#alistair therein | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

pathofcomets · 3 years

Text

i’m trying to give you something more

fandom: dragon age origins (AO3)

pairing: alistair/female cousland (rated: M)

summary: Because she wants him to die of old age. Because she wants to live long enough to spend decades by his side. Because she wants to bear him a child, because she wants a child of her own – and because she refuses to accept the world being as it’s been given to her, when she changed everything else about it. There must be a cure that would give the Wardens the option to also live.

Alistair left for Morrigan in the end. She has begged him for hours to do it, desperate and scared and tired. She didn’t tell him that, were he to refuse, tomorrow would be the last day of her life. Because there’s no way she would allow a king of Ferelden die twice on her watch, no way she would allow the man she loves sacrifice himself for her. He has argued, that this is the same thing – but it’s not. At the end of it, spent and having given a baby to a woman she despises, Alistair would still be alive, still be hers.

His lover crushes down in an armchair, staring into the fire, counting down the minutes and the hours seeping by, well aware that sleep won’t possibly find her in the circumstances. She’s scared of dying, but she has seen enough death – and has fought enough, to know that if it comes, it comes. But she refuses to risk his life; the smallest chance of him dying is equal to her dying a thousand deaths. So, because she is selfish, because she wants to keep him alive and breathing and smiling and joking for a bit more, she sends him off to bed with another woman.

Her head is a mess of thoughts, and she doesn’t know if she hates him or if she hates herself more for this. Out of the same desperate wish, Alistair went to give a child to a witch he cannot stand – because it is the price he must pay for her life. She hates that surviving is hurting so much.

She doesn’t know how much time passes, but eventually sitting still is not enough, so she starts pacing the hallway in front of that cursed bedroom; barefoot, she barely makes a sound. No one else seems to be awake on this terrible, terrible night but her, keeping watch for her heart’s betrayal.

The door opens, and the witch steps out, startling her out of her reverie.

“Just so you know, he came sobbing and with your name on his lips,” Morrigan says, and the Warden desperately tries not to let her eyes linger over the witch’s body, trying to figure out where Alistair’s imprint remains.

She pushes against Morrigan’s shoulder, not deeming her words with a reply, and she makes her way into the room. Alistair sits on the edge of the bed, head hung in his hands, his body trembling with the shakes of crying. She runs towards him, something in her chest caving at the sight, and she drops to her knees in front of him, cupping his cheeks in her palms, thumb washing away his tears.

It takes him a bit to focus, to realize it’s her, but once he figures it out, he clings onto her, arms around her shoulders, dragging her close to his chest. He’s still naked, and none of them cares. She feels her own tears choking her, a knot painful in her throat, and she cannot speak.

“I’m sorry,” he sobs against her neck. “I am so sorry.”

She shushes him, whispering sweet nothings, her hands coming to pet his hair, pass through his locks in a soothing motion. He feels disgusting, like the worst scum on this earth, and the fact that she is the one that comforts him, instead of being the other way around, makes him feel like he has never deserved her or her affections. He still smells like Morrigan, like salty sweat – and the smell of sex is strong in the air. She doesn’t seem to mind, as she just keeps up the repetitive motions, until he stops shaking, until he is not crying anymore.

She cups his chin, making him look at her, though his face is burning red with his shame.

“Alistair,” and the way she says his name gives him stupid, blind hope. “It’s me who is sorry.”

Confusion envelops his features, and his fingers tighten around her waist. She is just wearing a nightgown, and her skin is incredibly cold; she has waited in the hallway, listening to him and Morrigan having sex, her own penance for the act.

“Why?” his voice cracks at the end.

“I made you do it,” she says. “The blame is mine. But I’d rather have you alive.”

“I would have gladly died for you,” he says, viciously, and tears are forming in his eyes again, remembering what exactly he has given up for a chance at living.

“Then live for me,” she says, forcefully. “Live to make me yours.”

“Is that a marriage proposal?” he asks, weakly, though there’s a slight upward tilt at the corner of his mouth.

“It is if you still want me.”

“Always,” he says, and she leans over him to kiss him.

***

“Imagine. The bastard made king by the warrior princess everyone taught a ghost. That’s a story for the ages.”

Lady (still) Cousland looks at her friend through the mirror in front of her, as she applies rouge to her cheeks. She has lain in bed, pale and with death breathing down her neck, ever since the fight, and the effects are still visible, though she tries to mask them, as per the customs learnt from her mother back when she was still a daughter. Glory belongs to them now; minstrels had written songs for days now, catchy refrains now on the citizen’s lips, tunes familiar even to the busiest of nobles. Even through the fever, turned at times delirious, as per Wynne’s accounts, she has counted each day, has desperately asked for it, to keep her grounded.

If she loses her grasp on time, then everything would feel just like a dream, and the idea of waking up with monsters still left to fight, apocalypse still left to stop – it terrifies her down to the bones.

Leliana steps closer to her, taking the rouge and mirror from her hands, leaning to complete the Warden’s make-up herself.

“I don’t want to be just a good story. I want to lead a good life, too.”

Leliana’s face turns sad. “Oh, that’s the difficult part, isn’t it?”

Alistair knocks at the door, opening it before any of the women answer. He has sat at her side for days, dragged away only when the Ferelden advisors simply couldn’t postpone decisions anymore, and she feels unworthy of his devotion, after everything. She can’t quite believe that giving him away to the one person he hates the most has truly worked: that both of them are still alive and well, still some life ahead of them.

“You look beautiful, my love,” he greets, and Leliana disappears immediately.

The Warden snorts, because she has seen herself in the mirror, and beautiful is definitely something that she is not. But Alistair beams at the sound, coming to sit on the bed next to her, her hands gathered between his, fluttery kisses against her bruised knuckles.

“How is it going?” she asks, and he makes himself more comfortable, as he tells her of all the nobles, all the peace treaties, all the rich food he fell in love with.

It’s normal, and it’s them. They both try to ignore the obvious elephant in the room, the shadow that befalls who they are, the reason why they are like this, both alive.

“The people are awaiting their hero and their queen.”

***

She didn’t become queen because she wanted a country. She became queen because she wanted him. Too many hate her for the choice, especially since she could have, more easily, chose to be Alistair’s mistress – and not shake the entire foundation of Ferelden politics.

But since that night when Howe betrayed her, she had one thought on her mind: revenge. Falling in love with Alistair has been secondary, a most wonderful distraction, but still. Even if he weren’t to become king, even if she weren’t his betrothed, she would have still killed those who wronged her, world still turned upside down.

Like this, they will just simply always remember her name for it.

When the crown is pressed against her forehead, her king squeezing her hand in reassurance, she can hear the gathering of nobles celebrating, shouting blessings. The crowd outside the castle is going truly wild. When she takes her seat for the feast, she cannot eat anything. The alcohol disappears, cup after another, until she’s only warm and flushed and tipsy – anger brewing beneath her skin as she watches every noble man eat and drink, supposedly in her name.

Alistair leans towards her, his palm covering her cup, curbing her drinking, his eyes searching hers full of worry. She whispers, hisses the words that she actually wants to scream in the face of every single one of these fucking bastards.

“They remember me, Alistair. They broke bread at my father’s table, pet my hair as I curtsied before them. They might have forgotten or cursed my name, but I exist and I have the same blood as theirs cursing through my veins. And it scares them to see me here.”

She’s the strongest person Alistair has ever seen. There’s something; beyond the lost, glassed over look in her eyes, and the bruised knuckles and vicious fighting. A desire burning bright, a need that cannot be stifled, and a force that asks to be acknowledged. She never spoke about whatever happened to her before becoming a Warden, but she wears it on her skin, an open book for all who might be interested, head held high and bleeding heart on her sleeves. It drew him in, all this time ago, and for the first time, he notices it. He’s taking manner classes, scholars teaching him the needs of his country, the demands of his new title. She has no such needs, everything already known.

There’s one thing that the new queen lacks, but it’s not something that she can learn. That doesn’t mean she doesn’t try.

***

In her dreams, the Queen of Ferelden doesn’t dream of demons or the dead anymore. She dreams she’s pregnant, she dreams she is with child, she dreams she has a child – and the worst part is waking up and knowing her womb is filled with poison and not with life. It’s the reason why her political title sits so wrong with her; she’s a noble after all, she knows exactly what blue-blooded wives are for. And she hates that she wants it so badly and that she cannot have it.

When she wakes at her most vulnerable, her most desperate, she rolls around in the bed, hopes to find Alistair’s warm, sleeping body. They’ve done this so many times, the quick sex, the can’t quite believe they’re still alive sex, his body stirs alive under her touch even before he’s woken up. Her fingers are trained in unlacing his breeches, her mouth in welcoming his member in the warm, wet space.

He had told her once, in the secrecy and intimacy of her tent, when she has admitted her own pleasures, that he dreams of being woken up already inside someone’s cunt. Has asked her for it, one day when the promise of morning did not come with the possibility of death.

Her heart is still ramming in her chest, loud – she is not thinking entirely clearly, just the hot need of making her dreams reality, of turning off the nightmare of her life. There’s no foreplay for her, as she strides his hips, his member now hard and leaking with precum, Alistair finally stirring awake now. She winces as she’s slowly taking him in, but the burn satisfies her more than the pleasure, and she immediately increases the pace. His hands move up to her waist to help her movement, and soon she’s gasping and moaning, the sounds loud and breathless. Under her, Alistair grunts, hips moving up to meet hers halfway, and she bites her lips, squeezes her walls, beckons him to come inside of her, before allowing herself the pleasure of an orgasm. It’s what eventually sends him over the edge, and he comes with her name on his lips – and she wonders if he truly said it back then, with Morrigan too, if he imagined her while he was fucking the only one able to bear him heirs.

His cum is hot inside of her, and she comes as well, from that sensation – and Alistair fingers finding his clit, helping her out. She gets up, drops on her side of the bed, her fingers struggling to push and keep his leaking cum back inside, praying to the Maker and to all the demons and to whatever forces the Void might want to conjure up in the world – that she can will life inside of her. Alistair falls asleep by her side almost immediately afterwards, just a tired kiss against her temple and a muffled thanks; it probably was only an hour since he joined her in the bed in the first place, due to his royal duties. She slips out of the bed, finding a rug to clean herself up, and finds his empty office, crying her heart out in the dark and the cold, a setting quite as that of her womb.

***

She sits, straight, unable to properly look him in the eye, as she tells him she will go to Amaranthine. Of course, since he became king, Alistair has revoked his status as a Grey Warden. No one has seen it important to ask the queen to do the same, so she is now choosing to become the Commander of her order instead.

He covers the little distance between them, his hand tender against her cheek. She falters, finding his eyes, and she bites her lower lip to stop herself from crying.

“I’m doing this for us, Alistair,” she explains, an excuse that she gives to herself more than him, to reason her own decision.

She doesn’t have to say the reason why: they’ve been together for a year now. Their healers have shaken their head in disbelief each time a new month arrived, and her under clothing and bedding would come out painted in her period blood, sign of their failure at conceiving. The rumours can’t say more than that: because the king and the queen are obviously in love. All their paintings together immortalize a fondness, as they gaze at each other. All their public appearances have them on equal terms, affection obvious in their actions. Servants find them fucking in his office, against their bedroom door. Their taint is a secret of their order, so the gossip blooms: the queen is simply barren, tying down the poor king to her inability just in her quest for power and revenge.

“What if I tell you I don’t want it?” Alistair asks, still looking at her tenderly, like she could never hurt him, like she didn’t already hurt him in the past.

“What if I tell you I do?” her voice is low, barely a whisper, but still it hits him straight on, and his growing anger at her stubbornness snuffs out, just like that. “I’m the last of my line. I had to see every last member of my family killed with my own eyes. What kind of legacy is that?”

“You want a baby?” Alistair asks, star-struck, and he takes a step back, as if hit by a blow.

Because he never knew this secret, desperate wish of hers. Because he has seen her: strong and proud, every minute of every day, and he has assumed she has accepted her role with as much grace as she took in every single thing that happened to her so far. He feels sick with his incompetence, as her husband, to guess at her desires.

“Yes. Yours.”

Which makes it twice as impossible, since they are both tainted with the blood of darkspawn. In all written records she has accessed so far, there’s no mention of successful conception between two Grey Wardens, only one miraculous baby born out of a male member of the order and his beloved.

“Enough to leave me?”

“I will come back,” she says, and she sounds more certain than she looks.

“What if you don’t?”

“Then… I’ve loved you enough to at least try.”

“We could just… live however much life we have left, together,” he tries, and his words turn more desperate the more it seems not to affect her.

“And what happens after? Shall Ferelden go through another civil war because the throne is left without an heir?” She pauses, challenging him to say something, but when he does not, she turns bitter, vicious. “I suppose that’s not an issue for you, though. After all, you have a bastard out there.”

His face twists, pained. “You’re unfair.”

“I know.”

“I should have known I could never keep you,” he says, shaking his head, and his shoulders slump in defeat.

“Don’t,” she says, sharply, her eyes pleading. “I am yours.”

“Then why?”

“Have you ever paid any attention to what is going on in the castle?”

He hasn’t – all his focus has been solely on consolidating the entirety of Ferelden. Since the capital has been the only on withstanding the worst of the Blight, he has fixated on the council room and the many arrows on the map, marking immediate calls for help. He knows she knows that, he knows that is a question she doesn’t expect an answer to, because she already has it. Alistair Therein has been too busy building back his country to realize what is happening inside his own marriage bed, between the people putting the food on his table.

“I am the whore queen who seduced her way to power,” she says, and she drags at the ribbons at her dress corset, and the clothing hangs more loosely around her frame, wanting to seem the seductress that she is not. “I care nothing for the well-being of this country, because I can offer it no future,” her hands go around her hips, resting on the flatness of her stomach, where she is barren. “So what am I even doing in this position?”

“Andraste’s Maker!” Alistair says, and he steps closer, dragging at her dress, covering her naked skin, where goose bumps are forming in the cold, worry forming a frown over his forehead. “You stopped the damn Blight.”

“Yes. And now that that’s over, what purpose am I fulfilling?”

“You’re my wife!” he says, in disbelief, and he undresses his own outer jacket, draping it over her shoulders.

She looks at him, so full of love and gratitude, the way she used to look at him every evening, when they were camping in the wilderness, ages ago, as he wished her good night.

“That’s not enough,” she says it, and when Alistair looks pained, she softens her tone. “Not enough for them.”

“Why do you care for what the people gossip?”

She’s not sure his love can heal her fast enough so that others’ actions and words won’t scar.

“Because they attempted to poison me fifteen times already.”

He startles, his fingers digging painfully in her shoulder, but she does not wince.

“Why did I not know this?”

“I told them not to tell you,” she shakes her head, trying to shake off his indignation; after all, they had to listen, she is still their queen.

“Why?”

“Because you’d try to kill everyone in here.”

“Correct,” he says, viciously. “Let me do something about it.”

She shakes her head, again. “No point. If they already forgot Howe killed my entire family, Loghain let my brother die, the king die… if they forgot all that enough to want them back and want me gone, then there’s no way I could ever win their sympathies.”

“It will happen!” he says, with so much conviction that she almost believes him; she wants to believe him. But she is a Cousland born and raised, and she knows exactly how things work with nobility and their people.

“Ferelden is a country built by its subjects. Don’t fall out of grace just for me, Alistair.”

“There’s no just in that equation! I love you!”

“And I love you too. What happens when that’s not enough?”

“So you really want to go to Amaranthine.”

“I’ll have access to thousands of books, the entire written history of the Grey Wardens. I will find a cure, I promise.”

Alistair smiles, sadly. “You can’t promise me that.”

She takes his hand in hers, brings it up to her lips to kiss his palm, softly. Alistair looks like he has been stabbed.

“I promised more impossible things, and I kept my word.”

“You’re a fiend, my love.”

She takes the same hand, and places it under her dress, against her thigh. Alistair looks at her, and he does not see a Warden, does not see the Hero of Ferelden, does not see his queen. He sees just the young woman that she is, carrying more than she should, and still standing: the young woman that he fell in love with, the young woman that he will love forever.

“You do realize you’ll take every good thing in my life with you, when you go?”

“And you do realize you’ll keep every good thing in my life with you, when I go?”

“You’re unfair.”

“I know.”

***

“Commander,” a servant knocks at her office, and she raises her head from the book she is reading.

It takes her a bit to focus her eyes on the figure, after hours of reading, using nothing but a candle almost burnt to nothing.

“Yes?” she says, her voice hoarse, and she drinks from a cup of tea turned cold.

“Some soldiers just arrived in the courtyard. They’re demanding an immediate meeting with you.”

She frowns, having no idea who it could be. The Grey Wardens situation is bad enough, so much of the order dead or disappeared. They’ve seen no other living human around this area for weeks and months, only darkspawn and the incessant fighting they brought on.

She had only one thing to look forward to, in-between daily battles and research. Each evening, on her desk, she would find a red rose and a letter. With no fail, every single day, Alistair would remind her of his love for her, tell her of the negotiations in Denerim, of the places across Ferelden that he got to visit. She wonders how many messengers are used for this relentless show of devotion, to keep their love so close even when they are so far apart. But he is the king and she is the queen, and they are now allowed this luxury.

At any time during her stay in Amaranthine, she has a bouquet of flowers. Alistair has always been a romantic, and she has always loved him for it. But all those messengers are never announced, and they are never soldiers; assassins maybe, but this is new.

She drops her papers, closing the door behind her, nodding her head at a guard close by – no one is allowed inside until she returns. She starts with a slow pace, hurrying it when she starts hearing the commotion from the courtyard. It is raining, nothing new, and there’s only the soft light from the lamp.

Even so, she can recognize him instantly. His stance, his built, even his voice – even when all of him is drowned in a sea of others. Her voice catches in her throat, and she bolts running, dropping to her knees in front of him when she is close enough, formality and desire both in the gesture.

“Your majesty,” she murmurs, and silence has fallen all around them, everyone watching the reunion between their commander and her husband with much interest.

He smiles, dropping to the ground next to her, seeming not to care for the mud or the audience.

“Since when do you call me by my title?” he asks, joking.

“Alistair,” she breathes, and it is all she can do, limits reached.

Her hands grab against his armour, dragging his body even closer, their chest bumping clumsily together. But her lips are warm against him, and he opens his mouth eagerly, to welcome her tongue against his, her moan swallowed by the burning kiss.

“I missed you, dear wife,” he says, resting his forehead against her.

“I love you,” she says.

In a flutter of movement, his soldiers are giving their own rooms, he’s dragged by his hand towards hers. He smiles when he notices the roses, when he catches sight of the tower of letters. He has a similar one in their shared bedroom at home, her replies to his writing. She has not missed a single one, has sent one back every time, even when the writing turned sloppier, tiredness obvious in her tone as well.

She orders food, they eat in companionable silence, measuring each other up. She has more scars and fresh wounds, he has grown his beard, sleeps worse because the dark eye bags are back. He’s tired from the road, she’s delirious from the day’s readings, so they just shuffle around in the bed, his arms around her waist, his chin tugged at the crook of her neck. He sighs, content.

“I think I’ll finally be able to sleep,” he breathes.

“I’m sorry.”

“Return with me?” he begs, kissing the skin of her neck.

She does not reply, and eventually they fall asleep.

When the sun shines in the morning through the curtains, she knows they overslept. She knows no one will probably mind, will dare interrupt them. She rolls around to find Alistair already awake, staring at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

“I love you,” he says, already lunging for her, gathering her giggling form in his arms.

At first, his beard tickles as he places kisses against her thigh, raising her dress higher and higher up her figure. He groans when she finds she wears no underwear, and immediately presses his mouth against her cunt. She moans, and now his beard most definitely is not tickling, the slight friction making her toes curl in the bedsheets.

She comes, sooner than she expected; it’s been too long, and Alistair has dreamt of this moment enough to know exactly how he’d push her over the edge. He’s hot and throbbing against her, when he finally discards his trousers, aligning himself to her entrance. She spreads her legs wide for him, her folds and hair glistening. She swears when he pushes inside her, her arms coming around his shoulders, nails digging in his skin. He’s slow now, hips keeping up a pace that is driving her insane, but hits her deep and well. She’s still heavy with sleep and the aftermath of her first orgasm, so she welcomes each push with a mewling sound, happy and that happiness showing all over her body.

Alistair’s hand snakes between their bodies, finding her clit, circling it at the same time as he gives a sharp snap of his hips. He grunts in her ear, a soft curse that turns into mumbling praises for her, I love yous lost in each other, and her cunt tightens too, following him in coming.

When he wants to untangle from her, she drags him closer.

“Stay like this for a while?” she asks, chocking on her hope.

His body is heavy on top of hers, so he simply rolls them on the side, careful not to exit her with the action, even if a bit of his cum spills over her sheets. She plants lazy kisses over his forehead, nose, cheeks, and he smiles, showered in her affection. Slowly, the keep wakes around them: a loud scream outside the window, the coming and going of servants and soldiers across the hallway.

He moves now, his dick soft, his seed spilling out now that his body is not stopping it. He watches, transfixed, his finger coming up to push it back in, mimicking much of her previous desperation. If only she would fall with a child, then all this would be over, his queen would come back to her rightful place; not forced to withstand another set of terrible conditions and horrible fighting, in the name of love this time around.

He keeps his palms pressed against her pussy, and his voice sounds a little haunted when he speaks, even as she wiggles her body.

“I will ask one last time. Return with me?”

She smiles, sadly, moving away from him, cleaning up any evidence of what they’ve been up to from her body. He already misses her.

“The bastard king who’ll die young because of slow-acting poison and the empty-womb renegade lady that he decided he’ll love?”

“At least they’ll sing of us, my darling.”

She still stays. Because she wants him to die of old age. Because she wants to live long enough to spend decades by his side. Because she wants to bear him a child, because she wants a child of her own – and because she refuses to accept the world being as it’s been given to her, when she changed everything else about it. There must be a cure that would give the Wardens the option to also live.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #alistair therein #da: origins #da:o #female cousland #alistair/warden #alistair/cousland #king alistair #writing

11 notes · View notes