Disclaimer: Don't own Dragon Age (I just obsess over it)

Author's note: Thanks to readers / reviewers / subscribers! Hope you enjoy part 2! I'm planning to write more Sebby x FemHawke fics, so keep an eye out for them in the not too distant future!


MY GRIEF LIES ALL WITHIN

Part 2


They arrived too late to save him. By the time they clamoured into the chamber, the huge beast had the elven hunter pinned and a moment later, had taken his life. Merrill's cry of anguish was certainly more than enough to draw the Varterral's attention, the beast turning on them with surprising swiftness. It was distinctly spider-like, moving agilely on four huge legs, two small forearms tucked up against its chest. It was a creature of stone and fire, its underside like the flow of lava, each leg cast with a similarly fiery membrane. It swung its head towards them, opening huge jaws that sported sharpened fangs and bellowed.

Hawke was suddenly painfully aware that she was the only close-combatant in the current team. Cursing Isabella, she stepped bravely towards it.

"I'll draw its attention. The rest of you, keep your distance!" Hawke shouted, leaping from the stairs and dropping into a slide beneath the creature's legs.

"Are you sure that's wise?" Sebastian called.

She rolled out from the slide, leaping to her feet with cat-like agility; twirling duel daggers in hand. "Unless you want to take up a sword, I don't see any other choice, do you?" She windmilled, arms outstretched, catching both blades across one of the Vaterral's stony legs. The metal gave a high-pitched chink against the armoured plating but left little evidence of an attempted attack.

At least she'd got its attention.

The huge beast swung its body in one leap, landing so that it loomed above her, its head jutting down in an attempt to snatch her up in its more than capable jaws. The rogue leapt to the side, going for its legs again, but to no avail.

A volley of arrows bounced off of its back, nothing more than rain to the beast that seemed intent now on spearing the swift-footed Hawke to the earth. The breath rasped hotly in her lungs as she avoided a painful death, rolling through the dirt and springing back to her feet. She was given a momentary breather as a fireball roared up, crashing into the side of its head. Easily distracted, the Varterral moved to defend itself against this new attacker.

Merrill, staff held above her head, froze in terror. The arrows did little to veer the creature off of its course and at the last moment the elf cast herself into her stone armour. The legs of the Varterral lanced downwards, splintering the rock plating, but not deep enough to meet flesh. Merrill struggled to free herself as the monster aimed another strike. It was certainly determined and Hawke had no doubt that this determination would pay off in the end.

"Aim for the eyes!" Hawke hissed, flashing a frantic look at both Varric and Sebastian. Both were perched on the overhanging rocks. The white-clad archer nocked an arrow and, with a steady hand, let it fly true. It sailed through the air, hitting the rocky ridge just above its nearside eye. Brow furrowing, he readied another. A bolt from Bianca lodged itself just behind the monster's jaw, though it seemed very little distraction.

Hawke, with a battle cry, dived towards the monstrous Varterral and, with pure determination, lashed upwards with both daggers. To her surprise, the tips of the blades sank through the fiery underside to the flesh beyond. The monster above her thrashed in pain; its legs flailing to knock her aside. It partially succeeded and Hawke was forced to retreat from the erratic spasms of its limbs.

But she did not retreat quickly enough.

A vicious blow from its underdeveloped forearms sent her reeling across the ground, flashing vibrant stars in her eyes. She tasted the bite of metallic blood in her mouth and sagged against the cold, welcoming ground; more than willing to accept the pain-free darkness that came with unconsciousness.

"Hawke! Get up!"

Oh, yes, that's right. Lay still and she'd go from unconscious to dead.

Disorientated, she tried to pick herself up, staggering to regain her bearings. She was aware of the Varterral's lumbering form leaping after her and the lack of a dagger in her hand, raising an arm in a futile attempt to protect herself from the point of its spear-fashioned legs.

"Hawke!" Someone called her name.

"Get out of there! Move!"

"Go for the underside!"

She threw herself aside, nausea wracking her body, and wriggled back away from the beast. The ground reverberated beneath its bulk and suddenly she was pinned against rock, trying to edge her way under the lip of the wall in an attempt to avoid being pierced. Her armour caught on the jagged surface and locked her in place.

And then the Varterral was screaming in agony and rearing back away from her; attention diverted elsewhere.

"Make for the stairs, Choir Boy!"

"Hurry! I'll try to hold it off." Merrill's shrill voice was filled with panic. A fiery explosion added orange to the stars still marring Hawke's vision followed by a wave of cold from an ice spell. In her mind's eye she could see the icy fingers surging out from the ground, sticking up into the monster's belly. Its mortal cry rang out, piercing and deafening, and then the sound of it collapsing filled the cavern with thunder. Hushed silence followed, broken by the sound of boots on rock.

"Hawke!"

"Hawke!"

She tried to free herself from her half-wedged position, flapping weakly. She hadn't thought the head wound serious (surely it would have hurt more) but now she was thinking otherwise. Her vision refused to clear and the world continued to spin. Hands grasped at her, tugging sharply. She hissed between her teeth and tried to fend them off.

"Easy. Easy, Merrill. Let me get that." Sebastian's thickly accented voice soothed her and this time the hands on her armour managed to free her, pulling her gently back out into the open. She tried to stand but hands kept her down, pressed to the ground.

"Should have brought a healer." Merrill was panicking. "Why didn't Anders come? I'm sorry, Hawke, so sorry. This was all my fault! If I hadn't…"

"Step back a moment, Daisy. Give her some air."

Hawke felt herself begin to grow angry and panicky. She was not some pathetic damsel in distress. She could take care of herself! Why did she have to be the one to take a bad hit? She struck out at them, felt armour beneath her knuckles, and forced herself to sit up. Nausea claimed her and she wretched. Luckily, skipping breakfast had been a good idea that morning. Her stomach was empty. She grimaced, spitting onto the dusty floor and tried to stand.

"Hawke, I don't think you should—"

"—So what do you suggest? Just lie here till I die?" She wretched again, using the arms of her companions to pull herself to her feet. She blinked rapidly to try and clear her vision, saw the concerned faces of her friends swim before her, and reached up to touch the tender spot on her temple. Her fingers came away slick with blood and suddenly she was aware of the thick, trickling sensation down the side of her face, on her neck and chin, wetness on the collar of the shirt beneath her leather armour. She swayed and strong arms caught her; Sebastian's arms.

"Well, shit." She cursed. "Guess it was worse than I thought."

"Sit down a moment, Hawke and we'll get a dressing on it." Varric ushered her back to the ground and she watched through aching eyes as he rummaged for the things he needed, pressing a wad of padding against her head. The pressure of the bandage momentarily worsened the pain but she bit it back, refusing, point blank, to be carried out of the cave.

"I'll…I'll go ahead and find a healer in the clan." Merrill suggested. "The way back should be clear."

"Wait!" Hawke's fuzzy mind seemed to be trying to remember something. "We…I can't go yet."

"Yes you can." Sebastian sounded uncharacteristically firm and with his hand on the small of her back, he guided her back towards the entrance, Varric moving ten paces ahead to check the way was clear.


"It was my fault." Merrill wrung her hands. "All of it. I shouldn't have come."

"Daisy, none of this was your fault."

"But it was, Varric."

Sebastian looked up at the serious, angry tone in Merrill's voice, concern etched in his features. It was a disturbing tone for a blood mage to hold.

"Listen, why don't you go back to Kirkwall? We can come find you when we get back." Varric continued calmly, seemingly unconcerned about her change in demeanour.

"No. I have to stay. I have to be here when she wakes up."

Keeper Marethari stepped up to meet them, her face tired. "She's resting. She took quite a bad knock to the head, but the most skilled of our healers have tended to her. A good night's rest and she'll be fine. Just keep an eye on her. Any nausea or dizziness, take her straight back to a healer."

Sebastian hung his head. Aveline was going to kill him for letting this happen. So much for taking care of her. If only his arrows had been more effective in distracting the beast. Even when he'd moved close enough to aim three arrows at the beast's belly, they had done nothing more than irritate the monster. If it hadn't been for Merrill's frantic spell casting, the creature might have had him, too.

"Can we see her?" Merrill asked.

"Let her rest, child. You may all stay here and rest, yourselves."

"Keeper…we found these, in the cave." Merrill stood, handing over the amulets they'd found on the bodies.

"You have done a great service. Thank you." The Keeper declared sadly. "And, as promised, your reward."

"That'll cheer our Hawke up." Varric grinned, taking the pouch of silver from Marethari; testing the weight of it in his palm as if he knew, by how heavy it was, how much coin was within.

"Did Hawke also manage to retrieve the Varterral's heart?"

A horrible silence fell over the group, nervous glances shared between friends.

The Keeper gave a faint smile. "That would be a no, then."

"That must have been what she was trying to remember…well, you're going to be in trouble when she wakes up, Choir Boy."


Sebastian found that he could not sleep.

The last of the sunlight faded from the sky, casting them into shadow that danced and flickered wildly under the touch of the fire. His face, bathed orange, was warm, his hands absently stroking the smooth curve of his bow. Merrill had fallen asleep perhaps half an hour before and Varric long before that. He wondered why the dwarf did not seem all that concerned. Did Varric know something about Hawke that he did not?

He stood, unbuckling his armour with slow, practised hands, setting it neatly down in a pile alongside him. Then, stretching the ache from his body, he sat back down on the ground, leaned back against one of the logs, and rested his eyes.

Hawke found them all sleeping. Varric; lying on his back, his coat rolled into a crude pillow under his head, Bianca set protectively beneath an arm. Merrill; curled in on herself, hands balled under her chin, knees against her chest. Sebastian; still sitting, his head rolled back, the opening of his shirt flapping in the cool wind.

Her head pounded but the healer's had managed to close the wound and ease the bruising. She still felt fuzzy-headed but, the blinding pain was gone, returning her vision to her. Even still, she staggered unsteadily towards the fire; now nothing more than glowing ambers in the pale morning light.

Carefully, she eased herself down next to the sleeping archer, wriggling her bare toes in the cool grass – wet with morning dew – and released a breathy sigh. Turning her head, she took a moment to admire him, casting an appreciative, greedy eye over his relaxed form. The line of his pale throat flickered with a steady pulse, his lips slightly parted. The breath left his lungs with a soft, rhythmic 'whoosh', which had her smiling to herself. It was ever so cute.

She just wished that he didn't get on his high horse with her on certain things. Her love of trinkets and gold and… innocent, harmless thievery. Her 'inappropriate' comments, her flirtatiousness. Her dealing with grief…

Her shoulders drooped. It was odd that, despite all of their differences, that she found herself so impossibly drawn to him.

"Why do you put up with me?" She dared to ask of him. "I've been an ass these last few days and I'm sorry. I just…need to deal with things in my own way. You're all worried that I'm not grieving…but I am. Every moment of every day. Not a moment goes by that I don't think of all the people I've lost. I just…I deal with it in my own way. I put on my brave face, give everyone a smile and a joke and get on with it. I don't…I don't grieve in public. It's just not me. So…stop worrying."

She set her head against her knees. "For all our disagreements, I care about you both, you know. You and Aveline. You're my friends, even if we do end up arguing more often than we agree."

She paused, moistening her lips. "I said before that I didn't need you looking out for me. Well…after today it's become painfully obvious that I do. I could have been killed…so…so thank you, I guess. The only reason I can keep going at all is because I have all of you with me, keeping me sane."

She turned back to see his eyes had opened; highlighted white by the moon. She startled, clapping a hand over her mouth before she could further betray herself.

He pushed himself into a sitting position, wincing at the stab of pain in his neck from falling asleep in so awkward a position. Rubbing at the stiff muscles with a hand, he threw her a cautious smile (which was partly a grimace from the pain in his neck and back).

"Shouldn't you be resting?" He asked, as if he hadn't heard a single word she'd said.

She gawped at him in disbelief and then realised, a moment later, that he was deliberately choosing not to bring up what she'd just said. He was clearly aware that she found apologising difficult and this, in a roundabout sort of way, was an apology.

"I'm fine." She replied, her throat thick, making words difficult to form.

"But you're not, are you?" His voice was so soft and so kind that she could not stop the tears from forming in her eyes. She sniffed in an attempt to keep them at bay, but the look of compassion in his face was too much.

"Bottling it all up never helps anything. I'm sorry, for going about things the way I did." Though actually, it was mainly Aveline's fault. "Look, it doesn't have to be me or Aveline, but you need to find someone to confide in."

The first wracking sob rattled free from her throat and with the first came another and another. Afraid of waking Varric and Merrill, she smothered the cries into her hands, trying desperately to regain control of herself. She failed utterly.

Sebastian's fingers circling her wrist was all the encouragement she needed. And, with a strangled cry, she twisted around to face him, pressing her face to his chest, gathering folds of his shirt into her hands and muted her heart-wrenching sobs against him. His arms fell about her shoulders, pulling her close, murmuring soft words of comfort into her hair.

She cried until she had no more tears to give and with the unexpected release came a wave of fatigue. The warmth of him was obscenely comforting and she could have slept there, her head pressed over the beating of his heart, her arms coiling up around him. The inappropriateness of that, however, was not something that even the flirty Hawke could deny. Her want of this man was not something she was particularly proud of, though his vow of celibacy had not saved him from her flirtation in the past.

Reluctantly, she drew away from him, palms flat to his chest as if to keep herself from falling back into his embrace.

"Well, that was...embarrassing." She found it surprisingly easy to fall back into her facetious manner.

"Not at all." Sebastian replied quietly and she noted that his arms were still looped loosely about her, burning tingling bands of warmth across her waist and back.

She narrowed her eyes in mock-threat, "well, if word gets out about 'Hawke's emotional moment' then I'll know who's to blame."

He laughed quietly. "Your secret is safe with me, Hawke."

"Good." She wondered if he noticed he still held her. "Sebastian...are you trying to test the strength of your resistance to temptation?" She arched a brow at him, waiting for the meaning of her words to sink in. The response came in the flush that blossomed across his neck and face and he moved to withdraw his arms from her.

Quick as lightning, she caught his wrists before he could remove them completely, lifting her eyes to meet his. He would have had to have been blind to miss the desiring looks she'd thrown at him over the last few months. She had certainly noticed his towards her, and it was likely that he was better at hiding such things. But the thing between them had been left unspoken and ignored, both knowing what an impossibility it was.

"A true measure of one's character is one's ability to resist temptation." Sebastian replied, though his tone was not particularly serious.

"And where was that quoted from?" She teased softly.

He didn't respond; his blazing eyes fixed on her. She pressed the tips of her fingers into the smooth skin at his wrists and felt the pulse flickering there.

"Let me ask you this, Sebastian. Say you were comforting a grieving widow in the Chantry. She had four children to feed and no income. Life was looking dire. Yet, the words of comfort you offered her gave her hope, restored her faith in the Maker. She was so overjoyed that in that moment, her only desire was to show you how much. She throws her arms about your neck and kisses you."

He blinked, the meaning of her words trickling slowly across his mind.

"Would that be considered a sin of yours?"

"Not unless she'd asked me first."

A wily smile spread its way across Hawke's face. "So it would not be considered—"

"—Lady Hawke, I can't - in all good conscience - allow this conversation to continue. The sin would be yours and mine both."

"Yours, too?"

"I know what you plan."

"Oh, do you indeed?"

"I should walk away." Sebastian warned.

"But you won't."

Silence followed.

"I thought not."

"You're going to be the death of me, woman."

"I will not rest until the Maker has struck you down in his fury." She grinned wickedly.

"That...that is not even funny."

She released his wrists at long last and he drew his hands back away from her, setting them - palm down - on the grass.

"I think I'll try and get some more sleep." She declared with a sigh.

"Good idea."

She shifted and he expected her to get to her feet. Instead, she turned back to face him and lunged forwards, crushing her mouth to his. It wasn't the soft, gentle, romantic kiss that she'd always imagined and the force of the sudden, unexpected contact sent him sprawling backwards on the grass, her on top of him.

He tensed beneath her and she caught his face in her hands, angling it just so. It wasn't perfect by any means. His lips as tense and still as his body, but what could she have expected from a stolen kiss like this?

His fingers grasped at her hips with a bite of pain and she took that as a sign to end the act that she had a feeling she would live to regret. Well, she could always blame it on the bump on her head. She hadn't been thinking straight!

With a soft sniff, she made to lean back, only to find his mouth suddenly come alive beneath hers. His lips became soft, pliant and welcoming and they joined together with such belonging that the touch filled her with a desperate yearning. Even as she realised that this stolen kiss was getting out of hand, she was less and less able to break it off. She hungered for him, parting her lips, allowing him to swallow a soft moan as his tongue delved to taste her.

Her fingers lifted up from his face, threading through his hair, pulling him closer still, the swell of her breasts pressed flat against his chest. His pleasured groan sent a thrill straight to her core and, though she wished for nothing more than to follow the kiss through with something more, she became distinctly aware of this...situation she'd gotten them into.

Filled with a sudden desire to catch her breath, she pulled away from him, their lips coming apart with a soft 'pop'.

His eyes were so bright, the skin of his fine jaw so smooth and warm beneath her fingertips. It took all of her strength to pull completely away from him.

"What was that?" She demanded breathlessly.

"W-what?" He looked suddenly afraid.

"You weren't supposed to react, idiot!" She whacked him playfully on the shoulder, moving back to give him room to sit up. "Now you definitely get to share in the sin."

His face twisted into one of sheer disbelief and guilt.

"I knew you fancied me." Hawke teased him gently. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. You have a secret about me, right? Fair is fair." She stood, running a hand down the linen tunic she wore. "I guess I'll find you praying at the Chantry tomorrow, yes?" It was unkind of her, but she had a feeling he would read through the teasing tone to the hidden emotion within.

"I guess so." He mumbled in response, shifting so he was once again facing the fire.

"Well, goodnight…Sebastian."

"Goodnight, Hawke."

She noted the droop of his shoulders and the teasing smile dropped completely from her face. Yes, maybe she would come to regret her actions but...he probably regretted them more. After all, she had no one to answer to. He did. It was selfish of her – cruel, even – but she could not help the flutter of delight in her chest and belly. Could not help but touch her mouth; still warm and tingling from the contact.

Trust her, she thought silently, to fall for the one man she could never have.


Fin~