Author's notes: Hello everyone and thanks for reading! Special thanks to my reviewers, I love you guys!
Extra special thanks to my wonderful beta, Epiphany sola Gratia!
All right, he needed help.
He was manly enough to admit it. He needed help because, really, he had never felt like this before and he absolutely didn't know what to do about it, except for the fact that surely at one point he was going to have to tell her. The thought was enough to make his heart jump all the way up to his throat and his knees turn to jelly, which was not manly, not to mention highly uncomfortable.
He needed advice… girl advice… from girls.
He should ask Leliana. Oh, or maybe Wynne. Leliana was a sure choice: she was a girl and she had loved girls before, so it was a win-win in the advice department. Wynne was… wiser, more experienced… (He did not think "older." That would have just been mean.)
Yes, he should go talk to the ladies. That was an awesome plan. He felt really good about this. It would really go well.
Now, how to broach the subject…
It took him the better part of an hour, turning and returning the flower in his hand, to gather the courage to walk up to her and start talking.
"Here, look at this. Do you know what this is?"
The look she gave him was equal parts hopeful and wary.
"Is that a trick question?" she asked, half serious, and he had to laugh.
He had thought about this for so long. The whole speech was prepared. He even left some room for witty, appropriate improvisation, and she tested him thoroughly, apparently searching for the catch, or waiting for the moment he would screw it up. For the first time, he said everything just right. He wanted to make her feel admired, cherished, appreciated. Somewhere in the middle of all the rambling, he convinced her.
She took the rose, brought it to her nose and inhaled deeply, her eyes half-closing. Then she looked up at him, and the smile she gave him made his heart beat faster and his breath catch. Maker, she was so beautiful.
"I… I feel the same way about you," she finally said, and her eyes widened as if she was surprised at her own words.
They stood there, blushing and smiling, lost into each other's eyes. It was perfect.
For about ten seconds.
Then he made a joke about steamy bits, and the effect was instantaneous. The smile vanished from her face, replaced by an expression of pure anger. She looked like she was ready to throw the flower back in his face, and have it followed by another well-placed punch.
"Excuse me? I hope you're kidding," she said, and her tone was anything but amused.
He got out of it with his usual brilliance and she stomped away while he busied himself studying the clouds. They never spoke of it again.
But she kept the rose.
She was looking at him from across the fire and it was beginning to make him really uneasy. Three times now he had discreetly swept his hand across his face to check if there was something disgusting stuck on it. Four times he had subtly looked down at his clothes to see if anything was amiss. He could not think of another reason why she was so intently fixated on him. What about his hair? Was it his hair? Did his hair look bad?
She finally seemed to come to some sort of inner conclusion and got to her feet. He looked at her approaching with a certain level of wariness. What had he done now? He had been so careful not to say anything all night…
She stopped a few step away from him and then looked at him through her eyelashes, squirming a little on her feet and biting at her lower lip. He stared at her in disbelief. It took all of his hard earned Templar discipline to not burst out laughing. Maker, she could not pull off being flirty! That was when his brain functions came to a crawl, then a screeching halt.
Flirty?
"So…" she said in a seductive purr, swaying her hips enticingly as she walked up to him, "how would you like to join me in my tent?"
Her hand was crawling up his chest. Her hand was crawling up his chest and for the life of him he couldn't think of anything else.
Maker's breath, he was not prepared for this!
"Your tent. Ah."
Oh yes, very smooth. No wonder the lady was swooning.
Sweet Andraste, how was he supposed to explain this to her? Oh, yeah, that's right, he knew how: very awkwardly, with bad jokes and nervous chuckles, and maybe manage to throw in a nice stuttered compliment or two to try and salvage everything.
Her hand was still on his chest, but it wasn't moving anymore, and he silently thanked the Maker for small favours.
"Are you sure?" she asked him, and he nodded wordlessly. Words were not a good idea at the moment. Maybe he had finally learned when to shut up. Huh. Unlikely.
She withdrew her hand and considered him for a moment, arms crossed.
"As you wish," she said finally, but he just had time to catch her satisfied smile as she turned away. He suddenly had the impression he had just passed some kind of test. He had about a second to feel proud of himself.
Then he thought about what she said, how she looked, and the mental images flooded his brain.
They were on their way to Denerim. She had said that Leliana needed help with something she had to do in the city, and they all needed to meet this Genetivi for Arl Eamon; but she had looked at him and smiled, and he knew she was going to make some time so he could go see his sister. She was going to do this for him.
They would sit side by side at night, talking, learning more about each other. That meant he could spend all his nights looking at her, seeing her smile, laugh and bite her bottom lip in that cute little habit she had. He noticed the way she would always play with a lock of her hair when she spoke of her family, the way her hands would run up and down her boots while she listened to him. Talking to her was so easy, so natural, and he wondered why it had been so complicated before.
She was talking to Zevran again.
And Alistair was not staring, and was not trying to lean closer so he could hear, but really, there was nothing else to look at. Nobody else was making any sound and… wait, did he say "massage?"
"Are you saying what I think you're saying?" Kallian asked, her tone carefully devoid of expression.
Zevran leaned closer to her and murmured something in her ear. She stepped back, looked at him…
… and punched him on the nose.
"So you want to have your way with me?" she yelled. "You want to drag me in your tent and do all sorts of depraved sex things to me?"
"Wait, what? No!" Zevran said, sounding stunned, a hand pressed on his nose. "I mean, yes, yes, but I thought you wanted… I mean, all these hours we spent alone together, training, I thought…"
"I train with you because I want to be better, because I want to learn new skills, so that I can focus on my technique in battle instead of on…" She stopped, and pinched the bridge of her nose with two fingers, breathing deeply. "This," she said, motioning between the two of them, "is strictly professional."
"Well, clearly I've misread the signs," Zevran said stiffly.
"Clearly." She turned to leave, and a flicker of something resembling remorse flashed on Zevran's face. He reached out to her.
"Kallian…"
As soon as his fingers brushed against her skin, she whirled and punched him again.
"Don't touch me!"
Zevran watched her go, carefully wiping his bloody nose. Alistair turned to Sten, a huge grin on his face.
"Isn't life wonderful?" he asked, beaming.
Sten groaned.
The next morning, Kallian approached Zevran with a gruff expression, grumbling an apology and handing him some kind of leather gloves he immediately started fussing over, and that was that. They started training again as if nothing had happened. But Alistair would always have that moment, when her fist connected with his face. He would treasure it greatly.
His sister was… not what he had expected.
He remembers how it felt, walking out of that house after having all of his hopes thrown back in his face. He had cherished the promise of family, kept it so close to his heart, and now that it was gone, utterly crushed, a part of him felt… empty. Hollow.
He turned to Kallian, trying to smile in an attempt to save face. She was furious. She had tried to defend him, to explain things to his sister, until Goldanna had insinuated, with poison in her voice, that Kallian must have been his elven servant, only good for carrying his many riches. He had seen her step back then, as if Goldanna had physically struck her. She hadn't looked up after that, keeping her eyes on the floor, only repeating in a tense whisper that they needed to get out.
She was frowning, almost visibly shaking with fury, and it made all his good intentions of putting on a brave face vanish. He had never felt so alone; there had always been this hope, this possibility of family, and he just then discovered how much having a sister would have meant to him. He thought back on the Fade dream he had had of her, trapped in the demon's realm, on how he had clung desperately to this picture of her in his mind. Kallian had saved him from that dream. He hoped she could save him from this nightmare, too.
She was listening to him with an angry expression on her face and he could already hear what she was going to say to him: that he needed to be stronger, that he was a naïve fool. She probably believed that he had to think of himself first because apparently nobody else was going to do that for him. Her gaze shifted, then, and her expression slowly softened, changing from angry to sadly wistful. He turned to see what she was looking at and felt his heart sink.
The closed alienage gates...
It had been quite the scene, when the guard told her she couldn't get in. When he said that the new arl had ordered a purge of the alienage, her face went ghostly pale. There was no way to get in, no way to know who had died, who had survived. She had clutched at the gate bars for a long time, trying to get even just a glimpse inside the alienage, to see someone… something… anything.
Maybe she felt as alone as he did.
"You don't need her, Alistair. You have others who care for you."
Her voice was soft, gentle. He was lost so deep in his despair that he didn't hear what she was trying to say.
"Such as?" he asked.
She looked at him, eyebrows raised, before slapping him on the forehead with her open palm. "I care about you," she said, as if he was the stupidest person for not having figured it out yet.
Maybe he was.
Looking in her eyes, he saw her expression become more determined, "We're in this together, Alistair."
"That we are," he answered, smiling sadly. "I have your back. You know that, right?"
They only had each other now.