Love's Blush

by Sabrina Zbasnik

Reiss closed her eyes and breathed deep. Slowly she rotated her fingers in his. Alistair expected her to yank her hand away, but instead hers threaded with his and locked into place. "It's my job to protect you from harm."

  "Assassins, your job is to protect me from assassins. Water's not an assassin, I hope. Let's not give any blood mages ideas. And whatever bad vapors I inhaled or drank that liquified my insides wasn't an assassin either." This felt foolish, as far as he knew she'd done all she could to save him. He was the one to charge head first into a black and frozen river without any plan beyond 'try not to drown. It'd be bad.'

  "You don't have to keep apologizing to me for you not knowing and planning for every eventuality fate throws at us. It's not like you're the Maker," he chortled before the idea struck hold and his voice dropped, "You're not the Maker, are you?"

  "No," Reiss laughed once, her lips lifting in a guarded smile. "I..." her striking eyes rose to his and she said, "I will try to keep it in mind." The thought roared back into his brain from its cage.

  Kiss her.

  It'd been there skulking in the shadows for what felt like weeks now, but every time he wanted to press his advantage the timing was beyond awkward. Here, in a garden, with dozens of people doing their best to politely listen in was probably slightly better than making out in the throne room during a landsmeet. Still, the voice persisted. Kiss her. Run your fingers through her golden hair. Bump noses and giggle at it. Cup her long ears while mashing your foreheads together. Be with her.

  "I should be the one saying sorry," Alistair spoke, trying to shift away his damn invasive libido. "Standing around all day watching me sleep has to be the height of boredom for a guard."

  The left side of Reiss' mouth lifted and she shrugged, "It's not the worst, but it can get rather dull."

  "Tell me about it, and you're not stuck rooming with a mage that's spouting off alchemical theories about how the correct velocity applied to an acid will create some kind of mucus discharge, blah blah, something with gold."

  "Gold?"

  "It's always gold in alchemy," he nodded sagely and began to stroke his chin in thought, which drew a snort from Reiss.

  "I'm afraid I know little to nothing about potions, or healing, or any of that," she grimaced, her fingers tightening around his. "If I was better taught, trained in how to..."

  "I heard you," Alistair whispered. She whipped her head over to him so fast that errant tendril of blonde hair dipped down across her eye. Forgetting where he was and who he was, Alistair drew a finger against her runaway hair and tucked it back. A blush burned up Reiss' cheeks and she mouthed a silent 'thank you' under her breath. "In the cart up to Denerim. Wasn't a hundred percent certain it wasn't a trick of the fade at the time, and there were a lot more pink rabbits hopping around the castle than I remember, but..."

  Alistair shifted in his seat and leaned closer to her.

  Kiss her.

  Shut up, little head. This is important too. "I was glad you were there with me."

  "It..." Reiss' blush amplified tenfold, her forehead and chin breaking out in the adorable fever as she kept retucking her hair back behind her ears, "I didn't know what to, it seemed to at the time, I...I tried."

  "And it helped," he whispered, his skin aching to touch hers, to watch her summery eyes slip shut in anticipation as he kissed those pink lips. But Alistair jammed another hook into his errant libido and dragged it back into the cage. Not now. Maybe. Maybe later. If she was up for it. If he was up for it.

  He glanced out at the garden and watched Marn approaching Lanny. Cailan was coddled in her arms, the boy getting his own daily dose of sun while the nursemaid kept her good eye on Spud. His daughter, tired of watching sparkles, was back to digging for something in the mud. Somedays he wondered if the Maker didn't get the souls mixed up and Spud got a mabari's by mistake.

  "For what it's worth," Reiss whispered, dragging him away from his children, "I haven't forgotten either."

  Alistair swallowed hard at that; a literal awe shucks rampaged out of his broiled throat and plopped onto the ground with as much dignity as Oghren anywhere at anytime. He felt the fever return to his exhausted body, lighting up the cheeks in particular as he reached up to fluff his hair and try to not melt into the stone bench. A voice shouted at the edge of the garden, and Alistair whipped back in time to watch Marn clapping her hands at Spud. The princess ignored the order which drew out the wrathful Nanny inside. Barely glancing over, she dumped Cailan into Lanny's arms, scooped Spud up by the middle and began to drag the digging mudball out of the ground.

  Spud was in full on tantrum, twisting and screaming that she didn't want something. It was impossible to make out through the tears. Alistair knew he should get up and deal with it, but Marn only shot a quick 'I've got this' look at him before dragging her away from the assembly patrons of the garden to dump her into a no doubt wrathful bath followed by a timeout. Or perhaps vice versa, depending on Marn's mood.

  Blinking as if an archdemon just flew overhead, Lanny stood shocked with a baby in her arms. For delivering so many, she didn't seem certain what to do, vaguely rocking back and forth on her hips and holding Cailan as if he was a bag of melons. When her eyes landed on Alistair, she began to limp towards him. Reiss didn't even say anything, only released their grip and staggered to her feet.

  "My lady," she said in deference to Lanny before drifting back into the garden. Alistair watched her a moment before a cooing baby was thrust into his face.

  "Who's this then?" he cuddled to the for once happy Cailan chewing away on his blanket.

  "Are they supposed to do that?" Lanny asked as she collapsed onto a bench beside him.

  "I dunno," Alistair admitted, "but if it stops the crying I'll let him do whatever he wants as long as it only maims a few people."

  Her uncertainty washed away as the father resumed caring for his child, Alistair happily dangling a finger before Cailan's face and watching those bright blue eyes try to follow it. He always wore a deadly serious face as if trying to dissect the world around him. Spud had it for a few months, but the second she got smiling down, it almost never returned. This one, Alistair suspected, was a lot more like his father -- the other one.

  Glancing away from the baby trying to nom his finger off with soggy gums, Alistair watched Lanny. She'd abandoned her hood a few minutes into their garden walk. While no one had walked up to her and demanded "Are you the Hero of Ferelden?" she kept her trademark birthmark hidden behind a high collar just in case. Every time he remembered the Warden Commander daring to step a foot into the Palace she always seemed perturbed, wrinkle lines hoeing across her forehead and a small dance to her step as if she wanted to skitter far away. He used to assume it was him, but even Teagan commented on it once and she'd aways loved that man.

  But now, her face was at peace. Haggard from the trials of her life, he spotted even more previously unknown wrinkles digging into her cheeks and by the sides of her eyes. Even after everything she faced including being trapped in the fade, she still looked a good five years younger than him, perhaps more. Either it was her natural gifted looks, those striking cheekbones she did her best to ignore, or the smile that seemed to always flit through her face.

  "You're happy," he commented, the thought striking him fast.

  "Hm?" Lanny turned away from the garden, her eyebrow lifting as she waited for him to continue.

  Alistair shifted in his seat, feeling like his belt was constricting tighter as he confessed, "You know I'm loathe to admit this, but, marriage seems to suit you." A bright smile broke across her lips and Alistair turned away, "Mind you, you would have been better off choosing anyone else as a husband. Perhaps a malifecarum, or a golem."

  At that Lanny rolled her eyes and sighed. "Why is it so hard for you two to get on?"

  "He did hit me," Alistair offered up limply.

  "Yes, and as I understand it, you then hit him."

  "Well sure, and then after I..." he paused in the memory to watch Lanny's
eyes honing in on him. Quickly retracting his words, Alistair shrewdly eyed her up, "And he never told you the full of it, did he?"

  "Damn," she folded up a fist and playfully pounded it into her hand, "I don't know why this is the secret you're both taking to your pyre."

  Alistair didn't respond but he had a funny feeling it was because the templar felt embarrassed by it, and he considered it one of the lower points in his life. Not just for rising to the bait, or for letting his fists do the talking, but also because he damn nearly lost and that was just inexcusable. It felt another lifetime ago, before Spud and Cailan, when he was going through the motions of life and drop kicked his heart into a locked chest and refused to crack it open.

  He felt Lanny eyeing him up from the side as if she was thinking the same thing. "So, is there a good reason there's no longer an arcane advisor in the castle?"

  Alistair felt a growl reverberating in his gut, but for the sake of his ailing throat he tamped it down with the rest of the bile, "I know what you're thinking and it's not because of some lover's spat."

  She blinked slowly and crossed her arms, "I wasn't presuming anything."

  "Right, fine," he began to rock back and forth in his seat, not for the baby in his arms but because he wanted to run far from the conversation every time it popped up. "Because I don't have damn near every person in the castle glaring at me for ruining their betting pool about when the King would bed the mage."

  A coldness wafted across Lanny at that. She turned out to the garden so he couldn't watch her smile snap away. From the corner of her mouth, she said, "That particular quirk of yours isn't one I'm a fan of."

  In some teeny tiny cognizant part of Alistair's brain he knew why he tended to pursue women in robes, and that reason was sitting beside him trying to not lapse back into their not-so-dormant arguments. Before, he'd waved it away as familiarity, the heart wanting what it wanted, and also being somewhat scared that his attempts at being physical with a non-mage would somehow crash and burn. It went from trying to recreate the glory years to a debilitating crutch and what finally shattered it all was Lanny's death.

  "I don't, I mean," he stuttered wanting to prove that he wasn't some knuckle dragger fresh out of a swamp. "It's not as if I order them special from the circle, and now college. Shit, I asked her where she was during the Blight, figuring maybe we ran into each other during rescuing the tower, you know."

  Lanny didn't turn to him but she nodded slowly. "Where were you during the Blight?" was practically a Ferelden ice breaker.

  "You know what she told me? She was with her parents as they fled north to Nevarra because the girl was eight years old at the time," he tried to not gasp at the enormity of the thought. It took Lanny a moment before she turned to him with her own surprise.

  "Eight, playing in mud while wearing pig tails as we're off saving the world from a bunch of sword waving darkspawn and a pickled looking archdemon. It's..." he shuddered at the concept. Sure, the girl, woman, was an adult and capable of making her own choices but Maker's sake that was weird. "She didn't have much of a concept of the Blight beyond being sad about leaving her friends behind," he groaned.

  "Is that why you kicked her out of your court?" Lanny asked.

  "No," Alistair shook his head, "I'm petty, but I'm not that bad. She threatened the Queen, joked about how it'd be so much easier if she'd died in childbirth and I...fine, I snapped, and yelled, and maybe drug her across the floor like she was a spoiled child but..." Maker's sake, every time he had to retell it, it sounded worse and worse. It was just a joke, he could see it upon every face when he tried to excuse himself. You've heard worse and pretended to laugh at them. Let it go.

  Lanny didn't stampede or race to defend her fellow mage. That part was the least surprising of all, she never seemed to have much love for any of the arcane advisors assigned to Ferelden, for obvious reasons. "Ali," she turned to him and those deep eyes searched through his cowering face, "was this really about Beatrice or is there something else bothering you?"

  At first he couldn't respond, so Alistair tucked the baby closer to his face and let the grabby fingers try to yank out his hair. "Get all the grey," he encouraged, his lips skirting near that petal soft forehead as Cailan attempted to obey his father.

  "Ali," Lanny sighed, not about to give this up. She knew, by the void, she was the one who put all the pieces together and told him. That was one of the hardest letters Alistair ever received from her. He'd been expecting little more than her typical day to day life establishing the abbey, maybe more requests for any documents from King Marric's time with the Wardens as she hunted for a blight cure and then...

  "I don't know why I keep trying," Alistair groaned. "It's not like she's had, oh, 37 or so years to come forward and admit the truth. But, Maker damn it all, I keep thinking I'll find some magic reason to draw her to Denerim, to meet her face to face and then..."

  A warm hand scooped under Cailan's blanket to cup his fingers clinging tight to his son. His son who wasn't technically his son. "Is this what you want?" Lanny whispered.

  "What I want? What I want is a good pair of galoshes that don't flood in a puddle, or a cheese wheel that never runs out, or...or," watching the boy that he'd never abandon for anything, a fire stirred in Alistair's belly. "Is it so much to ask that she own up to her choices, to be the parent for once and-and at least tell me in her words. Give me a reason why she found it so easy to abandon her child like it, he, I was a basket of old fish?"

  He was behaving like a baby, whining and wanting to kick something until it fell over into dust, but Lanny didn't snap at him. Slowly folding her arms tight, she rocked back and forth while holding herself for a few minutes. Alistair knew that move, she wanted to say something that was weighing on her soul but had to find the courage.

  It took a few more flutters of the green moths circling the flowers before her voice cracked, "What about Kieran?"

  "What?" Alistair snapped up at that.

  "What if Kieran were to appear at the Palace on this day wishing to see you, wanting to hear why you abandoned him? Why he never got to meet his father?"

  "This has nothing to do with, that was all Morrigan's doing, her choice, and..." the growl and bile he'd kept tamped down erupted, spilling across the woman sitting beside him. "It was your choice in the first place. Your blighted idea, I only..."

  Lanny winced at that and slowly rocked in place, "But he doesn't know that. You can't blame the child for things beyond his control."

  "I..." Alistair folded deeper on himself, feeling the gas burning in his gut, "I don't know what I'd do. I hadn't thought about it before and, Maker's sake, why are you suddenly on her side about this?"

  "Believe me, Ali, I've never been on the Grand Enchanter's side for anything," Lanny swallowed deep and closed her eyes. "I'm worried about you and how it's eating you up inside."

  "So, help me find a way to get her to come clean. You know lots of tricksy moves, and if not you, our dear Divine practically pops out three clever plans before breakfast."

  Lanny smoothed her forehead with her fingers, massaging the wrinkles that snapped back into place. "Are you certain this is an angle you wish to pursue? What if you don't like the answer?" He scrunched his face up at that, certain that he'd never like the answer but wanting it regardless -- which she was well aware of. Groaning, Lanny stared directly at him, "Before the blight, I used to imagine scenarios for why my parents were no longer in contact with me. I wanted to believe that they still loved me but were being held back by nefarious forces or were embroiled in rather fanciful problems."

  She drew her fingers under the handle of her cane and clung tight, "It was a happy bubble I maintained until I went and broke it." He was there, despite the two of them being on the outs-ish at the time. Lanny begged him to travel with her to the Free Marches as she rekindled with her family.

  "When I learned the truth, that even saving the world from a blight didn't endear me to them, that I was nothing more than a stran
ger to my blood relatives I...I didn't bear it well. It has been thirty seven years, perhaps maintaining the fantasy is best for both of you."

  "Lanny," he nudged a shoulder into her, trying to knock away the pain circling her once smiling face. Maker take him, he wished the damn templar was here to give her a hug or something.

  "I am fine," she forced a smile, "it's been many years. I'm more concerned about you."

  "Come on, you know nothing gets to me," Alistair tried to laugh it off, "Got that one emotion tapped down, haven't bruised anything in awhile, and my gas is under control, so..." He slapped on a smile but it only got a slow glower from Lanny. Moving to slot her arms across her chest, she intended to drag the confessing bits out of him but Alistair wasn't in the mood. His muscles ached like the Qunari army walked over him, the lungs burned if he thought of breathing, and enough of the tinctures of chicken soup and broiled octopus liver Lanny kept forcing down his throat gurgled in his enraged stomach. Adding the whole confronting his personal question of parentage and what it meant to him on top of that was going to lead one very large and kingly tantrum.

  Seeming to sense his stubbornness, she unfolded her arms and gently tapped his elbow, "You know you can talk to me if you need to."

  "Yeah, yeah," he waved it away with a carefree hand, "if I ever get drunk into a blubbering stupor I'll pick up the crystal." Alistair tried to laugh it off, but he caught those always compassionate eyes watering up as she gazed over at him that he felt himself folding. Slowly he nodded. He couldn't muster up the courage to admit that he would probably need her beyond her magical healing skills, but she read the acceptance in his head bob.

  In his arms, Cailan finished testing out the blanket with his mouth and began to stare up at the sky. "What are you looking at?" Alistair asked the baby in his high pitched talking to things that were probably already smarter than him voice, "That's a lot of blue. Haven't seen it since Drakonis."

  "A lot of rain in the east, I take it?" Lanny asked.

  "There was talk of a lake forming in the area outside the Pearl. People wanted to try and drain it, but I thought it might attract some business."