Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except what I most humbly imagine. While, at times, I will take verbatim from the game, I mostly use the events of the Dragon Age games, expansions and universe as a loose structure around which to construct my re-imagined tale. If you are looking for a strict canon piece, I have no desire to offend, and so I warn you upfront!

When reading this tale, I hope you can easily imagine it being told by the very best of storytellers in Varric Tethras (from DA:2). In my version of events, Varric meets "The Hero" (Elissa Cousland) in Kirkwall during the time period of DA:2. I mention this only so that readers can understand his connection along the way, and so I don't have to mention and rehash it again and again as I make my way through the tale.

A/N: Not a lot to say here. I think, or rather I hope, that this chapter speaks for itself.

Muse Music: The Scientist by Coldplay.

Thanks to my readers, followers and reviewers and to my wonderful betas artemiskat and Snarkoleptic who ride this crazy roller coaster of mine willingly for some reason. :P

Happy Reading!

-Frayed One

Chapter Forty-Eight: Take Me Back To the Start

It took several hours for anyone to convince Elissa to wipe away some of the blood and put on some clean clothing, and even then it took a basin being brought into the room where Nathaniel was being seen to for her to do it. Four hours beyond that, everything that could be done for him had been done and she finally allowed her own injuries to be tended – and even then she would allow only surface cleaning and debridement – nothing that would lessen the bruises and scratches and cuts that littered her body.

Three days passed from the moment The Hero of Ferelden pressed a blade against her king and former lover's throat and demanded that Nathaniel Howe be healed, and in that time never once did she stray from his side – not to eat, not to sleep, not to take a moment for herself, not for anything. Even now she sat in a chair at his side watching the slow rise and fall of his chest and hoping that this would be the morning that he finally opened his eyes.

"Commander, the king has sent some breakfast for you. Where should I leave it?" It was a soldier who brought in the tray, as the more easily frightened servants and castle staff started to avoid crossing her path long ago.

"You shouldn't." Elissa's voice was neutral, devoid of all real emotion and she didn't even bother to turn in the guard's direction. "And tell His Majesty to stop sending me food and poorly concealed suggestions that I should rest or have a bath. Short of charging me with treason and throwing me in a cell, there is nothing he can do that will move me from this spot – and even then I'd just find a way out – so it's better for him to stop wasting his time."

"As you wish, Commander." The soldier left as quickly as he'd come, closing the door behind him and leaving Elissa mired in her thoughts and the silence once again.

She reached her hand out to touch Nathaniel's cheek, half-smiling at the amount of stubble that had accumulated in the few days since Thomas had taken them. He had always been methodical about such things – partially due to his upbringing and partially just because of who he was – and she knew that he would be displeased with his condition were he actually aware of it.

She'd watched him shave with a dagger by firelight once shortly after he'd stormed back into her life, utterly fascinated by the ease with which he could do something that was to her mind so complicated and potentially dangerous. He'd nearly cut himself fighting back a smile when – of course – he'd realized she was watching, forcing her to come up with some biting remark and stalk off into the woods to conceal her thoughts. She'd give anything to see that arrogant half-smirk of his right now. Anything she had left to give.

Elissa wasn't stupid. She knew that the longer Nathaniel remained unconscious, the more remote the chances became that he would ever wake again. With every passing second in every passing day her desperation grew, pushing her to consider in this moment an option that she had not considered as viable in a very long time.

"I'm almost glad you aren't awake at the moment," Elissa muttered to the empty air, glancing once more at Nathaniel as she walked to the door. "You'd never let me hear the end of this."

Elissa knew the way. She'd probably passed the overly ornate doors more than a hundred times, though she'd never once considered going beyond them – not until today. She stood hesitant at the doors now, taking one last deep breath before pushing them open and stepping inside, relieved to find the chapel entirely empty except for herself.

She paced forward down the aisle, eyes moving restlessly over the iconic depictions of Andraste that covered the walls, fearing in the back of her irrational mind that she might light fire just for having stepped beyond those doors and into a sacred space in which she no longer held any faith. But for today, for today she would have to find it.

Having reached the pulpit at the end of the aisle, it became a frantic sifting through memory – trying to unearth the mechanics of prayer from beneath the years of cynical detritus that had begun to erase its existence. It took work but eventually she accessed an old memory of Fergus kneeling, hands folded, beside their mother in the chapel at Highever. Ignoring the sting of that particular image, Elissa sank to her knees folding her hands in the best mimic of Fergus she could manage and set to focusing her thoughts.

"I don't know how to do this, really." She said the words aloud, not really sure how else The Maker or Andraste or whoever it was that answered prayers was supposed to hear you. "I can't recall that I ever have. So… I-I guess I'll just say what I came here to say and go back to what I was doing before, if that's alright."

She paused for a moment, sighing at her foolishness that she had waited for some sort of answer, and then continued. "One of my Wardens – no, that's not true – Nathaniel is more than that. Nathaniel is… he's…"

She pushed out a frustrated breath and stood to pace, infuriated that even now in an empty room she could not bring herself to say the words aloud.

"I don't know why I'm bothering to do this. We both know you aren't there; not for me – and certainly not for Nathaniel. To let him live in that environment with his father and… brother…" Her face wrinkled in disgust at even the brief passing memory of Thomas, and she cleared her throat and refocused. "No child should grow up like that. Having to fight and scrape and beg for the smallest hint that they might be worth something, that they might be loved."

The longer she thought, the angrier she became, and the further her original intent toward contrition on Nathaniel's behalf faded into the background.

"Your faithful sheep they say that you do things for a reason… to-to teach us lessons or restore our faith – but tell me, what is the lesson here? To fill his life with such horrors and disappointment? To give him things only to destroy them or take them away? And in the end, what? DEATH?" Her rage was complete now, she fumed and seethed and scrambled to come up with something she could do to gain control of this situation that was so far beyond her grasp. "What can I do to change this vendetta you seem to have against him? What can I offer that you haven't already taken? Another sacrifice? Is that what you require? More of my blood?"

She was yelling now as she pulled lose the dagger sheathed at her belt and cut a small gash in her arm, knowing it was as likely to fall on deaf ears as the rest of her unanswered pleas but having no other rational thoughts as to how she might convince a higher power to change its mind. The silence was deafening and only angered her more, pushing her to the point that her body started to shake as she fought to contain her temper.

"I do not accept this! Do you hear me?" The blood from her cut dripped down her arm and onto the floor and Elissa could hear the hissing as it began to eat into the ornate marble floor almost immediately. She smiled then, knowing once and for all that reliance on anyone and anything beyond herself was meaningless. "I don't need you. I've been to your beyond, and I walked back out again. If I want him back I'll have him. I'll go into the Void itself if I have to. I reject this, and I reject you!"

Elissa passed several of the castle staff and guardsmen on the way back to Nathaniel's room, but if they thought anything about the look in her eyes or the bloody cut on her arm, they were smart enough to keep their mouths shut about it and simply allow her to walk right by. Once inside the room, she settled back into the chair at his bedside and thought back on the afternoon they had spent in The Keep's throne room attempting to map out the conduit between them.

She closed her eyes and reached out, finding the channel in her mind's eye just as she had before – and attempting not to be frightened by how dim and distant it seemed in comparison to all the other times she had reached out for him in the past.

"I said I'd go to the Void for you, and I meant it." She breathed in, reaching her hand out and pressing it against his chest in the spot where the conduit always seemed to center itself and focusing everything she had left on finding him in the darkness and pulling him back to the light.

Nathaniel Howe stood on the edge of this lagoon in life and in The Fade more times than he could remember. It was unsurprising to him that he had come here again in the end, but it was a small comfort at best. This place was awash in memory – the tentative first steps of a new romance, the frantic screams of a desperate plea, the first time that he and Elissa had finally crossed the line between intention and action. The last flash made him smile; confident again that no matter how hard she had fought to deny it and refused to say the words – Elissa had loved him just as much as he still loved her.

"I know that look, young man, and I'm fairly certain I would not approve of whatever it is you're thinking with regard to my only daughter." Eleanor chuckled as the eldest Howe child spun in her direction, watching as he attempted to conceal those thoughts beneath his usually stoic features.

"Lady Cousland, I apologize. I should have realized that others important in Elissa's life would come here as well. I won't trouble you for long, I just – I… I wanted to say goodbye I suppose."

"Nonsense. Our home has ever been your home, Nathaniel. I don't see why that should change here in the Fade anymore than it would have in the forests of Highever." Eleanor came to a stop at his side, turning her eyes with his out across the water. "And call me Eleanor. I think we're well beyond the point where such frivolity is necessary, and you are the closest thing to a son-in-law as I am ever likely to have."

"I'm not so certain about that." Nathaniel laughed, short and insincere.

"Oh, I know about the king and the healer. Both decent men in their own right and Elissa cares for them, I am certain – but you and I both know it has always been you, Nathaniel." Eleanor's face gave away nothing, as calm and unyielding as it had ever been. "I suspect that Bryce and I knew it long before you and my stubborn daughter ever admitted it to yourselves, or to one another."

"Lady Cousland—" Nathaniel stopped and corrected himself at the clearing of her throat. "Eleanor. I appreciate everything you and the Teyrn did for me, and everything you are saying now, but I'm not the man that you think I am. If you knew…"

"The dead see many things, Nathaniel. I know that you are far from perfect, but who among us hasn't done things in their lives for which they hold regret? I am no innocent. None of us are. But you love my daughter, and she loves you – and the two of you are stronger together than you will ever be apart. Some things are meant to be. To fight them is to swim against the tide." She could see him start to shake his head with a sad smile out of the corner of her eye, and waited for him to say whatever it was he had to say.

"People keep saying that to me, and I've certainly repeated it many times myself, but I don't think Elissa ever believed it." Nathaniel stared off into the hazy distance, lost in thought and doubting if he had ever had a reason to be certain of anything at all.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that." Eleanor's expression was cryptic, and she watched Nathaniel's brow furrow as he tried to discern her meaning. "I think that perhaps you just haven't been listening."

"No offense to you or your daughter, but I have listened to her skirt it and deny it and flat out refuse to say it. I'm not sure what it is that I haven't been listening to."

"For the last twenty minutes, I'd say you haven't been listening to much of anything." Eleanor grinned, watching his frustration level increase. "She's been talking to you all this time, Nathaniel. You just haven't been hearing her."

"Elissa?" Nathaniel stopped then, clearing his mind of anything except for his thoughts of her, and there – through the fog – he could finally hear it.

I know you're in there, Nathaniel. I can feel it. Now wake up you stubborn idiot! I swear, if I could slap you out of the Fade I'd do it!

"That's definitely Elissa." Nathaniel chuckled, shaking his head. "But I don't see how that does me any good. If I'm here then I'm obviously—"

"You aren't dead, Nathaniel. You've just been unconscious while your body got the rest it needed to recover." She watched it dawning on him that it wasn't over, there was still time. "And my daughter, though her bedside manner is most decidedly lacking, has never left your side. That alone should tell you something."

"It tells me I should be concerned that I'll still be intact when I wake up."

"Perhaps." Eleanor laughed, patting him on the back and turning to move back deeper into the shifting landscape of The Fade. "Now please do wake up before she lights the castle afire in her temper and the king has to toss her in Fort Drakon."

"Yes, ma'am." Nathaniel smiled; focusing in on the sound of Elissa's voice and listening to Eleanor's grow more distant in exchange.

Oh, and Nathaniel – tell my daughter not to cut her hair with a blade again. It looks dreadful.

Elissa lost track of how long she had been trying to reach out to Nathaniel some time ago, but now what had been confidence was giving way to frustration and fear. He hadn't moved and nothing about the conduit had changed. Wherever he was, he was beyond her capacity to get to him – and that thought cut into her more than she would ever have imagined.

"You bloody pig-headed man!" Elissa lashed out then, unable to contain the tears any longer and angry that she could not stop them as they welled up in her eyes and streamed down her cheeks. "I've bargained and begged – I've even prayed – I-I… I don't know what else to do!"

She slammed the chair to the floor in her hurry to stand, swiping an arm across her face to wipe away the tears as she paced and feeling totally helpless and completely out of her element. Just as suddenly as she'd stood, she dropped down to her knees beside the bed, taking Nathaniel's hand into her own and pressing her forehead against it.

"I cannot lose you, Nathaniel. Not now – not like this. After everything we've been through… it wasn't meant to end this way. We never… I never…" She paused then, swallowing down her fear and finally said the words he'd begged to hear for so long. "I love you, Nathaniel. I-I… I always have."

A part of her had expected an immediate reaction, an instant flicker of that smug smile across his face, a twitch of his hand – anything, but there was nothing – so she collapsed forward against the bed at his side giving herself over fully to the onslaught of her tears.

"Say it again." Nathaniel's voice was so weak, he wasn't sure how she heard it through the sobbing – but she did, and she lifted her face up to look at him, wonder in her eyes.

"You-You're…"

"Say it again."

She wiped at her face, settling herself on the bed at his side and taking his face in her hands – holding his silver eyes with the green of her own and making a promise, "I love you, Nathaniel Howe. I have always loved you."

"Was that so hard?" Nathaniel smiled, leaning forward to brush her mouth lightly with his own and tasting the salt of the tears that were still flowing – once in sorrow, now in relief.

Elissa didn't hesitate this time, winding her hands into his hair and kissing him again and again – afraid that if she let him go even for a moment it would cease to be reality and she would lose him forever. And Nathaniel clung to her in equal measure, grateful beyond imagining for this newly granted chance to finally be where he belonged.