Title: The Wandering Drunkard

Summary: After ten years of travelling, Alistair finds himself in the very first place he left behind. And there's someone waiting for him.

Spoilers: End game stuff, so if you're surprised there are multiple endings you should consider yourself warned.

Notes: Another in the series of what ifs.

*

Another doomed soul come to drown their sorrows here, I see?

--Bella from Redcliffe

*

Fate: (noun) 1. something that unavoidably befalls a person; 2. the cause for Alistair's [bad] luck.

*

He didn't want to come back to Denerim, but when you do nothing but travel for ten years you eventually end up where you started.

The Gnawed Noble Tavern was exactly how he remembered it: noble people doing seedy things behind doors. But the bartender was a lot friendlier, and the drinks kept coming as long as he hinted he had gold in his pocket (which he didn't).

"You know—you know who you look like," the bartender said after the fifth round. "Well, if you didn't quite have the beard."

The drunk next to Alistair burped appreciatively.

"Like old King Cailan," the bartended said. "Yeah, a little…maybe if you squinted. Squint for me."

Alistair obliged.

The bartender shrugged. "Eh, maybe not." He wiped at a glass thoughtfully. "Poor Cailan, died at Ostagar, did y'know?"

Alistair nodded.

"Queen Anora has been ruling for almost ten years now, the bitch," the bartender whispered. "But you didn't hear that from me, eh?" A suspicious pause. "Now where exactly did you say you were from?"

"Orlais," Alistair muttered, even though the accent was not there.

The bartender nodded. "Don't get much of your kind around here, Orlesians." The glass was looking much cleaner than its mates. "There's a food shortage, dunno if you heard. It's getting pretty bad. Not for me, o'course, means I can charge extra, but…the elves, most of them have run off."

Alistair shrugged. "Hard times have fallen on Ferelden," he said.

"Aye, if that's true," the bartender agreed. "Now, my friend, I'll have to charge you for those drinks. Care for one more for the road?"

Alistair shook his head. Despite all this time he had never really cared much for liquor, and the type in Denerim was nothing more than fermented Mabari piss. He reached for his pouch for his carefully earned silver, and threw it at the bartender.

"Ya better have something else, son," the man said, unimpressed.

Alistair rolled his eyes. Back in the day he would have waved his sword menacingly, but he had lost that in a tavern down south. Instead he reached for the pendant around his neck. "There, rob me blind why don't you," he muttered.

The bartender inspected it carefully. "You steal this off a body?" he asked, suspiciously.

"Now, why would you say that?" Alistair asked. He got up, and all the alcohol suddenly rushed to his head. Ah, he loved the buzz of sweet intoxication.

"This is a Grey Warden seal, lad. They don't just give these away, y'know," the bartender said.

Alistair shrugged. "They do when they're dead."

The Denerim air did not help Alistair snap back to attention. Instead the air was thick with decay, and most of the street was filled with hungry bodies hoping to scare a coin or two off the wealthier drunks heading home.

Alistair stumbled his way past the needy hands, wondering where exactly he would go to sleep. He didn't quite have the money to stay at the Tavern, and he doubted the Pearl would be pleased to take him in. Their rates had gone up with the hunger strike, where a good slab of steak was at a better premium than Sanga's whores.

It had been ten years since he had walked out on the Grey Wardens. Ten years since the archdemon had been slayed, and Loghain…well, Loghain had died an honorable death. The thought made Alistair's brain sizzle.

"Ser, can ya spare a coin?"

Alistair blinked; the beggar could not have been older than ten. "Sorry, kid," he grumbled.

He was walking down a neighborhood, which looked just as dark and abandoned as the rest of Denerim. It had not been the first time he had heard of ill words towards Anora's reign. What had started out as a blissful queenship quickly became an unexpected tyranny once the food shortage had threatened nobles and peasants alike.

Alistair groaned. The alcohol was making its way around his brain, squeezing it like a grapefruit. He sat down, and realized he had chosen a puddle as his location for tonight. Well, maybe ten years was enough time to have lived. Death to cold and hunger seemed like a pleasant way to go.

"You're smelly."

Alistair looked up into a pair of dark eyes. It wasn't the beggar—a girl, Alistair thought, although too young for him to really care.

"What are you doing there?"

She was also annoying, and Alistair grunted at her, hoping "crazy drunk man" was on her list of fears.

"Humans aren't allowed in here," she continued, unfazed.

Alistair looked around. While Denerim was certainly in no state of beauty, this neighborhood looked especially rundown.

Ah, he must have stumbled his way into the alienage. Yippie.

"Don't you have parents?" he muttered.

"Of course, don't you?" the girl answered.

"No," said Alistair. "I was raised by a pack of wolves."

The girl rolled her eyes. "My daddy told me that, too. Maybe you're brothers."

Alistair squinted. She was definitely elf, although she looked healthier than most of the other elves he had seen. And she was definitely a lot snippier than the lot of them.

"Isn't it past your bed time?" he tried.

"I'm practicing." There was a pause as Alistair wondered if this was the part where he suddenly got murdered by a gang of robust elf children. "I'm trying to sneak out without my parents noticing," she added.

"Ah, well…that doesn't sound very…." Alistair faltered, because he didn't really care anymore.

The girl stared at him, curiously. "My name is Wynnifred," she offered.

"Alistair," he said, in return.

And then there was a light turned on in a house across from them, and the door opened, and Alistair's vision had already gone blurry with sleep and cheap beer.

"Wynn, what are you doing," a voice, male, with a better accent than Alistair had tried.

"I'm helping this smelly man, papa," Wynnifred answered. She poked him. "I think he died, though."

Alistair was aware of a male elf approaching him carefully. He felt drunk but not entirely stupid, and he could catch the glint of a dagger in the man's belt.

"I think you need to go back inside, yes?" the male said, turning his daughter back in the direction of the house.

"But, papa, Alistair was also raised by wolves."

And then Alistair was aware that he was being held up, and his eyes tried to focus on the person in front of him. His vision was hazy and his brain felt like it was leaking out of his nose.

"Ah, Alistair, it seems you have returned to us," the elf said.

"Ffffrrek orrf, Zevran," Alistair mumbled, and then passed out.