"So that's his little boy?"
"His name is Kieran."
"Kieran? Nice name. I think he would have approved."
He being, of course, the Warden. Her Warden. Ferelden's Hero, the one who slew the archdemon and ended the short-lived fifth Blight. Alistair knew not of how the very thought of her lover and his fate stung her heart. She was stronger now, but before Kieran came along, even the mention of his name reopened her wounds.
She was proud of Kieran, as any mother would be of her only son. She loved him more than life itself and would take down a mountain for him if she had to. In a way, Kieran saved her. Morrigan couldn't imagine what sort of woman she would be without him there to heal her. Bitter, old, and batty- just like her mother, she guessed. There was once a time she truly believed that Mahariel would allow her to live like the pretty little girl she once saw in a mirror. It was a faerie tale, and she was a fool. Mahariel was a fool.
"I would have preferred to ask his opinion of the matter. It didn't have to end as it did," Morrigan responded, a dry taste in her mouth. They could have been a family. Alistair wouldn't- couldn't- possibly understand. He was still less intelligent than a dog, for all it mattered, but at least he barked far less than before. She remembered a time the bastard prince couldn't take three steps without demonstrating this uncanny ability to sound more and more stupid with each word. Morrigan was always ready to shove it right back down his throat with a cleverly placed remark. Seeing him now, solemnly considering her son, it seemed the former rivals had come into a bizarre sort of calm.
"At least you have Kieran," Alistair mumbled, a weak attempt to console her. She wished she could say the same. She wanted Mahariel. She also wanted to hang him. But she wanted him there for their son, most of all. Kieran didn't deserve this. She quietly regarded the crest of the Wardens upon Kieran's shirt. The boy knew that his father was a hero. The boy worshipped him. He was too young and innocent to understand the truth. She would have to tell him one day, and she knew it was going to be hard. She of all knew what it was having secrets kept from you by your own kin.
It was all so perfect, and yet everything had gone so wrong.
In all her life she had never met anyone who understood her as he did. Mahariel was truly special. Somehow he'd wormed his way into her cold heart, and for a time, she felt like the world could end around them, and it wouldn't matter. Everything was falling into place. Briefly she had thought that mother's plan would not be so terrible in the end, that she would at least have something more to show for it. Perhaps she had fed into that fantasy far too much.
Countless times she had replayed that moment in her mind. She lay awake every night- for years- wondering if she had only said something different, if she had only been more candid with him. If she weren't such a proud woman, if she had only told him why she was so desperate to go through with it. She could have saved his life.
Morrigan was stubborn, but Mahariel was even more so. Nothing would have mattered. It was funny- in a sick way- how their pride had come to ugly blows. Morrigan wanted nothing more than to save him, but it was impossible without her ritual. Mahariel was torn from his clan by the taint, and gods be damned if he would let that taint live inside his children. There was no winning between them.
"You are a fool!" She had shouted, "I will not stand by and watch you waste this opportunity. Die, if you feel it is worthwhile. Or, be overshadowed. I care not."
"Don't do this. I love you." His words echoed in her mind. Three words to gut her.
"Yes. But not enough. Fare you well, my love. Should you live past the morrow, I trust it will only be with regret."
The irony of her words wasn't lost on her. If she could go back now she would wring herself for being such a heartless bitch, as Alistair would have readily described it, but there was no going back, and there was no changing what had been said and done. For all she knew perhaps Mahariel flung himself at the Archdemon with her last words to him strung round his neck.
Kieran lived as a reminder of what could have been. Perhaps he wasn't housing an ancient Elvhen god, as originally planned, but the boy brought her a different sort of change in her life. After the news spread of Mahariel's sacrifice, she fled. She raised Kieran alone, away from menkind, Blights, the ugly politics of Thedas, the Fade—all of it. It was what she needed to do to move forward. Mahariel was beyond her help. It was Kieran who needed her now.
A decade since then, she'd accepted her new role. She was Morrigan, Kieran's mother. If the Inquisition wanted her to be the daughter of the witch Flemeth, then she would oblige, for now. In the end, however, there was no avoiding the inevitable 'what if?' often crossing her mind. He would have been a dutiful father to Kieran, she thought. Nowadays she could think past the wrongs, and it was bittersweet to reminisce the magical night they spent together, all those years ago. He'd given her a gift, a gift far more precious than any Grimoire or pretty little mirror.
Morrigan watched her son from across the quiet Skyhold garden. He looked so much like her Warden. Her forlorn words barely reached Alistair's ears.
"I could have had them both."