AN: Hi all, it's been a very long time. I've been going through a lot - job stuff! Getting married! Family issues! Physical crap! Plus writing novels and trying to get published! - and I needed a break from all that. So I'm turning to fanfiction for a bit of fun and to play once again in a world that I love and not take things so seriously. This, like my It's The End series, will roughly follow the plot of DA:I but with enough twists and turns to make it unique. The prologue is something of a taste of what's to come, and afterward we'll be back to the beginning of the story, to see how it all started. I don't want to give too much away but there's definitely darker versions of some characters and some twisted love triangle goodness. It's fun to be posting here again! I missed this.

EDITING to say: As I've continued to write this, it has turned heavily smutty in the later chapters. HEAVILY smutty, and from what I understand there are rules against that kind of stuff here. When that time comes I will likely post a summary here for people who want to skip those parts and redirect the rest of you dirty minded people over to my AO3 account where that kind of stuff is allowed.

Enjoy!

Prologue: The Place Beyond

At first, all she heard was the beeping, soft and steady. Then the sharp smell of antiseptic.

That was a smell she would never smell there. It worked, she thought hazily. The mad bastard did it. I can't believe it.

She forced her crusty eyelids open, the light a now-unfamiliar florescent sterility. A crucifix hung across from her on a white hospital wall. Outside, the cherry blossoms blew in the breeze. Spring again? My God. How long have I been…?

She turned her head, just a little, and they were there, incredibly: her mother, father, and brother, standing by the window, their heads bowed together as they whispered amongst themselves. My family. Still here after all of this time. Was today to be the day, then? Did I catch them just in time? Thank the Maker.

God and the Maker, thought so close together as to be intertwined. Over time, their lexicon had crept in, even though she still had the tendency to recite her own blasphemies when upset. The thought almost made her smile, even though her throat was clogged with tears.

"Errol!"

Her mother was the first to look up and see her, and her shrill cry was music to her ears. Suddenly they were on her, tears streaming down their faces, her mother clutching her hand, her father calling for a doctor.

Errol opened her mouth, just a little. Her lips were cracked and dry, her throat sore. "Mommy?"

"Shhh, it's okay, sweetie, we're here for you," her mother said, her eyes, green as Errol's own, shining with tears.

"It's a miracle," her father whispered reverently.

Errol licked her lips. She was so weak, only a small part of her here, just enough to keep her conscious, not too much to lock her once again into this body. At least that's what he had told her. "What happened?"

"No one knows," her mother said, brushing hair from her forehead. "They found you in the river. They said you were… that you'd never…"

"They said you were brain dead," her younger brother said brashly, but his voice shook. She smiled a little.

"Hi, Jerk."

"Three days," her mother continued tremulously. "Three days just waiting here, praying, hoping against hope, and now—"

"What do you mean three days?" Errol asked sharply. "Mama, it's been over three years."

Her family stared at her like she was crazy. "Sweetie, what do you mean?" her father asked.

"Maybe it's the knock on the head," her mother said in a hushed voice.

"There's no way—" Errol started.

"Is it so hard to fathom that time might flow differently in two such different places?" The voice was strange, but the cadence familiar. Errol turned her head a bit, and saw a man enter the room.

He wore a white doctor's coat and had slightly frizzy blonde hair and a large nose. He looked like just a man, and felt like just a man. Here, like this, Errol could feel nothing. She had forgotten what it was like, to feel nothing, to live in a world where there was nothing beyond the physical. The absence hurt like a severed limb.

Still, she knew it was him.

"Do what you you came to do," he said.

"You're here? How? I thought you couldn't — are you— are you possessing him? Can you do that?" Errol asked, trying to sit up and failing. She was so weak. He waved one hand as if to brush the question away.

"It is irrelevant, and we have little time. Do what you came to do."

"Doctor, what are you saying?" Errol's mother asked, rising from her chair.

"I'd like to know what's going on," her father demanded. They both ignored him.

"They're saying only been three days," Errol said. "Did you know?"

He sighed. "I had suspicions that it might be a possibility, but nothing concrete. Still, this changes nothing."

"This changes everything! I came because I thought it was my last chance, because I thought they would cut the cord after all these months. But if it's only been three days, then I might—"

"Might what? Come back to say hello from time to time and risk being trapped here without my guidance? Or come back after your lover dies in our world in a vain attempt to escape, only to discover more misery and lose a piece of yourself you won't be able to regain? You play a dangerous game, and it is time to end it. Do what you came to do, and end this. Free yourself."

"What is going on?" her mother demanded, stepping between her and the doctor. "This is ridiculous. I'm calling security."

"Mama," Errol managed the strength to catch her hand. "Mama, please, I'm sorry."

Her parents both turned to her, confusion clear on their faces. She beckoned her brother over from the shadows of the far side of the room, felt the weight of the bed shift as he sat at the foot. She reached out and took her father's hand too, and felt the weight of their realness.

I am real here, she realized. In a way I never will be again. I am flesh and blood, truly. No one has to linger to make them forget. Her resolve weakened. No one will turn on me if they realize the truth. No one relies on me to save them. No one tries to make me something that I'm not, no one tries to shape me to their will. But—

She thought of the other man, the one she loved, the one she had left like a thief in the night after she promised she would stay. It was a betrayal she wasn't sure he was going to get over quickly, even if she returned as whole - or unwhole - as she had ever been.

"Errol," he warned. "Time is short."

"I love you," she said to her family. "That's all I ever wanted to say. I love you. So much has happened. I know it seems crazy, like I've just been lying here dying but I've been places, done things you wouldn't believe. Great things. Terrible things."

"Sweetie," her mother said, touching her forehead. "You're burning up. You're sick. Let us get another doctor in here."

"No, don't rush off," she begged. "Let me have this. Let me tell me that — it's okay. You don't have to worry about me. Don't worry. I'm okay. I love you. I'm just not here anymore. Be happy. I was going to tell you to let me go, but it's only been three days. I can live a lifetime in a few more. Maybe I'll come home. Let me think."

"I'm sorry," he said, near her head now, and he did sound truly sorry. "But I can't have you tethered to this place any longer. I have too many plans. It's holding you back. It's holding everything back."

She looked at him, suddenly fearful. "You said—"

"I said you would get to say your goodbyes. You did that. My part of the bargain is complete." He sounded sad. "I told you there would be a price. I do this for your own good. I have known it from the start. Your humanity is a chain that must be broken for something greater to arise."

From the pocket of his lab coat he produced a knife, and before anyone could move he plunged it into her neck. Errol felt it, cold, cold, biting into her skin like teeth, before everything snapped sharp as glass and she went spiraling back down, down down down into the Ferelden woods.

She woke with a gasp, and the world shifted, insubstantial, her form light as air, too mutable, unfixed, driftwood torn from a ship and tossed in the ocean during a storm. Cutting the cord had changed something, made her less than she was. Far less. So he lied about that, too.

It was too much. Pain, betrayal, rage, fear. The worst was the loss: loss of purpose, loss of self, loss of body, loss of humanity, loss of family, loss of hope, loss of faith. She couldn't stay, couldn't leave, couldn't concentrate, couldn't be.

"Control yourself!" he shouted. His mark was still on her neck, fixed, burning, pulling, demanding. Get it off me, get it off! She hated him in that moment. Couldn't believe that she had ever felt another way about him, couldn't believe that she had almost —

Fear, hate, betrayal, loss, pain.

"Errol, no, fix your form, you cannot lose yourself, not now!"

You did this to me!

She tore at the sky. She tore at herself, her weak human figure. She tore at everything.

When Cassandra and the others came upon the battle, they found no trace of her. All they found was him, a rift, and a demon.