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The rain fell relentlessly from the night sky in enormous drops, exploding on impact with the ground like grenades. The terrain, which normally would have been rolling emerald hills speckled in colorful patches of wild flowers and teeming with rabbits, had turned to boggy marshlands, oozing and squelching beneath Hawke's boots.
She staggered through the storm, arms hanging limp at her sides, hobbling on one foot, dragging the other behind her and barely able to stay upright, supported by a gnarled tree branch, trudging on without a destination just as she had done for the past three days. Her clothes were soaked straight through and clung her shivering body, stained crimson from her own blood. The wound it originated from was long, deep, inflicted by a Templar's blade, the gash followed the curvature of her ribs, all the way around to her spine, and it had begun to fester from lack of treatment and exposure to the elements.
Exhaustion held Hawke in an iron grip, threatening to pull her over the edge of consciousness, but she pressed on, well aware of the fact that if she indulged herself to the pleasure of sleep, death would find her.
She desperately wished she had not left her staff at camp when the Templars came, when she had been forced to run. If she had thought to grab it, she might have been able to use it as a walking stick, to ease her journey… really, if she were to be granted one wish to give her an easy journey, she would have wished that the Templars had not shown up at all, that she and Fenris could have been left to a quiet life in the quaint hamlet who's name she could not remember… but then again, she wished a lot of things had not happened.
She wished her horse had not died from over exhaustion mid-gallop, and even more so she wished she had not been on top of it when the beast collapsed. The horse flipped tail over head, and though Hawke had managed to throw her hands out at the last second and break her own fall and prevent herself from smashing face first into a stony ridge, her left foot had caught in its stirrup and the weight and sheer force of the massive, tumbling body had snapped the leg like a twig.
The pain had been excruciating, and at first she could do nothing but lay where she had landed, trapped beneath nearly eight hundred pounds of dead weight. In a wave of despair, Hawke could not keep herself from sobbing uncontrollably; a meltdown in result of all the emotions she had bottled up since fleeing Kirkwall and the wrath of the Templars. For over a year she bottled up every negative thought, every urge to cry or scream in frustration, putting on a smile and her happy-go-lucky, sarcastic camouflage in order to keep her companions spirits high, and keep them from sinking into the crushing despair that lurked on the edge of their camp.
One by one, their paths caused them to part ways until Hawke suddenly found herself alone, riding a stolen horse, galloping at full speed in a direction that she hoped was west. She had never ridden a horse to death. It was a terrifying thing to feel such a powerful creature crumple like that beneath you … even worse ending up beneath it's nearly thousand pound cadaver.
It had been a terrible end to a terrible day.
She finally worked up enough courage to pull herself free from the carcass and after a few hours of crawling, managed to stand and continue her journey to nowhere. The agony walking caused her was so great that Hawke had been driven to vomit several times, despite the fact that she had not eaten for close to a week. At least she was getting the last of the poison out of her system. In a stroke of luck, under the newly developed circumstances, the rain and the exhaustion, the crushed and twisted limb had gone numb, for which she was thankful.
She wished she had not been forced to leave Fenris lying in his own pooling blood. Rushing to his side, helpless to do anything to help, being pulled away and put on a horse, being instructed to run and not look back. Anders promising to save Fenris, when his eyes clearly betray his words, knowing that the mage would let Fenris die. Hawke forced the image from her mind, for the thought caused her more pain than her shattered leg. Blinking back what she could not determine to be rainwater or tears, she lamented the fact that a few hours earlier she could have distracted herself from thinking about Fenris by simply focusing on the pain in her destroyed limb; but the numbness did nothing for her broken heart. It felt as if she had been gored, that there was a gaping hole where her heart should be and she was slowly bleeding out … well, bleeding out from a wound different from the wound that she was already bleeding out of. All she could do was to clutch her chest in hopes to dull the pain.
She wished she had never met Anders, that he had not decided to "remove the compromise" between the Mages and Templars of Kirkwall, that he had not fallen in love with her when he knew she could not love him back. There was a list three miles long of things she wished Anders had not done. More importantly, she wished she had not gotten involved in his struggles, friend or not wherever that man went, trouble followed.
Most of all she wished it was not raining.
Hawke allowed her mind to wander, torturing herself with thoughts of her home in Kirkwall. She would sell herself to a demon for a good meal, hot bath, and the warmth of her bed – she would even settle for the cheap wine, lumpy mattress, and drafty halls of Fenris's mansion... but only if he was there to hold her and warm her.
Her grip tightened on her chest, someone was twisting a knife in her wounds, and she released a shuttered breath. Hawke told herself it was from the cold, she was soaked straight through to her bones and would probably die of hypothermia, it was nothing. She had shed too many tears over things she could not change. Haunting childhood memories, the blight, her mother and father, Bethany, Anders…Fenris…
Hawke could feel her nails piercing the palm of her hand through the fabric of the thin gray prisoner's dress she still wore.
She would not allow herself to cry.
She was unbearably thirsty, but she knew this was a thirst that no amount of water could quench. It was a thirst in her veins, aching for the familiar pulse of her magic. How had she lost it again? Hawke's brain was only running at about twenty percent, making thinking and concentrating nearly impossible. She was almost sure that she had not been made tranquil… she hoped she had not been made tranquil. All she knew was that something about this agonizingly relentless thirst was responsible for the loss of her magic. Any other mage would have been praising the Maker for the chance to be normal… but without her magic, she just felt empty inside.
Hawke suddenly found that her legs no longer worked, it made sense that the left one would give out but her right knee buckled and she collapsed, falling to her knees.
She attempted to stand, but her legs would not cooperate.
"Get up," She told herself, attempting again to stand, "Get. Up."
Again her body disobeyed, this time, the rest of her anatomy failing, causing her to fall to her hands.
"OLIVIA HAWKE, GET ON YOUR FUCKING FEET!" She screamed at herself.
Nothing.
She permitted a single sob to escape her lips, then, defeated, allowed herself to collapse.
Lying on her back, Hawke looked up into the pitch-black sky, the rain splattered against her face and ran into her eyes. Everyone she loved was either dead or had abandoned her… even the damn dog. How had it come to this? Everything had been fine until Anders showed up again. Why couldn't he just leave her be? Why couldn't the Maker just leave her be? Why was she destined to be unhappy no matter what choice she made?
Whether it was rain or tears, her eyes were overflowing, causing her vision to blur and darken. Her body suddenly felt enormously heavy and to move even her smallest finger was a task too difficult for the level of exhaustion she was experiencing.
With a start, Hawke came to realize that she was slipping away. All her childhood fears of death came back to her in a flood of memories and emotion. She tried to decide if she had been just enough to be allowed to stay at the Maker's side, but then she started to think about all the people she had killed and failed to protect her lifetime. All of the mistakes she'd made and people she'd hurt. All of the selfish things she had done and darkness she had dabbled in. Hawke was quite sure that allowing your family to die, having copious amounts of premarital sex, killing hundreds of people, cheating and lying to get what you want, purposely trying to get a member of the Chantry hot and bothered for shits and giggles, and using Andraste's name in vain as often as she did would definitely keep her away from the glorious pearly white after life. It was slightly relieving to find that she didn't actually care about any of that.
Under the circumstances, the Maker could go fuck himself.
As the pain began to fade, Hawke felt herself slip into that familiar cool embrace; she relaxed. She let go of all of her cares, her fears, her painful memories, and with a final sigh she came to the conclusion that dieing wasn't so bad
At least she wouldn't be lonely anymore.