Work Text:
The wind will blow or else it won't
Sometimes you just move on and sometimes you just don't
Your name is Marla Tabris, you are twenty-two years old, your mother died when you were fourteen, and you will never quite escape last year. When you were eleven, and your baby sister died when she was three days old of a fever that left your mother bedridden for weeks and unable to work, you fancied yourself a pickpocket. You were good at it, too, small and quick enough to slip your fingers into rich shems’ pockets, to cut their purse and run. You were just elven enough, dirty and malnourished enough, that you were almost invisible to them. You almost got caught, once or twice, but you bit their hands with your dirty, crooked teeth and ran off into the crowd while they were cursing and trying to stop the bleeding, because you always bit hard enough to draw blood. But one day, that wasn't enough. He didn't let go, even when you bit him, and he was even angrier then. He took you by the hair, pulling it tight around his fist, and slammed your face into the stone wall of the alleyway. Once, twice, three times, and then he dropped you, unconscious and bleeding, to the dirt.
The neighbor found you, hours later, and carried you home. Your father ran to get the midwife, who knew more than just how to birth a child, and your mother, sick in bed, wept that she might lose another child. But you lived, and you got better, and you went right back to cutting purses in the marketplace. You had seen death before, and it didn't frighten you.
But last year, death hung over you as you hacked at the Arl’s son's neck with a borrowed longsword, and in your heart you knew you'd hang for this. Whatever stroke of luck that had let you avenge your husband's death, Nola’s death, Shianni's pain, it has run dry and left you at the gallows. You don't mind, though. To be hung for this, well, it's a better death than you'd hoped for. A better death by far. Then, the Grey Warden recruits you. Steals you from death like you stole that shem’s purse, all those years ago, and you can't help but think there will be consequences.
But you go with him, you become a Warden, he dies, and you are left with a Wilds witch and an awkward almost-Templar to try to save the world. And you think, ah. This is it. The consequences.
The year that follows does a good job of distracting you from the death you could have had, from the hangman you still see in your dreams but fear less now than the Archdemon that screams in your head, in Alistair's head, in the heads of the Tainted. You fall in love. Alistair, now that you are looking straight at him, is not as human as he is at first glance. Morrigan becomes not quite a friend, but someone you respect, who respects you, and you kill her mother for her. Zevran tries to kill you, and then becomes one of your best friends. Leliana is strange and odd and sweet and the older sister you never had. Sten is condescending and disproving, but you find yourself fond of him anyway, mostly because of how he acts when he thinks no one's watching. He has death and misdeeds hanging over him, too, and while you will never really like each other, you will respect each other for that. Wynne is loving and stern and annoying and mischievous and you adore her like the grandmother that died before you could remember. She's not very good at it, but you're not very good at it either. The dog is a dream come true, and he keeps you warm at night and lays on top of you when you thrash and scream and squashes the nightmares out of you along with the breath in your lungs, and he licks your face when you shove him off. Oghren is disgusting and awful and hilarious and a damn good fighter, and after a while you think of even him fondly.
They are your friends, your family, and you wouldn't give them up for the world. When you return to Denerim to find your blood family quarantined in the Alienage and sick of some mysterious disease, they stand by you as you frantically try to save your home from Tevinter slavers, of all things. Valendrian dies, and all you can think about is how glad you are it wasn't your father. Shianni holds you tight, and thanks you all over again and it puts to rest the fear that's been living in your heart since the Temple of the Sacred Ashes and the guardian that showed you false images of her.
You are more than Marla Tabris, by the end of the year. You are the Champion of Redcliff, the Hero of Ferelden, the elf who killed the Arl’s son and lived to tell the tale, the woman who put King Alistair Theirin on his throne, who decreed that the traitor Loghain would be executed, the Warden Commander of Ferelden, the Arlessa of Amaranthine, the mother of a strange, unnatural child conceived through magic. You are so much more than who you were, and yet, it still hangs over you.
Thirteen months, one Blight, an Archdemon, falling in love, finding Andraste’s ashes, killing a dragon, killing the Witch of the Wilds, an Old God in the unborn body of your child by another woman, an Arling, and a civil war do not make it go away. What happened and what you did will cast its shadow over you for the rest of your life. You know that now, and you accept it. You will never quite escape last year. It has an unbreakable grip on you, like the man whose purse you cut when you were a child, and it will not let go, even unto your dying day. Whether you die in battle, in bed, on the road, or alone in the dark with nothing but the Call and the darkspawn to keep you company, it will be there. As constant as the taint in you blood, as the oath you took.
In peace, vigilance. In war, victory. In death, sacrifice.
And forever, last year.