The Enemy with No Name
We couldn't put tracks between Kirkwall and ourselves fast enough, and I don't think I glanced back once during the initial flight. He was emptying his guts over the side of the ship when I finally decided to glance over my shoulder, holding his hair back away from his face. The fog obscured most of my view, and so Kirkwall was no longer visible on the horizon save for in my memory.
Good riddance.
Fenris lifted his head, taking a gulp of the salt-tinged air, his skin leeched of color, his eyes heavy-lidded with sickness. The sea wasn't kind to him. He could scream in the face of a high dragon, throw himself between me and an arrow, but the tossing pitch and roll of a ship was his undoing. I called in a heavy favor to get us out of the city, and the ship's captain casually glanced the other way, his crew never voicing questions regarding the two, cloaked stowaways suddenly berthing aboardship. So long as we pulled our weight on the journey, we had a secure hammock in the berthing, and despite everything I'd been through, nothing prepared me for shipboard life. I guess I had only myself to blame; I'd gotten used to Hightown living, strutting around in my fancy silks, with a title bought back with the spoils of a deadly expedition.
I would have traded it all to have my family back.
Fenris and I didn't talk much the first few days; I guess we agreed it was safer to say little and do more. Then again, Fenris was never the chatty sort. I had to coax conversation from him like squeezing blood from stone. Not that I can squeeze blood from stone…I just…nevermind.
The point was, our communication had been stripped down to nonverbal cues. Sharing a hammock, that was fine, he'd become slowly accustomed to our intimacy. But out on the deck, it became apparent neither one of us truly belonged there, no matter how hard we worked. Sailors had this innate way of recognizing their own in one another, and whatever they saw in us, it wasn't anything that belonged at sea. It didn't matter to either one of us, I'd booked us passage to Orlais. From there, we'd head to the Anderfels. Hopefully, my brother was still alive and well.
"The captain's been glancing over his shoulder since we left, Kirkwall," Fenris said to me one evening, "I think we ought to disappear when next we make port."
I thought about it, forcing a smile.
"I'm not that talented a mage," I retorted, "but I think we can manage to Val Royeaux, yeah?" Fenris didn't smile, or rather, he tried not to. His mouth twitched at the corners. I grinned.
"Don't fight it," I whispered dramatically, "let the corners of your mouth do the thing they most desire to do."
He stopped fighting a smile, and frowned instead. Sometimes my jokes landed short of the mark. I wasn't perfect.
That was the third week out to sea.
The fourth week, everything hit me. Everything.
We had a lot of downtime one day a week, where operations slowed, usually when the wind was filling the sails and the sea's currents were cooperating. After days of back-breaking labor, crawling all over the rigging, pricking my fingers on needles repairing clothes, shoes, and sails…one would think I was grateful for the opportunity to relax.
But no one ever told me that the quiet time was when all of your thoughts, the worst of them, converged. Guilt wormed its way into my gut, guilt that I couldn't save Bethany from the ogre, or Carver from the Taint, or mother from…
I didn't want to think about my mother, but the image came to mind unbidden, burning and terrifying. Her eyes had been so blank, void of emotion, but her body wasn't her own. Nor was anything else. I sat alone in the berthing, whetstone in hand, the blade to my staff in the other. Of all the horrible fates to befall someone, why had my mother been the victim of a gruesome blood mage?
Why did she have to die when I'd worked to save everyone?
Was this the Maker's answer to anyone attempting to effect real change?
Was this His will? That my bloodline should be expunged either by financial starvation or outright murder? At whose feet could I lay blame but my own? I was the one who decided to get mixed up in everyone's troubles. But that was so like me, wasn't it? Good little Merishka, always helping folk who couldn't help themselves. If I were going to be remembered for anything, though, it would be as the apostate who gave succor to the abomination known as Anders.
No one was going to want to hear my side of the story, or why we helped him. No one wanted to know nor cared that he emotionally manipulated me, using his desire for 'free mages' to hurt others.
The hundreds of dead in the wake of the Chantry's destruction certainly didn't care.
I really thought I was doing something, you know? I thought I was making a difference, setting a good example for other apostates. Blood magic and demonic backroom dealing didn't have to be our only way out. Kirkwall was a shit hole from Darktown to the Viscount's Keep, but…I thought if I did enough, maybe we all would have pulled together and made it worthwhile. Maybe if I hadn't said yes to that Deep Roads expedition none of this would have happened.
Maybe wasn't going to bring my mother back, or Bethany. And my brother was miles from me. Not only that, as if it weren't enough, we accidentally unleashed an unspeakable evil on the world. We killed it, of course, but I couldn't be bothered to care by that point. Mother was dead, and Meredith was ready to tear out Kirkwall's throat.
I was supposed to be the city's Champion. I didn't want to be, but no one else wanted to protect the city from itself. I didn't have a choice.
Maybe that was the problem: my entire life since leaving Lothering revolved around a lack of choices. From the moment Carver came stumbling into the village from Ostagar, with a wild tale on his lips and an unnamed terror in his eyes, it had always been a choice between living and dying. Flee the darkspawn menace, or wait for them to butcher us. Flee into the Wilds in hopes of escaping the darkspawn horde and die from exposure and starvation, or trust the Witch of the Wilds to see us safely to Gwaren. My entire adult life consisted of facing the unknown, or facing down death. One of those was a sure end; the other was always hit or miss. Mostly hit, depending on your perspective. Everyone knows that once you die, you're free from it all. Obligations, choices, concerns, all of it cast aside for the sweet release of death.
But no one ever tells you how to deal with the result if you live.
On the good days, the feeling was persistent but bearable, and I could count on hard, manual labor to distract me. On the bad days, Fenris caught me brooding, teased me that I was worse than he was, but he understood better than most. On the worst days, I contemplated the other choice. Maybe the world's troubles would be a little less if I wasn't there to draw them. Maybe, maybe, maybe.
More and more, the ocean began to look less serene and more inviting. I'd stand in the prow, fancy myself slipping over the railing, tumbling into the lapping wavelets to be rolled beneath. I closed my eyes and imagined, for a moment, the last thing I would do: breathe.
"Hawke." Fenris pulled me from my thoughts, and I opened my eyes, dismayed that no rough troughs had pitched me over the side. Turning to face him, I saw the answer to a question on his face, saw the knowledge in his eyes I didn't put there, and then I felt ashamed. This behavior didn't become me at all. I was a Hawke—a noble-blooded mage who had accomplished more than history would ever credit me with.
But I didn't care. None of it mattered. My heroics were all bullshit in the shadow of a world filled with callous disregard.
"Was I drifting again?" I asked him, willing a smile onto my face, humor into my voice, "I can't seem to keep any attention lately." Fenris didn't smile, didn't find my paltry attempt at humor to be amusing. So, even that was lost to me, then.
"Come with me." He said, taking my arm, gentle, insistent. I went with him, glib as I could muster, and he pointedly ignored my jibes at his attempt to be forceful. Aboardship, privacy was a luxury only the captain was afforded in his stateroom, but somehow, Fenris had managed to find us a relatively quiet nook of the ship belowdecks, on the gun deck, behind a heavy canon.
"If you had any more on your mind, your neck would snap." He said flatly, "And you've been standing in the prow of the ship for days. I'm sure you're well-acquainted with what the water looks like by now."
"I just wanted to make sure it was still blue, Fenris," I replied without missing a beat.
"Hawke." Somehow, he'd learned the trick of it. The one where he'd say my name in that tone, and then like a blade, cut the seams of me until I spilled open, all of the ugliness I kept locked away exposed. I'd learned the trick of resisting the urge, but Fenris had come into his own in his long years of freedom. He was far more determined and willful in spirit than many gave him credit for.
And so he merely watched me, and I unraveled, bit by bit, coming undone.
He didn't touch me, he merely let me unwind. Tears, hot and salty, came to my eyes, rolled down my cheeks in fat drops. My nose ran, and I wiped it feebly with my sleeve. It occurred to me in that moment that not once had I had time…nor the energy, to grieve. Now, with Kirkwall behind us, and another unknown ahead, I began to understand the true weight of what I'd—we'd—been through.
"We didn't change shit," I said between sniffles and breathless sobbing, "nothing we did. Nothing, Fenris. No amount of reasoning, peacekeeping, diplomacy, threats…all of it was just us beating against walls until our fists were bloody."
Fenris' mouth set into a grim but sad line, and his brows knit, furrowed with concern.
"Sometimes…" He began, and I knew he was searching for the words, "Sometimes there is nothing you can do. But you've done more than your share, Merishka." He only used my first name when he was serious. It was hard to tell, otherwise. Fenris was only ever varying degrees of seriousness.
"I did more than my share and it still ended in shit." I shot back contemptuously. Not at him, but at everything around us. "I should have killed him for what he did. But…but he wasn't really the problem. It wouldn't have solved anything."
I leaned back against the bulkhead, trying to find some semblance of comfort against the rude wood beneath my hands. At least I'd stopped crying.
"You're one woman," Fenris assured me, "I'm sure even an army couldn't have stalled what Kirkwall had coming." He was right, of course. The festering hostility in Kirkwall had been there long before either of us arrived. I hoped, with Meredith's demise, that the bulk of it would be gone.
None of it mattered, though, because Fenris leaned in close, pressed his forehead to mine. In the fetid darkness, his lyrium tattoos gave off the faintest glow.
"We did what we could. It wouldn't have been possible without you…and your habit of getting into trouble." He assured me, smiling when I laughed.
"Like flies to horse shit, as Isabela would say," I laughed softly. Fenris echoed my laugh, and for a moment we simply remembered.
"Yes," he agreed, "something like that. And I have a feeling that won't change…and you're going to need me by your side if you intend to be reckless."
I pursed my lips.
"I can literally light things on fire with my hands, Fenris." I grumbled.
"Including yourself if I recall." He pulled away, his gaze never leaving my own, that lopsided smirk still present at the corner of his mouth.
"I was drunk!" I protested. Fenris' brows went up.
"During the fight with those slavers?" I covered my face with my hands and groaned. He had me there. Fenris gently grasped my wrists, tugging my hands away.
"Would you have done it?" He asked me quietly, "If I hadn't been there?"
It was one thing to know the question unasked; it was another to hear it given a voice, to speak it into existence, and to be unable to ignore it. I let my gaze focus on anything but his face.
"I don't know." I said quietly, "I've considered it, heavily. Maybe the world would be better off, you know?" I felt uncomfortable again, "That Hawke…always at the center of catastrophe."
"Because you're the one fixing it." Fenris told me firmly, "Or did you forget the last ten years we've spent fighting alongside one another?"
I didn't forget, but those ten years had been spent constantly trying to protect what remained of my family, and somehow always ending up with everyone's troubles dumped into my lap. The guilt from my failure to protect a city that relied on me as its champion was a lodestone around my neck. If I threw myself over the ship's railing I would sink, I knew I would.
Perhaps it would have been the one thing I was ever good at.
"Merishka…" I came out of the fog again and Fenris was doing that bit with his hands, a signifier that he wanted to touch me but wasn't quite sure how. So tentatively, slowly, I touched him instead. I put my hand over his chest, felt his deep inhale, and swallowed hard, feeling the beat of his life beneath my palm.
"Will you stay?" I asked him softly, taking my hand away and sitting on the floor. He joined me.
"You know I will."
It was enough. It had to be enough.