The scene was so similar, it nearly sucked the air from Alistair's lungs. It certainly left him gaping at Kalya, who was rubbing the same spot on the pristine table over and over and over.
All they needed was a three-piece band… or was it six?
Her dark russet hair was different now. Long past her shoulders, climbing down her back. She still tucked it behind her slender ear in the same way, so many lifetimes ago.
"Is it strange?" he asked suddenly.
Her head popped up, as if she'd been lost in thought, and he cursed himself for interrupting. They only had a few more days of quiet contemplation before it was back on the grueling hike. Although, perhaps… if things were truly different, as he kept telling Elissa they were, it would be back to normal for the group. Waters for everyone. Autonomy. No more chains - real or implicit.
"To be back, I mean." Here. In a tavern. With him. With one person freshly a Warden - though without the celebration that had brought Duncan, Riordan, and his brothers so jovially to the Spotted Pig those years ago. His tongue ached to put voice behind the waterfall of emotions rushing through his thoughts, but he kept all to himself.
"Alive?" she snapped. He winced.
"No! Well, yes, I mean, definitely that. But I was talking about being back here… in a Tavern. Though I… suppose it's not wise to talk about that, is it?"
Because of how badly Elissa had reacted when Alistair blurted out at the Urn of the Sacred Ashes that he'd known Kalya before. Known her.
Because Elissa - Maker love her - had the tendency to see the worst in things. Honestly, if there were infinite possible outcomes of anything that came out of his mouth, she tended to assume it was whichever one made him look the dimmest.
Because (and this was the smallest "because," but still a valid reason he should stop talking) taverns had very unfortunate tendency of giving Alistair erections, and here he was, standing in front of the girl who'd spun off all those impure, inappropriate sexy tavern-thoughts.
"It seems like another lifetime ago," he said, breaking the awkward silence. "So much has -"
Morrigan pushed a chair back with a loud squeak. Zevran, who Alistair hadn't even noticed sitting there - gosh, those rogues are sneaky - seemed unbothered by the witch's sudden anger.
"You have no idea!" Morrigan spat. "None!"
"And you do?" Zev asked, ever the charmer.
"Bloody more than you." Morrigan spun on her heel and marched up the stairs.
Zevran raised his eyebrows and returned quietly to his sketchbook.
Alistair wondered distantly when he had even seen the witch and the assassin interact with each other, when he suddenly noticed Kalya staring at him. He cleared his throat just to have something to do before he went back to fake-cleaning.
"Why did you do it?" she asked, her dark eyes boring into his. "Change me into a Grey Warden."
Alistair could feel the flush reddening his cheeks. It was Zevran - Maker bless him - who had reminded him of the one possible way to save her. Zevran who'd shaken him from his stupor. Without his intervention, Alistair would have stood unmoving as Kalya's life sapped away. Just as he'd stood unmoving high up in that tower as he watched Duncan die. Just as he watched Cailan die. Blighted, Maker-damned ogres.
A tear stung into his eye, and he blinked it away. He tried so hard not to think of how close he'd come to losing her. Every night, he tried and failed not to think of it.
"Well, I had to, didn't I?" Alistair wrapped his hand around the back of his neck and scratched idly. "It's the Blight."
Oh, void it all if Elissa heard him. He wanted Kalya to know how much she meant to him. How important it was that she stayed sober, that she unlocked her true Warden potential he'd always known was there.
"Kalya, you know I didn't have any other choice."
Because of her. Because of them. Because he'd loved her and hadn't kept her safe, and she hadn't kept her promise to stay far from Denerim.
And then… somehow, he'd done it. What "it" was he'd never understand, but something made Kalya loop the apron over her head and beeline for the kitchen.
Had his words been so touching, she didn't want him to see her cry?
Had she been super eager to clean some more, in a different room?
Had being in taverns aroused her too, and she had to get to privacy?
With a sigh, Alistair went back to scrubbing the clean - wait, there was actually a spot on the edge of one table! Tongue out in concentration, he dug into it, looking up only when Zevran chuckled and shook his head at him.
:::
Kalya turned to see the tavern disappearing in the distance, stolen bottles clanking against each other in the pack at her side. She felt naked carrying a pack without her daggers, but necessity of avoiding suspicion left them in the group's weapons chest.
A tiny sliver of moon was all that lit her way through the dry brush. Il tremore was slowly ebbing its way out of her system. Zevran had been right. It was quicker but more intense than it had been when she'd ridden it out on the streets of Denerim that lifetime ago.
Still, it left behind a ghost of a wicked headache before it considered draining for good.
She gulped, unable to stop imagining the sweet bite of the swirling amber liquid clanking on her back. How just one sip would dull the ache in her head, smooth over her hurt about Alistair, her awkwardness with Zevran, her guilt over Leliana and the others.
A long breath steadied her. She'd never walked this path, of course. Last time she was on it, she was unconscious, or dead, or some combination of the two. Oghren had gestured up to it offhandedly when they'd taken the trash out together, nodding to the mountain she now climbed. She was starting to recognize her surroundings now. Just around the bend in a foothill had been the reedy lake where… Yeah.
The ascent took ten minutes. Many times over what it had taken the group to come skidding down when they heard her splashing and screaming for her life.
When she reached the top, her stupid body itched again with that familiar fucking yearning. How warm it would feel to just sit on a boulder and tip back her canteen, looking over the landscape below. Relaxing. Inviting. Then, heartbreaking.
Was the heartbreak because of the pain she'd caused? The warning from Zev not to tempt fate a third time? Or because that cozy, enveloping peace was forbidden to her forever? Did it matter?
Kalya shrugged off the pack, and it hit the dirt with a thick clunk. No one would ever know, of course. But she would.
With a deep breath, she looked over the landscape below. The lights of the tavern shimmered in the distance. The sliver of moon reflected lazily in the lake where she'd lost her life. The lake where Zev or Elissa or whoever "didn't have any other choice" in bringing her back. The lake where a huge dark mass of an ogre lay still and sent a shiver up Kalya's rigid spine.
Finally, she spun in the grey dirt and marched to a small pile of geometric rocks. They must have sheared off the strange rectangular rock face. Sifting through them like a market grocer, she tossed them from hand to hand, testing their weight as she might shop for new daggers.
When three oblong stones met her satisfaction, Kalya returned to the cliff's edge, sat down on a boulder, and pulled the first bottle from the pack.
Kalya couldn't read the words, but she recognized the label as the spiced Brandy she'd shared with Zevran two days before her first Crow assignment. She willed courage in her gut to steel her for what she was about to do. With a shaking hand, she unscrewed the cap, brought the neck to her face, and inhaled its peppery bouquet. Then she took a deep breath, wound her arm back, and flung the bottle in a high arc over the ledge.
An instant passed, and she hurled one of the stones through the air in a tight spiral. It caught the bottle midway down its descent and cracked it open like a melon. Its explosive tinkling sounded was so small compared to the blood rushing through her ears. How long had she been holding that breath?
Before she lost nerve, Kalya withdrew the second bottle from the pack, tearing off this one's cap with emboldened fervor. She recognized this one as a Rivaini Spice. Her eyes squeezed shut as she tamped down the want, forcing herself not to remember the joyful memories, but the hangovers, the embarrassments, the mistakes. She pitched it off the cliff and spiraled another sharp rock into it shortly after, raining deliciously stained shards to the ground below.
The last bottle she'd recognized the instant she bent over in that stockroom. Kalya drew it out of the pack slowly, deliberately, the way one might pull the curtains back in the bedroom of a lover you were meeting for the last time.
Antivan Whiskey. Her first shared drink with Alistair. Her thousand shared drinks with Zevran. Her favorite of favorites. She took her time removing this cap. As she drew in the heady, familiar aroma, she was transported to countless taverns, countless smiles, countless soliloquies with her tumbler overflowing at each impassioned gesticulation.
This was it.
Kalya leaned back, closed her eyes, as if she herself couldn't believe she was doing this, wound up, and pitched the bottle high over her head - the steepest arc of all of them.
Suddenly, a bowstring twang. A fierce whirring, originating from somewhere to her right - somewhere on the zigzag path.
The bottle of Antivan Whiskey exploded in a firework of orange light, streaking down into the valley like a falling chandelier.
Kalya stared, jaw hanging open, as Leliana rounded the path to the top of the cliff's ledge. The bard brushed some orange ashes from her hands and slung the bow on her back.
"Herbalism isn't just for mixing potions, you know. Finding kindling on a rocky ledge is a handy skill."
"Holy shit, that was awesome!" Kalya leapt to her feet.
"Tailling someone through the wilderness so rarely ends in celebration," Leliana said with a demure shrug. "I simply had to partake."
"With a fucking fire arrow?!"
"I had a few to spare. Though I do hope you don't have a full bar up here. We leave in the morning, and I need my ammo."
Kalya gulped, tucking her long auburn hair behind an ear.
"I suppose Elissa sent you?" she asked.
The bard shook her head and shrugged again. "I had my reasons. I'm glad to be wrong."
The two of them settled on the boulder, overlooking the vista below. The hints of dawn were just starting to light the horizon. With a shared exhale, both of their gazes seemed to fall on the downed ogre in the lake, with its waves delicately lapping at its edges.
Leliana was the first to dare speak. "You really fucked up, you know?"
"I know."
"It's not going to be easy."
"I know that, too."
Leliana turned to her friend.
"Does it… feel different?"
Kalya rested her chin on her hands. "Everything is different."
"Let's hope so."
The sliver of moon was gone. In an hour or so, their absences would be noticed and their day's hike would start with a punishment. But neither of them wanted to head back. Not yet.
This time, it was Kalya who broke the silence.
"I love who I am when I'm drunk," she said. "This me - these sober thoughts, this sober body - it's not who I picture when I think of myself. Everything is better just three drinks in. For so long, I thought I could just… keep Three-Drinks-In Kalya sustained, but… it was never enough. I always wanted more ease, more numb."
Leliana tucked another strand of hair that had fallen across her friend's face behind her ear.
"I hope someday soon you'll see who the rest of us see. The real you. Then maybe you'll love who you've become. Who you are now."
