Author's note: Twenty facts about those who changed Thedas. Probably more to be added. A small exercise to drive off boredom.
X
Tasha Tabris Guerrin, Warden-Commander and Arlessa of Redcliffe
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i.
The humans come ten days after her eight anniversary. The humans return after her nineteenth, exactly ten days after.
Tasha doesn't know her own age. She stopped counting.
ii.
The first time she saw Teagan, she honestly disliked the man. He was everything she had despised till the moment, someone who had too much power for a mortal's hands. He was a human and not better than anyone else. What right could he have to rule others' lives with that much abandon?
But he had looked at her, modest and capable and gentle, and eventually those eyes were her undoing. That day, he showed itself to be the same as her and her burden didn't seem as heavy.
iii.
Soris is a good person. Shianni is a strong person. Maker knows she loves them both. But there were times in which she wanted to tell Soris to stop whining and Shianni to stop making waves. She didn't. It is their freedom to act as they want and not her place to say otherwise.
Though she wished they learned that her silence meant she wished theirs.
iv.
Her mother was a warrior and Tasha admired that in her. But it wasn't what she admired the most. The brown hair brushed every day by the window, the soft steps as she moved around the house, the gentle hand on her shoulder every morning without fail waking her up.
Good morning, sweetling.
Tasha admired most of all how her mother was so many things to so many people.
v.
She never liked cooking. She never liked a kitchen. And she most especially hated how Teagan would stare at her, a gaze that was more pleading than a pup's at its mother's side and rope her into the space anyway.
Two months after her marriage, Tasha stands by a side, spoon in her hand as the broth cooks slowly and watches her husband speak.
Inwardly, she thanks the Maker that the darkspawn lack someone as deeply convincing as her man.
vi.
Shianni says she is like a tree, cut at times but keeps growing; always the same but changing every season.
Tasha knows she is a weed, gripping for whatever water so she can survive.
Shianni also says Teagan is like a mabari, faithful and ever there.
That's when Tasha laughs because her cousin truly doesn't know him. If anything, he is the earth underneath her feet, steady, so steady that Tasha feels she can actually look up to the sky without fearing her feet to falter.
vii.
The first time Tasha holds her twins, she is so afraid she will do this wrong, that she will harm them, that she keeps asking herself what possessed to think bloodstained hands such as hers could ever hold something as gentle. Then she sees them sleeping, their tiny hands in hers and that fear changes.
Blood covered hands can protect far better than unstained ones. And her children grow knowing their mother would give her heart and soul for their safety.
viii.
She never loved Alistair that way.
She has no idea why Anora thought otherwise either.
ix.
"You don't have to braid my hair, love."
Her fingers slip under his tresses, carefully smoothing each part before, deftly, twisting them into a single thread.
"You don't have to wait for me to return home every time, husband."
x.
Most Wardens see nothing but torture and duty behind their life. Tasha sees it different. The Wardens are her purpose, her salvation and doom both. She doesn't know what she would have been if she had stayed in the Alienage but she knows she wouldn't chose it even if given the option. The taint on her body allowed her to change the world.
And, she realizes as she watches her children play in the yard, she will do a thousand more forages into the Deep Roads if it means she can walk back to the sunlight where they wait.
xi.
The first fight between the married couple comes from a comment that she, absently, had made about Isolde. It mattered little the links of law which connected them. Tasha just didn't trust the Orlesian woman.
And that's when Teagan takes the woman's side, when he pushes back, when he disagrees and their shouts cloud the castle of Rainesfere to the point where the servants barely touch the floor when passing by. It is not jealousy. It is not. It is seeing what is there, the prejudice, the pain, her nephew's hurt eyes and closed countenance.
But Tasha understands this blindness where it comes to family. She does. And the next day, she begs his forgiveness and never raises her voice against his brother and sister in law.
Though she dislikes Isolde still.
xii.
The day she sees Shianni standing on the stage and whispering a confident 'yes' to the Revered Mother's question makes her cry like the girl she once was.
xiii
Human and elf are labels. Tasha's firmly sure everyone can be just as blind, just as prejudiced, no matter the race they hide behind.
xiv.
"Momma, are you proud of me?"
Tasha looks at her little boy, his soft blue eyes of his father, her own dark hair and himself, staring underneath it all. A soul all of his own. A person all new and made by her own hands. He is better than her, than Teagan, than Alistair. He and his brother are innocence and the future, the bright spots of light in her existence.
There are no words to describe how much pride she holds in them.
"Of course, sweetling."
xv.
Once Alistair informed her of what it meant to be a Warden, Tasha hated Duncan.
xvi.
The balcony is cold, just as the Castle and the mountain itself.
"You do know it's winter."
Teagan is covered in one of his many furs, almost comically so.
She breathes deeply, feeling as the cold harsh air of the mountain dries her throat mercilessly.
"And what you're wearing isn't nearly enough to keep you from freezing to death, Warden or not," he continues.
Tasha smiles. "I've seen you swimming while raining."
"So we're both insane."
"So it seems."
xvii.
Clarel is a good Warden. An amazing Warden-Commander, even, the sort Tasha would admire easily if she was barely five years younger. They stand on opposite sides of a table and the Commander is requesting her aid for some task or another and the way she denies telling her directly what this task is brings a shiver of dread to her spine.
"I'm afraid I'm currently undertaking my own task, Commander."
The next day, she writes to Loghain. Four words which will make sense to no one else. He will understand.
Do not follow her.
xviii.
The caravan is overrun by darkspawn when the small group approaches. What few remain alive, the taint is so far gone that no Archdemon blood will keep them breathing. It's unfair and wrong, just like everything else in the Deep Roads but it is what it is. No amount of claiming it to be unfair will change it.
The elf lowers to the first dying man and ignores the slight gasp behind her as she slides her dagger through the grey skin. Clean and efficient. Her wardens, without a comment, move to imitate her.
Sometimes, Tasha's a murderer. It is what it is.
xix.
When someone calls her Lady Guerrin, Tasha still looks around for another person.
When someone calls her hero, Tasha fights not to roll her eyes.
When someone calls her Commander, Tasha nods.
When someone calls her Tasha, she's home.
xx.
And time passes, Tasha finds herself over thirty, which is amazing, a good amount of years still to come, a child gripping her leg, a sword by the dresser and a life that that elf in the Alienage would have never ever dreamt in her wildest fantasies.
It is so much better than you could have ever thought, Tasha, she whispers to that girl locked between the walls of the Alienage. Just hold on one more day.
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