The Long Vigil
Fort Drakon is far from quiet at night. There are little noises everywhere, behind the bigger ones, and he can't close his eyes, can't bed down and save his strength. Alistair tries to tell himself that really, neither was camp, neither was Eamon's, neither was anywhere he's ever tried to sleep, but this is wholly and undeniably different.
Most places he's slept, including the Deep Roads, did not echo with screams and whimpers and the smack of wood and metal on flesh, the rattle of chains, the creak of wheels.
The brutality of men to one another is something he's never truly had to face, not like this. Darkspawn aren't people. The Deep Roads are cruel, violent, disturbing- but not like this. This is worse, infinitely worse, and though he has followed Daylen's advice, has held back his trust and watched others warily, nothing could have prepared him.
They took Daylen away an hour ago, two, somewhere in what seems like the distant past as well as just seconds earlier. He had shouted then. He had railed. He had tried to protect his closest comrade, and Daylen had looked at him and just shook his head, lips pressed to a thin line. He had tipped his fingers forward in what Alistair wants to think was forgiveness, was a motion of strength. When the guard had dragged them from Howe's estate, Loghain's lieutenant had ordered the mage's hands bound. Alistair had watched as bandages were used to constrain him, binding each finger to its pair, strapping his palms together until Daylen was forced to stand as if praying.
And Daylen had taken it all stoically. Alistair had assumed that the other man knew something he didn't, had some hope that Alistair could not conceive of. He'd followed the man through haunted forests, dwarven thaigs, castles howling with the shrieks of undead.
He'd followed him to this prison.
Now Alistair lies curled on his side, back to the wall of the cage that faces the pit. He saw it on entering, the chipped stone stairs stained with blood both old and new leading down to cages, to manacles, to racks, to all sorts of things he refuses to imagine. But there is little left to leave to the imagination. They have had Daylen down there for a lifetime.
Alistair has heard everything, and he hopes desperately, selfishly, that help will arrive before it is his turn to face their captors stretched out at their mercy. As they'd been led through the streets, wrists lashed before them and pulled behind horses, Daylen had whispered They'll come for us.
But Daylen loves a mercenary, cold-hearted shrew of an apostate and is only close with the Antivan, and Alistair is not sure if either will come to their aid.
He tries to think of the long wait as a vigil. He never took his, of course, not the long vigil to be named a templar, but there were others. He has sat up long nights staring at a burning flame and he has watched the woods or the caverns or the halls while the others have slept. He has marched past fatigue, past exhaustion, and collapsed only when the road was safe. He has faced worse.
But the cries coming from the pit, Daylen's cries, are impossible to ignore. At first Daylen had been silent, controlled. And then had come the battle cries, the angry shouts, the protests, the defiance. Alistair had heard words shouted by their captors then, too. Orlesians. Plots. Sedition. He had focused, though, on how Daylen persisted, how he withstood.
And then had come the screams and the whimpers, the sobs, the pleas.
Daylen doesn't make those sounds. Daylen is their fearless leader, his fearless leader, and that was the moment when Alistair had turned away fully. His body has only aches from the bonds around his wrists, his skin marred by bruises and cuts from their guards. They had been stripped down to their smalls on arrival, Ser Cauthrien watching, impassive, the whole while. Alistair's armor had been set aside whole, likely to be given to the guard or sold for funds, whatever little bit would help Loghain. Daylen's robes, though, had been cut off of his body to avoid unbinding his hands.
If rescue does come, Alistair hopes they bring pants.
It's an idle, meandering thought, and it makes him laugh weakly. He's exhausted and his heart hammers in his chest, trying to find an escape of its own, but he's still making Blighted jokes. If Daylen could see him now-
He hears another of Daylen's broken cries, and he banishes the image.
What did he think about on all those long nights he has sat up waiting? But there's no point in thinking of giant slobbering dogs from the Anderfels, no point in making jokes, even to himself, about Orlesian cheeses. All he can strive for is utter blankness.
He prays that he will be able to sleep before they come for him.
There are no windows in the bowels of Fort Drakon, but Alistair is certain it must be dark already. Is it the dead of night? Grey dawn? Early morning? How long have they had Daylen, to draw those sounds from him? How long will it take to drag them from Alistair?
Not long enough. He doesn't want to give them the satisfaction, but though he takes blows in battle and rushes in first to protect the rest, it's not the same as being stretched out belly to the sky by trained torturers on the pay of somebody as paranoid, as ruthless as Loghain. He had no hope.
For the first time in months, Alistair says a quiet prayer to the Maker. He finds the words of the Chant, memorized so grudgingly, and they are the first sound that has passed his lips since they pulled Daylen away by his contorted, bound hands and he shouted No, no, take me first! and You can't do this, you can't do this! Then, he'd shouted to whoever was in the room, whether they paid him attention or not. He rattled the bars. He called out to Daylen. He fought.
He's not fighting anymore.
When he runs out of appropriate Chant verses, he repeats them again. He scrambles for anything at all to fill the air. He speaks verses that have nothing to do with perseverance, reciting the tale of Andraste to himself, the little details of which he learned because of how much like an adventure story it was. He repeats little limericks he's heard, one or two of Teagan's favorite ballads, a pale approximation of one of Leliana's songs. He sings, even, off-key and hoarse and quiet. He fills the not-quiet with sounds of his own, and finally, those words drown out what waits outside of his cage.
He loses track of time, but he's mumbling the words of Transfigurations in broken half-sentences when he hears the scraping drag of flesh on stone, the rattle of keys. He doesn't roll over, doesn't even let himself think my turn. A lock turns in a key and he hears the soft groan of Daylen Amell as he is dropped without ceremony to the floor. There's the scent of blood thick on the air, a metallic tang in the back of Alistair's throat, but he pushes it aside. He has not finished reciting Transfigurations. There are still- what? Eight verses left? Ten? He doesn't rightly remember, but he does know that he isn't done.
There are footsteps. A shout, from somewhere far away. Daylen shifts against the stone with painful slowness- and then the world explodes into fire just beyond the darkness of Alistair's closed eyelids and he feels the heat on his skin. There are voices in the flame, an Antivan accent and the archaic speech of a Witch of the Wilds.
And when Transfigurations is finished and the room is silent except for the running footsteps of Zevran and Morrigan, he lets himself thank the Maker for hearing his plea and sparing him this time.