-Alistair-

Our guests had been here a full week, and still I had not made an appearance. The Queen had summoned me several times, but I had managed to weasel my way out of it. I simply did not know how to act around Morrigan and …her son. Their companion had not said a word, their face hidden beneath the hood of their cloak. I had guessed them an elf by their stature, unless Morrigan had had a change of heart and started adopting strays. I found myself chuckling at the thought of the witch surrounded by squealing children.

Children. I hastily pushed the thought from my mind. I was not completely comfortable with it. It was not that I did not like children, but having any of my own seemed utterly ridiculous. I had no business trying to build a family. Not now anyway. My eyes traveled to my armor. I had pulled it out to clean it but had not actually managed the job yet. I rubbed my face in frustration. I had not believed I would be alive for the next Blight. Then again was this truly another Blight or just the clean up? If Corbin was correct and there was in fact another archdemon then it needed to be stopped, and quickly. I had sent one more messenger, to Soldier's Peak. The Warden Commander would send word to the Keep in Anderfels and all adjoining lands immediately. Would she answer the call? I wondered. Would she even know an archdemon had returned? Would she even care? My stomach twisted in disgust at myself. Of course she would care. Then again there was always the possibility that she was…No I wasn't going to let myself consider that. If she was dead I would have felt it, wouldn't I? Of course I would have. I grimiest at how adept I had become at lying to myself. It had not always been this way. According to Eamon I had once been so horrible at lying my ears would turn red when I attempted it. I remembered how embarrassed I had been when Eamon had told her that. It had made me feel like a school boy again, instead of one of the Saviors of Ferelden.

"I remember this one time; the boy couldn't have been more than four. He came limping into my study, covered in mud, leaves and dripping wet." Eamon laughed. "When I asked him what happened he babbled for a moment and then went on this long tale of how he had chased a dragon through a swamp, down a river and into a giant tree. Well by the time he got to the end his ears were so red they looked like little apples sticking out the sides of his head!"

She had laughed until she had held her sides in pain while I drowned myself in another goblet of wine. She had apologized profusely later in the evening, when we were alone in gardens of Eamon's estate. The time we had spent there after the war was the hardest to remember. Not because the memories were fading, but because they were so vivid. Eamon had gone back to Redcliff mere days after the battle was over, leaving the estate to me. There were days she and I had not even left my chambers.

There was nothing about her that was not perfect, even her imperfections were perfectly imperfect. She drove my senses insane by simply being in my presence. Her scent alone had been enough to arouse me, break me, and make me feel like I could take on the world all at once. Her skin was like silk to my callused hands, and even now my arms still ached to hold her. I closed my eyes letting the memory in just once more.

It was probably after mid-night. The fire had burned low and Dur had crawled into his bed by the hearth. She had fallen asleep in my arms hours ago, her head resting on my chest. Her soft fawn hair falling in short braids about her face. I gently brushed a loose strand of hair from her face, taking it in for a long moment. It's only imperfection of course was the tattoo that spread across it. Gingerly I traced it with my finger; I had asked her once why she hadn't gotten it. She had made some poor joke and I had not persisted. That was our way of letting the other know we did not wish to speak of it. I nearly jumped when she spoke.

"I guess you still wander why I chose to hide myself behind this mask?"

"It does not matter my love. Not unless you wish to tell me." I answered.

"I did not always have it." She replied sitting up, to look at me properly. "On my fourteenth birthday my mother came home with my present, a small crystal that shown like the moon when you held it up to the fire. At the time I was sure it had belonged to someone important but mother had always told me not to worry about such things. That night the guards came to take her away. I hid my treasure in a floor board beneath my bed. When the guards could not find it they questioned me but I refused to answer. The captain slashed open my face to tech me a lesson for lying. Then he cut my mother's throat, when she cursed him for touching me. It was a traveling Orlaisian elf that applied the mask for me. I could not bear to look at myself before it, but I guess that seems silly."

"No." I corrected pulling her into an embrace. "You are beautiful to me. I would not wish you any other way than as you are."

Dur huffed stretching from his mid-afternoon nap beside the hearth. He had become much more lethargic over the last month and I feared he would not last through the winter. I sighed heavily. I would be completely alone once he was gone. He seemed to be the only one that truly understood my pain. Dur sneezed abruptly and shuffled over to the open cedar chest by my bed. It was from it that my armor had come. Dur stuck his oversize head into the chest and nosed about for a moment. He sneezed again, as a cloud of dust rose up out of the chest, but retained what was in his mouth. He shuffled back to me, laying his prize in my lap. I smiled. It was his old battle collar. The metal ridges on it were cut at just the right angle to shred any enemy's weapon or body part that got too close to a Mabari's neck. Dur nudged my hand as I lifted the collar from my lap. He wanted to go, and who was I to deny him that? So many times I had let him loose believing he above anyone else would find her. But he had refused to leave me behind. I patted his head, as his ears suddenly perked.

"What is it boy?" I asked, rubbing his chest. Suddenly Dur jumped up much like a puppy would when called for dinner. He ran straight for the door, digging at the floor furiously and whining. Bewildered I opened the door to my room and he shot out like an arrow.

"Dur!" I called, grabbing my cloak and running after him. "Dur! Come back here!"

From where had this burst of energy come? I had not seen him move like this since…I derailed my own train of thought. He had simply caught an unfamiliar sound. I decided. Something alien and unknown, Mabari's did not like unknown things in their territory. I around the corner as his tail disappeared through the arch way into the castle courtyard. The faint sound of music reached my ears then and I froze. I know this. I thought. There was a servant girl leaning against the archway, unaware the large dog had just blasted passed her. When I approached she bowed and pressed a finger to her lips, pointing into the courtyard, as she hurried away. I could hear the tune more fully now and my heart stopped.

I am not hearing this. I thought. You've fallen asleep in your chair again. Wake up you idiot!

hahren na melana sahlin
emma ir abelas
souver'inan isala hamin
vhenan him dor'felas
in uthenera na rev…

"Dur! I had hoped that song would bring you out of hiding" she greeted, falling to her knees to embrace him, kissing him repeatedly on the head. "I missed you so, I should never have left you behind. But I could not take you with me, you understand that right?"

Her voice was cutting me like a knife, I gripped the column beside me for support. I begged myself to believe it a dream. This could not be real, she could not be here. Yet in the last few rays of sunlight, I made out the slim silhouette I had never thought to see again.

"A…Amaris?" I stumbled over her name, I had not said it out loud in so long. She jumped up startled, Dur grunted displeased. At first it looked as though she would make some sort of response. Instead her eyes suddenly filled with tears, and she fled deeper into the gardens weeping, Dur giving chase. I stood in the arch way in complete shock. What would make her run from my presence like that? She had left me after all.

"I never understood why she bonded herself to you." Morrigan sighed coming into view from the hallway. I had known she was there somehow, and I was not surprised. "I asked her once, out of all the other…options she had why she had chosen you. Do you know what she told me?"

"No," I said clenching my teeth. "What did she tell you…witch?"

"Come now Alistair, there is no need for hostility." Morrigan replied, moving to block my view. "All these years you have held on to your heart ache and resentment…did it ever once occur to you that she left for your sake and for the sake of the kingdom?"

I turned my back on the apostate, folding my arms.

"And what do you know of heart break?" I spat.

"I have known my share." Morrigan answered cooly. "You know I tried to talk her out of pursuing you, tried to show her that in the end you would chose responsibility over her. I even insulted you, showing you for the idiot I believed you to be. But she just smiled at me. You know the one she would give whenever anyone tried to pick at her beliefs? She told me 'He may be an idiot, but he's my idiot.' I did not understand her then and I still do not understand her now. But this I do understand. Everything she ever did, she did to protect you. My failed attempt to stop you when you charge the demon, I did that because she asked me to watch over you, to protect you when she could not. Leaving you was the hardest she has ever done, of that I am sure. But she did it to protect you. Hiding her identity from you during our audience with the Queen, that was to protect you. Do you truly not understand?"

"So her reaction the first time she sees me in five years to is to run from me? As if I am some monster she cannot face?" I questioned my anger ebbing away. "How is that protecting me?"

"She flees from you in shame because now she sees what you have become, what she turned you into. She realizes every choice she has made has destroyed you. In her mind she is the monster, Alistair, not you. She runs because she blames herself for the hollow shell you have become, though you seem to me no more hollow than you were the first day we met in the wilds. You see even then she looked at you differently from the others. Unconsciously placing herself between you and I, so that should I have struck out it would have been her not you whom I attacked. I still marvel at what you could have done to capture her so." Morrigan answered sighing deeply. "I am going to regret this but a promise is a promise. And we both know I do not break promises."

Morrigan stepped away from me, simultaneously handing me a small piece of parchment. It was yellowed with age, and had the faintest scent of lavender. I recognized it immediately, pulling open the note carefully.

Alistair,

For all the pain she has caused you, remember that she did not do so purposefully. Everything she did, she believed it for your own good. The pain it caused her to leave your side was more than even my heart could have endured. I know that you may be angry with her, hate her even; but know this that should you drive her from your presence, should you in like mind break her heart you will have condemned her to a death she will believe she deserves. And with her death she will take everything good in you with her. For I know now that you and she are soul mates, that one cannot live without the other. It grieves me I could not see passed my own sense of duty. I should have, in those first days, allowed you to pursue her, but she had begged me to stop you. It crushed me, the day you succumbed to the grief. The day the light left your eyes, and your boyish grin ceased its play upon your lips. There is nothing I can do now to make up for my part in this except to beg your forgiveness and to beg you to forgive her.

Maker be with you both,

Wynne

SLAP!

I recoiled from blow. My cheek was on fire, shock blinding my anger.

"What was that for!" I yelped looking up at the witch confused.

"That was to knock some sense back into you." Morrigan grinned turning me around and giving me a friendly push towards the stairs. "Go on Warden, the Blight and its archdemon can wait one more day."