Note from SurelyForth: BSN prompt fill time! This is from ages ago. Sabreene gave the prompt "escape" and this is what I came up with. If you can't see the connection, don't feel bad. I'm pretty certain there is none.

"Telekinetic panties?" Even at a whisper, she managed to convey the entirety of her amused disbelief.

"Yes," his eyes traveled deliberately down her face to the low cut bodice of her gown. "I can't say I'm not pleased with the results."

The kiss tackle into an empty sitting room had been unexpected, but he was very much enjoying being stretched beneath her on the floor as she held his wrists pinned above his head.

"Results? Was this an experiment?" Her eyebrow went up.

"Well, the public part of it was," he grinned rakishly. "I've pulled it off alone before, but never in a room full of people. I half expected to see beardo's wife blush."

"I'm pretty sure Isolde is dead from the neck down, but it would have been amusing."

"Neck down? That's being generous," he pushed his hips up ever so slightly and was rewarded with an unsubtle tightening of her thighs at his waist. "And I still think you got off too easy. I was trapped in that infirmary for fifteen minutes after you left, Alistair and his guard talking about sword fighting like I even care, meanwhile I could have caused some serious damage if anyone would have came too close or, Maker forbid, looked down."

"Heh. 'How did you come to lose your eye, Your Majesty?'" Brand squinted one eye. "'You really don't want to know…can we just focus on how awesome I look in an eye-patch? Better than a silly crown, by far!'" Anders had to admit that she had a pretty decent Alistair voice, but still.

"And how weird would he think I was, standing there in that state in the company of a couple of men? Although...it would go a long way towards justifying why I'm always around."

"Now you know not to ask me to demonstrate how functional my hand is," her eyes glinted with bottomless amounts of mischief as she lowered her mouth to brush against his jaw, her hair soft against his throat, and he paused to enjoy the way such gentle contact could turn his blood to flame.

"No, I just know not to ask you that in public," Anders shifted again. He was torn between the desire to push past this gentle interlude to something that better matched his sudden fever, and the a surge of altogether unexpected curiosity. "Why were you and Alistair sparring in the first place?"

She'd started biting along his neck, her hands relinquishing his wrists to slide down his arms as she did so, taking her time to contemplate his question.

"We were at breakfast and being our normal stone cold selves when I mentioned that I was going to start training again. It was probably the first thing I've said that didn't freak him right out," she sat upright and shrugged. "So we decided to spar."

"Do you feel closer than ever to your betrothed?" With his hands free, he was able to run them along her thighs, enjoying the way the she shivered at his touch.

"Obviously, "she laughed at that. "We might have actually had a bonding moment, if he hadn't, you know, slashed my arm wide open. Now he's terrified of me and he's caused me grievous injury. Eye contact will not be happening for at least two years."

Her voice was light, but there was an unmistakable twinge of I am so screwed that came through whenever she spoke of her future with Alistair. She didn't want it. He didn't want it. Only Eamon wanted it.

"Why did you agree in the first place?" Anders realized with a small start that he was trading fun time in his attempt to…get to know her? He didn't really know her at all, to be honest, besides what she could to him with her body and her smile. "Did you commit a crime and the sentence is queendom? Are you being blackmailed? Are you secretly in love with Captain Face Blanket and being queen means you get to spend oodles of time with him?"

"No," Brand spoke softly, and sadness echoed in that single syllable. Her expression had turned melancholy as her fingers curled thoughtfully into his robes, gathering the fabric at his stomach. "I don't want to talk about this, Anders. Not with you."

And what had been mindless fun, sex and flirting and dangerous games wherein they bumped against being discovered but always managed to escape notice, became very not mindless.

"I understand completely," he began to work his way up her skirt, determined to ignore the way a part of him was unspooling. She'd spoken candidly to him their second night together, opening up with little prompting. What was different now? And how was it possible that she was astride him, more than willing to do anything to him that he could dream up, and that not with you was maddeningly distracting. "I'm just here to please. And to be pleased, of course."

"Dammit, Anders," she let go of his robes, and he abandoned his exploration, his palms remaining in contact with her thighs because he was holding out hope that this would pass in seconds and they could return to sex and flirting and not the corners of her mouth turning down. You only have yourself to blame. "If I start talking about it, I'll cry and that's just not how I want this to go."

"I didn't realize that this was something that went," Anders was entering a place he'd been before, where his mouth ruined good things. But normally he was being too flip and now he was being too damn serious. "I'm a final, if protracted, fling."

"I..." she looked to the side, her already flushed cheeks deepening to crimson, and he studied her chin, how it jutted stubbornly, and the long slope of her nose. "Alistair told me how you became a Warden, how you escaped from the Circle of Magi and Ron conscripted you. It made sense. When I saw you in the tavern, I could tell you were someone who understands and appreciates what it means to be free. Alistair said you escaped several times?"

Anders nodded and then propped himself on his elbows. The wool carpet might have been scratchy against his skin, but he was paying more attention to the distance in her eyes as she turned back to him.

"I was never very good at evading the templars," he scowled. "Never minding their rather unfair advantage.

"So you probably know about that feeling when you've made it out and you're pretty sure that it's not going to last, so you appreciate it that much more? Everything is slightly brighter, food tastes better, and sleep is more restful?"

He was quite familiar with that feeling, and how it made him he pay that much more attention to everything, from how the air felt against his skin to the sweet bloom of that first sip of ale as it passed along his tongue, everything felt and noticed and enjoyed so that he'd have that much more to take back with him if when reality finally made its catch and those tiny, exaggerated moments would be what kept him from giving into complacency, from losing himself completely.

"That's what you are to me," she bowed her head down and when her lips pressed his he saw the sun coming up over Lake Calenhad, the thin edge of fire unfurling across the water's surface as he watched it from Bann Ferrenly's gate house, the lord away at the Landsmeet and the chamberlain had already sent a messenger to the Chantry. He wasn't one for nature, but the only time he saw sunrises these days was through the warped windows in the tower and even he had to admit that there was something amazing about watching the world come to life in front of him.

He sat up completely, and his hands ran up her back to pull her closer.

"I was alone for awhile, Anders, and I made mistakes. Some of them are unforgiveable. When Fergus approached me about marrying Alistair, I felt obligated to agree. It's the sort of thing I should have done in the first place, instead of…" her mouth had moved close to his ear and she whispered her confession, the intimacy of it unexpected. "I'd hoped, of course, but things went so wrong so quickly, and then I met you and…"

"Mistakes on top of mistakes."

"Piles of mistakes everywhere, and I know it. And I don't care," she positioned herself so they were eye to eye, their noses almost touching. "A fling is something that has an end point, something disposable. I can't have you, anything we do beyond man and wife is more dangerous than dangerous, but that doesn't mean that I'm going to let you go."

"I should tell you to let me go," he cradled her chin, the pad of his thumb brushing across her lips, and there was no mistaking the emotion that spilled warmly from his chest to his stomach when her mouth curved up at the corners. "But I am in love with the idea of being so unforgettable."

"I thought you would be," her fingers pushed through his hair, nails dragging lightly along his scalp, and if there was any part of him that had been hesitant before, it was all on board now. "Of course, you're the one who said unforgettable..."

"Is that a challenge?" It was his turn to tackle her back onto the floor and there was nothing he wanted to forget about the way she looked beneath him, her dark hair fanned around her smiling face and her eyes luminous as he did his best to make the leap from memorable to unforgettable, or to at least live up to that's what you are to me because, from where he stood, there wasn't anything better than that.