"Welcome back to the land of the living, qhira ."

Flora felt the physical world reshape itself piecemeal around her, one sense restored after the other. The smell of smoke - warm, woody and with an edge of something she could not describe - lingered in her throat. Some distance away, muffled by canvas, came the sound of celebration. The raised voices were infused with near-manic joy; the singing blurred by an excess of ale. There was gentle pressure on her palm: a calloused warmth set against the skin.

Like the night sky paling to grey before dawn, the tent came into gradual view around her. Obscure, shadowed masses clarified into the familiar: an armour stand hung with silver and white linen; a low table with a charcoal burner set at its centre; a writing desk buckling beneath correspondence. The canvas walls were concealed entirely by woven hangings: geometric patterns stitched in hues of cream, crimson and ochre.

Flora reached her free hand to her face and rubbed it across her eyes. She sat up on the bunk and the tent tilted around her: the world was not set right on its axis.

"Steady," came the voice again, warm and familiar. The pressure on her fingers increased into a firm grip: someone was holding her hand. "You've been unconscious for some time. Don't worry - the way they're carrying on, I think the celebrations will last until Satinalia."

The first part of his face that came into view were the eyes: dark and hot as coal. The rest of the coarse, careworn features assembled themselves as Flora's vision righted itself; Duncan smiled as he saw recognition dawn at last.

"How are you feeling, alma ?"

Flora grimaced, adjusting her position to avoid the creaking spot on the bunk, She knew where she was now; the surroundings made familiar by her frequent visits over the past month. A portion of every evening had been spent in the Warden-Commander's tent: at first, only a quarter-candle, then elongating to a full candle-length as their time was filled in ways other than mending. Duncan had coaxed more from Flora on the topic of her spirits than she had ever revealed before. In return, he had told her of his native Rivain: of the spirit healers who lived near the water; the mages who walked freely amongst the people; and his own misspent youth in the underbelly of Dairsmuid.

"My head feels odd," Flora replied in a whisper, wondering why the cloying miasma of sleep was not fading.

"I'm not surprised," he replied, leaning forward to adjust the kettle's angle above the charcoal burner. The bunk gave a creak of protest: it had never been keen on too much vigourous movement.

"You hit it hard during the assault at Ishal. I'm sorry that I sent you and Alistair up there, qhira. You know I never intended for you to get involved in the fighting."

As Duncan spoke, he slid the callused ball of his thumb across the inside of Flora's wrist: a gesture of casual familiarity and yet oddly intimate. The fraying seam of a bandage edged beneath his sleeve, but he did not move like an injured man.

"Alistair," Flora repeated, frustrated at the sluggish working of her mind. The name of her brother-warden had dredged up a sliver of memory, but when she tried to grasp it, it slithered away like an eel. "Where is he? Did he… did he get hurt too?"

She remembered now: they had been instructed to climb the Tower of Ishal and light the beacon at its apex. Duncan let out a soft laugh, taking the kettle from the burner as it began to protest. The muffled exchange of a drunken argument filtered through the canvas; raised voices slurring their insults.

FOOL! You —- idiot!

You'd—- realise. —PID CHILD!

"Only his pride is hurt," the Warden-Commander said, pouring the contents of the kettle into two dented vessels. "I'm afraid, qhira, that he is still sulking from not being chosen to participate in the battle itself. He's refusing to join in with the celebrations."

Flora frowned, and opened her mouth to say: I should go to him. Make sure he's alright.

She then remembered that Alistair would most likely not welcome her concern: he viewed her with a deep and visceral suspicion that went to the bone. He was open about his dislike and mistrust of mages: only recently, he had labelled her magic as weird.

Alistair's not my friend, Flora reminded herself, brow furrowed. She was not sure why this seemed oddly jarring: a thought that did not belong amongst the rest.

My brain must be all rattled from the blow I took at Ishal.

"Here."

He sat, the mattress gave a creak of protest at the additional burden. Flora inhaled the tea slowly - she had never grown a taste for it, despite it being the drink of choice at the Circle - and felt a little better. This was familiar: Duncan seated beside her in the inconstant candlelight. The flame's aura touched the golden ring looped through the Rivaini's left ear: it stood out bright against the greying hair. Clutching the cup in one hand, she reached out to touch the slender hoop: more out of habit than curiosity.

"If I put a hole in my ear, it would just heal," she breathed as he tilted his head in deference to her. "I thought that it was your other ear that was pierced."

There came the briefest of pauses, then Duncan smiled at her: knowing and familiar.

"Don't you want to know how the battle went, little goshawk?"

Flora's brow furrowed, hand drifting away from her commander's ear. For some inexplicable reason, the fact that the Darkspawn had been defeated - the Archdemon slain and the Fifth Blight ended - did not take up the prominence in her mind that such a momentous occasion ought to have done. She could not explain it, but the victory seemed oddly surreal; impersonal, almost as though it had taken place in a story from some distant Age.

"What happened in the battle?"

Flora felt as though she were asking someone to recall a dream. Duncan took her cup before it could spill the remainder of its contents.

"Cailan insisted on leading the charge. I'm surprised you couldn't hear him bellowing all the way at the top of Ishal. Still, he fought well. The Archdemon took some time to kill, but we managed it."

Flora's eyes dropped from Duncan's face to his body: moving across what seemed to be a whole and unscathed torso. He smiled, giving a wry shake of the head.

"I'm as surprised as you, qhira. I expected to take - to take some wound, at least. But we were exceptionally lucky."

A wide-eyed Flora nodded, astonished. She still did not really understand what the Archdemon was - or what it had been - but was unsure whether it was even relevant any more. If the Darkspawn had been defeated, then what were the Grey Wardens for? She hoped very much that she would not be sent back to the Circle Tower.

As she thought about Kinloch Hold, a sliver of memory caught the light within her mind: showing a long and curving corridor on an upper floor. The passage was strewn with loose pages and upended furniture; as though a headstrong gale had swept through the narrow confines. A door hung from a hinge; a figure lunged from the shadows with the whites of its eyes stained a bloody red.

Flora - disconcerted - blinked the image away. She had no time for the odd trickeries of the mind, especially when they were entirely fictional. The Tranquil kept the Circle passageways impeccably clean and clear of obstacles. Duncan's fingers lingered near her ear: rubbing a strand of hair gently between his thumb and index finger. She looked down at her lap, shy and yet pleased at the attention.

"Commander."

A man clad in the distinctive livery of a Warden had entered the tent; head bowed in deference to his senior office. The horizontal stripes of his tunic were reduced to black and grey in the candlelight.

"The priestesses are complaining again, ser," the visitor said, not bothering to hide his smirk. "Says that our celebrating is inappropriate and that we ought to beware the wrath of the Chantry Mother."

He then turned to Flora, and his mouth made the shape of the last word three times before it emerged from his throat.

Beware!

Head turning, Flora stared at the strange visitor as he took his leave. Her brain felt as though it had come adrift from her skull: nothing made sense.

"After what I've seen," the Warden-Commander replied with a chuckle, setting her glass back on the low table. "I have no fear of an old woman in a tall hat."

"Where's Alistair?"

She heard the words emerge unprompted from her throat. Duncan rose to his feet with the youthful ease that she had granted him, crossing the tented chamber to methodically knot the trailing bindings of the door. Once the flap was pulled taut, it melted seamless into the canvas until there was no indication of an exit.

"Qhira," he replied in a half-laugh, shooting her an amused glance over his shoulder. "All this talk of Alistair. Are you trying to make me jealous?"

Flora drew the folds of the blanket between her fingers, tracing the pattern stitched near its seam. She had believed herself familiar with all of Duncan's bedding - after all, she had spent many hours seated on this bunk - but this blanket was unknown to her. She did not understand why her mind still felt buoyant; as though she were holding her breath and observing the world from underwater.

"No-o," she said in response, uncertain.

The tent was not large and the body of her commander dominated even without his armour. Duncan bent his head to avoid a lantern hanging from a wooden ceiling-rib, his eyes settling back on her. He was not smiling anymore: instead he looked weary and each one of his five hard-lived decades. There was a sallow veneer to his skin that leeched the richness; his eyes cast in shadow.

Alarmed by the apparent sea-change in his constitution, Flora stretched a hand through the space between them, her fingers opening in entreaty.

"Let me help you," she implored, pale gaze searching his face.

As Duncan crossed the tent, Flora kept her hand extended: worried that he might deteriorate further before her eyes. He sat on the bunk beside her with a sigh, passing a swift palm over his face. She could see the creases dug around his eyes and the shoulders bowed beneath the commander's mantle.

You know, I never wanted to be a Warden, he had told her one damp autumn evening, when the sound of the rain had muffled his doubts from eavesdroppers.

I was conscripted by a woman named Genevieve. I ran away twice in the first month; both times, they found me and dragged me back.

The third time I tried, I was escorted to Genevieve's quarters and she told me that there was a Tevinter god named Orcus who came after oathbreakers and devoured them in their sleep. I didn't believe her, but I didn't run away again.

Flora had placed each of Duncan's absentminded recollections in her mind: storing them carefully like delicate beads of glass. Every so often she would remove them and repeat the words to herself; polishing the memory so that it would not grow dull. She was a daughter of Herring; stories were not told in books, but through remembered words.

He took her hand and his palm was as cold as a drowned man's. Flora grasped it in both of hers: wishing that she were the sort of mage who could summon heat in the beat of a heart.

"Let me help you," she repeated, anxious now. "My magic must have worn off."

Why didn't it last as long this time?

The ale-addled men were still fighting outside: exchanging flailing blows that seemed to make no dent to their opponent.

"Idiot! Can't you see that—- "

"WAKE UP!"

This made no sense, but drunkards were not expected to be coherent. Flora turned over the hand in her lap; pressing her thumb against his wrist to feel the pulse. She could feel nothing, but reasoned that Duncan was cold and perhaps his veins were hiding.

The Warden-Commander watched Flora study his hand with furrowed brow, his gaze soft and oddly regretful.

"Do you pity me, alma?" he asked her gently; without judgement. "Is that why you humour the affections of a dying man?"

Her eyes met his: the pale iris and the dark joining.

"No," she said after a moment, quiet enough that he had to lean close to hear her. "I don't pity you."

"Are you sure?" There was a smile in the question, but his gaze was serious. "I don't know what you would see in this old fool."

As Duncan gestured to himself, the word fool echoed about the tent, as though the canvas walls were repeating the word.

FOOL! Fool!

You —- fool.

Flora did not know how to explain that it was more what he saw in her . Thanks to Duncan, she had learnt about the spirit healers of Rivain who spent half their lives daydreaming and the wise women who inhaled smouldering peacebloom and touched the Fade with their minds. The mages of Ferelden's northern deserts were neither ostracised nor imprisoned: they lived amongst their peers without prejudice. It had been a revelation for Flora.

Spirit healer: her commander had been the first to name her such, thus elevating her from limited to specialised.

You have a rare gift.

You are a rare gift.

Flora did not know how to respond and so she looked back at him in silence. The world felt foreign and malleable around her; she clutched his hand in the hope that it would act as an anchor. The sounds of celebration from beyond the tent had waned into a soft background hum; the drunken argument lost beneath the wind. Duncan reached out to touch her upper arm, the flesh visible where the shirt hung loose.

It's too big because it's Alistair's shirt, Flora thought to herself, vaguely confused. Why am I wearing Alistair's shirt?

The question slithered from her mind as Duncan stroked his thumb down the skin; caressing her upper arm with the careworn tips of his fingers. The lingering touch left a prickling aftermath across the skin. Transfixed, Flora did not move, or breathe. She wondered if the writhing heat in her belly had reached her face. Duncan held her pink cheek within his palm and kissed her.

The canvas walls of the tent groaned as though withstanding a gale, then pulled fretfully at their bindings. The wind at Ostagar was a living thing: like a feral Mabari, it wrestled fabric in its teeth and rampaged around the crumbling parapets. Now it howled outside the confines of Duncan's tent and attempted to slide chill fingers through the slits in the canvas. It would be frustrated: there were no gaps in the canvas, no flap for entrance or exit, only a seamless span of fabric that severed the occupants from the alien landscape beyond.

Within the tent, the candles did not flicker, or move at all; each flame hovered static above its wick. The pattern on the blanket was disintegrating; the ochre and crimson embroidery blurring like paint on an artist's palette.

Propped on an elbow he lay above her; the blankets thrust from the bunk to create more room. It was only a single berth and not intended for two. Flora gazed up at him, caught between hesitation and anticipation. She did not know why she felt lightheaded: it was not possible for her to be drunk since her body purified alcohol the moment it touched her tongue. One elbow pressed the mattress beside her shoulder; Duncan's face a few inches above hers.

"Qhira," he said gently, and his eyes were set warm and youthful against the faded flesh. "Do you remember what I said to you before the battle? When we were alone together, here in the tent."

Flora was frustrated by the murky waters in her skull: she knew that she was not intelligent, but her mind did not usually work this slowly. It felt as though she were hauling up an anchor that had been tangled in some underwater debris: the memory took time and effort to retrieve. Duncan smiled at her, patient.

"You said," she replied, the words tentative. "You said that you had overstepped your bounds by kissing me. And that you weren't going to act any further on your - on your desire."

The Warden-Commander inclined his head in acknowledgement. His gaze lingered on the only softness to be found on Flora's sculpted face: the full and pliant mouth.

"Well, little one," he murmured, allowing the weight of his body to press her into the mattress. "I've changed my mind."


AN: Oh dear, lol. Of course this is just a conjuration of the Sloth Demon, but Flora is convinced by it! I tried to put in a lot of clues that something wasn't right (horizontal stripes for the Grey Warden tunic, hahaha, not good for the waistline!) and we also have her spirits trying to penetrate Flora's befuddled mind (mostly her general yelling FOOL at her, lol).

I thought this would be a more interesting way to enter the Fade bit than the traditional fighting the way up the Circle - Flora has a flashback of the fighting but just passes it off as an odd daydream.

It wasn't hard for me to write all this so quick - any Duncan content I just churn out at rapid pace haha. I think he's such a complex character, though I do try and put my own interpretation on things too. I like the idea that he (the real world version) actually recognised that his desire for Flora was inappropriate and stopped it before they went too far. Of course, this is the demon's conjured and twisted version, soooooo... anyway! Next chapter is going to be interesting XD