ACT ONE: AT THE END OF EVERYTHING
It had risen up within her like a great wave from the sea which threatened to drown her in its power, this despair, and it held to her as the purple haze in the sky above her began to fade to blackness, smeared in smoke and firelight which rose from the city below. Kirkwall burned, and with it so did the last of what innocence she had allowed herself the illusion of possessing.
Because she had known. From the moment that strange request had left his lips, Hawke had known that Anders' intent was anything but what he claimed it to be. And still she had helped him. She had told herself that she had to help. She was obligated to do anything and everything in her power to help him, to save him, as she had failed to save those so dear to her. And so she had ignored that whisper deep within her soul, telling her that she should not be following him so blindly; not when his temperament had taken such a strange turn so recently. Not when his former melancholy tendencies had shifted to fatalistic. Not when he now kept secrets from her, as he had never before.
And now where the Chantry had once stood, only a hole in the city remained. Not even ash... not even rubble.
Gone.
She wanted to lash out at her lover; to demand to know why he had used her for such cruelty. She wanted to strike out at him physically, to make him hurt as deeply as she did - right down to her soul which was screaming for the loss of those innocents who had sought refuge in the Chantry as so many did in times of need or fear. Those families, those children, those poor people who had turned to the Maker for protection when the fighting had first started, and who died as a result. People she had been fighting for nearly a decade to protect; to unite. Now gone, with not even bodies to commit to the flame.
They had died because of him. Because of them.
Without knowing how or when it precisely happened, Hawke realized that during Anders' self-righteous rant she had drawn her belt knife. The act had not gone unnoticed by her companions, either. A few murmurs arose at her back, low, but not so low that she could not hear their opinions on what the apostate's fate should be. Yet she responded to none of them, training her eyes on a face that had so often liquified her insides with just a smile; a face that was so achingly familiar and beloved to her, yet now harbored a stranger beneath, she felt.
"I trusted you," she breathed. "I loved you. I would have died for you. But this?" She gestured towards the emptiness where not even an hour before there had been the beating heart of the city. "There is no justice in slaughtering innocent people, Anders. Not for any reason. These were the actions of a monster. You are a monster; and I helped you do this.
"Damn your soul along with mine," she hissed to the man standing before her-
-and tossed the knife at his feet.
A voice rose from the small gathering beside her, but with a withering glare which displayed all of the rage and pain and betrayal roiling within her, she silenced Sebastian's protests. Her gaze then slid to Fenris, waiting for him to speak out as their archer had, only to find him watching her intently, yet utterly silent; expressionless beyond the fierce, ever-present spark behind his eyes. Aveline's mouth opened and then closed again, having thought better of providing input, clearly.
Without inspecting the others, Hawke returned her focus to the mage before her as her mind continued to struggle to come to terms with this tragedy. This could have been prevented. So many lives need not have been lost tonight. If she hadn't coddled him so; if she had stood up to him and demanded to know what it was he was hiding from her. But no, she had given in, foolishly believing that in granting him blind devotion it would somehow right the wrongs within his heart. And from that first kiss they had shared in Anders' clinic to the the events of just a few moments ago, she could see now that she'd made a spectacular mess of it all. Her fist rose momentarily to clutch at her short black locks before dropping back to her side; her despair winning out over her anger.
"I went into this with you willingly," she said at last, acknowledging no one but the man who stood before her; the man who had just last night shared her bed, "I tied myself to you in this. If your blood must be spilled, it should be mixed with mine, because I knew something was wrong and still I did nothing." With the back of her hand she scrubbed away the tears she had only just noticed on her cheeks. "I was a convenience for you, and now you will be the same for me. You'll accompany us into the coming battles. You'll fight like you're still human enough to want to help us. You'll fight like you give a damn if these people live or die," she waved a hand to her friends. "You owe it to them. We owe it to them."
For the first time since the explosion true anguish crossed over Anders' features. Yet Hawke quickly found his regret was ill-placed. "Maker help me," he groaned, "I was so certain that breaking your heart would kill me. How I wish now it had." Those words would have moved her previously, perhaps even enough to forgive him, if his crime had not intentionally claimed innocent lives.
But now her heart was shattered by a betrayal that no apology could undo.
"And that's exactly why you live, Anders." She announced, trying desperately to find that confidence that had been coming to her with less and less ease over the past few years. "The Maker won't help you anymore than he'll help me." And without another word to her companions or the man who had, in her eyes, stripped away the last of his humanity this night, Hawke strode briskly from the group towards the waiting battle.
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By the time the coming daybreak had first began to color the skies with shades of purple and the deepest blues, she was well beyond view of the city; the countryside quiet and restful, as though nothing terrible ever happened and life was continuing as normal for all.
The Grand Cleric was dead, at the hands of her former lover; the Knight Commander and the First Enchanter now corpses in the streets as well, by Hawke's own hand. Those who had been charged with guiding and protecting Kirkwall had destroyed each other, Hawke included, and in her eyes the city was all the better for it. And so she fled, knowing that to stay would be suicide, for none who would come to restore order would be blind to her part in that war.
Varric had promised to lead any pursuers to believe she had fled north into the safety of the mountains she knew so well, if necessary, rather than follow the open expanse between the Vimmark Mountains and the sea, which would allow her to travel more quickly, but at greater risk out in the open. With luck she could reach Ostwick before news of Kirkwall spread, and from there secure passage to Ferelden.
A short distance behind her Anders stilled matched her tiresome pace in silence, though she had neither ordered or asked for him to join her. Hawke doubted very much that he even knew why he followed, but she was so weary emotionally that she could not even bare to turn and face him. So she plodded on, listening to the lonely set of footsteps at her back. It was a strange to travel in such small numbers, for as her companions had fled to avoid retaliation after the fighting, some bidding bittersweet farewells to those they had grown to close to over the years, only Anders had shadowed her as she had stolen into the night and away from the city.
Or so she had thought.
Her assumption of secrecy however was put to rest abruptly when shadow erupted into motion and whorls of blue light, overpowering the mage at her back and knocking his staff to the ground before she had opportunity to draw her blades.
Over Anders' shoulder Fenris' eyes were alight with the flaring brilliance of his lyrium etchings; the pointed tips of a gauntlet wrapping around the apostate's neck, the fingers splayed on his other hand, which was nearly defined solely by the ethereal glow that surrounded it. Hawke knew the elf's intent. She had witnessed this before; that terrible rage that came just before Fenris plunged his hand through the chest of his quarry.
"Do not tell me to spare him, Hawke," he called to her in warning, "his crimes are beyond forgiveness."
Hawke allowed her hands to slip from the pommels at her shoulders, the gesture one of absolute resignation. "I know." She said softly, earning a brief glance from eyes that were near to mad with rage. "If you choose to kill him I won't stop you. I only ask that when he is dead you sentence me to the same end."
A sound of disgust was spat from between bared teeth, "Do not tell me you still love the abomination after what he has done!"
"You misunderstand," Hawke said quietly, "I meant what I said when I told him he had damned us both. I too played a part in the destruction of the Chantry. He asked for my aid and I gave it." Green eyes slitted with rage instantly widened impossibly beyond the feathers of Anders' robes and for a moment Hawke was quite convinced that Fenris had forgotten the mage in his grasp until the man spoke.
"No! She didn't know what she was agreeing to!" Anders bleated, choking slightly at the grip upon his throat. "I told her it was for a spell. A spell to separate Justice from me. She had no idea what I truly intended."
"I knew something was wrong," Hawke all but whispered. "The day he asked for a distraction in the Chantry I knew that whatever he was hiding from me should have had me worried. I just didn't make the connection." Looking back now, however, it was painfully clear to her, and that present clarity gave her all the more reason to hold herself equally accountable for the events of last night.
Maker, I should have noticed it sooner.
"I should never have involved you." Anders moaned, turning his head as far as Fenris' grip would allow in an attempt to look at her. "It was selfish of me to want you so close. There were others in the resistance who would have knowingly helped, but I-"
"Silence!" Fenris roared, shaking Anders violently with the grip he still held on the mage's throat, clearly cutting off the mage's air supply for a moment judging by the choking noises he emitted. "Tell me you did not know it would come to this, Hawke." The elf's voice was low, almost as though he were coaxing the answer he desired from her. Yet that could not be possible, she knew. Fenris never tried to find a reason to excuse anyone's actions, after all. They were guilty or they were not - there were no compromises.
"Not this, no," she sighed, unwilling to try to spare herself from whatever retribution she may owe. "But did I suspect he was hiding something important from me? Yes."
"But not this." Fenris waved his free arm back towards the direction of Kirkwall. "Not such depravity." It was bitten and hard, but in his voice she could hear his true request clearly enough now.
He was asking her for a reason to not have to hold her accountable.
Had she been in a more stable frame of mind, Hawke knew she would have found this astonishing; to be granted a pardon by this man was not something that she had ever witnessed. Not even his sister had received such treatment, and only lived today because Hawke had all but pleaded for her life. This turn of events should have staggered her, yet at present she could see no further than her own grief and self-hatred.
"No. No, not this. If... if I had suspected... I would have tried to stop him... reasoned with him..."
"Reason." The warrior scoffed, his icy gaze returning to the apostate in his grasp. "Monsters do not see reason, Hawke. They know only their perverse need to destroy."
"That may be," she agreed, "but he was not a monster to me then. He was someone I loved."
"And now?"
Hawke could not respond. The memory of the man Anders had been, the man she had loved, was still fresh in her mind. The hope that his heart would heal and she would have him back was not even a full day dead within her. To say the words aloud... to bring herself to renounce what she had only yesterday treasured so dearly...
Whatever expression she wore was seemingly enough for Fenris, for the elf violently shoved Anders, coughing ragged gasps, to the ground.
"Though I would like nothing more than to leave this abomination a rotting corpse where he lies," Her warrior companion spoke firmly, yet without the rage he had held to just moments before, "I know now that his death is not mine to decide. It must be yours, if not of his own doing.
"But I will not allow him to manipulate you further." With almost predatory resolve, Fenris circled the prone mage to stand before Hawke. "I am coming with you."
Miserably Hawke shook her head. "I will be hunted for my part in Kirkwall's fall and the mage's rebellion. I cannot ask you to come with me."
"I do not recall my decision to join you coming as a response to your request." Fenris growled and she recognized his statement for what it was: a challenge for her to argue against his decision. For a moment she simply stared into green eyes that somehow always managed to smolder, if not outright burn, and at this moment they were positively ablaze. Finally, she relented.
"All right. I can't order you to act against your will. But I couldn't bear being responsible for the death of another person I care for. Please Fenris, please don't place yourself in danger for me."
The glower before her cooled slightly, if it did not dissipate entirely. "I have survived being hunted by far worse, I assure you." Fenris rumbled smoothly. "You need not fear for me."
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Two years later...
Travel worn and hungry, Hawke wrapped her woolen cloak tightly around herself as she eyed the village warily. Though they had not had an encounter with Templars or Chantry agents in months it still seemed like such a risk to venture into populated places where she could be recognized, and she scolded herself again for being a paranoid fool. She was here for a reason, she reminded herself. True, the attention on her had all but died off for months a while ago, only to be refueled with a vengeance for reasons that had been previously unknown to her, but that did not mean that every corner of Thedas held danger for her.
"We have to eat," she sighed, more to herself than the men at her back, "and it would bee nice to sleep in a real bed again."
And this is the village from the last message. She decided again to withhold that information at the moment. While she readily shared information with one of her companions, the other was no longer party to her plans.
"The settlement is small," Fenris observed blandly, "we'll be lucky if we are able to purchase enough supplies to see us to the next town. Still, a bed would be a welcome change."
"Right then." Hawke reached beneath her cloak to tuck her daggers away, pulling her coin pouch from her hip and handing it over to Fenris. "Remember your aliases. You purchase our supplies. I'll check the chanter's board. There has to be some menial chores that can earn us a few silvers." The idea of checking the boards set her stomach into a roiling fit, but at least in smaller towns it would be easier to escape if they were identified. And it also gave her the opportunity to break away long enough to retrieve her next message. "We'll meet up tonight at the inn, just there." She pointed to the second largest building, its swinging sign boasting the image of a man asleep in his pub chair with his feet propped upon the table.
The look upon Anders' face spoke his opinion clearly enough. For the first few months his expressions of distress or disapproval had twisted her heart each time she had laid eyes upon him, which in turn plucked at Fenris' temper until he was growling Tevinter obscenities and refusing to meet her eyes. She had been trying valiantly to not care, to not feel whenever Anders turned that liquid amber gaze upon her, yet it was so difficult to simply cast aside years of sharing one heart with a man... even if that man had turned out to be a monster.
Now, however, Hawke found it easier to slide her gaze over Anders, as though he were not standing before her at all, and stride briskly away from her companions towards the chantry.
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Sunset had come and gone hours passed when Hawke at last entered the overly-warm common room of the village's combined pub and inn. After learning from the innkeeper that Fenris had already rented the last two empty rooms for the evening, and purchasing a bowl of stew to take back to her room, Hawke ascended the stairs to her accommodations, passing three closed doors as instructed before reaching the final and only open door on the landing. Inside her elven companion sat at the round table before the glowing fireplace, four bottles of wine lined up before him.
"Forgive me," he murmured, a fifth bottle of wine already opened and at his lips, "the company in my quarters is... less than ideal."
Hawke nodded her understanding and took the seat beside his, accepting the bottle he proffered. "Did you eat?" She asked, suddenly a bit embarrassed she has not thought to bring more than just one bowl.
"I did. Downstairs." He grimaced. "Be wary. It is still disagreeing with me."
"My, but don't we have a delicate palate?" Hawke grinned slightly, earning a devilishly quirked smile and a single chortle from her friend in response.
In the years since Kirkwall, Hawke still found herself plagued by nightmares of nameless faces and those she had loved and lost, crying out to her to save them. So many of these nights found her waking to the sounds of her own sobs, and a precious others few found her waking to crystalline green eyes and hands shaking her soundly as Fenris roused her from her dreams.
Even more rare than the nights her friend rescued her from her inner demons, there were nights such as this when she was able to find the small joys in life again. Nights where she remembered how to tease, how to smile, and occasionally even how to laugh. It was surprising to her that these moments were now only shared with the most somber member of her entourage, and yet she treasured each one of them. For they meant that he still counted her a friend, and not simply someone he could not trust to be left unguarded, as she often worried he would grow to see her.
Still brandishing her impish grin, Hawke waggled her fingers at her friend, palm up, and Fenris - not needing her mind spoken - reached to his belt to retrieve her coin purse, which she promptly refilled with the contents of her belt pouch.
"It's not much," she relayed, "but it will keep us in potions long enough to reach our next destination. Which reminds me," Hawke pushed her fingers back into her belt pouch and pulled free a tightly rolled piece of parchment. Fenris' brow arched at the site.
"Just how many liaisons can that man have?" He murmured, lifting the wine bottle to his lips again.
"He's always been a popular one, hasn't he?" Her jibe at their friend came with a small shrug and a smile as she unrolled the parchment she had picked up from her appointed contact to find Varric's careful print filling the page. Laying the paper flat on the table and flicking idle locks of short ebony hair from her eyes, Hawke began her study of the letter, Fenris idly pulling from the wine bottle as he watched.
The dwarf was still adept at raising her spirits, even from so many leagues away, she mused. His message started off friendly enough, as always, with talks about his newest book, the Seeker woman he had been reluctantly traveling with, another woman from the Marches they'd named Inquisitor - a title she'd heard more and more frequently of late, and his general distaste for being uprooted from his room at the Hanged Man.
Yet where his prior missives would normally continue into a coded message identifying her next safe-haven, Hawke's eyes now followed a surprising turn.
'Listen pal, I know you've had damned good reason to disappear, but I'm afraid that the world needs the Champion of Kirkwall again. Come to Skyhold. It's Corypheus. He's back, Hawke.'
It couldn't be possible, she knew. They had killed that creature years ago. Varric and Fenris had been with her in that very battle, along with Anders, naturally.
Yet prone as he was to exaggerations and even lies, Varric had his limits. Lying about that was beyond even her favorite story teller's gall.
With hands far steadier than they should have been, Hawke set the parchment on the table, raising clear blue eyes to Fenris, who stilled instantly, attuned to his companion's sudden change in humor, his wine bottle all but forgotten in his grasp.
"Corypheus has returned." She announced. "I'm going to the Inquisition's stronghold. If you come, I can't promise we won't be captured for my role in the Kirkwall chantry's destruction, or worse."
With deliberate, if not exaggerated care, Fenris placed his bottle on the table before turning a hardened expression upon her. "Are you asking me to part with you here?"
"No. I know where I stand on that account. I'm simply giving you warning, and leaving the choice up to you." Hawke clarified. "If it helps ease your mind, Anders will not be traveling with me after tonight. I won't risk his instability in another political arena. And I won't allow him the opportunity to influence such a large gathering of mages. The Inquisition has joined forces with the mages, if you recall."
Fenris nodded, yet his eyes flicked up to hers quickly, that ever present spark flaring, his next question clearly defining his current priorities. "Will you kill him?"
Hawke felt her own expression soften with her resolve. "You know I can't." Though she was fairly certain that she had separated her heart from the man who had years ago held a piece of her soul, she could not remove herself from their shared sin. Not even now, so long after the devastation had been wrought.
Dark brows that contrasted dramatically with his pale hair furrowed as the man scowled. "You will simply let him walk free then?"
There are no more templars to turn him over to." Hawke mused. "At least not a large enough number which can be trusted. Even if there were, he is more than capable of defeating them and escaping. No. His fate is his own, just as my fate is mine to control. But if he harms another person, as Anders or as Justice, I will hunt him down and kill him. That much I can promise."
For what seemed to Hawke to be an eternity, Fenris sat before her, silently appraising her. It was unsettling; the elf was not known for holding his tongue.
"I can ask no more of you." He murmured at last. "Now, when do we leave for Skyhold?"
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In spite of the death of their romance, and the distance she had tried to place between her own heart and his so many months ago, Hawke still found it difficult taking that final step towards separating herself from Anders permanently. He had been such a constant in her life for so many years that to sever him from her life felt like cutting away another piece of her own identity. They had loved one another, depended upon and trusted in each other without question; only someone completely devoid of emotion could simply cast that aside without a second thought.
Yet Hawke knew perfectly well that taking Anders into the Inquisition's headquarters, which now housed refugee mages from all over Thedas, was like taking a lit torch into a powder keg store room. He could not be allowed to spread his fanatical beliefs throughout their ranks. She had already witnessed the effects of that once in her life.
Nothing but death waited down that path.
And so, with a brief knock at his door Hawke entered without waiting for permission. She went alone, informing Fenris that this was something she had to do without him - that this had to be her doing and her decision completely.
Once aware of who had entered his room, Anders stood from his bed, the contents of his pack strewn out carefully upon the blankets as he performed his nightly routine of assessing his supplies. "Tomorrow I leave this village at dawn with Fenris." Hawke announced, steeling herself against the pang of emotion that tried to bubble from the depths of her stomach. "You will no longer be traveling with us."
For his part, Anders neither argued or pleaded, despite the sadness that marred his features upon hearing her decision. He must have known for some time that this day was inevitable, she felt.
"What will you do?" He asked instead. Hawke's eyes narrowed purposefully.
"That is not your concern." She was not utterly blind. She could see clearly enough that he still harbored feelings for her, despite the rift that had been growing between them these past two years. If he knew her intent he would try to find a way to stay with her.
"I will make you one promise before I leave," she added, attempting to impart a resolve she had once been able to adapt so easily. "If I discover at any time that you have rejoined the war; that you are harming people or taking lives again, no matter the reason, I will find you and finish what I did not that final night in Kirkwall. And know that I will be listening for that news. Closely."
That threat, spoken aloud and coupled with the wide-eyed surprise on her former lover's face, was enough to leach emotion from her control, and Hawke spun on her heal, marching from his room before the tear could reach her cheek.
The last tear she would ever shed for Anders, she vowed.
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