I followed Alistair out of the entrance hall and down a red-carpeted hallway. He had offered to give me a tour of the castle, but first he wanted to find somewhere private to speak, somewhere we wouldn't be overheard. We entered the library and he made a quick sweep of the room, ensuring it was empty before closing the door behind us. The library was impressive, with high-ceilings and rows upon rows of bookshelves. A long, wooden table stood in the centre of the room, strewn with parchment, books and candles. I walked on ahead of him, spinning slowly as I took in my surroundings and he stood by the door, watching me. I picked up one of the open books on the table and skimmed the page.

"The snowy wyvern is the rarest and most dangerous of all the wyvern family, but if one can obtain the heart of the beast, it can be used to create a potent regenerative healing draught that may also prevent...hey, I've read this before. Or something similar, anyway." I suddenly realised, replacing the book. I wondered if it was the same one that Vivienne would use more than a decade later. I gestured at the reams of parchment lying around. "Someone's been doing a lot of research to try and help Eamon."

"The arl is well-loved." Alistair said, quietly. I looked round at him and he smiled nervously when our eyes met. He started to walk towards me. "So, you speak Qunlat and Antivan, have an in-depth knowledge of Ferelden politics and you study alchemy in your spare time? You, Lauren Duval, are very quickly becoming the most interesting person I've ever met."

I flinched, strongly suspecting that my notion that he had brought me here to confront me about just who the Hell I was had probably been pretty accurate. I hate it when I'm right.

"What did you want to talk about?" I asked, turning away from him and slowly pacing down a wall of bookcases, brushing my fingertips along the spines of the tomes as I passed. He followed me, keeping an even distance of about five paces between us.

"I want to apologise." He said, with such heartfelt sincerity that I couldn't help pausing to look back at him. "The way I acted...I was an idiot. I really am sorry if I upset you in any way. I would have apologised sooner but, as I said before, I didn't think you'd noticed."

"Why did you? Act that way, I mean." I asked, looking away again. "If it wasn't about Morrigan...what did I do to you?"

"The short answer is nothing. You didn't do anything to me." He paused, and I glanced back over my shoulder at him, raising my eyebrows as a prompt for him to continue. "Okay, so the thing of it is...that night that I found you and Grayson together in the woods, and he was holding you, I thought that the two of you were...involved. I spoke to him on the night we stayed in the Spoiled Princess. He set me straight…gave me a right telling off, too, for the way I'd been behaving."

I turned slowly to face him, struggling to keep up. The conversation had suddenly taken a drastic turn that I hadn't anticipated, and this was brand new territory.

"Okay. Okay, sure. So...um, just circling back for a quick second, and ignoring the fact that the very idea of being with Grayson, who I see as a brother, makes me feel physically ill, how exactly would it affect you?" I asked, studying his face. He shifted, uncomfortably, and I had a feeling that I knew the answer, sensing it in much the same way as I sensed darkspawn, only with vastly different implications.

"Well, that night I was looking for you because I wanted…" He hesitated before reaching into the leather satchel he was wearing and producing a single red rose. "Do you know what this is?"

I looked from the rose in his hand to the nervous smile on his face with a confused frown.

"A peace offering?" I suggested, with a shrug, but something about the rose was nagging at me. I couldn't figure out what it was, but I knew I was forgetting something.

"A little more than that, actually. I picked it in Lothering. I remember thinking, "How could something so beautiful exist in a place with so much despair and ugliness?" He turned the rose over in his hands, thoughtfully. "I probably should have left it alone, but I couldn't. The darkspawn would have come and their taint would have destroyed it. So I've had it ever since."

"Oh. That's...nice." I said, struggling to reconcile Alistair, my goofy best friend from the game with Alistair, this apparently thoughtful, sensitive man before me, and I suddenly remembered why the rose was bothering me so much.

Our school held an annual talent show, and participation was mandatory. My sister was a gifted pianist but she couldn't sing for shit. I could play guitar and sing, but my piano teacher had given up on me after five lessons when I still couldn't play Chopsticks, informing my parents that they were wasting their money. As a result, Em and I always entered the show together, combining our talents. For the latest talent show, our music teacher had assigned Emily and I an old Irish folk song called Red is the Rose. I kept messing up in rehearsal and singing the words to Loch Lomond instead because both songs share the same melody and, after the fourth or fifth time, Emily was getting frustrated with me.

"No, Lauren, it's, "Red is the rose that in yonder garden grows". Not, "You take the high road and I'll take the low road." Honestly, it's not that difficult. Think of it this way: one of those things is a beautiful gift that Alistair gives you in Dragon Age and the other is a metaphor for death." I argued that Alistair hadn't given me a rose and she smiled, slyly at me. "Just testing. I know I told you not to romance him but I didn't think you would actually listen to me. You never listen to me. Now, from the top. Remember: engage brain, then sing."

I snapped out of my reverie as I connected the dots. With hindsight, it should have been obvious what was happening. My sister had warned me to stay away from him, and I had. But this was different, wasn't it? This wasn't a game anymore, and he wasn't a character. I looked up at him and we locked eyes and there it was again; that same undeniable something. I had felt it when we first met, and brushed it off. I had felt it before the battle of Redcliffe, and panicked. And I had felt it the night before, and he had panicked and ran. But he wasn't running now and I was frozen, like a deer in headlights.

"I thought I might...give it to you, actually. That's why I was looking for you that night." He gazed down at me, with hopeful eyes. "In a lot of ways, I think the same thing when I look at you."

"You think I'm a beautiful rose?" I asked, numbly, as I accepted it. My mind was racing so fast that I couldn't make sense of my thoughts anymore. He chuckled, softly.

"You are beautiful." He said, softly. "But that's the least interesting thing about you. I was just thinking, here I am doing all this complaining and giving you a hard time because of my own stupid misconceptions, and you haven't been having the greatest time of it, yourself. I made it even less pleasant for a few days there, and I'm sorry for that. You've had none of the good experiences of being a Grey Warden since your Joining. It's all been death and fighting and tragedy. I thought maybe I could say something. Tell you what a rare and wonderful thing you are to find amidst all this...darkness."

I stared at the rose in my hands, intently, unable to bring myself to meet his eyes. I had followed him to the library expecting a brief apology and then a lengthy interrogation about who I really was. But it seemed to me that Alistair had already decided who I was, and I didn't recognise myself in his words at all. I wasn't rare or wonderful or interesting. I was just a shallow, self-centered, upper-middle class brat who had been thrown into impossible circumstances and who had been lying to him since the day we met. The silence stretched on and he cleared his throat, awkwardly.

"I guess it was just a stupid impulse." He said, dismissively. "But...was it the wrong one?"

I took a deep, shuddering breath and looked up at him. He really was handsome. I couldn't say I hadn't noticed before but my stubborn preconceptions of him as my funny sidekick had prevented me from really admitting it to myself.

"Um...no, it was...lovely." I said, forcing a smile. "That might actually be the loveliest thing that anyone's ever said to me." His face broke out in a warm smile of relief and I bit my lip, searching for words. "And I think you are a very...attractive...man...person."

A very attractive man-person? Go home, brain, you are drunk.

"You do?" He peered down at me, smiling self-consciously.

"Well, yeah. I mean, if you like the whole tall, muscular, obviously handsome thing." I replied, lamely. He grinned down at me, the smile lighting up his whole face, and I realised I was holding my breath. We stared at each other in silence, and my heart hammered in my chest as the air between us almost seemed to crackle with electricity. He raised a hand to my face, gently brushing my hair behind my ear and started to lean in towards me. I did the obvious thing. I panicked. "You know, leading psychologists say that when you spend a lot of time in somebody's company, they automatically seem more attractive to you."

"Leading…what?" He asked, dropping his hand in confusion.

"Psychologists. Yeah, there's a name for it, it's called "Close Proximity Attraction", so that's probably what...this…is…" Oh God, stop talking, just stop talking you idiot. But I couldn't, the words just kept on coming without my brain's permission. "I mean, obviously we've spent a lot of time together, you know…all of the fighting and the…the killing and the having each other's backs all the time. Oh, and there's a bond that forms in combat, there's a word for that too, only I can't remember it right now but, you know, it makes sense that we would-"

"The first moment I laid eyes on you I thought you were the most beautiful thing I had ever seen." His voice was deep and steady now, and it snapped me out of my ramblings. There was a tenderness in his eyes that I had never seen there before, and suddenly I couldn't look away. I was transfixed. He smiled, slowly. "You were standing by the fire, wearing that ridiculous dress…you looked brighter than the flames. When we started talking, I felt like I'd known you forever. And Maker, but you were funny." He chuckled at the memory. "When I took you into the Wilds, I knew you were dying from the taint, but you fought like a demon. You were like nobody I'd ever known.

"The first moment I met you, you took my breath away, Lauren Duval. And you still do; every day, every moment. I just want you to know that."

I had nothing. A heavy silence fell over us again and he cleared his throat and grinned, sheepishly, breaking the spell.

"So…uh…what does your "Close Proximity Attraction" theory say about that?" And we were back to joking again, as if he hadn't just stopped my heart with his words.

Just seconds before I had been rambling on, saying so much about so little. But in that moment, I couldn't find my voice. It had abandoned me. It's funny; there are times when I can't stop talking, when a million words leave my mouth in a matter of seconds, unchecked…a million words that mean nothing. But when I wanted to find some words that meant everything, I just couldn't speak. Words like, "I feel the same way, but I don't want to hurt you." Like, "I can't imagine my life without you anymore, but you don't really know me." Like, "I want you to know who I really am."

So I didn't say any of that.

"It's getting late." I muttered, lowering my eyes to the floor. "The others will probably be wondering where we are."

"Oh...of course." His smile vanished and his face reddened with embarrassment. "I'm sorry if I…"

"No! No, please, it's not you, Alistair, it's…" I stopped myself, mid-sentence. He had just poured his heart out to me, I was not about to hit him with, "It's not you, it's me." But it really was me. "Look...you've given me a lot to think about. Please don't read into this, it's just...I'm just…"

"No, I get it. I've spent the last week ignoring you and now I've just blind-sided you with...I really hadn't planned on saying all of that." He rubbed the back of his neck, frowning. "If you want, we can just forget I said anything and...continue being friends. I wouldn't hold it against you."

"I don't want to forget." I insisted, shaking my head. He averted his eyes, and his face was red with shame. On an impulse, I reached up on my tiptoes and planted a light kiss on his cheek. He looked down at me, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "I don't want to forget." I repeated. "I promise. Just...give me some time to think?"

He raised his hand, tentatively, and lightly brushed his thumb over my cheekbone, and I shivered at the contact. Before I could think, he leaned down and kissed me. It wasn't a deep kiss. His lips barely touched mine, but it was soft and sweet and my breath hitched in my throat. I closed my eyes as I breathed in the scent of him. He smelled of leather and fire-smoke and something beautiful that I just couldn't place, and the combination was intoxicating. It made my head swim and I suddenly wanted to pull him closer and crush my mouth to his but he pulled away, and I sighed at the sudden absence of his lips.

"Of course." He breathed, looking down at me with gentle eyes. The corners of his mouth tugged just slightly upwards, in a knowing smile. "Take all the time you need."

I walked back to my room in a daze and threw myself on the bed. I still felt giddy from the kiss, but now that I was alone the reality of the situation hit me square in the chest. Alistair was a good man. I cared about him. I knew that now. I knew that all of the tension and the awkwardness that I had felt had been because I was in denial. But I wasn't from Alistair's world. Everything he thought he knew about me was based on a lie, and I couldn't tell him the truth. Lying to him as his friend was hard. Continuing the lie as anything more than his friend would kill me. But the look on his face when he thought I was rejecting him twisted my insides and made my chest ache. I lay there, between a rock and a hard place, going over everything in my mind for close to an hour, and I was still no closer to finding a solution.

A knock on the door interrupted my ruminations. I rose from the bed and opened it to find Grayson leaning against the door frame, grinning at me. He looked from my troubled face to the rose that I still held in my hand and raised his eyebrows in a silent question.

"We're not talking about it." I said, firmly.

"Okay." He shrugged, nonchalantly, but the amused grin never left his face. "Well, I just came to let you know that everyone's gathering in the dining hall for dinner. Come on, I'll walk you down."

I signalled for him to wait for me and closed the door, striding across the room to place the rose gently on the vanity table on the far wall. As I turned to leave, I shoved my hands in my pockets and froze as my fingers wrapped around the scroll of parchment that was still tucked inside. With everything that had happened with Alistair, I had completely forgotten Cullen's letter. A wave of guilt washed over me as I looked down at the still-sealed scroll. I considered opening it then, but Grayson called for me to hurry, and my stomach growled in agreement with him.

"Alright, I'm coming!" I called, with a sigh, leaving Cullen's letter on the table next to Alistair's rose.

AN: Thank you to Kira Tamarion for your wonderful beta skills.

If anybody's looking for more good fanfictions to get your teeth into (and aren't we all?), check out 13 Years by Kira and There and Back Again by ElyssaCousland. You can find them both on my favourites list, 14/10 would recommend.

And thank you so much to Giggle813, Midnight Alley, helenGet, ElyssaCousland, Chimera Spyke and Guest for your reviews!

helenGet: I hope this chapter answers your question :P lol

Guest: What a nightmare! Haha, get that password reset, there's nothing worse than having to keep checking for an update! I'll try not to keep you waiting too long for the next installment.

ElyssaCousland: I'm glad you're mostly enjoying this. If you have any constructive criticism I would more than welcome it.

Chimera Spyke: Morrigan is a total badass! I love her. And I hope I don't disappoint on the love triangle front...Lauren will definitely have some decisions to make after this.

Giggle813: Thank you! You're right, of course, it was only one comment and I care far more about the opinions of people like your lovely self who actually have something constructive to say.

Midnight Alley: Welcome back :) I'm glad you're enjoying it. I hope this satisfies your desire to know what Alistair had to say!