When I Look at You (a Dragon Age fanfiction)

North

Those of the team who had been inside Orzammar and endured the Deep Roads were so exhausted by the ordeal that it took two days of mostly sleeping to restore their energy enough to get back on the road.

Once they were moving at last, everyone's spirits seemed to rise, the journey down the mountain taking only half the time the journey up had. Oghren seemed to be fitting in just fine, talking knives with Zevran, trying to persuade Wynne to share her knowledge of wine with him, scandalizing and amusing Leliana with bawdy stories, dropping enough food at mealtimes for a dozen mabari.

Una had been too exhausted—and too wrapped up in Alistair—to spend much time with the dwarf, but she tried to hang back and match her steps to his during the march. It wasn't easy; her legs came up to his shoulder, a fact he pointed out salaciously a number of times.

Alistair, whose jealous streak showed every time Zevran displayed the slightest sign of gallantry toward Una, seemed amused by Oghren's far more obvious remarks. Una was relieved—the last thing they all needed was more tension.

One day, as they were moving along the muddy north road, she looked up to see a signpost ahead of her, and stopped stockstill in the road, only to be sent staggering by a blow from behind.

"Oof! Not that I mind runnin' into that particular part of yer anatomy, Warden, but you could give a fella some warnin' next time. Nearly broke my nose," Oghren complained.

Una ignored him. She was too busy trying to breathe, staring at the sign hanging above her, which read "Highever ". So close to home! Tears filled her eyes. She wanted nothing more than to turn down that path and run all the way into the city and inside the castle walls, to find herself held tenderly in her mother's arms and scolded by Nan and tormented by Oren. But none of them were there anymore, she reminded herself fiercely. She and Grenli—and possibly Fergus, if he still lived somewhere in the Wilds, an increasingly unlikely hope—were all that were left. But what if someone had survived inside the castle? Pictures flashed across her mind, of Rory Gilmore holding the doors closed with the last remnant of his men; of Nan's body sprawled across those of her servants in the kitchens; of poor little Oren with his tiny hand reaching toward his mother; of Una's own mother, clutching a little dagger in a brave and doomed attempt to hold off Howe's men as long as she could. No one was left. No one.

She wasn't aware of having fallen to her knees, sobbing, in the middle of the road, until she felt Alistair's strong, warm hands on her shoulders, lifting her up and drawing her against him.

"Let me go, let me go, I want to go home," she heard herself crying.

"It's not there anymore. You know that," Alistair whispered into her hair. "You'll only torture yourself."

She knew he was right, she knew it, even if she couldn't quite get herself to understand it. Una buried her face in his chest as he led her past the route marker.

She had regained some of her composure as they began to approach the next turn-off north, but Alistair positioned himself next to her anyway, to make sure he was within reach if her grief overcame her again. It had broken his heart to see her weeping in the middle of the road that way. If there was any way he could have taken some of that pain onto his own shoulders, he would have done so.

A small campfire was burning near the northern road, with a man seated next to it eating something from a bowl.

Oghren lifted his head and sniffed the air. "What's that? Smells like ... rocks."

Zevran smothered a grin as Wynne replied, "I believe it's porridge. Made of oats," she added when Oghren frowned at her.

"I'm not eatin' that stuff."