The first morning in her new body, Kalya awoke gulping away another scream before it escaped her lips, only to find Zevran snoring softly in that same chair, hunched over, head cradled in his arms at the very edge of her bed. Stiff and aching where new skin had been knitted together, Kalya knew sleep wasn't coming back, but she resigned herself to staying by his side. What better to do than run through all the ways you've disappointed everyone you care about until the sun came up?

The day was all delivered-soup and awkward whispers of gratitude. Kalya stayed still, averting her eyes and welcoming the well-wishers, as if she were recovering from a months-long illness, when in truth, it'd only been a day since she'd… well, fucking died. Even so, every muscle in her body twitched with want to spring from bed and test this new power coarsing through her body.

The second morning, with hours till dawn and no Zevran at her side, she rolled off the bed and tiptoed through the door.

To her surprise, Kalya discovered Elissa hadn't purchased a suite of rooms. Her recovery room, with a single bed and privacy, was attached to a large room where the rest of them slept soundly - loudly - on cramped cots. It was a set-up for a band of pirates or traveling Templars, where the ranking officer would have taken the lone suite.

A stone sank in her gut at how much this must have cost. How begrudgingly Elissa must have allowed it.

Her way lit by outside streetlamps gleaming through the window, Kalya made a silent line through the others until she found Leliana's leathers folded in a clump next to her pack. Kalya's ruined ones were nowhere to be found, and she suddenly felt squirmy with guilt wondering which of them had made the call to discard them outright.

Zevran, out of heartbreaking despair, tortured by relived Fade memories?
Leliana, out of respect for her friend, knowing a fighter hates to be reminded of failures?
Elissa, out of anger for Kalya's fucking shameful transgressions?
Alistair, out of… awkwardness?

Which made her feel the worst? All of them rolled together?

Hours later, and minutes after the sun rose, Kalya watched Alistair and Elissa step into the clearing a short hike away from their tavern to find her training hard. There might have been a raised eyebrow in their shared glance, but even though neither had been brought back from the dead, they both understood this impulse well.

Kalya's arm shot expertly over her head, then arced downwards, fingers splayed, in a motion that would have blinded her invisible sparring partner. In less than a heartbeat, her leg shot out, perfectly piercing the air where her enemy's solar plexus would have been. Then, anticipating his being knocked to the ground, she leapt over him, pinning his arms at the shoulders, and drove her dagger expertly into his invisible neck.

Kalya had sensed the Wardens' approach, feeling an odd tug at her core suddenly grow taut the moment they'd left the tavern. She spun to face them, unnaturally giddy.

A beat passed. It wasn't until Alistair gulped that Kalya realized how… inappropriate such joy must have looked after everything.

"I couldn't…" she started. "I've never felt…" She gaped for the right words. Darkspawn blood didn't aid her there.

"It's odd, isn't it?" Alistair blessedly broke the silence. "I recall ripping apart a log with my bare hands after my Joining. Duncan shot me one of his long-suffering glares as he handed me an axe."

The sad smile crept away from his eyes at the mention of his friend, as it always did.

"Elissa, I don't know how… I wouldn't…" Kalya sighed. "I fucked up. Thank you for the chance to make it up to you."

"Don't thank me." Without breaking eye contact, the warrior shrugged a roll of weapons off her shoulder and dug through its contents. "Repay me in loyalty and honor. It'll be a welcomed change."

In one hand, she drew out a pair of daggers and thrust them at Kalya. "And don't think this change covers your little… problem."

Kalya kept a mix of anger and shame veiled behind her eyes as she seized the weapons. "No, messere."

"Easily spoken." The roll dropped to the ground. Elissa held twin broadswords in each hand. "But whatever piddling reasons you turned to drink in the first place are nothing compared to the impulses you'll soon endure to quiet the song screaming in your head."

Elissa passed one sword to Alistair, who looked very much like he wanted to melt into the ground. These weren't training weapons.

"I did you no mercy by bringing you back, Elf," Elissa continued, "but I won't pretend having another Grey Warden isn't an advantage. Still…"

The woman advanced on Kalya, fire behind her eyes. "If you so much as touch a bottle, well, I'll do you no mercy then, either."

"Now." Elissa raised her sword. "Show me my investment was worthwhile."

The warrior swung the broadsword over her head and brought it crashing down. Kalya's arms jutted up and caught the sword in a cross. She didn't redirect. She didn't parry. She held the full brunt of the mighty blow with her arms extended above her head.

Elissa's jaw dropped, then tightened into a rage a beat too long. Kalya's leg was already chambered, already hammering forward into Elissa's solar plexus and driving her backwards.

Giddiness joined the feral surge of power erupting through Kalya's body. Riordan hadn't mentioned this.

"You training today, Alistair?" Kalya beckoned the other warrior with a daggered hand just as Elissa resumed her advance, and both of them descended upon her.

Kalya blocked both swings, catching them simultaneously on her dagger's thin hilt and redirecting them both under her, avoiding them both with a nimble hop.

As she danced around them both, she realized the fight was one-on-one-on-one. Elissa kept offering openings for Alistair to work off her advances and rush Kalya together, but he never took them, even going so far as to kick her lightly away when she got too close to him.

Exhilaration flooded through Kalya's veins as she bobbed and wove between them. Fighting had never felt like this, even on the best of days with the Crows, even at her strongest. Formerly strongest. It was as if she'd been training all her life underwater, and suddenly the real world was crisper, more delicate beneath her might.

Truth be told, the most difficult part was modulating her attacks from one Warden to the other. While Elissa was coming at her at an enraged 100%, Alistair was at 60%, making the challenge one of restraint, as Kalya received and dealt blows from one opponent to the next.

The three fought on the lawn together for the better part of the morning, and Kalya literally ran circles around the two warriors. She tired Alistair out first on purpose. Launching off a low-inclined sword, she got him to drop it and back away, arms raised, only to collapse back onto a jutting boulder, thoroughly spent and failing to hide a stately grin of pride.

Elissa's anger and fatigue began making her sloppy. She advanced towards Kalya who ducked under one leg, flipped her dagger in the air, and "stabbed" Elissa in the kidney with the hilt.

The taunt flushed Elissa's face beet red, and she spun around and grabbed at the empty air with both arms. Kalya dipped under one arm, then launched herself onto Elissa's back and slid a deliberate finger across Elissa's throat.

That was it. Elissa arched her back with a roar, and Kalya fell off, more amused than caught off-balance. It did knock loose a dagger, which had been tenuously placed in her belt so the sarcastic beheading didn't turn into a real one.

Kalya dipped and ducked under Elissa's wide swings as she retreated backwards, sensing and avoiding the natural pockets in the terrain as naturally as if she'd studied them her whole life. Heart pounding, Kalya watched as Elissa raised the sword over her head. There was no second dagger to form a cross. This was no training exercise. Still, she listened to her surroundings. She felt them.

The blow rained down, and Kalya dropped, elbows on her widened knees. The crackling crunch confirmed her calculations, and a sigh of relief drained from Kalya's lungs. She looked up.

Elissa's broadsword was buried in the bent trunk of a tree she'd been too enraged to account for. The woman stomped a foot onto the wood and roared again as she tried to pull it out, but to no avail. That swing hadn't been meant to be extracted easily from anything it had met.

Kalya twirled around and - to Elissa's back and to Alistair's exhausted form leaning on the rock - touched her head with two fingers in a quick salute to the both of them as she skipped back to the tavern.

:::

Before Kalya could round the top of the stairs, she discovered how Elissa had allowed such an extended stay indoors.

"There you are!"

A mop and several dirty rags were unceremoniously shoved into Kalya's hands by a smiling bard and sneering witch.

Leliana cocked her head to the side and folded her arms. "Consider taking our shifts the first step on the path to repayment."

They were dressed in drab linen, the unspoken uniform of servants whose employers were minutes away from not being able to pay them.

"O-of course," Kalya stammered. "Where did you… get those…"

"Someone nicked my leathers."

The color drained from Kalya's face, as Leliana's laugh tinkled through the hallway like a bell.

"I'm only joking. You think I left those out on accident? But! I did wear them while scrubbing vomit out of a latrine. Poetic, no?"

Kalya's goofy smile was still plastered on her face from the rush of the day. The rush of being the fuck alive. She'd clean the whole tavern if it quashed a fraction of the guilt eating her up inside. Speaking of, she wondered distantly which job Zevran had been assigned.

Leliana started down the hall. "I'm happy to change the sheets for the rest of the hall, but if I scrub one more privy, it'll include my own vomit."

Morrigan let out a long sigh, glaring down the staircase. "I suppose I'd be of best use in the kitchen."

"Wait," Kalya said. "They're paying you both to clean up here, right?"

Leliana pressed her lips. "If by 'paying' you mean 'allowing us to stay for a week without killing us in our sleep,' then sure."

"Well, what if I cleaned everything you were supposed to, and you both… took a load off?"

"The agreement was for all to pitch in," Morrigan sniffed.

"Yeah? So they won't be expecting you anywhere else."

The women exchanged a conspiratorial look. Then Leliana spun on her heel, marched into the first clean room, and collapsed on the bed.

"You don't have to convince me," Leliana said, knotting her fingers behind her head.

Morrigan didn't rescind her scowl but followed the bard in, muttering all the same. "Cook is a grabby degenerate anyway."

:::

Cleaning took Kalya the remainder of the day and several hours into the evening. The others filtered upstairs to change clothes when their cooking shifts ended, then they shuffled back outside to chop wood, hunt boar, and do whatever else the tavern owner accepted as payment.

The only one Kalya hadn't seen all day was Zevran. As the sun had risen in the clearing that morning, she'd allowed herself hope that he would have been the one to stumble upon her training outside.

He'd saved her. Yeah, Alistair and Elissa had actually done… whatever, performed the ritual, but he'd said it himself: "By begging our friends to give you this gift, I've forfeited your life." Only it wasn't forfeit - at least not any more than anyone's in a Blight.

She was here. She had been given a second chance she didn't deserve, and it was all thanks to him.

Time and time again, Zevran had proven to be the constant in her salvation. She itched for a moment alone with her old friend - not in some mournful, depressing bedside whisper, but a real conversation, between clashing blades as partners-in-crime, like they used to while cleaning the streets of Denerim.

When their communication of the past few months was all cheap-shots and drunken jabs, she wasn't even sure where to begin. Should she apologize? Thank him? Beg forgiveness?

Meeting him in a clearing during morning training would be a more of a blessing than she deserved, but she craved it. Thirsted for it as keenly as she yearned for the cursed drink that had gotten her here in the first place. But somehow she knew that sparring him again would put a voice to all the praise and gratitude she couldn't put into words. It would be enough. It was where they started, and where they'd likely end up – side-by-side on the battlefield. Maybe she'd catch him tomorrow.

When she asked in passing, Oghren grunted something about the elf offering to visit a nearby town for spices for the bland food they'd been stomaching the last few days.

Anticipation buzzed through Kalya all during dinner - an otherwise undramatic affair, blessedly. It had been a while since she'd eaten with everyone without… incident. When Oghren returned to the table with full mugs of mead for himself and Alistair, Kalya kept her eyes glued to her plate, pretending she had barely noticed, pretending she was barely imagining the feel of cool foam in her mouth.

Kalya didn't see who had apparently glared at him, but he blurted out, "OH, shit," and set both mugs on the ground. The rest of the meal, his sips - from both his and Alistair's mugs – were done surreptitiously under the table.

As the evening progressed, that forbidden longing wasn't what arced energy throughout Kalya's body. The thirst for numbing oblivion was there, certainly, but something else was curling around her insides, taking root in her wants and desires.

Once everyone's plates were washed and put away, the group sleepily headed for the warm baths in the basement.

Kalya knew she'd live to regret passing up this lush perk while it was still an option, but she couldn't quiet the pleading thumping through her veins. It was this or take a bottle to bed, so she slipped back into her leathers and returned outside for some moonlight training.

:::

The clearing was encircled by trees and illuminated by a quarter moon hanging low, just over the tips of the western treetops, when Kalya saw him.

Zevran's head was held high, his features relaxed, and he looked more like he had when they'd first met. Confident. A lazy half-smirk emerged from the lines of his tattoo, painting him downright cocksure. For a moment, she thought he might be out there looking for her, but he was headed straight past her towards the tavern when she called to him. If there were spices in his satchel, he hadn't procured many.

A blink of surprise - at seeing her out of bed, Kalya presumed - melted back into his grin a moment later, as he made his way towards her.

"I'm surprised our dear leader let you out here unsupervised," he said. "She must fancy her 'Fear of the Maker' act is working."

"Well, it must be," Kalya replied. "Or maybe she hopes a passing rogue will off me and her problems will be solved."

Zevran chuckled politely. Why did it suddenly feel like they were strangers? Kalya cleared her throat.

"You're out late," she offered.

"I could say the same. I thought this morning's training plus a day's honest work would have put all that vigor to good use."

The word was emphasized either as an odd insult or an invitation, and Kalya took a chance on the latter. The thrill of having fought Elissa finally on her level jolted anticipation and pride through Kalya like she'd never felt. She held up her daggers with a grinning wildness in her eyes.

"Want to spar?"

Zev shook his head, chuckling tactfully. "No, thank you. I know what happens to you Grey Wardens."

Kalya's shoulders sunk. In the lengthening silence, she wasn't sure which was worse - her hurt pride, the squashing of a silly daydream, or that she was she so self-involved, she hadn't even considered a friend wouldn't want to fight her just to lose.

"No," he continued, "let me believe my comforting lie that I can still best my own student."

With that, he bowed deeply, slowly turned on his heel, and headed back to the tavern. As if she were his superior. As if their years together had meant nothing just because she'd become a Warden. As if he knew how much she needed him, and still he had to plink the strings manipulating this strange, shifting balance of power.

Buzzing with unspent energy, her hurt hardened into the emotion she knew best.

When she confirmed he was out of earshot, Kalya's quickening breath mounted to a roar, and she expended the significant remainder of her stamina on an innocent oak nearby.