Marni was eight years old when the slavers came to Darktown. She was born to the skyless boundedness of walls and filth, in a place that she came to understand as beneath the world, rather than a part of it. The people of Kirkwall treaded over her, dumped their waste into rivulets of filth that flowed out of their sight and into hers. Out of sight: that was how the people of Kirkwall preferred their waste, and it was how they preferred Marni and others like her; the Forgotten. When she would look back on her early life, that was what she would call the people pushed out of the light and out of sight into the shadows of Darktown.
Mostly elves, refugees, and criminals, the Forgotten served an important function in Kirkwall: they allowed those who lived above to understand themselves as being above. From what Marni could tell, you couldn't have an "above" without a "beneath," so it was probably a great comfort to people living in Lowtown and Hightown to have the Forgotten underneath them as constant, albeit invisible, assurance of their relative status. Marni also suspected that there might be some sense of affinity gained for the people of Kirkwall in their joint, unspoken agreement to forget about the Forgotten, the same way they forgot about their waste, the same way Marni and her sister, Roe, agreed to forget about their father.
Marni's memory of her father was a blur, and refusing to try to recall the details of his face or voice was, in her mind, an act of love for her sister who'd had to say to Marni only once that they should forget him before she set about the task. Forgetting him wasn't the slow passive process of fading memories. It was active. She consciously blurred his face and garbled his voice and mixed up the letters of his name whenever she thought of him until she was quite sure that she wouldn't know him even if he did show up, which he probably wouldn't. To her mother, Marni applied the opposite practice, consciously sharpening every detail of her memory of Pelar until the image Marni had of her in her mind's eye was clearer than anything the senses could produce.
It was sometimes hard to believe that, as clear and detailed and lively as Marni's memory of her mother was, imagination could not give her life. Pelar was gone. Father was gone too, but alive, and no matter how actively Marni blurred his face and garbled his voice, she could not smudge him out of the world any more than she could will Pelar back into it. The injustice of these facts were the seeds of Marni's anger, a quality that Roe often chastised in her, urging her to accept their mother's death, their father's life, and their place beneath. But Marni protected and fostered her anger, and delighted in imagining it one day sprouting out of her chest like a beautiful twisted tree bearing angry red fruit that would poison or nourish anyone who ate it, depending on her whim. As far as Marni could see, acceptance—the opposite of anger—could never nourish or poison anyone, and that made it useless.
Sometimes to distract herself from the persistent pangs of hunger, Marni would watch the Forgotten and try to determine from the way they moved, sat, and spoke, who, like Roe, believed in acceptance, and who, like Marni, believed in anger. She felt instant affinity for anyone who looked like they might be hiding anger seeds in their hearts. They were part of a secret fraternity of the outraged, those who would not be quiet or gracious, would not smile on command, and would not let things go, those who would insist on being seen and remembered, even when it wasn't wise. This was what first drew her to Anders.
Anders was a human and a man, which usually put Marni on edge. Men, particularly human men, were dangerous; they saw elven girls as potential victims, easy targets to sate their perverse appetites and to assure themselves that, despite their place beneath the world, at least there was still someone they could put beneath them. But Anders was different. Like Marni, his anger bent toward goodness. When Marni was very young and was near death from a fever and a cough that rattled in her lungs, Pelar had brought her to Anders who tended her for three days with a quiet compassion that Marni had only felt from her mother and sister otherwise. He healed all the Forgotten with that quiet and nurturing compassion, asking for nothing in return.
However, Marni had also seen him burn like a bright blue flame, filled with rage so powerful that she had feared (and maybe hoped a little) that his anger would tear free from his skin, like maggot's bursting through the belly of a dead mouse. But once the Templars who had caused his rage to blossom in such bright, beautiful fullness, were dead at his feet, the flame quieted, and he was Anders the healer again.
It was witnessing this scene that inspired Marni to attach herself to Anders. While Marni's anger unchecked would get her scolded, kicked, or worse, Anders had made the world bend, however briefly, to recognize his rage as consequential. While Roe assured her that Anders' power came from magic, not anger, and she could never learn to do what he did, Marni saw more. So at the age of seven, she told Anders that she wanted to be a healer and would do any chores he needed if he would just teach her a little about potions and tending injuries. But it was not really the healer from whom she wanted to learn. It was to Anders' anger she apprenticed herself, determined to learn to summon that flame inside and see the world bend.
Anders looked down at the dainty child, rubbing the stubble of his jaw thoughtfully. Marni appreciated the fact that he did not laugh at her as Roe had told her he would, though she thought she saw bemusement play on his twitching lips. After an impossibly long silence, Anders finally said, "I suppose I could use a hand around here." And so began her apprenticeship.
For almost a year, Marni helped Anders around his clinic, boiling water, drying herbs, and cleaning bedding, among other duties. He taught her to read a little so she could properly fetch bottles of this-and-that, and he'd give her money and food enough for her and Roe to live but not so much to make them targets for the desperate who might view the children as an easy mark. Every day, Marni would set about her work in the clinic, watching Anders with eager anticipation to catch a glimpse of his pure bright anger. But, much to Marni's daily disappointment, in the clinic he was always the picture of calm. Yes the anger was there, nestled deep in his heart, shuddering through his tense voice, however he never allowed it to bloom as he had when she'd seen him fight the Templars. Not until the day the slavers came.
Marni was putting fresh bedding on the clinic cots while Anders was mixing a pain-numbing salve when the sound of screams and scuffling reached them from outside. Marni dropped the bedding and pulled the tiny knife she used to skewer rats from her boot, prepared to run or fight.
Frowning, Anders looked to the entrance of the clinic and grabbed his nearby staff. "Stay here, Marni," he said cautiously before walking out the door with wide purposeful strides.
Marni, sensing the possibility that she might at last get to witness Anders aflame with anger again, waited only long enough that she could be sure he was far enough ahead that he wouldn't immediately grab her and lock her in the clinic. Once she heard his footfalls pad down the nearby stairs, she snuck through the clinic door to track behind her teacher.
Marni followed the screams on tip toe, rounding the corner to see several armed human's wearing robes and pointy hoods and two elves, either dead or unconscious, piled in a heap against the wall. One pointy-hooded human held the wrist of a third elf with her back to Marni. The elf struggled to get away with no results, save the sadistic laughter of her captor who took some twisted pleasure in her pointless struggle. Bystanders were busy accepting the scene that was playing out in front of them, no doubt already concluding that intervening would accomplish nothing, and no one but Anders and another rage-filled elf Marni knew as Jenny seemed to be doing anything to prevent the pointies from taking the elves.
"Let them go!" Jenny shouted, a dagger at the ready. Anders staff was also poised for a fight, but the fire of his anger was still controlled and concealed.
The elf being wrangled by the slaver made a trembling and futile attempt to pull away and turned her body briefly to face Marni in the process. Marni's blood lit at the sight of her sister's panicked face, her dark skin ashen with terror. "Roe!" Marni screamed as she ran full speed toward the man restraining her sister, tiny pin-knife clenched tightly in her small fist.
Anders paled at the sound of her voice, "Marni, no!" he shouted, as he lunged to intercept her. He tried to grab her arm as she deftly evaded him in her bee-line for the slaver restraining her sister. Before the man had even noticed the small girl running at him, Marnie stabbed her pin knife deep into his thigh.
The man screamed and released Roe who ran away stumbling and sobbing without a backward glance. Perhaps Roe had expected Marni to be right behind her, or maybe fear clouded all other thoughts and feelings with the desperate drive for survival. Marni's own escape blocked by the quickly closing throng of human, she was forced to watch as Roe rounding the corner and left her sight just as another pointy-hooded man grabbed Marni from behind, pinning her arms to her side and lifted her squirming and kicking body off the ground.
Whatever needling fear Marni felt faded the second her sister was out of her sight and her own chance of escape was closed off. Anger burned hot within her as she snapped her teeth, snarling at the pointies. Her entire soul and body clawed for any part of her enemies that might dare wander within her reach.
"I'm going to enjoy breaking that little bitch," said the man who'd gotten the business end of her knife as he pressed his hand to stymie the bleeding of his thigh.
"You try it and I'll put the knife right through your cock next time!" Marni shouted, delighting in the slight reddening of his cheeks at her words.
As Marni grinned venomously at her victim, a deep thundering voice sounded to her left that sent a thrill through her she'd only felt once before. "Release her, Slaver! Or I will kill every last one of you!" Ander's shouted, his voice and form blooming in a blaze of blue rage. Bystanders screamed and ran, more afraid of the monstrous change in Anders than the slavers. But to Marni the cracked and burning form of her friend was a longed for glimpse at the ideal potential of rage in human form, all that she desperately wished to become.
"And what exactly are you supposed to be?" asked one of the slavers dryly.
"I am Justice, and you will not have this child!" Anders boomed.
Justice. The word worked its way under Marni's skin. This blazing anger that threatened to consume anything it touched was justice. She'd heard the word before, usually said in hushed whispers between Anders and his friends, and occasionally by people in Darktown who shook their heads in resignation saying "there is no justice." But its full meaning had alluded her. Now she felt its effect, her own skin prickling and the grip of the man who restrained her tightening slightly as Marni squirmed and whooped. "Justice," spoken by a transformed Anders, seemed as much a name as a promise; this was Justice, and there would be justice. It was beautiful and terrifying, sublime in its intensity.
The slavers exchanged curious looks between them. The woman with the pointiest hat waved her hand dismissively. "Marcus, take the two there. Lycus, bring the noisy whelp. The rest of you, hold off… whatever that is," she said gesturing in Anders' direction.
Anders roared with a bellow that rang through Marni's entire being and etched itself upon her heart. Lycus turned from Anders with Marni trapped in his arms, so she could only listen and not watch as her teacher, this master of perfect anger, tore into the men who were ill-fated to die while the rest made their escape with Marni and the others in tow.
Marni didn't fault Anders for not saving her. He'd made a greater effort to help her than the Maker had ever made on behalf of his followers. He had done more than her sister. On the march to the coast, she focused her attention on remembering Anders in perfect detail, both the nurturing healer and the blazing wrath of Justice. In her heart, she thought she felt the rage tree begin to sprout.
Author's Note: This fic is something of a sequel/parallel story to my novel Sorrow and Solace, an angsty Solas/Lavellan romance/epic taking place after Inquisition. I will try not to confuse by relying too much on Sorrow and Solace, but I hope to engage with some stuff I left dangling in that fic, so if you're a completionist or a romantic, you might like to give that fic a read before getting too deep into this one. The events in this chapter take place just before the end of DAII (middle of act III).