I am the one that can recount what we've lost.
I am the one who will live on.
Andoral's Reach, 9:40 Dragon
The leaves rustled in the soft breeze as the group huddled beneath the great tree atop the hill in silence. The freshly turned earth was dark against the tufts of yellow grass and white knotted roots, and a name had been carved into a stone that was leaning against the trunk.
Wynne.
The group who stood at the elderly archmage's final resting place were an odd bunch. A mage, an ex-templar, and a golem, to name a few.
The group started to disperse slowly; first the golem, it's footsteps thundering against the ground as it went, regardless of how gently it tried. Then the mage and ex-templar, hand in hand as though they were lovers. Slowly, the group left in ones and twos, until three remained. The young red-headed woman -who had sung an old Dalish song just minutes earlier - now stood motionless, hands clasped together as tears silently fell down her cheeks.
She exchanged a glance with the hooded figure who had stood a little apart from the group. The face was concealed, but she knew who it was. The gloved hand resting on the head of her aging mabari was a dead giveaway.
The war hound let out a low whine, then bowed his head.
The red-headed woman approached the hooded figure and saw a glittering within the darkness that she understood as silent tears. She held the arm of her friend gently, then gave her a quick nod before leaving down the hill towards where the others had headed.
The Grey Warden, alone at last, approached the resting place of her old mentor and friend. She crouched down, touching the fresh dirt with her gloved hand, and let a sob escape her lips.
The mabari nuzzled her shoulder in comfort.
"Did you know my mother well?"
She turned slowly, so as not to look startled.
The mage had returned, alone.
He was handsome, his dark hair greying at the temples.
The likeness between him and Wynne was obvious, as the Grey Warden push back her hood slightly, revealing her face and shock of red hair.
"She's an old friend," the Grey Warden said. She nodded to him then, wishing to say more, but knowing she couldn't.
She looked back to the grave once more, her blue eyes full of sadness.
"Farewell," she said simply, then turned away, glancing towards the tree line below the hill they stood upon.
She started to make her way down the hill when the mage spoke up.
"You're her," he said. She paused, glancing behind her at the mage. "You're the one who slew the archdemon."
She nodded once, closing her eyes briefly. "Indeed, I am." She took a deep breath, opening her eyes again, and gave him a small ghost of a smile. "Maker watch over you in the days to come, friend."
He nodded back to her. "Maker watch over you," he echoed back softly as she turned away once more, and headed down the hill towards where her black horse was tethered just beyond the tree line, her mabari trotting obediently beside her.
"You're her."
Who am I?
She wondered to herself as she let her mare pick her way through the trees, staying out of sight of the main road and following the slowly setting sun.
Beatrice Solona Amell was the name she was left with, twenty-eight years ago at a chantry in Lothering.
Beatrice was the name the Revered Mother and Chantry sisters had called her as she learned to read and write and sing during holy days.
Trixie was the name her cousin Bethany had given to her when she had unknowingly stumbled into the lives of long-lost relatives living just a short walk from Lothering.
Solona was the name she wore when her magic manifested, and she had gone to the Circle tower in Ferelden. Her time in Kinloch Hold had been long and tough for her. She didn't make many friends and the letters from the Hawke's were few and far between.
She then became Warden Amell, and later on the Hero of Ferelden. But with that title came a myriad of anger, sadness, loss. No one knew how she survived, and only three living souls in Thedas would ever know if she could help it.
Commander of the Grey followed that, and then she was Solona Theirin, beloved wife of the bastard prince of Ferelden. Not that any really remembered that anymore. She and Alistair worked hard over the years to build back the Ferelden Grey Wardens - sort of their way of building a family together, seeing as that future was now lost to them.
Who am I?
Now, she just didn't know.
She was alone, besides her faithful hound and trusty steed.
She had always been alone, really.
Living in the Chantry in Lothering, she enjoyed small pockets of family bliss with the Hawke's, when she was able to sneak away and spend time with them.
The three friends she did make while in the Circle were complicated.
Jowan. Cullen. Anders.
She had let them all down.
Guilt gnawed at her insides whenever she thought of them.
The sadness in the eyes of Jowan when she sentenced him to death. For blood magic, of course. But that didn't stop her from allowing him to use it to save the son of an arl from the clutches of a demon.
The hurt in Anders' eyes when she sent him away after he sought refuge at Vigil's Keep after the explosion in Kirkwall.
"As Commander of the Grey I order you to go to your Calling," she had said, not even blinking as she, too, sentenced an old friend - and lover - to death. "Your time here is over."
And Cullen. Guilt made her squirm in her saddle just thinking about him, even after all these years. How she had lusted after him while under his charge in the Circle. Her occasional hook-ups with Anders were spent with her eyes closed, imagining it was Cullen fucking her against the bookshelves at the back of the library. The night she left the Circle, she had run into him, coincidentally, at the Inn at the docks on Lake Calenhad. Even though both had been drunk - and she was technically no longer a Circle mage - she had still seduced the young, virgin templar. She knew full well his feelings for her.
And she knew he would regret it come morning when sober thoughts took over. But she just wanted that one night with him.
It was always what she wanted.
But when she woke up in the bed alone, sadness took over.
She had taken advantage, and lost a good friend.
And the hate she saw in his eyes, after the massacre that happened in Kinloch Hold upon her return months later. He spat words of venom at her. About her, and her kind.
It was because of her Jowan escaped, after all. And blood magic spread like a plague across the Circle.
Jowan was dead because of her. Anders was probably dead because of her. And she had turned the one decent, kind templar into a mage-hating, magic-fearing man.
And how she missed her friends from the Blight. Zevran and his neverending innuendos - Maker knew where he was now. Oghren had left to visit his family soon after the defeat of the Mother, and never returned. Sten was now apparently the new Arishock, whatever that really meant.
When once she had traveled with her companions during the Blight - times not spent fighting were filled with songs and banter, stories and jokes - she now traveled in silence, save for the clip-clopping of her horse's hooves and the occasional warning growl from her mabari when a threat came too close.
Avoiding villages and inns, she mostly slept outside, under the stars.
She hated being recognized.
Late at night, while spying out the constellations strewn across the velvet of night, she wondered if her beloved was also looking at the same stars.
"Look at the sky," she had told him as she cupped his face and kissed his nose. "As long as we both see the same stars, we won't be that far apart."
Alistair didn't want her to leave. They had fought about it and fought hard.
The angry yelling had turned into angry fucking which had turned into making love.
One more time, he had begged her to stay.
"I can't."
Who am I?
A hero no more.
Urthemiel lay dead almost a decade now.
Almost ten years and she wondered how Morrigan was faring with the child conceived days before the great battle at Denerim.
She missed her friends. She missed her husband.
Seeing Leliana had been hard. She didn't want to say too much, didn't want to get roped back into someone else's problem.
"This is not my fight," she had told Leliana upon meeting her outside the Winter Palace during a ball held for the Divine, as she ventured west.
"There was a day when you would have made it your fight," Leliana said bitterly, then regretted it.
Solona left without saying another word.
Heroes stay and fight the fights, she thought to herself.
"I'm a hero no more," she said out loud one night, laying under the stars. "I just want to live. I want to grow old with my love. Maker, don't take him from me."
Despite growing up in the Chantry, she had never really believed in the Maker. Yet she found herself praying more and more as the years slipped by.
Grey Wardens didn't live long, and her and Alistair's Calling loomed over them like a heavy cloud.
She knew no magic that could dispel it.
She would never be happy unless she could cure their Calling.
The same as she would never have been happy if one of them had died slaying Urthemiel. They weren't supposed to be alive.
And as soon as she saw an out, she took it.
In death, sacrifice? Not today.
No matter the cost.
It may not have quite been blood magic, but it was forbidden and wrong, and she could still ultimately pay for it in years to come.
But she didn't care. She and Alistair lived. That was all that mattered.
That is all that matters, still.
And she wouldn't stop until she found the Cure. The rest of the world could burn for all she cared.
Who am I?
I am a very selfish woman.