Hi guys - I've run out of my back-up store of ficlets, so these are freshly written, hence they're a bit slow. I have to find time to write... Exams, leave me be for a few weeks so I may write!

This is a follow up to Ficlet 32, 'A Girl Worth Fighting For'. It's based just after the events of Origins, in a storyline where Alistair stays a Warden and Anora becomes queen.

A Girl Worth Fighting For Redux (Mulan II) – Zevran, Oghren & Alistair

As the door to The Pearl slammed shut behind them, the three men picked themselves gingerly from the floor. They made a funny group – a tall, powerful, blond human; a burly, scarlet bearded dwarf; and a lithe, tanned elf who seemed cockier than most elves anyone in Denerim had ever seen.

Right now, however, the elf was scowling. Scowling was a rare occurrence these days, since the Blight had been conquered a few weeks ago, and Queen Anora reinstated on the throne of Ferelden.

Zevran shook his head, glowering. "Well, I don't need her to be all smug and snooty!" he grumbled, brushing dust from his fine leather jacket.

"I got a plaque right here that says I kicked 'Spawn booty!" boomed Oghren, brandishing the medal he had been awarded by the queen like a talisman toward the door to the brothel.

Alistair sighed, looking at his feet. "We got everything we dreamed we'd find when we came back from war," he muttered, almost sadly, reflecting momentarily on the chance he may have lost. He pushed it from his mind. No. He was better as a Warden.

"Yeah," agreed his companions. "Everything but a girl worth fighting for!"

As the three sighed in unison, the first rustlings of skirt fabric could be heard from the other side of the road. "Hey!" hissed Oghren, eagerly. "Suck in your gut! There's a girl worth fighting for!"

"And I think she wants us to come over," whispered Zevran, puffing out his chest.

The merchant girl was very pretty. And she was holding up her wares enticingly as the three men strutted over.

"My girl will laugh at all my jokes," Zevran mused as they made their way across. "But tell it to me straight!"

"She'll rub my head when I get sick," sighed Oghren, thinking longingly of Braska, and Felsi. But they were in the past, now. And it obviously hadn't been his head Braska had been rubbing all those years she'd been missing.

"And let me pick off of her plate," smiled Alistair, dreamily, whose attention had wandered off to the woman selling bread across the market. Looking back at the elf, he rolled his eyes. "If Zev can find a girl who likes his twirling knife trick," he quipped, wryly, as the elf spun a knife deftly between his fingers before the girl. Well, almost deftly – it nicked the table on its way round and stuck fast in the otherwise perfect wood.

"He'd really better just propose quick!" chortled the dwarf as the girl's eyes widened and her mouth set.

A few moments later, the three were traipsing into the tavern, Zevran pressing a hand to his throbbing jaw were the merchant girl had socked him for vandalising her stall. " Well, I guess you'd say based on today," he groaned, "I'm cranky!"

"I'll just spend my life with you two," muttered Alistair, gazing dejectedly into his ale. He could have been a king. Instead he was a Grey Warden with the charisma and attraction of a goat.

"Pass the hanky!" grumbled Oghren, slurping his beer.

Zevran shrugged. "And there's no one there to steal my chair," he sighed.

"And twirl around the floor!" bellowed Oghren, flailing an arm and knocking a burly young man off his feet.

"Wish that I had a girl worth fighting for!" agreed the three men as the young man rose to his feet with a roar and dived on the nearest bystander. It wasn't long before a full brawl was in motion, with dwarf, human and elf all diving into the fray.

"I would be true," shouted Zevran as he sunk his fist into someone's gut.

"To a girl worth fighting for!"

"I'd make fondue," came Alistair's chuckle as he easily blocked a drunken fist.

"With a girl worth fighting –"

Oghren's face appeared above the mess, holding a particularly ugly brute by the hair. "I'd even kiss you," he shrugged, before landing a solid punch on the thug's nose.

"For a girl worth fighting…"

Sturdy hands on collars. Doors being pressed into faces. Next thing they knew, Alistair, Oghren and Zevran were flat on their faces outside the tavern, noses pressed into the dirt.

Struggling up, the three shared a glance."… For!" they finished, sighing and slumping against each other.

It was tough to be a Warden. But mostly? It was lonely.

-0-0-0-0-

Supernatural quote in the end there. Woop.

I love writing bromance of these three.

Up Next: Fenris wonders at the light he has found in his life.