Worthy
"So is this where I stand?" He asked gravely. It was more of a statement, as they both knew the answer. It was apparent with the pointing of the Warden's hungry blade at Alistair's neck.
Her face was blank, devoid and unbetraying of any emotion. Her lips were pursed, thin and bloodless lines carved on her face. Her hazel eyes were suffocatingly dark, clouded, glazed, darker than they had ever been during their battles of the Fifth Blight. Alistair attempted to search in her eyes for a resolute answer to his mounting confusion. Where was the love that had once filled those eyes, the kindness and the just resolve?
Catching Alistair searching intensely into her, the Warden couldn't move her eyes. She had to face him; she felt compelled to face the overwhelming emotions in his eyes, the pleading why's welling out.
It still hurt. A dull, gnawing pain. She couldn't deny it. Their failure, no- her own failure and cowardice. To allow for an unborn babe, innocent, to take the fall of a demonic curse when it was the duty of the Grey Wardens to do so. To be sacrificed to destroy the Archdemon's soul was the bane of their existence, the main reason for their creation. And her own shameful fear of death and selfish obsession with Maric's son had kept her from fulfilling even that.
Remember, you are both Grey Wardens. I expect you to be worthy of that title… Men and women from every race, warriors and mages, barbarians and kings...the Grey Wardens sacrificed everything to stem the tide of darkness...and prevailed.
Worthy?
They had committed treason against the whole of Thedas itself.
She had been consumed by guilt.
She had been blinded by her emotions.
She had to set things right.
And with what little sense of worthy justice she had left, she knew what she had to do.
"This is where we both stand."