Author's Note: Hey!
This is the story of Tamsin Surana, the Warden, from Kinloch Hold to the end of the Fifth Blight. It is technically a Prequel for another story I have planned, and the meat of the story will (hopefully) be more about her experiences SURROUNDING the questlines we all know and love than just a retelling of those quests, though I will retell some events where I make things a bit AU or where they are very relevant to the character development.
Pairings undecided for this story, though the final pairing will be with Solas in book 3.
WARNING: This story contains graphic self-harm. MC is a masochist with a lot of psychological problems.
This story contains graphic sex.
This story MAY, at some point, contain BDSM relationships both sexual and not, and if it doesn't, the rest of the trilogy will.
9:27 Dragon, Circle Tower
Fire. It engulfs the tree in front of the me. My mother's shouting halts immediately, and a hand closes around my hair. I cry out in pain as my mother pulls me away from the fire. I fall into the dirt with a wail.
"Mamae!"
She doesn't listen. She stalks out of the yard, and doesn't come back. In a stupor of fear and shock, I sit on the ground, arms curled around my knees, watching the tree burn to a crisp. I am so absorbed I doesn't notice the return of my mother until she is pulling me to my feet. I look up at my mother's face, which is hard as stone. She grimaces at me before pushing me way from herself.
Rough hands catch me; cold metal plate pushes against my cheek and I am held in place. I look up at who is holding me – swords, shem, metal, templar, not alone. I spin my neck around to look for my mother hard enough to crack it.
All I see is her grim face as she drags the knife across her throat. I fight against the templars, screaming as they drag me-
The young mage startles awake, not an unusual occurrence nor an unusual nightmare. Memory. She looks around herself, remembering her surroundings on the bottom bunk in the apprentice's quarters. The Circle Tower, the gilded prison. Truly extravagant.
It only takes a quick look around the room to find the resident Templar guard. He stands stoically next to the door, righteously making sure none of the young mages fall prey to demons in their sleep. That's when they're vulnerable, after all. It unsettles the young elf every night, and she often sleeps little to none. Their eyes are always there, always watching.
She leans over and pulls her small chest out from under the bed. There are no locks, not on any of them. Not even full mages have chests that lock. Or doors. Gods, she misses doors, especially now as she pulls out her robes for the day: a stifling set of apprentice robes, the same as everyone else wore. There is no privacy as she strips out of her night clothes and pulls the robes over her head, but there never has been, not since she was six years old. At least when she was six years old, she didn't have to worry about the Templars' gaze. She didn't dare look over and check which one it was.
The chest is mostly robes, a few books, scrolls, and her journal. She has scarcely any personal affects at all.
"Tamsin!"
She turns around, now dressed, to find one of her only two friends greeting her. She must have just entered the room as there were only two other sleeping apprentices in here when Tamsin looked around previously.
"Morning, Moiraine," the elf greets.
"Morning?" the blonde snorts. "You missed lunch."
"Oh," Tamsin mutters. There's little else to say. It is Sunday, so there's no harm in it, really, and she'd gone to bed rather late the night before. What was she going to miss, Chantry services? That's a joke in itself. Her human friend kneels down to pull her own chest out, looking for a book. "Heading to the library?"
"No, though I'll bet you are. It's like you live there," she replies. Tamsin nods along in agreement.
"Yeah, you have me there. I'll see you for supper then?" The human agrees, and the apprentices part ways. Tamsin ignores the Templar by the door to the best of her abilities as she stalks by him and further into the tower. It has become a habit, truly, when she's never alone, to pretend she is. Most do it. The reality is that it's frustrating to only be able to have real discussions out of earshot, which only happens a few times a day and in larger groups. Meals are usually safe.
Still, there are topics everyone avoids. It's rare that Tamsin manages a real conversation with anyone, and so she avoids them. The incessant small talk everyone does, the bullshit, fake smiles and happy faces wear on her like nothing else, save perhaps those for whom the smiles are not fake.
That was perhaps why she lived in the library day to day. Just as on every other day, she walks along the round rooms until she finds a mostly secluded place; the library is, again, a safe haven. The templars tend to guard from doorways, and it was at times possible to find some privacy there.
Ten years in this place, and Tamsin found that, were she to pick up a book at random, the chances of her having read it were equal to it being new. She'd long since perused the most readily available books on the shelves and moved onto the dustier ones. It took a few years for her to discover that the older books, frequently written in other languages entirely, were always the most interesting. Since then, she occupied herself reading and translating, often. Some books of Tevinter origin, old books written in Ancient Tevene, that perhaps the templars would remove if they thought someone was taking the time to actually learn to read Ancient Tevene, or even modern Tevene, which was almost nonexistent, but those were perhaps some of the most interesting onees. Oddly enough, it was Tamsin's favourite pastime, and she became quite adept at it. There were many books in Orlesian, too, from the University and prominent circles like Montsimmard. Luckily, it was much more readily available and accepted for her to learn, and even get some tutoring with, Orlesian.
Moiraine and Jowan often joke that Tamsin would learn Ander over one old dusty book, and she believes it. Ironically enough, the elf did once learn Antivan, to a degree, over the only handful of books in the library in the language. It's a rusty and incomplete education. Tamsin has a reputation among the Enchanters for being found nose-deep in a book when she's supposed to be in a lesson.
Tamsin's opinion on the matter is that she learns more from books than she ever will from the Enchanters, but she never says so. That would be dangerous. She keeps her head down, aside from a penchant for curiosity, which endeared her to some of the higher up mages and made Chantry lovers threatened.
Hunger clawing at her stomach, the elf snags a dusty book off the shelf. She knows the hunger pains will fade, considering she's been here many days before. She's as far off as she can be from the central room of the library. In the wings, alcoves are more frequent and things are a bit quieter, though Templars patrol through on rounds, it isn't too frequent. It also happens to hold the dustier books. People don't come back here to read, admittedly, and Tamsin tries not to think about how many people, her included, have had sex on the chair she's reclined in now.
Truly, there's no privacy in the Circle. It breeds a variety of things in different people. Some stay modest, some surrender themselves to it, others fluctuate. Sex itself is fairly prominent, with the amount of young people cooped up in a building with nothing to do and nothing to feel.
That's Tamsin's problem, and it gives her trouble as she tries to focus on the words in front of her. Perhaps if it was a book written in Trade, she'd have an easier time reading it, but it's written in Ancient Tevene, called Usi Ambienti Manae, meaning Uses of Ambient Mana. It's a subject she has read on before, though a different book.
Her relative peace is interrupted by a harried apprentice rushing into the room, a startled expression on his face. He looks at her briefly, raising his arms imploringly, before diving behind her chair and curling himself into a ball. The heavy footsteps of a templar approaching cause Tamsin to wipe the startled look off her face and look back down at her book. It's a man, fully armored, and with those helms it's difficult to tell the difference between any templar. He halts in the doorway.
"You, knife-ear, where'd he go?" he demands. It feels as though a hand has wrapped around her heart as she fights to keep a neutral outwards expression. Luckily, it is a practiced face and she succeeds in pointing the man deeper into the library. The pressure in her chest fades off as the templar stalks deeper into the library. The room would be full of people, and she doubts he will come back to interrogate her.
The other apprentice has the same thoughts, or is excessively foolhardy, and he crawls out from behind the chair and seats himself on the side table.
"Thanks for that one, could've gotten a bit ugly," he says cheerily. He's a tall, with blonde hair loose down to his shoulders and warm brown eyes. He seems familiar to her, but so does everyone around the Tower. Really, everyone knows most people's names, and the only difference for Tamsin was that she truly never cared.
"What the fuck did you do?" she blurts out without thinking. Luckily, it doesn't matter. No one's around.
"Well, let's just say he'll be a bit wet under that helm."
Tamsin's eyebrows shoot up, but she knows better than to press for details. Truly, she doesn't want to know. That's when she places his name, however. One of the older apprentices, nearing his Harrowing.
"Oh! You're Anders."
"I see I have a reputation," he comments playfully. He rests his arm down on the back of her shoulder and leans in. "What kind?"
"Oh, a few," she mutters in reply, a flush coming over her face. A few indeed. He'd made at least five escape attempts, though none in the past year. His other reputations include tormenting and backtalking templars, resulting in no brief list of injuries and punishments. He's probably going to pay for this one later too. It's another thing entirely that apprentices say about him that makes a blush creep up Tamsin's face.
"You look pretty in pink." He grins, leaning away from the elf again to sit back on the table. His expression changes as he takes stock of the books on the table and the one in the other apprentices' hands. "Ambient mana? An interesting subject. I've studied how its been adapted for healing magics extensively."
"You read Ancient Tevene?" the redhead questions in surprise.
"How else would I read all the tomes the Chantry disapproves of?"
"True, I—"
The stomping of heavily armored boots interrupts their conversation. Anders winks at the elf one more time and grins.
"Gotta run!" he exclaims, spinning around the bookshelf and running deeper into the library.
What a curious interaction, she ponders, turning her attention back to her book as the templar rushes back into the alcove and beyond. As it turns out, that would be far from her last run in with Anders.
Tamsin breaks for supper, but only returns to reading afterwards. The sky darkens outside as she relaxes, absorbing herself into a history book on the Third Blight written in Orlesian. It's late at night, nearly curfew, before she realizes she needs to get back to the dormitory.
It turns into a hurried dash back to her bunk, trying not to get caught out late by the senior mages, who would assign detentions, nor the templars, who were much riskier. One could expect anything from a beating to a scolding.
It is about halfway to the dormitory that she encounters the templar. The halls are dim with torchlight glinting off the plate armor of his back as he leans into a small apprentice, no older than Tamsin herself. The young boy's face is purple, with blood spilling from a split lip and the templar's hand grasping his hair.
"Hey!" Tamsin calls without thought, then cursed herself when the templar spins to look at her. Perhaps she should have just walked away, run away, anything, and let the boy handle it, but something in her still flares up at the sight of scenes like this one. Helping the downtrodden, perhaps, but she couldn't deny that there had been countless other times when she watched something like this and turned a blind eye. She thought perhaps her encounter with Anders emboldened her.
Regardless, the man is angry he was interrupted. He stomps down the hall, approaching Tamsin, who froze in the middle of the hall. She can't make her legs work as she stands there stricken with fear until the templar reaches her. It's the powerful backhand that throws her out of her trance, and she is knocked to the ground. Her arms fly out to catch her, but it's useless as her head crashes against the floor too quickly to react. A metal boot flies into her stomach and she cries out in pain, curling in on herself. She wonders how Anders stands this on a regular basis.
"What do you think you're doing out so late at night, little knife-ear?"
Fucking shem. She can't answer, heaving for breath that had been knocked out of her by his foot. She doesn't know what she would say if she could. He hauls her to her feet by her hair and tosses her at the wall. She catches it, keeled over and spluttering. Strands of her black hair are left in his hand. He shoves her in front of him, marching her back towards the dormitories.
She can't help but think that she's lucky it wasn't worse, though she could've been luckier and met a kind guard. Maybe one that didn't believe a beating was an effective way to correct bad behaviours in apprentices.
She is shoved through the empty doorway into the room she shares with perhaps twenty other apprentices. The elf catches herself on the bedpost of someone else's bunk. She is thankful the lights are already out as she stumbles into her own bunk and pulls the covers over herself, still fully dressed. She presses her back against the wall, unconsciously seeking security, before closing her eyes.
Fear leads people to do harsh things.
The next morning, Tamsin wakes up in pain. Every breath she takes sends pain into her gut. Squinting her eyes, she notes that the other apprentices are only just rousing for the day, so she hasn't slept in. It's a relief. She wants to stay as unobtrusive as possible to avoid attention being drawn to her injuries. She goes so far as to throw some powder on her face in an attempt to mute the colouring of the bruises there.
Moiraine's face hardens at breakfast, but she doesn't comment on it, making stiff conversation about their lessons for the day. Their morning lessons with Enchanter Kyla pass without incident, though Tamsin paid little attention to them. She was a healing instructor, and though a useful skill, it was one Tamsin had no knack for.
After lunch, Tamsin gives up on her afternoon classes. She chooses instead to slip off to an alcove in the library and do some reading. Skipping classes might be a punishable offense, but by Enchanters, not templars. Their detentions are admittedly much less frightening than a beating or any of the formal punishments templars can apply. The third time Anders ran away, they flogged him. She remembered it clearly. She had been little more than a child at the time.
"Hey," a voice interrupts her reading. She was absorbed in her book and hadn't noticed someone approaching. The calm nature of the voice is all that keeps her from startling. She looks up to find Anders.
"Oh. Hello," she replies, surprised. She watches his expression turn to concern upon seeing her bruised face. He doesn't comment on it immediately, but comes instead to perch on her side table again.
"Not going to lessons?" he asks. Tamsin shrugs.
"Not unusual for me," she admits. "Why, shouldn't you be in some, too?"
"I have better things to do," he says. "For example, sitting here, on your table, and interrupting your reading." She laughs cheerfully in response, surprised to find it isn't hollow.
"It's welcome, then," she answers. And for once, it's true.