Archive of Our Own

“If you were raised in the Chantry, have you never...?”

“Never...? Never what? Had a good pair of shoes?”

He tries to be flippant, but his throat tightens. He knew this subject would come up eventually, and he’s been dreading it, hoping Neira will assume his evasiveness means no and that's the end of it; but she barrels on, blunt as always.

“Sex?”

“Ohhh, so that's what we're talking about. I admit I've never had a woman just... come out and ask me like this, that's for sure.” She looks at him expectantly, and he looks away, feeling the heat rise in his cheeks. “Er... have you?”

“Sure. Lots of times,” she says casually. “Not much else to do for entertainment in the tower.”

Alistair chokes. “Ah. I see,” he says, once he’s recovered enough to speak. “I guess I was just raised not to take that sort of thing lightly.”

Neira shrugs. “If that’s what makes you happy.” She doesn’t press, and Alistair lets out a sigh of relief as soon as she’s far enough away not to hear it. He doesn’t want to lie to her, not the way he feels about her. But it’s hard to find a non-awkward way to say, Yes, I’ve had sex, lots of times, to try and impregnate my brother’s wife.

Oh, and by the way, my brother was the king.

The first time he was summoned for an audience before the king, Alistair didn’t know what to expect. He’d always known he was Maric’s son, but he’d always been kept out of the way because of it -- hidden in the Chantry, where he couldn’t cause too much trouble. He wasn’t even sure if Cailan knew of his existence.

But the king greeted Alistair with a hug that could surely be called brotherly. He dismissed the guards, leaving himself and Alistair alone in the small private chamber. And then the king -- the king himself -- poured Alistair a glass of wine.

Alistair’s fingers trembled as he took a sip, to be polite, and quickly placed the glass on the table, afraid it would drop and shatter in his suddenly clumsy grip.

The king poured himself a glass and drank. He sat, looking relaxed and confident, and motioned for Alistair to do the same. For a few minutes there was a silence that Alistair didn’t dare break. Then the king looked at Alistair, a smile on his lips that didn’t quite reach his piercing grey eyes.

“If what I say to you ever leaves this chamber,” he said, “I will hunt you down and kill you myself.”

Well, his first meeting with his brother was certainly off to a good start.

“You’re my brother,” the king continued, making a smooth segue from his threat to an almost friendly tone. “Should I die without heirs -- which seems increasingly likely -- I expect Eamon will try to put you on the throne.”

“Maker, I hope not!” Alistair realized his exclamation was a bit too informal, and hastily added, “Your Majesty, I have no desire -- ”

“What you desire matters little when you’re the son of the king.” Cailan downed the rest of his glass of wine and immediately poured another. “Ferelden has just recovered its royal line. Few would be content to lose it in a generation -- not when there is a living son of the Theirin bloodline, bastard or no.” He let out a heavy sigh. “It’s a shame our father never formally acknowledged you. Things might be easier if he had.”

Alistair bit back the urge to say I’m sorry, because it didn’t seem quite appropriate for the situation.

“There has been pressure for me to set aside Anora and marry a more fertile queen. But the healers have advised me that this will solve nothing. The fault lies with me, not my wife.” The king poured another glass of wine for himself, but seemed not to notice or care that Alistair’s glass still sat on the table next to him, barely touched. “You, I hope, do not suffer from the same condition. If the queen had your child, he would still be an heir of Theirin blood. No one would question his parentage or his right to rule.”

Alistair suddenly wished he’d drank more wine. “Are you asking me to lay with your wife?!” And then, belatedly: “...Your Majesty?”

“I could order you to do so, as your king.” Alistair heard something tense in the king’s voice, saw something harsh in his eyes; but his tone softened almost immediately. “I pray it won’t come to that. The situation is unpleasant enough already. For now, I ask you, as your brother, to help me give my wife a child.”

This wasn’t right, Alistair thought. To lay with another man’s wife -- to ask another man to lay with your wife -- it was a perversion of the bonds of marriage. A perversion of what was meant to be an act of love...

“Do you love her?” The question came out suddenly, before Alistair could consider whether or not it was wise.

“What?” Alistair was about to apologize, but the king seemed more surprised than offended. “We were promised to each other as children,” he mused, “to show the bond between my father and Loghain. We never truly had a say in the matter. But after knowing her for so many years... yes, I think I have come to love her.

“This was her idea, if that makes you feel better. She’s clever like that.” The king smiled and finished another glass of wine, this time leaving it empty.

Alistair had nothing to say to that.

“I’ve never... I’ve never been with a woman before,” he said. It was a deflection. If I’m uncomfortable, it’s because I’m a virgin. Not because my brother just asked me to impregnate his wife.

Cailan laughed and slapped Alistair on the shoulder, as if he were not the king, but just one of the boys. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll show you what to do.”

Somehow that wasn’t as comforting as Cailan seemed to intend.

“Look, can we talk for a moment?” asks Alistair, dreading it, hating it, but desperately needing Neira to hear the truth from his lips, not Arl Eamon’s. “I need to tell you something I, ah, should probably have told you earlier.”

“I'm not going to like this, am I?”

“I don't know. I doubt it. I've never liked it, that's for sure.” He takes a breath, steeling himself. “I told you before how Arl Eamon raised me, right? That my mother was a serving girl at the castle and he took me in? The reason he did that was because... well, because my father was King Maric.”

“Doesn't that make you the heir to the throne?” He was prepared for her to be angry, hurt, but she only sounds intrigued. He’s not sure what to make of that.

He shakes his head. “No, thank the Maker. Anora -- Queen Anora -- was with child before Cailan died. I presume she’ll be made regent until the child is of age.”

“Oh,” says Neira. “I hadn’t heard.”

“She’ll be a better ruler than I could ever be,” Alistair continues, realizing it’s not strictly necessary, but babbling anyway. “I mean, have you met me? Anyway, my blood has never been important to me. I've spent my whole life trying to forget about it.”

She listens as he tells her about his childhood. Arl Eamon, and Isolde, and how he was shipped off to the Chantry, and how he broke his mother’s amulet in a fit of childish rage. Partway through, he realizes that her hand is on his arm, comforting him, and it takes his breath away.

“So there you have it,” he finishes abruptly. “Now can we move on, and I'll just pretend you still think I'm some... nobody who was too lucky to die with the rest of the Grey Wardens.”

“As you command... my prince.”

There’s a teasing glint in her eyes. He wishes he could return the joke, pretend it doesn’t matter, but the weight of what he hasn’t told her is suddenly suffocating. He pulls away from her touch, almost violently.

“Don’t,” he says. “Please. Just don’t.”

Alistair had imagined what his first time would be like. It would be with a woman he loved, of course. But beyond that, his fantasies were incomplete, full of blurry images and uncertainties. A woman with a face he couldn’t recognize; his fingers exploring mysterious womanly parts he had never seen; his cock thrusting into a sheath that felt suspiciously like his own hand.

Cailan led him to the queen’s bedchamber. Anora greeted them in a dressing gown long enough to cover everything, but sheer enough to give Alistair an idea of what was hidden beneath. She touched Alistair’s arm. Though the contact was more friendly than erotic, it was still a touch from a woman, and with some trepidation, he felt himself grow hard.

“Thank you,” Anora said -- the only words she spoke to him that night.

She, too, offered him wine; this time Alistair drank, too quickly, thankful for the way the buzzing warmth calmed his nerves. Then Cailan motioned for Alistair to sit and watch as he took his wife in his arms.

Anora sat at the edge of the bed, and the king knelt between her legs. He kissed her, long and slow, and Alistair held back a gasp when he saw Cailan’s tongue brush against hers, heard her respond with a wanton moan. Cailan’s lips trailed down her neck, his hands pushing the robe off her shoulders. Alistair couldn’t help but stare at her breasts, small and round and perfect, with hardened nipples that begged to be pinched. For a moment he could almost push aside the thought that this was his first good look at a woman’s breasts, and that this woman he had just met was his brother’s wife. That as he watched, not he but his brother lowered his mouth to a nipple and sucked.

That this beautiful, nearly naked woman before Alistair closed her eyes and moaned his brother’s name.

Cailan kissed his way down Anora’s stomach as he removed her robe. He spread her legs and shifted so Alistair could see her, wet and glistening beneath a crown of golden curls. He kissed her stomach, her knees, her inner thighs, everywhere but that wetness, until she tangled her fingers in his hair and moaned something that might have been, “Please, Cailan, please!”

When the king buried his face between her legs and licked, she all but screamed, and Alistair suddenly realized how deficient his fantasies were. Sex, he realized, was not just about spending himself within a woman. Making a woman writhe beneath him, making her scream his name... suddenly that seemed almost as great a pleasure as finding his own release.

By the time Cailan began to remove his own clothing, Anora was trembling, her breathing shallow, her moans wordless. The king’s cock, freed from his breeches, stood proudly between the queen’s thighs, as hard and ready as Alistair himself felt. Cailan pushed his wife onto the bed and climbed on top of her. As the very tip of him brushed her wetness, he lifted one of her legs, twisting her body slightly to the side. So Alistair could see better, he realized -- as if he could ever bear to look away.

Then Cailan thrust into her, and Alistair hoped his unmanly whimper was disguised by their cries of pleasure.

Alistair resisted the urge to unlace his breeches and take himself in hand. He feared spending himself before he was ready; but more than that, it felt wrong to masturbate while watching his brother. A brother whose face, whose body looked too familiar, too much like his own. It was too easy to imagine himself in his brother’s place, not just between the queen’s thighs -- where he would be soon, too soon -- but as the ruler of Ferelden. Someone confident enough to lead a country; confident enough to let another man watch him take his wife. What one had to do with the other, Alistair wasn’t sure, except that they both made his insides clench with something more than arousal.

As it went on, Cailan leaned further over Anora, covering her, latching onto the side of her neck with lips and teeth and tongue. When Alistair lost sight of his brother’s cock thrusting into her, he instead lost himself in the sounds of it, of Anora tensing and crying out Cailan’s name as she dug her fingernails into his back. Of Cailan’s grunts of pain and pleasure, muffled by his mouth on his wife’s neck, as he thrust wildly into her and then was still.

Eventually Cailan stood up. Anora lay there silently, eyes still closed, the king’s seed dripping out of her and onto the sheets. There was a mark on her neck that would surely become an obvious, painful bruise.

When he turned his eyes from Anora to meet Cailan’s hard gaze, Alistair understood. This wasn’t meant to teach; it was meant to claim. To show Alistair -- and perhaps Anora, as well -- who she truly belonged to. To show that Cailan was her husband, her lover, and though Alistair might well become the father of her child, he was -- and would always be -- an outsider.

Cailan moved to the head of the bed, cradling his wife in his arms. Anora opened her eyes, smiling up at him, and squeezed his hand.

The king looked back to Alistair. “Take her,” he said.

Alistair stood. His hands were unexpectedly steady as he pulled off his clothing. His cock, finally freed from the confines of his breeches, was hot and hard and leaking and maybe a little bigger than Cailan’s, he thought, and was ashamed at the pride that coursed through him.

He knelt on the bed, his hands pushing Anora’s thighs apart, then moving upward to cup her breasts. He was afraid to explore her body as thoroughly as Cailan had; afraid that he would overstay his welcome. But for the sake of her comfort -- and his own guilt -- he couldn’t just rut into her like an animal put up for stud, without at least trying to give her pleasure.

When he experimentally licked her nipple, Anora whimpered and arched her back. A moment later, he felt a hand on his shoulder -- Cailan’s -- and watched his brother lower his mouth to Anora’s other breast. Alistair mimicked his brother’s motions, the pressure of lips and tongue and just enough teeth to make her cry out. And then she was touching him -- Maker, touching him -- her hand clawing at his back like she had done to his brother in the throes of their passion. He kissed her neck, gently, on the unmarked side, and then moved his lips higher, close to her own. She turned her head. He never tried to kiss her again.

Alistair touched between her legs, realizing that the wetness he felt was his brother’s seed and trying not to think too hard about it. Again, Cailan helped, unbidden, moving Alistair’s hand until his fingers rubbed against a hidden, hardened nub of flesh that made Anora moan.

If it went on much longer, Alistair was afraid he would spend outside her body -- which would defeat the purpose of the encounter, and be terribly embarrassing besides. With a deep breath and a silent prayer for the Maker’s forgiveness, he grabbed onto Anora’s hips, lifting her closer to him as he slid inside her, and despite his misgivings it was so much better than he had imagined. Once he figured out how to move, his fingers were back at the place where they were joined, touching her. When he felt her tighten around him, he could no longer hold back his own cries.

Then instinct took over, his mind empty of all thoughts but harder, faster, until the only sensation in his body was in his groin, his arms and legs and lips going numb as he let out a strangled shout and came inside her. Belatedly, he was aware that Anora’s hands were no longer on him, that her cries of pleasure had been silenced, and realized that she had been running her fingers through Cailan’s hair as he kissed her. As he watched, they parted, as if they suddenly noticed Alistair’s body trembling over her and remembered that they weren’t alone.

Neira gives him his mother’s amulet. She found it in Arl Eamon’s study, so surely the Arl meant to give it to Alistair himself, eventually. But the gift, he thinks, is simply that when he told her about it, she listened.

Alistair gives her the rose he picked in Lothering. He tells her how beautiful she is, how lucky he is to have found her, barely managing not to stumble over his words. He may not be a virgin, but he’s never courted a woman.

When he finally kisses her, it’s less because he’s ready and more because he’s afraid he’ll lose his nerve. “Was that too soon?” he asks, and her answer is to kiss him again. He melts into her touch -- his hands on her back, in her hair, brushing the points of her ears -- and somehow this is more intimate than anything he experienced with Anora.

“I’m glad we’re getting past this awkward embarrassing stage and right to the steamy bits,” he says, and wishes he knew how to act at a time like this, knew something to say other than a joke.

“Sounds good,” says Neira. “Off with the armor, then.”

He laughs nervously. “Bluff called! Damn! She saw right through me!”

She leans close, so close he can feel her heat through his armor and her soft breath on his ear. “Why must it be a bluff?”

It doesn’t have to be. She’s had sex before; if he tells her he’s not as innocent as she thinks, she won’t care. But he needs to tell her the truth -- the whole truth -- and that’s what he’s not ready for.

Cailan always had Anora first. It was a claiming, but it also, Alistair thought, made it easier to pretend. If they both had her, their seed intermingling in her womb, who could say for certain that she carried Alistair’s child?

And Cailan always held Anora while Alistair took her. Any cries of pleasure she might have for Alistair were confused with the cries of pleasure for her husband’s hands on her body, or swallowed by her husband’s kiss. Once, Cailan put his cock in her mouth, Anora on her hands and knees, sucking him as Alistair’s thrusts rocked her between them. Alistair had barely finished when Cailan pushed him away and pulled his wife on top of him, finding his release again inside of her. Their bodies were still joined when Alistair showed himself out.

It hurt. Not just the thought that Cailan would treat his queen like a common whore -- how was it worse than what they’d already been doing? -- but the flash of vulnerability he saw on his brother’s face. Despite all they’d done, it didn’t occur to Alistair until that moment that Cailan, for all his confidence, might be afraid of losing her.

One day when he was summoned to the palace, Cailan was not there. It was disconcerting to be alone with Anora, as if the act they had been performing for months became illicit only now, when it was hidden from the king.

But she didn’t take him to bed. “I thought I should tell you myself,” she said. “I’m with child.” And then she kissed Alistair on the mouth. His first kiss: tender, passionate, and over far too soon. This was what Cailan was afraid of, he realized. And when she pulled back, her eyes wet with unshed tears, he realized that Anora was afraid, too. That she had barely spoken to him, tried not to look at him as he fucked her in her husband’s arms, because she was afraid of what they might come to feel for one another.

It wasn’t love, Alistair realized. At least, it wasn’t what he expected love would feel like -- and when he later met Neira, he knew that he had been right. But Anora would be the mother of his child, and that had to mean something.

The next day, Duncan took him away to become a Grey Warden. He wondered if Cailan had a hand in it, but he didn’t care. With the Wardens, he finally had a purpose. Not for the Chantry, or for his brother, but for himself.

“So how would you like to join me in my tent?”

“Your tent. Ah.” If he refuses, makes some excuse, she’ll think he doesn’t want her, and nothing’s further from the truth. Every nerve in his body is on fire for her, desperate for her, whispering yes inside him and trying to make his mouth move. But she needs to know the truth. If she hates him for it, maybe they just weren’t meant to be.

“I lied to you,” Alistair says. “I’ve let you believe I’ve never... been with a woman. But I have.”

“Is that all?” Neira asks softly, her hand on his cheek, and he quickly replies:

“No.”

It all spills out at once. What Cailan and Anora wanted him to do. How the heir to Cailan’s throne, the child Anora will birth any day now -- if she hasn’t already -- is almost certainly Alistair’s.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“I love you,” he says, because it’s one more truth he hasn’t confessed. “I love you and I want to be with you. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be like, but I want to find out.”

“Are you sure? We can wait, if you need more time...”

“Do you want to wait?”

“No.”

“Then neither do I.”

Neira takes the lead, slowly undressing him and kissing his newly bared skin, murmuring appreciation for his muscled arms, the smattering of hair on his chest, the scent of his arousal. His whole body feels like his cock, still trapped inside his smallclothes, hard and too sensitive and aching for release. No one’s ever touched him like this before, he tries to tell her, but she silences him with a kiss.

When she starts to remove her own clothing, he helps her, perhaps a bit too eagerly. He revels in her nakedness, kissing her stomach, her shoulders, her breasts, but always returning to her mouth, as if coming up to the surface for air. For a moment he feels the memory of a hand guiding him, but he pushes it away, preferring to fumble by himself, to find the places she loves to be touched.

His hand moves between her legs, finding her hairless and so very wet, and she gasps. He brings his finger to his mouth, curiously, tentatively, and although she doesn’t taste at all like he expected, he can’t describe it as anything but Neira. She buries her hands in his hair when he leans down to taste it from the source.

When she pushes him back and rides him, he grabs onto her -- as if he’s not the one lying firmly on the ground, and he needs her support to keep from falling. When she cries out in pleasure, it’s “Alistair, Alistair,” and he almost doesn’t care if the rest of the camp can hear them, as long as they hear her scream his name. And when he comes inside her, he pulls her down against his chest, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her. It’s like every part of them is touching, connected, and he’s almost afraid to let go.

The next time Alistair sees Anora, they’re rescuing her from her father. Her son was not even days old when Loghain, the self-declared regent, locked her away so she couldn’t interfere. At least the child was still safe. Even the man who murdered Duncan and Cailan would not stoop to harming an innocent babe -- if only, Alistair thinks, because he’s the heir to the throne.

They make plans, he and Neira and Anora and Arl Eamon, and he’s relieved that it doesn’t take long for them to come to an agreement. Anora is an inspiration, all strength and purpose despite the stress of her captivity, of having to stand against her own father, and Alistair thinks he understands why his brother loved her.

When the Landsmeet is over, Loghain is dead and Alistair isn’t king, and that arrangement suits him just fine.

“I did not know what my father was planning,” Anora tells him later, when they finally get a chance to speak alone. If she hates him for killing Loghain, she doesn’t show it. “But I knew there would be unrest if Cailan died childless. When I learned he had a brother... Despite what my father thought, Cailan only wanted what was best for Ferelden. As do I.”

“What about what’s best for you?” asks Alistair, knowing he must sound childish and not caring. “What’s best for me? For Cailan?”

For a moment, her stern, piercing gaze reminds him of his brother. “I am on the throne, you are not, and Eamon is satisfied anyway. Isn’t that what’s best for us? If you wished to be king, you would never have agreed to my plan in the first place.

“As for my beloved husband, he is dead, but I can only hope he would be proud of his son.”

His son. Alistair is struck by an impulse to grab Anora, pull up her skirts, and fuck the memory of Cailan out of her until she confesses who really put that child inside her. It disgusts him, frightens him, that his thoughts would betray the love of his life out of jealousy for a dead man.

“Can I at least see him, just for a little while?” he asks quietly. “I don’t want to go off and fight the Archdemon without getting a chance to hold him.”

Anora looks conflicted; but after a moment her expression softens, and she nods.

Alistair’s never held a baby before. The prince’s nurse hovers as Alistair cradles his son in his arms -- Maker, he’s so tiny, so fragile -- afraid even to breathe. The baby looks up at him with wide blue eyes and a toothless smile, and Alistair imagines he is recognized, accepted.

Then the smile turns into a wail, and the magical moment is broken. The nurse whisks the child away to be fed and rocked and whatever else one does to make a baby stop crying, and Alistair, no longer welcome, walks back to Arl Eamon’s estate. It’s not enough, that moment; but nothing would be enough save hearing that child call him father, and anything less would be torture. Better to let him go now.

Neira is waiting for him. She holds his head in her lap, stroking his hair.

“We can have a child of our own,” she promises, “when this is all over.”

It will never be over. They’ll always be Grey Wardens, with responsibilities beyond themselves. And with the taint, who knows if he even can get her pregnant. And besides, she’s a mage; what if their child is a mage, too, and the Circle steals him away?

What if the child they raise is burdened with the knowledge that he’s a replacement for Alistair’s son?

But she means well, and Alistair doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. “All right,” he says, and lets her hands go where they will.

“What if I told you there was a way to avoid dying tomorrow?”

Alistair’s head spins. He’s barely had time to think about what Riordan told them, and Neira’s already found a way around it?

But then she tells him the price, and his heart breaks.

“I can’t.”

“I don’t want to lose you,” she says. Her arms are folded tightly across her chest, nails digging into her own skin, as if she’s desperate to hold herself back from touching him.

If she touches him, he might, for a moment, be able to say yes.

“I already have one child I can never see. Never claim as my own. Please; I can’t do that again.”

Not even for you. He doesn’t say it, doesn’t even mean it, but he’s afraid she hears it anyway.

“I understand,” she says. He’s not sure if she really does; but this could be their last night together, and suddenly the truth is less important than the time they have left.

When they come together, there are no more words. He buries his face in her hair, damp with sweat and tears. He doesn’t want to die; but if he must, he only hopes Neira will forgive him.

Sleep does not come easily. When it comes, Alistair’s dreams are not of darkspawn, but of the woman in his arms.