Chapter 14

Eve stayed in her room for several days, only creeping out in the early morning of the first day when she knew Isabela and Varric would be asleep, to ask Corff to ready a bath so she could wash the blood from her body and hair and to have food and drink delivered to her room so she wouldn't starve. She burnt her dress in the fireplace watching the once beautiful creation crisp to nothing in the flames.

Her injured arm required the wound to be sewn. She did it herself, it wasn't neat, hurt like a bitch, but it was healing.
Her anger and shame on the other hand was not so easily resolved. Alcohol didn't touch it. The cramped space of her room only exacerbated it.
Alistair's impending wedding. Garrett's treatment of her. Anger, blood loss and wine loosening her tongue to spill her heart in front of people that were not much better than strangers.
The only good thing about that night had been killing those thugs. And Fenris. He had been something of a surprise. The elf had never said a word to her before, never even looked at her. She didn't even think he registered her as a person, but he had been there that night to help, however unnecessary that it was, offered her his mansion, his wine, revealing more of himself than she ever thought the quiet man ever would in that impossibly luscious voice of his. Had he seen how he shivered when he spoke? Especially when enriched by anger. Maker, she hoped not. He offered her help, not because he thought she couldn't do without it, but because she needed it and somehow knew would never admit to such a thing. And those markings, forged by such horror, the white of the lyrium against his golden toned skin, she couldn't help how her tongue trembled with the desire to lick them. Fuck she was messed up. Fuck how she just needed to, well, fuck. Maybe that would help the rage and frustration that roared under her skin painfully. That or killing something usually abated it.

So on the fourth day of being in her room - not hiding, she didn't hide - she crept from her lodgings as the sun was rising like an orange dragon unfurling its wings on the horizon, and made her way to the Wounded Coast.
She wore her armour and her sword, she wouldn't get caught without them again. There was no particular place she had in mind to go, no route she knew of, no point of interest she had heard about, she just needed to feel the sky above her. To feel like she was living the freedom she had sought when she had decided to run from the Wardens.

She ran in to a few groups of troublemakers, they were quickly dispatched, bodies lightened of worldly goods they no longer needed.
She spent two nights camping on a secluded beach since the nights were warm and skies were clear.
The fighting and the freedom were somewhat soothing, the binds of anger loosened.
It gave her time to think clearly, which she hadn't done for an age. She had spent such a long time pretending that if she didn't think about Alistair it wouldn't hurt, it didn't matter. But Maker be damned it did.
She remembered the rose he had given her, the first and only flower she'd ever been given by anyone. She didn't even tease him about it, was even speechless for a few moments. She'd kept the thing when it had dried up, it's petals as delicate as ash, in a velvet bag she'd found in a pile of dust when looting some skeletal corpses. But she didn't have it now, in her heartbreak, after a night of wasted tears, she'd silently passed Alistair as they had left Arl Eamon's estate in Denerim, and shoved the thing in to his hands, not even looking back to see his reaction. He'd probably just thrown it away there and then, but it felt good at the time to pretend it no longer meant anything to her.
She recalled how slowly their relationship had progressed. It was a pace that she wasn't used to, but he was nervous about being with her, the majority of his life spent under Chantry influence was hard to break from. When he finally asked her to join him one night, Eve had held off asking him for fear of looking too eager, she had never been happier. It may not have been the most mind blowing night of her life, he was inexperienced of course, but it was the first time she had laid with someone who she truly loved. Even Garrett, who she cared for, she had slept with out of fear he would find her boring and leave her if she did not. He had given her protection, shelter, food, and she gave him intimacy. But with Alistair it had been nothing short of beautiful. She had lain there afterwards, wrapped up in his strong muscular arms, her head on his chest listening to the soothing beat of his heart, as he twirled her once long hair through his fingers, and he had said how much he loved her, that wherever she went he would be by her side, for always. She had kissed him, told him the same with relief in her heart. When he slept she thought of the children they might have. Foolish, pointless thoughts she now knew, not just because he no longer cared for her, but because he had failed to tell her until after the Landsmeet that Grey Wardens didn't have children, couldn't necessarily have children, particularly the women, and especially between two Grey Wardens. The taint corrupting their ability to create and nurture life. Eve had dreamt of children even before Alistair, of bestowing the love she was denied as a child on to someone she created with a man she adored. But it would never be.
She had wiped her stinging eyes as she lay on the cool beach on the Wounded Coast thinking of the babies she wouldn't bear. She'd probably would have made a terrible mother anyway. Born to a mage girl of 15 her father had raped and eventually impregnated, she had been sent away, to Kirkwall strangely enough, just to die in childbirth. Then Eve was taken by the man who only wanted her because he couldn't have her mother. Luckily the abuse she had suffered had been in the form of violence and he had died when she was twelve, else who knew how that would have changed when she became the same age her mother had been when he began raping her. The thought made her sick. Her heritage was nothing but magic and blood. She had nothing to pass to a child anyway except anger and death. Foolish dreams indeed.

She was returning to Kirkwall, after running in to a group of mercenaries who apparently thought they could get her sword, the last one falling to her feet, when she heard the dulcet tones of Garrett.
"Eve?" She looked up to see him appearing over a ridge, Fenris, Isabela and Varric in tow.
"Oh. Hello Garrett." She said, wiping a splatter of blood she felt dripping down her brow. She looked passed him to the others. "Everyone." She greeted with a nod.
"What are you doing here?" Garrett asked, he had stopped several feet away from her, he looked nervous.
"Killing idiots." She smiled slightly.
"Oooh, snap, that's why we're here too!" Isabela grinned.
Garrett ignored the pirate "I thought you had left Kirkwall. No one has seen you for days, not since..."
"Since everything went a bit tits up and I punched you in the face?"
"Err yeah." He refused to look at her.
"I needed time to think. To get away." She told him.
"I tried to speak to you. I wanted to say I'm sorry."
"I know. Look, we need to talk, but not here. Will you be at your estate tonight? About eight?"
"Yes." He replied somewhat nervously.
"Okay, good. I'll be round then." She walked towards him. "I'm sorry for punching you. Again." She told him.
"No you're not." He smiled. "I was a complete arse. I deserved it."
"I am a little sorry I did it that hard though. And yes, you were an arse." She smiled in return. "I'll see you later."
"Good to see you out of that hole, Deadly!" Varric grinned up at her as she walked by. "Hawke thought you'd buggered off, but I knew you'd stick around, if only because you'd miss my glorious chest hair!"
"It would be my biggest regret." She told him with mock seriousness. Varric chuckled as he went to follow Garrett and the others.
"Eve," that rich voice. She looked back over her shoulder to see that Fenris stood watching her as the others disappeared round the bend of dirt track.
"Fenris?"
"I am glad that you didn't leave Kirkwall." He told her, his green eyes looking straight in to her grey ones.
"I... Um, thank you, Fenris." She replied, momentarily stunned by his words. He nodded once before turning around and quickly catching up with Garrett, Varric and Isabela. And yes, her eyes may have wandered along his departing form. Nothing wrong with that all, he was extremely pleasing to the eye after all.

She wouldn't walk through Hightown at night without at least light armour and weapons now, aware that the guards Aveline had her work cut out with were no deterrent for the criminals lying in wait. At least no one bothered her tonight and the streets were still relatively busy.
Garrett's estate wasn't the largest in Hightown by far, but it looked out on the main square just across from the Chantry, the bedroom windows all had great views over Kirkwall, as long as you didn't mind the chains, or statues of slaves.
She knocked on the door, Bodahn answered within a few seconds. It was always nice to see him, he was always positive, even when things were bleak, and Sandal of course was a beam of smiling sunshine, which reminded her to see if he'd enchant her daggers later with some new runes she'd found.
After the usual pleasantries, Bodahn knew she wasn't big on idle chatter, he told her to go ahead in to the library where Garrett was waiting for her and he'd bring some refreshments along shortly.
Garrett was sitting at the writing desk opposite the grand fireplace, the table almost spilling over with papers.
"You're popular." Eve said by way of announcing herself. Garrett practically jumped out of his skin, knocking a pot of ink to the floor.
"Markers arse, Eve!" He tried to compose himself, "you scared me to death!"
"I can tell." She grinned, taking a seat by the fire.
"How can you walk so quietly with all that armour on? Aveline wears lighter armour than you and you can hear her a mile off."
Eve shrugged. "Just a talent I guess. Though when you spend most of a year traipsing around numerous ruins trying to avoid making a noise so you don't get cornered by a bunch of walking corpses, I suppose you just learn to be quiet."
"Maybe you could teach Aveline then, she's always the first one to alert giant spiders or drakes of our whereabouts." He said wryly.
"It's on my to-do list." She smiled.
Garrett finished tidying up his pile of papers and took a seat beside her, looking Eve straight in the eye, nervously pushing a hand through his ragged hair. "I'm so sorry for what happened that night. I was so stupid..." He trailed off shaking his head in remorse.
"You were." She agreed, no point pretending otherwise. "But I got angry, it happens a lot lately. I shouldn't have punched you like I did."
"And I shouldn't have grabbed you. Or kissed you." He said sadly.
"No. Neither thing was one of your smarter ideas."
"I don't know what came over me. When I couldn't find you at the Ball, and bloody Seneshal Bran was all 'oh dear, I think I may have upset your compatriot with my talk of your Fereldan King getting married'..." Eve couldn't help but snigger at Garretts poor attempt to impersonate the snooty Seneschal. "and then I couldn't find you anywhere, I thought maybe the news of, you know, had you leaving Kirkwall back for Fereldan. Or you'd done something stupid,"
"Like run in to a bunch of thugs who wanted to 'have some fun' just to murder them brutally?" She finished for him.
"Yeah, or that. I thought the worst, running to everyone to see if you were there. I forget how capable you are, not that you weren't back in Lothering, but you were so different then, you let me look after you, you don't need that anymore. I miss it. I miss being that person to you."
"Things change." She told him simply. "And I'm sorry but they won't, they can't go back to how it was. I treasured that time in Lothering, I did, but I care for you as a friend."
Garrett's body visibly deflated. "I thought so." He sounded so miserable.
"Oh, Garrett." She sighed, both annoyed that he had put so much hope in rekindling something she didn't feel, and a little sad he was now unhappy. "You want something tinted by memories of a happier time when your family was whole and things were easier."
"I guess you're right," he mumbled. "You always were right. At least that hasn't changed, plus you are a pain in the backside," he smiled at her.
"Exactly. And I'm not going anywhere for the time being. You can still rely on me for any help you want, you're just better off relying on Isabela to warm your bed than me!"
Garrett's face burned a little red at the mention of Isabela. "Well she hasn't hidden how much she would like to 'warm my bed' as you put it," he admitted. "But she's warmed most of Kirkwall's beds by the sounds of it."
"I'm not telling you to marry her, just have some fun, Maker you deserve some!" She told him.
"Okay, I'll have some fun, not necessarily with Isabela, but I will." He grinned at her.

Bodahn shortly came in with wine and a platter of cheeses and meats which Eve and Garrett enjoyed over some good conversation and some card games. It was good to just talk about the present, forget everything else, laugh a little. The tension that had been there between them dispersing until it was barely noticeable. And most importantly, no violence was involved at all. Eve hoped it was the beginning of the start she was looking for, despite being a lot less lonely than she first envisioned it to be when her journey from Amaranthine began. Things were looking up for once.