Note from SF: Written for Miri1984 as a prompt request dealio I did over on Deviant Art. It's part of the Maps & Legends universe!
Rated M for even more f-bombs than usual, violence and some mild femslashy stuff.
It starts with the tattoo.
Wil thoughtfully presses the bandage covering the sore spot on her ankle and withdraws her hand with a wince.
"So you hate it," Carver's stretched out on his bedroll, stomach down in nothing but his breeches. In the candlelit interior of their tent his own tattoo is exposed on his shoulder, the swollen, reddened skin distorting the snarling mabari and giving it the appearance of a beast who'd just claimed a bloody victory on the battlefield. "I think mine looks pretty good."
"Of course it does," his sister abandons her poking and falls back onto her own palette, scrunching one of the small linen covered pillow Mother had sent with them until it satisfies her. "And I don't hate mine. Foxes are beautiful, smart...but who the fuck picks a tattoo for someone out of spite?" She mimics him, unflatteringly so, "Because you think you're so damn clever."
Carver pushes himself up at that, his blue eyes widening and his mouth moving in silence as his tongue works up a defense. It takes a few seconds before he finds his voice, and he's predictably unapologetic.
"I never said I didn't think you were clever, too," he frowns. "I just...it fits. You've got a smart mouth, and you're always trying to...I could have gotten you a cat instead. A skinny little barn cat, with bright green eyes and her nose and tail in the air. I bet the Clearys would liked to have seen it once you got back."
"Ass," she exhales and then rolls onto her side, back to him so he can't see the way her cheeks are burning at the memory of one particular afternoon with the Cleary twins...the loft in their barn not as secret as she'd hoped it would be and Toft Cleary, their father, had not hesitated to tell everyone in Lothering exactly what he thought of that Hawke girl what pranced around my boys like a cat in heat.
"Oh, don't be like that, Wil," he kicks at the back of her leg.
All he gets in return is her hand, aloft and sending a very clear signal that she would be like that if she damned well wanted to be.
They take their breakfast in almost silence, grunting out requests the way that only two people who have spent their entire lives together can. Carver reaches out his hand and snorts, Wil hands him a small tin that's over half full of honey. A treasure she'd managed to flirt away from one of the king's guards...an ugly guard, Carver had noted.
He pours the rest of it over his porridge, not even bothering to show it to his sister when it gets low..unwilling to even fake at niceties this morning.
Wil retaliates by smacking his hand with the back of her spoon, leaving a sticky spot across his knuckles that he licks off without a second thought.
"Gross," her nose wrinkles, but it makes her smile for some reason. "I think either we're about to be overtaken by darkspawn, or that woman over there finds you fascinating."
Carver's still in mid-lick when she says this, and his eyes shoot up at the mention of woman.
"Oh, for..." Wil knocks his hand way from his mouth. "You're not supposed to actually turn into a mabari."
He doesn't care...he's too busy being lost in a pair of large, sky colored eyes set in a tan, handsome face. For a few seconds she holds his gaze, but then her attention is pulled away by a priestess, probably there to offer blessings before the scouts head out to the Wilds for the day.
"Have you seen her before?" He pushes his bowl towards his sister and scoops up her own. "She looks like she's with Cousland's men."
"Yes, I've seen her," eyes rolling, she digs into the freshly honeyed porridge she'd received in exchange for that scrap of information. With a put upon sigh, and under the expectant glare of her brother, she offers up a bit more. "She bathes. Oh, and she has a dark brown birthmark...," she presses her finger to her back, just above her left hip. "Right there."
"Do you think you could talk to her tonight...at the baths?" He ignores the implication of his sister's attention to the birthmark.
"I suppose it can't hurt anything," Wil shrugs and continues eating. "I can tell her to look for you...here?"
At night soldiers gathered in the mess area to share stories, drink and listen to the tunes being played by bards that had traveled down from Denerim with King Cailan. An effort to keep morale high, they'd been told, but mostly it kept dinner annoying.
Carver nods, his stomach hot with anticipation. He's not certain how today will go...will looking forward to possibly meeting this girl get him through another day of searching for darkspawn bands in the Wilds? Or will searching for darkspawn bands in the Wilds keep him from making himself sick with nerves over possibly meeting this girl?
"Hopefully Peaches won't find out about this." Wil pats him on the shoulder and swings one long leg over the bench. "Or, better yet, hopefully future girl doesn't find out that you were with someone who lets herself be called Peaches."
He frowns and she ruffles his hair as she passes by him to return to camp. They're practically alone in the mess area, but it's still annoying.
"All right, Mother," he taunts.
"Oh, no need to be like that, Carv," she smiles sweetly over her shoulder and outright laughs when he returns her gesture from the night before.
So future girl has a name, and it's Maureen.
And Maureen is very unambiguously not going to be meeting Carver for dinner.
Unless she rides Wil there.
Which might be fun, but it might also earn them both the sort of notoriety that a woman in a camp full of mostly male soldiers does not want to earn. As it is, they've resorted to creative means of keeping each other quiet as even the softest murmur of pleasure will draw unwanted attention to Maureen's small tent on the outskirts of the Highever camp.
"My brother is going to kill me," Wil whispers into Maureen's stomach, which is as enticingly brown and firm as the rest of her. "He'll never believe that I'm not doing this out of spite."
Maureen twists her fingers into Wil's hair, forcing their gazes to meet through the sweat slicked valley between her breasts. "If it makes you feel any better, I don't give a damn why you're here" she raises her knee, forcing it to grind between Wil's thighs, eliciting a moan that must be vented through tight pressed lips and into warm, welcoming flesh.
The storm comes in soon after, and masks the most raucous hours of their fling. But the air it leaves behind is oppressively clammy, rendering the small quarters uncomfortably close when they're both spent from each other and the long days behind them.
Wil gathers her things to leave, Maureen pressing a kiss to the base of her neck as she dresses, only to roll over and into sleep before Wil has even pulled on her boots.
Charming, she thinks as she creeps into the damp night. Despite the sardonic twist her thoughts place on everything, it's an experience she wouldn't mind repeating. It's unlikely, though. Most of Highever's troops are still in the Wilds and Maureen will be heading in to join them in the morning. Beyond that, there are rumors of a vast horde closing in on Ostagar, something that has even the Grey Wardens in camp rattled.
Although it must be well after midnight, there are still fires burning in camp and soldiers drunkenly ambling about, searching for their tents. A feat, considering that most look the same, especially in the dark. And to a drunk. Which, blessedly, she is not.
She's also not deaf, which proves to be another blessing when she nears her tent and hears the unmistakable sound of flesh against flesh and grunting.
Her brother.
Grunting.
Dammit, Carver. She reels away, her feet taking her to the nearest fire pit where a few soldiers, from the west by their accents, are singing songs about pretty cattle and hickory switches.
Wil fumes.
In our tent?
The men stare at her. Leer at her.
"I'm not a fucking cow," she snaps. They laugh and return to their songs.
This is his revenge. For sleeping with Maureen, although she's not certain how he'd know. Or maybe he thinks she just didn't talk to Maureen...or that she told secrets from their childhood to scare the woman away.
Or maybe he's just enjoying himself the way you did. It's a rational thought that she rejects almost immediately. Since when does Carver just enjoy himself?
Wil flashes back to the grunting, almost as if he were right beside her, and swears that when she gets back to Bethany she will never, ever talk or tease or mention herself in any sort of sexual situation ever again.
She's close to swearing off the actual having of sex when she sees a head moving above the row of tents between theirs and the fire. It's hard to tell from a distance, but the woman's hair seems to be suggestively mussed and that's the only clue Wil needs before she's striding towards a bed that hopefully hasn't seen...anything this evening.
Things are silent on the approach, but she still hesitates before entering.
"Are you decent?" She whispers past the partially agape flap.
"Nope," he mumbles smugly. I did not know someone could mumble smugly.
"Could you get decent?"
Silence and then, "All right."
"Dammit, Carver," she pushes in, keeping to her side of the tent as if her life depends on it. Maker knows my sanity does. "If I see anything, or touch anything..."
He snorts in the darkness and presses the candle into her hand. "There are matches by your box," he yawns noisily. "And I'm covered."
It takes a few minutes of rummaging in the darkness before her hands feel the blade of one of her small serrated knives which...shouldn't be out. Annoyance a live thing within her, Wil feels along a trail of personal belongings until her fingers brush against the wooden box that's supposed to keep them neat and not on the ground.
"You knocked my box over! My shit's everywhere," She's glaring in his direction when her hand slips in something soft, like a slightly gritty powder. "And one of you assholes spilled my make-up."
"Good," he's speaking into his pillow. "You wear too damned much of it anyway. You're a soldier, not a prostitute."
Wil's fingers itch to flick his forehead but she settles for a quick shake of her fist in his direction and, having found the matches, gets to stashing her scattered possessions back where they belong. Nothing seems to be missing or broken, but she's still annoyed when she hears her brother's breath catch in a snore.
Oh, this is promising.
There's still some vivid green eye powder left in the small tin where she keeps it...certainly enough for a couple of days. Or maybe one day if it were split between two people.
Even though she knows it's a waste...he'll see it when he shaves in the morning, she can't resist. Moving as close to his face as she dares, and it's fairly close considering she knows exactly how heavily he sleeps, she quickly smears green along his eyelids and clear up to his brow. It's applied heavily, far more so than even she would ever wear, and the sight of his slack face painted like that is enough to resolve any anger felt towards him...and perhaps even make her like him again.
Better enjoy it while it lasts.
"Hey, Wil," he whispers without looking.
"Hmm?" She scurries back to her bedroll before he can catch her looming suspiciously.
"Did you see her?" He smirks when she murmurs that she hadn't. "Way prettier than yours."
That might just be a record.
He's dead asleep when she wakes up the next morning, and snores through her ritual of getting as much clothing on as possible before leaving the tent.
Still dolled up.
She giggles and ruffles his hair on her way out. At most he'll get as far as the baths looking like that.
He'll kill her no matter what, but there shouldn't be any lasting damage. Besides her being dead.
"Hawke!" The voice rasps from her elbow and she turns to see Captain Varel hurrying towards her. "I have something I need done."
"O...kay," she waits for him to catch up, wondering why he'd be asking her. She's proven herself a fairly unspectacular soldier thus far and has never been singled out by him for anything. "What do you need?"
"There's a gentleman by the bonfire near the quartermaster. Dark hair, answers to Duncan. He needs to see these scouting reports...," Varel lowers his voice, his grey eyes darkening with concern as he hands her a small parcel. "As soon as possible, please."
Please? She nods and clutches the documents to her chest.
The trek to the fire is a long and winding one, and she's glad that Duncan turns out to be fairly unmistakable. He looks nothing like any of the other soldiers, dark-skinned with long onyx hair pulled away from a gaunt face that's mostly obscured by a rather heroic amount of facial hair. Even his armor is strange, a hodge podge of styles, metals and fabrics.
And he's not alone...with him is a well-muscled mabari and a pale woman who can't be much older than Wil.
"Ser Duncan?" She tries to not seem too tentative, but there's something imposing about the man, although his eyes are not unkind when he turns to acknowledge her.
The woman with him continues to stare at the ground, her fingers curling absentmindedly around one of the mabari's ears. Bello would never let me get away with that, Wil thinks idly as Duncan looks over the documents.
"I have one, too," Wil nods towards the dog. "He's not here...Mother insisted that I leave him at home with her and my sister. For protection while I'm gone."
The girl looks up and Wil shivers. It's not the reaction she'd normally have when confronted with a not unattractive woman, but this one...her clear green eyes are glassy, almost vacant, and her face is tense yet blank. There's something so off that Wil automatically searches her forehead for evidence of the tranquil brand through the chestnut strands that obscure it. When none can be found, Wil turns back to Duncan who is twisting as section of his beard between his fingertips, deep in thought.
"Thank you for this," his voice is low and surprisingly gentle. "I'll be sending some of my own into the Wilds today, and this information will be most helpful."
Wil hesitates and the woman's head tilts slightly, a flicker of curiosity emerging from the depths.
"You are dismissed, ser," he turns back to the fire without another word, and the woman takes her gaze with it, teeth coming out to bite contemplatively at her full lower lip as she does so.
It's ominous, and things get no less ominous as the day progresses. Carver is gone when she arrives back at the tent, and her attempts to track him down are thwarted by another series of tasks from Varel, and then a trip to the magi encampment to deliver a pouch of lyrium to one of the senior enchanters posted there.
It's almost mid-afternoon before she hears the news, that they'll be making a stand against the darkspawn that very night...
"Pardon me?" She intrudes on the pair of soldiers who are discussing it, both significantly older than herself and annoyed at the interruption.
"It's a battle, little girl," one sniffs and looks her over with an imperious sneer. "This is the part where ye start to wish ye'd stayed home and got married like mommy wanted ye to."
"Right," she fights down a swell of panic. And nausea. She has to acknowledge the nausea. A battle. This is...this is not fighting one or two darkspawn in the Wilds...this is not a highwayman outside of Lothering.
This is certainly not sparring with Carver in the yard, while Bethany rains fire down on them. Carver. Her throat closes painfully and she must force herself to not run flailing back to camp, although there's an urgency pressing along her spine and a fretful gnawing that makes it impossible for her to hang onto lunch and she prays that nobody sees her bent over a crumbling ruin wall, retching down a steep hill that ends in shadowed brambles and the unknown.
It's a metaphor for something, but she's not of a mind to fit it together on her own.
Lightning splits the sky, and Carver draws a ragged breath.
Where is she?
He scans the hillside again, receiving from the ranks behind him the same slightly awkward stares he's been getting all day. But since none of those stares are courtesy of his sister, they barely register.
It's all happening so quickly, he faces forward and forces himself to focus on his place in the ranks and how much room is between him and the soldiers on either side of him...in front of and behind him. He's got his eyes on the Captain, who has his eyes on a tower and his mind probably on the valley below, where King Cailan is standing with the Grey Wardens and wouldn't it be awesome to be one of them? He'd seen them before the battle, two new recruits. They'd been hardly any older than he was, a man and a woman, and it had been easy enough to put himself in their places. If he were a Warden...he'd be fighting alongside the king and not shivering up here with the rank and file, being annoyed by rain as it grew increasingly pelty and by the absence of his damned sister who'd been missing all day.
She let me sleep late...almost got me in trouble, too.
There's also the din that's echoing up from the valley, and a rolling wave of torchlight that is visible in the distance. They're reinforcements for Loghain's men...once the tower beacon is lit, Loghain will send his troops down and then signal Varel when they're needed.
It's simple, Carver's eyes dart up to the tower and does another pass of the troops around him, anticipation and adrenaline pumping through his veins and nearly eradicating the lingering concern that refuses to be abolished no matter how many times he tells it that Wil's fine...that she's probably stumbled into a promotion or the king fell in love with her or something remarkable and undeserved.
Fuck. He cranes his neck and stares up the line of soldiers that winds its way along the hill. Where in the Void is she?
The tower is lit, implausible fire in this maddeningly pelty rain.
The tower is lit, and nobody comes.
Wil's in the wrong place, with the wrong troops. Captain Varel had asked her to take one last mission report to an elven messenger who'd been tied up at the infirmary, and she'd gotten left behind.
Not left behind really, because she'd been nabbed by someone else and told where to stand and she'd just done it, unwilling to risk another foray outside of her post in the off chance that she end up in the valley, accidentally amongst the royal guard or something crazy.
Crazy. She almost laughs, but that would be crazy. Men teem around her, a chaos of confusion, wet drawn blades and an almost palpable fear as the darkspawn rampage along the valley floor and spill up the side of the hill towards where she and the strangers she'd been thrown with are waiting, but not necessarily at the ready.
"Loghain's abandoned the field!" It ripples through the crowds like snatches of a dream conversation, words that can't possibly mean what they seem to, but that doesn't keep her stomach from heaving.
"The teyrn's left us," a woman at her elbow whispers, her face a mask of hopelessness. "We're going to die here-"
and there's a lull in the storm that's filled with beastly shrieks and steel on steel.
Carver. She chokes and searches further up the hill. To go looking would be to run away from the fight; she'd be abandoning the battle just the same as Loghain-
only, you know, one virgin soldier. Not a fucking general or anything.
"The battle's lost!" A man screams from below and Wil, who has never seen the Maker's work in anything ever, decides to take it as a sign.
She runs and she has no idea where she's running, only that it's away from the valley, from the soldiers who were depending on somebody coming and now nobody does.
Guilt trips her up and she slams against the trunk of a tree and realizes that she's somehow made it into the edge of the wilds. It seems unlikely, but this area is vaguely familiar from the weeks they've spent scouting.
There's a bog to the north of here...and I think there was a Chasind route that was marked for Lothering. She narrows her eyes against the starless sky, the weakening beacon and her own instinct to find her fucking brother and get them both out of her alive the only thing to guide her. If he's...if he...he'll know this area, too. We talked about the path, we had a totally significant conversation about that path...
Wil starts to run again, her sword propped on her shoulder, and she can hear others crashing through the woods around her, but she doesn't dare cry out. They could be Carver, or they could be darkspawn. Instead she tries to follow a relatively clear path, committing the ground ahead of her to memory in the pulsing of the lightning and somehow managing to avoid catching her boots in the underbrush, or getting tangled in the sharp low branches of the trees.
She doesn't know how long she races the noises in the forest, but she knows when to stop and that has everything to do with three man-shaped beasts that block her path and they see her before a lightning bolt alerts her to their existence.
Wil dives to her left, pushing off the trunk of a tree to abruptly change direction and avoid being attacked head on. The diversion is not one that buys her much time, but she's able to find her path again and has the advantage of having a life to fear losing.
Not that it matters when a fourth creature flies from the shadow and stabs at her ankle with its dagger like teeth. Biting back a scream, she lifts her leg and kicks it square in the jaw. With it sufficiently staggered, she's able plunge her sword into its shoulder, angled down towards its chest.
It burbles black blood that seems like the Void itself in the night. It's a small victory, the death of this twisted little blighter. Behind her, she can hear the three she'd shrugged off readying themselves to attack.
She could run, but her ankle is throbbing and one stumble, one fall, would mean certain death...or worse. Wil's heard stories of what the darkspawn do to women, and while they're usually short on details, she knows enough to not want any first hand experience.
So she spins around, swinging her blade as hard as she can and manages to swipe two cleanly across their stomachs, spilling viscera onto the ground between them. The third lunges towards her and connects solidly enough to throw her back, and hard.
Breath escapes her lungs, reason escapes...whereever reason is kept and she loses her footing to fall onto her back which does nothing to help with the breathing or the thinking.
Fuck. It's all that will come. Her sword is gone...her advantage is gone...her brother...
Where is he?
"FUCK!" She screams and lashes out with her gloved fist. It connects with something sharp that she refuses to see. Instead, she goes by the sounds of ragged breath and strikes the heel of her hand someplace just above that sound, hoping to at least stun the thing long enough to get the advantage.
It shakes her strike off, its fingers tightening around her arms and the stench of it, of the Maker's own punishment passed down ages ago, fills her nose like smoky blood.
I am not going to die here. She buries her chin against her chest so he can't bite at her neck and then begins to pitch and roll with every ounce of strength she possesses. It's not much, but it catches the darkspawn by surprise just enough for him to loosen its grip on her arm and that's all she needs.
This time she has her eyes open and they latch onto the filmy, lidless orbs that serve as the same for the darkspawn.
Contact made and target set, she drives her gauntleted fingers into the left one, as hard as she can and with no hesitation when it makes a sickly plop and begins to gush black blood. It's disgusting, but it works and she's able to roll it away and scurry to her knees. Its own dagger is within grasp and she grabs it with one trembling hand, managing to tear it messily across the exposed mottled flesh of the hurlock's throat and then promptly vomits the moment its lifeless body hits the ground.
This sucks. How many times can a person do this in one day? She stands, careful to not step in her own sick as if that even matters at this point.
As if anything-
"Wil!"
She hears him before she sees him, and feels him before she can even think to respond. His arms are so tight around her that it's even harder to breath than it had been on the ground with a hurlock on top of her.
But it's all right. It's fine. He loosens his grip enough so that she can turn and hang from his neck, so they can cling to each other, affirmation of life when the world seems to be ending around them.
"Wil...nobody came. And I didn't know where you were," his voice is gruff and he pulls away just enough to peer down at her as forks of lightning streak above them. His face is tense with emotion and confusion. "Your...your cheeks are green."
He touches her face with a bare hand, close to her eye, and seems confused when she starts laughing.
"So are yours?" She can't hold back the giggle that bubbles forth at the sight of her brother, Carver the Warrior, with green still smeared to his dark eyebrows and tracking down his dirty cheeks. "Here."
She guides his hand to his face and swipes it along his cheekbone, teeth digging into her lip to suppress any more laughter as he stares at his unmistakably emerald fingertips.
"Dammit, Wil," but he smiles, as quick as the lightning that cracks around them. "I was afraid I wouldn't find you."
"But you did," she pulls away and begins to search for her dropped sword. "You remembered the Chasind route?"
"Yes...I figured that's where you would head," he watches as she limps away. "We should keep heading that way?"
For a second she thinks about the madness they'd so narrowly escaped, which will surely unfurl throughout the Wilds once the last of the soldiers are...
"Yes, but we stay just off the main road," she sheathes her blade and, before she can take another step, he's there to help her without her even having to ask, one arm around her waist as he offers his shoulder for support. He'll never admit that she's slowing him down, and she won't remind him that he's still wearing eye shadow. Well, not until they're past another life or death situation and he's in a place where he's just grateful that she's alive.
Because now?
"Maker's breath, Wil," they fumble awkwardly over the uneven terrain. "Have you been sneaking extra rations?"
"Asshole. Also...nice of you to wait until I'd killed all those darkspawn myself before you stepped out of the shadows."
"You'd have only bitched at me for stealing your kills...never minding if I'd saved your life or not."
She snorts. "You're probably right."
"I am right...it does happen sometimes," he glances down at her and his brow is still tense, as if he's not certain if this is real. "More often than you're willing to admit."
"Fine, fine," she skips deftly over a fallen tree and all but drags him along, somehow leading even with her injured leg. "I do think I'm pretty damn clever."
He smiles at her, a flash of white in the gloom, and she could kiss his stupid face for being a brother exactly when she needs him to be.
But she won't, because they're on the run and there will be time for praise and celebration later, once they're out of the Wilds and back in Lothering.
For now, they just need to survive. The darkspawn and each other.