Author's Note: To any who read what I posted before in this story, I've adjusted the chapters to better reflect the chronology and to add in newer content. :) Things should go more smoothly from here.

I hope you enjoy Correm as much as I do.

Reviews are much appreciated! :3

Will be m/m later.

EDIT: I have re-uploaded this chapter and chapter 2 to reflect the edit suggestions that my mother made after reading them... They are minor, so don't bother rereading these if you already have! I promise I'll do my utmost to keep from doing this again. Thanks for bearing with me!

~::Chapter One::~

Correm Hawke pulled off his dirty leather helmet and ran his hand back over his sandy blonde hair. Sweat had plastered his hair down on his head, and the exposed skin around his neck likewise sported a sheen of perspiration. It was also that shade of pink that hinted at a burgeoning case of sunburn. He inhaled deeply through his nose and let out a big aah. With a grin, he tossed the helmet aside and threw his arms wide, enfolding the girl next to him in a hug. She gasped, her eyes going wide with surprise.

"Bethany, dear sister, you did marvelously!" the warrior said. "I could not have done better if I had tried!"

"That's because you're not a mage, Brother," she gasped out. She could hardly breathe with how tightly he was squeezing her.

The event that had just ended had overwhelmed her, and she was still trying to process it all. This was the sort of thing that they had hired on with Athenril, the elven smuggler, to avoid. They'd had to sell themselves into indentured servitude to afford the bribes to enter the city of Kirkwall, and their only other option besides Athenril had been with a sleazy mercenary. He leered at her when he first saw her, enough to make her terribly uncomfortable. The moment they had talked to him, her brother had decided that she would be more comfortable smuggling.

The memory of Meeran's eyes roaming over her still made her shudder.

Releasing her, Correm nodded seriously. "Too true. I suppose you are right. Pity, that. I love your little ice trick." He poked at her nose affectionately, still smiling.

Athenril did not look amused. She shook her head as she looked around the beach and surveyed the damage that had been done. There were a half dozen burnt corpses lying amongst a number of wooden crates, some of which were busted open. "This is too messy. This should not have happened. We must have a mole; someone had to have tipped them off."

"Well it weren't me!" said a man nearby. He was a portly, balding fellow, and his arms full of broken pieces of what looked like Orlesian pottery. He was sweating even worse than the blonde warrior was, even though he was not wearing armor. The extra pounds he was carrying around were obviously not doing him any favors.

With a long-suffering sigh, Athenril shook her head, "I know. You're too pathetic to pull off something so conniving, Lorus."

Correm was approaching the corpses on the ground. He bent down by one, and grabbed a chain from around the neck. "Huh." He tossed it aside, and yanked a dagger in its sheath from the dead man's belt. Pulling off one of his light gauntlets, he flicked his thumb across the flat edge of the blade. He grinned. "I like the pommel on this one. And it's nice and sharp, too. I've been needing a shave." He turned to Bethany. "Do you think I need a shave?"

Bethany rubbed a thumb up and down along her staff. "I... don't know. If you want." He was looking very scruffy today, but at this point they had been away from the city for over a week. It was never his habit to care much about shaving if he was away from home for too long.

Correm shrugged and stuffed the pilfered dagger down the front of his thick vest. "Oh well. Maybe I'll wait another week."

"You don't look good with a beard," she offered. With his light blonde hair, it made his skin look pasty. He did not tan easily. He sunburned, and it looked like he was going to be sunburning again after this. Not to mention that, with a slightly darker patch to the left side of his mouth, his stubble looked a little odd as it was.

"You wound me, Bethany!" Correm said, clutching a hand over his heart, and giving her his best "betrayed expression". It was not very convincing, especially with the dark tattoos around his eyes. He came off as looking more like a petulant child. "You don't think I'm handsome when I've been away from civilization for two weeks? I have a grungy charm!"

"No you don't," Athenril interjected with a smirk. "You could really do with a bath, Hawke. You reek." She pinched her nose and waved a hand at the air. This made Bethany chuckle, and she covered her mouth with one hand to hide it as her brother jerked his gaze in her direction.

The warrior shook his head, and moved on to the next body to strip it of whatever leftover goodies he could find. "You are a harsh taskmaster, milady elf," he said. "I work my fingers to the bone for you, and you don't give me the time to even comb my hair properly in the morning. Now you say I'm a disgusting, smelly slob."

"You sat around and did nothing yesterday, Brother, waiting for this shipment," Bethany reminded him. "If I recall, you spent an hour drawing crude pictures in the sand. As for your hair, you were rubbing sand into it and you spent the hour after that picking it out, so you can't care that much about it."

"Not to interrupt this thrilling conversation, but I could use some help here," Lorus complained in his nasally voice. He kicked the small pile of broken pottery he had collected off a short drop. It clattered and splattered into the water below, breaking into smaller pieces along the way.

Correm stood up and stretched, slinging his longsword over his shoulder in a cavalier fashion. "Sorry, chum, I'm just the hired muscle. My job is to defend this fine elven lady's investments."

The man sneered. "Well you didn't do much of a good job today."

"If you would, Hawke," Athenril said. "I don't know when the others will be returning." She walked around to the other side of the crates and looked off down the coast. "It would be helpful."

Bethany remembered Athenril's two elven henchmen wandering off down that way after a Coterie thug had escaped them. She hoped they were all right. They weren't at all bad fellows. One of them, actually, she fancied a bit, though she would never ever tell her brother that. The poor elf would have such a hard time of it.

Athenril was shooting Lorus a sharp look. "And, for the record, this isn't his fault," she said, referring to Correm. Bethany was relieved to hear her say that.

"But look at these ruined goods!" the man protested, gesturing at the wreckage on the beach. "What am I going to tell the buyer? I'm only the middle man here, but I'm the one who's going to have to make the excuses and grease the right palms in apology!"

Athenril rubbed her chin, and chewed at her lip. "Nature of the business, Lorus. I should hope that even an idiot like you would be able to recognize this."

The fat man's face was already red from the heat, but somehow it reddened even further in response to Athenril's insult. He glared at her and turned to begin to stalk in her direction with murder in his eyes. Bethany thought he really was an idiot for threatening the smuggler like that. The woman had her daggers out before he could even take three steps, but rather than having to defend herself, there was suddenly a solid wall of Hawke interposed between them.

Correm put his sword point first in the ground and leaned on the pommel with both hands. He leaned forward and narrowed his eyes, while a smirk tugged at the corner of his mouth. "She's got hired muscle, remember?" he said, and he pointed a finger at his own face. He grinned. "Does this look like the face of a man who would let you lay a hand on his employer?"

"I'm charmed, Hawke, but I can take care of myself," Athenril said, though her tone held more of a touch of self-satisfaction and pride than annoyance. She'd picked well when she'd hired them. She stepped up next to Correm to face the fat man. "I don't need you defending me."

With a shrug, the warrior leaned back and pulled his sword free. "Suit yourself, milady." He bowed with a flourish, holding his large sword off to the side. "I am here but for your pleasure."

The elf smirked. "Save it, Hawke. I'm not buying it."

"All these women, wounding me," Correm muttered to himself. He picked up the sack into which he had been placing the items that he had scavenged, and walked over to join Bethany while Athenril and Lorus began arguing.

Bethany had perched herself on a large rock nearby, and had been watching the goings-on. However, she could not help that her gaze wandered occasionally to the dead bodies on the ground. It had all been in self defense, and in preserving their interests—which for the moment were primarily focused on finishing up their year in Athenril's employ—but she did not like how this sort of thing was becoming more and more a part of her life.

At home, their father Malcolm had taught her everything she would need to know to defend herself. The world was a big place, and she would inevitably have to fight to keep her freedom now and again. Not to mention that her brothers would not necessarily be there to protect her. And now it was just Correm. Those skills she had learned had come in very useful in the last year, and even before that when they were escaping the Blight.

It had been a necessary evil, but Bethany had never thought that she'd ever end up doing criminal's work. It could have been worse with Meeran, yes, but that only made it a little more palatable.

I should listen to myself, she thought. Maker, I'm whining, aren't I? Better stop it now, that's a bad habit, even if it's only in my head.

After plopping the sack onto the ground, he sat next to her on the rock and threw an arm around her shoulders. "Really, you did wonderfully. My little sister, all grown up and killing things!"

Wincing at his words, Bethany sucked her lips and looked away. "Do you really have to put it like that?" The feeling of his grungy leather armor rubbing against her shoulders made her squirm.

Correm pulled his arm back and pursed his lips. The expression on his face was one of intense thought. It would have been comical to her had she not been in the mood that she was. He shook his head. "How about, 'All grown up and blasting the bad men to burned bits.'?"

She shuddered. "Oh, that's even worse!" She glanced down at the corpses one more time, since they were, indeed, burned to bits. With the ice melting, the smell of charred flesh was slowly growing stronger. Or perhaps she was imagining it. Either way, it was not pleasant. She wrinkled her nose and shuddered again. "So much worse."

The warrior shrugged. "Can't say I didn't try! You know what an idiot I am. Were you expecting anything else?"

"You're not an idiot," she frowned. He acted like one sometimes, and he made self-depreciating comments like that occasionally, but she didn't think that he was always joking about it.

He pulled off his gloves and ruffled his fingers through her hair with his usual grin plastered across his face.

Athenril's other guards came back. They had tracked the man who had gotten away from them, but the trail had ended at the edge of the water, and they'd seen no other sign of where he could have gone. Athenril was not happy about this, and Lorus complained some more, but there wasn't anything that anyone could do about it.

Eventually, everyone had to assist in the cleanup of the cargo. They had it somewhat organized by the time some of their other associates arrived with a small ship to take it all off to its final destination. Correm, of course, made his protests very clear, and threatened all sorts of retribution for the indignity of having to haul things when he'd rather cut up enemies. The only person who got upset with his blustering was Lorus. Everyone else knew to expect it, and they didn't pay him much attention after his first complaint.

Bethany did not like the way that Lorus glared at her brother, nor the looks that he sent her way either, which were of a decidedly different nature. Athenril's elves were much more respectful than this greasy man, and she hoped that they never had to work with him again. Since their time with Athenril was almost up, that seemed, fortunately, quite likely.

It was getting to be evening by the time they were able to leave and make their way back to Kirkwall and their Lowtown shack. Bethany and Correm parted ways with Athenril and her boys at the docks, and then they purchased meat pies at a stall along the wharf for a late supper. Correm ate twice as many as she did, but they both definitely had a healthy appetite for it after the events of the day.

"Brother?" Bethany asked as they were nearing their uncle Gamlen's place.

"Mm?" He raised his eyebrows at her. There was half a meat pie still in his mouth.

"This is not the life I want to live."

Correm stared at her, a crease forming between his brows as he chewed. He swallowed, and his lips and cheeks bulged as he ran his tongue around inside his mouth to catch the extra bits. He swallowed again, and shook his head. "Look on the bright side. We could have been forced to work for that mercenary fellow instead, and I'd have to protect you from grabby hands all the time. If I'll protect anything, sweet sister, it is your dignity."

He chuckled, and pulled her close to kiss her on the cheek, holding the pie in his other hand. "Besides. We're working for fame and fortune. We'll conquer this city someday!"

"I'd rather not have the fame, thank you," she said. "That would bring the Templars down on me for sure."

"How about the fortune? Haven't you always wanted to have all the prettiest pretty dresses?" he asked, in-between licking grease and gravy from his fingers.

Bethany laughed softly. "I suppose I can't say that I wouldn't want enough coin to at least make sure Mother is comfortable," she said.

"Of course," Correm grinned. "I've always wanted to buy her a proper house."

Bethany looked up at him and smiled. "I know," she said. Hearing that made the unsettling events of the day more bearable. She did love him so. "Still, what are we going to do when our year with Athenril is over? We only have a few days left. I won't have her to help keep the templars from finding me out." She frowned.

"That's where the fame and fortune come in," Correm said, brushing crumbs off his clothing. "If I've got enough sovereigns that they're spilling out my ass, I'm sure I'd be able to bribe the right people. That should be enough grease for the right palms, as our wonderful uncle puts it." He made a face. "And with that much metal coming out my ass, I think I'd need some grease myself."

Bethany sputtered and smacked him on the arm. "That's disgusting! Ugh! I don't think I'll ever get that image out of my head." She shuddered, suddenly glad that she'd already finished all of her food. He was chuckling, completely unrepentant.

She sighed, and dropped the issue. It was the only way to keep sanity around him. "Do you really think we'd be able to bribe the right people? With everything I've been hearing, the Knight-Commander is beginning to come down harder on mages and anyone who helps them. I don't want to get you in trouble because of me."

"Oh, don't worry so much." Correm led her up the stairs to their doorway. "We'll think of something. I've already got some leads that look promising." He opened the door and held it open for her. Inside, their mother Leandra and their uncle Gamlen were arguing about something. Correm looked at Bethany, eyes crossed and tongue sticking out. It was his way of expressing just how he felt about the scenario.

Bethany laughed softly and followed him inside. Their uncle was not exactly a nice man. He was rude, stingy, confrontational, had filthy habits, and was generally an unpleasant person. An unflattering facial expression was the least of what he deserved. Though, she did try to at least sometimes give him the benefit of the doubt.

"We'll talk more tomorrow," Correm said to her quietly after they entered. He bolted the door shut behind her.

"All right," she nodded.

Correm turned to their uncle, holding out his arms. "Gamlen!" he cried. "My favorite uncle! I see that you're lavishing my mother with your affection again. Now, tell me honestly, here. Just how do you do that thing where you're a complete bloody idiot?"