I do not own Dragon Age Origins in any way shape or form. This is a work of fanfiction only… please don't sue!
Regret
Elves have strong magical connections. The first mortals to visit the Fade were supposedly the immortal elves of old. It still persists in the elves of today. Magic comes easier to the children of Elvhenan, and even in the darkest times the elves are often the last to give up hope.
An Enchanter from the Circle comes to the Alienage every year. He gathers all the children together and tests them for magical potential. The ones that show a sufficient connection to the Fade are taken away to become mages.
She still remembers it. The day when the Enchanter told her that her son would become a mage. That he would be a danger to all around him, that demons would haunt his dreams, and that she would never see her little boy again.
What could she have done in any case? She could not exactly have refused to give him up. Everything they said was true in any case.
"Besides," the cynical part of her mind whispered. "Mage is better than servant, better than dock-thug, better than beggar, better than thief!"
And so, she kisses her son goodbye and watches him leave forever. She knows she is not alone, that other mothers have been forced to surrender their own little boys and girls to the Circle. The knowledge does little to sooth the ache in her heart.
Time eventually heals the hurt, and she goes on with life, but every so often she cannot help but wonder what he is doing at the moment. Has he made new friends? Is he happy? Is he safe? Does he miss her?
When she watches some upstart noble kidnap several young girls, she wonders if he would let the humans push him around like that. When two young men strap on armor and go after them, she wonders if he would have grabbed his sword and joined them. When they successfully return with the kidnapped girls, she wonders if he too would have succeeded. When the guards come to arrest the ones responsible for the slaughter, one of the boys confesses immediately in order to protect his friend and allows himself to be lead away to the gallows. She wonders if he would have had the courage to do the same thing.
But, she has heard nothing of him since the Enchanter took him away. All she has now are fading memories and wishful wonderings.
Days after the Siege of Denerimis over, she hears that a mage by the name of Surana was the one who both lead the defenders of the city to victory and who personally dealt the killing blow to the archdemon.
She doesn't know how, but she knows that it is her son they are referring to. Her son is a hero, a savior, a man who personally defeated the embodiment of a god. She tells no one this. She is incredibly proud of her son, but knows she has no right to boast. She is the one who gave him up after all.
A year passes. Denerim is slowly being rebuilt, and Ferelden is putting itself back together. She is wiping tables at the tavern she works in, when two men and a marbari come in and seat themselves in a shadowed corner. She goes up to take their orders and freezes.
One face she has seen before. It is on every single coin that has been minted since the Blight's end. The King puts his finger to his mouth in a shushing gesture and slips a sovereign into her hand.
His companion is a young elf who is cradling a baby to his chest. Though he does not recognize her, she knows who he is, even if she has not seen his face for fifteen years.
Her son breaks bread with the King of Ferelden, and talks to him like one would to an old friend. A mabari hound follows in his footsteps, and if she is correct, he is also a father.
She wants more than anything to tell him. To hug him like she did the day he went to the Circle, and to hold her granddaughter for the first time. But she says nothing. She takes their order in silence, and clears the table when they leave.
She keeps herself together until she is safely behind the door of her house, before breaking down completely. She wanted to tell him, to have him recognize her as his mother, but she couldn't. He has obviously done fine without her and has gone farther than she ever dreamed he could.
She has no right to call him her son.
He has saved countless lives, and is a hero of the highest caliber. She is merely the women who surrendered him to the Circle when they told her he could do magic.
She does not see him again.
Years have past in a blur. Her hair is grey and her face wrinkled. The memories of her son have faded, and time has taken the edge off her sorrow. The boy from across the road comes by every once and a while to make sure she is alright and occasionally helps her do things she can no longer do.
Then one day a new bit of news reaches her old ears. A maleficarhad been discovered in the BrecilianForest. An entire team of templars had gone into the woods to deal with the menace. A single survivor crawled out, half starved and screaming things about a demon child and her insane father.
For some reason, she suddenly recalls her son with vivid clarity.
Authors Note: This is loosely tied to my two previous drabbles "Shadows" and "Reunion"
Mostly I wanted to explore the fact that Mage characters did have a life before they went to the circle, and how a parent might feel to discover that their child was a mage and they had to give him/her up.
It's also struck me how elves seem to lean towards the mage class, yet what exactly elven old magic is/was, is not really explained.