Author's Note: The first part of my (planned) multi-chapter story. This serves as the 'prologue' and explains the origin of the main antagonist. With this, I hope to make her seem more sympathetic. The rest of the story will very definitely go on to be very Cullen/FemQuizzy focussed. The rest of the story will take place approximately 2-3 years after the events of Inquisition, so spoilers for that of course. Italics is thoughts.

Disclaimer: I do not own Dragon age, or anything else Bioware make.

Desire, Without – Prologue

There was a split in her thumb nail that reached to the cuticle. The skin beneath, dirty and sore, was torn open and had bled a thick, viscous blanket of red over her palm. Asha scratched between her fingers, where the red had hardened, to cake and flake off in clumps. At her feet, Lawson busied himself with washing her feet down, pulling a thin sterilised needle through a slash across her calf, scraping the dirt from her skin with a thick bristled scrubbing brush. He'd slathered a pink gel over her wound that pricked each pore with a short, sharp sting. A hundred thousand needles boring into her.

"Did you manage to get her? See her? The Inquisitor?" He looked up at Asha through his thick lashes, his eyes a burnt, mustard yellow. The other stitches were already melting into me, leaving behind blotchy pink welts. "What about your attacker, did you get him?"

"Didn't even get close. To her, that is. That blonde, knife-eared, city trash shot two of my men through the neck, and I got frosted by the Tevinter, but she...the Dalish...just stood next to the Qunari while he smashed people with his axe. Pathetic. Like she needed a bodyguard."

Asha remembered the Inquisition soldier, the boy whose throat she had slit when her party had snuck up upon the camp. She relished the feel of the blood coursing over her fingers, watching the blood bubble burst at his lips while he gurgled out his last breath. She guessed he was no older than eighteen, but couldn't muster up the inclination to care. I didn't send him to war. The Inquisition did. He followed the wrong figurehead.

Asha had been hiding in the shadows at the camp, waiting for the Inquisitor for a hundred and thirty five heartbeats when the first of her men had fallen, his hands grasping the arrow that was protruding from his neck. Blood had erupted from him like a cask of fine wine that had been ruptured. Chaos ensued, enchantments locking her men in place, twisting their bones, blades piercing and slitting skin, cries ringing out. All but three of her unit were struck down, and those that did escape fled with injuries.

Lawson tilted his thick-boned face up towards Asha as his fingers pulled the thread into a knotted loop. The sutchers were slim, tidy, clean, not like so many injuries she'd had to patch up in the field by herself. Lawson smeared the pink gel over the top where tiny jets of smoke issued upwards. In its wake, the cut continued to fade. "You were certain that you could get to her this time. You said...before. You'd planned it so well."

"Well I was wrong. It happens sometimes. Sometimes I'm just...wrong."

The elves, what they did to her, to her brother and sister, how she wanted to trust them, how she made her family trust them and watched as they paid the price. Asha scrunched up her nose at the memory, the weight of one of the Dalish guards crashing down on top of her as his knife grazed the top of her ear. Missed. Raging, with blood gushing in a frothy stream down his chin, he'd thrown himself towards her to try and catch her ankle and had pulled, sliding her over the rough granite floor. She'd felt the sandpaper surface scrub pieces from her skin; her bare hands, her cheeks, the strips of skin above her laced boots where her breaches were being pulled upwards. He turned to her, hands shackling her wrists, and looked straight into her face.

"I know you." He was grinning a sickly smile, blood between his teeth. "Your Father ploughed through our land. Our clan was trapped, scattered. Many died. Most of us. But we have you now. Ishta, was it?"

She tried to kick out but he had jammed a foot down on her ankle. There was a crack, and Asha felt the bones there shift, and hoped it wasn't broken. Pressed so close against her, she could feel the blade at his side bite through the thin cloth of her linen shirt and tear her skin apart.

"It's Asha. Asha Elsley. Lord Elsley is my father."

His fingers strayed higher, one hand still holding her wrists and both feet braced down on her legs. His face was close, too close, breath dry and stinking. Licking his lips he dipped a hand under her shirt and skimmed across the skin there. She squirmed back against the floor, and uselessly wriggled against him. He was big, tall, broad, the largest of any Dalish she'd ever seen. His his hair was long, greying, tied back into a tight braid that fell past his shoulders. His ears were only slightly pointed, barely poking out from between his greasy, stray tresses that fell around his weathered face. She felt her joints grind further into the floor. He laughed. "Hmm, but you're a firm little thing aren't you? And young too. Younger than that sister of yours?" He sank lower against her, lips brushing her ear, fingers digging her flesh as they rose and rose higher. When he spoke, his words were barely a whisper, though every syllable was relished. "And we had that little girl for breakfast."

For that one, stretching moment, she couldn't comprehend what the words meant, each empty sound lost in a sea of sensation. Urgh, my leg, painful! Breath disgusting, body disgusting, hasn't washed in a century. Did they have bath's a century ago? Weight. Crushing bone. Feet numb. Wait...little girl? And only a second after the words had passed his lips she reached forward and bit through his ear.

"AGGGG!" Asha turned, spat the lump of hot flesh out to the side, and pulled at her limbs until there were out of his grasp. He slumped further to the floor, clutching a hand to the hole in his head. Blood spilled out over his fingers. His entire frame was shuddering.

What's a hole in the head between friends?

She slid across the floor to where one of her daggers had slipped from its holster, feeling the cold comfort of steel between her fingers as she held it, aiming it to twist through the air into a spin. She licked her lips, brushed her tongue over her teeth as she stood over him, looking down. She could feel bits of his skin stuck to the roof of her mouth, spongy and sticky against the hard, smooth palate.

"My sister was called Lissa. You'll pay for her especially." He was struggling to hold himself up on one elbow, so Asha quickly bent to unclip the blades from his side and kick them away. She looked him straight in the face, just as he had done with her, and spoke slowly, enunciating each inflection. His bloodshot eyes were seeping with stinging tears.

"I'm sorry about your clan. Really. Lavellan, was it? I had nothing to do with moving them along, or the farming of your land, or killing innocents, but what you, what you all have done here today is fucking inexcusable, and I will not let any of you murdering bastards get away with this." I ran down the mental list of all the Dalish faces I'd seen, not knowing any of the names but just seeing the faces. Left eye tattoo, green eyes, silver hair, lots of freckles, big lips, auburn hair, heart-shaped face. She saw Lissa's eyes, duck-egg blue, always so clear, so perfectly clear in their love for her. She saw them, wide and hungry, as Asha plated up her favourite fish stew, leaving an extra bread roll on the side of her plate. She saw them, dark, bruised, lifeless, as she lay on the floor of that dank shack. And she saw those eyes as Asha spun her knife into the bleeding Dalish's neck, watched the grip, in his long, gloved fingers loosen. He coughed, spluttered a mouthful a saliva down over his chin, then went completely still.

Lawson's hand on her thigh, his blood-splattered fingertips drumming nervously, bought Asha back to the present. She thought she must've had that glazed, dead-eyed stare, because Lawson was scratching at his temple in the way that he always did when he was nervous.

"Asha? What happened?"

"The fight…" We had that little girl for breakfast. "It just reminded me of the fight in the mountains, I suppose. What happened with my family." She sighed, folded her arms, noticing her legs, stark in their paleness, smoothed and cleaned and free of grime. Only a pale red line, a ghost of a shadow, reminded her of the blade that had sliced into her calf. Not like the scars from that day. They could never, ever heal. She stood up, stretched, and patted Lawson on the top of his head. Lawson was a surface-dwelling Dwarf, one who had escaped from Carta thugs after a risky Lyrium smuggle had gone badly wrong. He was wry, but loyal and cunning, and had stayed by Asha's side after finding her wandering the plains after the slaughter in the mountains. They'd stayed together ever since, and he made her laugh when the nightmares threatened to consume her.

"Well, as I know that's not the full story then I'm just not going to even bother asking. You and your secrets, Ash. Humans. You're all the same." He trotted over to the curtains and threw them open so thick, mid-afternoon sunlight spilled through the glass, colouring the threadbare, beige carpet a rich orange. Colours flicked at Asha's vision. She rubbed her eyes, only just realising how tired she felt.

"Lawson, if you don't mind, I think I'm just going to go to bed." Lawson was his 'human' name. She extended version had too many syllables that Asha couldn't pronounce. "I haven't slept in an age."

Asha pulled off her shirt, undershirt, leaving only her grimy underwear beneath. Lawson didn't raise an eyebrow. He'd seen her after her escape, after she'd found the lifeless bodies of those she held dearest, after she'd been bloodied and beaten. Lawson had tasked himself with making her look human again, a task he swore was impossible. He still says that.

"Alright then." She unfastened her undergarments, dropped them to the floor, as Lawson gathered clothes and holsters and stained weapons from about the room. He held out her shirt on the very tip of his index finger, waggled it in front of her. "And I think this one's for the bonfire. No amount of scrubbing could ever get those stains out." Asha mentally grinned at the thought of Lawson on his knees, with a scrubbing brush in hand, as she made her way to her bedroom. Never gonna happen.

She thought of the bluest blue of Lissa's eyes, the arms that had embraced her when thy were children, the nursery rhymes she had hummed to soothe her to sleep. I hoped I'll see her in my dreams tonight.

"Goodnight Ash."

He bowed his head, clutched the pile of ragged clothes tighter, and let the door slam behind him as he dipped out of the doorway. The distinctive sound of footfalls carrying him away signalled that Asha was alone. A moment, an animal gently mewing outside of her window, and the eerie, tinkering laugh of a child in the distance.

Lavellan. The Inquisitor is a Lavellan. Was a Lavellan. The one with the big lips and heart-shaped face. No matter how many humans she has sex with she can't change that, what's inside of her. That poisonous name, that still exists. The rest of her clan might be dead, but as long as she lives, my family can be avenged.

Asha sighed, closed her curtains, and headed into her fabric cocoon.