The Truth Sets You Free

Title: The Truth Sets You Free

Characters: F!Amell, Anders, Nathaniel Howe, Oghren Kondrat, Velanna

Words: 1,039

Disclaimer: I own nothing of the Dragon Age universe but my games and strategy guides. This is just me making a mess in the sandbox.

Summary: Elena Amell and Anders have a long conversation involving her and Alistair’s child…that slowly resolves into one involving them and one single encounter in the Tower that they both recall fondly.

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“You cannot go out in your condition!” shouted Anders as he stormed into the office. Elena looked up calmly from her paperwork and leaned back in her chair, folding her hands demurely over the now nine month swell of her belly. She let him stand there, breathing hard for a moment, before she spoke.

“I don’t intend to, Anders. It is my full intention to send a party out under Nathaniel to try and find this opening into the Deep Roads. Oghren and Velanna will go with him.” Shaking her head, she asked, “What made you think I was going to go out myself?”

Her fellow mage deflated a bit and shrugged. “I don’t know…I just…I’m used to you not listening to me.”

Sighing, Elena pushed herself up out of chair and pulled her voluminous robes about her before she walked up to him. Reaching up to touch his face, she said softly, “I’ve been listening for the past two months, Anders. I haven’t left the grounds of the Vigil except to go to Amaranthine since we recruited Justice.”

“I’m glad you listened on that,” he grumbled as he lifted his hands to touch her belly and she felt healing magic across her skin, assessing her state and the state of the child. “You nearly had him early because of that jaunt of ours in the Fade.”

She merely hummed in acknowledgment of his words then blinked as she found him leaning in close to her.

“Anders?”

“I…I’ve never forgotten that time in the library, Len.”

“Oh, Anders…I…I can’t.”

He pulled back, looking affronted. “Can’t because you’re still in love with him? With the King who doesn’t have the balls to tell the world he loves a mage?”

Elena frowned at that and said sternly, “Anders, it’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like, Len? Why’d he leave you to raise a child on your own? Why won’t you…” He lowered his voice as he realized he was started to shout. “Why won’t you let someone that wants to be there, be there for you?”

She stared at him for a moment, utterly surprised at this revelation, then said, “Anders…this child…it’s not just Alistair’s.”

“What does that mean?”

“The Warden that kills the Archdemon isn’t supposed to survive, Anders. This child…he’s the product of a spell that a friend who died during the Blight was going to do. I had her grimoire after and I couldn’t…I couldn’t let him die because I know Alistair would’ve taken that blow. And he couldn’t let me die.”

She realized that she was crying now with telling this story because she realized that part of her had always wanted more with Anders than what she’d had in the Tower. It had taken her a long time to warm to Alistair because Tower relationships were so…flippant…and she’d been raised on thinking that. As Anders pulled her into a careful hug, she continued talking.

“This child…he has Urthemiel’s soul. Uncorrupted by the taint. And I don’t know what’s that’s going to mean for me or him.”

“It means you’re going to need even more help than I originally thought,” muttered Anders. “The Archdemon’s soul in the King’s bastard. You still don’t do things by halves, Len.”

Elena managed a choked laugh at that then tilted her head back to look up at him, jumping slightly when her nose bumped against his chin. “One day the Chantry is going to hear about him and they’ll send templars to try and take him from me. You know they will.” As Anders tightened his grip around her, she continued, “I’ll have to run then, leave everything I know, and I can’t…I can’t fall in love and lose it again. Not like that. I don’t have it in me to do that again, Anders.”

He sighed into her hair then breathed, “I do know how to run away and not get caught if that’s what you’re afraid of.”

“Don’t. Maker, Anders, don’t…don’t tempt me.”

One of his hands  – free of Alistair’s sword calluses but still rough and scarred from escape attempts and mishaps – rose to touch her face and Elena twisted her head slightly at the same time Anders lowered his head. Now they were face-to-face and she could see the seriousness in his hazel eyes and with his hand touching bare skin, could remember that one short tryst and their many long times so much better. She closed her eyes as she breathed in the scent of him, the Fade and lyrium and stone scent of the Tower mixing with the fresh air and winter grass scent that was their freedom as Wardens.

“The Wardens won’t protect us if we run,” she whispered, still trying to resist, still trying to convince herself that she could do this alone. Part of her knew, though, that she couldn’t, had known deep down since the ritual itself that she couldn’t.

And that little shred of the younger her that remained, who had agreed with Anders and loved him that little bit that the Tower had allowed her to feel, shouted that she wanted this, needed this.

“Then we’ll just have to protect ourselves and him, won’t we?” he asked. Anders pressed a quick, gentle kiss against her lips and added, “I always wanted more than that little moment with you, Len. Give me a chance?”

Elena felt torn between ‘yes’ and ‘no’. Then she frowned and asked, “Can you really do it? Can you run again and raise another man’s child?”

“I can always run. And what’s the boy to know? I’d be his father, you’d be his mother, and we might even give him a sibling or two if we get lucky.”

She stared up at him for a moment then lifted one hand to stroke his cheek, laughing a little hysterically as she nodded several times. “Okay,” said Elena when she was able to choke down the laughter, “okay. A chance, Anders. A second chance, you and I. We’ll see where it takes us.”

Anders smiled broadly at that and leaned down to kiss her as he breathed, “Hopefully a long way.”

And, to her own surprise, Elena didn’t think of Alistair at all as his lips met hers.