"You let me die," Solona ghosted through the mist, her voice as haunted and ethereal as her presence. He felt her before he saw her, a tickling at the back his neck, a familiar fluttering pull within his chest. Bathed in the soft sandalwood of her scent, he was blank with awe, drawing clipped breaths that refused to leave back through his lungs. The obsidian of her waves mixed and melted into the chartreuse overhead, a stinging absinthe.

Alistair had thought those and similar words a countless many times on the nights when, alone and bitter, he would crumple in upon himself, as though the chill of the ice she'd used to hold him in his place hadn't simply shattered or melted, but had taken residence in his soul. And he could never, ever, get warm. He would tell himself that if he had been stronger, he could have broken his legs free before she reached the archdemon. If he had been quicker, he could have dodged the spell. If he had been smarter or braver, she wouldn't have been on that rooftop to begin with. But he was none of those things, and so she was gone.

But, Maker, she was lovely. Even as her arctic eyes bit into him, a fury smoldering on their surface, dragging the pits of dread that had never quite left him deeper still within his gut, she was radiant. She bled her way closer, alabaster dancing like smoke across the stagnant pools that lay between them.

"It should have been me," He choked, the words as small and lifeless as he felt, his sword clattering uselessly to the ground before her naked feet, his shield joining the dejected pile only moments later. Sinking to his knees, he stared up into her face, guilt tearing at him to look away, but love locking his eyes in their place. She swept down to meet him, and although he thought that he had cried himself dry over the past ten years without her, he felt a tell-tale warmth trail its way down his cheek. A frozen hand settled like snow upon his chest, the weight of it steadily growing as she pushed, clawing her way into him. He wouldn't stop her. If it was his heart she was reaching for, he had given that away to her years ago.


A/N: In my head, Alistair goes with the warden to fight the archdemon instead of staying at the gates, but she refuses to let him sacrifice himself for her, so she shoots an ice spell at his legs to keep him from charging ahead of her. I'm pretty sure that in game, if Alistair is there with a female warden, he's always the one who finishes it off, unless you did the dark ritual, so that's my way around it XD