We were four, I think, when we first met. Your vibrant blue eyes met my own darker ones, and I had wondered why I'd never seen you before. You couldn't possibly have been from another clan, for your face reminded me too much of Ashalle, my mother's close friend. But then again, I was quite a shy young girl at that age, and I'd wondered if you were too. You weren't, as I quickly found out when I opened my mouth to speak hello, and in turn received a smack up the back of the head and a kick to the shin.
My mother died three days later, along with my father, and out of all the people who coddled and hugged me and whispered quiet consolations, you were the one who wiped my tears away and called me a stupid girl for crying the way I was. You told me that my parents were idiot's for leaving me behind, and I was obviously special – although you claimed to not know how that was – and that was why I had been left at camp on that fateful day.
It still makes me chuckle in light of all the despair that surrounds me, when I remember the image of you marching into the keepers tent and demanding that I be taken in by you and your mother. Remember that? A four year old, blonde, scrawny Dalish Elf shouting his mouth off about how I simply had to live him and his mother. For sympathy only, you insisted, but the caring look was behind your eyes anyway.
Six years old, I think we were, when I first showed you that you were my best friend out of – and I quote- all the mean boys in the clan, and I showed you my appreciation in the worst way possible. At the time, I honestly thought that you would enjoy having that dead vole as a gift, truly! The look on your face when you opened your bedroll to find the dead animal simply lying there, oh I wish now that I had paints and an easel; the look was something to behold! You screamed like a little girl, causing me to collapse into giggles, before I realized you didn't like my 'gift' and I told you to shove it in a place where even the gods couldn't see. Paivel was most amused I had picked up his rare curses, although your mother and Marethari certainly weren't. I didn't even know what area Paivel had been talking about!
It was your tenth birthday, when you pissed me off beyond recognition. How much had I cried, how many times did I punch you weakly in the arm to show how much I apparently hated you before running away? You must have searched for hours, dragged your way through thickets of dagger-like vines and found your way through the forests decieving ways in order to have found me. Only you had gotten past the barrier that the forest had placed for me in the middle of the Hinterlands, and when you found me you told me you'd search all of Ferelden if it meant getting me back for ruining your day, although the true sentiment was appreciated but unknown at the time.
Were we twelve, or thirteen, when Marethari ordered one of us to leave the tent we shared to share it with another elf of our own sex? I'll always remember that day, for the whole event was like a hail storm, neither of you giving up until you kicked and stomped your feet and Marethari gave in. Oh how you moaned and spat and hissed about how we should be able to still share a tent, for we were friends and nothing more, like brother and sister. I think that's the first time I felt disappointed that that was all you counted us as.
When Marethari did cave in and let us keep on sharing, you were simply shouted at for acting the way you did, whereas I was dragged into Marethari's tent with your mother for them both to give me sex talks, and advice on how to handle any lust I may feel as I got older. I imagine I looked like a bloody beetroot plant when I left that tent, although you could barely stand from the force of your laughter as you slapped me on the back, like I was one of the boys. I took up the bow my father had left for me on that day, and decided that a hunter would most likely be the best choice for me in order to vent out a lot of anger I was about to start feeling.
Fourteen years old. I'll never forget the embarrassment and plea in your voice when you asked me what it was like to kiss a girl. I did not refrain from slapping you, telling you that I was a woman and therefore had never even kissed another of my own gender, nor should I want to. I had nothing against it, but I had already decided that my emotions would lie with you. You rephrased the question, guilt now in your deeper tone as you asked me what it was like to kiss another. You kissed me at my whispered 'I don't know' and after a heated kiss and lingering hands, you told me that you were 'simply curious.' No awkwardness filled the air after that, but your mother sent me knowing looks anyway.
Sixteen and a half. You told me that when we would receive our Vallaslin, I would go first, and should I fail and not be allowed into adulthood, you would purposely scream in pain so that you would not pass the ritual either. Marethari must have known what we had planned, for she purposely sent for you first. You left the tent an hour later, blood on your face and underneath the coppery substance were the dark swirls of your tattoos. I went in next; Marethari caught me by surprise and in turn I screamed at the hot, ink filled quill as it burned into my forehead.
I failed it, and although I was not shamed, I was upset that you would now be classed as an adult and I the silly child who did not pass her Vallaslin ritual and was therefore not responsible enough to undertake the responsibilities of an adult, nor a hunter. You took me into the forest after seeing how upset I was, took me deep into a thicket and found the closest dead tree.
From it you ripped wood and bark, and burned the two in a small, tiny fire set between us. We did not know that Marethari had followed, intrigued by our disappearance, and she watched as you sat opposite me and drew on my face with the black, burned wood that you had made. You drew the exact same tattoos as you had, only with more swirls across my cheek and jaw, and laughed with me as you allowed me to understand that I didn't need the Vallaslin to fit in, for I had you to believe in me. Marethari had emerged from her hiding place with the true Vallaslin in her hand, and she had went over the lines you yourself had drawn, and proud I was to have finally passed into adulthood, and amazed that I had you by my side.
You stuck by me through everything, understood my growing anger and pain even if you didn't understand why I felt that way. When I got jealous and Marethari dragged us both in the same tent for you to sort me out, you did not hurt me when I drew my blade and attempted to fight, you did not cause one nick on my skin despite the cuts that went straight to the bone that I had inflicted on you. I wanted nothing else but for you to fight back and hurt me, but you didn't.
That fateful day in the woods. I told you not to go after those humans, yet you ignored me. We killed them all and found the ruins they were talking about, and you insisted in that pleading voice of yours for us to go in. I agreed, and damn I still regret it to this day. When you touched that mirror, just as you tried to pull away, it was as if Falon'Din himself had jumped from the mirror to wrap you in the darkness of the other world, and gone you were. I was dragged kicking and screaming from that ruin the second time I entered looking for you, and through the crumbling walls I swear I saw the troubled, pain-filled glint of your blue eyes, a tuft of blonde hair through the vines.
You told me once that you would have searched all of Ferelden for me if you had to; I should have done so for you. You were beside me when I felt my worst, always there to cheer me up. I should have been beside you as we both fell ill from the taint. Through my ups and downs, my worst and my best, only you stood there long enough to make a mark on my life. You were the only person to stay there through everything, and you never wanted a thing in return.
And when you appeared at the camp, more than a year later, Creators, I couldn't live with myself. Seeing you in that pain, watching as you hissed and cried and argued with yourself to resist turning around and clawing my throat out, it hurt. Knowing I could have stopped this; knowing that you could have been stood next to me as a Grey Warden had I only looked a little harder for you, like you would have done for me. I couldn't kill you, not when I thought you were delusional and insane from the taint. But when the hint of deep blue flashed behind the darkness that had taken over your eyes, I knew then that some part of you was still Elven, some part knew that you could never be cured and wanted the death.
You whispered through the darkness and the yells of my companions that you loved me, and it was those words that allowed me to bring my dagger up through your abdomen and cut through the bones of your ribs. Humanity saved you from the worst effects of being a ghoul, but my own humanity tortured me into screaming my heart out from depression, despair and shock. I had killed my best friend. The thought was unbelievable. I realised then that I had loved you for years. I had found my heart all those years ago when I first met you. It only made sense that it died with you.
Love could never save me, not anymore. Not now that I felt that my heart had been ripped out. I refused Morrigan's offer, knowing that when the time came I myself would kill the Archdemon.
And when my sword was plunged into the Archdemons skull, I finally felt peace, knowing that every single emotion in my body would no longer be felt again. I would forever rest in a blissful darkness, never to even be aware of it. My eyes were closed and a smile on my face as the Archdemons soul fought to get into my body, and my own soul did not resist. It had given up long ago with my heart, to rest amongst the other elves who had died and entered the afterlife.
Through the ages I loved you, Tamlen, and through the ages I killed you.