CONTENT WARNING:
This fic is DARKFIC. It explores the characters as they might behave when they are taken to a VERY DARK PLACE. Namely, it explores who Alistair might become married to Anora with Loghain redeemed, and how that would affect the Warden who helped shape his circumstances.
It depicts acts of alcoholism, substance abuse, RAPE, coerced sex, prostitution, and MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH. Content may be triggering and/or offensive to your sensibilities. If any or all of these themes disturbs you, please hit the back button on your browser now.
"Where are we going?" Alistair asked, his eyes barely fluttering open. Solona frowned; she'd hoped her sleep spell would hold until she got him aboard their ship, but he seemed to be becoming more resistant to it the more often she used it.
"Shh," she murmured, beginning to summon power to cast the incantation again. "We're leaving the palace, leaving Ferelden. We're going to go to Weisshaupt. We're going to be Grey Wardens again."
His eyes opened more fully, and a transcendent smile lit his face. For a moment, he looked so much like the sweet, eager young man she had met nearly a dozen years ago at Ostagar that she could have wept.
"Can we?" His voice was almost childishly trusting and plaintive.
"Yes," she said with assurance, though honestly she had no idea. His expression blissful, Alistair closed his eyes and Solona cast the incantation to ensure he remained asleep.
Her last week in Ferelden had been spent in the palace. With Queen Anora's sanction, Solona repeated the process she had undertaken years ago, binding Alistair in his chamber and painstakingly nursing him through the illness that came with purging his body of the poison the spirits he drank had become to him. She suffered at his side through his delirium and rages, his hallucinations and convulsions. The fits were far more violent than they had been the first time. At one point his heart stopped, and only a timely revival spell kept him from death.
She knew then, beyond a doubt, that there could be no third time to attempt this process. Next time, it would almost certainly kill him.
While she did that, her butler—at her behest—sought discreet passage out of Ferelden for the two of them. He found it in the form of a merchant ship he said he was reasonably certain was also carrying some sort of contraband. The captain, while avaricious, was not likely to ask questions, and thus it was the perfect opportunity for a mage (who was likely to be branded an apostate if she left behind the protection of being a Grey Warden) and an exiled king to travel incognito.
It was her butler himself, and two of the grooms from her household, who conducted them in a modest hired carriage to the docks and carefully bore Alistair aboard the ship. Thanking him, once Alistair was ensconced in a hammock in the tiny cabin they had been afforded, Solona pressed into the butler's hand a purse, and bade him divide it generously amongst the staff who had served her so well and loyally during her time in Denerim. And then she was left alone on the ship with Alistair.
It was the beginning of a new life, she hoped. If she could get Alistair to Weisshaupt, perhaps he would find a purpose again, or at least she could leave him in the hands of the other Grey Wardens and finally be free of the burden of caring for him. She had letters of credit to most banks in Thedas from her solicitor in Denerim, giving her access to the funds Anora had granted her for seeing to the king's well-being. Once Alistair was on his feet, she could retire someplace in obscurity. Perhaps Rivain, where the Chantry did not hold sway so strongly, so that she wouldn't need to fear being hunted, should it be discovered that she was a mage.
The ship sailed before dawn, letting the tide carry it out to sea. They'd be on the water for months, making port only a few times to resupply their food stores, as they sailed around the northern rim of the Donarks to make port in the western Anderfels. Solona hoped it would be time enough to get Alistair back on his feet and well enough to journey across the steppes to Weisshaupt.
For the first time in years, she felt hopeful, nearly joyous. Especially as Alistair began to overcome the worst of his illness and regain his senses. He still craved wine or other spirits and asked for her to find him some a number of times. His temper, when she informed him there were none to be had, was fierce and volatile when the urge was particularly bad.
But he was himself, mostly.
Secluded in their small cabin, Solona began to show him her maps and scrolls, describe to him where they were journeying to and how she intended to get there. Mindful of his need to feel needed, she solicited his opinions, though he deferred to her judgment more often than not.
It was a good start. She could never love him again as she once had, not after all he had done. At times she had to struggle against the idea that she hated and resented him. But she could help him, and then she would be free, her obligations met and her burden of guilt ameliorated.
It was a start.
Alistair lay wakeful in his hammock, the craving for spirits so strong his hands shook with it. He couldn't sleep, couldn't think of anything else. He despised himself for it, despised himself for the weakness. After all he had done to Solona, and all she had done for him despite it, he owed it to her to make this work. He owed it to her not to succumb again.
He ached for it. He ached for that blessed numbness, the oblivion that spirits brought. Even though he knew what it meant, knew it would make him into a monster and kill him, still he yearned for it. It was stronger than him, stronger than his will to live, stronger than his desire to make amends to Solona.
Each time he thought of what he owed her, each time he thought of the things he had done to her, he wanted it more. Just one drink. A goblet of wine. A tankard of ale. Anything. Just one. The thoughts of what he'd done, how awful he had been, did nothing to lessen the craving; they only made it worse. Each time he tried to think of being a man who might be even remotely worthy of her forbearance, it got worse. He wriggled and shifted and lay there in his cot with his palms and upper lip sweating, thinking of how good it would feel.
Just one. Just one. Surely somewhere on this ship, there was a bottle of wine and someone willing to let him have one drink from it.
Just one. Just one. Just one.
"Just one," he whispered to himself, slipping out of his hammock and creeping silently from the cabin, leaving Solona sleeping.
It was a warm summer night on the Amaranthine Ocean, and it would get warmer the further north they traveled. He hadn't dared put his boots on for fear of waking Solona, but it was comfortable enough to stroll the wooden deck without them. This late at night, there were only a few sailors on deck, dicing and laughing.
Several of them had bottles in their hands. Alistair migrated toward them.
"Ho! If it ain't one of our mysterious passengers!" the sailor hooted as Alistair drew near. "Look lively, mates! 'Is lordship's emerged from 'is chambers!"
"Eve'nin', yer lordship!" Another sailor said with a mocking bow. "Care for a game of dice?"
"Actually, I—er—" Alistair licked his lips, his hands shaking as he stared at the bottle one of the sailors lifted to his mouth. "I was just looking for a bottle of wine. To help me sleep. The, uh, creaking of the ship keeps me awake, you see. I thought perhaps one of you might know..."
"Eh, if 'ere's any wine aboard, the cap'n keeps it in 'is own stash," the sailor answered. "If 'e carried enough for th' whole crew, 'e'd ne'er turn a profit, right?"
"Of... of course," Alistair said, practically hunching over at the pain of disappointment.
"'Ere, mate." The sailor gave him a gap-toothed grin and patted the planks beside him. "'Ave a game with me an' the lads. We might not 'ave any wine, but there's rum a'plenty."
"Rum?"
"Haha! Blacker'n the Black City itself," the sailor cackled. "Might not be agree'ble to yer lordship's refined tastes, though. It'll cut a hole through yer gut, but ye won't have no more trouble sleepin'."
"I, um, don't have any coin," Alistair said, his fingers itching to snatch the bottle as he heard the contents slosh. "For the game."
"Yer lady looked like she 'as coin," one of them muttered, but Alistair quailed at the thought of trying to find Solona's purse without waking her.
"Wha' 'bout that bauble 'e's wearin'?" Another sailor asked, and Alistair's hand closed over the mended symbol of Andraste, the one that had belonged to his mother. The one that Arl Eamon had repaired for him, that Solona had given to him.
The bottle sloshed again as it was passed to another sailor, and he up-ended it to drink.
"Right," Alistair said eagerly, stripping off the amulet and sitting on the deck, laying it in the midst of their pile of coins. "I guess that'll do."
The first sailor he'd spoken to, a short fellow who looked like he might be half-dwarf, held out a meaty paw. "Name's Llew, yer lordship. Welcome to th' game."
Solona awoke in a panic, when she noticed Alistair's hammock empty. Frantically, she threw a modest kirtle over her shift—she dared not wear a mage's robes, for fear of how the sailors would react if they discovered there was a mage aboard—and left the cabin in search of him.
She found him slumped beside a stack of crates on the deck, an empty bottle in his hand. The odor of whatever he had drunk was sweet and cloying, not sharp and pungent like the whiskey he had favored back in Denerim. Other than that, the situation was much the same.
For a moment, frustrated tears burned her eyes, as her hands clenched into fists at her sides. She envisioned trying to wrestle Alistair to his feet, or her humiliation as she tried to request help from one of the crew in getting him back to the cabin. She envisioned tying him to one of the beams from which their hammocks were suspended, and what would be required in keeping him there for the long months of their journey. She imagined his rages and curses.
She couldn't do it. Maker help her, she simply couldn't.
Hopelessness and despair crashed over her like waves in a storm-driven sea. All of it. Everything she had done. It had all been for naught.
She felt tired, suddenly. So unbearably tired. Too weary even for tears, she turned around and made her way back to the tiny cabin they shared. The wound in Alistair's stomach was almost completely healed, courtesy of her magic and nearly three weeks abstinence from spirits. She could at least be certain he wasn't in imminent danger of death, unless he staggered overboard in his drunkenness.
It would have to do.
She could do no more.
The sailors were his friends. Llew and Conrad and a dozen others. There was even a qunari among them; he wasn't quite as friendly as the others, but he wasn't nearly as prickly and stern as Sten had been.
It was marvelous to have them. They were always eager to share a drink with him and engage him in a game of dice. They didn't frown at him, didn't shame him for having a drink or humiliate him. They didn't make him feel like a failure.
Not like Solona. Each time he made his way back to the cabin, she was there, silent as a wraith. She didn't speak to him, didn't look at him except to bestow upon him resentful, betrayed glares. She no longer tried to speak with him about their plans for going to Weisshaupt, or encourage him with thoughts of being a Grey Warden again.
One night, with the rum warming him, Alistair returned to the cabin early. He felt an aching need that he hadn't indulged in far too long, roused to an eager pitch by the sailors' crude talk of the magnificent bosom and backside that her gowns hinted at. He wanted her softness, her warmth. He wanted the tight heat of being inside her. How long had it been? Months, it seemed, since he'd felt like a man.
The second he tried to touch her, her power flared out. A repulsion field flung him against the cabin wall as she shot to her feet, glaring at him. Cursing her, Alistair tried to summon the holy energy that would put her down and drain her magic, but the concentration and force of will were slow in coming to him, and before he could bring it to bear against her, Solona encased him in ice.
In a magnificent rage, she stood before him, her eyes flashing angrily. "I can't stop you from forcing yourself upon me, if you manage to get your mind together enough to smite me. I know that. But I tell you, here and now, if you do so, be prepared never to sleep again. We're no longer in Ferelden, where I need fear the retribution of the Chantry, or the public backlash against mages, if I should kill the king. I will burn you to a cinder, the moment your eyes close. I will turn this entire ship into so much charred wreckage, adrift in the middle of the ocean! Even if it means my own death, I will destroy you. Get out! Go find your comforts in a bottle and leave me be. I want nothing to do with you!"
When the ice melted, he went.
The sailors were his friends. It felt good, to be a part of a group again. Good to be accepted. He hadn't known that feeling since the Blight. Solona threw him out, refused to acknowledge him, but they were always eager for his company.
"Madcap button, mate?" Conrad, a large, burly sailor offered, holding out a pouch to Alistair. Blinking drunkenly, Alistair withdrew a thin, fibrous wafer from the pouch.
"What is it?"
Llew laughed, taking a wafer for himself and popping it on his tongue. "Ye didn't think all our cargo was legal, did ye?" he asked with a snort. "Cap'n's got the secret 'old crammed to the beams with madcaps, 'e does. Ain't no other land in Thedas with a climate better suited to growin' 'em, ye see, than Ferelden. An' we get some as our cut o' the profits."
Nodding as though this made sense to him, Alistair laid the wafer upon his tongue.
The world was wavy and indistinct. It was like being in the Fade, but the colors! Maker, the colors were extraordinary. Even at night, in the moonlight, or the lamp-light belowdecks, everything was so bright, it sparkled.
He felt alive, gloriously, energetically alive. It was far better than drink. Far better than anything he had ever known. It was like being caught in the dazzling, delirious instant prior to orgasm and suspended there indefinitely.
How long he lingered in that state, he didn't know. It might have been hours, or days, or weeks. His friends, the sailors, were always there. If their laughter at times seemed like the threatening leers of demons, it didn't bother him. He laughed along with him, even when somewhere in the recesses of his mind it seemed they were laughing at him.
There amongst his friends, there was already rum, or those marvelous madcap buttons. Always laughter and goodwill. He stopped caring about Solona's disapproval, or his anger at her, or any of it. He slept where he crumpled when he'd had too much rum or when the madcap began to wear off. Sometimes he made it back to his hammock, sometimes he didn't. Sometimes he awoke with a pounding headache, for which Solona refused healing.
He sought out his new friends, in their crowded cabin belowdecks.
"Got a button?" Alistair asked, his tongue thick in his mouth as he sidled up to Conrad, the burly sailor who'd first let him sample the madcap buttons.
"Ye 'ear that, lads? 'Is lordship wants another button!"
He was sober enough to feel a little uneasy at their harsh laughter, and he didn't much like the feeling. These fellows were his friends, after all.
"Well, now, we've been talkin' 'bout that, yer lordship," Llew said, reclining in a hammock and cleaning his fingernails with the point of a knife. "We've been entertainin' ye fer weeks, now. Ye drink our rum an' use our buttons, but ye ain't got any coin to spare for a game o' dice, now that pretty trinket ye wore is gone. Them buttons is coin out o' our own pockets. It's time to pay up, yer lordship."
"I don't... have anything," Alistair muttered, shame-faced. Solona flatly refused to part with any coin so he could dice with the sailors, and she was always there, always watching, so he couldn't search for her purse in secret.
"Well, then, we'll jus' 'ave ta barter, won't we, yer lordship?" Llew offered, his voice congenial, but firm. "Yer lady ain't much ta look at, but she's clean, an' it'll be weeks still before we make port again. Most o' the lads ain't ever 'ad a woman who ain't a dockside whore what's 'ad a thousand men before. If she might be persuaded to show us a bit o' charm, we jus' might turn out ta have more rum and buttons to spare."
Cold panic clawed at Alistair's chest as the import of what they were saying settled in. "But—no! She would never do that!" he said desperately. "Maker, she'd burn my balls off for even having this conversation!"
Llew shrugged and turned away, plainly dismissing Alistair. "Well, then. It was nice knowin' ye, yer lordship. Best ye get back to yer lady, 'fore she decides to put a leash on ye."
His heart was pounding, his temples throbbing. Every part of Alistair ached with the need for some rum, or for the blessed euphoria of the madcap buttons. He felt lost and bereft at the sudden disdain of his friends, who had been so welcoming before. Confused and practically staggering with the ache of needing what they were refusing, Alistair turned to leave the crew cabin.
"Come 'ere, yer lordship," Conrad's deep, booming voice halted him. Alistair turned hopefully, to see Conrad holding a madcap button in his hand. Alistair rushed toward him, but the giant of a man jerked it away from his grasping hands. "Ye want this, ye gotta pay for it."
Trying to make sense of the refusal, Alistair stared at the man as Conrad untied the drawstring of his billowy linen breeches. He grabbed Alistair roughly by the hair and pushed at him, trying to force him down, force him to his knees. "Yer prettier than yer lady, anyway, and there ain't much difference between one mouth an' another when a man's been at sea for months."
The cock that was revealed as Conrad pushed his breeches down was intimidatingly large and half-erect already. Alistair's terrified eyes flew from it to Conrad's grizzled, beard-covered, pock-marked face, hoping for a reprieve, hoping for his friend to yield and give him the desperately-needed button without... without requiring Alistair to do what he seemed to be demanding.
"Well? Ye want the button, don't ye?" Conrad taunted, stroking a massive fist up and down the cock, bringing it more erect with each pump.
"I can't!" Alistair whispered in horror. To his humiliation, he could feel desperate tears burning his eyes.
"Suit yerself," Conrad shrugged, beginning to hitch up his breeches and turn away.
"Please!" Alistair cried urgently, feeling as though he might vomit, though from the need for the madcap, or the prospect of what Conrad was asking him to do, he couldn't say.
Conrad turned back to Alistair and stared at him impassively, and after a long moment, Alistair dropped his eyes, defeated. With an eager chuckle, Conrad pushed his breeches down, and Alistair sank to his knees.
He did vomit, after he forced his lips to part and Conrad's cock thrust inside. Sickened by the texture, the odor of the unwashed sailor, the knowledge of what he was doing, he wrenched away and puked, though there was little but rum in his stomach. Conrad waited until the heaving had stopped, then hauled him back up by his hair and slapped Alistair in the face with his cock.
Weeping, Alistair opened his mouth and accepted it. At a growled command, he licked and sucked, and when his untutored efforts were unsatisfactory, Conrad grabbed his head and began fucking his mouth with deep, rough thrusts, while Llew and the rest of the sailors he had thought were his friends laughed and made vulgar comments. Alistair choked and spewed again when the thick head of that meaty cock rammed against the back of his mouth, but Conrad allowed him only a moment to catch his breath, and then continued. He drove his cock deep into Alistair's throat over and over while Alistair fought and beat at him weakly with his fists and struggled for air.
Just when Alistair thought he was going to pass out, a torrent of hot, bitter fluid flooded his mouth. He fell to his hands and knees and spat out the slimy mess, retching on the dirty floor of the crew cabin. He sobbed with disgust and despair, torn between wanting to die and wanting what they had promised him.
"'Ere, yer lordship," Conrad said, his voice loud and jolly, full of satisfaction. He clapped Alistair on the back as though they were friends again, as though nothing was amiss, and handed him the promised madcap button.
Moaning, Alistair put it on his tongue and sucked, grateful for its sour burn to wash away the lingering taste of Conrad's semen in his mouth. The madcap bulb juice infusing the thin, fibrous reed wafer began to work its magic, and gradually, his sickness and disgust began to dissipate, leaving only color and light and beautiful joy.
It didn't occur to him to protest when, sometime later, another cock appeared before his face. Alistair knew what was required, and what the reward would be. He took it. He took those deep, battering thrusts into his throat, choking him. Took the bitter rush of seed that pumped into his mouth so far back he couldn't spit it out, but had to swallow.
Another madcap button made its way into his hands, and he meant to save it, for later, for when he needed it. But instead he sucked the juices from it avidly and spat out the drained wafer, and his euphoria redoubled.
Time ceased to matter. Alistair drifted in and out of bliss. He came back to himself briefly when he was flung down face-first, bent over a rough wooden table. His own breeches were dragged away and someone spat. Then there was pain, horrible, tearing pain piercing his euphoria, making him scream.
He heard Llew's voice panting in his ear, telling Alistair what a nice, tight woman he was. It was Llew, his friend, mocking him, ripping him open, gripping his hips and driving into him again and again. And then another wave of the madcap bliss overtook him and it didn't matter. The pain was distant and unreal, the humiliation and burning shame of no consequence as long as that feeling went on and on.
Finally, Llew stopped thrusting and went away. Alistair lay there, delirious, with seed dripping from his ass. A stranger took Llew's place, and then another, demanding his mouth this time. Alistair took it, fighting only when the rapture faded as the madcap's effects wore off until another button appeared and then he stopped fighting and just floated. Savage growling and searing agony were his only indication that the qunari sailor was taking his turn. He heard shrieking and vaguely thought it might be his own. But then another surge of bliss was upon him and Alistair passed out before the qunari was finished.