Outside the circle of firelight, Ostagar loomed behind them, its dark weight familiar and enormous, the ruins where everything had changed.
“I will take first watch,” Emma said. “Since I cannot get up.”
She did not elaborate on the reason, though it was apparent, sitting heavily in her lap. Alistair had gone limp somewhere between cross-referencing the third or fourth map. He dipped his head, which settled in the hollow between her thighs with the soft inevitability of water finding lower ground.
Sleeplessness had been the pattern, both of them surfacing from nightmares to find the other already awake, already watching, already pretending not to. That he had found sleep here, with his cheek against the inside of her knee and his breath slowing to something like peace, struck her as both deeply moving and deeply unfair.
Morrigan emerged for her watch and stood over them, arms crossed, brows folded to exasperation, a look she wore so often it had nearly become her neutral face. Emma looked up at her.
“You may have second watch instead,” Emma offered, “if this vexes you.”
“Tis not a bother,” Morrigan said, which meant it was, slightly. She did not retreat, which meant there was something else. “Do you realize you have been smiling for hours?”
Emma considered denying it. She did not. “It is the smiling that bothers you?”
“Not at all.” Morrigan's gaze dropped to the man sleeping in Emma's lap, and her lower lip acquired the particular curl for things she found definitely repugnant and perhaps fascinating. “But you are acting the fool. I fear 'tis contagious, since that fool began drooling into your groin, in fact.”
She felt a twitch begin in his hand and bolt down his arm, into shoulders that had stopped carrying anything. Emma smiled again, despite of its concession to the description.
“He must be pleasant enough in bed,” Morrigan continued. “I cannot otherwise imagine anyone enduring his conversation.”
The barb landed. Emma had fought not to lose the conversational candor she had with Alistair. That had quite nearly been lost to his own self-consciousness once the prospect of this intimacy appeared on the horizon.
That was behind them now, what felt like long ago. Almost dissipated to the comfort he so obviously felt, here and now. Something she couldn't take for granted.
Emma sighed; Apparently the rawness of that nerve had not entirely dissipated.
Morrigan had been expecting something like this, a tightening, a small private bristle. But she could not understand why. It wasn't worth explaining.
“I love him,” Emma said, simply.
Morrigan's sigh was long and theatrical. “Twas once a time when I suspected you were above such childish notions.” She paused, studying Emma, and something layered passed behind the gold of her eyes. “Do you truly enjoy cradling a grown man like a child?”
Emma looked down at him. Her hand moved of its own accord to brush slowly along the back of his head, a gesture she could not quite justify. The firelight felt warm on his hair.
“Maybe I do,” she said.
They sat in the eerie but familiar silence that constituted peace between them.
“When we spoke of friendship,” Emma still felt the nerve to explain, and settled for a poor approximation. “I agreed with you. That it is arbitrary.” Her fingers moved through his hair again, she felt a slight ripple in him, an unconscious response. “Arbitrary, but not without meaning.”
“Then what meaning do you find, I wonder.”
Emma's eyes found the necklace at Morrigan's throat. This one she had selected specifically for the elegance of her neck and shoulders, for the way that particular metal glittered against her fair skin. It had seemed, at the time, like a purely aesthetic decision. She was no longer certain.
“I think my feelings for him are not unlike what I feel for beautiful things,” she said. “Which is also arbitrary. And still means something, anyway.”
“A beautiful woman can become powerful through that beauty,” Morrigan returned, with the tone of someone quoting from first principles. “What power does this bring you?”
“That is an irrelevant question.” Emma did not look away from the necklace.
“One protests too quickly,” Morrigan observed.
The camp was quiet; she could hear, at the edges, the low sounds of others sleeping, the occasional shift of wood in the fire.
Morrigan let the silence settle before she said, with the neutrality of someone observing weather: “It has drawn my notice that your Alistair bears a striking resemblance to the late King Cailan.”
The muscles along Emma's back went rigid. She slowly spread her fingers across the nape of his neck. Morrigan nodded.
“Do not think for a moment that I relish it,” Emma hissed.
Morrigan looked at her in a way that made her feel briefly prey-shaped. Not threatened, but tracked. She kept herself still against the impulse to shift, deliberately, so she would not disturb the man in her lap.
“Is that truly so?” Morrigan's voice was almost gentle. “With the way he defers to you so completely... he could do great things, had he the inclination. Have you truly no desire—”
“Absolutely not.” Emma's voice was final. “He wants nothing to do with it. He is a Grey Warden.”
“Very well,” said Morrigan, with a sigh of reluctant concession. “Tis with regret that I am convinced this foolishness is in earnest.”
“I'm touched by your concern.” Emma paused. “And it goes without saying—”
“I shall tell no one.” Morrigan examined her nails. “Although, I do hope you'll reconsider.”
Emma looked down at him, hand still resting at the back of his head, and felt that familiar ache. The longing that had settled deeply and persisted through all things, even the closest moments, never really resolved. She had come to believe this was simply its nature. That the feeling was not a lack to be filled but a condition to be inhabited, like weather.
“Tis sickening to watch you two,” Morrigan said, though her lip had relaxed somewhat. “But if it takes your mind from our situation.” She turned. “Have it your way.”
She disappeared toward the fire's edge. Emma listened to her footsteps fade.
Emma stayed where she was. Alistair's breathing was deep and even and warm against her leg. She draped her other arm over him and felt him adjust, clutched her hand to his side, and instantly fell back again into a deep sleep.