There are things that Tali has learned to expect from Morrigan. For example, the witch never volunteers for first watch, only ever choosing to take watch near dawn. She seldom sits in the company of the others to eat, but when she does, it is invariably because she wants to take something out on Alistair. Or she just wants to bully him, no cause needed. It doesn't always have to be because she's upset. She insists that they find some way to bathe, even if it's a cursory rinse, no less than once every three days (and with Tali and Sav supporting her, it's usually more often).
These expectations, though, are flawed, as she reflects at the end of their third day travelling back southeast. She had never expected Morrigan to simply cease speaking to her after Tali told the others about Flemeth, Flemeth's plan, and what Morrigan wanted them to do. But here they are, picking their way toward the Korcari Wilds, and Morrigan remains steadfastly silent whenever Talvinder so much as looks at her. Tali would like to be able to ask her why, but each time she tries, even when they're the only ones within earshot of each other, Morrigan simply removes herself—to her tent, or further along the line of their party, or once, under the surface of the river water as they bathed.
It hurts Tali more than she would like to admit, and so she focuses instead on the confusion. Morrigan has gotten what she wanted: they are heading to slay her mother, and to save her. And, what's more, with everyone knowing that's the plan, they're able to move much more quickly and directly toward the Korcari Wilds. This could all be over before the first autumn frost. So Tali doesn't understand. She can't reconcile the fact that she's sure she did the right thing with the way that Morrigan spurns every attempt she makes to be the witch's friend.
What's more, the nightmares that have begun to creep back into Tali's sleeping mind don't help. They have her on edge, ready to find anger and disapproval in everything that even Savreen and Alistair do. She's reminded of the shadowy dreams she had after her Joining, the dreams she had after Ostagar, and yet there's almost something more menacing about these. They're less distinct, less frenetic, more aimless. She tries to tell herself when she starts awake after them that that's good, that it means that the Darkspawn are aimless and their pace will be slow and they'll be easy to counter, but that doesn't work. Because it isn't just the Darkspawn she worries are aimless.
"Sovereign for your thoughts?" Alistair's voice makes Talvinder jump where she sits by the fire, hand flitting directly to the hilt of her sword. "Woah, woah—I didn't mean to scare you, I just thought…well, you've been…it's been quiet, hasn't it?" Somewhat frantic, Tali glances around her—she's been distracted, lost in her own mind when she should be focusing on keeping watch—but it really is just Alistair. Abarie is even still asleep next to her, laying in a crooked twist with her stomach and paws up toward the air.
"Just—just jumpy," Tali says, and it's a poor excuse, and she knows Alistair knows it, but he doesn't say anything about it.
"It feels strange backtracking. I get it." That isn't it, but something tells Tali that Alistair's giving her an excuse, something to latch onto and to offer up as a reason for her silence and her nerves. Maybe he suspects she doesn't want to talk about Morrigan, but there's more bothering her. Tali is sure he knows about the nightmares. He has to, and Tali doesn't just think that because he's a Warden, too. She's heard him, caught in their throes or having just escaped them, panting with relief and the dregs of fear. It seems selfish to take the excuse he offers, knowing that.
"It isn't just that," Tali says, and she offers the words like a lifeline, hoping Alistair won't join Morrigan in her anger. At the moment, though, that seems like an impossible ask, Across the fire, he looks up and into her eyes. There's no anger, not yet, but that means little. Even the relief in his voice when he speaks doesn't mean the anger won't come.
"You're getting more nightmares, too."
"You said it would happen, before, after—after Ostagar. I just didn't…" The right words are elusive. Tali wants to explain how she feels, but she doesn't even know herself what the feeling in her chest is. Certainly not well enough to put it to sound or vocabulary, anyway. Still, Alistair has come to her, has bridged the gap she worries is forming between herself and everyone else. She wants to try. "I didn't know they would be this hard to…to separate from when I'm awake, even though I know they aren't real. If that makes sense." Thankfully, Alistair nods.
"The paranoia is always the worst part. Feeling like you're being watched, or like you're turning into them, or like they're too close." A strange sense of comfort floods Tali, and in spite of herself, in spite of the situation they're in, she smiles.
"I was worried I was just handling it badly." Chuckling softly, Alistair shakes his head.
"Nah, not at all." His hands, absentminded, dig at the grass next to him, twisting stalks into patterns and swirls. "It's the emotions. They get all twisted up." There's something hesitant in the way that he talks about his dreams, and Tali gets the sense that she's one of the only people to whom he's ever told this. It feels too fresh, too unpracticed. It makes her think of other dreams, even though her stomach twists with guilt. In one fluid motion, Allistair shifts and lays down on the ground, arms folded under his head, knees bent up toward the dark sky. "Whatever you feel in the dream sort of…carries over." He pauses, and Tali thinks that maybe she can see the skin on his face reddening. Embarrassment. She casts around for something she can say that will make him feel less vulnerable, less awkward.
"It's not so bad in other dreams, just—the Darkspawn—I mean, I'm used to dreams carrying over things from outside, you know? Not the other way around, like you said—" She's babbling a little bit, now, she knows she is, and it's as much to distract him as it is to distract herself. "Especially not when there's monsters involved. Don't have too many dreams with those, if I'm honest. Last dreams like that were at the Circle—" Tali freezes. Her face is the one heating, now, and she isn't sure how they ended up here of all places. She just meant to talk to him. She's been avoiding him, avoiding everyone for the most part. But now here she is thinking, always thinking.
"Those dreams were…they were a lot to handle," Alistair says, and his eyes are fixed up at the sky, resolutely away from Tali. "You never—I mean, we all went through our own—they were all different, of course. But if you ever wanted to talk about them…" His voice trails off, and once he's lapsed into silence, Alistair clears his throat, the sound almost compulsive. Knots. Her stomach is in knots. Tali's mind whirls between the facets of Sloth's dreams, the way it took her family and turned them into grotesque puppets, but then also the way that Alistair looked at her in his own dream, the way his mouth had felt on hers, the way she had realized—
"Do you want to talk about them?" It's the best she can do, asking him that. If he says yes, then she knows she has to tell him. They have to talk about it. Maybe it will be easier that way. And if he says no, then that's that. Yes. That's the only way. The only thing to do. Breath bated, Tali struggles to look at Alistar. She thinks she sees him swallow, heavy and gulping, and then he sits up in one abrupt motion.
"Yes," he says, and he says it with an intensity she can't process, an urgency that worries her. "There's something I need to tell you, about my dream." Why is she thinking—why is this the thing they're talking about? She has to stop this; there are more important things, other things, she should be learning about what it means to be a Warden, or talking about the way she—talking about—about—
"What about it?" But her mouth moves of its own accord, her heart beating in every crevice of her head, pounding against her skin. She remembers the rose, in the map case in her pack, tucked away and protected. She hasn't let herself look at it since she put it in her pack, but in the slow moments, she thinks of it constantly, and maybe she hasn't been wrong to hope that it means something, maybe—
"I know this might sound strange," Alistair begins, and suddenly he's looking at her, and he sees her, he really sees her, and there's an air of calmness around him that Tali hadn't expected. "And I know that it's…it's quite a lot to take in, since the dreams Sloth trapped us in were supposed to be…well. Paradise and all. And if that bothers you, we don't ever need to talk about this again—or talk at all again, for that matter, actually." As he speaks, that calmness starts to melt away. It's like a wick burning down, like the flame is too close to whatever it is he wants to say.
"I don't think that's possible," Tali says, and despite the panic in her own chest, it feels normal to comfort him (is that what she's doing? Comforting him?). A little laugh escapes Alistair's chest, a puff of noise, and he twists the grass again until the blades rip off into his grip.
"You were there," he says, finally, and Tali's heart sinks and jumps at the same time, because if he remembers— "You helped me realize that it was a dream." The skin on her face burns, searing, and she's staring at him, truly staring at him now. She thinks her mouth might even be open. Alistair looks up, and when he sees her expression, he seems to be unsure as to whether he should take it as a good sign or a bad one. "I think the demon tried—the memories are fuzzy," his voice slows a touch, but he doesn't remove his eyes from Tali's face, "but was it you, really you?"
How is she meant to answer? What should she say? Tali finds her throat too dry, tongue too heavy. All she can do is laugh nervously, and even that sound is strangled. She's taken so much from Alistair by taking him from that dream, that perfect future, and maybe she was there, and maybe he does still want that, but did she do the right thing, bringing him back to this Blighted world?
"Do—" she almost chokes on her words, and so she starts again, but instead of an answer, the best she can do is another question. She needs him to do what he will with it. "Did you want it to be me?"
Once again, she's struck by the fact that they are doing so many more important things, that there are countless matters more crucial than her feelings about Alistair. More important than her feelings for Alistair. The Blight, Loghain, Flemeth, the treaties, the Wardens, Ferelden, the whole of Thedas—they're all there and they should be worth more to Tali than the way her heart pumps this feeling of liquid fire through her body when she thinks about a future with him. Across the fire, Alistair watches her, almost seeming to study her. Tali's sure he can see the way her chest rises and falls rapidly, too rapidly, with her shallow breaths. He can almost certainly see the reddish hue to her cheeks, and if she could see her own eyes, she's sure they would be wide—they feel wide in her face, after all. The calmness from before comes back to his face, and a smile cracks across his lips, small but nevertheless there.
"So it was you."
"That's—you didn't answer the question—"
"Were you there the whole time, or just for the bit with the frozen lamppost?"
"I didn't—frozen lamppost?"
"I take it that means no, then?"
"I don't—will you just answer the question?"
"Talvinder, you were—you were in my perfect future. The dream meant to trap me in the Fade and placate me into sludge. If I didn't want you there, I think I would be even more of a masochist than I already am."
"You're a masochist?"
"That's not—I—it's a joke." Tali hardly thinks across the whole exchange, she's too busy listening to the sound of her own heartbeat and remembering how to breathe.
"I—oh. Yes. You make those." An incredulous look crosses over Alistair's face at that, and his smile widens, crooked, until it pulls at the faint dimples in the sides of his cheeks. "What are you smiling at?" He laughs, then, and it startles Abarie awake with a small indignant boof, though she calms instantly upon noticing that it's Alistair who's awoken her.
"You," is Alistair's only answer, and it makes heat flush over Tali's whole body once again.
"You've asked a lot of questions," she says, and it only makes Alistair laugh more.
"So have you!"
"That's not—I—"
"May I ask you another question, my fellow Warden? My loyal comrade?" Tali can't help but groan at the tone of Alistair's voice, but she nods anyway. "Well, then. You know you were in my dream. It's only fair if I—"
"Know if you were in mine?" He nods, and as he does, Abarie stretches and then walks in plopping little steps to flop her heavy square head down in his lap.
"That is, indeed, the question on my mind." Tali tries not to let her stomach complete yet another set of somersaults, but the acrobatic prowess of her innards astounds her at this moment.
"It—my family, they were all…still alive," she starts, but she remembers Oriana's necklace, and she doesn't want to think about that. "Yes," she answers, and she finds Alistair's eyes with her own as she does. "You were there." Heart beating still at a furious pace, Tali watches him, watches his expression, watches the emotions that pass through his eyes. She thinks she sees relief, and that worries her, because if he doesn't know it was her, her who woke him, who pulled him away from the family he's always wanted, she feels like she's lying to him. "And it was me, at the end. I—I woke you up, or brought you out. Whatever you want to call it. That was my fault."
Alistair blinks.
"Your fault?" Heaviness presses down in the center of Talvinder's stomach, because she knew this would be the outcome. She knew.
"I'm so sorry," she says, and she can't look at him. "All you wanted was a family, and you had a chance, and I took that choice away from you—"
"Wait, let me get this straight." The laughter in his voice throws her, and when Tali looks back at Alistair, sitting at ease, scratching Abarie's ears with a chuckle and a smile and a cocked eyebrow, she's confused. "You think I'm upset because you took me out of the dream? The dream with Goldanna, and you, and the—the kid, and again, the demon?" Well, when he says it like that…Tali nods, and when Alistair laughs again, she feels silly and relieved. But still, she has to explain, because it is so silly, so silly that she thought he would be angry at her for saving him from a slow death.
"It—it wasn't just—I didn't know if you remembered—" She's blurted out too much, though, because now that they've solved the matter of the waking up, there's the kiss—the kisses to be reckoned with. The laughter slows and then quiets in Alistair's chest, and the two of them seem again not to be able to look at each other.
"In your dream," Alistair asks, clearing his throat and pulling Abarie onto his lap in a most un-mabari manner. The dog loves it, though, licking at the underside of his chin. "When I was there…it wasn't really me. Or at least, I don't know anything about your dream, so it's pretty much as if I wasn't there anyway, even if I was, that is—"
"You weren't," Tali says, and the rictus grin of Sloth, wearing Alistair's face like a mask, comes back to her, the foul feeling of its breath on her ear. She shivers. "It wasn't really you."
"What was I…doing there?" Tali feels a little guilty again for feeling so many different things, for oscillating so quickly between horror and the remnants of trauma and this ridiculous (wonderful) fluttering in her veins.
"W—well," she starts, and it feels so silly to say, but she's kept herself from saying it for so long, and she was right the whole time, he does deserve to know. "We were…we were married." She's fairly certain that the temperature of her face would melt butter. "It was my nephew's birthday, and you had been travelling, but you'd just come home, back to Highever." The more Tali thinks about the dream, about the memory and the wish of it, the more she finds herself wanting it, wanting that life. It stuns her to silence, which in some ways is good, since Alistair takes that moment to speak.
"Funny coincidence," he says, but the tone of his voice clearly says that he doesn't think it funny or a coincidence in any way whatsoever. Tali meets his eyes, focusing back on the world around her rather than an imagined one, and there's a faint redness to his cheeks, but Alistair doesn't turn away or avert his eyes when he looks at her. "But we were married in my dream, too."
"I know," Tali says, and she can't help the smile that rises to her lips, "I was there." For the third time that night, Alistair laughs.
"If I remember right, I kissed you." Tali's heart, so loud and insistent, feels as though it stops, sputtering for a moment.
"I—well—"
"And then proceeded to fall completely for the demon's tricks, at which point it, disguised as my sister—I've never actually met my sister, do you know?" It's Tali's turn to stifle a laugh, because the way that Alistair's voice changes from the process of recollection to a wondrous curiosity is so stark. "How d'you think the demon came up with a face for her? I don't even really remember what she looked like, in the dream. D'you think it was just some face I'd seen before and forgotten? Or did it make something up?" Expectant, he looks at Tali, still scratching Abarie between her ears, in the center of her wrinkled forehead. Tali doesn't know what to say, but she also can't stop the laugh that bubbles up from her stomach.
"I don't think I had really—I can't say I've thought about that," she manages to choke out between giggles that feel too heady and high-pitched for her. It seems to remind Alistair of the topic of conversation, and he smiles sheepishly, shaking his head a bit.
"No, it—I guess that's one of the less important questions about the whole thing, isn't it?" He falls silent, the expression on his face thoughtful, his brow furrowing together and wrinkling ever so slightly. "I don't know what happened for a bit, to be honest. Though I suspect you were saving the damsel that is myself." He mimes swooning and, though Abarie is annoyed at the movement of her cushion, Tali finds it quite funny, and she giggles again. "But I…I do remember…that is to say…you kissed me."
It's strange that Tali can feel the motion of a hundred horses beneath her, despite sitting stock still on solid ground. Hesitant, she nods, the only answer she can give to Alistair's question. Her voice eludes her.
"Well, I have been told I have something of an effect on people." The crooked grin that tugs at Alistair's cheeks and the casual cockiness make Talvinder roll her eyes, but they don't calm the feeling of churning movement inside her stomach.
"I thought," Tali says, not quite indignant but not not indignant, "that the demon had killed you."
"Ah, so you were overcome," Alistair says, and she knows he's teasing her because he's not sure what else to say. Two can play that game, then, she thinks.
"You say that as though I didn't arrive in a reality where we were married." When Alistair opens his mouth to respond, he can't think of anything. His quip dies in his throat, and instead he's left to blush in silence.
"That…that is a very good point," he says at last, eyes cast down and away from Tali's.
She's silent, too, for a long turn, because what can she possibly say? She's never done this before, not in this way. There was a girl her age that she kissed once, but that had been out of fresh teenage curiosity more than anything. Nothing had ever come of it—if she remembers correctly, that girl, a bann's daughter, had been married about a year or two past to the daughter of a wealthy merchant. But that had been it, her only real romantic experience, until now. So she isn't sure at all how to proceed, though she thinks it's probable that people rarely know what comes next.
"Were you happy?" she asks at last, the only question of which she can think. Confusion passes over Alistair's face, his eyes squinting as though he's having trouble seeing. Thinking there might be something behind her, Tali turns, but there's nothing there. It's just her Alistair is staring at almost like he can't see her. "Is something wrong?"
"It was a dream that was supposed to convince me to stay there, Talvinder. Forever." He's not angry, exactly, but there is something intense about the way he says it, something that Tali has to think on to work out. But before she can, he speaks again, softer this time. "I was more than happy." Tali is still thinking about his tone, his meaning when he speaks again, decidedly more sheepish. "I would have stayed there forever, without noticing, without questioning it, if you hadn't come along."
"I'm sure you would have noticed," Tali says, because she remembers the feeling of her dream, the way time jumped too fast and everything was stitched together a little too perfectly to fit—no room to stretch. Alistair just shakes his head.
"I was happier than I think I've ever been," he says, and Tali understands his tone, understands that he doesn't understand how she can ask if he was happy. Of course I was happy, he seems to say.
It's a strange feeling, knowing that she's someone's dream. Knowing that she's Alistair's dream. It's a stranger feeling that he's hers, too.
"Were you happy, then?" he asks her, and he phrases it as though he's just repeating her question back to her, nothing more, but if she were pressed, she would be certain that he asks because he feels the same fear she does.
The question makes Talvinder think. She was happy, between the moments when she noticed the little bits that were off. She was excited, she wanted to be happy more than anything. She hadn't wanted to feel like there was something wrong—she had kept shoving it down, trying to stay. But she had known, too, the instant Alistair's lips had touched hers that it wasn't really him. She had known, later, that the way she felt—the way she feels—about Alistair has a name.
"I would have been happier if it wasn't a dream," she answers, and suddenly she feels the unbearable weight of all her sadness, back on her shoulders again. A future with Alistair is one dream, but a future with Oren, Oriana, Fergus, mother, father, Sikander, Chadda and Bikram—that's another entirely. It's a dream she will never wake to find made real, and it makes her feel again how selfish she's been, how selfish she's continuing to be.
"What do we do now?" It's a reasonable question Alistair asks, but even so, it feels like a knife blade to Tali. She isn't sure. She knows what she wants—to throw caution to the wind and kiss him again, here, now—but she can't bring herself to forget everything that's been put on them, everything they have to do. And maybe it's that she still feels the weight of the death that she carries, maybe it's that she remembers Flemeth's strange quasi-prophecy, maybe it's because she doesn't want to lose Alistair at the end of this, too, but she can't bring herself to do what she wants.
"I—I think we—I don't—" Her hesitance would be impossible not to notice, and she can see that it hits Alistair like a stone to the face. The hope in his eyes flickers and dims, and he looks away yet again.
"We don't have to do anything about it." He doesn't say it to hurt her, he doesn't say it to be backhanded or to manipulate her, and Tali knows that, she knows it. But she struggles to keep knowing it. He's saying it to be kind, to respect me. Because he cares about me. Because he—
"I can't lose you, too," Tali says, and it's a plea as much as it's a reason. He still can't look at her, but now she can't look at anything but him, can't look anywhere but his eyes, brown and suddenly shy and always perfect, always. "I want…I want that dream, I do. But right now…I can't lose you, Alistair." He nods, once, twice, the movement slow, and then he looks back, near Tali's face, but not directly at it. Not directly at her.
"I know what you mean." His voice surprises her. It's happy, and soft, and it isn't sad, and she doesn't understand. "There's so much going on, so much around us. I don't want to add to that." He closes his eyes, squeezes them shut, and then when he opens them, he does look at her, and she can see the hope again, and she thinks that maybe, maybe she hasn't made a mistake, maybe she hasn't ruined it. "I want this—if this is something, ever—I want it to be the right time." Gently, he starts to lift Abarie off his lap, and Tali is back to not knowing how to feel. The mabari whines and licks Alistair's face a few more times, garnering more sympathy pats, but eventually he lifts her fully off and away, and she accepts her fate, curling up once again in a furry circle. Alistair stands, wiping grass and dew from his pants, and it's clear he's about to head back to his tent. He stops before he does, though, hanging back a moment.
"I've never wanted to wait for anyone more."
After he goes, ducking into his tent, Tali wonders why making the right decision hurts so badly.