Chapter Text
When Tharja is nine years old, she sees a woman die.
Another of her mother’s patients, limp and cold on the midwife’s table. The child, stillborn, will be buried with her. Her head lolls back onto the pillow, mud-brown hair plastered to her face – once twisted in pain, now peaceful, hiding some divine wisdom.
Someone drags Tharja out of the room while she stares, imagining what it must feel like to be held like that child. To be cradled so lovingly, so desperately, by a mother who is still warm. Someone mutters in her ear that it’s not a proper sight for a little girl, as Tharja imagines what it feels like to be dead.
Curiosity does not kill her – it beats her, until she falls to the kitchen floor, wiping blood from her nose, imagining the dull, vacant look in her own eyes. Imagining how she must look dead. But her bruises scream, reminding her with malice that she yet lives, a malice she sees reflected in her mother’s eyes. Her father, motionless in the corner and reeking of alcohol, looks dead. Tharja envies him.
-
Tharja is thirteen when her wounds stitch themselves back together.
She does not know how much she takes, or from whom, but her father dies the next night. Her mother comes at her, clawing, shrieking, whipping the neighbors into a frenzy. Tharja learns that she is a demon, one of Grima’s chosen, and will only bring pain and suffering unless they are rid of her forever.
Tharja welcomes it. She welcomes their anger, their fear, their stones. She will finally know what it feels like to be dead.
But she awakens just before dawn, dried blood on her forehead, and her body will not let her die.
She looks up at the stars and they promise nothing.
Like a ghost, she steals back into her house and scrapes the pantry bare, bundles her clothes and leaves.
-
Tharja is fourteen when she learns the meaning of power. The value of control.
It is an old man who discovers her, shivering in the desert cold, the sand around her smoldering at her will, snuffing out in feeble protestation. He kneels, passes his hand over it, and the ground beneath her warms, trickling throughout her body until the shivering stops.
Diallo teaches her hexes to help and harm, fostering her power with gruff, reluctant care. He never touches her or raises his voice. Tharja wonders if this is death, if this is love. She never finds the courage to decide. After three years, Diallo’s health fails him, and he has only the strength to press his final tome into her hands before he is gone.
Tharja does not weep as she departs. Her body will not let her.
-
Tharja is eighteen when she kills a man.
Their paths cross on her way to Plegia Castle. He is a merchant, a husband and father, purse fat with coins. His smile is kind, but the mischief in his eyes reminds her of Diallo. Tharja’s guard drops, perhaps for the first time in years.
That night, she wakes to the sound of him rifling through her bags. His hands close around her tome, and as she starts awake, he lunges for her throat with a curved knife.
Tharja does not think. She flings out her hand and shears the air, buckling the merchant – thief – practiced murderer – to the ground in a heap of flesh and pulverized bones.
His purse becomes her purse. With it, she bribes her way past the guards at Plegia Castle and into an audience with King Gangrel himself. She demonstrates her skills, confirms (with an odd twist in her gut) that her powers can kill. The king’s archmage, Aversa, is well pleased. Tharja is welcomed into the fold.
She does not like Aversa. Her eyes look like her mother’s.
-
Tharja is twenty when she meets the vaunted Prince of Ylisse.
He looks the part. Tall, handsome, cutting an inspiring figure in his battle garb. His eyes and face shine with the captivating idealism that must have people lining up to die for him.
“You there, Plegian. You seem reluctant to fight.”
A weaker woman would fall at his feet. A viler woman would entertain corrupting him.
Tharja sneers at him. “Why should I fight and die for a cause I don’t believe in?”
Three years in Plegia’s army is long enough; she’s ever stayed in one place any longer. As she prepares to exit stage left, something catches her eye – or, rather, someone.
Just behind the prince: shadowing him protectively, perhaps a little too closely, is a young man of about the same age. His hair is prematurely grey, betraying whatever trauma can be etched beneath his unassuming face. He wears the eye of Grima on his robes.
Now, that's a funny thing for a Ylissean magus to be flaunting.
“Perhaps you’d like to rebel,” the prince presses. “And fight with us?”
Tharja barely hears him. The air crackles around this grey-haired enigma with power, with death. It’s dark and cold, and it chills her to the bone like those desert nights, only she knows not even Diallo’s tricks could warm her. The sheer weight of his killing intent is staggering, and yet here he is in the company of Shepherds, smiling and offering her comrades asylum.
“I have a bit of a rebellious streak,” she begins, finding she can’t avoid the stranger’s gaze. “A…dark side. Besides, you’d have to be a fool to accept me. What if this is just a ploy to get a dagger in your back?”
His smile is not false like the merchant’s. It’s serene – oblivious. He uses benign, elemental magic. His eyes are kind, but piercing, returning her pondering stare. Tharja is pinned by his evaluation. She realizes (too little, too late) that she has met her match.
Robin winks, nudges the prince on the arm.
The prince gives him a searching look, and turns to Tharja, serious, determined. “My sister. I think she would trust you.”
Tharja hears blood roaring in her ears, feels power thrumming in her marrow. Her heart quickens, the rush from mastering a spell or delivering well-deserved vengeance multiplied to infinity. The Shepherds are offering her a future, the fools, and the Exalt trusts her.
She lets Robin’s aura wash over her again, gripping her with fear and elation. This – this might finally be the death she’s been waiting for.
Tharja is twenty when she falls in love.