So, I just finished playing DA: I and I wanted to change up from my usual Mass Effect stuff and write a bit for this fandom. To those who are familiar with my other work, this story will be in the vein of something like the Other Side: a series of short pieces running parallel to the game and expanding on off-screen moments and character thoughts. Warning: there will be femslash smut as well as spoilers for all three Dragon Age games.
"What the fuck am I supposed to do now?"
Herah Adaar slumped down, taking a seat on the low wall next to Varric's tent and burying her face in her powerful hands. Even seated, she remained taller than the dwarf, but right then, she wished their roles could be reversed. She'd get to be the easily over-looked jester and Varric, well, he could take a shot at being whatever it was that people thought she was.
"What do you mean, Horns?" From somebody else, the nick-name could have seemed mean-spirited, but even though they hadn't known each other very long, Herah could tell that wasn't his way. Unlike most of the people here at Haven, Varric knew what it was like to be marked as an outsider by your appearance.
"I mean, what am I going to do about this?" She held up her hand and the green energy of the mark sparked into existence, her body tingling as the electricity ran up and down it's length. "Or them?" She swiveled her head, indicating the people that filled the growing camp: soldiers and refugees, farmers and spies, all of them looking to her for answers she didn't have.
"They think that Andraste gave me this thing. That I'm her Herald or something. That I'm going to save all of them from that…" She tiled her horned head up, looking at the massive, angry hole that rent the sky above them.
"You need a hero to fix that. Not somebody like me. I'm…" She sighed heavily. "You know what I am, Varric? I'm a mercenary. You need something guarded, some bandits run off your land, that's what I'm good at." A rueful grin appeared on her face and she laughed bitterly. "All I want at the end of the day is my head on my shoulders and some coins in my pocket. To find someplace where I can have a few drinks, play a few hands of Wicked Grace, and maybe meet a nice tavern maid who wants a girl like me to share her bed for a little while. And I'm supposed to be the one who saves the world?"
The dwarf nodded, seemingly unperturbed by her rant. "Well, what do you think somebody who does that looks like?", he asked
She threw up her hands in frustration. She suspected the question was a trap, but it was one who's outlines she couldn't quite see yet. "I don't know," she replied with a shrug. "Like the Hero of Ferelden maybe. Somebody who throws lightning out of her fingers and kills Archdemons. Not some qunari merc with a couple of knives. Most people see someone who looks like me, they run, or hide, or call me a cow. And now I'm supposed to be their messiah? Does that make any sense to you?"
"Can't say I ever met the Hero of Ferelden," Varric admitted. "If you want to hear the stories about her, you'll have to ask Liliana. Rumor around the campfires is that they used to be close. But I knew somebody else that people called a hero and let me tell you, they're a lot more complicated up close. Don't get me wrong, Horns, Hawke definitely knew her business in a fight, but she didn't exactly start out as the Champion of Kirkwall you hear about in all the tales. When I met her, she was just another refugee from Lothering with barely two silvers to rub together, and those were in the process of being stolen. Her, and her mom, and her brother were all living in this hovel in Lowtown that belonged to her cheat of an uncle, and she was doing odd jobs for some smuggler. A year later, she's set up in a mansion in Hightown, and a few more after that, she's got a statue of herself in the middle of town."
"And a few years after that, the city's a smoking wreck and Hawke's on the run from the Templers. Not exactly an encouraging example right now." Herah had never been there herself, but everyone knew the stories about Kirkwall: how a rogue mage destroyed the Chantry and killed the Grand Cleric, how Hawke had fought to defend the rest of the Circle from Knight-Commander Meredith's wrath, how the war that followed had engulfed half of Thedas.
"Okay, things got a little ugly there at the end," Varric admitted. "But that wasn't Hawke's fault. She saved the city from a qunari attack, killed demons, hunted down crazy necromancers, and did about a hundred other things even I couldn't make up. Sure, she could do a bit of the lightning throwing, but you've got that trick with your hand going for you instead. Sort of evens out, I suppose. My point is, heroes don't always look like heroes at the start of the tale. It's the becoming that makes for a good story."
Herah got to her feet, stretching her long legs. She had to admit that Varric had a point, but she still wasn't entirely sold yet. "Does it matter that I don't know if I can do it?", she asked. "That I don't even know if I believe in Andraste, let alone that she made me her Herald?"
"Why should it?", the dwarf asked with a wry smile. "Most of my best stories, I don't believe either."