Notes--I highly recommend from dirt by Setrus. It's an incredible look at the city elf origin and how it shapes one woman's life and decisions.

This chapter and the previous are a bit vague as to setting...I'm hoping that someday I can embellish upon them...but that day is probably far distant. Thoughts on the matter are welcome. Should these two chapters be at the Spoiled Princess? In camp? Why?

Some dialogue comes from is modeled off of DAO.

Chapter Title Reference: Louis Armstrong song

"It probably sounds stupid," Alistair said eventually, "I mean...I know I already admitted I couldn't have done anything even if I'd been beside him...but I feel like I abandoned him. Duncan, I mean."

"No," Elan said softly, leaning into his side as if to support him in a very real, physical way. Or maybe she was seeking a real, physical reminder that he was there, supporting her...as he had been since they'd met. Of course, it was the same thing, really. "I understand."

She paused, staring into the fire again.

She could almost see the look that had passed between Duncan and Alistair before the battle, a look that had reminded her of the last glimpse she'd ever had of her parents. She remembered the way she'd swallowed the urge to beg, to plead with Duncan to reconsider, not to leave them behind...not to send them—send her—away. Again.

She could almost see her mother crouching to embrace her father, feel Duncan's iron grip on her wrist. She could almost smell her hair burning, the oily, acrid smell of grief.

"Completely," she added, almost wistfully, her nose crinkling.

"I'd like to have a proper funeral for him." Alistair said in the same wistful tone. "Maybe once this is done, if we're still alive. I don't think he had much family to speak of."

"He had you," Elan said simply. And so do I. Thank the Maker. You're here and I am not alone.

Alistair smiled slightly, that same smile that did and didn't reach his eyes. The smile that nearly broke through the wall of grief and denial and duty that was all she had holding her together...the smile that nearly made her unravel in a flood of tears as bitter and endless as the sea. She looked hurriedly away.

Alistair didn't notice. He was thinking. "Duncan came from Highever, or so he said. Maybe I'll go up there sometime, see about putting up something in his honor."

A monument to Duncan in Highever...a city he had last seen under seige, a city he had failed to save...Why does it seem so fitting? The question bothered her, had the earmarks of something she would think of again and again, resounding in her head with each repetitive step as she walked along the path on which Duncan had set her...but she found she didn't resent it. She was sure there was a connection somewhere, one that she could accept and respect. Puzzling out what it was would keep her from remembering her home itself, keep her from thinking of all she had lost, of all the things she was doomed to miss...for the rest of her life. A life she owed to Duncan, after all. No, it's definitely fitting, much as the idea may sting.

Something in Elan's whole being changed when he mentioned Highever. It was as if she'd been transported there. The distance between them weighed on Alistair like years of hard living, and the weight seemed so sad.

He could have kicked himself for being so stupid...hadn't she just reminded him of her own grief? A grief he knew touched on Highever...and yet he had to go and mention it, like a bastard. Well, a man can't help acting like what he is...but, still. I should have known better.

But Elan sounded very present—the sadness dispelled with the distance—as she said, "Maybe I'll go. Back to Highever. With you, I mean. When you go."

"I'd like that. And so would he, I think." Though I wonder if he'd like just how much I like it...just how much I like you, really.

"So," he asked as flippantly as he could manage, "how did you know it wasn't real?"

"What, aside from the fact the archdemon isn't dead, Duncan is, and the Blight isn't over?" Elan smiled up at him, the vulnerability he'd seen in her eyes at Ostagar still there, but darker, deeper—the twinkle of her wry amusement winking behind it like a sliver of moon on a cloudy night.

"Um, yes. Aside from that." She loved that sheepish expression, the way it pulled one corner of his firm, generous mouth higher than the other, the little furrows between eyes as mellow and fortifying as tea.

"Easy." She waited for him to ask.

"Easy?" Alistair gave her a skeptical look just as fetching as the sheepish one. How does he do that? She wondered, but the most marvelous thing was that she didn't really care how he did it, only that he did.

"Two things, really," she explained. "Duncan was trying to convince me that peace had come for good, that the Wardens would merely be...a sort of living homage to our own deeds in the past...lorekeepers, I suppose? Like bards. Not terribly vigilant."

"Hmm. Not much like Duncan either." Alistair said.

Elan clapped her hands together, nodding adamantly. "That was what I said!"

"And the other thing?" Alistair prompted into the pause that followed, his voice tender for some reason he couldn't quite explain.

"Oh." She glanced away, suddenly embarrassed. "That."

Alistair raised his eyebrows at her, intrigued. "Yes, that."

"I...um..."

"What? Was it like that dream where you go to chapel to make the Grand Cleric happy, only to find she's furious because you're in nothing but your small clothes?" Then, much lower, so she wasn't sure she'd heard correctly, "Oh, please say it was." The tips of his ears seemed to redden slightly, but it might have just been the shifting firelight.

"No..." the way Elan drew the word out was—unintentionally, or so Alistair thought—suggestive. Tantalizing even. "It just seemed really strange...that you weren't there." Alistair's fingers instinctively closed around her shoulder, drawing her a bit closer. "Because, well...you know..."

Alistair wasn't entirely sure he did, but he thought he might like to...

"You're a Warden," she said more firmly. "And, too, I sort of wondered where Woofus was. And it was all just too...odd."

"Now why didn't that sort of thing occur to me?" Alistair asked, hoping she couldn't hear how wildly his heart was beating. And then he realized—it had occurred to him. He'd been thinking about her—in the dream. He'd begun to wonder where she was...and then she was there, as if he'd conjured her into existence.

"Probably because you were unlucky enough to get stuck in a dream where anything unusual could just be chalked up to the novelty of the situation," Elan said practically.

"Thank you for making me sound less foolish than we both know I was." His voice was a gloomy, but he was smiling, admiring of her pragmatism and touched by her...solicitude.

"Alistair..." Elan touched his knee. "Wanting a place to belong...a family...That's not foolish." In fact, we're damned lucky the demon picked up on my guilt about Duncan and not on my longing for my family, or we probably would have all ended like Niall. "The ability to love...that's what the darkspawn lack."

"Huh. Definitely an interesting take on the Chantry's version—"

"Is it? I'm not sure they're that far apart, in the end. Isn't selfishness at the root of sin? And love—well, maybe that's not all it is, and maybe it isn't like that all the time...but it can be selfless, sometimes. My mother—" Elan broke off, pressing her lips tightly together, as if compressing a terrible wound.

Her expression looked exactly like Alistair felt when he thought of Duncan. He supposed being disowned by your family must feel like a death...it would have to, to put that look on her face.

"I...I'm exhausted," she blurted awkwardly. She did look tired. Huge dark circles framed her eyes. "I—I should...get some sleep while I can."

A perfectly reasonable comment. So why did Alistair have the feeling she was still trapped in the Fade, running from some demon—or demons—she just couldn't escape? He wanted to ask, but he didn't know how to do it without intruding on her grief. She had respected his grief and she deserved as much in return.

"I...thank you for listening," she added awkwardly, sounding almost shy.

"My ears—like all the rest of me—are at your disposal...eh..." Alistair almost choked on the words. They sounded...so tawdry...and so truthful. "I mean...I'm at your command. That is..."

Elan was looking at him as she couldn't quite figure out what had him flustered—at least he hoped she couldn't—but suspected it ought to be obvious—which it probably was. For a moment he thought she might comment.

"And don't think I don't appreciate it," she mumbled, weariness sweeping over her face, washing speculation away. "G'night."