Adult-FanFiction.org : Games

In good times and in bad	By : kruemel Category: +A through F > Dragon Age (all) > Dragon Age (all) Views: 14749 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: Dragon Age and the characters of the game do not belong to me. This is a no profit fanfiction

Chapter List
- 83
- 84
- 85
@Smiling_Fox: Awww, thank you! Trying my best to come up with yet more awkward silliness and adorable Alistairish dorkiness.. Hope you enjoy reading this chapter. :D Notes:

Notes:

Warning: This is a very dark chapter including (almost) rape.

Chapter Text
"We must go quickly and avoid notice," Anora, wearing a guard's uniform, announces - bossy as always - on leaving her prison. She immediately points the way and expects us to follow - unless of course there's trouble. Then she stays in the background and waits for us to clear it. "If Howe's people find me, I'll be killed. And my people will insist on escorting me back to the palace - where my father may also have me killed."
"The good thing about the Blight is how it brings people together, right?" Rori mutters under her breath, having me chuckle.
"Pardon?" Anora frowns at her and scowls at me. Yep, I'm a fool. Having been married to Cailan should have given her some practice in dealing with dorks, though, no? "I don't like to repeat myself..."
"Save your breath," Rori snaps. Her hair is a touseled mess, she's all over covered in blood, thankfully only partly her own, and her mood hasn't improved ever since we last talked to Anora. "Go quickly and avoid notice, I got it. Maker!" To me she murmurs: "What the fuck does she think, we were planning to do? Have a parade with Morrigan as a shapeshifted elephant and Leliana shouting the news from the top of the roof?"
I can't say that Rori's been less tense ever since Howe's death. Could be the enormous amount of guards we've been fighting to get back to Anora. We're all so damn lucky to be alive, it's actually a miracle. Or as Zevran puts it: "We are ridiculously awesome!"
"Rescuing you wasn't a stroll in the park, quite the contraty," Rori informs Anora as we hurry to finally get out of here. "We've been true to our word, I do hope you'll pay back the favour..." Her voice fades when we run into a rather grim looking Ser Cauthrien and her soldiers just around the next corner. They are clearly waiting for us.
Blast! That much for avoiding notice.
"Warden, in the name of the regent I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Rendon Howe and his men at arms," Ser Cauthrien declares. Like always she's the very image of self-righteousness. Even a mabari wouldn't be more loyal than her. Wonder if Loghain has her sleep in the kennels, too. "Surrender and you may be shown mercy."
"Mu-murder!?" Rori is gasping for air. She looks as if she was about to burst into tears or laughter or throttle Cauthrien. Or just everything at once. Disbelief, disappointment, fury... it's all plain visible on her face. "This... this is so UNFAIR!" she shouts and stomps her feet.
"As much mercy as Howe has shown the Couslands? Or as Loghain has shown Duncan and King Cailan?" I snort since Rori has not yet recovered from the accusation. "Anyway, we didn't come here for Howe first place, we're here to free Anora, who was held captive."
"Don't be ridiculous! The queen isn't being held prisoner here or anywhere else. Her father would never stand for such a thing."
"But she's right here," Rori yells, pointing at Anora who has been hiding in the background without helping us.
"What!?" Cauthrien gasps, dumbfounded for once. That look on her face... priceless! I smirk at her. Ha! Now she's going to hear a truth she certainly won't like!
"Please, mylady, would you tell Ser Cauthrien what you told me so that we can get out of here without bloodshed?" Rori asks in the most polite way - well, as polite as someone can be who presses her words through gritted teeth. She's had about enough for today and I cannot blame her.
"Ser Cauthrien!" Anora calls as she comes forward. "Praise the Maker you're here! This brigand tried to kidnap me!"
"Wh-what!?" Rori for sure is as flabbergasted as I am. I'd never have expected the queen to backstab us like that. So this was a trap after all? Of course it was, stupid! I mean, how can Cauthrien already know about Howe's death if it wasn't? Rori was right all the time about Loghain's plan to use us to get rid of Howe...
Blast!
And now Anora... it somehow hurts. I've always believed her to be... good. Not only a good ruler but also a good person. But I also thought Loghain to be a hero until he ran from battle and condemned his king to die. I'm probably not very good at judging people.
"Unbelievable!" Ser Cauthrien exclaims.
"Yes, we can agree on that," Rori mutters, before she turns on her heels in one fluid motion to punch Anora straight in the face without as much as a warning.
Anora cries out and stumbles backwards. Not exactly the best way to prove our story of rescuing her true, but I'm so with Rori. She just beat me to it. Holding her bleeding nose, as she is pressed with her back against the wall now, Anora even has the nerve to call for help!
"Bring them down!" Cauthrien cries, her reaction prompted by Anora's lie. "Loghain wants the Wardens dead or alive."
Doom.
DOOM.
We are all wounded, Morrigan can hardly stand on her own anymore with all the spells she has cast already. Zevran cannot move his right arm, Barkley's limping and Leliana has only three arrows left. We cannot win this fight. And Rori knows it.
"Hurry back to Arl Eamon's. I will cause a delay..." she hurriedly makes up a plan as she has us all retreat, slamming the door shut in Ser Cauthrien's face. This will buy us some time, but it for sure won't save us. Maker, she must have brought the whole damn palace guard with her!
Oh, wait! Did Rori just say...? No! Oh no! That plan sucks! It needs to be changed...
"You mean, you and I will cause a delay," I correct her stubbornly.
"Alistair!" she cries in utter exasperation. I can see the fear and sorrow in her large dark blue eyes as it dawns on her that we are going to lose this time. "Alistair, please... there's only... us two Grey Wardens left..."
Nice try. So doesn't work. "You forget about Riordan," I point out. "Only death can do us part!" She glares at me furiously, I stare back with defiance. "Wishing Shale was here to drag me away?"
"If Shale was here, I'd have her crush Ser Cauthrien's head while she dances the Remigold on what is left of Anora," Gingersnaps presses through gritted teeth. "Only death do us part? You couldn't think of something more dramatic, no?" Rori sighs, a sad smile tugging at the corners of her mouth.
"How about: Where you lead, I will follow - till death. Or: I will stay with you until the dark waters of forgetfullness swallow us...." That's when Rori kisses me, it's a hasty crush of lips, full of longing and sorrow. Maker, I want to hold her tight and never let go!
Unfortunately that's when Cauthrien's mage blasts the door open with a fireball and we all run down the next corridor with Loghain's loyal bloodhound on our heels.
"What? You're sending us away so you can have all the fun alone...?" Zevran begins but Rori cuts him short.
"It's our only chance. They will take us captive if we surrender but someone has to tell Eamon what happened." She shoves Zevran away. "GO!" Reluctantly our companions leave. Well, not Barkley. It proves impossible to send the hound away. He stays at Rori's side even when she kicks him to make him leave. "Go, you stupid dog! They will kill you!" Barkley whines and retreats a few steps only to return to her side. "You and Alistair, you are the most stubborn males ever."
Now she's comparing me to the warhound. Charming. I do have to tell my flying dog foster parents from Anderfels. They'll be so proud of me!
"You sure about the captivity part?" I murmur when we both draw our weapons to defend ourselves.
"No," Rori admits. "I love you, Alistair," she adds, her voice shaking.
I don't even get the chance to tell her I love her, too, as Cauthrien and her men are upon us now. It's a very short, very nasty fight and when I hit the ground, my vision turning black, I beg the Maker that I will wake to see my beloved ginger again, alive and still kicking.
I do wake again.
I am still feeling awfully dizzy and have trouble coming back to my senses. My head feels like the Chantry soccer team was using it as a ball. I am disoriented as I lay on my back on the cold ground, naked but for my underwear. Some images cross through my mind... and none of them are pleasant. I remember being dragged into the dark... cries of agony echo through a vast hall... a cart loaded with blood stained corpses... a whole collection of instruments of torture and all well used... Fort Drakon.
Oh happy day!
Okay, be cool, Alistair! We've been in deep shit trouble before... You are still alive and as long as you are, there's a way out... there has to be... if Rori was here, she'd find one... I just wish the screaming would stop... it's giving me a skull splitting headache...
I should move... I must move... but I feel so heavy... rolling my head towards the light and the sound of shrill screaming already makes me nauseous... and it's not getting better at the scene on display right there in front of me...
Rori is alive.
She is also kicking.
Actually it's the guards she's kicking at. A group of ten leering sneering men who try to pin her down while they tear the clothes off her. Their filthy hands are all over her body as they try to force her legs apart while she screams bloody murder...
"Keep still, bitch!"
"Stop kicking!"
"Maker, Kertram! Can't you even pin down a little girl?"
"She fucking bit me!"
"Little whore, I'm going to break you in..."
"Ha! She certainly bucks like a horse!"
Oghren always says, I could never become a berserk. He claims I am too soft... that a castrated nug has more balls than me... that I simply don't have it in me, the fury that erases all thought and only leaves room for a murderous frenzy...
Boy, is he wrong!
... I feel strangely seperated from my body, as if I had left it and was now floating above it, watching myself...
... as I rise from my stupor with a roar of fury and lunge myself at the first guard, slamming him against the wall first, then, getting hold of his hair, I ram him face forward against the corner of the table... repeatedly.
It all happens so fast... Not sure what happens next, though, or how I get to sit on top of another man and punch his face to a bloody pulp... there's a whole lot of yelling and shouting... I hear Rori scream my name... and those animalistic roars and growls, guess that's me... I get pulled away from the guard, many hands grab at me... I get punched, kicked... I feel bones breaking and skin being torn... but I don't feel any pain...
My frenzy carries on but my body betrays me. When I collapse on the ground, I can hardly breathe... something's stabbing my lungs... probably a broken rib... is that one of my teeth swimming in a puddle of my blood?... Oh fuck... is that a... finger? Ahaha, not mine. I do care for a better manicure... My eyes are swollen... but I still can see... I wish I couldn't...
"That thrice-cursed whorespawn killed Hank and Lowin!" Someone kicks my side, stabbing the broken rib deeper into my lungs...
"He fucking bit off my finger!"
"Where's the bitch? Get her here." I get pulled from the ground to a kneeling position, fingers fisted in my hair, the cold sharpness of a knife pressed against my throat. "Now be a good girl or loverboy here is going to die, understand? Yeah, I thought you'd come to your senses. Have him watch! Hey, asshole! Can you see that?"
Rori...
Oh Maker have mercy!
"What in the name of the Maker is going on?" a sharp voice snaps, causing the guards to let go of Rori, dropping her as if she was a life-size doll. Ser Cauthrien sails in as the last-second rescue - and I have never been so glad to see her. Bless her! Bless that woman! I lie in my own blood with several bones broken, including my jaw and I laugh... Okay, it's some strangled gurgling noise and it obviously sounds more as if I was dying because Cauthrien immediately sends for a healer and tells me to hold on...
When I wake next, I feel bruised and battered and cold but that's still an immense improvement. I'm still alive and that's actually all I care about when it comes to myself at the moment. I am far more concerned about Rori. They tossed her into the same cell in only her torn and bloodstained underwear. Even in the dim light of the torches I can see the bruises on her wrists, on her thighs, arms, even at her throat. Maker! I am going to kill these bastards! At this very moment I want them dead even more than Loghain. To push him from the throne of my top assholes of Ferelden is quite an achievement.
I crawl towards her to pull her into my arms, cradling her gently against my bare chest. She's so small, so young. She shouldn't be here, shouldn't be forced to carry that burden... Blast, I shouldn't be here! I am a Grey Warden and my job is to end the damn Blight - well, that's probably not going to happen unless the archdemon drops by to pay us a visit. It's that king-business that brought us here. I just should have said no and leave it all to Loghain...
Maker, now I do sound pathetic! But I guess, when locked up in the bowels of the nastiest dungeon of Ferelden, a few pathetic moments can be excused with the circumstances...
I brush Rori's dirty hair from her forehead and kiss her brow as I whisper to her how everything will be okay, that I will protect her, that I never will let anything happen to her again- and all the time I feel like crying. But boys don't cry, especially not when they just promised their girl to be strong for her. So I sit there and blink until the pressure behind my eyes becomes unbearable - and that's when I find it impossible to cry... so I sit there some more since I got nothing else to do and get all whiny about my eyes and how they hurt just so I do not have to deal with the real pain.
It seems an eternity until Rori finally opens her eyes. She groans - and is immediatelly sick on the floor. I can hardly let go of her quickly enough and then I stand there, holding her hair out of her face to stop it from getting any filthier than it already is.
"Al-Alistair? Wh-where are we?" she stammers, wiping her mouth clean. They didn't give us any water and as long as she doesn't intend to sip from the puddle of questionable content at the back of our cell, she'll have to deal with the acid taste in her mouth.
"You're finally awake. I was starting to worry. Are you... are you okay?" I help her back to a her feet. She sways a little but doesn't seem injured beyond the bruises that litter her body. Those visible wounds are nothing I am too concerned about... But she was... she got almost... Maker have mercy... maybe this is not the best place to talk about that... "As for our whereabouts: We're imprisoned in Fort Drakon."
"Oh, wow. We do get around a lot, don't we? See all those awesome places where we've never been before," Rori says with a wry grin. Her choked voice betrays her fake cheerfulness.
"Join the Grey Wardens, see the sights and the floors of the best prisons in the land," I laugh, sounding rather hysterical to myself. Rori's grin still broadens, despite her hugging herself, looking so vulnerable as she stands there in her bloodstained panties. That she hasn't lost her sense of humour is a good sign, though. Right? Right? "That's not much of a recruitment slogan, is it? So, I do hope you have a plan?"
"Blast, yes, I have: I am going to strangle Anora when we get out of here," Rori hisses as she's already examining the lock and then unsuccessfully searches through our cell to see if she can find something to pick it.
"You mind if I pin her down while you do? Or perhaps kick her?"
"Hey, we're a team, right? In good times and in bad. Can't reserve all the fun for myself, can I?" Rori snickers before turning back to earnest. "Okay, plan... plan... let me think..." She begins to pace the cell. Finally she sits down and together we watch the guard on his watch. "Do you think, Barkley got away alive?" Rori bursts out.
"He's a very smart dog. I'm sure, he's fine," I reassure her, not believing a single word I say. But you just don't tell your girl that you think her dog is dead. "You know there's something about being trapt in a fortress full of people that want me dead that makes me think 'Hmm, being a templar might not have been so bad," I sigh when the guard passes us by a third time. Every time he nears our cell, he shortly stops to look at us... well, at Rori, to be precise. It is a stare I do not like as I have seen it before... Rori, pressing closer to me, must have noticed it to. A shudder runs through her whenever the leering guard reappears.
"With your luck, you'd have been in Cullen's place, locked up in a magical prison while the bloodmages toy with your sanity," Rori points out. Her voice has taken on a shrill sound close to hysterical by now. I can sense the rising panic inside of her with every minute passing.
"Hardly. Cullen's willpower is far stronger than mine. I more likely would have been possessed by a demon promising me cheese in return. Remember how easily I got fooled in the Fade?" My stomach rumbles loudly. "Do you think the others will come to rescue us? Maybe any time soon? I bet we missed at least two meals."
"I'm sure they will come. They would never abandon us. But I will not sit here and wait... until they... until he..." She inhales deeply, fighting with herself to regain her composure. I'm surprised anyway, she could keep it up for so long. The leering guard had it crumble and now she jumps into action, presenting a plan that is so downright stupid, I can hardly believe she even suggests it.
"Okay, let me get this straight," I say, frowning at her. "You want to seduce that guard..."
"... to cause a distraction..." Rori adds.
"... for me to break his neck?"
She nods, grinning sheepishly at me as she ducks her head when I scowl at her. "Are you freaking nuts?" I snap, grabbing her by her shoulders to shake some sense into her. Maker! Didn't she have enough for today? Does she really want to draw that kind of attention back to her? "What if he goes and calls his buddies so that they can finish what they have begun?"
"Well, do you have a better plan?" Rori hisses, pulling out of my grasp. "I am not going to sit here and wait for them to come... I need to get out of here, I have to... I need to wash them off..." Okay, breaking down now. No good. Absolutely no good. If we want to have a chance, we have to stay cool...
"Hush, kitten, please, I know it's hard, but try to clam down..." She backs away when I attempt to hug her for comfort. She practically jumps the moment I reach out for her.
"I can't just sit around and do nothing... just wait and not know what is about to come... I rather die trying than sit here and play the victim..." Now she's crying. That's not exactly the best way to seduce a man, although Rori claims that a man will always believe two things about a woman. One that she is weak and two that she finds him attractive. Where in the name of the Maker did she hear that utter bollocks?
I try to argue with her for her own sake, but she won't listen. So I grab her by the arm when she turns towards the cell door and she tries to shake me off. "Let go!" she yells and next the guard comes running.
"What the fuck are you two doing in there?" he growls, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. I hold up my hands to show I mean no trouble, letting go of Rori who immediately goes to set her plan into action...
Honestly, I do love her. But even I cannot make myself call her stumbling a sexy walk. And that smile she offers the guard looks more like a grimace of pain... and when she opens her mouth, she vomits right onto the guard's boots...
Alas, it was a stupid plan anway.
"Blast!" The man jumps backwards, shaking his feet to get rid of at least some of the mess. "What the fuck? What's wrong with you? Are you ill? Is she ill?"
"Well, she's puking her guts out. What do you think?"
"Blast! Cauthrien is going to have my balls on a silver plater!" the guard mutters to himself as he begins to fumble around with the keys. "You have to be alive and well for the trial... Gonna take her to the healer... You!" He points at me. "Stand back!"
The door swings open, the guard walks in and bends over Rori who is on her knees, spitting bile onto the floor. As soon as he reaches out for her, she lunges at him, crushing her head against his nose in her upwards motion. That brief moment when his head is flung back by the impact and he exposes his throat, is enough time for her. With the precision of a battle maiden who has been trained by a badass assassin and the sneakiest Chantry sister of Thedas for almost a year now, she hits the side of his neck with the side of her hand - and with a surprised sigh the guard collapses to the ground.
With a fluid motion Rori is back to her feet, only to cling to the bars for support when she's getting dizzy. "You were right," she croaks, offering a crooked grin that widens when it dawns on her she actually really succeeded. "My idea sucked. So I went straight to plan B."
"Maker, Rori, you are indeed ridiculously awesome," I chuckle.
For the first time ever since we arrived at Fort Drakon I start to believe, we have a chance to walk out of here alive.
- 83
- 84
- 85
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

In good times and in bad

Notes:

Chapter Text