Author's Note: Before Inquisition came out, I had this inkling of an idea where a romanced Alistair and the Warden agree to the Dark Ritual. But something goes wrong, and instead of surviving the archdemon, the Warden's body is transported elsewhere. Then, after many years, she suddenly reappears at the height of some crisis.
I'm not sure this is an idea I'll ever finish (or if anyone wants to read it, if I do). So I'm gonna call this a oneshot and see what happens. Con-crit welcome.
5th Blight, Fort Drakon
Leliana grips Alistair's arm, her voice no more than a hum in his ear. He would kill the witch. Find Morrigan and crush her neck until she chokes and dies.
"She was brave, Kadan," Sten's hand squeezes his shoulder.
Alistair wants to sink to his knees, but he stares at the tower, where smoke and ash whirl in the wind.
She has to still be there. He breaks into a run. They must have missed something. Maddy's good at sneaking, so she's just hiding up there. Or maybe she's hurt and needs him.
"Alistair!" Leliana screeches behind him, and he stumbles, falling against a watchtower.
A body at least. He drags himself forward. Just her body so he can know.
Leliana catches up to him, her hand grabs his hand. "We all knew this could happen, Alistair. Maddy most of all."
"No," he croaks. "We fixed it. We-"
He shoves Leli away from him and vomits on the ground. He lay with Morrigan for this. And Maddy found him after, wordlessly took him to the baths, washed his hair and skin, pressed kisses into his body, erased the memory of any touch but hers.
He careens for the tower again, wiping bile from his lips, but Sten grabs him from behind and swallows Alistair with his massive arms.
"She is gone," the qunari says.
10 years later. A cave in Crestwood.
Alistair presses himself into the cold stone wall, sword drawn, breathing halted.
Another warden, close and silent. They sent an assassin after him, but which one?
Does it matter, really? One blade is the same as any other. He waits and watches, resumes breathing slowly through his nose, calm and even.
They come closer, he hears and feels their approach, like a thrumming in his veins. Soon, they're near enough and he can see them, too.
He strikes, approaching from behind, two long strides forward. His left arm braces them securely across the chest and shoulders, his right arm leveling a sword against their neck.
It's a dwarf, he realizes, half bent, their-no, her-body flush against his legs and stomach.
He could kill her, a quick slice through her skin and no one would be the wiser.
But he is not that man, no matter what the order might say.
He takes in her armor. Not Warden mail but something more delicate. A trench coat that nearly reaches the floor. Leather jerkin. No headgear, just a black bob of hair. It's a ghost of a memory. Brief but painful enough for his heart to lurch.
The bow in her hand clatters to the floor. He hadn't noticed that. What sort of assassin would try shooting him in a cave?
Her chest heaves under his arm, and her breath comes quickly, tracing its way across the hand that holds his sword at her throat.
A clamor erupts behind him. He spins, the woman still tightly against him. He won't kill her if he can help it, but he's not above threatening to do so if it'll get him out of this.
But it's not more wardens running into this dank dwelling, it's Marian and others: a qunari bigger than anything Alistair's seen outside giants and ogres, a dark-skninned mage, and...Leliana?
The former bard is the first to move closer, her hands open and palms up. "Alistair, it's just us. You can let her go."
He lowers his sword, but he's slower in sliding his hand away from her. She turns, eyes wide, and she stumbles away from him, scrambling backwards toward Leliana.
Then he sees her clearly. It's a trick of the Calling, he's certain, evoking long buried memories of the Blight.
He blinks, but the same eyes stare at him. The same lips stretched into a thin line, quivering. She touches her neck with a hand that's embossed in green light.
Hawke and Leli step around her, and the qunari kneels beside her, one big hand touching her shoulder and the other tilting her chin upwards.
Alistair drops his sword to the floor, tears in his eyes. He's lost it now. He's seeing ghosts in the daytime. The ground beneath him wobbles, but Marian catches his elbow and leads him to the ledge where his bedroll lies.
"It's her," Leliana whispers to Hawke. "Alistair would know."
He tears his gaze away from the dwarf, who's nodding at the qunari as his thick, grey finger tucks a tendril of hair behind her ear.
Alistair's stomach roils, and he leans away from the two women on his bed, quick enough to deposit the contents of his stomach into the bucket that passes for a chamber pot in this dismal place.
He finds an errant cloth on his pillow and wipes his mouth with it. Marian's hand grips his shoulder, and Leliana squats in front of him, a hand resting on his knee.
The dwarf approaches them, picks up her bow and slings it around her torso.
Alistair's heart beats so rapidly it's almost painful. She juts out her hand-the right one-it doesn't glow.
"I'm the inquisitor," she says, and his fingers touch hers, his hand swallows her smaller one.
The touch is brief, and he's shaking, then rakes his fingers down his face.
"Are you a Grey Warden?" he says, his own voice hoarse and tremulous.
She shakes her head. "They said I might know you, but I don't remember."
He glances at Leliana. "She feels like a warden, she feels like..." Maddy. The eyes are hers and the mouth and the voice. It can't be. Impossible.
"She has the Blight?" Leliana narrows her eyes at him.
"I thought she was here to capture me," Alistair says, staring at the inquisitor. She glances behind her, and he notices for the first time the mark-the brand-on her cheek. It's all exactly the same.
Leli sits next to him on the bed. "So I wasn't wrong, was I? It is her."
Maker, he wants to believe it, but it's absurd. No magic like that exists. No magic like that should exist.
Hawke, apparently satisfied he isn't going to keel over, hops up from the bed. "Inquisitor," she nods at the dwarf, "We'll meet you back at camp. Let you get acquainted. Or is it reacquainted?" She chuckles and ushers the others away from the chamber. Or tries too.
The qunari sidesteps Marian and says, "Okay, Boss?"
The inquisitor turns, biting her thumbnail, "Okay, Bull."
The qunari nods, and he's gone with the others.
"I hoped she would remember you, at least," Leliana sighs, speaking as if it's only the two of them. "She walked out of the Fade without a single memory. She couldn't even fight."
The inquisitor shrugs, exchanging one thumbnail for the other. "I'm still not that good."
"Wait," Alistair says-to Leliana, not the shroud in front of him. "You're serious. She must be a demon, with that thing on her hand. She can't be-"
"I'm not a demon," the inquisitor says, hands making fists at her sides. "I'm as real as you are. Flesh and bone."
He meets her eyes and shivers. "I apologize but-"
"Leliana says we were...involved?" The inquisitor raises her eyebrows.
This is not Maddy, he decides. His Maddy would not be biting her nails or playing nice or let herself be incapacitated by a single opponent. Now that he's had time to calm down, he realizes his folly.
"Inquisitor," Leliana says, "Does he seem at all familiar?"
The dwarf shakes her head. "He feels...different, though, like there's some kind of energy from me to him." She blinks at Alistair. "Maybe we should have brought Solas."
"I don't think this is a matter of spirits, Inquisitor. Do you remember the Wardens you saw when we came to the village?"
The inquisitor cocks her head, then nods. "They felt like this too." She stares at Alistair. "You remember me, even if I don't remember you? Leliana and Cullen say I was important. And that you helped me. But they want me to try remembering on my own."
Alistair holds her gaze, waiting for his eyes to agree with his brain. They don't. His fingers itch to grab her chin and pull her nearer, let himself scrutinize her face up close for anomalies. "If you are who Leliana thinks you are, then yes. I remember you very well."
The inquisitor sighs and puts her glowing hand on the side of her head. "More maybes. I don't understand. Why are you the only ones who recognize me. If I was so important-"
Alistair knows why. The Hero of Ferelden became legend. Without a corpse, every likeness of her changed depending on the story. The statue in Denerim towers over the populace. Go by it and the Hero had hair down to her waist and slew darkspawn with a broadaxe. The truth is much less ostentatious: Maddy Brosca was small even for a dwarf and she killed the archdemon with poison and tiny blades.
"It's been ten years, Inquisitor," Leliana sighs. "We have more pressing matters, anyhow."
Like the song in his head, Alistair reminds himself. What's the point of chasing ghosts if he could be dead in a matter of months? Either at the hands of Clarel or by his own madness?
The inquisitor nods and gazes at her glowing hand. "Corypheus and the Wardens. Hawke says you can help?"