It should have been him.
Alistair watched as his fiancée (and how he shuddered still to use that term to describe Anora) delivered the eulogy, standing over his former lover's body displayed there on the cold marble slab. It was probably a touching speech though none of the words really registered.
It should have been him.
He had been so angry when she had chosen Anora over him, chosen Loghain over him. How could she? How could she betray everything about the Wardens to choose that murdering traitor over the man she claimed to love and support? It hadn't made any sense at all. It had to be a dream, a darkspawn nightmare, a bad trip to the Fade. But it hadn't been. And so he had left, done what she'd wanted and agreed to marry Anora and wiped his hands of the Grey Wardens once and for all. With Loghain as a member what did he want to do with the order anyways? Or anyone else in it. Not even her.
Anora was saying something about her, about how she had been "special" and how she had touched their lives, and he felt that pang of guilt again. No one knew those things more than he had. She had been the first person to touch his heart, to really love him just as he was. She had seen a million things in him that he'd never dared to dream were possible and then just like that, she had betrayed him.
Or maybe Alistair had betrayed her. After all, he was the one who was alive and it was her on that slab, still and lifeless. She had gone on to face the archdemon without him, had lost her life to save his, all of theirs. He'd never even given her a chance to explain herself, had simply marched off. And the last things they had ever said to each other were angry words. Or they were the last things he'd said, he remembered that much. What she had said was much less clear.
And Loghain was alive. Still. The thought should have made him angry – a small part of him was. But much more was centered on that marble slab and the empty shell that rested there that had once been someone who had loved him, that he had loved. Loghain and whether he lived or died…it just didn't matter so much anymore, not in the face of the absence of her.
Anora was making promises now, about how she wouldn't be forgotten, granting boons and gifts in her honor and it should have been him. The promises should have come from him, because she'd given everything to him. He should have given the gifts, because she'd been such a gift to him, and he hadn't known just how much until there was no way to take it back, not now, not ever.
Alistair was angry, he could admit that now. But it was himself he was angry at – for being too much a coward to do what he should have, for letting Anora take his place at her funeral. For walking out like that, for not trusting her, for not making things right before she had gone to fight the archdemon. For not being there at the final battle, for not being the one to strike that final blow. For being the one still standing while she laid there.
"Friends, let us hope that she has gone on to a better place and that she knows just how thankful we are for what she has done here," Anora was saying. And that she knows just how sorry I am Alistair added silently.
Anora bowed her head. "Now we bid the hero of Ferelden farewell. She will be sorely missed."
And he said what he should have said, when she turned to walk away that last time. Good bye, my love.
