Note: I wrote this in about thirty minutes so I know there are some grammer errors and a few other problems. So if you leave a review please don't bring it up. Though I would appreciate any comments on the story itself both positive and negative.
Alistair jumps and looks up from his paperwork when the door to his study is slammed open, his hand instinctively reaching empty space at his hip where his sword usually rests. But his hand drops as he lets out a sighs with a small smile when he sees his former lover and fellow Gray Warden Solona Amell standing in the doorway. His smile quickly falls from his face when he sees the look of hurt and anger on her face.
He starts to ask her wants wrong though he is sure he already knows what is wrong and his suspicions are confirmed when she cuts him off as she yells loud enough for the whole castle to hear.
"You are a real son of a bitch you know that! You throw everything away we had without so much as a second fucking thought giving me the bullshit excuse you can't be with me because I'm a mage. Yet here you are set to marry one in two damned months! And if that wasn't enough of kick in the bloody teeth she is not just any mage but my murderous traitorous cousin!"
"It's she isn't just a mage. She is a mage that..." Alistair starts to defend himself and his political marriage to the mage Viscount of Kirkwall but is once again cut off by Solona
"She's a mage that what Alistair? She is mage that is a traitor to her own kind? She is a mage that butchered an entire circle down to the last man, woman and child for a crime they didn't commit! Is that what you mean Alistair?! Is that what I should have done if I wanted to keep you? Killed the circle like you wanted instead of doing the right thing and saving as many as I could?"
Alistair groans as he shakes his head before he replies, "She is not a traitor to her own kind! Nor is she a murderer! She only did what had to be done! She had to protect the people of the city!"
Solona jaw drops as the anger fades from her face and eyes leaving behind only her pain. It takes her several long seconds to work past the lump that formed in her thought before in a strangled whisper she asks, "So the mages were not part of the city or were they just not people Alistair? Is that what a mage must do to be recognized as a person by the Chantry by mundane like you is turn against their own kind and slaughter innocents mages? So she is a person and I'm not because I have a soul and morals?"
Alistair stares at Solona in shock for a second before he starts to say, "No! That is not what I meant at all..."
The anger returns to Solona face as she cuts his off again only this time her voice is deadly calm. The voice she used on the people she was about to kill and Alistair begins to fear for his life as she says, "Don't lie to me. You know I wouldn't have cared who you married if had been anyone but her. I don't even care that she is my cousin but what I do care about is that she is a mage who is allowed to marry you and live outside the circle for turning against her own people.
"So have your murdering templar whore queen just know for this betrayal our friendship is done I will have nothing to do with you. I will have nothing to do with this country as long as that murdering bitch is on the Ferelden throne,"
She turns and shuts the door before walking up to the desk the pain and anger in her eyes turning ice cold. As she walks to toward him Alistair would have preferred to be facing every darkspawn in the deep roads with no weapons and wearing nothing but his name day suit then sitting here in his office facing Solona Amell. As she leans over the desk he pushes himself back trying to get as far away from her as he can and he almost forgets how to breathe when she begins speaking her voice a low cold whisper, "If your new templar whore hurts a single mage I will know about it and I will kill her and no one and I mean no one will be able to protect her. Not you, the crows, the entire Ferelden army or every templar in Thadas will be able to keep her safe from me. But because I love my country and for some damn reason I still love you I will give you one gift. If she does start going after the mages I will spare her long enough to give you an heir but after that her life is forfeit,"
Alistair is too shocked to say anything so he just nods his head. He knows he should call his guards to have her arrested for threating his future queen but he knows Solona and she would have prepared for that. If she is arrested and executed for conspiracy to commit regicide Marian would still die just without being allowed to live long enough to have a child. And also the fact he all but shitting himself right not he had seen her angry before but never this angry and it was never directed at him, which is new and extremely unpleasant. She gives him one last hate filled glare before pushing off the desk turning sharply on her heel. As he watches her march out of his office his heart breaks all over again because he knows he will never to see her again. His eyes begin to blur and burn as they fill with tears when he truly understands what he has just lost. He lost the love of his life and best friend twice in a single life time. He collapses to his desk as great heaving sobs rack his body and he doesn't care who hears or sees.
Two years later Alistair sits in his office just as he did that day Solona had walked out of his life forever. He can't help but reflect what had happened to him and his country in two short years. Shortly after Solona walked away from him Marin Hawke and her elven lover, Fenris, walk into it and he had made the single greatest mistake of his life, marring Viscountess Marian Hawke. She will forever be known as the Blood Queen of Ferelden. In only a short year and half her death squads hunted down captured tortured and publicly executed hundreds of mages. It had been a relief when she gave birth to their son a year ago because he knew Solona would keep her word and kill his wife a short six months ago.
Alistair sighs as he stands from his desk and walks out of the room. As he walks down the hall with no particular destination in mind he can't help but think that Solona had been completely right about the woman. Marian had been soulless and had no morals to speak of she was pure evil, probably worse than even Flemeth.
No sooner had she been crowned queen then she began making an alliance with the Chantry and systematically taking the power away from the Bannon and placing it squarely in her hands. The Landsmeet tried stopping her but after the mysterious death of five banns, three arls, the crippling of Teyrn Fergus Cousland's young daughter, as well as Alistair's own brushes with death all the power in Ferelden as in hands of Marian and the Chantry.
It only took six months and his late wife started making edicts naming any person with magic outside the circle would be declared blood mages and they were to be captured immediately integrated and then executed. It didn't matter if it was a five year old child whose powers just manifested or circle mage outside the tower on circle business if a mage wasn't in the circle they were called a blood mage.
He had tried stopping this from happening but with all the power the Chantry and with Marian held which made him and the remaining landsmeet virtually powerless to save the mages. For the last year and half of her life Marian and Chantry they had hundreds mages men, women and children, some as young as four, publicly tortured and executed. No one was safe but her. He and the remaining landsmeet intervened when and where they could sending out their own people to get to as many mages as possible and brought them to the Circle before they were caught by Marian's death squads that were led by her elven lover.
As Alistair passes a window he stops and looks out at the center of Denerim and sees the blackened pits in which she had the children thrown to be burned alive are still there. He will never forget the sound of their screams as they were fed to the flames or the smell of them burning. Not far from the pits are large patches where the stones have been permanently dyed red where had been drawn and quartered or had their innards removed while they were still alive. He thought about having the stones replaced and the pits filled in but decided he wanted to leave them as reminders of what happens when people allow fear and hate to rule them if they allowed the Chantry to pollute their minds with garbage just as the Marian had and her lover.
Maker he can still remember watching helplessly as that damned glowing elf gleefully carrying children two at a time to the pit smiling and laughing as the screamed for their mothers, who were often held back by fanatic templar, as he threw them in. The screams of the children and their mothers still haunt his dreams.
He takes his eyes off the pits and blood stained stones to look at the now empty Chantry and can still almost see the Revered mother standing next to a smiling Marian as the watched that horrible torture and murder. He had asked her once how she could do this to innocent people her own people and her answer was that they were a danger to everyone around them while she was not. She was making sure that another imperium didn't rise.
Alistair shakes his head before he continues down the hall suddenly feeling very sick to his stomach. For his whole marriage he had tried finding good in his wife but he never could but he thought he found a way to be rid of the evil woman when they found out she was pregnant. He and the rest of the Bannon didn't think the child was his and he must admit to hoping Duncan was she made no secret of her affair with the elf but they were never caught in the act so nothing could ever be done about it but if the child proved to be the elf. Well that it would be irrefutable evidence of her infidelity and which means he could have had their marriage annulled and the Chantry wouldn't have been able to stop it and she, most gleefully to several Banns whose children she had killed, would be subject to her own laws and edicts which they wouldn't have been reversed until after she had been killed by her own death squad. Alistair was rather surprised with himself when he realized he would have made sure that the one to torture and execute her would have been her lover.
He remembers finding her in her rooms sobbing her eyes out several times which had given him hope she was gaining some kind of humanity that she was feeling guilt over the hundreds of innocent people she had slaughtered, but when he finally gained the courage to ask why she was crying he realized how wrong he was. She wasn't crying over guilt but because she didn't want to have a child with him or anyone else because it might be a mage. He also learned that she had secretly aborted three pregnancies before Duncan and the only thing that saves him was she caught the pregnancy too late and was too far along to abort him safely.
After she had given birth to Duncan had refused to touch or even look at him and told the mid-wife to take the child and drown it because there was too great chance doe him to be a mage. After she gave birth to Duncan she got even worse and had made her last fatal mistake. She turned her sights on the circle. She managed to get one law passed that would allow her people to search the tower at her whim and to find "blood mages" before she fell from her balcony. He and the landsmeet placed a small army outside of the circle began have the law revoked before her ashes were even cold. The Chantry wouldn't have allowed the law to be revoked if half the clergy in Ferelden hadn't mysteriously caught the blight sickness and died. Fenris that sadistic bastard had gotten what he deserved. He and his death squad had been captured but an unknown group and the whole squad had been impaled alive on large wooden poles. And they were nice enough to impale them through the middle. No the poll was shoved someplace very uncomfortable and their own body way slowly dragged them down killing them slowly. Alistair is sure that that all of it was Solona's doing and it surprised him that he didn't care about the deaths of so many clergy, his Queen or her monster of a lover. In fact he was glad with them out of the way he could finally fix his country and make it safe for his people again, all of his people elves, dwarves, humans and mages.
Hundreds turned up for her funeral but only the few remaining Chantry clergy and fanatic templars truly mourned her while the rest of country celebrated her death. And the only reason people attended her funeral only did it to make sure she was dead. Several people even stabbed her corpses with knifes they had hidden just to make doubly sure she was dead. Alistair smiles sheepishly to himself he had done the same thing three times. Her lover and his death didn't even get a funeral most people just wanted to leave them on the pole he had been found on to rot but decide it would only spread disease which they probably would have been happy about. So their bodies were taken down dump into the pits they so loved throwing children to and burn without ceremony.
Alistair isn't so surprised to find himself at the nursery he loves spending as much time as he can with Duncan. He leans against the doorway and smiles at the scene before him Duncan and his nanny/bodyguard, a small elven woman name Tabis, playing with a stuffed cat. Alistair's heart melts when Duncan squeals in delight as he reaches for the stuffed cat as Tabis makes it dance. Not for the first time in his life Alistair wonders how could someone so innocent and pure come from such an evil and vile woman as Marian Hawke?
Alistair does not miss his wife or her lover. He had no love for the woman and by the time she died he had hated her and was happy she was gone. His only worry is Duncan. The boy will grow up with tales of the Blood Queen who slaughtered hundreds if not thousands of innocent people for no reason. He wish he could hide the truth about the woman from his son and spin him some tale about what a wonderful and kind woman she was and that she loved him before even meeting him but knows he can't. He won't be able to hide the truth from him because people's memories are far too long for that. Alistair shakes his head to clear his mind he has years till he has to worry about that so he will just enjoy his time with his son mourn the loss of his only true love Solona and run Ferelden as well as he can.
With that in mind he walks into the nursery and kneels next to his son who quickly crawls over to him laughing and giving him a toothless grin. As he picks up his son and hugs him to his chest he thinks how is life is almost completely perfect. All he needed was Solona and it would be absolutely perfect. But she will never come back and it is his own fault but as he looks down at his son he can't bring himself to regret any of his decisions.