i.

Elissa doesn't even have to close her eyes to see the broodmothers in front of her still. They're like a living nightmare. She had fought one, once, one of the poor dwarven women of Branka's group. She still has nightmares about that one, too, and the song… That Maker-awful song.

But when she rolls over at night, her bed is empty save for her.

She scrubs a hand over her face and pinches her cheeks to wake herself up.

"Commander?" Sigrun's cheerful little voice is soft now, worried.

"Ah, just didn't sleep very well," she mumbles back carefully.

Commander. She is their leader, and the whole keep is watching her. Tired, upset, needy? Those are things she can't be in front of people. She so sorely misses her husband, though, feels it beat along her skin. Their letters aren't enough for her.

The dwarf lays a hand on Elissa's arm. "If you need to talk, I'm all ears. I mean, I'm all mouth, too, but I think I can learn to shut up if you need it."

Her lips quirk into a smile. She misses Alistair, but Elissa is slowly learning that this is where she belongs too. She is a Warden, and she has to say, the adventure calls to her as much as it weighs her down.

"It's noth-"

"Look, I get the whole big bad leader thing. You're the Hero of Ferelden! You've saved a whole country from the Blight but here are the dawkspawn and some crazy talking ones and," Sigrun takes a breath, "all I'm saying is that sometimes it's good to talk. We're all Wardens here."

"How about instead we get a drink? My treat."

Sigrun watches her for a second before shrugging. "Okay, but, you don't know what you're getting yourself into here."

They sing drunken songs well into the night that make absolutely no damn sense at all, but it helps to get her mind off of things.

ii.

She has been gone four months and three day, and Alistair is not the least bit ashamed to admit he's been counting off the days. She writes him about once a week, and he's ashamed to admit that he's penned more to her than actually did any of those diplomatic things he's meant to be doing.

He's learning quickly that he's somewhat of a terrible king, if any of the eavesdropping he's done on fellow guests has taught him anything. Oh, and that the servants love him. It's why he gets extra things at meal times. It pays to have come from nothing, apparently.

Or maybe they just take pity on the big, moping moron - Ser Ellen's words, not his. Another one of those eavesdropping moments. He's never quite seen any person turn that shade of red without actually being on fire before.

It's disheartening, he supposes, that he isn't as good at this as he ought to be. He can see the thin lines of disappointment in Eamon's face every time Alistair suggests something that isn't what he would do. But if he wanted to be the king, he should have thrown his name into the hat with the rest of them.

Alistair never wanted this. He wanted her, Elissa. He wanted a life that didn't involve ruling a country he doesn't know how to.

It's disheartening because they're right, and sometimes he dislikes his own wife for pushing him this way and then abandoning him.

"You're being hard on yourself," Teagan says in a staunchly pitying tone of voice.

Alistair makes a face. "There's a reason that he never claimed me, you know. Maybe he always knew I'd be the pathetic one."

Teagan pushes his fork over a nearly empty plate. "I loved my nephew," he begins to say. "But he was not a wise king. Too fanciful, I think. That was his mother in him. She was filled with stories of glory, too."

Alistair's fingers tap along the table top. "I am filled with stories of glory."

"No, you've lived them. There is a difference." The man sighs, looking over at the young king. "You're new to this, practically a child yourself."

Alistair makes another face but he has a point on that. He is young. "Go on, I feel like you have more to say. And why wouldn't you? Everyone has an opinion."

The flickering candlelight casts shadows over Teagan's face. "What has happened that has put you in such a sullen mood? You nearly ruined the hunt yesterday."

"I hate hunting."

Elissa is what happened. More importantly, the letter she had him burn most immediately before anyone else could find out the truth. Talking darkspawn, intelligent darkspawn. The creator of their most recent Blight, and she… She let the thing go. Just let him waltz free like it was nothing, like being a Warden meant nothing.

But he can't say this to Teagan. He can't tell his friend Warden secrets. Maker's breath, he can't tell anyone these kind of secrets, and the one person who he can has barely talked to him and hasn't breathed a word about her return, either.

"You will have to grow up sometime, my king."

iii.

"You're leaving?" Nate asks her as she finishes packing a single bag. There's not much else that Elissa needs to take with her back home.

She pauses to glance over her shoulder, flicking a strand of red hair out of her face. "Let's see, imminent threat to Ferelden taken care of? Check. New Warden recruits? Check. Leaving my second in charge of his old homestead? Check. I am ready to return home."

There's a flicker of emotions over his face that she isn't quite sure where they stem from until he settles on a drawn brown and puckered lips and narrowed eyes. "You're leaving me in charge when I have barely-"

"Out of all these people, there is literally nobody I would trust more than you," she interrupts him, tying off her bag for good. There. That's it. After a moment, she slides her wedding ring back onto her finger. The weight is both foreign and comforting.

His gaze flickers to the movement before he's looking back up at her, and she can swear that there is color in his cheeks. "Your home is here."

"My home is in Denerim," she argues, but there's part of her that doesn't believe that. Her home is with Alistair, and it's with the Wardens. These past few months have taught her that. "I'm still the Warden-Commander, Nate. I'll be back."

He crosses his arms over his chest, that scowl of his taking up residence on his face once more. She smiles as she steps closer to him.

"Your face will get stuck like that," she teases.

"With you gone, perhaps I will finally have time to relax."

Elissa didn't think it possible, after the murder of her family, that she would find a friend in Rendon Howe's son. But as she gives Nate a farewell hug, leaning into his comforting warmth, she realizes that she has. That they're bonded in a way that nobody else can ever understand.

The next time she has to leave her husband, at least she knows she will have family waiting for her.

iv.

Her homecoming is quiet and unannounced, despite the ten letters folded in her bag from her husband this past week. She is the queen, they should be having some fancy party in her honor. But the idea of it makes her stomach turn. Later, she promises herself. Later she will be the queen that Ferelden deserves.

She slips into the castle at Denerim with a sly smile to the guards who happen to be on duty that night. By morning, the whole world will likely know that she's returned to her throne, but for tonight, that doesn't matter.

That doesn't matter.

Her heart pounds in her chest as she makes her way through the twisting hallways until she finally finds herself in their wing, before their bedroom door, and then she pauses. What if he's asleep already? She could crawl into bed and let him wake up with her arms around him, or she could wake him up, or she could - Maker, she could do anything she wants to do because she's home, and she has missed him so ferociously that it's threatening to drown her.

Her fingertips press to the door. Maybe she should just wait until the morning. Maybe she should have written to say she was coming. Maybe the party would have been a better idea.

On the other side of the door, she hears a whimper, and Elissa doesn't bother to stifle her laugh. Four months, and he's probably let her dog sleep with him the entire time.

A bark now, and Alistair's grumbled response that she can't make out.

With a smile, she leans her forehead against the door.

And she knocks.

"It's the middle of the night! Doesn't anyone respect sleep? Especially the king's," he calls out, and she listens to the shuffle of his heavy feet and the good-natured curse he levels at Barkspawn.

With a grin, she knocks again.

"I'm coming! I'm coming, what's the rush, it's not like there's"-the knob turns-"a fire or anything, right?" The door opens. "Or maybe it's just a ghost playing… tricks…"

"You're an idiot," she laughs in his face before throwing her arms around him.

He catches her automatically, tugging her into a bone-breaking embrace before his mouth crashes against hers so imperfectly that she might explode with happiness. His hands cups her face when he manages to break away, fingers sliding through her travel-weary hair.

"Why are you here?"

"I could leave again, if you'd like. Give you time to the slip the mistress out."

The way he's looking at her, like she's a star, like she is the universe, causes a warmth to settle in her body. His hands search her now, as if he's trying to memorize her all over again. Not that she isn't doing exactly the same, letting her fingers wander where her gaze leads.

"I can't even think of a clever and witty response to that," he murmurs, kissing her again. And again. It's short and sweet and leaves her wanting more. His lips brush her cheeks, her forehead, her eyelids.

"You're not as witty as you like to think," Elissa tells him.

Alistair laughs. "I have missed you, dear wife, and your insults. Nobody quite knows how to hurt me like you do."

Her lips touch the corner of his mouth. "I can make it up to you like nobody else can, too."

/

Elissa wakes up groggily the next morning, a stream of sunlight hitting her in the face conveniently. There's a warmth pressed against her bare back, a weight on her waist, and she smiles as she threads her fingers through Alistair's. For the first time in months, she didn't have to drink to keep her nightmares at bay.

Behind her, he stirs a bit, nuzzling into her hair with a sigh. "'m not getting up today."

"You don't get to stop being king," she laughs softly.

"Just one day."

"Afraid not, my love."

His lips brush over her shoulder. "Pretty pretty please?" A kiss presses into the side of her neck. "We can just stay in bed all day. I've earned the rest."

Elissa turns around so that she's facing him. Her mouth eases over his, and she doesn't even care about the morning breath. In fact, she decides right then and there that she's missed it. And the way his hair looks after sex. And how warm his body is against hers.

She breaks the kiss and grins with satisfaction at the groan of disapproval. Before he can say anything, however, she's already pushing him back onto the bed, her hands on his shoulders as she straddles his hips. The groan, now, settles in her belly as her grin turns wicked.

"Oh, if you thought there would be rest involved in staying in bed, you were much mistaken," Elissa tells him.

"Oh no, what will I ever do…"

They don't really leave the room for the next two days. It's the best vacation she's had in years.

v.

"You seem happy," Fergus says to fill up the silence that's settled between the two of them.

Elissa stops and takes a seat on one of the low stone walls in the gardens behind the palace. Her brother takes a seat next to her, stretching out his long legs. She glances at him from the corner of her eye, watching the way the sunlight moves through his reddish hair and thinks that he looks an awful lot like their father in this moment.

A lifetime ago, conversation between them wouldn't be so stunted. She'd know what to say, what joke to make, that would get him to roll his eyes and suck his teeth at her.

"You seem alive," she points out. "What do I have to do to keep in contact with you?"

That brings a smile to his face as he looks at her. "I'm not the one who became some big hero and then the queen, pup."

She almost winces at the use of the nickname but manages to swallow it back. "Yeah, I know. I guess I'm just as unreachable these days."

He rests a hand over hers. "I know you're worried about me, but I am okay. Some days are harder than others, but-"

"I just don't like the idea of you being trapped in that stone tomb with all of their ghosts." A lump forms in her throat, and she tries to breathe through it and can't. She can't, and she doesn't even remember the last time she's cried before.

Fergus leans in, planting a soft kiss on her forehead. "Dearest little sister, it's their ghosts that make it okay. I miss you there, though."

"I miss it, too," she whispers. "But I can't go back. Not yet."

"I know."

vi.

All too soon, Elissa is gone again. They had been planning some party - at Isolde's insistence. Alistair decides it's because Orlesians are strange. A party isn't needed for every little thing, and besides that, he hates the stuffy clothes he's forced to wear and the boring conversation. The only consolation he has is the promise from his wife about the dress she'll be wearing - and what, exactly, she won't be wearing.

But then she's gone, exactly one month after her arrival and two days before this fast-planned ball.

To say it's a drag is an understatement. The woman of the hour is missing, after all.

Warden business, she says. There's a haunted look in her dark eyes when she tells him that, straightening out his shirt for him. She stares at his throat rather than his own gaze, but he sees the sadness that's welling up inside of her. Not because of her reluctance to go. Because of her willingness to leave.

He tastes it on her lips as they say their goodbyes.

Alistair still tastes it now.

"You look forlorn, my friend. Is it because a certain beautiful scarlet queen has gone missing?" The light lilt of Zevran's voice is enough to make Alistair's eye twitch.

It's the hand that pats his bottom gently that has him growling. "Hey! Don't - that isn't for you."

"Her property, then?" The elf's eyes are bright with mischief, a devilishly handsome smirk on his face.

Wait, that isn't what he meant to think.

"How did you even get in here?"

"Oh, you know. You say you are a friend of the King and Queen, that you have helped to save them all from the Archdemon, give a little wink… It is easy." Zevran shrugs. "I am a man of many talents."

"So I have heard," Alistair says grumpily.

They're standing outside of the ballroom on a balcony, and he isn't quite surprised to see the assassin here. And he isn't really that irritated to find himself alone in his company, either. Funny how saving the world together does that sort of thing to someone.

"She sent you, didn't she?" the young king asks after a moment of silence.

Zevran is leaning with his back against the rail, watching the stiff Ferelden nobility drink themselves silly.

"I am offended and deeply hurt that you would think I would not come to see you myself. Here I thought we were good friends."

Alistair squints at him.

"Actually, I was invited to the party, but it seems she has run out on the both of us. She's quite good at that, I hear."

Alistair grunts in return, and he must have done something because the next thing he knows, Zevran is cupping his face and lifting his cheeks up.

"You are quite the sullen puppy without our dear Warden."

vii.

She does not return after her Deep Roads expedition, and she does not tell him of the nightmares the Harvester brings her.

In fact, Elissa spends some time in Vigil's Keep, helping with the repairs alongside of Sigrun. Warden business, she writes to Alistair, and ignores the pain in her heart at the partial lie. He doesn't understand, even though he should. He's a Warden, too, but he is King.

More and more she begins to feel like a parody of what she meant to be.

He threatens her just once. He threatens that he will abandon the throne and come after her, and that will be that.

So Elissa plans to go home to Denerim only until she receives a message about a sighting of Morrigan. Her heart nearly stops. Her breath grows shallow. Her eyes narrow in on the text in her clenched fingers, but she can't seem to actually read the words, not at first.

She's been searching, in her spare moment, even though she knows Alistair would hate it. But she's been searching. Morrigan is her friend. Morrigan has had Alistair's child. Morrigan, Morrigan, Morrigan.

Casting a glance at Barkspawn, who had refused to let her leave without him this time around, she smiles. "Are you up for an adventure, boy?"

/

The King of Ferelden refuses to leave his bedroom for two days after the missive from his wife.

I'm searching for Morrigan.