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Asher backstory
In the end, the smallest of mercies is that Aura is already in bed when it happens. Only four; old enough to know she loves Asher because he's her big brother who always sneaks her sweets, swinging her around and around, taller than anyone but their mother (but unlike their mother, willing to set her on his shoulders to allow her to see the world from such great heights, to make her feel like a giant) but she's still a baby, and she doesn't like the shouting, and doesn't understand why it's happening. It makes her cry. And that leads to more shouting. Or worse, it leads to the tension that has her wandering around with her big worried blue eyes, and guilt twists and turns in Asher's belly, a pit of snakes. This has been the worst Aura has seen, and Aura has known this since she was born and he does feel bad that it wasn't just as bad when Shannon, or Aedan, or even Tobias were little but it's not all his fault.
This past week? Well the air has changed. Something finally seems to have changed, an unspoken decision reached.
He finds himself watching with a curious sort of calm as his mother packs his things with the same brutal efficiency with which she moves through the rest of life, Aedan keeping Tobias out from underfoot, Shannon called away by their father before she could try to help. Asher feels the way he does after a fight. When his face is red, his knuckles bloodied and aching, the tightness in his chest that sometimes makes him feel as if he'll explode finally replaced by calm that never lasts. The house has been curiously quiet since the last incident, holding its breath, leaning in close to see what will happen since Eleanor Hardie had set her hands on the great scarred oak table that had served so many family meals where Asher had disgraced himself (her words, making him feel so small) saying enough was enough. And everyone had understood without understanding. Asher moves out of her way as his clothes are packed, things that'll be warm he realises, the things that aren't hopelessly torn at the knees or the shoulders, or the ones that have bloodstains (not his) that never come out no matter how hard they're scrubbed. A few keepsakes, a blanket rolled up tight that he's never managed, all of it goes into the pack, more than he thought she'd manage to fit in there.
He didn't think so much of his life could fit into something so small.
Aedan and Tobias duck back behind the door when she turns, Asher only able to follow with his heart hammering, tongue prodding at the split lip that started all of this. Or finished it, rather. Some part of him can grasp at this being an old thing. Older than him. Looks and snatches of conversations he wasn't meant to hear. Things that make him squirm the way he does when he has to go to the Chantry with the whole family, when his mother makes him recite it with her because he should be good, they are good Fereldan folk, Asher sit up straight, Asher listen, Asher stop fidgeting, Asher behave, Asher Asher Asher constant noise in his head.
He scowls. His split lip opens and bleeds again.
His mother says he's fortunate they live in a small place. Templars and not guards but Asher's never had a problem with guards, they just give you a clip round the ear for squabbling, haul you off by the back of the shirt and shout until they're as red in the face as you are if the fight is vicious. Some of them laugh. Some of them roll their eyes. They've got better things to care about than boys scrapping. Guards don't do what Templars do. They're not all full up on their own righteousness. They don't try to shame you before the Revered Mother, before all the Sisters, before whatever folk happen to be milling about at the time. Guards don't call Asher a heathen because he loves Korth, and Hakkon, and the Lady of the Skies. It had been a Templar recruit with something to prove this time that he'd been scrapping with. Shorter than Asher because Asher is tall for his age but broader since Asher hasn't come into much of his muscle yet, with an upturned nose like a great big pig's snout, watery eyes, wormy lips stuck in a smug grin. Asher can't even remember what the fight had been about. Maybe the miller's girl that Asher had been but maybe not. It doesn't matter now, it never really does in the end.
Asher just remembers that his blood had boiled when the insults had been thrown. That it had taken three men to haul him off. His lip had been split, his knuckles had been bloodied and aching but the recruit had been the one lying in the dirt a bloody mess with both eyes swollen almost shut, his nose broken, lips split, maybe even teeth missing.
He snaps out of his thoughts at the sound of his mother's voice. "Downstairs," she hisses, the first thing she's said to him in so long when it's been an endless litany of complaints, increasingly frustrated, exasperated lines of questions as to why he is the way he is. He never knows how to answer. Following her, he tugs at his shirt and realises that he's shivering when he watches her set the pack down on the table where his father and sister start adding to it. Shannon squeezes his hand on her way past after she piles in apples, chees, cured meat, and he knows, he isn't stupid even though so many people around here say he is, but part of him holds out hope. It's a joke. A bad joke. Only his mother doesn't joke. Doesn't even smile when it comes to him.
His father slips him coin when his mother leaves the room, after Shannon hugs him so tight with all her strength that it hurts. She runs before he can say a word, her sobs echoing down the stairs, and he aches in every place a meaty fist struck him.
"Dad-" He tries desperately, tongue suddenly thick in his mouth, eyes stinging.
Stafford Hardie's face twists and he can't meet Asher's eyes. He feels betrayed. "I'm sorry Asher, but this…son, there's no other way-"
Asher doesn't hear the rest because the room begins to spin as he's helped into a warm cloak that he recognises as the one his grandfather made him, the one he brought down from the hold, and he's practically a grown man now, that's what they're always telling him but he burrows into it all the same. Tears blur his vision and furiously he rubs them away when he spies his mother returning, an axe in her hand, refusing to give her the satisfaction; it's why he shoulders the pack himself, ignoring that it makes his father flinch. (His father doesn't seem so tall suddenly, he doesn't know why.) He takes the axe as his mother takes him by the upper arm, sparing one backward glance – his father, his head hanging in grief unable to watch, Shannon, Aedan, and Tobias all watching from the stairs, their faces stained with tears.
"You do not belong," his mother tells him quietly when they reach the door and it's just the two of them, eye to eye. He can't look away and there's something dangerous about how low and controlled her voice is that prevents him from answering her back. He's never had this sort of calm, and she might as well be high in the Frostbacks now, hundreds of miles from him. "I tried to raise you to be something better than a savage animal, and Andraste give me strength your siblings show none of this wildness. You would not listen, you will not behave, you have been given opportunity after opportunity, time and time again. No more. Here all you do is cause problems, you are a disgrace and I am ashamed to call you my son. There is no place for you."
She opens the door, doesn't shove him but out he goes all the same. It doesn't slam either, just shuts softly as if not to disturb the world as he stands paralysed on the other side as his legs start to shake. Is this where she expects him to beg? To plead and sob? Not that it's ever worked for her. You'd have an easier time moving a mountain than moving his mother but he still can't believe it, his mouth opening and closing without a sound. There is no place for you rings loud in his ears, burning through like a brand.
He considers the options as he braces himself with one hand against the door.
Night hasn't fallen yet as he looks out over the farm, the cattle and druffalo still grazing, the horses and bronto in their stables, chickens safely locked away in their coop from any foxes that might come prowling. From one of the bunkhouses he can hear laughter and he wonders if they know. What they'll say. Asher gets on with the workers on the holdings because he's usually punished and kept out of trouble with hard work and being the firstborn son doesn't get you any special favours either. He wonders what his mother is going to say too. Certainly the village and the surrounding areas won't care too much. He can imagine the other farmers, the merchants, the labourers, the blacksmiths, the grocers, and especially the faces at the Chantry, all of them nodding sympathetically and in understanding with her. Best not to let a bad apple spoil the whole bunch, bad and wicked to the bone that boy. You did your very best, the Maker will not judge you, Andraste smiles upon strong women.
Shouldering his pack, he lets those words give him strength as he sets off, headed for the next village because he has long legs, he can make it there before nightfall. He can get a bed for the night at least then figure out the next step. He never thought it would come to this. It was never even a threat. But then that's the sort of woman his mother is, even his father probably didn't know until she'd decided. It's only when he looks up to the mountains that the shame threatens to take his legs right out from under him. What will she tell his grandparents? He wasn't born to a hold but they all agree, even when it makes his mother set her jaw and leave the room, that Asher has precious little lowlander in him, but exiles from their homes have done bad things, terrible things, shameful things. Would his grandfather even look at him again were their paths to cross? Countless other arguments and Asher threatened to run away to the hold as his mother gazed coolly across the table, always with her calm and icy 'don't let me stop you' but he never did. Now he could do just that but he's afraid. So he walks until his feet ache, trying to ignore the cold because despite the cloak he's never gone out this late before without the promise of a fire and his own bed at the end of it, and the dark that presses closer and closer. He tries to ignore that he missed dinner. That he's missed several dinners since the explosive row when he was dragged home, creeping about the house to eat whenever he could when his mother could be avoided. He'd listened to them eating upstairs most of the time, lying still and quiet, then to the low muffled voices of his parents when his siblings had been excused.
Discussing his fate maybe. Did his father even fight for him at all? Maybe he bargained. He was a merchant from Denerim and he still is for the farm but no one can match the mountain-born, even one that denies her heritage, and then he had hung his head and made preparations probably. Asher was always being sent away with him when he went on deliveries or to collect payments and deal with contracts, getting in trouble because boys like to scrap, and Asher sees red so fast, but it didn't always get back to his mother. There wasn't always that same air of disappointment. Anger, yes. Frustration. Things Asher could deal with. It had felt more like a secret when it hadn't been too bad.
It hurts most to wonder what they'll tell Aura. Aura loves him best since he never gets cross with her, always letting her ride up on his shoulders, sneaking her treats but she's so little. She might forget she even had a brother called Asher.
The moon rises silver and bright, half-hidden behind thick cloud when he reaches the neighbouring village and the tavern that has beds, raucous laughter and glorious heat spilling out when he opens the door. He finds himself a corner occupied only by a slim elven woman with light brown skin and watchful tawny eyes. He leathers are stained from travel but they look costly, and she's armed, a glance around confirming the rest of the patrons are much the same.
He tightens his grip on his pack when she speaks, startled to hear a thick Orlesian accent.
"Relax boy, we're not after whatever scraps you've got in there, not on our way to being paid."
"Being paid?" He asks, stupidly he realises because this number of people, and leathers, weapons, and being paid can only mean a few things.
"Mercenaries boy," the elven woman explains, flagging down a pretty serving girl. "Another brandy."
The girl hovers, eyes narrowing at first at Asher as if trying to place him – she's used to seeing him looking bored or leaning on the bar as his father talks business. "Asher Hardie! Do your parents know you're here?"
"I decided it was time I saw the world myself." Asher declares because what does he owe his parents now when they sent him away? He's proud of how strong his voice sounds. "An ale," he adds even though he hasn't eaten, pressing a coin into her palm since he's eager to be rid of her when he wants to talk to the woman next to him as he loosens his cloak.
"A strange hour, Asher boy, to go finding your fortune." There's something like knowing in her voice though, but it's soft and fleeting so by the time he might ask, the girl is back with their drinks and the woman is asking a question as she looks him over. "You know how to use that axe?"
"Aye, my grandfather taught me, he's an Avvar hunter."
"Heard bits and pieces about them in Orlais, that they're barbarians but very fierce."
"We're not," it hurts to say that when it might be they now, since he might not belong anymore, "barbarians. Orlesian nobles are a bunch of ponces."
The woman laughs, nodding her head in agreement. "I am sure we can agree on that, an Avvar and Fereldan boy, and an elf from Halamshiral." She takes another drink, then looks him up and down again. "You will not be missed?"
It's hard to swallow, almost choking on an ale that's suddenly too bitter, feeling even younger than he is under her inscrutable gaze when he couldn't even begin to guess how old she is. "No. That…that was made very clear to me."
"Drink up and come with me. We have need of another young man. You live then you live, you die? Well as you say, you will not be missed."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." She shrugs then knocks back her brandy, twisting her dark brown hair over her shoulder. "There was no one to miss me – the pay is good, you get to see the world, you'll have stories to tell if you live."
Asher drinks up, following the woman when she jerks her head and joins up with the Stray Dogs that night. Later he learns her name is Melisende, laughing as the dwarven captain damn near crushes his hand, the markings denoting him as casteless faded by years beneath the sun and open sky. Asher sleeps in a stable with his head on his pack, a contract drawn up in the tavern signed, sealed, and rolled up neatly within. If he's a savage animal, best to run with the wild dogs where he maybe belongs.
This past week? Well the air has changed. Something finally seems to have changed, an unspoken decision reached.
He finds himself watching with a curious sort of calm as his mother packs his things with the same brutal efficiency with which she moves through the rest of life, Aedan keeping Tobias out from underfoot, Shannon called away by their father before she could try to help. Asher feels the way he does after a fight. When his face is red, his knuckles bloodied and aching, the tightness in his chest that sometimes makes him feel as if he'll explode finally replaced by calm that never lasts. The house has been curiously quiet since the last incident, holding its breath, leaning in close to see what will happen since Eleanor Hardie had set her hands on the great scarred oak table that had served so many family meals where Asher had disgraced himself (her words, making him feel so small) saying enough was enough. And everyone had understood without understanding. Asher moves out of her way as his clothes are packed, things that'll be warm he realises, the things that aren't hopelessly torn at the knees or the shoulders, or the ones that have bloodstains (not his) that never come out no matter how hard they're scrubbed. A few keepsakes, a blanket rolled up tight that he's never managed, all of it goes into the pack, more than he thought she'd manage to fit in there.
He didn't think so much of his life could fit into something so small.
Aedan and Tobias duck back behind the door when she turns, Asher only able to follow with his heart hammering, tongue prodding at the split lip that started all of this. Or finished it, rather. Some part of him can grasp at this being an old thing. Older than him. Looks and snatches of conversations he wasn't meant to hear. Things that make him squirm the way he does when he has to go to the Chantry with the whole family, when his mother makes him recite it with her because he should be good, they are good Fereldan folk, Asher sit up straight, Asher listen, Asher stop fidgeting, Asher behave, Asher Asher Asher constant noise in his head.
He scowls. His split lip opens and bleeds again.
His mother says he's fortunate they live in a small place. Templars and not guards but Asher's never had a problem with guards, they just give you a clip round the ear for squabbling, haul you off by the back of the shirt and shout until they're as red in the face as you are if the fight is vicious. Some of them laugh. Some of them roll their eyes. They've got better things to care about than boys scrapping. Guards don't do what Templars do. They're not all full up on their own righteousness. They don't try to shame you before the Revered Mother, before all the Sisters, before whatever folk happen to be milling about at the time. Guards don't call Asher a heathen because he loves Korth, and Hakkon, and the Lady of the Skies. It had been a Templar recruit with something to prove this time that he'd been scrapping with. Shorter than Asher because Asher is tall for his age but broader since Asher hasn't come into much of his muscle yet, with an upturned nose like a great big pig's snout, watery eyes, wormy lips stuck in a smug grin. Asher can't even remember what the fight had been about. Maybe the miller's girl that Asher had been but maybe not. It doesn't matter now, it never really does in the end.
Asher just remembers that his blood had boiled when the insults had been thrown. That it had taken three men to haul him off. His lip had been split, his knuckles had been bloodied and aching but the recruit had been the one lying in the dirt a bloody mess with both eyes swollen almost shut, his nose broken, lips split, maybe even teeth missing.
He snaps out of his thoughts at the sound of his mother's voice. "Downstairs," she hisses, the first thing she's said to him in so long when it's been an endless litany of complaints, increasingly frustrated, exasperated lines of questions as to why he is the way he is. He never knows how to answer. Following her, he tugs at his shirt and realises that he's shivering when he watches her set the pack down on the table where his father and sister start adding to it. Shannon squeezes his hand on her way past after she piles in apples, chees, cured meat, and he knows, he isn't stupid even though so many people around here say he is, but part of him holds out hope. It's a joke. A bad joke. Only his mother doesn't joke. Doesn't even smile when it comes to him.
His father slips him coin when his mother leaves the room, after Shannon hugs him so tight with all her strength that it hurts. She runs before he can say a word, her sobs echoing down the stairs, and he aches in every place a meaty fist struck him.
"Dad-" He tries desperately, tongue suddenly thick in his mouth, eyes stinging.
Stafford Hardie's face twists and he can't meet Asher's eyes. He feels betrayed. "I'm sorry Asher, but this…son, there's no other way-"
Asher doesn't hear the rest because the room begins to spin as he's helped into a warm cloak that he recognises as the one his grandfather made him, the one he brought down from the hold, and he's practically a grown man now, that's what they're always telling him but he burrows into it all the same. Tears blur his vision and furiously he rubs them away when he spies his mother returning, an axe in her hand, refusing to give her the satisfaction; it's why he shoulders the pack himself, ignoring that it makes his father flinch. (His father doesn't seem so tall suddenly, he doesn't know why.) He takes the axe as his mother takes him by the upper arm, sparing one backward glance – his father, his head hanging in grief unable to watch, Shannon, Aedan, and Tobias all watching from the stairs, their faces stained with tears.
"You do not belong," his mother tells him quietly when they reach the door and it's just the two of them, eye to eye. He can't look away and there's something dangerous about how low and controlled her voice is that prevents him from answering her back. He's never had this sort of calm, and she might as well be high in the Frostbacks now, hundreds of miles from him. "I tried to raise you to be something better than a savage animal, and Andraste give me strength your siblings show none of this wildness. You would not listen, you will not behave, you have been given opportunity after opportunity, time and time again. No more. Here all you do is cause problems, you are a disgrace and I am ashamed to call you my son. There is no place for you."
She opens the door, doesn't shove him but out he goes all the same. It doesn't slam either, just shuts softly as if not to disturb the world as he stands paralysed on the other side as his legs start to shake. Is this where she expects him to beg? To plead and sob? Not that it's ever worked for her. You'd have an easier time moving a mountain than moving his mother but he still can't believe it, his mouth opening and closing without a sound. There is no place for you rings loud in his ears, burning through like a brand.
He considers the options as he braces himself with one hand against the door.
Night hasn't fallen yet as he looks out over the farm, the cattle and druffalo still grazing, the horses and bronto in their stables, chickens safely locked away in their coop from any foxes that might come prowling. From one of the bunkhouses he can hear laughter and he wonders if they know. What they'll say. Asher gets on with the workers on the holdings because he's usually punished and kept out of trouble with hard work and being the firstborn son doesn't get you any special favours either. He wonders what his mother is going to say too. Certainly the village and the surrounding areas won't care too much. He can imagine the other farmers, the merchants, the labourers, the blacksmiths, the grocers, and especially the faces at the Chantry, all of them nodding sympathetically and in understanding with her. Best not to let a bad apple spoil the whole bunch, bad and wicked to the bone that boy. You did your very best, the Maker will not judge you, Andraste smiles upon strong women.
Shouldering his pack, he lets those words give him strength as he sets off, headed for the next village because he has long legs, he can make it there before nightfall. He can get a bed for the night at least then figure out the next step. He never thought it would come to this. It was never even a threat. But then that's the sort of woman his mother is, even his father probably didn't know until she'd decided. It's only when he looks up to the mountains that the shame threatens to take his legs right out from under him. What will she tell his grandparents? He wasn't born to a hold but they all agree, even when it makes his mother set her jaw and leave the room, that Asher has precious little lowlander in him, but exiles from their homes have done bad things, terrible things, shameful things. Would his grandfather even look at him again were their paths to cross? Countless other arguments and Asher threatened to run away to the hold as his mother gazed coolly across the table, always with her calm and icy 'don't let me stop you' but he never did. Now he could do just that but he's afraid. So he walks until his feet ache, trying to ignore the cold because despite the cloak he's never gone out this late before without the promise of a fire and his own bed at the end of it, and the dark that presses closer and closer. He tries to ignore that he missed dinner. That he's missed several dinners since the explosive row when he was dragged home, creeping about the house to eat whenever he could when his mother could be avoided. He'd listened to them eating upstairs most of the time, lying still and quiet, then to the low muffled voices of his parents when his siblings had been excused.
Discussing his fate maybe. Did his father even fight for him at all? Maybe he bargained. He was a merchant from Denerim and he still is for the farm but no one can match the mountain-born, even one that denies her heritage, and then he had hung his head and made preparations probably. Asher was always being sent away with him when he went on deliveries or to collect payments and deal with contracts, getting in trouble because boys like to scrap, and Asher sees red so fast, but it didn't always get back to his mother. There wasn't always that same air of disappointment. Anger, yes. Frustration. Things Asher could deal with. It had felt more like a secret when it hadn't been too bad.
It hurts most to wonder what they'll tell Aura. Aura loves him best since he never gets cross with her, always letting her ride up on his shoulders, sneaking her treats but she's so little. She might forget she even had a brother called Asher.
The moon rises silver and bright, half-hidden behind thick cloud when he reaches the neighbouring village and the tavern that has beds, raucous laughter and glorious heat spilling out when he opens the door. He finds himself a corner occupied only by a slim elven woman with light brown skin and watchful tawny eyes. He leathers are stained from travel but they look costly, and she's armed, a glance around confirming the rest of the patrons are much the same.
He tightens his grip on his pack when she speaks, startled to hear a thick Orlesian accent.
"Relax boy, we're not after whatever scraps you've got in there, not on our way to being paid."
"Being paid?" He asks, stupidly he realises because this number of people, and leathers, weapons, and being paid can only mean a few things.
"Mercenaries boy," the elven woman explains, flagging down a pretty serving girl. "Another brandy."
The girl hovers, eyes narrowing at first at Asher as if trying to place him – she's used to seeing him looking bored or leaning on the bar as his father talks business. "Asher Hardie! Do your parents know you're here?"
"I decided it was time I saw the world myself." Asher declares because what does he owe his parents now when they sent him away? He's proud of how strong his voice sounds. "An ale," he adds even though he hasn't eaten, pressing a coin into her palm since he's eager to be rid of her when he wants to talk to the woman next to him as he loosens his cloak.
"A strange hour, Asher boy, to go finding your fortune." There's something like knowing in her voice though, but it's soft and fleeting so by the time he might ask, the girl is back with their drinks and the woman is asking a question as she looks him over. "You know how to use that axe?"
"Aye, my grandfather taught me, he's an Avvar hunter."
"Heard bits and pieces about them in Orlais, that they're barbarians but very fierce."
"We're not," it hurts to say that when it might be they now, since he might not belong anymore, "barbarians. Orlesian nobles are a bunch of ponces."
The woman laughs, nodding her head in agreement. "I am sure we can agree on that, an Avvar and Fereldan boy, and an elf from Halamshiral." She takes another drink, then looks him up and down again. "You will not be missed?"
It's hard to swallow, almost choking on an ale that's suddenly too bitter, feeling even younger than he is under her inscrutable gaze when he couldn't even begin to guess how old she is. "No. That…that was made very clear to me."
"Drink up and come with me. We have need of another young man. You live then you live, you die? Well as you say, you will not be missed."
"Just like that?"
"Just like that." She shrugs then knocks back her brandy, twisting her dark brown hair over her shoulder. "There was no one to miss me – the pay is good, you get to see the world, you'll have stories to tell if you live."
Asher drinks up, following the woman when she jerks her head and joins up with the Stray Dogs that night. Later he learns her name is Melisende, laughing as the dwarven captain damn near crushes his hand, the markings denoting him as casteless faded by years beneath the sun and open sky. Asher sleeps in a stable with his head on his pack, a contract drawn up in the tavern signed, sealed, and rolled up neatly within. If he's a savage animal, best to run with the wild dogs where he maybe belongs.