Title: Written in the Rime
Summary: Alistair Theirin never wanted to be King. Danica Amell never wanted to have one.
Disclaimer: BioWare owns all; I just play in their pond.
Author's Notes: Set in the world established by Through the Blackest Nights. I think you'll appreciate why this one isn't written in opposing viewpoints as has been my habit with these two.
Reviews are always welcome!
Alistair pushes into his private chambers, not bothering to close the door behind him. He knows he won't be alone for long, and seeing what greets him makes him hope he'll be alone for long enough to settle. Fruits and cheeses, some of the finer wines he was able to arrange. Today is a milestone, he thinks, or it should be.
He had wanted to take her back, to give her again what he had given her then. And to take, again, what she had given him. He stands by the window, appreciating the patterns of the season etched on the pane and the false blanket of purity coating the city beyond. The frost on the glass tells a new story today, and still he wishes he could read it for what it was.
He had been looking forward to this all day, forcing himself not to look at her during court, knowing his face would give away the surprise and his own enjoyment of knowing he'd remembered something important. She never asks him to mark things like this – half the time he wonders if she remembers, herself – which made the planning and the anticipation that much… more.
And then it had been shattered. He knew that look, the charming smile and the fire in her eyes, and if the day hadn't gone so far into the Void so quickly he'd be amused now thinking about whether she planned to freeze Eamon to the spot or yank out the stick she was sure he carried up his arse and beat him over the head with it, knowing she wouldn't do either. Months Eamon had been aware of this, investigating this, and not a word had been said until enough evidence was there to present it plainly in front of the court.
And Alistair hadn't had a choice. He'd left Anora locked away, and she had been generally forgotten outside the periodic visits to see if she had reconsidered her refusal to abdicate publicly in favor of the King. Instead, she'd been busy with one of the servants she'd managed to charm, plotting some campaign to damage his popularity and maneuver her way out. In the end, he'd ordered three conspirators jailed over and above Eamon's calls for their heads, and had been forced to call for Anora's execution after she'd all but admitted it in front of the gathered nobility and used what had become her trial to preach her poison.
He hears Danica before he sees her, and he almost smiles. She wouldn't appreciate hearing that he thought of her as delicate, or tiny, or petite, or any number of other words that might accurately describe her stature. Her physical stature, he amends, because otherwise she's twice as powerful as I am and it has nothing to do with her magic. Her footsteps echo up the corridor and through the open door, eventually becoming drowned out by the imaginative litany of curses. She can, to this day, bring a blush to his cheeks.
Danica stalks past the guards on the door, maintaining her anger in that vocally generalized way, only making her target known after the door slams behind her and her angry strides have devoured the floor before her to drop heavily into a chair across the small table from where he stands. "Who in the bloody, buggering Void does that man think he is?"
She doesn't even know she's snatching up berries and popping them into her mouth, Alistair thinks, and struggles not to smile. He knows well not to amuse himself at the expense of one of her moods, so instead he speaks his mind. "How lucky am I? I've managed to fall for a woman who can summon all this anger for a man who I just… can't, and even still you let me handle it because you're more concerned for my image than you are frustrated with him."
"Yeah, well, don't go singing my praises from the rooftops yet. Daft arse had the nerve to chase me down in my quarters and tell me I ought to talk sense into you."
"He what?" Incensed, Alistair sits across from her, thinking it wouldn't do to wind himself up. And she won't take kindly to me wanting to step in for her, either, so I might as well be seated.
"You heard me. And so did Eamon, I made damned sure of that. Bastard wants to claim pride of place as the man who raised the King, he'd do well to consider how he treats you in front of the rest. Told him he bloody well deserved everything you'd said about his failures in his duty, keeping that from you. Sent him scurrying when I told him if he ever did it again I'd start whispering the word treason in your ear while you sleep. If he really thinks I have that much influence over you, he'll watch his bloody step."
Danica plucks idly at more of the fruit before the full weight of the events comes upon her in a rush. She's on her feet again in an instant, moving around to stand behind Alistair, hands on his shoulders. She's not really looking for knots, but she doesn't have to look that hard to find them, either. "Maker, Alistair, I'm sorry. I got so wrapped up in… I know you hate giving orders like that. It's what makes you so damned good on the throne."
He is quiet now, taking in her faith and her comfort and pressing his head back to rest against her body where she stands. "I never wanted this, you know."
Danica wonders where he's going with this. He was never one to complain about duty, Maker knew, but she hadn't thought he'd ever questioned actually being on the throne.
"After how I was raised, and how I felt about the Wardens, I wanted nothing more than to devote my life to darkspawn and danger. Some of that, I realize now, was some kind of innocent romanticism, but… Aedan nudged me along, hinting at me about duty and how the country needed the Theirin bloodline to feel safe more than it cared about having someone as untried as I thought I'd be on the throne." He reaches for the tray at the table now, not really caring what he ends up eating, but he's vaguely pleased to find himself continuing around a mouthful of cheese. "He kept encouraging me to figure out what kind of person I wanted to be. And then at the end? When they put the choice on him at the Landsmeet? He just looked at me. He wouldn't have forced it on me, and Maker help me I don't think he'd have said anything about it afterward, either. I thought if he trusted me, there must be something to all the rest, so I took the crown. And then something like today happens, and…"
"And you think you've gone mad with power, or you think you're unworthy of the people who look up to you. What a load of morally upstanding tripe I've never heard. You rule the way you do because you know it's right, and then you second-guess yourself later which is how I know damned well you'll be right again the next time duty forces you to do something hard. Sometimes I think you punish yourself more than you do the people you sentence." She steps around, now, to pour out wine for herself. Damned funny day, you ask me.
He thinks about this, and something strikes him. If anyone in the world would know about going mad with power, it would be her. He's still slightly ill when he remembers some of the things she's told him about life in the Circles, more so when he thinks of her telling him there's nothing he can do, because anything he did would only anger the Chantry and get its supporters riled up. She'd be ready to hear him if he came up with something that wouldn't put the mages in the Tower at risk as casualties, but she'd also claimed to have no idea what that something might be. And for his part, he's already seen one attempt at annulment, and he doesn't think he'd be able to stomach another. Especially if he were the cause.
Danica startles him out of his contemplation with a gasp. "Alistair, this… this wine, this fruit. Is this what I think it is?"
He can't stop the grin spreading. "I thought we should do something to celebrate. One year ago today, we finally figured out what we were doing with each other. Although personally, I think I wanted what we have long before that."
"And you put all this together, and then I didn't even notice. If I promise to melt later, can I get pissed at Eamon again for distracting me now?" She throws out that charming smile again, this time without any of the fire.
He laughs and thinks he wouldn't know what to do with her if she did melt. "I like you when you're angry. You know this. Unless it's at me, and then I'd rather be somewhere else. Like Antiva. But with one thing and another, I kind of forgot about it too, until I showed up here."
"That's it, then. We'll have wine, we'll have fruit, and I'm not having this day spoiled for you, so forget being King and we can talk about what you do want." She sips at her wine and begins tugging grapes out of the bunch on the tray.
This, is what Alistair wants to say, but she's made him think. He looks back toward the window and the new patterns of frost reaching for the sky. He remembers she's made that happen for him any number of times now when the weather can't do it for him, just because she can and she knows it pleases him.
Looking back at her now, she makes him think about how she holds grapes in her mouth and skins them with her teeth, but it strikes him that's just part of who she is, and she doesn't hide any of it from him. It's the grapes, it's the way she pulls at her fingernails when she thinks no one's looking, it's the way she scratches the crown of her head just there when she's plotting out the consequences of what she wants to say. It's the fairness and the foul-mouthed wit and the righteous temper she'll unleash for everyone but herself. It's all of her, every day.
He knows what he wants. And he thinks he would have known long before this, if he'd known how to listen to the frost on the glass.
"Forget being King, hmm?" Suddenly he's laughing, that staccato rhythm of nerves he knows she finds endearing, and he has to pay attention so the goblet he's holding doesn't slip out of his hand now it's gone damp. "Stop me if you've heard this one, then. If I'm not the King, and I mean, even if I am, when I am later, but since I'm not now… Maker. I think what I want is for you to… marry… me."
Danica is chewing on a grape, and oddly, the first thing that comes to mind as her gaze catches his is the way her jaw slowed and stopped its movements, and she knows she's forgotten to swallow but she isn't sure she can. She's not even completely sure she heard what she thinks she just heard. It isn't as if that was something they'd talked about, but she's a mage, isn't she, and if she married him she would be… And never mind that, it's only been these past three years that she hasn't spent her every waking moment being reminded of what mages can't do.
And this only reminds her that ever since the first visit back to the Circle, he's made a point of going with her every time she's called back so she doesn't have to do it alone. It's the Circle trips in her mind now, it's the moments like this with the fruit and the wine, it's his unfailing acceptance of everything she is. But even if she is starting to believe she heard what she thinks she heard, she realizes she hasn't remembered yet to swallow or to breathe, but there isn't room for that when she feels her heart threatening to fly straight out of her chest.
And now she sees his eyes are starting to fill, just a little, and oh Maker, he thinks she's going to say… But she still can't remember how to swallow that grape and she can't speak if she can't breathe and…
So she nods. And she keeps nodding, and eventually she remembers to swallow and breathe and move to sit across his lap and make him realize she really means it.
After what feels like an eternity Danica has finally composed herself, though she's still not in any mood to move away. She doesn't want to spoil the obvious joy on his face but she is who she is and speaks her mind anyway. "You know Eamon is going to be right pissed, don't you?"
The mental image forms and Alistair can't help but laugh. "The look on his face will be worth it, won't it? D'you think we should tell him during court?"
She forgets every now and again that he wears a crown, sometimes, that he's a different man when he's on the throne. But he never wanted it either. If he can be Alistair for her, she thinks, she can manage being Queen for him. There will be details to consider – her utter ineptitude for queening, his thumbing of his nose at the Chantry by taking a mage, and that's just for a start – but she knows he's aware, and she can indulge his romanticism enough to suggest they take their time now.
He was right. They should do something to celebrate.