A/N: This was inspired by a comic on tumblr by ankalime. You can find the comic here: post/146911224525/the-story-of-the-battle-of-river-dane-was-one-of
There were few books in the Tabris household as Anaba grew up. Each one, as a result, was treasured and loved and cared for read many, many times. Anaba grew up holding these stories close to her heart, keeping them there. Her favorite was the story of the Hero of River Dane. Most nights, she made her father sit with her and read her the story, even after she knew the story by heart. The girl, it seemed, had found the first person she looked up to.
Perhaps it was because Loghain Mac Tir was the poor son of a poor farmer, and Anaba was the poor daughter of a poor alienage elf, and she wanted to believe that she, too, could be a hero that did great and wonderful things. Like Loghain Mac Tir, and like Adaia Tabris, Anaba wanted to grow up to be fierce and proud and untouchable. Her mother could see this, a soft smile on her face when she looked at her daughter, and she offered to train her and teach her what she knew. When Anaba finally hit her mother with the flat edge of the wooden practice sword, and when she finally blocked a blow in time with the hard sheet of metal serving as a shield, Anaba thought of the Hero of River Dane.
"Do you think I could ever been like him, Mama?" she asked once, after a long day of training when they sat by the fire with hot mugs of weak elfroot tea and plenty of matching bruises. Her mother smiles and pulls her close, smelling like sweat and leather and the polish she used on her armor.
"One day, little one, you can be anything you want to be," her mother answered, Anaba felt a vicious proudness rise up inside of her. Her mother never handed out idle compliments, never told her anything but the truth.
"Then I'm going to be a hero one day, Mama, just like him and just like you!" Anaba says, and Adaia looks down at her daughter with her scraped knees, messy pigtails, and dirt-smeared face, and she did not doubt that one day her child would do great and wonderful things as a hero.
When Adaia Tabris was killed, it took Soris and Shianna and Cyrion all to hold Anaba back long enough to remove her sword and her shield from her reach. "Think this through, cousin," Soris pleaded, and Anaba's breath came in short, ragged, angry pants, a snarl twisting her face.
"I should kill them! They need to pay for what they did!" she hisses, and she nearly twisted out of Soris' grip, very nearly got her wish to go after the humans with nothing but her fists and her rage and her grief, terrible and all-consuming.
"Anaba! Think this through! If you go after them now, they'll kill you like they killed her, and then where will be?" Soris said, and this time Anaba stopped writhing, her brown hair hanging limply in front of her eyes.
"I wasn't good enough to protect her. I should at least be good enough to avenge her," Anaba answered, and her voice was hoarse from yelling and her eyes were wild and Soris thought he understood.
"That's what a hero would do, isn't it?" he asked, his voice unbearably soft and gentle, and Anaba meet his eyes, each of them realizing in the space of a breath that Anaba is doing this because she feels like she must.
"Yeah. Yeah, I guess it is what a hero would do," she muttered, and all the fight left her in a great big sigh.
"Most of them would, cousin. But we're elves in a human city, and maybe surviving is enough. We don't get to be heroes," Soris told her, and Anaba shook her hair out of her eyes, dirty and tangled as it was, but there was a fierceness that lingered that could not be taken.
"Most of us don't. But I will. One day. I promised her," Anaba said, and it has the hard finality of a promise.
Years later, Duncan arrives, and Anaba finally becomes the hero she had always wanted to be, a title given to her through a tide of blood.
She travels from Denerim to Ostagar, and there she learns the meaning of duty and the meaning of honor. She survives the Joining through sheer determination, and it is in her first battle that she learns that hero is just another word for mourner because all that this has been so far was blood and sweat and loss and taint and Anaba wonders how she could have ever thought she wanted this.
She mourns, and she endures.
A pretty witch follows them to Lothering from the swamp, and a pretty sister in Lothering that asks to join them. A stern and angry Qunari stands in a cage, too, and Anaba thinks out of all the people she has met, she can see more of herself in this Qunari. She frees him from the cage and she invites him to join them. Later, there is a kind and gentle mage that reminds Anaba of some of the elders in the alienage, and another elf who hides his sadness behind lewd jokes, and a dwarf who finds his solace in the bottom of a tankard. She wonders if any of them are not frail and broken things.
Her hard and broken edges fit perfectly against Leliana's softness, and Anaba learns through the pretty bard that sometimes loss doesn't have to result in the hard and angry person that she has become. There is power in softness, too, it seems, and slowly Anaba learns how to fall in love, the messy and tangled thing that it is.
Leliana sings songs of great heroes and tells the tales of great legends, because she knows Anaba's fascination with them. "Do you think I'll ever be a hero?" Anaba asks one night as they lay curled together under the stars, the fire crackling beside them. Leliana's answering smile is a bright thing, full of warmth and love.
"I think you're already a hero, my love," she answers, and presses soft kisses to the hard line of Anaba's jaw. The elf smiles as she wonders how everything has managed to come together perfectly enough that she managed to find herself here, in the right place at the right time with the right person who seems to understand her.
She thinks about the alienage she left behind, and she thinks about Nelaros and the blood staining the tiles. She wonders what would have happened if he hadn't died, if their marriage would have been a happy one. In the end, she decides that focusing on could-have-beens is not good enough for her anymore.
Anaba and Anora made quite the team, it seemed. In the end, however, Anaba is alone when she stands over Loghain, her sword at his throat and her hand shaking. "Go ahead and finish him. Make him pay for what he did," Alistair snarls from somewhere in the crowd, but Anaba takes another look at the defeated man at her feet, and she thinks of that moment so many years ago by the fire with her mother when she had promised that she would be a hero.
She lowers her sword and she and Loghain stare at each other for a several agonizing seconds.
"Join us," she says, instead, and her eyes are bright for the first time since Adaia Tabris was murdered. "Join the Wardens." Murmurs of shock ripple around the room, and her gaze falls on Riordan. She can see his silent approval as he gives her a nod.
"How could you spare him?" Alistair demands, betrayal shrill in his voice. She can see the same question burning in Loghain's eyes, and instead of answering Alistair, she answers the Hero of River Dane.
"You made me want to be a hero. I'm not going to betray that," she says, instead of whatever bullshit excuse she could have said about duty and honor, and her breathing is ragged. There is an ache in her chest, but it's a good ache, she thinks. Sometimes, being a hero means showing mercy, too.
In the end, she convinces Alistair to marry Anora.
"It is an interesting choice. How did you make it?" Eamon asks her, later, when there is no one in the study but the two of them.
"You humans act like blood is all, but it isn't always enough," she answers, a dry laugh escaping her cracked lips. Eamon does not question her again.
"I am proud to stand beside you,my friend," Loghain says, just before they head into Fort Drakon, where the end of whatever this has been lies ahead. Anaba thinks of Morrigan and the sacrifice her friend made, and she wonders if she could have done the same thing.
"I'm surprised. You've spent the entire Blight going against me," Anaba says, but there is amusement glittering in the depths of her brown eyes, an easy camaraderie between them.
"Let's just say I've still got a few lessons to learn about what it means to be a hero," he says, and he ruffles her hair. She feels, for a moment, like she is a child again, sitting beside the fire with her mother. She nudges Loghain, laughing, and when they go to face the archdemon, death pressing against them from all sides, Anaba's heart feels the lightest it has since her mother died. Heroes, it seem, are made out of determination and grief and loss and love and Anaba has all of these in spades.