AN: Just as a reminder, because I don't want anyone to be disappointed: the original story as I wrote it actually ends on Chapter 20. The last five chapters will all be epilogues/missing scenes that I didn't want to put in standalone fics, things that I wanted to include in the story and world but which didn't quite fit in the original narrative. Just wanted to make sure people had a sense of where we were, like glancing at the side of a novel to see how many pages are left. :)


I cannot live with You –
It would be Life –
And Life is over there –
Behind the Shelf

I could not die – with You –
For One must wait
To shut the Other's Gaze down –
You – could not –

So We must meet apart –
You there – I – here –
With just the Door ajar
That Oceans are – and Prayer –
And that White Sustenance –
Despair –
—Emily Dickinson

"Oh!" said the princess, and nearly dropped her tiny spoon back into the crystal egg cup.

Sebastian turned in his seat, following her gaze to see his captain slowly approaching their breakfast table on the west balcony. He was dressed as if he meant to work, only the trace of a thick bandage at his collar marking how near he'd come to death; his face was so pale Sebastian could hardly make out the white marks on his chin. "Fenris," he said, hurriedly pushing from his seat, but the servants had moved faster, already bringing forth a fresh chair and setting a third place for the White Guard's captain at their table.

Fenris sank into it heavily. "Your Highness."

"What are you doing, my friend? It's been two days—barely two days. You should be resting, not—" He tugged at the sleeve of the white surcoat, but Fenris's expression was mulish, and Sebastian threw up his hands. "You have not listened to me once in ten years. Why would I expect you to start now?"

"Better to keep moving," Fenris said, though the lines around his mouth were tight with pain. "Though if I am intruding—"

"No!" Sebastian and Hawke said at once. Sebastian glanced at her in surprise; he saw her visibly gather herself, and then with some effort she smiled and said, "It's good to see you up and about, Captain. How are you feeling?"

"It is not enough to keep me from my duties."

"You know that isn't what I meant."

Fenris snorted, more bitter than amused, and set down his glass of water. The morning was still very young; the light was cool and thin, the far corners of the green still touched with dawn mist. Sebastian felt abruptly that Fenris's look held the same mist, some part of him distant and withdrawn from sight. "I am recovering well, Your Highness," his captain said at last, though he did not meet her eyes. "Soon it will be as if it never happened."

The princess tensed, though her voice was level. "As well as could be hoped, then. A return to how everything ought to be."

"Somehow I doubt your sitting here is the best hope of the healers," Sebastian said, closer to stern than he liked. A mourning dove called from the treeline at the edge of the green, lonely and beautiful. His tone gentled. "Fenris, this can't be good for you. The morning air is so cold. Surely you would fare better indoors."

"Yes," Fenris said sharply, and then he sighed, shoving back from the table. "Just as well. I must speak with Lieutenant Rylen regardless."

"I want you to rest," Sebastian said, wretched, but Fenris only waved him away as he departed. One bite from a cup of fruit; two swallows, perhaps, of coffee. The egg was untouched; the bacon still hissed and spat on the plate. "Damn the man," Sebastian said to no one, then pinched the bridge of his nose. "My apologies, m'eudail."

Her smile was only a little strained. "I might suggest you go after him, but I fear you risk losing a finger to the snappishness."

"I'm sure there are many princes in history who lived well with no thumbs."

"And how many archers?" she asked dryly, and he laughed despite himself. She shook her head. "Your bow would grieve the loss. No, better to let him leave for now."

"Yes," Sebastian said, and he leaned back in his chair. "Though I'm afraid this departure only heralds one more prolonged."

"What do you mean?"

He forced the words out, made them become real. "Fenris is leaving An Taigh Gheal after the wedding. I don't know for how long. He will go north, to an old fort near Laverock, near the Tevinter border."

Her glass stilled midair. "What? Why?"

"He cannot bear the idea that Tevinter has attacked Starkhaven without cause. He has told you his master is from that country. From Laverock he can gather information. He can seek out evidence of Tevinter's involvement, of his master's location." Preemptive grief seized his heart; he swallowed hard, as if that might chase away the pain. "I would go with him if I could. He should not face such a danger alone."

Hawke was staring at him, her face white as chalk. "Fenris told you this? That he will leave the palace to seek out his master? He will leave you here without him?"

"Yes." His eyes stung. He looked swiftly at his plate, empty now but for a few rashers, and held his breath until the sorrow eased. "Lieutenant Rylen will take his duties until he returns." If he returned—but that thought only worsened the hurt, and Sebastian shied from the idea. "There is no use arguing with him about this. When he sets his mind to a thing it will be done, and there is no stopping him."

"Yes," Hawke said. Her hands had clenched tightly around each other. "I know him well enough to guess that much. If he could just share his heart plainly—if he could just tell you what he—" She bit off the thought and dropped her eyes. "But what magnificent hypocrisy this is from me. Even I can't bear it."

"What do you mean?"

"Oh, Sebastian, I hardly know what I mean. I just—Fenris—sometimes I think he is nothing but walls."

"We all have our walls, my lady," Sebastian sighed, weary despite the early hour, and she looked at him with an aching resignation. "Some merely stand higher than others. If we all felt so free to speak our hearts, a great many things would come easier." He shook his head. "Fenris has always been forthright with me, which is more than I can say for most in Starkhaven. There were many times when half-truths would have satisfied, would have been gentler; but still he showed me the courtesy of candor, even though he knew it would be difficult for me to hear. He did not always spare my pride or my feelings, but in the end I was always grateful. Such honesty is a rare thing."

Hawke made an abrupt, startled motion, but Sebastian's throat had closed and he could not continue. She did not voice whatever thought had struck her; instead she sat with him quietly, giving him room for the sorrow. Eventually, her tone gentle, she said, "So many times I'd meant to ask you to tell me something about Fenris. I'm grieved finally doing so has caused you such pain."

Even he could hear the fondness in his voice. "If there is pain, it is only because I love him."

She smiled sadly, but her brow was furrowed, and after a moment her gaze slid to the far trees. "Such honesty," she echoed distantly, with a weight he could not understand, and then she shut her eyes. There was a long, unexpected silence, and then she gave a painful laugh and buried her face in her hand. "Sebastian, your knack for piercing to the heart of the issue is occasionally maddening."

"My lady?"

She rose abruptly to her feet. He followed with belated courtesy; she hardly seemed to notice. "I'm sorry," she said, very quick. "Forgive me—I must think alone. Give me a little time—where are you this morning?"

"My office," he said, startled and somewhat alarmed, but she touched his hand and he covered her fingers with his own. "Are you well?"

"Yes—very." She leaned up suddenly and kissed his cheek. "Let me just think something through, Sebastian, please. I will find you soon. As soon as I can, I swear it."

"Yes, of course—"

But she was going already, her eyes a thousand miles away, Orana slipping into her wake as she headed back into the palace opposite the direction where Fenris had vanished. The last of the morning mist had burned away, the sunlight grown stronger with even these few passing minutes; the green shone with dew, and after a moment, the servants came quietly to clear their places, leaving the prince alone with his thoughts.

"Thank you, Captain," said Lieutenant Rylen, saluting again with badly contained delight. Fenris, whose voice had become untrustworthy, only nodded; Rylen turned and went out with some haste, and the door clattered shut behind him.

Fenris stood behind his desk a moment more, willing his breathing to remain steady. His wounded shoulder hurt badly, and his arm where the rapier had caught it twinged with every gesture. He rested with the pain a moment, letting it wash over him; then he took the papers Rylen had signed and placed them neatly at the desk's corner, and the ink shone black and wet in the cool morning sunlight. Raised to the position of Acting Captain of the White Guard, until such time as—

Until such time as it could no longer be ignored that Fenris would not return. Until such time as some exchequer's apprentice wondered why a forgotten soldier in Laverock commanded a prince's wages. Or perhaps he might go even farther, if Laverock were too close after all; perhaps he might go into the border villages directly, where he knew slavers still prowled and stole and chained those who could not defend themselves. Sebastian would grieve the distance, but even he would not be able to deny the worth of the work. And the prince would be freshly married besides, with a wife who would love him and his people. Starkhaven would need them more and more, and Fenris would be able to fade quietly into memory. A living ghost.

It would be a clean cut, like the blade of a surgeon's knife. Carve out the rot before it poisons the whole.

Fenris pushed away from the desk and went out, locking the door behind him. For the sake of both convenience and preference his office had been set close to his rooms, and he was relieved to reach their solitude swiftly and without interruption. He did not even see Orana, who lingered here sometimes under the guise of duty, who might mention to him in passing that today Hawke had asked after him when he had not arrived for breakfast; that today Hawke had read letters from her family and wept and hidden it; that today Hawke had ridden out with Prince Sebastian into the woods and had come back smiling.

He was glad Orana was not there. Even if Fenris usually welcomed her tidings, despite the stings and bites that came with them, he was too raw here and her Tevinter-honed insight too strong. Her gaze had always been sharp. Even on the day Hadriana had died, when the rest of the woman's slaves had cowered and wept, Orana had looked at him and seen through him despite all his shields against it. She would do so here again, he knew it, and though she would be gentle he did not think he could bear the pity.

His rooms were as he had left them this morning, save that a servant had straightened his bedclothes and taken away the empty wineglass. Pleasant rooms, fine for a guardsman, opulent for a slave: an antechamber and sleeping quarters and a small bathing room, all with windows taller than Fenris, though so narrow Sebastian had to turn sideways when he came through them, and only one entryway to defend. Hadriana had died here, choking on her own blood.

He had struggled to fill the rooms at first. He had been an escaped slave with nothing to his name but a set of stained leathers and a gifted greatsword. For weeks he had stared at empty drawers and bare boot-racks; for months he had endured the polite surprise of servants who arrived to help him dress in the mornings only to find him already armored and departing. They had grown to understand each other eventually, had learned together what services he could bear to receive and which he could not. More than that, he had, to his own astonishment, managed to fill the shelves and dressers one by one. He had learned how to own a thing and keep it.

Now he could mark out the last ten years of his life on every wall. There above the fireplace: a sword Sebastian had given him on the third anniversary of An Taigh Gheal's retaking. Decorative, beautiful, very likely to break on the first use. On the table beneath the windows: an array of fine polishes and oils for leather and steel, some gifted by Sebastian, others purchased with his own coin, others still small tokens from his guard when he could not find reason to be absent from certain festivals. On his nightstand: a handful of histories borrowed from the palace library, kept dusted by the servants but otherwise just as he had stacked them half a year ago, the night before he had departed at last for Kirkwall.

He breathed in the familiar smells a moment, watched how the slender bars of sunlight fell across the woven rug laid by his bed, over the armchair nearest the unlit fireplace. He had chosen the rug himself, had liked the weight and warmth of it; two years later he'd seen a pair of vases with the same interlocking pattern made by a master craftswoman in the prince's hall, and he had bought those as well. He touched the elegant curve of one vase, ran his fingertips over the textured porcelain. Then he went to his wardrobe and pulled from the bottom of it a small valise of leather and brass and the rucksack he kept behind it, the grey canvas much more worn and threadbare, and he laid them both on the bed and pulled them open.

Clothes, first. Practical needs only, none of the woven jackets and embroidered half-capes he wore sometimes to court. Both remaining pairs of his best boots, the soles shaped perfectly to his feet and reinforced on the ankles and toes; the boots from the forest were long gone, consigned to scraps. Three woolen cloaks, long and very well made. A pair of sturdy gloves he had bought during his first winter in Starkhaven. The riding clothes he had commissioned when he had realized he would at last have to learn how to ride a horse.

Sebastian would tell him the servants could have packed these things in his place, and he would have been right. But there was ceremony in this, even if a prince could not see it: a slave given the luxury of choice, a man leaving his home and deciding for himself what might be worth taking with him and what should be left behind.

He set his hand on the books and grew still. As ready as he was to go—to be gone —this was too final. There was time yet. A few days more before the wedding—there was time yet, surely. Laverock kept no library in those whistling stone walls.

He left the books and went back to his wardrobe, where he pulled on a light cloak and his riding gloves, his shoulder lancing like lightning with each sharp gesture. Donnic had mentioned something of a merchants' conflict in the city, and he would need to make Rylen's promotion known to the Guard besides. He had just reached the door when a servant knocked, entered at his word, and bowed.

"From the tailor, Captain," she said, and at his gesture she set the bundle she carried on the table by the window. She unwrapped it just enough for him to see white cambric, gold thread at the high, stiff collar and the cuffs, before he realized what she had brought to him. She saw his face change, bowed again, and withdrew without comment; and when she had gone he went to the table to see it better in the light.

Wedding clothes. His own suit, fitted so long ago he had forgotten, designed to complement the prince and his bride when he stood with them before the priests. Such fine cloth, the brass toggles beautifully polished, the seams trimmed with embroidered cups and lilies. He reached for the collar, hesitated, and withdrew without touching it. There was time yet, surely.

Fenris turned and went out into the morning, his thoughts fixed determinedly on Donnic and his duties and nothing else. He left the suit, still unwrapped and untouched, in his rooms behind him, where sunlight snared in the cuffs' gold threads and shone there, burning gently.