Do you remember, remember;

The fog rose around the knight's ankles, swirling as he carried his burden through the woods. His patterned armor, his cloak bearing a long-dead house crest, the bruises around his throat, all of it told as much of a tale as did the woman in his arms. Her auburn hair trailing past his thigh would have caught anyone's eye had the knight let anyone that close. All possible onlookers - foragers, hunters, trespassers in the king's forest - the knight's magic sunk into all of them to force them to forget he'd ever been this way. At most, their traveling would become the story of a dream, but it wouldn't follow after the woman he wanted to hide.

There'd be no peace for her, that much he knew. None of the Andrastes, for all he came across them over the centuries, had ever known the meaning of the word. This was the third of their line he'd watched fall from grace in a blaze of flame and pain, and likely she wouldn't be the last, but unlike her predecessors, there would’ve been no ashes left to rise from had he not intervened.

It wasn’t a pretty metaphor. He’d made those ashes and smothered her to death in them so that there’d be something vaguely resembling her at the end of it. She still came out twisted and inhuman with the limbs of a monster-to-be, and there was nothing left of her to mourn underneath.

He considered it a death of the self when the slate of memory was wiped completely clean. He didn’t take literally everything – what would be the point of taking language, basic history, the foundations of reason? – but he took every reason she viciously held against her chest to corrupt and seek revenge on those who took her loved one away.

He looked up at the blank white sky, his breath clouding the air. He could empathize with what he saw that night, but it didn’t stop him from taking everything she had and calling it mercy.

He’d thought bringing her to a mutual acquaintance well-versed in memory issues and avoidance of the Order would be a sufficient place for her to restart. It’d be a good thought, had he not gleaned the way to Aleister’s abode several years ago, during an attack, amidst said memory issues that might not’ve been accurate.

.....

He stopped his melodramatic walk through the fog and considered that he might be lost. Where were those floating eye familiars when he needed them?