Notes: wow, this was a bitch to write for some reason. also, jesus christ, the biggest moth I've ever seen is repeatedly slamming itself against my window. it is terrifying. on that note, happy late birthday, Kelsey!
Disclaimer: Dragon Age and all its NPCs belong to Bioware and EA.
i.
"You know, one good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together."
The sentence hung between them as the elf girl narrowed her eyes at him quizzically, and it dawned on Alistair that maybe he should learn to hold his tongue from time to time.
"I take it you are Alistair?" she asked in a voice that was soft and guarded and slightly accented with the ancient Dalish language that had been lost so many years ago. The tattoos flowered around her honey-colored eyes in gentle arcs, and her face betrayed suspicion, and distrust.
Needless to say, she was beautiful—and Alistair, of course, made a complete fool out of himself.
ii.
She was in her element, there in the Kocari Wilds. Whereas Daveth and Jory stomped through the swamp water and flinched at every slight sound, she moved from tree to tree quick and light, her bow tight in her grasp with an arrow at the ready. Even in the face of darkspawn, she hardly flinched.
Still, she was so young—couldn't have been more than twenty, and he could see the weight the darkspawn taint had put upon her shoulders. She was young and sad and he remembered his own recruitment into the Grey Wardens. He hadn't joined because he had wanted to—he had joined because there was no other choice.
iii.
After the Tower of Ishal, after the battle, after the screams and the deaths and the blood, she slipped out of Morrigan's hut quietly, bearing a pounding head and a heavy heart. Alistair stood at the foot of the marsh with his back to her, and she was surprised at how normal he looked out of his armor.
The whole army, dead—she couldn't even imagine the body count. Duncan, who had rescued her and cleansed her forest, and the brash, eager King Cailan, and thousands of husbands and siblings and parents and children who weren't coming home.
Alistair told her quietly that Duncan had been the closest thing to a father he'd ever had, and that the two of them were Ferelden's last Grey Wardens—Ferelden's last hope. "I can't let the darkspawn take over. Will you fight with me? Will you help me stop them?"
She half-smiled bitterly and thought of the Eluvian and of Tamlen, and how the same corruption that had killed him now ran through her blood. She thought about how she owed the humans nothing, but she did owe the forests and mountains that had been her clan's refuge. And she nodded, because she couldn't let what had happened to Ostagar happen to her home.
"I wish Duncan could be here," Alistair said wistfully. "I wish…"
She swallowed her pride and her wariness and put a hand on his shoulder, because she knew what it was like to grieve. "He saved me too," she almost-whispered, and told him her story.
iv.
With weariness numbing her every muscle and bone, she sorted through her pack robotically, spreading out all her things on the bed. Her little band—two Grey Wardens, an apostate mage, a mabari hound who refused to leave her side, a silent qunari, and a too-nice bard—were staying at Redcliffe Castle for the night, after a harsh two days full of defending villages and fighting undead and saving possessed little boys. She was still in her Dalish leathers, because there was a part of her that would not—could not—let go.
The door swung open without warning, and Alistair stood there with his fists clenched at his side. "Ever heard of knocking?" she sighed tiredly, wondering what he wanted and how long it would take, because all she really wanted to do was curl up on the oh-so-comfortable-looking bed and sleep forever.
"You let Lady Isolde sacrifice herself," he stated.
"She offered. She was willing. Who was I to stop her?" she replied, and her guard was up—the initial distrust between them had faded after several weeks of travelling and fighting together, but there was something about the way his eyebrows furrowed and the muscle in his jaw tightened that she didn't like.
All at once, something snapped and he was yelling, his eyes full of fire and fury. "You let her sacrifice herself with blood magic! How could you do that?!"
"What other choice did I have?" she said as he stormed up to her, towering over her in a suit of armor. She could still see the arl's wife, eyes desperate and pleading as she begged for a way to save her son. "Killing that little boy? How could I live with myself?"
"So instead you used blood magic to save him? How can you live with yourself now?"
Alistair realized, too late, what he had said. She could see it in the widening of his eyes and the drooping of his shoulders, and she could feel it in the moment of breathless silence that passed between them. Hot tears were pricking at the corners of her eyes, but she blinked them back stubbornly because maybe she had thought Alistair was different than the other cruel shemlen—maybe she had thought they could be friends.
"If you don't think I regret the choice I made—if you don't think I'm already guilty enough—you know nothing of me."
"I'm sorry—I didn't mean—"
"I know," she replied in a very small voice, and turned away.
v.
She hated the Deep Roads, he could tell.
She hated the too-close walls and the ceiling that could cave in at any moment, burying them in with the dwarven ruins. She hated the seemingly impenetrable darkness that felt like it clung to them everywhere they went. She missed the wind and the trees and the sunlight and the sky.
Alistair hated it too, of course, but for someone who had lived outside for their entire life—he couldn't imagine it. It was hard to tell if she was still angry at him for his stupid tendency to stay stupid things that he didn't even mean, but he didn't like seeing her like this. She was their leader—their rock, really, the one that kept them going through everything, and her jumpiness was bad enough to make him uneasy.
On their third night there, he offered to take the first watch so she could get some sleep. There were rings of gray-purple sleeplessness under her eyes, and Alistair could see a tremor in her hands as she restrung her bow and picked over the arrows in her quiver carefully, checking to make sure the tips and the fletching were still intact. They were camping what once had been a dwarf's house, and Oghren was passed out snoring while Morrigan tried to get a fire going.
"No thanks, Alistair," she answered distantly. "Can't sleep down here anyway."
He paused for a moment, considering that. "Look, we've still got at least another full day of darkspawn-infested travelling ahead of us, and who even knows what's waiting for us at the Anvil of the Void. That's not even counting the return journey. We need you at your sharpest."
She stopped what she was doing and raised her eyebrows, a slight smirk gracing her lips. "Worried about me?" she quipped, but there was something else mixed into her tone. An apology.
"Maybe," he teased, and felt the gap between them begin to close.
vi.
"I don't think I can do this," she admitted one night, her knees pulled up to her chest, head tipped back to gaze at the stars. They were camped just off the West Road, on the way to the Dalish elves' camp after curing Arl Eamon. Normally only one member of their group was needed to keep watch, but the darkspawn visions were particularly powerful that night, and neither of them really felt like sleeping.
Alistair watched her quietly from the other side of the campfire. Her hair was down for once, tumbling over her shoulders like a curtain of curls the color of autumn wheat. It made her look younger, somehow.
It took him a long time to formulate a response, and even then it wasn't very clever. "Why not?"
She lowered her head to meet his eyes, the firelight glinting on her swirling tattoos. "I'm nineteen, Alistair. Nineteen and a Dalish elf. I can hardly maneuver around one of your cities without making some kind of social mistake. How are we going to win the Landsmeet? I know nothing of human politics. I don't—everyone expects me to be this great hero, and that's just…that's not me."
She stopped and dropped her eyes to the flickering flames of the fire, biting her bottom lip. Her hand drifted unconsciously to the bow that lay at her feet, and her fingers tightened around the Dalish wood. He knew that look. She was thinking of home, and the events that had landed her here instead of where she belonged.
"For the record," Alistair began slowly, not really knowing where he was going with this because it was probably going to turn out utterly idiotic, "I'm glad you're here. Because, I mean, if it was just me then I would really have no idea what to do and then I'd make a lot of really stupid decisions and…I should just stop talking now, shouldn't I?"
He was rewarded, surprisingly, with one of her rare, tinkling laughs. "You'd get the job done."
She rose, gathered her things, and stopped halfway to her tent, tucking unruly strands of hair behind her pointed ears. "Thank you, Alistair," she breathed, and leaned down to place a light butterfly-kiss on his cheek. And then she slipped into her tent silently without another word.
Alistair was left with a crackling campfire, heat rising into his cheeks, and a small smile forming on his lips.
vii.
Every step she took into the Dalish camp was a memory flashing through her mind—she had to remind herself that this was not her clan, that her clan was long gone, but it felt so similar it hurt. The children gathered around the campfire listening to their hahren's tales, the hunters preparing to enter the forest, the halla keeper perched on the fence to keep an eye on her charges, the crafts master scolding his apprentices.
It was home, and it was the only thing she knew.
The woods were even worse, because a rhythm sang in her bones of learning how to shoot a bow, of the first deer she had taken, of the first human she had ever met, of Tamlen, Tamlen, Tamlen.
But she had a new life now—she was a Grey Warden, even if she didn't feel like one yet. A warm hand placed itself on her shoulder gently, and she did not have to look to know who it was. Alistair was as much a part of her now as her clan had been, as her precious lethallan had been, but he was something different—he was a new beginning.
viii.
It was beginning to drizzle the night they left the Circle of Magi, and she stood just outside the tower while Wynne and Leliana arranged for a boat back across Lake Calenhad. She felt and probably looked terrible, after fighting dozens of horrifying abominations and stumbling out of very real nightmares.
There was a sound behind her—someone clearing their throat, and it was Alistair—it was always Alistair, making sure she was all right, telling her to eat all her stew and go to sleep before she fell over. He almost reminded her of Ashalle in that way—but that brought too much homesickness, and she pushed it away.
This time, though, he was holding something out to her—a flower. He was explaining what she was to him—something gentle and beautiful amidst destruction and death, something to be treasured, something worth protecting.
They kissed there under the Circle Tower, in the rain, with exhaustion weighing down their limbs and bloody histories trailing behind them.
And it was perfect.
ix.
She made him king, and it was a victory—the crowds cheered, happy because they had a ruler who knew what it was like to be a commoner. Her army was united. Loghain was dead. The Landsmeet was over. It was a success.
Later, it didn't feel like much of a victory—she was a Dalish elf, a Grey Warden, a hero—but she could not marry a king.
Riordan told them quietly, away from everyone else's ears, that one of the three of them would have to die to kill the archdemon and end the war. Her eyes met Alistair's and her mind was already racing because it would have to be her—he was king, and the people needed him. They didn't need her.
Surprisingly, she was all right with that. Her life for the all the lives of Ferelden. This…this was how it was supposed to be.
The pain in Alistair's eyes was the only thing that made it hard.
x.
The air was filled with thunder and the screams of the dying, and after the longest battle of his life, the archdemon lay on the hard stone, bloody and broken and dying.
"Let me do this," Alistair insisted, begged almost, and there was ragged desperation on the edges of his voice. "I'm king. This is…this is the best thing I could do for my people."
She smiled, covered in sweat and blood, golden hair coming loose from its braids and honey eyes bright with unshed tears, but empty of regrets. She had never looked more beautiful. "I'm sorry, Alistair," she said very, very softly, and reached up to kiss him one last time. It was full of everything that was her, courage and gratitude and gentleness, and, "I love you," she breathed against his lips—and then she was gone.
She ran.
He couldn't catch her.
Light exploded over the sky, over the city, and the soldiers yelled triumphantly while the darkspawn screamed.
And then, just like that, it was all over.
Afterwards, he cradled her cold, lifeless body in his arms for a long, long time.