“Morning,” said a much more familiar voice. Careful, but not timid. 

“Oh,” she blinked herself out of her fancying, and turned to her left. Cole stood by as she expected. He, too, looked out at the abundant goods.

“Good morning, Cole,” she replied. Her smile was more comfortable, this time. “Have you come around to see what the traders have brought in?”

“Yes. Two are happy to be off the road. Too many bumbling fruits that roll and spill. They are glad to be rid of them for a time.”

A gentle laugh. “I can see that.” 

Where once Cole’s insights had seemed abruptly incisive, they were now more like facets of him she wanted to more of. Yes, he often spoke of everyone but himself, but that didn’t mean he had nothing to share. In fact his observations shone a window into him that was likely truer than most.

“You like the look of the apples,” he observed, once again snapping her out of her spinning thoughts.

“I do! Yeah,” she answered with a brief chuckle. “I love the colors, not just theirs, but all of them.” 

Rather than answer, Cole approached the cart. Once there he reached quietly into one of the half-open crates and pulled out an apple so deeply red it looked like it had been painted so. 

“Red,” he described it, “red is not a good color for so many reasons.” He spoke as he turned around, holding it cupped in his hands. 

“No, I guess not.”

“You still like it. You wish they did not take the good colors and turn them bad. It isn’t fair, now you dream of it with fear rather than fondness.”

Heidi’s smile fell. The dream he spoke of wasn’t one she had last night, or even the night before that. She never just had one bad dream and her nightmares never showed just one face. A few nights ago the theme was a dark, endless hallway in the depths of a fortress. Once it was faces of menacing warhounds. And, between them both, there was one of red.

“You remember,” he observed. 

She blinked and returned his look with a grin. She rubbed her arm, just above her bent elbow. “Do you ever have favorite things that get ruined? Like a mysterious story, but someone gives away the ending or spoils the magic. Or a meal that is so good, but then someone admits there are mushrooms in it, and you hate mushrooms?”

“I do not hate mushrooms, though.”

“Oh, er, fine. Carrots.”

“Carrots? How are carrots bad? And how could one not see them?”

“Fine, then, what do you not like?” She walked up to the wagon and stood beside him. Even she could hear the crossness in her voice. Her mind spun and her arms crossed. It was then she realized how foolish she had been in her metaphor. 

“Agh,” she sighed, “you likely do not need food at all. Forgive me, I shouldn’t have assumed.”

They were wordless, side-by-side for a while. Skyhold buzzed and hummed around them as if they were frozen, statues around whom everyone else lived. In this state Heidi felt anything but lifeless, however; in fact, she felt more attuned to the act of being alive. He always ensured thus. Being frustrated seemed like a futile endeavor. His presence brought her as much comfort as his words brought agitation. 

“Inquisitor?” 

With a steady breath her eyes fell on the damned apples again. They still looked beautiful. “I am sorry, Cole, I--”

“No need to be sorry.” He side-stepped closer to her but then held his arm out to the pile from which he took the apple. Restored on the top it looked like the King of all the rest. It did not shake, nor did the lot topple or stumble. Cole’s gentility ensured it. When his hand fell away, he joined them both behind his back. Heidi realized her piece meal grin had grown into a smile. 

“Red is a good color, Inquisitor,” he added. “Do not be afraid to love it. Love brings comfort where people feel as though the world could never favor them.”

Suddenly the air seemed even chillier than before, particularly against her cheeks and temples. She rolled her shoulder, her posture straightening up as the rush of spinning, splendid butterflies did what they do best in the pit of her stomach. Luckily for her though, if she never said anything, no one would know. He wouldn’t know. Oh, but wait. He could, and would. 

She pivoted on the heel of her boot so as to step away with new urgency. “Well, I--”

“There it is!” he interrupted, speaking nearly the same moment she did. Confused, Heidi stopped her retreat and faced him. He was looking at her pointedly, not directly in the eyes -- he rarely ever did that -- but just below. The bridge of her nose and cheeks.

“There is what?” she asked, letting out a light, brief chuckle. 

“The color,” he answered. “The red you call beautiful. It is on you, now. It is you.”

It is you. 

Nothing could prevent her from the degree to which the color he spoke of intensified in her complexion. She placed her hand against her left cheek to show practical modesty. With a shake of her head and kindly dismissive laugh, she backed away.

“Good day to you, Cole. Enjoy the rest of the...the colors,” she wished, noticing the twitch in his lip that could almost be a grin. She turned around to face her path back up the stairs. 

Others ... Her head turned sharply to the right, seeking those friends who had accompanied her tonight, hope rising for some kind of deliverance. Hope that died as she found what she sought. 

Leliana, impaled against the wall on a terror’s claws, blood seeping from her mouth, a hidden dagger clattering from her fingers. Josephine, her back split open to the spine, lying over the dismembered body of her little sister. Cullen, still standing when she saw him but cut down just as he turned to find her. Vivienne, encased in ice in the act of raising her hand to cast. Varric, tumbling headless down the steps, Bianca in pieces at his side. Blackwall, Iron Bull, Sera, Cassandra, Solas ... all dead or dying. There was no help to be found.

“They’re not dead.”

Her body jerked in shock, hearing that familiar voice in her mind. Cole ... where was he? How had he survived when so many others hadn’t? Was he safe? Had Corypheus found him?

“Shifting, twisting, darkness in darkness, but it’s all in your head. I can’t get in. You have to come out.”

“You can’t get in?”

Confused, Heidi frowned, looking around her with a more discerning gaze. The rifts were ... odd; not as she remembered them being. More ethereal, less real; the demons more vivid, more visceral than she knew they were. And Corypheus hadn’t been at Halamshiral. Florianne had been working on his behalf. 

“Help me,” she whispered, trying to find the edges that would let her escape this nightmarish place, and again, Cole’s voice, Cole’s presence, reached out to her. 

“Come to me. It isn’t far. They can’t hurt you.”

It seemed to take all her effort, but somehow Heidi gathered her will, forcing the blood and death from her mind. Darkness overtook her for just a moment, held at bay by the sense of Cole’s closeness ... and she opened her eyes to find that liquid blue gaze just inches from her own, bathed in moonlight.

“Cole.”

His name was little more than a ghost on her breath, an instant of calm before the storm hit, driving tears from her eyes as the terror of her dream took hold of her. She curled in on herself, but he was too close to let her close him out completely, pushing her knees down, stroking his hand over her shoulder, through her blonde curls, tracing a fingertip down the scar beneath her eye. 

“Dreams can’t hurt you,” he told her softly. “Not when I am here. I am always in your dreams when they turn bad.”

“I couldn’t wake up,” she whispered, shock lending a tremble to her voice even as she fought to restore a little of her own calm. 

“You came back,” he answered, still calm and soothing. “You came back to me. I was here, and you came back.”

“But what if I dream like that again?”

Cole’s gaze was clear and certain, the strangely comforting sense of confidence that hung about him somehow reaching out to envelop her as well. 

“I will stay,” he promised her faithfully. “Drifting, dreaming, demons dancing on the edge of darkness. Dreams don’t scare me. I’ll hold them back.”

She stared into his eyes, wondering how he had known she was suffering in nightmares when she had not. But she didn’t ask him, not when his hands were warm on her skin, soothing away the last of the pain and fear that had infused her when her moment of triumph had turned to the worst possible failure before her eyes. 

“He wants you to be afraid,” he said, quiet but certain, his fingers gentle on her cheek. “Corypheus fears what you are, what he made you. You hold the key to ending all his plans, his schemes. You hold the keystone to his great castle of chaos, and he does not control you.”

She sniffled a little, smiling at this mental imagery. 

“So all I need to do is pull away at the right moment, and everything he has comes crashing down?” she asked. 

Cole’s eyes held a hidden smile, one she was sure no one had ever seen but herself. A smile that belonged only to her, and only in these soft moments when they were completely alone together. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but Cole was the key to her own confidence, she was sure. Without him, she could have given in to those nightmares too many times already.

“Smiling on the inside,” he said, pointing out that he could feel her emotions, her pain. “Shining brightly, almost too bright to see. Like looking at the sun, but you don’t burn my eyes. I like it when you shine for me.”

She blushed, pretty color suffusing her pale cheeks for a moment in the moonlight, unwilling for this quiet stillness between them to end. Her hand unfolded, reaching to tangle her fingers with his. 

“Will you stay with me?”

He seemed surprised by the question, but answered with warmth, raising their joined hands until the tangle of fingers lay between them on the pillow. He squeezed gently, stroking his thumb over hers. 

“Marry me,” Alistair said again, sinking down to one knee now. “Xaviera Surana, I don’t care what the fools here say or think or do. I’m not going to be king of Ferelden if it means I can’t have you at my side. And I know things after that are uncertain - Maker, I’m sure uncertain is an understatement - but I don’t care. I believe in us. I want this forever. I want nothing more than this. Please say something. This floor is very cold and it hurts my knee.”

Xaviera laughed, and cupped his handsome face, took in how it looked even more bronze in the light of the estate’s torches.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, yes, yes, yes -”

She thought she would keep saying yes forever, entranced by the sound, by everything it represented, but Alistair surged up from his place on the floor, and carried her with him, crushing her against his warm broad body and kissing her full on the mouth.

“Marry me,” he said again, breathlessly.

“No,” she said, laughing.

“Too late, you already said yes.”

“Then stop asking!”

“What should I do with my mouth instead, my lady?”

How far they’d already come from their shy blushing, their stammering, their awkward jokes. How confident Alistair was now, carrying her to her bed, pushing her nightclothes aside, planting kisses all over her cheeks and neck and breasts and belly and thighs and finally between them, where she wanted him most. How easy it was to sink into him, to let go, to let him wind her higher and higher and higher, to not care at all who heard her as he did so. Xaviera had hoped and hoped, all her life, no matter what was happening, even when hoping was hard, when it seemed like there would never be any reward. And here he was - tall and handsome and funny and perfect and hers and she was over the edge now, falling apart, shaking against him.

When she opened her eyes again, Alistair was above her, looking down at her, smiling.

“Marry me,” he said again, quietly now.

“Yes,” she replied, just as quietly, welcoming him in.