A/N: Hey guys. Well, as I was playing DA:O for the three thousandth time this idea hit me. Its just a oneshot but I thought it was kinda original. Review review review if you want I hope you like it.
"Dear Maker Zevran I never knew the Crows were so serious about their training," Leliana choked out the words between laughs, "I had only heard stories about the training I never knew it was that serious."
Zevran scowled and pushed his food around his plate, "well, it is."
"Oh don't be like that Zev you have to admit that it is kind of funny," Alistair said, polishing his large wooden shield casually.
"NO! it is not funny at all!" The Antivan elf protested irritably, "Do you know how hard it is for a young child trained in adult level thievery not to steal candy for the soul reason of curiosity?"
Morrigan sniffed, "It is rather shocking to me that you have never tasted candy. Even Flemeth was kind enough to make the treats occasionally."
Zevran crossed his arms, "Well the training required complete focus. Our diets were very restricted so as to avoid hyperactivity. If you could not focus, you died. It was as simple as that. The cruelest part was that they left us with the decision. If you stole it and they managed to figure it out, you would be slaughtered. Looking back on it now it was a very effective method of teaching self-control. We were perfectly capable of stealing anything we wanted, but we knew what would happen if we were caught. With the skill level of our teachers, we knew there was almost no chance of us not being discovered."
Alistair grinned, "Did you ever try?"
Zevran's eyes darkened slightly, "No...but it narrowed my class' numbers to single digits in only two weeks, so many of us did attempt it...but no one ever got away with it."
"Wow," Leliana sighed, "Hard knock life."
Throughout this entire exchange, the leader of their party (a young casteless dwarf) had remained silent.
She stroked her Mabari, Leske (named after an old friend), and tried to remain unseen.
She had always known that this topic would come up at some point or another. History was not always the easiest thing to hide. She had tried to avoid letting her companions know any of her past, but in her secrecy her party had grown suspicious.
First came the obvious questions:
"Why are you branded?"
"What are all those scars from?"
"How did you get so good at stealing?"
"Why are you so good at picking locks?"
The answers had been the bare minimum: "Reasons...My job...My job...my job."
Then came the more difficult questions:
"What was your job?"
"Do you have family in Orzammar?"
"Where did you get trained?"
"What was Orzammar like?"
The answers had been suspicion-inspiring: "A bad job for a bad man...Yes...places...I don't really know."
Then came the questions she had not even been prepared for:
"Who is your dog named after?"
"Are dwarves as cruel as their reputation says they are?"
"Why don't you hold your blade the way a proper rogue does?"
"Why did Duncan draft you?"
The answers raised several more complicated questions: "A very important person...depends on who you are...this is the easiest way to swing it silently...reasons."
In all honesty she hadn't lied.
She was branded for reasons, her job had taught her stealing and lock picking and it had left her with her fair share of scars. Her job was a bad job for a bad man, she did have family in Orzammar, she had been trained in places it was just an unusual method of training, and she really didn't know what Orzammar was like. She had never gone any deeper than Behrat's shop, and she had been raised in Dust Town. Her dog was named after a very important person, and dwarven cruelty all depended on your caste, the way she held her blade did allow her to swing silently and kill her enemies in a sneak attack, and to be honest she wasn't even sure why Duncan had drafted her.
"ALEYA!"
"huh?" she said in her sultry voice, snapping from her thoughts and turning to look at Alistair, who had shouted her name.
"I think we are all rather curious about your past," He said, looking to the party members for support.
All of them nodded and hummed in agreement, and Aleya looked down at Leske, who was the only one she had talked to about her past, and the dog understood her distress. He nosed her hand in encouragement and laid his head on her leg.
She sighed, "It ain't exactly the most happy story."
Alistair clicked his tongue, "Oh come on it can't be worse than Zevran's pathetic candy-free childhood."
She sighed again and looked at Leske, who licked her fingers gently in reassurance.
Well, she thought, they are going to figure it out when we go to Orzammar anyway. Might as well tell them now.
"Okay...ask away."
Leliana squealed excitedly, "Me first! What does the Brand mean?"
Aleya smiled sadly, "It signals all dwarves that I am casteless."
"What does that mean?"
"The Caste system," she began, "is like the system of royalty here on the surface. The highest caste is obviously the Royal family, followed by the Houses of The Assembly. Then comes the Warrior caste and so on down the line until they come to lowest caste: Servants. The casteless are criminals, traitors, and their entire kin and bloodline until the bloodline dies off. The casteless are outcasts of dwarven society. We are considered filth that pollutes the stone and weakens it. We are not allowed to have proper jobs. Even becoming a servant is to honorable of a position for us. It is next to impossible to escape the casteless title. The only way I know is to become a noble hunter."
"What is a noble hunter?" Zevran asked sounding somewhat shocked and somewhat sad.
"Dwarven women are not always fertile. In fact it is more common to be infertile than fertile. This causes drama among the nobles (otherwise known as higher castes). If a casteless woman gives birth to a noble man's child, the child takes the house of its father, and the woman is moved into the caste of the man for the soul purpose of reproduction."
"How strange," Morrigan said, "Is the child considered a half-blood?"
"No. The child is considered a blessed addition to the house/family," Aleya said, wringing her hands.
"My turn," Alistair said, breaking the silence that had fallen upon them, "Why are you branded? Are you kin, criminal, or traitor?"
"Kin," She said quietly. "My father stole precious gems from a nobleman's treasury and then fled from Orzammar. My sister was only two, and my mother was pregnant with me when we were cast out of our house in the commons into Dust Town: the home of all casteless. I was branded at birth and we lived in poverty until I managed to scrape up some dishonorable work."
"Maker, that sounds horrible," Alistair said sympathetically.
"Whatever did you do for work?" Morrigan asked.
"Soon after my mother waned me from her breast she whored herself out in the commons and in Dust Town. She wasted almost all of our money on wine and ale. I grew up with no one except for my sister, who raised me. My sister always stole a few silver from my mother to buy us food, and often times when my mother didn't bring home very much Rica didn't eat at all. When Rica turned eight she went to work as a street sweeper and I turned six and worked as a shoe polisher. Together we scraped enough to buy one meal a day for both of us to share. We lived like that for seven years until she was fifteen and I was Thirteen. One day I when I was polishing shoes, Rica showed up to walk with me to the only merchant in the commons who was kind enough to sell us cheap food. Anyway, the man whose shoes I was polishing whistled at Rica..."
"And then what happened?" Leliana pressed on.
"I shattered every bone in his ankle with one sharp twist and flick of my wrist."
Silence fell over the party.
"and...and then?" Alistair asked meekly.
"The man in line for the last shoe polishing of the day laughed until he cried, then he pulled me to my feet, looked me up and down, and then offered me and my sister a job. The man was a local crime lord named Behrat who had complete control of the Orzammar carta and mafia. He hired me and placed me with my partner and my only friend: Leske, and paid for lessons for my sister. She was to become a Noble hunter, find a man, have a noble child, and then claim Behrat was our father. Then we would all move into the noble's house, and Behrat would have access to the Merchant caste. With that access gained, he could attain Lyrium, Ore and anything else he wanted and sell it to the common folk of Orzammar," Aleya said grimly, flicking twigs into the fire.
"Why was Behrat never caught?" Asked Zevran.
Leliana interjected before Aleya could, "If this man she speaks of was as influential as he seems, he had plenty of workers to do his dirty work and make sure he never got caught. And with control of the carta, Behrat probably had plenty enough money to bribe any one who threatened to expose his operation."
"Exactly," Aleya said.
"But...if you were as infamous as you say you were, how did Duncan find you?" Alistair asked, his voice baffled.
She chuckled, "Well, it wasn't very long until Leske and me climbed the mountain to become members of Behrat's circle of favorite thugs. One day, he gave us a job. We were to sneak into the Proving and drug one of the fighters so that Behrat's bets would pay out. He had a lot of money riding on those fighters, and we knew it. So we snuck into the Proving grounds and it was once we were inside that we realized that the Proving was going to be held in the Grey Wardens' honor. Wasn't long before we saw Duncan, and Leske dared me to talk to him and say something stupid. So I did and that was that. I thought for sure I had seen the last of Duncan."
"What did Leske dare you to say?" Alistair asked, looking slightly more happy now.
"He dared me to go up to Duncan and say 'Welcome to Orzammar, Sir. May I drink your bathwater?' and I did it because I'll be damned if I let Leske beat me in a dare."
The company howled with laughter until finally Zevran said, "Okay, Okay, shut up now and listen. What happened next Aleya?"
Aleya smiled and said, "Well, we found the fighter we were supposed to drug, and he was sodding soiled. Drunk as a fish, and we had to think fast. It ended up with me in the fighter's armor and me fighting in his name. I was doing good too until that damned drunkard stumbled into the arena and someone recognized him. We were incarcerated, the entire Proving was declared invalid, and Behrat bribed the gaurdsmen and put us in his personal jail so that he could kill us himself. Well, I couldn't very easily stay in that prison cell, because I knew that Behrat would go for Rica. I broke me and Leske out and we killed every one of Behrat's thugs and then we killed Behrat himself. We were about to make a run for it when the noble men and Duncan came in. Duncan conscripted me so that I could avoid the death sentence for impersonating a higher caste, and then we left," she said in a very matter-of-fact way.
"Wow," Alistair said, mouth agape.
the party fell into awkward, shocked silence until Aleya coughed awkwardly and said, "Well...That's my sob story for ya...so...yeah."
Zevran laughed and scooted closer to Aleya, "You are truly an amazing woman."
Alistair laughed, "And tougher than a box of nails."
"And very clever," Leliana added in a sing-song voice.
Morrigan smiled, "I admire you for everything you've endured."
Aleya blushed, "Oh shut up, all of you."
Zevran grinned, "Promise you wont hide this stuff from us anymore?"
"I promise."
The company cheered, then fell into banter with each other.
Aleya slipped away from the group and walked over to the creek bank.
She pulled her boots off of her sore feet and rested them in the cool current.
They had taken her murderous lifestyle much better than she had expected them to, and she realized now how happy she was to have her company of misfits.
She tilted her head to the stars and whispered, "Thanks Duncan. I owe you one Salroka."
A/N: Okay guys well thats it. I know the ending was kinda rough so if you could give me some pointers in the reviews that would be great thank you!
Love, QK