A/N: Because the Dragon Age bug is hard to shake. And because I can =3.
Chapter 1
Lost and Found
The world did not mourn the disappearance of Kirkwall's Champion. Rosalie Hawke: a woman whose story from penniless refugee to saviour of mage-kind was a tale told to children and soldiers alike and whose family name was its own adjective, synonymous with heroics and true, undeniable insanity. Anyone who had known her personally could not argue either of those points. But lately the name carried another, more sinister meaning: of murder and rebellion and things whispered behind closed doors that smelled of the faintest whiff of lyrium and desperation. Apostate – the stigma that her family had tried so hard to keep hidden for all those years, thrown in her face by people who had invited her into their homes for tea only days earlier – a brand that was burned into her very blood and a way for the Templars on her trail to forget she was a person who hoped and dreamed and lost like the rest of them, perhaps more than others.
Thedas was thrown into chaos; the boiled over tensions of Mage and Templar in Kirkwall and the resulting disaster only the beginning of an insurrection that would shape the world forever. Magi Circles everywhere were revolting, spurred on by the news coming out of a city that had survived two invasions, and the Chantry was forced to concede to the humane demands lest more innocent blood be spilled. The newly freed mages were blissfully ignorant of the merciless slaughter and madness that their rebellion stemmed from, the two people who gave up everything to stand in the eye of the storm, and the broken woman who drove a knife through the heart of the only one who had understood. Perhaps the only one who ever would.
It was only too easy to slip away in the middle of the night and never look back.
But someone had to be blamed for the death of all those innocents, and the man responsible was already dead and buried, so the Chantry turned to the next best thing. They labelled her blood mage, heretic, a mentally unstable murderer fit to be burned at the stake and turned the world against her. A new order was formed, the Seekers, dedicated to hunting and locating the missing Champion and her former companions, and the Divine threatened an exalted march on any country who harboured the fugitives.
The world did not mourn the disappearance of Rosalie Hawke because in their eyes she was nothing more than scum on the heels of their boots despite all that she had sacrificed. It was only a matter of time before Thedas watched Kirkwall's champion disappear and be replaced by the hunted apostate.
-oOo-
Dearest Carver,
I will keep things short, I'm afraid I don't have much time and I hope this letter finds you well; the couriers here are very shifty looking. The Templars have picked up my trail again, it's time to move on but don't worry I will be fine, I'll skip town tonight, and don't say you won't worry little brother, you'll hurt my delicate mage flower feelings! I don't know when I will be able to write again: just know that the Maker will find me innocent, He must, for it is his values that I fight for and that I love you very, very dearly. Please…don't be ashamed to say you're a Hawke, say it proudly little brother, and pray that we will be safe.
Love Always, Rosalie.
P.S. Did you know Isabela snores? Quite loudly in fact, I have found endless hours of amusement teasing her about it.
-oOo-
A small figure, wrapped up in a grey travelling cloak clasped at the neck with a silver hawk, stepped gingerly into the darkened halls of the hallowed building, now having fallen into disrepair, the caretakers no doubt having fled with the rest of the villagers once the raiders decided to move in. It felt odd to be back in one of these, Rosalie thought, eyeing the gloomy shadows the arched rafters and tall stained-glass windows cast onto the dusty stone floor with wariness, as if expecting someone to jump out from between the pillars lining the sides of the room at any moment.
Rain fell heavily against cobblestone streets and on the tin roof of the Chantry, making the cavernous hall echo with a strange splashy sound that made Rosalie feel as if she were drowning, and thunder crackled ominously in the late evening sky. The seemingly random storm had forced the crew of The Siren's Call, the second one of course, to dock at the small Orlesian coastal town until it passed. The group of hired, rowdy sailors had been overjoyed at the thought of a good mug of ale and a romp after two weeks at sea and nothing but watered down mead and stinking men to look at. No-one had been happier than their captain, however, who had been growing cagy and, if you would believe it, raunchier every second she had gone without a good lay. Rosalie smiled fondly at the way Isabela had happily flounced off with the rest of her crew to the nearest whorehouse, hoping that the Pirate Queen would realize that this place was run on crime rings that might not take too kindly to strangers soon. She dared not count how many times the other woman had propositioned her over the past weeks.
Rosalie had not felt the same itch as the others, in fact she had felt very little for months now, or she tried not to anyway, and instead had decided to wander the abandoned streets in the rain, running fingers over boarded up houses and reminding herself that she was, in fact, still alive. Eventually the rain had become too heavy to continue and the mage had decided to take shelter in this building. She hadn't known it was a Chantry until she stepped inside and shut the doors against the rain, and only then did she notice, when a flash of lightning lit up the room in a white glow for a few seconds, the rows of dilapidated pews and the giant statue of Andraste standing at the opposite end of the room, her once golden colour tarnished to dull copper and the candelabra that normally hung from her arm now mysteriously missing.
Rosalie sighed in the silence, stirring up that musty scent that came with decades of righteousness and old books. She supposed it was fitting, she had been trying to find comfort in the wild and unpredictable behaviour of nature, and nature had delivered her to the one place she knew would have brought her comfort had she been six months younger, six months more naïve, six months more in love. Still it never hurt to try, it's not like there were Templars hiding in the shadows waiting to arrest and execute her, right? Oh, if only she could be joking.
This Chantry had obviously been abandoned for a very long time, the mage doubted that the raiders would be highly spiritual people, but the remnants of grandeur still remained in the delicate carvings on the white marble columns and the peeling mural painted on the vaulted ceiling, depicting the betrayal of Andraste by her husband. Rosalie skimmed her fingers over the arms of the pews lightly as she walked down the aisle like a bride ready to be given to her betrothed, the coarse fabric of her cheap cloak trailing on the ground behind her.
An altar stood before the statue of the Maker's bride, a golden sun displayed on a stand in the centre of it and an assortment of candles in different stages of their lives on either side, but all covered in that same musty scented dust that made the runaway mage's nose tickle. She blew on the candles to free them of their coating and muttering a weak flame spell under her breath lit all the candles and the wall sconces, flooding the room with a flickering warm orange glow that soothed the edges of the chill that had unwittingly seeped into her bones upon entering the Chantry.
Rosalie sunk to the ground, folding her long legs underneath her crimson dress, and closed her cerulean eyes, preparing to pray for the first time in what seemed like a lifetime before hesitation gripped her like a vine and froze her movements. She was being stupid; she had always been a spiritual person from the time her mother had first taken her to a feastday when she was just barely old enough to talk, and even when the mage discovered her magic at a young age she had continued to go, knowing full well how dangerous and reckless that had been. Even in Kirkwall, when her faith had been shaken by all she had seen and her activities did not allow time for soul-searching, she had taken any time she could to attend services. But still that niggling of doubt remained, what if the Maker did not wish to hear her, she had been accomplice to the desecration of His temple after all, and brought the Templars to her or something. Rosalie groaned, pressing her forehead against the clasped hands leaning on the altar, realizing just her paranoid her own reasons were and let out an uneasy chuckle.
"Well…here goes nothing," The mage muttered to herself, taking a deep breath and starting:
"Maker I know you probably don't want to hear this but I need to say it… if only to make the words have a voice," Rosalie paused, ears straining against the silence for any supernatural sign that her God was displeased, but there was only the drum of rain on the tin roof and a surge of laughter from the brothel some streets away. She continued, "He was a good man…Anders was a good man, he believed in freedom and that everyone should be judged only on how they act, not on circumstances that can't be changed. He had a noble soul, I knew it from the minute I saw him, healing an injured refugee and not demanding anything in return, and he was so kind,"
Eyes opened to stare through tear dampened black lashes at clasped hands; one hand disentangled itself and went to the braid clipped into her raven hair, entwined with feathers and a bell that Anders had told her had belonged to his cat, Ser Pounce-a-lot. She let her fingers stroke the braid fondly, the feathers silk soft against the pads of her digits. "He truly didn't mean any harm… I-I don't think that was him in those last moments, no Anders I knew could have done something so blatantly wrong as murder, no in fact I'm almost sure it was Justice…or Vengeance. Freedom is a noble ideal, but he paid for it with his life and I will pay for it with repentance for the rest of mine. I hope that is enough."
With that tightly held confession the Ex-Champion stood, brushed the dust from her dress and spun on her heels, walking back up the aisle and extinguishing the flames with an artless flick of her fingers. Rosalie stopped with her hands on the handles to the great double doors, eyes staring down at the supple brown leather of her boots but not really seeing.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
And she left her secrets behind in that mausoleum of a Chantry.
-oOo-
Isabela,
How is she holding up? I haven't heard news of you in quite some time so I thought I better check up on my girls, though I suppose not hearing could mean you're doing very, very well. Aveline and that Cullen guy, he's Knight-Commander now if you wanted to know, have been doing their best to keep the city in check but to be honest I think I've had enough of Mages and Templars for a lifetime, and I'm not the only one. Daisy had to go into hiding the other week, something about insane Templars, and Fenris has decided to join the guard for the time being. Damnit I knew Blondie was bad news from the moment he did that whole glowy-I'm-possessed thing, I wish I had never sent her to get those maps from him. Bah, I can't change it now can I, no point worrying over it, I might get wrinkles. Stay safe, and take care of her.
Varric
P.S. I knew you snored! All those complaints I got at the Hanged Man were all your fault, Rivaini you owe me so many pints when you get back.
-oOo-
Relief, the vastness of which the runaway mage had never felt before, not even when they had first been granted entrance to Kirkwall, flooded Rosalie as the looming, ominous outline of stone gates stretching as high as she could bend her head to see appeared on the horizon. Vigil's Keep, ancestral home of the Howe family and the stronghold of the Fereldan Grey Wardens. A sweeter sight Rosalie had never seen.
The crescent moon was high in the midnight sky, casting a sickly skeletal glow over the surrounding fields and forests that unnerved Rosalie, but she had been walking for so long that she could no longer feel her feet, certain that they had turned to bricks of stone attached to the end of her legs. Isabela had pulled them into Amaranthine port that morning, just as dawn was beginning to poke its head over the hills, and wasted no time in slipping away to the nearest tavern before the harbourmaster could wake himself up enough to realize that there was suddenly another ship in the port. Rosalie was glad she hadn't been around for that mess. But there had been delays in her plan as the pirate fussed over her unwilling adoptee, filling her already full pack with enough supplies to keep a small army running, propositioning her one last time and making sure that the mage knew exactly where she was going. One would think that Rosalie hadn't been born and lived in Fereldan for most of her life.
Rosalie set out soon after that, to a tearful Isabela who was trying very hard to show that she was anything but tearful, at the time grateful to be away from people who were watching her every moment like a mother bird worried that her chick is silly enough, or depressed enough, to walk off a cliff, but now that familiar aching loneliness was starting to set in. She had spent most of her life always surrounded by someone, first it was her family, and then her friends and then…Anders, it felt so foreign to be walking with no-one to comment to that the Wending Woods were looking particularly creepy tonight weren't they. Her situation wasn't helped by the fact that she was supposed to be making this journey with her rebel by her side, maybe if she shut her eyes really hard she could forget the last few months and imagine he was there. They had promised one night, lying in each other's arms on her bed only weeks before that life-changing moment, that when everything in Kirkwall was settled enough that they could forget her for a few months that they would visit Amaranthine and the Wardens, he had been reluctant at first but Rosalie's earnest desire to see her brother had been enough to persuade the gooey-hearted healer. Ah, such things seemed so silly now, but the mage remembered feeling like they were the most brilliant thing she had ever dared to dream.
Yes Anders, It was nice to be happy wasn't it? At least for that little while.
Only silence met her whispered thoughts, those private little things that she would have shared with him that now died slowly inside that part of her heart she gave to him. Rosalie laughed, a cold, bitter sound that was more akin to a cry of anguish than an expression of happiness, before blinking away dewy tears and running a hand through raven locks. Pulling her thin travelling cloak tighter around her, because no-one told her that Amaranthine was so damn cold at night, as if that would ward away the dark cloud that hovered above the former champion and letting the numbness she had grown so accustomed to hiding behind take over. It was so much easier no to think.
Another half hours walk awaited the runaway mage, which she begrudgingly undertook, before the foreboding gates of Vigil's Keep were upon her… as were the floating flickering of guards holding torches patrolling the perimeter.
"Halt!" One guard, apparently the gatekeeper, shouted from his post behind the pointed wooden spikes lining the walls, "Who goes there?"
Hawke winced against the biting cold making her eyes water as she dropped her hood and shouted back, "I'm looking for Warden Carver, is he around?"
"He's asleep Ma'am, like the rest of 'em, like I should be," The gatekeeper hollered, muttering the last part no doubt in case his superiors were around, gesturing with a gauntleted hand at the Keep. Rosalie cursed colourfully under her breath, how could she get them to open up then; the Wardens weren't exactly known for their hospitality to people who looked like ordinary travellers, and it wasn't like she could tell them that the Champion of Kirkwall was here. Mercifully Rosalie was saved by the appearance of another figure from what was probably a guard station located behind the ornate head of the gate, attracted by all the shouting.
"What's going on here Guardsman?" A beautifully familiar, deep, gravelly voice asked of the gatekeeper. Rosalie could have kissed the eldest Howe child right then and there, even if he still didn't know who she was and that would probably be wildly inappropriate.
"There is a woman here for Warden Carver but he's asleep, Ser, shall I tell her to scat?" Gatekeeper replied earnestly, earning a flare of annoyance from Rosalie. Nathaniel's brow furrowed in concern, his prematurely aged face illuminated by the orange flow of the torch, as he stepped away from the guard and toward the spikes to see who their late night guest was. The mage resisted the urge to jump up and down and shout here I am!
"For Carver…," Realization dawned upon the elder Warden's features as he leaned over to stare at her in surprise, "Hawke, is that you?"
"The one and only!" Rosalie shouted through chattering teeth, trying her best to form a watery smile out of her frozen face but fearing she failed miserably.
"Maker…Open the gates! Quickly! And someone fetch a blanket for our guest!"
The earth seemed to shudder and rearrange as the great gates split open, pulling backwards with the heavy creak of aged wood and the squealing metallic clank of chains straining against moving cogs. Rosalie wasted no time in hurrying through the gates, only later realizing that she had crossed the invisible line from her old life into what would become her new, and trying not to flinch as they slammed shut behind her. Nathaniel Howe appeared from one of the staircases attached to the battlements, materializing as if from the shadows themselves, as she rubbed her stiff, uncovered hands furiously against her arms in a futile attempt to warm herself up, and upon seeing the decidedly unhealthy blue tinge to the former champion's skin he took her by the arm and marched her through the courtyard and up into the blessed warmth of the keep's common hall.
A few late night stragglers, who had been sitting around the hearth fire with playing cards, glanced up as a frazzled elf burst from a side door and bolted skittishly over to the two new arrivals, a fur lined blanket in his hand. Rosalie almost melted into a gooey mess of contentedness on the floor, purring loudly, when she managed to wrap the heavy cloth around her shoulders, the heat immediately chasing away the worst of her frostbite and thawing her brain. So maybe Isabela hadn't been completely unjustified in her worrying. Nathaniel was watching her contemplatively, his arms crossed over his leather-clad chest, an emotion somewhere between shock, disbelief and the sharpened edges of distrust. The mage imagined his thought process to be something like this: Hawke is here? She can't be here! Why is she here?
She knew the reaction well.
"Hawke-"
Rosalie cut him off, raising one hand that was beginning to regain its normal pale cream colour. A sudden weariness came over her, all the weeks of running catching up and smothering her like a poison fog, and the thick desire to lie down, close her eyes and just forget for a few hours grabbing a hold of her heart. "I can explain everything tomorrow. Please if I could just beg your hospitality for one night…,"
The mage could not look at him, choosing to stare at the grey stone floor instead of revealing her weakness, but she could feel his hesitation. Rosalie did not blame him. But the unnervingly perceptive rogue seemed to sense that the Wardens were not in any immediate danger, at least while the fugitive's autonomy was kept, and so took her gently by the arms and steered her through the common room and down a series of winding hallways and twisting stairs. Rosalie got to know the rough texture of the rough-hewn grey stone floors very well.
Finally Nathaniel stopped outside of a wooden door, the splintered wood seeming to have been recently repaired, and twisting the handle revealed a room no bigger than Rosalie's supply closet in her old estate. There was a bed inside, an old mattress on the floor, a chest for belongings with an ancient looking padlock and a wash basin but that was about it. The apostate didn't mind, she had slept in worse since her flight began. It was liberating when she stepped inside and dumped her pack ungracefully on the floor, stretching her aching arms high above her head, and earning a small chuckled from the elder Howe.
"Sorry about the accommodation, this wing is for new recruits, but it should do for now," Nathaniel apologized, his arms still crossed against his chest.
Rosalie grinned, a fake grin that was good enough for pacifying concern, and jested hollowly, "Trust me, you have no idea how good this looks right now,"
He was not convinced, she could see it in the tightening of his jaw, but he wasn't about to bring it up now. Maker knew the Warden wasn't very good at emotions. "There should be some clothes in the chest if you need them…Hawke, in the morning, I'll have to tell the Commander…"
Rosalie sighed, and nodded. There was no point trying to hide from the inevitable, she doubted the Warden-Commander was docile or stupid enough to ignore the outlawed criminal living right under his nose. Even if he was, she would not have these people who had only been kind to her harmed because of her foolish heart. Nathaniel inclined his head in acknowledgement and goodnight, and slipped silently from the room, shutting the door behind him.
The mage wasted no time in stripping off her garments and boots, so she was left only in her smalls, before rummaging through her pack and pulling out the baggy white shirt that Isabela had insisted she take with her from Orlais. This was of course before Rosalie had realized the shirt only fell to her navel. Still it served as a good sleeping garment to cover her modesty on a ship full of rowdy men and an even rowdier woman. Rosalie pulled the shirt over her head and promptly collapsed on the straw stuffed mattress, the ink blackness of dreamless sleep already tugging at the edge of her vision, one hand reaching up to tangle with the feathers in her hair.
"I'm sorry, love," She whispered into the silence, finally able to let dark tears flow. But I need this.
A/N: I hope you guys enjoyed and no-one was too out of character~! Yay for awesome pairings that make me giggle with happiness! Please Read, Review (I want the good and the bad!), Favourite, Alert and all that jazz, it keeps the attention whore authoress happy XD. Please note that in the future as the story picks up I will be using two Wardens: M!Cousland and F!Amell, simply because I couldn't choose which Warden was my favourite ha-ha~!