Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Author's Note: Gift fic written for parystrange, who requested something of her Elyssia Amell and Alistair. Their relationship was described as bittersweet, and I decided to latch onto one plot point that pary mentioned and run with it.

Scar Tissue

"He steps toward her. And instantly, she is falling over the ledge – a frozen, feather-soft corpse. The water rises up to meet her." - Alistair and Elyssia love each other in a world with no mercy for such love.

In the end, it is a broken thing between them. Born of shared duty, forced companionship and constant proximity. The burden of the last. The survivors. The sole bearers of the wardens' legacy.

It is not an easy weight to carry.

They are first together because they must be. Because necessity dictates that their path be shared. Because there is no other guarantee but this.

That they may not die alone.

It is a small comfort. And Elyssia Amell does not recognize when that comfort grows into a desire, and then later, into a need.

Perhaps it is when she witnesses Alistair fight for the poor, possessed Connor. Maybe part of her wishes there had been someone to fight for her as well (so young and so innocent – a common enough tale in the Circle – and how she wishes she could recall her mother's face). Maybe that first inkling of a protector's heart endears him to her just a little. Perhaps a lot.

Maybe it is when she is roused from a nightmare, the Archdemon glinting black and ravenous in her mind, its voice clattering around her thoughts like rain on steel, and her first breathless gasp of pain is met by Alistair's golden gaze. Maybe it is the way his whisper in the night soothes the terrors of her soul, simply because he knows them just as intimately.

Maybe it is the look on his face when she presses his mother's amulet into his bloody palm and closes his fingers around the charm. His hand shakes beneath hers, and even now, Elyssia can recall in perfect clarity the break of his voice and the subtle curve of his lips when he bows his head and whispers his thanks. Maybe it is the way he catches her wrist and holds it, unsure, unable – perhaps even undone – and the hesitant brush of his thumb along her pulse point.

Maybe it is the earnest look on his face as he holds the rose out for her, his words tumbling from his lips in a raw, unpracticed confession that is half earnestness and half unbridled fear. But she takes the rose, quietly, hesitantly, and she does not name that disturbing swell of something treacherous in her heart.

The Circle has taught her well enough the dangers of love. She is no stranger to the wounded heart. And yet…

Maybe it is the way he tells her, unabashed and unexpectant, that he loves her.

Maybe it is the way she swallows her fear and whispers her own answer back.

Eamon tells them of a bastard prince and a needful kingdom. He dresses it up as opportunity and calls it obligation.

In the end, it is a broken thing between them.

Elyssia takes a hurlock's blade just between her third and fourth right ribs when her barrier fails and the closest of her comrades isn't close enough. Her scream splits the night sky, her fingers unlocking from around her staff with a jolt of shock. It falls to the dirt at her feet, useless. She coughs a red cloud into the air, her vision swimming in black, knees buckling.

The last thing she sees is the gruesome, putrid darkspawn gagging on its own filth as a blade sticks out of its gut. It falls to the earth before her, and then a familiar golden visage is suddenly there. A shout, a broken plea.

Her name at some point, fading and distant. And then darkness.

She wakes with her chest wrapped in bandages and Wynne's exhausted face hovering over hers. A 'close call' she names it. The older mage's wizened face turns then, and Elyssia can recognize the remorse in her tone. "I'm…sorry I couldn't do more," the healer says.

Elyssia's brows furrow at the words. She reaches a trembling, aching hand to her chest, wincing at the motion, and lights her fingers along her ruined breast, tears already hot along her lids.

She wonders at what point you stop being called a woman.

Alistair never gives her long enough to dwell on it, because in the privacy of their tent, and the intimacy of their embrace, he lights his lips along her scar and loves it tenderly.

Sometimes she curls her arms around her chest and tries to distract him with her kisses, with the hot swipe of her tongue, the dip of her fingers low on his abdomen.

"Don't", he whispers – partly urgent arousal, but mostly stubborn determination.

She stills beneath him.

He stares down at her in the dim lamplight, and when his fingers tug at her wrist, slowly pulling her arm from her chest, she silences the sob in her throat with a false laugh. She hates the traitorous break in it. "See something you like?" she asks with a raised brow, her tentative bravado teetering on the edge. One misstep and she is plummeting down – deep and irretrievable. She holds her breath and tastes her own desperation.

His smirk is all boyish charm and soft appreciation. "Everything," he says.

She holds a hand over her face so that he doesn't see her crumble.

"I love everything about you," he whispers, dipping his head low so that he can plant his lips to her shoulder. A single, swift, gentle kiss. And then he is moving lower, trailing his love across her slick skin.

"Even that which is gone?" she asks tremulously. Her breath quakes in her chest, her hand still locked over her eyes.

His lips have reached the scarred remnant of her right breast, noticeably smaller than her left now, the skin still an angry red, slowly tinting white around the edges.

She thinks maybe some things never heal.

"All I see before me…is a whole woman. The same one I fell in love with." He kisses her scar, his breath lingering over the rawness of her wounded flesh.

The sound that leaves her is a cracked and delicate thing. He swallows it with his mouth.

They kiss until she is shaking for altogether different reasons.

Her scar presses to his heart the entire time.

"Whoever thought to put me on the throne is a dunce." Alistair kicks a pebble with his armored boot.

Elyssia quirks an amused brow his way, walking beside him. "I wouldn't say that to Eamon's face," she chuckles good-naturedly. Denerim is bustling all around them as the time nears for the Landsmeet. The sun is hot on their backs and across the river, the Royal Palace looms ominously.

Alistair rolls his eyes and sighs. "I'm not king material. I thought that was made clear by my allergy to politics and my ability to turn any conversation into a cheese joke."

She laughs fully this time, and is rewarded with a dashing grin.

His hand finds hers as they walk.

She is suddenly struck with a sharp pang. The image of his form, from behind a crowd of subjects. The steadily growing distance between them. The weight of a nation pressing at their backs and their shoulders are too weak, too frail for such a thing. She has never known how to carry the load of the world. The role of a grey warden was thrust upon her. She had no choice in it. And in this, she can understand Alistair's burden.

She has grown to know, from a young and fragile age, how to keep herself alive. How to hide in shadow and grieve in silence and make herself invisible to the harms of the world. She has learned to survive. She does it even now, when she locks away the part of her heart that wants to pull him outside the city gates, eyes fixed to the horizon, legs bounding with promise, and just run. Far and away and over hills and across oceans. Through the snow and the heat and the bristling wind of lands she dreams of still, places unknown, a world where there is no Blight and no magic and no damned Theirin blood in his veins.

This is how she survives.

But it is a slow dying that has tainted her heart since the first mention of his royal ascension. And she is still learning how to fight for others. Still learning how to put that which is greater and dearer before her own desires, her own brittle heart.

And whether she will ever admit it aloud or not, she knows – because how could she not – that this dream, this momentary fancy of affection, this silly little love affair (she calls it this because it is easier, and she isn't brave enough to weather the truth), she knows the end is nearing.

The world is too demanding, and the need too great, and her heart too resigned to be selfish in this.

He will be a king, and she will be a warden, and neither of them will be lovers.

She grips his hand tighter with the thought.

"Hey."

His voice catches her attention. She looks up, finds him staring at her, and discovers that they have stopped walking. She doesn't notice her hand resting over her faded scar until her fingers curl into a fist against her chest. She takes a ragged breath in. "You have a duty, Alistair," she says breathlessly. "And it isn't to me."

Elyssia remembers the winter of her fourteenth year. The Circle is especially cold, the mold tinting white and crisp on the stone walls, her breath a constant wisp of a cloud. Extra robes and blankets do little to warm them, even with the ever-present glow of fire. Something in the dank air sinks the chill into their bones, grips at their marrow as though trying to warm itself. As though the winter has abandoned its soul out on the coast and is taking shelter in their meager, worn, and deadened tower.

It is a winter that has them howling like wolves, all cracked skin and bloody lips (though this is not unfamiliar and 'cold' is just another way to say 'templar' in the Circle).

Elyssia finds a sparrow curled up in an abandoned nest, stuck in the thin sliver of what stands for a window in the stone wall of the library. Its tiny form is frozen solid, curling in on itself, alone. There are no sounds of other birds for many hours and it is many miles out to the nearest tree, the nearest haven. She wonders if the poor thing has died in its sleep. She wonders if that is maybe a mercy.

She wonders if some mate, or mother, or offspring, has come looking for the thing. Finds it dead and still, scentless, a feathered gem of swirling white and tan, flecks of brown dotting its tiny corpse. So small it wouldn't even fill her palm.

She reaches for it, but the window is just high enough, and the wind just strong enough, and her fingers just numb enough, that when she touches the brittle twigs of its nest, hand creeping upward to curl around the small bird, the nest tips. Falls straight through the sliver of stone and down into the water where she cannot follow. She doesn't even hear it on the wind.

She stands there for an indeterminable amount of time, just breathing, fingers still curled along the edge of the window, blinking furiously in the silent cold.

She goes to bed that night dreaming of tawny wings and black eyes glinting in the light. It is the last time she wonders what is beyond the Circle's walls of stone. She knows now. It is only a long fall and a hard stop. It is only the calling of the dead.

She was never meant to fly.

Alistair pulls her to him without warning, wrapping his arms around her form. She clutches to him tightly, without knowing why it matters so much that he not feel her shaking.

"Stop," he breathes into her hair. "I don't….want this. Please."

She swallows back that harsh slice of need and closes her eyes, breathing in the heady scent of his leather tunic. "It is…what is," she mutters into his shoulder.

He holds her tighter.

Their small, frozen corpses tip over the ledge.

There is nothing there to catch their falling forms.

"Do you ever think about what you'd be like if you weren't a Grey Warden?" he asks, prodding the campfire with a stick. He grins at the spark that flashes at the motion.

Beside him, Elyssia silently treasures this small, tender moment of him. Locks it away in a heart too brittle and worn for such things. "Of course." She doesn't say more. Because 'more' would equate to having never met him and that isn't something she wishes to linger on.

Alistair quirks a brow her way, holding his stick off from the fire. "Yeah? Well, what's your prediction? First Enchanter? Diabolical blood mage? Boring library attendant? What?" He laughs, and she is sure it is to cover his trembling anxiety. The crown is a shadow always at his heels. The coronation is not far off. There is only an Archdemon between them now, and the faint rebellion buried deep in their hearts. "Come on, what's in the hypothetical – yet decidedly impossible – future of Elyssia Amell?" He shifts excitedly, if not a little stiffly, in his seat next to her on the log, stabbing his stick into the dirt at their feet and forgetting it instantly.

There's a moment that comes to mind. She is nine years old and Jowan is seven. They are huddled in their quarters, curled beneath the blankets of her cot, pushed up in the corner. She spreads her palms, face-up, and he watches, entranced, with bated breath, as she lights a flame along the curve of her hand. It is momentary. Barely enough to truly call it a flame but nonetheless the light is there. Jowan's excited squeal is loud enough for her to clamp her hand over his mouth, her skin still hot with the remnants of the flame, and he stares at her wide-eyed. They watch each other in startled silence. And then she remembers to breathe and her hand is drawn back and everything in her is telling her that something is born in this moment.

But the night passes easily enough, and their silent, stealthy meetings under candlelight and blanket-cover only manage to continue for three more years. And then age sets in. A sense of maturity she calls it. 'Cowardice', Jowan calls it. Elyssia doesn't care. Because now the magic is suddenly, inexplicably, real. It isn't a light show or a parlor trick. It's heat and pain and intensity.

She thinks back on the rebellion at the Circle and wonders, if she and Alistair would have met not as fellow wardens but as mage and templar. As threat and the responding quell. She wonders if she might have died beneath his blade. If she might have been one of the lost, the forsaken, the abominations. She wonders if he would have struck her down.

She is silent long enough to worry him, and so he reaches a hand to hers, wraps his fingers around her stiff, chilled ones. He eyes her questioningly.

"I think…" she begins, eyes drifting over the spark of fire, gaze fixing to the dark surrounding woods where she finds a strange comfort. "I think I would be dead," she answers honestly.

Alistair doesn't respond. It takes him several seconds, but then he is clearing his throat, his other hand moving to her jaw, turning her face toward his.

They sit staring at each other for a long time, his golden gaze on her own dark one.

Slowly, hesitantly, his hand winds into her black hair and edges her closer. They are a breath apart when he sighs against her lips. "I would have found you," he whispers. "Somehow."

She opens her mouth as though to speak but any words have already died in her throat. She reaches a hand up to brace along his chest. Beneath her touch, through even the chill of his armor and the thickness of his tunic, his heart beats wildly.

"And I would not have you die," he breathes against her lips.

She closes her eyes and imagines that it is true. That in some cross-universe, some possible past, some dream-realm of theirs – that warden or not – he would be her constant. Her ever-present. It's a beautiful thought, to be sure. There's something comforting and endearing about it. Something safe.

Their lives are anything but.

And maybe that's why she understands that in this world, this time, this possible future, they must be wardens. Because in any other world, they would live their lives unmet.

Short lives they would be. Solitary. Unfulfilled. Without purpose.

And ever lacking.

Elyssia opens her eyes to his clear ones. "In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death…" She trails off pointedly. And when his hand slips from her hair she aches at the sudden loss.

"Sacrifice," he whispers back, face pained.

She nods, dark hair falling over her pale cheek when she dips her head low and brings their joined hands to her lips. Kissing his knuckles, she pulls in a shaky breath. "We have already sold our souls, my love."

He doesn't move for many long moments.

And when she lowers their hands and glances back up to him, she finds his gaze on the fire. Shadows lick across his face and cast him in slanted light.

It is a face she will remember for all her years.

Especially at her darkest.

She smiles at him, and in a room full of teyrns and arls and banns, they are suddenly, agonizingly, alone. "Your Majesty." She bows, eyes grazing the floor, hands bunching into fists at her sides. She takes too long to rise and she knows this, but looking at the floor is easier than looking at him and she is too lovesick to fight any longer, when she knows it is a losing war.

The world conspires to rend them apart and she must admit it is doing a thorough job of it.

"Please, Elyssia, you don't…" He stops, lip caught between his teeth. His eyes glance left, then right, a quick, barely perceptible sweep of the room. He sighs. And he has never looked so tired to her then. His brilliant, golden armor has never looked so dull. His eyes and his lips and his hands have never looked so not-hers. "You don't have to address me so," he finishes, a low utterance. "You of all people."

The air is stilted and thick between them, and how she longs to reach for him. She knows he must feel it too, because his hands twitch at his sides and his shoulders shift, just barely, for only a moment, as though he is ready to throw the throne to the damned and embrace her before the whole wide world, ready to run off with her to those vast hills and far oceans she had dreamed of once. Ready to smell the salt sweetness of seas unexplored, and the rich tartness of forests uncharted.

Ready to greet the earth with her, in one form or another, where their names would not be known and their strength would not be needed.

But that is not this world. And that is not this life. And they both know now that it is futile.

She may love him with all the force of her beaten, brittle heart but it is not enough. Will never be enough.

But it is all she has.

She manages a sad smile, never reaching her eyes, shaky and half-lilting and speaking of heartache that does not go quietly into the night. "This is the sacrifice we knew was coming."

He opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. "That doesn't make it any easier."

She swallows thickly, chest rising with the pain of her strained breaths. "No," she agrees, soft and aching. "It doesn't."

"I'll always love you," he says suddenly, forcefully, with a face full of honesty and a stance full of unrepentance.

She sucks in a breath at the words, because they are so intimate and dear to her own heart. Because she hears them in her dreams every night. Because they sleep on her tongue and wake with her breath. Because they are every bit a part of her as he is.

She doesn't think she could ever not love him.

And somehow, that makes this easier. That makes her strong enough to walk away.

She turns from him before he sees her tears and it isn't until she is outside the palace walls, the uproarious celebration in the main hall only a distant thrum to her ears, the bright sun blaring and stinging against her wet eyes as she throws her gaze to the sun – and how she yearns for blindness, if only for this moment, if only to stop seeing his golden, yearning face – that she remembers to breathe again.

Her eyes stare long into the sun and she finds that she can survive even this.

Though not unmarked.

Years later, when the wardens are invited to dine at the Royal Palace, a fully replenished and revived order, Elyssia finds that her ability to breathe is just as impaired as that last night they shared together, on the eve of his coronation.

Her seat at the grand table is not arranged beside his, and as the banquet progresses, and the toasts are made, and the music is played, she finds her gaze drifting further and further down the table to him. She locks eyes with him finally.

They share a moment of halted silence across the room. They have become capable practitioners of silent yearning, of masked desperation. Theirs are always the hearts of terrified, starved lovers. Lost in the noise. A chasm between them and not enough air.

Later that night, when the wardens are bidding their farewells, and the rowdy night of laughter and drink and joyous uproar is dying down, they find each other in the entrance hall. His hands are clasped behind his back, and hers are still at her sides.

"Warden Commander," he greets, smiling with an ache that speaks of all too present longing.

It is a warm smile nonetheless. And Elyssia can't help but stare in abject wonder at him. His hair has grown out, tied back by a string of thin leather, his beard just the slightest bit fuller, the lines around his eyes just the slightest bit deeper. But it is the same golden gaze, the same disarming smile, the same promising glint in his eye.

She stares, transfixed. Her efforts to keep her distance have all suddenly been for naught. She is weak before him in ways she has always been, will always be. "I've missed you," she whispers, before she realizes the words are out of her mouth.

He blinks at her, smile faltering somewhat.

They stare at each other for what must have been moments but might have been millennia, what might have been the far stretch of a breath in the wake of their flooded hearts.

He steps toward her.

And instantly, she is falling over the ledge – a frozen, feather-soft corpse. The water rises up to meet her. She has no wings to spread.

She is all too familiar with drowning.

His look of surprise at her step back makes her heart clench painfully in her chest. He stills before her, face once hopeful and charming, now resigned and defeated. Her tongue is too thick in her mouth and her throat is too tight and the way her scar burns is not earthly or right. Her hand finds the old wound on her chest easily enough.

His gaze flickers to the motion.

And then it is like the world moves again.

His face sets dim and knowing. His smile is a tender, beautiful thing, though small and cheerless as it is.

She remembers how much she loved him – still does – as though the knowledge is the very breath and power of her lungs, as though it is the blood in her veins and the pulse of her heart, as though she is her love for him. So long as she lives, so will it. And that will have to be enough.

Elyssia takes a deep breath, straightens her shoulders, and steps up to him.

His eyes widen imperceptibly, never leaving hers.

She stretches out a palm and watches as he takes it instantly, without question. His hand is warm and familiar in hers. She remembers how it once felt upon her ruined chest.

"It is…good to see you, Your Majesty." Pride swells in her when her voice does not crack.

Alistair peers at her for a moment longer, his brows furrowed in thought, his gaze intent and unsure on hers. And then he is releasing a long, slow breath, eyes drifting down to their joined hands. "Are you well?" he asks lowly, a hesitant breath.

She manages a small smile, her other hand moving to cover his own. "I am well enough."

He keeps staring at their hands, and she knows that by now he must have noticed the absence of a ring on her finger, just as she has noticed the absence of a Queen by his side.

They have only ever lost themselves to each other. There is nothing left to give another.

She wonders if it is something to mourn, the loss of their hearts, the certainty of their never returning.

When her fellow wardens call to her, she releases his hands. He lets her. They blink uncertainly at each other, breathing harshly in the slowly emptying hall.

She thinks of the searing pain of a sword between her ribs. She thinks of a dead swallow. She thinks of a muted campfire and the dawning, inevitable acceptance of sacrifice. Sacrifice that is heart-torn and soul-wrecked.

Even as she leans in to brace her trembling lips against his cheek, and even as she sighs into his warmth, and even as she tears herself away and doesn't look back – her hand finds its way to her scar, bunching in the material of her tunic.

She thinks maybe some things never heal.

She carries it with her still.

And in the end…

In the end.

It is no longer a broken thing between them.