Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except what I most humbly imagine. While, at times, I will take verbatim from the game, I attempt to use the events of the Dragon Age games, expansions and universe as a loose structure around which to construct my re-imagined tale. If you are looking for a strict canon piece, I have no desire to offend, and so I warn you upfront that I will divert from the traditional tale.

When reading these stories, I hope you can easily imagine it being told by the very best of storytellers in Varric Tethras (from DA:2). In my version of events, Varric meets "The Hero" (Elissa Cousland) in Kirkwall during the time period of DA:2. I mention this only so that readers can understand his connection along the way, and so I don't have to mention and rehash it again and again as I make my way through the tale.

A/N: This story is Book Two of a larger piece. The first portion (Star Crossed) is already up in its entirety. While the first story dealt with the pre-Blight relationship between Elissa Cousland and Nathaniel Howe, this one will focus mainly on Elissa's experiences during the Blight and her friendship/relationship with Alistair. Nathaniel will appear, but he is not the main character of this piece.

Muse Music: Hemorrhage by Fuel.

Edits posted 2/6/2013.

Thanks to my readers, writers and followers and to the wonderful artemiskat without whom this project would not be possible.

Happy Reading!

-Frayed One

Chapter One: Leave Love Bleeding

There was a moment, just a moment, where she thought it had all been a dream. That she had risen for the day and her anxiety over leaving had combined with her desire to see him again and manifested itself into a horrible nightmare.

But it was only a moment. The illusion shattered when she heard Fergus speaking in an angry whisper to Oriana just outside the door to her room.

"I'll kill him, I swear it!" Fergus' heavy footfalls echoed down the hall where he paced in frustration. "I will rip his head off with my bare hands!"

"Hush, dear." Oriana halted his steps with the press of a gentle hand against his arm. "You must calm your temper for Elissa's sake. Your sister will need you. A broken heart does not mend easily."

"I shall try, love. But I make no promises." Fergus sighed, and though he was making an effort Elissa could hear the fury seething underneath.

"To try is all that I ask of you." Oriana hugged him and laid a tender kiss on his cheek. "And that you go down to see Nan. Perhaps return with some tea and cookies? I would like to see if I can get your sister to eat something when she wakes."

Fergus reluctantly agreed, and Elissa sighed with relief, listening to the click of the door when Oriana pressed it shut behind him.

"It's alright, he's gone." The lovely Antivan sat at the foot of Elissa's bed and offered a sympathetic smile. "There's no need to continue your ruse, remarkable as it was."

"I'm sorry. I know I shouldn't avoid him, but I just… I don't want to talk about it right now and I know he will press me for answers I may not even have, or want to give to him." Elissa ran restless fingers through her hair.

"It is perfectly understandable." Oriana reached out to pat her hand before taking hold of it. "A broken heart pains us like no other injury, something Fergus cannot understand because his has never suffered such a tragedy."

"Will it ever stop hurting?" Elissa saw in the older woman's eyes the very understanding she could not find in her brother's. "It feels like I'm dying. No, worse. Worse than death. I'd rather be dead than feel this way."

"It will take time, but as the days pass it will hurt less and less until one day, you will think back on it and feel nothing at all."

"Nothing at all… We will be nothing at all?" Elissa stuttered out the words, her vision blurring as tears sprang heavy into her eyes at the thought that everything she had felt for Nathaniel, all her hopes and dreams, could simply cease to be. "I don't think I can do this. I-I cannot bear it! It's too much, it hurts too badly…"

She felt herself losing control; ripping apart at the seams. She collapsed against Oriana's lap and sobbed, gasping for air in between broken words that pleaded to the Maker for some sort of relief, some end to the sorrow that threatened to consume her.

Oriana stroked her hair, whispering words of reassurance and humming the lullabies she used to lull Oren to sleep in the wake of his nightmares. Eventually Elissa felt herself calming and relaxing into sleep.

It took almost two weeks for Elissa to voluntarily leave her room after collapsing to the stone floor at her brother's feet upon reading Nathaniel's letter. For him to have ended things in such a way, just a handful of cold words on a torn scrap of parchment, he might as well have simply cut out her heart. She'd have preferred it that way, truth be told.

She vowed to tell no one of her ill-fated plans to go to him the very evening she'd received his last letter, destroying it when her fingers found the wax of its seal carefully concealed in her pocket.

She thanked the Maker that she had received it before she'd been foolish enough to follow through on her plan to seek passage to the Free Marches. As devastated as she had been by the heartless, distant manner in which he had chosen to end their relationship, she knew that physically seeing him in the arms of another would have been worse.

Despite Oriana's attempts to quell his temper, Fergus had been livid with anger, and insisted that he would go to their father and demand he provide passage to the Free Marches where he intended to 'beat the heartless bastard into paste.'

Though Elissa appreciated his loyalty to her, she pleaded with him not to go and pretended that she was feeling better, offering proof when she slipped the Howe signet ring off her finger and deposited it unceremoniously into the back of a drawer.

"Please, brother, let it go." She turned back to him with a sigh, pressing the drawer closed by leaning against it.

"I don't know why you defend him after all he has done." Fergus kicked at the corner of her bureau in frustration. "He does not deserve your loyalty, Elissa. Clearly he never did."

"Don't say that!" Elissa snapped, drawing herself up to her full height so she could glare straight into her brother's eyes. "What we had… I-it may be over now, but it was real. I refuse to believe it was nothing… that I was nothing."

"Even though he treats you like you are nothing?" Fergus didn't even flinch in the face of her anger. He had enough of his own to fuel them both. "Maker, 'Lissa, wake up! I know you loved him, but he never loved you. Love doesn't do this. I would never do this to Oriana!"

"You take that back, Fergus Cousland!" She shoved him so hard he nearly lost his footing and went down. "He did love me! He did!"

"Have you lost your mind?" Fergus scrambled to regain his balance, reaching over to still his sister's violent swings by pinning her arms against her torso. "I'm only trying to help you!"

"Help? You call this help?" She twisted out of his grasp when the tears started to flow once again. "I don't want it! I don't want you here! I just want to be left alone. Get out! Get out now or I swear to Andraste herself I will punch you right in your stupid nose!"

Fergus opened his mouth to reply, but immediately closed it again, and made a hasty retreat to the door upon seeing her balled fist drawing back to take a swing.

It took another week for Elissa to work up the nerve to venture out again, doing so mainly because both her mother and father had started to believe the experience had left her with permanent damage. After the third visit from the family healer she decided it was either emerge on her own or be forcefully dragged off to a physician.

She ran into Fergus outside the kitchens and mustered up her brightest smile, requesting that he come to spar with her in the training yard as she felt rusty after all her time away. He agreed, wrapping an arm around her shoulder and accepting her stoic facade as truth.

It took some time but he eventually let the subject of Nathaniel drop completely, watching his sister throw herself wholeheartedly into her studies, her training, and the daily activities of his son Oren and wife Oriana. He believed she had found a way to refocus and move past her broken heart.

In truth, she returned to her dresser almost immediately after chasing Fergus from her room and scrambled to dig Nathaniel's ring back out of the drawer she'd chucked it in. She strung it on a leather cord and slid it inside the front of her tunic, as much to hide it from the eyes of those who would not understand as to feel the comfort of its weight directly against her skin.

In truth she might as well have been trying to learn how to breathe underwater, to walk with no legs, to speak with no tongue.

Living a life without him seemed impossible. She didn't know how she'd ever done it before… and yet, she must have. There had been a time when she had lived her life without Nathaniel Howe.

Minutes turned into hours, hours into days, days into months, and eventually she taught herself to bear the aching wound he had left in her heart without faltering beneath the weight of it, accepting that it would never fully heal.