Author's ramblings:
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I loved the bit of dialogue, when Merrill tells Aveline that she loves Hawke, because she felt it needed to be said.
In my play-through with Merrill as LI, it really lead to an emotional reaction on my part.
To explain this, I get deeply immersed into games, wouldn't bother to write about them if it weren't the case.
DA II manages to get me down, especially in the third act.
Hawke really fails more times, than he/ she succeeds. There are so many quests that end in people dying, when you want to save them; even people you first save, or show mercy to, die later or turn on you.
It is a bit depressing; so when Merrill talks about her feelings for Hawke (it was near the end of the game in my playthrough) it made me really glad.
It was like, at least Hawke has Merrill at her/his side.
I felt this much more than with Isabella as LI.
I like Isabella a lot, but in the end I felt the relationship between Hawke and her isn't as deep as between Hawke and Merrill.
Anyway, this story resulted from my thinking about Hawke and Merrill's love and what they may have to face after the events of DA II.
As always in my stories:
"" indicate speech
"" + cursive text are for expressed thoughts
and bold and/ or cursive also act to put special emphasis on certain words.
Disclaimer: I own neither the characters nor the settings, they all belong to Bioware. Let's hear a loud "Thank you!" for the great games they give us.
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I love Hawke!
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Chapter One
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The sharp resounding noise of an armoured hand meeting soft flesh echoed through the dark cellar, followed by a suppressed, painful gasp.
"Damn it, woman! Why won't you talk? It gains you nothing. We will find the champion anyway and it only worsens your fate if you don't help us."
Only one torch, fastened to the wall besides the crude door illuminates the damp room.
The walls are not plastered and made up of rough stones, tarnished with mould and something like a yellow moss.
It reeks of unwashed bodies, excrements and blood and even worse of death and decay.
There are four people in the room.
Two are regular templars, dressed in their bulky armours, they seem to be down on their luck, pressed into acting as prison guards in the templar fortress of Tantervale.
The third wears the less bulky garb of a hunter and he is the one standing before the fourth person in the centre of the room.
He is perhaps around 30 years of age, of medium height with thinning hair, a small moustache and a weak chin. His eyes are cold and find delight in his work, there's a mean streak visible around his small, thin-lipped mouth.
In the hard, wooden chair, the frame of the young dalish hangs limb in the shackles which fasten both her arms and legs onto the piece of furniture.
She is dressed in what's left of a short green tunic and nothing else.
Her delicate features are covered in bruises and grime, so much so, that you can barely recognize her Vallaslin Tattoos.
Apart from already bruised over wounds, there are quite a few which still bleed or at least shimmer with fresh blood.
Her hair is clotted together by blood and dirt, her nose is broken, her right eye is almost completely swollen shut, only a small slid remaining.
Her breathing is laboured, each breath accompanied by a wheezing sound. She coughs in short intervals and seems to be on the edge of unconsciousness.
But her tormentor won't allow her that escape.
Next to him on a small trolley, his tools are laid out.
He chooses a small needle-like blade, with a hand grip.
Then he grips the elf's left hand, rams the tip of the needle under her ring-fingers fingernail, until it hits bone with a sickening sound and then yanks the blade upwards, ripping the nail loose.
The elf screams, her head slams back against the headrest of the chair.
In quick succession the templar follows through with the routine on two more fingers, until he reaches her pinkie and leaves the blade embedded into it.
"No, no my sweet. No saving yourself by fainting. If necessary I'll use potions to keep you awake."
He grins sweetly and almost as if he were caressing her,gently strokes the elf's cheek.
"Now, my sweet, why don't you tell me where Lorelei Hawke is hiding?"
The elf fights for another ragged breath and simply shakes her head, before it falls down on her chest again.
Her tormentor grips her by her hair and pulls her head backwards and up, so that she is forced to bare her throat and face to him. He moves closer, his hot breath steaming in her nostrils, with the most revolting shemlen stench she has ever witnessed.
He smells of wine and garlic and of bad hygiene. Suddenly Merrill is thankful for the broken nose, which is almost completely closed by dried blood.
"Not that I smell any better, probably I smell much worse... Oh, ma vhenan. I don't know how much longer I can keep going. It hurts... it hurts so badly."
His lips are so close to her skin, that it feels almost as if he is kissing her and she tries to shirk farther away from him, but to no avail. There is no place to retreat to in this unyielding piece of furniture.
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"Listen, knife-ears! There are two options for you, little apostate. We know you are a blood mage, we know you consorted with demons.
You were living in sin with the so called champion of Kirkwall and were part of his coven of apostate mages along with the abomination Anders and Hawke's Grey warden sister.
Your crimes are to numerous to be counted and would easily be enough for ten death sentences.
Yet in his unbelievable mercifulness, Knight-Commander Maedhros has allowed me to offer you your life, albeit as a Tranquil."
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Merrill shudders with disgust, both because of the disgusting shemlen and because of the idea she would prefer to live as a Tranquil, to dying.
The templar grins sweetly again. He seems to know what she's feeling.
"If you don't want that, there is another alternative. Just think about it, we can at least stop hurting you.
You'll get good food, fresh clothes, a bath, we'll treat your wounds. You'll even get a regular mage's quarter until your sentence is delivered.
The champion and you, you are both doomed anyway, but you can at least spent your remaining days like a human being."
Merrill's blistered lips, move into the caricature of a smile. Through her dry throat and parched mouth, she forces her words.
Her usual just slightly brittle, melodious voice sounds jarring to her own ears.
"N-no. N-never."
No more energy, but these two words are enough. He isn't even worth this effort.
Merrill doesn't understand it and never will. In the battle between the mages and templars in Kirkwall, she witnessed many times, how the templars attacks pushed the mages over the edge.
Clawing desperately for the power to escape their oppressors and losing themselves to the demons instead.
Yet if the templars hadn't attacked, would all these mages have turned? Some might, but never all of them. And Orsino? He was a good person, kind and full of care for the mages he lead.
Still, the templars pushed him and kept pushing until he did the unthinkable.
"Their cruelty knows no bound, we are not living, thinking beings to them, we are but a scourge to be exterminated.
If this were not the case, how could they torment me so? Falon'Din, I implore you! I can't fight any longer, please just guide me beyond the veil."
Pain pierces through her thoughts and pulls her back into the hands of her tormentor.
The stench of burning flesh fills the room, as he presses a red hot blade into her cheek. Merrill screams again, as the sizzling noise of her boiling skin fills the room.
When the torturer finally stops and pulls the knife away, it leaves her skin with a sickening, rending sound and Merrill feels the flesh breaking into a raw wound.
"Why? Why do you keep protecting her? She has abandoned you to your fate, so much is clear. Why are you so stubborn."
Something inside Merrill's heart forces her to answer. Maybe, just because she wants to let someone know it before she dies. Someone should know it.
"I love Hawke."
Three words, but for Merrill they explain everything.
Obviously it's not the case with the templar hunter.
He backhands her with full force, drops the knife and starts to beat her savagely with his armoured fists.
This time it's too much for her already weakened body and the elf is actually thankful when darkness closes in around her.
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"Knight-Lieutenant Maeglin? You better stop here, there's not much left of her anyway."
The guard is speaking calmly, in an awkward way. They know the Knight-Lieutenant here.
He hates mages with a passion, due to his family falling victim to an abomination, but more than that, he likes violence, especially against female prisoners.
The more attractive the better.
"If the Knight-Commander had thought this through, he would have sent some other interrogator. Maeglin is probably going to kill her, before she gives in. Unbelievable how such a frail creature can put up so much of a fight."
Maeglin snarls at the guard, who instinctively takes a step back to his partner, after he just walked up to the officer.
Then the hunter relaxes and shakes his head and the tension in the room lessens.
"You are right, Ulfwin. Of course, she's worth nothing to us if she's dead.
Wherever Hawke is hiding, the elf may be our only way to find her."
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He walks back to the door and leans against the wall next to the two guards.
Then he takes a small pouch of tobacco out of a belt pocket along with a simple horn pipe.
He fills his pipe, lights it and then offers the pouch to his two fellow templars.
One declines, the one who held him back, a short, thin, brown haired youth, with barely a hint of the beard he seems to desperately want, the other a burly, stout man with coarse skin and short black hair and a face covered three of four fourth in a black beard, sprinkled with gray, accepts.
He fills his own corn pipe and starts to smoke away.
After he has taken a few calming puffs, Maeglin starts to talk.
"I don't get it. Whether she loves the champion or not, she must know it will only earn her more pain to keep quiet and in the end it will avail to nothing. Hawke's face is known by almost every man and woman in the Free Marches, she can't get away. So why not give in?"
The younger guard frowns and when he answers there seems to be some yearning in his voice.
"What if... I mean if she really loves the champion so much... Maybe she feels even the chance that Hawke may escape is enough to sacrifice her own life."
Maeglin shakes his head vehemently.
"No, no, Ulfwin. You can't think of her like of a regular human.
First of all the knife ears are traitorous scum anyway. Secondly, she is an apostate, a blood mage even. She's forfeited her soul a long time ago, if elves even have one. She is a monster in and of itself.
Mark my words. I'll get her to scream Hawke's hiding place at the top of her lungs."
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The young guard doesn't seem to be fully convinced, yet he knows speaking his mind would do no good and would perhaps even put him under suspicion, given the troubled times the templars and the chantry are experiencing.
The second, older guard points his pipe at the limp form of Merrill.
"That there is a strange 'un. I tell ya. When we got to her, she fought like a wild cat. Killed almost twenty of us and without turning as well. Made the earth and the plants go against us, she did. Pulled Padraic and Luitgo down into the ground. Aye, she did.
I've seen my share of desp'rate mages, and I was sure we'd have to fight an abomination any moment, but no, she remained herself."
"Humph! You probably were fast enough to dispell her magic."
Maeglin sneered, that was of course the only possible explanation.
"Na-ah. We din't even got that close for a long time and even when a few of us tried to block her powers, we din't manage. She is a strong one, yes she is."
"What do you want me to think, Gedric? That she has so much willpower, that she will not break? Is that it?"
A threat managed to sneak into the voice of the hunter and the older guard was quick to answer.
"Nay, 'course not. 'm not of that mind. It's just that it was strange, her being a blood mage and all, I was sure she would turn, yet she din't."
"Who knows what went through her mind? She might have thought she could win without resorting to a demon's help. She might have thought the Champion would come to rescue her little elven bitch. Frankly, I don't care. All that matters is to get her to talk, and I have lots of ideas left to ease her tongue."
And Maeglin smiled, a smile so vicious and so full of evil intent that even the hardened veteran Gedric couldn't help but feel an ounce of sympathy with the frail looking young woman.
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A.N.
I decided on shorter chapters, instead of posting the story as one large mass.
Not so much, because of time between posts, because I already have the story almost finished. No it's more because I think, like with a book, a good story needs to be organized.
Okay, the next and final point is elvish. In the game Merrill uses "Ma vhenan" repeatedly as a term of endearment for Hawke.
At first you would think it means "my heart/ love", but according to what is known of the elven languages it means "your heart" and "my heart" would mean "emma vhenan." There are some theories discussed over at the dragon age wiki, how this works, but I digress.
I know all of this, but I chose to use the phrase as it is used in the game, instead of changing it to "emma vhenan", after all Merrill is Dalish and should know best, shouldn't she?