Disclaimer: I own absolutely and completely nothing. Bioware has that particular pleasure.

Summary: A City-Elf/Bann Teagan collection of drabbles and one-shots based on a prompt table from an LJ-community. These will be more or less in chronological order with the faintest traces of added plot here and there. Will vary from drabble length to one-shot.

Author's note: Definitely random but I was lacking idea for so long. People, please, give feedback. I know my writing is messy, I know it's confusing and maybe repetitive but I'd really like to have opinions. Ideas, even. Prompts or even characters you'd like to show up, I'd truly like to know. Next, the archdemon~

In this chapter: Just what did she do wrong?

044.

She is a good person. A good woman. An honorable one. Despite her temper – which isn't nearly as bad as everyone tends to say – she knows she's a good person. She doesn't get just why she's the one to suffer all the time.

The Alienage is barely recognizable. Before, it was poor but decent, needing repairs but orderly in its own darkspawn made their mark and there is little than has remained untouched. There isn't a stone which hasn't been stepped on and broken. It's enough to make her breath chill in her lungs. What to do though? Nothing. Nothing more than grab her brother and push herself back against the wall and wait.

Outside, the fight begins in earnest. There are a few warriors running which are neither elven nor human, weapons tightly raised by closed fists. She follows with her eyes, carefully measuring her chances. If she could just chose the right time. Grab her brother and flee, leave this place before they are found by all the wrong people. How is the rest of the city though?

The elf is not a fool. Their safety would be compromised in any other place, it always like for elves. With that in mind, the woman pushes the boy closer and closer and closes his eyes tightly with a hand. Let him not know this nightmare. Let him not be afraid. This is what a good person does. Protect others.

She remembers the day she understood just what she could amount to in her life. She had been six, dressed carefully in her mother's work and sitting outside with the other children. Around them, everyone moved, there were comments and complaints and it was the Alienage, nothing else. A little girl was being taught to handle daggers. Jealousy, was it unexpected? Her hands searched for the weapon, found it heavy, found it cutting her fingers. And she cried and cried because the other child had made it seem so much easier. Her mother yelled in response.

There's a knife on her hands when the first creature irrupts through the doors. She doesn't even think about it, how bad she is with any weapon, how much she doesn't want to do what she has to do. Her brother is next to her, after all. There is nothing to do but to protect the sole thing she wants to protect.

The thing is huge. It is like someone made a baby under influence of alcohol and then allowed it to rot and the smell, Maker help her, just makes that idea all the more real. There's no doubt what to do. There's a scream of horror – hers, no doubt – and she finds herself jumping forward, pushing the ridiculous parody of a man with her hands, watching as it grins permanently even as she tries to stab him. Again and again.

"There are survivors here!" Her mind delusions over her screaming. "Orlesian, get the kid out of the way. Dwarf!" She has no idea why her mind chooses to summon such awkward names and discards them a second after. All that matters is that small blade and the darkspawn which became more than one. The metal slips through putrid flesh, the blood sliding down her skin making her wish to throw up. But she doesn't, she doesn't. She survived much more than this. She can do it. She can.

The day she was to be married, she was deadly frightened. The man was unknown, coming from Amaranthine of all places. She didn't know him, didn't know what he could do, the family he had come from. The only thing she knew was that he had accepted little, even considering that he had had to move to another city. The second she saw him, old, much older than her, she shivered in fear. The moment he fell asleep at her side, drunk and without touching her, she sighed in relief.

"Girl. Girl." It is dead. The small knife rests on its skull, oddly resistant even though she has tried it against the thing's armor more than once. And even odder, the thing seems to be laughing, even in death. How disgusting can they be? Do they revel in this madness? "Girl!"

He shouldn't have, shouldn't have. Shaken out of her stupor, she finds herself struggling against someone. A someone who speaks, who tries to hold her arms instead of stabbing them, a human.

And she doesn't trust humans.

"Call the Warden before I lose my patience."

Her husband is taken from her life nearly as fast as he entered, thank the Maker. She knows he might come back, probably will, and yet, seeing him enter the hospice supported by the mages brings a different kind of happiness to her heart. Definitely not the kind a wife should gain through her husband, no doubt. It doesn't matter. Her blade is her tongue while she defends their saviors, those unknown mages who come Maker knows from where, her saviors if no one else's. Shianni demeans her, of course. It is no novelty.

"Loghain! We need to keep going. Why are you here?"

The newcomer's voice is familiar and she stops struggling for a moment, all fight leaving her body replaced by sheer relief. Why, though? This woman never gave her relief. There is always grief and envy between them, so much jealousy leading to bad thoughts. She is a good person. She knows she is a good person. But she always envies this woman. Honestly, she hates the other for this.

Human hands leave her. "Darkspawn were entering this house," there's this odd dry tone attached to the man's voice. Dry and strong and enough to make dive for the knife all over again. "I trusted you didn't bring us all the way here to leave these fools to die."

There's something in the woman's eyes which never meet her. There's something in the man standing behind her, in his skin, in her hands, something wrong and off. It's so odd. She dresses in rags, the others in armor. She carries a knife, the others swords as big as her arm, if not longer. Her envy cannot be summoned while looking at them because, for whatever reason, she feels incredibly lucky. Incredibly alive while they seem not.

"We can leave her with Shianni on the way out," the commander says with barely a look spared.

"Not a friend then?" And if her gaze doesn't make sure he understands how his statement is laughable, the other warden's surely does.

She's pushed out of her house, her terrified brother dropped into her arms like discarded luggage. There are few elves around her, clustered like scared children and waiting for when they'll be allowed to leave the nightmare that has invaded their home. No one speaks except to comment on the departing party. Hoping. Hoping this small rugged band will save them.

Elva thinks differently. She sees the other woman is about to die, as sure as if she is standing on a cliff and about to be pushed out. How can this being save them? She's not even alive, stupid woman, so sure of her own strength. She is going to die wherever she is walking to, covered in blood and skewered by spears and swords.

"Hope you all told her goodbye," she whispers, her caution throw to the wind. "Because those aren't returning."

And the hahren – in all but age – stands right next to her when she speaks.

She wakes in the Chantry after the battle. All she can remember is a blow, a heavy blow that colored her face like a shem street on Andraste's Day. Everyone calls her ungrateful from then on. Shianni, that one makes no effort whatsoever to hide her despise for the older woman. Her brother sighs.

Elva has no idea why.