Chapter Text
Warden Commander Stroud, when he returns, is exactly what she imagined. Tall –– taller than Alistair even –– and thickly muscled, with hair as black as her brothers’, and a long, bristly mustache that curls at the edges. He wears the same padded blue uniform as all the Wardens do; with silverite studs and embossed with an intricate griffon, wings unfurling across his breastplate. The sheer volume of dents in Stroud’s armor, and the faded rents in his undertunic are the only outward sign of his seniority.
Stroud looks her up and down in an opaque, measuring way, and she resists the urge to step a little closer to Alistair. “Let’s see what Anders brought us.” He tosses her a staff, gesturing briefly, and the other Warden's fall away –– though Alistair is slow and stumbly about it –– leaving her alone in the center of a rough circle.
It’s unnerving. She’s not sure she’s had this many eyes on her in the whole of her life, and the urge to try to tuck back into a corner, or shove her fingers in her hair is so strong –– just a normal girl, doing normal girl things –– but she is a Hawke.
And a Hawke, never runs from a fight.
“Runsk,” Stroud commands, and a squat, barrel-chest of a dwarf steps forward; a Rogue with a pair of small hand-axes.
Bethany smothers a smile. The whole of her life she's sparred with her brothers. Father made sure of it. Hiked them all far into the wilderness behind Amaranthine and Lothering, so the sparks wouldn't show, and had her take them in turns. Broadswords, then daggers. Carver always pulled his blows, the great big softie, but Garrett never did. And now, she can fight rogues –– or warriors with broadswords–– with her eyes closed.
Alistair, though…
She glances at her ––
(protector, companion, friend)
–– at him.
Alistair is wearing the most extraordinary expression. Something wedged between uncertainty and outrage.
It makes her want to brush her fingertips between his brows to ease the creases there. Which is… an entirely irrational desire given that she's facing off with a man who looks as though he’s spent his life murdering people in dark alleyways, and would gladly do the same to her.
He reminds her a bit of Isabela, and her heart squeezes at the thought.
Runsk flips one of the axes in his hand, catching it with such a practiced ease the motion is almost unconscious.
She narrows her eyes, and takes a deep breath.
Focus, Bethany.
She adjusts her stance, just slightly. Letting her knees bend and bringing her weight to the balls of her feet. An imperceptible back-and-forth shift that brings her magic to the surface of her skin.
It isn't easy, even now. It's sluggish and hesitant at first. A weight dragged through water. She was taught to keep her magic locked up inside her, a thousand feet down. She learned it so well she got Carver killed, and nearly got herself killed.
(And nobody ever talks about how father died, but Bethany's always wondered.)
Maybe it's a good thing she's gone now, and away from her family, before she had the chance to get Garrett and Mother killed too.
But the dwarf at her front has no patience for melancholy. He's subtle, giving no sign of his intentions, until he's flying towards her, the cutting edge of his axes glints hungrily.
Bethany's unarmored. Bare from the elbows down. Half of her dress is still in tatters. But that doesn’t mean she’s unprotected.
Sparks fly off the the barrier she'd been building close to her skin. It’s a thinly transparent shield, but strong for all that, the way Father taught her.
A mage must make their own armor.
She’s used to having her barrier startle opponents into hesitating, but Runsk doesn’t seem fazed in the slightest, and starts hacking away at it with an alarming alacrity.
She dodges the next blow. Sliding out of the way with a breath of magic to propel her. The ground moves to make way for her, stone shifting as easily as sand.
That surprises him.
She gets a brief flare of satisfaction, but he swings one of his axes back her with enough speed that she can do little else besides block the blow with her staff. The metal on metal draws sparks, and Bethany grinds her teeth as the impact jars all the way up to her shoulders.
He gains ground, hacking away at her, brutal and methodical, forcing her back. Once or twice she misses blocking, and the edge if his axe clips her barriers, with a shower of sparks, and the ear-splitting shriek of claws dragged over steel.
But then he twists the axe as it lands, gets the underside of the curved blade hooked around the underside of her staff, and yanks it straight out of her hands, knocking the underside of her chin hard enough that she sees stars.
How nice. She misses she sky.
There's a flash of pain, and something wet –– blood? –– slips down her chin.
Damn.
Somewhere behind her, Alistair makes a brief, angry noise.
She can cast near as well with her staff as without, but it’s harder to control. And once loosed, her magic presses tight under her skin, wanting to burst free. Wild and terrible thing. She tugs at it, at the little knot under her breastbone that always feels like a too shallow breath. A tightness in her core that she can never undo.
Her fingertips are glowing green.
Why does she feel so dizzy?
She flings a handful of lightning at Runsk, and another of ice, slinging it beneath his feet. The lightning goes wide, but it nearly blinds them both, as the darkness gives way to the sudden burst of light.
Dazzled and on unsteady ground, he ought to slip, and fall. But instead, Runsk disappears. The air shivers and streaks before it swallows him in darkness, and dammit she hates when Rouges do that.
Bethany jerks back and to the left, fully expecting to shelter for a moment behind Garrett's bulk –– because what is she except a collection of bad habits –– and the startled shock of finding him not there leaves her breathless. Garrett has always been there. Carver to her right, and Garrett on her left. But he’s gone –– they're both gone –– and she’s never going to see him again. The shock of her brother’s loss rolls through her with fresh, sharp-edged grief.
Her magic responds in kind, turning brittle and jittery beneath her palms.
Panic and magic are a terrible combination.
She glances at Alistair, unnerved.
He’s pacing back and forth in sets of three steps. Shield unlimbered and slung over his arm. His eyes flick suddenly to the space behind her shoulder, and she flinches away as Runsk reappears behind her, axes whirling.
The dwarf isn’t as fast as Garrett, at least, but he's stronger, and swings his axe with enough force to shatter bone.
But she has the blood of Malcolm Hawke in her veins.
Bethany shatters the barrier around her. It sounds like glass, but it breaks like steel, all sharp-edged and dangerous. Runsk is close enough that one of the little bursts of energy catch him full in the face, cuts a line across his cheek, staggering him, spilling blood into the ruddy tangle of his beard.
If he were a bandit or slaver, this is the part where she'd light him on fire.
(No one ever said the Hawkes weren't ruthless to the bone.)
But they're sparring, not playing for keeps. So instead, she sets the floor between them ablaze.
Runsk jumps back with a startled “Fuck!”
The fire doesn't catch –– there's just bare rock beneath, so she must sustain the flames herself. It's like lifting something heavy with her entire body, even her lungs feel the strain of it. But she lets the wall of flame rise and rise, until it towers above the dwarf, threatening, in a way only fire can be.
She burns through most of her mana in half a minute, which is not normal –– she's only ever had too much magic, never too little. Sweat breaks out along her hairline, slides down between her shoulder blades, she can feel fatigue dragging heavily on her limbs. Her arm shakes but she forces the magic out as the ground begins to sway gently beneath her.
The fire falters a bit when she drops to a knee, but it doesn't go out, and for a moment she's not sure she can sustain it.
She knows the second she hits the bottom of her mana reserves, a sensation of utter wrongness that skitters up her limbs. Like an awful bone-on-bone grating from somewhere deep within her. The sweat across her brow turns clammy.
The fire sputters, turning weak and wispy enough that Runsk is able to wade through it with a stony determination on his face.
She scrambles backwards, nerves raw, legs shaking, and hears Alistair's voice all terse and sharp, and she didn’t even know he could sound like that.
And then ––
“Hold.” It’s Stroud, louder than she’s heard any of the Wardens’ speak.
Runsk lowers his axes at once, though it takes Bethany several long moments for her fists unclench enough to allow her to drop the spell. And even then the magic –– thin and tired as it is –– presses to the surface of her skin, choppy like the waves at the Kirkwall docks.
"You’ll do,” Stroud says with a stern sort of approval, and glances briefly at Alistair, “so long as you two can stop mooning at each other long enough to keep from getting yourselves killed. Maker save us all from infatuation.”
A few of the Wardens snicker good-naturedly, and Alistair goes red as a summer tomato.
***
Bethany’s days find a strange sort of rhythm. Food. Fighting. Hunger. Not-hunger. Alistair by her side during the day, with his smiles and his jokes and his bumbling awkwardness. Alistair by her side at night as well, curled up together, all knees and elbows that never touch. Alistair’s breath against her cheek as they sleep. Alistair’s bulk, stalwart in the darkness. Alistair, flushing red in the mornings when he wakes, arm half-flung around her during the night.
They whisper together sometimes in the tiny span of time between rest and sleep. Tiny, inconsequential things. How he's always been fond of the color yellow. How she hated being the only Hawke with curls. They stumble at times. There is so much hidden wreckage strewn across her heart –– and Alistair's too. But he's patient with her, and doesn't seem to mind when the conversation falters and she has to gulp back tears, remembering all at once that something as simple as rain has been lost to her.
(A downpour. Hair slick-stuck to her skull. Papa teaching her how to hold a flame in the rain. Carver had poked Garret with a stuck when he'd laughed at her. Drowned rat, he’d said. Mean. But she could tell from Carver's expression it was true, though he'd rushed to defend her anyways.)
(And she cries for the rain because it hurts too much to cry about anything else.)
She wonders if he'll begin to drift away. She needs him less and less each day. Some of the others have begun to make cautious overtures towards her –– Runsk is downright friendly –– and surely Alistair has other duties, Warden duties to attend to. Despite his youth, it's becoming clear that he’s one of the most senior in terms of rank, in whatever way Wardens have rank.
He speaks, and they listen.
They give her a uniform the day after she spars with Runsk. The blue of the tunic is so bright it's nearly ultramarine, with silver toggles, and silver buckles, and a panel of chainmail all down her front.
It doesn’t make her feel like she belongs, not when the rest of the Wardens are covered in dents and rust and faded blue patches, and her armor’s new enough to squeak. But she ties her curls over one of her shoulders to help her unlearn old habits, and hopes this is the start of something, and not the end.
Stroud gives her a once-over, and an approving nod when he sees her. Runsk shoots her a wide grin through the tangle of his beard, but Alistair stops dead in his tracks, ears gone all red.
“You look, uh––” Alistair blinks rapidly and clears his throat, “Like a Warden. You look like a Warden.”
Runsk makes a flat sounding snort and digs his elbow into Alistair’s ribs. “The word you're looking for is pretty.”
Bethany’s nose wrinkles a little as she fights back a smile. “I’ve never worn armor before. Not like this anyway.”
It was only ever leather and linen for her. And now it’s silverite and chainmail, and enough enchantments to put a fizzy sort of bounce in her step.
“It suits you.” Alistair says in a rush, and looks away.
A ridiculous warmth spreads through her bones no matter how she tries to tamp it down.
And well, it’s ridiculous, and Bethany bends her head to hide her expression. “Thank you.”
Runsk snorts. “Why are you thanking him? I'm the one who said you were pretty.”
Behind them, Stroud clears his throat softly, and Alistair glances up, seems to interpret something in the Commander's minute gesture, and heads down the path to where the rest of the Warden’s are gathering, snagging Runsk neatly by the back of his uniform as he goes.
“It’s a habit you know.” Stroud says, coming up beside her.
“What? Oh, Alistair?” She shoves her fingers into her hair, startled. They tangle in the ribbon. “What’s a habit?”
“The foolishness.” Stroud’s eyes narrow as he looks out to where Alistair stands. “I'd say it was an act, but there's no dishonesty in the boy. Don't let it fool you. He‘s something of a legend in the Order.”
Below, Runsk makes a show of scratching his backside. Alistair makes a show of offering to help him.
Stroud snorts, the exasperation of the sound slightly dampened by obvious fondness. “He's the only living Warden who has tangled with an archdemon. You've heard of the Hero of Ferelden?”
“Everyone’s heard of the Hero of Ferelden.”
Stroud makes a pleased sounding grunt, and inclines his head. “Alistair kept him company, for a time. Fought with him from Ostagar to Denerim. They took down an archdemon together. Ended the fifth blight.”
Carver was at Ostagar.
Alistair was at Ostagar.
Two halves of her life, nearly touching.
Bethany’s mouth goes dry. “Why are you telling me this?”
“He’s never spoken to anyone about it.” Stroud says. “But he ought to, in case the Warden’s ever have to do it again.”
“Why are you telling me this? Surely one of the Wardens ––”
Stroud raises a brow at her.
“-- one of the other Wardens would be better suited. I barely know Alistair, why would he…” She trails off at the look on Stroud's face; amused, and annoyed, and a little pitying. She tugs absently on a coil of her own hair.
So much for new beginnings.
“I wouldn’t want to pry,” She says at last.
“Politeness is not a much valued trait amongst Wardens. I would not want to lose anyone under my command because of it. Ask,” he insists. “It is a request. Need it be a command?”
She shakes her head mutely, fingers against the griffon wings unfurling across her new breastplate.
***
It is three solid days before she manages to speak to Alistair of Stroud’s request.
She isn't avoiding it –– not really… well, not much. But Bethany’s days begin to fill as her Warden training begins in earnest, and at night she falls into bed beside Alistair –– in her own bedroll, clad in breeches and tunic, at a respectable and increasingly disappointing distance –– too exhausted and hungry for conversation.
A surprising amount of a Warden’s time each day is spent preparing for a fight that never seems to come.
Despite the worn appearance of their uniforms, they keep their gear and weapons in pristine condition, buffing out scratches and rust, repairing straps and fastenings at regular intervals. Her armor is still blindingly new, so she has no upkeep to speak of besides a daily inspection to show she knows what's-what with gear maintenance, glad she'd made a habit of listening to Aveline's lectures, instead of ignoring them. So she paces behind Alistair, watching him work, out of excuses and already feeling like a coward.
She takes a nervous breath. “Stroud wanted me to talk to you.”
Alistair shoots her a quick grin over his shoulder, squinting one eye a little as if looking into the sun. “Oh?”
She swallows a sudden giddiness. “About the Archdemon.”
“Oh.” The easiness in his expression fades at once, like a candle being snuffed out. It’s strange to see such a closed look on his face. “What about it?”
She refuses to stick her fingers in her hair, so she wrings her hands instead –– will she ever be anything but a mess of anxiety and uncertainty?
“He wants to know how you killed it.”
Alistair turns away and back to the bracer he’d been mending, the line of his shoulders carries enough tension that she’s glad she can’t see his expression. “Well for starters, I didn’t.”
He falls silent, re-stitching chainmail to leather with jerky, impatient movements. Then all at once he rounds on her.
“Archdemons aren’t –– you stab it, and it dies, alright?” He twirls the bracer between his hands, glaring, heedless of the dangling needle. “A hell of a fight, I’ll grant you, but fairly straightforward for all that.”
“That can't be all,” she says, conscious of the white knuckled grip he has on the bracer, and the tension that ratchets up and down his entire frame.
Alistair scratches the tip of his long nose. “Yeah, well. What they don't tell you is that whichever Warden strikes the killing blow will die as well. Each time. No matter. A life for a life I suppose you could say. I dunno what happens if someone who's not a Warden kills the Archdemon. I don't even know if anyone else can kill one.”
“Is that how the Hero of Ferelden died?”
Alistair shoots her a sharp look, but after a moment he nods. “Nobody called him that until ...after. Emmory Cousland. Em. He was a hero, but he was also just a –– a person, you know?”
“A friend,” she offers softly.
“Yeah.” He falls quiet, brows pulled together in thought. “He wasn’t supposed to die, though. It was supposed to be me. Not the Archdemon –– well, that too I suppose. But Morrigan had a way out of it. She was one of Em’s... a mage –– a witch, maybe. I dunno.” He shrugs a shoulder in a jerky, hitching motion. “She wanted a child… or needed... I’m not sure. But she said if we slept with her –– not together I don’t mean, just one of us. With her. If we… well, there’d be a child, and no Warden would be culled when the Archdemon was killed.” He’s squeezing the bracers so tightly his hands are shaking, knuckles.white and sharp. “She said –– she promised, but… But…”
“He died anyway.”
“Yeah,” Alistair whispers hoarsely, and swipes the back of his arm across his eyes. “I don’t –– maybe she was wrong, or it didn’t work, or something.” He makes a humorless sound. “Maybe Morrigan just lied.” His fists clench and unclench at his sides erratically. “So," he says with a sort of stiff finality, "that’s how you kill an Archdemon."
He falls silent again, turning, abruptly giving her his back.
Bethany lingers. How can she not? Hurt and guilt radiates from him in waves, and her hand hovers in mid-air, wanting –– needing –– to soothe it. But it's so obviously a dismissal, and she doesn't need to see his face to know his jaw is fixed in a stubborn, silent line. For all his smiles and easy charm, he can be surprisingly stoic when he wants to.
Her hand drops. "Thank you," she whispers hoarsely, "for telling me."
His shoulders hunch, stiff with tension.
Bethany turns to go, and all at once Alistair whirls and grabs her hand, pulling her back towards him.
“Morrigan asked me first,” he says urgently. “To be with her. I just –– I said no. They tried, but Em died anyway. He just… burst at the seams. Just gone in this sudden flare of light. There wasn’t even anything left to bury." He flings the bracer against the nearest wall, the sound louder than anything Bethany’s heard in weeks. "What a bloody waste.”
He pulls her closer with a ragged sound, nearly against him, tipping his forehead to hers. He's breathing hard, all wet and noisy, but his cheeks are dry. All that pain locked up tight inside him.
Her heart pounds from the close contact, from the rawness in his eyes and in his voice. And she aches for him, hard and sharp like a gut-wound. For Emmory. For Carver. For what they’d both lost in the blight.
He makes a wet sound, shoulders shaking. His fingers tighten around her own. “So it’s my fault, you see. I didn’t even try. But I… It was… I should have –– But I was–– stupid selfish bastard.”
He looks very much like he wants to kick something.
“You’re not selfish Alistair,” she says quietly. “You’re the kindest person I’ve ever met.” She reaches up with her free hand to cup his face, thumb smoothing the sharp lines bracketing his mouth.
Alistair's eyes close, and he relaxes into her touch with a sigh. He turns towards her, just slightly, almost as if to plant a kiss against her palm, and then ––
His eyes fly open, and his body goes rigid. “Beth…”
There’s something strained in his voice. Not panicked, but tight, and urgent.
And everything inside her goes tight and urgent too, but in a completely different way.
“Beth,” He says again carefully, and deliberately drops her hand.
She takes a deep breath through her nose. She can’t smell him, but she can feel the warmth of his breath against her skin, and the tiny pickles of his beard on her palm. And a delicious heat slides down through her core, and into the cradle if her hips, where it blooms, plucking at that empty ache within her, drawing it to the surface of her skin.
She shivers.
"Beth," Alistair repeats. His fingers close around her wrist, tugging her hand off his face, pulling away, even as she rises up on her toes to kiss him.
"What?" She blinks in a hazy sort confusion, and tries to step back into the warmth of his arms.
But Alistair pushes her back, gently but firmly. Then turns, and walks away.
And the empty silence is ringing in Bethany's ears.
***
She tells Stroud what Alistair had said, and Maker, it feels like a breach of his trust. The Warden Commander listens stone-faced, and gives no indication if it's what he had hoped to hear. It's–– Bethany can't get over the injustice of it all. It usually takes scores of Wardens to stop a blight –– this one killed her brother, and Aveline's husband, and King Cailin, and nearly half of all living Wardens, and thousands of other simple folk –– and what is one more life atop a mountain of bones?
But it matters. It does.
(Maybe only because she knows Alistair would never let another Warden stand in his place again. If there is a sacrifice to be made, it would be he who makes it.)
But Stroud just nods, and tells her she's done well, and she just wants to shove her fingers in her hair and scream, and scream.
Wants to crawl back into the warmth of Alistair's arms––
Wants to crawl straight into Alistair's bed ––
Wants those big hands of his on her skin, and in her mouth and ––
And she's very glad when Stroud calls for the Warden’s to move out, even if Alistair doesn't look back to see if she's following.
***
That night she sees Alistair hesitate before he rolls their bedding out, just a little further apart than he used to. Three extra feet of distance she doesn't understand.
It feels like it might as well be as wide as an ocean.
She doesn't know how to fix it, and she’s not even sure what's broken.
"I'm sorry," she says at once, as soon as she lays down.
"Not your fault." There's something hard in his voice, a chip of flint that wasn't there before. He sighs and scrubs his hand across his face before flashing her a brief, troubled smile. "Let's just forget about it, 'kay?"
She nods, but he's already rolling away from her, wrapped solidly in his own blankets.
After a moment his voice floats out of the darkness. "Goodnight, Bethany."
She closes her eyes, and doesn't answer.
***
Bethany dreams.
But it isn't like any dream she's ever had. It's like time has folded all up on itself, like a memory overlapping. She’s in the small cottage her family kept in Amaranthine. Fewer windows than rooms, and a braid of garlic strung over the doorway. Her father is there, with his dark hair cropped all short, with its patch of silver on one side where his hair is going grey in a giant splotch. But Alistair is there too, sitting at the same table, only not. He's cast in the light from a campfire, hair fluttering in a non-existent breeze. And yet they’re talking –– she can't hear them, a strange loud rustling drowns them out, but they are. Alistair says something, and her father laughs. Laughs. And she can't hear it, but it still warms her straight through.
She sits by the table beside them, next to Alistair, watching this strange conversation play out. She forgot how her father used to knit his fingers together as he talked, thumb worrying at his old garnet ring. Beside him, Alistair’s smile is wide and easy and he brushes a slick of wet off the back of his neck, and wherever he is –– beyond her childhood home –– he’s sitting in the wind and the rain.
She watches them for hours, or moments maybe. Caught in that strange dreamstate where time is meaningless and infinite and everything rushes and stretches and drags all at once. And then Alistair turns to her, sees her somehow, and that smile of his grows broad, until he’s absolutely beaming. And she cannot help but smile back at him because…
Well, because ––
There's something –– not a sound, a feeling –– from behind, and Bethany turns, rising from the chair.
And Carver comes through the door.
Carver.
He doesn’t open it. Or go through it. And yet he sort of does both those things. But he’s there. Tall and fair as he ever was only –– no, not fair. Pale. Nearly bloodless, except for a stripe of crimson running from nostril to chin. And there’s no other color in the room except for that streak of blood.
No other color in the world.
“Carver?” She grabs at his shirt without thinking and it’s solid beneath her hands, but cold.
Everything is so cold.
“Bethany,” he says, voice cutting through that rustling sound even as it rises to a cacophony. His head tips forward and she can see the angle of his neck is all wrong, and a bone-deep fear blooms in her chest. “Run.”
She looks to Alistair, desperate, but he isn't smiling anymore. He's grimacing, arms braced against the table as though he can barely support himself. And the rain on his face isn't rain, it's blood. Pouring down. Drenching him. Enough that his shirt is soaked through entirely. The muscles in his arms and chest stand out, inhumanly taunt.
Her father’s different too. All the warmth sucked out of him, all the meat and marrow, and he’s just rickety, old skin stretched over bone. Eyes sunken. Garnet ring hanging loose on his finger.
Bethany moans, small and neat, that strange rustling sound in her ears.
And then they’re sort of melting. And blurring. Two men made of ink, not flesh and blood, twisting into nothingness as the blood-rain hits them.
And it doesn’t just rain, It pours. Her hair, slick-stuck to her face, obscures her vision, but she watches as her father and Alistair evanesce –– passing out of sight and existence like wisps of smoke, and turns back to Carver with a swallowed sob, terror lying thick in her throat.
Only it isn’t Carver at all.
A crack of thunder and the walls of the cottage disappear, and the thing beneath her hands rises, growing, unfurling. Black scales, and black eyes, and wings that stretch out into the storm. A dragon, but worse.
Foul.
Decaying.
Fear given physical form.
Templars and demons are what usually haunt her nightmares. But the thing that looms before her is so utterly unnatural, so visceral and wrong that her old fears seem almost childish and silly. Her mind scrabbles for some semblance of rationality, a word to anchor her in the chaos.
Archdemon.
The enemy of all Wardens. Mother of the Taint. Father of the Blight. God of the Darkspawn.
Horror.
Death bringer.
The thing that blooms in her belly so thick and raw, words like fear and terror fall woefully short of the sensation. But it’s red and solid enough that for a moment, her heart all but stops beating.
Bethany screams.
But the only sound that comes out, is that same rustling sound –– the Archdemon’s scales, she realizes, rattling in the storm. Surrounding her. Engulfing her.
Inside of her too.
She bolts upright in a flurry of motion, wide awake and gasping for breath. Her heart aches and her head is buzzing with the fitful sound of paper wings.
"Damnit," Alistair says with feeling, looking at down at her. He's already awake, arms wrapped around his knees. His hair sticks up at odd angles as though he has been tearing his hands through it, but he gives her a weak, slightly lopsided smile. “Hey. You’re safe now.”
Her mouth feels dry as old leather, and she coughs, trying to slow the frantic pace of her heart. “I…” Her breath shudders out of her like a sob. “What was that?”
"We eat together, we sleep together, sometimes we dream together." He shrugs, sort of, it's more like shaking off the remains of his own nightmare. "I was hoping you wouldn't –– not yet anyway."
"Did we dream the same thing?" She asks in a voice so soft it’s barely a whisper.
"Probably not." He says, almost a little tersely. His lips press together in a hard line, and he keeps glancing at her, uneasily. “Uh… you were there though.”
"You were in my dream, too."
Alistair looks at her again. "Yeah." It's not a question really, it’s a word built from a sigh. He watches her for a long time, hands curled tight around his knees.
From somewhere out in the dark she hears Runsk grumble in quiet annoyance. “Arsebite darkspawn. Just trying to get some fookin’ sleep, for once.”
There’s a rumble of agreement from several others in the camp, but not from Alistair. He just sits with his hands wound round his knees, breathing in softly ragged breaths.
“Hungry?” He asks after a while.
She is, but she shakes her head.
“You should try to get some rest then.”
She closes her eyes, but she doesn't sleep. And Alistair spends the rest of the night sitting bolt upright, trembling hands clenched tight around his knees.
***
There is a monotony to the deep roads she finds. They search for darkspawn. Eat. Walk. Walk some more. Consult an oversized and ancient map that Stroud guards with a feverish determination. It isn’t like any map Bethany has seen, it’s laid out by the depth of region, not distance, and filled with tiny notes and annotations where the underground cities have shifted or crumbled away.
Stroud teaches her to read the map. She struggles with the scale of the thing, judging distance seems impossible, and she can’t pronounce any of the place names well enough to keep him from shaking his head at her, but after a while, she can at least tell where they are going. That is, she can see that they aren’t going anywhere. Just winding around in little random whorls and turns, a leaf caught in a directionless breeze.
It strikes Bethany as odd, this fitful meandering.
"Where are we going?" She finally thinks to ask.
"Nowhere in particular." Stroud says mildly.
"Then what are we even doing down here?" Bethany asks, finally. "We're not actually doing anything, are we?"
Surprisingly Stroud looks to Alistair, who frowns silently for nearly a minute before answering. "We’re being hunted.” His voice is quiet and serious.
“Hunted?” Her voice sounds oddly steady. “By the Darkspawn?”
Alistair shifts from foot to foot, and Stroud sets a hand on the back of his neck, the gesture casual and intimate, and Bethany is struck again with how easily and often the Wardens touch one another. If she’d done the same to Alistair he would have likely stepped away from her. But Alistar just nods, looking calmed by the touch. “Yeah."
"They are always a threat of course," Stroud says, not removing his hand from Alistair's neck. "But they are not usually so… concerned with our presence."
The ghost of Alistair’s voice floats back to her, from when she was newly made.
We don’t usually do this… perform the joining in the dark...
A horrible thought crosses Bethany's mind. “Is it… Is it because of me?”
Stroud and Alistair exchange glances again.
“Of course not,” Alistair says, the same moment as the Warden Commander’s “It is.”
Alistair grits his teeth, glaring at Stroud. “But it’s not your fault,” he insists. “Honestly.”
"I'm putting you in danger?" It should be easy by now to swallow such guilt, she has practice enough. But it isn't.
Keep Bethany safe.
How many times has she heard that phrase, spoken in low voices to one of her brothers when her parents thought she couldn’t hear. Never with bitterness or frivolity, but with perfect solemnity. A vow that every Hawke learned young.
Keep Bethany safe.
But no matter what her family has sacrificed –– security, peace, Carver –– she’s never really been safe, has she?
Alistair drags his hand through his hair, “It’s not like they don’t stalk us anyway, all the time. And fighting darkspawn is what we do, Beth."
“Then why aren’t we fighting them?”
Stroud's touch moves to Alistair's shoulder. A brief, fierce grip of camaraderie.
“Because you aren’t ready,” Alistair says, every word quiet and clipped.
And it's true.
But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.
She’s never been the girl she ought to be. Never able to swallow her magic back, only able to choke on it. Never been the mage anyone needed either. Papa used to cradle magic as though it was the easiest thing in the world, with two feet on the ground and an unshakable faith in himself. Bethany just –– isn’t that.
“I know,” She clears her throat, armoring herself in her own wounded pride, enough that she can look him straight in the eye. “I know I’m not a very good mage.”
Alistair blinks, horrified. “Beth, that’s not what I meant.”
“Isn’t it?” She can’t keep the bitterness from her voice. “I’m not an idiot Alistair.”
For a moment he looks like she slapped him. A flare of hurt, deep and bright. “I didn’t say that! I would never say that.”
Her fingers find her hair.
He closes his eyes, and if she’s hard to look at. “Five schools of magic, Beth. That’s what you cast when you sparred with Runsk. You do know that most mages can barely manage three. And you’re only a month into the joining, so your mana pool is shot. You shouldn’t have even been sparring at all, not that soon after the joining, when you’re so tired you can barely stand upright at the end of the day.” He shoots Stroud a pointed and very dark look, but Stroud doesn’t seem the least bit concerned. “You should be sleeping and eating all day, that’s it,” Alistair says firmly. “Not walking around every hour of the day, and not fighting darkspawn.”
Bethany takes a breath. The anger in her belly dissipates at once, because she isn’t really angry at Alistair.
She isn’t really angry at anyone.
Still.
“I don’t need protecting, Alistair,” she insists, but there’s no heat in it.
"Maybe not.” He is mouth twists into a flat line, voice rising. “But has it never occurred to you that you are worth protecting?"
Bethany blinks, startled into silence.
And then, all at once the Warden’s fall quiet. They’re never loud, even at their rowdiest, but now all sound drops off so abruptly that it sends a frisson of dread through Bethany's core. Alistair and Stroud don’t look at each other but they do turn in perfect synchronization, heads canted sharply to the left as if hearing –– or sensing –– something Bethany does not.
Stroud issues no command that Bethany can see, but the Warden’s all begin to move as one, gliding towards the edges of the clearing, low to the ground. Moving like oil over water, disappearing in the shadows behind broken bits of rock and rubble.
And then Bethany feels it. A murky sort of awareness that creeps up the back of her skull. It has no shape, not really, but she knows what it is. Darkspawn.
Coming towards them.
Coming fast.
And Bethany is just standing there by herself out in the open like a –– well, like an idiot.
Alistair looks back and freezes, horrified, then he makes a split second decision, she can see it in his face. He turns and comes sprinting back towards her, abandoning all stealth for speed.
“What––”
Alistair abruptly claps a hand over her mouth, and all but yanks her to the ground. Her staff jams awkwardly on the floor, and she goes down hard on one knee, but he manages to drag them both behind a large boulder just before the darkspawn come through the tunnel entrance.
She tries to count them in her mind, stretching her half-developed Warden senses out, but they just feel like a writhing mass of darkness. There, but indistinct. She doesn’t know how many, but… enough, surely. They sound awful, the scratching rattle of armor, and the steady hiss-snarl of their voices. No language, and yet they speak, calling back and forth between themselves.
Alistair carefully raises his hand from her mouth, signaling her to remain silent.
She folds her arms around herself, trying to will her heart not to beat so loud. If she closes her eyes she can sense the other Wardens on the opposite side of the clearing, huddled together, waiting for the darkspawn to pass.
Just waiting.
Waiting.
Shuffling footsteps down the path in a hitching, inhuman gate.
The sound of Alistair drawing his dagger seems impossibly loud, the tiny scrape of metal exaggerated by the silence. But she feels a bit better knowing he has a blade in hand.
She risks drawing a tiny, shaky breath.
Waiting.
Wait.
One of the things shrieks, the sound jarring and far closer than Bethany expected. She can’t tell one darkspawn from another by sound alone, but the look on Alistair’s face is grim. The thing shrieks again, or another one does. It’s not the sound of attack, but still the effort to not cast a barrier around Alistair is so strong she’s shaking with it.
Breathe, Bethany, breathe.
Swallow the magic back. Swallow it back. You’re not a mage, you’re just a girl. There’s no magic there. You’re just empty. Just normal.
Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
No magic.
Nothing.
Breathe.
Swallow.
Breathe.
But she can feel it prickling at her palm. The light of the spell trapped just under her skin.
Paper thin. Like cobwebs.
Breathe, Bethany!
And Alistair reaches out and closes his hand over her own.
Oh.
Everything inside her shifts at once, the panic evaporating in the face of something else that demands her attention.
Him.
Alistair’s hands are big enough that they cover hers completely, and all she can see is bronze skin with a spray of faint freckles along the back. The sleeve of his uniform is bunched up a little, and she can see where the hair on the backs of his arms grows fine and dark, each one standing up on end.
A bead of sweat slides down the side of his neck and she reaches up to brush it away, thumb against the wildness of his pulse.
Alistair shivers beneath her touch.
He’s looking straight at her, clear brown eyes with blown pupils.
Waiting, waiting.
What are they waiting for?
“Bethany…” He says softly, teeth fixed in his lower lip.
And Stroud nudges Alistair with the tip of his boot. “Alright then, enough heroics. Get up.”
“Oh Maker damnit fuck.” A relieved breath rushes out of Alistair, and he drops her hand and rises, motions jittery and disjointed from too much adrenaline.
Bethany feels slow and syrupy. She catches a look that passes between Stroud and Alistair, but has no idea what it might mean.
She rises, her knee creaks stiffly. “What?”
Stroud rolls his eyes.
There are no darkspawn, just the rest of the Wardens wearing varying levels of bemused expressions. The backs of Alistair’s ears are red.
“What?” She says again, head foggy.
No one answers, but Runsk shoots her a very wide grin.
***
That night Alistair lays out their bedrolls as always, side-by-side and little apart from the rest of the Wardens.
(And more than a little apart from each other.)
There's been more darkspawn activity, so they set a watch for the night, and Alistair takes the first shift, leaving her coiled in her blankets, brim full of uncertainty and wet between her legs.
She shoves her fingers in her hair. But the old gesture does little to calm her. She can feel the tension bouncing under her skin. Like electricity. She’s used to shoving the magic down inside of her, so it’s strange that the thing that’s bubbling up inside of her isn’t magic.
It’s desire.
A vicious, bright-eyed lust.
It's been growing in the pit of her belly, alongside her hunger. Just as demanding, just as voracious.
Just as difficult to ignore.
Impossible, she realizes bleakly.
Like trying to stare into the sun without going blind.
Only the sun is Alistair's smile. And his laugh. And the warmth of his hands.
The feel of his pulse skipping beneath her thumb.
Infatuation, Stroud had said. But she knows it's more.
It feels like truth. Like gravity. Inescapable, and weighty.
And as much as she feels pulled towards him, he seems drawn to her. At least… he feels responsible for her, which isn't the same at all.
Not nearly the same.
So it's no surprise that Alistair brings her food after his watch. He holds out a piece of dried bread to her with a bit of something brown scraped over the top, and she feels her stomach begin to unfold from it's little ball of misery.
And she hates it.
She can measure the day with how hungry she is –– is she hungry enough that she's raw and bitter with it, hand clenched tight across her belly; or is she hungry enough that she's dry heaving in the corner, while Alistair flits beside her like a worried butterfly.
Her life is all broken up into little pieces of need and need more, and all the other bits of her are worn away, smooth and meaningless and she doesn't even recognize herself anymore. She's not the girl pretending not to have magic anymore. But she's not a Warden either. They're serious and stalwart and steady and she's just…
Hungry.
She turns away.
“Beth?” Alistair’s voice is low and painfully kind. “It’s been a long day. You need to eat.”
“I’m tired of eating.” She says, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “And I’m tired of being hungry. And I’m tired of being tired.” She covers her eyes with her hands.
And I’m tired of wanting you.
But that isn’t true.
She's tired of nearly everything right now. But not Alistair.
Never Alistair.
“It doesn’t last,” he says. “Really it doesn’t. You’ll go back to you, only… you know, a you who can sense darkspawn, and see in the dark, and survive the taint. And Orlesians find us really annoying. So that's a plus isn’t it?”
“You can see in the dark?” Bethany asks, lifting her hands and blinking around her. Everything still just looks dark to her.
“And annoy Orlesians. Why does no one ever focus on the truly important things?” He sits beside her on the bedroll and holds the bit of food out to her again. “Take it. Please? You'll make yourself sick if you don't.”
She sighs. It’s a wasted effort. She knows she’ll just be hungry again nearly as soon as she finishes… but it’ll keep that expectant, worried look off Alistair’s face if she eats. “Fine.”
When she reaches for the food, her magic sort of jumps...like a hiccup against her skin, reaching for Alistair, canting gently towards him. It hasn't done that in years , not since her magic was young and wild and impossible to hide. And of course it leans toward him.
“It doesn't bother you that I have magic?” It’s a question, sort of. At least she meant it to be. But it doesn’t sound like it. Her voice goes flat on the end and it sounds like a statement of fact, as though she already knows it’s true.
And somehow, she does.
Alistair grimaces, and goes quiet for a long time, scratching at the stubble at his chin than never seems to grow any longer. “I was meant to be a Templar once, you know.”
Bethany blinks, trying and failing to imagine him in a uniform that isn’t blue, wrapped in the quiet violence of every Templar she has ever known. “What happened?”
He runs his hands through the front of his hair, where it always sticks up in a cowlick. “Well, I was good at the fighting bits, and the looking intimidating in the armor bits.” He adopts a sudden sternness of carriage and expression for a moment before sliding back into his own easy charm. “But not so much the rest of it. Patience. Prudence. Propriety. Protection. Perseverance,” he says in a sudden, monotonous rattle. “I was terrible at it in fact. A truly terrible Templar.” He flashes her a tiny grin. “I suppose I’d rather you didn’t burn my eyebrows off when you’re asleep, or… you know, when you’re awake either. But no. It doesn't bother me.”
He’s quiet for a moment watching her eat. “I can’t imagine you in a circle though. That would be… ” He reaches out, thumb soft on her lower lip, brushing away a crumb. “Heartbreaking.”
Bethany’s breath catches.
Such a tiny little thing, his thumb on her lip, not even a square inch of contact, and yet it’s the most erotic thing Bethany has ever felt. She leans into his touch, mouth opening a little, and presses her tongue against his thumb. It’s not even a kiss, not really it’s just… instinct.
It just feels right.
Alistair’s eyes are wide and impossibly beautiful. A clear, warm brown, framed with dark auburn lashes. “Bethany...” His voice breaks on her name, and she thinks she could live a thousand years and never get tired of the way he says it, soft and reverent, with the syllables all strung together in a single breath. But then, “Please, Beth… please don’t.”
Bethany blinks. Confusion wells within her, and she pulls away, ignoring how much it hurts to do so. She hates the way his voice sounds now. All broken down the middle and strained at the edges, and what is she doing? He shows her a little kindness and she’s practically fellating his thumb.
What is wrong with her?!
She was only ever good at holding back her magic, but never her doubts. Never the fear and the uncertainty that comes spilling out. Never the grief and sudden loneliness.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she whispers raggedly, wishing she could say it a thousand times. “I-I don't know why I keep –– I don't understand myself anymore.”
“Hey now,” Alistair says, for a moment it looks like he wants to disentangle her fingers from her hair, but he doesn't. “I know. I know what it is you’re feeling. I remember the –– like you’d been hollowed out with a spoon and whatever they put inside didn’t fill all the empty spaces behind your ribs. Beth, I –– I remember. The joining… it’s so much more than surviving the black draught. You’re not the person you were –– not physically, anyway –– but it takes months to change into the person you’re going to be.” He shakes his head helplessly. “It’s my fault, Beth. It’s mine. I shouldn’t have ––” He cuts himself off with a terse sound.
“Shouldn’t have what?”
A muscle in his jaw clenches. “Shouldn’t have touched you.”
She grits her teeth. “Why not?”
“Well, because you… you know,” his ears turn a vibrant shade of red. “The… um… arousal.” He says the word so carefully, with all the syllabus round and awful, and she wonders if he’d mind terribly if she crawled off somewhere and died.
She swallows, utterly speechless, but she thinks she makes a wheezing sound of distress in reply.
Alistair chuckles awkwardly. “The joining doesn't take everyone quite the same. I'd rather hoped… but, uh... I was just like that,” he says with an apologetic shift of his shoulders, too awkward to be a shrug. “A little. A little more than a little. I had a constant and embarrassing, um, attraction to… well, it doesn't matter who, but it ended… I suppose badly would be an understatement. I was crushed. And um, very very chafed in… hmm.” He scrubs a hand through his hair making it stand up in wild little spikes. “But it did end.”
What if I don't want it to end?
“I’m just saying, I understand, is all.” He takes a shaky breath. "And it… passes, like everything else to do with the joining." Alistair’s mouth twists up into a sudden smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes. “And then… you’ll be fine.”
Bethany shifts her head, mutely. It isn't a nod and it isn't a shake. It's a gesture of absolute helplessness in the face of that constant tangle of hollowness and heat that's getting harder and harder to shove in the background.
“Hey, could be worse, yeah? Stroud said he went blind for a week after his joining.” For half a heartbeat the smile on Alistair's face is real enough, but it slips away just as swiftly. “Alright?”
She can feel the tingling spot on her lips where he touched her, and she covers her mouth with her hand.
Not to smother it.
To save it.