Chapter 159: *Apologies and Indiscretions

I spent the night crumpled in the hallway, right where Alistair left me. Thinking, not sleeping. I had a lot to consider, and all of it was ... well, uncomfortable. The truth often is.

The thought of going into our bedroom and spending the night along in our bed was repugnant to me, and I honestly couldn’t bring myself to move from where he’d told me to ‘stay put’ before he left.

Left was the wrong word, I knew; he’d promised me he wasn’t leaving me. But he’d been too distraught to stay in the room with me, even though he’d said he was coming back, and that was worse – because I knew he was out there somewhere, hurting and trying to learn to ignore it so we could move forward. I’d been so self-centred that I’d hurt him, badly enough that he needed time alone to try to heal, and I really had no excuse.

Was it really so terrible that he’d not been wanting sex? He’d said it wasn’t a matter of desire, just ... complications. It had been a stressful time – the Architect, my brush with sleep-deprivation-induced insanity, the miscarriage, Faren, everything with Anders and Solona ... why did it come as such a surprise that he hadn’t immediately dragged me into bed? Not everything can be fixed with sex, and you’d know that if you weren’t such a self-centred, melodramatic...

I sighed. I’d cried for probably an hour after the door had swung shut behind him; the ugly kind of crying, not the Hollywood kind that makes women swoon and men want to rush to the aid of the damsel in distress. I wondered if I’d been loud enough that the guards stationed outside had heard, but I couldn’t even bring myself to be embarrassed. I’d have done a lot worse than submit myself to embarrassment if I could have undone the look on his face when Alistair had told me he needed time away from me for the hurt to fade. And the tears – I couldn’t remember a time before the miscarriage when he had ever cried. I’d felt so guilty about those first tears that I’d caused the second ones.

The fact that he thought I didn’t trust him ... that was the worst. Because the truth was the opposite – it was me. I was unworthy, and that was the whole problem. It wasn’t that he was a bad person who would leave me – it was that I deserved to be left. He should have wanted to leave, and that made it possible to believe that maybe, just maybe, he did.

I closed my eyes, exhausted, and the image of my husband’s tear-streaked face played on the back of my eyelids. It was so real, so heart-wrenching, that I sighed and opened my eyes again. Even my own imagination was giving me shit for being such a jerk. Because he didn’t look as devastated in my head as he did ... offended. Offended that I thought he would leave me, that his love wasn’t as real as mine?

I shook my head. It was a perfectly valid assumption, really. He was Alistair – hero, Prince, Grey Warden – and I was just ... me.

I winced; I could almost hear Sigrun scolding me, telling me about how Alistair had reacted when I’d been abducted by darkspawn. Clearly he’d thought I was someone worthy ... he’d come for me, taken care of me, and he’d stayed, even after I’d tried to murder one of our friends, even after I pushed him away and spiralled into self-destructive self-loathing. He’d rescued me twice – once from the Architect, and once from myself. And somehow still I doubted his love?

That did it. I had a perfect moment of clarity: I couldn’t trust him with everything, trust his judgement and his motives, his abilities and his morals ... if I didn’t trust his judgement of me. He’d had the opportunity, seen the worst of me, and he still stayed. He still loved me. Even when I ran, he always came after me.

It was time to put my money where my mouth was – I had to trust him. Trust that if he thought I deserved him ... that maybe I did.

I sat up, suddenly wide awake. How had I gotten myself into such a stupid situation? Hadn’t I said – to Zev, to Nate, to Leli ... that they had to let the person they were with decide whether they were worthy? I’d argued with Leli, for heaven’s sake, when she’d used being Orlesian as an excuse not to be with Nate. Told her he got to decide if it was too big a problem for him. And then, not for the first time – it was the Brecilian Forest all over again, when I’d given Leli excuses for avoiding a relationship – I’d used the same, stupid, arrogant reasoning to decide that I didn’t deserve Alistair.

I am an idiot.

And then I knew what I had to do. I wasn’t going to spend the rest of the night – however many hours were left – alone on the floor of the hallway in our stupid suite when my husband was out there, somewhere, hurting, and I’d done that to him.

I jumped up, ran into our little bathroom to find a cloth and wipe my face, changed out of my ‘work clothes’ and into a light linen dress, tidied my hair, and went looking.

I was followed, of course, by a guard; I told her I wanted to walk, since I didn’t care to explain that I had no idea where my husband was and needed to find him. She merely nodded, and fell into step behind me as I paced the halls.

Where would I go, if I were Alistair? There weren’t any ramparts, except for the bridge leading to the tower, and I didn’t think he’d go out there; it was too cold, and there were too many people he might run into. If it had been me, I might have run to Aedan – but Alistair wouldn’t.

I considered other options as I walked, not coming up with anything – until I remembered that I was a freaking Warden, and I had other ways to find him. So I pictured the Keep’s floor plan in my mind, developed a search pattern, and started walking. I started at the kitchens, and went back and forth down corridors, then up a flight of stairs and started again. A few floors up, I felt him – his radiant warmth, from above me and to the north. I considered – and then realised I knew exactly where that put him.

I left my guard outside the wing where I knew he was. The wing was empty – not yet renovated for habitation, though it would eventually be Warden quarters – but another guard, this one male, waited down the far hall. I saw signs that the renovation process had started – there was little debris left from the broken-down furniture that had been left behind, and someone had swept away the evidence of our stay there months before. There were a few pieces of furniture lying around, mostly chairs and couches, that looked old but not broken – whether they were cast-offs from whatever items Levi had brought in, or ancient pieces that had just fared better than most I wasn’t sure.

I walked calmly through the common area where we’d had our meetings on our first visit to the Peak so long ago, not even stopping to check in the rooms that had been Wynne’s, Leli’s, or Aedan’s. Alistair hadn’t chosen a room for himself, when we’d been there; he’d slept on the floor outside mine. But the taint told me he wasn’t in the common area, and I just knew he’d be in the room I’d slept in when they’d found me after my disastrous fight with Alistair outside Denerim.

It made me sad that he’d gone there – to the place that reminded him of those times, the worst times in our relationship – but I supposed it wasn’t a surprise. It was familiar, deserted, and he could torture himself there in peace.

The door was open; I crept inside, hearing the soft sounds of snoring which confirmed I was in the right place. Dim moonlight allowed me a little visibility, and I could see that he’d at least decided to acquire himself a couch instead of sleeping on the floor, as I feared. He lay scrunched across it, one leg hanging off the end, the couch a good foot too short for him; his head rested on the padded armrest, and he was partially covered by a blanket which he must have taken out of the travel supplies in our room. So that’s what the bundle was. Under the blanket, though, I could see another shape; I tiptoed closer and realised that in his awkward position, he was hugging a pillow, holding it close to his face but not resting his head upon it.

My pillow. I could see strands of my dark hair stuck to the pillowcase, and recognised the linens from our bed.

When he’d gone into our room, he’d grabbed himself a blanket – and my pillow.

Something that had been frozen inside me – something nervous and frightened, something that worried he’d be angry I’d come after him – thawed, and the sudden warmth, between that and the blazing sunshine that was his taint, stopped my shivering.

His face looked surprisingly peaceful, despite the dark shadows beneath his eyes, and suddenly I couldn’t bear to disturb him. I crept away, found myself a dark corner, sank to the floor, and just ... waited.

I might have slept, I couldn’t be sure; if not, I drifted into a sort of meditation where time was meaningless, and I had no pressing need to do anything except wait. I thought about the events that had gotten us there – the Blight, the Architect, the miscarriage ... the terror demon, which I realised now had had much more effect on me than I’d admitted, even to myself. I thought about how I would apologise, how I’d convince Alistair that it wasn’t – it never had been – about him.

After a while – I couldn’t say how long – I heard him shift, and his breathing changed. Dim light was coming in through the cracks in the shutters and under the door, and I could see his profile against the black backdrop of the couch. I knew he’d woken up, and I waited to see if he’d slip back into sleep or not.

He didn’t – his breathing sped up just a little more and didn’t settle again, and I knew, somehow I knew that he was aware of my presence. Neither of us spoke for a bit, just sat there listening to each other breathe. My thoughts spun, through all the same reasoning and arguments, without providing anything new.

Finally I broke the silence, starting mid-sentence as though he’d been present for most of the argument in my head. Which to be honest he might as well have – I had to admit that half the time he knew what I was thinking better than I did.

“ ... and in my defense, I did sort of have a terror demon rampaging through my head.” I paused, rolling my eyes at myself for the non-sequitur. Alistair shifted to his side, looking towards me expectantly though I doubted he could see much in the dim corner where I sat.

“It told me you would never love me again, and I couldn’t get those thoughts out of my head. You’re wrong though. It wasn’t ever you I didn’t trust. It was always me, always thinking that I didn’t deserve you, that you should leave me ... I never stopped to think about whether you would.” I played with the material of my skirt, looking for something to occupy my hands. “I blamed myself – for the miscarriage, for Faren ... and I felt like you deserved better. And then when you wouldn’t touch me, I thought ... maybe you’d finally realised it. I’ve heard of men who were disgusted by seeing their wives give birth, who couldn’t get over it, and Maker, I bled all over your sodding lap! If that isn’t gross, I don’t know what is. And I didn’t want you to have to live the rest of your life with someone you couldn’t have sex with.”

He sighed, and sat up, swinging his legs down to the floor and scooting over a little, making space on the couch. “You’re not the only one who had a terror demon messing with their emotions. It told me ... well, it doesn’t even matter. All I wanted was clearance from Anders that I wasn’t going to hurt you. He told me right after that we couldn’t, and I didn’t have the presence of mind to ask how long we should wait.” He patted the space beside him shyly, and my heart soared as I scrambled up from the floor and sat gingerly beside him, close but not touching.

“I could have told you that. It was about the third question I asked after he stopped the bleeding. He told me that he meant it when he said ‘like nothing had ever happened.’ That physically I was fine. He also told me ... that ending it like that might make the grief harder, and that I shouldn’t ‘push myself’ to get physical again right away. He was sort of offended that I asked, honestly.”

He snorted. “Well that explains it. I got a rather long, emphatic lecture about how women shouldn’t be pressured into sex right after a miscarriage, and how important it was to have time to recover, and what an arse I would be if I didn’t leave you alone to heal.”

I rolled my eyes. “This from the guy doing oral sex in the library after cheating on his girlfriend.”

Alistair laughed, and the sound echoed around me comfortingly; he reached behind me to pull me up against his side, rearranging the blanket over to cover my legs.

“I never dreamed you hadn’t been told the same thing. I couldn’t fathom why you were teasing us both when we couldn’t do anything about it – it seemed cruel, really, which was unlike you. I thought ... I thought if I just waited, we’d be okay. I never stopped wanting you, Sierra. I was going crazy without you.”

I put my head on his shoulder, and we sat there together for a quiet minute while I struggled to contain the grateful tears that had appeared in my eyes.

“I tried to talk to you about it this morning, but you weren’t listening.”

I flushed again, embarrassed. “I didn’t hear a word you said, I am afraid to admit.” I bit my lip. “Sometimes the voices in my head are louder than the ones on the outside. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know what else to do. I could have stopped you, but grabbing you and shaking you until you listened didn’t seem like the best idea.”

“Yeah, I’m not sure that would have gone over well.” I reached over and touched the pillow he still held awkwardly in his lap. “You stole my pillow.”

He ducked his head. “It ... it smelled like you. At first I grabbed it by accident, but then ... I didn’t want to switch it.”

I took his hand, unable to contain the hopeful smile that spread across my face. “I’m glad.” I turned to him, reaching up to stroke his cheek with my other hand. “I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you. It’s my insecurity, that’s all it’s ever been, but I should have known better. And I do, now – I promise. Never again.”

He leaned into my hand, but raised one eyebrow skeptically. “Just like that? You’ll never be insecure again? You can’t promise that.”

I shrugged. “I trust you.” I smiled at his doubtful expression. “I just realised ... if you told me that someone I’d never met was a good person, that you trusted them ... I’d believe you. Without question. You’re a good judge of character. And I figure, if you still love me,” I paused, and he nodded seriously, “and you think I’m a good person, and you trust me,” he nodded again, a hint of a smile on his lips, “then I must believe you. I either trust you or I don’t, right? And I do.”

His smile could have lit the room like it was bright daylight. He leaned over to kiss me, and I raised my lips to be kissed, revelling in the feeling of his arms wrapping around me as he pulled me into his lap. The kiss was thorough, but comforting, not passionate; he pressed his face into my neck and just held me like he would never let go. And I was happy to be held, fully happy for the first time in ... Maker, it felt like weeks. I laughed out loud, hugging him to me and then peppering him with kisses on any part I could reach.