Work Text:
Marion is twelve and the twins are seven when father takes her aside.
He’s caught her playing with sticks again. She’s been following around the mercenaries in Honneleath, mimicking their movements until it’s too dark to see, and Father ignored it thus far, but she’s now tearing her mother’s flowers to bits under her feet.
“You know, your mother will sell you off to bandits when she sees what you’ve done to the garden.” Her father sounds amused rather than angry, though truth be told, Marion has few memories of her father ever raising his voice.
“Sorry, Father,” Marion says, shoving the stick behind her, hoping he’ll forget its presence once it’s out of sight. “I was… trying to dig a hole… a big one, so mother could plant a tree.”
Father laughs, a deep rumbling sound. “Yes, I can see how swinging at the air and beating your mother’s bushes would help with that.” He puts a heavy hand on her shoulder and tilts his head to the side. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
He takes her into the house, waving to the twins and their mother, and leads her into the cellar – dark and dusty and smelling of wet dirt. “You grandfather didn’t have magic,” he says, kneeling down on the ground and taking out a key. “He was a – well, a man of many talents, I suppose. Carver, now Carver will be a big man, but you’re slighter, faster. A large sword won’t suit you at all.”
He opens the trunk, and Marion ducks under his arm to see inside. It’s filled with clothing, rings, amulets, books, and fabric wrapped around a bundle. She’s never seen any of this, which means it’s from before – before Ferelden, maybe even before Mother. Her heart beats faster, and she sticks her hands under her knees before she can touch anything.
“These belonged to your grandfather,” he says, pulling out the bundle and unwrapping it. “You’ll have to start with wooden daggers and practice with them in a place that won’t have your mother ready to send you off with the Chasind, but I’ll give them to you when your old enough.”
When he finally unwinds the bundle, she sees long daggers gleaming dangerously through a smattering of dust in the dim light. The vicious, curved blade calls to her. These were her grandfather’s, something from a past Father seems intent to forget, and he’s showing them to her. She reaches out her hand and touches the flat end of the blade before running her finger along one of the edges, cutting herself. It’s small, the blade less sharp than it should be, but enough to draw blood.
“Careful, child,” he says, pulling them away and carefully wrapping them in the dull, brown fabric. “Weapons should be respected. In the right hands, they are a just man’s protection. In a fool’s hand, they’re dangerous.”
Marion looks at her father, his face serious, his dark eyes locked with hers. “Of course, Father. I’ll remember.” She shifts her feet and watches him place the blade back into the trunk. “When will I –“
“Any weapon, be it magic, sword, or dagger, must be respected. A weapon is our last resort. We only use it when every other option has failed. Never forget that.” He locks the blade away in the trunk and stands. His movements slow. “Let me see that finger.” He grasps her hand, and green light spreads along her fingers, the itch of skin knitting itself together. “Enough with the lessons. Now let’s go upstairs before your mother tosses our supper to the dogs.”
* * *
Marion trains with wooden daggers for over a year, despite her mother’s protestations that such skills are undesirable in a girl, that her boyish ways will make her unappealing, that she should be more like Bethany and wear dresses instead of boy’s clothes.
Marion laughs at her mother’s admonitions. “I’d never want a man who’d make me wear dresses. Besides, that’s what you have Bethany for.”
Mother looks frustrated, Father winks at her, and Marion agrees to wear a dress to the Maker blighted dance in town, but she keeps her daggers under the skirt of her dress. Just in case.
* * *
She use the daggers until they’re little more than slivers of wood, has them until she steals proper weapons from some men stumbling out of a tavern too drunk and handsy to notice their absence.
Two weeks later she meets a boy with dark hair and a low, rumbly voice. He tries to pick her pocket while she’s out buying milk from one of the nearby farms, and she kicks him in the knee and punches him the stomach for his trouble.
“You got fast hands,” he says, once he can breathe again without wheezing.
“Yeah,” she says, staring down at him. It’s dangerous for her to make trouble, to bring attention to herself. If they have to move again because of her – Maker help her. “What of it?”
“Nothing. Just,” he smirks and stands up slowly, his hands in front of himself, “I bet you could be better.”
Marion tilts her head. “And who’s going to teach me? You?”
“Maybe.”
His name is Larek, he’s sixteen, and he spends four weeks showing her how to pick locks and set traps. She’s fourteen when he presses her up against a tree and kisses her until her body shivers, and her hands are making fists in the air, unsure of where to settle.
The next day her mother and father sit down with her, Bethany, and Carver. They’re moving again, they have a day to pack, and no matter how many times Marion asks, they won’t tell her why.
* * *
When she turns fifteen, her father gives her Grandather’s daggers. They’re in a different cellar, this one darker and muddier, and Marion is shifting from one foot to the other, rubbing her palms along her trousers.
“These are to be used to protect,” Father says, placing the daggers into her hands, his fingers rough against her own. The metal feels heavy, right. Like they belong with her, an extension of her hand. “Use them well.”
“Of course, Father.” She caresses them, feels the grooves along the blade, and she should be excited, but the look on her father’s face makes her pause, pulls her lips into a jagged line.
Her father hasn’t left and isn’t smiling. He’s watching her with sad eyes. “You’re growing up so fast.”
“I could try to slow it down if it’d make you feel better,” Marion says, her voice teasing in an attempt to banish the shadows from under her father’s eyes. He looks serious, almost stern, and the expression just looks wrong on a face marked with deep laugh lines.
Father shakes his head. He lets a breath, long and slow. “You’re a grown woman now, and I’m trusting you keep to your mother and the twins safe when I’m gone. This hasn’t been a good season for us, and I’ll have to go further away from the farm this year.”
“You know I’ll look after them,” she pauses, breathes, “What’s – is something wrong?”
Father doesn’t answer right away, just stares at the wall like he’s seeing something she can’t, before finally looking back at her, placing his hands on her shoulders, and she can feel their heavy warmth through the thin fabric. “One of these days, it may be longer than a trip. I won’t live forever, Marion.”
She shakes her head, taking in her father’s broad shoulders, his tanned skin, his strong arms. “You’ll outlive us all,” her tone is light but quiet. There’s a feeling in the air that makes her want to run out of the room, to put her hands over her ears before she can hear anymore. Something big and scary like a crackle in the air that she can feel in her gut.
“No one is immortal, Marion, not even your mother and I. And your sister – Bethany is a brave girl, she’s strong, but the life of a mage --” he turns away before looking back at her, “you must protect your sister when I am gone, from the Templars and… and from herself.”
Marion’s heart thunders against her chest, trying to beat its way out of her body. “Father, I – Bethany would never succumb to --” her voice is hoarse, more whisper than anything else. “She knows what becomes of mages who give in. She would never do that.”
His hands press harder on her shoulders, and it almost hurts. She can feel the rough edges of his fingernails through her blouse, and when he speaks, his voice is deep and strong. “I don’t doubt your sister’s strength, but you must never underestimate the power of a demon, Marion. Swear it to me.”
Marion feels herself shaking, but she meets her father’s eyes. “I promise. I’ll protect them when you’re gone from… from everything. Even themselves.”
“Good. That’s my good girl.” Malcolm releases her, pats her arm, but she can still feel the imprint of his fingers. It’s going to bruise. “I know I can always count on you.”
He leaves, his heavy steps reverberating through the small room, but she stays in the cellar for hours. She uses the whetstone to sharpen the edges of her daggers, focusing on the shick shick shick from the metal until it’s all that fills her thoughts. After, she moves on to polishing the blades, not stopping until the daggers gleam yellow-orange in the dim light of her candle. Not going back upstairs until she sees her wide, scared eyes reflected back to her.
* * *
To Bethany, Malcolm says, “Our magic should serve that which is best in us, not that which is most base.” To Marion and Carver, he says, “Your abilities must serve the greater good.”
Malcolm teaches his children many things, tempers his council to each of them, but that – that knowledge, that wisdom he teaches them all.
After his death, Marion remembers those words. They echo, whisper, beat into her heart. She does not always live by them, cannot, but she tries, for her father and her siblings, to honor the memory of the best man she’s ever known.
She hopes her father is satisfied with that.
* * *
Father is killed, murdered at the end of summer. The first indication that trouble was coming, thundering down upon them like dragon’s wings.
A Chasind man comes to their farm in Lothering to tell them, his tongue wrapping awkwardly around the Common words. But he looks into their eyes when he tells him, speaks honorific words, and does not turn his head away until their mother collapses on the floor in grief; her body breaking like twigs bent too far by the wind.
Marion’s heart feels like it has been crushed under stone, bile rising in her throat, her eyes so dry they hurt.
“Thank you,” Her voice remains steady as she speaks to the Chasind in the little of their language she knows. Bows her head as they lay her father’s body down, beaten and torn by strange weapons.
One of the few in Lothering willing to deal with the wild folk in the woods, Malcolm left with a kiss for his wife his children. Marion had been scolding Carver for nailing Bethany’s braids to the headboard, and she’d been distracted. Maker damn her, but she remembers little of his parting except that he’d been wearing his brown trousers. The day had seemed so normal, so ordinary.
She contacts the Chantry, cleans her father’s body, and shepherds her mother, brother, and sister off to bed, drying their tears. Once everyone is asleep, she walks into the room she shares with the twins and begins to unpack her things, their soft snores masking her footsteps and the opening of the trunk. She had planned to leave for Denerim, to make her own way, to have her own adventures – battles, lovers, and fortune. A few more days and she would have been gone.
It isn’t until everything is back in its place, until she’s sitting in the chair her father used to write letters, that she allows herself to cry. She has one night and one night only to grieve for Father. Her father would want her to be strong. She’s seventeen, and the family is her responsibility now.
* * *
She does her best, but it isn’t enough. Bethany and Mother settle into old patterns, and they listen to her, seem to recognize that she’s taken over Father’s place as head of the family. She wonders if her father ever told them that this day might come, if they had their own version of a cellar talk. But Carver, Carver never liked to listen to Father and he’s sure as shit not listening to his big sister.
He stays out late, drinks at Dane’s and comes home stumbling drunk, takes up with a local girl. She doesn’t yell at him, doesn’t need to.
“Your not Father, Marion, and I don’t have to listen to you! I’m sick of you ordering me around. I don’t have magic. I shouldn’t have to live like this.”
Carver’s brow is sweaty, his arms are tense with the need to hit something, probably her, and she knows Bethany’s in the next room listening. “Of course not, Carver. Do what you want. I leave tomorrow, but maybe you’ll get lucky and I won’t come back either.” Carver’s head jerks back like she’s hit him, his face flushing red. “A few more days, and you could be free of me.”
She’s quiet, gives him the chance to let this settle in. She doesn’t push, knows it’ll just make things worse. The silence stretches, lengthens until it makes the space between her Carver greater than the few feet the room allows. “Maker damn you,” he says, finally, turning away from her. “I didn’t – I didn’t mean that.”
Marion reaches out and lays her palm flat against his back, nestled in the spot between his shoulder blades. She could tell him that she understands, that she hadn’t wanted this life, that digging up vegetables and shoveling shit isn’t what she’d wanted either. But it wouldn’t matter. She’s her father’s daughter, she’s the eldest, and Bethany needs to believe that there’s no place else she’d rather be, that she’s not the noose around their necks and the chain around their ankles.
“I know, brother. Just take care of them until I get back.”
* * *
“I’m going, and you can’t stop me,” Carver says, pack slung over his shoulder, sword strapped to his back.
He doesn’t explain more than that. He could. There are good reasons for him to join the soldiers at Ostagar. The darkspawn are a threat to everyone, Lothering is close enough that if King Cailan can’t defeat them, they’ll be a danger to the family, to their town. There are explanations Carver could give, but he won’t. Marion’s brows draw together in annoyance, Carver always annoys her, but she wouldn’t justify her decision either. Sometimes it feels as if they’re just enough alike to make everything harder than it should be.
“You can’t go, Carver. It’s too dangerous,” Mother says, turning to Marion. “Say something to him.”
Marion almost but not quite snorts at that. Carver hardly listens to her on good days, and while she might be able to guilt him into staying, she sincerely doubts that danger will be an effective argument. “If King Cailan is defeated, the darkspawn will head north. I doubt prayer will keep them from Lothering.”
“That’s just one more reason I should go.” Carver stares at her like he’s daring her to forbid him. Maker’s breath.
“Wait two more days,” she says, smiling at him winningly, which just makes him frown harder at her. “It won’t kill you to help out around the farm. Maybe you’ll even have time to say a proper goodbye to your girl.”
Mother sounds angry behind her, but Marion tunes her out, and just stares at Carver. If his face wasn’t already red from anger, she thinks he’d be blushing. “All right, sister, two days, but then I’m leaving.”
“Of course.”
Marion spends the next day robbing her neighbors blind. She should be sorry for it, but she has too much to do and little time to do it in. Carver grouses a few times over how little she’s helping with the harvest, and Marion just smiles at him, “But you’re so good at it, brother. I know you wouldn’t want me to interfere.” Carver makes a sound between a grumble and snort but he goes back to work anyway, which is what Marion wants, so she ignores the under-his-breath mumbles that are none too kind.
The morning before Carver leaves, Marion takes the money she’s acquired to town. She’s there for longer than she’d like, but she finally finds a few Chasind driven out of their home by the darkspawn who are willing to work for the meager pay she can offer. It takes some bartering, where she gives them more than she’d like, but she knows her father wouldn’t want her take advantage of their desperation – well, further advantage.
By the time she returns to the farm, the sun sits high in the sky, dark clouds between her and its warmth, and Carver’s standing in front of the door, kissing their mother and sister while Bethany stuffs a wrapped package of food in his bag.
“I didn’t think you were going to bother to show up,” Carver says, looking at her with a mixture of hurt and anger.
“And miss you going away? Perish the thought,” Marion darts between her sister and the door. “Give me a minute.”
Marion can hear her brother’s put upon sigh from inside the house. She grabs a packed bag from the chest at the foot of their bed and moves her daggers to her back for easy reach before heading outside. Her heart is thudding with an excited beat in her chest, and she takes a deep breath, pushing back her shoulders, steeling herself before she opens the door.
“Now I’m ready,” she says, ignoring the surprised look on her mother and sister’s faces and the irritated one on Carver’s. “I don’t suppose you have another sandwich ready, Bethany. I’m starving.”
* * *
Marion only speaks about the battle once, and it takes a decade. No, not battle, not even war. What happens at Ostagar is a slaughter.
She doesn’t see King Cailan fall, doesn’t see the line of Grey Wardens crumble under the endless waves of darkspawn. People like Marion and her brother only ever see the king from a distance and not at all once the battle begins.
No, Marion doesn’t remember the events history will record, the people who will be remembered and mourned by the country. Instead Marion remembers the quick, deadly song of battle, the terror that sends her heart galloping at the first sight of a darkspawn up close, their faces twisted and skeletal. She will never forget her mocking jests as she cuts off a genlock’s head, her laugh as she stabs a hurlock in the back of the neck, blood pouring over her hands. She dreams of the turn from thrill and song to harsh breaths and desperation as the battle continues, going on and on until her arms burn from exertion, her chest heaves and contracts in pain from a well placed arrow that she doesn’t have the time to remove.
She remembers the men and women beside her falling one by one until she’s surrounded, outmatched and outnumbered. A well placed blade sliding through her armor, and how she’s only saved from disembowelment by falling over the dead body of a man she’d been laughing with a few hours before.
She remembers finding her brother among the corpses, pulling him up by the arms, and yelling at him to run, her legs burning with effort as they stumble through corpses. They stop later, much later, when she’s so light-headed she can’t run anymore, and they sew each other up with quick, shaking hands. The wounds will leave scars, her brother’s teeth on her hand as she stitches up an ugly, sluggishly bleeding wound on his back will leave another.
She will never tell anyone about after, her brother and her curled up together, wedged between two boulders, huddling for warmth against the freezing wind. Her relief and fear causing tears to sting her eyes, tears she won’t allow to fall as her brother shakes against her.
“You did good, brother. I’m proud of you. Maker, Father would be proud of you. The way you cut down that hurlock – I bet he wasn’t expecting that one,” she whispers against her brother’s neck. She talks until his body relaxes, finally too exhausted to fight off sleep, until her whispers are hoarse and her throat aches.
That memory is for her and her alone.
Later, when she sees her brother’s body crushed under the strength of an ogre, his body bloody and broken, she will think of that moment, and she will whisper once, before leaving with Flemeth, the secret she never told Carver. “You were always my favorite.”
end.