Ashe

She blinked, not quite sure she had heard Alistair right.

"What do you mean 'not king anymore'?"

Alistair didn't answer straight away. He got up to his feet and walked up to the window and gazed out into the darkness.

"What is the point of me being king when I can't have the one thing that I want?" he murmured so quietly that Ashe could just barely make out what he was saying. He turned around toward her and the look on his face when their eyes met again almost floored her. His eyes were glinting – not with tears, but with something else; resolve maybe. He looked pleading, adoring, loving, desperate and reassured at the same time. She had never seen so much raw emotion on his face before.

When he spoke again, his voice was steady and calm. "I'm going to abdicate the throne."

Ashe got up from her chair, too anxious to sit still. "Alistair, what in the Fade is going on? Why would you ever do such a thing?"

Alistair smiled at her. "I don't expect you to take me back. Maybe the damage has already been done permanently, you believing -" he swallowed hard, "- that I would ever betray you, even if you were to believe me now. I don't know and I don't intend to let that influence my decision. But I cannot live with myself if I don't do everything in my power to make you see the truth. No matter what happens with us, I won't fucking let you believe I would hurt you like that."

"Alistair..."

He held up his hand. "You think I care about those pathetic girls out there?" he scoffed and pointed at the door. "You think any of it matters, if I can't have you beside me? The idea that Hawke tried to plant in your head – that I wasn't willing to give up my… what did he call it? 'Harem'? Since the moment I first laid eyes on you, I haven't so much as looked at anyone else, let alone touched them or fucked them, Maker." He looked as though he would be sick as he uttered the last few words and Ashe felt the hope inside her flare up dangerously as she found herself swayed by the intensity with which he delivered his words.

"I don't fucking need a court full of whores and opportunists. I don't need to be king. And I intend to prove it to you and to everyone else."

"Alistair, you don't have to..."

"I know I don't have to, Ashe," he interrupted her. "And I'm not doing it to force you to come back to me. I want you to understand this. I'm doing this no matter what. I've already told Eamon of what I intend to do when I get back to Denerim."

"Alistair! You can't!" Ashe was horrified but Alistair had a look of steel on his face.

"I can and I will. What would I even go back to, without you? Even if you never want to see me again, I will never marry another. I will father no sons or daughters to be my heirs."

Ashe's breath hitched in her throat.

He crossed the distance between them and grabbed both of her hands. He gripped them so hard it hurt, but she let him. "You are the only woman I will ever want." He lifted a gentle hand to her face. "To be my wife, my queen, the mother of my children." He looked at her reverently as he caressed her cheek, and Ashe all but melted beneath his fingertips as the truth in his words washed over her. "Don't you see?" he whispered. "None of it has any meaning to me without you."

His warmth flooded every cell in her body, and her heart pounded in her chest from the proximity of him. She felt a million things at once – astonishment not the least of them.

"You would… You would really do that, for me?" she mumbled.

Alistair pushed her shoulders back so that he could look at her. "I would, and I will. Anything, if it will make you see the truth. I will never allow even the smallest seed of doubt linger in you, Ashe."

"I don't… I mean, I really..." For what felt like the first time in years, Ashe Trevelyan stumbled over her words.

Alistair huffed out a breath and let go of her. "You don't have to say anything, love. You don't owe me a damned thing," he said and smiled sadly at her. Then – confusing her even more – he stepped back, creating further distance between them. "And to prove it to you, I will return to Denerim and follow through, no matter what. This is not some ploy. I love you more than life itself, more than Ferelden and much, much more than any throne or title."

Ashe felt like a child, confused and at a loss for what to do, so she simply blurted out the only thing she could think of. "But you have to think of your people, Alistair, they love you. The stability of the country-"

"Ashe. What the people think is irrelevant. The nobles are the ones who are really in charge. Didn't you hear what I just said? I will never take a wife who is not you. So no queen and no heirs. The Theirin bloodline will end with me. When the men with the real power realize that, they're going to force the crown from my head whether I like it or not."

"Why are you so stubborn?" Ashe cast her eyes down, she couldn't bear to look at him as she spoke again in little more than a whisper: "You could just marry someone else and -"

"No."

She looked up at him in surprise and relief as his resounding answer boomed across the room.

He stalked toward her, an angry scowl on his face. She stood dazed when he grabbed her shoulders as if he were trying to shake some sense into her. "Do you want that? Do you want me to marry someone else, Ashe?"

Images of Alistair walking down the Chantry aisle with someone – someone that wasn't her – made Ashe sick to her stomach.

He was in her face now, breathing hard and fast as he shook her again, seemingly wanting to force the answer out of her. "Is that what you fucking want?" His voice broke into a whisper at the last word and Ashe finally looked him in the eyes.

They were burning, pleading, daring her to say it.

Ashe's head was spinning; her brain calculating all the ways she could turn him down so that she would protect herself from risking getting hurt again.

But she knew deep down that doing so would be denying herself both her happiness and her pride – she was no coward afraid to live and take chances just to avoid eventual heartbreak.

There could be only one answer to his question and she would tell him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, how she felt about the idea of him marrying someone else.

She straightened her back and stuck her chin out. "I would rather die than see you on the arm of someone else."

Alistair blinked; once, twice, three times, as if he wasn't sure he'd heard her right.

"Do you really mean that?" he said, his rough voice breaking again.

Ashe felt herself sway closer to him. She could feel his breath on her lips and her pulse was hammering when her lips parted. "I've never meant anything more in my life," she said and she didn't even have time to blink before he had her pushed against the wall and his lips crashed down on hers.

She had almost forgotten what it felt like, what he felt like. It was like nothing else, better even than she had remembered in her dreams. His warm lips against hers, his hands squeezing her hips, the sounds he made, Maker help her…

He left her breathless, full of desire and heart racing when he pulled away from her, much to her dismay.

What she saw in his eyes as he looked at her made her wonder how she could have ever doubted him. She had never seen anything like it.

Which is why she was left completely dumbfounded when he squared his shoulders and backed away from her, simply stating: "I can't stay with you," before turning around to walk out of the room.