Melisande paused when she reached the crossroads. This section of the road seemed familiar, though she hadn't passed this way in over two years. There was a holly thicket to one side, the prickles studded with blood red berries.

Just over that rise and another mile to where the land rolled smoothly down to chanter's creek and she'd be in Highever's teyrnir.

Home.

Finbar yipped and stepped forward with a fresh will as though he found a familiar scent in the air. She followed in his wake.

They were climbing the rise when she felt it, that prickle along the back of her skull that forewarned. Darkspawn. Not many...but still. She pulled shadows around her. With any luck they hadn't noticed her.

Melisande was picking her way back down behind her sure footed friend when the clash of steel and evil, shuddering laughter floated towards them. A fight then. Grimacing, she tugged her hood around her face and crept closer.

It was a refugee group, just a few families, perhaps, and what they could throw into a cart and a small wagon. They were fighting, though, not huddling and the three scouting 'spawn were meeting a match. Three men and two women...one standing on the seat of the wagon with a shortbow, doing her best to keep the tainted creatures away from the wagon where an old woman was corralling the children. One little girl, with a tumble of cornsilk curls, was holding a fire poker. Valiant little thing.

They looked to have it under control. There was a genlock fallen and another clearly injured and...ah, there. The archer had made a fine shot through its eye. In all honesty, Melisande had no interest in being seen and...well, she was somewhat distinctive. She turned away from the fight.

Finbar was creeping forward through the brush, growling low in his chest. Melisande's turn startled the hound and he looked back over his shoulder to see her with an inquisitive look.

"They've got it, Fin. Let's go."

He whined then clearly bewildered. In the year since they had left Highever, they had never turned from a fight before.

"No. Leave it. There's only one more, they'll be fine. I want to make Highever by dark."

He sat, then. Obstinately, with the most disapproving look she'd ever gotten from her faithful hound.

"You're welcome to go help. I'm not..." There was a shriek, a terrified child, and then a horrendous crash as one of the carts...a baby squalling...oh, Maker...

Melisande drew her sword and one of her parrying blades and crashed through the brush, feeling a crawling sensation up her spine as a whole troop of darkspawn spilled into the clearing. Blast and damnation. She concentrated for a moment and within a few steps a slim, grey wolf had joined them, slinking close to the ground. The noise of the fight covered her own and she was able to get around the back of the emissary without any detection. She slipped the magebane coated knife between the straps of its tattered robe and when it turned to slap her away, jammed the sword into its gut.

She let her shadows spill away and mockingly called out a challenge. Howling, the creatures turned away from the easier prey to the Grey Warden who had popped up in their midst, like a spirit. Finbar took up his own howl, staggering the front runners and then bowling them over with a charge as the wolf went for the nearest genlock's throat.

It was what she hoped for, allowing the travelers to regroup and come in behind. No sign of the archer and Melisande wondered as she took out a rogue genlock, whether the woman had jumped free of the cart in time.

She was fast and they were desperate and it was a lethal enough combination. In less time than she'd expected, Melisande was wiping her blades clean on the grass. "Don't touch them. I'll drag them into a pile and we can set them alight." She said to one of the men who came to speak to her as the others righted the wagon and checked on the children. Even the baby was fine, Melisande noted, gratefully. The old woman had curled around it just in time and braced herself against a basket full of woolens to cushion the impact. She was bruised, but alive.

"Ser, thank you! They came out of nowhere, just sprang up from the ground itself."

"Yes, they do that."

"You came just in time. Oh, you're injured, let me…"

Melisande daubed at the cut across her eyebrow. "It's fine, I'm alright."

The man shook his head. "No, ser. These things, the cuts fester and…you don't want to leave it. Never ends well. We're from South Reach…it's…it was bad."

"No, really…" But he was already turning to get his kit when another of the travelers cried out in pain before collapsing to the ground.'

"Oh, Wilf!" The archer, limping but well enough dropped down beside the man.

Melisande could see a dark patch on his neck, starting to spread and his dark eyes had already taken on the sunken, glassy look of a victim of the taint. "I'm sorry…but…"

"It's got him, doesn't it?" The woman looked up at her, tears sheening in her green eyes.

"I'm sorry, Nattie. I…" Wilf broke off into one of the wet coughs. "I caught one of their blades."

Melisande swallowed before she spoke. "I am sorry, Nattie."

"No. It's not…" The man set a consoling hand on hers, where it was clutching his coat. "We're…Wilf, I'm pregnant! Please!"

"I'm glad to know it. Hope it's a pretty little girl, just like you, with a voice like a thrush and an eye like a hawk. Don't take it bad, love. It'll be alright." He looked up at Melisande with a twisted grin on his sweating, still handsome face. Not long, though, until the taint would change that. "Don't make my brother do it, m'lady. Would you…" Nattie sobbed. "You know…what'll happen, love. Don't make me suffer it."

"I can. If that's what you want." Melisande agreed, but she waited until Nattie kissed her lover and the other woman came over to console her sister-in-law, one arm tight around her while Nattie clutched Wilf's hand. The two looked into each other's eyes, while Melisande slid her sharpest slimmest blade into his heart and twisted. She'd poisoned the blade with a toxin that would work so fast…yes, between one breath and the next he was gone. She hoped it was as painless as it looked.

They lit a separate pyre for Wilf and a few words were spoken. Afterwards, the travelers made camp over the rise to allow everyone time to rest and insisted that Melisande stay with them to share their meal. The little blonde girl, Betta, was shadowing her and clinging to Finbar and Melisande didn't have the heart to push the child away.

After the children were settled, Finbar settled at their feet, protectively, she found herself alone by the fire sipping at a mug of tea that Nattie's mother had pressed on her. Melisande watched Nattie help with the two girls, and then they'd sat under the wagon to comb out their hair, before crawling into the bedrolls. It reminded Melisande of the evenings that her own mother would come to her room and offer to comb her hair, listening and talking of little things, sharing bits of motherly advice.

Absently, she fingered her own cropped locks, starting to curl now. It was an amazingly practical haircut, if nothing else.

She hadn't cut it because of Highever tradition, though it had occurred to her later. Grief, oh, grief was appropriate. No. She closed her eyes to resist the memory. Camp and a fireside, finally, after a long fight, then a slog through the rain.

She'd bound her hair up in a long braid after Flemeth had rescued them. Except to wash it or comb it out with the rough wooden comb she'd picked up from a refugee woman in Lothering, she never touched it. And now there were these long wet days, when it chafed her neck and weighed her down, in a tangled sodden mess.

It had been after they'd picked up Zev, but before they'd ventured into the woods, looking for elves like children in a tale. She'd been exhausted and starving. The nest of genlocks they'd stumbled into (and despite being able to sense the Maker-doomed things, they always seemed to stumble upon them), had fought long and hard. One of them had managed to get a hand on the length of hair and tugged her backwards and only the twist of her spine had kept her from impalement on a jagged sword. It died with her dagger through its eye, but she'd been shaking from the close call.

She'd sat down at the campfire. They hadn't found a stream, just an old well, so baths had been out. She just meant to untwist the copper wire and unlace the braid to comb it out to dry. Instead of the comb, though, she'd pulled her belt knife. Why was she even keeping it, all this hair? That life, that she'd worn elaborate braids and ribbons for, flowers and jeweled pins? It was gone. Even if they managed not to die, and at that point Melisande had been sure death was still waiting for her around every corner. She was a Warden, now, not a noblewoman. She was proud of it, it had been something she wanted when all she was, was a light-footed sneak with a knack for finding a weak point. But it wasn't a life for balls and ribbons. No noble son was ever going to follow her down a hall, hoping to see her pull her pins and let the scented masses of red-gold hair fall over her shoulders and down her back invitingly.

She'd pulled the braid tight and slipped the knife underneath and just as she was about to draw the sharp blade through…

"What're you doing?"

Melisande had turned to find Alistair staring at her, his polishing kit forgotten in his hands. From the look on his face, she'd wondered if it looked like she was about to slit her own throat. He'd dropped his kit, then. He'd knelt down at her feet and pulled her braid from her unresisting hand. "Oh, please, Meli," he'd said in a whisper like he was in Chantry. "Please don't."

It had been the first of a lot of things.

The first time he'd shortened her name, outside of battle. The first time she'd heard that husky, pleading tone in his voice. The first time he'd touched her outside of helping her with her equipment or to deal with an injury or to slap her across the shoulders like a comrade.

The first time the thought had occurred to Melisande that if Alistair Theirin would just keep looking at her that way, with those gold flecked, honey warm hazel eyes, she'd never care about any other noble son, ever again.

He'd taken the knife from her nerveless fingers, the easiest disarm he'd probably ever performed. He told her later while wrapped in her arms in the dark, that seeing her, sitting by the fire combing out her freshly washed hair was just about the highlight of his week, at that point. He'd wanted to tell her then, but he couldn't get the words, so he'd just picked up the comb and given it to her instead, the blush stealing up his neck and just about to turn his ears bright red.

Zev had come back to the fire, then, to sharpen his blades in company. Alistair picked up his gear and sat down to work, studiously not glancing at her. Melisande had worked the binding wire out of her braid and set to work combing out the tangles, like she'd never had any other intention.

She'd remembered then, the tiny portrait of her mother, done just after the war. It sat on her father's desk and she'd recalled her mother laughing, saying she'd forgotten how to lace a dress she wore leathers so long. Her mother's chestnut hair had been painted in a braided coronet that wrapped her head. Leliana had nodded when she asked and between the two of them, they'd twisted her hair up into that same style, high and tight.

They'd found a better campsite the next night, with a nice oxbow stream and a tiny bit of seclusion. Alistair had given her the rose he'd had Sandal enchant back after Lothering.

They'd courted sweetly. Gently, even. Amusing, considering their circumstances. He was so...fresh to it all. Not unworldly, no, after all he'd grown up in a stable and among other men. He'd absorbed the ideas, anyway. But with a regard for her, a reverence. Kisses gradually turning from charming and awkward to heated. One sparring match that had quickly lost all pretense when she'd tried to distract him with her charms. Zevran had been properly apologetic later, for interrupting them at an inopportune moment.

But then came Haven. Then came the Gauntlet and the Guardian's questions and the shade of her father.

Then came Melisande, sobbing in Alistair's arms later in camp as she told him about that awful night. About her father's life blood spilling on to the stone flagged floor in a gushing, stinking wave. Her mother, brave and defiant and suddenly very small as Melisande backed away, cruelly free from being the teyrn's daughter at last, into the life she'd always wanted.

He'd held her, whispering nonsense and sweetness in her ear until his reaction to her cuddled in his lap made itself known and he'd tried to pull away, embarrassed. "Maker, I'm sorry. I'll go…I..."

"Don't. Don't let go, Alistair. Stay with me, please." And she'd kissed the racing pulse in his tanned throat. He'd swallowed hard and nodded.

"Alright. Yes, if you want…I want to… If you're sure."

"Stay with me." She'd repeated it and he'd touched her face with that look of surprised awe that never failed to humble her.

Then Alistair had turned that unyielding tenacity she'd never seen off the battlefield until then to her, to unbraiding her hair and, though he'd been the innocent, she'd been the one trembling before he'd touched an inch of her bare skin.

"M'lady?"

Melisande jerked back to the present, blinking rapidly. "Yes, Jacen?"

Wilf's brother smiled, a little unsure. "It didn't look like a good memory, m'lady." He turned to stir the fire.

"It's just Melisande."

"Yeah? All right." He sat the newly filled kettle to the side of the cookfire on a flat stone, where it would stay hot, but not boil away in the night, with any luck. "We owe you our lives, m…Melisande. I can never…" he glanced at the little band, all tucked in for the night. "My whole world right here, you know. All I've got left are these folks."

She indicated that he was welcome to sit with her on the rough log they'd dragged up and he didn't quite collapse, wearily. "You're from the South Reaches?"

Nodding, he took up his own tin cup and sipped his tea. "Yeah. We'd thought to take ship at Denerim, but the cost of all of us…we couldn't manage."

Curious, she couldn't help but ask, "Where were you looking to go?"

"The Free Marches…got word some cousins are doing okay up in Kirkwall. Found work in the mines up there. I'm a farmer, but…I could mine, too, I guess."

"You'd leave Ferelden?"

Jacen shrugged. "Can't fight the Blight, no matter how hard we try."

Oh, they didn't know. "But…the Blight's over. We…the Wardens killed the Archdemon and the hordes should already be scattering back to the Deep Roads."

His eyes were wide in the firelight. "When? When did this happen?"

Over the cup, she couldn't help but smile at the man, the hope in his eyes. "Three days ago, give or take."

The thankful prayer was whispered like it might not be true if he said it too loudly, "Maker be praised." Jacen offered his cup and they clanked their tea together, in a toast. "Maker bless them, them Wardens. Andraste guide their steps. You came from there?"

"I was through there, yes."

"Maker's Balls. It's over." Slapping his hand on his knee, the lean brown man couldn't seem to stop grinning, showing off quite nice teeth, actually, and it triggered Melisande's own grin.

"Yes, ser!" Because it was. No matter what else, the Blight was over and Jacen and Nattie and Betta could find their places again and all the others and Ferelden could rebuild. The whole reason she and the rest of her own companions had bled and fought and starved, sitting right here at this campfire and tucked safely in their beds for the night. Not unscathed, not without hardship to come and probably nightmares for the rest of their lives. But the Blight was over. Melisande echoed Jacen's words. "Maker be praised."

He was a farmer, hmm? She looked at his hands, capable and strong. He had a broad back and a certain sort of determination underneath the sudden joyful shock and the long day written across his foxish features. Melisande swallowed off the rest of her tea. "You know, we aren't far from Highever. I know some folks there. You might get set up in something more like to what you're used to, if you don't have your heart set on seeing the Marches."