Author's Note: Hey guys! I'm baaack! I've caught up in school and now have a shiny new laptop on which to write this and maybe some other things. Who knows. Thanks for being patient!

Disclaimer: I own nussing.

I remained silent even as the others talked over our pints. We were keeping mostly to ourselves in a corner table, speaking openly but in hushed tones when it came to our purpose and our plans.

"We need to split into groups to accomplish everything in a timely manner. Alistair, you and Gwen know the most about Genitivi from his research. Do you need anyone to join you?"

My head was tilted up, but I wasn't looking at anyone. I could see Alistair's eyes shift to me briefly before he fiddled nervously with his mug. He shook his head, "No, I think we will be all right."

"Right then. Leliana, you and Wynne should buy what supplies we need. Would you like someone to go with you?"

"Mather would be pleasant company," Leliana smiled and the dog let out a quiet bark of approval.

"Morrigan, you and Sten will come with me to do odd jobs around the city to gather money."

The dark-haired witch let out a hiss of disapproval and Sten grunted.

"This is not-"

"As I have said every time since you joined us, if you do not wish to participate, then do not." I growled, narrowing my eyes as I looked up at the giant man. "But your constant negativity is wearing and I have no patience for your nay-saying, not today. Stay here or leave, assist or hold your tongue. This goes for everyone." I lifted the mug to my lips and drained it before I set it down heavily and pushed back from the table.

I dropped a few of the copper coins I carried with me onto the table before I turned and headed towards the door. Alistair joined me shortly thereafter, outside of the Gnawed Noble Tavern.

He was frowning quite deeply as he caught up with me, putting a hand gently on my arm. "What is going on, Gwen?"

I shook my head but didn't shake him off.

"Gwen, I wish you would talk to me," he fell in-step beside me as I moved away from the tavern.

"I don't have anything to say, Alistair. I just…I have a lot on my mind right now."

"Aedan said you took the watch all night."

"And?"

Alistair let out a heavy sigh and ran his ungloved hand back through his hair, "Is it the dreams?"

I stopped walking and turned to look at him. I lifted my hand and I curved it along his cheek. "Alistair. I am fine. Just a little high strung. I will apologize to everyone later. But I don't want to worry about me right now. We should focus on finding your sister. Goldana, right?"

Alistair looked at me for a long moment before he lifted his own hand to touch mine before he took it, lifted it to his lips to kiss it, and then finally left them joined between us as he started us in one direction.

It was odd; we didn't hold hands very often and especially not out in the open. I think he knew, somehow, that I needed someone to keep me on the ground. He couldn't make me happy, but he could keep me from flying off the handle again.

"We're to meet everyone at the Pearl tonight. The rooms are cheaper there, and no one is likely to ask questions."

"After we find Genitivi?"

"Assuming we do."

"We will," I squeezed his hand gently as he stopped us in front of a rather run-down looking shack of a building. Not that anything on that side of town was particularly well-kept. I imagined the people that lived there had better things to spend their money on, like food. "But first..."

"I'm not… I don't know, Gwen. What if she doesn't remember me?"

"How could anyone forget this face?" I smiled up at him and gently touched his cheek. I was hopeful for him but concerned, too. The look in his eyes made me worry that this could only end poorly, but I was going to try to make it better for him.

His grin was appreciative and he touched my hand before he held it at his side, lifting his unused hand to knock on the shoddy wood of the door.

It took half a second before the door opened. A woman, a few years over thirty that looked like she'd gained an errant decade, stood with a fake smile hiding an angry grimace. Her hair was the red of Alistair's highlights, but that was where the similarities stopped for me. Her eyes were brown, a muddier color than Alistair's ever achieved. Her cheekbones were high, but not quite the same kind of structure as Alistair's. She reminded me of my own half-sister, where there was something that made us family but just the one thing – for us, it was our mouths. We had the same lips, our mother's lips. Everything else, there was a niggling feeling that we looked alike, but nothing to put a solid name to.

"Do you have linens to wash? I charge three bits on a bundle, you won't find better. You can't trust what that Natalia women tells ya, she's foreign and she'll rob you blind."

"N-no," Alistair started, shaking his head a little. "We don't need to have any wash done. But…but my name, it's Alistair." He sighed a little, disheartened by the now-impatient look on the woman's face. "This…this may sound a little strange, but I..I'm…Are you Goldanna? Because…if you are, I think… I'm your brother."

Goldanna went from looking impatient to looking incredulous, shaking her head. "My what? How do you know my name? What are you folk up to?"

"He's telling you the truth," I backed him up, setting a hand on his shoulder. I didn't believe that they shared a mother, but the idea that the King had slept with multiple women was hardly a difficult idea to swallow. This was a concept I would address with Alistair later, because he didn't need any more to think about just then.

"Our mother was a serving girl at the castle-"

"They told me you was dead."

"Me? Who told you that?"

"Thems at the castle. They told me that you and my mother was dead. I tried to tell 'em that you was the King's baby, but they gave me a gold coin to shut me mouth an' told me to by on my way."

"I'm sorry… I had no idea. But the baby didn't die, the baby…it's me. I'm your brother."

"For all the good it does me! You killed me mother, you did. And that gold coin didn't last long, an' I had to scrape along. When I went back to the castle, they ran me off. And you came back here, looking for what?"

"What they did isn't his fault."

"And just who are you? Some tart, followin' him around for his riches?"

"Excu-" I started but Alistair shook his head.

"You can't speak to her that way. She is my friend and she is a Grey Warden."

"And what's it to me? So you're a prince and a Grey Warden too? Who am I to think poorly of someone so high an' mighty? I don't know you, boy – your royal father forced himself on my mother and took her away from me, and left me with nothing. I have five mouths to feed and unless you can help with that, I've got less than no use for you."

I saw the look on Alistair's face; he looked crushed and I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. I stepped forward, despite his quiet protestations.

"You are an incredibly awful person. I understand that you have suffered, but you know nothing of what he went through. He came here to find you, to connect with you, hoping that family could fill a hole that you obviously feel too.-"

"Just who are you-"

"I'm not finished, Goldanna," I growled, clenching my jaw. She looked angry but a little afraid. "You do not deserve him, not even a little. I am sorry for what happened to you and to your mother, but that is no reason to treat him this way." I reached my hand to my belt; beside my dagger was a pouch of money and Goldanna gasped as I reached, probably thinking I was going for my knife. I pulled the pouch off and weighed it a little – it wasn't all we had, but it was quite a lot. Probably thirteen gold. She didn't deserve it, but her children didn't deserve to starve either. I threw the pouch at her feet. "Feed your children, woman, and stop blaming everyone else for the situation you find yourself in."

I turned around and looked up at Alistair before I walked through the door. I heard him say, "It appears I truly do not have a sister," before his footsteps fell in with mine and the door slammed shut behind us. Alistair's hand found mine and he gently pulled me close to him after we moved away from the front of the woman's shack.

He held me close, despite our public state and the amount of armor we wore. "Thank you, Gwen. For what you said, for giving her money even though she didn't…she didn't deserve it."

He kissed my forehead before I pulled back from him and held his hands between us. "People can be awful, Alistair. In fact, most are. The important thing to remember is that you don't have to be. You have to know how to deal with them – and sometimes I forget that, like with Lady Isolde – but you have to always be yourself, and be good."

"You're not awful," he responded quietly. "You were going to let yourself be killed to save Connor."

"You're right. But I can be awful too. It's just making sure that goodness overrides. Sometimes even the bad things we do are good, if that makes any sense. Like…Sten. We let a known murderer out of his cage, which is bad. But he would have been left to whatever the darkspawn would have done to him if we had left him there, which is just as bad. So we saved him. And we will probably do some awful things between now and the end of all of this, but the overall good is saving Ferelden."

Alistair nodded a little and I saw his jaw set. I hoped I had done more good than harm, but I wasn't entirely sure.

"And..uh…let's not tell anyone about the money, shall we? I think that would be grounds for mutiny again," I smiled at him a little, squeezing one of his hands as I let the other one down. "We've got our way and find Genitivi's place before it gets dark."

Alistair nodded a little before we broke our hands away and he pulled out a map we had hand-drawn from our information. Through our studies and word-of-mouth, we were able to find the location of his home, actually just across from the pub we had started in.

"You know," I started as we walked back in the direction we had come, glancing around the town at the different people that could be seen there, "we do this thing where I'm from, it's called 'going on dates'. I think it's, like…courting here, or something."

"Are you saying I should write you poems that tell you how beautiful you are and compare you to…the moon, or something?"

"Only if you're comparing me to a moon made of cheese, because I feel like if there's one thing you love more than anything, it's cheese."

"You're a close second," he grinned as he looked at me and, for a moment, it was almost as if the Goldanna nonsense had never happened. We weren't hunting down a man, searching for fabled ashes – we were strolling through a marketplace, just two people that happened to be armed to the teeth and dressed for war.

"I think I'm okay with that."

"Do you really want to…go on a date? That's what you said, right?"

"I don't need to. Sometimes I just think it might be nice to be able to eat dinner together, you know, by ourselves? Alone. Romantic. But…this life we're leading doesn't really lend itself to such things."

Alistair looked pensive for a moment before he smiled his charmingly boyish smile and we stopped in front of the door that would lead us to Brother Genitivi.

This time, I knocked. After a moment, there was a scrambling behind the door and then a man, older than Alistair but not old enough to be his father, with dark hair and squinty dark eyes opened it just enough for us to see him.

"What do you want?"

"Is this Brother Genitivi's home?"

"Yes. He isn't here," and then the man began to slowly close the door.

I placed my booted foot in the doorway and then pressed a hand to the wood. "Do you know where he is? This is very important."

The man made a face at Alistair and I before he let out a heavy sigh and opened the door a little more. "No, I don't. I haven't seen him in weeks. I'm his assistant, Weylon. What is it you need?"

"We need his help to find the Urn of Ashes. It's important that he tells us where it is."

"I can't tell you anything that I don't know. It's been days since I've last seen him. He told me he was going to somewhere near Lake Calenhad, but that's all I know."

I paused before I responded. First, he had said it had been weeks and then he said days. Something smelled fishy – and I doubted it was dinner.

"Have you seen any knights looking for him?"

"Yes, some knights from Redcliffe, I think, came looking for him. They've disappeared since."

"How do you know they've disappeared?"

"Well, they haven't come back or written about Brother Genitivi," he added quickly. A very small sheen of sweat began beading above his eyebrows.

"Where did you send the knights?"

"Lake Calenhad, I told you I read that in his notes."

"Actually, you said that he told you that before he left. And when did you say he left again?"

"About a week ago."

"So was it days, or weeks then?"

The man's face contorted first in frustration and then something like anger. Alistair was looking back and forth between the two of us before I took a small step forward.

"You are not telling us something and I have no more patience for games. This is a life or death situation for someone very important to my friend and you will tell me what is going on."

"We- I mean I…think it's best if – oh, sod it. I tried to deter you, but you just wouldn't give up. "

He began to conjure a ball of what looked like lightning in his hand and I did the only thing that I could think of – I smacked him. Hand-to-face contact. He looked half-dazed for a brief second but he quickly regained himself and threw a lightning bolt, fast this time, right at my chest. I flew back, skidded on my butt until I fell backwards and hit my head on the ground, hard. It was no matter, though – Alistair had his shield and sword at the ready by the time Weylon could focus on him, giving us a small edge. I was faster now, better with daggers than I had been. My right hand still couldn't keep up as much, but my left hand was quick and strong. Alistair distracted him, taking the brunt of his spells, as I moved myself around the back of him. He noticed me before I could drive the dagger home with my left hand, but my right one made a swipe at his barely-covered arm.

"You have to die, you know," he growled as he thrust another knife-like bolt of lightning at my chest and I groaned as I was slammed back against the wall.

I hated when we killed people but sometimes, it was kill or be killed. And he had just told us his intentions, so I made no bones when Alistair did what I could not and took the man's head off at the neck.

I shivered, looking at the spilled blood that had splattered across the wall, the ceiling, the floor, and myself. Making a face, I shook my head and stepped gingerly around the decapitated one before leaning into Alistair.

"Effective, but messy," I smiled wanly, turning away. I could handle, most of the time, dead darkspawn. It had taken me a while not to feel the bile rise in my throat after that first kill – but this was a person, even if he was an awful one.

"Let's look around, I guess – I mean, we're already here. He's dead so I can't imagine we'll be doing much more damage."

As we walked away from the body and began to search for notes, I swiped at the blood on the front of my now-charred armor, flicking it to the floor and leaving even more of a mess. It wasn't an intentional motion, so much as habit; I didn't want it on me to avoid suspicion when we walked outside but other than that, I felt no great desire to remove it. I had grown too used to death.