AN: Many thanks to the wonderful Decantate for prodding me to write this idea down AND doing my beta.
It wasn't his fault, not really. He'd only tried to do his job, tried to do the sort of thing Duncan had recruited him to do. The emissary had been on the verge of unleashing one horrible spell or another when Alistair called down holy fire from the sky. In truth, it had something to do with sunlight and willpower and just a little bit of magic, but they had all been taught it was the wrath of the Maker himself, channeled through them. Amazingly, it hadn't done wonders for his ego until he first used it against the darkspawn, not five minutes past. That moment of awesome power and supreme confidence had lasted exactly three seconds before a particularly vile Orlesian curse had left the lips of the pretty redhead. He'd only really heard half of it over the guttural cry of a hurlock as it charged him, but he'd heard enough to know it was a direct match for the naughty words he'd learned from the son of an Orlesian merchant. It involved a tree, fire and the target's mother, father and other ancestors going three generations back. Bugger.
The darkspawn were dead now, and with any luck, Shara wasn't quite dead enough for him to get in trouble. He hadn't seen her after all, not with the sun in his eyes and the emissary's ridiculous headdress hiding Shara as she flanked the other mage. He still wasn't used to the way she slunk around the battlefield – and how she managed it in that bright yellow robe was another question altogether – but he'd quickly learned to get away from anything she was concentrating on. She had a knack for making darkspawn explode, but had failed to give him ample warning the first time. He'd spent a week picking genlock bits out of his splintmail.
Morrigan was crouched over his fellow Warden, hand on Shara's forehead, and as he grew closer those disturbingly golden eyes turned to him, very nearly holding his gaze. Her chest, however, won the competition and he started to stammer an apology, but Morrigan only hissed like a cat. That did take his mind off those horribly tempting breasts on an equally horrible woman and make him realize that his Maker-given gift to talk himself into all sorts of trouble would be best wasted another day. "You foolish, stupid, idiotic, pathetic excuse of a man." The words were harsh, but given the situation, entirely reasonable. It wasn't one of his better moments. When he shrugged noncommittally, Morrigan's pale skin flushed red all the way down to her navel – which was something else entirely – and oh Maker, if he made it out of this alive he was never going to smite anything again.
"Well? Do you have anything to say for yourself, or are you going to sit there and stare?" Morirgan gave him only a moment before continuing on, completely uncaring as to whether or not he had something to say. It was annoying, even if he was so at a loss for words he'd even forgotten to apologize. "If you're going to use your fool Templar tricks the least you can do is avoid the mages fighting with you. You don't see Shara or myself hitting you with fireballs. Idiot." Morrigan spoke with exquisite disdain and the skin on the back of his neck prickled as she began to heal her fellow mage.
The last bit wasn't entirely true. Alistair had been burned, frozen, electrocuted and paralyzed on several occasions and they'd only been on the road three weeks. Every time he did it, they'd look at him as though he were a child that didn't understand the sky was blue or fire was hot. It was always, "Alistair, you ran straight into that stream of ice," or "Really, Alistair, don't you recognize a paralyze spell when you see one? You tackled the genlock I was aiming for." It was never their fault, and always his.
Sighing softly to himself, Alistair flumped to the ground. The act was a maneuver he'd practiced since his earliest days in Templar training. It drove Shara to madness, particularly when he did it while the others finished off whatever darkspawn that lingered, but he was perfectly happy to rest a while before finishing the job. After all, if you waited long enough, they all died eventually. Duncan had never seemed to mind, but then again, Duncan was vastly different from Shara. He missed the man, especially since the only other person remotely interested in him was Leliana, and even that he couldn't enjoy, not with Morrigan and Shara whispering at the apostate's fire, occasionally giggling and casting odd looks in his direction.
A low groan reached his ears, and as he stood back up, Alistair realized he wasn't quite certain he was relieved to hear it. He certainly didn't want to lead, but he remembered the fit Shara'd thrown when they'd watched Loghain desert the field. Still, he supposed it was better to have her alive than dead.
He was wrong. So very, very wrong. The first words out of Shara's mouth were, "Flaming buttered turnips," but the next set of words was "If I see Alistair I'm going to murder him." He took a split second to be impressed by her sudden coherency, but that was soon overwhelmed by the desire to flee. He'd tensed, fighting the instinct to run until he'd seen the look in Sten's eyes. Sten hadn't said more than a dozen words to him, each doled out in single, barely-growled grunts, but Alistair's current predicament had earned him two fully enunciated words. "Run. Fast."
He was running then, as fast as his splintmail-clad body could, but the thing was, Templars weren't trained to run. They were trained to track, to keep a quick, steady pace and wear their quarry out. They were also trained to not fear wrathful mages, but Alistair seemed to have forgotten that bit while he was busying fleeing for his life.
His flight was cut short by a branch. As he fell he promised himself he would find a darkspawn axe and hack the thing to pieces later, but the promise of future revenge did nothing for him now. It was covered in moss the exact same shade as the grass, catching the toe of his boot and giving him a very sudden, painful introduction to the ground. While he struggled to get back to his feet, Shara was already up, unleashing a blast of magic that left him stunned and fuzzy-headed. He was only fortunate that the effort used up the small bit of energy Morrigan had coaxed out of her, and Shara soon joined him on the ground. Alistair found himself profoundly grateful Shara and her belt knife were a several paces away because he was quite certain had she been much closer, she would have crawled over and stabbed him out of spite.
Alistair had never thought he'd regret being alive, but every muscle and bone in his body was sore and stiff and it was all Shara's fault. She'd spent the last two days finding new and painful ways to exact her revenge. The first had been almost childish in its simplicity – casting a solid wall of energy right as he stepped into it, hitting with a resounding thwack. It had almost broken his nose, and the swelling had only gotten worse, but that hadn't been enough for her, oh no. Her next trick had been to animate the rabbit bones left over from dinner and walk them into his tent while he slept. In his struggle to escape the deformed skeleton of half-charred bones, he'd gotten so tangled in the blanket his legs had been unable to move on command and he'd fallen straight onto his shield, bruising the entire right side of his body.
When he'd finally crawled out of the tent to find Shara standing there looking perfectly pleased with herself, he'd drawn himself up, nearly ready to unleash his fury on her, she'd let out an amused giggle and it was then Alistair realized his smallclothes had suffered a rather unfortunate tear during his struggles. All he could do then was squeak out a protest, clasp his hands to his newly-exposed privates and scuttle back into his tent while he blushed a dozen shades of red. He'd spent half the night finding the rabbit bones, each one poking into him as he tried to sleep. After finding the first three, he'd taken to chucking them at Shara's tent, each soft thuck of bone on fabric giving him a slight thrill. Even after that she hadn't relented, perfectly happy with torturing him in ways he wouldn't expect.
A sudden burst of yellow light erupted at his feet, the familiar tingle of magic going completely unnoticed during his reverie. The sudden shock made him lose his footing for a moment, and though he didn't quite fall, he had most certainly had enough.
Getting to his feet with such enthusiasm he nearly lost his balance again, Alistair straightened, brushing dirt from his breastplate. Turning quickly on his heel he marched straight up to Shara, fixing his gaze on those black-brown eyes as he did. He did his best to loom over her, even though he wasn't very good at it and there wasn't much looming that could be done to someone only a few inches shorter than yourself.
Shara's wore the smallest of smiles and cocked her head to the side as if in expectation. He did not disappoint. "I've had enough of your childish games, Shara. I apologized half a dozen times, tried to help you set up your tent, and have generally done all I could to put myself in your good graces. If you keep doing this, I'll, I'll..." He trailed off a moment, the slightest hint of nausea disturbing the pool of rage that was nestled in his belly. "Well, I'll teach you to not do it again." It was a rather lame ending to what had been a brilliant, if short, tirade, but it was better than nothing.
"You think I'm childish, do you?" One eyebrow was arched just so and Shara's lips twitched as he saw a smile creep into her eyes.
Drawing in a quick breath, Alistair nodded once. "Yes. Duncan would be shocked by your behavior." It felt like an appropriate thing to say, and it may have even been true.
Once again, Alistair felt he had the upper hand for three glorious seconds before Shara burst into a fit of laughter and playfully smacked his shoulder. Alistair could feel his face melting into a frown while she grinned and chuckled and shook her head. "Oh Alistair, Duncan didn't think me childish at all." There was an evil glint in Shara's eye and Alistair suddenly began to wonder if she wasn't a demon sent to torment him. "And he thoroughly approved of things that were far more shocking than what I've done to you." The last was said in a husky sort of slur that tickled bad places in his mind.
When Morrigan and Leliana both began giggling that horrible woman-giggle which always seemed to spell his doom, a blinding bit of truth flared into his mind that quickly had Alistair in shock. "Sweet Maker, you slept with him?"
As their laughter grew louder, Alistair could only let out a low moan of despair and sink to the ground, while Sten watched with eyes that were almost sympathetic.