Author's note: I don't have a beta reader. I've been trying my best to find the typos, the spelling flubs and the awkwardness as I go. I'm putting these up here because I need your help to make them awesome. So please point out any mistakes you see because I've only got two eyes. They're starting to cross at this point.
Alistair had watched her withdraw over the months, felt her slipping further and further away.
It made him think of when he was a much younger boy, trying to catch the spring-fluff seeds in his clumsy young hands. Try as he might to get close to capturing them, the window would come along and leave his hands splayed and hollow.
So when he had finally found her wandering the lowest halls within the castle murmuring to herself, touching the walls as if she didn't recognize them anymore….Everything he'd carefully planned on saying fled on a cruel wash of worry.
She looked as translucent pale as she had when he'd first set eyes on her in Ostragar which seemed like his whole life away from now! She was beginning to sun-darken, wasn't she? His memory said she was—and now she was see-through pale. He could see the delicate blue spidering veins if he really wanted to think about, along her neck and jaw. And she was thin. Thin and ethereal as if all it took was the slightest breeze and she'd leave his splayed hands.
He didn't want to think about that. He was very good at not thinking about things, at least.
He cleared his throat and smiled, pretending the sky-blue half rings under her gray-green eyes did not bother him at all. "I said, who do you en—"
She blinked up at him finally and the fact that her face was so blank—Maker's breathe—he thought she might have been in the fade. If it wasn't for the fact he couldn't feel it and his nerves weren't screaming on fire which was the usual unfortunate warning for a Templar that a mage was channeling.
"Your Majesty," she coolly greeted him, and then swayed a tiny bit. Out of habit, he reached up to grip the tops of her arms gently to steady her. He did it without thinking, of course. For a moment he saw something pass across the sharpness of her elven face. Her wide mouth softened as he'd seen it replay in his memories so many times. Always right before she'd sigh and say, oh Alistair. You really are an idiot, and then he'd grin and she'd—
She'd pulled out of his gauntlet covered hands with a straightening of her spine that felt like ice clicking together at the back of his head. He cursed having to wear armor day in and day out…But your Majesty! What if someone was to attempt to take your life, the lords had protested. And the Bann's all nodded along, echoing, you need to be protected at all time!
"Ameria—" She Maker well knew he hated hearing that title from her. Usually. Well. There were certain times when she said it that made his toes curl but now was not the time to be thinking about that.
"I hear that congratulations are in order, your majesty." She folded her hands across her middle. He knew that gesture. He'd seen it so many times right before she steeled herself to cast spells that made Darkspawn explode. He was a little worried…
"Are you—my…Congrat—what?—Ar—who?" Andraste's filly knickers! When did he revert to being thirteen again and finding his first chin-hair? He reached out to try and touch her again and she took a quick step back. He felt as if his heart had plunged into his stomach when she did, the weight of a full suit of armor suddenly had him weary.
"Ameria what—"
She cut him off again. "Your new bride is exquisite," interjected. "Your Majesty is most lucky to land such a splendid human, and so well bred." She tried to keep her voice even, cold. But he swore he could hear the low keening of a wounded animal in there somewhere.
He could almost imagine the sound his heart and stomach made as they hit his feet.
"Wellllllll I suppose yes," he said. "She's rather pretty for a princess but aren't all princess you know…generally pretty anyway? I—" He's talking without thinking again, isn't he? Her face, her beautiful face—the face he'd remember cupped in his hands or touched by his finger or smiling in his dreams—went lax, guarded.
He really needs to write a note about this to himself, about talking, and what harm it could do.
"Is that what is wrong? Maker preserve! I don't love her! I haven't even seen her! Maybe she has a lazy eye and buck teeth. She could look like Oghren, for all I know I haven't—"
She kept interrupting him and it was really, really starting to grate. "Your Majesty has a duty to perform."
It stopped him dead in his tracks. He hadn't realized that he'd stalked toward her (well you really couldn't stalk in a full suit of armor on stone. In a hallway made of it. It was sort of like listening to a meandering band of angry children toss their metal dinner plates about in a creaky, jingle.)
"Duty? Duty? Oh yes, Minister Fuzzybeard-with-a-little-bit-of-corn-in-it, I do have a duty. I am well aware of my duty. I have duty three times a day, every day, did you know? And with it, a side of duty and a whole whopping Andraste's flaming corset goblet fulllllll of duty. Mm-mm, duty. It's delicious with a side of lamb. My favorite!
"I especially love duty first thing in the morning when I open my eyes after a good long night of not-sleeping because I am worried about duty." He could hear himself climbing steadily toward shouting and that is not what he wanted. He stopped, took a deep breath and reached for her again.
She couldn't be doing this on purpose. She couldn't. She cried after she killed the Darkspawn for Maker's sake! When Zevran mocked her for it, she told him she took no joy in death and would not speak to him for days. Ameria cried when Leliana played sad songs or sappy ones. She cried if she laughed too much. She cried for Ferelden and she wept bitterly the night she claimed Alistair King and the night before the Archde—he didn't want to think about that night. Ever again. He pushed it from him.
Ameria could not be cruel where it was not warranted. Where it wasn't—oh no. Oh, no, no, no.
"I don't want duty, I want you. I love you, Ameria. That hasn't changed!" When he settled a hand to the top of her shoulder he cursed himself again for gauntlets. He just wanted to touch her! He tried to take off the other gauntlet, fumbling with it by using his teeth.
She weathered this stoically. They were arguing and the king was leaning on her absently gnawing on his own gauntlet.
He thought he saw her mouth tick uncontrollably along the corners. As if she might, despite it all give away a smile. It made him pause for a moment and stare hopefully even if he had a mouthful of leather and metal. Which, to his surprise, really didn't taste very well and made him wonder why dogs adored chewing on leather so much.
"No?" She began easily enough. It was deceptively light and her hands did not move to touch him. They curled together over her middle and then were clutched tightly. That sinking feeling returned in the pit of his stomach and he stopped chewing on the gauntlet.
"You love me, but you could not find the time to even come see me in the last three months?" She took another step away. Her severe gray skirts swished almost angrily against the tiles as she danced away from his hands as if tugged by the wind.
"You love me, but you couldn't write me a single letter to say so. You love me, yet for weeks upon end you could not take a single moment to come see me? Not even pass me by in the halls—in the same castle we both occupy." Bitter did not sound right from her, he thought. She should never sound bitter. It made her voice all wrong. And it hurt. Maker it hurt.
Alistair pointed a single, sodden armored finger at her. "That's not exactly fair, now, is it? I'm the King, remember? The King you put on the Maker's bloody Throne!" And instead of him teasing her lightly about it, his face had twisted into something much harder. Something months sitting perched atop a throne could twist a man into.
" You said you wanted me to be King! So here I am being King!" He was so confused. He did what she wanted him to do, didn't he?
"And I've been eyeballs up in doing all these King-things that need be doing because apparently this country can't sneeze without asking me first.
"What did you want? What do you want? Did you want me to drop Ferelden and come running?" He was angry. He realized it seconds too late when he had found himself shouting again, he voice echoing from the walls. At the back of his mind, a teeeeny tiny voice—the same one who told him not to go play in that cage where he ended up being locked in for a day, and ignored anyway—told him that he should stop. He wasn't really upset with her at all, it wasn't her fault really that someone wanted his attention every hour of everyday and that that, was the price the King paid. He should stop before it got out of hand.
But he didn't listen.
"Sorry war! Sorry Darkspawn! Sorry thousands and thousands of people who depend on me every waking moment to make important decisions with them in mind." He spread out his hands and spoke to a crowd that did not exist in the hallway. "Can't come in today to play King because Ameria needs attention."
He dropped his hands with a small clang at his greaves. "Is that what you want? Really?"
Please say yes, he found himself abruptly thinking. Please say yes so I can drop pretending to be King and let Anora out of the tower. I'll plop the crown on her head and we can go and be like we used to. Like it was. I can curl around you at night when you sleep to keep your demons away; protect you and comfort you. I can listen to the sound of you breathing and your heart's rhythm matching mine. I can kiss you when you cry, and laugh when you laugh. I can love you without—
"I am leaving tomorrow," quietly. Those four words fell between them as heavy lead, stopping the flow of air.
He'd been nearly crushed once by Sten. He'd been pushed into the Templar during a particularly nasty battle outside of Lothering; Alistair hadn't even been able to leak out a breath to tell him to get off him. This feeling her words brought was a lot like that but worse.
"Why?" It's all he could wrangle himself to say without cracking. And men—no, Kings—they didn't weep.
She didn't say anything. She only watched him with this eldritch mix of emotions on her face he couldn't read anymore and he thought, maybe, he was just going to die. Right then and there. Or maybe that's just what he wished.
She didn't say, haha Alistair, fooled you! Or, Maker! I'm sorry for saying that. We're being so childish, aren't we? I don't know what got into me! Except she didn't say anything! Everything was going too fast and too wrong. His head was reeling and he didn't understand how they came to this in the few seconds it took him to round the corner and open his mouth!
He kept seeing a little seed on the wind. She was his little seed, right there at the edge of his fingertips but the wind kept sweeping her away.