This is for the DA2 Anders prompt group at BSN. This week's prompt is "misguided."
Back-story: Audrey Hawke has a tendency to disappear on the anniversary of father's death, warned by Bethany, Anders goes to her new estate in Hightown to keep an eye on her.
It will fit into future chapters of my current fic The Chameleon
A rare showing of Audrey Hawke's vulnerability.
Early night was encroaching, fading the light in the sitting room where they sat, Anders still nursing the same drink for the past three hours and Audrey curled up in an armchair in a semi inebriated state.
"He was so big you know" she said sadly "not actually, but when I was little he was so tall, towering over me, he seemed so strong and so powerful, despite the ever-present threat of being discovered, he made me feel safe. He used to let me climb atop his shoulders to try and reach the stars, when I couldn't he would smile and tell me I just had to grow up a little more, then I would be able to pluck them from the heavens myself... It seemed so strange to see him lying there, broken, so small, so weak-"
Anders said sympathetically "Attacks of the heart are often so sudden and severe that it completely debilitates a mage's ability to heal themselves."
She raised her head off her arms and looked at him but there was something distant in her green eyes "It wasn't an attack of the heart" her voice was so lifeless.
"But Beth said-"
She cut him off "We lied to her... she was thirteen... grief alone she could barely handle, she was so vulnerable, I had to watch her, stand over her while she slept with a dagger poised to strike if..." she choked down a sob.
A memory flashed through his mind, he was 15, pulled out of a class on charming weapons with fire, taken to a room ringed with Templars who drew their swords the moment Irving started to speak telling him his mother was dead.
Audrey wiped her nose and continued "if we told her the truth her pain would have been greater, but worse would have been her fear."
"Audrey how did your father die?" he asked softly.
She was staring at point to his left, the silence seemed to stretch between them; finally she spoke "We used to work at one of the Bann's estates, father had finished for the day but I hadn't, so I told him to go on, I'd only be a short while..." she pulled her eyes back to meet his gaze "Three Templars caught him on his way home, I came upon them, he had paralysed one, one was dead and the other was pulling his sword out of my father's stomach, that one never saw me coming... They had depleted his mana, so he couldn't heal himself" she took a shuddering breath "and he died telling me it wasn't my fault."
Anders had moved to crouch before her, his heart breaking in her sorrow and pain, and that she was still harbouring this misguided notion that she was to blame, "The vagaries from our daily decisions are potentially infinite, you were not to know, if you hadn't stayed behind you would probably be dead too" his eyes beseeching her to see reason.
Audrey looked down to his hands surrounding hers "You don't understand... I told someone... someone who I foolishly thought we could trust, they informed the Templars of him."
Inside him Justice began to rage, demanding vengeance to be exacted for her pain, "What happened to the person?" Anders asked his voice edged with venom.
An image that Audrey thought she had left behind in her nightmares filled her waking eyes again, of silent pleading blue eyes that filled with tears and screamed for a mercy that would not come, "He died" she said hollowly.
Silence built between them again as Justice receded and Audrey tried to clear her vision.
Anders disengaged their hands and reached out to lightly stroke her cheek then dropped it back down "I'm so sorry".
"He trusted me and I failed him, I failed them all, and I kept failing, with Carver and with Beth, and now my mother is reminded of it every day of her life when she looks at me and doesn't see her husband, son or daughter." Tears started streaming down her face "And I don't know what's worse, the fact that I was so misguided by a man that I loved or that my father was so obviously mistaken about me because I didn't keep them safe, which he managed to do for so many years, and I ruined it all in less than seven."
She let Anders pull her towards him and succumbed into his comforting embrace, letting the waves of despair and distress crash over her, she stopped caring about being strong, stopped fighting it, and for the first time in years she cried.