That You May Always Remember Me

Chapter 6

"We're friends"

There was enough wood in the camp that Viola managed to start a fire. The wolves laid nearby, watching her closely. Their stare made her uneasy and she felt like she was their captive. If that woman truly was the Hero of Fereldan then surely she wouldn't let the animals bring harm to anyone in the party, right? But she didn't look like a hero and she claimed not to know Alistair. Suddenly the Inquisitor thought it may not have been the best idea to let him wander the woods alone with her. She sat next to Cole on a log in front of the fire. "That spirit told you something. What was it?"

Cole fumbled with his own hands as he tried to find the words. "She fell through the hole."

"You told me that." The Inquisitor was growing impatient and Cole knew it. He inhaled deeply and explained as best he could.

OOOOOOOOOO

Alistair kept pressure on his lip, trying to stop the bleeding, but all he accomplished was getting his hand red and sticky. Dry twigs and leaves crunched under his boots as he walked through the forest alone and squinted at the trees. He was pretty sure he'd been here before. That bush looked familiar. Cursing under his breath he stomped forward in a random direction. The sun was setting quickly and he was walking in circles.

He stumbled into a clearing where a small lake sparkled in the last bit of daylight left. Due to the falling darkness he didn't notice that Elissa sat by the edge of the water until he almost stepped on her. She stiffened and sniffled, and he was shocked to find tears in her eyes before she turned her face away. What did she have to cry over? He was the one who got punched in the face! It was exactly that sting on his lip that reminded him to fight his instinct and leave her alone. He moved a few paces away and found some smooth stones to skip across the pristine lake while she stifled her emotions as quietly as possible. After a while, her voice, still laced with sadness, carried over to him.

"I woke up in the Anderfels, not knowing who I was or how I got there. I wandered helplessly until I found this tiny little town where this woman saw me and took me in. She fed me and nursed me back to health. When I finally asked her if she knew who I was, I realized that she thought I was simple. She took care of me because she pitied me. As soon as I could I left and walked until I reached another town." Alistair glanced over and saw her eyes still sparkled as she stared intently at the rippling water. "There, I worked odd jobs until I earned enough money for a halfway decent weapon and since then I've mostly lived outside of society, depending only on myself."

"You couldn't remember anything?" He couldn't hold back the exasperated question, though he knew the answer he'd receive.

eHe

She shut her eyes tightly. "I've gotten flashes, images, feelings, but nothing that offered any information about who I am or where I'm from. Eventually I stopped trying to find those answers."

A stab struck Alistair's heart as he threw the last stone in his hand and watched it plop and sink. She had been out there, alone and suffering, and he stopped looking for her. Of course she gave up hope; from her perspective it must have seemed that anyone from her old life didn't care if she was still alive or else they'd have found her years sooner. How could he have ever claimed he loved her?

Her voice stopped him from dwelling on his own guilt as she continued to explain her past. "I found the wolves just before I crossed the border into Orlais."

"And you joined their pack?" he half smiled at his own joke and noticed she did as well, though she continued to stare straight ahead.

"There were a lot fewer of them then. Their hunting grounds had been taken over by humans and many of them were on the brink of starvation." She laughed slightly. "We helped each other, I suppose."

He walked over and sat beside her, sighing heavily. "Why didn't you ever settle into one of the towns you stopped at?"

She shrugged. "I just never felt like I belonged there. I guess I was always searching for a place that felt… right." Her blue eyes finally turned and met his. "I still haven't found it yet."

Another stab, and Alistair had to look away to keep breath in his lungs, but he knew he had to push forward. There were so many questions left unanswered and for whatever reason Elissa seemed willing to talk now. When they had first met, she saw him as a threat, but now she was explaining all she knew of herself to him. He wasn't sure what had changed. Was she starting to remember him? Or did that kiss affect her as much as it had him? "You said…" he tried to piece the information together. "You said the spirit looked like me?" She nodded hesitantly. "Does that mean…"

"I remember you?" Her pink lips frowned. "No, I'm sorry; I don't. I have seen your face before, though… In dreams." Alistair inhaled sharply. "It was just that face… not doing anything, just looking at me and… smiling. I don't know why that spirit looked like you…"

"Because it was a spirit." Viola stepped out of the blackness that now surrounded the lake with one of Elissa's wolves at her side. The beast quickly ran to its master and began licking her hand. "You've been gone a long time," Viola explained. "We came to make sure you were still alive. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, it just sort of happened."

Alistair crossed his arms and watched the Inquisitor expectantly. "I won't mind if you have any sort of explanation for all of this."

The Inquisitor took in a breath and leaned her head back. "The first thing you need to understand is that our world is very different from the fade. Spirits who cross over don't always understand how things work here. Our particular spirit couldn't figure out how to communicate with us. But if there's one thing spirits understand it's emotion, and she apparently got plenty of it from the two of you." Viola looked at Elissa, who sat still and silently took it all in. "That's why she was drawn to you after coming through the Rift."

"She said the spirit looked like me to her," Alistair chimed in. Elissa broke eye contact with the Inquisitor and looked at his shoes.

"That's not unheard of," Viola shrugged. "After all, she was invisible to everyone else. They can change form."

"But why did it look like him?" Elissa uttered her first words since the elf had arrived.

"Spirits can access people's memories very easily; even the ones we can't get to ourselves. Some use it to trap people in fantasies or nightmares, but spirits of compassion heal old wounds, which is clearly what ours was trying to do. Except it didn't work and, according to Cole, that's why she went to find Alistair and bring him back."

"This whole time she was trying to tell me where Elissa was?" Alistair cursed himself under his breath for not following the spirit sooner, or trying to figure where it was she was always looking through the window.

"Exactly. The entire story isn't really all that complicated," Viola remarked. "Just a spirit following its instincts by bringing two people together. The real question is what to do now."

Alistair bit his lip, but quickly stopped when he felt the painful sting of his wound. Wiping away a drop of fresh blood he watched Elissa, and the longer he stared the more she began to change. Her long hair, which she wore in a messy but practical braid down her back, was suddenly as short and choppy as it had been when they first met. The ten years of aging and survival that marked her face were gone, and her hands were softer, like the first time he held them in his own. Regardless of what her mind failed to recall she was Elissa Cousland, and there was only one answer to the question of what to do next. "Come with me."

Her face shot up towards him, and his vision reverted back to reality. "What?"

Kneeling to her seated level, he spoke calmly but firmly. "Come with me. You don't belong out here, and maybe once you're home… once you're around familiar people and places… you'll start to remember."

Her blue eyes locked with his, but a wall stood between them that they could both feel. "I don't know…"

"You've been alone out here for ten years." His hand fell on her arm in an earnest gesture. It was unconscious but she didn't shrug it away. "Though I can't say I've had to go through all of that, I've been alone too. But we were never alone when we were together!" He bit his lip, once again forgetting the pain this action caused. "That doesn't sound right, but I don't know how else to put it."

Elissa's gaze wandered across his face. Alistair waited patiently as it crossed his jaw, mouth, nose, and brow, each stop loosening one brick from that wall. By the time she was done it still stood, but not as tall or strong and Alistair could sense this even before she responded with a hesitant and quiet, "Okay." He smiled triumphantly and rose, but she caught his arm before he could walk too far. "I just have one question."

He stopped mid-step. "Anything."

"How exactly do we know each other?"

Alistair's smiled vanished and he looked to Viola, who crossed her arms and shrugged unhelpfully. "We…" he stumbled. He didn't want to lie to her, but the truth seemed a bit much. She had just barely agreed to leave everything she knew and trust that he could restore an old life that she couldn't even remember. Adding to all of that the claim that she once loved him would only make things harder, or, even worse, make her change her mind altogether. "We're friends." It technically wasn't a lie, though she seemed to chew on this assertion a moment before begrudgingly accepting it and following he and Viola out of the clearing.