CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - HOME

Fenris stood quietly, watching the scene unfold around him. Once arrived in Starkhaven, it had been an easy enough task to get to the right people and convince them of his ties to the Prince, which had surprised him.

His wife was, as yet, unaware of his presence.

He knew her face, and he knew who she was, yet that part of him seemed disconnected from anything he should have felt at the sight. She was bouncing a babe on her hip as she spoke to a few people on the dais, then handed him off to an elven woman - Cora, he realized - who took him with a smile.

This is my wife. And I feel nothing. It is as if I have watched a moving picture of what should be memories. The Maker has cursed me, he thought.

The other voice in his head, the one that called herself Watcher, said sadly: I did the best I could do. I'm sorry.

He could fake it, he knew, but something inside of him also told him that she wouldn't believe it for long.

So, he stood in the shadows, not making his presence known, as she stepped forward and addressed the mages that had gathered. He spotted his traveling partners among them, and Merrill's face, barely visible for her diminutive height, nearby.

"If I've said it once, I've said it a hundred times. There will be no help from Tevinter, and they do not have the answers." she said. "It is up to the Conclave to decide how to proceed."

"What are your recommendations?"

"The Circle at Dairsmuid was annulled, and the Conclave at Cumberland was interrupted. Here in Starkhaven, the Seekers have made it plain that if the Prince continues to harbor mages within his walls, they will attack. He cannot put the lives of his entire citizenry at risk for the fifty of you that are here. I'm sorry."

A whisper went up among the three, and the woman - my wife, he reminded himself, and eyed the ring that still glimmered on her finger - cleared her throat. "If I may?"

They looked at her, and she continued. "I am formally recommending we retreat to Andoral's Reach," she said. "It seems as if the mages from all of Thedas are convening there, and it certainly seems to be the safest place."

"We?"

"I think the Conclave forgets my heritage."

"We are aware," said the First Enchanter. "But no non-mage has any need to bring him- or herself to such a place."

"As I said, the Conclave forgets my heritage. I am born of a line of mages, and my late husband's sister was also a mage; it's likely our son will be, as well. You'll forgive me for saying I have significant stakes in the matter, and need to keep his welfare in mind..."

The rest of her words trailed off in his ears. Our son? The child that had been in her arms...that child was half his?

His legs were not his own. He strode over to Cora, who looked as if she had seen a ghost.

I am a ghost. I am the late husband, dragged from death's door by a deal even I didn't understand, to come home to a wife and child I don't recognize...

"Cora," he said, and nodded his head. She nodded back, slack-jawed. Then he loosened his breastplate and let it fall to the floor so he could pick up his son.

The child didn't cry, but looked up at him with as much confusion as he imagined he had on his face. He felt his chubby cheeks, his rounded ears, his tiny, upturned nose. And then he looked into the child's eyes, and recognized them.

These were his eyes. The ones he saw in the looking glass every morning when he splashed water on his face.

This babe - this little human in his arms - this was his son. It didn't matter what he felt about the child's mother now - he was sure he could learn to love her again. She was the mother of his son, after all. He was home.

He felt his eyes water up and spill over, tears of joy and relief washing down his cheeks; the child, seeming to finally realize a stranger was holding him, wrinkled up his face and began to wail inconsolably.

"...I recommend we ride along the Minanter for as long as we can, and stay to the north bank as much as possible. I know there will be no help from Tevinter at large, but I can write to my brother for a few reinforcements, and negotiate for rooms in Hasmal, and Hunter Fell. After that, we can turn and cross the fields of Ghislain -"

Leto began to howl behind her. What was the problem? He seemed to be especially attached to her lately, and even Cora couldn't calm him when he was having a fit. "Excuse me," she said, and turned to fetch him from Cora's arms. She could plan one-handed, she was sure. The members of the Conclave made their annoyance known if not vocalized, and all she could do was roll her eyes. Maker forbid I am the kind of mother who is interested in mothering my son, she thought -

- and promptly brought a hand against her heart, which had suddenly decided it no longer wanted to beat.

His hair was still as white as it had ever been, though it had grown considerably since the last time she'd seen it, almost two years ago. He seemed to be a little thinner than she remembered, and not as powerfully built, and the greatsword she was used to seeing on his back had been replaced by two keen dirks the length of his forearms. He was handing their wailing son over to Cora, who was laughing despite herself.

It couldn't be. Could it? "Fenris?"

His head swiveled in her direction, though his eyes seemed clouded over and not quite focused. She crossed the space between them and had a good look.

He was definitely thinner, malnourished even. That was nothing in comparison to the scar across his face, a weal that seemed to burn with a light of its own. It met a few others, smaller ones that crisscrossed and seemed to meet in funny places, echoes of an injury long healed. Those are what kept you from me for so long.

She brushed back a rogue lock of hair, the better to see his face. She looked into his eyes and realized, with no small amount of dismay, that no light of emotion shone back.

It was her turn to cry, it seemed.

First there was a crying child, and now there was a crying woman. He had no idea what to do, so he did the only thing he could think of - or had Watcher thought of it? He drew her into his arms and held her.

"What happened?" she cried against his chest. "Is there...is there another woman? Please tell me there isn't another woman."

He couldn't help but laugh at the thought of that. No, there was no lover but his right hand, but he didn't think humor would help the situation any. "No, there's no other woman. I've just...it's a long tale..." What did I call her? Oh, yes. "...amara."

Watcher's thought ebbed in his head. Whatever she is to you right now, she needs you more than she's ever needed anyone else.

I know.

"We should talk," he said. "Privately."

She stopped sobbing, and nodded to the First Enchanter as Fenris escorted her out. "We'll reconvene tomorrow," she said, and ignored his objections. She took the child from Cora and cuddled him against her with one arm, then took him by the hand with the other.

"...So, what you're trying to tell me is that you don't remember a thing about us."

They were seated in her suite, a beautiful work of marble and plush fabrics, and she was holding a sleeping Leto in her arms.

He remembered; that had been his name, and it had been stripped from him. They had decided to give their son that name, the son they were so sure they'd have. The son they'd tried to have, and that he remembered thinking had never come, in the moment he'd thought he'd died.

"No, I remember," he said. "But it's...it's not the same. It's as if I'm watching someone else's life in front of me. As if it didn't happen to me."

"And the spirit?"

"Watcher is the only thing keeping the lyrium in this scar from becoming unstable."

She was calm, though it looked as if she'd devolve into tears at any moment.

Go to her, Watcher said. Tell her how you feel. Look on your son, Fenris.

He took a deep breath, and crossed the divide between them, taking her into his arms in the way he'd remembered doing. She was warm and smelled sweet - the smell niggled at his mind and his heart - and the child began to stir and whimper.

"I...I don't know what to say. But I want to stay here, with you. Keep my vows, and try to remember. And...and know my son."

"What if you don't?" Her eyes shone. "No, that doesn't matter. Do you think you can love our son?"

"I loved him the moment I looked upon him and realized he was mine," he said. "As for you...I loved you once, and I know the reasons why. I'm starting to feel it again, even now, I think." And as he spoke those words, he knew they were true.

Leto interrupted the moment by moving from a whimper to a full-frontal assault on his ears. Althaea bounced him a couple of times, to no avail.

"What's wrong with him?" he asked.

"He's hungry," she said.

"You can feed him, right?" he asked, then realized what a stupid question that was when she eyed him with an exasperated stare.

"Yes, Fenris, I can feed him. I just...I'll go to the other room." She began to get up when he understood her meaning. Feeding him would mean baring a breast in front of someone who'd just confessed to being a near-stranger wearing her husband's face. You idiot.

"Oh - my apologies. I'll...I'll just leave."

"No," she sighed. "I'm all right with it, if you are. I just thought you might be uncomfortable."

"No, amara. That's not something I'd ever be uncomfortable with." He couldn't explain his sudden need to see to it that she was comfortable, taken care of, no matter what the cost. Is this what love feels like? Is this what I'm supposed to be feeling?

I think if you care for her, the rest will come, Watcher said. He looked on as she smiled a bit and rearranged herself, then brought Leto to her breast.

His breath caught in his chest, and though he knew he shouldn't be aroused at something so necessary, he felt need - intense, unexplainable need - surge from his heart up into his head and down to his loins.

"Is everything all right?" she asked, and he nodded mutely. He bounced between intense pride and stark desire as he looked upon the woman nursing his son.

This is my wife, he thought. I made my vows to her in a field of poppies. And whatever I feel, however I feel it...I will not be forsworn.

"Fenris," she whispered, "is everything all right?"

"Yes," he said. They were more than all right. "I just...Maker, how do I say this?" She needed to hear it, he knew she did. "I need you."

"I need you too," she said, and laughed a little.

"No...I need you." He reached for her hand and placed it against his straining arousal, and watched her eyes grow wide. "You are...the most beautiful thing I've seen in months, and doubly so with our son at your breast."

She was breathing heavily, pupils blown wide and dark with desire. It seemed to feed his own. She laughed again. "We, uh, might want to wait until he's done eating."

"I think he is," he said, as he picked the boy up. "Does he sleep now?"

"See if you can get a burp out of him, first." She got up and dabbed at her breast with a towel, then handed it to him. "You might want this."

He stood up and looked at the child with confusion, not sure what to do. Althaea was quick to save him, putting the towel across his shoulder and then patting the boy's back gently. Fenris caught the gist and continued the gesture, following her to the bedroom as he did.

The sitting room was bright white and huge and imposing, but the bedroom suite was its polar opposite. It was painted in warm colors, with a comfortable-looking bed of deeply colored wood, and a crib very near it. A brightly-colored mobile hung over the bed, a spring-loaded contraption hung with stuffed plush fishes and seagulls.

Leto finally burped - a little brrrup that filled him with delight - and looked up at him with big, soulful green eyes. Merrill had called them his "puppy eyes". Though he remembered having begged to differ, he could see what she meant. The scent of Althaea's milk on his breath wafted up, and he continued to look at the babe. He finally broke his gaze to find that Althaea was staring at him with a half-cocked smile.

"Put him over there," she said. "I'll check his diaper." And when she did, an incredible stench rose up to greet him, and he made to turn away.

"Oh no, you don't," she said, yanking him by the wrist. Her familiarity in the gesture seemed to leach out onto him, and he fell in with no complaint. "You want the fun parts? You take diaper duty, as well."

The smell didn't seem so bad as she guided his hands with expert grace; he remembered thinking this of her often, but still, that disconnect!

It seemed like forever, but Leto finally slept in his crib, and she turned toward him. "I thought he'd never fall asleep."

"Does he always take that long?"

"No," she laughed, "thank the Maker. I think he was busy looking at the Big New Person that was burping him. His adda."

Adda. It was both the Arcanum and the elven word for 'father'. He repeated the word, trying it on for size.

"We can call you something else, if you want. 'Papa' or 'Daddy', or nothing at all -"

She was wringing her hands nervously, and he took them in his. "Whatever you want. I'm just...well, I have to get used to it, don't I." He imagined what it might have been like if he'd had the chance to be there from the start: the first twinge of wonder and worry at her missed moon's blood; the nausea, the fatigue; her belly growing heavy as Leto grew inside her; her hand, crushing his, as she screamed and strained until the babe's indignant wail pierced the air. He'd missed it all, and he decided he'd make up for it, a thousand times over. Then, he realized, against all the odds, that connection to his old thoughts or no, he had fallen in love with this woman, in a matter of hours.

Kindred souls have a way of finding their way back to each other, Watcher remarked, and in that moment Fenris thought she sounded rather smug.

Please, just...let me have this moment. The presence obediently faded to the back of his head, where she usually lived.

He realized he'd been lost in his thoughts for a long moment, when she squeezed his hand. "Can I see your scars?" she asked. He nodded, and sat on the bed, the better to give her access with.

She felt along his face for the deepest one of them all, the one that had come from the Knight-Commander's lyrium-edged sword. He'd lamented how it had disfigured him; he'd been distinctive enough without the red weal across his brow, and now there was no way to hide, or the red that had leaked into the markings on his face. "How did you get this one?"

He explained, and she bit her lip as he did. "There are others," he said.

"I'd like to see them, too, if you're okay with that."

He silently removed his tunic, and bared his chest to her; the one he had here was where one of the slave statues in the Gallows had hit him hard enough to strip him of his breastplate. Sadness seemed to intermix with desire in her eyes as she felt along the raised line of it.

"You've lost a lot of weight," she said.

"I spent several months asleep," he replied. "When I woke, I found I had weakened to a point where I couldn't raise my sword."

"When did you...lose them? Your memories, I mean."

"Watcher was able to stabilize the markings, but something went wrong. It was perhaps six months ago now, and I spent that entire time getting strong enough to travel here from Llomerryn." He placed her hand against the central marking that laid over his heart.

"You came all the way back to find me?"

"I'd heard talk that the Archon's daughter was alive, and that they were calling her 'The Widow of Kirkwall'. I was reminded of my vows, and determined to fulfill them."

"I never would have held you to a promise you couldn't remember making."

"I remember it," he countered. "We were wed in a field of poppies outside Tantervale. I played it in my head any time my resolve weakened."

She reached for him and kissed him, and desire bloomed. His body seemed to know her touch, even if his head didn't. "I have a couple more," he said, and removed his trousers, as much to display the scars there as to show her how interested in fulfilling his vows he was.

Her hands glided up and down his body, inspecting him, figuring out the differences, and he finally stopped her before he thought he might explode. "I want to see you."

She blushed and seemed hesitant. "I hardly look the same."

"I know," he said, and touched her gently. She allowed him to slide the housedress off.

What followed seemed an eternity of lazy exploration on his part, reacquainting himself with her body and learning its intricacies. Motherhood had been kind to her: it had widened her hips, and turned her breasts from buds hardly larger than a man's to dense, milk-laden teardrops. He traced his hands along the scars Leto had made as he'd grown inside her.

She is mine, he thought, and in that moment he'd realized how lucky a man he'd been, and how stupid he would have been if he hadn't gathered his stones and returned to her, memories or no.

"Maker, you are so beautiful," he whispered, and continued to whisper endearments in her ear, tokens of affection and desire that he meant wholeheartedly. She opened under his touch, returning it first with apprehension, then with zeal. He searched the memories in which he'd known every way to touch her, and repeated them, and smiled when she had to stifle her moans.

"I want you inside me," she said, and he nearly broke in half at the thought, wondering if he'd be taking advantage; she didn't give him time to question, but guided him to her entrance and pulled him in.

His world exploded. He felt Watcher writhing in pleasure at the back of his mind, and a bridge of light appeared behind his eyes; he crossed it, and everything came flooding back to him. He moaned and stilled, sweating with simultaneous pain and pleasure, then opened his eyes to find hers staring right back up at him.

He'd stopped. Did she do something wrong? Was he about to get up and walk away? She prayed that wasn't the case.

His eyes flew open, surprise etched into his face, along with something else.

Recognition. Her prayers had been answered, and she watched as his eyes softened and he began to weep.

"Maker, my love, my sweet love, my heart," he said, the words turning into a litany as he wept and embraced her.

"You remember...?"

"I do. I do!" He laughed and kissed her with the familiarity of years, nothing like the ones she'd had earlier in the evening, when he was still unsure.

They kissed in this way for a long time, until he came to his senses and remembered what they'd been doing before and buried himself inside her to the hilt; he moved in all the ways they had before everything had gone to the Void and back.

He was getting close, she could feel it, and she realized she hadn't started drinking moon tea again, in case it would get into her milk and hurt Leto. "Fenris."

"Hmm." He was still thrusting against her, but slowed when he heard her tone.

"I haven't had my tea in years," she said. "So, unless you want another child, we should..."

He grinned and slowed, but continued to lazily move against her. "I told you I wanted a daughter. Unless you don't...?"

"I do," she said. Maker, she did. But now?

Not likely. It had taken them almost a year to conceive Leto, and that had happened only after they'd given up trying.

"I do, too," he said, and there was silence as he resumed his ministrations and brought himself to his full, bringing her over the edge with him, filling her womb with his seed. It either would or wouldn't take root, she didn't know, didn't care. Whatever the Maker had planned was fine by her.

He lay exhausted in her arms, tracing lazy spirals on her abdomen. "I missed all of it," he said. "I didn't want to, but I did. I won't miss it again. I want to see you grow with our daughter -"

"You should have seen me, I was as big as a bronto, waddled like one, too -"

"I want to touch her and tell her that I love her from the moment you feel her quicken in your womb. I want that more than anything. I swear to you, this time I will be there."

He continued to trace circles on her belly until she fell asleep in his arms.

Watcher stirred and borrowed her host's eyes, bathing the room in a soft green glow. Just for this moment, she thought. I would never abuse my control.

She pulled his lips into a smile as she looked around the room and spotted the glow of light where Leto's soul rested, sound asleep in his crib. Then she looked down at her borrowed body, and saw Fenris's soul, blazing with the newness of the freshly healed psyche.

She looked down at his wife - her wife, too, she realized - and saw her soul, gyrating slowly and pulsing every so often. She borrowed his hand and traced a finger down the still-naked body, which did not stir.

The little pinprick in the wife's womb, though, did stir, responding to Watcher's touch.

She smiled and regarded it, bathing its light with some of her own. Then she returned to her refuge and let the body sleep.

EPILOGUE

The trip had been long and hard, and they'd fought the entire way along the Minanter, with flames and ice and lighting and Fenris's dirks. They'd fought with Althaea's arrows until, to his surprise, she'd sickened and grown pale. She took only water and a little food until she'd begun to blossom with the fruit of their union, then again took up the bow.

Fenris never imagined his seed would have taken root so quickly, and if he'd known it would have, he might have been a little more careful about things. As it was, though, she was doing well enough for a pregnant woman on the run, and Leto had a grandmother and a village-worth of mages to coddle and care for and protect him.

It wasn't until they met and joined with a corps of twenty Tevinter battlemages, led by Phoebus as an envoy, that Fenris saw fit to remark upon the absurdity of the situation. Ten years ago, he would have torn all of them apart or died in the attempt. Then again, ten years ago, he'd had no idea of how to walk the gray. It had taken Hawke and Althaea and Mae and Nigel and half a hundred mages in Kirkwall and Starkhaven to teach him that, and he knew he still had a very long way to go. She advocates for balance, and I will keep her alive long enough to do it.

He looked upon the fortress of Andoral's Reach, an ancient Tevinter ruin, thought of the irony, and called for the bannermen to raise the colors.

The Tevinter shield and the banner of the Starkhaven Conclave rose up as high as the apprentice children could raise them. He put a protective arm around his wife and a hand on her burgeoning belly, and waited for the fortress to answer.

Postscript: Ladies and gentlemen, that's all she wrote, there is no more, the fat lady has sung, etc. I've considered adding an afterword, of sorts, with some of my thoughts while writing, what I've learned. Let me know if that's something you'd like to see.