Vir Lath Sa'vunin Chapters Fifty-Three and Fifty-Four

[lenna_nightrunner]

A Dalish-centric AU gen fic featuring two Mahariel Wardens, one bastard prince, and lingering ghosts.

Title: Vir Lath Sa'vunin (We Love One More Day)
Rating: T
Authors: twist_shimmy and lenna_nightrunner
Post Word Count: 2820
Summary: When their parents died, Tesni Mahariel was left to raise her brother Caerwyn with the help of the rest of their clan. True to their penchant for getting into trouble, Caerwyn and Tamlen went hunting one day and ran afoul of a mirror, of all things. The next thing Tesni knew, Caerwyn had been recruited by the Grey Wardens. As if she’d let some shemlen just take her brother away! Determined to keep Caerwyn safe, Tesni goes after them, and antics ensue. She’ll stop the Blight to protect her family, Caerwyn will help--grumbling all the while--and Alistair will do his best to bond with his tattooed and bristly new brethren. When all is said and done, the blurred lines between friendship and blood bonds will draw them down a path that will change all three of them forever.


Love hurts.

Chapter Fifty-Three: My Lover Meets Me Where Dreams Become Reality. Sadness, Sadness, Just a Fantasy. (Métisse)

TESNI

I lifted my head from where I was slumped against the wall when I heard renewed activity in the main room of the prison. Words echoed over the stone and made their way to me, and I cocked my head to better make sense of them.

“--relief, ser.”

“Thank the Maker-- out time.” I recognized that voice. He was my guard. My smart sodding guard. “Let me show you-- one.”

Bootsteps moved closer toward me, so I dropped my forehead to my knees again. Soon, two men were standing on the other side of the bars. Metal clinked on metal; one of them was leaning on the door to my cell.

“Just pulled this one from the Arl of Denerim estate.”

The new voice made a sound of derision. “What, a knife-ear? Why are we bothering keeping her?”

“Cauthrien thinks she’s the one killed Howe.”

“...You’re having me on.”

“It gets better. They found Arl Urien’s son in the dungeon of his own sodding home. He’s the one who said so.”

There was a pause, and then the new guard sighed. “Guess that means someone’ll be by to question her soon, eh?” His companion must have nodded, because he added, “Maker, why is it always my shift?”

A new shift? It was morning, then. I’d been awake all night.

“The sooner the better. Watch this one, Erik.” I grinned into my knees as he added, “We pulled four lock-picks out of her braids, and she’s already assaulted a guard.”

“Who?”

“Mathias.”

He groaned knowingly. “Oh, blast. He didn’t try to-- he did, eh? Well, serves him right.”

Yes, yes he did. Apparently naked elves were a weakness of his. I’d almost gotten through the door when someone had come looking and found him unconscious on the floor of the cell. The Trickster was having fun today.

“Just be careful,” the smart guard said. “She’s a wily one.”

He sounded bitter. Granted, I’d kicked him in the mouth after he took my bow away from me. When I lifted my head and bared my teeth at him, he glowered back and ran his tongue along a swollen bruise on his upper lip.

The guard standing beside him was young, and his mouth fell open when he saw my tattoos. “Andraste’s blood! What’s wrong with her face?”

The smart guard turned his head and stared at his companion. “Are you blind? Those are tattoos.”

“Right. Who’d do that to her face? What is she, a Crow?”

I almost laughed. Would Zevran be proud of me, or offended?

“Cauthrien thinks she’s a Warden. And a Dalish.”

“Now you are having me on. Dalish aren’t real.”

“That’s what I said, but she talks funny for a flat-ear. Can’t get a word out of her that makes sense.”

They paused and stared at me for a moment. “So she can’t understand us?”

“Oh, she can. She just won’t say anything back.” When I smiled at him again, he spit through the bars at me. “Sodding elves. Anyway, you have fun with her.”

My new captor stared at me, and I stared back. “Ma tu’lin, shemlen. Mahvir ar revas, ma tu ar’din.”[1]

The young guard’s eyes widened. “Hang on, I’m coming with you. I’m not about to stand here alone with some mad knife-eared bitch.”

The smart guard snorted, which resonated disgustingly as they turned away. “How’s a coward like you get this job, anyway?”

“My father knows--” the words trailed into senseless echoes as they retreated back down the hall.

I lowered my head back onto my knees. It sounded like I’d be left alone for a while, at least. Thank the Creators for impressionable shems. Maybe now I could risk sleeping. I was cold, and tired, and not looking forward to meeting whoever was coming to ‘question’ me.

There was a thin pile of straw and a blanket to my left. I pulled it away from the bars and rearranged it so that I could lie down facing the door. It was still cold, but if I curled into a ball I could almost ignore it.

It’s just like traveling with the clan, I told myself. When the aravels were full of our belongings and everyone slept on the ground as we moved to a new campsite, I’d spent countless nights feeling slightly chilled, sleeping knees to chin just like this.

Of course, I hadn’t been alone. Caerwyn had been there. And Tamlen.

What have you done, lethallan?

“Emma harel,”[2] I replied, and closed my eyes.



Tesni.

I grumbled and curled more forcefully against the wolf pelt beneath me, but it was too late. I was awake enough to be analyzing the smell of the forest around me, and it was going to rain in an hour, if not sooner.

Tesni, wake up.

“I’m cold,” I said, and grumbled again as he wrapped his arms around me and began pulling.

You’ll be a lot colder when it starts raining on you. Come on. We have to get back to camp.

I opened my eyes and smiled. Blond hair, tattoos. His face was stern, but his blue eyes were merry. What were you dreaming about?

“I don’t remember.” There had been... I rubbed at my forehead and remembered a statue in a ring of light, and a shem who called me ‘sister.’ I knew better than to tell Tamlen about that, so I just shrugged and looked around for my bow. It was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s my bow?”

What bow?

“I carved it. Oh, fen’lin, Master Ilen is going to be so angry with me.”

Tamlen laughed and pulled me to my feet. You haven’t managed to make a bow that shoots straight, emma lath.[3] Dreams of greatness?

I scowled. “Stop teasing. I remember carving it!” I looked down at my hands in confusion, and recoiled when I found them covered in blood.

Tamlen didn’t notice; he took a hand in his and tugged. Come on. Marethari’s good at yelling, and I don’t want to hold the clan up.

I let him pull me along, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Marethari would be angry if she saw me. Why? What had I done?

Other than abandoning your clan to go live with some shemlen and flat-ears?

I stopped cold and stared at Tamlen as memories rushed back. “You’re dead.” The blood on my hands suddenly made sense, and I jerked my arm away from his.

You killed me twice, remember? First by leaving me to go after your brother, and second with the knife I gave you.

“The shem said--”

The shem was wrong. I never would have stopped looking for you, emma lath. He grabbed me by the face and made me look him in the eyes. Never.

“You didn’t have any siblings. Caerwyn needed me.”

So did I.

I buried my face in my hands and felt ill as I realized I’d just coated my tattoo in his blood. “You asked me to--”

That was before the flat-ear.

“Don’t call Zevran th--” I snapped, and then stared down at my hands.

You replaced me with a mockery of an elf. How am I supposed to feel? Was I that easy to forget? Why not Fenarel, or Junar? You let your entire clan down, Tesni.

My eyes narrowed. “The clan is wrong.”

...What?

“The clan is wrong.” I clenched my fists at my sides. “Alistair isn’t a shem and Zevran isn’t a flat-ear. I love them both just as much as I do Caerwyn.”

I’d never seen his eyes go cold like that to another elf. He stared at me like he used to the occasional human hunter we’d run across when we were out patrolling, but I forced myself to narrow my eyes and glare back. He was wrong. He was. And I wasn’t going to let him make me feel guilty for having a new clan to love and protect.

Don’t come home, Tesni. You’re not a Dalish anymore.

Tamlen walked away and left me alone in the woods, but everything sounded loud and like metal--



“Wake up.” A gauntlet slammed against the bars, and I woke feeling like my body was drowning in its own blood. “You’ve got some questions to answer.”

I took a deep breath and forced my heart rate to steady while an unfamiliar voice sounded from behind the guard. “Maker’s breath. Give her some clothes. She will be of no use if she falls ill.”

The guard ran off, and I shifted into a sitting position and squinted at the shem on the other side of the bars.

---

Chapter Fifty-Four: My Spirit is Enthroned in the Land of the Silent Moving Shadows, Where a Deep Red Fountain Keeps a Thousand Lakes of Blood. (Dargaard)

CAERWYN

I could've sworn I saw Sten smile out of the corner of my eye, but his face was as blank as usual when I looked at him properly.

"Hey," I said to Leliana, and lifted her chin up. "Want me to kill her for you?"

She laughed through some sniffling, and I wiped at the tears on her cheeks while she tried to dry my neck. When we'd done the best we could she pulled away and picked up her bow.

"No, you ca--" Oghren began to protest, but then the insane alas'len was suddenly gone. Great. We were going to have to try to get through the traps she'd sent her clan and the darkspawn into without any more clues.

Well, we might as well get it over with.

If whoever'd designed this sodding deathtrap was still alive I'd've killed him. You'd think the golems'd be more useful out fighting darkspawn than attacking people when they were just trying to turn off poison gas. And if ghosts could fight us, why weren't they fighting darkspawn too instead of helping faces try to shoot blood at us. Maybe they could've used more of those flying knives that'd almost clipped off Oghren's lip-beard-thing in the traps. Those couldn't really wander around as easily.

We made it through unstabbed but covered in blood, as usual. We were finally at the end, where there was a golem who looked like he was made from armor instead of stone. What he told us horrified even me. I'd never thought about what had to be inside a golem to make it 'live.' I'd just thought they were another kind of magic. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea where Shale came from.

So Branka hadn't just sacrificed her clan trying to find the Anvil. She wanted to use it to create golems, and to do that she needed to kill more of her people. When she showed herself again, nothing she said could convince me not to kill her. I wanted the alas'len to fight the Blight with us as people, not rocks.

I looked up at Caridin. "Support a new king and I'll destroy it."

"I will."

"After I destroy her."

"No!" Oghren gripped his axe tightly. “Just give her the blasted thing! She’s confused... maybe once she calms down, we can talk to her!”

"Too late."

I signalled the others to be ready to attack, and watched Oghren carefully. If he tried to protect her I’d either have to find a way to stop him or kill him, too. I hoped I wouldn't have to.

Branka saw me draw my daggers and laughed. “You’re not the only master smith here,” she said to the suit of armor. “Golems, to me!”

And then we had plenty more rocks to fight. Sten was the most effective at it, and I thanked the Creators Oghren was at least joining us in fighting the golems if not his wife. With the help of Caridin and his own golems we finally took down the rest, and I was standing over the insane alas’len with my knife to her throat.

“Fool!” she spat. “The dwarves will all die in a sea of darkspawn, and it will be your fault.”

I looked over at Oghren, and saw Sten ready to hold him back if he tried to help her. Good at following orders even when I hadn’t given them out loud. Then I locked eyes with Branka again.

“Better with us than you.”

Oghren made a sound that hurt my chest as I slashed my knife through his wife’s neck and felt her blood spatter all over me. Then I turned to Caridin.

“All right,” I said. “What now?”

Leliana was sad when Caridin jumped into that liquid fire Oghren kept calling “lava,” but I was glad for him. I’d lived a pretty long time compared with the shems, and if I hadn’t become a Warden I might’ve lived a long time more. But that long, with that ‘life’? It was much better this way.

It was finally time to go back. Sten offered to carry the World’s Ugliest Crown ("Is this armor? It hardly seems practical.") and we all pretended not to notice how unusually quiet Oghren was at dinner.

Lying in our tent that 'night' I had to keep reminding myself we were done there. We could go back to Alasan,[4] give Bhelen the Hideous Facetrap, and go home. My blood'd stop burning and we could see the sun again. Soon. Just a little longer.

Leliana shifted against me while I was staring up at the roof of the tent, pretending it was sky. I’d decided that since everything hurt anyway I might as well’ve had her close. Dalish weren't the only people who needed touch.

"I'm, um..." She sighed. "I'm sorry... about earlier."

I rolled onto my side and looked at her. "Why?"

"We can't afford for me to fall to pieces when we have to fight," she said. "I wouldn't have been ready if we had needed to act right away."

It was difficult to shrug lying on my side. “We didn’t.”

“Still.” Leliana sighed again and was quiet in a way I’d learned meant she was sad.

"You..." I wanted to know what’d made her cry, what was making her sad now, but I didn't have a right to know. There was a difference. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

She shook her head. “No... you should know.”

Leliana explained everything, calmly but with her voice shaking on and off and her words slipping in and out of Orlesian. I listened in silence while my emotions shifted from pity to anger to just not being able to understand why someone would do that. To go through all that trouble; to create such an elaborate lie and then feed a person to wolves.

"And then the men, th-they..." She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her arms around her shins defensively.

What? What'd they done? I tried to read her expression, and found... shame. Why woul--

Creators.

Leliana was strong, but that many men... How could they--how could anyone do that? We didn't even have a word for that in elvish. I’d never even thought...

She took a deep breath and continued, “I am... not proud of the things I did before the Revered Mother took me in. I am not proud that I loved doing it. I lied until people... until they wanted me. Until they trusted me. Then I gave them what they wanted before I killed them.”

Her eyes were fixed on the roof of the tent. “I have many regrets. What I did was very wrong, sometimes even cruel. But it was nothing compared with what... with what Marjolaine did to me.”

Leliana took another deep, shaky breath. “She lied until I wanted her. She lied until I trusted her. Those things were cruel, but perhaps no more cruel than what I had done to others. But she did not even care about me enough to kill me herself. And worst of all, she made me... she m-made me... love her." The last two words were rushed and quiet.

The pain in her eyes made me hurt, too. “And what Branka did to Hespith....” I trailed off.

She nodded. “Yes.” She sniffed and wiped at her face, even though none of her tears'd fallen.

“You don't lie, Caerwyn."

I snorted. "Not well, anyway."

"You don't lie to me."

“No,” I agreed.

"It's... it's one of the things I..." Leliana looked away. "One of the things I... love about you."

Love. Something in my chest twinged.

"I’ve been meaning to say it for a long time..." She met my eyes again. "J'taime,[5] Caerwyn."

I realized then that I'd already known in some strange way. I thought of Tesni and Tamlen and just... knew. But I didn't know how to tell her. So I tucked her braid back behind her ear, kissed her forehead, and hoped she understood.

I was never very good with words anyway.

 

 

---

[1] Ma tu’lin, shemlen, Mahvir ar revas, ma tu ar’din: I’ll make you bleed, human. Tomorrow I’ll be free, and then I will kill you. (ma tu ar’din, thanks to bellaknoti and the elven language wiki)

[2] Emma harel: I’m scared.

[3] emma lath: my love

[4] Alasan: “dirt place”—Caerwyn’s term for Orzammar.

[5] J’taime: I love you.

"Want me to kill her for you?"