Prompt 2: "Everyone has a dark(er) side."

When Kalea didn't come to his tent last night, Alistair didn't think anything of it. It had been a long day—Maker, a long week—and coupled with the surprise darkspawn ambush late in the day, they were all exhausted. After getting healing from Wynne, Alistair had barely been able to stay awake through supper, and had crawled into his tent, falling asleep mere seconds after he laid his head down.

So, when he woke up and the elven mage wasn't by his side, he assumed that she had felt the same way he did and had slept in her own tent that night. It wasn't the first time that had happened and undoubtedly wouldn't be the last. He thought that until he looked across the camp and saw her emerging from Zevran's tent.

For one, frozen moment he just stared, not believing what he was seeing. There had to be some rational, logical explanation and his mind starting frantically searching for one. And then Zevran came out behind her. The assassin dipped his head to brush her cheek with his lips at the same time his hand tucked her loose hair behind her ear, his fingers lingering over and playing with the delicately pointed tip.

His world shattered. Neither of them had seen him yet and he turned away, hurriedly busying himself with striking his tent, needing something to do that would keep him away from them while he tried to process this sudden and disturbing turn of events.

He knew she'd had other lovers before him—that she was far more sexually experienced than he, and that she liked to flirt. But he had never thought it would result in something like this. How could she do this to him? To them? Didn't she know how he felt about her? Maker's breath, he'd told her that he loved her! Did that mean nothing to her?

It was then that he realized that he had assumed she felt the same way. Now that he thought about it, he realized that she'd never said it to him. Habit kept his hands moving as he rolled the canvas and tent poles into a neat bundle, his mind no longer on the task at all, but wholly consumed with this terrible realization.

She had never told him that she loved him. Liked him? Yes. Wanted him? Yes. But love? No, that had never crossed her lips. Something hot and dark bloomed in his chest, spreading out like a sickness. He couldn't confront her about it right now. He knew himself well enough to know he wouldn't be able to string a coherent sentence together and that would just make him look like an idiot. So he would wait, give himself time to watch and decide exactly what he was going to do.

He said nothing to either of them, and no one said anything to him, though he caught a few curious glances from Leliana and Wynne. Instead, he watched, watched as the two of them shared little touches and looks, moments of affection that she should have been sharing with him.

His temper became short, his normal joviality fleeing in the wake of his anger. The darkness in him turned into something ugly. When Kalea came to him a few nights later, leaning down to kiss him, he pushed her away abruptly, standing and saying he was tired and was going to bed. There was a flash of hurt in her wide, deep brown eyes, but he ignored it. He wasn't the one who had chosen this, and if it hurt her, well, good!

With Zevran, he didn't even bother hiding how he felt. He stopped talking to the rogue altogether, glaring at the elf with undisguised hostility and hate. For his part, Zevran understood the unspoken message and kept as far from Alistair as possible.

It came to a head during a fight with another group of darkspawn. Alistair was used to serving as a shield for the others, taking strikes meant for others, his armor and shield absorbing blows that would have felled them. And he had done it for all of them. Certainly for Kalea, Wynne and Leliana, but also for Morrigan, Sten and Zevran.

Alistair saw the attack before it came, saw the shriek heading for Zevran as the elf wove and sliced through the monsters. With the noise all around them, people yelling and shouting, the darkspawn screaming and bellowing, no warning he called could have been heard. But he had time to get there, place himself between the assassin's unprotected back and the shriek. He could run in once more, putting himself in the path of danger and saving Zevran from the attack.

He didn't.

Instead, he turned back to the hurlock he was fighting, not responding as he heard Zevran cry out. There were immediate pulls of magic as he felt both Kalea and Wynne cast their healing spells, a growl from Canth as the mabari launched himself at the shriek so that Zevran could fall back, away from the danger.

It wasn't until the battle was over, the last of the darkspawn dead on the ground, that he looked over. Wynne was attending to injuries the others had received. Kalea was kneeling on the ground next to Zevran. The assassin was sitting up, but he was pale and covered in blood, his armor rent in several places. Zevran looked over Kalea's shoulder at him, and in that gaze, Alistair saw that Zevran knew what had happened.

He turned away, his face not betraying the surge of satisfaction at seeing his foe so beaten.

"Alistair? Can we talk?"

Kalea's tentative question pulled him back into awareness. His first impulse was to say no, to send her away. His mood, already black, had turned even darker in the days since he let Zevran be injured. As much as it satisfied that primal urge to hurt the other man, it nagged at him, his conscience telling him it was wrong and that he damn well knew it. He'd been unable to sleep well, wrestling with himself.

"Sure. What do you want to talk about?" he said coldly.

She shook her head and looked around the camp. "Not here. I want to talk alone. Walk with me. Please?"

He stood and strode from the camp into the surrounding woods, forcing her to hurry to keep up with his long strides. At one point, she tried to take his hand in hers, but he snatched it away.

Finally coming to clearing, far away from the camp and any listening ear, he turned on her. "All right. We're alone. Talk."

Frowning, Kalea asked, "What is wrong with you?"

Was she really going to play dumb here? "Nothing's wrong with me," he replied shortly.

"Alistair, something is obviously wrong. You're not yourself."

"I'm not? Well, maybe you don't know me as well as you think."

That took her aback, and she looked startled. "Alistair, please." She stepped closer to him, almost touching, and raised her hand to his cheek. He turned his head to the side. "See?" she cried. "That! That's what I mean. You don't talk to me anymore, or touch me. You avoid me. What's going on?"

It was too much and he couldn't contain it anymore. "How dare you? How dare you come to me and ask me what's wrong? I don't talk to you anymore? I don't touch you? Well, why would I want to after you started sleeping with that…that assassin?" he snarled at her.

Her eyes flew open wide and he reached up and grabbed the wrist that she still held raised, crushing it in his grip, and pulled her into him, his other arm wrapping around her like a band of steel.

"What do you think I am?" he hissed. "Am I supposed to watch you touch him, kiss him and say nothing? Watch you go to his tent and listen to him make you cry out? Am I just supposed to sit and do nothing and then just take you back when you feel like it?"

"Alistair, wait, no—"

"Shut up!" he snarled. "I'm a man, Kalea, only a man and I can only take so much! And this…this is too much!"

It was hard being near her and being this angry. Her silky red hair shimmered in the late afternoon light, the clean scent of it making him want to bury his face in it. Her dark eyes were large with surprise, like bottomless depths that he could fall into and be happy to never emerge from.

"Don't you know how I feel about you?" he asked hoarsely. "I love you, Kalea. I would do anything for you—I would die for you—but I can't…I can't do this. I can't sit and watch you go to another. It's killing me, seeing you with him. I don't want to lose you, but you have to choose: me or him. I can live with whatever you decide, but I can't live with things the way they are now."

For a long moment she didn't say anything and he felt his heart sink. Alistair had hoped that he might get through to her, but apparently it hadn't been enough.

"You…love me." The words were a statement, but her tone was doubtful, questioning.

"Yes."

"When…when you say that, Alistair, what do you mean?"

He blinked at her. "What do I mean? What do you think I mean? I love you. I want to be with you—and only you—for the rest of my life. I want to kiss you and love you and make you smile and laugh. I want to wake up next to you every morning." He stopped and took a deep breath. "And I want…I want you to want to same thing with me. I want—wait, no, why are you crying?"

Kalea buried her face in his chest, shoulders shaking. He let go of her wrist, dropping his hand to her head, cradling it.

"In the tower," she began, "lots of boys told me they loved me. But it never really meant anything. Love was just something you said when you wanted to fumble underneath someone else's robes, in hidden corners and closets. What you described…that doesn't happen for us. It's a story, a fantasy you only find in books. So when you said it, I thought that's what you meant—that you just wanted my body, that you meant what everyone else meant.

"I didn't mean to hurt you. I didn't realize what this—what I—meant to you."

She hadn't known what he meant? He squeezed his eyes shut, taking a deep breath to steady himself, and inside of him, that darkness let go a little bit. The feel of her fingertips on his cheek made him open his eyes.

"I think…I think I love you, too, Alistair." She bit her lower lip and worried at it. "I'll have to tell, Zevran. I hope he'll understand." She drew back. "Let me go do that and then you and I can…make this up to you."

Alistair was going to say he didn't care whether or not Zevran understood, but he realized how needless it was. He had won.

The ugliness drew back a bit further as he followed her back to camp, but he knew it wasn't gone. Maybe it never would be. Until it had happened, he hadn't been aware that he could feel that way, that his hate for Loghain could be eclipsed by something far deeper, far more primal.

What he had felt when he saw her with another man…. No, that would never really go away. It would always be with him, waiting, in case anyone ever tried to take her from him again.