Just a little thing stuck in my head and I had to get it out. I think it's been blocking my work on other things lately. Things I promised to finish, both to myself and to others. I will finish said things. Eventually. But this had to come out because it was blocking my thought process. Hope you don't mind the unusual sadness from me. I normally hate sad stories, but this just hit me for some reason during my depressive episode this past couple days.
Anniversaries Need Alcohol
The eve of the anniversary was grey, cold, and more than a little damp.
Most of Denerim was either indoors or making preparations for the following day.
Five years since the Fifth Blight ravaged the land and Ferelden had still hardly recovered.
The only reason it was faring as well as it was was entirely due to the efforts of its people. Led by the King and Queen, recovery was progressing.
Even on the eve of the anniversary of that fateful day, King Alistair was working hard to arrange the forces of the country to make sure everyone who'd taken part had proper recognition and those who didn't were educated on how to handle such events in the future.
Not perhaps another Blight, but any fight like that.
Alistair was taking a break from planning and checking messages and that was where the young servant girl found him.
At first, she was just quiet and nervous about interrupting his reading over a note scribbled out years prior.
Everyone knew that note was far too precious to him to bother him over anything trivial.
But as she shifted on her feet, she was conflicted on how seriously she should take this.
"What is it Evane?" Alistair sighed as he folded the note.
She jumped as he spoke and felt that ever familiar feeling of butterflies when he remembered her name.
Her seniors had all told her no one remembered the servants, least of all the Elves. But King Alistair did. He knew every soldier in the castle, every servant, maid, and squire, and sometimes it seemed like he knew every person in Denerim.
"I...begging pardon Majesty..." She hesitated. "I was told to inform you of a disturbance at the memorial. Four of the new Guard on patrol there sent me saying they'd apprehended a drunk."
Alistair sighed again as he turned for the door.
"Did you see who it was?" He asked her as she hopped quickly to keep at his heels.
"I...no your Majesty. I am deeply sorry." She started to look as if she had failed everything and Alistair reached to touch her shoulder.
"That's alright. Better safe away from potential trouble." He said gently.
She looked up, eyes wide and so full of admiration.
Alistair hurried down to the main floor and out to the courtyard.
As he turned the corner leading to the memorial, he faltered just a moment at seeing nearly twenty soldiers with some injury or another scattered around the statue of the Warden who slew the Archdemon.
Remarkably, none were badly injured, and no one was close to dead.
He knelt beside the first soldier he came to.
"Report." He spoke softly.
"He just snapped sir. We heard Keenan shouting for help and by the time we got here, he was on the ground and that Elf came at us next." Alistair sighed at the kid. "I'm sorry sir. He's not normal."
"I know soldier." Alistair felt about twenty years older as he heard the sound of armor hitting stone. "I know. Never has been. Gather the injured and get them to treatment." He directed at Evane.
The girl nodded as he stood and headed for the statue.
Stoic and determined, her likeness captured her battle ready attitude.
She'd always stood strong in the face of adversary. He tried so hard to follow her example now that he was King. Harder still to make his marriage to the daughter of his enemy work, in respect to his fellow Warden.
She had explained and convinced him of how the political arrangement would benefit him and Anora both, and while they argued they also stepped back to remember the woman who believed in a future free of war and fear.
In five years, he'd come to trust and like Anora, perhaps even dare to love her.
All thanks to Cousland for not letting him die on a battlefield over stupidity.
Alistair moved around the statue to see another of his guard going to attempt to restrain the lone blond Elf. His soldier was armed with proper gear and weapons while his opponent had nothing but what appeared to be a mostly empty bottle of some very potent alcohol.
He stepped forward as he held up his hand and his men stopped.
The drunk whipped around to face him even as Alistair was already reaching out to him.
It was likely the biggest shock to his troops to see him not aim to harm the drunk Elf, but embrace him.
Alistair felt the halfhearted blow hit against his left ribs and bit back the wince as he pulled the man close.
"It's alright." He said quietly.
"Let me go." The slurred voice was heavily lilted in Antivan accent.
"Only if you stop hurting my soldiers." Alistair said as the man tried to push away from him, dropping the bottle in his struggle.
"They started it."
"It's over." Alistair could smell the alcohol on him and realized this wasn't his first bottle today.
He kept ahold of the Elf as he moved closer to the statue.
"Everything is." The resistance fell as his sight stuck only on the grey stone beside them.
Alistair was suddenly holding all his weight as the man dropped in his arms.
He slowly lowered them both to the ground as the Elf gripped his shirt.
"Why the fuck did it have to be her?" The man cried out and Alistair felt his own heart clench.
After everything Riordan had told them that night so long ago, she had choices.
She could have left him kill the Archdemon and be the sacrifice after Riordan failed.
She could even have taken Morrigan up on her offer with that Blood Magic shit.
Fucking Morrigan would be infinitely better than seeing his old comrade like this.
Alistair put his left hand on the back of the Elf's head as the man put his forehead on Alistair's left shoulder.
He was jolted from his reminiscing by the sound of sheer pain and anger and sadness that left the man in his arms. It only brought him straight back to that day again.
Having been thrown back like the man before him, Elizabeth was the only one who'd kept her feet. Alistair could still remember watching her charge the beast, slay it, and then when the light was gone, her body lay on the stone beside it.
Her lover, a man who'd traveled with them and supported her from the time she had spared his life, had tripped over himself to get to her side. Alistair had followed only steps behind, praying to the Maker that she wasn't gone. That Riordan was lying. That maybe Morrigan had done her stupid fucking ritual in secret after all.
And he'd been helpless to do anything but watch Arainai gather her in his arms and then listen to the man scream in pain at the realization she was dead.
She had changed his world. Alistair could even dare to say Elizabeth had become his world. He'd killed his own partner instead of leaving her side and Alistair had been present when Arainai had offered his most precious keepsake as an offering of love.
The man had met them as nothing more than a killer for hire and she'd left him a better man.
Arainai screamed out again and Alistair felt the hits on his other shoulder as he tried to sooth the convulsions and sobbing.
It was like this every year, only worse with each anniversary that passed. He dreaded to see what ten years might look like, or twenty.
Would Arainai regress? Lose himself to the life of murder and death again? Become the man Elizabeth never wanted for him again?
"Why?" Alistair finally heard the word in the cry this time. His shaking was slowing.
Arainai kept hold of his shirt as Alistair reached up to wipe at tears on his own face.
The Elf wasn't the only one she'd changed.
It was just who she was.
Stern and strong enough to make even Sten accept her, a feat in itself for anyone, let alone a woman warrior like her.
Humor and humble to make Ogrhen and Leliana feel at ease with her.
That kindness and sense of warmth that Wynne had so loved to see from her.
The dignity and respect it took to earn Morrigan's favor, enough for the woman to do something she'd hated for her.
And a light bright enough inside her to guide a remorseless assassin to be a better man.
Everyone of them had loved her in their own way. None maybe moreso than Arainai, but few could match that level of commitment.
Alistair couldn't withold the tears upon hearing Arainai cry out again.
"Why did she have to leave me?" The Elf seemed to shrink in on himself despite Alistair holding him.
The words hit hard and broke his heart. "She didn't. She never would have." He said as he reached to wipe his face with his sleeve.
Elizabeth would never have left the man she'd loved so fully.
No care for his country of origin, nor his blood, not even his job or his personal history.
She had just loved Zevran Arainai for all that he was. Shameless, flirty, deadly killer.
She'd have fought for this man, even in this state.
She would have held him tight, told him it was all going to be alright, and wiped away the tears.
Alistair could do that, but Arainai wouldn't believe him any more than he believed himself.
It wasn't going to be alright for Zevran.
Not without her.
"What am I supposed to do Alistair?" Arainai's voice shook.
Alistair didn't even know what he was supposed to do five years later, let alone how the man who'd loved her so much was supposed to cope.
"What do I do without her?"