Author's note. DARKFIC - warnings for nudity, physical abuse, and dub-con penetration in a dream setting. If any of the above is likely to offend you, please stop reading now. Thank you. There is a firm nod to Robert Heinlein here in Cauthrien's description of training in Maric's Shield, it appears that the formation of a top army unit has never changed very much, past, present or alien future. This is actually a reworking of something I wrote several years ago, it was quite spooky how well it fitted Ser Cauthrien and the DA setting. It is set roughly seven or eight years before the events of Dragon Age, and is not part of the Hourglass canon, although nothing in it is directly contradictory to that story.

Grateful thanks to my two beta readers Shakespira and Josie Lange, without whose support I probably would never have found the guts to publish this at all :)

Cauthrien speaks

It's a talk I give every batch of new recruits to Maric's Shield. Breaking, I say. We call the first two months breaking. No matter which guard unit you came from, no matter what you were, no matter what your previous experience was, we will break you. We will break your will, your purpose; we will make you wonder why you ever came here. Maric's Shield does not take raw recruits; you are good soldiers in your own right or you wouldn't be here. That makes no difference, I say, we will still break you. And when we have broken you, we will rebuild you, stronger than you ever were. But the breaking comes first.

In the course of those two months, we aim to run out of the unit roughly three quarters of each recruit unit. It has to be done. We find the ones who don't have the guts for this early, we get rid of the ones who are here with romantic notions. The Teyrn once said if we hadn't managed to get every recruit at some point in the first week either crying for his mother or trying to take a swing at his sergeant, then we weren't doing our job, and he'd get a better bunch of sergeants. But he hasn't tried to replace us yet, so we must be doing the job right.

We find everything you try to hide from us, every shield you cling to, every shred of pride. That's our job, and we're good at it. If you call me a sadistic bitch, then I know you're halfway there. If you go for me with a dagger, you're three quarters of the way there. You won't connect. Nobody ever does. The Teyrn told us if we were ever sloppy enough to let a recruit land something on us when that moment came, be it punch or dagger, then when he flogged the recruit for it, he'd string the sergeant concerned up with the recruit and give them a dozen when he finished for incompetence. It happened to me once. It never happens to any of us more than once.

We will break you, I tell them. If your sergeants don't manage it, your captains will. If your captains don't do it, the Teyrn will. When you start having the nightmares that wake you up screaming, you're almost there. We will break you, and we will remake you. And we who are Maric's Shield are the living proof that this works, and that it is necessary. Because on the battlefield, nothing breaks us. It cannot. It is already too late.

And the ones who survive it, who come through, I see them look at me and wonder - how, when, what? What broke me? Oh, if they only knew. I sometimes think I ought to add a fourth line to that litany. If the Teyrn doesn't break you, then you will break you. And if you let it get to that point, you've lost any chance of doing any of it the easy way. If there indeed is an easy way. I wouldn't know. I've never done anything the easy way in my life.

Dreams. They say if you dream of your death, you don't wake. So dreams can be more than just a drift into the Fade and a drift out of it again. But if what you dream of is the death of part of you? And its resurrection? Then is the dreamer who returns to the waking lands the same one who fell asleep? Maker only knows what the Chantry would teach about this. This is probably a brand new heresy that they haven't even thought of yet. And that night, that dream...

I don't know I am dreaming at first, as far as I am concerned I am just standing outside the door. Not even sure why I'm nervous. I've been summoned here before, it's only my commanding officer I'm seeing, it's not like it's anything unusual. A final peek at the rather murky reflection in the silverite shield behind the door - yes, armour polished, leathers oiled, boots shining. Can't see anything there that even the most picky sergeant major ought to get upset about, and after all it isn't a senior sergeant I'm going to see, it's a captain who probably wouldn't even notice if my kit looked like I'd just crawled in from three weeks in the field. My pride won't let me do that though. It has to look right.

The first inkling I get that something is not as it seems, is when I get no answer to the tap on the door. This isn't right. Always before when I've been called here, I've been called straight in. Not today. I tap again. Nothing. Then finally I try the door handle and it opens. So with a shrug I walk into the room - and that's where it all starts to be terribly wrong. I know what this room is supposed to be like, and this isn't it. It should be light, airy, with tall undraped windows, a desk set backing onto the windows, rushes on the floor. Instead it's dark, and this makes no sense at all because is should be broad daylight. The windows are blank, black, nothing to see outside them. There's no rushes, I'm walking on polished boards. But the desk's there, and someone's behind the desk, only I can't see who he is. I don't even know how I know it's a man. But it is.

Training and instinct take over. I march to the desk, crash to attention, salute. "Sergeant Eilana Cauthrien reporting, ser." This is wrong too. My rank is correct, but that name isn't mine...and yet in some odd way it is mine, just as a reflection in clouded glass both is and isn't your own face. I shake my head almost as if to try to dispel an illusion. Nothing changes.

"You won't get rid of it that way." The voice behind the desk is one that I've never heard with my waking ears, and yet I know who it is.

"What's happening to me?" I ask. Not expecting an answer.

"You're dreaming." The reply has a hint of laughter in it. "Asleep and dreaming. Of course, you don't have to believe this. But ask yourself this - who are you?"

Who am I? The question runs through my head. I look down at myself. The kit's wrong, that isn't the heraldry of Maric's Shield, those aren't the Gwaren wyverns on my pauldrons. I don't even recognise where those white horses now replacing them are from. Then there's that name I gave that isn't my own. And yet is my own.

"I don't know who I am." The words seem to come without my wishing to say that.

The man's voice has hardened. "Then what are you, if you don't know who?"

This question clearly is awaiting an answer. I open my mouth to answer, close it again. "I am a sergeant of Maric's Shield." This plainly isn't enough. "I am a dominant woman, who never let anyone else run her life." Also true, and still not enough. "I am a servant who never found a master who would accept the service." And I don't know where that came from...

"Now perhaps we're getting closer to the truth." Again, there's amusement in the voice and a touch of menace. "But perhaps that isn't what you wanted anyway. Perhaps if you ever found that master you'd be terrified, you'd run."

I open my mouth to deny this, pause. After all, I've spent a lot of my life running away from one thing or another. But...did I do that in this life? Because I now seem to have accepted that this is indeed a dream, and whoever I am here is not who I will be again when my eyes open on a waking world that's predictable, normal, safe. I don't entirely know who or what I am here, but one thing is clear to me. This moment will never come again. I will never again be who I am now. I may not even remember any of it when I wake. So all that is left to me here is honesty.

"How do I address you?" My voice is strange to me, harsh.

"How would you have addressed the man you expected to see when you walked into this room?"

Another question, but it gives me the answer I needed. "Then, ser, the answer to the earlier question is no. If I'd ever found him, I wouldn't have run away."

"Brave words." The voice is sarcastic. "Easy to say from a position of safety, when you know that the problem is never going to arise. But that's not who you are here, and there's no safety net here, only truth. So, Sergeant, here, now, alone, if you have found what you say you never found, will you run?"

"No, ser."

A soft chuckle, he seems to find this amusing. "Even if I tell you now, that you're going to give me your dignity, your pride, yourself...and then your life?" I half see his hand move, gesturing towards the door. "You can still walk out of that door, you know. It isn't locked. I don't know what dream is behind it, but that's a gamble you'll have to take."

I pause. He's left me the choice - as he says, there's no guarantee of what's behind the door, but there's a chance of safety. Whereas here...he's told me plainly what's going to happen. But if I run now...I'll never know what might have been. The same wave doesn't come twice, the same chance isn't offered a second time. I straighten my back again. "No, ser. I'm not going to run away. Not this time."

"Very well." There's a sense of movement as he comes out from behind the desk - why, why can't I look him in the face? See what he looks like, who he is? But my eyes are fixed forward in the 'eyes-front' position, staring at the wall ahead of me. He's behind me now, close enough to touch, my skin is crawling with the ancient fear of the unknown predator. "Kneel"

My knees have hit the floor so fast at that command it's like it was conditioned. Kneeling up, back straight, there's a smell of beeswax that must be polish from the wood of the desk, there's a tiny pebble under one of my knees which ought to actually be painful except that I can hardly feel it. Nothing seems to matter at the moment, except to listen.

A hand lifts the helm from my head and sets it on the desk in front of my eyes, turned towards me so the badge is in my line of vision. I struggle to try to see what the badge is, somehow there's this odd feeling that if I could identify it, it would answer so many questions. That helm is the grey iron of my own unit, somehow I've carried that through into the dream. But the badge...that's a horse...but not a horse, it's the White Horse of Highever, that ancient carving in the chalk cliff that's thousands of years old. Does any regiment use that badge? I can't remember, can't think... my eyes are fixed on it. It doesn't even look like a horse, really, I remember thinking that when I saw the carving itself, once, and then I remember reading something someone said about it once. 'It's not what a horse looks like, it's what a horse is'. Is that what this means then? That who I am here, is not what I appear to be in a waking world...but who I am, at some far deeper level?

I take a deep breath. A hand behind me is currently untying the tight bun my hair is in, and some job he's going to have of that, with the thousand hairpins that are keeping it in place. "May I ask questions, ser, or do you want me to remain silent?"

"You can always ask questions. I'm not promising to answer them. And the ones I answer, you might have been more comfortable not knowing the answers to"

Not the most enlightening of answers, but the permission's there. "So - why can't I look you in the face?"

"Because you don't want to." The voice holds amusement now. "At some level, you're happier not looking. And because your mind's controlling what's happening here, you can't raise your eyes."

I think about this for a minute. "Then, are you who I think you are?"

"No." He's unwound the bun at last, my hair's spilling loose over my shoulders, the hairpins and bands are set on the desk. "And yes. It isn't a simple answer. I am a construct that you have made, an aspect of yourself. Talking to yourself isn't a sign of madness in a dream, you know, just a fact. I am no demon, nor am I exactly who I might be if you saw me with your waking eyes."

Great. I can't even lie to myself in dreams now, and none of this has been remotely comforting. Though I suppose that comfort isn't what I was looking for anyway, assuming that I am dreaming, that my own mind is doing this to me.

"Strip"

I'd expected this command earlier really. Carefully I stand up, stiff from the forced position, unfasten my polished black leather boots, set them aside, take off the armour I fought so hard for the right to wear. Even now, I can't quite make myself throw them aside - I lay them carefully on a chair. Socks in the boots. Smallclothes on the chair arm. Normally...well, in another world, what might have been normally...I'd be blushing, ashamed again, wishing frantically that I was sixteen again, with a young body, slender, unscarred, unmarked...and yet none of that's important now. One lesson is learned. Service is important. Dignity is not. I am who I am...and all I can ever offer is what I am. Then I drop to my knees again in front of the desk, drawing shoulders back, pulling abdomen in, pushing chest forward, the head raised as if on parade. I haven't bowed my head . I have no reason to be ashamed of who I am, or what is done to me. Somehow I've learned that much.

The hand lightly touches my loose hair and chuckles at the shiver. "So much for dignity. Now, you will yield me your pride. What are you proud of?"

It's hard to think of an answer to this. Naked, vulnerable. Maybe the answer is just to stop thinking. My head bows to the caress and I reply, "I'm proud of what I can give, of what I can endure."

"So we're going for honesty now. Good." The voice hardens. "Stand up. Brace yourself over the desk. Don't make me waste time tying you down."

I'm on my feet almost before he's finished speaking. Bowed forward, legs spread to brace myself, gripping the corners of the desk for balance with my back laid flat like an offering on an altar to some strange god. Something is laid across my back, lightly, it's a cane of some kind. "You will not speak, you will not cry out, you will not move in any way. Do you understand me, Sergeant?"

"Yes, ser." My voice is very soft.

As the first stroke falls, it's hard not to scream immediately. There is no warmup to this, it's not an erotic beating, just slashes falling like fire across the skin of my back, determined only to create the maximum of agony with the minimum of fuss. As far as I can judge, most of the strokes are drawing blood, quite deliberately. There is no pace to them, so I cannot brace myself, there is no way to predict where the next stroke will fall, they are randomly covering arms, shoulders, back, buttocks, legs. If he'd bound me I would at least have had something to strain against to hold the position, here I've only got the old mind-tricks to keep myself there, telling myself silently that I'll endure ten more before making a cry, then another ten, then another ten...fooling mind and body that there's an end in sight.

Then suddenly I do cry out, and at first I don't even recognise the cry as having come from my own throat. He's struck low, between my legs, not on my sex, but slashing into the soft skin on the inner thighs where buttocks and legs join, two swift strokes that have marked both legs. I bite down on my lip but it's too late, the sound is out. The beating pauses. A finger trails down my back then is brought round to my mouth, and forced between my lips so I am compelled to taste the blood on it. "That, Sergeant, is the taste of failure. Learn it. One simple order and you have already disobeyed. But the lesson isn't over" The beating resumes, and I've bitten down hard again on my lip, I no longer know whether the blood I'm tasting is from his finger or I've drawn blood with my bite. The wash of shame is ripping through my body, couldn't I just have held on that bit longer, couldn't I have choked back that cry somehow, couldn't I...

I'm hardly feeling the blows now, when they pause again I just lie there, panting. The cane is laid down and something else is shown to me - a knife. Plain, not ornamented, it's the boot knife that Maric's Shield carry, used to kill enemy sentries when a cry can't be risked, blade blackened to destroy the reflection. "I'm going to push this up into you" he says, and I feel myself brace again at the words. "You're wet, and open, you'll welcome your own mutilation. Or death perhaps, if you're lucky, it depends what it cuts into. If you're not lucky, you'll live a long time like this. Broken. Is that what you want?"

For the first time now, I'm afraid. Truly afraid. If this is a dream, it's gone well over the border into nightmare. And the battle within me is raging...this is another test, he's waiting to see if I'm going to fail again, I've already cried out, now he wants to try to force me to speak. I'm trembling uncontrollably, and it isn't all muscle tension. But if I don't speak, and he does this... Something trickles down my cheek and I realise it's a tear, closely followed by another one. I didn't even realise I'd started crying. I have no idea when that happened. "No"

"No - what?" The voice is harsh. Something is touching my labia, it's hard, cold.

"No ser." The tears are clear in my voice now. "It isn't what I want."

"Then beg me." The voice hasn't softened in any way. "Know that you've failed again, and beg me to spare you."

I don't know what's more unbearable, the physical pain, the fear, the shame of failure, or the knowledge that after all my belief in my own strength, I'm going to do just that. "I beg you, ser. Please, please don't do this to me. Please make use of me in any way you wish...but don't push that knife inside me" I keep thinking there ought to be a better way to say it, but any attempt at better wording is lost in the urgent need to be clear. "Please..." my sobs are trailing off into silence.

I hear him laugh. The pressure increases, and then suddenly I feel it slide into me, ice cold, hard, metallic, and I scream...and yet my body has realised something that my mind has not. He's reversed the knife, what he's forced into me isn't the blade, but the hilt - and suddenly an orgasm has struck through me, brutally, my body twisting and closing against the intrusion. My teeth are clenched into my lower lip, but whimpers are coming from me whether I want them to or not, and I'm choking on my own tears, trying to hold back the sobs, swallow them, stop them somehow... And then it's gone. The hilt is pulled out of me, and without seeing, I can tell he's stepped away from me and is just watching me.

"There goes your pride, Sergeant." The voice is almost gentle, and it provokes a bout of fresh weeping. "Ground into the dust. I've watched you cry, I've heard you scream, I've listened to you beg for mercy because what I wanted to do to you was unbearable." Somehow he's chuckling, amused. "And quite a display it all was, I must say. I could have broken you more easily with mind games than with physical pain, but your endurance of physical abuse was what you were proudest of. And it's gone. Given up to me. Do you regret the loss?"

I've almost cried myself into silence now, but my mind is racing. He'd have broken me one way or another, he's just made that quite clear. What has he actually done to me? Only made me prove to myself that despite my inverted pride in not protecting myself, that there is something that I will say 'enough' to. In some ways, I've surrendered my body so many times...but this once, I've surrendered my mind. Failed, showed weakness - but was there ever another time that I truly submitted everything to someone else's will? Including the things which I thought I valued most?" "No ser. I don't regret it. I only wish that I wasn't such a slow learner."

"There is no such thing as a slow learner." He hasn't moved, the voice is still coming from a little distance away. "There are only those who learn, and those who refuse to learn. The time isn't important, only whether the lesson is learned. So, your dignity is gone, your pride is gone. What do you have left to lose?"

"Only myself, sir." I hardly recognise my own voice, it's hoarse from crying.

"As you say." The voice hardens again. "So, will you yield that up to me as well? Or has your courage failed you now?"

It's a question, but not a question, more of a taunt, or even a command. Still bent over the desk, I consider how to try to answer it. There's only one answer really. Without speaking, wincing even with this small movement, I draw my hands back, running them down my bruised body to my backside, pull the cheeks apart to open anus and vagina, wait.

A hand runs over my sex, teasing, caressing. It slides between my cheeks, finds my anus, penetrates with a finger. I sigh softly at the intrusion, he laughs again. "You're tight. Very tight. This is going to be hard on you then...maybe that's all to the good." The finger withdraws and is replaced by another pressure, I don't recall hearing him undress but I know what's there...mind you how do I know he isn't naked anyway when I can't look at him? The thought puzzles me for a minute - and then all conscious thought is gone as with one swift thrust he forces himself into me, dry. No preparation, no lubricant, nothing that might make this even slightly easier, just brutal impalement.

Someone who's never been anally assaulted has no concept of what it actually feels like. There is no pain that you can inflict on the human body that hits in the same way. It quite literally feels like you're being ripped in half from within. There is no form of vaginal penetration that comes remotely close, because the vagina tries to compensate, it opens, lubricates itself, tries to cooperate with the intrusion. The anus doesn't, it fights the intruder all the way and remains burning dry. I scream, the sound forcing itself out of my bruised throat, and my control is lost sufficiently that I release the corners of the desk that I've been clinging to - two strong hands catch my arms from behind and pin them down while the thrusting continues, feeling like it's sawing my flesh open. My head drops to the desk, I wail out the pain into the wood, clawing violently with pinioned hands. For now I've forgotten who I am, what I am, what was done to me, I'm left as an animal fighting a predator and failing, I can hear that laughter as he forces into me. "You offered me this, Sergeant, I'm taking it. Would you now withdraw the offering?"

The words somehow penetrate the agony, they're a lifeline back to sanity. "I don't take back what I've given," I manage to say between sobs, my vision darkening as it feels like light explodes behind my eyes, as the waves of pain rack my body, amplified by the echoes of the beating. Somehow I've forced myself back to stillness, forced myself to open to him when every nerve is trying to close and shut out the invader. In one silent scream I feel him grind himself to a climax, his body shuddering against mine...and then one of my hands is released. He's picked up that knife again, and suddenly I feel the edge of it against my throat. He doesn't have to tell me to keep still. I know what that knife is, I know what it's used for.

"Dignity, pride, yourself. All gone." The voice hisses in my ear, cold. "All that's left now is your life. Perhaps if you die in your dreams, you wake up. Perhaps that's true, or perhaps you just die. I don't know which it is. But it's all that you have left now. Is that mine too?"

Somehow this ought to be the hardest choice of all...and in fact it isn't, perhaps because I've been so thoroughly broken by what's gone before it. My head strains back, not pulling away from the knife, but to give him a clean stroke. I can't speak. I can only hope that he sees what I've done and understands... My eyes close.

Then suddenly, the knife blade has gone, he's pulled out of me, I'm alone. And somehow empty in more ways than one. I said when this began that I didn't know who I was...now I don't know what I am except an empty vessel, a broken toy...

"Stand up and dress." The command almost comes as a shock. "Make sure you're turned out as smartly as you were when you walked into this room. There's a mirror on the wall. Use it."

I'm sure that mirror wasn't there when I came in. But I do use it. Pulling the uniform back on is its own agony, every movement hurts, bending down to fasten the polished boots nearly finishes me off. But at last it's done, all but the helm which is still on the desk. I turn to the mirror, use it to straighten the belt, set the pauldrons square. I twist my hair into a rough knot at my nape and pin it as best I can

He's walked up behind me, and I feel the helm being lifted onto my head again. I can see his hands in the mirror, strong fingered, square nails as he settles the helm in place. But still not his face. I have to accept that this is one thing I will never know, but what I see in the mirror is myself again somehow.

"There" He speaks for the last time. "You gave me all of it, so all of it is returned to you. You are who you are, you are what you are, but you take that now as a gift from my hand. You won't forget this when the dream passes and you go back to the daylight."

I turn, to see he's standing in the pool of shadow by the desk. One hand rests on the desk, tracing a bloodstain on the wood with a finger. There seems to be a need for something from me to finish this. I can't thank him. I don't know how to. Then suddenly I do know. I take one pace back, come to attention and salute him - and this time I see the salute returned. And without seeing his face I know he's smiling. And that he knows what I couldn't say.

Then I do an about turn - march to the door, and without looking back, pass through it. And the dream that is life somehow wakes me from the deeper reality again.

And yet, and yet...

When Teyrn Loghain came that morning to take the sergeants for weapons drill, he called me out first, which he never does. Oh, he dumped me on the floor several times, that's standard. But I probably came closer to disarming him than I have ever done, he seemed distracted. And I'm not a woman normally given to much imagination, but when he helped me up after landing me in the dirt for about the tenth time, I saw him studying my face, then my arms and legs under the training tunic. No marks of course, other than the training bruises. But he seemed to be looking for something else.

Then his eyes met mine, and there was this shock of recognition. And we both read the same question there

Of what did you dream, last night?

But I know I will never ask. And that he will never ask me.