At first, she thinks it’s a dream.
The world, these days, is wretched and cruel. A Blight creeping toward them, the sick and rot of the taint spreading across the land and the people; the dead rising, denied any hope of peace while they tore their families to pieces with their own bony hands; her father, trapped, no doubt murdered, in the castle where his old friend slept and would not wake. And her friends, dead, slandered — had Eleanor and Bryce begged for their children’s lives? Had Lily suffered? Had Ellis —
— she cannot think of Ellis.
So when she hears the echo of his voice in Redcliffe’s Chantry she thinks it a dream. Perhaps a gift from Andraste, in thanks for her first real attempt at prayer, or rather a punishment for the years she spent so close to the Chantry in Amaranthine without any shred of real belief. And when she lifts her head to look for the source, there’s no one there, only whispered mentions of Grey Wardens and the promise of their aid.
When she hears it again, she’s prepared. The leather gloves she’s trying to fit on fall from her hands and she ignores them, and she takes off in a run, dust kicking up from beneath her feet. She could swear it’s him. The hair is the same dark mess of curls she’d once combed the knots from with her fingers, one evening in Highever when they had slipped past his parents and her own to sneak to the turrets and watch the stars, his head in her lap, her back to the stone. The hands, now free of the no-doubt ill-fitting gauntlets that must match the armor he wears, are certainly the same hands that covered her mouth when she dissolved into helpless giggles at sunrise when they tried to sneak back in.
And his voice. She would know that voice anywhere.
She’s throwing herself into him before he’s fully turned to face her, arms around his neck, a hand stealing into those curls, Astoria on her toes to reach him. She’s been in mourning for him — she’s been plotting Howe’s slow and painful death, certain that the accusations of treachery are false, because how could they deserve such a fate — she’s been thinking of herself very nearly as a widow, miserable at the thought of never seeing him again —
When she pulls back from him it’s only to take his face in her hands and stare at him, tears spilling onto her cheeks in a rare and unconstrained display of emotion. Her heart is swelling with relief. Her hands are shaking against his skin. (He might have been her husband, sooner than later if their parents had their way, but practically since their meeting he has been her friend and she has loved him as well and as wholly as she could love anyone, has shared countless secrets with him, has felt his loss like an open wound.)
She draws his face down to her and presses a furious kiss to his forehead, ignoring the curious stares of the strangers around him. They have had him for Maker knows how long; now she’ll have her turn. Astoria brushes an errant curl back, then lets out a quiet, wet laugh.
“They told me you were dead.”
(And suddenly she finds that she barely cares about Redcliffe and the walking dead,)
