Chapter Text
Sometimes, Meredith dreams about her childhood. Dreams about her sister, before she had become the Thing.
It had been a simpler time, before everything had gone to shit. A time before the Kirkwall docks where her father once worked had become shrouded in the shadow of the Gallows, even though logic dictated the ancient Tevinter fortress had stood for centuries, and would stand for ages more.
No. In the old dreams, Meredith can only remember the sun. The perfect summer days. The deceptively still surface of the Waking Sea reflecting the cloudless blue skies above their heads. Hers, and Amelia’s. Bare legs dangling into the water to keep cool in the heat. Amelia, jerking into Meredith’s side swearing an eel had slithered past. Meredith, clutching at her big sister’s side to keep her steady.
It was only seaweed. Only ever seaweed.
On a good day, they’d have coppers enough to split a whole fish between them for lunch, a big juicy fat one at that. They’d cook it on a stick over one of the communal firepits, Amelia glancing around nervously worried the neighbourhood boys would pick a fight with them again and Meredith focused on her task, confident in the knowledge they wouldn’t.
Meredith had known, once upon a time, that their father had been disappointed their mother had borne him a second daughter. But it didn’t matter so much these days, not now she’d proven to him she could do everything a boy could, could do it even better.
She still remembers the first time she’d come home bloodied and bedraggled after breaking a bully’s nose for making fun of her sister. She’d expected to get a hiding but Dad had only laughed, ruffling her matted hair.
Maker’s breath, he’d said, I’ve created a monster. And yet upon noticing her swollen thumb, he’d still taught her how to throw a proper punch. For next time. It had been in that moment Meredith had been convinced of her purpose in life, her reason for being: she had been brought into this world to protect her sister, and she would never ever give up, so long as she lived.
And it had all been going so swimmingly, until Amelia’s magic had manifested. Until the already shy and reticent Amelia withdrew so deep inside her shell she had turned herself inside out instead—
—her dreaming mind refuses to dwell on what had happened after, tonight. Tonight, it still has hope. A false belief there is a chance. Something, anything, that she can do to change what actually happened.
She is chasing her sister through the winding streets of Lowtown, bare feet kicking up clouds of dust as she runs. Amelia is out of sight, but only just. Like Meredith will turn the corner and see her standing there, close enough to jab a finger in the dimple of her smile.
Meredith is not sure any of this ever actually happened.
However, what she is certain of is this: that Amelia has always been just out of her grasp. That the templars always reached her sister first.
That every day, she wakes up into a nightmare.
She is sticking to her nightclothes, her sheets, perspiration rolling off her in waves. It’s summer in Kirkwall, but she is no longer eight years old, but forty-two. It’s early still, sun yet to break the sky, but she can make out the shape of the objects in her bedchamber in the red glow of her greatsword, never too far from hand.
Do you still believe you can change things? Orsino had once asked her many moons ago, and back then, she had demurred. Had told him she didn’t know.
But now, as she pushes herself upright and hums the red lyrium’s haunting song under her breath, she feels it in her bones.
Certainty.
As good a name for a sword as any.
The Thing watches her out of the corner of her eye. You promised, it says. Once upon a time, Meredith had been adamant that the Thing was not her sister. These days, she sees little utility in such arbitrarily drawn lines.
Yes, she whispers into the empty room. I did.