Things returned to a blissful normal the morning the party was due to leave South Reach. The rest of the time there had seen a marked absence on Rhodri's part, while the rest of them milled about the town and the inn as it pleased them. Extended episodes of purchasing sex were not so unthinkable; Zevran had long nursed the suspicion that the Grey Wardens had larger appetites in that regard. Certainly, Alistair and Rhodri both– and it was not as though Zevran had intentionally listened, but rather unavoidably heard it– made enough noise in their individual quarters at all hours to suggest that that was the case.

This morning though, Rhodri, as neatly groomed as she usually was, sat alone at the table with a large wedge of bread in hand. She beamed at Zevran when she caught sight of him.

"Good morning, you," she greeted him fondly, patting the seat beside her. "Did you sleep well?"

Whatever feelings of uneasiness that had plagued him the last few days evaporated, taking the tension in his muscles with them. Zevran smiled and took the proffered seat.

"I did indeed," he replied, nodding appreciatively when Rhodri passed him the breadbasket. "The walls here keep out Alistair's snores excellently, and I think I will miss them very much." He spooned a generous amount of a moreish light honey over his still-warm bread roll. "And what of you, my Warden, hmm?"

Rhodri chuckled and nodded. "Oh, I'm fighting fit and ready to go." She paused when she went to take a bite of her bread. "Mmm, well. I will be once I've eaten, anyway."

The rest of the party members trickled in shortly after, and following a quick breakfast, they were on the road for Kinloch Hold ahead of schedule. Zevran had, briefly, experienced a resurgence of unease that left him unsure of whether or not to assume his usual walking place with Rhodri. She seemed normal again, but what if she wasn't? What if this whole thing had been part of an enormous personality shift? Or a sign of further fluctuations to come?

More to the point, what should he do in the face of that prospective change? Give her more time away from him? What, for goodness' sake?

When the companions started walking, he decided to gauge her preference by hanging back enough that it looked like he was delayed. Feigning busyness by adjusting his pack, he stole a glance at Rhodri and caught her frowning a little as she looked at the spot beside her that he usually occupied. She turned and cast her eyes through the companions until her gaze landed on him, breaking into a smile before turning back.

Zevran's stomach jittered. She looked for him. Frowned when she realised he wasn't there, even, just as she had once before. Of course she had; the Warden was a creature of habit when she could manage it, and they had been side-by-side for months now. As someone who was firmly against the unnecessary disruption of a Warden's routine, he walked to her as quickly as casualness allowed. How foolish of him. How irrational.

He fell into step with her within a beat, and the conversation between them flowed as easily as ever. It was as though those strange two days had never happened at all. Had it all really just been a sex bender? Or had something else gone on? Too pleased by the return to comfort to satisfy his curiosity with probing, Zevran evicted the topic from his mind. It was far better to be immersed in lively good humour than it was to be the man with the answers.

§

The journey back to Kinloch Hold was less than smooth. Certainly, the current mood was a dramatic improvement from the outright warfare on the way to South Reach. Morrigan, Maker be praised, was now significantly calmer. In fact, it had to be said that with the conspicuous absence of unprovoked sniping toward Alistair or Leliana– and even Wynne, once Alistair and Leliana (and Rhodri, of course) requested it, Morrigan was actually quite civil to them. Abrupt, yes, and absolutely not to be trifled with in any way, shape or form, but civil she was. Her current interest was in the newer grimoire that had been salvaged from Flemeth's house after the altercation, and her absorption in it no doubt further added to the peaceful atmosphere.

But there was still a brooding resentment when it came to Wynne's pending ejection from the group. Wynne was as resolute as ever that she had no desire to leave, and Rhodri was equally unwavering in her dismissals. Alistair and Leliana, glum as they appeared about the whole thing, never voiced their disapproval with any real conviction. Whether this was due to their collective lack of a spine, or whether perhaps they had finally comprehended the gravity of Alistair's injuries remained to be seen.

On the other end of the spectrum was Rhodri, who looked to be in a positively radiant mood. She hummed when she walked– when she wasn't making animated conversation with Zevran or the others. She ate with gusto, and spellcasting was effortless, powerful, and completely unseen. And so far as Zevran could see, she had a lot to be happy about: Wynne's dismissal, for one, but also the promise of a visit to her students and peers in the Circle. They had left with the promise of better conditions, and there was a hopefulness to her voice whenever they spoke about it.

And as far as Zevran was concerned, his proximity to Rhodri meant that that happiness reached him far more readily than the malcontent from the party members behind. Not to mention his own joy from the prospective lack of Senior Enchanters. No, as far as he was concerned, the good life was right here, right now.

In fact, when it came to it, he was pleased to be following up on the state of the Circle, too. It had been hard to forget the faces of those children, little Martha in particular, all of whom had warmed to him and Alistair and Leliana so quickly. He made a point of keeping an eye out for any farmsteads with cows on the off-chance that her parents worked within, but none were around.

When the morning of the Circle visit had come, Zevran and Rhodri rose early, just as they had done months ago, and made batch after batch of cookies to take to the mages. They had worked out an efficient routine: Zevran held the frypan, where the cookie dough was spread evenly, and Rhodri held one hand over the top and another over the bottom, summoning heat and evenly baking the confection on both sides.

"Everyone will be very pleased to see you again, my Grey Warden," Zevran said as he spread a handful of raw dough across the pan with his fist.

Rhodri nodded with a small, tender smile. "Yes," she said. "I'm looking forward to seeing them, too. We love each other very much."

What an odd thing to say; was being pleased to see someone the primary hallmark of loving someone? She had said it as though it was, and it struck Zevran as rather an odd prerequisite for attachment.

Naturally, if one loved someone, it was probably sensible enough to look forward to seeing them. But people looked forward to all sorts of things. Zevran, for instance, greatly looked forward to his afternoon bath, especially when the day's work had been demanding and grimy. That didn't mean he was about to go to a bathtub with a marriage proposal, though.

Perhaps Rhodri, undoubtedly widely adored as she was, had no concept herself of the criteria, and was returning these people's affection en masse through her own set of standards. Being pleased to see them, for example. Perhaps, Zevran pondered in a weak moment, even more ardently when peanuts were involved.

And then, in an even weaker moment, Zevran wondered if Rhodri looked forward to seeing him. She had no reason to, certainly; Zevran brought no desirable quality to the table in such unique quantities that made him irreplaceable. Alistair was equally handsome, if not more, and his kind, slightly bumbling manner, instantly reflective of the bevy of good morals underneath, was ineffably charming. Morrigan, alarmingly spiky and unscrupulous though she could be, had good looks and a powerful intellect that Zevran could not match. And, what was more, she was not averse to using either if it benefited her or someone else she saw fit to assist. Really, it was a good thing he wasn't obliged to compete, because he wouldn't have stood a chance on his own merits– or lack thereof, as the case was.

Which meant that Rhodri might have looked forward to seeing him if he was the only one available. That wasn't so unthinkable. After all, Zevran wasn't so lacking in skills that he was completely useless. He was better than nothing– not more, certainly, but not less either. And that, in turn (not that he had even asked himself the question, but the answer sprang forth unbidden, like a fishwife's reprimand) meant that Rhodri was highly unlikely to ever love him. Which was good, of course; such a thing would have only led to disaster for them both.

At the end of the day, though, all of Zevran's postulations about love, concerning him and others, were moot. He had never loved, and doubted very much that he had ever truly been loved either. In fact, when it boiled down to it, Zevran probably knew as much about love as he did about food poisoning: he had seen enough people affected to know it existed and was widespread, and feared now and then that he might have had a brush with it himself, only to find himself mistaken not long after. In short, he knew next to nothing on the matter, and had best leave it alone.

With the matter as settled as he could make it on such short notice, Zevran smiled thinly and said nothing. He brushed the dough crumbs off his knuckles and held out the pan.

§

The final party making the journey out to the Circle were Rhodri, Zevran, Alistair, and Leliana– and Wynne, of course. There had been much less tension this time around when it came to getting out there. With the Tower no longer under attack, old Mr. Kester had his boat back, and was only too pleased to lend it to the Wardens. With guarantees of a visit after that (after all, traces of Brother Genitivi had been said to be around here somewhere as well), they were off and sailing, and arrived at the Tower when the sun was fully up and gleaming.

There were even more stairs in that bloody Tower than Zevran had remembered, though. He was sure of it. Were the mages able to stretch and shrink the Tower, depending on their exercise needs or how much they wanted to inconvenience people journeying up from the bottom?

… did that help to keep the demons at bay? Did they die of exhaustion when they had taken too many stairs without a single soul to nourish themselves on?

Oh, it didn't bear thinking about. Zevran watched Rhodri, who was offsetting what must have been illegal amounts of energy by taking the stairs two at a time and then looping back down to the rest of them when she outpaced them overmuch, and prayed for a little of the same energy to be sent his way. It never came, of course.

The party's reception was something of a mixed one to begin with. The Templars guarding the entrance, Zevran remembered, were two of the ones who had taken substantial pleasure in forcing the mages to scrape the remains of their fellows off the walls, denying even the politest, simplest request for a moment dedicated to said fellows' funerary rites.

At a glance, they didn't look naturally evil. They were perfectly average-looking human men: middling height and weight, neither too handsome or ugly, sporting the short-clipped hairstyle that just about every man in the region wore. The sole cue suggesting an undercurrent of malevolence came when they caught sight of Rhodri and Wynne, and their faces briefly hardened in reflexive contempt.

The thing with men like these, however, was that they were useless without an evil higher-up feeding them specious reasons to indulge their baser nature– and instructions on how to go about that. They had just enough nous to follow orders, and when things deviated from that, they were utterly ineffectual.

And now, as they stood there watching them approach, the best they could do was to glare and shake their heads in a show of defiance when Rhodri called on them to open the door. Inconvenience: the last resort of the outmanoeuvred and morally slovenly.

"You've got no business here any more, Warden," the one on the left said. "I don't even know why Carroll let you in from downstairs."

Wynne, who was sticking out her desire to remain in the group until the last, made no attempt to argue.

Rhodri's lip curled. "We have troops here. And I have a delivery," she gestured at the soon-to-be-reinstated Senior Enchanter, who scowled. "Go and get Knight-Commander Bradley, then, if you won't let us in yourselves."

"He's busy," said the other one.

"He won't be too busy for this," Rhodri insisted. "Fetch him."

"We'll take her in from here," he pointed at Wynne, and then raised an eyebrow. "And who's to say you have troops here?"

Rhodri's face went white; Zevran drew his knives. "What have you done to them?" she asked, her voice climbing to a shout. "Where are my people?"

A brief but high-pressure shouting match ensued, brought to a quick end when the redheaded Knight-Commander threw the door open, his own sword drawn. Upon being asked for assurances of the mages' wellbeing by a panicked Rhodri (and Wynne, too, when it came to it), Bradley surveyed the sheepish door guards with a displeased look. When the Warden had been assured of excellent conditions for all and sundry in the Tower, proper greetings were exchanged, and the Knight-Commander had the other two Templars carry Wynne's possessions up to her quarters.

"If I'd known you were coming today, Warden, I'd have stationed those two elsewhere," Bradley chuckled, rubbing his neck with a gauntleted hand as he led them inside. "I put them out here as often as I can to keep them away from the mages. They're better these days, but not by much."

Rhodri smiled weakly. "I hope they're not giving you too much trouble, either."

He shrugged. "No more than usual. Tell me, do you plan to take your troops? If so, I'll have to ask you to stay awhile so I can sign off on their release documents first." The Knight-Commander let out a sigh. "Bloody paperwork. It never ends..."

"Hah," Rhodri snorted and scuffed her boot as she walked. "Can't believe you aren't grateful for the free pillow. That's what the papers are there for, isn't it?"

"Oh, stop, you bugger…"

"All right, all right." She held up her hands playfully. "I won't take the troops today, but I'd like to talk about that with you and Irving about a plan I have in about six months time, if you'd indulge me…?"

Bradley pointed further down the corridor. "Let's take it to Irving's office. Can your party come in, or will they wait somewhere else?"

"I won't be gone long. Just a quick look around and then talk to Irving."

Everyone was exchanging nods– except Wynne, who had become rather diffident. They were parked at a table in the largest part of the library, and Zevran couldn't decide if it was better or worse that the library didn't look much different from how it had when they were last there. Come to that, what they had seen so far of the Tower had been very similar to how it had been when under demon-siege.

Credit where it was due, of course: the place was definitely cleaner. No guts, and no corpses plastered on the floors and walls. No runaway demons or other nasty beasts. The library books were mostly back on the shelf, and the ones that were not sat in precarious stacks that loomed over the heads of exhausted mage-scholars.

Perhaps it had been foolish of Zevran to think it at the time, but the dim, decidedly claustrophobic feeling the interior gave on their last visit had felt like a byproduct of the evil going on there at the time. Something temporary, like a spate of dark skies in the bleak chapters of a story, that would clear away the moment positivity was allowed to reenter the plot. Not so here, though. No, it seemed that the bleakness here was not a chapter or two, but rather the entire book. How did people keep their sanity in a place like this?

He still hadn't come up with a satisfactory answer by the time he noticed a rapidly-approaching familiar face— quite a number of familiar faces, in fact. Little Martha, who was now missing her two front teeth and showing off the gap to best advantage as she beamed at him, led the troop of youths that swarmed their way, and not one of them appeared notice they were in the most miserable place in Ferelden, which in turns was the most miserable country in Thedas.

What they did look was pleased to see them; had they run into Rhodri on the way and been advised of the cookies that awaited? Uncle Alistair and Aunt Leliana had both proved to be excellent with children, so it was eminently possible that they were a welcome sight on their own merits, cookies or no.

Martha, however, went straight past Alistair and Leliana and stopped in front of Zevran, bouncing on her toes.

"You came to visit, Uncle," she said breathlessly, her eyes sparkling. "I knew you would. Have you come to take us home?"

Zevran chuckled and shook his head. "I'm afraid not. It is still very dangerous out there."

Martha's face fell. "Oh."

"Ah, but it will not be dangerous forever," he said quickly, giving an enterprising nod. "We have plenty of work ahead, but we are getting through it, piece by piece."

The young lady took this with a nod and climbed into the chair beside Zevran's. With a glance to his fingers, which sat linked on the table in front of him, she arranged her hands in much the same way and went still.

"Did you find Ma and Papa?" she asked after a moment. "Are they all right?"

"Mm," he shook his head. "Forgive me, I looked for the cows, but I did not see a single one anywhere. Perhaps their farm is quite a long way from the roads, no? It is much safer out there, away from everything."

That wasn't necessarily true; plenty of tiny villages that were an eternity away from civilisation, like Honnleath, had been razed to the ground by Darkspawn, but it didn't do to leave a child wondering such heavy things without a little hope. Martha looked relieved, and the lie felt immediately justified.

Zevran smiled a little. "Do you know what I did see, though, while we were travelling?"

"What?"

He made a point of looking around furtively, and dropped his voice to a murmur. Martha, looking terribly intrigued now, visibly strained to listen as he spoke.

"We met a Dalish clan in the Brecilian Forest. And do you know what they had?"

She shook her head.

"Not cows, but halla."

The words had the desired effect: Martha's eyes widened immediately, and her fingers came unlinked.

"Really?" she whispered. "Real ones?"

"As real as real can be," he guaranteed.

Martha let out a long, loud exhale. "Wow. What were they like, then, Uncle? Were they nice?"

He snickered. "They were nice to me, and quite naughty for Rhodri– oh, yes! Very cheeky," he forced a straight face for the purposes of dramatisation– a difficult thing with this young lady who reminded him so much of himself laughing into her hand. "One of them always wished to be patted, so he would knock his nose into her hand to say, 'You, there! Don't you stop admiring me! Leave the other one alone and pat me instead! Tell me how handsome I am, or I'll be very upset!'"

It was around now, as Martha approached a fever pitch in her fit of giggles, that Zevran thought he could understand why Rhodri grew starry-eyed when recounting her time as a teacher. No doubt there were less-than-pleasant aspects of the job– Zevran had not forgotten Rhodri advising her class that competitions over who could eat the most window-spiders were forbidden, which carried the disturbing implication that preventing such competitions was necessary. Had he been that disgusting as a child? Surely not.

"Shh," Zevran said when the laughter started attracting looks from displeased library patrons. "I have not told you the best part yet. Are you listening, Martha?"

Martha fell silent and nodded rapidly. "I'm listening," she whispered back. "I'm listening perfectly. What's the best bit?"

"Well," he lowered his voice again, "one of the halla came up and started eating Rhodri's robes. Right here, on the shoulder," he tapped the top of his right shoulder. "Made a big hole there."

"Oh!" Martha gasped. "Oh, that's so naughty. Was Rhodri angry?"

He smirked and shook his head. "No, Rhodri was a bit silly, because she was very pleased to see the halla. You know what she did?"

"What? What did she do?"

"She let it eat the other shoulder, too."

The disturbance in the library that resulted from the young mage's shriek of laughter, Zevran decided, would be Rhodri's fault. After all, he had given her all this instruction on how to handle knives; there had been herbalism lessons– not to mention all the general education on life outside the Circle. And had Rhodri, in return, shared any of her expertise in interacting with children, or keeping them from disturbing library patrons with their laughter? No, ser, she had not. Where was the reciprocity? Where was the mutual skill exchange?

And in fact, it was at that moment, as that jarring screech pealed through the library, that Rhodri materialised. She stopped her ears, looking terribly rattled by the whole thing, and when she finally drew up to Martha, she dropped into the seat beside her and raised an eyebrow.

"Stellicula," Rhodri said quietly, "my darling, why in the world are you making a sound like that in the library?"

Martha, who had no sense of solidarity whatsoever, pointed straight at Zevran.

"It's not my fault," she protested– softly, once reminded of the appropriate volume. "Uncle Zevran was telling me what happened with the halla."

Rhodri transferred her wry look from her student to Zevran, and he, the freshly accused, made a point of looking as innocent as he possibly could. Wide, golden Antivan eyes were a sure indication of a person who could do no wrong, as all Northerners knew well– all Northerners, it seemed, except Rhodri.

The only one not to be convinced of his blamelessness now turned back to the child and shook her head. "Uncle Zevran is a silly, naughty man," she sighed. "Because I know you, Martha, and I know you can't keep a secret."

Martha gasped. "I can so keep a secret! … I think. I just haven't so far, that's all."

Well! No protest on accusations of Uncle Zevran being a silly, naughty man. It was every person for themselves in this Tower. Not that Rhodri looked convinced by the argument.

"It's important to be realistic. We all have things we aren't good at, Martha. You'll remember how bad I was at remembering not to sing silly songs when you were all doing your work, sic?"

Martha sighed and rubbed her forehead like an overworked noble. "Yes. You did a lot of that."

"That's right," Rhodri accepted the remark with a smile and a nod. "And you are not good at keeping a secret."

"Mmm…" she nodded back, far more acquiescent this time. "I'm not very good at it, no." She paused. "I might get good at it one day, though."

"You might indeed."

"Especially if I get paid to keep the secrets," she added thoughtfully. "With cookies!"

Zevran, who could no longer keep himself out of the discussion, snorted. "Young lady," he said to her, "do you know what blackmail is?"

Martha frowned. "No? I don't get any mail."

"Something tells me you're well on the way to mastery either way," he chortled, allowing himself to be pinned with an arch look from Rhodri. But he was not the sort to be intimidated by such gazes, and pressed a little further, "And how many cookies would you charge for your silence?"

"All of them," Martha answered, without hesitation.

Rhodri looked at Zevran, and then she looked at Martha. "You're going to be a powerful woman one day, stellicula," she said after a moment, shaking her head. "We'll hand out the cookies soon, but I need to talk to your other uncle first."

With a wave to the two of them, Rhodri excused herself and wandered away to Alistair; Martha's triumphant smile at her teacher's prediction remained for quite some time, until she heaved a sigh and it fell away.

"Wish I could've seen the halla eating up her robe," she mumbled. "Maybe even just looked at them and patted them."

Seized by a sudden thought, Zevran reached for his pack. "I have the next best thing," he said to her, and retrieved the folded-up sketch he'd made of the halla from the front pocket. "You can have this. I drew it myself, you know."

Martha opened it and stared at it with wide eyes. "You drew this?" she breathed.

"Mmm," he shrugged. "I was not so pleased with the horns, and the–"

"I love their faces!" she said, a little too loudly, and quietened before anyone could tell her to; her voice returned to a whisper. "That one has really curly horns, and that one has a fat little tail."

Several other features he wasn't entirely pleased with were pointed out with the same breathless enthusiasm. He tried, with dwindling conviction, to complain about them, and eventually fell silent altogether. Martha's praise continued uninterrupted now, and Zevran sat there, only half-listening in his bafflement. What an odd thing it was that aspects of his drawing that he considered a failure had been received with delight by a child. How very, very odd.

A first round of two cookies per person was handed out immediately. Peers of the adults' age also came and joined in the meeting, and several hours later, after all present played a few games and had some talks in between, another three cookies were handed out to each individual just as the party was about to leave. Zevran presumed this was to give their departure a note of pleasantness amid the distress. Martha advised Zevran, as she took her three allotted cookies, that she had mastered the magic trick he had shown her. He laughed.

"Ah, so we have a mage and a magician in the family now, do we?" he chuckled. "The first one!"

She nodded, acknowledging her dual role quite seriously. "Want to see?"

Zevran, of course, accepted with a nod. Martha obliged by taking one of the cookies, which was easily the size of her palm, and held it behind her back. He watched on with an inward smile as she frowned, her shoulders shifting while the presumed rearrangement took place.

"One second," she mumbled, "... Ah!" She pulled her hand, now folded with the thumb concealed (the cookie, on the other hand, was in plain view), up near her own ear, and the cookie fell out of its precarious spot and onto the ground.

Zevran bit down on his lips, allowing only the barest amusement to show by means of an arched brow. It wasn't good to laugh at children; it only discouraged them. Martha tutted under her breath as she bent down and picked up the cookie.

"It's still clean," she said unprompted. "I didn't do very good this time."

He smiled and shrugged a little. "It needs some work, perhaps, but practice will take care of that."

"Yeah. When are you coming back, Uncle? I'll be ready by then." She stood there, this tiny girl with three large cookies to hand, watching up at Zevran, who was a deadly man with at least nine knives on his person, with great expectation.

Ah. Brasca. He had almost gotten out after a time of nothing but small talk and silly games. Almost, but not quite.

He opted for honesty: "I am not quite sure," he said after a moment. "We have quite some work to do for now." Martha, who had looked remarkably untroubled up to now, sniffled and blinked back obvious tears.

"Ah, but you know," Zevran added quickly, "I am very sure of one thing."

"... Yeah?"

"On my next visit, I will bring you ten cookies. Huge ones. Just for you."

"Ten," she echoed, nodding now. "Wow."

"But you have to keep that quiet, no?" He chuckled and winked. "Make that your first secret you've ever kept."

"Yeah."

"Ah, good. Then it is agreed?"

"Yeah."

Martha had them shake on it, and that was that.

In the stairwell, the now-four companions trudged their way downstairs. Alistair and Leliana had had a painful goodbye with Wynne and were quiet and gloomy, and Rhodri, who had admitted to the party that she was satisfied conditions in the Tower had improved dramatically, had been left unable to speak without coughing or choking after more separations from tearful students and peers. Through a western-facing window, the sun was setting and bathing the four of them in thick, poured-gold light. They were shining, and mourning, and adventure was pulling them ahead while the people they met cried and pulled them back. Why would anyone pull Zevran back?

… Would Rhodri pull him back if he left? If she would, why? And if she wouldn't, why not? Anything was possible; everything was a tangled bundle of questions he had no answers to– and if he was honest with himself, he wasn't even sure what most of the questions were.

Absorbed in his own bafflement, and the ache it was producing, Zevran sighed, and Rhodri's head snapped around in his direction. He watched her watch him, unsmiling, speechless, and searching, and when she carefully– dutifully, even– inched out an arm, he nodded. The arm went around his shoulder, resting there the entire trip down with that hard, heavy comfort he had come to accept reflexively whenever it was offered.

His head was buzzing, and the only thing he seemed able to establish on that terribly short walk down to the boat, was that he, Zevran Arainai, didn't know anything about anything.

§

The party stayed one night in the place they had camped by Lake Calenhad the first time. Amid all the near-bare trees, the young elm Rhodri had carved a memorial into stood alone, in full bloom.