We lit candles at the bow of the ship as we sailed away from Kirkwall.
Isabela had protested at first, worrying that the wood might catch fire as well as the candles' wicks, but a soft "Please," from Hawke and the presence of several buckets of water near at hand had convinced her to relent. Now a good quarter of the deck was filled with tiny pinpricks of flame dancing in the darkness, throwing sharply-defined shadows onto the forms of our fellow onlookers.
Merrill knelt near the front of the group, head bowed and eyes wet with tears as she whispered words I couldn't understand. Isabela stood behind her, ostensibly to make sure her ship didn't burn, though her hand on Merrill's shoulder betrayed her. Further back, I saw Aveline and Carver, and even Varric off to the side. He didn't care about mages and templars, he always said, but this was more. This was Hawke. Carver seemed to have borrowed somebody else's clothing, though I couldn't have said whose - presumably he'd thought better of keeping his armor on for this. As he should have.
I felt Hawke take my hand in his, and when I looked up at him he gave me an attempt at a comforting smile. A poor attempt, but an attempt nonetheless. And I could hardly blame him. I knew he felt these losses just as much as I did.
I looked back at the others one final time, thankful that most of the eyes seemed to be on the general scene rather than on me specifically. Something seemed to stick in my throat, something that echoed with the sentiment that I should not be the one doing this, not when so many of these candles were only here, now, because of me. Hawke squeezed my hand, a reminder that he, at least, thought this was right. It was not enough to drown away those feelings, but it was something. I began.
"We gather tonight to remember those who have died. To honour those taken from us by a flaming sword, by the predations of a slaver, by demons, or despair, or by their own hand. By a world that tells us we are lesser, and that we will not be missed when we are gone." My voice slipped a little at this, and it took a moment before I was able to continue.
"We are here to keep alive the memories of people who, whatever their faults, were good people, people undeserving of the end that was brought to them; and to remind ourselves of the hope that one day, nobody will need to add another name to this list, and all of us, mage or not, will be able to stand side by side as equals in freedom."
Hawke read off the names. There were fewer than there should have been - people neither of us had recognised, who had grown cold and still without even another person to see and mourn them. They were the ones who deserved to be here the most, and yet even that was denied. I sent a silent prayer to the Maker for their souls, on the chance that he yet listened to us. To me.
"Nikolas. Alton. Reina." I could put a face to fewer of the names than I would have liked. Some were familiar, half-remembered from the whispers and prayers of fugitives I led through the tunnels beneath the city, hoping for the best for those friends they left behind, the only family they'd ever been allowed.
"Breanne. Verda. Elsa." Elsa. We'd met in an open courtyard in Templar Hall, and I'd nearly fled the place in heartsick rage to see her. This is what I can make the both of you, was the Knight-Commander's message. And she had the gall to say it wasn't a threat. The sunburst brand on the girl's forehead might have protected her from possession, but not from those who would destroy the possessed. I doubted she even put up a struggle.
"Dinah. Martenn. Neoma. Alrien." Hawke had asked Carver for help when we were compiling the list. It wouldn't have been something I'd have thought to do, but for Hawke, Carver was still in his thoughts, still family. Even through the bitter arguments, which I'd seen only the barest hints of; and the drunken sobs against my clinic door when he should have been out celebrating his newly acquired wealth, a bitter treasure of a memory that I'd seen entirely too much of. Still family. His presence here was testament enough to that.
"Darell. Olivia." All she'd wanted was freedom, and she'd fled one form of slavery only to be taken for another. And the last words she spoke… To ask for help from anybody, and have the anybody who responded be a demon. What terrible, aching irony. And didn't the whole story sound just so familiar.
"Arturo. Leorah. Niall. Torrin." We'd originally thought only to name those who'd died in Kirkwall, those with some personal significance to the both of us, but partway through I had thought to include others I remembered or knew of whose deaths were the result of the Chantry's oppression. Hawke liked the idea, and spoke their names with all the rest, though nobody here but me knew them.
"Emmy. Margritte. Karl." Why do you look at me like that? It had always been me asking that of him, when he'd sigh in exasperation at my complaints and rants and foolhardy attempts to smuggle myself from beneath the templars' noses. How I'd wanted, needed him to see my point, agree with me, let me know there wasn't something wrong with me that I couldn't stay put like a good little apprentice… And when he finally did, I didn't need it any more, but it cost him his life.
"Isaylen. Jamie. Solivitus." Hawke had trembled as he knelt over the friendly apothecary's lifeless form, dead eyes staring up into the stormy sky and mouth opened in pained surprise, frozen in the moment of a templar sword running him through. He was the one who'd told us about Meredith sending away for the Right, beckoning us closer to his booth in conspiratorial silence after Hawke had been tasked with hunting his fellows. The very news that had prompted me to… And now he was dead. My fault. All my fault.
"Rhett. Sommer. Rebeka." I was supposed to smuggle her out of the city the night Meredith struck the Underground with one of her raids. I saw her later, cowering in a corner of the Gallows courtyard. Hawke approached to ask if she was alright, and all she said was that she was there on the templars' orders, and that she wasn't to converse with outsiders.
"Teodore. Markus. Valorie." Nothing more than a memory, a faded, ripped letter from a captured apostate home to her estranged family, left alone and forgotten in the cell where they kept me after the seventh time I ran.
"Aleythia. Ketojan." We'd spent some time debating how to refer to him, here. There was no appeal in using a name given in ignorance by Petrice, of all people, and even less with it not being how the qunari mage would call himself, but Hawke and I both bristled at calling our fellows things in such a context. Dangerous things. Concern for specificity, of all the minor random issues contemplated, was what had ultimately made the decision.
"Julianne. Raivi. Harris. Evelina." I'd known her, back in Ferelden. She'd attended all the healing classes, determined to learn something that would let her help people once she'd passed her Harrowing and was allowed outside on occasion. Utterly useless at it, but Maker had she tried, and later she looked so grateful whenever I mended the cuts and scrapes and runny noses of the children she looked after. And people were still surprised that a pair of dirt-poor apostates could take better care of a horde of orphans the Chantry and the Templars with all their power and influence. She deserved so much better than Darktown and demons.
"Huon." I'd like to go one week without meeting an insane mage, just. one. week, Hawke had quipped after seeing the elf slaughter his wife in the alienage courtyard. Because if I need my heart torn from my chest, I already have somebody who can do it, cleaner than watching all these echoes of myself give more ammunition to the templars, was the part he'd left unsaid.
"Grace." Oh, how she had blamed him, how she had spat with rage when they talked in the courtyard, but even with what she'd done, he couldn't find it in him to return the favour. Nor could I, not with the way I saw her flinch and look so small when Ser Karras walked past. The man had disappeared one day, if I recalled correctly. Like how Ser Alrik had disappeared. Hawke had crawled into bed after me that night, for once, and I'd heard Bodahn complain about cleaning bloodstains from the floor again. I never asked.
"Decimus. Uldred. Idunna. Tarohne." None of our companions behind us would mourn them, I knew. Nor would Hawke, or I, at that. Not as they were, at least. But whatever they became, they had dared to dream of freedom, and there was no justice in the weight of it destroying them. People aren't born wicked. Yes, they did evil, but they were blood on the hands of the Chantry just the same.
"Orsino." Hawke's voice wavered as he said this last name. That poor man. That poor, stupid, vile, deluded, desperate man. I don't think Hawke will ever forgive him… and yet, despite it all, he chose to include his name. My lover.
"And all the rest, whether we here know your name or not. We shall remember. Maker be with you all," I finished, more a whisper than anything. I don't think I had the strength for more.
The others left not soon after, and I didn't mind. This wasn't theirs, and for once I didn't begrudge them that. Hawke stayed, sitting on the deck and watching the candles, buried deep and far away in his thoughts. Firelight glinted in the half-dried tears that had spilled onto his face as he read. I shifted closer and sat beside him and drank in the hollow ache that appeared to have replaced my insides. You subvert justice, the very air seemed to berate me. I felt the truth of it to the core of me with every stolen breath I took. And yet, could I have expected anything else? I knew the innocents I'd killed deserved justice, but still I'd sought it from a man who denied its very existence. We'd nearly come to an argument over the very topic in weeks past, such a short time ago. Such a long time ago. What if you tried to stop me? Or worse - what if you wanted to help?
Always the worse. Could I love him any other way? Can I still love him this way? Would that I never needed to know.
But for now, as ever, I take what I'm given and try not to think too hard. I'll fail at that latter all too soon, just as I always have. But tonight is for a different sort of grief. A shared grief. I lean against Hawke's shoulder, and he puts his arm around me. He buries his face in my hair, and the tiny flames start to swim in the beginnings of my own tears as I blink them away.
We remember. The gravity of it all has been crushing us slowly since before we even met, coyly whispering like its very own demon that wouldn't it just be so much easier to put it all away and never have to think about it? Maker help me, but I'd been selfish enough to give in for longer than I'd prefer to admit. But now, even if it kills us, we remember.
And we fight.