Reply to Suilven's Ten Minute Challenge on CMDA. Ten minutes to draw up a drabble/one-shot.
The Warden wasn't supposed to be with her cousin. Hawke is a strong person, a good person. He doesn't need her. But so is Leandra and blood runs deep. They run together, crossing half of Hightown, shouting through Lowtown until neighbors try to stop them on the streets and her duty is forgotten in their urgency. Ferelden and the Wardens are far indeed when they enter the Foundry.
Eventually some things bother more than their missing relative.
The first clue is a portrait. It looks so much like Leandra that has them all staring, dark hair and light blue eyes, a face that's so delicate that it's a wonder the woman didn't break with a gust of air. First. The Warden memorizes the female's features, puzzles, grips her staff and runs after her cousin.
Then, small things. There's a shield with the Amell crest to a side. Second. The books on the walls, she can swear to know, swear to have read them someday, Genealogy of the Houses of Kirkwall, Magical Lineages of the Circles of the Free Marches, Personal Journal, and she doesn't read the rest. Third. The elf which belongs to her cousin calls her off and steals her attention all over again, gripping her arm and dragging her along.
The image of the woman above the fireplace stays with her even as she fights. It overpowers the smell of blood and magic, the spirits the man has called upon them and that claw at her skin like they are hungry for her soul. Each and every one are killed methodically, leaving her attention focused on the portrait, on the body of a dead woman standing in front of them and the soon to be dead man. They hypnotize her even without blood magic influencing her actions.
It makes her stop and stare; makes her spells run cold.
Hawke doesn't notice, the poor man. He runs the other mage with his sword, rips it out savagely and returns to his mother, begging, hoping beyond hope Anders can do something. Hawke, for all his intelligence, all his wisdom, doesn't connect the dots. He is but a man, after all.
Leandra's face on a dead woman, a shield with a crest of a dead house, copies of books which lay in his own library, Hawke doesn't see.
Moira Amell does.
Silently, she weaves her way through the bodies until she reaches the dying man. His eyes are lighter when they open, his hair is darker, his magic is stronger, empathizing with hers in a very familiar way.
"Revka?" He whispers, staring at her face in pure confusion.
The mage is about to die. So close, so close, just at the edge, she can feel as he pulls the Fade desperately for aid. And his hand lies against her face as he wonders if death is bringing him an illusion to ease his passing. It's not.
This man's wife died years before, giving birth to a child, a last mage like all the others which had preceded her.
Revka died but she did leave that child behind.
"No. I'm not." Her knife moves without hesitation, ends him, hides her secret and his in between Hawke's whispered pleas against his mother's skin. "Goodbye, father."
AN - In case this isn't explicit enough since ten minutes and everything. Ahem. I was wondering why Leandra and Quentin's wife were so similar. And I thought, why not Revka? Which means Quentin would be the Warden's father and cousin to Hawke? Messed up, a little, yes. This Warden has become my target to write awful and twisted little things.