Disclaimer: Bioware owns it.

He packed his few possessions before dawn the next morning, and was lightening the larder's stash of apples and fist-sized hardening biscuits and a small wheel of cheese, even taking a few pieces of dried venison when she found him.

"So you're really doing it, then. You're really leaving."

He looked briefly at her, and she…looked like hell. Miserable. Hair askew, dark circles under her eyes, and above all, she carried herself with an air of defeat he didn't think he'd ever seen before. Her tunic was tucked haphazardly into a circle skirt, and she wasn't wearing any shoes, but merely curled her toes against the chill of the stone floor. He would find it endearing, but…no. No, this is the end of it.

"Yes."

She was quiet, leaning against the door jamb, her shoulder seeming to hold it up while her head lolled against it. She exhaled loudly, but it was only when she let out a scoff that he raised a brow and looked at her again, carefully wrapping a wedge of cheese.

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm…rubbish at being a person, it seems, and I…I don't know what to do to make you stay."

"You've made up your mind, and I've made up mine," he said, buckling his pack. "There's nothing left to say."

She sighed, as though each word she spoke was being dragged out of her. He merely waited, a part of him wishing…this could've turned out differently.

"I wish it didn't have to be like this."

"If wishes were griffons," he replied flatly, and lifted his pack once, jostling it to settle the contents and ensure they were packed well.

She stepped further into the room and sat down at the small table, the one they all used to gather around before they had that nice long table in the mess. She folded her hands together on the surface and waited for the words to come.

"I know you're trying to have manners and all, saying 'pass the potatoes', but all you have to do is stretch your hand a bit," Anders says, passing the bowl over to Nathaniel.

"My mother would kill me for the state of my table manners," Elissa notes, one hand still wrapped around a chunk of bread as the other uses her fork to deftly stab a potato as the bowl floats by.

"They are pretty bad," Anders admits. "I mean, they raise some real hellions in the Tower, but you, my dear lady, would put them all to shame."

"This is what happens when there's no one around to shake their finger at me," she mumbles. "Maybe I should hang that picture of Nathaniel's mother in here – that'd be enough guilt to set me to rights, I'm sure."

Nathaniel chokes, and Anders claps him on the back. "That's not funny," he wheezes.

"I thought it was," she smiles, and it is one of few she's offered him as they teeter back and forth between struggling to sort each other out, get their bearings, and a thick blanket of passive-aggressive posturing.

"I…I'm sorry. For earlier," she clarifies, as though there were any other reason he'd be trying to escape in the early dawn hours.

"No reason to apologize if it's how you really feel." He decides he doesn't want to make this easy on her – he doesn't want her fake excuses or equivocating diplomacy. He wants a little proof that she's really human underneath all that armor she's piled upon herself. He wants to see her a little bare – a few tears are no longer enough.

She swallowed, and he watched her carefully. "But what if…" she trailed off and looked up at him. "What if it's not?"

He crossed his arms over his chest. "What if what's not? The part where you baselessly accuse me of still holding you responsible for my father's actions, or the part where you think I can't possibly know what I want?"

"Both. I was unfair, and I'm sorry."

"Yes. Well." He puttered, tightening a strap, and she took the prolonging for what it was – a second chance.

"I keep thinking that you're going to change your mind. That you can't possibly still…feel that way about me."

"And what about you? You're allowed to have held onto us and I was what? Supposed to forget you and my promise?"

"So much has happened," she began awkwardly, and he slammed the heel of his hand on the table with a dull thud.

"You keep saying that!" He raised his voice and she flushed, surprised. "That's no excuse. It has been just as long for you as for me, and I want to know why I'm expected to be the changeable one, why I am being held to a different standard!"

"I don't know!" she shouted back. "I don't know." She blinked back tears, and he refused to let them sway him.

"Well, until you do know," he hefted the pack in one hand and slung it over his back, grabbing for his quiver and bow, laid across the table.

"Stop," she reached out for his hand, wrapping her fingers around his when he grasped for the strap of his quiver.

"Why? Give me one good reason to stay. Give me one good reason to continue subjecting myself to your changeable whims. I may not have much pride left, but what I have has taken a beating, Elissa. What do you want from me?"

She stared at their hands, and chewed on the inside of her lip, her brow furrowed. "So much has gone wrong, I can't seem…to let the good things happen. I've seen demon trickery and I've had the most horrible nightmares. I've imagined things I can't even put words to, and nothing, nothing in the last three years has been good or right. I've had a bit of fun, sure, and made friends the likes of which I will never again have in my entire life. But it was all because horrible things happened, and even more horrible things were happening and after awhile, the only good thing I was holding on to, the thought of seeing you again, even that seemed to rot away into impossibility. I've been going through the motions, and I can't seem to let myself believe that this is real, that I have…another chance."

"And what are you going to do with that knowledge? I won't stay here if we don't want the same things. It would be unfair to both of us."

"I want this. I want to try again," she looked up, blurting the words as though they had been captured in a bubble and the bubble had only now just burst.

"And now I find it is me who hesitates," he says cautiously. "Are you sure?"

She sat there, picking at her cuticles. "You're going to have to steer me in the right direction once in awhile, but yes," she looked up at him. "I'm sure." With renewed courage, she rose from the table and went to him, reaching her hands up to his face, and only hesitated a moment before she kissed him.

"What made you change your mind?"

She sighed, and he wrapped her in his arms, laying her head on his shoulder. "Sigrun told me you were leaving. And…I knew I should have stopped you yesterday. I wanted to; I just couldn't get the words past my teeth. I knew that if you left, I would never see you again. And I couldn't…let that happen."

"And what happens next time you doubt me?"

She let out a little chuckle that didn't match his severe tone, and hugged him tightly. "You're going to snap me out of it," she said, pulling away. "Won't you?"

He considered her for a moment, and then kissed her again, a proper kiss, the one that should have happened upstairs if she hadn't spooked.

"Cook will be up soon. Come back to bed." He raised an eyebrow and she smiled. "No funny business, just…come to bed with me."

He kept hold of her hand, setting his things just inside the kitchen door, and let her guide him upstairs. She led him to her bed, and pushed him to sit, kneeling to take off his shoes and socks. She shucked her skirt, her tunic coming down to her knees, and crawled to the far side of the bed and climbed under the covers. She lifted the quilt, and with a careful look at her, he slid in, and she cuddled against him, curling into a fetal position. Hesitantly, he wrapped his arm over her waist and settled his face in the curve of her neck. It was a matter of moments before she fell asleep, and he followed not long after, surprised at how, after so many sleepless nights, he is pulled into the Fade so easily.

# # # # # #

He woke up alone. He stretched out an arm, and the sheets she had occupied earlier that morning were cool to the touch. He wondered when she'd crawled out of bed, and how he had not managed to feel her do so, as the way the bed was shoved to the wall, she would have had to climb over him. He sighed. While they'd come to an agreement, nothing was really solved and he felt it keenly, lying in her bed, without her waking up next to him.

The sun was up, but it was still a couple hours before it would reach its zenith, and there was no shortage of things to do - an extra pair of hands were always welcome when it came to the masonry work that echoed from dawn til dusk, there were always farmholds to assist with planting and harvesting, or rebuilding. Darkspawn attacks may have pulled down houses and lean-tos, but lives had to go on, and so back up they went.

Somewhere along the line, those who knew his father and lived within the walls of the keep (and some without), had come to realize he was not his father, and began to treat him accordingly - it seemed that falling into place as her second had happened without any particular attention to the happening. Men and women of all stations brought issues to him outside of normal court days, and he brought them to her, no matter what their personal attitudes towards each other had been at the time. Pondering how that may or may not change if he were to genuinely become her second in name instead of just circumstance kept him in her bed longer than he intended to be.

"You're up," she said quietly, slipping in the door.

He swung his legs off the bed. "Why didn't you wake me?"

She pressed her lips together. "How much sleep have you been getting?" When he couldn't give her an exact number, she smiled and approached him, leaning in to kiss his cheek before continuing to her armoire, which had apparently been her purpose in entering the room. "Not enough, apparently. So I let you sleep."

He cocked an eyebrow at her. "Keeping track, are you?"

"Isn't that what I'm supposed to do? Nag you about things?" she asked off-handedly, burrowing into the armoire, the door obscuring all but her bum sticking out.

"That's wives," he commented dryly and rubbed at an eye. He hadn't unbraided his hair, and it had gotten tangled while he slept. He started to unbraid his hair, waiting for a response. When she did not offer one, and was clearly now just rooting around in there, because there was no way she hadn't found whatever it was she was looking for by now, he decided to just come out and say it.

"Is that what we're doing? Playing house?"

She ducked out, empty-handed, and he began to wonder if she'd just pretended to have a purpose and instead had just come in to check on him, and hadn't had the courage to say as much.

"This is the part where you tell me," she said carefully, flushed from either her baseless exertions in the armoire or because she was being put on the spot.

"I can't be making all the decisions here," he said. "But no, I don't think, considering that fiasco yesterday, we should pick up where we left off three years ago. You were right that we're different people, but unlike you, I do not think these things cannot be worked through."

"That's not what I meant," she began, and he held up his hand.

"I don't want to argue with you. Whether you meant it or not, that's how it sounded, and that's why I was going to leave - because you seemed to not want to try, instead using them as excuses why we couldn't be together." He paused, and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his thighs, his feet still bare. "I still haven't missed my ship, if you've changed your mind again," he said, and while it was without heat (he wasn't sure he had any more in him, and considering the year he spent living on vengeance, it was both surprising and not that he had none left), the words were still there. The trust they once had was clearly broken, if they were second-guessing each other all the time.

"No," she said straight away, and he was thankful that she did not consider it. "No, I don't want you to leave. I haven't changed my mind. I just...don't know what comes next."

She looked so distraught, chewing the inside of her lip with her arms crossed over her chest. He had once been affectionate with her, and he was generally not an affectionate person, so it was a struggle to remind himself to be so again - to use it as wordless reassurance when clearly she had backpedaled so much from the girl who had openly sought his affection to the become this one who was afraid to ask for it.

"We take it one day at a time." It felt strange directing her this way - she had always been so forthright, taking her half of anything with a cheerful relish. Now, she tried to carry every menial task associated with the arling and the Wardens, as though no one else could be trusted (though she had never said a word when he had been the ear of many of the arling's commonfolk); and yet in this, she was entirely under his instruction. It wasn't quite what he wanted - he wanted the girl he once knew - but he knew it would take time before she would open herself back up and embrace that person that was still in there, somewhere. He was sure she was merely buried underneath this tangle of responsibilities and strange self-inflicted insecurities.

She closed the small distance between them, and he sat up straighter on the bed, watching her. She was predictable in that way, thinking everything through; whereas when she fought, it was all instinct. The difference was…interesting to observe. She hesitantly leaned in and gave him a brief peck on the lips. She pulled away, but he put a hand on her hip and rose, pulling her back to him.

"I'm not going to see you again until supper," he said, and kept his gaze on her as he slid his hand into the fine curled hair at the nape of her neck, and pulled her closer for a proper kiss. He started slow, and worked them into something with more heat. She returned his insistence, and began to even wrest for dominance, gripping his tunic with one hand and threading the other into his hair, unbraided and silky between her fingers. He permitted her to take over, and the hand that was in his hair became an arm wrapped around his shoulders as she began to push him, ever so slowly, back down onto the bed. He allowed it merely because he was caught up in her - reminded that this is how she used to kiss him - with total abandon in those last few days before he left, when every spare moment they were together was spent wrapped in each other.

"You hardly give me a chance to greet you," he joked, not entirely adverse to her method of attacking him as soon as he appeared.

"We'll have two years to talk. You'll write letters, I'll write letters, there'll be plenty oftalking," she grinned, and allowed her fingers to skim just under the hem of his tunic, skittering across his ribs.

"You make a convincing argument," he admitted with a smile as he ended up in a chair in the study, and she on his lap. He held her by her waist, and she had her arms around his neck as she made herself quite familiar with his tongue and the backs of each of his teeth.

When he sat suddenly, he jolted and pulled out of reach of her mouth, which was now slightly swollen and reddened. She was balancing herself with one knee on the mattress next to his thigh, her eyes were bright, and he had to smile when she looked slightly put out that he had stopped them.

"We don't have to do all our catching up in one day," he pointed out, and she seemed to suddenly notice that she almost had him back in bed.

"Oh," she said, "oh right," and suddenly loosened her grip on his tunic and climbed off him. He didn't let her get far, and pulled her back to him by the wrist, making her bend slightly, and kissed her once, twice, more gently.

"You don't have to run away," he pointed out, his lips touching her as he spoke, and kissed her again briefly. "I'm going to go help Voldrik this morning, and I'll see you at supper," he promised, and with a small smile, kissed her again when she looked disappointed. He chuckled and nudged her away so he could grab his boots and she was still standing there looking forlorn.

"Oh don't do that," he said, and tugged on his other boot. He stood, and with a single finger, tilted her chin up and kissed her again quickly before heading for the door.

# # # # # #

Sigrun was sharpening her dagger in their new armory (it was indeed a miracle that nothing ill had befallen their merry group when the sharp objects were still stowed in their mess), and didn't look up at first when she heard Elissa approach.

"I see Nathaniel's bow is back in its place. I'm assuming he's not bound for Kirkwall?" she looked up and Elissa was some strange combination of thoughtful and concerned, holding up the doorjamb.

"Not at the moment, no."

"And yet I can't tell if you look happy. You should look happy."

"I don't share well," she admitted, picking at a fingernail. Sigrun laughed, a short bark, and examined her dagger closely. "Once upon a time I wanted nothing more than to be his other half, but I don't know how to do anything halfway anymore. I know he's been handling some of the arling's business on his own, and it's taking me sticking my fingers in my ears to keep from wanting to meddle."

Sigrun shrugged. "So you're a meddler."

"No, I'm a controlling bitch," she muttered dejectedly. "I had to lead Alistair around by the nose even though, rightly, he was the one in charge, and I forget that other people should have input into decisions that I make."

"You've got to relax, girl."

"You're telling me."

"No. Really."

"Yes, because the darkspawn will just wait. I can't even think about relaxing until I have this Architect and Mother malarkey sorted out, and who knows when that will happen? Fate does not want me to have a day off to organize my personal life."

Sigrun shrugged. "Set all darkspawn on fire. Take vacation with sultry-voiced nimble-fingered archer-thief. Come back and stay in bed for a week because you can't walk." Elissa colored a deep red and Sigrun laughed again. "See? Easy. I just mapped it out for you."

"I'll be sure to send out a message. All darkspawn please gather in one place so I may set you ablaze so to further my immediate need to be screwed senseless by Nathaniel Howe," she commented dryly, and there was a cough from behind her and Sigrun snickered. "I hate you," Elissa said without even turning around.

"Have either of you two lovely ladies seen our dear Nathaniel? Clearly he is not screwing the Commander senseless, as she appears to be right here, senses and all," Anders said lightly, and she didn't even have to look at him to reach out and smack him upside the head as he came to stand beside her.

"He's helping Voldrick."

"Ah yes. Manual labor," he mused, and looked down at his hands. "I'm far too delicate for that sort of thing."

Sigrun opened her mouth to reply, but any further comment was lost as Captain Garavel burst into the armory. "There's a darkspawn horde heading for the city!"