#beatrix tabris

@empresstress13 commissioned me to continue the AU where Ellana and Beatrix Tabris are cousins, and I was all too delighted to! I had such fun reimagining the opening of the game with Bea included :)

Thank you, my friend, for commissioning me!

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Pairing: Beatrix Tabris x Leliana

Rating: General

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The snow of the Frostbacks crunched under Beatrix Tabris’s boots as she approached Haven, her stomach in thick knots of anxiety. She’d been on her way to the Temple of Sacred Ashes when the explosion happened. It lit up the whole sky, and lit up every drop of blood in her body with fear.

Leliana. Ellana. Everyone who went there in good faith -

She’d hurried to Haven after that, her heart in her throat the whole way. Leliana’s name was the one singing through her mind over and over and over again. It had been so long since they had seen each other. Leliana was busy acting as Left Hand of the Divine and Bea was busy acting as Spymaster of Amaranthine. It couldn’t be over like this, it could not be over like this, she would get to Haven and Leliana would be okay, and Bea would hold her again.

And then, every so often, her thoughts would drift to Ellana Lavellan, her newly discovered cousin, who’d been sent by her clan to the Conclave as a spy. They’d only just found each other. She couldn’t be ripped away now.

Bea had not been with Nehnara Surana to the Temple of Sacred Ashes when her dearest friend was trying to save Arl Eamon. They had not reunited by that point. But Bea knew what it was supposed to be like from Nehn’s descriptions - massive, ancient, made entirely of stone and yet somehow alive, so grand it seemed impossible that the mountains had not simply birthed it on their own.

It was only a crater now.

She could see that now, just as she could see the mountain passes swarming with demons and soldiers. Just as she could see the angry green gash in the sky, sparking and twisting over and over again. Haven was not a Haven at all. It was a madhouse.

“You,” she barked at the nearest soldier as she drew close to the chaos, her hands already drifting to the hilts of her knives. “Who’s in charge?”

“Seeker Pentaghast,” he said. “She’s with the prisoner now. The one who caused all of this.”

Cassandra Pentaghast. The Right Hand of the Divine. If she survived then maybe - maybe - Leliana had too.

“Take me to them,” Bea said in her most commanding tone. “Now.”

It was hard to believe that the scrappy girl who had grown up in Denerim’s alienage had a commanding tone now, but she did. She was a Spymaster after all. But when she stepped into the old Chantry and followed the trembling soldier down into the dank prison beneath it, she started to feel like the frightened, powerless, scrappy little girl she had once been. If Leliana was not there - if Cassandra told her the worst -

But a wooden door creaked open, and Leliana was there, beautiful as sunrise, whole and healthy in her lilac and silverite armor, the hood draped over her head. Her arms were crossed and her back was to Bea but Bea would have known her anywhere, and she could have wept for joy to see her. Leliana. She was safe.

Cassandra Pentaghast was in the room too, and so was someone else, kneeling on the floor, bound in chains - the prisoner who had caused all this destruction.

“Ellana?”

The word escaped Bea’s lips before she could stop herself. All three women in the room turned to her - Cassandra, Leliana, and, yes, Ellana Lavellan, her long lost cousin, swaying on her knees and looking disoriented and angry, her hands bound in chains, green light coming from the space between them.

“Bea,” Leliana breathed, turning. She started towards Bea but paused. Of course. They were conducting an interrogation. Leliana could not seem soft now.

“Let her go,” Bea said at once. “She had nothing to do with this.”

“Do you have any proof of that?” Cassandra asked, her voice tight with rage. “Because before you stands the only survivor of that Maker forsaken temple. The last woman to see Divine Justinia alive.”

The Divine was dead?

It made sense. Bea had seen the devastation. But still her mind was reeling. The Divine was dead. How would this affect the war between mages and templars? Her sources in various chantries around Thedas? The political situation for the Wardens?

And Ellana was the only one alive? How?

“I told you,” Ellana said, and her tone was hard, too. The kind of anger that came from fear. “I don’t know what happened to the Divine. I don’t know what happened at all. I -”

Before she could finish her sentence, awful crackles of green light sprouted from her left palm, enveloping the cell in their eerie glow. Ellana bent double, crying out in pain, cradling her left hand, and that was when Bea saw it - the gash of light in her left palm, a mirror image of the cracked sky outside.

“It’s getting worse,” Cassandra said, tersely. “We need to move, now. We need to get her to the Breach.”

The fit subsided. Ellana looked up, angry and confused once more.

“What? Where are you taking me?”

“I’ll be right there, cousin,” Bea said at once. “We’ll go together.”

Ellana looked at Bea, a long and searching gaze, her grey eyes flinty. Then she nodded, and hauled herself off of the floor of the cell.

Leliana caught Bea’s arm as they walked out of the cell, pulling her aside.

“My love,” she murmured, catching Bea in a quick embrace. “I have missed you.”

Bea pushed aside all thoughts of the broken sky and the turmoil outside and the strange energy radiating from Ellana’s hand (she needed to write to Nehnara at once, Nehn would know what it was, Nehn would know what to do) and focused only on the way Leliana smelled. Like lavender and clean cotton and Andraste’s grace.

“She didn’t do it, Leli,” Bea said at once, tightening her hold on Leliana. Maker, it felt so good to have her in her arms again. “Ellana. Whatever happened here, it wasn’t her. I know it.”

Leliana drew back and cupped Bea’s face. “You always see the good in people, Bea. And I know that she is your kin, but the evidence is damning. We need to see where it leads.”

Leliana was right of course. But Bea knew Ellana was innocent. She knew it in her bones. And Ellana was family, and Bea would protect her however she had to.

“I’m coming with you. I need to see where it leads, too.”

“I would have you nowhere else. I have - it has been so hard, Bea. These last few days. Justinia -”

Leliana’s voice broke. She looked away. Bea turned her lover’s face back to her and kissed her sweetly on the mouth and for a moment there was nothing but that kiss, perfect as spring’s first rain.

“Let’s go. We’re going to figure this out. We are.”

Beatrix Tabris - Page of Swords

I was tag by the fabulous @buttsonthebeach to take this quiz for an OC to see their “worst self”! I’ll be doing Beatrix Tabris so we can see how similar she is to her cousin ;D

art of Beatrix Tabris by @justanartsysideblog

This seems fair. XD

Though considering her background and Thedas in general I’d say she’s appropriately angry/ violent. 

tagging: @zanidragon @mistressdreadwolf @justanartsysideblog @fibrochemist @solverne-02 @savvylittleminx @mindtrove @kittlesandbugs @thema-sal-shiral @minionripley

As always:  Feel free to ignore! Only do this if you have the time and/or inclination.♥ Love y’all!

Beatrix remembered the panic and chaos in the alienage during the Battle of Denerim. She remembered the pain of before - blood spilled and lives taken. I won’t let this happen again. I won’t. 

Seeing darkspawn attack Amaranthine seemed like a return to every nightmare from that time. . . the city was saved. Beatrix still wasn’t sure she had done enough. I’m so sorry we didn’t get there sooner, Avira.  

@wardsarefunctioning surprised @empresstress13 with a fic commission for Christmas, and Tress delighted me by asking if I would write about a little headcanon of ours! Since we both use Gugu Mbatha-Raw as a face claim for our elf OCs (her Beatrix Tabris, and my Ashara Lavellan), we joked that they must be distant cousins. It even made sense, since Ellana’s parents were city elves before joining Clan Lavellan.

I now present an AU in which Beatrix Tabris goes in search of her long-lost Tabris cousin, Ellana!

My Ko-Fi || My Commissions (I am done with December commissions and taking a small break before January commissions! Keep an eye out for an announcement post when they are open)

Pairing: Background Beatrix Tabris x Leliana, Nehnara Surana x Zevran (both mentioned)

Rating: General

Clan Lavellan was camped in the woods not far from Wycome, and even though Beatrix Tabris had seen other Dalish camps before, her heart still did a flip at the sight of the proud sails of the aravels. It was partly because there was something majestic about them, no matter how many times you saw them, and partly because this visit was to be unlike any of her other visits to Dalish clans. This visit was not for business. She was not coming to Clan Lavellan as the Spymaster of Amaranthine, or as a representative of the Hero of Ferelden.

She was coming to Clan Lavellan to look for family.

Bea had heard the wistful stories often enough from her parents - the cousins who had left the Denerim alienage in search of a better life, heading for the Free Marches. They kept Bea’s parents up to date on their travels at first, but then abruptly fell out of contact right around the time Bea herself was born. Well, accurately speaking, only Ambrós was a Tabris, but obviously his wife Sioni counted too, being married to him and all. Those were the words Adaia Tabris spooled out like thread on nights when she talked about their long lost family, and how she always hoped she could go and find them again someday.

Adaia never made the trip, of course. But Bea was here now, on a crisp fall day, preparing to cross the perimeter of the Dalish camp on a tip she’d gotten in the Ostwick alienage.

“Ambrós and Sioni? No one really knows. They left real sudden. Maybe - twenty-five years ago? Maybe more? They got into some trouble. Turns out the alienage here wasn’t any better than the one in Denerim, go figure. They did say that if they ever left again, it would be to find the Dalish, so I always assumed that’s what happened.”

The hahren’s words led her to another hahren who knew the names of the Dalish clans that roamed the Free Marches, which led her to the first two clans. They had no memory of Ambrós and Sioni, which left Clan Lavellan.

“I would not get my hopes up,” the Keeper of the second clan said. “Ailmar would have still been Keeper in those days, Falon’Din guide his soul. He was many things, but welcoming of flat ears and shemlens he was not. I do not think he would have taken them in. But Deshanna, their new Keeper, might have more to tell you.”

Bea hoped they did have more to say. She had been away from Amaranthine too long. She missed Nehnara, her oldest friend. Ferelden was dangerous now, with the war raging between the mages and templars all of the Hinterlands. She should be out there helping people, gathering information. Maybe seeing Leliana if she was lucky.

Leliana - how she missed the warmth of her skin and the sound of her voice singing by the campfire. Bea hoped she had not gone on this trip for nothing.

And then - there she was. Standing on the steps of an aravel, staring up at an elf who had her father’s eyes.

Deshanna did remember Ambrós and Sioni. She remembered pleading with Ailmar to let them stay with the clan, even though she was only a First at the time. She remembered delivering their baby girl - the first delivery she had ever assisted with, and a difficult one at that, after a difficult pregnancy for Sioni, and two miscarriages before that.

“Ambrós and Sioni are with the Creators now, but their daughter is still with us. Ellana. Her aravel is over there, with the other hunters. I am sure she would be glad to see you. I think she has always longed for a better sense of where she is from, and who her people are.”

Bea knew, just looking at her, that she had found her people. She was Ellana Lavellan - not Ellana Tabris, never had been, Ambrós and Sioni had left that name behind in Ostwick - and she had the stark black tattoos of the Elvhen gods on her face, but there was something immediately recognizable about her. Something in her watchful grey-eyed gaze, in the set of her full lips; cautious, but ready to break into joy.

“On dhea, traveler,” Ellana said. “Can I help you?”

“My name is Beatrix Tabris,” Bea said. “And I think we’re cousins.”

The rest of the story unspooled just like the stories Adaia Tabris used to tell. One thread at a time - an untangling, and a reconnecting, a knitting up of gaps of lost time. Ellana was rapt with attention as Bea shared what she knew of their parents and how they grew up together. Deshanna had been right. Ambrós and Sioni had hidden much of their past from their one and only daughter. Even Ellana did not know why they fled Ostwick for Clan Lavellan. She had not even known their last name was Tabris.

“I would never have found you,” Ellana said at last, taking Bea’s hand and squeezing it. “I am so glad you found me. I always - I always hoped I had family out there somewhere. Outside of my clan. I wanted to go looking for them, but I didn’t even know where to start.”

Bea knew that feeling well - that longing for connection, for home, for family. She’d had her parents, yes, her cousins, and Nehnara until she was taken to the Circle, but longing was part of an alienage. It was woven into every branch on the vhenadahl. There were always lonely people. People who needed family. She would take them all in if she could. For now, she pressed Ellana’s hands in return.

“Well, you’re stuck with me now. I probably should have warned you of that first. Oh, and Nehn! She’ll be your family now too. And Zevran, and Leliana. And at least a couple of mabaris. All you have to do is come to Amaranthine.”

Ellana’s smile reminded Bea of her father’s, too. Warm as the sun, welcoming as an open door.

“I may just have to take you up on that. Deshanna is sending me to Ferelden, actually. There’s going to be a meeting of some sort in a place called Haven. Something to do with this mage and templar nonsense. I’m going to go as an - information gatherer, of sorts.”

Bea could not help her own grin. “You mean a spy?”

Ellana snorted. “Well, I was trying to be subtle. But yes. As a spy. I have been practicing my lockpicking and everything.”

Hey! Hey! @lillotte17 is a fantastic artist and does such an amazing job with portraits!!! I love these modern!AU versions of Beatrix Tabris and Nehnara Surana, both of them ready to take the world by storm!