Disclaimer: I own nothing, I make no money.

Second Disclaimer: I'm also stealing this writing style from orangeflavor for this gift fic for her for the holidays. Go read her work. After you're done reading this story, of course.

My Final Failure

"How many times have I tried? The past cannot be undone. All that I fought for, all that I betrayed, and what have I wrought?" - A father who cannot let go. A story of the failures of Gereon Alexius.

The world rumbles.

The brilliant white flash, the thunderous roar, the shards of green-wreathed flame spill from the sky as the magic punches a hole deeply through the Veil.

Gereon Alexius has felt this sensation once before, standing in the audience hall of Redcliffe Castle. He rushes for the door. He bursts past the watchmen, his eyes rising to the sky in the west. He sees the wound in the world. The Breach.

He is not supposed to be here. He is not supposed to be watching the sky burn. The air smells of ozone, of charred breath and the metallic-aftertaste of lyrium.

He is too late.

A miscalculation.

The journey was smooth. The arrival, seamless. But the destination is wrong. The where is correct for the when, but the when is broken. He had aimed much further and fallen far, far short.

Alexius can hear the bells of alarm ringing in Redcliffe village. The terrified villagers scurry at the burning plumes of green, black and white flame spiraling lazily above the spine of the Frostbacks. They flee at the burning meteors streaking through the air as they tumble out of the Fade.

From this distance, the Breach barely looks like anything at all. A pinprick. A small cut in the flesh, easy to mend.

They, all of the "they," from the Venatori to the filth-caked peasants of Redcliffe, will only see the wound. They do not see the infection lurking behind the tear. They do not know it. Not like he knows it. Not like he has known it for years now.

They do not see the irreversible, incurable sickness at its heart.

Not like he does.

He spends hours tearing through tomes, struggling to translate the ancient Tevene and make sense of the glyphs and runes scrawled on the pages.

Alexius walks a path that many had started and none had finished. There is success to be found in the greater failure. His fingers run over the brittle paper and the indelible ink upon it, even as the floor and table shakes.

The Inquisition rattles Redcliffe Castle with stone and spell and battering ram. The walls are tall and strong. The Venatori soldiers and mages sling death from ramparts. The bodies of soldiers choke the causeway, leaving a gauntlet of corpses and blood-streaked stone. The dead tumble off the narrow bridge, their bodies falling like rain until they break upon the cliffs and plunge into the cold water far below.

And the castle shakes once more, more violently than from any catapult or fireball. The thunder screeches like metal being slowly torn open by demonic claws, a flash of green light pulses through the narrow slit of the drawn drapes of the study.

The Breach expands.

Its sickness widens.

Alexius trembles as he dips the feather pen in ink and begins to scratch down the date and the time on the parchment. The clinical measurements now fill half the page. He cannot help but notice the pattern.

The time between each is growing shorter.

The rate is exponential.

In one year, the Breach will grow hourly. Shortly after, every minute. Beyond that, he cannot say and cannot know.

At what point will the wound become so great that the sky ceases to be?

It is a question that he cannot waste time pondering. Without intervention, the Breach will swallow the world. That is known. Lyrium and blood are needed, crucial, for his experiments. But their value is insignificant now in the face of time.

Alexius can toy with the hands and the gears but the clock is broken to him. It cannot be stopped from moving forward. And it cannot move back far enough. Not yet. He must go further.

The death throes of the world, vibrating through the stone floor and shaking his body in his seat, remind him of urgency.

His eyes open, feeling a familiar rumble.

Alexius stands inside the audience hall of Redcliffe Castle once again.

The flash of light, the peal of thunder, the quaking of the floor beneath his feet, the scent of burning blood and the tingling feeling pulsing through his arms and legs. They are all as familiar as the taste of failure on his tongue.

He does not go outside this time to witness the shockwave of green light burning through the atmosphere. He does not need to see the shards of stone burning through the sky. He does not need to hear the frightened screams of those who do not understand what is happening.

Alexius clutches amulet in his right hand, closes his eyes and inhales slowly to collect himself.

He had sacrificed a fortune of lyrium and cut the throats of six slaves. The power he unleashed with the spell could have easily crumbled Redcliffe Castle to dust around him. He could have thrown his consciousness into the Fade for a week without waking. He could have brought time in the present to a standstill, freezing everything in its place for hours while he manipulated whatever he pleased around him.

But it was not enough power to take him beyond this point.

It was not enough power to stop the Breach.

It was not enough to save his son.

He pulses mana into his hand, feeling the vibration of the amulet as time swirls around him, pulling him back to the present, to the world that he started in motion on the day the sky burst into flame.

When he opens his eyes again, he is standing in the same place inside the castle, the scent of blood and smoke and acrid stone thick in the air. Six bodies lie motionless in a circle around him, their flesh as white and brittle as paper, all of their blood spilled and spent. All unable to change what has already occurred.

His fingers loosen from around the amulet as his hands stretch out before him. The corpse-like figure shuffles closer to him and into his arms. Alexius embraces him, feeling little but cloth and bones. He chokes back a gag as he gets the first whiff of decay, like mold and tepid water and spoiled meat.

"How long was I gone?" Alexius asks, fearing the answer.

"Three days."

The soft-spoken words are as quiet as a whistle, barely-there and carried on breath that is as cold and rotten as death.

Alexius clings tighter to his son. The sight of splotchy, black corruption across Felix's scalp is covered in glassy haze as his eyes fill with tears. The dead skin is sloughing away. Underneath it is foul, black corruption as dry as leather and as hard as stone.

"Was it the same as last time?" Felix asks, already knowing that his father's return is indicative of another failure.

If he succeeded, they would not be here. The world would not be here. It would be long ago, on a cloudy, grey day on the highway to Hossberg.

Alexius squeezes Felix closer to his chest, a soft whine stealing between his lips as the tears roll down his cheeks. He does not need to answer. Felix already knows.

"I will find a way, my son," Alexius promises.

It's a promise that he has mortgaged his life upon but one that he is increasingly unsure he can keep.

He has been searching for a way ever since he received the message, even since he stormed out of the Magisterium and mounted his horse, ever since he rode without rest for his home. He has been searching for a way ever since he first spied the two festering wounds, two slashes from claws in his son's back with black, parasitic corruption already spreading around the edges.

Felix has been dying ever since.

"I will give everything to save you."

Alexius has already given his life. He has given the sky. He has given the future.

None of it has value in the now. They will only be worth saving if he can undo the before. It is the only thing that matters.

Felix feels inches from death, wrapped in his father's arms.

The pit in his stomach is as deep and empty as the Breach, yet he cannot look away.

Alexius holds his hand over his mouth so that he will not scream. He holds his breath so that he does not vomit. The corners of his eyes burn because there are no tears left to shed. The smell of rancid flesh is overpowering.

The surgeons work carefully, their lancets carefully carving around the blackened, dead flesh upon Felix's head. The blood that oozes around the knives is so black that it hardly looks human any more.

Alexius convinces himself it is just the poor light playing tricks on his tired eyes. Felix's blood is still vibrant red and smelling of iron, not black and tainted and beyond transformation.

He barely even hears the wild screams of the slaves and does not see their bodies struggle with inhuman strength to try to break the paralytic magic and the belts and fetters that hold them to the table. They howl like animals as the blades carve into their heads, cutting out the grafts of flesh needed. It would be a mercy to put the slaves down before such butchery, but the skin must be live. And even then, there are no guarantees that Felix's body will accept the bloody donation.

The sleep spell he had cast upon Felix was so deep that he took his son to the edge of death. He barely drew breath, but Alexius had been willing to take the risk.

There would be no horror greater than his son waking in the middle of the grim operation and seeing what the surgeons were doing to him.

A slave's hands clench in and out wildly as he fights against the spell. He howls agony as the surgeon carefully lifts the square of bloody skin away from the man's scalp. They move quickly, rushing it across to the other table, placing it carefully upon the black and bloodied head of its recipient and begin the process of sealing it with magic.

The mages do what little they can to stanch the bleeding on the slave from the gaping hole left upon his skull.

Alexius gags as he watches the slave writhing on the table and foaming slather at the mouth. He knows there are a dozen more slaves like him in the dungeon with wounds just as deep and grim. And a dozen more who were slowly rotting, purposefully infected with Felix's blighted blood, the only way to see which might carry some resistance to the taint he carries within himself.

The new patch of flesh on Felix's head still has the slight pink color of living, human flesh. It is a stark contrast to the rest of his son's greyish-white complexion. The surgeon wipes his hands and steps toward Alexius.

Alexius' hand trembles as he reaches forward, his fingers shaking wildly as he points across the room toward his son.

"Will… is he well?" Alexius asks. He is afraid of the answer. He is always afraid of the answer.

"The transplant appears to be successful, but we won't know for sure until tomorrow." The Venatori spellbinder's face is grim. He is a man hardened to the horror of the torturous work that is asked of him. His jowls sag with fatigue. "If it does not take, the flesh will wither and die well before the corruption spreads to it. If it successful, the blight will spread through the graft faster than the rest of his flesh.

"The effect of the blood transfusions is also becoming increasingly weakened," the spellbinder says. "Felix sickens if we try to give him untainted blood. The few samples we are able to harvest from the prisoners and slaves resistant to the taint are now only slowing the corruption slightly, my lord."

Alexius places his fingers back across his lips so that he does not whimper. He swallows the agony, the bitter realization that time is slipping away even faster for Felix than for the world.

Not even the leaps he had made in manipulating time could stop that now.

"How long?" Alexius whispers, allowing the words to slip past his fingers.

"I can't say, my lord," the spellbinder says. "But however long, it is growing shorter. The Blight has killed half of my subjects. The spymaster, Leliana, is proving to be the most valuable, but even she will not live forever under these stresses. Without more men, I cannot guarantee I will have any remedies for him."

The spellbinder could not save him. Only Alexius was capable of that and only if he could shatter the clock and return deep into the past.

"I will give you whatever you need. Slaves. Soldiers. Mages," Alexius bargained.

"Anything. Just please, please save my son."

He has seen the sky burn more than two dozen times.

Every time it is exactly the same.

No matter how much fuel he expends, no matter how far he aims into the past, no matter how many techniques or alterations he tries, he cannot escape the Breach.

When his consciousness lands in his body, it is always in the same place. It is always within the audience hall of Redcliffe Castle.

He has memorized every detail of it now. His left foot is forward. He is twenty-five paces from the throne. His is eighteen paces from the double doors of the hall. A woman's shrill scream echoes through the hall four seconds after the flash of light. She screams a second time one second after dust begins falling from the ceiling as the thunder roars and shakes the castle.

Two Venatori swordsmen stand outside the door, their heads craned up toward the sky. A mage stands on the ramparts, thirty degrees to the west side of the main door, raising his arm up to shield his eyes as he crouches down in fear of the Breach. Eight large chunks of flaming rock fall from the sky in the first twenty seconds. The sixth shard is the largest, flying toward the mountains. It explodes in a brilliant flash of green flame as it strikes the slope.

Felix is asleep, resting in his bed with two blankets pulled over him to fight the chill within his body. The half-eaten plate of food will fall to the ground due to the quaking of the keep, spilling green peas all over the carpet and breaking the plate into three pieces. The chalice of red wine tips onto the bedside table, running across the smooth, stained wood and dripping onto the fur carpet beneath.

No matter what happens, Alexis cannot escape this moment.

He has seen it occur at normal speed. He has watched it happen in slow motion. He has even frozen time in its place.

In that place, where time was frozen, he made the long journey to see the Breach at its conception.

Alexius ran out of Redcliffe Castle, ignoring the soldiers and slaves frozen in time. He ran down the long, narrow causeway leading to the castle. He walked through the hills, traversed the lanes of Redcliffe. He followed the roads, climbed the mountain and walked inside the Conclave at the Temple of Sacred Ashes.

He walked past the hundreds of mages and templars and soldiers and southern clerics. He walked beyond it all, to the source.

Alexius stands in the room, realizing that even though time had not moved a single second since his arrival, he is infinitely too late.

The Elder One towers, his wicked, rotting arm outstretched. The red lyrium fused into his flesh glows, the crackle of electric power frozen in time. The lyrium still hums. It still pulses slightly in and out with light as Alexius nears it.

Divine Justinia is caught in a magical web, paralyzed by the magic of four Grey Warden mages. Her feet float just above the ground. Her eyes are wide and fearful. She glances over her shoulder, back toward the other man standing across the room.

Near the doorway, the Herald of Andraste leans back, his right hand grasping at the wrist, the glowing orb fused into his left palm. Trevelyan's face is streaked with shock, his eyes wide and locked onto the furious orb caught in his grip.

Alexius reaches out and touches it.

The orb is completely engulfed by green and white light. In the middle of it of all, barely noticeable in the blinding flash frozen like ice in the stream of time, he can see it.

A small, black hole of nothingness.

And he knows it is too late.

It is already here.

The singularity where the Veil was pierced and his time magic became possible.

The Breach.

Even in this moment, it has already started. It has already sickened the world.

And it cannot be stopped.

The Elder One demands that he stop these events from occurring. He demands that Trevelyan be destroyed. He demands that the past be changed.

No matter how many times he pushes, no matter how many spells he casts, Alexius knows he can never go past this moment. He can open the door of time and traverse its halls, but there is no point before this moment. This moment, the exact second that the Breach has come into being, it is the beginning.

It is the end.

Alexius waits, because there is little else he can do.

He still does not know what happened to the Herald and Dorian.

He regrets what might have become of Pavus's boy. He was bright and talented. If only he could have been made to understand, he might have been able to help. His mind was capable of going to places that Alexius' could not. He loved Felix as a brother.

Felix has never forgiven him for what he did to Dorian.

Now, it is too late for him to forgive his father.

They have not left the audience chamber in weeks. The Venatori had excavated and installed the ancient, runed door at the entryway. The red lyrium shards required to open it are spread between his five most trusted advisers. They only come together once per day, to bring food and remove buckets of filth.

And to do what little they can for Felix.

They bring fresh blood. They drag in living specimens to carve apart on the banquet tables pushed into the corners of the room. The wood is stained forever with the blood of countless bodies. The corner reeks of horror and desperation.

Alexius hides away in his small sliver of the rapidly decaying world, staring through the shattered glass of the windows at the swirling green tempest in the sky. He cannot remember what the sun looked like, because he has seen nothing but green and white and black and spinning, floating chunks of stone suspended in the haze.

He peers directly into the Fade and sees nothing but his pride.

He does not blink any more when the sky flashes. He does not startle when Redcliffe Castle quakes around him. He does not flinch as he watches the edges of the Breach spread wider across the sky.

He led the Venatori to the ancient elven orb. He claimed the artifact from the depths of elven ruins so old and so hidden that no mortal soul had stepped within them for centuries. He proudly presented the prize to the Elder One.

His new god swore that he would save his son.

Alexius believed him.

There is shouting in the yard of the castle from soldiers fighting off demons belching from the rifts within the castle. The tears cannot be closed or contained. Every time the Breach expands, they burst once more.

He is running out of men. Any soldier who is too wounded is given to the Blight and blade. He has given half of his mages to the corruption. There is no one left in Redcliffe or the Hinterlands. Those whom he has not already captured and enslaved and sacrificed have been killed by demons.

They drag in the bloated corpses too. Even the cold, dead, rotting flesh can be, must be used.

The Venatori still cling to hope that Alexius will save them. They still believe that he is locked away in his chamber, struggling to survive, searching for a way to break this hopeless existence. Even as he turns them over to Blight, those who survive the day still remain loyal to him and to their new god.

They do not know that they are as lost as he is.

"Felix," Alexius croaks. "Felix. Come here, my son."

Felix looks skittishly across the hall. He squats in the corner, where scent of blood in strongest. He lifts his bloody jaws from the human hand he is gnawing. The smear of red blood across his chin and cheeks is stark in comparison to his patchwork flesh of pink and pallid grey and rotting black.

Felix lost his speech two months ago when he vomited and hacked black blood and clumps of stinking flesh so foul. His bony fingers, bereft of nails that had long since died and fallen off, clawed at his throat like a rabid beast, tearing away his own weak, moist flesh. He flailed violently, trying to scream but failing to elicit anything except a gurgling, whistling growl as he drowned in his own blood.

Alexius had sobbed, his throat burning with bile as he watched the surgeons wrestle Felix to the ground like a wild animal, subduing him with belts and chains and spells.

He thought it was his son's last day. Although he had been preparing for it for years, expecting it every day, the emptiness and bitter clenching in his stomach when it was happening before his eyes was an agony beyond anything the Elder One could conjure. Eternal, soulless damnation would be kinder.

Felix cranes his head to the side, as a dog might trying to understand the words of his master. His blackened eyes dart back and forth across the room wildly as the mangled hand slides between his fingers and drops to the ground.

"Come to me, Felix," Alexius beckons, sitting upon the throne of a land that is decaying to nothing.

Felix considers for a moment more and skitters across the floor. He crosses the room, away from the light and the warmth of the hearth burning in the west wall. He moves quickly on all fours, clawing against the stone through the shadows. He mounts the small, stone stairs up toward the dais, one step at a time. He cocks his head once more and reconsiders his father.

"Come, Felix. Let me hold you," Alexius coaxes, his hands outstretched toward his only son.

Felix moves, slowly creeping toward the throne. He crouches before his sitting father, his head twisting around in a circle, his fingertips running across the red blood upon his cheeks. And he leaps, throwing himself into his father's lap and curling like a cat.

He weighs nothing. His bones are jagged prods that stab into Alexius' old, tired flesh. Each breath he takes is a rattling, shaking quiver in his chest. He smells of shit and rot and darkspawn foulness.

Felix's skeletal hands wrap around the collar of Alexius white vestments. The bony fingers leave thin, bloody streaks like fingerpaint upon his shoulders as his arms wrap around his father's neck.

And his head rests lightly upon Alexius' breastbone.

Alexius trembles as he lifts his own arms and wraps them carefully around his son. His stomach lurches at the overpowering stink of wretchedness. He feels a pain in his hip where Felix's gnarled foot is stabbing him like a blade.

He squeezes Felix closer to him. He bends his head down, planting a kiss on a small, uncorrupted patch of fresh flesh upon his son's scalp. Alexius can taste blood and sweat and dirt upon his lips.

The windows flash white again. Redcliffe Castle shakes. Felix's body tenses with an animalistic reaction of fear. Alexius holds him tightly to keep him from bounding behind the furniture.

Felix growls as his fingers clutch to the fabric of Alexius' hood.

Alexius can swear he hears "I love you" masked in the guttural croak that escapes his son's mouth.

As the sound of magic and creaking hinges sounds at the front of the hall, Alexius does not bother to turn around.

He has heard the sounds in the castle. He has seen the explosion of feedback as the rifts burst and seal in a violent flash of light. He can feel the familiar trembling in the Fade, a Tevinter magic he knows all too well.

It is not the Elder One, but the arrival of visitors are equally as grim.

The footsteps stop at the foot at the dais. There is a moment of silence.

Alexius watches the flames in the hearth. The flames consume the logs. The smoke burns his eyes. Felix's cold, dead hands are outstretched slightly, trying to take in the warmth while keeping his distance from the light.

"Look at what you've done, Alexius!" Trevelyan's voice is tired and accusing. He can feel the magic strongly here. The Anchor. Taunting. Incurable. "All this suffering, and for what?"

"For my country," he says, but he does not mean it and never really has. It has never been about Tevinter. He would let Tevinter burn.

He has let Tevinter burn.

"For my son… but it means nothing now."

The log crackles and spits a burst of ash and Felix startles backward.

"I knew that you would appear again. Not that it would be now. But I knew I hadn't destroyed you."

For all he thought he knew about time magic, he had quickly learned that it was less than nothing. It was wild, unpredictable. It could not be tamed. It could not be broken. He could sneak in and out of its doors, but he could never go anywhere that the Breach would not allow.

He could never go back before the Conclave and stop the Herald.

He could never fulfill the Elder One's demands.

He could never stop the wound that would kill the world.

He could never cancel his meetings in the Magisterium.

He could never change his mind and accompany his family on the road to Hossberg.

He could never defend them as the darkspawn fell upon their column, black claws and poisoned blades cutting down guards and women and children.

He could never prevent the two bloody claws from raking Felix's back.

He could never stop the tainted blood from infecting his boy.

He could never save his son.

"My final failure."

He breathes the words quietly. The Herald will think they are for him. But they are for Felix, who crouches at his right side. His skin, much of which is no longer even his own, is drawn taut across his bones. He smells of foulness and rot and blood and death. The yellow robes he wears are a mockery, the only thing left to remind Alexius that his boy was once human.

"Was it worth it? everything you did to the world? To yourself?"

There is such disappointment in Dorian's voice. Dorian had always been the better, the brighter. When Alexius spoke, he listened. He could see the sickness, he could feel the rot growing in Tevinter's heart. Alexius could never have changed that, either. But Dorian, Dorian could have made them all believe. He could have become greater than his father, he could have ruled Tevinter, he could have saved it. Not like the Elder One.

"It doesn't matter now," Alexius says, because it doesn't. All that Dorian was, all that Alexius was, all that Tevinter was, all was reduced to nothing. The sickness had won. "All we can do is wait for the end."

"What do you mean? What's ending?" Trevelyan asks and the question falls foolish in the air. Does he not have eyes? Can he not see everything around him. It is too late. It would always be too late.

Alexius cannot help but chuckle. It has been months since he had reason to laugh and he only does so now because the of the Herald's naiviety. He is a fool. A fool who thinks he can changes things. A fool who thinks he can save what has always been lost. A fool who does not realize that which is can never not be.

"The irony that you should appear now, of all the possibilities. All that I fought for, all that I betrayed, and what have I wrought?"

He knows the answer, better now than he ever had before.

"Ruin and death. There is nothing else."

There has never been anything else. Not since those claws fell upon Felix's back. All the world had been spiraling to an end. Unwavering. Unmerciful. Unstoppable.

"The Elder One comes: for me, for you, for us all."

A groan, a surprised shriek, the sound of metal scraping across a scabbard. Felix's weak and lifeless body jerks from the ground. His arms hang as limp as a corpse at his side. His head rolls onto his shoulder, his neck too weak to support it any longer.

The rusty dagger poised at his son's throat is all Alexius can see.

The spymaster's flesh is as ragged and dead as his son's. How long has she had the taint? How many months has it been since they forced Felix's black blood down her throat? They said she had survived the Blight in Ferelden. She proved most resilient to the taint. Her blood, her flesh, had kept Felix alive.

Alexius retreats a step even as his left hand reaches toward his son. His staff is heavy in his right hand and he forces it to stay down.

"Felix…"

The names dribbles desperately off his tongue. His blood runs cold. His heart stops in his chest. His lungs clench and he holds his breath.

"That's… Felix? Maker's breath, Alexius, what have you done?" Dorian still accuses. Young and righteous and naive. He could never understand.

"He would have died, Dorian! I saved him!"

A lie.

Felix could never be saved, because Alexius could never go back.

Once, he thought he might have been able to undo what had been done. When it became certain he could not, by the then he could not let Felix go.

The boy suffered every day. The gruesome surgeries. His lost mind. The horror and savagery he displayed as the corruption overcame him more and more.

But he was still his son, even as he transformed into the monster he now was.

"Please, don't hurt my son. I'll do anything you ask."

He means it. He would give anything. He would take his own life. He would battle the Elder One, just for a chance to hold his son once more. Just for one more day. One more hour. With Redcliffe fallen, there is no way left to prolong Felix's life. Everything crumbles. Felix will die. But he will die in his father's arms, bathed in loving tears when the end comes to take him. He could give his son no less.

"Hand over the amulet, and we let him go," Trevelyan demands.

"Let him go, and I swear you'll get what you want."

His hand goes to his neck, he wraps his fingers around the amulet, ready to rip it from his neck. It is nothing. It is useless. It could not take him where he needed to go. It had the power to change nothing.

The spymaster's eyes are as black and dead as Felix's.

"I want the world back."

Her words are impossibly cold, as deep and empty and poisonous as the Breach itself. The spymaster is more wicked, more brutal, more soulless than the Elder One himself.

The knife cuts deeply across Felix's throat.

Black blood cascades from the wound as Felix falls toward the ground, as light as a leaf. The droplets of stinking blood seem to fall one by one, globs of sticky, corrupted wretchedness that float in the air before the break upon the carpet.

Alexius freezes as the body hits the floor. It barely makes a sound as it falls across the dusty carpet. Felix does not move. Tainted blood pours from the neck, a black halo forming around his son's dead, pallid skull.

She wanted the world.

It had always been lost.

It lay before him, oozing putrid sickness onto the carpet.