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Before Darkness Claims Our Souls

Summary:

Alistair was given to the Chantry as a child - and knew everything the Chantry taught about mages. Their hubris brought darkspawn into the world when they sought to usurp Heaven, but instead, they destroyed it. They were cast out, twisted and cursed by their own corruption, and returned as monsters. They were something to be feared. They were something to be hated.

They weren't something to be loved, but Alistair loved him anyway.

Notes:

This is a romance between survivors focused on recovery throughout the Fifth Blight. It is also a horror story, with references to rape, drug addiction, grooming, and other dark content. Thank you for reading!

Chapter 1: The Mage

Chapter Text

9:29 Dragon 27 Haring
Ostagar in the Dead of Winter

Duncan must have been mad at him.

Alistair couldn't imagine any other reason for him to recruit a mage. In the very least, Duncan could have warned him. Then again, maybe Duncan had warned him. He’d told them all he was going to Kinloch Hold, but Alistair had assumed Duncan was going to the Circle of Magi to recruit more templar-recruits, or chantry-initiates, or fish people out of Lake Calenhad for all he knew. Anything but mages.

Alistair had nothing against mages. Mages had something against him. Mages had something against most templars, not that Alistair had ever been a templar, but that little distinction seemed lost on most people. You spend one little decade dressing like a templar, training like a templar, and living like a templar, and suddenly everyone thought you were one of them. It was downright presumptuous is was what it was.

Alistair kept telling himself it could have been worse. Duncan could have gone to Jainen instead of Kinloch to recruit someone who knew him. Alistair hadn’t spent long at Ferelden’s second Circle. Just long enough to fail his initiation to the Templar Order when a mage failed their initiation to the Circle of Magi. They called it a Harrowing - and it was… definitely that.

Alistair hadn’t been able to drive his sword through the girl’s heart, even if there was a demon inside her, so the Knight Commander had sent him back to Bournshire’s monastery in shame. At least Alistair supposed he was supposed to feel ashamed. He wasn’t sure what he’d felt. Miserable, mostly. He still saw that poor girl in his nightmares. The mage Duncan recruited wasn't anything like her. He was…

Well he was kind of creepy.

For a lot of reasons, really, but the fact that he was a mage was definitely up there. Alistair liked to know his chances of being turned into a toad at any given moment, and the chances with Duncan’s new recruit seemed high. He was… definitely magic. He used telekinesis for everything - anything he sought to touch finding its way into his hands with a beckoning roll of his fingers that was downright rude with how distracting it was.

And he was quiet. Like, really quiet. He spoke in hushed whispers. People leaned in to talk to him, their ears so close to his lips they’d probably end up kissing on accident if he wasn’t so short. And he wasn’t just quiet when spoke - he was quiet when he did anything. His laugh was more of an exhale, when he laughed at all, which wasn’t often, no matter how many jokes Alistair told.

They were good jokes. Other people laughed. The mage didn’t. He just smirked, a quirk of his lips and a lingering look, and even his eyes were magic. A vibrant Fade-touched red that marked him as a mage with so much mana it had to manifest in other ways. His bronze skin was constantly cloaked in an arcane shield, along with an actual cloak he wore over a standard issue tunic, trousers, and leather that didn’t really scream ‘mage’ like the rest of him did.

Come dinner, the mage retrieved his bowl with another distracting roll of his fingers, and Alistair couldn’t help himself.

“Shouldn't you be wearing robes?" Alistair blurted from the fireside.

The mage stopped on his way to Maker knew where, and took a seat beside him at the fire instead. He brushed his fingers through his voidblack hair, pushing it out of the way of his eyes, and raised one dark eyebrow that left Alistair regretting his entire life’s choices, "Robes?"

“You know,” Alistair fiddled with this spoon. “Mage robes?”

“Are there other kinds?” The mage teased, his voice a low murmur Alistair had to lean in to hear, but once he leaned in he couldn’t pull back. He felt pinned in place by his eyes, and whether it was the fire in them or the fire outside them, Alistair started sweating.

“Sure,” Alistair cleared his throat, rubbing away the flush that crept across it. “Templar robes. Chantry robes. Robe robes-”

“Robe robes?” The mage exhaled bemusedly. Not laughing. Not really.

“Very specific type of robe, robe robes,” Alistair joked. “It’s reserved for only the robest of robes.”

“Are there Warden robes?”

“You know now that you mention it, I’ve never actually seen any.”

“Then I shouldn’t be wearing robes, should I?” The mage whispered.

“Did you miss the part about the robe robes?” Alistair whispered back, wondering why they were whispering.

“Is there a reason you want me in robes?” The mage asked.

“I don’t want you in anything,” Alistair did not think that one through.

“Is that so?” The mage smirked.

Alsitair wasn’t prepared for him to smirk. Alistair definitely wasn’t prepared for him to smirk at him. Alistair didn’t know what to do with his smirk. Maker, could people see the mage smirking at him? Why did Alistair keep calling him ‘the mage’? He had a name. Why didn’t Alistair know his name?

“Why are you-... I don’t-...” Alistair recoiled, coughing and choking on his soup. “Maker, that’s not what I meant - I just-... That fire’s pretty hot, isn’t it?”

“Is it?” The mage asked.

“Right remarkable’s what it is,” Daveth chimed in and saved him. Alistair didn’t know how he felt about that - or about Daveth. Daveth was a thief. He’d picked Duncan’s pocket in Denerim, and wound up on the gallows for it, and Duncan had invoked the Right of Conscription to keep him from swinging from them. Joining the Grey Wardens shouldn’t have been that easy. It should have been an honor.

Alistair certainly thought it was one. Duncan had recruited him after he’d come in fourth in a tourney at Bournshire, six months ago, and maybe fourth place wasn’t the loftiest place but it was still a place. It was better than fifth place, and sixth place, and well, all the other places. A pickpocket didn’t even have a place. The other recruits all had places. Ser Jory had won a tournament in Highever, and the mage had to have won something for Duncan to speak so highly of him.

“Fire burning all night, no kindling,” Daveth continued, staring at the mage from across the fire. “Neat trick that.”

“It’s just magic,” Alistair said. “Any mage can do magic. Not everyone can do tricks.”

“Supposing you got one?” Daveth asked.

“As a matter of fact I do,” Alistair fished his worry token from his pocket, rolled it over his fingers, and held them palm up so the coin ‘vanished’. “Ta-da.”

“Reckon that’ll be right useful against the darkspawn,” Daveth snorted.

“You never know, it-” Alistair looked back at his hands, and suddenly his token was gone. “You thief!”

“Aye?” Daveth blinked.

“You took my coin!” Alistair rolled up his sleeves, but no coins fell out. “How did you take my coin? You’re all the way over there.”

“So only thieves be thievin’?” Daveth asked.

“Give me back my coin!” Alistair demanded. A bit of gold glinted to his left, and Alistair finally noticed the mage holding his coin back out to him. “How did you-...”

“Now that’s a neat trick,” Daveth chuckled.

The mage was still smirking at him. The mage probably hadn’t stopped smirking at him. Alistair took his token back, feeling his face heat up. “Magic,” The mage said.

Alistair worried at the surface of the rune with his thumb, battling back… something. Embarrassment, probably. He could still feel the mage’s eyes on him, and it was making him squirm. He shouldn’t be squirming. Grey Wardens didn’t squirm. Grey Wardens definitely didn’t squirm in front of Grey Warden recruits, especially when they were in charge of those recruits.

Duncan shouldn’t have left him in charge. Bad things happened when he was in charge. Nothing bad had happened yet, but Alistair was sure it would happen soon. All it would take was one skirmish, and then people would get lost, and people would die, and the next thing you knew he’d be stranded in the Korcari Wilds without any pants, and being pantsless seemed bad. Alistair definitely wanted to be wearing pants - especially if the mage was going to keep staring at him.

“So,” Daveth interrupted his train of thought, moving around the fire to find a new seat by the mage, and nudge him with his elbow. “I’m here to escape the noose, Ser Knight’s here to escape his wife, Ser Templar’s here to escape the Chantry, what about you? What are you here for?”

“To save the world,” The mage said, and left for their tents.

“That’s dramatic,” Alistair mumbled under his breath, watching him walk away and the strange way his steps slowed through the snow. His boot hit the ground heel first, rolling leisurely up to his toes, and leaving perfect footprints in his wake. “So he’s… a bit strange, isn’t he?”

“I confess, mages make me uneasy. I am grateful for your presence, Ser Templar,” Ser Jory said with a nod in his direction that made Alistair even more uncomfortable than the mage had - but it was a different sort of discomfort. It was just… bad. Bad, bad, bad.

“Not a templar,” Alistair said. “I just trained as one, and I wasn’t very good at it. Not a fan of the uniform. Or the lyrium addiction. Or the mage hunting. But the shame and self-flagellation? Now that I could get behind.”

“Tell you what I can get behind,” Daveth snickered, with a long look after the mage. “Magic to fight the darkspawn. The whole world’s at stake. Can't afford to be picky.”

Daveth pushed himself to his feet and left after the mage and made Alistair uncomfortable all over again. Everything was just uncomfortable. The whole thing. The whole lot. Mages. Templars. Wardens. Mages. Thieves. Mages. The mage. The mage whose name Alistair still didn’t know but couldn’t stop thinking about ever since he’d made an ass of himself in front of him sassing First Enchanter Jendrik.

Maker, what an introduction. Alistair hadn’t meant to sass the First Enchanter, but he just had a sassible kind of face. All he was supposed to do was invite the man to speak with Grand Cleric Elemena. Anyone could have done it. Alistair was anyone. Anyone was an easy criteria to meet, but Her Grace hadn’t asked him because he was just anyone. She’d asked him because he was an ex-templar, an ex-NOT-templar, and - once again - that distinction was lost on everyone involved.

The Grand Cleric meant it for an insult and the First Enchanter took it for one and Alistair was caught in the middle. It was a sassy situation to be in, so Alistair had been sassy, but Grey Wardens weren’t supposed to be sassy, and the whole thing had just been bad for everyone involved. Bad for Jendrik, bad for Elemena, bad for Duncan, bad for Alistair, bad for the mage - whatever his name was - when he watched the whole thing and probably wrote him off as just another templar like everyone else.

Alistair didn’t know why that bothered him so much but it did. It was one thing for someone like Ser Jory to think he was a templar. It was another thing for a mage to think it - like he was some kind of crazy mage hunter chasing down apostates in the Korcari Wilds when there was a Blight on the horizon. There were already enough of them at Ostagar, watching the battlemages sent by the Circle of Magi and squinting at anyone in the army who wielded a polearm.

Alistair didn’t want anyone thinking of him like that. He didn’t want people thinking of him at all, really, but if people were going to think about him he wanted them to think about him as a Grey Warden. He liked being a Grey Warden more than he liked being anything else in his life. He had friends, and a family, and a future, however uncertain on the edge of the uncharted territories and the end of the world. Alistair couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

He could, however, imagine being in a different tent.

Alistair’s tent was next to the mage’s tent, and the mage’s tent…

Well, the mage wasn’t the only one in his tent. Alistair heard Daveth invite himself into the mage’s tent, and then he heard Daveth invite himself to a lot of other things, and Alistair couldn’t not hear those other things with nothing but canvas between them. And maybe he wasn’t trying very hard to not to hear them, but he shouldn’t have to cover his ears in his own tent.

He should probably cover them. It seemed rude that he wasn’t covering them, but it seemed ruder that he had a reason to cover them. Not that there was anything wrong with the mage doing whatever the mage was doing, but Maker’s sweet saving grace, he had to be doing a lot by the sounds Daveth was making. The mage wasn’t even making any sounds, except for whatever sounds the two of them made together.

There was no way they were together - not after one night - but they definitely sounded together, the wet slap of skin on skin ringing in Alistair’s burning ears between Daveth’s groans and grunts and endless pleading for more of whatever the other man was doing to him. “Fuck me - just like that - oh fuck - yes - sweet fucking Maker I love magic - fuck, fuck, fuck-!”

Daveth's didn’t sound anything like the mage’s murmur. Alistair couldn’t even hear him murmuring. He should have been able to hear him murmuring. It seemed like he was murmuring, an all but inaudible hum interspersed between Daveth’s hitching cries, almost like he was praising him for all of them. Not that Alistair would know. Not that Alistair should know.

Maker, it was hot in his tent. Winter felt like summer, a sweltering heat flushing his skin and leaving him tossing and turning in his bedroll. Alistair kicked off his blanket and dragged his pillow over his head, pressing it into his ears, but it didn’t help. The mage was still there, in the tent right next to him, doing something with his magic that made the other man keen. Magic couldn’t do that. Could magic do that? Why didn’t Alistair know if magic could do that?

Daveth kept gasping, louder, and higher, and more and Maker save him Alistair couldn’t take it anymore. He snatched up his clothes and dressed in a rush, stumbling out into the snow. The chill whipped across his face, sinking beneath his wrinkled tunic and unbelted trousers, and cooling the flush on his skin. Alistair fled from the mage’s tent, kicking up snow into his unlaced boots as he hastily stuffed his tunic down his trousers and belted them.

Maker’s breath, how could someone just-... just-... just do that in the middle of a camp? Didn’t they know other people could hear them? Didn’t they care? Shouldn’t they care? Should Alistair care? Alistair cared. Alistair cared a lot. Alistair cared so much his ears were still burning with the memory of those hushed murmurs and a crippling curiosity over whatever words had been in them.

Alistair wandered circles around the Grey Warden encampment and eventually found himself at the bonfire. Duncan was awake, because Duncan was always awake, smoke from his cigar mingling with the heat of his breath in the cold winter air. Alistair found a spot next to him to stand and shiver, rubbing at his arms and shaking his head when Duncan offered him one. He’d tried, once, and coughed himself half to death, but he liked that Duncan smoked.

It was comforting, in a weird way. His cigars had a nice scent to them, pungent and aromatic, and they were strong enough to mask the scent of death whenever he smoked them on the battlefield. Alistair had only been in a few skirmishes with him since they’d arrived at Ostagar, clearing the darkspawn from the Korcari Wilds in preparation for the arrival of the main horde, and Duncan smoked after each one. If Duncan was smoking, it meant they’d won. It meant they were safe. It meant he could relax.

Alistair tried to relax, but he felt too tense. He’d been tense all day, and it was all the mage’s fault. “You’re mad at me, aren’t you?” Alistair blurted.

“Am I?” Duncan countered, raising a confused eyebrow at him.

“You are,” Alistair decided. “That’s why you recruited him.”

“I recruited someone because I’m mad at you,” Duncan said slowly.

“I knew it,” Alistair huffed. “I knew you were mad at me. It’s because of what happened with Grigor, isn’t it?”

“What happened with Grigor?” Duncan asked.

“... Well if you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you,” Alistair said.

“Do I have to ask Reyor?” Duncan asked.

“Reyor doesn’t know,” Alistair sang.

“Are you saying my Constable isn’t keeping track of my Wardens?” Duncan asked.

“Terrible Constable,” Alistair lied. He loved Reyor as much as he loved the rest of the Grey Wardens. After six months, they felt like family. They were family. “He’d lose his sword if he didn’t keep it sheathed.”

“I’ll let him know,” Duncan chuckled.

“Please don’t,” Alistair said quickly. “You can’t both be mad at me.”

“I’m still waiting to discover why it is you think I’m mad at you,” Duncan said, tipping his ashes into the snow.

“Because,” Alistair said vaguely, waving towards the tents. “Because of him.”

“Him?”

“You know. Him. The mage.”

Duncan frowned, “He has a name, Alistair, and you would do well to learn it. He may yet die in the Joining and you must honor his sacrifice and carry his memory into battle if he does.”

“Well I-...” Alistair sputtered, shrinking under Duncan’s disappointed stare. “... I know that-...”

“Good,” Duncan went back to smoking. “Now give me the gossip.”

“Who says I have gossip?” Alistair laughed.

“You have gossip,” Duncan rolled his eyes.

“He’s with the th-Daveth,” Alistair cut himself off. “He’s with the Daveth.”

“The Daveth?” Duncan repeated. “He earned an article while I was away?”

“They just met. They don’t even know each other,” Alistair ranted, pacing through the snow and kicking it up into the bonfire. “They can’t just-... can they? Isn’t there something about-... you know-... fraternizing?”

“I take it their ‘fraternizing’ is keeping you awake?” Duncan guessed.

“Yes!” Alistair said. “Maker’s breath, you’re going to make them stop, aren’t you?”

“This isn’t the Order, Alistair,” Duncan said. “There are no rules against ‘fraternizing.’ If they’re bothering you, you should tell them.”

Alistair couldn’t just tell him. Maker’s breath, he’d be lucky if he could even look at him after what he’d heard. “Well, so much for sleeping,” Alistair sighed. “You sure it’s not too late to trade him out for another mage?”

“Quite sure,” Duncan said.

“... why’d you recruit him?” Alistair asked.

“I saw something in him,” Duncan exhaled smoke, and eyed him through it. “Something I saw in you.”

“In me?” Alistair asked doubtfully. “What? A love of cheese and witty one liners?”

“A man of character,” Duncan said.

“What’s his name?” Alistair asked.

“Why don’t you ask him?”