A/N: Set sometime during Inquisition; inspired by Florence + the Machine's "Long & Lost")
Is it too late to come on home?
Are all those bridges now old stone?
Is it too late to come on home?
Can the city forgive? I hear its sad song
.
The Starkhaven siege is broken the day the Champion finally returns to Kirkwall, the way Aveline always imagined she would – dramatically, and at the head of an army.
She always thought Hawke would carry her shield, though. Not be carried on it.
The standard of the Inquisition rides high on the hills, a flood of swords and eyes and white fabric. It's a bit too much like the banners that waved above the Viscount's keep before the end of Meredith's reign; it doesn't bring her much comfort.
"We can't all be perfect," Hawke says from right beside her where she stands, exhausted, dispassionate, watching Sebastian Vael, King of Starkhaven, swear allegiance to the Inquisitorial throne.
"Or timely."
Hawke doesn't laugh, but the sentiment is there. "I came as soon as I could. At least I brought reinforcements."
"But did you have to die to get them?"
Hawke doesn't answer her and when she blinks and looks again, she is gone.
Sebastian kneels on the bare Keep floor and the Inquisitor stretches her hand above him, blessing or condemning, it hardly matters anymore. It is over, and that is all the justice Kirkwall can expect. But what it needs -
Her armor presses down with the weight of a thousand years. She is creaking, groaning with rust and salt like the fittings on a shipwreck.
She sails yet, though. She will not sink.
"You'll have to watch that one," Hawke says, falling into step with her outside the massive doors. They've walked this way so many times, side by side, that even now she never can remember to walk down the middle.
"She's beautiful."
"It's always the pretty ones."
"You would know."
Kirkwall's banners flutter above the corridor, ragged and defiant. They'll pull them down eventually, Aveline is sure. The Inquisition's eye will oversee all, and for now she is too numb to know how she feels about that. It's been so long since she simply slept, and it would be some time yet before she would again.
"I suppose it was necessary. Bringing them here."
"For the people."
"For the people," she echoes and it sounds like a tired sigh, like the shrivel of dried leaves blowing across a courtyard in the fall, husks in the face of winter.
There is no Chantry in Hightown; perhaps there never will be again. She doesn't know how long it will last, the idea of Kirkwall as a lone secular city-state, but she supposes the Veil is thin enough here without knocking on the door to ask the Maker for direction.
They take Hawke to the Estate instead. It is not the homecoming she might have wished.
There are no flowers, none to be had in a city at war. Leandra's garden lies fallow outside the house, but the walls of the courtyard are lined with strips of red fabric that blow in the breeze, knotted into the ivy and hung from the branches of trees. The Champion's standard, makeshift and ragged. Hawke's name is spoken with scorn in the halls of power, but the lowest voices are the ones that carry.
Already there are tremors in the water, a swell pressing up from underneath, and soon the tide will rush in.
.
They decide to do it in the courtyard before the Viscount's keep; the fountain that was there has long been destroyed, and there is nowhere else large enough for the crowd that is certain to gather without going all the way to the Gallows. Meredith's… corpse is still there, the red glow faded but still malignant; the Inquisitor's men will see to it before they leave.
It should please her, but it doesn't. The sickness in Kirkwall will not be cured with the excision of one tyrant, not when that is merely a symptom and not the root of the disease. This will be nothing but a bookend on someone's shelf one day, paper-thin and bloodless.
They stand on the ramparts overlooking the square. Seneschal Bran continues to outdo himself, cordoning space for officiates and dignitaries and the pyre. There is no space allotted to Hawke's family; it isn't required.
"It would just be worse if they were here," Hawke says, leaning with elbows propped out too far over the wall. "You hate when people cry."
"What are you even doing here, Hawke?" Though she can't say she's surprised.
The corner of Hawke's mouth quirks, lifting into a familiar uneven smile. "I missed the old girl." Her hand moves almost lovingly on the stone beneath it, her gaze a thousand miles into the distance. It focuses back in sharply, no less fond. "And I thought you might appreciate the chance to say goodbye."
There's a lump in her throat, burning back behind the words. She really does hate when people cry. "I'm not much of one for loose ends."
Hawke laughs. "You never were."
"Hawke-" The words aren't there. Aren't… right. Hawke is strong, tall and rough-edged and terrible, but she can see all the places the light penetrates, the ragged little tears in the whole that time has worn. There are lines in her face, gray in her hair, and even when she smiles that peculiar Hawke smile, Aveline can't tell if this is a memory or just a reflection of herself.
"I don't know how Kirkwall is going to hold together without you."
"This isn't me, Aveline." The official standards, the ceremonial robes, the lonely looking body wrapped in white, she gestures to it all. "This was never me. Just because I'm not in there doesn't mean I'm not in here." She turns and reaches out, two fingers to tap against the breastplate over Aveline's heart. "You're going to be fine. You are always fine."
"I'm sorry I never saw how much good you did. I'm sorry I wasn't at your side, at the end." Memories press, gray skies and a red beam of light and the sound of her sword on the ground. "Both times."
"I wouldn't be me without you. If I could go back – I wouldn't change anything." Hawke shrugs and looks almost smug, returning to lean on the banister. There is resignation in her voice, but not without satisfaction. "I guess it was all worth it. In the end."
.
The flames bloom high and hot, blistering stones and her skin where she stands at parade rest, hands clasped behind her back; consuming, christening, destroying, renewing, grief and hope in one.
Hawke stands alone, as always, far closer to the fire than any human woman can endure. She's in the old armor, slung about the collar with fur that begins to spark, her dark hair catching as infernos flare beneath her skin, spreading like ink droplets in water.
She looks, just once, a glance aside to meet her eyes, and then she's gone.