i.

“You have pretty eyes,” is almost the first thing Alistair says to Briana Cousland.

Almost.

He thankfully stops himself before he has a chance to blurt it out and makes a joke about the Blight instead while kicking himself internally. Acting like an over-eager mabari is not the best way to make a good impression on the new recruit, after all— nor is waltzing up to her before she even knows his name and complimenting her out of nowhere. That sort of thing is generally frowned upon when introducing yourself, or so he’s heard.

She still looks at him like he’s the most bizarre man she’s ever met, but it’s a start.

Later, when they’re trekking through the Wilds looking for darkspawn blood, he wonders what it is about Briana’s eyes that made him nearly make a fool of himself before they even exchanged pleasantries (because normally, he waits until after he's give his name to remove all doubt about his ridiculous self). It isn’t just the color of her eyes, because while that is pretty, there’s something more to them. But as he watches her silently (despite his attempts at idle conversation) lead their little group through the swamps and carry herself like the weight of the world is on her shoulders, he realizes what it is that he sees.

Sadness.

There’s a lonely, heartbroken sadness in her eyes from the raw pain of something she clearly doesn’t want to talk about and will probably carry with her for the rest of her days. He wants to reach out to her, to tell her that she isn’t alone anymore and that she can talk to him if she wants to; but something tells him that she’s shut in on herself and won’t open up to a strange man who makes ill-timed jokes and wants to be her friend.

So he continues to follow her instead, because maybe his presence will at least ease some of her burden.

ii.

Duncan is gone, Ostagar is lost, he’s one of only two Grey Wardens left, and there’s a bounty on his and Briana’s heads.

It’s a lot to take in.

The only family he might’ve had is gone. Duncan, the man who took him away from the monastery and went against the will of the Grand Cleric for him, is dead. Alistair hasn’t felt this alone and sick since he was a child at Eamon’s, and there’s nothing he can do about it— other than plot all the ways in which he wants to stab Loghain, that is it.

Part of him is vaguely aware that Briana keeps glancing at him worriedly over her shoulder, but he’s too trapped inside of his own head to say something to her. Waves of guilt and sorrow keep crashing down upon him every time he resurfaces, and he must look like a kicked mabari.

I should have been there. It should have been me. I should have—

“Alistair?”

Briana’s voice is enough to snap him out of his thoughts for a moment, and he looks up at her with a smile that he hopes doesn’t look nearly as forced as it actually is.

“Yeeeeees?”

“Nothing, I just…” She frowns, concern clearly written all over her face. “Are you all right? You’ve been…quiet.”

“And you’re complaining?” Morrigan asks from somewhere behind him. “I rather prefer him this way.”

“Your concern is touching, Morrigan,” he mumbles, then shakes his head. “I’m…I’ll be fine. No sense in worrying about me. Let’s just keep going. Hopefully, we can make it to Lothering before nightfall. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to find out if the wolves around here have acquired a taste for Wardens and surly swamp witches.”

“Oh, I suppose you think you’re clever, then?” He can practically hear Morrigan rolling her eyes, but he opts to ignore her.

“I…if you’re sure,” Briana says, almost reluctantly. She sounds like she wants to say something else, but whatever it is is left unsaid. He doesn’t know if he’s grateful for that or not.

He’s not sure how much time passes in silence after that, but just as he can see the outskirts of the village beyond the trees, Briana speaks again.

“Loghain will pay for what he did. I can promise you that.”

Her words catch him off-guard, and for a moment he wonders if he’d just been hearing things. But Briana is looking at him with such determination that he knows she meant every word of what she’d said.

“Good,” he says, and Briana nods.

It’s not enough to ease his guilt, but he feels himself hold onto a tiny, newfound sliver of hope for the first time in days.

iii.

Werewolves, he decides, are the worst.

“Over there!” Leliana runs in front of him and stands at mossy-looking spot underneath a large tree. It’s no bed or healer’s cot, but it will have to do. He sets Briana down as gently as he can under the shade as Leliana leans her sword against the trunk of the tree. Briana’s mabari protectively curls up next to her.

Alistair and Leliana had managed to take down the werewolf who’d mauled her, but not soon enough. She has cuts and gashes everywhere, pieces of her armor are either torn off or slashed through, and he’d be amazed if she hasn’t broken anything. And without a proper healer on hand, he’s not entirely sure what to do.

“I don’t suppose you remembered to bring bandages, did you?” He asks, absentmindedly brushing a lock of hair out of Briana’s face and trying his best to keep his tone even and calm. Panicking right now would not help.

“Some, but not enough.” Leliana hands him a small bag of what he assumes (hopes) are medical supplies. “But we’re in a forest. There’s bound to be medicinal herbs around here that we can use.”

“You know about herbalism?”

“I know enough.” Leliana shrugs. “As a bard, you learn to use what you can. Stay with her; I’ll go have a look around.”

The idea of Leliana going off by herself in a werewolf-infested forest doesn’t seem like a particularly good one, but they need herbs and there’s no way that he (or the dog) are leaving Briana’s side.

“Be careful,” he says. “Two people getting mauled in one day would sort of ruin my afternoon.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll try not to.” Leliana laughs.

He’s too focused on Briana to watch the bard go. The supplies Leliana’d handed him aren’t much (because really, who goes into a forest to meet with the Dalish expecting werewolves?), but they’re enough for him to bandage the worst of her injuries as he tries to remember Duncan’s (brief) lessons on field medicine. When he’s used the last of the bandages, he drops the bag to the ground and leans against the tree, hoping— praying— that Leliana will come back with the herbs they need soon.

Minutes or hours later, he hears a low groan and almost springs up. Briana’s eyes flutter open and she tries to sit up, but Alistair gently pushes her back down onto the moss with one hand.

“Don’t,” he says gently, then reaches over to the supply bag and hands her an elfroot potion. “You’re not healed yet.”

“Wha—” Briana looks at him as though she’s sure that he’s a ghost. “Alistair?”

“That’s me, last I checked.” He offers her a smile. “How do you feel?”

“I thought…” She shakes her head, wide-eyed, as she downs the potion. Some of the color returns to her face, and he lets out a breath that he hadn’t realized that he’d been holding. “I thought I was dead and you…”

“And I…?”

“That’d you’d left,” she says quietly. She looks small and vulnerable, which are two things that he’d never associated with her. “That you’d decide that I wasn’t worth saving and leave me back there for the Dalish or the werewolves or worse.”

“I would never,” Alistair says immediately, surprised that she’d even thought of such a thing. “I could never. No one of us would. Well, I can’t speak for Morrigan, but I assume she has an ounce of decency underneath all of that unpleasantness somewhere.”

Perhaps that’s not the best joke that he could’ve made, but it seems to have its intended effect regardless. Briana relaxes slightly and he can see some of the tension draining out of her.

“You won’t leave?”

“Never. You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid,” he says seriously.

“And Leliana—”

“—Is coming back,” he interrupts. “She just went to find more herbs. For whatever reason, no one thought to bring an apothecary’s worth of supplies for a friendly visit to the Dalish. If it turns out that we also have a Warden treaty with the nugs or something seemingly harmless, remind me to bring several months’ worth of supplies when we go.”

“I’m sorry…about all of this,” Briana says after a pause, turning her gaze away from him. “I’m slowing us down. I thought…I thought that I could fight better than that, but…”

“It’s all right. They don’t teach you how to fight werewolves in most places, you know,” he says, but Briana shakes her head.

“I wasn’t properly trained. Not really.” Briana shakes her head. “I was just swinging a sword around and hoping for the best.”

“Well. How about this: when you’re up to it, I’ll teach you how to skillfully swing a sword around,” Alistair offers, before he even has time to think about it.

“You’d do that?” Briana asks, sounding quite surprised by his proposal.

“Why not?” Alistair grins. “Well, I might not be the best teacher, but we’re in the whole ‘darkspawn stabbing’ thing together, right?”

“Together,” she repeats, and he decides that Briana Cousland’s smile is his new favorite thing in the world.

iv.

If he were to look back on his life, Alistair couldn’t tell you the exact moment he realized that he was in love with Briana Cousland. There were a lot of signs along the way— little things, like the swording lessons, late nights spent talking about Maker-knows-what, having each other’s back in battle, the way he lightened up whenever she was near— but he never felt as though he fell for her suddenly and all at once.

And maybe he never felt like he fell at all; maybe it was just a natural progression that neither one of them noticed because it just felt right.

“You’ve taken quite a shine to our fearless leader,” Wynne had teased, and he’d gotten flustered, because, well, that woman is evil when she wants to be. But part of him knew that she was maybe on to something, and it was really quite amazing how the Blight ended up bringing people together.

One night, after they’ve set up camp on their way to their next destination to finish getting their army ready, he finally works up the courage to give Briana something that he’d been holding on to for weeks.

“It’s a rose,” she says, taking the flower from him and looking at it curiously.

“Well, yes,” he says, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly. Maker, this was so much less awkward in his head, and it doesn’t help that he can swear that he can hear either Zevran or Morrigan snickering at him from somewhere in the background. “It just…reminded me of you.”

“Of me?”

“Yes, because it’s something beautiful in the midst of something as awful as the Blight,” he explains quickly so that his nerves don’t have time to fail him. “Like you.”

“I…oh.”

Briana blinks once, then twice. He hopes that she can’t hear his heart pounding in his chest, because it certainly feels like it’s going to burst out of his ribcage.

But to his surprise (and relief), she smiles and spins the rose in her fingers. If he didn’t know any better, he’d swear that she can see a faint hint of pink on her cheeks as well.

“That’s very thoughtful of you,” she says. “Thank you.”

Later, when they kiss for the first time, he thinks that she smells of flowers.

v.

If there’s one thing that Alistair definitely does not want, it’s being crowned Ferelden’s king. And now, thanks to Briana, it’s going to happen. She knew he didn’t want it, too. Anora wanted it, so why couldn’t Briana have just let her keep her blighted crown? Maker, what a mess.

But on the other hand, Briana said that she’d rule alongside him as queen, so that’s…maybe some sort of silver lining in all of this. At least she’d saved him the trouble of proposing himself, even if his plan wouldn’t have involved either of them taking the throne.

He’s still a bit miffed about the whole thing, though.

“I didn’t have a choice,” Briana says, not quite meeting his gaze. “I’m sorry.”

“Anora was right there! You did have a choice,” he insists. He can’t tell if he’s angry at her or Eamon or what, but he’s angry at someone. “You knew I never wanted the crown, and then you went and made me king!”

“I know,” Briana says quietly. “That’s why I chose to rule with you. I thought…I thought that if I was going to make you suffer, I might as well suffer with you.”

“For the record,” he mutters after a pause, “I would’ve preferred flowers and maybe some cheese as a proposal.”

“I made do with what I had.” Briana looks up at him. “I know you’re angry at me, but I hope you don’t hate me for this.”

“I don’t hate you. I couldn’t even if I wanted to,” he says immediately. “I just…give me some time to…process all of this.”

“Of course.” Briana moves her hand as if she’s going to reach out and touch his arm, but she thinks better of it and lets it drop back to her side. “We have an archdemon to kill.”

For a moment, Alistair can’t decide what he finds more terrifying— the darkspawn hoard, or being placed on his father’s throne. But knowing that Briana will be with him through all of it makes things seem a little less scary, and it’s enough to make him hope that they’ll get through this.

vi.

The archdemon is dead and he’s alive.

Alistair doesn’t have time to revel in his amazement over surviving the battle, however. The air is thick with smoke and smell of blood and decay, Denerim is all but completely wrecked, and he hasn’t seen most of their friends since they’d parted ways earlier— but none of that seems relevant at the moment. Briana was the one who’d killed the archdemon, and if Morrigan’s ritual was fake and what Riordan said was true…

He runs through the smoke to the dead dragon, but he can’t see anything.

“Briana!”

No answer. He feels his heart drop out of his chest and his world come to a screeching halt.

No, she can’t be…

“Alistair!”

He knows that voice; he’d recognize it anywhere. Overwhelmed with joy and relief, he almost drops his sword and charges off in the direction it’d come from— only to practically run straight into Briana.

“You’re alive,” he breathes, gathering into his arms. “Oh, Maker, I— I thought you were dead.”

“Never,” Briana says, returning his embrace and echoing the words he’d said to her what felt like a lifetime ago. She’s different than she was then; she’s a capable ally that he’s come to depend on and look to, but she’s still the same woman with pretty eyes and maybe a little less weight on her shoulders than when they’d first met. “You’re stuck with me, I’m afraid.”

“There are worse fates to be stuck with the woman you love for all eternity,” Alistair says, feeling his lips curl into this big, goofy grin as he wipes some of the archdemon blood off of her face and kisses her.

Eternity doesn’t sound half bad, really.

vii.

As it turns out, being Ferelden’s king isn’t as terrible as he’d been imagining. Of course, having his beloved queen at his side doesn’t hurt, either.

So, naturally, while she’s away handling what’s going on in Amaranthine, he misses her terribly.

Briana’s latest letter speaks of the new recruits, all of who are driving her up the wall. Oghren is apparently a Warden now, which is remarkable, because he’d have thought that all the alcohol and other disgusting bits that are probably in that dwarf’s blood would’ve cancelled out the effects of the Joining. There’s also the snarky runaway mage he vaguely recalls meeting at the Keep, as well as a Howe. Yes, he can definitely see how this is going to go swimmingly. But more than that, he knows that she’ll save the day like she always does and then come home to him.

When she’s done there, they’ll be together again. Forever, this time.