Reverse-Cowgirl Diplomacy

A flash of gold in her peripheral vision drew Elissa's attention and she spared a glance to see that Alistair, too, was charging toward the fallen archdemon, his sword in his hand. She didn't know whether he had seen her, or if he was simply determined to end the corrupted Old God, but he was closer to the monstrous dragon than she was. Horrified, she screamed for him to stop.

"Alistair! NO!"

Perhaps he didn't hear her, or perhaps he was determined to make this sacrifice himself, but he did not pause before he slid under the massive head of the beast, his sword thrusting in to the underside of its jaw. The archdemon's scream was unearthly, nearly driving Elissa to her knees from the agony of hearing it both from without and within.

When she looked up again, Alistair was poised beside the archdemon's head, his sword drawn back as he prepared to thrust it into the skull. She screamed again, but it was too late. The sword plunged downward, and then the world erupted around her.

---

Redcliffe

"The Circle mages have arrived, the messengers say we can expect the dwarven forces to arrive within a day or two, and the elves are on their way and should be here by the end of the week."

"Huh?" Alistair shook his head, realizing belatedly that Fergus had spoken to him. He turned away from the window in Arl Eamon's study, which he and Fergus has commandeered for their war councils. In the valley beneath them, spreading out from the quiet village he had grown up in, was a vast, busy encampment of the army they had amassed. As he watched, one by one torches began to ignite as the sun sank lower. "Sorry, I wasn't listening. Say that last part again."

"Distracted, Your Majesty?" Fergus asked, giving Alistair a knowing smile that was eerily identical to his sister's.

Alistair felt himself blush. "I was just... wondering how things are going in Denerim."

"If I know my sister, by now she's likely got the whole place under her charming yet astonishingly firm thumb," Fergus snickered.

Normally Fergus could draw him out of his fretting moods with quips about Elissa, but this time Alistair merely went back to staring at the window at the darkening landscape. "Do you think she's had the baby?"

"It's been nearly three weeks since we left, Your Majesty. I imagine the chances are fairly good that she has."

He didn't allow himself to ask whether or not Fergus thought she was all right. No amount of speculative reassurance was going to do anything to quell the worry in Alistair's heart until he actually heard some news.

"What was it like when your wife gave birth?" he asked instead.

"I don't actually know. Mother and Nan and the midwife drove me from the room. Then Father got me good and drunk and kept me that way until it was over," his general answered. "I'd offer to render you the same service, but under the circumstances it really wouldn't do for you to be soused until we go up against the archdemon. So, the best I can offer you is strategy and some moldy old maps."

"I appreciate the thought," Alistair muttered, forcing himself to abandon his post by the window. "Now, what was that you were saying about the dwarves and the elves?"

Fergus spoke at length about the state of their supplies and the expected arrival of their allies, and Alistair made himself attend carefully. His brother-in-law was turning out to be something of a surprise for Alistair. He should have known—from the fact that Elissa had always been a competent, if not stellar, fighter and strategist—that the upbringing of the Cousland children had involved considerably more than simply tutelage in matters of sex. Yet he hadn't thought that idea through to its natural conclusion. Somehow, like an idiot, he had managed to settle himself on the notion that they had been taught how to seduce and little else.

He had appointed Fergus as his general before the Landsmeet while specifically making it clear that had Elissa not been at the end of her pregnancy, it would have been her leading his armies. His reason for doing so had been to offer some sort of acknowledgment before the nobility of all Elissa had accomplished in leading them against the Blight, to give her credit for the unimaginably difficult task she had undertaken. But Fergus had turned out to be a highly skilled military leader and planner in his own right, and only once he realized this did Alistair remember that Elissa's brother had been sent to Ostagar to lead Highever's troops against the darkspawn. Whenever other skills he may have been taught, Fergus Cousland was indeed a man of arms and had been groomed to lead armies. Alistair's choice to make him general had turned out to be one of the most astute moves of his reign, brief though it had been so far.

With his army in such expert hands, Alistair had realized that there was actually very little for him to do and that his presence was more inspirational than useful. He wasn't going to repeat his brother's mistakes and ignore the advice of his general in favor of yielding to his own impulses, even though the part of him hearing the call of the archdemon day and night (and the other part of him that wished to get back to Denerim as soon as possible) wanted to charge into battle immediately. Instead, he let himself be guided and so they had been in Redcliffe nearly two weeks, waiting while more troops from their allies arrived each day and the size of their army swelled.

Far more than his military knowledge, however, Alistair was finding he valued Fergus as a companion. During their months of travel, he had enjoyed the company of Leliana and Wynne, since Orzammar he'd become friendlier with Zevran than he had ever imagined he would be, and even Oghren could be agreeable on occasion, when he wasn't being a completely offensive ass. But Fergus—perhaps because of his similarities to and affection for Elissa, or perhaps simply because he was that personable—was quickly becoming a comrade and confidante of the sort Alistair hadn't had since Duncan had died.

That thought, however, led Alistair to remember that both Fergus and his wife had slept with Duncan, and that thought brought him back to his understanding of the Cousland family dynamics. It made him uncomfortable, even as he longed to question Fergus about all the things he just still didn't quite understand about the way Elissa looked at things. Perhaps a male perspective would help.

The truth was, Alistair was concerned about Elissa. For a while, he'd been so grateful that things with the Landsmeet had worked out so unreasonably well that he hadn't dared question anything. He and Elissa had survived. They'd brought down Loghain. They'd even gotten married. With the exception of the looming Blight and the separation it entailed, he should have been sublimely happy, and a part of him was. But the other part....

...The other part didn't like the way Elissa had been behaving since Fort Drakon. It was nothing overt. She still smiled and laughed, still made love to him with a passion that took his breath away. And yet there seemed to be something missing. She was subdued. Too subdued. Her smile didn't brighten her eyes the way it once had. She was behaving....

...Like a perfectly brought-up noblewoman.

He would have thought it an act, a mask she wore in her capacity as queen, except that she never took it off, even when alone with him. Her joy and sparkle were diminished. Her unabashed and keen sensuality had been dampened until she was barely recognizable as the woman he had traveled with for so many months.

She was suddenly everything Alistair would have once imagined he wanted in the woman he loved, modest and sweet and in no way aggressive or intimidating.

But she wasn't Elissa.

Perhaps it was just because she'd been nearing her time with the babe. Perhaps once he returned to Denerim—and he refused to let himself dwell on the possibility that he wouldn't return to her—she would be herself again.

But what if she wasn't? What if it wasn't the babe, but Loghain, who had wrought the changes Alistair had seen?

"Still concerned about matters back in Denerim, Your Majesty?" Fergus's voice once again intruded upon his thoughts, and he turned to look at his brother-in-law, whose eyes and smile were so like Elissa's.

"In a manner of speaking," Alistair muttered. "I'm thinking getting drunk isn't such a bad idea."

"Well, I can't sanction any plan to get you well and truly besotted, but I hardly think Arl Eamon would begrudge a flagon of his finest," the teyrn suggested, and thus it was that they found themselves sitting in two comfortable armchairs in the arl's study with the heavy oak door closed and the desk cleared of its usual array of map. In place of the maps was a flagon of wine and two golden goblets.

"So, what seems to be the problem, Your Majesty?"

"Please," Alistair said uncomfortably. "No titles when there's a bottle of wine open."

Fergus gave him Elissa's smile again. "Very well, then—brother. What's the trouble?"

"What was Elissa like, as a girl?" he asked abruptly. "When I met her, your parents had just been murdered and she was scheming to marry Cailan and then the battle at Ostagar happened and everyone was dead and I dumped all this responsibility on her.... I have no idea who she was, before all that, or how what happened in those days may have changed her."

Fergus gave Alistair a long, considering look, as though weighing him, before turning his gaze to the closed door of the study. Finally he said cautiously, "If you know about the plan for her to marry Cailan then I suppose Elissa has told you at least a little about our family secrets."

"Much more than a little." Fergus's eyebrows lifted in surprise, and Alistair shrugged. "She doesn't like to lie."

"No. She never did. Which is surprising, because she's damnably good at it when she decides to do it," Fergus said with a chuckle. "But she always had this very rigid sense of honor. She'd plot, scheme and manipulate to get her way, but her word was always golden and she took a great deal of pride in that fact."

"What else?" Alistair prompted.

"She was always very confident, very assured. She knew who she was and what her strengths were. And once she realized the power she could have over men she became downright dangerous. As much to herself as to the men around her, I think."

"How so?"

Fergus hesitated. "It feels disloyal to say this, but I think Mother and Father—may the Maker keep them—started teaching us too young.”

“Elissa said something very similar once to me. That she might have been better off with a little more time embracing her innocence,” Alistair remarked, not adding that he had agreed wholeheartedly with that sentiment.

“It’s true,” Fergus nodded. “Oh, I'm not denying the usefulness of the things they taught us. It's served us all very well, but Elissa's temperament made it a volatile combination. As much as she tries to be analytical and pragmatic—and she can be frighteningly so at times—she'll always be a creature of passion. It was easier for me, I think. I learned my lessons and learned them well, but it was my skill as a warrior that really shaped the way I thought of myself. Elissa thought of herself first and foremost in terms of sex. It became her identity, the first thing she thought of to solve all her problems. It wasn't just a weapon in her arsenal, it was her arsenal. Or so she thought."

Alistair snorted. "I know exactly what you mean. She's never thought particularly highly of her other skills. Now I think I understand why she's reacting so badly to what happened with Loghain."

"She never gave me all the details there, but then she didn't need to. And I think you're right," Fergus agreed, taking a long sip of his wine. "Nothing cuts quite as deep as your own sword when it's turned against you."

"How do I help her?"

"You don't." Alistair gave Fergus an irritated look, not finding the answer even remotely helpful, but Elissa's brother was unfazed. "This isn't something you can fix. She's got to find her own way through it, figure out how to reclaim herself."

Alistair cursed and muttered into his goblet.

"What was that?" Fergus asked.

"I said I'd rather go back to the days when I had to stand by while she took one man after another to her bed and she was happy and full of life than return to Denerim and watch her float around the palace being so careful and proper and never really seeming to truly care about anything."

Fergus guffawed, nearly choking on his wine in the process. "Welcome to the family, brother!" he said, raising his goblet in a toast.

Finding himself relaxed and his tongue loosened by the wine, Alistair ventured to ask, "How did you do it?"

"Eh?" Fergus looked at him curiously.

"How were you able to... share your wife?"

Fergus seemed on the verge of cracking another joke, then grew serious when he saw how earnest Alistair was. "Well, it helped to realize she wasn't mine to begin with. Oriana and I came to care about one another very much, but I went into the marriage with no illusions of her being a chaste maiden."

"What made you choose an Antivan courtesan?" Alistair asked.

"Was I supposed to bring some shy, cloistered virgin into our family?" Fergus scoffed, shrugging. "That would hardly have been fair to the girl, nor beneficial to my family. In fact, if the girl turned out to be prone to gossip, or to running back to her father with hysterical tales of debauchery and lewd conduct, it could have been ruinous. No, I needed a wife who wouldn't be easily shocked, who would understand our family and our aims. I was always more comfortable with martial matters, anyway, and of limited utility in games of seduction, considering the strong preponderance of males in the ranks of Fereldan nobility, only a handful of whom have any taste for men. Elissa was still a child, and so it was best to bring into the family a wife who could fulfill that role while I focused on training and leading our armies."

"But if you came to care for her, didn't it drive you mad to think of her with other men?" Alistair insisted.

Fergus smirked. "Only in the best possible way."

"Meaning—?"

"Meaning there are some pleasures a woman can only enjoy completely when pressed between two men, and I came to enjoy indulging my wife's taste for those pleasures very much indeed, especially when they happened to coincide with the indulgence of certain pleasures of my own." Fergus gave Alistair another look that reminded him of Elissa, one that made him squirm and blush again as he recalled once more that, even though he was much less blatantly flirtatious than Zevran, Fergus did enjoy the company of men.

Thinking of Zevran led him to recall that night in Orzammar, how it had felt to hold Elissa and listen to her cries of pleasure while Zevran fucked her. Had the pleasure been enhanced for her by both of them being there? Was that an experience she wished to repeat? Perhaps with both of them pleasuring her at once, rather than just one while the other watched.

Alistair's mind started supplying mental images of the various possibilities, and he quickly had to force himself to stop thinking of it as his body began to react.

"I suppose it doesn't matter anyway," he murmured after a long moment. "Now that I'm king and she's queen, we're likely to draw too much attention if we were to carry on in such a way."

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," Fergus said, setting his empty goblet aside. "So long as it yields an heir, the king's bedchamber is the least scrutinized parcel of territory in all of Ferelden."

Alistair had no ready response for that, and was fortunately saved from having to concoct one by a firm rap on the door of the study.

"Enter!" he called out, almost grateful for the interruption.

The door opened to admit Ser Cauthrien, who—as always—bowed and would not meet Alistair's eyes. He'd been shocked when Fergus had made her his second-in-command, but Fergus had shrugged and said that after the service she had done Elissa in the Landsmeet, he owed her a chance. "Forgive the intrusion, Your Majesty, general. The Grey Warden Riordan has just arrived and I thought you would want to be informed immediately."

"Please, send him in at once," Alistair ordered, rising quickly from his chair. He heard Fergus murmur his thanks to the knight, but his attention was completely upon the filthy and grizzled Warden who came through the door.

"Your Majesty," said the Senior Warden with a bow, but Alistair waved him off.

"Just Alistair, Riordan, please. What's kept you? We were expecting you over a week ago."

"I apologize for my late arrival," Riordan said. "I went out of my way to take news of the Blight to Denerim before leaving for Redcliffe."

"You've been to Denerim?" Alistair asked avidly. "How is the queen?"

"She was well when I saw her, Alistair. She was delivered of a daughter perhaps a week before I arrived, and both she and the princess were doing fine."

"Oh, thank the Maker," Alistair breathed, and then a slow, foolishly pleased smile began to cross his face. Fergus grinned and congratulated him with a slap on the shoulder.

"The news is not all good, however," Riordan added. "The reason I traveled first to Denerim was to inform the the queen that the darkspawn horde has turned east and is heading toward Denerim. Her Majesty is organizing an evacuation of the city, but the darkspawn should be there in perhaps a week. And the archdemon is leading them."

"Oh, Maker's balls!" Alistair heard Fergus curse through the ringing of his own pulse in his ears. "And here we are on the bloody other side of Ferelden!"

"Get the army ready to travel," Alistair commanded. "The dwarves will have to catch up to us, and we'll meet the Dalish elves along the way. We leave at daybreak to march on Denerim and not a minute later."

"Yes, Your Majesty," Fergus said, bowing deeply, and left the study, quickly rolling up his maps and battle plans to take with him.

"There's more, Alistair." His agitated pacing was interrupted by Riordan's softly accented voice. "There was one other piece of information I needed to share with the queen, and with you as well. The queen will not be evacuating Denerim with the rest of the citizens. She is a Grey Warden. She will be there, to help fight the archdemon. We all must."

Something in Riordan's words made Alistair stop and look at him sharply.

"Why?"

---

He didn't remember leaving the arl's study. He didn't notice when the two armored guards who had stood sentry outside the study fell into step behind him, following him up the stairs to his bedchamber. Beside his door, two more guards stood watch, but Alistair noticed them no more than he had others. He simply walked into his chamber and shut the door behind him, leaning on it heavily. He covered his face with his hands as Riordan's words ran again and again through his mind.

... If the archdemon is slain by a Grey Warden, its essence travels into the Warden.... The essence of the archdemon is destroyed, and so is the Grey Warden.

The Grey Warden who kills the archdemon... dies?

I am the eldest, and the taint will not spare me much longer. But if I fail, the deed falls on either you or Elissa. She is aware of this, and will be in Denerim awaiting the arrival of the army for the final battle. The Blight must be stopped now. For what it's worth... I'm sorry.

I'll do it. I'll take the blow.

He wanted to rant in fury at Riordan for going to Denerim and telling Elissa about this, rather than letting her evacuate with the rest of the city's population. She just had a baby, for Andraste's sake! How could Riordan think of her sacrificing herself when she had a newborn who needed her?

"I'll take the blow," he whispered again, dragging his shaking hands down his cheeks.

"That may not be necessary," a familiar voice emerged from the shadows in the depths of the chamber. He felt Morrigan, felt the press of her magic against his templar-attuned senses, before she actually stepped forward.

"What—" Startled, it took him a moment to come up with a coherent response to her presence. He was so distracted he couldn't even be bothered to wonder why she was there. "How did you get past the royal guards? Actually, you know what? Nevermind. I don't care. Just... get out."

"I would not be so hasty to throw me out, if I were you," she cautioned, and Maker even the sound of her voice grated upon him! "I may have the solution to your dilemma, you see."

"What are you talking about? And why are you still here?"

"I am aware of what happens when the archdemon dies," Morrigan informed him. "A Grey Warden will die as well, and there's a good chance it may be you, or your queen. While I care nothing for your life, your wife has been kind to me even when she needn't have been. I would be loathe to see her perish, or to see her suffer the loss her beloved."

Alistair stared at her, attending her words for the first time. "How—how do you know this?"

"How matters little," the witch said dismissively. "What is important is that I am offering you a way out. A way to keep either you or your queen from being forced to sacrifice yourselves."

"It may not come to that. Riordan said—"

"And if this Riordan does not succeed? What will you do then?"

"I'll do it," he declared. "I'll make the sacrifice. Elissa will make a better queen than I would a king, anyway."

"Indeed?" Morrigan gave him a scathing look that he'd come to know all to well. Usually he saw it just before she made some cutting remark about his intelligence. But instead, she merely asked, "And do you think she would thank you for throwing your life away when you might have saved yourself?"

"Saved myself... how?"

"With a ritual, performed on the eve of battle in the dark of night."

"What kind of ritual?" Alistair asked suspiciously.

"The uninformed would call it blood magic, but you were there at the Circle Tower, and have seen enough to know it is magic derived from sexual energy, rather than blood." Her lips twisted in a sneer. "Honestly, I'm not sure which description will least offend your templar sensibilities."

"Sex magic? You mean—?"

"Yes. You must lie with me. Tonight. I know you despise me, but I will entreat you, for once, to listen to reason." With his head spinning in outrage and confusion, it didn't seem worth it to protest her accusation of unreasonability. "If your queen were here, I would bring this proposal to her instead, but as she is not, I must attempt to convince you."

"You would be able to do this ritual with her?"

"No. I would merely request that she convince you for me, since you do not trust me. For the ritual, the participant must be male and he must be a Grey Warden."

"Why not Riordan?" Alistair asked desperately. This could not be happening. Morrigan could not possibly be asking him to choose between having sex with her or dying.

Morrigan shook her head. "He has been exposed to the taint for too long. You are the only suitable Grey Warden."

"So what do you get out of this? You hate me every bit as much as I hate you."

She looked away, unwilling to meet his eyes. "As I've said, I owe your fellow Warden a debt of gratitude."

Something in her reluctance to speak of her motivations made Alistair nervous. There was something more here, something he was missing. "That's not everything."

"No, it is not, but beyond that my reasons are my own and I will not speak of them. All you need know that once the battle is over, I will leave and neither of you shall ever see me again."

"I need more than that," Alistair insisted, shaking his head in refusal. "Nothing comes without a price. There are always consequences to this sort of thing. Maker's breath, what if there was to be a child...?"

He froze then, staring at her as horror congealed in his stomach. Morrigan looked as uncomfortable and awkward as he'd ever seen her. "That's it, isn't it? That's what all this is about. You plan to have a child, my child!"

She sighed impatiently. "Yes. From the ritual, a child will be conceived."

For a moment, Alistair was speechless, unable to do more than gape at her. Finally he found his voice again. "This is insane! Andraste's teeth! Why would you want such a thing? Are you... Is this some plan to go after the throne?"

The look she gave him was so contemptuous and full of venom it should have withered him to a cinder on the spot. "Don't be a fool!" she spat. "I care nothing for your throne or your politics. The child will bear the taint, and the taint will enable the child to absorb the essence of the archdemon, without being destroyed. Most importantly, for your purposes, is that no Grey Warden need be sacrificed."

"That still doesn't tell me why you would want this."

"Very well. What I seek is the uncorrupted soul of the Old God, born in the child's body."

"Oh, well that's so much better than just another bastard heir to the throne!" Alistair shouted, storming past her toward the decanter of brandy on the mantle. "Because there's no threat at all from some sort of dragon... god... thing!" He splashed brandy into a heavy glass snifter and drank it down in one searing gulp as he tried to collect his scattered, racing thoughts. "Just what do you think you're going to do with it, anyway?"

"Some things are worth preserving in this world. Make of that what you will," Morrigan said, looking more sincere than he'd ever seen her. "I will raise the child apart from society, and you have my word I will teach it to respect that from which it came."

"And I'm supposed to believe that? You teaching a child respect for humanity?"

She grimaced. "Believe what you will. I care not. What becomes of the child will not be your concern. I will leave and you will give me your word never to attempt to locate me. So far as you're concerned, the material point here is that neither you nor Elissa need die. Your Ferelden shall have its heroic king and queen. She shall have her beloved by her side, and her child shall not have to live without its mother."

Alistair tried to think beyond her words, to the myriad possibilities and dangers posed by the sort of being the witch seemed determined to create, but all he could see was Elissa's lifeless body in his arms, and a babe crying for her mother, who would never again return.

A thought occurred to him. "That's why you've always disliked her, even when she tried to be nice to you," he observed. "You've had this planned all along, and you didn't want her child to interfere."

Morrigan looked away. "It's true, the fact that her babe has been born before we confront the archdemon is... fortuitous for my purposes. I do not know how, or if, a child in the womb of a Grey Warden might have affected the outcome of my ritual. It is for the best that things have worked out as they have."

"So you don't deny you've intended this from the start."

"'Tis why Flemeth sent me with you, all those months ago," she acknowledged. "But what I intended, and when, and why, does not alter the truth of the matter. I offer you a chance to be free of the burden you have been called upon to bear. Now, enough talk. You must decide. Do I depart tonight, or do I remain and render you this one final service?"

Alistair braced his hand on the mantle, closing his eyes as he sought to bring his unruly thoughts to some sort of order. Maker's breath, he didn't want to do this, didn't want to even consider touching Morrigan, much less fucking her.

When he opened his eyes and looked at the witch, standing there calmly waiting for his reply, he knew there was only one choice he could make.

---

Elissa couldn't remember picking herself up off the stones of the roof of Fort Drakon after the explosion. Her head was ringing; she could barely see, barely hear. All around her people were lying unconscious, or moaning and struggling to rise. Heedlessly, she forced herself forward, toward the dark, massive bulk of the archdemon, and beside it, a prone form in golden armor, still and silent.

She fell to her knees, sobbing, clutching him in her arms, dragging him onto her lap. "Wynne!" she screamed hysterically, searching the rooftop for the familiar robed form. "Dear Maker, help me! Wynne!"

Even as she called out for the mage, she knew it was hopeless. If Riordan had been telling the truth, there was nothing Wynne could do. Her kind, gentle, shy Alistair was gone; not merely dead, but his soul destroyed. He would not even be awaiting her in the Fade, with a ready quip on his lips. He was simply... gone. And yet it didn't seem to matter that she knew it was hopeless, she had to do something and so she screamed for Wynne again, and from out of the smoke and the clamor of battle as the final remaining darkspawn were slain by the army she had pulled together, the mage staggered, blood trickling down her face from a wound on her scalp.

"Help him, Wynne!" she sobbed desperately. "Please!"

Wynne's hands felt for Alistair's throat as Elissa rocked with him, her hand stroking his face. Warm. He still felt warm.

Warm....

"Thank the Maker. He still has a pulse," Wynne said weakly, placing her ear before Alistair's mouth. "He's breathing!"

Elissa stared at her in disbelief. Wynne's hand began to glow as she placed it upon Alistair's breastplate and sent a gentle surge of cool, rejuvenating energy into him. Alistair coughed and spluttered, jerking in her arms, and slowly his golden eyes opened to stare up at her.

Alistair tried to lift his hand toward her face, but winced. "Ow," he complained, coughing again.

"You're alive!" she gasped, joy and wonder and incredulity combining in a mad tumult within her. "How?"

He gave her his dear, crooked smile. "I just... did what I knew you would have done."