CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - BIRTH AND REBIRTH

In all of the lives in which Watcher had taken part, there had always been an ocean. She came to know that after she'd clasped the elf's hand and had fallen through swirls of purple sky and into a vast sea of molten lyrium.

Her own memories were like waves lapping on the shores of her head; they came back slowly, gently, and before long, she realized that she was very, very old. Before the old woman there'd been another woman, and another, and another, until the memories of the things she'd watched stretched back to an ancient forest, and one elven woman who had lived for a millenium until she had released Watcher and entered a long sleep from which she'd never woken: uthenera.

Before that, there had been the Fade, a place of darkness where her cousins had warred upon each other, and a golden city in the distance. Her cousins had taken interest in the lives of those in the Real, but somehow, she had been one of only a few who could cross, in the beginning. She thought, perhaps, that she was the only one of her kind. She had never seen another.

Later, the ones who called themselves Dreamers had pulled her cousins across the Veil, and not all of them were able to adapt. That was why she feared the spirit Justice living in the feather-man's - no, Anders, she reminded herself, she knew his name, now - head. Justice had no idea of the constraints of mortal lives, their feelings, their dreams, their desires, their history, and did not care to know. Justice only knew his burning imperative, a hunger for vengeance that bordered on the demonic.

She felt deeply for the mage who had hosted him. Very few would have been able to keep a spirit as strong as him in check, and this mage Anders had proven to be no exception. A being like Watcher, though - old and interested only in absorbing knowledge, and doling it out, and occasionally catching a glimpse of what had been or what would come to be - controlling her would easy enough, mainly because she did a very good job of controlling herself.

She came out of her reverie. She had a job to do for the elf, her payment for the eyes he'd provide, windows for her to look out into the world. She had never had a body of her own, would never, but that was all right by her. She'd done things this way for millenia, after all, and the only hunger she'd had was one for information.

She would do right by her host, even though she was a Watcher and had never worked any sort of influence on the Real. She had a look around.

She'd seen it on her way down, as she'd fallen - a maelstrom in the distance, a red whirlpool consuming the water around it, dragging it down, causing the rest to become unstable. Given enough time, it would consume him, and both she and her host would wink out of existence, as if they'd never been.

She wondered where he was, right now. Was he in the strange white room, the place he called limbo? Or was he asleep? His body certainly was, and now that she had her memories again, she knew it was definitely in Very Bad Shape.

She looked off into the distance, and saw an island, with a great spire rising from the jungle in the center. That was her host's conscious mind - a place where she would never go. It looked different, every time; the old woman she'd shared with had had a china shop on a tidy little high street, and her memories were a great, labyrinthine city.

She swam into the ocean of memories, catching snippets of them as she'd passed. Below, there was a fog, simultaneously red as blood and black as night. She knew, underneath that, was her host's Old Life. She didn't know how she knew, but she knew. The only way she could dredge that up was with a very old magic that required a lot of power, of the same that had put it there in the first place.

Her host was a hard man, and had sometimes even been a cruel one, but he would never condone the taking of a life for something so small as a memory. That was why she had started watching him in the first place, starting with his fox-faced wife, months and months ago.

She swam past a voice, which seemed to rise with her thoughts: Our integrity sells for so little, but it is all we truly have. That was the wife's voice, though Watcher didn't linger long enough to find out to which memory it was attached.

The way to the maelstrom was surprisingly short, and she swam around it for a time, then dove underneath the waves to take a look.

It was a creature, a fish of some type, though from what hell it originated was beyond her. It was huge and scarlet and gold and had a bright sun branded across its forehead, and it sucked the blue ocean into its mouth. A giant eye regarded her, and she wondered what form she had taken in this ocean, or even if she had done. Whatever the answer, it could see her, and it was not happy about her presence.

It was a big creature, but to be fair, she was a big creature, too. She dug her claws into it and wrestled it for a time, making her way to the shore of the forbidden island all the while. She dragged it up, and out, and watched it struggle to breathe the open air, and then she watched it take one last shuddering attempt at breath and die.

The island shook.

Watcher didn't know much, but understood that the shaking was not a good thing. Clouds gathered around the spire, turned into lightning, and blasted the corpse of the fish-thing skyward, sending it out and away, and she dove into the water and swam for her life. She watched as a curtain drew over the island, translucent and pale, and knew that in dragging the creature there to kill it, she'd just made a terrible mistake.

Fenris woke with a start, but didn't rise.

He listened to the sounds around him: a gentle creaking of wood upon wood, gulls crying at each other in the distance. He felt the rolling of the ground underneath him, a lullaby of sorts.

I'm on a ship, he thought, and it likely belongs to...Isabela. The name took a moment to come to him. He tried to sit up, but couldn't; the motion roused the person next to him, sitting by the bed.

This is Isabela's ship, and her name is...Merrill. He stared at her, regarding her face, and somehow knew that at one point he'd felt strongly about her - disgust, even! But the feeling didn't come. He only watched as the girl's eyes widened and she threw her arms around him in surprise, then got up and fetched the other mage.

Anders peered in, warily, and Fenris knew that this man was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people in Kirkwall. But something was wrong; he knew that he should be angry at him, should take him by the throat and grind him into a paste on the wall, but there seemed to be a disconnect. It was as if that feeling was something abstract, and therefore distant.

"You're awake," he said. "How do you feel?"

"Tired. Weak."

"Well, that's to be expected. You've been asleep for months. I mean, you would wake up from time to time to be fed and watered, but other than that...nothing."

"You were keeping me under a spell." The phrase should have been an indictment, but came out matter-of-factly, instead.

"Necessary precaution. The, uh, the burn seemed to spread while you were awake. Then, perhaps a day or two ago, it stopped." He handed Fenris a small looking glass. "Have a look."

This is my face, he thought. A bright red weal crossed from one end of his brow to another, meeting with other, smaller scars that seemed to be receding. The red had leaked into half of the markings on his chin.

"What happened?"

"Meredith felled you. You nearly died." Anders wrung his hands, and the memories came flooding in; the argument, and then the Kirkwall chantry going up in a pillar of fire. And...

"My wife." There were pictures of her inside his head, memories, but somehow, they stirred nothing in him. She was simply...there. As if perhaps he was watching another person's dream.

"Gone," Anders said, and though he knew he should have been moved by it, he simply sat, listening to the incredible emptiness of his head. "We thought you were not far off, either, but you made a very sudden, very incredible recovery." He looked at Merrill. "If you wouldn't mind giving us a few minutes?"

"Hmm? Oh!" The girl jumped up and out of her seat, and left the room. Anders peered deeply into Fenris's eyes.

"Is there something you want to tell me?"

Don't do it, Fenris, said a voice. He cocked his head to try and locate it, to no avail.

Watcher? Is that you?

Yes. Don't trust his demon. Please.

So, Fenris shook his head, and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

He ate, relieved himself, and tried to walk about the cabin with only a little luck. The effort of those things exhausted him, and it wasn't long before he found himself asleep.

Althaea was the youngest of six, and had therefore never seen a birthing. In a small way, she had a general idea of what would come - pain, and a lot of it - but she'd never imagined all the walking.

She'd walked for hours in the beginning, when it had been a while between bouts of cramping pain. That had finally given way to sitting, and then laying, as exhaustion settled in.

"Does it always take this long?" she asked Cora, who'd woken up from a nap just in time to catch another bout of pain. She'd been able to nap in the beginning, too, but no longer.

Cora laughed. "I've heard the first one is always the hardest, but I only ever had Merry." She patted Althaea on the head and made her breathe as another set of racking pains descended upon her.

They were getting worse, and she was on the edge of panic, but the midwives Sebastian had hired were some of the best, and not at all bothered by how things were progressing. Beatrix, herself a few months along at this point, had come to visit, but had left after she'd seen her first contractions. Althaea didn't blame her; there was no way she wanted another child after what she realized the first was making her go through.

That thought pained her, and in another way completely. If she did have another child, it would have to be by a different father. Not likely, then, she thought. I couldn't see myself with any of these stuffy lords, no matter how many of them try and court me. She knew they would, too, as soon as Leto was a little older; she was close to the Prince's ear and therefore a woman of great usefulness. No; she'd rather be alone for the rest of her life than have to wade through an endless line of suitors who were more interested in her assets than in her.

In the end, everything blurred together. She had no time to think, only to be; she had screamed with the pain and cried out Fenris's name, and clasped Cora's hand, and knelt and pushed and heaved. The relief from the pain had come, paired with an indignant squall -

Leto.

The midwives cleaned and swaddled him, then brought him to her. Cora showed her how to bring him to her breast.

She fed her son, her last great gift, and cried, and slept.

He rested against the railing on the balcony of his room, taking a moment of rest from his exercises to breathe in the cool salt air of the ocean nearby.

He'd been awake for a few weeks, now. During his long sleep, his muscles had atrophied from disuse, and walking even as far as the chamber pot had pained him for hours after. Now he was mostly upright, eating everything in sight, and making a slow transformation from "severely emaciated" to "only mostly malnourished."

He'd attempted to raise his sword and found that he couldn't even lift it. He wondered how he ever could have, let alone bounce from place to place, almost dancing with the thing. He sighed, wondering if there would ever be a time in which he could lift it again. Likely, yes, but not any time soon, if his current rate of progress was any indication.

Hawke and Anders were long gone, having given him enough gold to rent his room for a goodly time; Isabela and Varric had taken the ship on some adventure or another, one he was in no shape to participate in. They had been patient, but it had been the distant patience of near-strangers, and in truth, that's what they were to him. He had let them leave. It had been no great loss.

Only the little elf Merrill had stayed. He knew that the man to whom the memories belonged would never have allowed it, but he was still too weak to do most of the things he needed to do, and she, for some reason, had been willing to help.

Perhaps she considers it penance, Watcher said. She'd spoken little after she'd confessed to causing what he was calling "the disconnect", but was beginning to figure out that he neither blamed her for nor was angry about the event, and was beginning to speak her mind more often.

Perhaps she does, he replied. He stayed at the balcony, relaxing against it, until Merrill returned from whatever outing she was on.

"Oh!" she said, when she came, balancing a few bags in her arms. "You're up!"

"I was bored," he said. He'd torn through every book Merrill had found for him; reading seemed to be one of the only things that brought him any solace from the disconnect, or from his tingling muscles.

She frowned. "Well, you're up and walking about, so that can't be too bad. It's already better than last week. How are you feeling?"

"I don't know," he said. "In truth, I've been wondering what to do with myself once I'm healed. What will you do?"

"I don't know," she said, and sighed. "I don't think I could ever return to the Dalish, not after what I did, but there are dark times ahead, and I want to help make them...a little less so." She sat down on one of the chairs on the balcony, and crossed her legs very primly. "I heard news of your wife today."

He summoned her face up in front of him. Nothing, as usual. "Is she in Starkhaven?"

"She is," Merrill said. "After they attempted to annul the Kirkwall Circle, twenty or so mages fled to Tantervale, where she was with the priest. Sebastian. She managed to get the leader of the city to allow them in, they helped Sebastian take back his city, and now they're living there, only they're calling themselves the Starkhaven Conclave."

"Interesting."

"Right, well, she's been pretty outspoken against Meredith's decision of late, and it's been causing a bit of friction, but she's the Prince's advisor and no one can complain because the city is doing so well. The Chantry seems to be paying her no mind, so."

He thought about it for a moment. His wife appeared to be thriving despite his demise -

"There were some mages visiting from Dairsmuid at the market this morning. They told me the Starkhaven Conclave are calling her 'The Widow of Kirkwall'."

So, perhaps not thriving, then. Blast.

"Do you think you'll go to her?" Merrill asked.

"I don't know," he said. "I don't think I could do her any justice in my current state."

"You mean, not remembering?"

"I remember her," he said. "I just...well, I know that I loved her. I don't know if I do now, or if I could again. I don't think that would be good for her."

"I think it's probably better than living the rest of her life thinking you're dead. Besides, you made a vow to her."

The girl had a point.

"I'll come with you," she said, "If you don't mind, that is."

He was ambivalent about that. The more he thought about his vow, the more he realized that the only good turn he could give Althaea would be to show back up. He'd return to her and hope that whatever had enkindled his love in the first place would make itself known again. First things first, though - he'd have to get to a point where he could walk without exhausting himself.

The sword work would just have to follow.

Postscript: two. more. chapters. Can we get this baby up to 125 reviews by then? I hope so! :hearts: