It isn't Leliana's voice that wakes Talvinder the next morning. It's the faint groan that echoes in from the vague direction of Morrigan's tent, a pained, guttural, fearful sound. Tali is on her feet and bursting from her tent in a heartbeat, her father's kirpan in her hand as she rushes past the fire in the faint pre-dawn light, Abarie at her heels.
"Talvinder? What—" She disregards Leliana's voice as she moves, worried that something has decided to pick off Morrigan in her spot so far from the safety of the fire. But when she makes it to Morrigan's tent in a few rapid steps, Tali finds nothing out of place, no blood, no nothing. Perhaps she's hearing things? Her heart is still thumping in her chest, though, her hair prickling along her neck and her arms. Something still feels wrong. Another groan punctuates the air, and Tali's absolutely certain it comes from inside Morrigan's tent.
"Morrigan?" Tali taps the canvas, but the groans don't stop. Instead, they turn to ragged sobs and gasps. She's half aware of Leliana approaching her from behind, hesitant and confused, but Tali is more concerned with Morrigan. After a few more seconds of strained and frightened noises, she can take it no more, and she pulls the flap of the tent open, motioning for Abarie to sit outside as she peers in.
Inside, Morrigan sleeps. A nightmare. Her limbs twitch and tremble, and Tali thinks she can see her eyes rolling back and forth beneath her closed eyelids. It's not a comforting sight, especially given the nature of demons and dreams, and it does nothing to relieve Tali. There might not be a creature attacking Morrigan, but a demon would be worse. Gently, she moves in a crouching waddle toward Morrigan's head, casting about in her mind for a course of action. When waking sleepwalkers, she thinks, one is supposed to be gentle—surely this can't be much different?
With a deep breath, Tali kneels next to Morrigan, who is still shuddering, whimpers escaping her mouth. She picks up the witch's head and brings it into her lap, stroking Morrigan's hair and trying to soothe her. It feels a little silly, and no doubt Morrigan will be furious when she awakens, but that isn't that important now.
"Morrigan." As Tali whispers her name, Morrigan's eyes fly open, but she doesn't awaken. Her eyes still roll and rove in her head, aimless and unsettling, more white than iris or pupil. Tali keeps smoothing her hair, trying to bring her back to consciousness. "Morrigan," she says again, a little louder, and for a brief second, she thinks Morrigan's eyes focus on her before they roll back into her skull, lids fluttering with a juddering motion that resembles the dying twitch of a butterfly's wing. Morrigan's body goes rigid, and then the tension fades and she lets out a sigh. "Morrigan?" Tali isn't sure whether that's a good sign, and her heart stops, caught in her throat. Once more, she speaks, saying Morrigan's name still a little louder. "Morrigan." She doesn't want to risk shaking the witch, in case it startles her, but she isn't sure what else to do.
As softly as possible, Tali gives Morrigan's shoulders a small push. This time, Morrigan sits bolt upright, the top of her head cracking against the bottom of Tali's jaw as she does.
"Ow," Tali says, not sure what she expected. Meanwhile, Morrigan scrambles to the far end of the tent, reaching for her staff with trembling hands and wide eyes that flash with terror. "Morrigan—"
"Why are you in my tent, Warden?" Morrigan's voice hisses out from between her clenched teeth and her black hair falls unevenly over her shoulders as her eyes dart back and forth. Only when she's satisfied that there are no other figures hidden in the small space of the tent does she turn her gaze back to Tali, waiting for her to answer.
"You were having a nightmare. I was worried." There's a brief moment where Morrigan's eyes widen, her brows crinkling unevenly in the middle of her forehead. Then she shakes her head, wiping the expression from existence.
"'Tis nothing."
"You've been having them for a while now haven't—"
"I said, 'tis nothing. Will you listen to me, or must I force you from my tent? Which, I will remind you, you entered without my permission?" The anger in Morrigan's voice doesn't sound quite right, not quite like real anger, and though Tali frowns, she complies. Switching places and shuffling back toward the entrance to the tent is more than a little awkward, and Morrigan watches Tali the whole time, making her feel strangely self-conscious. She's about to leave, halfway through the tent flap, but she can't brook leaving things like this, and at the last moment Tali turns back, offering one last olive branch.
"If you ever need help, Morrigan, all you have to do is ask." Morrigan's face flashes with an expression that looks like she's tasted sour milk. Tali doesn't wait for her to come up with some sardonic response, and instead she steps out of the tent, finding a confused Leliana waiting for her.
"Is she well?" the redhead asks, eyes trained warily on the tent. Sighing, Talvinder nods.
"As well as she always is, I think." The sun is rising, now, peeking over the horizon. Alistair won't be happy with the time, but with three of them already awake, it would be best to wake the others and break camp. As Tali walks back toward the cluster of tents, though, she realizes exactly why Morrigan's anger sounded wrong.
It's not anger. It's fear.
It takes Savreen hardly a moment to notice that a tent is missing once she emerges to finish putting on her armor. She knows who it is before she's even scanned the others gathered around, breaking down their tents or eating breakfast on their carefully rationed provisions.
"Where is Jowan?" Around her, the bustle of activity ceases. Everyone freezes, looking up, around, at each other, across the camp. No one answers. Savreen doesn't like it. "Tali, you saw him during the changing of the watch?" She turns to her cousin, who freezes in the middle of chewing before looking at each of their companions in turn. Finally, she swallows.
"About that—" Tali begins, a nervous smile on her mouth.
"You didn't." Savreen doesn't want to groan with reproach, but she does, the sound escaping her lips in a long tangle of noise. This is just like Tali. Her cousin, still smiling nervously, shrugs deeply, almost as though she could disappear inside herself like a turtle.
"I—"
"Didn't do anything alone," Alistair adds, not even looking up from his now heavily scorched leftover rabbit. Savreen looks to him with narrowed eyes, trying not to be too frustrated.
"You mean that both of you decided, on your own, to, what, just turn him loose?"
"You're talking about him like he's a mabari, Sav," Tali says with a wince. "He wanted to leave—"
"He is a blood mage, Talvinder!" Her voice is a little high, and Savreen clears her throat, trying to calm down.
"And we had this conversation before, back at Redcliffe." There is a pleading tone to Tali's voice now, and with a sigh, Savreen realizes that she has to concede. Not just because she doesn't want to argue with Tali, but because she really did expect something like this to happen from the very beginning, and what's more, because none of them can afford to harbor any anger towards the others.
"You're right. And I disapproved then, too."
"But Sav, I—" Tali gestures aimlessly about while Alistair waves his skewer of meat-turned-charcoal in some approximation of defense.
"If you're mad at her, then you should be mad at—"
"I'm not mad at anyone," Savreen says, silencing them both and causing them to look sideways at each other, confusion on their faces. Alistair presses his lips together and forward, looking remarkably like a duck, while he squints his eyes as though he'll be able to bring Savreen's meaning into focus if he looks at her just so. "I am not mad at anyone," she repeats with another sigh. "But I do wish you had told us all. This…this was a decision we should all have had a part in." Tali frowns and hands the rest of her food to a whining Abarie. Something tells Savreen that she's lost her appetite.
"Would you have let him go?" Tali asks. Savreen can't blame the faint suspicion in her cousin's voice, though it does frustrate her. Tali doesn't seem to understand what it is that Savreen carries, and she never has.
"You did the right thing, Talvinder," she says eventually, bringing up a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose. "But you did it in the wrong way." There is dead silence in the camp, except for the sounds of an enthusiastic dog chewing away at a hunk of jerky. "If you will excuse me, I would like to scout some of our road ahead before we leave." Still, no one speaks, and Sav simply grabs the rest of her armor and pulls it on as she walks.
Just as she reaches the tree line, she thinks she hears Alistair speaking.
"Well, that could have been worse."
It could have been better. But she puts it behind herself, or at least she tries to. Tali doesn't always fear trouble, but Savreen can understand why her cousin would be worried about Savreen's disapproval. To avoid that disapproval is not—has never been—how Savreen would wish Tali to act, but she understands. Or at least, she wants to understand. It's hard, though, when she hasn't truly let herself be mad at Tali for her unfairness. When she hasn't let herself feel much of anything. Perhaps she should—but no, she thinks, there will be time for that later. Much later. Now the task is the Blight: she has her duty, and she must see to it. There is nothing else for her.
But no matter how much Savreen wants to put this morning's events behind her, she's distracted, the tension and doubt throwing her off her game. She realizes as much when she's a short way down the trail along the nearby river—their proposed route to the mountains, since all water does flow down—and she finally catches the sound of someone behind her. In a flash—still not fast enough to make up for the reach of an enemy archer's bowstring, she thinks ruefully—she pulls a sword from her hip and turns, raising the weapon against whoever it is following her.
Ranjit looks at her with faint bemusement, ignoring the sword tickling his nose, and it only makes Savreen more frustrated. Turning back around, she sheathes the blade and takes a deep breath in through her nose before she speaks.
"I take it you have finished packing your tent and…whatever else you have." She refuses to wince at her own words, but oh, how she wants to.
"I have," Ranjit answers, his voice steady. At least he isn't laughing at her. Savreen doesn't think she could take that, not now. She kneels down, pretending to inspect the old tracks of a rabbit on a small patch of dirt. She knows already, has known for some time, that the river trail will have no small amount of game. It's the best route to the mountains, and she's not learning anything new. But she wants to look busy. She wants Ranjit to go away.
He doesn't.
"Did you need me for something?" Savreen's voice surprises her a bit: it's stringent, short and clipped. There's a faint flash of embarrassment in the pit of her stomach—she should be handling things better, no matter what those things are. Strangely, though, Ranjit isn't fazed. He shakes his head, crossing his arms in front of him. The clinking of metal on metal makes Savreen realize he's already fully armored, prepared for the road and dressed to be on their way. Slowly, she rises to her feet, not looking in his direction as she does so, not even as he speaks.
"I thought you might need me." Pressure. That's the feeling inside Savreen's head: pressure, from all the expectations she's put on herself, from the expectations of the others, from the fact that they need someone to lead and she's not entirely sure how it's happened but now she's that person. And that pressure snaps, bursts.
"And what if I did? What good would it do?" She wheels on Ranjit, and he is so placid it drives her to distraction, to madness. "My own wants, my own needs, are immaterial, Ser Gilmore. They always have been, except for the few blessed moments in which I forgot myself." As she speaks, Savreen gestures inward at her chest, the fingers of each hand spread wide. She brings her hands forward, palms out and fingers together. She holds her hands there as though she could remove her very heart from beneath the layers of muscle and bone and skin and armor that contain it, remove it and present it to Ranjit so that she might never have to trouble with it again. "Except for the few moments that now torment me, unendingly, unceasingly." She is trembling, and she thinks the way she offers her words up to Ranjit contains a question, a request within it, but even she isn't sure what that is.
She doesn't know herself well enough for that anymore.
"Do the memories torment you, my lady, or is it the way they suggest that one's duty and one's wants are not mutually exclusive?" Ranjit's eyes are dark, almost black in the shadow of the forest canopy. Savreen freezes, hunched, nearly bowed before Ranjit, and she tries to search the endless depths of the deep brown light set beneath his brows.
"What do you mean?" In response, Ranjit shakes his head, smiling ruefully, sardonically.
"You have always believed in your duty. It is admirable. Of course it is. But I wonder if you are afraid of wanting anything, more than you are afraid of failing in that duty."
"I—that isn't fair—" He looks away for a moment as Savreen stutters, his eyes scanning the trees around them. When he looks back to Savreen, Ranjit's expression is brittle and sharp.
"Is it? Has it ever been? Were you always fair when you loved your guardsman against your better judgement, indulged in your emotions as a moment of weakness, of regret?" No, no—that isn't right. It can't be. Is it? "What do you want, my lady?" She doesn't think before she responds.
"I want to do what is right, what is my—"
"Your duty as a Warden, as the Teyrn's daughter, as the future Teyrna. Yes. But what do you really want? What does Savreen want?" His words cut her to the bone, ripping through her flesh like a freshly sharpened blade slipping on a cutting board. The cold that blooms over Savreen's skin, dewing like sweat, could almost be blood.
"I—I want—" She wants to run, to stay, to cry and scream. She wants Tali to understand her feelings; she wants Tali never to know how she feels. She wants to run into the river, splashing in the water until her fingers and toes go numb. She wants to go home, to Highever, and she wants to find Arl Howe and she wants to make him feel pain, the pain he's made her feel, deep under everything, under the shell she's built around herself. She wants to run off, here and now, with Ranjit, going anywhere or nowhere, it doesn't matter. She wants to take his hand and kiss each and every bone within his body, she wants to pry his armor from his muscles and his clothes from his skin and to bare herself in front of him and she wants the future she once dreamed of and she wants oblivion and she wants and she wants and she wants. She wants so many things, so many uncountable things, and they scare her, those shining gems of possibility, tumbling over each other like beads, scattering as though from the string of a broken necklace.
He's right. She doesn't want to want anything, not as she feels the shame creep, hot and acidic, up her cheeks. And he is right—she did want him against her better judgement, she always has thought of him as a weakness of hers, even when she has wanted him, and him alone.
"You are allowed to want things, Savreen."
"No—" She is on the verge of tears; she can feel them building inside of her skull, can feel the pressure returning. "No, I—"
"You are allowed to want things at the same time that your duty is before you." A tear slips out, down her cheek, and she blinks furiously. "You are able to want things and to still fulfill your duty. Your duty is not a punishment, nor is it meant to torment you. It should bring you joy." Savreen's knees will not hold her, and she buckles to the ground. The dirt is wet, and it seeps through her pants. "It should bring you as much joy as my duty to you brings me."
With languid movements, smooth, almost as though he's trying not to startle a songbird, Ranjit steps closer, kneeling in front of Savreen. Slowly, he stretches out his hand, offering it to her. She stares at his palm, the way his glove creases in the same spots as his skin. She could never forget the shape of his palm, the map of his skin, the feel of his hands—they are as dear to her as her own fingers.
"Will you take my hand?" Again she stares at him, her eyes lost in his as she tries to determine when, exactly, she forgot what her duty meant to her—when she forgot herself. "What are you thinking about, Savreen?" When Ranjit speaks, Savreen closes her eyes.
"Does it matter?" She asks.
"Always." She takes his hand.
The walking that day is easy. They're still moving across flat ground, but Tali knows that won't last. Soon, they'll come to the foothills of the Frostbacks, and then their journey will be full of ups and downs that will only grow steeper and more difficult to navigate. Less easy even than that, though, is knowing how to approach Sav—or any of the others, really—after that morning.
"It was the right thing," Alistair says, over and over, whenever Tali looks at him with doubt and anxiety in her eyes. But the others seem less convinced, Sten especially. And of course Savreen. She can't blame them. Not that she doubts they would have let Jowan go free, not really. That's her only true regret, that she implied Savreen might not actually let him go. No, she knows they probably would have agreed in the end, and that makes it worse, because she lied to them for nothing.
Morrigan, at the very least, approves. That, she makes clear, even though she remains uncharacteristically tense. Or—well. More tense than is characteristic, at the very least. When they break for a meal about midday, she hands Alistair a packet of dried fruit and nuts without him needing to ask her for it. He stares at her for a moment, even though she glares back at him for it, smiling especially gleefully when she does.
"We are not friends," she says, matter of fact.
"No, wouldn't dream of it," Alistair responds, his voice light on account of the smile still tilting his lips upward. "I'd never be friends with someone like you, anyway." Morrigan's grumble is lost in the noise of Alistair crunching on his food, but Tali still watches her closely. It's strange, and in the light of her nightmare this morning, it seems far stranger. She remembers the look of fear in Morrigan's eyes and suddenly she can't help but think of how terrifying a thing must be to scare Morrigan. She's glad when Savreen calls for them to begin moving again, returning from a small scouting trip to the next riverbend.
But walking is boring, really, and there's nothing else to think of but the worries that already consume Tali. The inside of her lip tastes metallic, slightly warm from worrying it with her teeth, and still she chews it, clambering over countless logs and stones and even wading into the river. Jowan, gone. Morrigan, afraid. Savreen, upset. Alistair…Maker, how does Alistair even feel? They haven't spoken privately since the night before, not since he'd given her the rose. They've only talked about Jowan, about the road—neither of those are particularly helpful in figuring out Alistair's feelings or his thoughts. And of course, then, what good would that do? There's still the matter of whatever it is that's happening with Morrigan, and the Blight—Maker, the Blight, how could she have forgotten? The Blight is the center of it all, of everything, and here she is, thinking about a rose, half-dried and pressed in the spare map case in her pack.
Foolish. She's being foolish again, as always. She needs to focus, focus on the road, on the forest around them that is slowly thinning, the ground growing more sloped and hilly, the sun that's nearly setting—Nearly setting?
"What's the time?" Tali blurts out, suddenly aware of herself again, of a pebble in her boot, of the ache of hunger in her stomach, of her position at the rear of their line. The others stop and turn to face her, though Sav only glances at her before her vision darts back to the flickers of sunlight on the horizon, through the trees.
"Gloaming is about a quarter of an hour away," she answers. Tali blinks. They've been walking a good while, then.
"Will we make camp soon?"
"It would be good to make it to the forest's edge, into the foothills proper." This time, Ranjit answers, not Savreen, and Tali fights the urge to raise an eyebrow, looking between the two of them. That wouldn't be helpful, not with Sav already disapproving her handling of Jowan.
They begin moving again, but Tali thinks they've picked up the pace a touch, eager now to actually cease for the day.
"How long until we're there?" she can't help but ask. Ranjit shoots her a small, humored look over his shoulder, bemusement twisting his mouth.
"We get there when we get there," is all Sav says. Tali thinks it's a joke. She isn't sure, though, not until Sav turns around and offers her a small, tense smile over her shoulder.
Maybe Sav isn't that upset with her, after all. Tali's feet move more lightly after that.
By the time they stop to make camp, they've walked for perhaps another two hours. Their path is lit now by the gentle purple light of Morrigan's staff, accompanied by bursts of moon and starlight that make it through the thinning canopy in flickers. They make another turn as the river twists over itself. The shore has long since shifted from one of dirt and pebbles and fine sand into one of large rocks set in beds of silt, and the water babbles more loudly, now, splashing shallow over the stone. With one final twist, a few more feet forward, they come, finally, to the clear sky, passing the last tree trunk. Out in front of them, the ground ripples out in a mess of hills that grow gradually taller as they recede toward the mountain range in the distance. Tali notices that the forest doesn't exactly end so much as it does fade, turning into scrubland with a few sparse copses of trees clinging to the dry, thin soil here and there, as far up along the mountainsides as the roots can grip. The faint, dark green blanket, almost black in the night, gradually gives way to the greys and blues of sheer rock faces, craggy surfaces and formations, and then those, too, slowly fade silver and then white and then gem-bright, snow-capped peaks reflecting the stars back up into the sky.
"Those are the Frostbacks?" Ranjit asks, and his voice is full of a wonder Tali understands. She's never been this far west, never seen the mountains this close. They seem almost to collapse the horizon toward them, folding the world up on itself by their sheer size. It's a far cry from seeing them as a distant line of different-colored blue in the sky over the edges of the plains.
"Those are the Frostbacks," Savreen answers. There's a similar awe in her voice, despite the fact that she's been out west before, beyond Lake Calenhad, on her tour of the Bannorns. Back in the days of her many suitors. But having seen the mountains, like living rock, once or twice before seemingly does nothing to ruin their splendor. Tali thinks, for a brief instant, that the one thing of which she might never tire—the one thing worth the sore feet and the pangs of hunger and the aching muscles—is the constancy of these new views, these spaces in a world before so unknown to her. Then that instant passes, and her stomach twists again, with guilt and doubt. Twice today she's failed to think of the Blight, of the reality facing them all. It feels remarkably selfish.
That feeling, the guilt, the doubt, the selfishness, doesn't leave her, not as they all turn away from the mountains to set up camp under the shelter of the leaves and eaves of trees, not as Ranjit builds a small fire, boiling river water atop it, not as Tali sits next to the others chewing listlessly at waybread and some dried meat and fruit. She doesn't speak as they dole out watch shifts, her mind instead turning everything she's done over and over and over.
She's been horrible to Sav, even if she's apologized twice. She's kept things from the others out of mistrust, as far as Jowan was concerned. She's kept the truth of the dreams, and the nightmares, from Alistair. She's fixated on those dreams, too. She's sought her own happiness. She's forgotten the Blight. And worst of all, she hasn't just looked for happiness: she's actually been happy. Happy, when her family are dead.
It makes the last bit of waybread in her mouth taste like dust, that realization. That she's been happy.
Abruptly, she stands, causing Abarie to harrumph and all the others to turn to her in surprise.
"Bed," Tali mumbles, heading hurriedly to her tent and crawling inside, Abarie quick on her heels. There are no tears stinging at the corners of her eyes, that at least is true, but she feels like there is something so deeply wrong, like her chest is too tight and the air too thin. She remembers feeling like this at Ostagar, and again in her tent after her nightmare, and after leaving Highever. That's the only thing that keeps her from thinking she's dying as the pain rockets through her and she gasps for breath. Everything is panic, blind and thick and heavy, and she isn't sure how long she sits there, huddled on her bedroll in her tent, as she thinks and thinks and thinks, too hard and too long.
After an indeterminable time, though, the feeling softens, then ceases, and Tali finds herself lying on her back, looking up at the canvas overhead, Abarie curled in a sleeping circle at her side. There's still a fire going outside, but she isn't remotely sure of who it is that's keeping watch. If she knew, she might go outside. If she knew it was Alistair, she certainly would—but there she goes again, thinking of him, when they are in the middle of so, so much. Perhaps it's self-flagellation, perhaps it's compulsion, but she can't help listing everything out again, angry at herself: losing her family, the Blight, the disaster at Ostagar and the Tower of Ishal, the Warden Treaties, Loghain in control of the throne, King Cailan dead, an Archdemon to defeat - there are so many other things to worry about.
And yet here she is, again, thinking of a boy. Stupid and guilty and selfish and, worst of all, foolish.
Tali brings her knees up and hugs them to her chest. If she could roll herself up into a small pebble, tumble away in the dirt and the dust, surely that would be preferrable. But she can't. She lets her legs go and stretches out. Maybe she should just try to go to sleep. That would be far easier than turning into a pebble. Rolling over onto her side, Tali ruffles Abarie's fur and closes her eyes. She'll sleep, and tomorrow they'll return to the road, and everything will be fine. She won't have to think about Alistair and what it means to want him, to want to tell him that she does really want him.
With a groan of frustration, Tali sits up again. Of course she's thought of him again. Him, and the guilt, and everything else, and she's completely unable to sleep now, and she knows it. The air in her tent feels stifling, oppressive, and Tali rolls back over and scrabbles with the ties of her tent flap before clambering out into the night air.
The fire has died down mostly to embers, but the scent of smoke lingers in the air. It makes her think of the night she left Highever. Anger and fear and loss all tangle together in the pit of her stomach and she thinks about her family, about Sav, about Howe, about how this all began, and she wishes not for the first time that none of it ever happened. It drowns the guilt and the fear for a short time. Then someone speaks.
"You couldn't sleep either?" She jumps. "Oh, I'm sorry. I just thought—I mean, I couldn't sleep—so I told Ranjit I'd take his watch—and you're, well, you're out here too, so obviously you're not asleep, because if you were…" Alistair trails off and rubs the back of his neck wryly, aware of his babbling, but not knowing how else to speak at this particular moment. Talvinder glances at and away from him quickly, feeling a blush rise to her face and neck and throat, hot and hopefully hidden in the dark shadow of nighttime.
"No. I couldn't." Because I was thinking about you. Because I was being a fool. Because I'm selfish beyond all count, and I don't deserve to be here, not next to you and Sav and Ranjit.
"The nightmares will get easier to handle," Alistair offers, gentle and quiet. Tali doesn't correct his misapprehension. Instead, she stands there, by her tent, in silence, looking at Alistair and yet not looking at him, focusing on this one freckle beneath his eye that's shaped almost like a petal. Or a leaf? He's quiet, too, for what feels like a long time, and it seems that both of them are aware that there is a step between them that each is waiting for the other to take. The silence, though, is too heavy to hold for too long, growing as stifling as the tent. Tali is the first to speak, in a stuttering mess of syllables.
"Anyway, I, uh, I imagine keeping watch is—well—a little lonely. I could—I mean, only if you want—I could keep you company for a little while?"
"That would be nice," Alistair says, and his voice is soft, sitting in the dark by the dimming fire. Tali sits down next to him, almost touching him, furious at herself for it, fighting the wave of revulsion that sweeps over her, and stares into the glowing embers.
They sit like that for a while, not saying anything. The feelings keep creeping back, though, even as Tali tries to beat them away, and she can't understand why, why, why she keeps returning to the feeling of Alistair sitting next to her, even though the smell of smoke reminds her of a burning keep.
"How did we wind up as the last three Grey Wardens in Ferelden?" The question is impulsive, but Tali has to know why her, why she's here despite her clear lack of suitability.
"Hmm?" Alistair takes a moment to process her words, looking over at Tali with a knotted and furrowed brow. It's too late to back out of the question now, and Tali swallows.
"I just mean: out of all the other Grey Wardens. Dahna, Wenalen, Caomhin, all the others. Duncan. Why us?" Why me?
"I don't know, really. Just the luck of the draw." There has to be more. That can't be it. She doesn't deserve to be here. She presses further.
"But why did I survive the Joining? And Sav? It could have just as easily been Daveth or Jory, or even both, and not us. Why—" Maybe he senses the growing frantic note in her voice, maybe he knows. Regardless, Alistair interrupts her with a swift shake of the head.
"I've been there. It doesn't really help to wonder, I promise you." His voice holds the memory of sadness, of sleepless nights and survivor's guilt, and Talvinder believes him, despite the guilt and the anxiety still raging inside her.
"How do you make it go away?" He turns to smile at her, a little sadness, a little bitterness.
"You don't. You just live with it, until someone makes it worth your while to keep trying to live." The bitterness, though, is short-lived. "You hold onto hope that that happens."
"Who made you want to stay alive?" They lock eyes and it's almost like she knows what he might say, what he wants to say, what she wants him to say, what she's afraid he'll say, what he's not going to say—before he turns away, blushing in the dark, and coughs. It jars Tali out of the moment, and she realizes with no small amount of horror that she's done it again, forgotten herself, forgotten the Blight and everything around her. Even if Alistair wants her to believe there's no rhyme, no reason to her survival over anyone else's, nothing she can do or could have done, she's stuck here, the guilt heavy once more, because of everything and nothing she can articulate properly.
Alistair lets out another little cough, clearing his throat, and he speaks. It isn't reproachful, just a little awkward.
"I appreciate the company, but you might want to get some sleep. I'll wake Leliana up soon."
"Oh. Yes. Right. Of course." Tali stands, hurriedly, heading for her tent again.
"Talvinder?" Alistair's voice stops her, and she looks back over at him, legs folded as he sits in the fire's glow. "Whatever you feel guilty about, don't." It shouldn't help, but it does. That simple command quells the worst of her feelings, and Tali nods and crawls into her tent, onto her bedroll, back next to a sleeping Abarie. Before she drifts off to sleep, she tries to memorize the faint, very faint, silhouette of Alistair, lit by a sleeping fire.