"This is all kind of weird, don't you think?" Said Alistair.

Aedan shrugged his shoulders and shook his head in a gesture of confusion.

"What do you mean?"

"This," he gestured around him at the accommodations, "I mean the servants, the castle, the squires. It's not like we're exactly used to this, you know?"

Aedan smiled slightly.

"Actually, I kind of am."

"Huh? Oh, yeah, right, noble of Higheaver, and all that," Alistair murmered, "I guess you would, be, at that. Well, it's new to me at least. I'm just not sure I'm comfortable with all of it."

"What, the servants?" Aedan asked in surprise, "trust me, don't. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves if they were anything else." Seeing Alistair's look of shock at his arrogant statement, he softened a little bit. "I do know what you mean, though. Especially after the last few months. I don't mean the camping. I mean that we were all more or less equal in each other's eyes. "

"Except Morrigan's, we all looked equally inferior in hers," Alistair added helpfully.

Aedan began to exclaim in protest, but thought better of it. "Yeah, I'll concede that point. I love her anyway".

"Oh, better can it, here she comes."

Unfortunately, Morrigan had either heard enough, or knew them well enough to know they were talking about her.

"What, talking about me again, I see? Hmmm. Let me guess. Alistair said I was an evil shrew and the Warden offered a half-hearted defense at best? Am I right?" She had her hands on her hips, and an eyebrow raised in inquiry. Her words were an accusation, of course, but even Alistair had learned by now that the expression she wore was not malicious. "Well, as long as you added the last part, Aedan, I forgive you both." She slid comfortably into his arms at the last and they shared a slightly mushy but tender kiss. They were even mercifully quick about it, for Alistair's sake.

"Do you really know us," Aedan paused, and reconsidered, "me, that well?"

"Well, yes, but I can shapeshift, you know. And let me tell you, eavesdropping is a lot easier when you have bat ears," she grinned.

"Meh, evil witch, always cheats," Alistair murmured good naturedly. "Anyway, let's do this thing properly, shall we?"

"Indeed," his friend replied, "Barkeep! More ale!" He shouted, holding his mug high in the air.

"Truly? This is how civilized men behave as soon as they are behind safe walls?" Morrigan commented in mock disbelief and reproach, "Honestly, now I know for certain that mother was right after all. Men are all pigs. Every last one of them."

"Even me?" Asked Aedan innocently. Morrigan poked him on the tip of his nose.

"Especially you," she retorted with eyes open wide to emphasize her mock-sternness. It was clear she was in a playful mood, and even Alistair could tell.

"Oh, brother. Come on, Aedan, we're seriously behind. Let's get drinking! You, too, Morrigan. Pull up a mug!"

"I…think not. No. No, I really don't think that's such a good-"

"Oh, come on! Didn't you spend all that time telling us when the three of us first met how you wanted to see the world and experience it and all that? Now's the perfect time!"

Morrigan considered what he was saying. He was right, she had wanted to experience the world, and not just the places in it. She felt herself giving in. "I..suppose I could have… one drink… surely?"

Aedan was loving every minute of it. She was in a playful mood, indeed.

Of course, none of them stopped after one, and it was hours before good sense finally kicked in. Which meant, of course, that the bar closed, and they all had to leave. As usual, Aedan was relatively unaffected by the alcohol, but Alistair was clearly reeling. He could hardly stand, let alone walk. Morrigan, despite her most sincere intentions to limit herself to one drink, and then two, and maybe just three or four, was not in much better shape, but she faked it well. She had to keep up appearances, after all. They deposited Alistair in his room, and Morrigan waited outside while Aedan helped him remove his boots and shirt, then managed to get him at least mostly in bed before leaving him to sleep it off.

When Aedan turned around after closing the door gently behind him, he jumped in surprise at Morrigan's proximity. He was, for all intents and purposes, pinned against the wall by her body.

"So this is what 'drunk' feels like, hmmm?" I don't feel impaired in the least. What about you, Warden? Think your spear can still find its mark?" She purred suggestively, and then lightly grazed his nose with her teeth.

Playful, indeed, he thought.

"My dear swamp witch, are you trying to seduce me?"

"Possibly. Why? Is this Warden… seducible?" She cocked her head both coyly and innocently, and thus erotically as hell.

Aedan looked rapidly back and forth from her left eye to her right, trying to eternalize this moment for the rest of his life, before replying with a soft and drawn out "Yes." He leaned in to kiss her, and she was deliciously pliant in his arms.

"So, are we going to do this with you pressed against Alistair's door, or shall we go find one of our rooms?" He asked her when they paused for air. Her hair was already a mess, and his belt had magically become unbuckled.

She didn't reply for a moment. After a few seconds, Aedan broke the silence: "Is something wrong?"

"What? No, not at all." She narrowed her eyes hungrily. "I'm just trying to decide."

"Vixen." He nuzzled her neck some more. "Come on, Alistair is going to have enough of a headache in the morning without nightmares to boot. Whose room is closer?"

She relented with a disappointed sigh, and Aedan realized she really had been willing to do it right there, literally on Alistair's doorstep. She allowed herself to be led down the hall to his room, where she shoved Aedan in impatiently and bolted the door behind her. When she turned around, she took on an air of mock severity once more.

"My dear Warden, why are your clothes still on?"

He crossed the room quickly and took hold of her forcefully yet gently and began hungrily undoing what few fasteners there were on the revealing robes she liked to wear. She'd have to visit the tailor in the morning. Playful was fun. Tenderness and softness would come later, when they had exhausted themselves. At least he hoped so. They continued kissing and necking for a while, occasionally getting words in between breaths.

"I love you, Morrigan."

"Don't, Aedan, not tonight."

Aedan stopped kissing her neck, disappointed.

"No, Morrigan, I do."

"I know you do, and I love you too." Oh my God, I can't believe I/she actually just said that! each of them thought. Morrigan covered her shock better than Aedan.

"You do?!"

Damn. She was regretting her indiscretion already. Damn all the brewers in the world, she cursed to herself, damn damn damn.

"..Yes. I do. But, just.. just not tonight. Please, Aedan. Please. I need this." He didn't really understand what she was asking for, but he went along with it anyway.

"Ok."

The moment passed, and they both remembered what they'd been doing before the interruption.

"Good. Now that that's settled, where were we? I do believe the Warden had just caught a dangerous apostate in his quarters, come to cast a spell on him. But it looks like he caught her, and now she's at his mercy. What, my dear Warden, will she ever do now?"

"If she's a good girl and does as she's told, he won't tell anyone her secret."

"Oh? And whatever will he tell her to do?"

"Oh," he said, with a devilish look in his eye, "you know."

She smiled and went to him.

"Mmm. Yes."

In the end, it turned out that drunkenness did not, in fact, hamper the Warden's abilities with his spear.

Hours later, exhausted, the two slept. Both of them dreamed.

Morrigan dreamed of her mother, now dead, at least for now. She dreamed that her mother was chasing her, shouting strings of curses after her, about destiny and inevitability. About a certain plan they'd had, and about a certain conflict that had been building in Morrigan for a long time now without her realizing it. Disturbed by these unhappy dreams, she trembled and murmured in her sleep.

Aedan dreamed of a castle, and himself sobbing violently with his back to the gate to the outside. He wasn't sure, but he thought he saw Morrigan in his dream, too. She was disappearing into the distance.

The two of them might not have realized it even if they had glimpsed what the other had seen, but to the spirits of the fade, it was clear as day that the dreams of the two were completely intwined, as was the rest of their energy.

Aedan awoke from his unhappy dream, and felt the relief of air to a drowning man when he felt her there, warm against him, even before he had opened his eyes. She was still there. He held her close for several minutes until three teardrops leaked from his eyes, then kissed her gently on the back of the head and lay awake watching her for some minutes. He loved her. He was terrified of losing her. He had been overjoyed when she'd admitted to him that she loved him, and he believed her. He had already forgotten that she shied away from it immediately. But he did fear, and he understood now what Morrigan had tried to tell him when she told him she wanted him to end it because the dependency between them could be dangerous. She was right. It could be.

But he feared losing her far more than whatever might come of that danger. He loved her. Period.

She stirred slightly as he gently stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers. He put his arm back around her and cupped her breast, pulling her gently into him. She reached down to put her hand on top of his and helped him tuck her in closer to him, but didn't open her eyes. She was still asleep, and it looked like she was sleeping easier now. He was glad.

"Oh, Morrigan, what would I do without you?" He whispered softly.

"I hope, certainly, that you would not resort to bestiality in my absence."

He was surprised; he hadn't seen her open her eyes, and was a little embarrassed that she'd heard him.

"I thought you were asleep?" He stroked her hair gently, before she took his hand and put it back on her breast.

"I was." She was smiling slightly.

"I'm sorry, I did not mean to wake you."

"'Tis alright. I was having a bad dream anyway."

"You too, huh?"

She rolled over to face him, with a look of uncharacteristic concern in her eyes.

"What was yours about?" She asked.

"You."

"Oh." A look of confusion crossed her face, and Aedan sought to add to his answer.

"It was a dream about… losing you." He knew what she was about to say, and he went on before she could say it. "I know what you're about to say. You're going to tell that this was, is, a bad idea, and that you told me so all along."

"Yes, I did." She wasn't smiling now.

"Let me finish. I understand now what you meant when you said that this interdependence was a weakness. A distraction. Even a danger. When I think of what would happen if I lost you, it makes my blood run cold. I feel like I wouldn't be able to carry on."

"You are not helping your case, Warden."

"Then let me tell you why I feel this way. For the first time in my entire life, I've met someone that I can be completely myself around. When I'm with you, I'm not pretending. You think human interaction is a sham anyway, so I don't have to put on the many masks that growing up as a noble required me to wear. Even around our party. With Alistair, I hide some of my darkness. With Sten, I can't show any weakness. With Wynne… well, Wynne is like a mother to me. And no one lets their mother see everything, do they?

"I think I can relate to that last point, at least," she allowed.

"And we're not even including Leliana. I know she wants me, and I have to be careful not to hurt her. She is not a fragile woman, by any means, but she is a good person, and I don't want to cause her pain. Even without that complication, and despite her past, she is about as close to innocence as you can get in a world like this. Some of the decisions that I have to make… I would prefer it if she didn't have to face their consequences.

"My entire life, everyone has always had such crushing expectations of me. But with you, I'm just me. Not the noble, not the Warden. Just Aedan. I don't have to worry about showing fear in front of you, and even though you don't really believe in human joy and celebration, I don't have to censor my feelings for your benefit. You simply accept them, at face value, or don't. I have never met anyone else that I feel comfortable around like you. I trust you, in a way that I don't even trust Alistair. Isn't that strange? You probably think this is all very silly, but I wanted to tell you how I feel."

She did not say anything for several minutes. Instead, she just lay there, quietly, looking into his eyes. Neither of them said anything. Then, she smiled, slightly, as if she'd come to some decision.

"Your feelings are returned. I… do not really understand any of this. I have never experienced it before, and it is confusing to me. I do not know how to act, how to feel. What is normal? It terrifies me, but for once I am not afraid to admit that to someone. Flemeth would have slapped me for allowing such weakness to show, and I half expect you to do the same, but time and time again, you do not."

"Never. And I like you exactly as you are. You. Don't worry about how to act, what is appropriate. If I was going to get angry about you acting inappropriately, I would have long since changed my mind about the time I told you I preferred you to speak your mind." He smiled a crooked smile at the last, and she returned it, as they shared the memory of their second meeting. "Truly, it's what makes you so completely different than any woman I've ever met, or will likely ever meet, that makes you so special to me. Nobles meet a lot of people, Morrigan. But I never met anyone who expressed themselves as freely as you. It is so refreshing to me that I cannot adequately describe it to you." He brushed a hair out of her eye and tucked it over her ear.

"I still do not want to talk about the future, Aedan."

"Don't worry about the future. Not even about tomorrow. Honestly, every day when we wake up there's a good chance we won't have to worry about tomorrow, because we'll all be dead." He was surprised to hear himself actually say it, but now that he had, he believed that he did mean it. He wanted to have a future with her, for certain, but he really, truly, didn't even know that he'd be alive this time tomorrow. The present was the only thing he could control.

"'Tis too true, that."

"What that means is that we have to live like all we have is today. And if all I have is today, the only thing I want is you, Morrigan. Just you." He swore he actually saw tears in her eyes, but it was dark, so he pretended he didn't see them. She didn't say anything about his, either. It was dark, after all.

Morrigan didn't really understand what it was she was feeling at this moment. She felt the anxiousness lift, and felt it replaced with something else, something warm. It would be months before she realized that for the first time in her life, she was experiencing happiness, and safety. It was strong enough, even, that she was able to force her terrible secret from her mind, at least for now. As he had said, maybe all they had was today, and they'd be dead by the next day. It wouldn't matter for some time, yet. Some day she would have to deal with it, and what it meant with him, but not tonight. Not tonight.

They held each other close for some time, and then, they did something that neither had ever done before. Both had experienced sex, many times in truth, but neither of them had ever before made love. In the predawn hours before they had to again face the world that wanted to kill them, the witch and the Warden made love.