Leliana

"Tell me a story." an old request, one I have heard many times before.

Only now, it is an older voice that speaks; a voice from my childhood...the voice belonging to the hand that guided me to those who taught the art of song, dance, and poetry. The hand that guided me out of love. A love that she was not required to feel.

"Cecile?" I question, turning to her.

Her face is blurred; memories fade over time and faces lose their definition. But I know the voice, the kindness in her eyes, the cadence of her accent, and the touch of her hand as it reaches out and rests upon my shoulder.

"Who else would it be, Leliana? How many voices have spoken to you as strongly as my own?" she smiles, a carefully controlled measur eof approval.

I remember practicing, straining to earn one of her rare smiles, to sleep another night in comfort, knowing I had earned my place in her affections. She had been kind, but not maternal. Approval and affection were things that must be purchased with skill and dedication. And it was such a thing that had led me to believe that Marjolaine loved me...for she demanded the same things.

"Very few." I return Cecile's smile.

"Then tell me their stories; sing me their songs. Or have you lost your taste for that, my dear? I see the calluses on your hands, Leliana. The splits in your nails." she shakes her head and makes noises of disapproval between her teeth. "This is not the life I fashioned for you. Not who I taught and encouraged you to be. What have you done to yourself, my girl?"

"I am afraid I strayed from the path you set me on, Cecile."

I hang my head, still withered by the edge of disappointment in her tone. Some habits can never be broken, so deeply are they embedded in the soul and psyche.

"I can see that, my girl. Who has done this to you? Whose weapons have damaged your lovely hands; whose orders have caused your voice to rasp with exhaustion? Why are there circles of sleepless nights below your eyes? And do not even ask me to comment on that tangled rat's nest of what once might have been hair. I raised a lady fit for Orlesian nobility. I raised a child who could break the Maker's heart with her voice. Where did she go?"

"She is here still." I promise my benefactor, even though I have not been able to find that child for many a year now. Marjolaine attempted to kill her, or at least shape her in a more sadistic mold.

"She is changed." Cecile's warm brown eyes darken. "There is blood on your hands, my girl. Your mother wished a better life for you. You had such promise, such potential...it is why I took you under my wing, though no blood bound us together. Why now do you spit in the face of your heritage?"

"Cecile...my life is my own." I defend myself, my decisions; the roads that have brought me to this point.

The tortures and horros that I endured because you let me go out into the world untrained but for songs and stories. You did not raise a child, you raised a caged bird, who leapt at her first chance for freedom and found herself enslaved to a crueler mistress than the one she had escaped.

"Your eyes were bright as violets once." Cecile caresses my cheek in a motherly fashion. "Full of wide inquiry and zest for life. Your mind could gather no fill of legends and song. You wrapped yoruself in books and tales of heroes. Where are you now, my girl? Where are you now?"

"I am still immersed in the tales of heroes." I look into the distance, at the city spread below us.

It is a city in flames. Smoke rises from crumbling stone towers. Cries of the fallen, the injured, the grieving and bereft reach my ears and I shudder, for I know that fate is soon to be. That this dream, this sight, will become a reality and I will be in the midst of it all.

"I am following one of pure heart and bright steel. Tomorrow, we will be in that city, Cecile. Tomorrow, we will fight to save all of Thedas."

"And this is why your skin is torn and roughed by winds? You thought yourself suited to a life of hardship and trials?" Cecile questions me.

"I am suited to it." I whisper, thinkin gof the lives I have aided in preserving, of Salem's heated professions that, without me, she would never have reached this point. "I could not be bound in marble halls forever, Cecile. The life you had planned for me...it was...beautiful. It was all that any Orlesian girl and woman could dream of. But my dreams have changed, and in that change, I have managed to find greater beauty in darker places."

"Come with me, my girl." Cecile extends her hand and I take it.

She leads me into the burning city. The acrid smoke catches in my breath and makes me cough. Blood scents the air, mixing with the flames, filling my senses with the scent of hot metal. I stumble over the corpses and gaze upon the dead. Men...women...tiny children who have never commited a crime against the world.

"This is where you find your greater beauty?" Cecile asks. "How is there beauty in this? How is there a single thing worthy preserving?"

Because this is the aftermath of the actions of heroes. This is what the legends never mention, the songwriters never write, the tales never tell. This is the hell of reality, Cecile. That which you locked me away from for so many years.

"This is what I have been fighting, and will continue to fight, to prevent." I tell the woman who took my mother's place, providing for me, caring for me, in her way. "This is what I and those I love struggle against."

"Heroes die, Leliana." Cecile's eyes fill with tears. "You were meant for a smaller life than this. A quiet one, filled with beauty and joy. Surrounded by your children in your old age, when you would walk into the Maker's grace after knowing nothing of hardship and tragedy. Such is the life I wished for you...and your mother did as well."

A single tear falls from my eye. "Heroes die, Cecile." I whisper, thinking of Salem's fate. "I am...not one of them."

"Leliana." my name, spoken in a voice that holds nothing but love, nothing but promise.

I awakened from my dream, feeling the hand clasped with mine. My eyes roved over the beautiful blue scarring, the single white line where this hand had been pierced through, saving me from torment. I gazed into Salem's eyes, feeling my own wet with tears...tears not caused by dreaming.

"Yes, love?"

"Scouts have reported in." Salem whispered, stroking her marred hand through my hair. "The archdemon is moving towards Denerim. It is time, dear heart."

She did not look away...Salem never looked away. Not when she had watched her father bleed out and her mother slaughtered by Howe's men. Not when Cauthrien demanded her surrender. Not when Loghain challenged her to a death-duel. And not now, as she looked the future in the face...and saw her fate.

Then I shall not look away either. I am by your side, my warden. Until the bitterest of ends.