54. Resurrection of the Past

As they walked, Peep stopped every hour or so to give Sherry the Philosopher's Stone. On the third such stop, they sat to eat lunch. As she sat beside Peep and ate, Sherry stopped suddenly, the chicken she was eating falling from her fingers and a surprised, childlike look on her face.

"Callbrith!" she said, nearly bouncing with excitement. "I left instructions with Callbrith!"

"Well, what was they?" asked Peep.

"I..." her brow wrinkled and her look of delight turned to frustration. "I don't remember."

"Have you remembered anything else?" Wynne asked.

"I... no. Well, sort of. They feel like memories, but they can't be," Sherry answered. "They don't make sense."

"Tell us anyway," Zevran told her. "You might be surprised. Once you didn't believe in magic or Darkspawn, you know."

She sighed. "You will all leave me here for the wolves," she groaned, "when you find out just how crazy I really am."

Peep wrapped his arm around her, and Alistair bristled. But he said nothing—he recognized that after the morning, he had no right. It was hard, though, to let the matter go.

"Tell us, lady. We'll 'preciate the story, even if it ain't a real mem'ry. K?"

She looked at Peep and then Wynne. "Alright," she finally gave in. "I remember things from my childhood. I remember the first microwave oven that came to our city. And when cellphones came out. Then you could sit on the beach and you could speak to someone literally on the other side of the world through video. It was a totally different world. Cars, not horses. Indoor plumbing everywhere."

"That's not all, is it?" Wynne asked gently.

"No. But the next part is even more insane. For it to be true, I would have to be... very old."

"You are," Peep told her. "I kin tell you that what ya just tol' us is true. Ya did live during a time when all of dat was commonplace."

"Ha! And I thought you all would think I was the crazy one!"

"I be serious, lady."

She stared at him for such a long time that Alistair grew restive. When he threw his chicken bone into the fire, she glanced at him and then looked at Wynne.

"Alright, well. I remember my sons." She nudged a ball of snow at her feet with a toe. "Alexander and David. They were twins. I had them after... well. I had them after an encounter I don't want to talk about. At first, I was going to give them up for adoption, but I couldn't do it. When I held them, I realized that I loved them and it wasn't their fault."

She sighed heavily, staring into the fire. "They died in the war. It came right after I learned how to prolong life. But they were dead when they were sent home to me. It was too late to save them." A tear ran down her face, then another followed. "I wanted to die. Life without them had been sad and lonely already, but when they died, I couldn't even live for their visits anymore." She bit her fist to choke back a sob. "My two little angels. Grown men when they died. I begged and begged them not to go, but they wouldn't listen. They were warriors for God and this was Armageddon."

She shook her head. "I'm too young to have grown children," she said softly. When Wynne pulled her into her arms, Sherry gave way to crying.

He wanted to be the one to comfort her. Once, he would have been. He wondered why she never told her about her sons. But then again, why would she have? That was something one might trust to someone she loved, not someone she intended to use.

He realized, aghast, that he'd said it out loud. Everyone was staring at him as if he'd grown two heads, except for Sherry, who continued to sob into Wynne's shoulder as if she'd never even heard him.

"And for what would she be using you for?" Maryanne asked. "So far as I can tell, you're useless, whiny baggage."

"Set me up as a puppet King and rule the area!" Alistair argued. "Use my family name just like Arl Eamon wanted to do-"

"She coulda ruled anytime she wanted to. A flick of her fingers and this whole region would have knelt at her feet. What did you think made her so valuable to Loghain? With her at his side, there would have been not a whisper of protest against him."

"The Thedans wouldn't have given in so quickly," Alistair said. "They would have-"

"Are you kidding me? They're in an unfamiliar world, ruled by another people. They don't have any real standing here. If your politics meant anything here, Loghain wouldn't be hiding in a militarized fortress, kidnapping Sherry to try to gain control over the area." Maryanne stood up. "You are such an idiot, Alistair. I don't know how you've survived this long."

"Wait," Alistair said, "don't tell us, this is the part where we learn that you've never had any friends."

"Oh, I can be friendly if I want to be. Alas, in your case, wishing to be more intelligent does not make it so."

Sherry stood up and walked abruptly away. Alistair hunkered in on himself. Peep followed Sherry. When she stopped, he held her and talked with her for a while, though Alistair couldn't hear what was said, they were far away.

"Why is she always talking with him? He's married," Alistair complained.

"Maybe because he actually likes her?" Zevran said.

"But doesn't hit on her," Maryanne added, and Zevran chuckled and acknowledged her comment with an inclined head.

"I like her," Alistair objected. He did! He really, really did.

"Funny way you have of showing it," Maryanne told him. "One would think you were trying to drive her to suicide."

The others turned and began speaking excitedly about Sherry's apparent memories. He sat and laid his head in his hands, wanting to sob, himself. He'd made a terrible mistake that morning, and being defensive and upset wasn't making anything better.

He wanted to cry. To just go off and curl up and sink away into the ground. He wasn't being mean on purpose, he just couldn't seem to control the things coming out of his mouth. He felt like he should leave, but he felt helpless to do so.

"Zevran? I need you for a while, please," came Sherry's voice.

Alistair wanted to jump up and tell her that he could help her. He sat still and fought the instinct.

Moments later, the sound of battle had him on his feet. But it was simply Zevran and Sherry practicing. Alistair sat back down and watched, his heart aching. It screamed at him to make amends, to fix the terrible mess he'd gotten them into before it was broken forever.

But he didn't know how, and he still didn't trust her. Maybe he didn't know why she was pretending, but that didn't mean she wasn't, did it?