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“It looks kind of like the markings on your forehead. What did you call it, the hallasleen?” Alistair’s lips twitched up into a small smile, teasing. His thumb moved to smooth out his love’s furrowed brow—a habit, after so many years together.
“It’s vallaslin, Alistair.” She mumbled into his forearm, fingers still absently tracing where the taint spread on his left arm. It unfurled from a lesion in Alistair’s bicep, one that refused to do anything but fester over the past few months. The taint created a grotesquely beautiful effect on his veins, coloring them a deep crimson visible from under his skin.
She closed her eyes, fingers tightening around those wretched dark branches marring him. A silence came over them then, Barkspawn’s occasional sleepy whine the only interruption.
“The Hero of Fereldan,” Alistair announced suddenly, jovially waving his free arm about in a dramatic fashion, “Fells the Archdemon and yet is afraid of a little taint!” He grinned at the back of her head, only to frown when the expected retort did not come.
He slipped his hand under her chin and tilted her face upwards. His frown morphed into a grimace upon taking in his lover’s vacant eyes, and her lips that were pressed together in a thin line. He cradled her face into both of his hands, fingers automatically rubbing in practiced motions to coax her out of her silent reverie. “You were thinking about your friend again, weren’t you?”
She nodded, setting her cheek against one of his palms, and stared at him with the same piercing gaze that made his heart first thump all those years ago. Alistair sighed, his teeth grinding new grooves on his lower lip.
“I…” His throat clammed up and the aborted sentence hung in the air. What could he say, ‘I’m sorry your former betrothed turned into a ghoul and tried to kill you? My deepest condolences?’ Words never were his strong suit—they escaped him now just like the night of the ambush, when she sought solace after slaying Tamlen with trembling hands.
He averted his eyes and cleared his throat. “I’m not going to...I won’t let… I’ll…I’ll be down in the Deep Roads long before then.”
“And I, with you.”
He sighed again. Old arguments sprung to his lips, about how she should live on without him and how the Wardens needed her. It was as if they were reciting lines from a well-rehearsed play and it was his turn. He swallowed them down, gritting his teeth against the bitterness. That fight would be revisited another day.
“I’m a lucky man.” He said instead, repeating those words said long ago when the taint rarely occupied their thoughts. He smiled, his thumb moving yet again to smooth out her creased brows, her usual tic before an argument. “Right. Well until then, my dear Warden-Commander? In peace?”
“Vigilance.” She answered, pressing as much of herself as she could against him, as if he would vanish without her anchoring him. She threaded her fingers through his, her lips murmuring their nightly ritual of thanking Andraste and whatever powers may be that Alistair was still hers, at least for another night.