Alistair

It was only a rumor. There was no way that they were dead. Mahariel and Ashe were more than capable of defending themselves against anyone. But despite thinking that, Alistair couldn't help but to run as fast as he could out of his quarters towards what his captain described as the murder scene.

He stopped dead in his tracks when he arrived.

Both... both of them?

No, the dead girl being lifted away by the healers and the guards wasn't Ashe. That was... Lady Hewlender? He barely noticed before noting that Ashe was nowhere to be seen. But behind the people hauling off the dead noblewoman was – no.

"Get the fuck out of my way." This wasn't real, couldn't be real. Alistair pushed the guards out of the way until there was nothing obstructing his view of the woman on the floor. Her beautiful, golden hair was matted with blood, her own blood. The wound in her stomach...

He fell to his knees, his hand over his mouth, reaching for her with the other. "No, no, no..." His voice was a broken mess. "Please, Mahariel, wake up, please, please..." He touched her cheek, wishing desperately that she'd open her eyes to yell at him for touching her. But she didn't move. He looked down at her wound again and his hand hovered, shaking, over it, as if he could fix it by just touching it, but he didn't dare to do even that, to touch it. To feel it, feel her blood covering his hand, that would mean that this was real.

His head snapped up to the healers who were just standing there, doing nothing. "Why aren't you helping her? Fix this, now!"

The two women just stared at the floor. "I'm so sorry, Your Majesty. But she's gone, there's nothing we can do for her now," one of them said, never once daring to look at him.

"Don't..." His voice broke. "Don't say that, please," he whispered. "She's still warm, sh-she must have just... No, please..." He could feel tears welling up and spilling from his eyes. He inched closer to Mahariel and put his shaking arms around her. Her head fell against his chest and he could see the tips of her ears peek out through her hair. Her beautiful, delicate ears that he'd once spent hours kissing and caressing, knowing how much she liked it. He lifted his hand to wipe away the tears from his face but it came up covered in blood. He stared at it, the crimsom liquid sticking to his skin, taunting him.

No, this wasn't real. It couldn't be real.

"Wake up, Mahariel, please..." He started shaking her but nothing happened, she just hung limp like a ragdoll in his arms. Had her soul... already left? "No, no, no, wake up! Maker, please, please don't take her from me," he sobbed, his voice nothing more than a broken whisper of a prayer. He rocked back and forth on his knees, with the broken body of the first woman he'd ever loved in his embrace. He didn't know how long he sat like that before they came to take her away. He wouldn't let them and he kicked and screamed and lashed out against the healers before his guards subdued him.

"It's for your own good, Your Majesty, we have to protect you," someone said. That and his own broken sobs were the last things he heard before the oblivion of a sleeping spell claimed him.

He woke up disoriented and looked around and found that he was in his own bed. So it had just been a dream then? He felt relief wash over him, but that relief froze when he saw Ashe's friend Hawke standing at the other side of the room, leaning against the wall and staring into the fire. What the fuck was that man doing in his room? Alistair's eyes flickered towards the door and felt confused when he saw his regular guards standing there. Why would they have let him in?

Then, Hawke turned and looked him straight in the eyes. His expression changed when he saw that Alistair was awake, into a look of sorrow and pity.

No, no, no. No.

Why would he look at him like that if... if the nightmare wasn't true?

Hawke approached the bed warily. He opened his mouth to speak but Alistair cut him off.

"Don't. Don't say it." But the look on the man's face told him everything he needed to know. Mahariel was gone. It felt like someone had reached into his chest and ripped the heart out of him. And all over again when another thought occured to him. He ripped the covers off of himself and sprang to his feet. "Where's Ashe? Th-they told me that she..." He couldn't finish that sentence, the horror of the prospect of her being gone as well was too much for his mind to handle.

Hawke held out his hands in front of him as if to calm Alistair down. "She's alive, but she was badly injured. Cullen is with her now."

"Take me to her, now."

Hawke only nodded and led the way out of the room, Alistair's guards following in silence.

They arrived at the infirmary, and several healers were going about their business in quiet around the room. In the center there was a bed, and Alistair saw Cullen kneeling in front of it, his hands clasped together and head bent down. As he got closer, he heard him mumble prayers. Was she in such a bad shape?

Alistair inhaled sharply when he saw Ashe. She was lying down on the bed in nothing but her underclothes and a large bandage covering her stomach. She was deathly pale and it sickened him to see her like this, nothing like her lovely, lively self. She looked just like... just like Mahariel had done when he'd found her.

Not her, too, please Maker, I will do anything if you spare her.

He knelt down beside her, next to Cullen. He carefully took her hand in his.

"Andraste, she's so cold. What happened?"

Cullen didn't respond, didn't even give a sign that he'd noticed Alistair beside him.

Hawke came up behind them and answered in Cullen's place. "She and Cullen found Mahariel and the other girl. Greta Hewlender, the little sister of the man who attacked Ashe earlier. From what we could gather, it seems like Lady Hewlender was attacked and Mahariel must have interrupted. Your mages said that the girl died right before... right before Mahariel did."

Alistair listened to the words, trying to fight the weight of them crushing him. But he was confused. "So if they were already dead when Cullen and Ashe found them... Who attacked Ashe?"

Cullen still didn't respond.

"The Commander says that no one did. It was some sort of magic, perhaps a trap or residue of what was used on the others."

That made more sense. He still couldn't believe that Mahariel had been defeated by anything, Maker, he'd seen her slaughter an Archdemon without a scratch on her. She must have been taken entirely by surprise. He couldn't blame her for being caught off guard, she was supposed to be safe here. The guilt crashed down on him and he sank to the floor, breathing hard and fast. This was his fault, it had happened inside his own walls. And now, Ashe was lying there looking like death was just waiting for her to give up, too.

"But I don't understand," he whispered. "Mahariel was still warm when I found her." He turned his head and looked straight at Cullen. "Was she still alive when you found her?"

For the first time since they'd entered the room, Cullen stopped his mumbled prayers. When he didn't say anything, something flared up inside Alistair. He'd just lost Mahariel, sweet Andraste, she was lost to him forever and he would never be able to make anything right with her. She'd died loathing him. Why had she even been here?

Cullen had brought her here.

"Answer me." Alistair's voice was little more than a growl.

Cullen slowly turned his head towards him, but he didn't look him in the eye. "I don't know. At first, I didn't think so. But maybe... I don't know. Then something attacked Ashe and I had to... Maker, Alistair, don't you think that I'm hurting, too? Mahariel was my friend, too, I know how you feel."

Something snapped in him and he was on his feet in a split second and he dragged Cullen up by his collar and put his face not an inch away from the other man's. "Don't you fucking dare," he snarled. You will never know how I felt about her. It may have been a lifetime ago but no one will ever know the depth of the love I felt for her. She was my everything back then, and I will never forget what that felt like. So don't you fucking dare say that you know how I feel."

He pushed Cullen away violently, sending him stumbling backwards. He jabbed his finger at him. "This is your doing. You brought her here, for your own selfish reasons. I know... I knew Mahariel, she probably didn't even want to come, but you persuaded her somehow, and now she's dead. Because of you."

Alistair expected him to protest and try to worm his way out of it, but Cullen said nothing, he just looked struck down.

Good.

"This was all just some game to you, right? I mean, you've had all the time in the world to make Ashe yours, but you probably didn't even show interest in her until I showed up, did you? You used Mahariel as a pawn, trying to wrest my attention away from Ashe. You're the fucking reason she's dead. You don't deserve her," he said and pointed at Ashe, still lying still as death on the bed. When his eyes caught on her pale face, sorrow gripped him again. All that he'd lost... he couldn't lose her too. He turned away from Cullen and sat down at the edge of the bed and took Ashe's hands in his own.

He heard the other man moving up behind him but was stopped by Hawke who stepped in between them. "Not here, Commander. Ashe needs to rest. This will have to wait until later."

He could hear Cullen grunt in response. "This isn't over, Alistair," he snarled. "You're so quick to blame me, but what about your own responsibility? This all went down in your house. I would never have allowed something like this to happen in Skyhold. Who did you let inside that could have done this? And know this, I will never stop fighting for Ashe. You believe what you want, but I will never stop, do you hear me? I'll be outside the door for now, but only because I want to protect her. And I'll make damned sure to do a better job than you did."

With that, Cullen left and shut the door behind him. If it wasn't for the fact that Alistair didn't want to leave Ashe, he would have flung himself after the other man.

But his time would come, and he would make sure he would regret those words.