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9:41 Dragon
Morrigan felt her spine go stiff when she saw Inquisitor Ellana Lavellan enter the garden at Skyhold. They had not spoken much since they returned from Halamshiral, which suited her fine. She had been able to conduct a thorough investigation of the ancient magics of the place, even to speak with a Tevinter magister being held prisoner who claimed to know the secret to time travel. And she'd been able to explore it all with Kieran. Had been able to breathe just a little easier, knowing he was away from the Orlesian court. There was a gaggle of children in Skyhold and he'd fallen in with them easily. He had his father's charm.
Her heart twisted at the thought of Zakir. And that made her even less inclined to speak to the Inquisitor. She had a piercing stare and a blunt tongue. Admirable enough qualities. But she didn't want them turned on her, or her son.
Of course, Kieran wasted no time approaching Lavellan, and speaking to her in his strange, matter of fact way. In every way he was an ordinary ten year old boy - and then there were moments like the one Morrigan was witnessing now, where he spoke of the Inquisitor choosing her shape, revealed he had knowledge he should not have.
And that twisted her heart more than any thought of his father.
“Kieran, don't be a bother,” she said. “The Inquisitor is a busy woman. And I am confident that you have not finished the day's lessons yet.”
Kieran made a face of absolute despair. “Mama-”
“Don't ‘mama’ me, Kieran.” Her tone was indulgent, not threatening, and yet he listened anyway. Good. That was the kind of mother she was. One who ruled with love and not with fear (or at least no more than was reasonable). She couldn't resist the urge to push his curls back from his forehead as he passed, to feel the warmth and reality of him. Her son.
“He's no trouble,” the Inquisitor said, though she watched Kieran go, puzzled. “His father is Warden-Commander Cousland, correct? The Hero of Ferelden?”
“Don't let him hear you call him that.” She'd only ever heard Zakir call himself that when he was mocking himself (or when it might gain him political favor). She had not heard him call himself that in so long. She had not heard his voice in so long.
Damn her foolish, aching heart. She did not want to feel these things around a stranger. She wanted to nurse them in privacy, to be vulnerable only when she was alone.
Or when he was there, to hold her vulnerability in his strong, scarred hands.
“So, I take it that is a yes?” the Inquisitor went on, an eyebrow arched.
“Yes, it is. It is not common knowledge, but it is not a secret either.” Morrigan made her tone brusque. “Was there something you needed, Inquisitor?”
The elf shook her head, and continued studying Morrigan's face, searching for something. Morrigan wished she had hackles to raise, teeth to bare. She had them, locked in her magic - but even she was too civilized to change into a wolf or a bear just so her emotions would be plain. Animals were so much more sensible than people.
“We saw a statue of him, you know. In Redcliffe.”
“Ah, yes. I know the one.”
“Is it a good likeness?” She spoke with genuine curiosity.
“No.”
“Oh? Why not?”
Morrigan could have elaborated from there. Could have talked about how they made him too handsome, really. Chiseled away the softness of his Rivaini features, the broadness of his nose, made his beard neat and trimmed and his hair pulled back in a sensible queue. They fixed his nose, even though he broke it fighting bandits in Lothering and it never healed right. She wasn't good at healing then, and it was long before they met Wynne. She liked it better broken. They took away the long, knotted scar carved into his right cheek, all the way down onto his neck, too.
And it wasn't that he wasn't handsome - he just wasn't handsome the way they wanted him to be. He looked far more like his Rivaini mother than his Fereldan father, and that look wasn't considered attractive to the boorish Fereldan nobility. In fact, he wasn't anything they wanted him to be. He was not the noble Hero of Ferelden. Certainly not during the Fifth Blight. He was an angry child, still a teenager, conscripted into an organization that cared nothing for him, who cared more about revenge for the dead family that haunted him than he did about saving the world. He lied and intimidated and stole his way through the Blight. Killed anyone with any connection to Loghain and Rendon Howe without blinking an eye.
And stone could capture the breadth of his shoulders, the sheer strength in his arms, but it could not capture the devastating grace with which he wielded sword and shield, the wild danger and deception he exuded in combat. It could not capture his sly grin or the boom of his voice as it issued a rallying cry.
It could not capture the way he'd grumbled, flustered, the first time she woke to him softly stroking her hair, looking down at her while she slept. The way those impossibly big, strong arms became gentle when they held Kieran for the first time.
They could make a statue of the Hero of Ferelden. But they could not make a statue of the man she loved.
“Why are you so keen to know, Inquisitor?” she said at last.
At that, Ellana Lavellan finally turned her piercing gray eyes away. “It's just - I know they are already writing stories about me. Painting pictures. Gods forbid, but I am sure there are statues in the works. It's - I'm not sure what to make of it. It isn't really the same for Marian Hawke, I realized. She's only a hero to some. She's a criminal to most. But Warden-Commander Cousland, I realized - he might know what it's like. To have everyone put you on a pedestal. Quite literally. And he isn't here to tell me himself, so…”
So the great Inquisitor had come to make herself humble and vulnerable? A strange decision. What purpose could she have in it? Unless - the Inquisition had written to Zakir. She knew it. Leliana herself had pressed Morrigan to tell him to come to Skyhold. Was this a ploy to soften her heart, to convince him to join them? Never. The Inquisition would not get its hooks into him. The world had taken enough from him. The mission he was on was for him. For her. For their son.
“They will never get you right,” Morrigan said. “And that is a blessing. Guard who you really are. The world will take everything it can, if you let it. I watched them try to take every piece of Zakir they could.”
Now the Inquisitor was looking at her. Studying her once more. Absorbing the words.
“What is the biggest thing the statue got wrong then? What did he manage to hide?”
It was none of her business. She owed this woman nothing. But if giving her a breadcrumb now meant that she would leave Morrigan to her thoughts, her memories - her longing - she would give it.
“The statue is so still. The artisan put in no sense of motion. They make Zakir seem like - a bulwark against a tide. Resolute. Still. That is not how he lived - how he lives his life.”
“Then how does he live his life?”
Morrigan could see him - feel him - so clearly in her mind's eye. So clearly it made her ache. She wasn't picturing him the way she’d seen him last, when he left her to search for a cure to the poison in his blood - or to die in the attempt. She could see him as he was ten years before, when they met. Nineteen, reckless, cocky, angry, grieving - and, yes, handsome as the day was long.
“He lives his life like he is running out of time,” she said finally, when her throat was clear, and she could trust her voice again.
“Aren't we all?” The Inquisitor said, hollow. Tired.
Morrigan didn't want her kinship. She wanted Zakir. She could let herself feel that once the Inquisitor left, and the garden was empty. She could lean into her grief instead of pushing back against it, let it swim up from the deepest pit of her stomach and take up residence in her lungs. She wanted him to come back. Because he was running out of time now. And soon all she would have were statues that didn't even look like him, and a son who did.
*
9:31 Dragon
Zakir stood out from the other Wardens who approached their ancient cache, not just because he was the only one with dark brown skin and tightly-coiled black hair. He was not even that much taller than the rest of him. But he had such a strong presence radiating out from him that Morrigan could not resist testing whether or not he was a mage, even though she saw no staff on his back. When he spoke to her, and his voice was courtly, his cadence measured, she knew at once that he was a noble. The dirt and bruises and ill-fitting armor couldn’t hide that.
Still, to say that he stood out was simply to say that he was a more interesting rock, or pinecone, or arrangement of clouds in the sky. He didn’t matter. None of them did.
He didn’t matter until the horde descended on Ostagar, until Mother transformed into a dragon and went to the top of the Tower of Ishal with one purpose in mind - saving the two Grey Wardens who had survived their Joining from the betrayal that would shatter the rest of the Fereldan forces. Mother knew there would be two of them, and she said they would be important before she left. Morrigan knew even before her mother returned with her hurricane of wind and the thunder of her landing that one of them would be Zakir. The other was the dusky-skinned, blond-haired one who had dealt with his fear at the sight of a so-called witch by making poorly-timed jokes about swooping.
“Help me bring them in,” Mother said when she was herself again.
They were both broad-shouldered men, swords and shields on their backs, but when they were stripped of the bloody armor and lying in the cots, they looked like boys. Morrigan realized that they could not be much older than she was. No more than twenty, surely.
“Look as long as you like, girl,” Mother said from the doorway. “You’ll have to choose one of them.”
“For what? A sacrifice?”
“No. To preserve something ancient from going out of this world. To be the father of your child.”
The notion was so absurd that Morrigan had just laughed riotously. Mother did not.
“Sit down,” she said instead. “There are things I must explain.”
Even after Mother was done explaining - the Joining, the darkspawn blood, the reason Wardens alone could kill the Archdemon, what would disappear from Thedas forever if the Archdemon’s soul slipped away without a new vessel to carry it, how she would be that vessel. Or, rather, how her unborn child would be that vessel. How one of the men - one of the
boys
- unconscious in the next room would have to father that child.
“And if I refuse?” Morrigan said when her mother was done. Her throat was dry. She wanted to sprout wings and fly away and never come back.
“You won’t,” Mother said. Her hands were folded neatly on her lap. There was something regal and still and assured in her pose. It only made Morrigan more angry.
“How could you presume to know what I will or will not -”
“Because I am your mother, and I know you, as one day you will know your own child. You crave knowledge, Morrigan. You crave secrets. Would you really pass up the opportunity to know such an extraordinary secret? To preserve such rare and powerful knowledge?”
Morrigan’s gut twisted. She wanted to be a spider, to weave a silken web around and around and around herself, to be cocooned safely away from the thoughts racing in her mind. Ancient knowledge, ancient power, the duty she had to both of those things - and then the thought of a swollen belly, a mewling infant, her whole life over before it ever really began -
“But the cost -” she began.
“Its impact fades rapidly, you’ll find.”
Like so many things her mother said, the words rang with import that Morrigan could only guess at. On the one hand there was a kindness in Flemeth’s eyes - something that said Morrigan herself had been worth the cost. On the other hand, did that not imply that Flemeth had had Morrigan and her alleged sisters for the same reason she was now telling her to have a child with one of the Wardens? Morrigan’s neck prickled.
“I hope you don’t expect me to go in and take advantage of them,” Morrigan said.
Mother snorted. “No. I suspect that all parties involved will be perfectly willing when the time comes.”
“Why? Are you expecting me to fall in love with one of them?”
Mother laughed this time, a full belly sound. “It would not surprise me if you managed to be that foolish.”
Morrigan rose and left the hut, letting the door slam behind her. The moon was full and she could hear the screaming, the dying, the darkspawn, if she really tried. There was a foul scent on the breeze. Rotten and sweet like overripe fruit. She decided two things under that moon: if she did this, it would be with the one they called Zakir, and she would not love him.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
9:41 Dragon
Every night in Skyhold, Morrigan has the same dream. It is a memory, actually, which makes it hurt worse, and the spirits of the Fade know that, and she hates them for it. It is of the day Zakir finally decides to leave to search for a cure to the Calling.
It has been going on for years, of course, but it is only getting worse and worse. Sometimes he stares and stares at Kieran, or at her, unable to understand what they are saying, because the singing in his head is so loud.
She wakes up one night in their cabin in the woods, and he is awake, sweating.
“What is it?” she asks, her hand on his thigh.
“I refuse to die like this,” he says.
The next morning he gets ready to go. She isn’t even sure there is any logic to his packing. He takes his well worn shield with the Cousland crest and then the sword he wielded in Amaranthine, not the one Fergus sent for him last year, which also has the Cousland crest on the hilt. He packs the sausage they smoked for the winter and one string of the onions they have drying in the rafters and little else. Kieran watches him with knowing, sad eyes.
Halfway through all of this, he comes to her side. He twines his fingers around hers, pulls them to his chest. She feels the racing of his heart. He doesn’t have his armor on even though he has set it aside already. Not the breastplate, anyway. He is half out the door, and yet he has to stop and put her hand against beating center of his being.
“I love you,” Zakir Cousland says softly. “I will always love you.”
Morrigan takes her hand back from him, cups his face. She looks into his deep brown eyes. He looks so afraid. He went to the Archdemon with less fear in his eyes.
“You are going to come back,” she says instead of echoing his words back to him. That is never the kind of couple they have been - the kind that relies on words. They rely on actions. He’ll know what she means.
It isn’t until later, when the breastplate is on, when he is hugging Kieran as tightly as he dares, that the fear comes for her too - fear like she hasn’t known since Zakir told her that he killed Flemeth, since she felt the first pangs of labor that would bring Kieran into the world. Then she goes to him, and kisses him hard.
“I love you,” she says. “I will always love you.”
It doesn’t make it easier when he is so far down the road that she cannot see him any longer.
The demons replay those moments over and over and over in her mind every night. But she gets up every day and she teaches her son’s lessons and she consults at Lavellan’s war table so that there will be a world left for Zakir to come back to, a world left for them to be a family in. Morrigan goes on.
*
9:31 Dragon
Morrigan had grown up on her mother’s stories of the Grey Wardens. How they were typically either overly zealous martyrs who wanted to fling themselves in harm’s way, or criminals running to the only place that would take them, or mages or elves seeking refuge from the Circles and alienages of the world. Zakir Cousland was none of those things.
“How did you come to join the Wardens?” Morrigan asked on their first night on the road to Lothering.
“I was conscripted,” Zakir said. The muscles in his jaw worked beneath his beard.
“And you do not care to elaborate further on that point?” Morrigan asked.
“No.”
He walked with single-minded purpose, with fury in every step, towards Lothering. He did not waste a word. His only tenderness seemed to be for the mabari hound at his side. Azazel.
“Is he named after the Pride demon from the Canticle of Trials?” Alistair, the other Warden, asked that same night.
“Yes.”
“Interesting choice. Have you had him long?”
“Four years now.”
Azazel whuffed, stared up at his master with baleful eyes. The kaddis Zakir had lovingly applied that morning was flaking off his haunches. Zakir scratched behind his ears, and for the first time all day, a little smile played around the corners of his lips.
“You know, I think you might like that dog more than me,” Alistair said, trying for a joke.
“I do,” Zakir said, meeting Alistair’s gaze directly.
The details came into focus by the time they were in Lothering. The massacre at the castle in Highever. The Warden Duncan pressing Zakir into service, standing over the bodies of his dying father. Morrigan would be furious, too. And it seemed that fury was going to get them through the Blight rather efficiently, too. Zakir wasn’t one to be waylaid by petty arguments and so-called moral dilemmas, Morrigan learned quickly. He only cared about two things, really: killing Rendon Howe, and finding his older brother, who had not been with the army at Ostagar.
“Although, when I find him -” Zakir broke that sentence off every time it came up. There was a wound there. Morrigan did not press for what. She knew what it was to have wounds that needed hiding.
*
It became easy to get lost in the details of their day-to-day travels - the mysteries and irritations of their two new companions from Lothering, Sten and Leliana - in fighting off darkspawn and bandits and wolves on their way to Redcliffe Castle - arguing over where to set up camp and whose turn it was to take watch first.
“Ridiculous,” Sten muttered the third time this particular argument erupted. He turned to Zakir. “You are the leader, correct? Then lead. Tell them what the order of the watch is and be done with it.”
Zakir clenched his jaw. It was a common gesture with him, Morrigan realized.
“Fine,” he said. “Alistair, you get first watch. Sten, you get second. Leliana, you get third. Morrigan, you get fourth. I’ll take last.”
She could not help but feel a flame of anger at the order he had chosen.
“Ah, yes. You already have the chief quality of most leaders: a keen sense of your own self-interest. I hope you enjoy sleeping through the night while the rest of us must wake and sleep and wake again.”
Zakir turned to her, and though Morrigan was not a woman easily intimidated by shows of power, there was real power in him, coiled like a spring. It was the power of privilege and wealth - of maleness - of strength that could cleave a hurlock in two with one broad stroke of a sword.
“I will,” he said. But the muscles in his jaw were working again. Turning things over like the whole situation - the whole Blight - was something he could chew up and spit out.
To her surprise, he came out of his tent halfway through her watch and sat beside her. He was already in his armor. He’d looted better fitting pieces, but they were all mismatched, and yet there was still something regal about him.
“You can go to bed if you like,” he said, and she assumed his tone was meant to be kind, but that very kindness upset her.
“I think our large qunari friend would not like this show of weakness from you,” she said, staring straight at him. Normal people did not like that, she found. Her directness of gaze. Zakir Cousland did not flinch. “You’re a leader. You gave the orders. Stick to them. Enjoy the rest you chose for yourself.”
He made a frustrated sound and raked his hands through his corkscrew-curled hair. Morrigan had never seen hair of its texture before. She wanted to touch it, to see if she could separated it into further and further curls, to feel if it was soft or woolly or coarse. She remembered what her mother said. She would lie with him, or with Alistair. Her stomach dropped, and bile rose in her throat.
“I’m a second son,” he muttered. “I was never the one who was going to lead anything. I’m the fuck up. I'm the one who named his dog after a demon because he thought it would be funny and he wanted to irritate his mother. We need Fergus.”
Mother expected her to lie with this - this sniveling, uncertain fool?
Morrigan rose to her feet and looked down at him.
“Well, Fergus is not here,” she said. “You are. Rise to the occasion, or fail. Those are your options. If you are bent on the latter, I suggest you tell all of us now, so we can stop wasting our time.”
Zakir stood. He towered over her. His lips were broad and soft, like the bridge of his nose. He did not look at all Fereldan. His mother had been Rivaini. But the words that fell from his tongue had the clipped, crisp consonants of the Fereldan nobility all the same. He confused her.
“You really do have the manners of someone raised in the woods,” he said without venom. But Morrigan had spent enough time in the world of animals to know a warning growl when she heard it.
“And you have the foolishness of a pampered noble who has never had to think for himself before this moment.”
Zakir actually laughed at that. A mirthless, rueful, anguished sound like the whine of a dying dog.
“You have no idea what I have been through in the last fortnight,” he said.
This
? This is who her mother expected her to love? To bear a child for? Morrigan renewed her resolve.
I will not do it. And if I do, I will never love him
.
“And? ‘Tis of no consequence what you have been through. There is only forward from here. Survival has meaning. Power has meaning. You have the chance for both.”
The fire guttered and spat hot sparks at their side. The trees moved with the wind around them. Azazel padded out of the tent that Zakir shared with Alistair and came to their side, whuffing a greeting to his master. Zakir looked and looked at her.
“You’re right,” he said. “All I have to do is survive this fucking Blight, and gain enough power to ensure that Rendon Howe pays for what he did. Nothing else matters.”
It was not the response Morrigan expected. She felt the way she did when an updraft caught her wings and sent her higher when she took to the skies as a raven.
“Well then. I am glad we have settled the question of the rest of your life. Are you going back to sleep or no?”
“No. I want to keep talking to you.”
“So blunt. I thought all nobles were dithering, simpering folk.”
“Not this one. Did you grow up in the Korcari Wilds?”
“Why do you ask such questions? I do not probe you for useless information, do I?”
“You can probe me anytime.”
All the while as they talked Zakir was moving. Settling into a more comfortable stance, crossing or uncrossing his arms, stroking the stubble on his chin, patting Azazel. For a warrior, he was light on his feet, quick to move. Morrigan had seen that in the skirmishes that had plagued them over the last few days. He darted forward like a gust of wind and slammed into darkspawn like a boulder, his shield raised. She was seeing now that that impulse never left him. That perhaps it extended to his mind, too.
“I see,” she said, and her tone was even warmer than she meant it to be.
“Well? Are you going to answer me, or are you going to turn me into a toad as Alistair has insinuated you will?”
“I did not say I wished you harm. I simply wished to know whence comes this strange curiosity.”
“We don’t need to be strangers, do we?”
Again, that noble accent, the courtly air of his repartee. This was a man who’d been raised in Ferelden’s courts. And yet he was not put off by her. Not frightened of her. He seemed to be enjoying this. For the first time in days his jaw was not quite so tight.
So Morrigan talked to him over the course of their journey to Redcliffe. She told him of Flemeth, of her first journeys out of the Wilds, of the golden mirror that Mother smashed to teach her a lesson. He started to do the same with their other companions, though she couldn’t help but notice that he liked her best of all. He wasn’t sure how to penetrate their Qunari friend’s frosty resolve, and Leliana’s cloying piety irritated him as much as it irritated her, and Zakir seemed to take particular joy in teasing Alistair to the point where he finally realized he was the butt of the joke and not a participant in it. Good. Both Leliana and Alistair needed to learn the lesson that she and Zakir seemed to have already internalized, the one they discussed that night that he tried to take over her watch. Power and survival had meaning. Nothing else.
She did grow angry with him while they were in Redcliffe Village. First because he kissed a girl whose missing brother he’d found. Right on the lips, in front of them all, after all his jokes about his tent being cold and how Morrigan could probe him anytime. Second, because he had found a small bar of gold, and tossed it to her.
“Here,” he said.
“Do you not need this?” She asked at once. “I heard you bemoaning the state of your sword not two hours ago, and I am confident this could be used to purchase a new one.”
Zakir shrugged. “That little thing? I don’t need it.”
She very nearly threw it on the ground at those words. This would-be princeling, thinking he could show off his wealth. He’d flirted with the tavern girl in the village too - Bella - and intimidated that sop Lloyd into giving him money, and then passed it on to Bella. Morrigan's magic flamed in her, a wild thing.
“Do not dare pity me, Zakir Cousland. I am not some common harlot you can win over with simple favors and gifts of gold.”
He looked genuinely chagrined. He dipped his head and rubbed the back of his neck. It might have been an affected gesture in any other person. But something about it from him seemed so real.
“I’m sorry. I thought about that story about your mother and the mirror and - it seemed like something you would like. You deserve pretty things. I meant no offense.”
Morrigan’s heart softened, and she forgave him. She forgot, sometimes, that he was only nineteen - two years younger than her. That his parents were dead. His home ashes. That the fate of Thedas was on his shoulders.
This is weakness
, she hissed at herself as they went from place to place, doing what they could to shore up Redcliffe Village against the tides of undead.
This is weakness, foolish girl. You tell him not to pity you, and then you pity him instead.
She did not pity him any longer when they circled back to the tavern and found Howe’s agent there. Berwin. Zakir did not even wait to hear what Howe had sent him to do. The instant the arl’s name left the man’s lips, Zakir’s hand was on his dagger, and then he slashed across his throat, spilled crimson down his collar and onto the sticky tavern floor.
“Was that truly necessary?” Leliana asked, horror in her voice.
“If you knew what Howe did - who they killed - who the first two people they killed were - you would know that it was.” Zakir’s voice was gravelly with rage. And pain, too. That pain again.
Later, in the castle, when the undead overwhelmed her and drove their blades into her again and again, and Morrigan lay bleeding, her head propped up on Sten’s knee as he poured potions down her throat, while Zakir held back the rest of them and Leliana gave him cover, and Azazel howled his dreadful cry, Morrigan would wonder if she was in as much pain as Zakir was. She would wonder who the first two bodies he found that night were.
“Is she alright?” Zakir asked, harshly. Morrigan’s vision was all sparks. “Can we move on?”
“She nearly died, Warden. Look. If she is to be your saarebas, you must look to her care and keeping. Do not allow her on the front lines again.”
Nearly died. Morrigan didn’t think she had ever come this close to dying before. The sparks cleared from her vision and her blood filled with the heat of the potions. She could breathe more easily.
“I see,” Zakir said, chagrined once again.
“I can scout ahead,” Leliana offered.
“Go, then. Be careful.”
Morrigan could not even hear the hush of Leliana’s soft-soled shoes as she left. Perhaps the delusional girl was good for something after all. She could hear the grind of Zakir’s armor as he moved closer, the oily sheathing of his sword.
“Thank you for your advice, Sten,” Zakir said.
The qunari merely grunted. “You should not need it, Warden.”
Morrigan’s vision returned. Zakir was over her, his face a stormcloud of anger.
“Right then,” he said. “No more turning into a spider and rushing off to die. Can we agree on that, at least? If not, I can always send you back to the village to keep watch over Alistair and the survivors of last night’s raid.”
Morrigan’s laugh sounded more like a croak, and her throat burned with it. “Perish the thought,” she managed.
Zakir chuckled, and it was a lovely sound.
*
They took back the castle, and they took back the mind of the boy who had been the cause of the undead at the cost of his mother’s life. Morrigan had been more fascinated by her journey into the Fade than horrified by Isolde’s death. Zakir made the right decision. They did not have time to go traipsing off to the Circle at Lake Calenhad for the sake of an idiot Orlesian noblewoman who thought she could hide the fact that her son was a mage. The apostate, Jowan, offered them another solution, and Isolde volunteered herself. She understood that it was the price she had to pay.
Alistair did not see it that way, and that was when the words came tumbling out. How he was raised in that castle. How he was a bastard of royal blood. How he was not sure he could forgive Zakir for this, but could not envision abandoning his duty as a Warden.
“And to think,” Alistair said bitterly, glaring down into the fire. “We’re still delayed. We still need to go after this Urn of Sacred Ashes if we want any chance of saving Eamon.”
“At least the village is safe and so is the boy,” Zakir said. “Maybe you’ll see things differently by the time we get to Denerim.”
Denerim. She had never seen a city of its size. She already had a dozen questions about it. She knew Zakir had been, and considered asking him them. But she saw, out of the sight of the others, how his shoulders sagged. She thought of what a simpleton she would seem if she pestered him with the questions. So she held her foolish tongue.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
9:31 Dragon
The first man Morrigan ever slept with was a farm boy she found in Lothering’s tavern when she was eighteen, and growing bolder in her excursions outside the Wilds. They lay together in one of the rooms upstairs. He was from further east in Ferelden, and young like her. It was the first time he’d been trusted with bringing the goods his parents produced to market. They were both eager with the excitement of being young and away from their parents. It wasn’t very good - to be frank, Morrigan did a better job of pleasing herself with her own hand than he did - and afterwards she wasn’t quite sure what all the fuss was about.He was absolutely moony over her after they were done, of course. So maybe that was what all the fuss was about. Maybe it was about the way you could use the thing between your legs to bring men to heel that women liked about the whole affair. It was the only part she really enjoyed.She’d had a handful of other lovers in the years since, always sporadic, never for more than one night, and those experiences had been better than her first. And the more time she spent on the road with Zakir Cousland, the more she wondered what it would be like when she lay with him.It was a foregone conclusion at this point that it would happen. Neither of them were subtle in their flirtation. Both of them were tense with things they did not wish to speak of. As they made their way to Denerim, fighting past the civil war and the darkspawn alike, Morrigan began to wonder when it would happen. Would it be in Denerim, in some fancy inn that noble boys like Zakir patronized? Or on the road, in the dark, the trees above them? She hoped it was the latter. She had only known him for a month or so, but every day that passed confirmed for her that he was the first sensible man she had met. The first one who might actually be her equal.Morrigan separated the issue of sleeping with Zakir from the ritual Mother had proposed. They were different as fire and water in her mind. She wanted one. She did not want the other. She understood that it would save Zakir’s life (and Alistair’s, she supposed), but that wasn’t enough motivation for her to bear and rear a child. She was still mulling over the other part of it. The soul of an Old God, preserved. That was tempting. Seeing as how they did not seem anywhere close to doing battle with the Archdemon (as Sten reminded them, constantly), she knew she had more time to consider it.They neared Denerim when the gates were already shut for the night, so they camped outside of the city one last time, near a stream that fed into it. It was there that Morrigan got to witness the ritual of Zakir washing and twisting out his hair for the first time. She watched him sink into the methodical action, traced the patterns of his muscles as he did so.“I take it your mother taught you to do your hair thus?” she asked when he was nearly done.“She did.” The words were clipped. Morrigan pressed on anyway.“You do not wish to speak further of her?”“No. Do you wish to speak of Flemeth?”This was officially the longest Morrigan had been away from Mother. She half feared that speaking her name would summon Flemeth to their side. But she would not be prey to such silly notions. She squared her shoulders.“Perhaps, depending on what you wished to ask.”“I’ve heard the stories about her, you know. About her daughters. Is she really your mother?”“I have no reason to suspect otherwise, though I do find it difficult to imagine her with child.”Zakir snorted. He bent down to study his reflection in the water. “Well, she doesn’t sound very nurturing from your stories. I would kill for that gold mirror she smashed right now.”“Must all mothers be cooing, nurturing sorts? She taught me a valuable lesson that day. If other mothers do not teach such things, I believe they are the lesser for it.”She almost did not believe the words as they left her mouth. Was she truly defending Mother? If she did go through with this ritual - if she did bear a child - would she be the same?“I see where you get your ruthless practicality from, then.” Zakir replied, coming to sit beside her on the fallen log she had chosen. She could see the dark hairs on his arms and chest this close. She thought about the slide of his skin against her own.“I shall take that as a compliment. Was it meant as such?”“It was.”Every time she challenged him, he rose to that challenge. She had never met a man who did. She wondered how his beard would feel against her face, if he was stronger than the farm boys she’d had in the past.“I am glad you see it thus. I know that common wisdom holds that women are the weaker, more emotional sex, but I find so often that men are far worse about such things. It is better to be simpler and clearer, don’t you think?”Zakir studied her a moment. Morrigan felt heat rise to her cheeks under the weight of his gaze. “That depends on what you mean by simpler and clearer.”If Morrigan had learned one thing from her time in the wilds, it was when to strike.“Take a man such as yourself,” she said. “Between us, there could be sex. Lust. Passion. Anything else is simply a delusion.”A smile grew across Zakir’s lips. He leaned in closer to her. Her heart sped up as their arms brushed.“Nothing wrong with a little delusion, is there?”She had him. She had him in the palm of her hand, like a rich jewel pried up from the rocky earth. She wanted to kiss him then - but she wanted to revel in the anticipation more.“To indulge in love is to indulge in delusion. Surely a Grey Warden such as yourself does not believe otherwise?”Zakir remained close to her. All she had to do was lean in and their lips would touch. He would be warm, and hers.“No, you’re quite right,” he said. “It is a delusion. Especially in times like these.”There was a silence. A waiting. Zakir’s eyes flickered to her lips. His were full and wide - fuller than any man she’d ever kissed before. Morrigan felt her heart leap. Then the voices of their companions drifted towards them on the breeze - Leliana insisting that she’d caught Sten petting a kitten in the last village they passed through, Alistair playing with Azazel. Zakir stood, and the moment was gone.“Come on,” he said, and he stood, and he offered her his hand. She pushed up to her feet on her own, her head held high.“I think I will take a walk,” she said, brushing past him, even though it was a chilly night and the food at the campfire smelled passable for once (likely Sten’s doing). But if Zakir Cousland was going to rise to her every challenge, she was going to rise to his.*
9:35 Dragon
Morrigan woke in her hideaway in Orlais and Zakir was there, curled around her, snoring. She was surprised to see him. He had gone to see his brother Fergus, and to follow up on a lead about the Architect (who she was still somewhat convinced he had dreamt up in a fever). She did not think he would be back for another month. She shook him awake and pitched her voice low. Kieran was just starting to sleep in his own bed in the other room and she did not want to wake him.“What are you doing here?” she whispered.“Sleeping,” Zakir grunted, rolling away from her.Morrigan summoned a pinch of electricity and zapped his shoulder. He flinched, and burrowed deeper into the covers.“I wasn’t expecting you for another month. And why didn’t you wake me?”“Because I was tired. Can’t we talk in the morning?”“No. I want to talk to now.”Zakir groaned, rolled onto his back, and scrubbed both his hands down his face. He’d trimmed back the beard again. Perhaps Fergus didn’t like it when his baby brother looked like a wild mountain man.“Well,” Zakir said. “Talk.”Morrigan’s anger rose like a hot flame. She threw her hands over her head.“I thought I was perfectly clear that I wanted you to talk.”Zakir’s eyes were still half-closed. Against her own will, Morrigan found herself admiring the strong angles of his face.“I’m home. I missed you and Kieran too much to stay away longer. Fergus is fine. The lead didn’t work out. Did I miss anything, or can I go back to sleep?”Morrigan wanted to pick up a pillow and hit him with it. This impossible man. She should never have let him come through the eluvian with her after he found her the year before.“I would have appreciated some notice before you turned up in my bed.”At that, Zakir stiffened. He was still a mountain of a man, beard or no. Warden-Commander or no. He opened his eyes fully and looked at her.“My apologies. I suppose I had thought of it as our bed.”He rose and padded out of the room, swiftly as if he had never been sleeping at all, bare as the day he was born, and Morrigan watched him go, the moonlight painting him silver, her heart in her throat. She had not considered her words. They had simply come out. It had always been her bed, ever since she was a little girl. She shared it with no one except for Kieran. She and Zakir had been lovers, yes. But they had never had a bed that was theirs. They’d rarely had a bed at all.Morrigan followed him into the small living space beyond the bedroom. He was looking out the small window with its thick, warped glass, his arms crossed and his legs planted like he was on watch. She stood close to him but did not touch him.“I am sorry,” she said.Zakir did not turn to her, but when he spoke his voice was soft. “I went back to Highever and it wasn’t home anymore. You are my home, Morrigan. Wherever you go - wherever our son goes - that’s where I go.”They had not spoken so openly of the idea yet. He had followed her through the eluvian those months ago and it had all been about Kieran, of course. The son he had not yet met. And they had reconnected as lovers, but they had not really discussed the future.Zakir turned to her and dropped his arms to his sides. Her eyes were drawn to every scar on his chest. For the first time she considered it as a haven - a soft place she could go to rest, and be safe - and not just a vehicle for violence.“Very well,” she said. “Come back to bed.”As they went back, Morrigan hesitated, thinking to check on Kieran in his room, but Zakir’s hand on the small of her back guided her away.“I already looked in on him,” he said. “He is fine. And Azazel is with him in any case.” He cleared his throat, looked down. “He looks so much like -”Morrigan knew he would not say the name. He had only said it once before in the time she had known him.“Bed,” she said softly, and led him home.*
9:31 Dragon
In the end they did not sleep together until they were on the road from Redcliffe out to Orzammar, after the Temple of Sacred Ashes, after taking said ashes to Eamon and healing him. Personally, Morrigan was still torn about whether or not they should have defiled the rest. On the one hand, she had no love for the Chantry and their Prophet. On the other, the ashes did have some kind of mystic healing, and she would not mind studying it. Sten had merely called it a wastebasket, and their new companion, Zevran, had been of a similar mind to her. So had Zakir, it seemed. He had taken the pinch they needed and then stood there for a long moment, eyes full of anger, fists clenched at his sides. Then he had walked away.She had asked him about it on their way down the mountain.“I had not thought you a simpering fanatic like Leliana,” she said.“I'm not,” Zakir said. At first his tone didn’t seem to encourage further discussion. “But my mother -”Zakir did not finish the sentence, and Morrigan didn't ask him to.Their flirtations had continued. There had been gifts and fireside discussions. They fought side by side through wolves and bandits and darkspawn and Morrigan found herself able to predict his movements, to hex the right enemies so they were vulnerable to the mighty smash of Zakir's shield, or to snap their legs in place with frost so Zakir could cut them down. They were clearly compatible on several levels. Why hadn't Zakir made his move?In the end, Morrigan decided it was ridiculous to wait on him to make his move, and made her own.“‘Tis cold in my tent, all alone,” she said one night when he was on watch and the others were asleep. It was cold. The Frostbacks were colder than the Korcari Wilds had ever been, and she had traded her looser clothes for heavy furs, and armor that Zakir had purchased for her in Denerim.Zakir looked at her, and for the first time in days she saw a spark in his eye that had been missing since they met with Eamon, and Eamon refused to help him go after Howe and Loghain yet. He had only grudgingly left for Orzammar. And of course he had heard nothing of Fergus yet.“Is that so?” he said. “Should I investigate it, then?”Zakir’s kisses were devouring, searing, bent on taking her whole, and Morrigan suspected he would say the same of hers. He was not uncertain or selfish like the men she’d been with before. He took her where he wanted her, to be sure, hauled her to the angle he wanted with his hands on her thighs, but he let her have her way, too. She’d never felt so free in another person’s arms. He was on his back the first time he finished, groaning hungrily, gonna come, gonna come, gonna come turning into I’m coming, I’m coming, I’m still coming, I’m still coming, Maker above .And then she could not resist pressing on, after that, continuing to take the measure of this spoiled noble, this grief-stricken son, this Warden with the weight of Thedas on his shoulders. She rode him harder, faster, he came again, she found her own pleasure with his thumb pressed to the swollen pearl between her legs, and then again with him behind her, and that final time he came it seemed to take something essential out of him. He collapsed, panting, on her bedroom, and Morrigan was sore and sweaty and pleased and so fully, fully alive she could sing. This was no romp in the stables. She would not have to return home to Mother later. Zakir would not simper and sigh over her, or call her a whore. He saw her simply for what she was. She could see that in his hazel eyes as he lay there, coming back to himself. He saw a woman in possession of her own body, her own mind, who had chosen to share both with her.“Well, I see the stories they tell of Grey Warden endurance are not exaggerated,” she said, her sex already clenching again at the thought of his thickness, his hardness, how he’d filled her over and over, as powerful in sex as he was on the battlefield.Zakir smirked, though she saw some surprise in the set of his jaw.“Was this a one-time thing?” he asked, a moment later.Morrigan could hardly imagine not taking her pleasure of him again - but should she say so? Of course she should. He had not minced his words, and would not respect her for mincing hers.“I will have my way with you until I am satisfied, out of a sense of fairness if nothing else.Zakir looked her up and down, raking his eyes over her.“Sounds like fun.”“And should you decide not to continue our… misadventure, then so be it. Very simple, is it not?” She didn’t know why her heart sped at that question. It was simple. They had discussed it by the river outside Denerim.Zakir rose, his bulk filling the tent, and stretched as well as he was able. Then he reached for his pants and tunic.“Works for me. I should get back to the watch. Wouldn’t be very fair of me to just leave it to Azazel, now would it?”“Does he have a sense of fairness, I wonder?”“Don’t we all?” Zakir said, and she saw it again, his fury when Eamon wouldn’t go after Howe, after everything Zakir did for his family.For all that Zakir did not really talk about them, Morrigan was beginning to realize just how much they meant to him. How much disdain he had for the political struggle that had broken out between the children of King Endrin.“Fergus and I would never have been so unreasonable,” he said. “Then again, I would never have wanted his place so badly.”How kind he was to the children he saw on the streets. How he would look at them with such grief on his face that Morrigan could barely look at him - that she began to suspect who it was that he’d found first that night when Howe’s men attacked his family’s castle.After that first time, he went to her over and over, like she could fuck that grief from his body, and Morrigan welcomed him each time. She could not fix things, of course. She could not fix the Blight or his loss or his anger just by fucking him. She told him so. He snorted.“Maybe I don't want to be fixed. Maybe I think I'm fine the way I am.”She looked at him. Tall and strong and cunning and relentless.“I agree,” she said, and felt something like affection filling her chest.Of course, she could not let that affection blind her. She was free for the first time in her life. Out in the world, seeing things she never expected to see, like great veins of lyrium and ancient thaigs so deep underground they made you forget the sky. If she went through with mother’s ritual, she would lose all that to a squalling child. So each night, after Zakir left her, she imagined his death, and ignored the pressure that filled her chest at the thought.She gave him a ring while they were in the Deep Roads, one Mother used to track her. She told him it was for convenience, safety even, given the dangerous maze of darkspawn warrens they now found themselves in. She said nothing of how much she liked always having him on the edge of her senses, like a sunrise just about to crest the horizon.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Zakir had one simple organizing principle for calling on the Grey Warden's treaties, and that was to go where the power was. It was why he had started in Redcliffe, and then gone on to Denerim and then up through the frigid wastes of the Frostback Mountains to reach the Urn of Sacred Ashes, and then to Orzammar to crown a king. Why he had chosen to keep the the Anvil of the Void rather than break it, hopeful that the golems would break the tide of darkspawn that loomed all around them (and they did loom all around them - Morrigan was beginning to wonder if their stench would ever come out of her clothes, if she would ever forget the sound of their undulating shrieks). Hopeful, too, that all of this power would finally be enough to strike at Rendon Howe.When his choices were down to the Dalish clan in the woods of the Hinterlands, and the mages in their tower, he was not impressed."The mages need our help," Leliana insisted. "You heard what the ferryman said the last time we passed by Lake Calenhad.""All of Thedas needs our help," Zakir retorted."The mages need it more than most," she said. She had that mooney, puppyish look in her eyes that she often got when looking to Zakir. It was all Morrigan could do to stop herself from rolling her eyes."They should not need anyone's help," Morrigan said."They are trapped in that tower!" Leliana pushed on."You have watched me fight. Are you truly under the impression that any mage is helpless?"Zakir snorted, smiled, but it was a smile only for Morrigan, and it warmed her."Mages will be more valuable than elves," he said finally. "We'll go there next.""You did not seem to think my people so useless the last time you sent me ahead to assassinate our enemies, my friend," Zevran said, his lips twisted into a smile far more bitter than Zakir's.Zakir did look away at that. Abashed."Somehow I doubt Dalish training will be as fine as that of the Antivan Crows," he said. "But I see your point. Nonetheless - we are closer to Calenhad. We'll go to Kinloch Hold.""A tower full of saarebas." Sten made a noise of disgust. "Leave me out of it.""What does saarebas mean, again?" Zakir asked."Dangerous thing."Zakir called Morrigan that in his tent alone that night, when she was on top of him, riding him. He cupped her breasts and held her hips and urged her into sharper, harder thrusts against him, and he looked in her eyes and he smiled and he murmured it. Dangerous thing. He was stretched out beneath her in all his maleness, all his thick and hard earned muscle, and he was entranced by her power, not enamored of his own. Morrigan glowed with pride at his recognition, let the tent fill with mage light, and forgot about darkspawn and ancient rituals for an evening.
(A decade later, she and Leliana would talk about Zakir in a castle she did not yet know existed, far north in those same Frostback Mountains.
"I am grateful to him now, you know," Leliana said one evening when she came to Skyhold's garden in search of Morrigan. "He bled the last of my foolishness from me."
Morrigan remembered the songs Leliana sang by the campfire, her voice innocent and sincere, the way she mooned after Zakir all those months. She remembered how Leliana had cried after they killed Marjolaine in Denerim, how Zakir had taken her by the shoulders and told her enough was enough, that she was in this life for a reason, that it was time to accept that instead of hating herself for it. She looked at the woman before her now, hooded, and angry, and calm, and lethal, and respected her for the first time in all their acquaintance.)
Kinloch Hold was a horror, blood and death and desperation. Dangerous things, indeed. It turned Morrigan's stomach. It reminded her why she would never be caged, never submit, to a will other than her own. And it was, of course, where they found Mother's grimoire.Zakir found it in the wake of a battle in the Senior Mage quarters, after rifling through broken furniture and cabinets for a potion of bottle of salve or bundle of elfroot or even a vial of lyrium dust, anything to shore up their supplies. He'd been bleeding badly minutes before, a gaping wound along his thigh that their new companion, Wynne, had only barely healed. Morrigan was surprised to see him return from his foraging with a book in his hands."Morrigan," he said, tone cautious. Then, when she approached, he held the book out. "Here."She had told him, of course, that she had hoped to find her mother's grimoire in the tower, but seeing the chaos that filled it had made her put that hope aside. Reading what was in the book made her put every other hope she'd ever had about the woman she called Mother aside.Morrigan had not been looked after with such diligence, kept from the world with such fervor, because Flemeth loved her. Because she wanted to keep her only daughter safe. Flemeth had only ever done it because Morrigan was one more means to an end. Her body was a shell that Flemeth hoped one day to inhabit.She was so sick with the idea that she hardly processed the rest of the fight to retake the tower. She went through it on instinct alone, preoccupied with the feeling that her skin was too tight. Mother wanted her to do the ritual and bear a child with the soul of an Old God. Then someday Mother wanted to take her body for herself. Had her body never been her own? Had Flemeth never intended for Morrigan to own this one simple thing - her hands, her feet, her lungs?Zakir's face when they camped that night told her that he had read enough of the grimoire before handing it over to her to know what it said. He came into her tent still in his armor and knelt, arms braced across his knee, waiting for his orders."Tell me what you want me to do to her," he said."Kill her," Morrigan said. "I want her to die."Zakir nodded once, and went from the tent.They made their way towards the Brecilian Forest from Lake Calenhad, and every step that took them closer to the Korcari Wilds was a step that filled Morrigan with increasing dread and anger. She tried to school herself to acceptance instead. This was the way of the world. You could not trust anyone to have your interests at heart. Not even your own flesh and blood. She would never perform the ritual now, no matter how much closer they were getting to facing the Archdemon, no matter how many times Alistair and Zakir saved all of them with their unerring sense of where the darkspawn were, no matter how young they both were, no matter how much weight they had on their shoulders. She could never trust that Flemeth had told the truth about any of it, about what the ritual would mean. She would let the Wardens go to their fate, and she would go her own way.Then one day Zakir took Zevran, Alistair, and Sten with him on an unspecified mission away from camp. Azazel, strangely, was ordered to stay at Morrigan's side. And then Morrigan knew that he had not forgotten his promise.Zakir returned to camp hours later battered, bloodied, exhausted, reeking of ash and smoke. He held her face and looked at her and spoke with all the seriousness of a chevalier taking an oath."She will never hurt you again."And then he went into the satchel at his side, and gave her the real grimoire, and then he went to bed, and Morrigan sat there beneath the stars, holding the keys to her freedom - her real freedom - and thinking only of another kind of cage.
I love him. I love him, I love him, I am a fool, I love him.
(She was to see Cullen a decade later too, of course, though she did not immediately recognize him as the shaking, terrified templar trapped on the highest level of the mage's tower in a pink shell of arcane energy. He took a moment to place her face as well.
"You were there," he said at last. "Kinloch Hold. You were with the Hero of Ferelden."
"Was I?" She said as blithely as she could. "We went so many places together that year. I can't remember them all."
"Perhaps I am mistaken," he said. "You would remember Kinloch."
"Perhaps nothing memorable happened to me there," she said, trying not to think of the book, the concern in Zakir's eyes, the promise he'd made, how fiercely she longed to hold him again.)
*Alistair and Zakir's friendship had been through its share of ups and downs in the months since they met at Ostagar. Morrigan got to witness all of it. Zakir was too clever by half for Alistair, enjoyed teasing him too much, and was too ruthless in his priorities for the two men to truly bond. But as they drew closer to the Landsmeet, Morrigan saw Zakir taking him aside more and more, the two of them having increasingly serious conversations. She assumed they were discussing who would strike the killing blow against the Archdemon, who would make that sacrifice. Then, one day, after they'd recruited the Dalish clan and when on their way back to Ostagar on the tip of a dying man, she caught wind of their conversation."We'll have to go to Weisshaupt when all of this is over I imagine,"Alistair was saying."Both of us?""Well, I'd hardly want to show up without you. Then they'd blame me for all the nonsense you’ve done in the last year."Zakir laughed. They continued talking. Morrigan went numb with horror.They did not know what would happen when one of them struck that final blow. They did not know why it had to be a Grey Warden who did so.Zakir did not know.But she did know. She knew that every step was taking them closer to the Landsmeet, and to one of their deaths.And suddenly, watching them walk ahead of her, she felt as sick and hopeless as she had when she first saw the grimoire from Kinloch Hold.
I love him, and I don’t want him to die.
Ostagar was covered in snow and death, and as they cleared each space of the darkspawn that had set in like woodrot, the feeling grew and grew within her. She had to power to stop him from dying but at what cost? She stood near the Tower of Ishal, looking out over the vastness of Ferelden, imagining all the places she had not been yet. Orlais, Nevarra, Tevinter, Rivain. She had just won her freedom (he was the one who won it for her at the tip of his sword) and to keep Zakir Cousland alive she would have to give up forever (because if Mother was gone who would raise a child with the soul of an Old God?).“We need to keep moving,” Zakir called to her.She turned to him, saw his breath puffing out in a cloud around his handsome face, the streaks of blood on his armor, the way his hair was growing long, the tight-knit curls starting to stick off of his head at odd angles if his helmet was off. Something must have been written on her face because he approached her. He reached out and touched her arm.“Are you well?”Morrigan pulled away.“What is the meaning of all of this?”“Of what?”“All… this. Your concern. These feelings.”Zakir looked taken aback, for once. He glanced over his shoulder at Alistair and Zevran where they lingered, waiting to move on.“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“ This . This - helplessness. I do not care for it. It is not what we agreed on.”Zakir raised his hands in defeat.“I’m not entirely sure what this is about, but we have darkspawn to kill and Cailan’s armor to recover. I want Alistair to wear it when we walk into the Landsmeet. Whatever it is you want to talk about, let’s save it for camp.”“Forget it. Forget I said anything.”Morrigan felt like she was freewheeling through the air, a bird caught in a torrent of wind, the rest of their time at Ostagar - battered between the ideas of choice and freedom and knowledge and power and him . The man ten feet ahead of her in the snow, forging a path for the rest of them to follow.*They found Cailan’s armor, made it back to Denerim, took Alistair to his sister’s house at his insistence, and left it with a man who would be king in tow. Zakir was talking to Alistair in low tones about all of it, and Morrigan could not quite hear every word, but she caught what was important.“Fuck her. You have to look out for yourself now. And you have to think of what will be best for Ferelden. Anora is Loghain’s daughter, and we all know what he has done…”She did not weigh in. She did not follow Zakir to his room when they returned to Eamon’s estate. They had not spoken privately, had not lain together, in the two weeks since their return to Ostagar. It was better that way. The whole issue was getting clouded right at the moment when they both needed their heads clear. Zakir needed to end this Blight and Morrigan needed to make a clean escape when it was all done.And then, of course, Anora was the one they had to rescue - and they had to rescue her from Rendon Howe’s stolen castle.And even though she overheard Zakir talking to Wynne, asking if she would accompany them, Morrigan had to step in.“Let me join you,” she said. “My healing has been enough to carry you this far, minus a scar or two. And there will be bloody work ahead of us. More suited to an apostate than a Circle mage.”Zakir looked at her a long moment.“Works for me.”Morrigan did not say, of course, that she wanted to come because she wanted to be there when he finally got what he wanted. When he finally confronted Howe.She was surprised that their trick with the guards’ uniforms worked - that everyone in the keep did not immediately recognize the tightly coiled rage that was Zakir Cousland, the murder in his every step through the halls. Perhaps she just knew him better than most. Perhaps it was a convincing disguise to everyone else. Perhaps they would have been surprised when their party made it into the dungeon, found at last the torturer’s chambers, the air thick with blood and spilled bowels and death - found Howe there, unrepentant surrounded with guards. Perhaps they would have been surprised how Zakir shrugged off every blow, every arrow, every spell, so he could at last pin Howe to the floor and raise his sword high.“I deserved better,” Howe spat.“You deserve less than even this, butcher,” Zakir snarled, and the sword came down.And then the strangest thing of all happened. Zakir told Alistair and Zevran to scout ahead. And after they left, he dropped sword and shield alike and knelt there on the bloody wretched floor, shaking, unable to rise.“Zakir?”Morrigan approached at once, fearing injury, her healing spells seeking out and finding punctures and cuts and bruises but nothing mortal. He pulled off his helmet and threw it to the floor. Morrigan circled around to see his face. Sweat, blood, and dust caked it. She couldn’t tell if he was crying. She had not seen him cry before. All she could tell was that beneath the blood and dust and sweat he looked impossibly young in a way he hadn’t in weeks. In a way that made her remember that he had just turned twenty a short time ago."It was my brother’s son," Zakir said finally, his voice the quietest she'd ever heard it. "His was the first body I found the night Howe's men attacked. He was only four years old. My little Oren."It was the first and last time Morrigan would ever hear him say his nephew's name.She put her hand on his shoulder. Then, realizing he would not feel it through the armor, raised it to his cheek. He leaned against her and her heart swelled.“I am so sorry,” Morrigan said. “You have avenged him. ‘Tis enough.”“This is very touching and all,” Alistair broke in, returning. “And I hate to interrupt the one genuine emotion the two of you seem capable of producing in a day, but we have a lot of castle left to clear. We need to get moving.”“Fuck off, Theirin,” Zakir said, no heat or venom in his words, as he rose from the blood-soaked floor.“You know, half the reason I’m agreeing to this king thing is so you can never tell me to fuck off again.”“The joke’s on you if you think I’m going to stop telling you to fuck off just because you have a crown on that thick skull of yours.”They left the cell and Morrigan imagined it again - their broken bodies, a Ferelden without one or both of them.*They rescued Anora, returned her to Arl Eamon, and Morrigan was not in the room for the conversation that followed between Eamon, Anora, Zakir, and Alistair. She did take one last look at him, surprised as always how at ease he was in the midst of politicians and nobles. He was one, after all. Another reason to distance herself.But then that night there was a knock on her door, and it was Zakir who entered, fire in his eyes. He took her by the waist and said:“I want to fuck you. And I don't want to be gentle.”Morrigan knew that there should be considerations - calculations - reasons to say no. But suddenly there were none.“Well then. Go ahead.”He was not gentle. He tore the new robes they'd gotten her at the Wonders of Thedas in the market district before they went to assault Howe’s keep. He pushed her onto the bed. She thrilled at it, this wildness in him, laughed and lifted her hips obligingly, invitingly, when he flipped her onto her belly. She didn't try to hide her moans when he fingered her roughly, first one and then two, in and out so hard she could hear the wet, sucking sound her sex made. She bit her lip hard, felt her toes curl, felt something start to build, and then his fingers were gone and she heard his belt come undone and then he was in her, all in one stroke, looming behind her, a mass of grunting, muscled man driving his cock into her like he would die if he stopped fucking her.Morrigan did not often yield to anyone, in anything. But she liked yielding to him in that moment. To the power in his thighs, in his big hands. She knew now that she was safe with him. Knew it as sure as she knew her own name. She wanted him to hold her by her hair, the back of her neck, to take her until he had all he needed. She wanted to give that to him.“That's all?” she gasped when he started to slow. She was dripping wet around him, close not exactly to coming full of some raw kind of pleasure. He came to a stop, half out of her. “Where's that Warden stamina I like so well?”He pulled out of her. He left the bed.She rolled over, sore and bewildered and still brimming with pleasure and quite mad that he had stopped. He was standing by the fireplace, no shirt on, his pants sagging down off of his hips and his belt flapping loose, staring down at the fire. His cock still jutted up hard against his belly, and glistened with her slick. His chest still rose and fell with his effort. But his lips were twisted shut with sorrow.“Alistair told me - Alistair told me today. About what happens to Wardens. The Calling. All the shit Duncan left out when he forced me to join. I have thirty years to live.”Morrigan’s world reoriented itself. Her mind wrapped around the question.“So you will be - forty-nine, perhaps fifty, when you pass? Where I come from, some get half as many.”She did not say, of course, that she had known this already - that it was yet another thing Mother had passed on that Duncan had not.Zakir shook his head, still staring at the fire.“I did not want this. I did not volunteer. Duncan stood there over my dying father, in my burning home, and forced this on me. Howe forced this on me. I thought - maybe - there would be a way back after all of this. Stop the Blight, get Alistair crowned, tell Weisshaupt to find a new hero. But there isn't.”Morrigan rose from the bed. For the second time that day she rested a hand on his shoulder, the touch light and intimate and comforting.“So there is no way back for you. There is no way back for me, either. Mother is dead. I will never return to the life I had before. There is only forward. That is not the worst thing in the world.”Zakir looked to her at last. It was a softer look than he gave her usually. A tender look that made her stomach flutter. He reached up and took her hand where it rested on his shoulder.“We never talked. About what you started to say at Ostagar.”“‘Tis no matter. A moment of foolishness, only.”Zakir smiled, tender still.“I’ve had a few moments of foolishness over you, Morrigan.”It was too sweet and too perfect a sentiment and she didn’t know what to do with that feeling, and so she knelt before him, pulled his pants down the rest of the way and guided them off of his feet. And then she took his cock into her mouth. He gasped. She licked up the salt of his skin, the taste of her own body, swirled her tongue around the soft, ridged head of him. He pumped his hips towards her, tentatively at first. She looked up at him through her eyelashes, and pulled her mouth away, and smirked. He put a hand on the back of her head, and pulled her towards his cock again. She rested her lips primly on the head, not even quite a kiss. Her heart was pounding and her clit was twitching between her legs.“Open,” he said, his voice gruff and low.She did.She opened her mouth and let him fuck her like that, one hand on the back of her head. She moaned and swallowed around the length of him, scratched down his corded thighs, let herself be overwhelmed. She reached up and gave his balls a sharp tug and he stuttered, bent in half over her.“Love, please,” he murmured.They did not call each other sweet names. Certainly not in moments like these. But she liked it. She wanted to hear more of it. She hummed around his length, and took control of the pace again, sucking him in and out of her mouth. She slid one finger between the folds of her sex and summoned a gentle, vibrating current to wrap around it, to buzz all around her aching clit. She managed to get the tip of another finger inside herself so she could feel the sweet pulse of her cunt as she got closer, closer, closer -Her mouth fell open as she came, and Zakir pulled back to watch her, his own chest heaving. She rocked forward, slid her finger deeper, filled herself with that pure and buzzing delight, reveled in her own slick. She brought herself over again watching him fist his own cock, pump it frantically, and as she came he did too, hot splashes of spend on her throat and breasts and chin.“You're cleaning that up, you know,” she managed when they were both spent.He hauled her to her feet and kissed her hard on the mouth, wrapped his arms tight around her, enveloped her entirely. She melted into him, heedless of cooling spend and working to ignore the fact that she loved nothing so much as being held by this man.“On the bed then,” he said, slapping her ass as she turned to go.He fucked her one more time that night, this time face to face, and even if he was not gentle, even if he pushed her legs back so he could fuck her deep, his eyes were on hers whenever she opened them. She watched him as he slept. Thirty years. So the man who lived like he was running out of time actually was running out of time. She thought of her mother's grimoire. Of the ritual. Of the baby that might be. The archdemon. Zakir pulled her close with a sleepy sound when she laid down. He burrowed his head against her neck. Traced an idle hand up and down her back. And the thought came to Morrigan then, unbidden.
I will carry his child. But I will not let that chain me to him. I will not let it take my freedom, my power. I won’t. I won’t. I won’t.
She let that thought carry her to sleep. (When Kieran was born nine months after the ritual, nine months and a few days after she came to the decision to have him, Morrigan’s overwhelming thought was - well, what now?
It had been the biggest decision of her life to conceive him, to carry him - and now he was here and he was so ordinary. A fussy, smush-faced little bundle that she was expected to carry from place to place, who would only sleep if his skin was touching hers.
What now?
For now she holed up in the cabin she had found and warded and prepared, and she nursed, and nursed, and nursed, and reveled in her solitude, away from the world and all its complications. When she did not sleep or nurse and bathe or change him, she studied many of the books she had picked up in her travels. She learned about the Old Gods, their rituals, what the fate of the little boy sleeping in his cot nearby might be. She learned and she learned and she learned and eventually the question clarified itself.
Now we go forward.
She had succeeded. She had not lost her power. She felt more powerful than ever, seeing how she could make Kieran smile, make him laugh, how he cuddled close to her long after the time when he was a tiny infant acting on instinct alone. How she could lift him up, see the boy he was becoming. It was the best power in all the world, she decided. So she went forward. She went forward into all the future promised her and all it promised her son - the secrets of the Dalish, the Elvhen, the real identities of the Old Gods. She went forward, baby on her back, and tried not to think of all the ways he looked like his father - tried not to wonder where he was now. She'd left Zakir behind, fearing he was another link in a chain, something to bind and hold her. And every day she wondered if what she had held onto so fiercely was not power but loneliness instead.
There was time. She would learn the answer. There was time.)