Author's note: As of my posting this story, the characters are listed in the wrong order so the story looks like it focuses on Varric and Aveline instead of Hawke and Leandra as it truly does. I don't know how to fix it or if it'll just fix itself, but hopefully that clears up any possible confusion.
"I can't do it, Aveline." Marian's chest and stomach wrenched with every heartbeat, twisted into knots so tight she felt she would collapse. Her throat burned with the threat of tears that had yet to fall, barely held back. Her voice was weak, she could barely breathe. "How- how am I supposed to tell her?"
"However you can." Aveline spoke softly, laying a hand on Marian's shoulder as she stared at Gamlen's front door. "But it's something you need to do. Draw strength from me if you have to."
"I can't." She gasped, on the cusp of hyperventilating. "I can't."
"I'll be right beside you. Leandra will understand, even if you don't say anything."
Several moments passed in relative silence, as the shouts and clatter of Kirkwall's evening bustle faded into the background. Marian was wide-eyed, nearly gasping with every breath, with all colour having long since left her. And then, suddenly, she slipped her arms around Aveline, her armor colliding with the guard-issue plate-mail with a clang.
"Aveline, I'm so sorry." Finally, she began to cry. "For how I've treated you since...well. Since then."
The helpless guardswoman could only awkwardly pat Marian's back before it was over. Her voice was still soft as she simply replied, "I understand. Grief...isn't something easily controlled."
"Thank you." Hawke took one last, deep breath and swiping the tears off her face. "I- I think I'm ready."
"I'm with you."
Climbing the stairs up to Gamlen's shack was a monumental task for Marian. With one hand, she clutched Bethany's scarf around her neck with white knuckles, a safety line as she began to tremble more with every step she took. She shared one last, meaningful look with Aveline before, with a shaking hand, she palmed the door handle and slipped inside.
Leandra was stirring a pot of stew on the fire, but she heard the door creak and spotted the two of them immediately. Where Gamlen looked nervous as he saw them, Leandra's face broke out into a huge smile when she saw them and greeted them at the front door with an excited "you're back!" but it died instantly at Marian's expression. Her heart stopped.
"Bethany isn't with you." It was a statement of fact, not a question.
For the rest of her life, Marian would remember that as the moment she shattered, utterly.
She thought she'd broken when she slipped a dagger into Bethany before the Blight could take her, when they'd cremated her and she couldn't watch her sister turn to ash, or even when she lost all control of herself when they next encountered Darkspawn. But that, she found, was strain, her emotions out of control under the pressure of grief.
It was when it all fell away that she broke, utterly.
"No." It was almost a whisper as her fear deadened along with everything else. "She caught the Blight." And that was all she had to say as Leandra cried out and fell to her knees.
"Dear Maker..." Gamlen fidgeted, thick-voiced and helpless, as Marian and Aveline helped Leandra to her feet, and disappeared into one of the back rooms.
Marian was eerily quiet, but tears were slipping down her cheeks again. Aveline tried- in vain, she knew - to comfort Leandra with whatever she could. "I promise you: she didn't suffer. We gave her a proper service."
"Thank you." Leandra sobbed. "Oh, my darling Bethany..."
Helpless, the warriors guided her into bed. Aveline had the strength to take her grief straight and keep going, but as Marian leaned heavily against the wall, it was clear that neither mother nor daughter had that strength.
"I'm sorry, mother." Hawke murmured. "I...you need time alone. I'm here if you need me." She crept out of Leandra's room, with Aveline in tow. When it was clear Aveline didn't intend to stay, she escorted her friend to the front door.
"I think it's best if I don't sit on my hands here." She said. "The others should hear the news."
Marian nodded, expression blank. "Varric will probably be on it already. This is your home as much as it is ours, if you need it." Her gaze fell to her feet. "She's going to blame me. She did last time."
"It was beyond your control, and you know it."
"I couldn't leave her behind for the Templars. Visions of her ending up like Karl... it was- is - my worst nightmare."
"Hawke, if you blame yourself, you'll only make it worse for both of you. You need all the strength you have."
"Thank you." Aveline pursed her lips, nodded, and left, but her eyes held nothing but sympathy and shared pain.
Autonomously finishing the stew her mother started, Marian left it on the table for later and disappeared into the room she shared with Bethany a month ago, a week ago. She stared into space as she undid the straps on her armor and let it fall to the floor. She changed into one of the few spare pairs of clothing she had and slipped into bed. She left the fireplace empty and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep in the dark, still clutching Bethany's scarf around her neck.
She didn't know how long she lay there, motionless, drifting in and out of consciousness at irregular intervals. Sometimes, she blankly registered her mother's sobbing, easily heard through the thin walls. Maybe it was a few hours, a night perhaps. Maybe it had been a full day, or even several. Daylight didn't make it this far into the house, and only firelight flickered through the crack under her door. She couldn't use her appetite to judge; she hadn't been able to eat any more than a few nibbles since...since...
She pulled her blanket further over her head, trying to ignore the faint gnawing in her gut and tried her hardest to fall asleep again.
She awoke to the sound of someone knocking lightly on the door.
"Go away." She mumbled loudly, incoherently. Infuriatingly, they opened the door a crack anyway.
"It's just me, darling." Leandra assured her, her voice almost a coo were it not so shaky and weak.
Marian pulled her blanket a little farther over her head, shielding herself from the light and her mother's scrutiny both. "Go away. There's nothing you can say I haven't told myself." She was acting like a child and she knew it, but she felt like no more than one.
"Oh, my darling girl..." Marian felt the weight of the bed shift as Leandra sat down beside her. She curled in on herself a little tighter, not relaxing when she felt the warmth of a hand on her shoulder, somehow located in the dark. "I know how I acted after...Carver, lashing out at you like I did, like you controlled the monster that took my boy from me."
Bitterness crept its way up Hawke's throat, hot and sour. "What was it? 'Don't lecture me, this is your fault?' That kind of lashing out? Here to repeat it, are you?"
"No, Marian." Leandra's voice broke. "I don't blame you. I never have. I just wanted you to know that. I hope you can forgive me."
Beneath the blanket, Marian felt her expression twist into a snarl. "Leave me be."
Leandra said nothing, but leaned down to kiss her daughter's hair before she slipped out without another word.
She woke up again to the muffled sobs of her mother coming through the walls.
She'd long since lost track of time, but she knew she'd had plenty of it to think, more than she'd like. Few of her thoughts were coherent; flashes of memories long past, fervid dreaming, confusion about where or even when she was. What she could make sense of was the guilt that lent a sinking feeling to her entire self - though her stomach in particular felt like it was made of lead - and the weight of grief lurking beneath it all, not prominent right now, but there, always there. It was heavy, a parasite that sapped her of any feeling until the floodgates opened at random for just a few minutes at a time before it started all over again.
Right now, the guilt felt strongest.
For the first time in Maker-knew how long, Marian shrugged the covers off herself and clambered awkwardly out of bed, wincing as she stretched the kinks out of her stiff body. As quietly as she could, she nudged her door open and shifted out of her room. Beast noticed, nuzzling her hand with his wet nose and whining, but he left her alone after a quick scratch behind the ears when he picked up on her mood and went back to his corner to lie down. Marian rapped her knuckles lightly on her mother's door before sticking her head in.
"Can I come in?" She whispered.
"Of course."
Leandra's room was almost as miserable a sight as Marian's. With total darkness only warded off by a pair of candles on her nightstand, most of it was cast in shades of amber or grey, with shadows dancing eerily off the walls. Marian shut the door behind her and peered through the dark, locating Leandra's figure beneath the blankets. In an almost perfect mirror of what Leandra had done during their last discussion, Marian sat down lightly on the edge of the bed.
"I heard you crying." She stated dumbly.
"I'm sorry, dear, I'll try to be quieter-"
"No, it's alright." She murmured gently, almost a whisper.
"I was just thinking about your siblings. How I'll never get to see them again. You and Bethany were so close...it must be horrible for you."
Her statement tore Marian apart inside, and she could only whisper, "It is."
Leandra turned to look at her. "I'm sorry, darling. I've been selfish, grieving to myself when you're going through the same thing. It feels like there's nothing left in the world for a while, but you need me strong, not making things worse for you."
Marian kissed her mother's forehead. "I'm sorry about...well. I'm sorry. For everything. For pushing you away when you're all I have left. For snapping at you like that." She swallowed a painful lump in her throat.
"You don't need to worry about that, love. I understand."
"More than I'd like you to."
"I understand that you're grieving, you want to lash out. You've always been quick to anger."
"But you don't deserve it. You're just a mother who wanted the best for us, only to lose so much. You don't deserve it, and you don't deserve to be pushed away or punished for it, either."
"My little girl has grown so strong." Leandra breathed, and even in the faint candlelight Marian could see the shimmer of tears in her eyes...but also a beaming smile. "I love you. You know that, right?"
As weighed-down as she was, Marian softened, if only subtly. "I know. I love you, too."
After a pause, Marian excused herself and stood up to leave. Just as she reached the door, her mother said one last thing. "I'm not the only one you have left, darling. Your new friends are there for you, as is Aveline. Never forget that when you need somebody to lean on."
Past then, Marian found herself up and about just a little bit more. She ate half a bowl of cold stew just to prevent herself from "running" on an empty stomach. She made short trips to the market to buy food, pulling a hood over her head to avoid both the sunlight and unwelcome looks. Varric came by, announced to her and Leandra that he was still calculating the profits from the expedition (as it turned out, it had only been a few days since they'd returned, but he'd left them their space) and took Hawke aside to ask her how she was holding up. Her answer was always the same as his visits became regular, as grief weighed her every step and ate away at her and she found herself bitter and angry at random more and more often.
"I'm not."
"The others are worried about you." He told her matter-of-factly. "The only reason they haven't kicked down your door is because I told them you need time and space. You've got some loyal friends, more than you think."
"I want to be left alone. I can't stop you from checking on us, but I'll see them again when I'm ready."
"We've got Wicked Grace night in the Hanged Man every Thursday night." He said, smirking. "I was expecting this bunch to scatter to the winds once the expedition was done, but there's no sign of that happening. Not even Isabela's gone anywhere. You're the anchor they have in common."
"I-" She was...stunned, really. She had thought everyone except Aveline and maybe Merrill would have disappeared by now. "-maybe...that'll be sooner than I thought."
"Take your time. But not too much of your time." He clapped her on the shoulder made for the door. "And again, Hawke...I'm sorry about Sunshine."
She said nothing as she watched the door close behind him, but hearing his affectionate nickname for Bethany was worse than any punch to the gut.
On rarer occasions Marian would be up and about, preparing meals for her mother and checking the mail. Gamlen was clearly affected by Bethany's loss and Leandra's grief even as he tried to hide it behind his usual cantankerous demeanour, but he took special care not to step on anyone's toes and kept mostly to himself, saying little.
It was when she was checking the mail that she came upon an official-looking letter with the Viscount's seal stamped boldly on the wax. She tore it open, and almost dropped it once she read it.
"Mother!" She cried.
When Leandra all but scampered out of her room, fearing something was amiss, Marian handed her the letter that confirmed their ownership of her old childhood home. Her mother's hand flew to her mouth and it wasn't long before she was openly weeping bittersweet tears, happy to have the mansion back but wishing that both her children were there to see it.
Marian held her, helpless in the face of such a display. She should have been glad that they'd succeeded, that between the mansion and the profits from the expedition they'd be living in Hightown by the end of the month. But she couldn't find any happiness in her for it. Nothing was worth the cost. It was a hollow victory.
Swallowing her anger, she let her mother have what joy she could, even as she cried into her daughter's shoulder until she couldn't anymore.