Author's Note: I recently completed Dragon Age: Origins, and the song in the credits by 30 Seconds to Mars inspired me to try my hand at writing something. I'm not fond of the ending, but I think for my first foray in to the Dragon Age world, it's not as bad as it could have been. The warden in question is Idarith, my elven mage. I don't mention her by name because really, if you wanted her to be, she could be any female mage, but I wrote it with her in mind. She and Zevran are off rebuilding the Grey Wardens together, but this is, what I imagine to be, a defining moment in their relationship. Reviews are appreciated, and please be kind!
Blood stung his eyes. The substance stung against his skin even as it dried, chipping and flaking as his face twisted in a grimace. His arms felt like lead, and with his fingers numb, he had no idea how the sword and knife were still in his grip. He could hear her breathing next to him, loudly, painfully. She was pale, so ashen that she appeared to have walked straight out of the Fade to haunt the battlefield.
Her staff seemed to be the only thing supporting her, and her usually meticulously kept robes were torn and singed and bloodied. Even for someone fighting from a distance, she'd been unable to stay back for long; they had been utterly and completely overwhelmed. But against all odds, here they stood, facing the trembling form of the archdemon amongst the rubble.
He started to approach her, to offer his arm, anything to drive away the stark, empty look in her eyes, but a mighty shudder from the creature before them stole his attention. She left his sight but for a moment, his gaze turned to the archdemon as it reared it's head. The clatter of wood on stone, louder than it should have been, and she was moving.
Zevran had always laughed at people who claimed that they could pin-point the exact moment they realized how they felt for someone. He was man who made it his priority to follow his desires, and he did not pretend not to be privy to his fondness for the warden. But as she moved away from him, the sword in her hand even as Alistair yelled at her to stop, his heart stuttered to a cold stop for a scant second.
It was lunging for her, and he knew that she was strong, the strongest woman he'd ever known, but she was a mage, not a warrior, and he was crying out, although it was inaudible over the scream of the beast as she plunged the sword through it's skull. The pillar of light engulfed her, and he remembered the fear in her eyes, the trepidation, and unwillingness to accept the life of an unborn child in exchange for her own.
The explosion knocked him off his feet, and he was certain that he'd broken an arm when he landed, but even with his vision spinning dangerously, he was on his feet stumbling through the rubble to where she lay, collapsed on the creature's neck, tears streaming down her cheeks as her eyes stared at the sky, unfocused.
"I'm sorry." Her voice was hollow, but as she looked at him, the calm, the distance from the situation fractured, and her face crumpled as her voice rose in volume. "I'm so sorry."
He didn't care if she'd sacrificed every elf in the alienage, she was alive, and he'd never be able to forgive himself if she'd been anything but. He half knelt, half fell next to her, pulling the trembling form in to his arms. His armor had to be cutting in to her cheek, but she didn't seem to care, her tears and blood smearing against his skin as she hid from everything and everyone but him.
Zevran knew, that day, that he would follow his warden to the ends of the Earth and back, so long as he never had to watch the woman he loved run towards death again.
