Like the coat of some exotic cat; the cabin interior was cast in dappled patches of light and shadow. The moon slid in slender fingers beneath the ill-fitting door, while the guttering candle flickered an inconstant aura. Lake Calenhad was so placid below them that the ship could have been gliding south through undisturbed air; the water caressed the hull with gentle familiarity. A northerly wind breathed life into the sail, as though encouraging them to leave its domain.

Little disturbed the reverent silence, scholars made peaceful neighbours. Footsteps on the deck overhead gave the cabin a subterranean feel: a wooden hollow nestled in a bank of earth.

Now it seemed that nothing could delay the inevitable. Flora had escaped the instructor's interrogation and avoided Templar imprisonment; she had determinedly navigated the Circle ship under cover of darkness to seek out her brother-warden's company. There was no lock to the door, but Alistair had positioned a sturdy oak chest between them and the rest of the world. He hoped fervently that Duncan's ghost would leave them be: that the shade of their dead commander would not lurk in the corner, watching them with dark and thoughtful eyes.

Yet even if he was, it would not have stopped Alistair. His need was more potent than guilt or battle-weariness, the exhaustion from earlier replaced with a deep-rooted urgency. He had to restrain himself from crossing the span of the cabin in three impatient steps: as much as he wanted to join her, he also wanted to savour the sight of her waiting expectant on the bunk. The young man was certain that he would never again see a sight comparable to his sister-warden: sculpted artistry clad in antiquated linen and woollen socks. In the threadbare gloom of the cabin the light found her face and she was resplendent.

Alistair found himself in motion: his body had rebelled at the delay. He crossed the floorboards in a heartbeat, sinking before Flora like a devotee in supplication. His hands settled on her hips, palms pressing the fabric; he could feel the heat of her skin through the linen. She rested her slender arms on his shoulders, fingers curling against the collar of his shirt.

Leaning forward, Alistair's lips found her neck: pressing a kiss below her ear. Her skin was warm, and damp where the wet hair had clung to it. He heard Flora's breath catch in her throat and the sound sent a rush of blood southwards, rapid enough to leave him dizzy. Wanting to hear her again, he kissed the length of her neck with lingering purpose; reluctant to let his lips stray far from the skin. He could feel her shivering within her nightgown, small breasts shuddering beneath the linen as her breath came quick and shallow. He made no attempt to hide his own arousal: given its size and prominence, it would have been a futile endeavour anyway. His mouth explored Flora's throat in slow reverence, tongue measuring the heady throb of her pulse. She let out a small animal sound beside his ear, fingers clenching into his shoulders as though he were already moving within her.

A red veil descended over Alistair's world as the civilised shell of his mind split in two. In that moment he would not have been able to recall his own name if questioned. A swift, ungentle motion later and Flora was supine on the bunk beneath him, her arms wound around his neck. He grasped a fistful of fabric and hauled the nightgown up around her thighs; she was wrestling the buttons of his shirt free.

"Eh," she said suddenly, her voice caught somewhere between dazedness and dismay. "Wha- ?"

Later, Alistair would be ashamed by the length of time it took for him to come to his senses; to uncurl his fingers and lift himself off her. The crimson veil dissipated and the cabin came back into focus: the lantern at a guttering ebb. He felt like a Mabari leashed in sight of a rabbit, the blood surging hot and rampant through his veins.

Flora looked freshly bedded, her hair an eruption and her nightgown in disarray. Her cheeks were still flushed from his attentions but her eyes were wide and distraught, and fixed to the south of his shoulder. Alistair looked down, and saw the tail of a dark and linear bruise protruding beyond the border of his collar. It was a souvenir of the ill-fitting breastplate he had borrowed from the Templars: one of several.

She reached out to push the shirt aside, her eyes following the bruise as it cut a swathe across the muscle. Her mouth turned down at the corners as the loosened fabric also revealed a mesh of angry violet, where the chainmail had been compacted into the skin.

Before everything else, Flora was a mender. She shot him a swift and appalled glance, unbuttoning the remainder of the shirt.

"It's nothing, Flora," he said, voice hoarse from the ebb of desire.

Her pale eyes darted to his once again, then returned to the battered terrain of his chest. His collarbone was mottled blue and black; the line of his breastplate etched in red where it had dug in. Flora drew in an unsteady inhalation, for once, not distracted by the rounded delineation of muscle.

"You should've said somethin'," she replied in a small voice, head bowed to his collarbone. The air near her face was suddenly gilded: she had exhaled against his skin, working the aether with her fingers.

Alistair heard the tremor in her words and was astonished: none of the marks had broken the skin. None were really substantial enough to be deemed wounds.

"Flora," he said softly to the top of her head, wondering if there was more to it than just some bruising. "Flo. It's not serious."

She moved her lips to his shoulder, fingers following the line of the linear bruise. Alistair could feel her hand shaking against the muscle, her breath emerged unsteady. He watched her work her way across the breadth of his chest, then down the taut plane of his abdomen: in other circumstances it might have doubled as a caress, but Flora had now donned her mender's mantle.

"I should've been there to shield you," she said to his armpit, the words muffled. "When you were fighting the Sloth demon in the Fade. That was my job: Duncan gave it to me."

Alistair could remember Duncan's words clearer than Duncan's features. His commander had issued his final instruction at their last meeting in the mortal world. your sister will shield you in battle and keep you safe. I want you to do the same for her when you're not in battle.

"Flo, these aren't wounds from the battle - or at least, the demon didn't give them to me."

Flora looked up at him, her brow furrowed. Alistair realised that he had not in fact grown used to her face and he most likely never would: that it still had the power to knock him from his feet like a rogue wave.

"They're from my armour," he continued, following the curve of her ear with his fingertip. "A breastplate leaves marks, and worse ones if it's not fitted properly. I borrowed it from the Templars, remember? You couldn't have shielded me against this even if you had been there."

Flora had not known the toll charged by steel and iron for protection: after all, she had no need for armour

"Oh," she breathed, the rigidity of her body waning. "Maybe you shouldn't wear armour, then."

Alistair laughed, the sound absorbed by the cabin's wooden walls. His ribs no longer ached at sudden motion.

"What, fight naked? Like an Alamarri clansman?"

He saw the corner of Flora's mouth quirk upwards.

"No-oo. You could wear… a hat."

Her thumb traced the outline of a dappled bruise near his navel: the discolouration began to melt away as though diluted. Alistair drew in a deep lungful, summoning the disapproving insect stare of the Chantry Mother at the monastery in an effort to subdue his arousal. Although his sister-warden was mending him in her usual manner, the proximity of her mouth and fingers to his skin was an exquisite form of torture. He fixed his eyes on a knot of wood on the wall: a whorl that resembled a large and lopsided thumbprint.

"Just a hat?"

"Mm."

It was as though they were not in the midst of a national crisis, or the sole survivors of an infamous and ancient military order. They could have been any young man and woman in a tavern, or near a market stall; exchanging frivolous, tentatively flirtatious conversation. Alistair realised that he had not spared a thought for the Blight since she first crept barefoot into his quarters.

He thrust this to the back of his mind; smoothing a rampant arc of Flora's hair against her head. The mottled array of bruises and contusions had vanished, the flesh of his chest an unblemished swathe of olive, save for the scars that predated her. As she returned upright, he saw her grimace: face creasing in a momentary flinch of pain.

"Is your knee hurting?"

Flora nodded glumly. Seated hips touching on the bunk, they gazed down at the linen-covered bend in the limb.

"Mm. It didn't like all the steps."

The journey between the apprentice floor and the Circle kitchens was six flights: there had been a time when she had been able to run down and back up the stairs without pause.

Alistair reached down and lifted the hem of the nightgown with newfound assurance. The linen pleated around her thigh as he pushed it up, revealing the sore pink dome of her knee. Flora had removed the strapping before her bath; the flesh below was visibly swollen.

"Well, I'm sorry that I can't return the favour and fix it, Flo," he said quietly, his fingers settling into the hollow dents of the joint. "By Andraste, I wish I could. But this might help with the swelling."

Flora watched him work the sore flesh of her knee; admiring the broad span of his man's hands, blacksmith's hands, she thought. Yet despite their size and palpable strength, his fingers moved against the knotted muscle with surprising tenderness. It was not merely an excuse to touch her, he was wholly focused on his task, head bowed and a faint furrow across his brow. The lantern on the chest gave a last writhe of flame and then expired. They were surrounded by a rich and earthy darkness.

"When I worked in Eamon's stables," Alistair's voice slid from the shadow above Flora's head, "I used to do this for the horses there. They'd come in limping after the knights rode them too hard. Some idiots used to gallop them over frozen mud, cobblestones… if they went lame, they'd be sold and I- well, I didn't want them to be sent off to a stranger. I knew them all."

Alistair's words were low and distant; he did not revisit his childhood often. As he spoke he rotated his thumb slowly in the hollow of her knee, working out the knots in the muscle. The touch was confident: he knew what he was doing.

"The horses must have missed you when you left Redcliffe and went to the- " Flora hesitated, unsure whether it was monosterly or monastery, "- the Templar school."

Alistair half-smiled, hand now lying idle on her calf.

"Probably the only ones that did miss me," he said easily, face hidden in the shadow. "Ha."

Flora's small hand found his face, her palm framing the uncompromising slant of his jaw. A dim aura, like a winter sunset, clung to her fingertips; remnants of her earlier mending. It gave off enough light for her stare to adhere to his: light grey meeting green flecked hazel. Alistair exhaled unsteadily, not taking his gaze from her face.

"I have something for you," he heard himself say. "Flora."

Simultaneously he wondered if Flora could feel the acceleration of his heart: if its quickening revealed itself as a rhythm against her skin. After all, earlier that day she had felt Irving's pulse from a hundred feet below.

Even if she could, Flora's enigmatic face betrayed nothing. She let her hand drop from his cheek; the back of her palm rested on her thigh. Thus released, Alistair rose and crossed the cabin in three steps, to where he had piled his baggage in a haphazard mound. He retrieved his pack and reached an arm aside the sagging mouth, groping around with a feverish determination.

At last he withdrew a leather tube that trailed a slender braided strap. Flora recognised it as a map-case, crafted in a cylindrical shape to house rolled-up parchment. She wondered, somewhat perplexed, if he were going to give her a map. She quite liked maps - with their scribbled coastlines and ink-flecked forests - but she could not read them. She used the winds and the skies to angle herself when necessary, not compass and diagram.

Her brother-warden did not open the map case, but turned his attention to the shadowed lantern. The wick in the expired candle still held a glow: Alistair used its last moments to light a second stick of wax. The new candle burned full and bright, it was beeswax, not cheap tallow. The wooden walls and floorboards soaked up the renewed light like bread. Flora, wanting to be helpful, exhaled: the air shone a little brighter.

Turning back to her, Alistair narrowly avoided hitting his head on the rafters. The ship's larboard cabin was not made for someone of his dimensions. Any chamber - regardless of size - seemed to shrink in his presence: he took up space like a sizable piece of furniture.

Alistair seated himself on the berth beside Flora, and she noticed his shoulders move in a deep inhalation. The candlelight outlined the solemn profile of his face: the usual humour had been replaced with a steely, steadfast focus. He held the map case in both hands, strap dangling to the floorboards. They both looked at it for a long moment. The embroidered stitching was elaborate and not Ferelden in design.

Flora never saw the need to break a silence, and so Alistair spoke first. His voice was quiet enough that she needed to focus on the words lest they slip away on the draught.

"Remember when we were in Lothering?"

The town's name pressed a cold finger of dread to Flora's spine. She shivered: recalling the strange stagnation of its occupants: aware that they lay in the direct path of the Darkspawn horde and yet oddly reluctant to leave. The desperate crowded the pews and benches of the Chantry; the town itself ringed with a barricade that would keep out refugees but little else. Like a man out walking in his funeral shroud, the town seemed to exist halfway between life and death.

I told them to leave, she thought to herself, gloomily. They knew they were in danger.

Did anyone actually leave, though?

"I saw this growing near the Chantry," Alistair continued softly, his fingers moving restlessly along the map-case's length. "I was shocked that it had even survived this far into winter. It was the only one on the bush."

He then grimaced, realising that his disordered thoughts made little sense when voiced out loud.

Flora, who was used to fragmented half-conversations within her own mind, admired the proud jut of his nose: like the helm of a ship, she thought fondly. The lantern transmuted his hair into a tousled mass of gold and richened the warm olive of his complexion. She needed assistance from the Fade to manifest light, but her brother-warden radiated it by virtue of colouring and character; as though a brilliant, albeit oddly-shaped sun had set on the berth beside her.

"And I thought - well. I knew the town was in danger of being overrun by Darkspawn," he continued, his eyes fixed on the map-case as though he could see through the leather. "I couldn't just leave it behind. The colour… it reminded me of your hair."

Alistair turned the top half of the map case, and it came loose in his hand. There was no roll of parchment inside, nor anything vaguely cartographical in nature. He withdrew a single-stemmed rose, torn at the root and moulting leaves. It was several days past its prime; the wine-red petals were blanched and curling at their edges. Any thorns had been clumsily scored off with a pocket-sized blade.

"We're at war," he said, softly. "With a terrible and merciless enemy. We're outnumbered and surrounded by foes on all sides. The Wardens have been murdered and the Darkspawn have taken the Wilds. I should be despairing, but…"

Alistair trailed off: it seemed blasphemous to speak it out loud.

I've never felt so at ease. So content.

The world makes sense to me now, though it should be chaos.

"Such a rare and beautiful thing amongst all the misery," he said instead, returning his eyes to the rose and to the tangible. "It seems right that you should have it."

The words emerged with weight and purpose. Alistair did not dare to look at her: it was the closest he had come to

shaping the maelstrom of joy and peculiar terror within his belly into coherency.

From the tail of his eye, he saw her hand move to lift the overblown bloom.

"A flower for sweet Flora," he said lightly, aware that she had not spoken a word since he had sat down. "I'm sorry - decomposing foliage isn't a very nice early Satinalia present."

Yet when Alistair allowed himself a swift, sideways glance, he saw no evidence of decay on the bloom. The faded petals had richened to cherry-red, while small, sprouting leaves replaced those that had wilted. Flora looked down at the renewed cutting, mildly - but not overly - astonished. She had never pretended that she knew how her magic worked; only that it did so in strange and inexplicable ways.

Alistair also stared at the rose, resting in the loose cage of Flora's fingers. Each beat of his heart felt like a physical blow striking his ribs. In contrast to her flawless face, his sister-warden's hand seemed deceptively ordinary: the fingers were small and the nails bitten; there were fawn-coloured freckles on her knuckles.

"Thank you," she said, and then looked up at him, her grey irises inscrutable as a Bannorn mist.

Alistair heard himself responding in a stumbling rush of words. He was not a bard and had no claim to eloquence; but he was determined to get them out so that they existed in reality and not merely in his heart.

"I like you, Flora," he said, and repeated it. "I like you, and I… I think that I have for a while. But- " here, he hesitated. "But - I think that you need more time. Duncan only died a- barely a month ago. And there was something between you, wasn't there?"

Alistair looked at the rose in her palm, the rich crimson of the petals in stark contrast to her skin. He thought of roots, and the whitish-green curls of new growth in soil.

"The beginnings of something," he continued, quietly. "And I don't think you're free from it, yet."

He remembered her words from the tavern in Lothering, during a conversation that had taken an unexpected tangent towards intimacy.

I have been kissed, she had said.

Flora was still looking at him. There was a rawness to her gaze that strengthened Alistair's resolve; a wistfulness that confirmed his suspicions.

"I'll wait," he said, his voice low and surprisingly steadfast. "I'll wait for you, sweetheart. You can take as much time as you need to mourn him. I'll be here."

The fingers of Flora's free hand found his: they knotted together and clenched in the familiar grasp. Her head tilted to the side; he was too tall for it to rest on his shoulder and so she leaned her brow against his upper arm. They sat together on the bunk, hand-in-hand in companionable silence.


AN: Haha I had to slow things down between them - they don't kiss properly until Satinalia (after the temple of sacred ashes journey) and they don't sleep together until the return to Ostagar! And since I wanted to keep that original timeline in this version, I needed to find a way to turn the heat down a little :P

Also, Alistair isn't wrong - despite the fact that there's all this chemistry between them, she has a lot of unresolved emotions about Duncan. Shakespeare said it best: the course of true love never did run smooth!

Merry Christmas! Xxx