Hubris
"It is better to lose your pride with someone you love rather than to lose that someone you love with your useless pride."
"… so then the mage froze the thing in place! Weakened by the long fight, the dragon couldn't break free – I climbed its neck, grateful to my armor or the scales would have cut my feet to ribbons. I leaped upon its head and plunged my sword – this sword – through its brain!"
As usual, the story was well received, if not necessarily believed. I really don't care how much they believe, as long as I am rewarded for it. I accepted a mug of rough ale for my effort and swept the coins on my table carefully out of sight. Those coins meant a warm bed, a warm meal next week. Or another cup of strong, harsh ale to make me forget the past.
I'm laughing at some remark when I feel the chill run down my spine. It appears that the past has come to find me; I haven't felt that feeling in some time. I haven't exactly been hunting darkspawn for the past ten years. I'm not sure which is less likely to walk into the dive I'm at: one of those darkspawn, or the only other thing to set off that reaction, a Grey Warden.
I'm sure that I looked startled, but I manage not to wrench my head around to look, but just barely. Instead, I turn just enough to see a figure out of my best dreams and some of my nastier nightmares. Her name is Neria Surana, and even without the darkspawn sense, I may have felt her walk in the door. Her exotic looks have turned more than a few male heads, though many turn right back away as they feel the cold her magic exudes around her.
I pretend to ignore her and go back to my ale. I owe my life to this woman. I betrayed her almost as badly as she betrayed me. If she's looking for me, let her do the work. If she isn't looking for me, perhaps she won't find me, despite the bond of the Taint. We had done ninety percent of the work to defeat the last Blight, and then I had left. She won without me, and became a Teyrna. I… lost, apparently, and become a drunken wanderer.
I feel her chill before her hand lands on my shoulder. Her touch on that shoulder awakens feelings I haven't had in ten years, but I just as swiftly suppress them.
"Alistair? I had heard you were here, but..!" she looks shocked and more than a little dismayed. "You - you're trading your reputation for drinks? You look - " Apparently she was too polite to tell me how I looked, but continued relentlessly, "Have you no pride in yourself?"
I sneered at her and she actually moved away slightly. What did she know of my life since that day at the Landsmeet? What did she know of what I had done to get by? "Pride?" I coughed out a humorless laugh. "Pride is what landed me here, Your Grace. Would that I had never had any pride at all!"
I sat in the very hard unpadded chair in front of the Arl's desk. I'm wrapped in a worn towel, clothing sopping wet. The arl stands, looming above me. I hang my head miserably and swing my short, child's legs, scattering droplets of water.
"Alistair, you're attached to my household, and you simply must have some pride in your appearance. You can't go traipsing through the palace covered in mud! Teagan was well within his rights to dump you in the horse-trough; Isolde would probably have had you whipped as well, if she had found you first. Now, take this bucket and go scrub your footprints away before she sees them!"
He sits on my chest, a boy at least two or three years older than I, the son of a guardsman. He's rubbing remarkably familiar mud into my hair.
"You think you're better than us, the arl's bastard! Putting your nose in the air!" He sneers at me and then decides to rub the mud into that "arrogant" nose. I struggle, but he outweighs me by a good bit. "At least I have a father who's willing to say he's my father. You better treat us with respect, stable boy, or I'll do worse next time, you hear me?"
A few years have passed between my memories; my feet do not dangle as much as I face the arl. I am not miserable and cold; a rising anger warms my soul. I have done nothing wrong, but I am to be punished, regardless.
"Now, Alistair, training as a templar is really the best thing for you," the arl condescends. "We both know that Isolde is… less than fond of you, so it will be good to get you out from under her feet. And you'll finally have a real place at last. Your mother and father would have been so proud to see you serve the Church."
The anger finally bubbles to the surface and I leap to my feet. "Proud? My father never even claimed me, my mother died before she ever knew me… oh, yes, proud that I'm going to go off and kill mages for the church!"
With that, I ripped my mother's amulet from my neck and through it at Eamon. I heard it miss and strike the wall as I turned and ran out.
"We've heard that you're the arl's son, Alistair-with-no-last-name. That why you think you're too good to come drink with the likes of us?" The young man had a rough look about him, though he was dressed in the same plain tunics as the other templar trainees.
"No, Tad, I don't go drink with you because I don't like you." Of course, he also doesn't do it because he'd rather not get caught; the teachers and other clergy frown on fifteen year old trainees sneaking out to get plastered. But either answer will have the same result, so he goes for the more satisfying one. The results will be the same; five years have put considerable muscle on his growing frame, but it'll still be three on one. With any luck, he'll break Tad's nose, though.
"Really, Alistair, is it so difficult to get along with them? Or at least, to not pick fights." The chantry sister is daubing a salve on a cut under his eye. Part of the punishment for fighting is that hurts won't be magically healed, unlike most wounds incurred during training.
"Sister, I try, I really do, but they're just so arrogant. I can't help myself, my mouth opens and next thing I know they've put me flat on my back, or up against the wall or whatever. I try. I do." The whine in his voice is definitely a little juvenile for his age, but he's in enough pain that he excuses it.
"You just need to humble yourself a little, Alistair. No matter where people came from, you are all the same now, you all belong to the church."
His day had gone from bottom five to the number one spot in five minutes flat. Eighteen year old Alistair had at least been released from dishwashing and vegetable peeling to watch the tournament, but there was no way he would be allowed to participate.
And then the warden, his name was Duncan, had specifically asked that he be allowed. It was a wonder that his armor fit, with how puffed out his chest was. That pride carried him through the day increased with every victory, keeping him good natured about each defeat. He knew he wasn't the best; he missed far too many training sessions on punishment duties when his mouth got the best of him. Or the other trainees lied to get him in trouble.
He knew he wasn't going to win, but he almost broke down when he was chosen regardless of the standings. He held back the tears of relief and joy until he was back in his rooms, packing.
A rough hand grabbed his shoulder and spun him around. "Look at that, Emer, he's blubbering at leaving all of his friends here. Let's give him something to remember us by, eh?"
This time, though, it didn't matter how many there were: he was the victor today. He was free.
He stares at Neria for a long time, alone with his memories. There is no one he calls friend now, not in his heart. Once, though he had loved this woman.
He had loved her more than anything in the world. He have given her the world and had told her that. He would have ripped out his heart, turned the world upside down, if they had told him how, if that would have kept her safe.
He had thought she would do the same for him. His attachment to Duncan must have looked odd, from the outside. His birth father had given him up, though, and Eamon was never anything but distant. At the chantry, he had camaraderie with some of the other men; he might have called a very few of his fellow trainees brother, but his instructors were never father. He was never a source of anything but amusement and irritation to them, and that was not something to win the admiration of those who taught.
Duncan didn't care if he couldn't kill a mage in cold blood. Duncan told him, later, that he didn't come to the monastery looking for the greatest skill or ferocity; he came looking for the greatest heart. He wanted someone to be an oak at the back of other wardens, someone who would give everything.
No one had ever, ever described him as anything like that. Gawky, goofy, perhaps even friendly, but not as someone "great-hearted" or "reliable". Duncan made him feel as if nothing that came out of his mouth was stupid. Maybe it was all an act, something to instill loyalty in a new recruit. He never saw Duncan act that way towards the other recruits in his group, the ones brought in by other Grey Wardens, though, so he didn't think so.
Loghain's actions, or inactions, took away the first person to treat him like he was worth something in this world. He couldn't let that go unpunished, and he didn't think the second person to make him feel that way would make him back down.
He couldn't let himself back down, not without tarnishing Duncan's memory, and how dare she ask that of him. He had been beat down in one way or another his entire life, and he couldn't let that happen again.
Neria still won, and then she had the gall to save his life. He had lost Duncan, he had lost the Grey Wardens and he had lost her. Why would he want to live?
Perhaps he had lived for this moment. Staring at Neria across a dingy tavern table, cheap to replace because it was wrecked so often. He closed his eyes, pushed back his stringy, unkempt hair.
"Oh Neria, pride is why I couldn't let him live, "he whispered, barely audible in the crowded room. He tone was a sharp contrast to his angry words of a moment before. With his eyes closed, the sudden cold touch of her tiny hand on his cheek came as a surprise and he flinched slightly.
"Alistair, Alistair… I needed to be a leader, or the armies would never have followed me. I couldn't let Anora see me be weak! I never dreamed that you would leave me, not when I had lead us all along." Her lips nearly touched his ear as she leaned forward to murmur her tragic secret.
No more words were spoken as he came around the table to sit next to her, to hold her close, to weep over what might have been. There was nothing of romance in their embrace, only comfort for their mutual sin.