Mercy's Broken Sword

Disclaimer: All characters, names, locales etc. property of Bioware.

A/N: be gentle this is my first Dragon Age story.

In years to come hereafter Mahahlia of the Dalish Clan Mahariel would always claim that it was the Shemlen she blamed for all the ill that had befallen her since leaving her clan; just as it had always been the Shemlen who brought doom to her people, to the Elvhen.

So then why was it that Mahahlia stood now in silence, in mourning, for the death of a shemlen? How could it be that she, a Dalish, found herself the doom of one of the quick children? The humans had always been her enemy. How could she grieve now there was one less of their number alive? How could she grieve yet feel too great a debt of shame to shed tears?

Alistair.

She stood by the window in the vacant Arl of Denerim's estate, the guest of Queen Anora. She had chosen to move her party here from Arl Eamon's manor in the market district as soon as the bodies of Arl Howe and his soldiers had been removed for burial. She knew that she would now and forever more be unwelcome in the house of Guerrin, after all.

Dusk painted the sky in bands of cerulean and bluish pink while gulls circled lazily around the steepled rooftops of Ferelden's capital. Tomorrow they would make for Redcliffe to meet the Darkspawn horde; tomorrow could be the end of them all. Perhaps that would be penance for her crimes?

Alistair.

'I should not have told Tamlen to make an example of one of those shemlen in the forest.' Mahahlia spoke more to herself and her sorrow than to any listening audience, 'Things would be different now if we had never come across those shemlen.'

'Oh?' Her companion in solitude had remained uncharacteristically silent for the last little while. His single utterance now managed to be both encouraging of further disclosure without seeming too eager for secrets revealed.

She nodded. 'They were filthy scavengers come to pick amid the ruins in our forest,' she explained warming to her confession, though words were not her forte. 'Tamlen and I were hunting and came upon them.'

'Ah an ambush; what fun,' the still and expectant silence hanging heavy in the room was sliced open by the sweep of a delicately vicious blade across a whetstone. Mahahlia stuck one of her dangling braids into her mouth and sucked on the end. It was an old habit she had yet to be broken of.

'Fool shemlen,' she admitted. 'They did not even know they walked within Dalish territory.'

'All the better for an ambush, yes? We Antivan's have a saying: ignorance is a Crow's best friend. Better for business if the mark does not see me coming,' A chuckle, running low over the sure strokes of the blade. 'Alas it is less fun this way. But we do what we must.'

'They begged for their lives.' Mahahlia twisted the damp end of her braid between her fingers. He had not begged when the Queen ordered His execution. Instead He had just looked at her. That look Mahahlia would remember until the day she returned to the Creators.

Alistair.

'It is an apt thing to do under the circumstances, is it not?' Slish-slish went the blades across the stone, and she knew without looking that it was her own two blades he so diligently worked on. Her edge in battle would be undiminished due to his attentive care. 'I have killed many, and have yet to meet a mark happy to die by my hand. I have always wondered why that would be so, as to die by the hand of a Crow is considered an honour in my country.'

Mahahlia traced the worn stonework around the window with her fingers; she still found it strange to be so confined within shem walls. The window did not allow enough light and air into the room. She could not taste the wind as she longed to and the air tasted of wood smoke and open sewer even high above the city's crowded streets. Slish-slish; steel and stone striking agaisnt one another in eternal battle. Both elements too hard, too set in their ways to give way to the other, leaving nothing but strife and sharp edges in the wake of such brief contact.

Alistair.

She remembered how He had been dragged away in chains; a grey warden risen almost to the throne brought as low as a common traitor; all because of her. Something hot and ugly curdled under her breastbone. Her fists clenched against cold rough stone. Damn the shem, she would not weep for him. She was Dalish. She was of the people who did not submit. Damn the Shemlen one and all.

'I should have loosed an arrow to the shemlen's heart as soon as look at him.' She whispered and no longer did she speak of those fool thieves in the forests of her lost home.

'Oho – mi amora, such bloodlust does you credit.' Her companion laughed again, a sharp and cawing sound; the laugh of a crow. Slish-slish and it felt like her own soul had been rent to pieces. Sliced and cut and mauled by fate, by circumstance, by accident.

'You do not understand.' Clasping bony elbows against her body Mahahlia spat her braid from her mouth. Rage painted her face from sallow to blazing.

Alistair.

'My dear Warden,' her companion chided her, unconcerned by her sharpness. 'In this I must protest. Killing is something I understand very well.' A slanted smile quirked his full bottom lip. 'It is, how do you Fereldens say, ah yes, killing is my bread and butter, no?'

His jaded eyes watched her from the bed with equal parts wariness and amusement. Never once did he stop sharpening the blades. She sucked in ragged breaths of air, words lodged in her throat stricken mute and mesmerised by the deft speed of his movements. Slish-slish and as the blade edges ripped across the stone she felt sure that the very air should bleed. Finally she moved from the window and dropped onto the bed beside the Antivan. 'I am not Ferelden; I am of the Elvhen.' She muttered sulkily, chewing on her braid once more.

'As you say amora,' Slish-slish sparks almost flew from the lethal edge of the daggers and she realised then that these were her old blades from home - her Dar'Misu. Surprised Mahahlia grabbed for one tanned wrist and stopped the rapid motion so she could seize up the blade, with its sharp protrusion close to the hilt, and hold it to the light.

'These are mine; these are my clan blades.'

The words failed her, as they always did. She lacked the means to express what she felt. Or perhaps, more accurately, she lacked the means to know what it was she felt? It had been with these blades that she had ended the life of an injured solider in the Korcari Wilds rather than allow his plight to detain her from her mission to retrieve Darkspawn blood and Grey Warden treaties. She remembered now how He had stared at her, standing there with the shemlen blood dripping from her blades. Horror and sickness had been in His eyes then.

Are you insane? Do you even know what the word "mercy" means?

A gentle touch, warm fingers stroking her cheek and flicking the damp braid from her mouth, dragged her from memory. 'Si amora,' the Crow smiled crookedly. 'I do not sharpen the blades of any other.'

Mahahlia frowned sensing a hidden meaning to what he said. Her suspicions were confirmed a moment later when his smile turned wicked and he brightened impishly. 'Though now that it has been mentioned, perhaps an exchange could be arranged, hm?' The smile grew as he set aside the other Dalish blade and the whetstone and turned fully to face her as he sat cross legged on the bed. 'I have so dutifully sharpened your weapons, perhaps my beautiful grey warden, you would sharpen mine?' A ducking of his head and flutter of his eyelashes was somewhat undone by the lascivious smile that spread his lips.

Mahahlia felt herself flush under the overly-bold appraisal of his eyes, the lecher's smile, and the amusement in his voice. She thought she understood his intent, but as always his seducer's tongue confused her. The word games and subtleties of wider Thedas courtship were still very foreign to her. It was far simpler among the Dalish. Shoving her chewed braid behind her ear, Mahahlia swept away the sheath of unbound hair that fell to her collarbone as she did so.

'This is some manner of euphemism, yes?' She cupped her chin in her two hands and regarded him with her usual earnest solemnity. 'You are asking for sexual favour in return for this service, am I right?'

The Antivan threw his head back and laughed; a rich honeyed sound. 'Ah mi amora! You have the subtlety of a dwarven berserker and all the slinky wiles of a Qunari.' He clucked his tongue reaching out one hand to stroke away the frown lines creasing her brow with one thumb. 'You take all the fun out of this seduction. I should be very upset with you but alas, I fear I am too far under your spell already.'

'Now you tease me.' Mahahlia turned her face into his hand until he cupped her cheek. His skin, as always, was so very warm. Sighing in satisfaction she shifted a little closer to him, leaning her body unconsciously until he moved to offer a shoulder, then a lean chest to rest against. For a few scant moments she felt herself relax, finding a refuge from the angry pain deep in her chest. She closed her eyes but all she saw was a pair of shemlen eyes burning into her heart.

You can't be serious? He killed Duncan, he killed the king. You can't let him live!

Mahahlia's eyes snapped open again, chest contracting in pain. She found herself looking up into a pair of shadowed eyes quite different from those others. 'I have a…..friend….of the name Isabela who would like you very much, I think.' The Crow spoke with curious hesitance. 'She could teach you much of a woman's role in a good seduction. Isabela is a most delightfully seductive teacher.'

Mahahlia swallowed around her pain, cheek pressed to his collarbone. 'This Isabela is a shemlen?'

He sighed. There was some tiny hint of frustration in that sound and in the minute tensing of his muscles as he supported her weight. 'Yes she is human. But it is one small fault amid a multitude of very desirable traits.'

'The Elvhen do not submit to shemlen.' The words were a mantra spoken by rote that slipped almost unbidden from her lips.

Her companion turned a sigh of irritation into a false chuckle almost too quick for her to catch. 'Ah amora, you are a harsh mistress, no? But truly the odd submission is not so very bad. I could tell you many tales, my warden, of what joy can be had with a good bit of submissive fun.'

She lifted her head wriggling around to make herself more comfortable in the circle of his arms. She had always been small and slight even by Elven standards. Her lean pale limbs always appeared deceptively slender and weak compared to some of the party she had become accustomed to travelling with and her face displayed all her youth but none of her cunning.

'Then tell.' She instructed nuzzling her head under his chin. In the time they had travelled together he had told her many stories, and while she understood perhaps only half of what his clever words hinted at, she had yet to bore of his grand and gaudy tales. Perhaps his tales would allow her to forget that other, the one whose name her heart would not speak and yet could not banish either. She hoped it would be so. To her surprise however Zevran said nothing. After a moment she lifted her head to frown at him.

'What is wrong?'

A trace of discomfort crossed his tan face, 'I have a question.' There was such a solemn look on his face as he lifted one dagger calloused hand to trace the spiked whorls and curves of her facial tattoos.

Mahahlia frowned. 'Then ask.' She did not understand why he hesitated. Surely he knew she could not answer a question he did not pose?

A wry smirk pinched the edges of his mouth, something like amusement but darker, and traced with bitterness, flittered over his lean face, 'It is about your fellow warden, mi amora.'

A cold dagger lanced through Mahahlia's chest, burning like ice through her heart. She gasped upon the name. 'Alistair.'

The assassin nodded, 'Indeed the very same. I am forced to wonder,' he pursed his lips, the silver tongued rogue considering his words with utmost care. 'Ah, it is nothing.' He smirked without humour. 'Such macabre thoughts have no place in the bedchamber, yes? Let us not speak of him at all.' The smile grew bolder but also less true upon his face. 'In fact let us waste no more time on words. Tomorrow we could all be dead. Time to make merry while we can, I say.'

She grabbed his wrist as he withdrew his hand. Her fingers clamped tightly around that nub of bone. 'Ask.' She commanded. 'Ask your question Zevran.'

So rarely did she speak his name, or any of the names of her travelling companions. In part this was because they did not speak of her by name, but merely by the name of her punishment: Grey Warden. Still now she used his name and her eyes demanded honesty. She wanted a truth as harsh and unbending as her own nature. She suspected that she already knew what he would ask.

The assassin studied her with hooded eyes and she could not read his intent; like so much else Mahahlia lacked the understanding, the ability, to know his mind. She was of the Dalish and the Dalish had never concerned themselves with the ways of shemlen, durgen'len or city elves. Now thrust amid their numbers Mahahlia was cut adrift and so often confused. So many mistakes had been made simply because she did not understand and could not submit to be taught.

Alistair.

'He loved you amora, you knew this, yes?' Warm fingers tilted her chin up and forced her to look him in the eyes. The purring words wrapped around her like unbending steel. She had commanded him to ask and he would not save her from her own instruction. She tried to flinch back but he was stronger than she was. Hot hands grasped the sides of her head, forcing her to kneel before him on the bed and look him in the eyes.

'You are not so naïve that you did not know.' He pressed when she could not speak around the wild flutter of her own heart lodged in her throat. 'You are not a coy blushing girl who does not know the power of her own beauty, amora. I know this to be so, for am I not your victim also?'

She dropped her eyes, 'He was shemlen.'

'Si amora and now he is dead; condemned to a traitor's death, no less.' The assassin showed her no mercy and she could not stop herself flinching back at his dagger lazy words. She jerked her eyes to his and found him watching as closely as a carrion crow observes the last breaths of fallen prey along the roadside.

'He was shemlen; I am Dalish.' She tried to explain. Was Zevran not Elven as she was? His blood was Dalish and although he did not truly know what that meant surely he must understand her meaning? She wished that he could. She wished that she could know what it was to be Elven but not Dalish. 'I am one of the Elvhen.' She said with cold simplicity. 'Never shall I submit to the Shemlen.'

'Ah so that is the answer.' He chuckled but once more there was precious little mirth to be found in the sound. 'I had wondered.' A slanted smile, 'I am glad to be an elf, as I think had I not been so, this magnificent body would now be feeding the filthy scavengers on the roadside where we first met.' He clucked his tongue. 'What a waste that would have been.'

'Riordan said….' Tears threatened but she burned them aware with sheer will. She was Dalish and she would not submit.

'Ah yes Riordan,' clever lips curved contemptuously around the name, 'a fine strategist that man. And to think, I used to wonder why it was that such legendary warriors as the Grey Wardens lacked respect in Ferelden. Tsk with cunning minds like his in the ranks it is a wonder Thedas has not fallen to the Blight already.' Mockery was thick in his laughter and it hurt her ears to hear it. Hanging from his hands she closed her eyes, damming a river of tears behind her eyelids.

'Ah but it is done now, yes? And I have upset you, which was not my intention.' Mahahlia did not know the tears had escaped her eyes until he released her head to swipe his thumbs, with gentle kindness, across her dampened cheeks.

'Ser Cauthrien asked me to show mercy,' Mahahlia knew she trembled but she could not stop her body from betraying her. Her chest hurt and she buried her head in his shoulder once more, trying to burrow into his warmth. 'I promised Anora……he did not even want to be king!' A sob escaped her and she clamped her jaws tight shut.

'All you say is true,' he agreed, 'and yet…..'

'The Blight can be better fought with more Grey Wardens,' Mahahlia whispered. 'We must take aid wherever we can find it.' Her tears soaked into his loose tunic, Dalish salt tears seeping into Antivan cotton and shed for a Ferelden bastard. Had Mahahlia fully understood irony she might have spared a cruel laugh for such things right now.

'Indeed? Still it was not so much a gain, as an exchange, yes? One warrior for another, one seasoned Grey Warden for a raw recruit. Lohgain for….'

She jerked away from him wrapping her arms around herself, clasping knobbly elbows tight to her chest, nails digging in until needle sharp tingles of pain ran up her arms. 'Do not say it.' She hissed. 'Do not speak his name.' Her hair spilled around her face, the wet chewed braid slapping her cheek.

'Do not say the name Alistair?' Sweet poison and cruelty flowed heavily within his voice, 'Mm, as you wish amora. Still such wretched tears you weep, almost as if……as if you loved him too?'

She shuddered, shook her head, and her hair lashed her face in furious denial. 'I have no love for any shemlen.'

'Truly?' A world of cynical doubt echoed in that one word. 'Well that is that then.' Smiling again her assassin gracefully draped himself across the bed, satiated now he had cut such wretched confession from her heart. He held his arms out to her. 'Come amora, we'll have no more talk of the former grey warden. The night grows long and there is a Blight to stop tomorrow, si?'

Slowly Mahahlia allowed herself to be pulled down into a warm embrace that hid steel and daggers behind sweetness and light. 'It was for mercy's sake.' She whispered into his chest, breathing in the scent of cinnamon spice, leather, and a hot and distant sun. The Crow said nothing, for there was nothing to be said.

'He was supposed to be pleased with me.' She whispered choking on her sobs. 'I wanted…..I wanted to prove to him that Dalish could be merciful – that I could be merciful. Show him that I did not hate all Shemlen.' She clenched her fist over the assassin's chest, fingers clutching at the folds of his tear soaked tunic. She lifted her head, begging for understanding with her eyes. 'I was merciful to the shemlen.' More tears seeped cold and stagnant from between tight laced lashes. 'He was supposed to be pleased.' She whispered again brokenly.

Are you insane? Do you even know what mercy is?

A great sigh filled the Crow's chest like a ship's sail and lifted her head before sinking down again. 'Si amora,' the assassin could only nod as all his suspicions were confirmed for better and worse. 'I know this.'

And then there were no more words as the Dalish elf, child of the Elvhen, she who would never submit to any shemlen, gave herself over to her tears. She wept all through the night and into the morrow and when the sun rose so did she, to face a foe that, like she herself, knew nothing of mercy.