The only thing he heard was the sound of Bethany's bones crunching against the stone. Garrett did not know what was expected of him. The ogre had charged—directly at him, at Carver, at Aveline...they'd all jumped out of the way. Bethany had been standing before the ogre, protecting mother. He didn't know why they hadn't jumped out of the way too. They'd seen the ogre coming. They'd had time to run away.
Why was it his fault Bethany had stood her ground?
"Why didn't you stop her?"
Why...?
Carver and mother had given him the cold shoulder, both grieving over Bethany in their own ways. Mother had lost her daughter, Carver had lost his twin, Aveline had lost her husband, and Garrett held the blame for all of it. Apparently all was supposed to be well in his world, aside from the guilt of being the sole cause of Bethany's death, never mind the ogre that had killed her with its bare hands. They hadn't wanted any comfort, nor had they offered any between themselves. Each grieved in their own separate spaces in the cramped confines of the ship to Kirkwall, jammed together and pretending the others weren't sitting right there beside them.
"If only Bethany were here..." He'd heard mother say, sad and morose. It was still his fault. Still big brother's fault that little sister had had her head crushed in, that mother's little girl had died so violently and so young. Still Garrett's fault that Carver was now bereft his only sister, feeling angry and lost in her absence, feeling like half of him had died with her too. Maybe it had. Carver was always angry now. It was still Garrett's duty as the eldest child to take care of them though.
Still my fault.
He buried himself in his work. Athenril always had something for him and Carver to do. Garrett was glad for it and it meant not having to sit in Gamlen's rotting house to listen to the silence that hung in the shape of Bethany's absence. That silence was full of pointed fingers and accusations that he knew were just in his mind. But they were still there. He couldn't stand it. He didn't dare. He crept home at the latest hour possible, sometimes after dawn, only because it was a safe place to sleep. Relatively safe. No one would shank him in Gamlen's. It never did feel like it was a home. His sister's shade lingered there, even though she had never set foot on these shores, let alone in his uncle's house. The nightmares made sleeping a grueling trial rather than a respite. He only rested when his feet dragged to the point of stumbling, and only with the greatest family never inquired after his health or state of mind, distracted as they were with their own grievances. A pall hung over the interior of the place, as if his sister's corpse still lay in repose upon one of the bunk beds, unspoken of and ignored. He couldn't shake the shadows, couldn't shake the feeling, as if she stood in his shadow, and followed him silently. He couldn't get away, couldn't be alone, couldn't be safe—but the silence was the worst.
Bethany was always silent now.
He clung to the piecemeal companions he picked up as he built a name for himself in Kirkwall's underground, not letting Tomwise, Worthy or Elegant know how he panicked when they drifted away on their own separate paths. At least Carver was always there...brooding and sulking and raging silently. Silently. Until he burst, lashing out with words, with fists, with blade and insult alike.
And Carver was always there in Garrett's shadow, where Bethany's absence was. Still together. Still silent. Carver hated, and Carver raged, wanting to get out of his brother's shadow. Garrett wondered if Carver felt her there too, in Garrett's shadow, or in his own. She didn't have to fear the Templars anymore, at least. She was with father now.
So why were they still bleeding for her, a year later?
"If only Bethany were here." Yes, here in Kirkwall amidst the starving refugees, the bandits, the hypervigilant Templars...she would be suffering with them. Misery's company would weigh less heavily. It had frozen his insides to see a woman who looked so much like her in the market place. He'd nearly called out his dead sister's name, before he remembered—she was dead. No longer alive, she was a still, silent, broken body upon the blood-spattered ground.
He could see that mother was still broken inside. She'd been breaking into little pieces, even before father died. There had always been something she was missing, something that she longed for. She'd broken into more pieces when father died, and after Bethany died, mother's heart was little more than fine ashes from their funeral pyres.
How many pieces could a heart break into, before it ceased to be a heart, Garrett wondered. He never stopped to wonder if his own heart was still in one piece. He would've found the answer, if he could stand to look at it. Their time with Athenril was over, and now Carver and mother wanted nothing to do with the smuggler—they didn't want to associate with the riffraff anymore. They had nothing to fear—but Garrett did. Mages never slept well in Kirkwall, not in the Gallows, not in the city, not ever. Their waking hours were followed by rumors straight out of the Gallows, whispered like ghost stories made more frightening by the fact that it was right over there, across the water. At night there were the soft noises just at the edge of hearing, the feeling of something watching from the impossible distances of the Fade. Something. Garrett never slept more than he had to. He hated it in Kirkwall. But in Kirkwall they stayed—for mother's sake. At Carver's insistence. At Garrett's perpetual peril.
No, without Athenril's protection from the Templars, Garrett was left looking for a "proper" means of hiding from the Templars. Then the brothers caught wind of the Deep Roads expedition, and sought to hire on, but Bartrand had dismissed them as easily as the next set of desperate, out-of-work refugees. Hawke hoped that this would finally be enough to convince his family to simply leave. Maybe mother would forget about the old Amell estate and the family could pull up stakes, earn enough money to go back home to Ferelden. They didn't have the farm anymore, but it'd be home, it'd be somewhere else, somewhere Not-Kirkwall.
Then along came Varric, smiling and serving up an entirely reasonable answer, along with a way out of the whole mess, right into the expedition. Hawke couldn't blame him for it. He couldn't hate him for it either. He still harbored a helpless, undirected rage deep down in his gut that left his head ringing and feeling oddly light. That was another thing—no one called him Garrett anymore. It was always Hawke now. Another reminder of his responsibilities. His duty.
Wading through the blood and sludge for coin, they met several strange people, all of whom seemed to congregate around Hawke—all castaways or misfits. Except, perhaps, for Aveline. She had found a place in the guard, and Hawke found himself somewhat envious of that. He did not begrudge her the happiness she had found—how could he, when he'd been the one that mercy-killed her husband? He even went so far as to help uncover the corruption of the then-Guard-Captain Jeven, which lead Seneschal Bran to select Aveline as Jeven's replacement.
Aveline and Hawke had a delicately balanced relationship—Hawke broke the law regularly, beyond the mere fact of being an apostate, and Aveline would look at him, weigh his actions, and judge him. It frayed at his patience at times, even knowing that she meant well. What else was he supposed to do? It wasn't like she could give him a place in the guard. If the Templars found him among the city guards' ranks... There was simply no place for a mage. Not in the guard, not in Kirkwall. And yet here he was.
He'd had a hope that Anders, the healer who ran the free clinic in Darktown, might be a friend. Someone who simply just understood what it was to be an apostate. He knew the fear of constantly being hunted and the ever present danger of getting caught. Perhaps, in Anders' case, the healer knew it too well. Anders had been nervous and worn to unraveling when Hawke and his companions had stepped inside the clinic. There'd been something odd about him. Something Hawke couldn't quite put his finger on. Then they had found out, that night in the Chantry.
They'd gone to rescue Karl, a circle mage and a friend of Anders's. But instead, they had found a tranquil man who'd once been Karl, and a slew of Templars closing the trap around them. Hawke had panicked. At the sight of Andraste's flaming sword gleaming upon the many chest plates in the dim candlelight, his heart dropped into his boots. But then...
Anders's secret had come to light, in a breathtakingly horrifying revelation made in the blood and tormented screams of both men and metal rendered molten upon the gold-trimmed tiles of the Chantry floor. That was what frightened the Templars most. That was what made people fear mages most. An Abomination. How Anders had not gone mad was a mystery—or was he? Hawke couldn't tell anymore. Everyone was mad in Kirkwall in one way or another. Some were simply more subtle about it. That they lived here at all was indicative of some mental abnormality, Hawke reasoned.
Was he mad as well?
He must be. He still lived here, in Kirkwall, at Carver and mother's behest. Sometimes, he wondered why he simply didn't leave on his own. He knew he couldn't leave because it was his duty as the eldest child to support his family. Because he knew if he left, then he'd be alone.
Would it be any worse than how alone he felt right now?
His heart curled in on itself, shriveling into some pain-wrecked semblance of what it once had been. Maybe if he just stuck it out, got this expedition sorted out and got mother the Amell name and the house in Hightown back, it'd all be alright.
Maybe?
He didn't like bringing Fenris along. But sometimes Hawke just couldn't stand to bring Carver along when his younger brother was in one of his vindictive moods, and Aveline wasn't always available. They needed someone to mete out the damage on the front lines of whatever impromptu battle field the group might stumble upon. The elf had made it abundantly clear he despised mages of every ilk, including Hawke. Why Fenris kept following him, Hawke didn't know, or understand. Perhaps he simply needed the coin and the safety found in numbers. An escaped slave marked as the property of a Magister of the Imperium had few friends, after all. With the attitude Fenris sported, it was not surprising that the elf had few friends. But perhaps his attitude was simply directed towards mages. He got along with Varric, at least. It didn't quite stop Hawke from feeling a tiny bit paranoid about having the elf behind him. The intangible rip-the-heart-right-out-of-your-chest ability the elf boasted was about as unnerving as Anders's passenger, whether the passenger's name was "Justice" or "Vengeance."
At some point, he'd headed out to Sundermount to keep the bargain he'd struck with the Witch of the Wilds, in return for her aid in getting to safety ahead of the Darkspawn horde. The miraculous and unexplained appearance of the Witch in question aside, Hawke was left holding the bag with none of the answers, another pile of cryptic words that made little sense, and a Dalish blood mage of all things, who didn't have much sense of self-preservation to boot. Hawke had given her two days max before she got caught, but Varric had taken a shine to her. So that was how Merrill the blood mage joined Hawke's retinue as yet another example of Kirkwall's finest insanity. And Hawke simply accepted it, as he accepted everything these days it seemed. It was hard to really work up the energy to make a fuss about anything beneath the constant weight and grind of the day-to-day affairs.
Perhaps the most outlandish task he had been given in his never-ending quest for more coin, was headhunting Tal-Vashoth in return for a lucrative business deal with a dwarf by the name of Javaris Tintop. It turned out to be a dead end since the leader of the ship-wreaked Qunari in Kirkwall had made no such deal with Javaris. The Arishok, as he was called, was probably the biggest, most intimidating ox-man Hawke had ever seen. Quite the eye-opener for a farm boy from the small town of Lothering, even after spending a year seeing all manner of strange goods the smugglers under Athenril laid their hands upon. It likely added to the jaded outlook he had, having gained some perspective for what was constituted as strange, outlandish, and downright dangerous.
He didn't even blink when some minor Orlesian nobleman asked him to look for his missing wife—it was just another task to run about the city with while scrabbling for more jobs and more coin. Then he discovered that the search for Orlesian noble's missing wife involved an aged Templar, demons, and a severed hand. On one of the hand's fingers, he found a wedding ring that was later identified as belonging to the missing woman in question. The elder Templar, who went by the name Emeric, was certain that the dead woman was one of many in a long line of victims. The serial killer had a penchant for delivering white lilies to the victim's house before he took them. Hawke left that job to Aveline's guards and the Templar Order. They were the ones who were paid to deal with this sort of thing, not him. He did get a bit of coin for his legwork, but gold was not enough to motivate him to pursue that line of inquiry. It seemed too dangerous to be worth it.
These days he was always tired...and that was simply how things were. He couldn't even work up a properly impressed response when he first met Isabela, pirate and captain of the late Siren's Call, after a very swift beginning and an even swifter ending to a bar fight at the Hanged Man. She was likely the most normal one of the lot. Which simply made him cynical enough to figure she likely had some dark past or hidden strand of insanity to her person. Everyone was nuts in Kirkwall. Some simply hid it better.
He didn't really understand how such a disparate group could stand to be in one room all together—Anders was forever on about mage rights, forever at odds with Fenris for any of a number of obvious reasons, not the least of which being the healer's status as an Abomination. The one thing they did agree upon was their contempt for Merrill and her blood magic. Guard Captain Aveline sat in what amounted to a den of thieves, rubbing elbows with the likes of Isabela and Varric, both whom broke the law brazenly or discreetly as fit their natures. Yet there they were, sitting around the table in Varric's suite, drinking and playing Wicked Grace on a weekly basis. He didn't understand it. But it was a small space in time where he felt like everything was okay. But that was all it was—a moment. A breath of air too small to breathe comfortably, but not small enough to grant the bitter mercy of letting a drowning man's lungs give out. It was a refuge he could never stay in for longer than the span of one evening—the others all had their own lives to deal with, their own business and going-ons. No one ever asked if he was alright, or if he needed help personally, speaking as if their own personal problems and the next paying job were all that mattered.
He got used to it, though. That's what life was like in Kirkwall. It became a steady rhythm for him, like a ship pitching to and fro in a storm. The day of the expedition drew steadily nearer amidst the sea of fighting and odd jobs they did, drawing them onwards like a beacon—they'd succeeded in gathering up a sufficient amount of gold with some coin to spare, with enough left over to ensure that mother and uncle Gamlen would have enough for food and amenities while they were gone. In the days leading up to their departure however, mother grew increasingly nervous. He'd expected her to hassle them to be careful, to ensure that they took every precaution and didn't stray away from the group alone, to pack and prepare and to look after each other.
He didn't expect her to try and convince him to leave Carver behind, speaking right in front of the man in question like Carver was merely a tag-along. Carver had been adamant about going, but mother always had a way with words, finding chinks in her eldest surviving child's doubts and insecurities:
"It's not fine! You can't both go! What if something were to happen to you?"
That had been directed at Carver, her voice full of concern for her youngest son's survival. She'd then turned to Hawke—did she ever call him Garrett anymore either? He couldn't remember when he'd last heard her call him by name—and said:
"I understand why you would want to do this."
Hawke hadn't thought there was anything left to hurt in the withered little husk of a heart he still possessed, but her words struck as deep as any lethal blow, with pain and guilt that flowed as freely as lifeblood from a mortal wound. He felt the unspoken accusation in her words, that he should want to crawl into a hole and die for his failure to protect Bethany—that this was simply the best he could do to redress the grievous wrong he'd done to the world for failing to protect his sister. His presence wouldn't be missed. He heard that loud and clear, in the way mother pleaded to leave little brother behind. Carver was the one that would be missed.
So he left him behind with mother.
Carver turned from him, angry and resentful—but that was alright. It was always like that now. One more drop in the bucket wouldn't make a difference, really. Hawke left, wishing something would kill him in the Deep Roads so he didn't have to come back.
If only he was so lucky.
He couldn't just lie down and die. At the same time, nothing would just bloody kill him so that no one could blame him for not trying to survive, or say that he hadn't tried his hardest. Not darkspawn or a Maker-forsaken dragon—in the Deep Roads of all places! Why, for Andraste's sake, was there a dragon in the Deep Roads? Neither were enough to kill him, no matter how hard he threw himself into battle. He was even reckless enough to pick up a lyrium idol with only a glove between his bare skin and the humming red substance. But to no avail.
Then Bartrand betrayed them.
Hawke wanted to scream at the Maker, Andraste, and whatever other powers that be. But he didn't. He buckled down and trudged on, hating every single step they carved out through the darkspawn, rock wraiths, even a demon. The raw lyrium blocked Hawke and his companions' path more than once, and he could swear he heard music from just beyond the glowing stalactites and stalagmites. But no one else seemed to hear it. It took him a while to notice that the music didn't seem to go away, like a faint ringing in his ears. It bothered him at first, the ringing becoming louder when all was quiet, most notably upon the edge of sleep. But eventually he got used to it too, and it became merely another layer of background noise.
When they reached the surface, Hawke was glad to see the sun and sky again, in a strained, twitchy sort of happiness. The first thing he wanted to do was hunt Bartrand down and kill him. Not because the dwarf had trapped them and left them to die, no— it was because the damned dwarf hadn't done it right. They were still alive. Somewhere along the line, despair had simply snapped under its own weight, leaving jagged and sharp edges of anger rooted in Hawke's psyche. The bastard had locked them in the Deep Roads without supplies, a map or directions to get out. And they were still alive. Hawke was beginning to wonder if there was anything that could kill him.
Was a simple, uncomplicated death at the hands of another too much to ask? No one could blame him for just lying down and dying if he fell in battle. No one could say he hadn't tried. There was no guilt or shame then. He was just too damned lucky, or too damned persistent. So Bartrand had to die—it was just that simple. He failed to kill Hawke, so Hawke would show him how it was done, properly, in the hopes that someone else would be kind enough to return the favor. He didn't care if that didn't make sense. He didn't tell the others what he was thinking. He never did share his thoughts, since they never cared enough to ask. It was Kirkwall. And he'd stopped trying to make sense of it long ago. Now he was simply accepting the fact that he didn't have to make sense, either. He'd spend the rest of his life trying to make up for letting Bethany die instead of dying in her place as was expected of him. He understood that. It didn't have to make sense that a single moment's failure would extract a lifetime's worth of reimbursement. It just did.
They'd found enough treasure in the Deep Roads that they couldn't take all of it in one trip. Varric would have to make arrangements to send further expeditions to retrieve the rest. It surely must be enough to make mother happy, to get back the old Amell estate and title, and maybe she'd be happy then. Hawke was certainly happy, and would have skipped home with a lighter heart if he wasn't limping with weariness. He did his best to ignore the dark thought that whispered that mother, Carver and Gamlen wouldn't care that he'd survived, just that he'd brought home gold, and enough of it to make their lot in life better. He succeeded at that at least.
He opened the door to their hovel—ah, hovel, sweet hovel—somewhat pleased to smell the stink of old cabbage after the stench of darkspawn and the musty underground cave air. Then Mother and Carver's argument drowned out his half-born words of greeting. For one wild moment he'd been deliriously happy to see them again, safe and sound—until he'd noticed Carver was wearing plate armor and a very familiar looking skirt.
"So you're back." The look on Carver's face hadn't been relief, or even a welcoming glower of "glad you made it back in one piece." It was cold anger layered over the usual sibling jealousy that Hawke had never been able to pinpoint the beginnings of. Any last shreds of happiness Hawke had felt at seeing his family again died at the sight of the flaming sword of mercy upon Carver's chest plate, like the ashes of a snuffed-out fire.
Mother had run towards him with a worried look, and for a brief second Hawke had thought it'd been directed at himself.
"Oh, thank the Maker! Please talk some sense into him!"
He didn't understand how his heart continued to worked in that moment. It felt like a violation of the laws of reality that something so broken could still keep going. The world pressed on, and Hawke found himself dragged along with it.
Carver was joining the Templar Order. Nothing they said made any difference to the youngest of the Hawke siblings. Hawke wouldn't have to worry about being turned in by his younger brother—Carver knew the value of family, even if Hawke didn't.
Mother was simply inconsolable. Hawke got as drunk as possible and stayed the night in a rented room at the Hanged Man. Despite the hangover the next day, he was sorely tempted to stay drunk and spend his coin on ale and whores. Responsibility and duty required otherwise, however. He spent the first day recuperating and then went about the business of buying back the Amell Estate, feeling as numb as if he'd accidentally frozen his insides with an ice spell. The numbness was kind of a relief, and kind of not. It hurt, but his mind just couldn't process any more pain. Not anymore. It was simply another layer of background noise in his daily life.
Acquiring the Amell Estate ended up being a lengthy process, made up entirely of shuffling through the mind-numbing tedium of filing the right papers, waiting for said papers to be accepted or paying the correct taxes and fees. When he finally got it done, he realized the mansion he'd bought was in utter shambles. To fix it up would require a small fortune. Hawke actually considered just buying a new house instead but mother actually came alive then, and insisted that they fix up the old Amell estate because it was home. Her home, at least. To Hawke, it was merely the place where he fell asleep, wherever that happened to be at the time. It made little difference, in the end. He'd stopped considering that home meant somewhere safe where he could be happy. Safety was no longer a requirement, not that he realized he'd wanted it. Happiness had died and was buried back on Ferelden soil, back with Bethany.
He didn't notice the time passing anymore. He did what he had to, which was very little these days, falling out of touch for the most part with his companions except for the occasional visit, citing paperwork and renovations as his reasons for keeping his visits short and few between. Varric sent a brief note of condolence, the way one would send a business partner a polite and proper note. No one asked how Hawke was doing after a harrowing life-or-death adventure in the Deep Roads and having his apparent victory turn to ashes in his mouth. Hawke's state of mind was just not something that concerned either Hawke's family or his friends since he wasn't a mage-turned-slobbering-abomination. It continued like that, right up until a summons from none other than the Viscount's office had brought an end to his pleasantly monotonous stupor. He could already feel a headache forming when he heard the Viscount relay the Arishok's request for Hawke by name no less. It was inevitable that the city's insanity would start back up at some point, but the peace of staying locked up within the walls of his mansion seemed like it could block out the world forever. A messenger's knock on the door shattered the brittle peace. ] With a task in hand that he could not in good stead refuse, he went about collecting his comrades-in-arms from the years prior. He had no doubt bloodshed was not far off if the situation required him to set foot outside of his reclaimed estate.
As luck would have it, the Qunari had recently suffered a theft—someone had stolen a formula, mistaking a mixture that created a madness-inducing gas for the explosive powder Javaris had wanted to trade for years ago. As if Kirkwall needed more madness, really. It was Hawke's job to clean it up, however. Javaris, as it turned out after some inquiring, didn't have the formula, nor had he stolen it. Instead it was an elf, presumably insane for some reason or other. No one needed a reason to be completely barmy in Kirkwall anyway. He and Aveline ended up having to fight through crowds of vicious and deranged thugs in one neighborhood, trying not to choke on the green smoke filling the air. He might've gotten some into his system, it was hard to tell with the air smelling as foul as it did. The scent of rusty, abandoned mining equipment mixed with the smell of stale vomit was hardly unusual, save that now it was not just the ambient smell of Kirkwall's less reputable parts, but of an insanity-inducing, poisonous gas. While fighting to seal off the barrels, they covered their mouths and noses. He had to wonder upon finding the elven woman he assumed to be responsible for this particular wave of madness, if she hadn't inhaled some in as well. It seemed likely, even though she wasn't retching herself to death. Killing her and the mercenaries that followed her seemed like the end of the leg work, and he returned to inform the Arishok and the Viscount of the matter's resolution.
That devolved into yet another cluster of headaches, none of which were inclined to resolve themselves anytime soon. Suddenly it was as if the entire city was on alert and aware that Hawke was out and about. Everyone and their mothers were rushing to lay their problems at his feet now. On top of further complications with the Qunari, he also had Aveline breathing down his neck about that aged Templar Emeric, who'd been chasing after murdered noble women for the past few years without pause. While Varric and Aveline looked into the disappearance of a misplaced group of Qunari at the Hanged Man, Hawke took Merrill, Isabela and Fenris to make a sweep of some poncy Orlesian nobleman's home in Hightown at the Templar's insistence. He'd ceased to question why the Templars were willing to look the other way where he was involved—perhaps it was the reputation for solving problems with murder, connections to the underworld or all the tales Varric made up on a regular basis about their adventures.
He was also beginning to wonder if there were any mansions in Hightown that didn't have demonic infestations. Maybe it was history repeating itself when Hawke found out that the man they were looking for—named DuPuis, of all people—was actually a blood mage. A quick poll of the group led to the swift conclusion that his innocence was in doubt. And the suspicious note that referenced an artifact given as payment as well as 'creatures difficult to control' didn't help. The 'creatures' mentioned in the note no doubt referred to the dead shades staining the living room carpet with ash, seeing as there wasn't anything else the term could apply to. Feeling rather irked at having to come out of his house to be barraged with endless requests of inanity and peace-keeping duties, Hawke was more than happy to kill the man where he stood. The terrified woman DuPuis had held hostage by DuPuis could've been explained away, perhaps, but there was little doubt in Hawke's mind that he would have had to kill the man at some later point anyway.
Returning to the Gallows revealed that someone had lured Emeric away with a false note, using Hawke's own name in the matter. Hawke was feeling impatient and ready to kill when he took off in search of the missing templar. He was entirely unsurprised to find the man dead in a back alley, surrounded by shades. In fact, he was disappointed by the scene's lack of variation. The templar's death did mean Aveline would get off his case, and the Templar Order could investigate it at their leisure—a few more deaths among the nobility was hardly a noteworthy event. It was late when Hawke finally parted ways with his companions, returning to his home with dragging steps, tired and sorely tried from having to deal with what felt like every last problem the city could think to throw at him.
Gamlen was there. At first Hawke had wondered if it was trouble with debtors or some scatterbrained idea to invest in qunari cheeses that had his uncle visiting. It turned out Gamlen was looking for mother, who had failed to show up at his hovel in Lowtown for their weekly visit. Bodahn affirmed that he nor his son Sandal had seen her all day.
"Where could she be?" It was odd to see Gamlen so out of sorts. Hawke almost laughed, but he was too tired to even work up the energy to chuckle.
"With her suitor, perhaps?"
Hawke's brow furrowed when Bodahn mentioned a suitor, surprised at the thought.
"Suitor? Leandra never mentioned a suitor." Apparently mother hadn't made any mention of a suitor to Gamlen either.
"Well, those lilies arrived for her this morning."
Hawke's thoughts slowed to a complete halt at Bodahn's last comment, reaching back to try to recollect a most pertinent piece of information he knew he needed in that moment.
No...
The words came tumbling out in a rush as he explained the matter to Gamlen. Both ran out the door to search Lowtown for any sign of mother's whereabouts while Bodahn made a mad dash to alert Aveline. The longer they went without any sign of mother, the more tightly wound the ball of stress in Hawke's gut became. With each call of his mother's name there came no response, only the feeling of Bethany's silence and the guilt of her death, still as dark a stain upon his hands as dried blood on a burial shroud.
An urchin pointed them in the right direction after a few silvers loosened his tongue. Hawke then found himself tracking an ominously large trail of blood after sending Gamlen to wait back at the mansion. The steps that led him to the Foundry district were all a blur, and he barely noticed the vaguely familiar warehouse as he passed through it, searching frantically for mother. Down through a concealed trap door, he met with demons, shades and the walking dead. Another time he might have been more hesitant to take on such numbers alone, but rage pushed him on, giving his magic a more potent edge—all he he could hear was the ringing in his ears at that point, the same distant song he'd heard those last few weeks in the Deep Roads among the red lyrium. The thrumming of fear in his veins drowned out what little thought he possessed. The resurrected bodies of the murdered women nearly undid him down in the underground passages. He found himself scrabbling for more mana, more magic, pulling on his connection to the Fade in the way a suffocating man draws air into his lungs. Suddenly in the heated moment between life and death, power surged through him. He did not stop to question from where he drew it from.
He froze mid-stride as he ran through what looked to be a cobbled together living space, his eyes fixed on a painting that bore an eerie resemblance to mother—no, not eerie, down-right disturbing. Stumbling over the books strewn across the floor, a haphazard glance revealed that their concern with anatomy, surgery, necromancy and blood magic. Not daring to think of what those books might portend, fright drove him on. His feet took him down the passageway and the ensuing stairs with all the grace of a half-blind man, stopping when as he saw a figure rise up from beside a chair, facing away from him.
"I was wondering when you'd show up. Leandra was so sure you'd come for her."
"Where is she?" Hawke demanded, gathering his mana in preparation to tear the man limb from limb. He had no doubt he'd have to fight him.
"You will never understand my purpose. Your mother was chosen because she was special, and now she is a part of something...greater."
"Spare me the demented ramblings. Where is she?" He'd heard it all before—all that mattered was getting mother back.
The man smiled, turning to look over one shoulder at a figure seated in a chair. "She's here. She's waiting for you. I have done the impossible. I have touched the face of the Maker and lived."
Hawke shook his head, lightning sparking around his fist with all the warning of a thunderstorm upon the horizon.
Smiling indulgently as one would to a favored child, the man turned away, walking back to the chair. "Do you know what the strongest force in the universe is?"
That gave Hawke pause.
"Love." He circled the chair, reaching down to draw the woman up onto her feet, saying, "I pieced her together from memory. I found her eyes, her skin, her delicate fingers...and at last, her face...oh, this beautiful face...I've searched far and wide to find you again, beloved, and no force on this earth will part us."
The woman staggered, as if an inexperienced hand pulled upon a marionette's strings, and turned to face Hawke—with mother's face. Her face...but not her body. Attached with seams in neat, strong stitches, the line where her neck had been severed was a gruesome necklace —bright, vivid red against the deathly pallor of her skin.
Time had no right to move on beyond that horrible moment. But the world kept going and with it, taking all sense of foundation that remained in Hawke's world, ripping it away like skin flayed from a living body. The skinless flesh of his mind was left naked, bloody and screaming, without defense for the nerves scraped raw upon the shattered pieces of his psyche. He lashed out, his magic thrashing in blind destruction like the death throes of a mortally wounded creature.
What happened after, he did not speak of—not to his friends, not to Aveline, not to Gamlen. He kept it quiet, shutting and hiding the trapdoor from sight, washing away the trail of blood...no one should know. No one had any right to know. Except Carver. Carver needed to know. He would tell his little brother...but not yet. Hawke's silence disturbed the others, but he let them offer their condolences and unspoken support as social customs dictated—it was more for them than for his own sake. He didn't need it. They simply assumed how he was without asking, as they had for all the years he'd known them. He took time to be alone. The city understood and backed off, at least for a time, to allow him to observe the mourning period. No little problems to ferret his time away with were sent a-knocking at his door. There were no letters with pleas for help. That was good. He needed time.
The disappearances of noble women from the streets of Hightown didn't stop, however.
~.o.O.o.~
It was approximately a month before Carver stormed into the manor, angrier than he'd ever been before and looking like a righteous soldier of Andraste in his shining armor and his intent fury. Hawke, however, had not been home. So Carver had paced, had stewed, had raged at the walls while waiting for his thrice-damned brother to return and to answer why it had been an official letter of condolence from which he'd learned of their mother's death, and not from Hawke himself. Bodahn shook his head in dismay.
"Sometimes he disappears for days, Messere. I've asked but he never says where he's been or where he's going."
The dwarf's words only served to fuel Carver's ire, not that he would ever admit to the small spike of concern for his elder brother's well-being. Hawke had always been the strong one. The hour grew late, and at length, Carver departed, fuming as he made his way down the stairs to Lowtown. He didn't dare stay longer—Knight-Captain Cullen hadn't given him leave to be absent from the Gallows overnight, and the ferry would be closing for the evening soon if he didn't hurry. He'd just reached the Docks when a voice from behind him gave him pause.
"Carver..."
Carver had turned about—and darkness took him.
Awareness swam back, the world rocking slowly as it spun in circles, inside and outside of his skull. He found himself seated at a dinner table in unfamiliar surroundings—the rundown-looking walls and cracked plaster told of Lowtown, but the smell might've placed him closer to Darktown. There were three silhouettes seated there with him, barely visible in the dim gloom, their heads bowed as if giving thanks for the meal set out before them. Mouth-watering aromas of a meal gone cold mingled with an underlying stench of something...chemical, and what he knew to be the tang of metal.
"Who's there?" He asked, his eyes on the figures as he attempted to rise from his seat, only to find that his arms had been bound to the armrests of the chair. He could feel the pull of other ties across his legs and waist, rendering him immobile.
The tallest of the figures raised its head, slowly, as if with great effort.
"Ah...you...would be Carver, then...?" A wheezy laugh accompanied the man's question, shaking his curiously narrow frame. "I've heard so much about you, recently...welcome to our humble home." There was a sort of mockery in his words, a strange mixture of bitterness and what could have been described as joy—like a host entertaining both a much beloved friend and troubling thoughts he could not completely hide.
"What in Andraste's name is going on, and why in the void am I tied up?" Carver demanded.
The other man just chuckled wheezily, as the two other figures stirred.
"Carver...? Carver? Is that you?"
His heart almost stopped. "Mother?"
The response to his shocked inquiry was forgotten at the sound of approaching footsteps. Hawke entered the room, carrying a lit taper. "So nice of you to join us, Carver," Hawke said, his voice was warm as if welcoming Carver home for Satinalia dinner. "Look, mother, Carver's come to join us—it's just like old times, isn't it?" He asked, lighting the candles one at a time with the one in hand.
The light revealed a seated man, little more than a dried husk, with his sleeves pinned up as if to make his lack of arms disturbingly conspicuous. Beside him sat mother in one of her favorite evening dresses, the purple one with the gold trim, dark pink skirt and high neckline. Her face was pale, almost too pale and something was terribly wrong with her eyes.
Carver sat unmoving, a mute fear curled around his spine as his mother's head raised in an odd manner to meet his gaze with her own vacant stare. "I have a surprise guest that I'm sure you'll be happy to see, little brother," Hawke said, sounding excited and pleased as he laid a hand on the third figure's shoulder, the one seated closest to Carver at his right.
She raised her head, dark curls moving out of the way of her face, turning to look at him with unfamiliar eyes in a too-familiar face.
"Oh, I know I haven't found her eyes yet so this pair will have to do in the meantime, but I found almost all of the other parts so far! I'll be getting her fingers soon, I've already found them, I just need to collect them. Isn't it wonderful, Carver? She looks just like she did years ago, doesn't she?" Hawke said, moving to circle an arm around his brother's shoulders, beaming with pride even as Carver stared, aghast with horror.
"That's not Bethany!"
Hawke tutted in disappointment.
"I did say I wasn't finished yet, Carver. Oh, and I haven't even introduced you yet to Quentin! There was a dreadful misunderstanding when he and I first met, you see—he wanted mother's face to bring back his dead wife, but I just couldn't allow that, you know? I decided I had to kill him. But some of his words stuck, and as he lay dying upon the floor and mother started dying again—he'd taken her head off of her body and stitched it onto another one he'd cobbled together—I admit I had a bit of a breakdown." Hawke looked at his brother, fingers twiddling in a nervous habit as he admitted this tiny, shameful thing. He brightened quickly afterwards. "But then I had a wonderful idea! He'd kept mother alive and attached her head to another lady's body, so why couldn't I just put it right back? 'I know enough healing magic to fix the damage and make her all pretty again!' thought I. I had to use some of Quentin's books and research to do it right, however, and to make sure she didn't die. Quentin himself has been very helpful in teaching me and helping me practice, so we've come to an understanding of sorts. He's a friend of the family now!"
"You are fucking INSANE! That's not mother, and that's not Bethany!" Carver said, on the verge of screaming as he strained against his binds, thrashing about in an attempt to get free and away from this utter madness. He could not even begin to contemplate what was going through his brother's mind to create...this.
Hawke's smile vanished. "I know," He said in a low voice, one hand moving up onto Carver's shoulder as if to restrain the struggling man.
A wave of dizziness washed over Carver, his movements weakening until they ceased altogether. "Brother..." He growled with an effort, "I just wanted to say, I'm not bloody sorry to do this to you." With that, he unleashed the Holy Smite he'd been concentrating on upon his brother.
Hawke barely moved, looking at his younger brother with patient displeasure.
Reining in his panic, Carver unleashed a Cleanse as well, hoping it'd at least dismiss whatever magic was binding the souls to the dead bodies—he absolutely refused to think of them as his mother and sister.
"If you're quite finished throwing a temper tantrum, Carver?" Stepping closer to Bethany, he leaned down to bring his face level with hers, looking at Carver intently. "You should apologize to your mother, and to Bethany. That was a very mean thing to say, Carver."
"Up yours, you daft barmy bastard!"
"I realize this must come as a shock to you. It'll just take time for you to adjust to Bethany's presence again. I understand," Hawke said, patting his brother's shoulder. "So don't worry, we'll have all the time in the world that we could possibly need now that we're all together again. We don't need anything more than family and love, and I won't let anything tear us apart again."
"I am not staying here! Let me fucking GO!"
"Nooooo, no no no, mother would be sad, and she'd worry if something happened to you! I'd worry that something might happen to you. The Templar Order is just so dangerous these days under Knight Commander Meredith, you know. No, it's safest for you to stay right here, brother dear. Family has to stick together after all. You understand, don't you?" Hawke said, turning away from the table, walking past Carver and out of his younger brother's sight.
"Brother!"
The sound of Hawke's voice drifted back to him from a distance, accompanied by the sound of footsteps ascending a set of stairs. "Now now, Carver, I have to go out and get Bethany's fingers, don't you remember? So play nice and catch up with your sister, why don't you?"
"GARRETT!"
The sound of his name after going so long without hearing it brought a wide smile to Hawke's face. He was still smiling as he swung the trapdoor shut, listening for a moment to make sure there was no trace of his brother's cries to be heard through the thick wooden floors. Satisfied, he sliced open a vein in his wrist, using the power of his blood to obscure the trapdoor. It was his duty to protect his family no matter what it took, and no force in the world would take his loved ones from him. As he strode away into the night, he found himself feeling happier than he could ever recall in recent memory. The Arishok had a point—there was an undeniable certainty to fulfilling one's role when one chose to succeed at it. Hawke had made up for his failures, and at long last had found peace of mind. They would always be together now—except...
Hawke pursed his lips as a thought occurred to him. Mother might be lonely. Quentin was affable, but he wasn't father. He would have to look into finding Father as well, for mother's sake—and there was nothing Garrett Hawke wouldn't do for his family.
A/N: Many thanks to EasternViolet for her thorough betaing on this piece! :D