Denerim's castle was full of ghosts. She kept seeing them in the flickering fires of torches aligning stone walls at night.
Here inside this room, Morrigan's golden eyes had desperately beseeched her to not be foolish. The wind from a howling storm that brought no rain had keened eerily through wood and brick alike, making the eve before the battle somehow--so much more appropriate. She remembered thinking that even the wind mourned what was what is, and what might become.
Torches in their sconces stuttered, flickered and hissed as they burned their oil sending meandering coils of black into the air. The torches stained the walls every night and every morning these stains would be scrubbed away. Teams of meek-faced elves and human servants alike all scuttled bleary eyed each morning to dutifully scrub; making the hollow-at-night-castle not so dark. Not so foreboding.
Not so filled with memories.
In death, sacrifice.
The words clung to her in these idle days and during these nights when she, like the ghosts she often imagined, wandered the halls. Every night she let her fingertips trail along the jagged, unevenly cut walls--feeling the rock beneath her hand. The gray stone-gray stone. I should have been stone, she thinks. To him, and to all of them.
Perhaps it would have made things easier.
In the beginning, after the Archdemon, after the war and the death and the rebuilding… it was still sweet enough.
Alistair, despite the many protestations of his court? Continued his nightly visits to her chambers. Sometimes, he liked to appear in the middle of the day when she was wrist-deep in scrolls. Warden business, for some reason now that Alistair had become King, despite being the senior most warden, the responsibilities of Soldier's Peak and Ferelden's band…such as it was, fell to her. And he had loved, then, making his body guards give chase to her unofficial office, leaving them sputtering and protesting behind a slammed shut door whilst he grinned down at her.
It's the grin that had always melted her, she thinks. At first it had been boyish, innocent and charming. Now, he had somehow mashed all of these things with a certain very adult knowing into that grin. Each time it made her insides feel like molten gold.
So he would shut the door. He would toss his breast plate aside without care for the resounding crash. She'd laugh and clear the desk. Somehow he'd always remember the rose petals.
She'd forgotten the one lesson she had learned at the alienage, however. That one solitary teaching that had been pounded into her skull over and over again…The single knowing she should not have forgotten after her disastrous wedding--
"Nothing good can stay. It will never last. It will always be taken away by some shem," her cousin had bitterly remarked.
She paused at the doorway of a cozily lit room, not seeing it.
At first, of course, Alistair would not hear reason. Amicable and approachable, he was willing to make light of himself despite the heavy crown on his head. The court did not quite know how to handle him and at times, forgot their place.
The backbone several doubted Alistair even had became apparent early on, when his court of men--each thinking they knew best-- attempted to speak to him about marriage. About his elf companion (and when he was not in earshot? Elf whore) and, how could he not see that he must take a wife? A noble wife, to ensure the safety and peace of Ferelden! That he must, post-haste and at once, create an heir for the throne or all would be for naught. His council did not care for the Darkspawn threat anymore; as far as they were concerned, their King had solved it all by himself and more pressing concerns now weighed the country.
Like his loins and what sprang from them.
Broaching the topic with him was like watching a tornado gather in the distance. His advisors and lordlings did not see the way his features had gone from bemused to slack in the span of seconds and they were never quite prepared for ferocity of his response. He and his personal guards often left those complaining the loudest, blinking in surprise as the gilded doors to the throne room slammed shut.
But months passed.
Paper work piled up for her. He remarked one evening when the first messengers arrived for her and she complained, "You made me King, remember?" a twinkle in his eye.
"I'm busy parading about the country, looking dashing in my armor and kissing babies. Did you know Kings are supposed to kiss babies? I'm not quite sure what the point of it is. They're very smelly and cry a lot...you knoooooow, come to think of it, they're quite like my court, aren't they?"
So he had things to do and she had things to do. And eventually, her office no longer smelled like roses. Neither did her room. There was no gilded, golden armor left carelessly on a chair inside of her bed chamber. There was talk of political arrangements, and a princess from Orlais…
Talk of golden hair. Talk of blue eyes. Talk of good of the country and for the Throne. A portrait had arrived last month of a magnificent creature that had made her both envious, enthralled, and blackly bitter for an entire week. And how could I possibly compare to a princess? she thought. Messengers mistook the fire in her eyes and had shrunk from her. Couriers and page boys recoiled in the hallways as she strode through them, gray skirts whisking with annoyance.
Eventually, the King stopped yelling about it and had begun to listen. She'd stopped coming to court to save him the embarrassment. People whispered and pointed now. The King's whore, they'd mouth near her. She stopped visiting his office, so that he would not have to clench his jaw and glare soundly at his chamberlain who stared fire at her every time she came near. Or the human servants who did little to hide their disgust and disapproval--he's our king! He deserves so much more than some knife-ear--for the sake of their sanity, she'd stopped everything.
She wasn't sure what she'd expected.
She supposed that she thought he would come striding (and clanking) down to her office one day and throw open the door. He'd say something incredibly stupid and endearing all at once. Maybe they would fight and, maybe they wouldn't. But the end to the fairy tale would be everything turning out right again, and he would kiss her and she would lean in like she always did and whisper: again. He'd blush to his ears and then--
Fairy tales. For children and nobility.
He never came and that, perhaps, hurt the most. And she knew it was foolish! She had known deep down that his duty would be that of his country. Of Ferelden's. She knew she was being selfish; but as time passed it became more difficult to remind herself of this greater good. It became far more difficult not speak on it and taste the bitterness of being alone at the back of her throat; tears in a bottle drank from but not yet shed.
Even the elven servants eventually went from warm to cool around her. After all, she was the single most reason why he wouldn't marry, wasn't she? She's the reason he had no wife and no litters of golden curly-haired babies.
He stopped coming. She stopped sleeping. The nightmares, not by the taint, but of Darkspawn and killing and the things she'd had to do to survive…Or men and anger, of a wedding fouled? Those nightmares had returned. And as much as she tried burying herself in work, traveling all over the place and then some to be rid of the thoughts of him…It didn't work.
She lifted her finger tips to the wall again. "I envy you," she told the chilled rock. A simple wool austere gown whispered as she turned a corner and--
"Who do you envy?" Alistair asked, as she found herself staring blankly at a golden breast plate while he looked about the hallway behind her.
His appearance and voice was a blow she'd not been prepared for--was she ever?--and all of her air seemed to leak out of her, leaving her breathless.