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Pel just reaches up and tugs him down into a strong hug, encompassing him as much as her tiny arms can. And she is strong. A lifetime of camp chores assured that.

"What," Alistair says before he realizes what's happening; when he does he cuts the question short, and there's a moment of awkward, half-uncooperative stiffness while he feels ridiculous about being a fairly enormous human presently handled and tugged by a small elf, but only a moment. The awkwardness lingers, though, just not the stiffness. When he straightens up he smiles again. "Thanks," he says, and, "I'm fine. Are you fine?"

Awkward Hug Elf strikes again. She folds her arms against herself, blissfully unaware.

"I'm fine. I..." Words are also awkward. "You want to get out of here a bit? Just for the change of scenery. We could justify it by bringing back some kindling, if we need to."

He doesn't look back toward the fortress behind him. That's something. But he does shift backward a little bit, one heel sliding back, like he's on an invisible leash, if the invisible leash were made of his own worry and not being held by anyone in particular. Certainly not Zevran. Zevran probably wants the break. Alistair can see himself being obnoxious, like an out of body experience, but he's yet to be able to make himself stop.

"Isn't that what the books are for?" he says, which is better than no, maybe, if Pel isn't touchy about book burnings.

She sees the hesitation, sees that one foot move like a chain is pulling him back, and decides baby steps might be better. She'll offer both, and let him choose.

"Or we could sit in the garden and talk, if you'd rather. Or right here. That way you can be nearby."

Anyone can see Alistair and Zevran are close, and if Pel knows anything, it's that when something horrible happens to someone, it also happens to the people they're closest to.

Saying right here would be ridiculous. Alistair fights himself over it for a second or two, then says, "Garden sounds nice."

She moves to thread her arm through his and walks him to the garden. It's a nice scene, aside from Sina's little tent. Pel can't help but stop here and there to give some of the plants an extra boost with magic, something the plants are used to getting from Sina. But they never sit down. Walking keeps worried bodies feeling like they're doing something.

She plans to be silent for a few minutes. If Alistair wishes to fill that silence, she will listen.

She gets maybe ten seconds, after the plants, before he blurts, "You know, we met because he was trying to kill us," sort of. Putting on a show of it at least. "We had to knock him around some to make him stop, so the first time we spoke he was lying there bleeding in the dirt, and he was. He was funny. I didn't trust him at all." Things he doesn't tell anyone anymore, because it was forever ago and no one cares about those details and this one, in particular, he's ashamed of now. "I thought Cousland was mad for letting him come along. But from the very first day, he was..." Funny. He's already said. Funny, companionable, kinder than he claimed, all while dealing with things beyond the Blight that Alistair didn't know about then and won't divulge now. He tries to encapsulate all of that with, "He talked to Jonas' mabari like it was a person. Whole conversations."

He's talking about Zevran like he's dead—like he's lost, at least—and Zevran would hate it. Or maybe right now he wouldn't care. Maybe he'd agree.

"If they beat that out of him, I'm going to burn down Antiva City."

His tone strains toward self-aware jest—he couldn't, he wouldn't if he could, probably he'll cry more instead—and falls a little short.

She takes a few steps more in silence, framing what she should say in her head first.

"Burning down Antiva City would show a lot of love. And it would make you feel a lot less helpless--that's not a criticism. When something horrible happens to someone you love, it happens to you too. Just...in a different capacity. The same event from a different side. And I know how...how it is when you can't stop something horrible from happening to someone you love. But what you need, and what they need most of all, is for you to listen to what they want. If he asks something of you, even if it's for you to leave him alone, your obedience shows him he's not powerless against his surroundings anymore. And it shows you that the danger is passed, and you don't have to live in fear that something will happen to him. Skyhold's a good place for that. There's a lot of people watching over him now."

It's good advice, probably. He wouldn't really know; he's not presently objective enough to judge. But it's also unsolicited and currently unwelcome, and all it does is make him pull back into himself—nothing blatantly physical, he doesn't step away from her, but he draws up a little straighter and holds himself a little less loosely—and glare at a bush as they pass it.

"He can tell me to leave him alone if he wants me to," he says.

Welp. If Zevran is hinting rather than asking straight out, Pel can't do anything about it. So she goes quiet again, thinking.

"I'm sorry," she says at last, and nothing else. It's her time to listen, not lecture.

Alistair shakes his head in lieu of telling her that it's all right; very little is all right, anymore. But she doesn't need to apologize. He reaches his free hand over to pat the arm she has threaded through his in case the head shake wasn't clear enough. He's quiet for a moment, too, but not for long. He doesn't handle quiet well anymore.

"He's been looking after me since--" he says, and then discards the thought without completing it: he doesn't want to talk about Zevran, really, with the nerve already exposed and twinging, and Pel is missing background information that she's more than earned but that he doesn't particularly want to drop on her out of nowhere. "How's your research coming?"

"Not as well this last while, since Merrick was poisoned." She touches her cheek briefly to his arm, just taking a little comfort as it all comes back, then moving forward. "But Leliana agreed to fund an excursion to an ancient elven temple in Orlais. That's...enormous. The Inquisition leaders have decided my work is important. I mean--my work and Morrigan's, and Merrill's."

Sometimes she's got too much of an ego to remember she's only one of three major researchers of her field within the Inquisition.

The sound Alistair makes isn't a laugh. He's not in the mood. But he does make a sound that isn't entirely mirthless in its pitying skepticism. "You're working with Morrigan? I'm sorry." At least Merrill is cute. "That's great, though--the other parts."

"I like Morrigan. She sets my teeth on edge sometimes, since...no human should talk like they know more about elves than other elves do. But she shares her information willingly, as far as I can tell."

Or maybe, Pel thinks, she is totally misled about Morrigan. Maybe she only shares a fraction of what she knows, and Pel assumes she shares everything just because she shares, period.

"You like--?" Alistair repeats. Never mind the rest of it. He'll grab hold of this; old habits, old patterns, requiring very little effort but enough thought that he doesn't think about other things. "Pel, I thought you were sensible. I trusted you. I feel so betrayed."

"What? I can't like you and Morrigan both?"

"No," Alistair says. "Absolutely not. Ask her; she'll agree."

"A pity. What's wrong with Morrigan?"

"What isn't?"

Her mother is a dragon she asked them to kill. She turns into spiders and does blood magic sex rituals. She spent the entire year of the Blight comparing him unfavorably to dogs and toadstools.

She's done well by Kieran.

"She's not so bad," he says, relenting, with a sideways glance, "if you like coldhearted imperious know-it-alls who may kill you in your sleep. I guess it's down to taste."

"She's incredibly arrogant," Pel allows, "but I've been able to work with her. Emphasis on work, by the way. We have a similar field. But don't worry, I'll protect you from her."

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