"What did you say about the Wardens?"

Alistair's voice was remarkably even, perhaps only a fraction higher than was normal, with the slightest tremor to the words. Yet Flora could see the sudden clench of his fist; the candlestick rolled in a languid arc across the flagstones; there was a sudden dangerous heat in her brother-warden's face. The Templar, who had believed his remark to be only a passing comment, appeared confused. They stood in the central aisle of the Chantry; the desolate and destitute strewn across the benches around them.

"Eh?"

" You said, " Alistair replied quietly, the full muscle of his body tensed as though ready to lunge. "'Grey Wardens turned traitor.' What did you mean?"

Ser Bryant frowned: was the outcome of Ostagar not common knowledge? Loghain Mac Tir's army had passed by Lothering barely a week prior; their weary march accompanied by tales of tragedy, death and betrayal.

"The Wardens were responsible for the bloodbath in the valley," the Templar said, and if he had not been distracted by a refugee leaning on a long wooden stave, he would have seen Alistair's face twist in shock. "Didn't you hear? They planned to let the king die so they could seize Ferelden for themselves, though it went badly wrong. Their commander came up with the plot, apparently."

The notion of Duncan desiring the throne in any shape or form was such a ridiculous one that Alistair laughed; though it was high, wild and humourless. Ser Bryant shot him an odd look, noticing for the first time the dented Templar insignia on his breastplate. The refugee's wooden stave had turned out to be a harmless walking stick rather than an instrument of magic.

"That ain't the truth," said Flora, shooting an anxious glance at Alistair from the tail of her eye. Her brother-warden was swaying slightly, as though someone had punched him square in the face.

"From the mouth of General Mac Tir himself," the Templar said, turning his attention on them more closely. "He stopped here to send a message to the capital before continuin' north. The Order has been banned from Ferelden. I'm about to post the bounty for any survivors now."

He gestured to a sheet of creamy parchment; freshly inked and ready to be pinned up.

"It's a lie," said Alistair faintly, each word an exertion. "It's not true. The Wardens weren't - they weren't- "

Ser Bryant looked at them as though seeing them for the first time, his mouth pulling taut and suspicious.

"Who did you say you were, again?"

Time to intervene.

"No one," said Flora, hastily. "We ain't no one."

Fortunately, a flurry of footsteps came to their rescue: another Templar arrived, red-faced and indignant.

"Captain, a group of refugees have forced their way past the barricade. They're demanding the use of empty buildings for shelter. What should I tell them?"

"No, clearly," retorted Bryant, his attention mercifully refocused. "Uncertain times are when order is needed most of all. I'll tell them myself!"

"It's a lie," repeated Alistair, louder and angrier this time. " Loghain is the traitor! He betrayed the ki- "

His face was contorting: one moment, consumed with white-hot fury, then suddenly veering off into despair; the tall, brawny bulk of his body trembling like the Anderfels shaken by earthquake.

Taking advantage of the Templar's distraction, Flora seized her brother-warden's arm. Feeling like a rowboat steering a Marcher galleon, she guided him into a side-chapel that was empty of refugees. Intended for private prayer, the windowless chamber was barely large enough to hold a shrine and six benches. Candles clustered into several alcoves in the wall exuded a warm and waxy light.

Alistair was walking like a maleficar's reanimated corpse, stumbling through a world that no longer seemed to make any sense. His sister-warden shoved him ungently down onto a bench; then rested on her knees beside him to resolve the difference in their heights. Alistair seemed about to crumple forward at the waist when she put her arms impulsively around his neck, pulling his head beneath her chin. He went rigid for a moment and then let out an unsteady exhalation into the soft yielding of her throat. As her brother-warden let his face rest in the hollow warmth above her collarbone, she pressed her chin to his mail-clad shoulder and closed her eyes.

There was no way to measure the passage of time from inside the windowless chamber. Flora heard the Templars leave and then return; she heard snatches of conversation between Mother Dorothea and Ser Bryant; then between the Revered Mother and a woman with an accent that Flora could not identify. Alistair was motionless in her arms, only the slight rise and fall of his chest indicated that he was indeed still breathing.

Wasting time, grumbled her general-spirit irritably near the back of her ear. Compassion, in contrast, hummed with quiet approval.

Is that Andraste? Flora thought, ignoring her general and eyeing the crude features of the shrine effigy.

Yes.

Why is she wearing a crown? I thought she were a fisherman's daughter. Ain't no fishermen's daughters wearin' crowns. It's not practical.

Because the reply came, after an infinitesimal pause. She did not stay a fisherman's daughter forever.

Oh.

Alistair shifted against her, exhaling unsteadily. When he raised his face, it was flushed and sweaty from the prolonged contact with her skin. His golden hair was dishevelled and he appeared more a boy fresh woken than a grown man, shy and disorientated. Flora untangled her arms from him and sat back on the bench; his chainmail was indented pink against her cheek.

"Sorry," he said, with the reflexive haste of someone used to making frequent apology.

"For what?" Flora's pale eyes settled on him, quizzical.

"For… for being weak. Just then." Alistair's mouth twisted in shame. "I'm a g-grown man."

She still looked confused, her muse's face contorted in perplexion.

"You ain't got nothing to be sorry for," she said after a moment, Compassion murmuring wordless in her ear. "You've had a nasty shock. Loghain - Lie-ghain - is just spouting nonsense. He's a sea snake."

"It's just… hearing those lies about the Wardens. About Duncan. Saying that we're traitors, Flo."

"He ain't going to believe there's a Blight until he's halfway down the Archdemon's throat," replied Flora, unimpressed. "We'll show up on his doorstep with our armies and crack his legs like lobster claws."

The combination of northern bluntness and Flora's own eccentricity prompted a reluctant smile from the young man. Alistair looked at her for a long moment, colour rising to the tawny bone of his cheeks as he remembered how the soft flesh of her had felt against his face. He then took a deep breath and gathered himself together, rising to his feet.

"What do you think the odds are on that candlestick still being where I dropped it?"

The two young Wardens, disguised from the world by a dented Templar breastplate and a baggy woollen cloak, made their way back into the main part of the Chantry. As they did so, a lithe figure slipped from the shadows near the entrance; cloaked in the garb of a lay sister but moving with the breathless subtlety of a thief. The candlelight caught briefly on a half-shorn curtain of brick red hair; then the figure melted back into the gloom and vanished from sight.

The silver candlestick gifted by the Revered Mother had vanished, snatched up by some desperate refugee. Nobody would meet their eyea and eventually they left the Chantry without it. The sun was sinking beneath the distant Frostbacks, flooding Lothering with a rich palette of umber and burnt gold. The desolation of the town was muted by the softening light, although the windmill threw its own skeletal silhouette across the abandoned buildings. Within the Chantry, tinted light streamed in through the glass, casting shifting pools of amber on the flagstones. The refugees turned their faces away; too focused on their own misery to appreciate the sight.

Despite their destitution, the two Wardens decided to venture to the inn anyway on the chance that the proprietor was feeling charitable. Between them, they gathered up anything that they could barter - Alistair retrieved a shortsword from his pack that he had never used; Flora offered up a ring so tarnished that the metal was unidentifiable. When he found out that the ring had belonged to her since childhood, he protested; she had shrugged and pointed out that their need was greater.

The inn was a two-storey timber and stone building, with a slate roof sorely in need of repair. A faded sign above the doorway read Dane's Refuge, although the accompanying image had long since worn away. The innkeeper had made a half-hearted attempt to bolster his livelihood against the rumours of incoming Darkspawn: sandbags were stacked haphazardly near the door and boards nailed across the lower windows.

Despite the desperate circumstances, Lothering's tavern was not short of patrons. A company of men clad in unfamiliar tabards sat drinking in one corner; two dwarven merchants were counting the day's takings near the hearth. The innkeeper stood behind the bar, half-heartedly wiping out tankards with a grimy rag.

The two junior Wardens approached the innkeeper with some trepidation. Their arrival caused a mild flicker of interest from the other guests; their eyes passed over the cloaked Flora and settled on the brawny, mail-clad youth at her side. Alistair had never quite grown used to being the tallest man in whatever space he entered; nor did he enjoy the attention it attracted.

"Evening," began Alistair, hoping that his voice was emerging easy and confident. "Do you have a room free? I'm afraid that we don't- "

He cut off his own query abruptly, gaze fixed on the parchment pinned to the wall behind the innkeeper's head. It was the bounty clutched in Ser Bryant's armoured fist earlier: a reward for each Grey Warden taken prisoner, redeemable from Loghain Mac Tir.

Flora, sweating beneath the heavy wool, threw back the hood of the cloak.

"This is in exchange for a room," she said; thrusting forward the tarnished ring in the centre of her palm. It resembled something dredged from the bottom of the river: grubby and wholly unappealing. "Yes? Please?"

She had never quite mastered the art of Herring-style bartering; as a healer, she had no intention of accompanying her offer with the threat of a punch.

But the innkeeper was not looking at the ring, he was looking at her face with his mouth drooping and brows furrowed; as though straining to complete an interrupted thought. While he hesitated one of the company men in the corner called out across the tavern; a leer in his voice.

"I'd take the girl in exchange for a room if I were you, barkeep."

This succeeded in jolting Alistair from his reverie. Before he could turn and snap a retort, the innkeeper too reclaimed his senses.

"Your room is ready," he said, with a note of unusual deference. "As is your dinner. If it pleases you to take a seat, I'll have it brought out."

Alistair and Flora's eyes met; both equally confused. Flora's fingers closed over the ring and she withdrew her hand.

"Sister Leliana has already paid coin for your bed and board. She insisted on a good room," continued the innkeeper, eyes darting nervously in a manner that suggested that he did not want to get on the wrong side of Sister Leliana. "You will tell her that I followed her instruction, won't you? Please, take a seat. She wanted you both fed and watered."

A bemused Alistair found his voice at last.

"But we don't know who this Sister Leliana is," he said, as Flora gave a solemn nod of corroboration. "I've only passed through Lothering once before, and that was almost a year ago."

The innkeeper's shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, his moustache quivering.

"Look, I don't know. All she said was: bed and board for the tall swordsman and the fair-faced girl. "

The tall swordsman and the fair-faced girl looked at one another, and in a single mutual glance agreed not to question their luck any further. The innkeeper steered them to a table near the hearth, promising the swift arrival of bread and stew. Firelight spilled across the wood, gleaming dully against the pewter curve of the tankards. After a brief protest, Alistair allowed Flora to take the seat with her back to the tavern; they would attract less attention with her face hidden, and her shield would block any sudden strike. Neither had forgotten the bounty pinned to the wall; Loghain Mac Tir's seal fixed heavy and crimson at the bottom of a death sentence written in spidery ink.

As the innkeeper had promised, food and drink arrived soon after. Alistair fell on the meat stew as though he had not eaten in a fortnight; Flora was no less eager. The bread was stale but neither complained, devouring a loaf between them. Only when there were only crumbs and dregs left did they realise that they had an observer.

"I've never seen such gluttony," breathed Morrigan, fascinated. "Surely, 'tis a pair of hogs."

"I thought you'd flown back to the Wilds," retorted Alistair, swallowing his last mouthful. "Ah, well. I'll just have to live with the disappointment."

Flora shifted herself along the bench to make room for the witch, her brow furrowing as she surveyed their scavenged plates.

"I'll ask for more food," she said, distressed. "You need to eat as well."

Morrigan did not take up the offer of a seat, though the corner of her painted mouth twitched slightly at the gesture. Instead, she crossed her arms and eyed the other patrons of the tavern, her lip curling. The men in the company had departed, leaving plates and spillages in their wake. Only the two dwarven merchants remained, alongside a sour-faced elf drinking alone in the corner.

"I spent years as a child wondering what life beyond the Wilds was like," she observed acerbically, keen yellow gaze sweeping across the chamber. "Certain that it was full of the excitement and glamour that a humble marshland could not provide. Is this it , then? I was deluded. 'Tis a huge letdown. I would return home, if I was not certain that my mother would send me back."

"This is a small tavern in a rural village," Alistair pointed out, wiping a fleck of ale from his jaw. "Not some… lady's salon in Val Royeaux. You won't find any glamour or excitement here."

Flora cast about in her mind for something exciting for the witch to occupy herself with.

"You could go and have a look at our room," she said at last, for want of anything else. "It's the one at the end of the corridor. Sister Lel- Lelyan - Lillian paid for it."

Morrigan grimaced at the prospect, deigning instead to sit beside Flora on the bench. Alistair took another long draw from his tankard and leaned back, comfortably full-bellied for the first time since they had left Ostagar. The Chantry sister's generosity was also the first stroke of luck that they had had since the massacre in the valley. It was a welcome end to a day that had included several most unwelcome revelations.

"Hey, Flo," he said, glancing over the table towards his sister-warden. She had just finished her own tankard of ale, grimacing as the liquid dissolved into its component parts on her tongue. The cloak was bundled on her lap, the mass of dark red hair tied in a knot atop her head. The knot had been slowly slipping to the side all day; its current position was just above her left ear.

"Eurgh, yuck. Eh?"

Alistair let out a self-conscious half-laugh, fingers drumming against the wood.

"I wonder why Mother Dorothea thought we wanted to get married?"

He looked at Flora once again from the tail of his eye. She was grubby, the hair needed a good wash and a dedicated hour of brushing, the woollens she wore were both ugly and shapeless; and yet she could easily have been stolen from some museum pedestal, or from the shelf of a glass display case. If he pressed a finger to her cheek he would not have been surprised to find it sculpted from marble, or from cool white ivory. In stillness she might have painted on silk by an Orlesian painter in the Age of Towers.

"Hm. Dunno," said Flora, sounding more like the lowly boy who carried the easel for the Orlesian painter. "I was meant to be gettin' married to the lobster pot weaver back in Herring. Before I got taken."

She did not look unduly bothered by the abrupt severance of her betrothal, biting at her thumbnail. Alistair eyed her for a moment, wondering why he was so interested.

"Weren't you only fifteen when the Templars took you?" he asked, watching her inspect her thumb.

"Mm, something like that," replied Flora vaguely. She had no idea how old she was; the Circle had decided that she was neither a child of ten, nor a grown woman of twenty, and so placed her squarely in the middle.

"Did you want to get married?"

She shot him a perturbed look from those pale, clear eyes. "Weren't up to me. My dad wanted an unlimited supply of lobster pots."

Morrigan, who had only been half-listening to the conversation, let out a sudden squawk of horror. Her black-nailed fingers splayed out against the wood as she pressed her palms to the table.

"You two got married just now?!" she howled; drawing the attention of half of Lothering. "And we are to share a room tonight? I am not willing to witness the consummation of this… this… this unholy union!"

Alistair almost choked on the dregs of his ale while Flora's brow creased in confusion.

"We didn't get married," she clarified, fiddling with the fraying sleeve of her tunic. "What does con- consummation mean?"

"Ask your brother-warden," came the snide reply: Morrigan had noticed the slow, crimson flush creeping up Alistair's neck.

Flora turned her face expectantly towards Alistair, who offered a prayer to the Maker in the hopes that his voice would emerge steadily.

"It's when a man and woman- " the two dwarves shot him a pointed stare "- or, a man and a man… or a woman and a woman…"

He was certain that sweat was beading on his forehead now, and that the flush had encroached onto his cheeks. Flora was gazing at him unblinking, and the pressure of being under her long-lashed scrutiny was unbearable.

"Or anyone , does something with anything - well, not exactly anything- the Chantry forbids… certain… acts … with certain… things... "

Alistair wished fervently that the floor would break apart beneath him, sending him plunging into the Deep Roads and away from this conversation. Morrigan was laughing openly, and even the two dwarves were looking at him with pity. Then, to his infinite relief, the clouds of confusion cleared from Flora's face.

"Oh," she said, astonished. "Bedding someone?"

He exhaled unsteadily, feeling as though he had just been in single combat with a Hurlock.

"Yes."

Flora smiled at him across the table and the vice that had been gripping his shoulders loosened; tension draining onto the ale-stained floor of the tavern. She thought about asking him what acts were forbidden by the Chantry, but then grew distracted by the curling pattern of ash against the plaster: the ghost of fires past. Alistair knew that he had been granted the perfect opportunity to end the conversation, or to divert it down some less inflammatory route, but he heard his mouth forming the words before he could stop it.

"Have you - have you ever…. bedded someone?"

Morrigan's face swung towards him like a panther on the prowl. Alistair was vaguely aware of the incredulous contortion of her mouth, but found himself ignoring it; his attention was entirely on his fair-faced sister-warden.

"No," she replied, with an amiable shrug. "I ain't never."

Alistair was astonished.

"I thought - I was sure that- "

Flora eyed him with mild interest, small fingers still plucking at the loose thread at her sleeve. He ploughed on, committed now.

"- that you and Duncan had… you know."

He could not transform his scattered thoughts into words, though he had no evidence that anything sexual had ever transpired between his sister-warden and their commander. The way that Duncan had looked at her was proof of nothing, since similar stares followed Flora wherever she went. All else that fuelled his suspicions was circumstantial: the casual intimacy prompted by her healing, Duncan's palm on the small of her back, the stillness of his body as he listened to her babble for hours about her spirits.

Flora shook her head in a single back-forth denial, her eyes pensive.

"No," she said, pressing her fingertip into the curve of a spoon and absentmindedly spinning it against the surface of the table. "How about you?"

"No." He mirrored her response, as Morrigan's jaw dropped with comedic incredulity. "I spent my youth in a Templar monastery. We saw women once a month if we were lucky, and they were usually grey-haired priestesses with whiskers. It took me eight years to get my first kiss after I moved there."

Morrigan made a retching sound, and was ignored by both.

"With a grey-haired priestess?" asked Flora, stifling a fishwife's cackle in her grubby woollen sleeve. "Did her whiskers tickle?"

"Ha," Alistair replied, shooting her a wry look. "No. With a visiting lay-sister - an older woman, I might add."

A woman with a round, jolly face and kind brown eyes, he thought to himself, wryly. The sort of woman that I used to fantasise about.

Looking up, he noticed the deceptive arrogance of the full, curving mouth; the cold, seawater grey eyes that were so at odds with the girl beneath the skin.

"Have you ever kissed anyone?" the young man asked, aiming to distract himself.

Flora thought for a long moment, the spoon idle between her fingers. She recalled the candlelit interior of a grey-striped tent; the smell of foreign wood burning on the brazier; a meeting of lips which had begun as healing, but ended differently.

"I have been kissed," she said eventually, careful to put the emphasis on the correct words. "But I ain't ever kissed anyone."

"Huh," Alistair replied, lifting his tankard to hide a sudden flush; only to find it empty. "Fancy that."

Flora smiled at him, suddenly oddly wistful. The knot of hair was now unravelling; ropes of dark red hair trailing down her shoulders like spilt wine. Her fingertip was still planted in the belly of the spoon, spinning it in languid circles across the wood.

"VIRGINS," screeched Morrigan, cutting across them both with the usual lack of grace. "I cannot believe that the fate of Ferelden has been entrusted to a pair of VIRGINS. Doomed, doomed; we are all doomed."


AN: I've made Alistair more angsty in this chapter compared to the original because I feel like it's more realistic; its only been like a week since the Wardens got reamed at Ostagar!) anyway, I love writing the development of relationships between characters and I thought there were some nice moments here. Lol I know the licking the lampposts in winter line is classic Alistair but I can't include it because poor Flora is so literal, she would never work out what he was on about lol

Again we see the difference between Flora's healing and a kiss - she's put her mouth on hundreds over the years, but she doesn't count it as a kiss! More like CPR, except she's not putting her mouth over the nose as well lol. Ha ha reminds me of when I signed up to be the work first aider in our office because it was a paid day off to go to the course, then the next week a visitor broke their arm falling down the steps and I actually got called into action T_T. thank you so much for the reviews! i appreciate them hugely!