Salvation Under a Breath
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters, settings, lore or anything in this story. All of it was taken from BioWare's Dragon Age.
Summary: An exiled Alistair finds himself in Amaranthine, faced with a Neria Surana whom he hardly recognizes. She, an Arlessa, Commander and most of all Blood Mage, and he, a drunken, crazed empty husk of himself; they must face what the Landsmeet has wrought in both their lives. This is the beginning of the end. F!Surana/Alistair, dark and twisted
Chapter I : A Tenuous Hold
If there was one thing Warden-Commander Neria Surana calls an ill omen, it would be Seneschal Varel clearing his throat.
He was doing it now, in a most inconspicuous and genteel manner as any other could, but it never fails to precede bad news. Or difficult decisions. She sighs inwardly, her back still turned to him just as the last of the nobles trickle through the double doors and her companions visibly relax. Court that day had been tiring, especially after yesterday's trek from Amaranthine to see to the disposition of the city. The trip had been most fruitful, though, with gathering new leads for them to follow concerning the talking Darkspawn, the encounter with Nathaniel's sister and the cutting down of Templars.
Especially the cutting down of Templars.
She feels a hand the color of winter grasp her heart and give it a little twist, just enough to make her suck in a breath. She closes her eyes and breathes the soft hiss of hurt out, a smile assuming its place in her next heartbeat.
She shifts noiselessly on her feet and spins around quickly to face her seneschal. "Yes, Varel?"
She almost forgets to listen to him while she keeps the smile on his face. The man's calm, ineffectual voice rolls off her and though it is a rather self-indulgent thing to do, she imagines the bed in her quarters upstairs.
"…and was thrown in the dungeons before you returned for Court today." Then her wonderfully efficient seneschal gives her a deadpan look. She sometimes thinks it is the same look he gives Dworkin when the dwarf asks if it safe to test his bombs. But at this moment, she knows it is because he is waiting for her to speak.
If he was talking about dungeons that means we have another prisoner. Possibly another recruit. At this a wry smile paints her weary face and she glances around the hall to find the other Fereldan Wardens looking just as tired, but patiently waiting for her instructions nonetheless.
"Yes, Varel." She offers, turning back to him and nodding in a most helpful way.
"Commander? Yes Varel will what…?" the grey-haired man inclines his head and peers into her eyes, to discern what she means perhaps or most probably to see if she needs to sit down. She remembers his earlier apologies for springing Court on her like he did and how she almost swooned with fatigue.
"Varel will…know when I've seen the prisoner. Right now all everyone wants is a bath and dinner." She tells him, smiling genuinely this time, and she hears faint cheering in the background, mostly from Anders' direction.
"Aye, Commander. Please see me before you do." Varel says it in such a way that there is a sigh hidden beneath it and she feels a bit guilty for not listening closely to him.
But then again, he deserves it for springing Court on me like that.
As the other Wardens file out of the room, she passes an off-hand question to him about the background of the prisoner and any other information.
"Actually, Commander, I was debating whether I would tell you this sooner or later. I suppose it must be sooner." This was the first time since the Withered on the battlements did she hear Varel's voice catch a tone of foreboding in it.
"What about? The prisoner isn't a talking Darkspawn is it?" she turns slightly to him, after nodding at Nathaniel whose eyes softened just as they met with hers leaving the hall.
"No, Commander, but he says he knows you." At this, she whips around and her look is questioning.
"Knows me? How?"
Varel gives her a different look this time, and it is most similar to the way First Enchanter Irving looked at her just before she walked away with Duncan a lifetime ago.
The words that spill from his mouth begin a roaring tempest within her, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she feels much like a girl caught in a storm at sea. He speaks slowly and though it is the gentlest she has ever heard him speak to her, if that was even possible, the roaring in her head and the speed at which he heart is plummeting increases and she knows if she does not move now, in this very moment, she will crumple to the ground.
Her fingers dance across her throat, her breathing beginning to become difficult and before Varel even finishes what he is saying, she turns around and sprints out the double doors, not seeing the tall, dark, lanky figure leaning against the wall waiting for her, or the sharp call of her name from Anders, who has never seen his fellow mage and Commander run quite as fast as she is doing right now would you look at her legs.
You fool you idiot what are you doing here they will kill you where have you been why did you leave oh is it you is it you is it you
A long-dead yearning in her heart begins to stir, and she feels as if the tips of her fingers and the edges of her robes are unraveling, her heart soaring and plummeting at the same time.
Just the remote possibility that Alistair may be the man in the dungeons is making her come undone. By the time she is at the top of the steps leading to the Courtyard, she is pleading, to no entity she can name, and for something she is not even sure of. But it is a plea, and the most earnest one she has ever made, more earnest than her desire to die by the hand of a Tainted god.
Please.
She calls on her magic, allowing her to jump from the top step of the Keep entrance to the bottom where Sargeant Maverlies and Dworkin give her pointed glances as she almost tears the door to the prisons off.
And this is not at all like the time she saw Nathaniel for the first time, a quiet, burning aura behind the bars, a look dripping with hatred steady and smoldering in her direction.
This time is not like that at all, and almost as soon as she is in the prisons she feels she needs to turn around and run far far away, possibly somewhere familiar, like the Circle Tower, or Redcliffe, or the Deep Roads, anywhere but here because she does not know how to face this, not like the Darkspawn, even if some of them talk, because she'd rather hear the murmuring, the groaning and the growling instead of…
Instead of the same voice that called her a traitor, a disgrace…the voice that told her she betrayed Duncan and everything the Wardens stood for when she agreed to spare a man's life.
A weak smile. Her name from his lips in an apologetic, exhausted, haunting whisper.
"Neria."
Like the rake of claws against the chamber of her heart. She is unable to reply.
"So its true then? That two-faced bitch made you Commander? I suppose its only fitting." The sudden shift in his voice is almost as frightening as the Withered's grating tone. It slices through her like a poisoned blade, leaving flesh torn and corrupted in its wake. "You're just like him, you know. You're her Howe. Ah the irony of it all."
"Wh—what are you saying…Alistair?" it is in this moment she knows true weakness, she is rooted to the spot where she stands and knows his words will hurt her more.
"Just like her father. Rewards those who are..loyal." he drawls the last word out in his implacable accent, and a memory within her is shattered, a memory about a campfire and lampposts, a memory she had been holding onto the past few months just to keep herself from unraveling.
She sucks in a breath in an audible gasp, her hand flying to her mouth, and then sees that he is the second man behind those bars to speak to her like that with eyes that hold nothing but hatred.
"She even gave you a whole Arling! A mage with her very own Arling! Oh I beg your pardon, my lady," again with the familiar drawl, wrapped around words that get worse by the moment. "I forgot my manners. I am your humble servant….Arlessa Neria."
He says everything with so much malice, his voice high at times, almost maniacal in his ravings, and it makes her stop to listen to more than his words and see more than the duster, as the dwarves would say, in front of her.
She narrows her eyes and peers at him closely, noticing the twitch of his fingers as they dangle from his knees, sees the veins along his neck bulge as he throws his head back in an indulgent, mocking laugh.
Her initial trepidation and uncertainty solidifies into a smoldering rage, as she hears the high lilts of his laughter, and her hands ball to fists at his side and before she knows it, her blood is singing and a desire to crush a bastard prince is born in her heart. Her hand itches for her sword, dangling daintily on her hip, but her hand passes over it.
"Private," she barks, more at the prisoner than at the soldier standing guard. "Open the cell."
"Yes Commander!" the young soldier nods curtly, glad to see his arlessa finally looking and speaking like herself. Seeing her so distraught makes him itch to chastise the prisoner, a pommel to the temple, effective and painful.
Just as the soldier unlocks the cell door and it swings open, he feels a dark shadow speed past him and swirl around the prisoner, who suddenly jerks in awkward, almost painful movements.
The Commander steps past him, almost imperiously, and he can see red flames licking the outline of her body, and a familiar smell fills the room, much akin to the smell of rust and dirty water. The private steps out of the cell and positions himself by the door of the prisons, trying to think where he knows this scent that is rolling off the Commander in waves. If moments before he describes her as confused at the least, now, murderous is a mild way of describing how she seems.
"Thank you, Private, please fetch the seneschal now. Return with no one but him, and speak not of this to anyone. " She tells him calmly, and he hesitates only slightly before going out the door. "Yes, Commander."
It is as he is halfway up the steps to the Main Hall that he realizes what the Commander smells like. He is horrified and in awe at the same time, and he cannot help but glance where he came from, his heart fills with equal parts admiration and fear for his Arlessa.
She smells of blood. The Commander smells like blood and magic.
"Can you feel that?" she steps close to him, with footsteps he cannot hear, and eyes that rival any darkspawn's in malice. "Do you know what that is, Alistair?"
She drawls his name out like a lover would, no, like a demon would, and he, unable to move a bone in his body stares helplessly as she is directly in front of him, her small, elfin face inches below his own. She looks up at him, and her smile is nothing like he remembers at all. Her smile, which used to shine with the Maker's light, now sends his heart further into the depths he has already buried it in, for it is the smile of a predator.
Seeing her again provides him with a moment of sanity, a brief reprieve through his constant drunken and magical haze. The mere outline of her body he recognizes, and it jolts his heart awake after so many months for the first time. But for the price of that moment, he finds that she exacts payment in suffering now. Suffering and blood.
He itches for the vials that were strapped to his belt, the skin full of ale and the small vials…Tinkling enticingly against each other, blue liquid swishing in a promise of sleep void of visions of her.
From the moment of the first sip, no, from the moment he reached for the vial after finding he had no more money to buy even the cheapest swill, he knew he was paying a price as well. Insanity and dependency for the cessation of her face in his torment. The cessation of guilt, the cessation of fever dreams and voices from the shadows. He so looked forward to it, and reveled in it, finally being able to indulge in his hatred for her, instead of his tenuous hold on his desire and anger, trying to keep in perfect balance the two. But now, he sees that for lyrium-induced stability, he shall pay in having his whole world pulled from beneath him, and the only thing anchoring him would be the balance he tried to let go of before. The tenuous hold, the fine line of obsession is returned to him, and he almost feels he regrets coming to Amaranthine to seek her out.
A stray thought enter his mind,
Why did I come to Amaranthine anyway?
It is hard to focus, and the vision of her before him steals his discipline away.
He is still unable to move, safe for swiveling his eyeballs, and as he can see her small form enveloped in a steadily- burning flame, new founts of anger and hatred well up inside him.
"Blood magic. Yes, you insipid Templar, you cowardly, treacherous Warden." Her hand reaches up to rub his cheek affectionately, calloused, scarred fingertips running across his face and neck.
He is disgusted and thrilled at the same time.
"Shall I add more reasons for you to hate me?" this time he presses her body to his, and through his rags of clothing and her thin robes, he remembers every moment they shared in his tent, and every inch of her skin is an image brought to life behind his eyes. He finds his arms encircling her, and even if he wasn't being controlled, he suspects he would do the same. He feels her head come up to inhale at the junction of his neck and shoulders.
She chuckles, and he knows she is aware of his shame. His hands fall uselessly to his sides, but he is still unable to move. She steps back, and he finds her giggling at him, each tinkle of her laughter cutting at him.
"It is so good to have you back Alistair. We have much to catch up on…" she eyes him up and down, and the look in her eyes is hungry, he feels he is being devoured.
Then she tosses something into the corner of his cell, and his eyes see the blue fluid in a flask fly through the air. He feels the muscles in the neck tighten and his throat become dry.
She turns away and begins to walk out the door just as the man who had captured him earlier appears. His eyes are drawn to the corner where the potion was flung.
Just as the grey-haired man closes the door to his cell with a noisy clang, he is released from her hold and slumps to the floor. There is not strength left in him, and his face is in the filth of the floor, but it is a position familiar to him.
It is a testament to how pathetic he has become when he begins to crawl to the corner, his eyes already searching for the glint of blue liquid in a glass vial.
~end of Chapter I
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