My first fanfic... Not entirely sure where this idea came from. I'm actually an Alistair fangirl, so forgive me for his angsty-ness here; I wanted to explore a darker sider of his persona, a side he seemed to show just a bit when he got very angry with my PC. Oh, and I'm a Loghain fangirl, too, so this is what you get :)
Bioware owns all. I own nothing but my imagination and the curious ability to talk to these different characters in my head.
Feedback is most appreciated!
He found her.
He always had a knack for doing so; it was how they kept their relationship a secret, at least, in the beginning, when it had mattered that the secrets be kept. She would volunteer for first patrol, or wander away from camp on the pretense of checking her snares-she didn't even have to look in his direction to know that he would come for her, that he would find her.
He claimed it was the taint that linked them, that it allowed him to feel her direction. He could feel the pull of her blood and know exactly where she was located, as well as in what direction she was heading. She understood this, could feel the same subtle tow in her own veins when darkspawn were nearby. But she never felt such things from another Warden.
She tried. She tried to sense his approach, closed her eyes and tried to figure out where he would appear. Despite her skills, however, the hunting and tracking she had been doing since she was a child, he still usually managed to surprise her. She would round a dead tree and he would be leaning against the stump, lips quirked in that smile that she found so wildly attractive: it was half arrogance, and half embarrassment, boy and man all rolled into one expression. At other times, he would simply steal up behind her, his arms catching around her middle, his breath warm against her neck. She told him it was dangerous to do, that someday she would mistake him for a darkspawn and skewer him. But he only laughed at her, his touch tender and timid.
Secrets and mysteries didn't matter now, of course. The Landsmeet changed everything; there was no going back.
He was a King.
And she betrayed him.
The camp was quiet the evening after she did it, morose even. Where once there was laughter and companionship, now there was only a disconsolate pall that hung over their shoulders like a heavy cloak. One of their own was gone, only to have been replaced by another, an outsider, a man who trusted them as little as they trusted him. And she knew the others blamed her for it; one or two of them openly voiced their opinions when given the opportunity. The rest expressed their discontent by simply refusing to meet her gaze.
It wasn't as if her decision had been easy. No. In actuality, it was one of the most difficult things she had ever done. Ripping her own heart out of her chest would have been less painful; at least her death would have been quick. Instead, she got the dubious honor of continuing, of lasting, enduring this weary path until the Blight was ended and the Archdemon lay dead at her feet.
Or she lay dead at its feet.
She was able to bear the sullenness of her company to a point, keeping her hands busy and her mind occupied with sharpening her weapons. The easy rhythm of red steel against whetstone was comforting, a straightforward task that made sense in a world that was turned on its head. When she chanced to glance up across the fire, however, and saw dark hair instead of blonde, the reflection of flames flickering back at her from ice blue eyes instead of warm amber, the stranger sitting in his spot, the sheer wrongness of what she had done made her feel ill. She broke and ran for it, making good her retreat. She escaped into the comparatively friendly recess of the woods, and lost herself amongst its trees.
But he found her.
One moment she was alone, the forest still and soft around her; the next, he was there, silent and unyielding. Her heart slammed hopefully, painfully against her ribs as he appeared suddenly in front of her, his armor gleaming dully in the silver moonlight. The rest of him was shadows.
They stood facing one another, only a few paces separating them. She tried to see his expression, some trace of emotion, but there was nothing to discern. His only movement was the slight flaring of his nostrils, the breaths that coalesced in the cool air between them. He looked so different, so far removed from that curious mixture of confident warrior and playful boy he had been when she first met him in Ostagar. There was a gentleness about him then; it was not in the man before her now.
He was the first to break the quiet, and she winced at the raw ache in his voice.
"Why, Elissa?" he asked, "Why?"
She took a step away from him, recoiling as her hope died a painful, bitter death in her belly. This was not to be a happy reunion, then, with apologies and repentance. No, he wanted an accounting: he was here looking for answer, to demand them of her.
She didn't think she could give them.
"Because," she replied quietly, unable to meet his dark gaze as she made the attempt to explain, "Because it was the right thing to do."
"How can you say that?" He gestured angrily towards the south, towards the Blighted lands, towards the ruins of Ostagar and Lothering, and all the dead in between. "How can you say it when my brother's body lays on a funeral pyre, your King deceived?" His voice rose as he continued, "How can you say it when Duncan's body lies broken and unburied?"
She swallowed hard, determined to hold her tears in check. If this was the way things were to be, the way he wanted them to remain, then he was not a man to whom she would show her tears. He was no longer a man with whom she could share her burdens.
"The death of one man does not justify the murder of another, Alistair," she answered, dismayed when her voice cracked on his name.
He laughed, a furious and fierce noise, nothing like any laugh she had ever heard him utter. She shuddered inside, her guilt a bile that rose in her throat.
She caused this. She had changed him, had been the driver and the catalyst, and her belief that it had been the right thing was becoming ever more slippery. She clung to it desperately, even as she felt it sliding away.
"How can you say that," he asked again, taking a step towards her, his tone lowering dangerously as he loomed above her, "When Howe's body lies rotting in the dungeons of his estate?"
At the mention of the deceased Arl of Amaranthine's name, the snake that had plotted the deaths of her entire family, her guilt morphed instantaneously into ire, her eyes seeking his and catching hold. No more warmth there; the amber irises were wrathful, begging retribution.
She was not intimidated, found courage in her own resentment. "You go too far," she snapped up at him, unconsciously widening her stance for combat, her hands clenching and unclenching at her sides as if aching for the feel of a pommel, "Howe was a traitorous monster who killed out of avarice and a sick desire to see others bleed. His death was personal." She snarled the word.
"As Loghain's should have been for me," he shrieked, his cold façade abruptly shattering into searing rage, "He killed my family!" He smashed a gauntlet-covered fist against his breastplate with a clang that resonated around them. It was a sound of battle, an echo of war; it was a heartrending reminder of loss.
In the face of his hatred, the agony in him, her vehemence evaporated as quickly as it had formed and she squeezed her eyes shut, turning away. She knew well what it felt like; she was experiencing it now, all over again. He would never understand, she realized, never comprehend the sense in her actions, and they would never be what they once had been. He was lost to her, lost like so many, many others.
"It's not the same," she sighed, withdrawing, "You know this." The past year had quickly taught her that quitting the field was sometimes better than making a stand. That same hard won experience was now telling her this was not a confrontation she could win.
It was time to put this to an end.
He was not yet ready to allow her retreat. He reached out and roughly grabbed her arm, halting her flight. She felt his fingers leaving marks against her skin even through the drakeskin leathers she wore. "Tell me how it is not," he growled, forcibly shaking her in rhythm with his words, "Tell me how slaughter differs from slaughter."
He had never touched her in anger before, had never physically struck her or bruised her. Before tonight, she would have claimed he was incapable of doing so, that he would sooner have fallen on his own blade than do so. But he was different now, infinitely colder and harder, with a cruelty about him that startled her in its intensity.
Her defensive senses triggered, and she instinctively yanked away from his grip, her hands reaching for the blades at her back. "Intent," she spat at him, pulling her sword and dagger to fore in demonstration, "A man who kills for personal gain cannot be compared to one who does what he thinks he must to save a nation." If he really wanted a fight, if retribution was truly what he had come for, then he would have it.
"A nation he would've seen destroyed for his own pride!" he cried, his voice shaking as he drew his own weapon, whipping it violently over his head. It was his father's sword, King Maric's sword, the runed blade she had found at the ruin of Ostagar and given into his keeping. It was magnificent, and he wielded it now as he had then: with deadly efficiency.
She was prepared for him, and blocked his first blow, catching it between crossed sword and dagger. Silverite and red steel screeched against each other in protest, and he used his impetus to shove her backward as roared a battle cry in her face. She shrugged the shock off, however, having heard it during the heat of other battles. Using the strength in her legs as a brace, she managed to hold her ground, her heels digging furrows in the earth. Gathering herself, she pressed him back, pushing him away. But he only came at her again, this time with his shield, intending to bash her. This time, she took the hit, allowing her body to move with the force of it, and gained some breathing space as she rolled away from him.
They had fought together too many times before. A point had been reached where each knew where the other would be, no matter whether they were looking or not. It wasn't the same thing as the taint, as him finding her in the deepness of the forest; this was an intuition, beaten into them after hundreds and hundreds of hours sparring together, of watching each others' backs in combat. They were two autonomous entities that had merged to use a single awareness. Their communication was extrasensory, their responses flawless, and many a darkspawn had fallen before their inexorable onslaught.
Fighting alongside him had become an art, an intimacy, as personal an action as making love with him, and just as unforgettable.
Now, facing one another as foes, they were entirely equal. They were attuned to one another, one give, the other take as they fell back and feinted, advanced and assailed with easy grace. They circled an invisible center, two cunning predators searching for an opening or a weakness in their rival; there was no room for error, and neither wavered. They danced, wholly balanced, each knowing the steps to this routine intimately, following it precisely.
It was maddening, frustrating, and she wished for nothing more than an end to it.
But Maker help her, it was all so devastatingly familiar that she longed for them to continue on in this manner forever.
He was the first to hesitate, to falter in the established ebb and flow; she thought it was over when his shoulders bowed, the tip of his sword falling towards the dirt. She interpreted his stance and mimicked it, lowering her own weapons just a fraction.
He stood there, scrutinizing her through narrowed lids, his gaze still severe despite his weary countenance. His jaw clenched; she saw the muscle tense, and felt her own retighten in response.
He was not yet finished with her.
"Cousland," he spat her name as if it were a curse, "Traitor." He drew himself up, his eyes gleaming with a light that some may have called holy, but most would have named madness. "Going forward, that's what the name Cousland will mean," he told her, his bearing every bit that of a King, "Everyone will know that your family is nothing but oathbreakers and liars. You will be stripped of your title, your lands, your wealth, even your name. Everything. You are the last," he snarled, "And you end your line in disgrace."
Each word may as well have been slashes of Maric's blade on her body; they cut at her, ripped at something vulnerable deep inside her gut. It was as if she were back in Highever, back in the larder, watching as her father bled out on the floor, as her mother tried to hold the pieces of him together while gazing up at her in despair. She had been helpless to do anything to ease their grief or aid them in any way, inadequate and cowardly; she had run away when they needed her most, ran to the Grey Wardens, ran with Duncan, and swore imprudent vengeance in empty remuneration. And naught had changed with Howe's execution; her parents were still dead, her brother was still missing, her self-importance had created hatred in the man she loved, and she was alone.
It didn't matter that her lands and her status were no longer her own. It didn't matter because she had already lost them all the moment she had ingested the darkspawn taint, and awakened from the Joining. Grey Wardens held no lands or titles, and there was no shame in it; but she had still been a Cousland in her heart, it had still meant something to her. And now that too was lost to her, lost as he was to her, like her parents, like everyone and everything she had ever loved.
The path she followed was but a farce, and she wandered a world in which she was lost to all.
What was a person with no home, no family, no friends, and no name? Could they still be considered a person, or were they but a ghost, an apparition to either flee or ignore? She felt the stitches along her poorly mended heart tear anew with the knowledge that he was right: she was nothing.
With a howl that sounded very much like that of a dying mabari, she leapt at him. She allowed her anger to take her, allowed it to drive her, and recklessly rushed him head-on. Her intention was to kill; she cared not whether it was him or her that fell.
She had underestimated him, having always valued the weight of actions above words. But he had always had a witty tongue; just because he had never used it to wound did not mean that he could not. He gauged her reactions to his verbal battering and anticipated how she would respond to this alteration in their choreography, effortlessly dodging her thoughtless frontal assault.
He slid around her charge, his blade swift and keen. She felt the finely honed edge along her rib cage, splitting effortlessly through the tough drakeskin armor, slicing through her skin as if it were so much paper.
The pain was different, almost welcomed in its immediacy and its sharpness. It blotted out the sting of loss, and she hissed out a breath, unsure whether it was from hurt or relief. She sensed heat, felt him yet next to her, close, as if holding her up, supporting her as the friend he once had been. She perceived his moment of indecision, of unexpected reluctance: they hung suspended for a breathless instant, their bodies pressed ardently against one another, and the very world itself seemed frozen in uncertainty. A second later, however, he fell away, taking his sword with him, and she watched as an arc of thick droplets followed behind, shining black and wet in the moonlight.
She fell to her knees in the leaves, unable to hold herself up without his strength to bear her up. Her dagger and sword slipped from her hands unheeded. She gazed up at him, a great and powerful figure from her reduced vantage, his outline softened in the shadows. He was watching her silently in return, unsympathetic, the runes of his weapon darkened and running with her life-blood.
She drew in a ragged breath. "Finish it then," she said to him, feeling the tears she had earlier hidden now running unchecked down her face. "If that's what you really want, kill me and be done with it."
It was only reasonable, after all. He had always been a good man, was a genuinely decent man, and possessed an innate idea of justice, of what was right and wrong. But he had also been naïve, even ignorant, in the true ways of the world. She had taken it upon herself to change that, had recreated and reshaped him; she had coaxed him at first, then prodded him and plunged him into a life he loathed.
The result was the creature standing before her.
Where before he might have weakened or wavered, he now could be strong; he would not allow another to control him or overrule him. He could assertively temper the ambitions of a power-hungry queen, and resist the imitation-uncle who thought only of his own greedy aspirations. He could now recognize the more subtle machinations of all men in the court, the seemingly insignificant evils they committed against themselves and one another in their continuous struggles for dominance, and he would not be a pawn in their games.
He had always been a protector by nature, a Warden in every implication of the word, apt to jump to the front of every foray, his shield raised and providing a buffer for his companions. And now he could safeguard a country he claimed to love, as well as those who lived in it, just as staunchly and stoically, without the hassle of pity.
He was a King.
And she betrayed him.
If he required her blood in payment, it was only his by right, a claim she had afforded him. It was a due that she was more than willing to pay.
He continued surveying her where she kneeled before him, his face blank of any emotion as he stood motionless. Her tears were nearly blinding her, the agony of her wounds intensifying with each breath she drew. She wanted nothing more than to seek solace in silent numbness, to have him sink his sword into her heart and end its torment.
She sucked in as much air as she could, releasing it in a final scream at him: "Kill me!"
Her command broke whatever spell he was under; he moved in her direction, putting his feet down cautiously, raising his sword as he closed on her. She welcomed his approach, lowering her head in supplication and closing her eyes. She was panting, her every gasp burning her as she waited for the chill of silverite against her neck, praying that the end would come quickly.
But Maric's blade would not touch her again.
His voice once again broke the stillness of the forest, and he was very near, the single word but a whisper in her ears. "No."
It was an effort to lift her head a second time, to gaze at him blearily through crusted eyes. He was only a few inches away, squatting down so that he was on the same level as she. His own gaze was hard and unforgiving, two amber gems that were as chilly as the wintry air surrounding them. Entirely gone was the man she loved; he was a stranger now, a construct of her own cynical design, and a man she had never met and would never know.
"Please," she entreated weakly, not sure anymore what she was even begging for. The taste of copper and ashes was sour on her tongue.
He shook his head slowly, unwilling to grant her even this small, final mercy. "No," he said again, bitterness like acid dripping from his tone, "You'll live as the traitor you are, just as you let live the traitor who now stands in my place at the fireside. It is a mockery you permitted, and one you will suffer." Something flickered and shifted in his eyes, something small but very much resembling sorrow, as he shook his head once more and muttered in a low voice, "As I suffer."
Her chin fell when he pushed himself up, her head too heavy to vertically maintain, but she listened to him leave, following the trail of his footsteps until they faded into the background noise of the woods. She knew this was the last; he would not find her again.
At some point, she fell forward onto the forest loam, but such was the anguish in her heart and the pain in her side that she barely took notice of the blunt-force shock. She drifted, floating in half-waking nightmares of torture and regret. She was semi-aware of an iciness seeping into her fingers and toes as she began to lose feeling in them, semi-aware of her life-force oozing out from the injury along her ribcage, but these things carried little significance and were not enough to draw her fully awake.
The sun rose at some point, but it brought no heat. The light only burned against her closed eyelids; she saw his tawny gaze in her dreams, the blighted emptiness of them reminding her of stories her father had told about the Silent Plains of Navarra. His eyes echoed the wreckage of that land, the desolation, and they froze her.
She wasn't sure if it was that same day, or many days later, when she felt a familiar tugging inside her. It was a pull very much like that of a darkspawn approaching, though milder. It started in her belly, and quickly spread throughout her entire system, following the sluggish pumping of her blood through her veins. Her heart stuttered feebly, and her mind called out for action against the danger, but there was little her muscles could do to react.
There was some slight surprise when she felt her body turned over onto its back; she had not heard any footsteps drawing near. She felt the discomfort of limbs being shifted that had not been moved in many, many hours, and a bone-deep throbbing started up in her side. The pulsation caused an involuntary groan to issue from her throat, startling her nearly as much as the presence of another person.
"Alive then," the individual in question rumbled deeply, his voice caustic and sounding almost disappointed by the assessment. There was a sneer in his voice when he muttered, "Barely, anyway."
She felt her chin tilted backward by a large, callused hand, and a small glass bottle was put to her mouth. A thick liquid was poured down her throat, and she swallowed mechanically. The taste of the poultice was foul but recognizable, and she felt the curative take affect almost immediately. It was like taking a shot of Ogren's strongest dwarven whiskey: warmth flared in her chest and tingled outward, gently washing away her physical pangs.
She sighed in relief and tried to open her eyes. Everything was fuzzy, out of focus, and the sun was ten times too bright. She squinted as a murky apparition leaned over her; it was a man with long dark hair, two thin braids dangling down in front of his ears to frame harsh, weathered cheekbones.
"Who did this?" he asked her, his words demanding, more an order than a question. She felt his hands on her shoulders, gripping lightly; his voice may have held anger, but his touch was considerate.
Her mind abruptly supplied a name: Loghain.
He found her.
She shook her head, unable to summon the strength to tell him, feeling herself drifting away on the current of warmth the poultice provided. She coasted on its tides, her nightmares temporarily relinquishing her.
When she peeled her eyes open for a second time a little later, she found she was being carried, cradled in his arms and against his chest like a child. She most likely would have balked had she not been so injured; she was not a woman who enjoyed the feeling of being coddled. At this moment, however, if she were to be completely honest, she would have admitted that she was not entirely displeased by his holding her; his touch was that of a man who knew what it meant to be a father, to be both provider and guardian, teacher and master. His hands were impersonal, if gentle, and she did not get the impression that he was cosseting her, nor that she should be fearful of him. He was carrying her simply because he needed her to move and she could not do so on her own.
He was not wearing armor, a discovery that brought pleasant disbelief when her cheek brushed up against the wall of his chest. She let it remain there, resting against a shirt that was soft and body-warmed. With her nose buried against him, she found that he smelled of simple things: sweet-grass and fresh churned soil, camp-fires and wood-smoke, cured rabbit furs, soap and clean sweat, and, hovering just beneath it all, the slight tell-tale musk of mabari hound.
He smelled of Ferelden, she realized, of home, and for a few moments, she was there; she was savoring the blissfully sweet feel of the caring embrace holding her close. For the arms carrying her were no longer those of a man who barely tolerated her, but those of a father, a friend, a man who comforted and supported her, who cared not that she was without a place or name in the world. She need not hide in dark, secret places; the sun was welcomed on her body, and she remembered what it was to be found, to belong.
With a soft, wistful breath, she settled herself contentedly against him, and diminished back into the Fade.
More to come, I promise! Next up is some one-on-one time with Loghain and exploring a little bit of his darker side... or maybe it's his lighter side...?