"Evening, Guard Captain." A guardsman said as Clarissa Hawke and Aveline Vallen pushed open the doors to an almost-empty barracks. The guards were changing shifts, with the daylight roster returning to the barracks and the nighttime roster already out in the streets. The only sound they heard was the creaking of hinges as they entered Aveline's office. Clarissa took a seat in one of the chairs and discarded the various accessories of her armor while Aveline walked over and hung her sword on a rack next to the door.
Both were exhausted from a patrol in the Foundry district, which Aveline had assigned herself to and Clarissa had tagged along. Clarissa had bumped into Aveline after escorting Bethany to Ander's clinic, and had insisted to accompany her. It had been a relatively quite patrol and the pair didn't even have to draw swords, which Clarissa credited to Aveline's appearance.
Clad in full armor, Aveline was, as Isabela said, a woman-shaped battering ram. With round, emerald eyes that could break a man's will or uplift it to new heights, Aveline fit the role of a leader of men and women alike perfectly. Her relatively square jaw and short, ginger hair accentuated her aura of masculinity which set her apart from most women, and her strong, balanced physique inspired fear in her quarries and bravery in her comrades.
As a warrior, Aveline Vallen was steadfast and courageous, matching Clarissa in skill and mirroring her in resolve.
As a friend, Aveline Vallen was trustworthy and understanding. They had both suffered loss, and they both vowed to lay down their lives to safeguard what they still have.
Clarissa couldn't have asked for a better companion.
"Well... This route is relatively safe, but I wouldn't trust a single patrol with it. Too many blind corners." Aveline said thoughtfully, hands spread across the table over a map of planned routes for the Guard. Ever since her rise to the captain's position, Clarissa had seen less and less of Aveline. She had missed their conversations in the cramped quarters after her patrols, where Aveline would tell her about the people she had met, the victims she had saved, and most of all, the people she thinks she can help.
Aveline was a champion for the weak, and an avowed enemy of oppression. Clarissa didn't even want to imagine the feelings that would've raged within her when she had to endure the sights and sounds of the downtrodden in Kirkwall's slums, then walk the cobbled, pretentious streets that the elites of the city prided themselves about.
A shield of the weak.
Yet at a loss with the world against her.
A protector of the fallen.
Yet powerless as all she loved was taken from her, again and again.
Seeing her brow furrow in irritation and her mouth move in soundless curses, Clarissa put a hand on hers, earning a swift glance from the troubled green eyes. A glance laced with anger, frustration and a deeply rooted sorrow that defined her since the day they met. A glance that made Clarissa's heart flutter with pain for her friend.
Clarissa led her to the pair of chairs opposite her usual seat and sat her down with a gentle but firm push.
"Don't you think you're neglecting your guest a bit?" Clarissa said, trying on her most infectious smile. Aveline's eyes flashed back briefly to the chart on the table, then she sighed and rubbed her temples.
"I suppose Hightown patrols can wait. The lords and ladies have their own guards anyway." She leaned back in her chair, her brows relaxing. She looked at Clarissa and smiled. "It has been a while, Hawke." She said, tone laced with weariness. Clarissa smiled as well, casting her eyes around the office. She spotted a rack of wine beside the bookshelf behind Aveline, and she reached for one of the bottles.
"What are you doing? Those aren't ours!" Aveline said, sounding pretty much like a bewildered little girl when she saw that her exclamation hadn't deterred Clarissa one bit.
"No, they're not. They're Jeven's. Fruits of his 'labor', no doubt. He won't miss it, and the Seneschal certainly wouldn't give another thought before he 'confiscates' it into his little lockbox." Clarissa popped the cork and tasted it before she magicked a pair of glasses from somewhere in the room. She watched as Aveline's eyes turn from alarm to amusement, an emotion she was glad she could give her.
"I guess he won't." Aveline grinned sheepishly, taking the filled glass from Clarissa and hung it under her nose as she looked her friend in the eye. "You never cease to be trouble, Hawke." She shook her head.
Her eyes trailed from Clarissa's comical expression to her outstretched shield arm, which Clarissa laid on the table, and noticed the collection of bruises she had on her delicate, toned skin. She glanced at her own shield arm and found far less marks. Then she remembered that Clarissa never bore a shield, but a large, metal bracer that functioned much like a buckler, but with far more mobility. Her curiosity piqued, she pointed a finger at Clarissa's arm. "Why do you favor a bracer over a shield? It's certainly more protective to your arm to have a plank of wood or sheet metal to deflect blows with."
Clarissa glanced at her arm and a sheepish smile appeared on her lips. "I don't even notice the bruises. They've been there ever since I held a blade." She rubbed her arm, wincing when it stung. "It's kind of a long story, and it's kind of a silly reason." She said, taking a sip of the wine.
"We have about two candlemarks until the day shift comes back, so humor me." Aveline said. At Aveline's insistence, she felt her thoughts drop back ten years ago.
"I was sixteen then, and it had been the day I first forged my sword and shield." Clarissa began, the memories flowing back.
A hot summer's day as she jogged to the smithy in the village, feet light in nervous energy and eyes bright with anticipation. The smith, Aedan welcoming her with a greasy hand on her shoulder. The furnace's orange light illuminating the racks of swords, daggers, bucklers and shields on the wall. She had been so excited to finally have a weapon of her own, to be able to care for it and grow with it, to wield it until it felt like an extension of her.
"I still remember the feeling of holding my sword for the first time, the feel of its hilt pressed into my palm, the sight of its glittering edge mirroring my eyes, the rush of wind it made when it sliced through the air." Clarissa said, eyes looking out the window, across the Waking Sea. "The sword was perfect, but expensive, so I bought my shield from an old templar Father knew well. It still had the templar's sigil embossed on it when I looped it through my arm, and it felt inexplicably strange when I held it, like it wasn't suited for me. Nevertheless, I thanked Aedan profusely, and when I walked out the door, I met two templars that were waiting for me."
The uneasiness she felt as she greeted the templars, constantly reminded of her secrets against the Order. Her shock when she realized their purpose waiting outside the smithy.
To recruit her.
"'I hear you've quite the reputation around here. For a farm girl trained by retired guards and old veterans, your skills with a blade surpasses most of our candidates.' He said cheerily, but I didn't let my guard down. 'Normally we only allow members of the Chantry to join the ranks of our order, but I hear from sister Leliana that you attend the sermons regularly and you seem to know the Chant like the back of your hand.' Which was part of the act, by the way. 'We're willing to make an exception, on account of your exceptional case.' He winked. He wasn't that old, and I could tell he had a thing for me. Not that he flashed it around, but I could've read him like a book, as I did with most men."
A disguise of apparent interest, a promise of consideration, a swift run back to the farmhouse. Partly to escape the templars, partly to show Carver her new toys.
Her surprise at a familiar figure waiting by the door. She didn't expect Bethany to be up that early. She didn't expect her standing at the door. She was younger than her, but old enough to recognize the blazing sword she bore on her newly acquired shield.
"You can't imagine the look on her face. The horror I saw etched into her features as she saw the steel shield on my arm, the symbol of the one thing she feared the most in her life." Clarissa said, her mind's eye re-enacting the scene in immaculate detail. "I was her sister. Her older sister. I led her for the first time around Lothering. I bought her her first dress. I was the only person she looked up to aside from Father and Mother."
"And there I was, bearing the mark of that which was the bane of her life, the order of that which was the hunters of their kind."
"She ran back into the house, and I could hear Mother holding her tight as she cried. I stood in the fields, my joy gone, my excitement burned out, my heart shattered by what I had done." Clarissa said, Bethany's sobs almost audible to her ears. She saw Aveline's eyes soften with shock and sadness.
Laying the sword and shield on the table they shared; Falling onto the bed they slept in. Bethany's brown eyes encompassing her vision, Bethany's sobs echoing through her head.
She had remembered her younger sister. Remembered comforting her during the thunder and lightning; remembered keeping her warm from the snow and ice; remembered singing her to sleep when she woke in the middle of the night; remembered taking revenge on the boys that pulled her hair and pinched her face. She had taken all this, and she had destroyed it in one fell stroke.
"I remember taking the shield out into the fields. I remember scraping it with my new sword, gritting my teeth and screaming silently as the mark of the templars faded from view, line by screeching line. I remember taking a shovel from the shed. I remember battering the shield with it until it was a foot deep in the dirt. I remember covering the glittering steel with brown soil, and I remember walking back up the path to where Mother and Bethany were standing."
She had been crying. The smooth, white skin around her eyes swollen and red. Trails of liquid diamond traced her almond-shaped face, making her shed tears of her own. She had taken her by her hand, looking at Mother with renewed purpose. She had taken her to the smithy, Aedan surprised and bewildered when she asked him to make her a steel bracer. "Didn't the templar sell you a shield?" He had asked.
"I looked at Bethany, at the complex strains of emotions troubling her innocent, angelic face, and I smiled."
"'Not anymore.'"
Clarissa noticed the streaks of wetness that lined her cheeks, and she hurriedly wiped at them with her arm. She felt the warmth of her tears sooth the throbbing of her bruises. "It was another day until I received my bracer. According to Aedan, it was the finest he had ever forged. At my insistence, he etched a symbol onto the back of the steel."
The bracer fit her arm perfectly as she flexed her fingers and her right shoulder, pleased when she felt no discomfort. She heard Bethany come into the room. "What's that on the back?" She asked, noticing the symbol at the back.
"It was a eagle crossed with a hawk, in the fashion of Mother's family's seal. I remember Bethany's fingers running over it as I told her that the hawk was me, and the eagle was her. 'I will never leave you, dear sister. Even should all the templars in Thedas come looking for you, you remember this seal on your sister's arm, and you remember that I will always be there, and I will never, ever, leave you.'"
A moment of silence followed as Clarissa downed the glass of wine in one go. Aveline looked at Clarissa intently, her eyes revealing her understanding of what Clarissa forsook when she buried the shield in the dirt.
The shield, the pride of a full-fledged warrior.
The templars, the most prestigious calling that can ever be bestowed on a person.
"You gave it all up. For Bethany. Even... even I couldn't have done that." She said haltingly, eyes shifting from understanding to thoughtfulness.
For one to forsake so many for that which she loved, surely that affection, that love, runs deeper than most. For her, duty and honor had always come first. Love and personal happiness took a back seat compared to the chivalry hammered into her bones and etched onto her heart. She couldn't understand Clarissa's decision
"Do you regret it?" She asked, only because had she been in her shoes, she would've done it completely the other way.
The barracks' doors opened. Muffled chattering and tired laughter reached the duo's ears through the door. Wordlessly, they rose out of their seats. Aveline because she had to debrief the guardsmen after their shift; Clarissa because it was getting late.
Before opening the door, Clarissa put the bracer back in its rightful place on her right arm and looked long and hard on the eagle and the hawk etched on the steel.
I will never, ever, leave you.
Ever.
She looked Aveline straight in the eye, and she smiled.
"Not one bit."