Title: Vengeance
Rating: T
Summary: The mages have lost the war. The ringleaders of the resistance are convicted of treason and sentenced to death.
A/N: Thanks for reading. Review please.
When I thought that I fought this war alone
You were there by my side on the front line.
Vengeance
Hawke hasn't been tied up in ages. She almost forgot what it feels like.
The morning is gelid and unforgiving, the slow wind a continuous torture as it sinks through hot flesh and into the marrow of her very bones. She is no longer shivering but suffering from painful spasms and fits, her teeth clacking together and fingers numb to outside stimuli. Rope cuts deep into her wrists, warm blood seeping from the burning wounds and dripping red on the ground, the stone beneath her colored a mystical silver by the gray sky about to erupt with the approaching dawn. Brief plumes of fog escape her chapped, bloody lips with every stinging breath she takes. Ice clings to her sticky black hair, the strands falling in clumped tendrils about her pallid face, thick with oil and filth.
Cullen kneels adjacent to her, eyes drooping and dizzy. Plump beads of crimson slide down his nose, dripping in a slow rhythm onto his thighs and thinning as the liquid rolls off slick steel armor, losing a little of itself with each millimeter of distance. If anyone took the worst of the blows, it was him in trying to protect the rest of the group after Hawke fell. He is second in line to be executed. She is first.
Hawke closes her eyes and swallows, tasting bitter iron. Fenris growls low in his throat, staring at the surrounding templars with pure and unbridled fury. His collarbone is broken, and she can see the skin beneath his broken carapace coloring into an ugly purple. They caught him in the very beginning, eliminating him quickly and efficiently. They were well-informed and knew how important he was in strength to their resistance when they struck. Some part of her is smiling at how indignant he is at being caught; he is the most pessimistic man she has ever met next to Carver.
"Don't have a plan, Sister?" her brother asks in a low chuckle from behind. Hawke can't see him, but she knows that he's in a terrible state. He was one of the last to go down, just before they caught Cullen. She saw him before they put the potato bag over her head, knows that his ear and left eye are completely useless now. She knows one of his legs is twisted and maimed, and that, if they manage to get out of this alive, he will never walk again.
"You know me," she whispers into the frozen air, shifting slightly on the spot. Her sore joints snap and complain in response. A faint smile curls around her lips, but it's entirely fake and only for her own comfort. After all, he can't see it. She hopes that she projects some sort of hope into her raspy voice. "I always have a plan."
The Gallows loom overhead, held up in its dilapidated state by fine craftsmanship and foul memories. Pained whispers blown by a mysterious, eerie breeze still echo across the courtyard. If Hawke tilts her head just right, breathes out the Templar influence that clogs the air and disrupts the natural flow of life, she can still sense the magic bleeding from the solid stone. It has been years since the day she and a handful of mages and misfits held their own against a Templar army. Nearly a decade has passed since the Divine razed Kirkwall to the ground, all her inhabitants with it, and left it in a pile of rubble and craggy ruins in the name of the Maker.
"I...suggest you get to it quickly then," said Cullen in a whimper, his eyes frantic as they darted over the Templars guarding them. "Else we are...all finished."
"No," she shakes her head, and it makes her dizzy. Even as she utters the word, though, she knows it is a lie. The resistance is scattered and chaotic. There is no easy regiment to fall into when the leaders are gone. There is neither a grand line of succession nor any sort of test to determine who should lead when those who carve the path have been executed. And all the leaders are in the courtyard, waiting for their deaths. She hunches over further into herself to keep from falling over, so tired and so very beaten. When the morning comes, they'll have lost it all.
"Take heart," she hears Aveline say fiercely. "We will not have died for nothing."
"Everyone stop talking about bloody dying," whines Isabela. "I'm freezing, and this is so not helping my morale. Besides, you're scaring Merrill."
"I'm fine, Isabela."
When Hawke's mouth splits into a smile, her scabbed lip cracks open. Fresh blood dribbles down her chin, and she lifts her head to the sky. The whispering starts again, rising up from the stone, and Hawke thinks for a moment that she can hear Meredith laughing in the distance. She is no longer a statue in the inner courtyard. She's long ago turned to red sand, swirling about in the low wind with the tumbling leaves. Cullen coughs and heaves a ragged breath. He's probably bleeding internally. His color is all wrong.
There is a brief shuffling behind her and a grunt of pain before warm air hits the back of her neck. She smells metal and fire, can feel the faintest amount of heat that only comes from physical closeness with another person. Beyond the skyline, she can see orange and yellow bleeding across the sky. The sun peeks over the horizon, and the light it brings burns.
The Templars guarding their sad group begin to move, to converse with one another. Their faces are securely hidden behind those artfully crafted helmets so that they are each emotionless, faceless soldiers, but she knows they are scared. Even if she can't see their darting eyes, she notices the way their heads swivel to look at her every few moments. There's a nervous energy surrounding the place that emanates solely from them, not her soldiers, bound and vulnerable though they are.
She is dangerous, and they have every right to be afraid of her. She is the mage of their nightmares—something that can think and feel and still practice that forbidden art of magic—, the Champion of Kirkwall, and the scarred, battle-hardened woman who engaged them in three days of intense, constant battle, precious time spent whittling her down to a state weak enough for them to overwhelm her.
Hawke breathes slowly, wincing at the icy air. There is no more talk as the sun rises ever higher. She has no last words of encouragement, can't give a hearty and spirit-raising speech when she's kneeling on the cold ground guarded by twitchy men with swords. So she lets the silence swirl around them, broken intermittently by that strange whispering and ghostly laughter that seems to fade as the morning approaches. A cricket chirps in the distance, and Hawke lets her head fall forward when at last the sun blazes in the sky, and the pure light washes over them like heavenly fire.
Something hard and heavy settles on her shoulder, and she can see the shock of ebony hair in her peripheral vision. Carver presses his forehead hard against her, and she can feel the weariness in such a simple gesture. "I'm sorry," he whispers against her back. Burning hot tears sting her eyes, and she shakes her head, biting her lower lip, because it just absolutely figures that when his apology finally comes—one that's been overdue for too long, one that she never expected to hear but so completely deserves—that she can't sweep him into her arms and hug him so tightly that he's small and fragile and her baby brother again.
What she can do is too infinitesimal and utterly insubstantial, but she does it anyway. Hawke pivots her cheekbone on her own shoulder and touches the tops of their heads together, the smell of sweat and blood even more potent. "I love you, Carver," she replies.
Sebastian, Cullen's replacement, the man who has hunted her for nearly a decade, marches toward her and kneels at her feet. He's older now with drawn eyebrows and a sparse smattering of a reddish beard on his square jaw and upper lip. His eyes are a stormy blue, nearly silver around the edges as he casts a slow glance at the sky. Carver doesn't move, panting in pain against her shoulder. No doubt his leg is causing him quite a bit of trouble. Hawke swallows and tilts her head up, closing her eyes for a brief moment.
"Dawn is here, Hawke," Sebastian laments, his accent thick with pity. "On this day, the rebellion will be crushed at last."
"You're wrong," Hawke lifts her chin, clenching her fists behind her. "The mages are thousands in number. The rebellion has infected every city, every town. You can't kill us all." She's lying again, but she hopes that she sounds convincing. More than that, she hopes the mages can organize themselves, hopes against hope that they still fight back.
"They'll disperse when you're dead. You know they will," he says gently, so convinced that he has won. He stands, and his cape blows in the dying wind, swaying against his legs. Carver moans again into her shoulder, and she feels the muscles in his jaw clench.
"You overestimate my importance."
"You underestimate it," he lifts his hand and curls two fingers. Two Templars appear and seize her soft upper arms, fingers digging tightly into the sore bones of her stiff shoulders. Carver makes a hoarse noise in the back of his throat as they haul her into a standing position, her legs trembling as she tries to stand. Sebastian is closer now, and she can see just how hard this war has been on him, as well. He speaks not to her but to the Templars, his voice solemn and low. "We kill her quickly. This is not meant to be malicious vengeance but simply...the end of it all."
He removes the bow strapped across his chest, and it sparkles with inlaid lyrium, electric and pulsing in his hands. Melted gold swirls around the worn handle, slinking artfully around the carved symbols and smooth grooves meant for his slender, gloved fingers. Pure magic emanates from it, brushing against her own absent aura in light caressing waves that wrap around her in a calming embrace. The weapon was a gift from Hawke after Sebastian promised to assume his rightful position in Starkhaven as royalty. How ironic that it would be her death.
"On the dais," he points to the raised platform in the middle of the cracked staircases where the rusted metal railing has fallen into disrepair.
It is only when they move to march her that she begins to struggle.
"Oh, Hawke, no!" moans Merrill in despair, and Hawke arches her back, feet dragging across the concrete ground as she tries to slow the ascent. The grip they have on her is strong, bruising even, and she can't break it with the rope tying her limbs awkwardly together. She twists and struggles, a short, frightened whimper escaping her throat as they hit the first step.
"Take heart!" shouts Aveline in reassurance.
Hawke uses their grip as an anchor and bucks up, kicking into the air with her feet as they haul her up the remaining steps. They turn her around, and she can finally see the ringleaders, the masters of the resistance, and they are all so delightfully broken in so many individual ways. Carver's veins are pulsing in his thick neck, and he's red in the face, struggling where he sits to stand and help. But he can't, and she knows that. A single tear slides down her face as his stunning eyes meet hers, trying to convey everything they've never said in a single split second.
"You can't do this," says Isabela desperately, shaking her shoulders, tugging on her hands. "Sebastian, please. Hawke saved you. She avenged your family!"
Sebastian doesn't spare her a single glance. Something in his cobalt eyes has hardened irrevocably, his hands wrapped tightly around his bow, ready to draw it. A small part of Hawke notes that this is a rather unorthodox execution, and it reminds her a little of Andraste. The only difference is that this, this is not a mercy.
"I won't miss, Hawke," Sebastian promises, as if that is her number one concern.
"You sick son of a bitch," growls Carver in a pained yet dangerous voice. "If you kill her, I'll skin you alive. Do you understand?"
Despite all they have been through together, all the near-death experiences, all the painful moments, all the fighting, Hawke has never thought that she would actually die. But she has no plan this time, no clever scheme to maneuver out of the way of that arrow that will fly so straight and true right into her heart, and she isn't even trying. All she can think about is that she has not fallen in love since she was sixteen and hasn't found the one yet. She hasn't bought a house in the country yet, hasn't made a pass at that attractive man from Antiva with the alluring accent and blond stubble she met a few months back. She didn't have the chance to have any kids—two girls, one boy just like her mother. All the missed opportunities in the world seem to smother her at once.
The Templars wrestle her into position so that she is at the front of the dais with the two of them out of the way of the path of the arrow. And she knows that Sebastian won't miss, because he never misses. With her hands tied behind her back, it seems so utterly unfair that she can't even protect herself. That she must stand at attention and watch the arrow pierce through her flesh.
As Sebastian draws back his shot and widens his stance, Hawke takes another icy breath.
The tears sliding down Carver's cheeks remind her of broken glass as they glint and mix with the bloody tracks on his face.
She feels very much like Andraste must have on the pyre when the sun at last rises above the massive tower and the hot rays scorch her bruised and bloodied back. The twang of the arrow is deafening, and within mere seconds she feels an explosion of pure agony just above her left breast. The grass poking up through the cracked stone shines bright and green and lush as Hawke falls to her knees, the rough hands finally releasing her. Blood bubbles up and spills from her plump and split lips as she opens her mouth for a wordless cry.
She is faintly aware of Isabela's disparaging scream when she topples over, and, as she shatters, she can hear Meredith's cold and mocking laugh loudly in her ears.
I believe these are called drabbles? Eh, I have no idea about all this fiction terminology. I just write. Thanks for reading. Reviews are welcome.