh, and I was wrong, we're out of bacon. Just cheese and bread left, at least that we can breakfast off of. And tea."
Fenris nodded. "I'll pick up more groceries later today then."
"Right. Remind me to give you some more coin before I head off to work," Alistair said.