So...I've thought about this back and forth constantly the last few days and the thing is, I just didn't like how the original chapter twenty panned out. I was so eager and exited to throw Alistair and Aurora back together, everything just happened too fast. When someone you love hurts you, you don't just forget about it and turn around and let them back into your life without a second thought, not a healthy relationship, anyhow. So I've rewritten this chapter, if that upsets you I truly am sorry, but while the concepts of this story do belong to Bioware, I am still the author of Aurora's journey. Also, this is my very first fanfiction, which maybe is just an excuse I'm using to make myself feel better, but...yeah. Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the rewritten bit of this story. It's obvious now who I do eventually plan for her to end up with, even though it was something I struggled with for sometime. Thank you for taking the time to read this note and for being a reader of Tarnished Legacy, even when I have to redo things from time to time.
The cough erupted from her throat, sharp and painful when it pricked the outside of her chest and ran its fingertips down the inside of her ribs. It was the third hour of the waves that were constantly crashing over her being, not smoothing her edges but rather making her more rugged with each crashing fleet. Site was gone, her eyes no longer able to make a clear connection to her brain and turning the world around her to dust covered antiques. Sometimes she would pick up words when the ringing in her ears would dim, allowing the softest bits of idiom to find a pathway through the small and seldom occurring cracks.
Memories would wander through her mind, some buried and others forget but each one painful and rusted in its own way. Mother would pull her to her lap, Father would lift her to his shoulders, Fergus would trip her in the library. Emerged in her own conscious, she would find herself sitting in the middle of the Fade with her knees pulled to her childless womb and shivering from a chill that she could not even feel. When she would look at her hands, the fingertips would be turning blue with frostbite crawling up her flesh with a belligerent parade. Then she would scream, a sound that would penetrate the air and break through sky, but when it as over it was as if it never happened.
"Aurora," It was a whisper and a yell at the same time, sending her head snapping up and eyes wide and sprinkled in blue veins. Several feet ahead of her a figure stood, a blur of ink black with no definite mass nor form. Clumsily, she stood with a hand pushing herself up from the texture lacking ground and she stepped forward towards the thing calling her name, "Demon," slurring, she pointed a finger at it, "Get out of my head." Then the slurring stopped, the five words as clear as a summer sun.
It cackled, the foggy mess of spiritual existence rumbling with each harsh and rickety noise, "Shhh," then it was all around her, drowning her in a liquid that tampered with her insides and dripped into her lungs. Air would not come, clamoring down her throat but hitting a block along the way. The thing was inside her, molding to her internal structure and mending itself with every nook and cranny of her soul. Every single feeling stunk of familiarity and held a consistency saturated in deja vu, an experience she was certain she had felt once before.
Eyelids crumbling she succumbed to a defeat of mentality, losing herself somewhere in a facade between the living and the dead. A final breath of air fell from her lips, a black wisp that only existed for a quick moment before finding its end. For a moment, the soul that belonged to her but yet was not here took a moment to adjust, looking at the frozen blue veins that were refurbished in black. Then it grinned, putting its arms out wide and tilting its head back, before falling back and straight through the ground of the Fade.
…
Wynne was sitting in a chair pulled close to Aurora's bed, watching the girl twist and turn and occasionally call out slight and soft words. For nearly an entire day she watched her suffer, constantly falling from consciousness only to resurface for moments at a time. Fevers would scorch her skin before crashing, plunging her internal temperature so cold her whole body would erupt in shivers. After convincing Zevran to leave and take a walk around the courtyard, it was only the three of them, a child yet to be born and a Mother who's perfect pregnancy had staggered into an unknown conundrum.
Sitting up like her entire body had been propelled forward, Aurora's eyes opened in a wide and vast expression that left her lips apart and a deep gust of air traveling down her throat in an attempt to catch her breath. Looking at her wrists with shaking limbs, she let out a gasping sigh of relief before finding her stomach and searching for the roundness of life she had grown so accustomed to. When she found it it was like she collapsed, breaking into a sob and hugging the home of her growing child.
"Aurora!" Wynne was at her side, a hand on her shoulder and in complete shock at the way the she had sprung to life from hours of illness, taking in such a breath of air it was as if she had been drowning before hand.
"It was inside me," Her word were raspy, throat dry and tampered with by crowded emotions, "It was in my body, in my soul."
"What are you talking about, dear girl? Did you have a nightmare?" The mage was trying to make sense of everything, placing a hand on the woman's shoulder.
"No, it wasn't a nightmare. It was real, in the Fade, I could feel it fusing to me," She looked at Wynne, dark circles under her eyes and fear scrawled into her iris, "It crawled through my throat, like some kind of permanent ink for my insides."
"You've been sick for the last twenty hours Aurora, you're ill, you have a fever, delusions are normal," She helped her to lay back further, putting the back of her hand against her forehead and applying a cool pressure.
"Wynne, a demon wants my baby, they want her," Staring up at the mage she begged her to believe her, trying to prove the truth to her words, "I've encountered enough things to recognize a demon. They're going to take her, they're going to take my baby!" Then she was yelling, frantic and weeping with a constant cling to her extending abdomen, "You can't let them take my baby, promise me you won't."
"I won't let anyone take your baby, Aurora. No one is going to lay a hand on her, I promise," She tried to be as comforting as possible, constantly stroking her hair and using every calming spell she could think of to try to the soothe the mother to be.
"They'll find me if I sleep," Her voice was far off, clinging to the edge of consciousness, "She isn't safe while she's in me."
"I promise you won't go to the Fade while you sleep now, you will not dream, no one can get in." The words seemed to finally settle her, eyelids fluttering a handful of times before finally closing and her chest falling and rising into a gentle pace. Wynne stood from the door, finding a still awake Alistair sitting on the floor with his back against the wall. Once he saw her he immediately stood at the fastest rate he had in his entire life, "Is she alright? Is the baby alright?"
"For the time being, they are both fine."
"The time being? For how long is "the time being"?" His voice became louder, near yelling as panic crept into him.
"Alistair, she thinks she's being possessed when she's in the Fade, that someone wants the child."
He growled, flushing with anger, "That bastard! I should have had his head sliced off when I had the chance." For a moment he fumed, before calming himself down enough to continue speaking to Wynne, "I have a mage in the dungeons of the palace, a blood mage, who made a confession to possessing Aurora to get her into Loghains bed. I intended to get more information out of him before we had him tried and killed for his crimes, he was guarded by Templars, I thought it would be safe, he has no access to blood."
"You didn't tell her she was possessed before this? You've been at the castle for weeks! Maker, you could have at the very least told me!"
"I've been trying to tell her but the woman can barely stand being in the same room as me for an hour, she wouldn't even let me in the room when she thought something was wrong with our child!"
"That is a conversation for another time, Alistair. For now you need to tell me everything you know about this blood mage, right this instance." With a sigh he nodded, running a hand through his hair.