AN - Never written the ot3 before, but here goes ^^
What happens to Kirkwall without Hawke to become its Champion? I dunno. Things falls apart a bit more rapidly, one would suppose, but that isn't particularly important to the story. In this version of history, the Hawke family escaped to the Free Marches, but for one reason or another never made it to Kirkwall. For years, Hawke makes her life as a mercenary and adventurer to provide for her family, but the fallout from her most recent adventure has left her in way over her head. Soon to be literally.
Oh, if only a beautiful pirate queen would come to her rescue…
Currently Rated T – Subject to change tho. Depends on the smut muse, tbh.
Any Port in a Storm by Imrryr
Chapter 1
...
"Ocean, noun. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills."
― Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
…
The rolling waves glittered like jewels in the afternoon sun, endless and beautiful, bringing back long forgotten memories of dewy ears of grain sweeping back and forth on a warm Lothering morning, stretching from horizon to horizon. As a little girl, she used to watch the fields and dream she was out here, out on the sea that her father always spoke so fondly of.
She had longed for that day. Anything to take her far, far away from Lothering. Far from the Templars. Far from the whispering people who were always one misstep away from discovering her family's secret. Far from the boring, sedentary life her parents wished for her.
It almost brought a tear to her eye to think about it, to think about how far she'd come.
"Well," Hawke said to herself as another wave crashed against her. "This sucks."
The tropical sun had long ago burned her fair and exposed skin to a deep red. Unfortunately, that meant just about every inch of her with possible exception of the soles of her feet. The qunari hadn't been kind enough to allow her to keep the remains of the rags they'd found her in when they dumped her here. Maybe they hadn't appreciated her sense of humor. Bethany always said it would get her killed someday.
She frowned. A black spot lingered on the western horizon. A ship, probably, but with the glare of the sun on the rolling waves, and the exhaustion permeating every inch of her shivering body, it was a little hard to be sure. Perhaps the qunari had returned to finish her off. Perhaps the acting captain finally understood that joke Hawke had made about how horny the crew must be as they stripped her and marooned her on this spit of sand in the middle of the Amaranthine Ocean; a spit of sand that had sunk hours ago under a rising tide which was only growing higher. Was that really worth killing someone over?
Well, possibly. The joke had been pretty bad.
Minutes passed, or hours - who could say – yet the black spot lingered before finally splitting into two. Either the dreadnought was breaking up, or there was another ship out there.
Or, she was losing her mind.
Also a distinct possibility.
A particularly tall wave doused her face, leaving her spitting and gasping in the foamy water. Her throat burned worse than her skin with thirst, but she knew better than to slake it here. Holding herself tightly in the waist deep seas, she imagined the people back home laughing at her plight, laughing at her for ever dreaming of leaving their cozy, boring little hamlet.
Hawke tried to imagine herself as a farmer: tending to her malodorous livestock, huddling around an inadequate fire during the long winter, year after year after year, chatting to the same people every day about the weather. She groaned. It sounded like a very slow death.
Another wave doused her and she shut her eyes. Of course, there was no Lothering. Not anymore.
And no one there had died a slow death.
Not like Hawke was about to.
Stupid irony.
It took some time, but eventually one of those black dots had drawn close enough for her to make out six in a small boat as it rode the waves directly for her. She cringed. Her experiences on the sea thus far did not bode well for a rescue. In addition to the always dangerous qunari, Tevinter ships often plied these waters, and even the outwardly respectable captains explicitly trading in non-human goods were hardly above picking up a few slaves to line their pockets when the opportunity arose.
Four people were at oars while two others sat in the back, a short man at the rudder, whose stocky frame revealed him to actually be a dwarf - out here on the sea of all places - and an elf, a Dalish elf - if those markings on her face were not a figment of her imagination - openly staring back at her with eyes so wide she could see the green in them even at this distance. She held a tall staff in her small hands, twisted at the top like the roots of some ancient tree. A mage then.
That was a worrying sight, but the fact that the occupants weren't all human was at least a strike against them being from Tevinter.
Even more comforting was the fact that none of them had horns.
As they drew alongside, the crew lowered their oars and brought the craft to a stop just a few feet away. The dwarf smiled down at her from his perch on the stern thwart. "Ahoy, there." His gold necklace glittered in the sun and he had an easy smile on his face, like he'd launched this boat and had these sailors row all the way out here just for a chance to sell Hawke something. If so, she hoped it was fresh water. She'd give the shirt off her –
Oh, right.
"H – Hi," she croaked, her voice weak and cracking. Having an audience was doing little to reduce her shivering.
"And to think, humans say mermaids are a myth."
"A Dalish and a d-d-dwarf in a boat in the middle of the ocean," she stuttered through chattering teeth. "I must be seeing things."
A particularly steep wave took that moment to sweep through, dunking her head beneath the water and completely ruining her attempt at looking ambivalent about her current situation.
The dwarf continued to smile as she sputtered and coughed. "I take it you're not a mermaid then? The other half the crew has their money on siren."
She shook her head. "Afraid I can't sing a note."
"Well, that's a shame."
Great, here she was, slowly drowning in the middle of the ocean and she runs into the world's chattiest dwarf. "Indeed."
"So, you're just an ordinary human."
Hawke nodded, pouting as another wave splashed against her exposed chest. At least this dwarf wasn't the leering type, though the men and women at the oars certainly were. They wore no matching uniforms. Not navy then. Possibly merchants, if she was lucky, but when had she ever been that? "Alas, you've summed me up in one mere sentence."
"Marooned?"
"The qunari have no sense of humor."
He raised an eyebrow at the name. "Someone your age should've learned that lesson by now."
She crossed her arms more tightly over her chest but flashed him a smile as she cocked her head. "I could be a naïve young farmer's daughter for all you know."
The dwarf tilted his head in disbelief.
"Or not." Okay, sure, she had lived in a farmer's village, grown up alongside them, but the Hawkes had never really led that sort of life. They'd sort of just, well, faked it. She wasn't about to go back to Ferelden and start now, no matter how close she got to drowning.
Thankfully, the dwarf didn't appear interested in pushing for more information. "Captain's marooned her fair share of men here."
"Well, your captain sounds lovely."
"She doesn't appreciate it when other pirates use her favorite spot."
Hawke tried to sound as disinterested as possible, even as her legs threatened to buckle under the strain of fighting the waves all day. "I'm terribly sorry to have inconvenienced her like this."
The dwarf smiled. He glanced at his elven companion, who gave the tiniest shake of her head. Oddly, this reassured him. "Hop aboard."
She did so with a complete absence of grace or dignity, hauling herself up the rail before tumbling into the rear of the boat and receiving several splinters in her sunburned butt for her trouble. "Thanks," she mumbled at the wide-eyed stares she was getting.
"Not at all," the dwarf replied unfazed, nodding at the crew who firmly grasped their oars and took to rowing once more. "Varric Tethras," he added with a dip of his feathered hat before dropping down to his seat. "First-mate of the Siren's Call."
It was impossible not to feel the stares of the crew on her back, but they kept their mouths firmly shut as they went about their work, and Varric seemed to have an admirable control over them. Hah. Admirable. Admiral. She frowned as her eyes darted back to the underwater spit slowly disappearing into the distance, remembering the faces of four-dozen scowling qunari as she was dumped upon it that morning. Maybe she'd just keep that terrible joke to herself.
Meanwhile, the red-faced elf kept glancing at her and then looking away. Hawke had never seen a Dalish dressed in such a way before; from the heavy green scarf around her neck, to her billowy white shirt, her numerous rings and piercings of gold. She looked like a retired Antivan Crow who had long given up on being discreet.
Everything was right except for the eyes. Never in Hawke's travels had she met a pirate that seemed even remotely intimidated by her, yet here one was.
She was, in a word, adorable. Pretty too. Despite her slender frame, her arms betrayed the muscles of someone completely at home aboard a ship, hauling up lines, and climbing the rigging. Naturally, Hawke scooted closer. She didn't have an inkling of magical talent to speak of, but if she possessed any supernatural powers at all, it was her ability to make any awkward situation more awkward.
Also, her ability to flirt was known the world over, at least that's what her sister used to say.
Hawke shook her hair, but any enticing effect this might've normally had was somewhat offset by her chattering teeth and the way she continued to shiver.
"I'm Hawke," she began, extending her hand.
The elf took it like she had no idea what she was supposed to do with it.
"And what's your name?"
Her eyes met Hawke's for the barest instant. Endlessly green, she thought, like the Brecilian Forest on a dewy summer's morning. Beautiful, ancient, yet also not without an unnerving sense of danger. "Merrill." The accent was most certainly Dalish, Ferelden Dalish if she was any judge.
"Pleased to meet you." She shook Merrill's hand, but found herself startled by all the scars upon it. They ran all the way up to the sleeve of her shirt.
The uncertain look in Hawke's eyes didn't escape Varric's notice. "Merrill here is our resident blood mage. Is that going to be a problem?"
Hawke looked at the hand, then to the sea, then back at the hand. She shook her head, letting it go in what she hoped was as nonchalant a manner as possible. "Not at all." Running into a blood mage out here in the lawless seas surrounding Rivain wasn't too uncommon, not really, but few spoke so openly about blood magic. It was all making her a tiny bit nervous. Which, still, was preferable to drowning. She'd have to remember that.
Evidently satisfied she wasn't secretly a templar or something, Varric tossed her a heavy canteen which Hawke held in disbelief for a long moment before emptying in record time.
She practically purred in relief. Water had never tasted so good. Groaning happily, she allowed herself to stretch out along the bottom boards at Merrill and Varric's feet, much too exhausted to attempt the whole dignity thing. Doubtless, her mother would be ashamed. She often was. Merrill, face still redder than Hawke's burnt skin, kept her eyes firmly locked on the empty southern horizon while Varric maintained his ever present expression of amusement. "So, erm, what exactly is this ship you're taking me to?"
Varric nodded forward. "The Siren's Call. Three-masted frigate. Just your typical pirate ship."
Hawke rolled over to look, but all she could make out over the heads of the rowers were the tops of the masts, the black flag of piracy flying from the highest of them. "Oh, marvelous." At least the bodies of their enemies weren't hanging from the blood-dripping rigging or anything. Did they actually do that? She'd read about pirates doing that sort of thing in books.
"Rivani is a fair captain. Keeps a firm leash on her crew and has nothing to do with the slavers."
She let out a sigh of relief. The Arishok excepted, Hawke had been fortunate enough to avoid any of the more disreputable captains on her long voyages back and forth across the sea. When asked to choose between a slow death by drowning or doing even a fraction of the things going through the average pirate's mind when they looked at her, well, she'd choose drowning, thank you very much. "Is this a literal leash, or a figurative one?"
Varric laughed. "You'll do fine. Just don't give her a reason to kill you."
Hawke frowned. There was always a catch.
...
A long line of sailors were leaning over the rail, gawking as the little boat drew alongside. The crew itself was fairly ragged as far as their clothes and personal hygiene went, but the ship's red and black hull was as freshly painted as if it had just come off an Antivan drydock. Her prow was adorned with an exquisitely carved figurehead of a woman holding up a globe of Thedas with black lacquered continents and gold leaf seas. She clutched a flimsy piece of fabric to herself that only slightly covered her sizeable endowments.
She was also standing on a pile of skulls.
So, yeah. Pirate ship. Definitely.
Much to her chagrin, Hawke wasn't allowed so much as a blanket to cover her own body after she climbed aboard, still damp and sandy and shivering and occasionally sneezing. At a firm look from Varric, the gathered sailors stepped back and Hawke dutifully pressed herself back against the rail, pulling up some loose ropes to clumsily cover her lower half with. No sense in letting these horny sailors see everything.
Not without dinner first.
At least most of the horny sailors appeared to be women. That, she supposed, was a nice change of pace.
She guessed.
Still, she greeted them all with a winsome smile. Pirates were still pirates, and she had no desire to be fucked by them all, even if was just their eyes doing the fucking.
The following minutes went by slowly to say the least. As the ship creaked and moaned, the crew only murmured amongst themselves. More than once, Hawke opened her mouth to say something, but the slight shake of the head she got from Varric made her think twice about it.
She'd never been on a pirate ship before. The fact that the deck was as clean and organized as any she had ever stepped foot on came as a bit of a shock. No blood on the boards, no moaning captives chained to the capstans, no weapons being brandished at her.
It almost put her at ease, at least until a woman sauntered out of the rear cabin.
Hawke swallowed, feeling suddenly light-headed again. Okay, wow. So, pirates definitely weren't all bad. This one – well, this one… Wow.
Her heavy boots left her a good two inches taller than Hawke, and her dark hair and complexion suggested she was indeed native to Rivain as Varric's nickname suggested, that picturesque land of steep sunlit cliffs, endless steaming jungles, and sparkling seas. Despite the heat of the afternoon sun, she wore a thick blue naval coat adorned with gold buttons and epaulets over an open white shirt, all topped with large feathered hat.
There were a thousand things to capture one's attention, but when the captain's golden eyes were focused straight on her, it made Hawke want to drop to her knees and buy whatever this woman would sell her a hundred times over.
She was, in short, the most beautiful woman she had ever seen – and Hawke prided herself as an authority on the subject.
The captain stared at her expectantly. Swallowing, Hawke found herself unable to offer any loud, heartfelt declarations of love. Instead, she gawked dumbly before unconsciously letting the ropes drop from her hands. Again, everything went awkwardly silence for a long moment. The woman gave an approving smile. "You don't look much like a mermaid to me."
Hawke glanced down at her naked form, suddenly feeling a little inadequate in a lot of different ways. True. She couldn't even swim. "Did you, uh, want to take a closer look?"
The captain only continued to smile. "I think I've seen all I need to see."
Hawke tried not to take offense to that.
She leaned against the door jamb, mimicking Hawke's posture, nodding at one of the elves on the crew - another Dalish, if his intricate tattoos were anything to go by - who promptly tossed her an oversized shirt. "I'm the captain of this ship," she began, appreciatively watching Hawke struggle to slip it on. "The Scourge of Rialto. Terror of the Waking Sea, etcetera, etcetera… You may call me Isabela."
Head finally popping out of the neck hole, she grinned back at her. "Hawke," she replied simply. No fancy title to speak of.
Captain Isabela had a voice like honey – like the color of her eyes in the bright sun - a voice that no doubt charmed many people out of their possessions without her even needing to raise a sword. "So, Hawke, do you want to tell me what you were doing on my island?"
Leaning back against the rail, Hawke was pleased that the shirt at least covered her bottom sufficiently. "Just… erm… coming to terms with my mortality?"
Isabela stepped forward, arms clasped behind her back. "I see. And you got there, how?"
Hawke swallowed, still entranced by those bright eyes, "Thrown overboard."
She nodded, unsurprised by this. There were few other ways one ended up on a sandbar several hundred miles from the coast of Rivain. "By whom?"
"A qunari warship. Well, the first mate, specifically." She was quite a woman herself, tall, muscular, more physically imposing than any member of this ship's crew, but yeah, no sense of humor. A total deal-breaker as far as Hawke was concerned.
The being tossed overboard part had been just another strike against her, but, hey, they could've worked through that.
The sailors began whispering excitedly amongst themselves, but a pointed sigh from Isabela got them to quickly shut their mouths. Hawke found herself relaxing a little. This particular group of pirates at least respected – or feared – their captain.
She drew nearer until they were very close indeed. Isabela cupped Hawke's chin with the tips of her gloved fingers, turning her head to the left and then to the right as if inspecting plundered riches. That voice was even more alluring up close. "And what did you do - or say - that made the qunari throw you overboard?"
"Oh, you know… stuff," Hawke said softly under Isabela's piercing gaze. Apparently, antagonizing the captain and then killing him in a duel was frowned upon in qunari society, even if the first part had been entirely accidental, honestly. Well, mostly accidental. How he had discovered the secret she'd been carrying, Hawke would never know.
And perhaps the crew also didn't approve of the way she kept one of the ship's masts always been him and her until he let out a roar of frustration and swung so hard his sword got stuck in it.
Then she'd stabbed him in the back.
No points for style, but it had gotten the job done.
Hawke really hoped she wouldn't need to fight Isabela. She was much prettier than what's-his-face, for one thing. And even though she didn't carry a sword as tall as Hawke was, all those blades hanging from her person made Isabela appear twice as deadly as any qunari. Two daggers with blades longer than a human's forearm dangled from her belt, sharp edges glinting in the bright afternoon sun, and a short sword was slung over her back. Hawke had never been very proficient at dueling. It had merely been good fortune that her last opponent had been as slow as he was huge.
Isabela on the other hand looked as though she could kill someone five different ways before they hit the ground. Even through her light touch, Hawke could sense the power that lay beneath her skin.
Those strong fingers directed Hawke's gaze back to her honey eyes, fingers gently stroking her cheek. "Are you going to say anything to make mycrew throw you over?"
For the briefest moment, Hawke's attention wandered lower. Every inch of this woman was exquisite. Her neck, her collarbone, her – at a firm cough, Hawke's eyes snapped back up, lips breaking into a wide grin as a knowing smile spread across Isabela's face. If Bethany were here, her eyes probably would've rolled straight out of their sockets.
"She's not a mage?" Isabela asked, turning to Merrill. Again, the elf shook her head. "I suppose you can't do too much damage then." There was a light in her eyes that warned Hawke not to take that as a challenge.
She wasn't planning on it.
Finally, Isabela stepped back, leaving Hawke feeling in need of a cold drink, and a cold bath… a cold everything, really. "And where were you heading when the qunari got fed up with you?"
That was a piece of information she wasn't prepared to share just yet, certainly not in front of all these still leering men and women. "Kirkwall," she lied.
Isabela's eyes narrowed just a fraction, enough to suggest that she didn't believe her, but the rest of her demeanor remained unaffected as she turned away. "I'm afraid that's not where we're bound."
"Oh, I'll go wherever you're willing to take me."
Looking over her shoulder, eyes raked Hawke's body one last time. "I'll bet."
…
After a stop at the healer's to relieve her sunburn - and only afterwards, a dead crew-member's chest to pick up some better fitting clothes - Varric showed Hawke to what she assumed would be her cabin for the foreseeable future. Although, really, calling it a cabin was a bit generous: eight feet by six feet with a too-short bed, an empty sea chest, and not so much as a porthole to look out of. Still, she knew better than to complain. Most people found the sleeping accommodations on ships a surprise at first. Her family certainly had, many years ago when they'd crossed the sea to the Free Marches together. This ship was spacious by comparison.
It seemed that the crew of the Siren's Call followed the typical arrangement: a wide hallway, running from stem to stern through the berth deck, strewn with hammocks in which they all slept and lined with chests on which they sat when not otherwise engaged. Both men and women eyed her warily, or hungrily, it was hard to tell, but no one challenged her right to be there.
When you lacked confidence, fake it. That advice had gotten her this far. It was probably etched on the Hawke family crest somewhere. She'd have to ask Uncle Gamlen one day. He was the man who sold it.
As for the officers - or rather, the piratical equivalent of officers – their private cabins were clustered at the stern of the ship, the great room at the end serving as the officer's mess. Six cabins, one for Merrill and Varric, as well as four others whose names Hawke hadn't quite managed to learn yet.
It was in front of Merrill's door that she now lingered. It was marked, oddly enough, only with a crude drawing of a single flower. She tapped lightly.
Half a minute later, the door slid partly open and Hawke found those wide inquisitive eyes staring up at her, cheeks already turning red and she hadn't even opened her mouth yet. Start with something simple, she thought. "Hi."
Green eyes blinked at her. "Aneth ara."
Hawke smiled at the Dalish greeting. "You're not scared of me, are you?"
Merrill shook her head like someone who was trying exceedingly hard to be polite, yet who was also completely terrified. It was surreal. Mages were powerful, beyond powerful, and the last mage Hawke had gotten on the wrong side of had incinerated the building she'd been spending the night in - blasted it apart from foundation to ceiling. All she'd been able to do was run, wishing for the first time in her life that there was a templar nearby.
Preferably an army of them.
"Varric told me you'd missed dinner," she offered, holding up a small, steaming plate. "Hot biscuits, and, erm, I think it used to be a bird of some kind. Maybe."
Merrill's eyes darted to the offering and she licked her lips. After a long moment, she seemed to come to some sort of decision, nodded sharply, and slid the door open all the way.
Hawke nearly dropped the plate. The cabin was no bigger than her own, but in the space that would normally be occupied by a bed, there stood a large, fractured mirror rimmed with twisted wood, like the end of Merrill's staff, but golden. It was so tall it almost scraped the deck above. "Wow."
The door slid shut behind her, and the tilting plate taken from her grasp.
A mirror… only not really. Its supernaturally bright surface lit the room yet it reflected no light. She stepped close, waving a hand in front of it. Not even a ghost of a shadow. "This is a strange sort of mirror."
Merrill stood alongside her, gauging Hawke's reaction. "It's not a mirror. At least, I don't think it is. It's an eluvian."
No doubt Hawke's blank expression made it very clear that she had no idea what the word was supposed to mean.
What followed sounded like a speech Merrill had given countless times before. "Millennia ago, the elves had a kingdom, an empire that spanned all of Thedas, and every city had an eluvian. They allowed the elves communicate across their empire, though I don't know how exactly. So much has been lost…"
Hawke blinked. "So, it's magic?"
Merrill nodded.
Her hand went to touch the surface, and when Merrill made no move to stop her, she pressed a finger to it. Cold, like getting on the wrong side of one of her sister's frost spells. The air around her skin crackled with some kind of indescribable energy. Magic surely, but not being a mage herself, Hawke could say no more than that.
"I've spent the last few years restoring this. More than a decade ago, two of our hunters discovered it in a ruin beneath the Brecilian Forest. When we found them, one was lying on the floor, her skin turning black, and the other… Tamlen… we never found him, just his bow, lying on the ground next to a pile of shattered glass."
Hawke withdrew her hand. This close, she could make out tiny fractures in its surface. It would have taken even the finest glassmakers of Serault years to piece this back together so well.
"There was some sort of taint in the glass. It must've killed him."
Or, he got swallowed up in this thing, Hawke thought, eyes unwilling to look away.
But the mirror only stood there, like, well, a big spooky mirror that simply didn't feel like reflecting anything today, that's all. No worries.
Maybe it was just the frame. When her fingers brushed against that, it was clearly only wood, not magical at all, but the twisted form was more on the creepy side of beautiful than Hawke would've liked decorating the interior of her own quarters.
Merrill answered her unvoiced question. "Ironbark," she said, her tone almost reverent. "I had to build a new frame. The old one was made of stone. Tevinter, I think."
Hawke blinked. "Human? I thought you said –"
She frowned. "The eluvians were originally elvish, but so much has been lost since those days. More than a thousand years. After Arlathan fell, they took whatever they wanted, building their fortresses on the ruins of our cities, enslaving our people, and repurposing our magic for their own uses… most of it too horrible to contemplate."
Hawke nodded. The Dalish clung to their traditions and history like barnacles clinging to the rocks, yet they seldom discussed such things with humans.
It was an honor to be taken into their confidence like this.
Her thoughts soon turned sad. The Tevinter Empire had once spread across all of Thedas, amassing its wealth and power on the ruins of vanquished Arlathan. But even the memory of those days was practically forgotten; empires fell, books turned to ash, cities and once mighty fortresses became nothing more than stone skeletons, long since pilfered of anything of value. Yet, the elves were ancient when Tevinter was young… The task Merrill had before her was seemingly hopeless.
"If I can at least recover one small part of what we lost," Merrill added into the silence.
How many elves dedicated their lives like this, Hawke wondered. "So, this taint you mentioned wasn't part of the original mirror, I take it?"
Merrill shook her head. "It came later. Possibly even after the temple was abandoned. Some kind of darkspawn corruption."
Darkspawn. There was a topic she was all too familiar with. The Darkspawn were why her family no longer resided in Lothering. Or anyone else for that matter.
Merrill continued, talking about the ruin she'd found the mirror in, the books piled in the corner of this cabin that hinted at secrets she had yet to uncover, and all of her remaining nervousness melted away.
Hawke couldn't help but smile as she tried to follow along. She had always admired passion, even if it was for things she didn't truly understand.
It was a mission of hers, Hawke came to realize. Many in Merrill's former clan disapproved of her holding on to this part of their heritage, something that had killed one of their most beloved hunters, but disapproval turned to contempt when they discovered how she had removed the deadly taint from the glass.
Blood magic. Demons.
Even the elves of the deep forest shuddered to speak of such things. It was why Merrill was here, living a most un-Dalish life at sea, and not on dry land with the rest of her clan.
Still, Hawke's face betrayed no surprise when Merrill brought the subject up. Even if Varric hadn't been so blatant about it, the marks on her bare hands and arms made it all pretty obvious. She only replied with a distracted, "Oh, blood magic? Right on."
Remarkably, her forced ambivalence seemed to set Merrill at ease.
The lengths Merrill went to for her people's history didn't surprise her. She didn't need to ask what it was like to have it all only to lose it. There were only two facts one needed to know about the Hawke family line: one, there was mage blood in the family, and two: they used to be loaded… until Uncle Gamlen got a hold of the family fortune.
Now, not so much.
Still, one family's declining fortunes were hardly on the same scale as what had happened to the elves, she would readily admit.
Humans had all the power in Thedas. The elves... again, not so much. And whatever they tried to grasp was quickly taken from them.
A mail-shirt of dwarven make hung on a hook from the ceiling, the subtle outline of a tree on the breast created with the addition of green mithril rings. It made Hawke think back to the humans, elves, and dwarves she had seen working together on deck, hauling up lines, raising the sails, holystoning the deck planks.
At least on this ship, things were more equal. Race or sex did not seem to determine one's status out here on the waves. Thedas could really learn something from Isabela's crew of lawless pirates. How sad was that?
Eventually, the conversation turned to more mundane, non-blood magic related topics. Merrill and most of the elves on board had been together since Isabela fled Kirkwall some three years ago, right after the qunari attack that killed the Viscount and brought war between the city-states. She kept the ship's log, led the mages in the boarding parties, and was captain of the foc's'le. Whatever that hell that was.
"Raid many ships, do you?"
Merrill nodded. "We would hardly be pirates if we didn't. We strike mostly at the Orlesians, but the captain also likes to take on the slavers making the trip from Ferelden to Tevinter."
Hawke's fists clenched as she fought to suppress her anger at the very mention of the men enslaving her people. She'd seen it a hundred times herself. Even with the blight long over, her homeland would take generations to heal. A single poor harvest could still force thousands of starving refugees into ports all along the coast, making easy targets for the unscrupulous. "Is there much money in that?"
"The ships they sail on are usually worth something. We usually drop the prisoners off in Ostwick or Wycome."
The only two city-states still untouched by the war currently engulfing the Free Marches and threatening to spread across Thedas. "That's surprisingly… noble, of her."
Merrill nodded. "She's very kind, and beautiful. I don't know where I would be if wasn't for her… and Varric."
Clearly, there was another story there, but it felt distinctly as though she had pried enough into Merrill's past for one day, so she let it drop. "Kindand beautiful, huh?"
She blushed to the tips of her ears. Again.
Definitely something there too, but she decided to have mercy on the poor woman. If Merrill blushed any harder Hawke would be in great danger of needing to hug her, and then Merrill would probably explode into tiny little pieces.
"She thinks you're pretty."
So unexpected was the comment, Hawke could only gape at Merrill for a long moment. "I... uh... she told you that, did she?"
Merrill shook her head as she pretended to be fascinated by the book in her hand, or maybe she wasn't pretending, being surrounded by all these books and ancient artifacts left Hawke feeling decidedly out of her element. "You just… look like the kind of woman she sees ashore."
"I look like a prostitute?" she asked, her smile growing.
Merrill dropped the book straight on the floor, fixing Hawke with a look of horror. "Creators! I- I didn't mean that!"
Finally, Hawke couldn't stop herself from wrapping her arms around her. "It's all right Merrill," she said, laughing as she patted the smaller woman's back.
Thankfully, the slender woman didn't actually explode at all, in fact, she melted into the hug like it was just the one thing she'd been hoping for. "I just meant… you seem so strong, and confident. She likes that."
Hawke practically hummed as she pulled away. Merrill stood a little less stiffly now and no longer fidgeted with her hands, and with only a hint of red about the cheeks and ears. Progress. "So, is Isabela trustworthy, you think?"
"I trust her with my life."
No one would ever say it was easy for a human to earn the trust of an elf, let alone a Dalish elf. And yet Merrill was hardly the only one on board. And this thing - this eluvian - it was surely valuable, yet Merrill kept it here, with apparently no fears of anyone tampering with it.
"Is something wrong?" Merrill asked.
Hawke shook her head, more to clear her thoughts than anything else.
"She knows," Merrill continued. "Even the qunari don't leave people marooned on sandbanks without a reason." Strange how quickly she went to becoming the nervous one, while Merrill assumed the very picture of confidence. Hawke fingered the ends of her shirt. "She wouldn't rescue you just to double-cross you. I mean, unless you were a slaver, or you've stolen something of hers..."
"Can't say I've done either of those things," Hawke said with a shake of the head.
"Then you don't have anything to worry about."
"Because she thinks I'm pretty?"
Merrill only nodded. She didn't even blush this time.
Oh well, Hawke supposed that if Isabela did double-cross her, the result couldn't be any worse than the slow death by drowning that had been in store for her earlier in the day.
Maybe it was finally time to share her secret with someone. If so, who better to confide in than the commander of her own ship? Someone who might be able to help her find what she was seeking. Someone who could protect her from those who hunted her. But first, she would need to get in her good graces...
Hawke and Merrill chatted a little while longer, Hawke encouraging her to sit and finally begin picking at her food, even as Merrill became engrossed in a very thick book lying on the floor. When she was mostly finished, Merrill thanked her and Hawke took her leave.
Though she intended to mull her options over for another day or two, it wasn't long before Hawke's feet took her to the door to the captain's cabin. She'd never been very good at resisting temptation. Certainly not when the temptation took the form of a beautiful woman.
"Isabela?"
The door slid open and those piercing eyes raked her body up and down. Oops, how did those remaining buttons get undone? "Yes, sweet thing?"
Hawke quickly pushed her way into the cabin as she pulled her shirt off. "I have something very important I need to show you."
...
What she had intended to take only an hour or so to show Isabela, quickly stretched deep into the night, and after several hours of sleep, into the following morning.
Those books she'd read as a little girl hardly did justice to the reality of romancing an actual pirate queen. Probably because they skipped all the best parts.
As Hawke lay satisfied on top of her, Isabela was running a hand over her butt. "So… you do realize you have a gigantic map tattooed on your ass, right?"
Hawke looked over her shoulder, feigning shock. Somehow, Isabela didn't find that half as amusing as she did. "Yeah," she mumbled into the silence, resting her head back on Isabela's wonderfully soft breasts. "I noticed that too."
With surprising ease, Isabela unceremoniously dumped Hawke to the side and mounted her thighs to get a closer look. "Detail like this takes some real dedication, and some serious coin. Or a long succession of drunken nights, and some serious coin."
She let Isabela run her curious fingers along her curves. It wasn't like those fingers weren't similarly engaged in the dark of the previous night. She sighed. Isabela was a pirate, and pirates by definition were the scum of the earth, or the waves, as the case may be, but she was tired of carrying this burden by herself, hiding from her friends and family to keep them from getting dragged into what had turned out to be a very dangerous and financially ruinous adventure. Her solitary efforts were getting her nowhere. Maybe Isabela would learn all she needed to learn, then kill her on the spot, or maybe she'd maroon her again. At least Hawke would die in a state of sexual satisfaction. "Well," she began, swallowing. "A demon sort of did it."
Isabela instantly retracted her hands. "A demon?"
Hawke nodded, finding herself a little saddened by the way Isabela recoiled. There were many people in Thedas who would kill someone for simply being touched by a demon, consensual or not. "A demon," she repeated. "A desire demon." Though, to be fair, she hadn't known that at the time.
"Really?"
"Really."
"A desire demon tattooed a map on your ass?"
It did sound rather silly to hear it said out loud, yes. "Well… um… essentially."
"With magic?"
She grimaced. It was hard to talk with the side of her face buried in a pillow. "Hopefully? I can't really say. I was unconscious when it happened."
"Drunk?"
A shrug. "At first, maybe. But later on, I discovered that I'd lost a few days."
"Magic then."
"So it would seem."
Isabela let out a breath, she turned over Hawke's hands as if checking demonic sigils or something. "Usually, once a demon gets its claws into you, escape is impossible." Then she placed a finger on Hawke's cheek, as she looked deeply into her eye. She would find no demonic glow in them. Hawke had already received assurances from the most respected healers in Ostwick and Kirkwall that she was not in fact possessed. Unless, maybe, they were demons too. Darktown had been pretty creepy.
"Perhaps I wasn't worth possessing?"
"A blow to the ego, I'm sure," Isabela smiled.
"It truly was," Hawke replied, throat going dry under Isabela's gaze. "You're really pretty, did you know that?"
She smiled. "Thanks. I like your eyes," she said, outlining one with the tip of a finger. "I think I'd like to carve them out and stick them in a jar."
Hawke swallowed. "Uh…"
"Don't worry," Isabela giggled. "I'm not the dread pirate Corypheus. I only let people think I do such things. It's good for business."
"Nice to know."
Again, with wonderful strength, Isabela rolled Hawke over and settled back on top of her. The sight of this feared pirate captain all naked, hair disheveled, and very much on top of her, was enough to make one tingly in all sorts of places. "So… do you always let demons share your bed?"
"You mean, apart from last night?" The light from the windows glinted on Isabela's teeth when she smiled at that. If there was any demon in this room, surely it was her. "Well," Hawke coughed, "she didn't take the form of a demon to start with."
"They seldom do - unless you're into that sort of thing. So, what form did she take?"
"Well…" She shook her head, eyes fixed on the tall windows that ran from floor to ceiling at the stern of the ship, showing the morning sun just rising above the waves, and finally let out a deep breath. "You're going to laugh at me."
"Wouldn't be the first time."
She sighed again. It wouldn't even be the first time in the last thirty minutes. Apparently, she was doomed to be absolutely hilarious, even during the act of lovemaking. "She, uh…" At Isabela's look of growing impatience Hawke finally just spit it out, "She looked kind of like the Hero of Ferelden." Exactly like, actually, from the little chip missing from her left ear, to the famous scar running across her pretty elven face, taken when the archdemon Urthemiel spit its liquid fire at her from the top of Fort Drakon.
Isabela laughed so hard Hawke half expected the crew to come bursting through the door to see what was the matter. "Oh, Maker!" she cried, grasping her stomach, "You thought you were sleeping with the Hero of Ferelden?"
Another sigh.
"That is too good."
"Like you wouldn't do the same!"
Isabela didn't even flinch at the accusation. "Been there. Done that."
It took a moment for Hawke's brain to fully register the import of what she was saying. "You… wait, what?"
"Many years ago. I met her just before the Battle of Denerim."
Hawke's fell back to the bed, allowing the sinfully soft pillows to swallow her up.
"Well," Isabela continued. "If it helps, I am not a desire demon. Or any sort of demon, no matter what anyone else might tell you."
"I should've just asked her that. So, I know you say you're Lyna Mahariel, but are you actually a desire demon in disguise? C'mon. Be honest. I promise I won't tell nobody."
Isabela laughed again. If laughter was the basis for an enduring relationship, then Hawke felt she might as well just propose right now. "So, tell me…" she asked, "how did you realize the truth?"
"That final night, when I woke up, she was all horny." At her raised eyebrow, Hawke quickly added, "I mean, with horns growing out of her head? Like a qunari, but, purple."
"Ah. That's usually a giveaway."
"I thought so," Hawke said with a nod.
"And then what happened?"
Hawke's brow creased as she struggled to find just the right phrasing. "Well, um, I laid there for a long while with her arms wrapped around me, strongly considering freaking right out, you know, like you do? But she didn't make a move to devour my soul, or anything of the kind, she just sorta smiled at me." Kind of exactly the same way Isabela was smiling at her right now, actually. "So, I just calmly got up and mumbled something about needing to use the bathroom. She looked like she didn't want to let me go, but I somehow managed to convince her."
"You charmed your way out of her bed?"
"I suppose you could put it that way."
"Or," Isabela drawled. "You told a lot of bad jokes and she kicked you out?"
She huffed. "You sound like my sister."
"So, what happened next?"
"Well, just as I was contemplating sneaking out through the third story window, there came a great crash from the other room, a lot of shouting in some language I'd never heard before, then this big old ugly guy with a sword broke down the door and tried to kill me."
"This a regular occurrence for you?"
She shrugged. Kinda. "I think he was a demon too. He had this glowy magic surrounding him. Then he shot a ball of green stuff at me."
Isabela made a face at Hawke's lackluster descriptive powers. "Green stuff?"
"I don't know what it was. I've never seen magic like that before. It gave me this scar along my shoulder," she added, rubbing the shiny skin a little sadly. It continued well down to the small of her back. No healer seemed able to cure it.
"Poor thing," Isabela said, leaning down to kiss her there. "So two demons are looking for you?"
Hawke nodded.
"Would've been nice had you mentioned that sooner."
She snorted. What a wonderful first impression that would've made. Hawke pictured herself climbing up on board the Siren's Call, only to get tossed off it thirty seconds later. "I'm not as dumb as I look."
Isabela ruffled her hair, like Hawke was twelve and not in her thirties. "That remains to be seen. You are as adorable as you look, at least."
She rolled her eyes.
"Fortunately, I have a habit of –" Isabela waggled her eyebrows, "getting my hands on things that net me quite a bit of trouble. As long as you make yourself useful around the ship, I don't mind protecting that fabulous rear of yours." The look in her eyes made it clear she wasn't talking about manning the bilge pumps, thank the Maker.
Smiling up at Isabela, Hawke purred and stretched her limbs, watching with pleasure as hungry eyes raked every inch of her naked body. Hawke knew that look. It was the I'm-thinking-about-last-night-and-would-be-rather-interested-in-repeating-the-experience-soon-if-you-wouldn't-mind-too-terribly-much look. It was a very good look on Isabela. "Thanks," she replied.
Finally, Isabela began closing the distance between their lips again. "Remember what I said: as long as you make yourself useful."
Hawke nodded, allowing her eyes to drift shut. "I'm versatile."
"And flexible," Isabela breathed.
She felt the woman's warm breath against her skin. "Aww, you noticed?" Isabela hummed, but Hawke waited a moment, then two moments, then three, before opening her eyes. Isabela had pulled back, her eyes wide. "What?"
Her companion suddenly sat up on the bed. "We need to show Merrill your ass!"
Heart suddenly racing, Hawke looked over at the door, half expecting to see Merrill standing there, staring at them both with horror etched on her face, presumably one second from fainting dead away, but the door was still locked tight. Isabela was off her in a flash. "Merrill?" she squeaked, reaching for her pants. "But she's…"
"Adorable, I know, but not nearly as innocent as she appears."
Hawke tightened her belt. "Because of the blood magic?"
"Well, partly." Strange how the blood magic aspect didn't seem to disturb Isabela at all. This really was an odd sort of ship. It would've been one thing if everyone on board was a mage, but that wasn't the case either. Neither the captain, nor her crew, seemed to care about such things. "Actually, I just meant that I've seen her drunk more times than I can count, and sometimes she joins me on my trips to the brothel when we're at port."
"Oh." Now there was a mental image Hawke was having great difficulty forming. "Is she the navigator or something?" Hawke didn't really relish the idea of draping herself over a table while Isabela and Merrill tried to plot a course using her butt as a navigational aide.
"Huh?" Isabela shook her head. "No, I just mean those words on your butt are in elvish. She could probably translate them."
"Oh…. yes, right. You, uh, think she'll mind?"
"Seeing your ass? I doubt it. She does seem rather smitten with you."
"Oh." Yes. She had noticed that. Smitten or terrified. One of the two, surely.
"And…" Isabela added, eyes flashing, "if you hurt her in any way, I'll throw you overboard. After I carve out those pretty eyes of yours, of course."
Hawke swallowed. "Of course."
…
Again, Merrill was completely red faced. How this woman ever accompanied anyone to any sort of brothel was definitely completely beyond Hawke's imagining.
"See?" Isabela was saying.
Merrill nodded. "It's a map."
"Indeed."
"Well, I'm glad we've got that sorted," Hawke grumbled.
Both women ignored her. "Something about the coast of that land looks vaguely familiar," Isabela continued.
Merrill hummed, tossing the magnifying glass back on the table. "The text is Elvish, for sure, but it's too small to read."
Hawke sighed. Under normal circumstances, she would have only positive things to say about the prospect of two beautiful women admiring her ass in a locked bedroom, but the reality of the situation was leaving her cold. Literally as well as figuratively. "Can't you just trace it onto a piece of paper or something? This position isn't very comfortable."
"It's a bit too detailed for that," Isabela replied. "Unless you want to be lying there for the next ten hours. Or I can bring Lia in here. She's the ship's chartmaker, and probably wouldn't mind looking at your ass either."
Eyes still curious, Merrill placed her finger on Hawke's skin for a second, then seemed to notice what she had done and swiftly retracted her hand.
"It's all right, Kitten."
Kitten. Very appropriate, Hawke thought. Still blushing, Merrill tilted her head as she stared, leaving Hawke with little to do but sit there and admire the elf's striking face, curious eyes, and the way Isabela kept brushing the hair out of them for her.
Then, as if suddenly coming to some sort of unvoiced conclusion, Merrill nodded sharply.
The question never had a chance to leave Hawke's lips, she was too busy recoiling at the sight of Merrill unsheathing the long knife hanging from her belt. "Uh, wha –"
With her free hand, Merrill pressed her back down with more strength than the slender woman should've possessed. Hawke was hardly frightened of blood, but when Merrill sliced the palm of her own hand clean open, she tightly shut her eyes.
The wrongness of that was quickly overpowered by the rush of magic. Her ass grew warmer and warmer – again, not as pleasurable as it sounded – then a rush of magic suffused her entire body before vanishing in an instant.
A new light had her hesitantly opening her eyes.
And there it was; the map, etched large upon the wall, and glowing with its own faint yellow light.
She looked over her shoulder. Unfortunately, the original map was still where it had been for the past few weeks. Hawke sighed. She preferred her butt the way it was.
The two women were already stepping around the bed to get a closer look while Hawke took one look at the blood still dripping from Merrill's hand and grabbed a discarded shirt off the floor. With speed born of long experience, she ripped a piece of the flimsy material into a long strip. "Here," she said, scooting forward and grasping Merrill's hand. "Warn a girl before you do that next time." When she turned Merrill's hand over and wiped her palm, she was surprised to find nothing more than a faint white scar.
"It usually heals pretty quickly," Merrill said, her cheeks flushed.
"Oh,"
Isabela leaned over and ruffled her hair again.
Sighing, Hawke pulled a bedsheet to her, wrapping it tight around her upper body as she slumped on the mattress.
She had never gotten a very good view of what was tattooed on her butt, no matter how many mirrors she'd collected for the purpose. She couldn't read the strange script, didn't recognize the landforms, and trying to figure out just how many mirrors she needed in order to see a non-reversed image gave her a headache before she even got started.
The map was actually two maps; one panel for each… well… one panel for each. On the left was the coast of a continent, or country, or something bordering a large body of water at any rate. The right panel depicted an island crisscrossed with rivers and mountains, an improbably large lake in the center of it, all surrounded by a thousand spires of rock jutting out of an ocean filled with horned fish and other more fantastical creatures of the sea.
Calling it inhospitable would've been charitable.
"Thedas," Isabela said, pointing at the left map.
Hawke blinked. To her eye, it looked more like the Maker's unfinished plans for Thedas, but now that it had been pointed out, she did recognize the east coast of Ferelden and the curving sickle shape of Rivain, but if that was supposed to be Seheron at the top, then the map-maker should've checked their sources better. It was firmly attached to the mainland in two places, leaving the Nocen Sea as a giant lake.
But the biggest departure from reality was the complete lack of any Waking Sea. There was nothing to keep a person from walking a straight line from Denerim to Kirkwall, should they have wished to.
Though neither Denerim nor Kirkwall appeared to be on this map either.
"Elvhenan," Merrill corrected, her voice betraying a deep sense of awe. "This is the world before the great Elvhen Empire fell."
Isabela's eyes widened. "How can you be sure? I was thinking it must be a very old Tevinter map."
Merrill shook her head, pointing to the shores of the Nocen Sea. "None of these places have human names. And look, no Minrathous, no Vyrantium. Even the most ancient Tevinter cities aren't here."
"So, is this what Thedas, erm, Elvhenan, used to look like?" Isabela asked, "Or is it just one of those old maps that only collectors find interesting. Remember that one we lifted from that merchantman a few months ago, where Ferelden was drawn as an island, and Seheron was spelled with an F?"
She seemed to consider this. "That was very valuable, wasn't it? But I don't think so. See these mountain ranges?" She pointed to each one as she listed them off. "There's the Hunterhorns, and Gamordan, and there's the Frostbacks. All perfectly in place."
Hawke titled her head. That was strange. The seas were definitely wrong, but the mountains corresponded exactly to what she knew of modern Thedas. Old maps, like the kind Isabela was thinking of, tended to be inaccurate in every way, warping seas and mountain ranges in all sorts of fantastical directions. But here, the ranges were charted as precisely as any Dwarven cartographer could ever wish for. "So, where's the Waking Sea then?"
Merrill frowned. "When the humans came, they used their magic to force the ground to swallow up Arlathan and many of the other great Elvhen cities. Many elves fled, but some tried to use their magic to hold the invaders off. Great battles took place all over Elvhenan. Mountains rose, and entire lands fell into the sea..."
"The magisters did this, or was it the elves?"
She shook her head. "So much is lost."
"I'd hate to run into the kind of magic that could carve a thousand-mile long sea into a continent like that," Isabela said.
Even Merrill seemed to agree on that point.
The mood in the room had turned entirely too gloomy. "What about the other map," Hawke asked, nodding at the improbable looking island on the right. "I suppose it's important somehow?"
Isabela was counting the numbers marked along its left-hand side, written in Elvish just like everything else, "Forty-five, fifty…"
"Oh, well done," Merrill said with a smile.
"I had a good teacher," Isabela winked. "Hmm. Judging by these latitude marks, it's somewhere in the Sundered Sea." She ran a finger across the map of Elvhenan. "Riiiight about… here," she said, pointing to a small dot hidden in a vast ocean at the bottom left corner.
Merrill's eyes grew wide, but Hawke only blinked at the name.
"The Southern Ocean?" Isabela asked, eyes narrowing. "The Sundered Sea, south of Ferelden and Orlais? You know, the one with all the ice in it?"
Hawke continued to stare blankly at her. Geography lessons at the Lothering schoolhouse never really extended much beyond Orlais: bad, Ferelden: good, and there's some mountains in between. She'd picked up a few things in her travels since, but she wasn't exactly an expert on the subject. "Oh. Um, is that bad?"
The look on Isabela's face conveyed an answer something along the lines of 'what are you, the world's biggest idiot?' Thankfully, her mouth was kinder, "Only fools sail so far south. Many rulers have sent expeditions that way, looking for a fabled passage to the west and its riches, as well as to avoid the qunari and the slavers…" she crossed her arms, "but there's nothing out there except endless plains of ice, barren rock, and the eternal peace of a watery grave."
"How do you explain the little palm trees then?"
"Huh?"
Scooting to the edge of the bed, Hawke pointed to the island. In addition to the little bumps indicating mountains, there was also the occasional tree and waterfall. None of it looked frozen, in fact, it looked positively tropical, like the rain-soaked northern shores of Rivain and its thick, lush forests.
Isabela regarded it dubiously. "Artistic license… or more accurately, a lack of artistic imagination. Most mapmakers never leave their homes. To an Orlesian, every land from Ferelden to Seheron must look exactly like Orlais. They couldn't imagine how it could be otherwise."
"Oh."
"You know, we might have to bring Lia in here after all. Trace this to something a little more portable than the wall of my cabin, or your butt." Isabela smiled appreciatively as Hawke laughed.
"Hey, my butt's portable. I take it everywhere!"
Isabela shook her head, even as she laughed. Then she blinked as a thought came to her, "Was your father a mage by any chance?"
Surprised by the question, Hawke looked up from where her eyes had wandered onto Isabela's breasts, even mostly covered as they were. "Uh… actually, yeah, he was."
She nodded. "When demons mark people like this… Well, they tend to prefer people who already have some magic in them."
Hawke slumped. Her sister was a mage too. Hawke and her late brother Carver had been lucky in that respect. "So she chose me for my blood, not my charming personality?" She canted her head out of the way before Isabela could ruffle her hair again. "This thing must be important though, right? Why else would a demon go through all the trouble of tattooing it on my butt?"
Isabela shook her head, like there was a joke to be made there but she just couldn't think of one on the spot. Meanwhile, Merrill's mind appeared to be racing with the possibilities. An unexplored island detailed on an ancient Elvish map...
"You know," Hawke drawled, smirking at the preemptive roll of the eyes she was getting from Isabela, "If it truly is a map to an ancient Elvhen bastion of some kind, it could contain untold riches." Hawke hardly needed to sell it any harder than that. Merrill was fixing Isabela with a wide-eyed, hopeful look that would've worn down the defenses of a qunari, even that big beefy one Hawke had stabbed in the back two days ago.
Shutting her eyes as she shook her head, the smile on her lips gave the distinct indication that this wasn't the first time Isabela had fallen victim to Merrill's pleading looks. "It will take us a week just to reach Estwatch. Another two to make it to Gwaren, if the winds are favorable. And another two to wait for the people there to stop laughing at us when they find out where we're going."
"It will be fun though, right?" Merrill, asked rising from the bed and practically bouncing from excitement. And really, who could resist that face?
Not Isabela apparently. "Fine… fine. I'll put it to the crew, see what they think. Okay?"
Merrill quickly nodded, breaking out in a wide smile.
"Balls," she muttered to herself as she wandered over to the window. The sun was much higher now. Bright and warm without a cloud in the sky. "We'd need cold-weather gear, and supplies for months..."
"You think they'll go for it?" Hawke asked.
Isabela shrugged. "We have a fair number of elves among the crew, and Varric is always up for an adventure. Gives him something to spin tales about. Besides…" she let out a deep breath, "All these qunari ships sailing so far south of Par Vollen isn't a good sign. It might be a good idea to leave Rivain for a few months."
"Are they planning to invade?"
She made a vague gesture with her hands. "The qunari are notoriously difficult to predict, but they do seem agitated. Well, more agitated than usual... Almost like they're desperately searching for something very important to them."
Hawke frowned, only slightly relieved it wasn't for her. The qunari already had her in their grasp once, had already seen what was tattooed on her, erm, more sensitive bits – despite her protests – and yet they'd still let her go. It was actually a little insulting, to be honest.
Only a little though.
"Well," Isabela drawled as she stretched her arms. "The crew should've eaten by now. No better time to ask them." Crossing to the door, she glanced over her shoulder. "You'd better come too, Merrill." She paused. "Merrill?"
Merrill remained where she was, staring at Hawke again, more openly than ever before. Hawke leaned back on her elbows, waggling her eyebrows. She probably could've put a shirt on at some point. Ah, well...
Isabela snorted at them both. "Hawke?"
"Hmm?" The expression on Isabela's face was half amusement, half warning.
A pair of black trousers landed on her head. "Put your pants on."
End of Chapter 1
AN - Anyone unfortunate enough to intently follow my multi-chapter fics knows that I take forever to update. Real life, sickness, writer's block… all that stuff, you know? So, I really can't say when the next chapter will be up.
