CHOICE OF THE CHAMPION
Part I: ON THE RUN
Chapter 1: Crossing Land
The sparks from the dying embers were dancing in the wind. Aedale Hawke watched them with empty eyes, unmoving as the sun was slowly setting under the distant peak of Sundermount, making the shadows longer and longer. She had lit the bonfire with her hands, not magic.
Fenris was sitting silently at her side.
"Are you blaming me?"
The corner of his mouth twitched. "For stopping me from ripping his heart out the first time I realised he was an abomination? For not killing him yourself when you did? Yes, I am blaming you."
Aedale swallowed soundlessly. Her throat seemed suddenly dry and thick.
"The rest of the responsibility, however, is his alone."
Silence stretched between them. The cold northern wind blew, extinguishing the last flames in the ashes; the summer was ending. Aedale shivered as she felt the chill under the thin layers of her hastily scrambled old armour. Fenris wordlessly stood up, picked up the blanket and tucked it around her shoulders.
"Thank you."
"You're welcome."
Silence fell again. Aedale stared at the dying bonfire, not making any move to rearrange the awkward way in which the blanket was hanging from her shoulders. Memories raced through her mind: the thundering blast, the crush, the sudden push of the Veil being opened by so many passing souls at the same time-
"We should rest before tomorrow", said Fenris without looking at her. She shivered again, more violently.
"I won't sleep tonight."
"You have to. We must find horses and get to the Waking Sea by tomorrow." His voice betrayed a hint of frustration; his clawed hands opened and curled into fists again, as if he wanted to rearrange the blanket on her shoulders again. He composed himself, though. She shook her head impatiently.
"I know. We will. I just won't sleep."
A short pause. "Why?"
"The Veil-" Her voice faltered, thickened with uncried tears. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing her disobedient body to stay still; another shiver went through her, one that had nothing to do with the northern wind.
She felt an uncertain hand on her shoulder – and then, as its grip suddenly gained confidence, two strong arms pulling her to a metal-plated chest. Fenris shifted and embraced her tightly. One of his hands grasped the blanket and wrapped them both in its warmth. Aedale let out a strained giggle that sounded more like a cry than anything else.
"Look at you, all fussing over me like that... the world has gone mad. What's next, the Chantry being blown to bits?" She choked on the last words, hiding her face in his chest, desperately trying to still her shivering. Fenris' arms tightened even more around her, his palms rubbing gentle circles at her back.
"I have always fussed over you."
Another memory of grief and loss flashed on the inner side of her tightly squeezed eyelids. He had held like that before, a long time ago, as she'd cried her anguish and sorrow into his chest – after Mother was killed. There had been fire, too, she'd stared into its swirling red ribbons and crackling embers, and had not thought, had not felt anything. There had been a stilled sense of loss, as if nothing would bridge that gaping hole Leandra's death had torn through her life - Bethany was gone, Father was gone, Carver was – he was gone too, lost to Templars and lyrium and the cold, distant Maker - but of all the things she'd thought lost, Fenris had been there, the pain from squeezing his cold metal gauntlet anchoring her in reality.
"Y-yes, I guess you have."
Fenris rested his chin of her face and inhaled deeply, calming himself with effort. She knew he was feeling helpless. She knew he hated feeling helpless. But this time, this one time after seven years of being the tough mercenary-turned-noble-turned-Champion, she could not save him from his plight.
There was no longer a Kirkwall for her to be a Champion.
"Why won't you sleep?" he asked again, more softly, with a deep rumble in his voice. Aedale shivered again and felt another squeeze of his arms around her. "You won't make it to the coast. You're exhausted. I will carry you if I must, but I... you should not want that, Hawke. Now is not the time to deny yourself rest."
"Fenris," said Aedale with a half-strangled voice, pressing her face to his chest. "How do mages dream?"
"How is this-" The elf trailed off and she felt his fists squeeze on her back. "What has the... the blighted abomination done to the Veil?"
"It tore," whispered Aedale. "It tore, and it shattered, and all those dead... I felt them passing, Fenris, I know they're there, pressing against it from the other side, all those people he killed... and crossing would be the easiest thing, and what do I say to all those souls? What do I say?"
His embrace was suddenly so tight it hurt. She did not oppose, it should hurt, hurt meant feeling, she rested inert and silent in his arms as he trembled in helpless rage.
"You tell them it's not your fault."
"I literally gave explosives to a known unstable fanatic. This is not much wiggle room I have in this."
"You didn't know!" he roared. Aedale felt one traitorous tear trickle down her cheek; it was too late to blink it back. She tasted salt, suddenly reminded of the terrible monotonous days seven years before everything, the dried salt on naked lips as the refugee ship was making its way through the Waking Sea. She hadn't cried much since those days.
"It didn't matter."
"Hawke," now it was his voice that was stifled, heavy with unspoken emotion that was frustration, desperation, and helplessness in equal measures. "This is the only thing that matters. All that I learnt as a free man is that there's a choice before a responsibility, and you had none. It wasn't your fault."
"O-of course. The one-armed man did it. Like in Hard in Hightown. The possibility of the Champion of the bloody place being involved a terror attack goes beyond even Varric's imagination."
That brought a small bitter smile on his face, one she didn't see but could feel in the tiny shifts of muscle under his skin. "Congratulations, Hawke. You have now surpassed the peak of incredulity."
She sighed weakly into his chest. Even though there was no way of bringing them closer together, with her cheek pressed tightly into the little creek of his chestplate, the squeeze of his arms around her told her that he would try.
"You are the only thing worth salvaging from that city," he said quietly. Aedale closed her eyes.
"Tell that to the dead behind the Veil."
"I would if I could."
The bonfire was now empty and cold. Fenris slowly unclasped his gauntlets and slid his bare hands under the blanket, drawing soothing circles on her back. She wondered tiredly whether the possibility of touch was meant as just as much of a consolation to him as it was for her.
"How long until we get to the ship?"
"A day's ride. Varric and Isabela should be waiting there."
"And the rest of them?"
Aedale blinked back exhaustion, glad that there was finally something concrete and factual she could focus on. "Merrill's staying, Aveline's staying. Carver... he'll stay by Cullen, they need just as many of level-headed folk as they can get right now. Anders-" And there it was again, a tight-squeezed knot in her throat, a sick feeling in her stomach, and a dull, pounding ache that seemed to transpire from her temples throughout the entire body. "I don't know what Anders will do. He'll run."
"He'd better," answered Fenris darkly through gritted teeth. "You should have killed him. He does not deserve a shred of mercy, least of all from you."
"Maybe. Probably." She moved her hands from his sides to rub her eyes, and felt him shift against her. "But with all the death around... I couldn't, Fenris. I could not send another soul through the Veil. Not then, and not there."
"And so the murderer walks free."
"He wanted to die. Killing him would be mercy. Let him live and see what his crime has wrought."
To that Fenris had no answer.
The long shadows crept lower and broader, spilling wide on the ground as the light of the sunset diminished and faded. The sun was gone, the light was gone, her life for the last seven years was gone, and Aedale felt another steady trickle of an unwanted tear, silent and hopeless as she was. It had been over thirty hours since she had any rest.
"How do I... start over? I've done it so many times before. I thought I've run out of ways things could go wrong."
"Hawke." Fenris let out a strange half-sad chuckle. "You haven't even reached your thirties."
"Mother wanted me to get married about three years ago, you know. I would have a family. Children. Tiny Hawkes running around, probably twins. With magic. Of course, I was too busy pining after you to even entertain a possibility, and yet..."
"Do you regret it?" The four words were carefully measured, wrought out of any emotion, and yet every single one was a heavy stone in Aedale's stomach.
"No. Never."
"And yet."
"And yet."
"I couldn't live like that," she whispered. "I couldn't live without a purpose. And raising children in a world so unstable would be... it would be a purpose doomed from the start. But now it seems like I needn't have bothered. Everything I strove for was doomed."
"This is my attitude, Hawke. Not yours."
She let out a strangled giggle. "Guess you do rub off on me in some ways."
"Hawke…" Fenris sounded tired, hesitant, his hands fiddling with her armour straps restlessly. "I've done this before. The running. This is all I had ever known for years before meeting you. It's a life I do not wish for you, but it was… bearable. There is little I can imagine that could ever stop you."
"But you decided to stay. To settle. Build a life, and friendships, and a home. And I'm the very reason you're caught up in the middle of… of this. You could've stayed if it weren't for me." I made you a fugitive again, she thought bitterly. All that talk of settling down and starting over, and here we are, because of my mess: two people with nothing, on the run.
"You know what made me stay, Hawke?"
She flashed a quick, weak smile. "I did."
"Yes." He chuckled quietly. "You were the first kind spirit I met since Seheron. Not unlike the Fog Warriors, I suppose… Fierce. Proud. Loving, and open, and so very free. I could never see you bound, Hawke. Not by poverty, not by birth, not by your own magic. And I thought… I thought I could use company like that."
"Mmm." She reached out to tilt his head down, planting a soft kiss along the lyrium lines on his chin. "Sweet talker." For a single shining second, there was no Anders in the world, no blown-up Chantry, no terror on the streets of Kirkwall, there was just him and the way the lyrium in his skin sang to her lips.
He held her tightly, waiting several second before returning the kiss; after all this time, he was restraint embodied, he was all about denial and warded caution; but he was also fierce, and passionate, and when his lips closed on hers her mind drifted away, leaving only the body to enjoy the urgent, sloppy kisses.
As they parted, panting slightly, noses inches away – his rough ashen-coloured skin against her unhealthy paleness – Aedale smiled without opening her eyes.
"I see why company is useful."
"Yes." He rested his forehead against hers. "It is not home, or settling down, that kept me in Kirkwall, Hawke. It was… company. There was never a person to trust on the run."
Heavy, unspent tears spilled down from her tightly shut eyes again; she felt a soft wet touch on her cheeks, spreading the salty moisture, and she knew that he was kissing the tears off her face. A sweet gesture, one so unlike and at the same time so like Fenris that her heart swelled and ached at it. He'll stay with me. He'll stay.
"I've never stopped following you."
So stubborn.
"I'm not sure if I'm in the best shape to follow."
"Then I'll carry you until you are," he stated simply, as if it were the most obvious thing and not a declaration of loyalty so fierce that it make her heart ache. She kissed him again, a little peck on the lips, but Fenris would have none of that: he tangled one hand in her hair, bringing her even closer, and gave her a thorough deep kiss that sent her head spinning.
She gasped for breath. Fenris' lip twitched in the slightest smug smirk as he pulled her down, shifting so they were lying face to face, wrapped in the blanket, heads resting on the heavy rucksacks.
"We should rest now."
"I can't-" she started, but the elf interrupted her.
"Have I ever told you about the jungles of Seheron? It's a hot, moist, dangerous place where battle has been raging on for years to no end, the endless struggle between Tevinter soldiers and Qunari forces. The battles have been going on for so long that all strategic meaning of the island is now forgotten, important as it remains. It is now a mark of pride for both the Tevinter and the Qunari, but for the native rebels in between them, it is more than that – it's the land of their people…"
As she listened to his deep, rumbling voice weaving a story from the threads she'd known from his earlier musings – the brightly coloured poisonous flowers flooded by torrential rain, the thick fog veiling vipers and rebels, the white-clad white-faced fog dancers, old and wise and fiercely proud – a new thought appeared in her drowsy head, something that cut deep, painful and comforting at the same time.
We are now truly equal, he and I. The fugitives.
There was only one thing certain about the future – it would hold many deaths. The rest was an unknown, and she would need to take it and slice it into bearable pieces, and then endure – be it a Blight, a mercenary life, or an Exalted March. But then again, maybe it wasn't too brave to add Fenris to the list of things certain.
Fenris and death, she thought. It fits. I like it.
-/-
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Honestly, my first Inquisition playthrough, as awesome as it turned out to be, was a little underwhelming in terms of character development. I was ungodly (unmakerly?) attached to my Hawke, and the Inky I played as for the first time was a little bit of a reprise of her: a noble human mage who had a huge crush on Solas, and then, finding him unattainable, turned to Cullen and developed a wonderful, fulfilling, stable adult relationship for the rest of the game. (She was also an elemental mage, so go figure.) In short, she was as drama-free, healthy leader figure as you can imagine, responsible and respectable and all sorts of fantastic things. She also turned out to be terribly uninteresting - to the point where I was more excited about chatting to Varric about what Hawke was doing than about my actual protagonist. Sad times, I tell ya.
I fixed my Inky in the following playthroughs and now she's just as much of a badass as Aedale is, but that initial disappointment has bred "The Choice of the Champion" - an attempt to retrace Hawke's way from Kirkwall to Adamant. „On the run" is the first instalment of the series, dealing with the aftermath of the Kirkwall battle and Hawke's journey to Ferelden. All the chapters are already written out and will be published regularly. Please subscribe/bookmark for updates - and while you're here, why don't you leave a comment or something? I'll love you.