Morrigan's mood does not improve as they cover ground. In fact, it worsens the further they move, west and away from Redcliffe. Savreen notices the witch speaking less, snapping more, pitching her patched tent further and further away from where the rest of the party sleeps clustered around the watchfire. On the third night, she can barely see Morrigan's tent—the firelight almost gives out before reaching the canvas.

She wonders if she should say something. More so, she wonders if she can say anything that would help. She remembers their chat atop the tower at Redcliffe Castle, remembers the way Morrigan spoke about her mother. It's possible, of course, that something about Isolde and Connor triggered this change of behavior. But then, Savreen thinks, why hadn't she noticed it earlier? If it was really just Connor and Isolde and their relationship, it would have been plain the moment they found Connor in the great hall.

But Morrigan had been fine before she began watching over the boy, grudging but accepting of the need to care for him. And then in the days after…well, truthfully, Savreen realizes with some surprise, she hadn't seen Morrigan much while they both waited at Redcliffe Castle. She had avoided visiting Connor, avoided it because it made her feel more helpless and restless. And now she isn't sure exactly when Morrigan began growing irritated and withdrawn, no matter how hard she tries to concentrate on it.

Reflecting on Morrigan's attitude does, at the very least, occupy her thoughts as she keeps watch, tending the fire and trying not to imagine Darkspawn lurking past the edges of her vision. It helps the time pass, slipping by in more manageable chunks that don't bore her to tears or set her on the edge of her toes with anxiety. Soon, the moons have both moved across the starry expanse of the sky, two hours' progress, and Savreen stands, heading to wake Sten for his watch.

Softly, she taps on the rough canvas of his tent, sending faint ripples across the taut fabric. It's enough to do the trick—the man is a light sleeper—and Sten rises quickly, his face carefully measured, as always. But when Savreen turns to head to her own tent, he stops her.

"I have a question," is all he says, short and to the point. It's more than he usually says to Savreen, and when she looks back at him, it's with curiosity. Her answer is maybe more guarded than he expects, staring at her with his dark, deep-set eyes that have a contradictory sort of openness to them, but it is as open as she feels comfortable being.

"Would you like to ask it?" There's a faint furrowing in the center of his brow, wrinkles forming and disappearing as quickly as a brush of wind across the surface of still, deep waters.

"You are Wardens." As he speaks, he steps closer to the fire, taking the seat Savreen has just vacated.

"That is not a question."

"No, it is not." Still waiting for his question, Savreen watches as he carefully adds another log to the fire, poking the coals up around it with a nearby stick until the flames and their glow are to his liking. "My question is how?" Savreen blinks and turns her body fully to face Sten, abandoning her tent for the time being.

"How?" He nods, eyes trained on the dancing flames in front of him.

"How."

The question is so simple, but there is something in it that Savreen isn't sure how, exactly, to answer. She starts small, with the obvious response.

"We were recruited." Sten shakes his head, finally looking up at her with eyes that reflect the flames back across at her.

"That does not answer my question." Savreen takes a step back towards him, crossing her arms over her chest. She can feel her own brow furrowing, feel the confusion showing on her face.

"Then what is your question, really?"

"You and the other woman Warden. Your kin. You were born for something different. How did you become this?" Savreen still isn't sure she understands entirely, but she's getting closer. She takes another step forward, then another.

"Why does it matter?" Sten looks at her still, thought heavy in his unblinking eyes.

"What could matter more?"

Savreen tries to take the measure of the man sitting before her, his dark, faintly silvered skin warmed by the firelight, almost metallic in character. His question, though, feels honest, free of judgement. She takes a final step forward and sits across from him, folding her legs beneath her.

"You say we were born for something different." He nods. Savreen doesn't. Instead, she shakes her head. A faint frown buckles at the corners of Sten's lips. "I was born to the Faith of the Disciples. I was born to protect, to serve others, to perform a duty of care. So was my brother, and so were my cousins."

"But you were born to lords of the land." He says it so simply. "You were born for a station and a role. This is not that role." There doesn't seem to be reproach in his voice, nor even frustration. He wants to know, to understand.

"My role, and Tali's, has only ever been to protect others in whatever way we can. It is…it's true that we were meant to do that by serving the people of my family's Teyrnir. It is also true that we were not always meant to be Wardens. But circumstances…change." She tries to figure out how to say it, how to explain the fall of Highever Keep. "The roles we were born to, they shift when there—when those we were meant to serve are stripped away. Circumstances change."

"And duty remains." A little surprised, Savreen looks up at Sten to find him nodding.

"Duty remains." Sten lapses into silence at that, but he watches Savreen, now, instead of the flames.

"I thought you were different than me. Not just you and the other Wardens, but all the Fereldans. But perhaps I was wrong to judge you in that manner."

"No, I think you were right. You are right. We are…different. But maybe not in the ways that matter." Once more, Sten nods.

"Is it really so different here than it is in Par Vollen?" Savreen can't help but ask. Sten is quiet for a long moment, considering her question.

"We Qunari…we know our roles. We are raised for them, not simply born into them but born for them. I knew my role when I came here to study the Blight." Another pause, this one more pregnant, and Savreen understands.

"But circumstances change," she offers. She thinks she sees a smile on Sten's face at the repeated phrase, at the mirroring of her own situation to his.

"Indeed they do. But never duty."

"Have I answered your question?" Savreen asks, and she notices as she does so that Sten's posture has relaxed ever so slightly. He nods, and his ash-white braids flit across his broad shoulders with the movement.

"Most informatively." She stands, aware of the tiredness in her limbs, and, with a 'goodnight,' returns to her tent at last.

On the fourth night after leaving Redcliffe, Tali finally is convinced that they've made it far enough for Jowan to slip away. Far enough from an angry Isolde bent on justice, but, more importantly, far enough to be out of the reach of the Templars, and of Greagoir. As they all gather around the fire, grateful that Leliana is the one cooking her expertly caught rabbits and not Alistair, Tali catches Jowan's eye with a pointed look.

"Who's taking first watch tonight?" she asks, nonchalant as she can possibly be, rotating a skewer of cleaned and roasted meat in her grip. Before anyone else can offer, Jowan clears his throat—a bit too eagerly, maybe, but no one else seems to find it suspicious—and speaks.

"I'll take it. Haven't done it yet, so I figure it's my turn." Tali takes a bite of rabbit—bland, but hot, real, cooked food, and, casually, speaks after.

"Second's mine, then." She thinks, with a faint skip of dread in her heart, that Alistair looks at her, aware of something, but she does her best to keep chewing.

"I shall take third," Leliana offers, oblivious, rotating more meat on the fire. In response, Alistair groans, and Tali feels whatever tension had hovered over her drift away with his attention.

"Please don't wake us at the Maker's asscrack of dawn again," he asks, already rubbing his eyes as though in anticipation of the exhaustion. Leliana frowns before retorting, most likely trying not to imagine where Alistair picked up the idea of the Maker's ass.

"We seek to make it to Orzammar as quickly as possible, yes? Then I do not understand why you wish to waste so much time sleeping!" Normally, Tali would expect Morrigan to chip in here, to say something snarky about Alistair's sleeping habits or his snoring. She even looks over at the witch, but Morrigan is silent, her golden-brown eyes trained on nothing as she chews listlessly, deep in thought.

"Because we can't move quickly if we're all sleepwalking!" No matter, though. Leliana and Alistair's bickering will surely have distracted the others from Jowan's suspicious eagerness to keep watch first—and Tali's insistence on following him. At least, that's what Tali hopes. With an exaggerated yawn, she stands, taking a final bite of food before tossing the skewer and picked clean carcass back onto the fire. The fire pops, consuming the bones and scraps hungrily.

"As much as I enjoy the friendly chatter," Tali says, "I'd like to get some rest in before watch. Jowan, wake me when it's time."

She does not, of course, sleep a wink, not even with Abarie snoring on top of her chest. Half an hour passes. Morrigan's shadow creeps across the canvas of Tali's tent first, heading into the darkness. Then Savreen and Sher, and, shortly after, Ranjit. Tali's heart pounds and she rolls over, trying to will herself to calm. Instead, she finds herself listening even harder to the faint sounds of the others. Alistair is the next to leave—she knows him by the sound of his voice as he trips and curses—followed by Leliana. Only Sten and Jowan remain, and she can hear the sound of a whetstone running across a blade as the Qunari silently sharpens his sword. Finally, though, she hears Sten sheathe the greatsword, apparently happy with its upkeep, and his footfalls recede lightly across the grass to his tent.

Tali lays there in silence, listening for any hint that Jowan is headed her way, that the others are truly sleeping, that their plan is about to go wrong. Soon, though, Abarie's snoring is joined by a faint chorus of other sleepers. She hears the rustle and snap of canvas in the nighttime breeze, the sound of fabric bunched beneath sleepers who toss and turn. But those sounds are normal, those sounds are expected. Everything is as still and quiet as it could possibly be. Another half hour passes, agonizing in its length as Tali stares at the dark ceiling of her tent and waits for Jowan to 'wake' her. But she wonders—what if he's changed his mind? Or what if he's decided to simply leave without telling her, to make her seem less culpable? That might cross his mind. It would be good of him. Or what if he's taken their supplies and run? A chill starts to weasel its way down her spine and she finds her skin prickling with anxious sweat as a fourth, far worse possibility enters her mind.

What if Jowan is still loyal to Loghain, and he isn't coming to wake Tali because he wants her asleep when Loghain's men come? When they come to kill them?

The acrid smell of her own fear and the chill of the dampness under her arms and along her back chases away any possibility of rest before her watch. Her heart beats like the thump of a rabbit's foot in her chest, echoing up to her throat and down through a stomach that feels as though it might rebel at any moment. Once more she finds herself listening for the faintest sound of feet on the grass, at the edge of the clearing, rustling through the brush that surrounds their camp. Off in the distance, she thinks she hears something—possibly the clop of horses' hooves? But no, no there are no roads, she's being silly, imagining things in her fear—but that was certainly the sound of a branch breaking, of leaves crunching—maybe she isn't being so paranoid after all, maybe she should be more prepared. She reaches for her father's kirpan just as she hears footsteps on the ground outside her tent, and her shoulders tense. Abarie awakens and growls, her muzzle twitching slightly, and Talvinder tightens her grip on the blade in her hand.

But it's just Jowan who taps the flap of her tent, hesitance in his motion.

"Talvinder?" he whispers, his voice slightly choked by a few hours of disuse. He clears his throat, but it isn't needed. Talvinder rights herself, sitting up on her knees and pulling the tent flap open to find Jowan looking down at her with nerves plain on his face.

"Everything all right?" she asks, trying to keep her voice steady. She doesn't set down her father's kirpan. The thought of Loghain's men is still on her mind, still in the frantic energy that prickles the hair on her arms and legs and the back of her neck. Jowan nods, though he glances over his shoulder, eyes jumping around, landing on the tents of each of their companions.

"I think it's clear. I think—I think it's time." Now Tali sets down the dagger, pulling herself forward and out of her tent. The cool air makes her shiver slightly as it wisps against her skin, making her arms break out in gooseflesh, and she stoops and reaches down through the canvas flap of the tent, pulling her gambeson out and on over her head. Righting it, she speaks in a hushed voice.

"Everyone is asleep?" He nods, and as Tali steps closer to the fire, she notices the canvas of his tent rolled up in a pack, his provisions and bedroll inside, sitting just at the edge of the firelight. "You—you're ready already?" For some reason, it hadn't hit her that they would be losing a companion, an ally, until now, until she sees everything packed.

"I wasn't sure if I should wake you to help—I thought it might…well, it might look more suspicious. But I…I wanted to thank you, anyway." That startles Tali, and she looks back at Jowan, feeling the nonplussed expression heavy on her face.

"But I haven't done anything." A smile cracks across Jowan's face and he just barely holds back a strangled chuckle.

"You believed me. You didn't need to do anything more. You gave me a chance, Talvinder." Now Tali finds herself smiling, too, and she thinks that maybe she considers Jowan a friend, actually. That she might even miss him.

"Thank you for…I don't know what to say, I just—it didn't seem right not to let you try to make things better, if that was what you wanted." She pauses, because words are inadequate, because she isn't sure how to explain that she did what she did because it's what she believes in, more than anything else. Fidgeting, Tali brings her hands together, touches her fingers to the kara on her wrist, turning the slightly warmed steel over her skin. "Promise me one thing, Jowan." He nods, bending down to bring his pack to his shoulders.

"Anything. You've given me freedom. If I could repay you—" She doesn't want repayment. Not for this.

"I asked you before to protect others, whenever you can. Whenever there's a need. Please don't forget it." Another nod. He looks at her for a long moment, and Tali realizes she isn't sure what more to say. She's barely known Jowan a fortnight, if that. She doesn't even know if he's Andrastian, if he believes in the Old Gods, the Elven Gods, anything, nothing—she doesn't know how to wish him well. Neither of them speaks. Somehow, it's a better goodbye than a long speech.

Jowan seems to know when he's ready, when the time is right time. He shifts his grip on his staff, the staff he's carried since they left Kinloch Hold, and though it seems somewhat alien to his hands, the grip different than what he's used to, he at least seems more comfortable for its presence alone. Softly, he clears his throat, turning to look around their camp.

"I am glad to have met you, Talvinder."

"Waheguru guide your steps and your deeds, Jowan." At her words, Jowan's face breaks into a smile once more.

"And yours, friend." And with one last firm grip of Tali's hand, a final shake, Jowan turns and steals out, back into the tree line, out into the forest, back the way they came—or possibly some other way, Tali isn't sure. It's better that way, better that she doesn't know. Maybe he'll go further west, toward the mountain pass over the Frostbacks and through to Orlais. Maybe he'll turn north and head for the Waking Sea, seek passage to the Free Marches and beyond. Maybe he'll stay in Ferelden. Tali remembers his dream, remembers the farm, the family. Maybe he won't stay.

"Travel safe, Jowan," she whispers, not quite to him, now that he's slipped, silent, into the darkness. It's more to the air, to the stars, to the earth beneath her feet. It's more of a prayer than not.

Before Tali can take a seat by the fire, though, before she can even register relief that the plan has gone off seemingly without a hitch, the flap of a nearby tent opens. She stiffens, panic in her limbs, as Alistair steps out from the tent, straightening up with a disapproving expression on his face. A very awake, very disapproving expression.

"I—I—" Tali isn't sure if she should even attempt to pretend other than the truth as Alistair walks across the camp toward her, his face unreadable. It would be better if he yelled at her, or if he woke the others. It would be better if he said something, anything. But he doesn't. Silently, he sits down next to the fire. Abarie snuffles into his head, licking his ear, and when he pets her, he doesn't even fight a smile, like he normally would. Instead, he just stares at the fire, his face impassive.

"I'm sorry." It's the only thing Tali knows she can say, because she knows it's true, she knows that she never wanted to keep this from him. With a flick of his hand, Alistair gestures for Tali to sit across from him. Hesitantly, she does.

"I heard him break down his tent. Weird that he put it up just to pretend. Would have saved him time, been quieter not to bother with it." Surprisingly, there isn't really anger in Alistair's voice. At least, not anger that seems directed at Tali. "Though I suppose that would have been suspicious, wouldn't it?"

"I…"

"I knew something wasn't quite right at dinner. You never go to sleep so early." That cuts like a knife, bites like the sting of an arrow in Tali's flesh.

"I should have told you. I'm sorry, Alistair I—" Finally, he looks at Tali instead of the fire.

"You always meant for Jowan to escape. To leave. Didn't you." As she sits there, the silence between them, the silence of Jowan's departure, the silence of the night all heavy on the air, weighing on her shoulders, she knows there can be no response but the truth. After keeping it from him for so long, Alistair deserves it.

"Yes. I—I told you back in the tower, the best I could. I knew he would come with us if we asked. But I didn't know that it would be what he wanted to do. He made his atonement by helping Connor. He deserved a chance. And after the Circle…" Still silent and unreadable, Alistair watches her, as though processing her words. For the barest flicker of a moment, there's something like the edge of anger in his eyes, but then it fades. He shakes his head, and his expression softens.

"No, you were right to…to think of that. And I know he's done what he could to make things right, and that it wasn't by his choice in the first place that he…that he went to Redcliffe. I guess it's just…part of me was still—is still angry. So angry. About what he did to Eamon." This is the one thing Tali isn't sure how to refute. She isn't sure she can, and she doesn't even think she wants to, in all honesty. Alistair has every right to be mad. She even wonders if she should feel more guilt than she does, taking Jowan from Isolde and Teagan and Connor, removing the choice of justice from their hands.

"But it was Loghain that used him, really." Alistair's voice startles Talvinder, and when she looks back to him, focuses on his face, she sees blind fury behind his eyes, and the anger makes sense, now, and it is a relief that it isn't reserved for her, but the way Alistair squeezes his hands into fists still makes her heart ache. "It's been Loghain this whole time. Jowan deserves to be free from that snake, just like anyone else." The force of Alistair's words hangs there for a moment, and Tali just watches him, watches him as he stares into the flames, hands clenched around his knees, fury sparking like the embers reflected in the dark glittering surface of his eyes.

The right thing to do, she thinks, would be to counsel him away from that anger, now that she knows it isn't for her, now that she knows it's not something she can apologize for. But she thinks of Howe, and then she thinks of leaving Highever, and she doesn't want to do the 'right' thing.

"We'll stop him," she says, and her own voice is brittle enough to make Alistair look up at her, to make him stare at her once more. "Loghain will pay."

They stare at each other, just the two of them, alone and awake in the night. There are things Tali wants to say, but now isn't the right time, not with the thought of Loghain and Howe lingering between them. Softness and vengeance don't mix, they never have. And it would be selfish of her to try, anyway. The images of Howe's face, of Loghain's, of the carnage, the ruin left in their wake, the detritus of lives—they poison everything, the two of them. And Alistair, like her, has so much on his shoulders. It wouldn't be fair to add more.

But he doesn't leave. He doesn't go back to his tent, even as the silence continues. The only possibility in Talvinder's mind is that he doesn't trust her anymore, doesn't want her to be left alone to keep watch. It makes sense, but it deflates something inside of her. When he does finally stand, she closes her eyes. It feels like a smack to the face.

"I—do you mind if I show you something?" Confused, fully having expected his words to be a rebuke, Tali opens her eyes and looks up at Alistair. The firelight burnishes his skin, gilding the edges of the hair on his head and forearms, adding a patina to the lines of stubble on his jaw. She doesn't want to notice any of it. Oh, but she does.

"Show me something?" With a gulp, Tali forces her feelings from her mind. Alistair is in front of her—that is a fact. She need not feel anything about it. Certainly not now.

"Yes." Alistair nods as he answers, and he almost seems nervous—a strange detail, given everything. Blinking, Tali responds.

"I—not at all?" She knows her voice is more of a question than an answer. It's enough for Alistair, though, and he walks slowly, almost gingerly, to his tent, as though afraid of breaking something in the moment around them. Tali watches him go until he ducks into the canvas opening, and only then does she whirl back to the fire, casting her mind around for what he could possibly mean. Her head, though, is empty, and it remains so as she hears Alistair return. Now she can't bring herself to turn around and look, fear and hope writhing in her stomach: hope that it's—but no, no she shouldn't even think that it's about affection, because she's so afraid of the disappointment.

Alistair sits once more, this time directly next to Tali. He isn't wearing his gambeson, just his shirt, cleaned and dried after their good fortune in finding a river nearby, rolled up to his elbows and tucked into his breeches. Tali is painfully aware of how the bunched-up fabric of his sleeves brushes against her arm, even through the fabric of her own shirt. She doesn't want to be, but she just is. There's a moment of relief from the ache in her sternum when Alistair clears his throat and holds out a hand, palm open.

"I don't understand," Tali blurts out, looking at the slightly crumpled and faded flower resting in Alistair's grip. Her heart is racing, and she can't look up to his face to read his expression.

"You—you do know what this is?"

"It's a rose?" Out of the corner of her eye, Tali sees a nervous smile flicker across Alistair's face. He moves his hand closer to her, offering her the flower, and, as delicately as possible, Tali reaches out and takes it by the stem. It's light—of course it's light, it's a flower—and slightly brittle, dried out and fragile, trimmed roughly on a forked and thorny branch, but still its petals smell like blossoms and summer air. And it's red, the color of love. Tali blinks, once, then twice, and a third time for good measure. The flower does not disappear, not in any of the three moments in which her eyes are closed. She must be mistaken. There's something she isn't understanding, some reason for the remarkably well-preserved rose in her hand. She looks at Alistair, and his expression isn't anger, and she doesn't understand how it couldn't be, not after what's just happened.

A joke. She has to tell a joke. It will fix everything.

"Is this your new weapon of choice?" It works, cracking through the tension in the air. The smile that rises to Alistair's face isn't a nervous one this time.

"Yes, that's right. Watch me as I thrash our enemies with the mighty power of floral arrangements! Feel my thorns, Darkspawn! I will overpower you with my rosy scent!" As he speaks, Alistair adopts an accent of foppish superiority, gesturing wildly with his hands. It makes Tali laugh, just a little, and that seems to gratify him. He watches her for a moment, she can feel his eyes on her as she looks at the rose again. It's not fully open, more a bud than anything else. Something small and growing. Waiting to blossom. "Or, you know, it could just be a rose. I—I know that's pretty dull in comparison." Tali wants to ask him why, what it's for, because she can't possibly be assuming correctly. There has to be something else behind the gesture of showing her this flower, but to ask why is too direct, too likely to produce an answer other than the one for which she hopes. So instead, she asks him something else, something free of the weight of 'why.'

"Where did you find it? We haven't seen any rose bushes on the road." With a bashful expression, Alistair scratches the side of his face and looks away, into the fire.

"I picked it in Lothering, actually. Kept it in a jar in my pack. You know, to keep it from getting crushed. Helped dry it out, too, I think." He pauses, and for a moment Tali thinks that's all, that he's finished speaking, but then, abruptly, he opens his mouth once more. He's still staring at the fire as he talks. "I just remember seeing it, outside the inn, and thinking, 'how could something so beautiful exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness?' I probably should have left it—space, and travelling and all—but I couldn't. The Darkspawn would come, and their taint would just destroy it. So I've, uh, I've had it ever since." Tali thinks she understands, maybe. The rose is about having hope, about fighting back his desire to give into despair after everything that's happened. It must be. She holds it out, ready to give it back to him.

"What will you do with it?" At that question, blush sprouts up across Alistair's cheeks, working its way down his nose and up to the points of his ears.

"Ah. Well I thought," finally he turns to look at Tali, brown eyes meeting grey, and the nerves in his voice are gone, "I would give it to you, actually." He reaches out and gently urges Tali's hand back towards her own body, closing her fingers over the stem of the flower. His hand is still on hers as he continues speaking, and Tali isn't sure what she understands anymore, because she's so sure that he can't want what she does. "In a lot of ways, I think the same things when I look at you." He's looking at her right now, as he says it, with a smile on the corner of his mouth, and it can't be true.

"I don't—I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything, honest." There's a stinging in her eyes, and she thinks she might cry, but she isn't sad—it's just so much welling over. "I just thought: here I am, doing all this complaining. And you haven't exactly been having a good time of it yourself. You—and Savreen—" the way he pauses on Sav's name, Tali knows this isn't about Sav. It's about her. "The two of you haven't had any of the good experiences of being a Grey Warden, not since your Joining celebration. Not a word of thanks, or congratulations, or the—the way we become family. It's been all death, and fighting. And…tragedy." Unbidden, the faces of the others cross Tali's vision. Marion, Wenalen, Dahna, Caomhin, Oswin, Huguette, Roderick. Duncan. "I just thought maybe I could say something, to help."

Alistair's words pull at an ache behind Tali's chest. Strangely, she wants to apologize even more for her deception around Jowan. She wants—what does she want?

"Alistair—" He reaches out and his fingers rest softly on the skin of her free hand, the hand not holding the rose, of which she doesn't ever want to let go. Tali thinks her eyes widen at the contact. "Alistair I'm sorry I didn't—"

"I know you had your reasons. I understand." Tali's heart skips. Why is it doing that? She remembers the feeling of Alistair's lips, in the Fade. She wonders if they would feel the same— "But I just need to tell you. I need you to know what a rare and wonderful thing you are to find amidst all this darkness." Everything stops. Tali isn't sure she's heard correctly. Alistair sits there, his fingers resting on her knuckles, and after a long while, he stands, the movement somewhat abrupt.

"Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll be heading back to my tent to sleep off this blushing. Just to be, uh, safe. You know how it is." His movements are hurried, leaving Talvinder alone with a rose in her hand and racing thoughts in her mind, but she has the presence of thought to call out softly after him, before the adrenaline fades.

"Alistair." Her voice stops him, just at the entrance of his tent, and Alistair locks eyes with Tali for a few seconds. She panics, and the courage fades, and instead of saying what she wants to say—I feel the same, I feel the same, I have always felt the same about you, I always will and there is nothing I want more than you—she says something she hopes he'll understand. "May I keep it?"

A crooked smile rises to Alistair's lips, and he nods.

"It's already yours," he says, and Tali isn't sure he's talking about the rose. "It always has been."

The stars, Tali notices after, sitting there alone, are more beautiful than she's ever seen before.