In This Together

Title: In This Together
Author: ElCapitan18
Game: Dragon Age
Characters/Pairing: F!Mahariel and Alistair
Disclaimer: All recognizable content belongs to Bioware

Sylaise, Hearthkeeper, grant me patience, Serai prayed as she forcefully pulled her foot out of the mud. The second prayer she sent forth was to Elgar’nan, pleading the All-Father for vengeance upon the two irksome shemlan who had yet to stop their juvenile bickering since they had left Flemeth’s hut hours ago. Slapping her neck, Serai killed the mosquito that had finally dared to land on her sweat covered skin. These swamps were a miserable place and Serai was the reflection of her environment. 

“What is that blasted sound that you are making with your face?” Morrigan demanded.

To which Alistair replied with a confused, “What are you talking about, witch?”

Serai could hear the irritation in Morrigan’s voice when she was forced to clarify. “That nasally whistling noise.”

“You mean my breathing?” Alistair returned, dumbfounded. 

“Yes,” the witch threw her hands up before slapping them against her legs with annoyance. “Could you please endeavor to do less of that?”

“You want me to breathe less?”

“I would prefer it if you weren’t to breathe at all, truth be told.”

“Well, truth be told,” Alistair rebutted, “I’m not going to stop breathing just because it annoys you.” He proceeded to punctuate the end of his refusal with deep, obnoxious and dramatic gasps for breath. 

Creators, she was going to kill them. When she whipped around to face the two humans dragging behind her, their small group of three was forced into a stop and Serai glared at her companions. She was seething. It was too damn hot for this shit. There were too many bugs, and the mud was too thick, and there was still too much distance between them and Lothering for them to continue on like this for even a second longer. 

“Enough,” she barked at them. “The two of you have not stopped barking at each other like fucking dogs for hours and I’m sick of it."

Alistair opened his mouth, already pointing a finger toward Morrigan to place blame. Before he could voice a single word he was cut off by Serai’s biting tone. “She’s a mage, Alistair, we get it. You don’t trust her, and it doesn’t fucking matter because she and her mother saved our Creators’ forsaken lives and we are indebted to her.”

Before Morrigan could properly jut out her hip, wind her arms before her breasts, and pin Alistair with a victorious simper, Serai moved her attention onto the witch of the wilds with narrowed eyes. “And you,” she growled deep in her chest. “You pick at an open wound and think yourself better than the bleeding because you have not known our suffering. How dare you judge him for mourning his losses? How dare you taunt and goad him and then bristle when he responds to your provocations.”

When both Alistair and Morrigan had fallen silent, their expressions wide with astonishment at Serai’s outburst, she continued to admonish them past gritted teeth. “I am not your mother. I am not here to make sure the both of you play nice. I don’t know about either of you but I’m here to end this blasted Blight so that the world might not end as we know it. You are adults. Now fucking act like it.”

Violently pointing northward, Serai ordered Morrigan to, “Lead the way. I want no less than a hundred paces between the both of you until we get to Lothering.”

Raising her chin, Morrigan muttered a neutral, “Very well, Warden,” before taking the point and getting them moving again. 

Serai’s gaze moved onto Alistair where it remained firmly trained until Morrigan had exceeded the hundred pace minimum of their separation. Glaring at her fellow warden, she ground her teeth before turning on her heel and following steadily behind the mage’s steps. She could feel Alistair’s apologetic gaze boring into the side of her head, but she ignored both him and the urge to steal a glance of the tall human. 

“Look, Serai—“ Alistair started only to be immediately be cut off by her raised hand. 

Without looking up at him, Serai demanded, “How old do you think I am, Alistair?”

Having caught him off guard, Alistair stammered before he was able to properly answer her question. “Well, my lady, the Chantry sisters were very adamant about reminding me the importance of never asking after a lady’s age.”

“I’m not a fucking lady, Alistair,” Serai hissed, finally looking at the man easily keeping stride beside her. His long legs made short work of what ever distance she tried to march ahead of him. He might as well have been twice her size. If she stood on the tips of her toes the top of her head would not make it anywhere near his collar bone. The man made her feel like she should have been born a stubby-legged dwarf instead of the pointed eared elf she truly was. 

Without removing her glare from his handsome face, Serai answered her own question. “Nineteen, Alistair. I am nineteen summers old.” His dirty blond brows were knitted together with an expression she loathed to call apologetic. “You are my senior both in rank and in age and yet I’m here nannying you and that mage like I’m Ghilan’nain herself, cursed with the task of taking care of a pair of adolescent halla.”

“I’m not entirely sure what that means,” Alistair replied after a moment of consideration. “But I think it’s safe to assume that it’s a bad thing?” She glared at him and he offered her a lopsided smirk in an attempt to ease the tension growing between them. 

Grimacing at his own tactlessness, Alistair scratched the side of head and tried again. Awkwardly he confessed, “I shouldn’t have been so easily baited by Morrigan,” with a sigh. “Our cause is difficult enough without the both of us at each other’s throats.”

Now that Alistair had owned up to his role in Serai’s currently foul mood, she relaxed her shoulders and let out a long, slow breath. She had not stopped moving or fighting since those fleeing shemlan had crossed her and Tamlen’s path. Her entire life had changed over the span of a week and every last second of it had been beyond her control. Tamlen was dead, Duncan was dead, the king was dead, the wardens were annihilated, their betrayer was at large, her clan had likely moved on to the north already, and Serai found herself in the unfortunate position of leading two shemlan whose only purpose in life was to annoy and insult one another. 

She was cursed. She had to be. What other explanation was there for this level of bad luck?

“Hey,” Alistair’s tentative voice pulled her from her thoughts. When Serai looked up to meet his gaze she frowned to find that his hazel eyes were soft with gentle understanding. “We’re in this together. I may not like Morrigan, but I like you and if we’re stuck with performing the impossible task of uniting all of Ferelden to fight the Blight, I’m glad that at least we can rely on each other.”

Serai cocked an eyebrow at him. “Was that your idea of a pep talk?”

The corner of his mouth curled up into a smirk. “Did I do it wrong?” he wondered, the warmth of his lopsided smile reaching his eyes. 

She felt a smile start to take shape on her lips and she shook her head in a failed attempt to shake it off. “There’s usually a bit more ‘pep’ in a pep talk.”

“You mean like, ‘it’s not so bad, it could be worse’?”

“Something like that,” Serai replied, amusement alight in her voice despite herself. 

Alistair’s broad and strong shoulders jumped as he shrugged. He looked down at Serai and his smirk faded a bit as he countered, “It could be worse. I could be alone in this.” They stared at one another for an awkward moment as Serai tried to find a way to respond. Before she could mutter some poorly thought out reply, he continued. “And then Ferelden would surely fall. I don’t know about you but, personally, I don’t think the throne is big enough to sit an arch demon.”

She fought for control of her lips but couldn’t help the grin that Alistair had unraveled across them. With a shake of her head she pointed her attention forward and allowed the conversation to end with that. As strange as Alistair was, there was something about his dry sense of humor that she found annoyingly endearing. Her world may have fallen apart, and it would never be able to go back to the way it was before, but she too was glad that she could at least count on Alistair to have her back. 

As bad as he was at motivational speeches Alistair was right about one thing. They were in this together, as long as they could rely on each other they would find a way to end the blight. But first they had to make it to Lothering.