Love's Blush

by Sabrina Zbasnik

  "Me? Who wants to talk about me? There's nothing interesting whatsoever in my life, but you. What about you and that old man you've got teetering through this abbey?"

  "Old?" Lanny pursed her lips, her hand sliding off of his, "He's your age."

  "Exactly, I'm old as dirt now. Hear that," Alistair creaked his knee back and forth, getting the pop he expected, "happens all the damn time now."

  "Cullen will be fine. Later I'll, uh..." a momentary blush erupted on Lanny's cheeks, her retracted private moment with that man she for some reason married throwing up the shield always between her and Alistair. Just what he needed to be reminded of, all those happy couples out there being free to love each other without any of that political muck getting in the way.

  Lanny patted her cheeks, trying to dampen down the blush, before she reached into the pocket of her apron. A flat bottle full of amber liquid twisted back and forth in her fingers before she passed it over to the heartbroken man. "It's Nevarran whiskey, more or less."

  Alistair already uncorked it and was about to take a drink when he paused, "What do you mean more or less?" Despite that, he still poured more than a shot down, needing to feel his throat burn the way the rest of his insides did. Tears that for once had nothing to do with Reiss burned in his eyes, which he wiped with the back of his hand before passing the bottle back.

  Sniffing first, Lanny took a more generous sip before answering, "It wasn't technically whiskeyed up in Nevarra but by Nevarran traders."

  "Whiskeyed up?" Alistair chuckled.

  "I don't know the blighted word for it. Distilled? Brewed? Whatever one does with wine?"

  "I believe we call that 'smashing the hell out of grapes and then leaving it in the sun for a few years," he picked up the bottle and took another shot. "More or less."

  Chuckling at their inanity, the pair traded the whiskey back and forth between them until the bottle ran dry. They didn't need any glasses, drinking just like they had during the Blight when something so frivolous as cups wasn't an option. He remembered far too well the first time she found a bottle of wine, or what they said was wine. After the hangover he woke up to, Alistair suspected someone passed off their varnish drowned in piss as wine. She wanted to get him to open up about Duncan, he didn't want to talk about it. So instead they drank, one for one until that damn seal on his mouth opened up. After Kinloch, he did the same for her, in that case with a bottle of rum that someone drowned flowers in.

  "I've missed you," Alistair groaned, one hand propping up his head. Why did he need to prop it up? Oh, because it was too heavy to keep upright. Duh.

  "I miss you too," she tried to pat his knee, but missed and swiped at the bed instead. Shrugging, Lanny crossed her leg in the least lady-like way possible. Good thing she was always in trousers, or the templar would probably have to challenge Alistair to a duel, and in his state he'd wind up a stain on the ground.

  "If you miss me so much then why don't you ever come to Denerim? It takes my nearly dying for me to see you and even then it's only for what? A few days."

  "Ali," she shook her head sadly, before smooshing her poofed out hair to her face to try and hold it all tight in place. "I can't just up and leave. I'm needed here."

  "That templar can handle it. Isn't that the point? Bet he loves stomping around giving orders to all the others. Has he built a squirrel army yet?"

  "Squirrel...?" Lanny looked about to ask, which would have led them down a winding rabbit hole, but she shook it off. "It isn't just duty that I'd leave behind here, and you know that."

  "Ssso what? It's a few weeks without him, big whoop. Whoa!" Alistair leaned over, planting a hand on the ground to try and stop it from spinning away.

  She grew silent, her eyes staring out the door before speaking, "Why don't you come out here more?"

  "Because it'd bring a good dozen and a half people all babbling about what the King needs and how they have to secure this and that as if I'm some baby that can't chew his own food."

  "And..."

  "And what?" Alistair blinked slowly before his heart waved the answer before him, "Right, and I can't leave my kids for long. Don't want to leave them. Maker, did you see how big Spud's gotten already?"

  She nodded her head slowly, her teeth nibbling on her bottom lip. "I miss you, but Cullen's a different kind of missing. A more urgent kind, like you with your children."

  Any biting response he had shriveled up at that thought. Even when Spud was in her 'Let's shove everything breakable off a shelf because I'm half cat' stage and Cailan was somehow suffering from double colic because why not, he still yearned to be near them. With breaks mind, and the much needed nap, but even this time away while his kids were off with their only grandfather and various aunts doing fun summer things where no one wanted that King to mess stuff up he missed them. Wished he could see them, play with them, put them to bed and every once in awhile strike a candle to watch them sleep.

  Lanny reached forward to grab his hand tight. He glanced down at their clasped hands but didn't grip back, Alistair's spine prickling with worry. Thankfully, the whiskey didn't toss all her common sense out the window and she refrained from leaping on top and ravaging him. Alistair was about 75% certain he'd have the wherewithal to stop her. Probably.

  It took her a few more moments before she spoke, her voice roiling in unspilled tears, "Maker only knows how much longer we have with them."

  Clasping his other hand over their conjoined ones, Alistair nodded his head. She was always fretting over it, that ever shortening fuse burning away in their veins until one day...Boom! Somehow in between saving templars and marrying that loutish oaf, Lanny kept on trying to cure the blight, to give them both another decade or two with the ones they loved. He didn't want to dampen her spirits, but deep in his heart Alistair feared that there was no answer. Life wasn't fair and in the end no one cheated death.

  "At least I have you at the end of it." He meant to whisper it to himself, but she lifted her weary face and smiled.

  "Always," she squeezed his fingers once before releasing them, Alistair letting her hand return to her. "I'm sorry that, you know..."

  He shifted on his hip, trying to lean all his weight onto as little of his ass as possible. Somehow that would distract him from the pain reverberating up every bone in his body. "My life's always been one colossal screw up, right? Not like I've ever gotten a thing right, why should I start now?"

  "Ali..."

  "I'm fine," he waved away her concerns.

  "Bullshit," Lanny was always quick to call him to the carpet for it. He knew he was hurting, and of course she did, but in that moment all he wanted to do was sulk far from prying eyes and concerned tongues. "It's all right if you don't want to talk about it now. There's plenty of time later."

  "Later?" Alistair scrunched up his nose, fully confused.

  She shrugged a shoulder, causing the strap of her apron to go sliding off. That was Lanny, she never could find anything that fit properly. He almost moved to push it back automatically, but her fingers beat him to it. "You can stay as long as you'd like. Follow around with me, hold bottles, mix things, get people to drink stuff they all but spit in my face."

  "You make it sound so enticing," Alistair laughed. "But I rather doubt your templar will like me sticking around for long."

  "Nonsense," Lanny waved her hand, "he's fine. Okay, he'll grumble, but he won't say anything directly...to you."

  "I don't want to get you in trouble."

  That caused her to laugh, "Says the man who pointed down a path littered with bear traps and exclaimed, 'It's a shortcut.'"

  "That..."

  "And then in the middle of stepping around them we have nearly a dozen wolves descend upon us."

  "It got us there faster, I think," he scratched his chin, barely remembering the incident. There were so many in that year it was hard for him to keep track.

  No doubt she was aching to tell him how wrong he was, but Lanny let it subside. Instead, she patted the e
mpty bottle and sighed, "Stay, we can send a raven to Teagan telling him you're safe and being watched over by friends."

  She seemed to be all but begging him to remain. Was it for her benefit to have someone other than the dour templar to keep her entertained or...? A dirty mirror hung on the wall, barely tended to by the always busy staff. Out of the corner of his eye he caught his own reflection and nearly panicked. Alistair looked half dead, his skin so pale the reds of his besotted lips burst like a darkspawn's intestines in snow. The under eye baggage piled up on top of his cheekbones, waiting for someone to come along and claim them. But most striking of all was the frown lines setting into the fold on his forehead. They seemed to be permanent now.

  Lanny wasn't hoping he'd stay for her sake, but for his. She went and became a full time nurse and healer when he was off playing King and he didn't even notice. The mighty warrior that killed hundreds, perhaps thousands of darkspawn found her true calling in shoveling medicine down a crotchety old templar's throat.

  "I'll consider it," Alistair lied. While he'd love nothing more than to give into her ministrations, able to easily distract himself with her witty banter, he knew what watching her and that damn man she loved would do to him.

  "Good," she nodded, a bright smile lifting up her soft cheeks. Hers was the kind of smile that brightened up a room. No, an entire building. He missed how easily he used to be able to draw one from her, before everything between them became weighted by years and disappointment.

  "Do you..." Alistair spoke before his brain told him this was a bad idea. But it was too late now, might as well keep going. "Do you ever wish that I'd never taken the crown? That I'd stayed a Grey Warden...with you?" He stared at his hands while talking but, when no answer came from her, looked up.

  She was tugging on a curl, her lips pursed as she thought. "Ali, I'm married. Happily so, to the point it annoys some of the more conservative of our charges," at that confession, a blush burned on her cheeks. "The past is just that. I wouldn't change what I have now for anything."

  He winced even while knowing that'd be her answer. Of course in the scales of life she'd choose her templar, damn near every woman in thedas had that blighted sketch of him nailed to their bedroom wall.

  "But," Lanny interrupted his self lashing thoughts, "before Cullen, I did think upon it. Often."

  "One more thing I completely screwed up," Alistair said, but there was no malice in it at her or him. He knew that as King it never would have worked with her, but without that crown... He'd hoped that Reiss would be different. Then again, he wanted her because she cared nothing for the damn thing. "I'm not worth overcoming the insurmountable pit of shit that comes with that shiny hat."

  "Yes you are," Lanny insisted the way all smug married couples do. Granted, he was technically married. Maybe he should ask his wife how she was able to find someone to fall in line as her lover without buckling under the weight. "There's got to be someone out there for you."

  "Lanny Amell, the eternal optimist."

  "I am not," she pouted.

  "Sorry, Rutherford. Maker's sake, I know you took his name to hide but couldn't you have just made up something better instead. Sounds like the noise a horse makes just before it sprays snot all over you. Rrutherford!"

  She giggled at his mangling her beloved's family name, her family name. "I meant I'm not an optimist. You can still call me Amell, provided no one else is around."

  That brought a soft glow to his cheeks, "You are so the optimist. Come on, you were the one leading us through the damn near impossible for a year. If it were left up to me we'd have laid down in a ditch five feet outside of Lothering and let the darkspawn trample us to death."

  "No, there's no way. You're more competent than you give yourself credit. Also Morrigan would have kicked us for miles until we were safely out of the darkspawn path."

  He frowned at the witch's name, but didn't rise up to rant and rave about her. Alistair was getting better about it. Getting better about a lot of things, but still not good enough. Not for her, not enough for her to keep him. Why did it have to hurt so bad?

  When Lanny's hand rubbed up and down his back, he startled and sat up, not realizing he'd bent over in pain. Maker's breath, he was tired. "I shouldn't keep you. I'm sure you have to get back to your dour darling and do whatever it is to fix him."

  "Ali, I don't have to leave right this second. Cullen's fine, at least he's not pacing outside the door."

  He smiled at her acknowledging the strangeness of the situation. Lanny usually got through it by ignoring it which somehow made it all even worse. Shaking his head, he staggered up to his legs in the universal 'the party's over' move. "I'm really exhausted, about to pass out and I really don't want to have that man jump to wild conclusions that lead to him pounding my face into the ground."

  Lanny frowned, her lips pursed almost to a flat line.

  "What? I've grown rather attached to this face. It's not good by any means, but it's familiar. Think of all the new paintings they'd have to make if it got beaten to mashed potatoes."

  "All right, I'll leave you be," she stood up, slipping the empty bottle into her apron pocket. "Whenever you wake up, you can come find me. If you want to talk we can, if you want to work I know some stables that need a good mucking."

  "Ooh, both delightful options. However will I choose?" he chuckled, earning a soft crinkle at the edge of her eyes. Those lines weren't vanishing as quickly as they once did, age always creeping up on them both. She nodded once and tried to shift out between the beds to the door.

  "Lanny?"

  His plea paused her and she turned, her chin quirked up.

  "Would it be unseemly if I...could I have one more hug?"

  Her eyes shattered as a thousand thoughts and regrets burst and faded away, that weird wobbly wall between them thickening and waning as she burned through every possibility of what a hug could cost her. "Of course," she said, sliding towards him. So much tinier than Reiss, tinier than nearly everyone he interacted with that wasn't a dwarf, her cheek pressed into his chest and Alistair leaned over to cup his hands against her back. Just as he did during the blight when they'd sit together by the light of the campfire terrified of what the next day would bring. Friends at the time, friends now, clinging to the rare anchor they could both depend upon in this world.

  Patting her hands once more before sliding back, she glanced up at his eyes and smiled, "Try and get some sleep. I hear that whiskey's got a real kick to it."

  "Something I can look forward to tomorrow along with the horse shit."

  With the smile that'd never leave his memory, Lanny tugged open the door and stepped into full night out beyond the abbey's walls. An owl's cry burst above them, the feathered fiend's glide silent save its hooting. Maker only knew how many screws the templar was going to put her for this, but she'd bounce back -- that was what the Hero of Ferelden did. When the world kicked her down she kept getting back up and fighting.

  "I'm sorry," Alistair whispered to her retreating back. She paused in the doorway, her head glancing over her shoulder to stare a question at him. "For hurting you after the landsmeet, for rejecting you because of...I'm sorry."

  She winced a moment before letting it slide away into a beatific smile, "I know. And I'm sorry too."

  "For what?"

  "That you're hurting now," her final words reverberated in the fresh air as she closed the door behind her. Alistair curled up on the cot's cheap mattress and tugged the blanket up to his head. Of course that left his toes and ankles exposed to the nipping cold of the south, that was just the kind of man he was and life he lived. Always coming up short no matter how hard he tried.

  Licking his fingers, he pinched off the candle flame and tried to dig himself into a dreamless sleep. Inside his chest, his heart labored on as if unaware it'd been left shattered in a million pieces and would never work again.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  A Turn

  Everything hurt. Reiss would lift up her
sleeves expecting to find gouges shredding apart her skin and bruises popping up like mushrooms after the rain. But there was nothing. All the pain she felt ransacking her body was on the inside.

  And it was her fault.

  Karelle had been quiet and asked few questions of her. She had to wonder who drew first blood, wanting to supply that ever churning gossip mill that Reiss once had access too. Then again, perhaps they preferred to make up their own tales and not have the far more mundane truth to fall back on. After returning the armor to the stand and handing the chamberlain her sword, Reiss' decision smashed down against her head. This was it. She'd given up on everything in her potential glass future, pretty but forever cold and untouched, for a gaping unknown. It was too late to go back even if she wanted to. Alistair...the King was already a days travel out of Denerim. And it was doubtful he'd want her back anyway.

  She could feel the glares and impolite whispers trailing her, everyone who'd poked fun at their King suddenly railing to his side against this heart breaking interloper. Reiss didn't fight it, in truth she deserved it. She'd been the one to kiss him, to pursue what they had between them and at the last second balked. Everything was on her. Maybe if she confessed it all to the chantry mother, Reiss would receive the proper lashings she had coming.

  Clutching tight to the trunk holding her few belongings, Reiss slowly inched down the hallway. She'd left everything gifted to her by the chamberlain and...him -- toiletries, towels, even the bandages in her room. For a moment her fingers lingered over the flowers, their petals fading with age but still clinging to the stem. A painful reminder of each time when he'd slip a hand over her back, kiss her with his full heart, and then happily plop another into the vase.

  Unable to toss the flowers out, Reiss laid each one upon the vanity to dry. Moisture would leech from the petals, crackling them to a dead brown but preserve something of what had once been, just like her heart. She felt the tears struggling to come out again at the thought, but the stomp of boots bouncing up and down the hallway paused her. Cade was leading a batch of the guards through for no good reason beyond keeping them fresh.