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The first had been hesitant. He hadn’t known if she’d let him, if it was okay, and when she hadn’t reacted his heart had sped up, Andraste’s flaming knickers, I should have asked. He goes to pull away, apologize for whatever he had done wrong. The next thing he knows, Mahariel is pulling him back down, kissing him back with enough fire it makes him blush. He’s bending down and she’s on her tip toes. Seconds pass and she pulls back lips smirking, eyebrows quirking up.
“If I knew you’d do that, I would have already gone on more quests without you,” Mahariel says.
“Ha ha, very funny,” Alistair smiles at her on lilting laugh (and maybe also the sound of Morrigan making vomiting noises had something to do with it).
The next had been their first time together, and more importantly, his first time with her. It was clumsy, neither very experienced, let alone with human or an elf, and most of the time was spent giggling (very manly giggles on Alistair's behalf) but Maker, it had felt so good to touch her. He leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to her valaslin marked forehead. Her hands trail down his back and she ends up laughing and Maker now he’s laughing. Their first time isn’t perfect because of the sex, but because he could see her smile and laugh like she hadn’t before.
The comments outside from Zevran and Leliana were not appreciated, however.
The lands meet had finished. Loghain had been beaten and beheaded by Mahariel, Anora was queen and they had gathered their forces to defeat the Blight, but most importantly, Alistair wasn’t king and was still with Mahariel. She was safe, well, as safe as they could be while trying to not get eaten by a big, nasty, dragony archdemon. Arl Eamon seemed to be purposely avoiding Mahariel as much as he could and would also try to avoid Alistair. It had hurt, but by 20 years of getting ignored by the man, Alistair was sure he could handle it.
Alistair was waiting outside the door to Riordan’s room, waiting for Mahariel to come. When he saw her he couldn’t help the smile that crawled across his face. Even with her Dalish Armour on, her dread locked hair hanging at her shoulders, the dirty, unwashed, dark skin, she looked beautiful. She always looked beautiful to him.
“I was worried I was going to have to have to go in without you,” Alistair jokes, voice light and easy. “He’d make me make decisions and you know where that’ll end?”
“You running around screaming without any pants?”
“See, you know me so well!” She laughs and he grins, her face crinkles up a bit, her mouth is wide and smiling teeth showing. He remembers when her smiles were a rare thing and her laugh non existent. Now he’s glad that she laughs more.
She moves closer, arms stretched out to hug him. She’s small against him, miniature, but he would never say delicate. She was anything but delicate. The arms envelop his waist, and her head goes to just under his shoulders. His arms find their ways to her waist and he’s leaning down, lifting Mahariel ever so slightly so that he can reach just a bit better. Their Armour clank together and he’s certain that Riordan must have heard but he doesn’t care right now, not when their lips meet and he feels her smile on his lips. He see through half lidded eyes that her ear have quirked upward and he smiles himself.
They part their lips but don’t stop holding each other. Her smile is serene and her hazel eyes look like their sparkling as they look up at him. “Thank you,” Alistair says out of the blue.
“For what?”
“For not making me king. For letting me stay a Warden,” His hand works through her hair, dreadlocks running between his fingers. “For letting me stay with you.”
She hugs him just a bit tighter than, head resting against his chest. “You’ll always stay with me, you know that.”
They stand there, forgetting everything else, if just for the moment. He wants to stay like this but knows he can’t possibly forget the blight, or else the archdemon isn’t the only thing he should be afraid of, more the angry Dalish woman that would rip his head off if he tried to skip out.
“We should probably go talk to Riordan now,” Mahariel sighs, leaning off Alistair, their arms untangling. She does, however, continue to hold his hand.
“What happened to professionalism?” Alistair joked. “Though I do like this a lot better.”
“I can be both professional and holding hands with my boyfriend,” She replies, opening the door to Riordan room.
Alistair watches from afar as Mahariel grabs a discarded long sword, running towards the archdemon. Her pace is quick, filled with adrenaline, her face frowning and her lips drawn into a line. She ran with a limp, she was covered in blood and scratches, but that was hardly the worse of it. Her right eye was covered with dark red blood, so much so that the only thing he could make out were the long claw marks oozing with blood.
She dodged the Archdemons first attack, and before he knew it, she had struck the sword straight into its head, twisting the sword as it drove deeper.
Light was the next the thing he knew. bright, painful light that was impossible to see against. He squeezed his eyes shut, turning his head away from the light. A powerful blast almost knocked him to his feet, but he kept his ground, even as he knew the other fell. When the light dimmed he opened his eyes, squinting until he saw where Mahariel was, body lying down meters away from the body.
He knows he should have checked if Wynne was fine, if the other mages were fine (he just assumed Morrigan was, since it is Morrigan). Instead he sprinted over to her, panicking with each breath. She wasn’t moving. “Mahariel!”He kneeled beside her, lifting her body up against his chest, fear taking over better judgement. “Mahariel!” He shouted again. No, no, he did not go through all that, they did not go through everything just to be killed. “Shaesiara!” He tried again, on the verge of tears. No, this couldn’t be happening. Oh, Maker, no…
“Creators, you’re loud…” He heard her grumble and that’s when the real crying began. She was alive. He was alive. They had somehow gotten through all of this in one piece. “Hey, you said my name, you never say my name!”
“Maker, I thought I’d lost you…” He hugs her tighter, which on hindsight was a terrible idea, but thankfully she doesn’t complain.
“I wouldn’t go now,” She says, her breathing uneven and a little shaky. “Not when all the fun is beginning.” He leans down and kisses her. It’s different than there other kisses. Their other were sweet as they took their time, this one is hard and desperate, filled with passion and love and relief. Relief that they both made it out alive, more or less in one piece.
“Now, that was lovely,” She says, her dales accent extra string now. “But I would just like to pass out very quickly, if that’s suit you.”
When he arrives to Vigil's Keep and sees Mahariel for the first time in months, there’s a sweeping relief over him. She’s hanging around with a tall, blond man in mage robes (great, he thinks, more mages to not like me. Lovely) and another Dalish elf with a female dwarf standing next to her. He is not far away and it does not take her long to notice him.
Her face brightened, her vallaslin (”Falon’din,” she had said one night, “Friend of the dead. I had thought it appropriate at the time.”) moved with her smile that dissolved the shock on her face. She had squealed (”Did she really just squeal?” The blond man turned to the elf. “She does that a lot when she meets new people. Typically it’s screaming at them to run away.” Elf hits him on the shoulder.) ran and instinct took over him, he laughed as he caught her when she leaped onto him, legs wrapping around his waist and hands on his neck as she drove forward for the kiss. Maker, he’d missed this.
After, they lent together, foreheads touching while they both looked at each others faces, studying them. She hadn’t received any new scars on her face just the claw marks going across her right eye and down her face. The eye used to be hazel, but was now a faded blue colour with a clear cut through the middle of her pupil, her eye now rendered useless and blind. She had decided that eye patches were not her thing (”Plus they make me look more scary. Can you imagine how many Shemlen I could scare now? Or darkspawn?”).
The moment would have been far more pleasant if her Mabari (he always joked that the moment he found out she named him Barkspawn he knew she was the one) who had accompanied him didn’t jump on them, eager to join in on the action. They both had toppled to the floor while Barkspawn licked Mahariel, taking the liberty to stand on top of Alistair while doing so.
“Didn’t know you two would be so eager to start rolling around together- Hey, what was that for?”
“No reason, just saw Velanna hit you and it made me want to do it myself.”
“Alistair…”
Her voice sounded reluctant to say those words, and if he was perfectly honest with himself, he had hoped not to hear them.
“Right. Good luck. I’ll keep it off you.”
He knows he’s going to die. There is no way he could survive this, not really. Everything he has done, every choice he makes has ended up to this moment. He is going to make it count.
He thinks of shouting that it’s for Mahariel, so that she’ll never become what he saw in the fade, but he sticks with just the Wardens. This will be his own thought, imagining her will be the last thing he sees before he dies.
He knows that the inquisitor and Hawke have left now. He knows because the rift closes and now it’s official, he’s stuck here, in the fade facing a fear demon and the one thing he regrets is not being here with Mahariel. “At least I’m not getting fooled by a demon. Again.” He mutters under his breath as he takes another slash at the beast. He keeps thinking of Mahariel, of the happy times with her, during the Blight and after, of the promise to meet together after this is all done…
And now he’s lost his nerve to die. He can’t do it knowing that she’ll be out there, thinking he is alive. They were going to survive the calling, now he owes it to her to survive the fear demon. He takes up his resolve, staring the fear demon in the eye and runs.
He will just have to find another way to her.