Forgiveness

A few days had passed since they’d packed Erimond off to the Antaam.

Leliana had assured her she had ways of having him practically dropped at the feet of the Arishok. Or “Sten”, as she and Jolena still called him, despite recognizing the discrepancy.

“He was always Sten to us.” They had told her, fond smiles gracing their faces. “He will always be our Sten.”

Mhyrra believed them wholeheartedly, their smiles and the sentiments behind them familiar and infectious.

But now here they were again, the scene becoming dishearteningly common.

Idly, Mhyrra pondered that she might consider adding more comfortable padding to her illustrious throne of a chair, but Josephine had insistently argued that the expressions and postures that might result from her potential discomfort would serve to unnerve and intimidate the accused.

Hmph. Mhyrra needed no aid to unnerve or intimidate anyone. Perhaps she should bring up the matter again now that she had proved it once more? She shrugged off the thought. Between her actual lack of real discomfort, the relative scarcity of prisoners and convicts, and how often she ended up standing anyway, there was barely any point.

The scene that was unfolding before her was rapidly proving to be of a wholly different sort from the rest, however. The crowd’s murmurs were decidedly less heated. Some even sounded puzzled, and now so was she. The prisoner in question was not being man-handled, actually following the guards that held her by the shoulders willingly.

A Grey Warden. That much was clear by her armour, battered and smeared as it was, the griffon on her chest-plate appearing broken and bowed, same as its wearer. Head bowed, chestnut hair hanging limply over her downcast eyes, shoulders slumped and entire countenance shadowed in sorrow and despair.

Mhyrra couldn’t help but blink, the sight so morose and jarring to her that she immediately brought her entire focus forward. Beside her, she didn’t need to look to feel Jolena and Roxanne doing the same, as she was certain Blackwall was as well somewhere to her left.

“Another of the lingering pains of Adamant, your Worship. Ser Ruth is a Senior Warden of the Order.” Josephine gestured to the approaching woman. “She was one of the many who slit the throat of another to bind a demon. She does not contest this.”

The guards finally pushed her forward to her designated spot, the gesture unnecessary, and the woman still wordlessly compliant. Mhyrra was even beginning to fear she might topple over, she looked so drained. But she stood, drawn down and silent.

“In fact, she surrendered to us. She requests no mercy. She wants the public justice of the headman’s axe.” Josephine finished quietly.

Mhyrra stared at her a moment. Then at Jolena, the elven battle-mage similarly mystified. Roxanne could only knit her brows. She glanced at Blackwall, seeing him give even more rapt attention to the matter than any other save the three.

Finally she brought her gaze to the woman before her, who had still yet to move or speak. Leaning onto her elbows she began calmly addressing the despondent Warden.

“You’re very serious about this. To face the punishment for one’s action takes great honour and bravery. I applaud you for it. But tell me truly: is more death the answer?”

Here Ruth finally raised her head to respond. Her grey eyes haunted, her face drawn and sallow, Mhyrra could have sworn she looked more ghost than woman. Yet her voice still had some strength to it as she spoke.

“There is no excuse for my actions. I murdered another of the Order.” Her gaze faltered once more. “That blood marks me more than the Blight ever could.” She began to shake.

Inside, Blackwall shivered in sad sympathy. To see first-hand others who bore the same sort of pain. He prayed that the spirit of the man who saved his life lived on, and that the Inquisitor, this strong, honourable woman that he’d come to follow with pride, would show this woman similar consideration.

In the pause opened by Mhyrra weighing Ruth’s words, Josephine, ever the compassionate diplomat, choice to add her own opinion on the matter.

“Excepting their actions while thralls to Corypheus, many treaties allow the Wardens any extreme, if it opposes the Blight.” She offered.

Ruth’s head snapped up as if she’d been struck, head swinging between the four women in front of her, face aghast and eyes filled with anguish.

“I can’t do it! I can’t use the greater good to justify my crimes! I won’t!” She cried. “As if it could ever create a future I could be a part of! That my friends and family and countless innocents could be a part of!”

Her words struck deep into many souls, eyes widening and hearts growing heavy.

Unexpectedly, Ruth snorted, a rough sound that rung pitifully from her lips.

“But then, what right to friends or family does a monster like me have anymore?” She raised her gaze towards Mhyrra once more, glancing between her and Jolena. “It is wrong that this of all things broke me, your Worship, Commander. I’ve done worse with full sanction. And now I can do nothing…”

She fell to her knees, a last tearful, pleading gaze in front of her before her chin sunk to her chest.

“…but serve as an example of the cost.”

The air hung dark and heavy. Mhyrra was certain she spotted many an eye beginning to tear over in the crowd, her companions included.

Solas, for all his enmity towards the Wardens, seemed unable to remain unaffected by such a display of humility.

Cassandra couldn’t fault the woman for believing in her order right up until the bitter end, until the price to her soul turned too steep. She wondered if her devotion to what was left of the Seekers would end in similar tragedy, praying that it wouldn’t.

Cullen was of a similar mind-set. Where would he be now, if not for the chance at real, worthy purpose the Inquisition had given him? How would he be without the support of those who chose to forgive him, even when he didn’t forgive himself? He thumbed the coin in his pocket. It seems luck had stayed with him even more than he’d realized. If only others’ wasn’t so sparse…

Bull tasted ash in his mouth. He had learned that causes were hollow without people to stand beside you in them. Early enough that it hadn’t cost him everything he’d built here, everything that truly mattered. This woman hadn’t been so lucky.

Varric could only sigh that weary sigh. The sigh that he sighed when stories lacked their happy ending. When heroes were humbled. When good men and women were cruelly, unfairly broken.

Dorian couldn’t pretend to know the depth of what the Ser was feeling, but he knew some. He had, among other reasons, left his homeland precisely because he couldn’t and wouldn’t stomach the causes most of them so sickeningly believed in. And yet what had that accomplished, save protecting his own hide? The Inquisition had done more to aid the better parts of Tevinter in the months since it had formed than he had in all the time he had left. And here this woman was, ready to shoulder the consequences of a choice she’d all but been backed into a corner to make, with more grit than he believed he would have in her shoes.

Sera looked like she was about to start sniffling, red-faced and glassy-eyed. The Wardens buggered up, but why should the good ones have to pay the tab? People make mistakes. Heroes don’t kill other heroes. Shouldn’t punish victims. She knew Mhyrra wouldn’t. But what then?

Cole appeared uncharacteristically agitated, swinging back and forth on his feet as he rambled like a mad wind, though too low for most to hear him. Hurt so heavy it sinks into the heart, so hard it hammers the soul. Have to help! Don’t know how! Mhyrra will know. Mhyrra always finds ways to help. Help! Mhyrra, help her!

Josephine, Roxanne, Jolena and Leliana were like Sera in their current countenance, clenching their jaws, the latter two noting in the back of their minds to send Sten a very strong letter to be particularly thorough with his gift.

Even Vivienne for all her usual frigidness, appeared to show empathy for so utterly broken a soul, her usual snark and wit completely absent from her.

And Blackwall…Blackwall just stood there, hands tight at his side, tears running freely into his beard, the drops losing themselves in the dark forest that seemed to swallow up his face in his sorrow. Gods, he pleaded, if any of you are truly up there…If you believe the least bit in fairness…If you believe that a criminal and a murderer, a coward, deserves a second chance, then please…grant one to this most deserving of souls. Take it from me if you have to! But he knew not if any gods were truly listening. Only Mhyrra. She didn’t know. He could never summon the guts to tell her. What would she chose? What would she do?

For her part, the Qunari in question could only sit there, drinking it all in, heart growing heavier by the second, water gaining her eyes as well. The woman didn’t deserve this. But even if she spared her, then what? Buildings and bodies were easily renewed, mended or buried. Minds, hearts and souls? Much less so. Ruth’s were broken, horribly bent at the very least, and she didn’t know if she was as apt at fixing things as she was at breaking them or building up from scratch.

But she was damned well going to try with every ounce of herself she could muster.

“What is your name, serah?”

Like a boulder thrown into a wall of glass, the question seemed to shatter whatever spell had gripped the hall, jarring everyone from their morose thoughts to stare at her. Ruth slowly lifted her head, blinking the tears from her eyes in a stupor.

“W-what?” Her voice little more than a whisper.

“What is your name, Lady Ruth?” She repeated softly.

The woman blinked again, still seeming unsure that she’d heard right. And yet the word tumbled from her mouth before she could care to stop it.

“K-Katerine, your Worship.”

Mhyrra cast around her mind for a moment, to the readings on culture and history she’d invested time in ever since she realized how much institutionalized bureaucracy and tradition she was going to have to cleave her way through, so as to better know how to do just that.

A good thing Josephine was such a patient teacher, else she’d have just tossed a thunderstorm their way and called it a day.

“Katerine.” She rolled the name of her tongue. “Strong name. Beautiful name. From ‘Katarina’. ‘Pure’.”

Katerine froze. That was exactly the same thing her maman had told her when, six years old, she had said she found her name too harsh, too old-fashioned, after other children had made fun of it. She had said it with such affection, the likes only a mother could give her daughter. She’d been proud of her name ever since.

How ironic that she’d so perverted its meaning over the course of her life, only to be reminded of it here, on her day of reckoning.

“I do not know how much or how little you believe in the Maker, Katerine.” Mhyrra continued, snapping back her focus. “Nor do I in fact know any more than the next woman if He truly exists, or how Andraste herself would react in this instance. So I cannot offer you hollow words of how I forgive you in their name. Nor would I if I could. But here is what I can and will give you, real and true.”

She rose from her seat and strode toward the woman staring at her in rapt attention, along with everyone else in the vicinity, before kneeling in front of her, green orbs shining gently as she gazed into those stormy-grey eyes.

“You wish to atone for your crimes? You wish to serve as an example? Then serve as an example that the Wardens will no longer go unchecked or unaided. If you believe that the Wardens of Weisshaupt, Orlais, Ferelden or any other nation will no longer take you in, then join the Wardens of the Inquisition.”

Katerine started, gaping, same with many others, but she pushed forward before anyone could think to interrupt.

“If they would have you, if they are willing to give you another chance, then under their wing you shall pay your penance towards those you have done wrong.” She rose back a little, speaking over Katerine’s shoulder to seemingly no one in particular. “What say they?”

Both women heard a clanking of metal to the left, tuning to see Blackwall standing there, tall with determination and certainty.

“Aye.”

“Aye.” They all turned again to see Jolena descending the dais, nodding and smiling.

Katerine could barely breathe, barely think as the world whirled around her.

“Why…why would you all do this?” She pleaded, grasping for sense that seemed to elude her.

Mhyrra merely smiled, moving forward to engulf the woman in a tight bear-hug.

“Because that is what people do when they truly care about you. They never forget, but they forgive. I cannot speak as to whether deities or deceased religious figures would do the same,” She pulled back a tad to lift Katerine’s chin up. “But I forgive you, Katerine.”

The woman felt another hand on her shoulder, turning to see a smiling pair of grass-green eyes framed by a sea of red.

“I know better than most how steep the price of being a Warden, of being a true hero, can be. How terrible. But someone who shoulders that burden? Who keeps her soul through it all, to still recognize right and wrong, and to not think herself above and beyond punishment for what she’s done, despite all she’s had to sacrifice?” Jolena kneeled as well, joining Mhyrra in lacing her arms around the woman. “That person earns my forgiveness as well.”

Barely a moment after, a third pair of strong arms, Blackwall’s, embraced her tightly, and then a fourth from behind, a large shadow inexplicably covering her until the brim of the person’s bizarrely large hat entered her vision.

“It hurts. But others helping, sharing the hurt, dulls it, turns it to heal.” She didn’t know the voice, but the words sunk into her somehow regardless.

A fifth person slid up besides Mhyrra, gold and brown and yellow and scarlet, before throwing her arms around her as well.

“What?” Sera chirped, grinning through her tears. “I want a hug, she needs one or five, and I want to give her one! Win-win-win!”

Mhyrra mirrored her expression.                          

Katerine just couldn’t take it anymore. The Inquisitor, her friends, her people, the very people who were doing more to heal and help the world and its denizens than she could remember the Wardens ever doing in recent memory – baring Warden-Commander Surana, who still hugged her tight and warm with the others – the people she thought would condemn her, spit on her and curse her name as they stomped on her skull…

They…chose to care. To take her in. They…forgave her.

In that moment Lady Katerine Ruth of the Grey Wardens broke down, bursting into hot tears as she buried herself in the tangle of limbs and warmth, sobbing into Mhyrra’s chest as she pulled her closer, the others following suit.

Naught a dry eye was to be found in Skyhold that day.