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Alistair nuzzles against Harea’s shoulder, rousing her from her light sleep. She hums quietly and turns without opening her eyes to wrap her arms around him. He presses kisses against a large scar that surrounds the joint, mottling the skin in a fleshy ring. The scar wasn’t there the last time he saw her in Denerim, and she’s never told him where it came from.
“Harea, love,” he murmurs, nuzzling her shoulder again.
“Hmm?” is her only reply.
He props himself up on one elbow so he can see her face as he traces her scar with his finger. She opens her eyes slowly, smiling softly when she sees his eyes trained on her face.
“How did you get this one?” The scar isn’t like one he’s seen before, almost perfectly circular but with jagged edges and deep ridges that show just how serious the wound was. He follows the pattern around her shoulder, tracing the triangular marks.
The smile melts from her face and her eyes go cloudy as she remembers. Alistair moves his hand to cup her jaw, thumb stroking along her cheek. He waits silently as she figures out how to explain.
She takes a deep breath before speaking. “It was the last big battle when I was in Amaranthine. We’d tracked the Mother down to her lair, but to get to it we had to go through all of these ritual towers, and they were just crawling with these weird darkspawn things. We called them the Children.”
Alistair nods. “The Mother and the Children. Got it.”
She grins at him, momentarily amused, and continues. “The big ones were Childers. Biggest, meanest assholes. I’d rather fight an ogre by myself.” Alistair nods and waits as she takes another deep breath. “We were fighting the Mother. I had Valenna with us, but we’d run out of lyrium potions, so when the Childer got me, she could only stop the bleeding, not heal the wound entirely.”
Alistair’s hand slips into Harea’s hair, cupping the back of her head as he leans in to kiss her. His lips brush over hers, just a whisper of a touch that she tries to chase as he pulls away. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
She pulls him back to her for another kiss, sliding her hand down his chest to rest on his waist. He sighs against her lips and presses closer to her, his hand moving across her breasts to her hip. His fingers run over another rounded lump of scar tissue, almost exactly the same texture as the scar on her shoulder.
“Is this--” he breaks their kiss to ask but keeps their foreheads pressed together. She closes the distance between them to bite his lower lip, and he groans.
“They had these pincers to hold you down. I have five more of these. I’m surprised you haven’t noticed.” She pulls away slightly to show him the six identical scars that grace her sides, three on each, and he leans down to kiss each one individually. She smiles as his growing beard tickle her skin, relaxing onto her back.
He follows her and rests his head on her chest, holding her close. She runs her fingers through his messy auburn hair, trying to ignore the memories of the Mother that threaten to overwhelm her. The Children were everywhere, the broodmother’s tentacles bursting from the ground to knock her team off of their feet. She still wakes more often than not with a scream trapped in her throat, the memory of the Childer pinning her down at the front of her mind.
She’s starting to drift back to sleep when Alistair suddenly sits up, propping himself up on his elbows to look down at her. She blinks her eyes open slowly, focusing on him, raising her eyebrows at his little frown.
“You fought the Mother at the end of the Battle of Amaranthine,” he repeats slowly, working through something in his mind. She nods at him, waiting for him to figure out whatever he’s looking for. “You were pregnant.”
“I was.”
“You fought a broodmother while five months pregnant?” He sits up a little more, pulling away from her, and she follows him, eyebrows drawing together at his stormy expression. “What if you’d died? What if you’d lost Duncan?”
Silence stretches between them for a long moment where she doesn’t breathe. “Excuse me?”
“You should have been more careful,” he says, slowly, like the reason for his sudden irritation should be clear. “You could have--”
“Are you seriously going to sit there and lecture me about what I should have done?” Harea’s voice is dripping with derision, and the sudden coldness makes Alistair snap his jaw shut, his mistake starting to dawn on him. “If you hadn’t run away I wouldn’t have had to fight the Mother while five months pregnant.”
She pulls the blanket with her as she stands, wrapping it around her naked body. “It’s not like I wanted to be alone, Alistair! Do you have any idea how fucking scary it was? An elf, a Grey Warden, pregnant without explanation, in charge of stopping an invasion of talking darkspawn without help?”
She crosses the room to the wardrobe, pulling out a robe and sliding it around her shoulders before letting the blanket fall discarded to the floor. She keeps her face hidden from Alistair, her trembling hands hiding in the sleeves that are just a bit too long for her.
“Harea--”
She pauses by the door, clutching the frame with one hand. Her head snaps around to glare at him, silencing whatever else he’s about to say. “You don’t get to be angry about anything that I did while you were gone. I need to check on Duncan,” she hisses, then steps through the frame, letting the door slam shut behind her.
Alistair is still frozen in the bed, staring at the closed door, trying to figure out exactly where he had let that conversation go wrong. He was so angry with her for putting her life in jeopardy, for putting Duncan’s life in jeopardy. How could she do that? Just waltz into battle with a broodmother without thinking?
His anger back, Alistair flops back onto their bed and slings one arm over his face. Harea always was hard-headed. She knew what she wanted and wasn’t going to be afraid to fight for it. He liked that about her, it was one of the things that had drawn him to her at first, back when he finally really noticed her in Lothering.
She was so strong, leading them when he couldn’t. She pulled Ferelden together in time to save Thedas from the Blight. She kept Eamon from putting Alistair on the throne. She even saved his life by completing Morrigan’s ritual, even if he thought he hated her for it at the time.
Duncan was… odd, sometimes. A bit too serious for a child. More serious than Alistair was, much of the time. But he certainly wasn’t a darkspawn or a demon. He was just a boy who loved his mother and who seemed to accept that his father had been at war for the first four years of his life.
Alistair ground his teeth together, trying to straighten out his thoughts. He left her when she needed him, leaving her to go to Amaranthine on her own.
And that’s the problem, he realized. He left her alone and that’s why she had to face the Mother alone. That’s why she had those scars.
He failed her.
And I’m still failing her.
With a grunt, Alistair climbs from the bed and pulls on a pair of trousers, following Harea’s path through the little house that they had found. She’s curled up in a chair in the living area, under a blanket, watching as Duncan practices reading in a primer. Fen is curled up on the floor next to his little human, and he barely looks up when Alistiar enters.
She glances up at Alistair, her face still tight, and eyes him warily as he crouches beside her chair. She seems ready to pull away from him when he pulls her hand into his, completely encompassing it.
“Harea, my dear,” he begins, voice almost a whisper to avoid distracting Duncan. She squints at him, and he soldiers on. “Come with me for a moment, please.”
“I don’t want to fight with you right now,” she hisses back, glancing at their son who’s still studiously ignoring them.
Alistair shakes his head. “I don’t want to fight with you either. I just want to tell you something.” He tugs at her hand insistently and she stands with a barely suppressed eye roll. Duncan glances up at them, but quickly resumes his reading, content for the moment to allow his parents their privacy.
Harea follows behind Alistair back to their bedroom, her fingers still locked in his, and waits as he shuts the door before wrapping her in his arms. She stands stiffly for a moment before relaxing against his broad chest. One hand rests on the small of her back, the other sliding up to cup the back of her head. He rocks gently back and forth, just like he used to before all of this, and she winds her arms around his waist.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers into her hair. “I shouldn’t have snapped at you. I’m just… I’m mad that I wasn’t there for you.”
She squeezes him a little tighter, then leans back so she can look into his eyes. “You can’t lash out at me like that.”
He closes his eyes and rests his forehead against hers. “I know. I know. I’m sorry.”
She moves her hands from his back to cup his face, pulling his lips down to hers. Their mouths brush together once, then again, before she holds him steady to look down at her. “A lot has happened since you left,” she points out, quietly, no hint of anger in her voice now. “We both changed. We both grew up , Alistair, and we have to work through all of that. Together. Okay?”
At his nod, she pulls face back down and kisses him again, harder this time, and he pulls her tighter against him. She stretches up on her tiptoes to press closer, sighing softly as the warmth of his skin seeps through her robe.
Alistair takes the sound as an invitation and pushes the robe off of her shoulders, letting it pool around her feet on the floor. She giggles against him as their lips play together, his large hands dancing over her skin, touching each of her Childer scars with a reverence she’ll never get used to.
When his hands reach her hips and slide lower, hoisting her up by her thighs, pressing her against the door, she moans quietly against him. Her fingers slide into his hair, holding him tight as she nips at his lower lip. He growls, pressing harder against her, returning the affectionate bite with a series of them along her collarbone.
The doorknob shakes behind her and the latch rattles as Duncan tries to push his way in. Alistair presses Harea more firmly against the door, holding it closed, as his eyes meet hers. She’s biting back her laughter, eyes dancing at the wide-eyed confusion she sees on her lover’s face.
“Papa?” Duncan’s voice calls through the door, petulant at being locked out. “I need you to help me.”
Harea presses a kiss to Alistair’s forehead as he sighs heavily. “I’ll be right there,” he calls, voice a little hoarse. “Just… give me a minute.”
The pair stay still, pressed together, and wait until Duncan’s footsteps to disappear back into the main room of their little house. Alistair lowers Harea to her feet, but stops to give her another firm kiss before moving to hand her the robe that’s under his feet.
“You’re a good papa,” she coos at him, soothing his disgruntled expression into a crooked grin.
He knots the ties of her robe and tugs her against him, kissing her until her knees go weak and she falls loosely against his chest.
When he finally pulls away, that smirk is still on his face. “You should get dressed, my dear,” he murmurs, breath tickling her skin as she leans in to kiss her cheek. “I’ll see what Duncan needs and get breakfast started.”
It’s all she can do to nod as he kisses her forehead and slips out the door.