Introduction:
This is an unpleasant story, part of a challenge I set myself after Cadsuane (aka Lady Damodred) and then Addai wrote two excellent stories about Alistair's end.
Since they had the courage to actually do this and I had been thinking about the same thing for some time, I decided I should not be left behind. Their stories are probably better.
Do not get us wrong, I am sure I speak for us all when I say we love Alistair, but when you spend a long time hanging out with a fictional character you begin to realise you want to explore every intimate detail about him, past and present, even his potential deaths. Naughty girls that we all are, we couldn't help but do it and then, of course, write it down.
I also owe a debt to Miri1984 and especially the first chapter of her epic "Shades of Grey", all these tales are easy to find, they are linked in my favourites here.
This is going to hurt
"Either to be a hero or to grovel in the mud-there was nothing between. That was my ruin, for when I was in the mud I comforted myself with the thought that at other times I was a hero, and the hero was a cloak for the mud: for an ordinary man it was shameful to defile himself, but a hero was too lofty to be utterly defiled, and so he might defile himself."
Fyodor Dostoevsky Notes from the Underground
This is going to hurt, Alistair thought, this is going to hurt a lot…
He had fought the guards so he was a mess. His mouth was bleeding, he had spat out a few broken teeth, his body ached, his hands were puffed-up, his left eye swollen shut, a rib might be cracked, from the pain he knew there would be cuts and bruises everywhere… There was a throbbing lump on one side of his head.
Because they had seen him in his fine armour, they probably thought he was soft. Well, he had shown them what for, almost two years of daily fighting for real had toughened him, even when it came down to sheer brute force, fists and kicking as eventually it did.
They had let themselves go, garrisoned in Denerim all the while, his last shout before they knocked him unconscious had been: "Think you can resist the darkspawn horde, think again, you can't even take me…" Well, obviously they could, when there were fifteen or so of them, "You're dead, all of you dead…"
More than a cell, it is a cage. He reckons he must be in the basement of Fort Drakon. Not a good place to wake up. Actually, his wonderful plan was now completely awry, because it did not, in fact, involve waking up at all. Ever.
I am so fucked...
Alistair is only wearing the thin undershirt, breeches and smallclothes. It is just a quite small rectangle, grey masonry walls on two sides, bars, bars and locked door on the other. No cot. No bucket. Perhaps a drain? He wants to urinate, badly. He crawls around a bit, why walk when you can crawl? Perhaps not, then.
Straw. Stone floor covered in... He doesn't really want to think about that, and straw.
Well, at least it is lit. There are no less than two sconces with two torches within sight in the passageway outside. So he can see what a dirty, lamentable, state everything's in. Including himself.
The revered Mother would not even enter the tiny cage but remained flapping indecisively, like a wounded stork, outside, wielding her copy of the Chant. It must have been pretty clear that he would have difficulty even rising from where he slumped, collapsed against a wall. She was middle aged with the wary, cynical eyes of one who has seen too many bad things and perhaps has even participated in them. Already he despised her for her cowardice.
"You should make your peace," she said, looking down her sharp nose at him, "So the Maker will receive you…"
He moved his mouth, it was already full of blood again, "I've done a few things…" He croaked. "More than a few, probably," He added. He had to pause to spit the blood out, he could not abide the thought of having to swallow it. She looked away, repelled.
He disregarded his instinct not to trust her. "Rage," he said, "Pride... Fornication… Drunkenness… Violence… Taking the name of the Maker and his Holy Wife in vain…" Her head kept nodding like a marionette's as if she could not wait for him to finish.
When he had nothing more to say or confess, she said, "You are a traitor…"
There was a long silence, he was thinking that over, "Who… who did I betray apart from myself?" He asked her, eventually.
She was not going to play that game, but another one. "It has been decided," she replied, "that you will hang because you are a bastard…"
He looked away. It dawned on him that he had no particular preference, hanging, beheading, the end result was the same, but to bring up, like this, in his final hours the stigma of his illegitimacy, it struck him as cruel.
As if she wanted to rub the point in, she continued, "… and bastards do not merit the sword even should they wield it…" She was silent for a while, but then she added, "However, were you to confess…"
A hook, Alistair thought, "And what form would this 'confession' take?" His voice was a damaged thing, he realised, atonal. It had lost all subtlety and any hint of irony he may have wished to inject into it.
"The words have already been set out, all you would have to do is sign them. Then, Queen Anora, in her mercy will grant you the sword. You will also be allowed to clean yourself up, a fresh change of clothes. Your wounds will be dressed. She may even, in her magnanimity, consent to a private execution…"
"I see…" he whispered. He looked down at his bare feet, they were cut, bruised and filthy, all of him was filthy. He realised she thought he was ignorant, that he probably did not even know how to read, and was easily duped, little wonder, since he was in such a state.
He struggled upright, approached the bars very slowly and painfully, clutched at them to prevent himself falling. Even so, she took a step back.
"Revered Mother…" Alistair said, she looked at him fearfully, "Piss off and leave me in peace…"
"You will be lost, you will become one of the lost, forever wandering the Fade…" she threatened him as she retreated.
He tried to smile. No doubt the result was ghastly, "You disgrace those robes… I think I'll leave it to the Maker to determine the calibre of my soul, not you…"
His next visitor was wholly unexpected.
She glanced at him briefly and turned to one of the guards, "A basin, a washcloth, water… NOW…"
She knelt beside him and wiped the cloth first over his face, then his hair his hands and finally his feet.
"What Morrigan," he mumbled, "Loghain not to your liking? Did he not fall for your wiles? Have you come to gloat?"
"Sneering does not become you, Alistair," she said wringing out the cloth, the water running pink.
Alistair laughed but it quickly ended in a rattle somewhere at the back of his throat, "Do I care now what becomes me? Apparently it has been determined that I will hang because I am a bastard… The sword is too good for a bastard…"
She said. "I cannot assist you to escape."
"I wasn't asking..." he said.
She ploughed on regardless. "The guards have all been told that should you get out their lives are at stake, and there are at least a hundred of them on duty here today. Even the lives of their loved ones may be forfeit, it seems. It is quite common, however, for them to accept bribes to allow people in to see the prisoners, more often than not attractive females, and they are creatures of habit..." There was a little smirk on her face, he recalled how corruption always seemed to amuse her. "The long and the short of it, you die tomorrow…"
He spat blood again. "So it would seem… What do you want, Morrigan?"
"I will not mince my words…"
"Please don't. It's not like you ever have, anyway."
"Your seed."
"My…" He doubled over as laughter began to shake him, and then, almost as soon as he had started, he stopped, "Oh, Maker," He said clutching his stomach, "That hurts, it really does… Why…" but the words became a quiet groan.
Morrigan looked at him dispassionately, her green gold eyes lingering on his face, "You have been forsaken by everyone, and you die tomorrow. You are the last of your line. This is your final chance to reproduce. Why squander it? Who knows? A child might even avenge you… The making of it could certainly afford you a little pleasure in this gloomy place…"
Alistair pulled himself up and leaned back against the wall, his face looked pale and drawn, and glistened with perspiration, "My child…" he gasped, "Another bastard…"
"Here," she said taking a flask from a burlap bag on her belt, "drink this… It will heal you somewhat and give you some strength…" she gave him no choice, opening his mouth and tipping the substance into it. Involuntarily, he swallowed and then turned his face from her, embarrassed. He clasped his hands together, and lowered his head, his chest heaving at every lungful of air.
After a few minutes, he straightened up again. He looked slightly less haggard now, "The child of a bastard and an apostate witch…" he said.
"If you choose to view it that way: Yes." said Morrigan.
He took a deep breath and was surprised to find that it was suddenly painless, "What is your interest here?" he asked.
She explained.
"It will not be harmed?" he asked it seemed to her for the thousandth time.
"No t'will not."
"Nor used..."
"No." He still seemed undecided, his arms wrapped about himself as if he were attempting to physically hold himself together. "Alistair…" She leaned towards him, her intent obvious.
"My mouth is still bleeding… I can't…" Alistair said feebly.
For a moment he felt her warm breath against his face and then her lips were silk smooth against his own. One of her hands settled soothingly on his cheek. He closed his eyes as her soft tongue entered his damaged mouth, fluttering around in there so lightly… Alistair felt himself harden. Then she withdrew as gently as she had approached him.
"Yes," he heard himself say, "yes…"
As he watched she cast aside her cloak, loosened her belt and with one flowing movement pulled her robe off over her head and knelt beside him quite naked. Wordlessly, with long deft fingers she undid the buttons on his shirt and ran her hands over his chest just skimming his skin. There were fresh and angry black/purple contusions there and lacerations. Nevertheless she bowed her head and he felt those lips of hers linger briefly above his heart.
Alistair extended a hand and caught one of her breasts, clasping it, feeling its firm ripeness and then running his thumb back and forth over the taut nipple admiring the clearness of her skin, through which he can see the blue itinerary of her veins. Their lips joined again and this time he returned her kiss, his tongue playing with hers, exploring the sealed, intact, smoothness of her mouth.
Morrigan's hands wandered slowly down his body towards the prizes at his groin.
Alistair broke the kiss and caught her wrists she looked at him and he saw the surprise in her face. Moving his hands to her shoulders and gazing into her green gold eyes, he held her at arms' length and said as tenderly as he could. "Just so we are both clear, there is no love here…"
She smiled, as if acknowledging his words. Alistair stood up, not without some effort, and unlaced his breeches, not without some difficulty, as his hands, too, were swollen and bruised, some of the knuckles distorted. He pulled them down together with his smallclothes, kicking them to one side. Morrigan stood herself, but then bent down to pick up her cloak and with a flourish extended it over the dirty floor of the cell. Then she wrapped her hands around his head and pulled his bruised face towards her breasts.
"Let's get to this," he said eventually, his voice husky.
"There is no rush," She replied, lying back on the cloak. He looked down at her spread at his feet for a few moments, eating her greedily with his eyes. The thought occurred to him that he preferred a rounder figure. Strange, that such quibbles could still persist in the circumstances, but, men set to die on the morrow could not be choosers…
"No love." She echoed his previous words teasingly, opened her legs and bent one knee, showing him a little more of the rosy flesh between them "but still enjoyment to be had…" she said running her hands over herself from her breasts, slightly reddened by his recent ministrations, to her thighs. He wanted to touch her there, to kiss her there, to put himself there...
Alistair knelt between her legs, wishing that his body were clean, whole and unblemished just as it had been a few hours ago, before his world had suddenly been turned upside down, that he could give her his best… But then, and the next thought followed fleet on the feet of the first, if things were as they had been a few hours ago, he would not be here, she would not be here, and neither of them would be in this clinch.
"It may be easier for you if I…" she suggested.
He shook his head, "Let me at least assume the illusion of some control…" he said, "Offer yourself to me…"
"Take me, oh Alistair…" she said with a cynical smile.
Alistair laughed and for the first time noticed that laughter echoed very strangely in this place, as if the walls weren't used to it and didn't know what to do with it.
"What is so funny?" She asked, as if unaware.
"Maker… the games we play…" Alistair said, his shoulders shaking and then the laughter once again became a spasm of pain, immediately casting a shadow over his features.
"The games we play…" He said softly, seriously.
"The stupid, stupid, stupid games we all play…" and suddenly there were tears coursing down his face.
Morrigan, levered herself up, looked into his eyes, kissed him briefly and said, almost as if she really meant it, "Take me Alistair."
He did.
Afterwards lying next to her, Alistair asked, "Will that do?"
"It will suffice." Morrigan responded.
"Well it will have to." Said Alistair testily, "For all your charms, there's no more coming from where that came from…" A bad day for an involuntary double entendre, he thought, as if there were ever a good one. He got up, groaning quietly and eventually found his smallclothes, breeches and shirt. Morrigan also rose and draped her robe over herself and picked up her belt and wrapped it around her waist.
"Alistair…" she said.
"What?" he said, again, he needed the wall for support.
"I have a gift for you…" she handed him a tiny violet flask with gold and emerald reflections, like her eyes...
Holding it in his right palm as if it were a rare, exotic insect he asked her, "What is this?"
"It is the gentlest concoction of its kind I could distil…"
"Tell me what it is, Morrigan," he insisted quietly.
"You will fall into a deep sleep…"
"Sleep…" he echoed as if that were a new and alien concept to him.
"I have adjusted the dosage for your build…"
"But will I ever wake?"
Morrigan looked away, "Not in this world Alistair…"
"Is this my reward?" He asked, "I give you a child and you give me… this…" He said holding it out to her.
"No, I would have given it to you even if you had refused me." She said meeting his gaze. Picking up on his reluctance she added, "I can hold you in my arms while it takes effect, should you wish…" his expression was unreadable, "or leave it with you to consume in private…"
He held it between his thumb and index finger up to the light of the torch in the passageway, the bottle cast a violet reflection over his damaged face.
"There is no dignity in a public execution, Alistair", she said very quietly, "No nobility in hanging, your bowels…"
"I know." He interrupted, "You forget I have seen as many hanged men as you…" he said still looking at the bottle as if mesmerized.
"Take the draught then, or at least keep it and think about it…"
Smiling at her he held the flask out at arms' length… and dropped it. The tiny fragile bottle shattered into more than a dozen crystal shards. A clear liquid seeped into the filth on the floor, lost forever.
"I can get you another one," said Morrigan looking down at it, "I can arrange for one of the guards…"
"So eager, Morrie, you seem so eager…"
She laughed lightly "It is not what you think," she said, "I do not wish you dead, Alistair, at least not tomorrow and not like that…"
"I believe you," he said.
"But you are going to refuse me…"
"Yes."
"May I ask why?"
He clenched and opened his hands, feeling the bruises and the tension put on the tendons by the swellings and hearing the damaged knuckles crack alarmingly.
"I need the pain," he said.
"The Templar reasserts himself…" commented Morrigan.
"It seems he does…" Alistair smiled grimly.
"Pain is unnecessary." She opined.
"It is not." Suddenly he feels very adamant about that, very clear, "It will alert me to my transit to the Fade. It purifies…"
"Alistair… I shall leave the cloak here 'tis cold in this cell and likely to get even colder later…"
"Goodbye, Morrigan…" He is going to miss her, he thought, not just because of the obvious, but he realised he had found their new form of interaction refreshing. Adult and detached.
She turned to leave.
"Just one thing…" he said.
She turned back.
"You know how you were always calling me stupid and a fool…" her face was still, "You were right. Tell my child his father was a fool because he did everything he did for love or out of a sense of duty and never thought once of himself, until it was too late. Tell him this where it got me, and that a rope was my recompense … Give him this…" He removed his Grey Warden pendant from around his neck, "it is the only thing I have now."
"And vengeance?"
He had thought about that, "Revenge later will not lessen my bitterness now, or ease my soul in the future… It's pointless… Much like everything else, really."
Alistair is sitting slumped against the wall again his arms clasped about his knees his head down, shivering, even with the cloak wrapped around him. He suspects he will have no more visitors, it is late, he thinks, the world sleeps but not him. He's grateful for the cloak but he would rather not have it and not be cold.
A pair of boots would be nice, his feet are frozen. Come to think of it some gloves wouldn't go amiss. Oh, and a little wine. Let's not forget the three course meal and the love making... Ummm.... Well at least he's had that, surprisingly. So he can very easily make do without all the rest of the stuff can't he? Especially since tomorrow, or is it today? Well...
He tries to count things. The numbers that make up his life.
24, one but it was a full-sized dragon so perhaps it should count double... Triple? Quadruple..., 8.5 inches, 220 lbs, 0 (because Goldanna doesn't count), two (but I doubled my tally today, way to go)...
He attempts to count the darkspawn he has slain or the maleficari, an impossible task. He gives up.
Then he tries to speak to Andraste.
The Maker himself just seems a little too distant, a little too abstract. He tries to talk to her as if she were the mother he never knew or the lover who didn't betray him. He begins by apologising to her for killing the mother he never knew...
Then comes a very miserable part where he attempts to enumerate all the bad things he has ever done. Eventually, he gets the feeling he is boring her, so he shrugs mentally and says something along the lines of, "Well, you know all the rest, and I'm really sorry for it..." And promises her he'll be good thenceforth, for what that's worth...
Finally, he tells her how much he has always admired her courage and asks her to help him be equally brave.
Andraste must have been listening because finally and without being aware of it, he falls asleep.
There's four of them, three guards and one guy in slightly fancier armour, a captain, he guesses. No sign of the Revered Mother. Good. He did not expect the manacles, one of the guard clamps them on his wrists with an air of righteousness to secure his hands behind his back. That's the trouble with pain, it bloody hurts... It is a bad moment to smile at his own joke.
"Not tight enough for you are they? Perhaps I can adjust them for you then..."
"Please," he says, "please, they're hurting me a good deal already..." It is true enough, there is tension in his words, amazing how a little compression can become in so short a time utter agony... The smile was but momentary, his face is now a grimace. This doesn't count as begging, he tells himself.
"Very well, then," the guard relents, "but you killed two of my friends yesterday..."
He does not say he is sorry to the guard because he is not. He will be paying for that soon enough, anyway.
Their little group sets a brisk pace but he has considerable difficulty keeping up. His legs simply do not seem to be working right, so he shambles along as best he can. He can't determine whether it is the injuries or fear or a little of both. The stairs are particularly difficult, the guards almost have to carry him. They seem used to it.
They come to what appears to be the main floor. Fort Drakon is a big place. They come to a halt. He realises that they are about to go outside. The captain of the guard is looking at him. He knows he must look like shit and the thought is very bitter.
He does not consider himself to be particularly vain but he has always taken some care with his appearance, shaved regularly, arranged his hair, ensured he was at least reasonably clean (despite what Wynn used to say), that his clothes, however modest, and they had been modest for most of his life, were washed and repaired. And now, precisely when it is most important, all these small comforts have been denied him.
They go outside, it is a beautiful day, cold but sunny. There are dozens of people. The crowd roars when the door is first opened but falls silent when he is ushered forward to the front of the scaffold. He does not care because out of the blue he knows Elissa is there, he ignores everything but scans around for her. Oh she's at a window overlooking the courtyard, next to the 'merciful' Queen. Just as he catches her eye she goes green and turns away.
Oh my love, I was your ever faithful lieutenant, the one who took most of the blows, the one who gave you his innocence and confided in you, who trusted you and this is how you reward me...
Anora, always pale, looks even paler this morning. He realises now what her game is. He has to die, of course, even though he is a fool, his blood makes him too dangerous to keep alive, but that's not the half of it, is it? Use Elissa's guilt over his death against her and she'll be begging to take the final blow against the archdemon. No doubt some unfortunate accident will befall Riordan along the way. Anora will be playing happy families with daddy once again. He can't help smiling insolently up at the Queen and he almost feels sorry for Elissa, who, he senses is crying somewhere behind her. Almost.
Now he has business to attend to, someone mutters something about final words. Excellent. He looks over the crowd. They are getting impatient. Amazing how many have brought their children here. There's a little girl nervously sucking her hand being held up by her father almost in the front row. He smiles directly at her.
"Get out of here..." he says quietly, a hush fall over them because they want to hear what he has to say: "Get out of here," he shouts, he's very glad that his voice seems to have recovered its natural inflections, he makes the most of it, "You're a bunch of sitting ducks and the darkspawn horde is coming. Do you have any idea what they will do to your children? Any?" he pauses, "Your so called betters assure you that you are safe. You're not! Don't believe them..."
"Enough", he hears the captain of the guard say behind him, "enough..." but Alistair has sensed some confusion in the crowd.
"Oh, so you thought I was one of them, did you? I'm not, I'm a bloody pleb just like you lot, and a bastard to boot..." He's grabbed from behind, he struggles a little, just for show, really, "And speaking of boots, I'm not even wearing any for this lot to steal!"
It is a terrible joke but elicits more than a few nervous titters...
And now there is only one thing left to do. Suddenly his guts clench, it takes most of his willpower to stop him from pissing himself in front of everybody. Shit, shit, shit, shit...
They place him standing over the trapdoor. A man approaches with the noose, a grandfatherly looking man with white hair and surprisingly gentle eyes. "I am so sorry, lad," he whispers. "Good show." And then, "Is it true?"
He has to stand on tiptoe to place the noose over Alistair's head. "Yes," Alistair murmurs back as he does so. "It is."
"I lost a nephew at Ostagar," the old man says, he fusses with the placement of the slipknot, "It has to be just so," he mutters, "then it will be quick..."
"Thank you," says Alistair, "Thank you." Suddenly everything has become a blur.
"Don't be afraid, lad," he tightens the noose so it is flush around Alistair's neck, "We're nearly there now." The hemp rope itches but Alistair tries to keep still.
The old man moves away to the side of the scaffold where the lever is.
The guards release him. Alistair pulls himself up straighter, squares his shoulders. Tries to fix his gaze in the middle distance... This is going to hurt, he thinks, this is going to hurt a lot... But it will be over quickly...
FIN