#in this one. essentially kass had to get out and wasn't able to take ash

[scurvgirl]

Blast from the past incoming. I was going through some old WIP folders and found some unpublished Reincarnation/Frat AU stuff featuring Ash and @justanartsysideblog’s Melarue. This is a heavier and ultimately unfinished piece, warnings for mentions of child abuse and incarceration. 

Ash started the fire. In the end, she only regrets it was a public place. Too many witnesses seeing a true Saarebas harnessing her power to kill. They didn’t care who she was killing or why, all they knew was that she used magic to kill. Magic is meant to serve man and all that crap, not kill him. But Andraste never talked about mages with abusive shit-stain fathers, now did she?

Doesn’t matter now, she guesses. She’s a 15-year-old Vashoth Saarebas who started a very public fire with very little training. She’s a threat to society, to be locked away and the key lost.

“Adaar, got a visitor. Get over here,” the guard says, tapping her baton on bars. Ash sighs and stands. The guard lets her out and leads her down the hall to a new cell where an elven person is sitting. The cell door opens and she’s directed inside with a curt command. The person watches the guard with a sharp gaze, almost like they can shoot daggers out of those silver eyes. Shit, maybe they can, she can summon a blue inferno that engulfs almost an entire mall store and manages to only kill one person. Who’s she to say what other people can and can’t do. 

“You a lawyer or something?” She asks, eyeing their suit. Looks expensive, like the kind she’d eye in store fronts she knew she’d never be able to shop in. 

They turn that sharp gaze to her and incredibly, they soften. “I’m a lawyer...and something,” they reply. Oh. Well that’s nice.

“You don’t seem like a public defender,” Ash states plainly.

“Because I’m not. I found your case and I’m representing you, pro bono. Have your injuries been documented?” They ask, pulling out a briefcase.

Ash shrugs, “A doctor checked me out, said that I probably got them while he defended himself from me.”

“And what really happened?” They ask, so softly she almost doesn’t hear it. 

She goes very still and reassesses them. They’re beautiful. Not pretty or sweet looking like a lot of the attractive girls she knows, but actually beautiful in that terrifying way. They look like they belong more on the cover of a magazine talking about their fabulous celebrity life and drinking smoothies than they do in the dingy juvenile detention center in the middle of bum-fuck Free Marches. Yet, here they are. 

“I was never really good at being an obedient child like my father wanted. Or demanded. We were at the mall because he needed new shoes since his were busted. I needed new pants, my jeans finally gave out. When I said I needed the jeans, he lost it. Said that I was ungrateful and he already gave me so much. Then he hit me. And then something in me just snapped. I couldn’t do it anymore.” Her voice grows quiet and her throat gets itchy and tries to close up. But she has to speak, they may actually listen, she thinks. They might just care that she isn’t this big scary Saarebas. 

“He’s always hated my magic, whenever I’d do something with it he’d hit me. Then he’d yell, then he’d cry about what on earth did he do to deserve such a terrible daughter.” She fixes her gaze, hard and blurred by unshed tears, “But it was my magic that defended me. It was my magic that kept me warm. I killed him, I don’t deny that - the world is better off without him. Believe me when I say it was justified.” 

They don’t move or speak for a long pause afterwards. When they do, it’s a reach for her hands. Theirs are so nice compared to hers - manicured next to nail-bitten and dry. 

“I believe you.” The words wash over her like clean water after wallowing in filth for weeks. Is this hope? Actual hope that this will work out? Can she really live a free life without her father? Shit, she wasn’t free when she lived with him, she thought...real bars wouldn’t be worse than with him at least.

Is there an actual chance she might not have any bars?

They turn over her hands and glower at the scars dotting her arms. The bruises in the shapes of hands that are still pressed into her flesh. 

Rage flashes across their face as they gently touch her. Evidence that he had gotten bolder, more careless in his abuse as of late. He’ll never touch her again, at least. These marks will heal, he will fade, and she will be free of him. 

Their fingers find the band around her wrist, designating her as an extremely dangerous mage, specialized to fire. The needle marks in the hollow of her elbow show how they keep the magic suppressed. It’s anti-lyrium, synthetic in origin, that makes her feel cold all the damn time. It dulls all sensations and emotions. It’s as close to making her Tranquil without actually making her Tranquil. The Rite of Tranquility may have been outlawed decades ago, but the Chantry loves its loopholes and influence. 

They look up at her with an expression she can’t place - knowing, perhaps. 

“Do you trust me, Ashokara?” They whisper so low that she almost doesn’t hear them.

She shrugs, “I just met you, don’t even know your name. But...as I see it, no one else has believed me, so yeah. I trust you.” 

Their lips twitch, “My name is Melarue, and I am going to help you.” Their nail cuts at the needle mark, making Ash yelp and try to snatch her arm away.

“What the fuck?!”

“Shh,” they whisper, and then a language she’s never heard spills from their mouth and somehow into the cut. 

“What the fuck?!” 

Magic slams into her, decimating the wall erected by the anti-lyrium. Emotions and power and familiar warmth flow into her like a river released by a destroyed dam. With the floodgates opened, tears spill from Ash from the pain and the heartache and the fear she’s felt over the last few days of arrest. With the knowledge that they’re going to kill her for killing her father. 

“What are you doing to me?” She sobs. 

“Should you need your power, you have it now. You will need your strength - this is far from over, Ash. It’s going to be okay.” Their hands move to grasp hers with a kindness she hasn’t felt in a long time. Through tears, she looks at them once more. 

They’re a mage, like her, and very powerful if they can counteract the effects of anti-lyrium. She sniffles, trying to compose herself. 

“So...what do we do?”