Wounds: Temperance
Disclaimer: Characters, lore and settings belong to BioWare.
Alistair wanted nothing more than to abdicate the throne right at that moment, if it meant he could hold the Warden Commander in his arms.
He had arrived too late. He truly intended to come back and assist her in rebuilding the Wardens and sorting out the remaining darkspawn forces, but Kingly duties had kept him from staying in Amaranthine.
Not to mention the look in her eyes when they had last spoken.
Antivan poison would have been a kind word for the venom he had seen in her eyes.
He could not blame her, not after how he had severed their relationship so abruptly after the Landsmeet. She had looked so relieved to see him King, so trusting in the strength of his love for her, that he almost couldn't make himself go through with it.
And yet, Alistair now found himself in the ruins of Vigil's Keep, all the Wardens severely injured but recovering. More than half of the Keep's soldier's were gone and the walls were reduced to uneven rows of stepping stones.
The Keep itself still stood, but the interior was too inhospitable, still littered with bodies and broken barriers. It was behind the last barrier, at the very top battlement and at the very end did he find Neria, Oghren and two other Wardens on mattresses.
She barely moved, and was covered in bandages.
He had felt the air leave his lungs in a whoosh, and had to resist the urge to gather her up in his arms and run all the way with her to the Circle Tower, or the Dalish, to Wynne or Lanaya, to the best healer he knew.
But he could not, and he could not show these people anything more than a King's concern for the Warden Commander, nothing more than his concern for her as a companion during the Blight.
Neria suddenly began to twitch, and she coughed, tiny and gurgled, and the bandages around her neck stained a bright red. A dark-haired Warden sitting next to her pallet knelt immediately at her side. Alistair had turned and shouted for a soldier to fetch a healer immediately, but when he had turned around, a Warden mage was already kneeling on her other side. The rogue set his remaining unbroken arm on Neria's chest, to keep her cough from rising, and the mage held her face tenderly, whispering Tevinter under his breath.
The urge to hold her compelled him, stronger by the minute.
He knelt down beside them.
The two men barely looked at him.
"Puncture wounds to the neck. I thought I'd closed them up." said the mage through gritted teeth. He was getting paler, his own bandages beginning to stain with blood, but not as bad as Neria's.
"Didn't you heal her first?" asked the rogue, who had finally let up on her chest as she had stopped coughing. "
"You know her. Wouldn't let me near her. Pointed Spellweaver in my face and made me heal Oghren. She's still running a fever, Maker's balls. If the bloody witch doesn't pull out of this I swear I'll recite the Chant of Light in my smalls on top of her sodding pyre…" the mage fell back, healing light dissipating. "Hey, aren't you King Alistair?"
The dark-haired rogue whipped around and sucked in a breath.
"Nonsense, man, I'm just a Warden." Alistair had the sense to regret wearing shiny armor today.
"Yes, and the Warden Commander is just an excessively lovely woman with a penchant for running things through with a sword." quipped the mage, who managed a respectful nod of his head in Alistair's direction.
"You highness, forgive us, we did not realize—" Alistair cut the rogue off.
"No King business. Within these walls I'm a Warden just like you. I'm sorry I wasn't here when this happened. May I know your name, brother?"
Suddenly, before the rogue could reply, a great, pained gasping burst from Neria's lips, and her arm shot out, as if to reach for something. Her red hair fell about her face, which was a frozen in an expression of mute horror.
"Commander!" the rogue bent forward immediately, trying to set her back down on the dirty mattress.
Through a torn larynx, Neria struggled to say something.
"Blast it, she's delirious!" the mage got up, wincing, and took Neria's face in his hands again, but this time his hands glowed only a feeble blue. Just as the mage had begun to say something in Tevinter, Neria had raised her arm higher, and a translucency came over her body, and Alistair saw ancient elven magic help her shake both men off.
As the two wounded Wardens fell away from her, Alistair moved.
"Heal her and put her to sleep now!" he barked. He found himself above Neria, his face inches from hers while he held her arms down with his hands and pinned her legs down with his own. He felt her arch and buck beneath him, the bandages at her neck and arms completely red and beginning to drip.
Instantly, Alistair imagined a different Neria beneath him, a Neria lit with glow of firelight, naked, bucking and arching in pleasure. He heard her chanting his name in a litany of release, and it took his breath away.
The elf's struggles beneath him ceased, and he felt the edges of a sleep spell on his Templar senses. Her face, moments before completely stricken in pain and horror, relaxed into peaceful slumber. Her long lashes brushed against her skin, and he was so close he saw the freckles he loved so much.
Alistair had never done anything so hard in his entire life.
He stopped himself from brushing his lips against her brow.
He let her go.
Again.
Immediately, the rogue's arm fell from its sling and had torn her bandages open. He had settled himself behind her, propping her up against his chest to help her breathe. The mage took her and laid his right hand against the slow flow of blood from her neck, and bent his head down to brush his lips along the wounds, murmuring in Tevinter.
Both men clutched her tiny elven hands in their own, as if holding on for dear life.
Alistair stood up. What he would give to trade places with any of them.
He already knew what had happened in Vigil's Keep when he had left her. He didn't even have to ask these two nameless Wardens anything.
She had found new Wardens.
She had made them hers.
As much as she was theirs.
Alistair resisted the urge to knock them out, sling her over his back and run far, far away with her.
"Ugh, is that you, pike-twirler? Come to hurt Neria again?" Oghren's voice carried, woken up by Neria's incoherent, wounded cries.
"I'll get someone." Alistair said, quickly, and did not see the mage called Anders and the rogue Nathaniel Howe look up to his retreating form, and understand.
In the shelter of her Warden's arms, Neria slept. Beneath the light of her Warden's hands, some wounds closed, while others still bled freely.
A/N:
All right, I have to ramble, because this was a broodmother to write. Temperance is such an encompassing concept, and so difficult to place. Suffice to say, I feel little love for this piece, but I think I was able to present the concept of Temperance enough.
I actually had another idea for 'temperance'. One involving Alistair as Knight Commander and Neria as First Enchanter, but it turned out to be an AU monster which would not meet the deadline and is still unfinished.
I am thinking of continuing it, nut I fear the assumptions too blasphemous for any DA canon XD Thoughts, anyone?