Guarded Love (COMPLETED)

Wants & Needs

She hadn't told him. Alistair was happy to see her up and walking about, happier when she managed to get some broth down, and practically squealing in delight when Reiss said she could handle riding on a horse for a week. How could she puncture through that? He'd been miserable with so many deaths hanging over his head, a cloud of both vengeance and despair working together to drive him to great pains to work off his nervous energy. Instead of bothering the sick woman, he turned his emotional fervor upon the dummies in his room. Reiss would often hear through her door the sound of a sword sticking into wood and slicing open canvas.

She thought about talking to him, letting him talk to her, but there were certain things the man refused to broach upon. His fear of death seemed to be a pretty big one, not that Reiss was in any mood to weigh her mortality either.

It would be cruel of her to tell him that for a brief window she thought she might be carrying his child. Which, of course, assumed he'd even have wanted one from her. They hadn't known each other long, and had been intimate an even shorter amount of time. What was she doing thinking that the King would wish anything so permanent between the two of them? He'd probably find it as great of a relief as she did.

There was no reason for him to need to know.

Reiss kitted up for the first time since her illness, taking the time to hone her blade and oil up some of the joints that grew rusty, before returning to her room for the day. She knew the last of the assassins was being led to the gallows that very afternoon -- it was over. Her entire reason for standing behind the King, for sitting in on his meetings, for being let into his life, was about to be ripped from thedas. What was to come next?

"Reiss? You home?" Alistair's voice echoed through their shared door.

"Yes," she chuckled, rising off the bed and throwing open the door. "I am, but where are you?"

"In here," he said, offering no hints to where that here was. Suddenly, his blonde head stuck out through the door at the far end of the room and he waved a hand. "Come on, come on."

It was his bedroom. Reiss had seen the King naked in so many various ways and positions, lain upon him while watching the stars, felt his punch rattle through her bones, but in all the time serving him she'd never walked into his bedroom at his whim. Laying her hands against her still fluttering stomach, she crossed the threshold and took her first great stare around the room.

She'd barely looked around when he fell ill, most of her time spent pacing back and forth outside trying to not worry the floor and herself to death. Alistair was a surprising man in many respects; on top of the shelves and shelves of books -- stocked by the Hero of Ferelden perhaps -- and a few swords and shields stuck to the wall, there were trinkets of every make and type upon shelves, desks, a few even perched upon the floor when he ran out of room. While tchotchkes were a purview of the certain type of wealthy that could afford them, these were not golden antiquities designed to gain in wealth over time. Reiss spotted a hunk of wood that looked like it was plucked out of a river before someone carved a silly face into it. That shared the exact same spot next to a mechanical wonder box where a metal boat rowed upon undulating waves of silver.

Every inch of his room was incomprehensible, nonsensical, and all Alistair. Things without any value were treasured more than the most priceless gem. Reiss laughed at the idea, knowing where she fell in that ranking according to the world.

He turned at that, breaking away from a chest cracked open on his bed. "Sorry, I was getting into the packing zone as it were and didn't hear you come in."

"Packing zone?" she asked, rising up on her toes to try and glance inside the chest. Reiss was surprised it was nothing but clothing. She'd figured on a few of those golem dolls making it inside.