If Wishes Were Poppy Dreams
"Hey. Mage boy."
"Hawke. What are you doing here?" Anders shoots her a glare from where he's sitting, mixing a large batch of something that smells earthy and mildly unpleasant. Thea just grins, all uneven chipped teeth.
"Just checkin' in. Wanted to see your pretty face again."
"I don't need to be checked in on."
"Need to make sure you aren't doing anything stupid. Might need you for a job next week- going in after some stolen cargo."
"I'm assuming you're not working for Aveline on this."
She laughs, pushing off the doorframe she's leaning on and sauntering in. "I'm going to liberate it. Should mesh well with your rebellious nature."
"I don't have a rebellious nature, Hawke." He sighs and stands up, crossing his arms over his chest. "If you're having some problems because of that stop at the Blooming Rose the other day-"
"Oh, Anders. Is that a come on? Because you know I'll drop trou for you, but right here? Now?"
He flushes and she notes how he looks away, adjusts his robes with a frustrated, angry expression. "Forget I said anything."
She laughs. The sound is rough and hoarse and overloud- everything she is. The skin of her lower face is puckered and tight from scarring, likely a magic attack many years ago. Her skin is tanned and lined and will inevitably turn to leather as she ages. She's wiry and tough, her red hair roughly cut, her fingers calloused. Her tattoo is uneven and vibrant, her eyes ringed in dark make up she smears on to make herself disappear when she has her face covered in fabric. Right now she's settling in, hopping up to sit on one of the emptier tables in the room of his clinic.
"I'm clean, mage. I know what I'm doing."
"If I had a silver for every time I heard that..." He sighs, rubbing his forehead and leaving a streak of grey-green mash. "You've checked in on me, now go."
"Don't feel like it." She tugs at a pouch on her leg, pulling at the fastener.
He throws up his hands. "I don't- Andraste's flaming tits, I don't understand you."
"Good. I like it that way. Just keep not fucking with me, we're good."
He can't understand her whims and can't understand her decisions. She's always infuriating, just her very presence, and he snaps the first thing that comes to mind, the question he's been thinking since the first day they met. "How can you side with the templars when your own sister-"
"Oh for fuck's sake. This shit again? Listen." She stops fumbling, fixes him with her too-intense green gaze. "You know how I grew up? Always fucking running. Because of my dad and my sister. And you know what I always had to be? Big sister fucking protector. I didn't want that. I didn't want any of that. I ran away when I was fourteen, lasted almost a year before some members of the Mages' Collective dragged me back kicking and screaming. Me and Carver, Beth's twin- we were always second rate compared to her. She was the sweet little darling who needed to be protected."
Thea spit onto the ground, then resumed looking for whatever it was in that pouch. "And Carver, he would just fucking whine. Said mom and dad didn't give a fuck about him, not compared to me and Beth- but they only cared about me because I was causing trouble all the time.
"So yeah. I don't have some undying sisterly support of magic. And you know what? I can dodge a sword better than I can dodge a spell. Comes down to it, mages are too dangerous for me."
Anders shakes his head, feeling that familiar surge of anger and Justice wanting to come out. "Sibling rivalry is no excuse to-"
"It's the only fucking reason I've got, aside from protecting my own hide. I'm a bit on the selfish side, if you hadn't noticed. Bet my mom wishes that I'd died instead of Carver. Bet you she wishes I'd died at Ostagar." She finds what she's looking for. She pulls out a long, battered pipe and leans over to light it from one of the torches on the wall that fills Darktown with soot and smoke. She takes a long drag, then leans back, exhaling and muttering, "If wishes were poppy dreams..." Then she shrugs, focusing on him once more.
"So I have no love for mages. But I'm not going to turn you in. Or Beth. So it's none of your business, skirt boy."
He stares at her, unmoving, trying to process, trying to formulate a remark to this, this woman who is terrifying, observant, and strong, unerring with a bow and nasty with a knife, this woman who threatened him for the Warden maps and has almost walked out on him when he needed her help more than once. And suddenly, all he can think about are the way her lips purse around the stem of her pipe and those words from all those weeks ago, He sure got a nice body out of the deal.
Why the hell had he turned her away? Oh, right, because he was afraid he might hurt her. Break her heart. As if she'd ever have let him get that close.
He wasn't sure she had a heart, anyway.
She's grinning at him as if she knows what he's thinking and then the first curls of smoke drift by. He comes back to himself. He snarls, stalking across the room, and he can feel that tiny burst of Vengeance in him, that protect the suffering at all costs, and he grabs her wrist in one hand and her opposite shoulder in the other.
"How dare you smoke that in here, Hawke. Around my patients."
She looks from him to her pipe, placidly. "Want some?"
When he thinks about it later, he can't tell if she lets him force her down onto the table or if he actually overpowers her, but in the moment he's on top of her and her pipe is clattering to the floor, gummed poppy juice sputtering out. He can feel power itching to get out, muscles tense and mind tenser.
She laughs, and a last roll of tart sweetness with just an edge of disgusting breaks over his face. He shudders.
"Some of your patients could use a little relief," Theodora Hawke purrs, licking her lips and lifting one leg to press against his. He exhales in shock, pushing himself away. He stumbles back.
"Get out, Hawke."
"You're no fun," she sighs, pushing herself off the table and into a crouch on the floor in one fluid movement. She lifts her pipe, dusts it off. "Cost me some serious coin, too."
"Don't you have an expedition to fund?" he mutters, trying not to look at how her leathers cling tight to her, how her tongue peeks out between her teeth as she looks at that pipe. Then she smiles up at him again, that wicked, evil, cruel smile.
"Yeah, and numerous other things. You know how much Bethany's keeping-the-templars-away habit costs us each month?"
He turns away and just listens to her laugh as her footsteps fade into the distance. His head spins, still wanting her even as he resists the urge to electrocute her into wonderful, blissful silence.