BioWare owns all but my character's and her dog's names. : )

So, what would you do if you were in the Fade with those you loved and lost, but were begged to go back and continue saving the world and the others you loved who were fighting the good fight? This question is probably going to be spread across multiple chapters, just something to ponder.

SPOILER: I don't know what is going to happen in Awakenings, and in Return to Ostagar you don't find Duncan's body. But I put him in the Fade. I don't even want to think of a Dunc-spawn, as Duncan is one of my favorite characters. So in my story, he is dead.

Also, there is a little sex scene in here, which I hope I did tastefully but still kept it sexy. I mean if you hadn't been with the one you love going on almost a month now, wouldn't you jump them? That and the cussing is the reason I rated this as T.

I hope you enjoy this next chapter. And thank you so much for your reviews, messages, and encouragement! This story is compelling me to write it, but your support makes it even more a joy.

Blessing!

Kai came up from under the cool water of the small lake outside of Highever as she had a thousand times before. She lay on her back floating in the cool dark water, watching the clouds scuttle across the sky, had she been dreaming, she must have been. What a horrible and beautifully realistic dream, too. Ah, but today was a day for relaxing and taking in the fresh air. She could smell water and grass and the wildflowers growing on the bank.

Today must be "Cousland Camaraderie Day," as her family had labeled it. Her family always took a day once a month where no servants waited on them or disturbed them. It was a day off for the servants as well as the family. The family didn't attend to castle business or politics unless it was an emergency. They just spent it with each other. It was her favorite day of any month, even more than her birthday.

Kai flipped over and began to tread water, looking at the shore. There was Highever, the stone walls shining light gray in the sun, what a beautiful sight. And someone was waving at her to come ashore, her father probably. Ah, lunch must be ready, Kai started to cut through the water with graceful strokes. She loved skimming through the water and took a moment to delight in the sensation. Her father often joked that she was part selkie.

She got to shore and found a cotton towel and her clothes. She dried off as best she could and slipped on her tunic, pants, and boots. Kai knew where everyone would be – in the garden next to the orchard where they kept the bees. Her family would be there with a table laden with food and blankets to lie on in the grass while Father and Mother, she and Fergus, and Oriana and Oren would take turns reading aloud from either a new book Father had gotten for their library or from an old favorite they all loved hearing again and again.

Kai headed towards her favorite spot in Highever, winding her way through the orchard of apple trees. Their blooms were falling like snow when the breezes caught the blossoms. She took a deep breath, it was so...perfect. She wanted to laugh and dance, she felt so free, so happy.

She came to the walls of the garden and the sturdy wooden gate set in it. She traced her fingers over the familiar words carved into the gate whose varnish had darkened to a deep honey brown with age:

"Cha d'dhuin doras nach d'fhosgail" – no door ever closed but another opened

And without having to open the door and swing it, she knew the garden side had three words carved in it:

"gaol, gra, gaire" - live, love, laugh

Maker, it felt good to really be home. That dream had seemed so real, that horrible dream. A dream where she let her parents die, she drank the tainted blood of monsters, let people down, killed other (sometimes innocent) people, a dream where she had the fate of Ferelden hanging on her decisions.

And those monsters had been horrible creatures, Kai shuddered. She'd had to choose between bad decisions or worse ones. Sometimes, the decision was between a lot of people getting hurt or only some. Kai didn't think she would ever complain to her parents about making decisions on the running of Highever ever again. Somehow, running a castle was easy in comparison.

She had to admit some of the dream was not so bad, she'd met and befriended interesting people whom she had loved and who loved her. She' loved and been loved by a man, Alistair. The name seemed to whisper among the falling blossoms, then, it was as if a cloud came over the sun, she'd watched him die. Okay, everything which seemed good in that dream had been tainted like that blood she drank. Best to leave that dream far behind.

Today was family day, love and laughter and living, as the door said. She smiled. Kai grabbed the heavy wrought iron handle of the door to the garden and stepped through, turning to close it behind her. "I'm here, I hope you didn't let Fergus start without me, or he'll eat up all the blackberries before I get any!" She turned from closing the door to find him standing there, the bloke from her dreams, and he was just grinning at her.

Not a dream, real, this must be the Fade. Kai strode forward as the Kai she had been just a moment ago and the Kai that was made in the heat of battle collided. She walked at a fast pace, closing the distance between her and Alistair. When she was close enough, her fist shot out and landed squarely on his jaw. Part of Kai's mind registered that she must have caught him by surprise, Alistair was a shield warrior, and it took a lot to knock him down. "Hee-yyy, that hurts even in the Fade you know." He rubbed his jaw where her fist had landed. Kai could only stare at him.

She could feel her face getting hot with fury. "You sodding, thunder humping..." Kai was so mad she was at a loss for words, "NUG HUMPER!" She screamed at him, "How dare you, just, how dare you?" Kai paced back and forth in front of him, balling and unballing her fists. "If you weren't already dead, I would kill you myself!"

It was then that she heard other voices, "Mum, what is a nug humper?" Oren's sweet voice piped up.

"Ask your Auntie later, dear," came her sister-in-law, Oriana's, tart but amused reply. "I will let her explain that one."

"Brother, you really know how to pick the feisty ones don't you? Of course, I knew how beautiful and strong she was when I met her when she was ten and kicked those noble's brats arses so soundly, glorious! You really are lucky." A voice Kai registered as Cailan's laughing voice came from her right.

"Indeed, you can see why I wanted to recruit her, though I don't recall her language skills being so- diverse at the time," Duncan's deep, beloved, amused voice rumbled gently from her left.

It was her father's voice behind her that made her anger drain out. "There's my fierce girl."

"Fierce girl, indeed, I am proud to say she takes after her mother, except for the appalling language, wherever did she learn it?" Eleanor Cousland's voice, filled with laughter, sounded from behind her next to her father's voice. "I dare say I would have done the same thing to you though, Bryce. Honestly, men can be just like small boys, you don't just...surprise a girl like that."

Kai whirled around to see her parents standing together, looking at her with smiling faces and eyes glowing with love for her, "Hello, Pup." Her father smiled at her and opened his arms. She had never seen such a beautiful sight. Her heart constricted, and she just threw herself at them. She heard herself babbling, saying their names over and over again, telling them how much she'd missed them and loved them, tears ran down her cheeks. She motioned Oriana and Oren over, and they all just hugged each other.

Then, Oren broke in wanting more of the attention that was being given to his 'Auntie' for himself. Kai just scooped him up and kissed him until he started to protest and then she hung him upside down and tickled him until he giggled with delight and turned red in the face. "No, Auntie, stop, stop!" he protested, though he was laughing and obviously wanting more.

"What's that, I can't hear you, someone is laughing too loudly," Kai told him as she held his legs with one hand and tickled him with the other. He squirmed and shrieked in her arms. Kai missed them so much. She realized she had been so busy saving Ferelden that she not only didn't have the time to mourn them, but she also never had the time to miss them properly. Oriana's "proper behavior as done by Antivan women" running joke, Oren's laugh, her father calling her "pup", her mother's teasing scolding, oh how she missed them!

Kai realized that their family reunion was being watched with polite interest by the others in the garden. Kai put Oren down and turned to Duncan and Cailan. What did you say to the young king you were supposed to save and didn't?

She bowed her head flushing, "Your majesty, I am so sorry."

But Cailan merely tilted her chin up to look at him, "First, I am not a king here." He held up a hand to stop her protest, "Second, it wasn't your fault. You take too much on yourself, dear lady...Kai. I am just sorry I was not able to fulfill my promise to you." Cailan brushed her knuckles with his lips.

She felt tears welling up, and then she turned to Duncan. She gave Duncan the same treatment she had her father, she just sort of launched herself at him. This man she had only gotten to know for the briefest of moments, the man on whose face she had seen such incredible sadness as they left her parents behind to die. A great man, who had believed in her, trusted her to do right by the Gray Wardens and Ferelden, a man who had stepped in for her father, however briefly, this man whom she felt as though she'd failed. The man whose face a demon in the dream side of the Fade used to try and trick her, and she had been forced to kill. She found herself sobbing into his shirt front.

Duncan hugged her tightly. "There, there, child, all is well. All is well," he just kept repeating until her tears had finally stopped. Maker, she was tired of crying. She was doing more crying now than she had in her entire childhood and in the space of the last month to boot. She kissed Duncan on the cheek and smiled when he looked bashful.

Then, she turned back to him, she watched Alistair's eyes get wide, and he threw up his hands and started to back away, but he found himself getting closer to the garden wall with nowhere to go. Just where Kai wanted him, silly man, he should employ better tactics than that against the enemy. Her mind gave a little giggle at his expression of wariness. He looked as if she were some wolf about to bite him, oh. She would bite him, and nibble, and lick...

Kai jumped him, literally, wrapping her legs around his waist as she smothered his mouth with hers. She nipped his bottom lip and smoothed the bite away with her tongue. She remembered well the taste of him, the scent of him. These familiar things just entwined themselves around her until she felt the two of them were one person and the rest of the world didn't exist anymore. She felt his surprise and wariness quickly overcome as he responded by nibbling her top lip and running his tongue just inside her mouth only to take it away, daring her to follow. Maker, how she had missed this!

It was Oren's childish voice which brought her back to the fact that they had an audience, "Mommy, why did Auntie hit him and then climb him like a tree?"

Kai realized that she had, indeed, climbed up him. Her legs wrapped around his waist, and her hands pulled on the back of his head, crushing his lips on hers. Alistair had one hand fisted in her hair and the other on her...um...hindquarters. His big hand with its long fingers was doing enticing things along her inner thigh. She knew she was blushing, but she was not about to let go. From the look on Alistair's face, he felt the same way.

Oriana's voice came as if from far away, "I think it is time we went inside Oren. Your Auntie and Alistair have a lot of catching up to do." And Kai heard rather than saw them leave the garden, Duncan and Cailan both chuckled as they walked the way Oriana and Oren had gone.

She heard her father's voice say, "I really like your young man, Pup."

Then, she heard her mother's voice, "Reminds me of us, Bryce," and her mother's soft laugh as her parents left them alone in the garden.

She looked at Alistair almost not daring to believe it was him. She remembered the last time she'd looked at his beloved face and into his warm brown. She remembered the day he sacrificed himself and how he had looked at her, and remembered the way his face looked as he lay on the bier at the funeral. Her eyes began to fill with tears. "No, my love, don't," He took his hand from her hair to thumb away the tears that had started down her face.

"I really hate you. You know that, don't you?"

He just smiled his lopsided smile, "Understood." And then he kissed her again, his mouth smothered hers, taking her into that wet slippery world. She felt as if the top of her head had come off and was spinning around. How did the man do that with just a kiss? Granted, she'd had only three lovers in her lifetime, but none had this effect with just a kiss.

Dizzy, she moaned and nipped and licked and allowed herself to run her tongue in his mouth and along his lips. She felt him laying her backwards...on a bed? The garden disappeared and they were in a bed in the middle of a clearing in a forest. She cocked an eyebrow at him, and he grinned. "It's the Fade. You can go anywhere, visit anyone and make your own reality. I wanted privacy and to be outdoors like the first time we..."

"Licked a lamppost in winter?" Kai smiled at him, "I don't remember our having a bed the night you asked to jump me."

"I remember my asking in a very romantic manner for the pleasure of your company in your tent."

"Oh, you mean sweating nervously and then telling me your head felt as if it were going to explode every time you were around me? Yes, very romantic," Kai found herself giggling as he tickled her ribs in retaliation for her cheek.

Then, he cupped her face in one of his hands and looked into her eyes before his lips were on hers again. He ran the other hand along her belly, leaving a trail of fire. No one had ever lit as many fires with just lips and hands alone as he did. He sighed her name before his lips were once again crushed on hers, and then he moved to her jaw and down her neck. His hands skimmed the skin of her breasts, his thumbs teasing and causing intense waves of energy to pulse down her body until she was arching under him. He ran his hands along the inside of her legs, his fingers leaving trails of longing.

She found her own hands running along his back, feeling the muscles tense under her fingers when she bit his neck or licked his collarbone or kissed the smooth muscles of his chest. Her fingers moved up to knead the muscles of his shoulders restlessly.

He moaned when she ran a fingertip up his spine starting at his lower back and sliding up between his shoulder blades. It was one of those arousing moves Kai had learned when they were first discovering each other. His response was to torture her by closing his mouth first on one breast then the other until she thought she her system would just implode. Ah, each of them still knew what made the other crazy. She smiled to herself, she had been a little nervous, truth be told.

She never could figure out how they got out of their clothes. The steps between kissing and naked never seemed to register when they were together. She allowed herself to cry out and moan as she hadn't been completely free to do when they were at camp or when sneaking stolen moments in each other's rooms at Redcliffe or Arl Eamon's place in Denerim. At Redcliffe or Denerim, it had always felt as if they were two wayward teenagers who might get caught and sent to the Chantry to do penance.

She felt her system raging under his hands, her longing cutting through like a blade. Sweat broke out all over her skin, and she could feel herself flushing. She wanted him to fill her up, body and soul, she'd been so empty. She opened for him and then closed on him like a hot wet fist, they moved together sweetly, building on each other's' pleasure.

She always likened it to climbing a mountain that was spinning madly. Each step built up her pleasure until she thought her heart would simply give out as she gasped out her last ragged breath when she could take no more. Her orgasm released like an arrow from a bow and sent her flying. She felt his own body shudder as hers arched under his, her body gripping his and her legs wrapped around him as if to keep him prisoner. Their hands were linked together in fists, their lips together breathing each other's' breath as she cried out his name, his ragged breathing echoed her own as he buried his face in her hair and collapsed on top of her.

She always felt as if she had left the world when they made love, now that she was in the Fade, she really had left the world. She let a giggle escape from her lips, "A laugh is not exactly what a man wants to hear from his lover." Alistair unhooked his hands from hers to frame her face as he looked her in the eyes, she mirrored his move.

"It is if that lover is completely boneless and feels as if her skin is velvet and she has been dunked in molten metal." She looked into his eyes, "Oh, how I have missed you." He smiled and kissed the end of her nose before rolling to the side and pulling her to him. She simply placed her head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat as it slowly returned to normal.

How familiar this was, how delicious, she wanted to purr like a cat, she felt so complete, so relaxed. She hadn't realized how tense she had been for so long. She supposed that killing had a way of making people tense. She suppressed the urge to laugh again. Her thoughts seemed ready to fly away as her body had.

Her eyes started to droop, but popped open in a flash, "Alistair."

"Hmm" with the end of hmm going up in that way he liked to do. His hands were gently stroking her arm and her back, whatever skin he could reach even though his eyes were closed. It was almost as if he was afraid she was going to disappear.

She had a brief moment of amusement since they were both in the Fade. "I kept hearing your voice in my head, was that really you?" Not that she supposed it mattered now, but it could have been she was quietly going mad after all.

He looked sheepish and blushed, "I know I should have probably left you alone so you could grieve and get on, but I couldn't help it. I missed you so, and you were so sad."

She put her hands on his lips to stop his usual wont to babble. "I think hearing you saved me at the funeral."

"Well, I tried to leave you alone that day, you seemed so sad, and I thought I might make it worse. And then I felt what you felt, your fear and longing, and you were screaming into your own head. I was afraid you were...that you were going to lose yourself and all that makes you, you, would be lost and I was going to be lost, too. I wanted you to come back to me as you, not broken. I had to stop it, I couldn't take it." He looked at her with tears in his eyes.

She could see the fear he felt for her that day, "I was afraid for me too, you saved me twice." She leaned in and kissed him lingeringly, stroking the side of his face with her fingertips.

"I wonder if Fergus hears Oriana, I mean, I never discussed it with him or with anyone else, for that matter. I figured they'd think I was going mad, I did wonder, myself."

"I believe I can answer that question and many more, Warden," a soft feminine voice commented.