Culture Shock

They left Denerim Southward on the Imperial Highway the morning after looking for Brother Genitivi… and meeting Goldanna. Emma expected the road south would be two weeks, give or take ambushes.

Alistair stopped coming to her tent the first night out of Denerim. Their lengthy conversations, the ones that had exhausted him to the point of her insisting he follow her to bed, fizzled. And she realized he was expected. It had become a habit.

Emma gave it time. Grief does strange things, failure does stranger ones. The camp settled. She listened: Sten’s patrol, Muffin’s snore, Leliana’s occasional murmur. Morrigan’s mysterious silence. Muffin made circles before collapsing against Emma’s leg. She turned pages she didn’t read.

Alistair took point and kept pace. The sardonic debriefs still happened. In the morning, Muffin began pointed investigations of his boots. Not much else had changed, really.

He’d sit near enough to share warmth, they’d trade observations on whatever catastrophe they’d just survived, and then he’d drift—not far, not pointedly, just to the other side of the fire.

She let him. She kept inventories with Bodahn and Sten, scoured scrolls with Wynne, made tinctures of Morrigan’s reagents when they finished curing. And kept another count in the back of her head.

By the time they neared South Reach, mist was already rolling in from the south, low and thick, the kind that diffused torchlight and turned everyone’s exhalations into something theatrical.

After he said goodnight from halfway across camp, Emma banked the fire and went in. Now she had to sit with the possibility that the rare hours of rest she’d managed in recent weeks weren’t entirely a fluke. She lay in the dark with her book open and decided she had to say something. Surely there was a reason.

It was late when they neared the swamp. The path narrowed to a thread through scrub that dragged at her robes. The smell of standing water crept in, slow and sour. Mist clung low, never rising high enough to clear properly. The sky above it was absurdly clean, sharp with stars.

“Why don’t you come to bed anymore?”

Alistair didn’t stumble, but he came close.

“Em—look. I was going to say something.” He exhaled through his nose. “I kept thinking I’d sort myself out first. Which, in hindsight, is a terrible plan.”

“Tell me.”

“Back there,” he said. “With Goldanna. I keep thinking about what you said after. About standing up for myself.” He turned a pebble over with his boot.

“She blamed me for existing, which, fine. That part’s familiar.” A short, humorless breath. “But when she turned it on you—” He stopped, jaw tightening. “I didn’t even think. Not until after. That’s the part that bothers me.”

“I didn’t intend to scold you,” was all she said.

“No, you were right.” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I’ll try. To pick my battles. I think. I’m working on that.”

“That’s good.” Emma watched him. She would have liked this conversation, but didn’t understand what one thing had to do with the other.

“Like when that blood mage had you frozen behind the barricades,” he explained, quieter, “I stopped thinking. I just went. I cut through everything between us. And then you have to compensate. You cover for me. You fix it. You—”

“You know I want to protect you too, right?”

“I know.” He swallowed. “If I don’t protect myself, then it all lands on you. And I don’t…” he trailed off. “I didn’t expect…” he started, then stopped again. “When I said, ‘Duncan was the only one who cared’ and you were standing right there…”

“I told you not to forget that I care about you.”

“You did.” His voice dropped. “And you meant it.”

She had. But outside Goldanna’s door, it had stopped being wry.

“I haven’t forgotten,” he said softly.

“Have you changed your mind about us?”

“No,” he said immediately. Then, slower, “I just thought maybe I’d got ahead of myself. Again.”

Emma frowned. Ahead of himself was the exact same phrase he used, distraught, when Leliana became so flattering.

So she’d made a nasty bargain, and hurt one to gain the confidence of another. It didn’t feel right, but it was a risk they both ventured— him and Leliana, both.

Each deserved to lose, but only one had to. So she chose Alistair. And it chilled between her and Leliana.

She’d made worse bargains with higher stakes that were, somehow, still easier to accept. And Emma thought it worked. Alistair had seemed more comfortable. Until now.

“Have I done something wrong?” she asked. It was very possible she misunderstood the rules, even now.

“No. No, Maker, no.” He shook his head hard. “I just—needed to think.”

He hesitated, then forced himself through it.

“When we saw her,” he looked at Emma, “Goldanna. I… I guess I was expecting her to accept me as her brother, without question. Isn’t that what family is supposed to do? I… I felt like a complete idiot. I still do.”

“So, it’s about Goldanna?”

He sighed. “Kind of. I mean, she didn’t know me. And there I was, expecting things I shouldn’t expect. I had no right—But you, you were right there. And you talked me down after we left, and you said some things… I’m still thinking over.”

He went quiet. She could see the thoughts percolating in the slight shift of his jaw. More words before they became words.

“You’ve been a true friend, the first real one that I’ve had, the one bright spot out of everything that happened. I wanted to thank you, and…”

He looked down and kicked the pebble, launching it across the path.

“You were right.” He sighed, then mumbled near-inaudibly: “I should be looking out for myself more.”

“I meant what I said,” she reached for his hand. He let her take it. “But I don’t understand why you can’t come to bed.”

His voice had gone a little strange. “That’s. Actually—that’s part of it.”

She looked at him.

“Can I ask you something?,” he said.

“Anything.”

Emma’s flat timbre thinned to a pleading edge. It unsettled him. He couldn’t have held any more back if he wanted to. And part of him very much wanted to.

“Areli,” he said.

She felt his pulse surge. He felt her palm go clammy. He squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back. They kept walking.

“You told me she was…an elven mage, an artful healer. A woman. And it sounds like— I mean, she was… special.”

“She was.”

“And you loved her.”

“…I love her,” Emma corrected, “I never stopped loving her.”

Alistair studied the look on her face, looking up at him, completely persistent, focused. Is that what love looks like?

He looked down. The mist shifted around his legs. He still had her hand.

“…Right.” He didn’t let go.

“And then there’s Leliana. Who is—well, she’s also a woman.”

“That’s true.”

“And, I’ve been incredibly childish and basically done this to myself, but I got the impression you’d never—because—well—”

“I haven’t what, Alistair?” she asked. Smugly.

“But you have,” he said quickly. “Because you like women, mostly, don’t you?”

“A few women, specifically. I haven’t developed a broad civic interest. And,” she added, “I’ve never licked a lamp post,” then nodded with mocking seriousness.

“I’ve heard stories about the tower.”

Emma’s expression sharpened.

“And you did… whatever it is you do there,” he continued, gesturing vaguely, like he was afraid the details might materialize if he got specific. “And now—” He made a gesture at himself. “You want me.”

“You,” she said.

“Yes, me.” Frustration edged in. “And I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I am in that context. I don’t know if this is the same thing or a completely different thing or—”

“It’s not taxonomy.”

“I know, but—”

“And if you’re about to reduce this to ‘tower libertine versus hayloft rube,’ don’t.”

That stopped him.

“I didn’t say that.”

“You were thinking it.” Emma exhaled, irritated now, properly. “You’ve seen blood magic. The Blight. Abominations. And this is what you’re afraid of?”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t,” she agreed. “But it’s also not impressive.”

He stared at her, a little stung.

“I just want to know how I’m the one you picked,” Alistair said. The pitch of his voice had been climbing and gradually reached something sharp.

“You’re asking me why I like you?”

“You’ve seen me trip over my own shield, right? Just wanted to make sure we’re working with the same information, here.”

“There’s no accounting for taste.”

“Right, which is worrying.” He cleared his throat to ground his baritone. “I know it’s not fair to ask you this.” He didn’t stop. “Which is why I haven’t. Until now.”

He looked at her expectantly. Ask her anything, she’d said. He hoped she wouldn’t regret that.

“I love Areli. I… I could have loved Leliana.”

But I loved you already. That didn’t seem like a wise direction to go with someone who could barely comprehend being liked in the first place. She felt him go very still beside her.

“I had to choose,” she continued. “I don’t like that I had to choose. But I’m trying to do this right. You were—”

Emma sighed. There was no description for this, no good reason. Just vertigo. Nothing left to do but roll with it.

“—the pull toward you was different.”

“That’s a cop-out,” he muttered. “Different how?”

She shot him a look. “Yes. It is.”

That surprised him more than anything else.

“I don’t know why,” she said, continuing angrily. “I can’t point to the reason. I didn’t like hurting Leliana. But had to, and so I was sure. I kept ending up here. Next to you. And that’s—” She shook her head. “—this isn’t about you being better than her.”

“Good,” he said faintly. “Because I’d lose.”

Emma sighed. “Except for the fact that you aren’t. Do you want this? Or do you just need me to tell you that you aren’t a loser?”

“No! I mean, yes. I mean. I just… I had to ask, I suppose. That’s all. You’ve been up front with me about all this. Now I’m all messed up.”

“Why?” She looked at him. “I miss you.”

He looked at her. Emma slipped her arms around his leathers, stiff as they were. It apparently didn’t matter. He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and squeezed.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

More than anything he’d just tried so sort out with her, he was frightened of how he’d ached for this. He went a bit mad alone in his tent, scrambling for a kind of self-possession he clearly didn’t have. And that scared him.

“You could have asked me sooner,” she added.

“I know. I missed you, too.”

“I was right there.”

They kept walking. The trees closed around them. Muffin appeared from the undergrowth with something horrible in his mouth and had to be redirected.

Ultimately the bargain snagged, but it held. Alistair sheepishly pushed himself through her tent flap that night.

He reached for her hand and held it, with something provisional in the grip, like he was checking whether he was still welcome. She just settled herself onto his shoulder and held to him. He exhaled.

She set the book on her chest while he stared at the tent ceiling. But she could see him carrying the question still, unanswered, set aside. Belief and understanding being two different things.