Disclaimer: Bioware owns all, except what I most humbly imagine. While, at times, I will take verbatim from the game, I mostly 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!

When reading this tale, 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: And this is it - the final chapter in Book Three! Book Four is already in the works and will be up soon, so keep an eye out if you want to follow along :)

Thanks to my readers, followers and reviewers and to my betas artemiskat and Snarkoleptic who have patiently followed along with me and kept me on track through this wild ride.

Happy reading!

-Frayed One

Chapter Fifty-One: A Game of Chance

The morning after…

As Nathaniel awoke, he was distinctly aware of another body in the bed beside him – which was unusual. The truth was, Nathaniel had invited only a handful of women into his bed, and none of them had spent any time there after they'd completed the act that brought them there in the first place. To wake up fighting for the blankets, well, that was something he hadn't done since the days when Elissa would…

Elissa… He opened his eyes then, just enough to see that it was in fact Elissa who lay next to him. Most of the sheet was wrapped around her midsection, and she'd taken and rooted – face-down – into two of his pillows. He chuckled, rolling onto his side and watching the growing light of a new dawn dance across the bare skin of her back – lighting the fire of the phoenix's wings. He reached a hand out, drawing his fingers down her warm skin to reassure himself that he wasn't dreaming.

In the blink of an eye that moment was over, and he found himself looking down at a wild eyed Elissa, his wrist in one hand and his throat in the other. He gave her a moment to adjust, to realize who he was and that he was no threat, until finally she relaxed her holds and let him go.

"You know, all the times I've fantasized about waking up with you naked in my bed, you've never once choked me." Nathaniel smirked down at her, leaning his head against one hand and reaching the other over to rest against her stomach. "And your hair never looked quite so much like a wilding."

"Funny." Elissa snorted, falling back in the bed and brushing her curls back with a half-stretch. "I didn't mean to attack you, I'm just used to waking up first and—"

"And you're about as used to sharing your bed as I am?" He waited for her to acknowledge what he'd said, but she showed no sign of doing so – so he just continued. "It's alright. If you'd actually hurt or offended me I'd imagine we'd still be brawling at the moment."

"Perhaps we should?" She grinned at him, that spark of mischief in her eyes that always seemed to surface when they were together. "I haven't sparred in days. I could use a good brawl."

"Ah, but sparring requires clothing… and armor… and I'm rather enjoying the lack of those things at the moment." With each word Nathaniel trailed more of the sheet down her body, exposing her bare breasts and leaning down to take one of her nipples into his mouth to graze it with his teeth – smiling against her skin at the quick intake of breath. "Do you remember that summer in Highever? The one that was so dreadfully hot?"

"Your idea of pillow talk is quite odd. You know that, right?" Elissa moaned when he reached up to cup her other breast as the vibration of his laughter transferred into the other. "But yes, I do remember. I think we lived at the lagoon that summer. Fergus even talked Nan into having our lunches sent down, though I'll never know how he managed that one."

"I'd forgotten that, but she did, didn't she?" He laughed again, pushing up on an elbow and continuing to trace slow patterns across her chest with his fingers. "I spent that entire summer fixated on getting a look at these."

"At what? My breasts?" She snorted, having a difficult time imagining Nathaniel in their youth ever having done such a thing. "I think I'd have noticed that, and likely encouraged it. You were far too much of a gentleman back then for my tastes."

"Oh, I assure you, I'm speaking the truth. Why do you think I spent so much time in the water? It was hot, Elissa, but it wasn't that hot." Nathaniel laughed at the slight widening of her eyes when she realized what he was saying. "And I was a gentleman because that's how I was raised. You were young and inexperienced and we were not yet testing those boundaries. What would you have had me do? Drag you off to some secluded corner and pry off your top?"

"That certainly would have gotten my attention."

"Quite a bit more than your attention, I'd wager." He smiled again, trailing his hand down her abdomen to disappear beneath the sheet at her waist and smiling when her breath hitched again as he found what he was looking for. "And just talking about it seems to have worked exactly as I intended, so I'd say my pillow talk works perfectly fine."

"You're so bloody arrogant." The tension in her jaw showed how hard she was trying to play up the irritation, but the breathy quality of her voice gave everything away.

"Is that a complaint? I can always stop…" He slid a finger forward, listening to the moan she couldn't control when he slipped inside her, and watching the quick twitch of her thighs as they parted to give him better access. "I'll take that as a no."

Elissa leaned up several times in an attempt to kiss him, but Nathaniel dodged – wanting simply to watch her face while he teased her into a frenzy. The increasingly frantic pace of her moaning and the rapid rise and fall of her chest nearly did him in when he joined a second finger with the first, and he shifted himself above her when she finally managed to take his mouth against her own.

He was two seconds from penetration when a brusque knock sounded at his door, "Bloody… Just ignore it…"

For a moment she did, digging her nails into his biceps as he sucked at her neck, but then a voice called out and Nathaniel felt any hope he had of finishing fade.

"C-commander?" The slightly mousy voice shook, obviously not wanting to be there at the moment any more than either of them wanted to hear it.

"How did she even know where to find me?" Elissa huffed, waiting for Nathaniel to move enough that she could start to get up.

"You aren't exactly quiet, Elissa." Nathaniel chuckled, watching the narrow of her eyes in response.

"Neither are you!" she snipped, yanking the entire sheet off the bed and wrapping herself in it before heading toward the door.

"Hey!" Nathaniel scrambled for a moment, reaching out and missing the trailing end of the sheet. "Elissa, don't you dare open that door!"

"I suggest you grab a pillow, darling." Elissa winked at him, a slight chuckle when she heard him scrambling for a pillow as she drew open the door.

"Commander, I-I'm sorry to wake you, I-I…" The blonde's words trailed off as she looked past Elissa and caught a glimpse of Nathaniel, and Elissa fought the urge to laugh when she turned six new shades of red before diverting her eyes. "Oh d-dear, um… I'll just give you this and go then."

Elissa took the missive and closed the door, not bothering to hide her smile as she strolled back over to the bed with it.

"Thanks for that." Nathaniel folded his arms across his chest, all of the good tension he'd worked up slowly replacing itself with bad.

"Oh, come now. You've just made that young woman's week, at least. That sort of thing can fuel a woman's fantasies for quite some time. Trust me, it certainly fueled mine." She winked at him again, watching some of the irritation ease back out of him with the knowledge that she'd spent just as much time thinking of him as he had of her.

"What's so important that your messengers are showing up at my door before the sun's even fully in the sky?" Nathaniel shifted closer to her side, trying to get a look at the parchment she was reading.

"It's the bloody First Warden. He'd like me to come to Weisshaupt to address 'concerns with regard to the emerging threat of intelligent darkspawn' as well as my 'confusing choice of second'." Elissa rubbed at the bridge of her nose, feeling the real world encroaching on her brief pocket of contentment once again, and allowed Nathaniel to draw the missive from her fingers and scan it himself.

"If he wants to see us, then we go." Nathaniel shrugged his shoulders, attempting to take a bit of the severity out of the news. "And if my being your lieutenant is such cause for alarm, then I won't be. It's as simple as that."

"No. This is my choice, Nathaniel. You are the best person for the job, you know it and I know it, and they will too." Elissa turned to hold his eyes. "And if they don't accept my choice, then they don't get me either. I'm fairly certain once that becomes clear they'll accept whatever I have to say. Well… either that or throw me in some cell beneath the fortress."

"You don't actually think that's a possibility?" He watched her brief laughter, but it was short lived when she saw that the concern in his eyes was real.

"There's no way to know. I shouldn't have survived the battle with the Archdemon. Alistair and I dodged that as best we could, but I've never been brought in to answer for it… and now with all the fall out from The Mother… I can't say what they'll do if I don't pass whatever test it is I'm certain I'm being called to submit myself to." She could tell that her words were doing nothing to soothe him, but she couldn't deceive him about the very real danger in going to Weisshaupt. "If I do fail the test, I'll likely be imprisoned or killed – and if those things happen, then you have to come back without me."

"What? Do you honestly expect me to—"

"I honestly expect you to follow orders. This war is not over, it's only begun. The Wardens in Ferelden will need a leader, and if I should fall, for whatever reason, that leader is you." He started to mutter again, but Elissa reached forward and covered his mouth with her fingers, flipping a leg over his and settling into his lap. "I don't want to fight, Nathaniel. I knew this day would come, and now it has. We will leave tomorrow, we can argue then. For now – I think you should finish what you started."

"Do you?" Nathaniel smiled as she drew the pillow out from between them and reached down to find that the interruption and mild irritation had done little to divert his earlier intentions.

"I do." She leaned in to kiss him, enjoying the feeling of his fingers sinking into her bare hips as he guided her down to settle fully on the length of him.

He wound his fingers into her hair as she started to move, pressing kiss after kiss against her mouth and trying to push aside the dread of Weisshaupt long enough to enjoy the day.

The day after…

Nathaniel was prepping the horses when Anders found Elissa standing just outside the stables. She'd crouched down next to their packs, going over the things they'd need one last time before they departed for Jader where they'd booked passage on a ship to Val Royeaux.

"Leaving for your honeymoon already? Funny, I don't recall being invited to a wedding." Anders looked for any sign that he'd hit a nerve as she flicked her eyes up in his direction, but saw nothing but the mild irritation that came – he assumed – from having to speak to him at all.

"I'd hardly call a summons to Weisshaupt a honeymoon." Elissa snorted, standing and pacing close enough to address whatever it was that had brought him out in search of her. "What can I do for you, Anders?"

"Just wondering if I have any standing orders while you're away. I seem to have lost my invitation to your briefings in the post."

"There were no briefings… honestly, Anders…" She rubbed at her forehead, sighing, and then continued. "I spoke with Varel and I spoke with Jowan. You run your clinic just fine without my intervention and you're better about keeping your supplies up than I have ever been. If there had been a need for standing orders, I would have given them. As it is, if that changes, Jowan will speak with you."

"Jowan? You've left Jowan in charge." Anders laughed bitterly, shaking his head and pacing a few steps away. "So he's your new pet? How does Howe feel about that? Or is that part of your twisted relationship, him getting to watch other men take you to bed – like some sort of sick foreplay?"

His insinuation hit far too close to her still haunted memories of Thomas and the Denerim basement, and she snapped like a wounded animal back in his direction. "I think it's fairly safe to say I've had the one and only mage I ever will."

They stood there a moment longer, glaring in silence, both realizing this is who they are now – broken and damaged and just looking to do more as though that would somehow make it better, make it easier to ignore just what it was they'd both lost in the end.

"I put Jowan in charge because he has proven he can be. He held the forces here at The Keep when Varel fell. It was not a slight in your direction, Anders. Not everything is about you and this nonsense—"

"Nonsense? Well, that certainly says everything, doesn't it?" Anders' laughter was cold as he turned to go. "And I'm well aware that not everything is about me, Elissa. I'm fairly certain none of this ever was."

Nathaniel emerged from the stables as he stalked off up the hill, dusting off his hands and coming to a stop at Elissa's side. He watched her eyes trail after him, and felt the brief pulse of remorse before she shoved it down where he could no longer sense it.

"It will get better." He sincerely meant the words, but the look on her face as she turned to retrieve their packs told him he should never have said them.

"Tell me, Nathaniel – when we were apart, when you were certain there was no hope that we would be together again – did it ever get better for you?" She held his eyes for a moment, reading the answer easily without his ever saying a word. "Do me a favor, do not speak reassurances you can't even believe for yourself."

She stalked off to the stable, leaving Nathaniel to grab their packs and pursue her with a sigh. This promised to be an exceptionally long journey.

Two weeks after…

Anders was sitting with Pounce back in a far corner of the lower courtyard when Justice found him, or rather when the smell of Justice found him. It seemed to travel far ahead of the corpse bound spirit these days – counting down his time among them like tick marks on a prison wall.

"Not really looking for company," Anders groused, scratching lightly at Pounce's head and watching him dash off after a leaf.

He'd tried the company route once in the week following Elissa's departure for Weisshaupt, thinking that perhaps he could find some sort of kindred spirit in Nathaniel's sister Delilah who had moved into one of the cottages a few days after her brother had left.

Anders saw to her care as she was reaching the end of her pregnancy, and as they shared – if nothing else – a strong distaste for Elissa at the moment, he'd thought that perhaps he'd found someone to talk to. But though Delilah certainly shared his ill will toward the Warden-Commander, she had no desire to discuss it with him or anyone she deemed loyal to Elissa – feeling they were likely planted there looking for any reason to send her packing back to Amaranthine as soon as possible.

"I suspect you are not looking for anything that would appear beyond that patch of ground at your feet," Justice replied, the pop and creak of his joints pulling a cringe out of Anders as he sat on the bench beside him.

"It wasn't literal. It just means 'go away, I don't want to talk to you'. Now that you know that, could you do it?" Anders waited for him to move again, but he didn't, drawing a sigh out as he realized that if the spirit was staying – a lecture must lie on the horizon.

"You should not mire yourself in this useless negativity. There are much better uses for your time and energy than continuing to dwell on someone who no longer has need of you." Justice recognized the flare of temper in the mage's eyes as Anders turned in his direction, but didn't understand what he'd done to provoke it.

"Yes, Justice – please do rub some more salt in that wound. That will certainly motivate me to do whatever it is you think I should be doing with my time and energy."

"I have upset you, and that was not my intention." The spirit followed the tense, angry movements of the mage's body with his cloudy eyes, attempting to think over his words more carefully – though what triggered a particular human emotional response was a riddle to him.

"For something that isn't your intention, you certainly seem to do it a lot." Anders snipped, glaring over at the rotting body of his companion briefly before turning his attention back to Pounce. "Whatever you came here to say, can you just get it out already? Like I said, I'm really not looking for conversation."

"I have watched you losing focus over these past days, and I found it to be… bothersome would be your word, I suppose." Justice watched the frustration in Anders' eyes fade slowly as curiosity seeped in. "Someone with your mind, with your talents, should not be losing themselves to whatever this is that has dragged you down. You should be—"

"Let me guess…" Anders laughed, standing up and walking over to tug a long stick off the ground and drag it at his feet for Pounce to chase. "Someone like me should be 'devoting myself to the plight of my people'."

"Yes. Have you never given it thought? Has it never crossed your mind how much good you could do?" Justice paced himself, he'd learned from pursuing this line of conversation in the past that Anders tended to react poorly when pushed too hard. "The Commander is spread too thin already. To fight a battle on so many fronts is to lose before it is begun. The mages will need a champion of their own."

"And you think that champion is me?" Anders turned back to him, eyes wide when Justice made no move to deny him. "I'm one man, Justice. One. I could barely walk back into that tower without El— One man against centuries of depravity you cannot even imagine. It would be like throwing a pebble at a mountain."

"Yes, but a pebble aimed carefully - a pebble thrown with the correct amount of force - can start an avalanche." The spirit paused, seeing Anders' mind struggling to understand his meaning. "It always starts with one. It is one that begins a revolution."

"Your time among the lesser beings of Thedas has finally driven you mad, Justice," Anders snorted, pacing once again.

"In the Blackmarsh, the Commander was dying. You were drained and there was no hope. I used my power to fuel your abilities." Justice watched his pacing slow, and finally stop.

"Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"

"My time here is growing short. This body is failing, and when it does… when it does I shall simply cease to be." The spirit's corporeal shoulders popped when he attempted to mimic the gesture he'd watched humans use thousands of time to illicit a sympathetic reaction. "I have done very little good in my time here. The Commander has kept me hidden, and though I understand her reasons, I feel the need to right some of the wrongs of this world before I am forced to leave it."

"And you want me to, what? Merge with you? Give you a vessel from which to do this work?" Anders' eyes narrowed in Justice's direction, having heard the manipulative whispers of demons and humans one too many times to simply trust blindly.

"It would be unjust of me to ever suggest such a thing." Justice shook his head, standing as quickly as his brittle body could manage. "But if the cause is righteous and the vessel is willing… I would consider such an arrangement."

Anders watched the slow, hesitant movements as Justice maneuvered his current vessel back down the path toward The Keep. It was obvious he would not last longer, and he wondered if there was a part of the spirit that understood the concept of fear enough that he held dread for the end so fast approaching.

"Justice." He watched Kristoff's body turn back in his direction, swallowing and then making his choice. "I am willing."

"Then there is much to discuss." Justice walked back to the secluded corner, and for a moment – right before his features disappeared again into afternoon shadow – Anders was certain he saw the brief flash of a smile.