Author's Note: Ostensibly written for a prompt involving the Grey Wardens, it turned into more of a sketch of Wilhelmina Hawke and Anders, during and just after the Deep Roads expedition.
Rated T for some language.
BioWare owns Dragon Age 2 and, again, I thank them for being so generous with their fans and for giving us such awesome characters.
As far as he's concerned, the world is two women.
And one of them is dying.
She's been propped against her sister for the past hour, unable to stay upright on her own. Wil is urging sips from a magic-cooled flask but Bethany refuses for the hundredth time. Were it anyone else, Wil would have downed the entirety of its contents herself just to prove a point. Bethany, though, gets infinite patience and a strong arm around her thin shoulders.
Anders can see those shoulders shaking, even at a distance. He can see the way every breath is a battle won, and the way her plain, pretty features are being distorted by the creeping corruption within her blood.
Worse yet, he can feel it crawling through his veins, too, an oil-slick and corrosive reminder of the cost of his freedom. Freedom that wasn't free at all, something he'd tried to convey to Wil as they sought the Grey Warden expedition that he wasn't certain he hoped to find.
It's a life not quite worth living if you're not surrounded by the best people. And the best Wardens he knew had left well ahead of him, save the one that would stay forever.
Wil has set the flask aside, and is now using her free hand to stroke Bethany's hair, brushing at it as she examines the spidery lines that have spread like cracks across her sister's bone white cheeks. Anders doesn't know whether there is any risk of catching the taint from such contact, but he's not stupid. Any warning he made would go unheeded with a flash of green-eyed indignation and a pithy remark. Meanwhile, Bethany would look only more miserable once burdened with the knowledge that Wil would rather risk a slow-poisoned death than keep her distance.
"Your hands are so cold, Sunshine," Wil keeps her voice low, but the cavern where they'd set up camp is like an amplification chamber. Anders can hear every ragged breath from fifteen feet away. "Now would be a good time for a fire spell."
"I don't want to burn you, Mina," it hurts her to speak. "And my hands are always cold."
"This is true," the flask is once again being positioned at Bethany's lips and, this time, the younger woman takes a grateful sip of the watery wine that they'd been fortunate enough to have in excess when they were abandoned in this godforsaken place.
"Do you remember the time I almost froze your leg off?" Bethany's tongue comes out to catch a stray drop of liquid, and she ducks her head to fit under her sister's chin. "Father was teaching you letters, I think. I was under a desk, and you were wearing those brown boots that Mother hated."
"You kept punching me with your tiny, bony fists," Wil smiles, crooked and genuine. "What you hoped to accomplish, I do not know."
"I just wanted your attention," Bethany gasps out a laugh and, suddenly, things seem close to normal again and Anders could almost pretend that this was any number of conversations they'd had during their confinement in the deep roads, their attempts to find levity in a dire situation leading to these revealing forays into past lives. "But then you had to go and stamp my hand with your big, ugly boot."
It's Wil's turn to chuckle, a warm sound as she's drawn into the memory, too.
"That big, ugly boot was my only defense! And I didn't want it to hurt, I just wanted you to stop punching my shin! You left bruises and everything."
"Did the cold bite, Mina? All I remember is my hand turning to ice as it grabbed your leg and the way you shou-," she's interrupted by a fit of coughing that scrapes and echoes across the cavern. To Anders' left he can see Varric, who has been sitting watch just within a narrow, vertical fissure that was the only entrance into their camp, turn to offer a meaningful gaze. After a few agonizing minutes, Bethany regains her breath and continues as if she everything is normal. "You shouted. 'Oh, you evil thing!'"
"Well... you are an evil thing!" Wil's free arm goes up so that she can engulf her sister in a close embrace, her face burying itself completely in Bethany's hair, but not before Anders sees it crumple in a silent grief so vast, so intimate, that it finds its way into his bones, too, and he is forced to his feet and moved as far away as possible away from the two women.
One of them is dying, and Anders is jealous of how very much she is loved.
Stroud had seemed uncertain, although he'd given in with far less grave Grey Warden rhetoric than Anders had expected.
Perhaps he'd been somewhat moved by Bethany's plight and Wil propping her up, her eyes bright with tears that would not fall and her lips uttering the sort of strange things they always did, as if her mind was broken by this giving of her sister to a stranger who would take her away to some unknowable place, never to be seen again and normal couldn't be made to happen.
She's still staring after the Wardens, although it's been over an hour since they left and they are probably miles away by now.
"I know...," Varric pauses, guilt evident on his face. Were it not for Bartrand's betrayal, Bethany might have avoided the taint and the Hawke sisters would be home by now. Rich, happy and...together. He'd held his blame in silence these past few days but, now that there was nothing for them here but danger, he needed to cajole her back into that reality. "We still have at least three days before we reach the surface, Hawke, and food enough for...none."
"Ok," Wil remains unmoved, although her shoulders slip from where she's been holding them high and tense, and Anders can see her throat working towards this question,"Was the last thing I said to my sister really 'I'll tell Mother you ran away with a handsome dwarf lord so at least she'll be proud of one of us'?"
Varric's head falls forward, his chin pressed against his chest, and that's enough for her.
"Andraste's ass," her hands push through her hair, which is even messier than usual, and she holds it back for at least a full minute, staring into the void that had taken the one person who truly understood that I'll tell mother you ran away with a handsome dwarf lord meant I love you more than anything. When it came from her. "Fuck."
He has not sensed any darkspawn since before they found Stroud and the others, but his dreams are still tormented two nights later, full of the black and grind that he'd been able to minimize since he'd allowed Justice in. Beyond the images, however, and the slick dread that pooled in his heart and stomach and burned, was something new- a prickling on his skin, and a strange combination of heat, dread and longing.
It was a sob that woke him, a single broken sound that should have been lost in the whispered confusion that kept his thoughts scattered and fragmented even after his eyes had adjusted to the faint glow of a dying fire. In between him and the embers was a familiar form, one that he'd been watching for months and was it hunger, exhaustion or the taint that made him lose himself in the seconds between being an observer in his bedroll and an interloper in hers?
An interloper. She is too welcoming for him to call himself that, her arms encircling his neck and her body shifting automatically so that he can settle himself on and relax into her.
"Mina," he does not know where this comes from, this name he'd only ever heard Bethany use and despite what Wil might think of him, and how she is already consuming him with her presence alone, Mina was not his to say. "Please."
Her hands find his cheeks, her palms damp with tears that sting his skin as she pulls his face down to hers, their mouths meeting in silent consent and every point where their bodies touch catching fire in the process.
No.
It's a command and he heeds it, only heeding leads him to a new awakening as he sits upright, in his own bedroll, and with his own small yelp of heartache.
It is wrong but I want it. More than want. His chest heaves and it's painful to breathe when everything within is unyielding, knotted with fatigue and frustration and the painful realization that he could be so cruel to himself. I guess it's not enough what I put myself through, that my dreams need to torment me, too.
"Are the nightmares something that all Grey Wardens have, or are you just that unlucky?" Her voice is soft and...close, yet he does not startle at the nearness or the question. The previous night she'd moved herself to be near Varric, settling beside him with her knees hugged against her chest to keep a personal watch over her friend. "It sounded...terrible."
"Yes," he can barely make her out in the darkness, just the barest glint of her eyes, but her attention warms his skin and eradicates far more of the roiling in his blood, breast and mind than it has any right to. "And it is terrible. Disjointed. Hopeless. I'd forgotten how it can take hold, how it could hurt and...confuse."
The word hangs between them, and he hears the rustle of Wil shifting her legs. Without seeing her face he'll never know if it's emotional or physical discomfort that moves her.
"I didn't know how to help you. My usual method of ruthless, efficient violence seemed excessive, but I didn't want you to feel alone when you woke up," the sentiment wavers there, as if her mouth is not quite used to giving voice to something so ordinarily sincere. "And, because I know it would bother me, nothing made sense. It was just a bunch of meaningless syllables."
She's lying.
As if Anders didn't know that, as if it wasn't the reason it's so very hard to keep his hands close to his lap when all they want to do is pull her against him and show her...
No.
It's a command, and he heeds it.
He is glad to see his clinic, its familiar stone walls and gritty floors. The undercity is a place of few redeeming qualities, but it is without darkspawn and his first night home is spent in a deep, dreamless sleep as if the entire world, within him and without him, knows how much he needs the peace.
There are no patients when he wakes, and none of Lirene's volunteers are around, either, since he'd not made his return known to anyone who wasn't with him when he stepped foot back in Kirkwall.
As he goes to open he feels a swell of temptation- to keep the doors closed for one more day, to plan his next move, to bury himself in solitude in an attempt to realign that which was knocked off course the day he met Wilhelmina Hawke.
That last is a very Justice thing to think, and Anders nudges back. The expedition was a genuine distraction, but they'd accomplished much in the months before it. More than Anders could have done on his own, and Justice offers little resistance there.
In the end, he decides that being around people might be for the best. However, when the door swings open with a familiar screee, Wil is on the other side, normally bright eyes shadowed with concern, and swimming in a set of templar armor that somehow manages to dwarf even her frame.
"Dangerous," his stomach knots as he imagines Justice striking out at her, fury at the symbol emblazoned on her chest overriding Anders' own, warmer, reaction to the familiar curves and angles of her freckled cheeks and crooked smile. "Don't tell me you've been out there all night."
"I wasn't going to," she steps neatly past him and then settles back against the doorframe. "I wanted to ask you something."
"Are you crazy?" Maker, all he needed was for her to sacrifice herself for his safety. He isn't Bethany, an apostate in only the strictest definition of the word and an expert in fading from notice when in certain, sworded, company. He is dangerous, unpredictable, and a target for more than just templars.
"A touchy subject, don't you think? Even I know not to ask a person that," she deliberately waves off his incredulity and continues as if he'd raised no protest. "I wanted to talk to you about the Wardens."
"I've already told you more than I should have," he exhales this, trying to expel his fear and consternation with it.
"Yes. But you don't know how mothers can be. Always wanting to know exactly what kind of super secret organization of legendary warriors their children are joining. I told her I thought it was like the sewing circle she had in Lothering, but with more dismemberment," Wil winces. "That just made her cry harder."
Anders believes she'd say that, but he knows it is not only her mother who needs reassurance.
Tell me I did the right thing, her eyes are begging him. Tell me that I have not damned the best part of me.
"It will be hard for her at first. The nightmares aren't the only thing that changes when you become a Warden, but it's not anything I can describe. It's better than death..." he hesitates, because her brow is knotting in horror. "It's better than death, but it might be a long time before she realizes that. One of the benefits of hating my life was that becoming a Warden seemed like a free pass at normalcy to me. I never understood why the Commander always apologized for Conscripting me until she was gone and..."
"And?" Wil is not going to let him stop there, but Anders can't make it come out, the truth. The truth that he'd felt betrayed by a friend when she'd left him to return to court in Denerim, the truth that it was the Wardens that made him realize how tenuous his freedom truly was, and would always be as long as the Chantry and their templars existed and could get their hands into anything and on to anyone.
The truth of what he'd done. What Vengeance had done through him.
"Bethany might never forgive you, but you did the right thing," Anders looks away when her face threatens grief. "She'll survive. And you will, too."
"I know," Wil struggles for a few seconds, but she regains most of her composure, snorting softly at herself for having slipped. "I shouldn't put this on you. You have your own concerns and, without you..."
"I know," Anders feels his lips curl at the implied gratitude. His presence on the expedition had served a purpose, at least. He didn't want to think about the alternative, the girl nicknamed Sunshine dead or abandoned to the darkspawn.
"Do you? Or are you just trying to keep me from saying something monumentally stupid?" She's suspicious, and it seems to open something inside of her. "I realize how I must come across to you. To everyone. I'm not very...nice, but I love my sister. You have no idea how much it means...," Wil shivers and looks down at where her hands are twisting against each other, the ensuing silence stretching raw between them.
"I have never met a person more loved than Bethany," he almost offers his own fingers to seize onto, to twist and worry, but there is no part of him that would be able to extricate himself from her grasp if she decided to keep him, especially when he lowers his voice in confession. "If every mage had someone like you in their lives, someone who cherished them as a person, who was willing to fight for their rights as if they were their own...I've been jealous of Bethany since the day I met her, and not just because she's been free her entire life."
"Anders," Wil breathes his name and despite how it feels to hear it like that, warmth expanding throughout his chest and stomach, he realizes that it's the worst possible outcome to this conversation. She came here for reassurance, and probably to say nothing more than thanks, and he is taking advantage of her loss.
Positioning yourself to fill the void left by Bethany.
"You should leave," he no longer trusts himself to look at her, to even have her at arm's length, but she's stubborn for some reason and when he tries to move away she follows, catching his wrist before he can get too far. "Mina. Please."
She's behind him, but he doesn't need to see her to guess her expression- confusion. That name, that name only used by the dearest to her heart, and a please that was half admonishment, half invitation. How many more ways can he mislead her? Should he turn and kiss her out the door, slamming it shut behind her? Should he lay her out on the nearest cot, take her until they're both spent, and then demand that she never speak to him again?
He shakes his head, willing himself to think of the one thing he could he say that would get her out of here now, without keeping her away forever.
She should be kept away forever.
He ignores that advice because it's more that he's capable of.
"I hate that you're hurting now. I hate seeing you grieve," the words catch in his throat because her fingers have tightened around his wrist in anticipation. She doesn't want to hear what he has to say any more than he wants to say it, but there's no other way. He's let himself get too close and close is just not something he can be anymore. To anyone. "I don't ever want to be responsible for causing you that much pain."
His arm is relinquished and he does not know if it's relief or sorrow that floods him when the silence is filled with the crunching of boots against the coarse grit that coats everything here in Darktown, but most of all the ground.
You could still catch her, his heart stutters against his chest and his legs twitch in response.
Then...No.
It comes with an image of Wil trying to hold her world together even as it's dying in her arms.
You cannot do that to her.
This demand is his own, and he heeds it.