Alistair/Cousland has always been my favorite Origins pairing but I never really thought the death of her entire family was brought up enough.
I always figured that would be slightly significant. So here's my attempt at being angsty and deep/thoughtful/what-have-you. Expect short chapters and erratic updates! (And do alert me of any nasty typos you happen across.) I wouldn't be surprised if something like this had been written before but I love Alistair/Cousland too much to resist. ]

Disclaimer: I own nothing!

Enjoy. :)

Smoke, riding the glow of the fires set to her ancestral home.

She felt the heat sink into her skin, settle like a cloak around her shoulders. Rage boiled and seared her bones, cauterizing the raw wound in the empty space of her heart. The flames banked in her eyes and left behind the charred black remains of who she had been.

She'd had a sense of humor, once. She remembered distant times of laughing with her family. Her father. Her mother. The woman Fergus had loved and wed, and her brother's little boy. The memories couldn't hurt her anymore. Instead, they broke off like tiny shards of ice in her chest, splintering until they touched every vein.

Now, as she listened to this man – was he truly a warden, a former templar? - she searched and fought to find even a sliver of the woman who knew how to laugh. When her tight expression failed to shift, he broke off with an uneasy chuckle of his own.

She envied him the sound. Her own throat was dry and broken from disuse, no good for laughing.

He stuck out his hand. She took it from habit and when her cold fingers touched his warm ones, some of the frozen chips in her blood began to thaw.

Alistair watched her more than he liked. The other recruits were of a like mind as they tramped through the Wilds. They stumbled and tripped over themselves every time she dispatched a darkspawn with cool efficiency.

Quick swings of the blade. One. Two. Another genlock fell before her.

Her face was ever unchanging amongst the carnage, a porcelain mask on an animated doll with black eyes.

He expected her to fall apart with every blow she took and found himself surprise when she bled instead of shattered. Half of him believed she wasn't real. The other half cringed away from the vast emptiness he glimpsed behind her dark eyes. Ice and shadow – like soul had been sucked from flesh.

As they limped back towards the camp at Ostagar, he caught sight of a tiny petal between her clenched fingers. Virginal white, stained deep red at the center.

Her mask had yet to fall but he thought, perhaps, that there was something left of her to save after all.

She was off by herself again.

Alistair watched as she leaned against her dog, shoulder to shoulder, and stared up at the full moon. Clouds crossed the sky frequently, but she never pulled her eyes away. As though she could peer through the cover to the bright orb behind them – as though the clouds didn't exist at all.

Since they'd awakened after the battle at Ostagar, she had said little, her voice cracking apart at the seams. He nearly expected her throat to bleed with the effort those few words took, to split open and give reason for her anguish. His own suffering ate at his insides, but he couldn't bring himself to share it with her.

Seeking a distraction, he cast his eyes across the camp fire. His face twisted. Morrigan watched them both with hawkish eyes, a yellow gaze that saw too much and revealed too little. She was like a monster from a child's tale. He didn't like her, hadn't from the start, but Elissa hadn't argued over her presence and Alistair found himself agreeable to most of what she did – if only to avoid poking at the hairline breaks he saw forming across her facade.

The crackling of the fire was barely enough to break the heavy silence that settled over their camp each night. He could see the oppressive weight of it bearing down on their de facto leader, her frail shoulders buckling under it and realized he was staring at her again.

Knowing he was going to regret it, he hauled himself away from the comforting light of the flame and shuffled awkwardly to sit by her side. She did not turn her head to look at him – did not acknowledge him in any way. Her mabari's eyes flickered, a warning, but the hound gave her a gentle nudge.

"You know," he rambled, "They say sleeping gets easier a few weeks after the Joining."

Finally, a reaction. Her black gaze moved, so slowly he could nearly hear the creaking of tendon and muscle working beneath her thin skin. She said nothing, but the harsh slash of her lips eased and something like interest softened the severe pull of her brow.

"The nightmares," he continued, easier now that he'd earned her attention, "They're worse just after but they usually fade." He leaned back on his braced arms and looked up at the sky, trying to see what she found so enthralling in it.

She shifted then, her body turning towards him. Her mabari – what was its name again? - lay down at her side, tucking its wide muzzle into her lap. Alistair noticed for the first time that it was still speckled with blood, as was her armor and half of her face. He shuddered. It looked black against her pale skin and seemed to writhe in the flickering shadows cast by the distant flame.

"I dream of many things," she said suddenly, and he started in surprise, nearly toppling over. Her voice was a whisper, a faint breath in the night. "Not all of them are of the darkspawn. I doubt they will let me rest," she drawled, and he was shocked to hear a hint of wry humor in her rasping, hollow voice.

Dark bruises colored the skin beneath her eyes, but for once she looked like more than a walking corpse. There was something like color in her black irises. Perhaps they had once been a warm brown rather than char black. She leaned back, mimicking his pose, and seemed content to watch the clouds as they passed over the moon.