No Armor Against Fate (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

His Own Tent

The addition of Arl Eamon's tent had altered the configuration of the campsite. Alistair hoped it would mask, at least for a little while, the additional alteration he was making. But when a shadow fell on the tent stake he was hammering into the ground, Alistair looked up. She had her arms crossed, and she was just ... looking at him. She didn't look angry, or hurt, she was just waiting.

He remembered the days before they were together, when just being near her could reduce him to a stammering mass of nerves. He felt something like that right now, but for a far less pleasurable reason. "Um," he said.

Thora studied him for a moment. "This is a new development," she said cautiously.

He looked down at the tent stake. For his own tent, which hadn't been put up in ... months. "I, er ..." he began again, desperately.

"Hey," she said, her voice softening at his obvious distress, hunkering down next to him. "This is me. Talk to me."

"I don't want you to be hurt," he muttered.

"Yes, I can see that. That's why you decided to put up your own tent—which I presume you intend to sleep in—without talking to me about it," she said with biting sarcasm. "Unless you merely felt we needed a change of interior scenery, I can't imagine why you would do that."

"It's ... ah, it's just that Arl Eamon's with us now," he said desperately. "I ... well, I haven't spent much time with him since I was 10, and ..."

"You think he can't tell you've grown up? Because you hardly look like a 10-year-old. Although sometimes you act like one." She eyed him up and down. Alistair couldn't tell if she was angry or confused or what. Truthfully, neither could she.

His mouth opened and closed several times. How could he tell her that he was so afraid of losing her that he had a hard time being with her at all? It didn't even make sense to him, put that way. He wanted to touch her, to hold her, to tell her—and himself—that everything would be all right. But he wouldn't believe it, she wouldn't believe it, and in her present mood she wouldn't even accept it. "I— I'm just not comfortable, you know ... sharing a tent with a woman. In front of the Arl," he clarified. Since he'd been comfortable enough all this time.

"So now that we're with the Arl, there's no more, um, being together?" Her cheeks turned pink. She wasn't really any more comfortable talking about physical intimacy than he was, a fact he found both surprising and endearing.

"No!" he said quickly, then more calmly, "No, we can still ... be together. Just not so obviously, is all."

Thora's brown eyes studied him seriously. She believed he was truly uncomfortable sharing a bed with her in front of the Arl, who was the closest thing to a father he had, other than Duncan. Duncan probably wouldn't have minded, she thought with amusement. He'd always struck her as a practical man—a 'do your duty and when it's done do what you want' type. The Arl might be more bound by convention. But she could see the fear in Alistair's eyes, and she knew this was the beginning, that he was starting to distance himself, slowly but surely. It was her own fault, she knew that, but that didn't make it easier to handle. Thora reached out and put her hand over his, stilling the hammer he was using on the tent stake. "So, um, if you're all done here, would you like to help me ... fetch some water?"

"Water?" He looked over at the full buckets sitting next to the fire.

"Well, you never know when you might ... need some," she said, quirking an eyebrow at him suggestively.

"Oh! Water." He swallowed as her fingers gently caressed his wrist. "Definitely. Might need quite a bit," he said. One big hand reached out, touching the coils of braids at the back of her head. He wanted to ask her to take it down, but he knew what a production that would be. And he didn't know if he deserved to ask.

As they made their way through the trees, looking for a suitably private spot, both of them felt the bittersweet sting—from now on, every time they were together might well be the last time. Who could blame them if that made it even hotter than usual?