Life is difficult, Morrigan thought to herself for what must have been the hundredth time since she had gotten up that morning. There was just so much that had to be done. The infant needed fed, constantly. She didn't want to sleep unless her mother was wide awake. As soon as Morrigan tried to get some sleep herself, the baby woke up, and demanded both food and attention. Morrigan almost regretted leaving the quiet village where she had given birth to their daughter. The people had been good to her there, and had not asked very many questions. They had seen that she was in need, and left it at that. Yes, she did regret leaving. But she did not want to return.
She had sworn that she was going to raise the child apart from society, and that's what she was going to do. Despite what she had turned out to be at her core, Morrigan felt that her respect for Flemeth had grown over the last few months. She had grown up despising the horrid woman, but being a mother was a lot harder than she had anticipated. Surely, though, if Flemeth could do it, so could she.
As if that weren't enough, some local chapter of the Chantry had caught on to the fact that there was an apostate in the area. Morrigan doubted that anyone in the village had turned her in, but she'd been dodging the Chantry her entire life, and knew that no one had to inform on you. They just seemed to know. She'd spent the past few weeks having to dodge their inept search parties. It wasn't hard, but it was another burden stacked on top of her already complex situation.
Now that the child was born, it was both easier and harder to move. It was easier, because she was physically mobile again, as well as able to shift, but also harder, because she had to worry about someone else, someone who was weak and completely incapable of doing anything to help her with any of what had to be done. Children are parasites, Morrigan frequently caught herself thinking. She did mean it, but she not resent her child. The child was the second person Morrigan had ever loved in her life. The child was the only thing she had of his. Never mind the fact that the child carried the soul of an Old God now. There had been many other reasons they had conceived the child, not least of all the fact that if they hadn't Aedan probably would have died, but she had only recently begun to understand that if things had been somehow different, if she hadn't had to conceive the child to save his life, she would not change it. She found it hard to believe, but she was happy that they had created a child together.
I never expected to have a matronly bone in my body, she thought as the baby nursed. She couldn't help it. The baby was a part of her, of him. Of them. She would never see him again, but she would see him every day. The child was only a few months old, but she had seen in the first minutes of the child's life that she had her father's ears, and nose. She had her mother's eyes, of course, and hair. She still had not come up with a name. It would have to be done soon, but Morrigan was at a loss. She had never known any women that she would like to name her child after. If it had been a son, she would have named him after Aedan. But it wasn't, and the only other women she had really known had been Flemeth, Wynne, and Leliana. She was not going to name her only daughter after one of them, of that she was certain.
If she didn't think of another name soon, she was going to name her Sarah, after the woman in the village who owned the inn with her husband. Sarah the innkeeper had shown her only kindness, and it was a good name. She had talked much with Sarah over the course of her several weeks there after the delivery while she regained her strength. Morrigan was uncomfortable with how much she had shared. As a rule, she disliked people, and liked trusting them even less. But she'd had no choice, and to be honest, she had been lonely. It was good to talk to someone else, after travelling for so long. It didn't help that the year she had spent with Aedan had gotten her used to being around people. It had been harder than she'd expected to go back to living in isolation.
Sarah told Morrigan that she thought that Aedan would eventually find her. She hadn't listened when she tried to tell her that she knew he'd already given up, and out of frustration had revealed how. Sarah had not been disgusted, or even offended. She'd suspected from the very beginning that Morrigan was an apostate, and it didn't bother her in the least. "After all," she'd said, "all the pig men in the world are not apostates, and I certainly would not give any of them a place to stay or stay up late talking with them. People are individuals, not labels. One being bad has nothing to do with the other." Still, even after Morrigan had revealed that she knew through magic that Aedan was no longer pursuing her, Sarah had told her that that didn't mean he had given up. "I have a feeling that he doesn't go a single day without thinking of you. He may have turned back because he had responsibilities, but I guarantee he will come back for you as soon as he can, even if it takes him years. There's no question that he will never give up on you. The question is whether or not you'll let him find you."
Morrigan wondered about that, and often. It was an idle fantasy, of course. Still, she had begun to dream of him. Him looking for her. Her letting him find her. Him keeping all his promises, and them being happy. Occasionally, against her better judgment, she would look in on him. Every time she did, what she saw was worse. She had heard about the Afterblight, and knew that it was the only reason he'd stopped pursuing her. The world had needed him, she expected. Parts of her wanted to be mad at him for turning back, wanted to believe that it meant he hadn't meant any of it at all when he had tried to tell her how he felt about her. But she knew it wasn't true. She could feel it, even here, what it had cost him to turn back without finding her. Every time he marched into battle, she knew, and it kept her up at night. If she thought she'd known fear and uncertainty before, she had been wrong. She hadn't known anything of the sort. Fear and uncertainty were being able to feel every arrow and sword that threatened to snuff out his life, and being forced to remain a thousand miles away, unable to even see with her own eyes whether he lived or died, let alone do anything about it.
Time passed. She didn't come up with a different name, so the child was named Sarah.
When the second war was over, she had breathed a sigh of relief, even if it meant that she might have to make some hard decisions about whether to stay put or start running again. Hard choices or not, he had survived the second war. She had no doubts about that. As time went by, she could feel more than just the turbulence of battle. At night, when Sarah was asleep, and she lay awake unable to sleep, she could sense his heart beating a thousand miles away. It was very faint, but it was not her imagination. She knew it wasn't the ring. He'd worn it for a year before she left, and though she could divine his location through it at will, it had never shown itself to have any power like this. What it meant, she did not know.
As the weeks went by, Morrigan waited nervously to see whether or not Aedan came after her. She did not know which she wanted him to do. Both, was probably the answer. Her dreams were getting worse. She could feel his spirit becoming more erratic. He wasn't doing well, she was sure of that. Each night, she wandered the fade while she dreamed. Most common folk did not know it, but when in a dream, one's consciousness was actually in the fade. Mages could actually navigate it without getting lost, but Morrigan had little experience with that. She did possess the ability, but most of the time, her visits to the fade were just like anyone else's: uncontrolled and brief, lasting only until dawn. Or until the baby woke her up with hungry crying. What she did know was that dreams were often significant, and never random. In her dreams, Aedan seemed to be getting more and more desperate. Coupled with what she felt, she knew something was going to happen, but she didn't know what. It might be a revelation, a decision, or something else entirely. But she was being given a glimpse into his state of being, and the picture she was shown was not a pretty one. He seemed confused, angry, and in pain. Then again, so did she. Perhaps she was only projecting.
One night, the pattern changed. She'd been dreaming of him, as usual. He'd been standing on a hill, watching her from above. Suddenly, the landscape changed. Instead of the rugged landscape of Ferelden, they were standing in a dreamlike landscape, on the edge of an abyss so deep that at the bottom there was only blackness. He walked to the edge of the cliff and stood there with his back to her, until she'd tried to touch him. He'd turned around so suddenly that she froze, startled. He'd looked at her then with such sadness in his eyes that she hadn't known what to say, even in a dream. Then the landscape changed again. The bottom dropped out from under him, and all she could see was him disappearing into the darkness.
Morrigan woke up screaming. She sat up, covered in sweat, and threw the covers off her. Mercifully, Sarah hadn't woken up. Morrigan sat there in the darkness for several minutes, trying to calm her breathing. She'd felt it. Something had happened, but she didn't know what. She tried to reach out, to find out, but she couldn't, not until she was calm. She forced herself to breathe.
When she had herself back under control, she closed her eyes and carefully began to probe with her mystical senses. She could tell immediately that something was wrong, but it took her a minute to figure out what. She could still feel the pulse of his heartbeat, so she knew he was alive, but she couldn't feel him. She hadn't realized it, but his presence had always been there. Now there was nothing, and she felt naked all over again, just as she had that first night when she realized there was no one to help her, and that he was truly gone. She tried again, this time ignoring the secondary link that she'd discovered, and tried only the ring. She sensed a room, with a window. A tower. Denerim. So he was still in Ferelden. Why can't I feel him then?
She tried for hours to sense his presence, but she found nothing. She finally fell asleep an hour before dawn, and when she did, she found her answer. The connection was back, but only while she dreamed. That meant that Aedan was lost in the fade. Morrigan had heard cautionary tales of this. It only happened when someone was in so much pain that they simply let go, preferring to drift, rather than go back to face the world when they woke. Aedan was no mage, even if he had demonstrated some ability to navigate. Even skilled mages rarely found their way back when that happened.
When dawn finally came, she fed the baby, and collapsed again, exhausted, but was unable to sleep. It was too much for her. She'd only been hanging on by hoping that Aedan's life was turning out alright without her in it. Instead, losing her had caused him so much anguish that he'd literally let go, and was now lost in the fade, probably never to return. Morrigan had never known loss so profound. It made her sick, and her muscles felt tense, as if her body wanted to run away, or fight. She tried to be strong, but she just couldn't. She burst into tears, and rocked herself until long after she'd run out of tears.