ankle deep

by wren and alma

Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

2. beneath the ghosts of all my guilt

disclaimer: disclaimed.
dedication: to self-indulgent schmoop
notes: anyway you get two chapters today because wren's a dumb who forgot to post the first part a month and a half ago when alma put it up on AO3

chapter title: beneath the ghosts of all my guilt
summary: Solving the problem of Ferelden, one civil disagreement at a time. — Elissa/Cailan, Alistair/Bethany.

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Hawke thumps the Templar in the side of the head, and he goes down without a sound.

Redcliffe in the morning is lovely. The sun's bright on the hills, Lake Calenhad stretches out in the distance nothing but a serene glitter, and there's mist obscuring the Frostbacks and the Tower alike. The storm's moved on, thank the Maker. It had been a long night, Beth's breathing shallow and laboured as she tried to sleep a long day of riding and a near-mana depletion off. Hawke's glad of it; she'd been worried that her sister would catch a cold.

But she hasn't, and the horses all managed to fit into Beth's magical shelter so most of their equipment's dried enough to be comfortable, and no one's killed each other yet. It could be worse.

And really, the Templar that she's just knocked out is just the icing on the cake.

"Stop looking at me like that, I didn't even kill this one," Hawke says, already stripping the platemail off him. She ignores the horror with which the Warden is staring at her. "We'll leave the horses here, sell them if we can, and make the crossing as soon as we get the chance."

"Take them to the Chantry," Alistair says. "There should be a man off to the left. He's from a mercenary group who will probably pay good coin for them."

Hawke barely has to nod at Carver before her brother takes off, all five horses on a string. She knows she doesn't have to worry about him getting a decent price; her brother haggles like a merchant born. Instead, she surveys her charges: Alistair, staring uncomfortably down at the second set of Templar armour she's thrown at him in just as many days; Beth hovering anxiously at his side, because of course she is, she can't help her own sick fascination with the Templars, can she; and the King himself, three days of stubble on his face and the sleepless constitution of the walking dead.

If they make to Highever without one of them dying, she's honestly going to be so surprised.

"Are you going to help me with this?" Alistair asks, wry grin working its way across his lips.

"Are your Chantry sensibilities going to be offended if I tell you to take off your shirt?" Hawke asks. "Or do I need to find you a tree to hide behind while you get changed?"

He starts pulling off his clothes, rather than let her come up with something else to tease him about. "I just need help with the cuirass. Bloody thing's too complicated."

Beth squeaks.

Oh, no, she's turning red, why is this happening, she needs to get it together. Her sister and Alistair both turn to stare at her, and Beth has to wave them off. Where is Carver when she needs him, he's always running off just when things turn terrible, she is never going to forgive him for this—

Hawke stops. What on the Maker's green earth is Beth—

Oh.

Oh.

"No, I'm not touching this," she says. She never signed up to coach her innocent virginal baby sister through her first crush on a Grey Warden. Absolutely not, this is not happening. "You, King, person, you help him, I'm going to take Bethy to buy food."

Which leaves Alistair only half dressed in the shadows of Redcliffe Village, awkwardly staring at the King. Who is not his brother. Just some guy, who happens to be royal and also kind of looks like him. Not a big deal.

Well, this is terrible.

Cailan looks at Alistair looks right back at him, and suddenly they're alone for the first time in either of their lives, and just—really, Hawke? Really?

"Let's get that on you," Cailan says.

"That's really not necessary," he says, even though yes, it actually is. The cuirass is a pain to put on alone. It involves moving his shoulder in ways he's pretty sure the Maker never intended. He's going to be useless as it is in a fight; he doesn't need to add broken arm to the list of problems.

He races through getting the rest of the armour on, if only to distract himself, but that doesn't work, does it. It leaves him staring down at the cuirass and knowing he has to get it on somehow.

"Alistair, let me help," Cailan says, and doesn't really give either of them time to think about it. He hoists the cuirass up, and then he's jamming it on, and it's probably painful, but if Cailan thinks out the fact that this is younger brother being strapped into Templar armour, that terrible black rage rises, and he wants to go hunt something down and kill it.

"Maker," Cailan mutters, more to himself than to Alistair, "this is worse than the armour they commissioned for Ostagar. Who came up with this?"

"Orlesians," Alistair said. "Remember who controls the Templars."

He's remembering things. All the awful things that were taught, that were discovered by recruits whispering things they shouldn't have ever heard but inevitably did, all of it's rushing back. The belfry begins its song for vespers and for a moment, it's like he never left the Chantry, still listening to the choir sing, still stuck with everything.

Maker, that was a miserable experience. Why would anyone actually want to join the Templars?

"I swore I'd never put this armour back on," he says, very quietly. There goes never. Six months. Such a short never.

"You never should have had to put it on in the first place," Cailan tells him, just as quietly.

"Yeah, well, when rumour is you're Arl Eamon's bastard and his wife would like to see you dead for it, there's not much choice," he says, bitter on his tongue. "Especially when the alternative is admitting out loud who's bastard you actually are."

Something very fierce tightens inside Cailan's chest. "I'm never going to forgive them. Any of them."

"It's not worth the energy," he sighs, tries not to think of the castle so close by and the little boy he never got the chance to know. "Am I free to go?"

"It should be worth the energy," Cailan shakes his head. "And I wouldn't—of course you are."

Alistair backs away, very nearly slams the Templar helmet down over his face, and Cailan thinks he understands. Sometimes the world is too big to deal with, too dark, too close. There are still too many things that he doesn't understand, but Alistair's unwillingness to deal with Cailan isn't one of them.

Frankly, Cailan thinks it's half a miracle Anora put up with him for as long as she did. But only half, because she's run off, now, and the worst part is that he can't even blame her for it.

On the worst days, Cailan thinks that he'd run away, too, if he had the chance.

Carver watches the not-Templar storm past him, and looks back to see the normally disheveled King looking like a hurricane just tore through him. He thinks that if he and Mar ever get that bad, he'd much rather just be put out of his misery. Fighting with a sibling is the worst—Carver just doesn't like to think about it, okay? But that's also probably the problem with these two.

Actually, forget it. Not his problem.

"Who had the bright idea of putting these two together like this, anyway?" he asks, looking at his sisters.

"Not. Touching. It," Hawke repeats.

"Mar, don't be mean," Beth says, quietly. "Just—I'm going to talk to Alistair, alright? Try not to get into trouble while I'm gone?"

"That means I'd have to stop being myself," Hawke says, voice sorrowful, "and I don't think I can do that, Bethy, I really don't."

"Try," says Bethany, and then turns to take off after him. He's not hard to find; the armour shines in the offensive-bright sunlight. That's how it always is, after storms, as though the sun is trying to make up for nearly letting them all die from exposure.

She follows him all the way down to the docks.

He really does look out of place, silverite armour a white gleam. There's nothing subtle about Templar armour, is the thing—you can see them coming a mile away. And Beth's spent so much of her life running and hiding, letting words bubble out of her to get herself out of trouble in any way she can, because Maker knows the last thing she wants is to be trapped in that prison of a Tower. Even from here she can see the dark blur of it on the horizon, and the sight alone sends a shudder down her spine.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks, very softly.

"I don't know if I can," he admits. There's no easy way to sit down in this armour; Maker, he hates it, but there's a reason and, well, the others are going to have to wander down here eventually if they want to catch the ferry.

He's always liked the docks. It's open, the buildings falling away to reveal fresh air, blue skies, and a lake that seems to go on forever. It's easier to think here.

"We can just be quiet, then," Beth says. She looks out over the water, the sky reflecting golden-blue. And the lake's so clear here, all the little silver fishes darting down in the depths; she can feel the magic that's sunk into the ground over the Ages. It's soaked the bedrock, singing nonsense tales of little girls and the drowning boys who'd loved them, and Beth sinks down to dip her fingers into the lakewater like the magical waste doesn't matter at all.

"No," he's finding words to be a bit difficult here, "I don't—the quiet makes it worse?"

Quiet is silent nights in the stables, looking out into the shadows and wondering where the big brother he's not supposed to know is. It's wondering what it would be like to be a trueborn son, raised in a palace where it's never cold or wet or smelly. Quiet is the later nights in the Chantry, when the stone walls were dead silent and thinking that maybe if he had been trueborn, he wouldn't have to go to bed hungry and there'd always be a friend nearby if the silence got to be too much.

Quiet is a lot of thoughts he really, really doesn't want right now.

"I guess I can understand that," she says. "I never said thank you, for yesterday. Mari told me I fell off my horse, and that you realized before anyone else. I don't remember it, but, well, I appreciate it."

"It's nothing," he shrugs. "When you join the Wardens, you learn quickly to pay attention to your surroundings, especially any mages. Lose your mage and you could lose your life, is what Duncan's always saying."

"I'm not a Warden, though," she says. There's something about the water… Beth stirs it twice before she realizes she's not using her fingers, and that if someone sees her making the water move with just her brain, there would be hell to pay. She backs away, shaking her head to free herself of the strange thrall of it. "And if my sister has anything to say about it, I never will be."

"But I still am," he says, looking down at the water. There's an unnatural sheen to it, the centuries of magic finally taking its toll. "Even if I'm travelling with other people, I'm still a Warden. I still have to look out for everyone, especially if there's a Blight."

Beth flicks her fingers at him, droplets arcing to sprinkle across his face. "Has anyone ever told you that you're too serious?"

"Usually I'm told I'm too flippant," he says, crooked grin working lighting up his features. "Please don't tell anyone about this, it'll ruin the idiot persona I've worked so hard to build."

"Well, there's your problem, isn't it," Beth says, lips curling into a smile. "You've gone and convinced everyone that you're not listening, but that's not true, is it."

"You say that like it's a bad thing," he's teasing, an easy thing to do when there's an ugly blackness winding it's way around his spine, poisoning everything it touches. He'd thought the taint would be the worst he ever encountered. Who knew fami—that dealing with something as simple as this would be so, so much worse.

"Oh, is that you doing it now?" she asks, blinking at him. "You're teasing, but it doesn't reach your eyes."

"Do you always try to dismantle people you've just met, or is it just me?"

"Sorry," Bethany tilts her head at him, honestly not sorry at all. "It's a bad habit. But I can keep a secret, so as long as you don't try it on me too often, no one will know."

"I can't promise that," he says, shrugging. "I've been doing it so long by this point, I don't usually notice."

"That's a little upsetting," she points out. "A lot upsetting, actually, no matter how you look at it. But… I guess I'm not one to talk."

"Let's just say I didn't have a happy childhood and leave it at that," he offers. There's a shadow growing on the horizon. Whether it's the ferry or just a ship returning from the tower, there's no way to know. Or maybe it's a monster, the magic in the lake finally bonding together to create some awful distortion of a fish. He hopes it's the boat. Templar armour and lakeside battles never, ever go well.

Beth takes in a tiny, sharp breath. There's the ferry, so close and so far, and a skein of dread tightens around her throat. She knows how this is going to go down, but—

"How are the others going to get on?" she asks, softly. "You and me, we're, well, look at us, we'll make sense. But my sister and Carver and, and His Majesty, I… how are we going to manage this?"

"I don't have the papers needed to get us all the way to Kirkwall," he admits, very quietly. The mana-draining cuffs are heavy in his hand. "So this is where I start apologizing profusely and ask that you not hate me."

"I'm going to have to wear shackles, aren't I," she sighs.

"Unfortunately, yes," he says. "I wish there was another way, but without those papers, the only way to do this is to say I had to hire outside help. And that would mean that you're dangerous, and any normal Templar would have a mage like that restrained."

She laughs an ugly sound that rips its way out of her chest, too jagged to be real. "They'll probably think I'm maleficar."

"If you were a maleficar, no one would have bothered arresting you," he says. "So you'll just be a very creative mage with a little too much experience in the primal school."

"Which is," she shakes her head, "ironically, true."

He nods. "The best lies are the ones based in truth, aren't they?"

"That's what they say," she says, so quietly, and pulls in a breath. She offers him her wrists. "Shall we, then?"

"I am so sorry," he says, hands gentle on her wrists. He pulls her just a little closer, needs a better view to make sure the cuffs are on properly. This is going to be painful as it is. No reason to make it worse by accidentally catching her skin in the lock. "I really am sorry, but this is going to hurt. You'll be regenerating mana at the same time that these are draining it, so just… brace yourself?"

The cuffs latch closed, and pain shocks through her. It's like everything is on fire, the magic in her blood screaming at this latest offense against its person. It rebels inside her, throwing itself at the cuffs, make them explode, destroy them, how dare they, how dare they! Beth sways, trying to force it down and away, box it up, compress, compress, compress—

"Ow," she says, breathy and high. "That's—unpleasant?"

"You'll only make it worse by fighting it," he tells her, smiles a little sadly. "I am sorry. I wish there was another way."

Alistair has only seen these cuffs in use once before, and seeing the pain obvious in every line of Bethany's face reminds him of exactly why his faith in the Templars started to crack. The older Templars who had been controlling that mage, the actual glee they felt at seeing another human being hurt because of something beyond their control—he didn't understand it then and he doesn't understand it now. He'd rather there be no Maker at all than there be one who so sincerely wants to see those of His own making in this much pain.

"I'm not going to be able to help you stay standing," he says very, very quietly, "and no one else is either. You're going to have to do that part on your own. If I have to do it and there's someone around to see, you could end up getting hurt."

"It's fine," Beth says, though her teeth are grit together. "I don't need help."

"You'll have these on until we're clear of the Tower," he explains. "It should get easier as time goes on, but just in case it doesn't, you'll need to be prepared. I am sorry, Bethany."

She chokes out a laugh, drops her head back with a sick-sounding crack. Even beyond the pain, the cuffs are heavy—she'd not been prepared for that, but maybe she should have been. "Carver's going to have a fit."

"He can take it up with your sister," Alistair grimaces. He intends on having a few words with the eldest Hawke. This plan is sound, yes, but if she ever tries to get him to do this again, he's going to take the breastplate and introduce it to her head.

Beth actually giggles at that, weird and weak, and leans over to nudge an elbow into his side. "She'll probably just agree with him."

He almost nudges her back, a habitual action, but at the last moment, the thinks of what he's wearing and doesn't. Armour against the thin mail she's wearing? No, no thank you. If he's going to be facing off against the giant that is Carver Hawke, he'd rather not give the young man any more reason. "This was her idea. She's not allowed to object."

"Actually, it was mine," Beth tells him. The pain's lessened, now, a little, but moving still hurts. Maker, is this what they put all apostates though? No wonder no one ever wants to go; even beyond losing all sense of freedom, to get there you have to wear these. "Who's idea do you think it was, to knock a Templar out and steal their armour? Mari would have just killed them and been done with it. Me… not so much."

"So I should send all objections to you to deal with?" Alistair asks. Maker, this girl is insane. Flirt with Templars, impersonate an apostate being arrested by a Templar, hang out in the Chantry—does she have no sense of self-preservation at all?

"If you must," she says. The ferry looms closer, a long flat-bottomed thing of rough-hewn wood. Her face falls into a kind of frozen neutrality. "I'm sorry, Alistair," she tells him, voice distant, "but you're going to have to go get my sister and the others. I don't think I can move very far—hurts too much."

"I know. I am sorry about that," he says, voice low as people begin to gather on the docks. Not many, but that's unsurprising. There will be more at the northern docks, waiting to travel to Redcliffe. He's in a bit of a bind, though, regarding that. The mana-draining cuffs are easily visible; they're meant to be an obvious sign that hey look, here's a mage! He can't just leave her here alone, not when there's a risk that a real Templar could see her.

Carver is the first to spot the flash of too-bright silverite. His sister and the King stay close to him, the latter hunched over in a pitiful attempt to disguise his sheer size, the hood pulled low. With any luck, they'll be able to pass him off as hillfolk. Well, an abnormally tall hillfolk. They still walk around with cloaks like that, hiding from the stares of everyone around them, don't they?

And then he sees Bethany.

White swallows up the world, anger flaring brighter than any silverite armour, because that is his sister, in pain, in those shackles and he made a promise that he would never, ever see her in those. Not in the company of someone in that—

—breathe. It's just Alistair, just one of his sister's harebrained ideas. It's not—Bethany isn't going to the Tower. This is to keep her out. This is to keep her out of the Tower. This is to keep Beth safe.

He glares at Mar, jaw clenching painfully, and reminds himself again that this is all for Beth.

"She's fine," Hawke says, very quietly, casting a glance at her brother. He's glowering. At this rate he's going to frighten everyone around them off, though maybe that's a good thing. "She's strong, and you know why we're doing this."

"Doesn't mean I have to like it," he growls, low and quiet so only she can hear it. He moves quickly to Beth's side, keeping her safely between him and Alistair. It'll be better that way, if he can easily keep an eye on her, if he can even scare off one Templar who might try to approach them.

"Carver," Beth murmurs, the comfort of having him close a balm against the blister of the mana-draining cuffs around her wrists. She can't help the way she slumps into him, even though she can feel the way he's bristling all over like a wounded porcupine—she can't touch him, she knows, because that would kill the ruse before it's even begun, but still her shoulders go down. "Carver, shh, I'm fine."

"Let's just get this over with," he says, not daring to look at her.

He's never going to forgive me for this, Beth reflects.

Behind her painfully-codependent siblings, the King of the realm is doing his very best to disappear into the woodwork. It's not going very well; Hawke doesn't think she's ever seen someone so large appear so conspicuous.

"You're quite terrible at this hiding thing, aren't you," she says, and it's not a question. Cailan stares at her miserably from within the shadow of his hood, and Hawke shakes her head, decides to take pity on him. "Oh, stop looking like I've kicked your cat. Straighten your spine, you're tall enough that people will think you're Qunari if you keep your hood up."

He does, and immediately looks less like he's some constipated hunchback. Hawke reaches up to pat his shoulder—the fact that she has to reach up alone will convince half the people on the pier that he's some mad creature—her sympathy near tangible.

"What do they feed you in Denerim?" she asks, because, honestly.

"I wish I knew," he says, jerks his head at where Carver's hovering anxiously at Beth's side, looking nothing so much as a deeply concerned guard dog, "because I think your brother's had some, too."

"You're all unnatural," Hawke mutters. "Are you ready to play mercenary?"

"Not even a little bit," Cailan tells her.

"Oh, fantastic. This is going to be so much fun!" and she doesn't cackle so much as she—cackles, that's really the only word for the way she sounds. Hawke sweeps her hair back, cracks all her knuckles, and ambles off to stand with her siblings. The family resemblance between them is stark for a moment; she and Carver share colouring and eye-colour, and a certain way of standing that speaks of military training. Bethany, on the other hand, looks nothing like either of them. She's round-faced and curly-haired and her mouth is drawn down; she watches the ferry draw towards them with the look of a woman going to her own death.

Cailan stands at their backs, a hulking shadow, and with Alistair in his Templar armour, they very much look like a group of mercenaries, taking the unfortunate mage girl between them to somewhere far worse than here.

This is it. This is where he gets to lie and fake his way across a ferry that will inevitably be more Templar than normal person. If they make it through this without him landing in front of the Grand Cleric, it will be a miracle.

Alistair takes hold of Bethany's upper arm—gingerly, because Maker he doesn't want to hurt her, but he's supposed to be a Templar and he knows that showing mercy is going to get them so busted so fast—and leads her onto the ferry. This early in the ruse, no one will ask for papers. Why should they? It's only going to be at the Tower landing that there will be a problem. Right now, it just looks like he's here to take someone to Kinloch.

Calm down, he tells himself. It's just until the northern docks. Given the location of the sun right now, that'll be sometime before dawn. Still dark enough that hiding will be easy enough and then he'll be back in his own armour.

Assuming they still have his armour.

If Hawke left it behind in Redcliffe… Alistair tries not to think of that. Tries instead, to think of Duncan and whether or not the former thief would find any of this amusing. Probably not, because of the aforementioned risk of Grand Cleric. But it'll still make for a good story, won't it?

"Sit," he says quietly, pushing Bethany down to a crude bench aboard the boat. It's out in the open; Maker, please don't let it rain again. Not an ideal seat, but at least it's close to the ferry's edge. If they have to escape, it can be done faster from here than from deeper in the ferry.

Beth looks up at him, eyes blazing. "Don't touch me."

Pain lances up from her wrists, and she breathes through it. Magic reacts to emotion—and it's finally sinking in that she's wearing mana-draining cuffs, on a ship bound ostensibly to the Circle. It occurs to her, belatedly, that she is officially useless in a fight. Oh, Maker, Maker, when is she going to learn? She's struck with a kind of creeping paralysis, out of beat with the rest of the world, crumbling apart in slow motion. The blood leaves her face, and she can feel her magic flare, drain, flare again.

This is what it's like for other people, she thinks, the hollow haunting emptiness inside that threatens to engulf her whole. If she could get these cuffs off, she could set this whole boat alight, sink it to the bottom of the lake, burn them for ever letting this happen—

Carver sits down on his sister's other side, not touching her but still close enough to feel the tiny vibrations in the air as the reality of what is going on starts to sink in. He takes a deep breath, pushes it out through his nose and adjusts the sword on his back until it's visible to anyone who passes by. If she's going to be like this the entire trip then, well, nothing for it. He'll just have to stay calm as he can, steady the way she usually is.

He looks at her, covers it with a glance out to the receding docks and silently prays that nothing goes wrong between here and the northern docks. She's gone wide-eyed nervous and if not for those cuffs, he wouldn't be surprised in the slightest to see lightning arcing off her body like the world's most vicious shield. It's not going to anyone any good if the burning white-hot fury seeping into his bloodstream is allowed to run free.

"Don't think about it," he says very, very quietly, still looking over his shoulder at the docks. "You're always telling me that thinking about it makes it worse, so stop it."

"I'm not thinking," she breathes the words more than she speaks them, drops her head so that her face is shadowed. "I'm trying to figure out how Mari learned to pick locks."

"Because she's evil incarnate," he murmurs, turning back to face the ferry. He crosses his arms over his chest and glares at everyone in their general vicinity.

"Better evil incarnate than… than this," she says. Her wrists itch. It's like all her blood has rushed to the skin there, the pound of her pulse in time with the slop of the tide against the shore. Beth rotates her hands, scratches, scratches. The cuffs provide a sharp edge, but it's not enough. She does it again, again, again.

By the time this is over, she's going to be raw-wristed and bled dry, and still she will have willingly worn these things. Oh, Maker.

"Stop that," Alistair murmurs, wishes he could say it nicer than that. He can see the red starting to spread out from beneath the cuffs, ugly bold against her skin. "You'll break your wrist if you aren't careful."

"That's the point," she says, fighting with the urge to dig her nails into her thighs. "If I get a hand out, I'll—" she cuts herself off with a tiny feral sound at the back of her throat. "—I'll still be sitting here."

He reaches over, gloved hand covering both of hers. Was she always that small? "Exactly. Stop fighting and it won't hurt as much," he says. There's not as much concern for being quiet, though he still is. Carver's glowering has scared everyone off. "It's too late to change the plan now."

"This will be pointless if you ruin it now, Beth," Carver breathes. This whole thing is a terrible idea. They should have just taken the Imperial Highway along the western coast of the lake. Longer travel time, but less chance of going tits up. Last thing they need is for Bethany's fear to get the worst of her, because that would push him over the edge and then they'd likely have a dead Bethany and probably a dead King, if not a dead everyone. Which ruins the entire reason for even attempting this.

Goodbye Ferelden, you were beautiful while you lasted.

"Remember who's with us," he mutters.

"It'd be authentic, though," Beth murmurs, "me freaking out."

"It could destroy the kingdom."

"I hate it when you're right."

"Quiet, the both of you," Hawke says. Her arms are crossed over her chest, tapping one foot. She's got the sharp look of a killer in her eyes. Her siblings are going to get them all caught—this is the reason she'd much prefer to leave them at home. "Carver, leave the mage alone. We have a job to do."

"Ah, but it's fun to tease her," he says, does his best to imitate her mercenary-murderer grin.

"And I'm sure it'll be fun when she blows you up. You'd deserve it, too," Hawke says, dismissive, and glances down to see her sister's mouth open and bared in a snarl full of teeth. Ah, she thinks, there's my girl. "Leave her alone, if you keep it up we'll tip the boat."

Carver's brow furrows. It isn't until his sister tips her head toward the other passengers that he realizes what she means. "I doubt I'm the reason they're all over there," he says.

"You sure about that, mate?" Cailan asks, very quiet. He stands like a giant off to the side—Maker, do they not know what they look like? Carver's near as big as he is, Hawke looks like she kills men for fun and profit, and Alistair is wearing full Templar regalia. Not to mention the little mage sitting between them, half-mad with the shackles around her wrists, tiny and dangerous.

They're a mental little group, and everyone around them can see it.

"All of you, please shut up," Alistair says, his voice still muffled by the helmet. People are staring. That's not good. If people think they're weird, or overheard something, then the Templars will ask questions. Templars asking questions can make this all go very wrong very quickly. Things tend to die when Templars ask questions. It's a horrible habit, but no one would ever listen to him when he was still in the Order. "Try and get some rest, will you?"

Bethany slumps forwards, hair curling limply around her face. There's blood soaking into the white of her skirt. She's never going to be able to get it out.

(That it's her own blood is a little morbid, but, well. Blood is blood is blood, and maleficar are maleficar are maleficar. She's not going to lick it away, because who does things like that?)

In all his years of living in Redcliffe, Alistair never actually rode the ferry. That was for important people, not bastards living in the stables. It's an odd experience, absolutely terrifying if the fact that he is wearing platemail is taken into account. Why Templars in the middle of the lake is a good idea, he has no idea. It seems like a death trap to him.

How many Templars are down there, drowned because the armour they stubbornly wear to show the world that they've got absolutely nothing to compensate for is too heavy and too difficult to take off in a pinch? Does the magic in the lake sink into their bones as the bodies rot away, leaving skeletal warriors still in that damnable armour just waiting for the time when someone will realize they're there and call them up?

That'd be one hell of a rebellion. He doubts Kinloch would survive it. A Circle Tower torn down from the bottom up by the angry remains of those once sworn to protect it.

But that's a morbid thought.

The ferry ride is mostly quiet, a nervous knife-fight silence only broken by the splash-slop of the water against the hull. If anybody actually manages to sleep, it'll be a verified miracle. There's a cramp in his leg by the time they pass by the miserable little dock where a slumped inn proudly proclaims itself to be The Spoiled Princess. Though, if there's anything spoiled in there, it's probably just a—yeah, no, that's an even more morbid thought than the ghost Templars breaking down the Tower.

Which is very close. Painfully close. It makes his heart seize up, thinking of how close he came to actually being in this position of actually arresting a mage as sweet and charming as Bethany to actually take her to this very place. The sun is almost beneath the horizon, hazy bruised gold heavy in the air as the make the last leg of the journey to the Kinloch Hold.

(Maker, give him strength. Andraste, he takes back everything negative he's ever said about you, just please let this work.)

Hawke watches the inn shrink behind them as they cross the lake.

(Hey, she went drinking there, once. Started a fight, too, but that's a totally different story. They were cultists. Probably.)

Something's prickling at her, the peculiar sensation of being watched spidering across the back of her neck. She can't quite figure out where it's coming from, and so she stares coolly at all the other passengers.

But they all avoid her gaze.

The Circle Tower looms high above them. Hawke's not impressed, honestly. It's an indistinguishable-coloured tall stone building rising out of the lake like a jagged wound. There are no windows and only one set of doors that she can see, and the air nears hums as they get closer to it; the crackle-pop of magic tastes like burned sugar on her tongue. But it's still not enough to keep her from noting three separate escape routes, and only one of them involves scaling the building.

(Hawke makes a mental note to tell Beth about them, later, once they're away from this place. Just in case. Of course, if Beth ever does end up in a Circle, Hawke has no doubt that Carver will tear Thedas apart to find her.)

Cailan looks up.

And up, and up, and up.

"This is Kinloch Hold?" he asks, very quietly.

"The one and only," Alistair responds. Maker, he swears this Tower gets more and more disturbing the older he gets. It's like hello, welcome, leave your dreams at the shore and prepare for hell. Once upon a time, it was simply wow, that's a tall tower. He'll be a happy man if this is the last time he ever sees this place.

"It looks like a place where dreams go to die," Cailan says, frowning up at it. It's a prison, is what it is. The little mage is the only one in shackles, but he has a feeling she's not the only one here to be shunted into a Circle. It's a hollowness behind the eyes—there's at least two other passengers here who've got that look to them.

And Cailan understands the need for the Circle. He understands that it has a purpose. He even understands that in some cases, it's necessary.

But he can't see how it's necessary to lock people away from their families.

And that brings him right back to Alistair. Because of course it does. These things always come full circle, don't they.

(Full circle, full Circle; it would be funny if it weren't quite so sad.)

"Supposedly this is one of the nice ones," Alistair says, sits up a little straighter at the sight of Templars waiting for the ferry. "As nice as a prison can be, at least."

They dock carefully beside the Tower, like the magic resonating off the building could destroy the ferry. It's silly, so silly. It's a prison. There aren't even any windows, which can't be healthy, don't people need sunshine? He's pretty sure people need sunshine to be healthy.

And then there are Templars everywhere, ushering people off and—how did he miss that there was a Tranquil on the ferry?!—and then there's one, a young one, vaguely familiar this one is, standing right in front of him. Short blonde hair, brown eyes, probably not much younger than Alistair himself is. He just can't remember a name.

"Do you want me to take her?" he asks.

Alistair shakes his head, does not trust himself to stand. "Wrong Circle. This one's going to the Gallows."

(That name still tastes like iron on his tongue. Even now, so long after the stories faded. But that's just it, isn't it. The stories never faded. Stories like that never fade away.)

The Templar looks at him, nervous-wry smile. "Lost your papers?"

"First recovery from another country," Alistair shrugs, "and this one's a bit feisty. Had to get local help."

"Andraste, I just want to get this over with and get paid," Hawke says, slowly, casting her eyes over the rest of the passengers exactly the way she would if she were looking for potential employers. Mercenaries have so few qualms about who they take gold from; any other day, and she'd think they were almost smart.

She smiles at the Templar. "Runaways. You know how they are."

"Kirkwall, you said?" the Templar squints at her. "Are you an Amell?"

"No, I'm a Hawke," she says, smile growing, because what better way to distract from the fact that he knows her mother's maiden name? "Oh, but you're cute, aren't you?"

His face flushes bright red. "S-sorry. It's just… you look a lot like one of the mages here and I just wondered if you were related since she's originally from Kirkwall. It was a stupid question."

"A stupid question from a stupid boy," she tells him, has to resist the urge to reach out and pat his head. He really is cute, in the same way a dopey puppy is cute. "It's alright, love, you don't need to worry about me, I'm no Kirkwaller. Just a mercenary."

"R-right," he says, turns to Alistair. "Sorry if I've held you up. Have a safe trip. They say things are getting ugly to the north."

Alistair nods, very slowly. There's a thickness in his chest, a vague sense that he's missing something important. "Thank you, I'll keep that in mind. May the Maker be with you."

"And with you," the Templar smiles nervously, doesn't look at Hawke—odd, that—and finally leaves.

Getting back on the barge is a study in patience that Hawke doesn't have. There's a horrible little laugh bubbling in her throat, a hysteric thing that plays out on her lips. "Maker, did you see him, I bet he would have sat up and begged if I'd told him to. But that name, Amell… Carver, isn't that—"

"Maria, stop it," Carver says. Oh hell no they are not dealing with this, not now. Mother's family can wait for another day when Beth doesn't have to face down Templars on their home turf and they do not have the King of Ferelden with them. "We're not going back there, not to deal with family shit when we just got through there safely. We can check it out later, okay?"

"Carver?" comes Beth's voice, wavering. "I—I think I'm dying?"

He leans back against the boat, peering over the edge and accidentally bumping into Bethany in the process. "Think about Dog at the rabbit warren, getting into Old Barlin's chickens. Or Sister Leliana's stories. Think about those. Do you remember the one about that mage? What was his name, Split? Screech?"

She's shaking. That isn't good. He's seen soldiers like this, after facing darkspawn for the first time. It's a haunted hollow look, fear in every tremble, like being locked in a nightmare while wide awake. Soldiers have died from things like this.

Alistair looks back at the receding Tower; they're still too close for him to—screw it, there's only the captain aboard the ferry now, aside from them. He reaches over and quickly undoes the cuffs, letting them drop heavily onto the deck. Her wrists are angry raw, flesh rubbed to the point of bleeding. "What's the mage's name, Bethany?"

"Sketch," she breathes, too high, too fast, her throat's closing up, everything inside's gone knotted and tight and her lungs squeeze, she can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe— "His name was Sketch."

"What'd he do?"

"Ran away," she gets out, and there are tears, now, thick things that clog her throat, oh, Maker. "Val Royeaux, the White Spire, he—he ran—"

"This is stupid," Carver mutters, because screw the Templars, screw the Chantry. He pulls Beth close, holds her rattling frame close to him. She's so tiny against him. Too tiny, too fragile. Maker, why is Marian so useless. This was a shit idea. Terrible, really. They should have just taken the western road along the shore.

"Carver," Hawke says, voice gone dead quiet, "let her go. She needs to breathe."

She kneels down next to the pair of them, very gently curls a hand around Beth's cheek. "Beth?" she asks, "Bethy? Bethy, love, listen, can you look at me?"

Beth's still shaking, the tremble to her limbs so violent, now, that her entire body is vibrating. But she looks up, because in the end she still trusts her older sister to keep her safe, and Bethany doesn't know how not to listen when Mar tells her to do something.

"There you are," Hawke says, softly, and she's smiling just a little. "I know, shh, I know. Breathe with me, okay?"

"W-what?"

"Breathe with me," Hawke says again. "In and out, alright? There's no one here but you and me and Carver. Just us three. C'mon, breathe, Bethy, breathe. In and out. In. Out. In, Beth, breathe in. There's a good girl, shh, we've got you."

They sit like that for a very long time, and Beth concentrates on breathing, in and out, inhaling to the count of seven, exhaling to the count of eleven. Her sister's voice in her ear, the rhythmic sound of waves against the hull, and the breathing, the breathing, inhale, expand, exhale, contract, back and forth and back and forth and back—

(—and oh Maker, they'd been so close, and there's blood on her dress, her wrists hurt, her magic curls low in her stomach, and it wants to burn, to burn, to burn, she needs somewhere small and dark so she can shake herself to pieces and forget that this ever happened—)

—but in the end, it's the constant pound of Carver's heart that brings her back. Beth knows the sound of Carver's heart better than she knows her own, the pulse of his blood as familiar and dear as her own self. The th-thud th-thud of it pulls her back, anchors her back into her body.

Andraste, what would she ever do without her twin?

"I'm okay," Beth whispers, a long time later. "I'm okay now."

Carver presses a kiss against her hair. "Good. I'd hate to have to burn down the kingdom we're trying to save."

Beth curls into him, pulls her older sister down with her until they're nothing more than a pile of limbs and dark hair, too tangled up to know where who begins and who ends. "Just, stay," she almost begs, "for a little while. Please."

"Always, Buttercup," he says.

"Don't be weird, Carver," Hawke murmurs, an exhausted smile crawling over her face. Beth used to have episodes like these when she has a child before her magic settled; an awful wild panic that took her over and sent her to shaking and crying. It's been years since she's had one, and Hawke thinks somehow this one was worse. "Bethy, are you really alright?"

Beth nods. Her eyelids are drooping. "M'sleepy."

"Get some rest," Carver says. "We're not going anywhere."

Alistair watches all of this, or tries not to, from the other side of the barge. When the shaking got really bad and even Hawke was looking worried, he'd figured it time to give the family some space.

Which meant grabbing their other companion and going far away, but still in sight.

Well, that was brilliant. He sighs and pulls off the helmet, the lake wind a calming balm against his face. He'd only meant to let the Hawke family have some alone time. He never meant for this, whatever this is, what is he saying. There is no this because for this to be anything would be admitting that the blood in his (their) veins actually means something.

Which it doesn't.

"I used to get seasick," Cailan says, rather unexpectedly.

"That's… interesting?" Alistair has no idea what he's supposed to say to that. What on earth. Is this how the King does small talk? That's an amazing knack for making things awkward. No wonder Ferelden is facing civil war.

Cailan laughs, a little embarrassed. "No, it's just—if this was a decade ago, I'd have puked by now. Which is disgusting, but still true."

"I'm not at all sure what to say?" Alistair says, because really. His choices are you're really bad at this talking to people thing aren't you and well, trying to have a conversation. A real conversation. With the King. Who looks freakishly like him and is in no way important. Just the King of his home country. Nothing more.

"I get that less often than you'd think," Cailan mutters. He shifts his weight, trying to stretch out the tight knot of nerves in his stomach. "Not usually this terrible at conversation."

"You should probably work on that, given where you're going," Alistair says. Nothing works here, does it? Silence is more awkward than the Grand Cleric's disapproving stare and he'd rather face darkspawn than indulge the gnawing curiosity about the King.

(Curiosity is a powerful thing, though.)

Finally, after a long moment, he quietly admits, "This is my first time being on a boat."

"Really?" Cailan blinks at him. "You're handling it better than I did."

"I think it's more the idea of wearing platemail while in the middle of the lake is kind of terrifying?" Alistair says, tries not to think about what's going on here. This is not a conversation.

"Do you ever wonder who came up with platemail?" Cailan asks the sky. "I think they must have enjoyed cruelty. Or at least, they must have enjoyed watching people stumble around like drunken children."

"I try to not think about platemail," Alistair tells him. "Platemail is Templar armour, which is Chantry stuff, and the Circle."

"There are other kinds of platemail," Cailan says, thinks about his own set of platemail back at Ostagar, golden and shining in the sun. Beautiful craftsmanship, absolutely shit usefulness. If he doesn't die in that armour, he'll be a happy man.

"None that I've worn."

"Sometimes they even look nice," Cailan sighs. "But that's about all they do."

"It's just about making power look pretty," he says, looks down at the sword of mercy emblazoned on the breastplate. So much beauty spent to conceal something so very, very ugly. "Something beautiful shouldn't make people frightened at first glance."

"Unfortunately," Cailan says, very quiet, "that's mostly what politics are about."

Well, that hits a little too close to the heart. Alistair takes a deep breath, coy sweetness of the lake cut with the fresh wind blowing in from the north. "I never wanted any of it," he says, just as quiet. "Not the Chantry, not the Wardens, but above all, I never wanted to be a part of that."

"What, politics?" Cailan asks. At the tiny inclination of Alistair's head, an awful little grin lights his face. "No one wants to be part of politics. It means empty marriages and long parties full of Orlesians. Not a fun way to go through life."

"That may be," Alistair says, "but there are times I've thought I'd take all the politics for a chance at normalcy. I'll admit that."

"Normalcy?" Cailan asks. "What do you mean?"

"You don't get a chance at a family with the any of the groups I've been with," and well, that's not a thing he's ever said aloud before. There goes the no conversation thing. "At least with politics you do."

"There's no guarantee of family, even then," Cailan says, mouth twisting. He looks out over the water, very carefully doesn't think of Anora, doesn't think of the way her eyes would narrow any time someone made a joke about children, the way she used to sit with her hands folded in her lap and the way she'd said, three days before the wedding, if we're doing this, neither of us will ever be happy. "I know that better than anyone."

"But at least there's a chance," Alistair tilts his head back, looks up at the twinkle of stars peeking out from the curtain of night. "That's better odds than I've had so far."

Cailan doesn't really have a reply for that; odds are, Alistair is going to end up being luckier than Cailan himself has been, in that department. It's not hard to be, when you go and marry your oldest friend even though you knew from the start that you'd never be able to think of her as anything but a sister. And even though he knows that it had made sense at the time, he can't help but wonder if there hadn't been a better way. Anora is a sharp vicious thing even now, all her prickly edges turned jagged in that last letter. As if I'd ever care what they said, but Cailan, I can't stand what this is doing to you anymore—

Maker, he misses her.

"But," Alistair sighs, "I guess that's what happens when you sell your life to a group hell-bent on destroying an unstoppable evil, just so you can get away from the annoying self-righteous group that sucks all the fun out of everything."

"A rock and a hard place," Cailan grins out of the corner of his mouth. "You need to spend some time with nobles. You'd never believe it, but they're worse than darkspawn."

"Darkspawn are at least predictable," and he is not smiling. He is not smiling. "I'll give them that."

"And you can kill them without offending anyone," Cailan says. He stops to think about it for a second. "And, you know, darkspawn don't even talk. They go about trying to destroy civilization, but at least they're honest about it."

"Actually—" Alistair starts, but then falls silents. There are still some things about the darkspawn that are secret, after all. Duncan probably wouldn't be happy if he told the King everything. "Never mind. It's nothing."

(This is an absolutely lie. Duncan is the type who wouldn't care. Alistair knows this. He's still going to use it as an excuse.)

Cailan looks down at him. There's something in Alistair's face, something haunted, and he lets it drop because letting it drop is easier than pushing and frightening the other man. This might be the most words they've spoken to each other, well, ever; he's not about to ruin it by being obtuse. Dusk is edging into true night, purple creeping across the horizon to blend into blue into navy into black around the dome of the world.

"Do you think we should go interrupt them?" he asks, nods in the direction of the Hawke siblings. "Or would that be rude?"

Alistair takes a careful look at the siblings, squashes the bitter green that tries to flood his veins at the sight of it. Bethany looks like she's asleep, with Carver close to it. It would be easy, probably better, to wake them up. They have no idea what to expect when they reach the northern docks, if that Templar is right about the conditions.

Half asleep, exhausted fighters, or groggy, still waking up fighters, should it come to it?

"Leave them," he decides. "It'll be almost morning before we reach the docks. We could all use some rest."

It's not going to be a comfortable kind of sleep, Cailan knows. The barge doesn't have anything in the way of creature comforts, and even less in the way of places to rest. And he's still too awake, honestly—if he sleeps at all in the next week, he's going to be surprised. Plus, the dark rings below Alistair's eyes speak of someone who'd crash and sleep for a week, given half a chance.

"It's been a rough day. I'll take first watch," Cailan says. "Get some rest."

—

Beth wakes to sunlight on her face, and to the strangest sensation that she's being watched. There are a tangle of arms and legs and bodies all curled around her—Carver and Mari, presumably—still heavy with the wash of sleep. She has to wiggle, a little, to extract herself from them.

She sits up, and looks around.

Beth's never been one of those people who can't remember how they got somewhere, when she wakes up. She's always been one of the unfortunate ones who wake up with the precise knowledge of where they are and how they got there—but the northern docks come as something of a shock. After yesterday (and this is how she will always think of it, later: then, or that day, or once upon a time), she expected she'd be too on-edge to sleep, much less sleep so long and so soundly that she didn't wake for near the entire journey across the lake.

She has to struggle to stand, pushing Carver's clinging grip and Mari's knees off in the process. Her wrists still hurt; looking at them brings bile up her throat. They're still rubbed raw. The memory of the cuffs is still a loaded thing, the silver-grey of them around her wrists inscribed with glowing runes. The pain is all but gone, but then, she thinks that pain has an element of blank: there is no beginning nor an ending, only an existence, and once it exists, one cannot remember a time before it.

Beth breathes in.

Maker, she's glad she invested in basic healing skills.

"You feeling okay?" Alistair asks, stepping gingerly across the ferry. It's morning, they really should wake up, but after yesterday…

Though, Marian Hawke still owes him new armour. He's not wearing this beyond this boat, not after what he saw when he decided to look out at the docks. Soldiers, soldiers, and more soldiers. A mix of uniforms. Surprisingly, none from Highever, unless they're not wearing the iconic green heraldry on their shields anymore.

Needless to say, he's not stepping off this boat until he's wearing something less conspicuous. He'd like to try to avoid scrutiny.

"I am sorry about yesterday," he says, very quietly. "I wish there had been a better way."

"Oh, no," Beth says, shaking her head. There's a tired little smile curling across her face, an exhausted sort of thing that probably makes no sense to anyone but her. "No, I'm—I'm fine. It hardly even hurts, see?"

She raises her hands for his inspection, fingers glittering white-blue with healing magic. They're still far enough from shore that it'll look like nothing except one more slick of sunlight off the water, and the Captain is turned away; not that it matters, if he'd really cared about her magic then he'd have turned them around right as soon as Alistair had taken the cuffs off last night and not given them the chance to flee.

"I'm alright," Beth says, lets the magic crawl up her hands to envelop her wrists. "Really."

There's barely a hint of the damage left by the time the magic fades. "That's good," he tells her. "Just be careful. Sometimes mana levels fluctuate for a day or two after. Try to warm yourself up and end up blowing up the entire village. That kind of thing."

She smiles at him, brings her hands back into her own space. "I promise, I won't blow anyone up."

"Do you think we should wake them up?" he asks, peering around her to where Hawke and Carver are slumped over each other, still sound asleep. He's pretty sure there's snoring, though he couldn't rightly say which one it is.

"Can we wait a little bit?" Bethany asks, trying not to feel guilty about it. "They're both going to spend the next couple of days coddling me, and I'd prefer a little peace as long as I can get it."

"We'll be stuck here until they wake up, but if you insist," he shrugs. "And your sister owes me new armour. Don't let me forget that."

"We'll wake them when we get to shore," Beth says, and then frowns. "Did she not bring your other armour? Oh, Mari, why are you like this, you can't just go throwing people's clothing away, that's rude!"

"We've already been to shore," he says, scratches the back of his head. "We docked a couple of hours ago, but I asked the Captain to come back this way. We've got a slight issue at the docks."

"Issue?" Beth asks, worry-lines creasing her face. "What's happened?"

"I'm not sure," Alistair explains, a nervous smile twitching at his mouth, "but there seem to be a lot of soldiers there."

"If I have to put those cuffs on again, I might not survive," Bethany says, a little faintly, and doesn't think she's joking at all.

"No, no," he says, hands up and trying to… well, he's not sure. It probably looks like he's surrendering but that's not at all what—hand gestures are just weird sometimes. "I'm not going out there as a Templar. Ideally, your sister will wake up and come up with a plan to get us through the docks unseen. If not, then we tell them we're refugees from the south, I guess? It might come to fighting, though."

It will probably come to fighting. Alistair has spent the entire time since they arrived trying to figure out a way to get them through the docks in a way that doesn't require the Templar-apostate thing. He's had quite enough of that, thank you kindly.

"Let's not tell my sister that fighting is an option," Beth sighs, "because that'll be her answer. As though she doesn't slaughter ninety percent of the people she comes across as it is."

"Is she incapable of thinking about the consequences?" he asks, not thinking about it. Then he does. "Sorry, I didn't mean that. Ignore me."

Beth shrugs, laughs a little. "No, you're right—it's just that she does think about it, you know? She knows that sometimes diplomacy is probably the right way to go, but I think, well, she just doesn't care?"

She doesn't tell him about the three years that her sister disappeared when she and Carver were twelve, came back with a jagged smirk on her mouth and a pair of Antivan daggers strapped to her shoulders; she doesn't talk about the way her older sister had stopped moving like a person, and started moving like a killer. It's no wonder that the Warden-Commander picked Mari for this. There's no one else in the world who can kill people the way her sister can.

"So long as she doesn't get us killed before we get him to Highever, it'll be okay," he says, thinking darkly in the back of his head she's going to get herself or you killed someday. Humans have an amazing ability to have no respect whatsoever for their own safety, and he's beginning to think a lack of self-preservation runs in the Hawke family.

"Oh, she's not that irresponsible," Bethany laughs, shaking dark curls out of her face. "And besides, Carver and I are here to keep her from really letting go. She won't put us in danger, not after—"

Beth cuts herself off, shrugs a little helplessly. Not after yesterday, is what she was going to say, but Alistair's eyes haven't left her wrists yet, and she thinks it might be a little cruel to keep forcing it on him. He's so visibly uncomfortable in the Templar armour.

The worst part, though, is that it's likely still their best chance of getting out of this without shedding blood. And isn't that just the littlest bit sick.

He shrugs, looks back to shore, still a little unsure. "With any luck, it's just a group waiting to head south for Ostagar."

What he doesn't add is that there's also a chance that news of the King's abscondence from Ostagar has finally reached the north, and the soldiers there are waiting for them with the intention to drag them all back. Or kill them and take the King. He looks up at the sky. Five days? Surely someone (Teryn Loghain) has noticed that the King is no longer in Ostagar. If not that, then how long would it take for news of Highever's troubles to spread amongst the camp?

"Alistair," Beth says, gently, "stop, stop thinking. We're going to be fine."

He shakes his head. "It's nothing. I do think the sooner we get moving, the better."

"And you're probably right," she soothes. "But worrying about it isn't going to make it any better. Besides, do you honestly think anything would be worse than, well, yesterday?"

"Yes, actually," he says. "We fail to get to Highever and Ferelden falls. Ostagar is a loss, and Ferelden falls. Either way, this entire trip is rendered pointless and we're all dead."

Bethany laughs, a high bright sound that echoes across the lake. "Your pessimism is endearing," she says, amusement tucked into the corner of her lips. "Now, I'll go wake my family up, and you get His Majesty ready to go, and we'll go deal with whatever waits at the docks, alright?"

She pauses only long enough to touch his shoulder. "We're in this together," she says, passing him by. "So we'll be fine."

"Your optimism is endearing," he responds. He turns and wanders back over to where the King is… not asleep. "How long have you been awake?"

Cailan shrugs. "Will I get yelled at if I say I haven't slept?"

"No, but next time say something," Alistair grumbles, landing a light kick against the King's lower leg. If it hurts, he doesn't care. If it doesn't, well, Alistair's going to wonder if the King is even human. These boots aren't meant for gentle. "It's not polite to eavesdrop."

"You were doing fine on your own," Cailan grins up at him. "She's very pretty."

"Don't care," he says, pulling off his gloves. "We've got a job to do."

"Keep those on," Cailan tells him. "If you're right and we're going to have to fight our way out, you're better off not being recognized."

Alistair scowls, but tugs the gloves back on. "I'm not the one who will be recognized."

"I know you're not, and I'd offer to switch armours if I thought for a minute I'd fit what you're wearing," the King says, dropping his head back to rest against the hull. Maker, he's tired, but he can't sleep—it's always like this, when his head's in a bad place, he doesn't sleep for days and days, completely unable to rest for longer than a few minutes at a time. "I'm more useless in a fight than you'd expect."

"I hope you're a quick learner, then," Alistair tells him, looking over to where Bethany is trying to wake her siblings. Maker, what was Duncan thinking sending someone like Hawke with the King? "We're still a couple of days out from Highever, and then we've got to get you to the castle."

"Easier said than done," Cailan says. He stands up and stretches, all of his vertebrae popping. The Hawke siblings are waking, too, Carver throwing an arm over his eyes with the look of someone who'd much rather be anywhere but where he is, and the eldest sitting bolt upright, eyes already sharp.

"Who else is as excited as I am to go break into a walled city to save our beloved homeland?" Hawke asks the group at large, mouth twitching.

"Mar, shut up," Carver says, not whines. He does not whine.

(Okay, it was maybe a whine.)

She reaches over to scrub a hand across his head, snickering at the way he grimaces. And then her gaze settles on her sister, and the smile drops away.

"Okay?" Hawke asks, very softly.

"Okay," Bethany tells her, reaches down to help her up.

"Do I want to know why we haven't docked yet?" Hawke asks as she rolls into standing, yanks Carver up after her. She looks over the the King and the Warden, both shifting nervously. "What did you two do?"

"Nothing," Alistair says, frowning at the accusation. "We've got company on shore. That's why we haven't docked."

Carver sighs. It is too early for this. "Good company or bad?"

"Company is never good," Hawke murmurs. She moves to the side of the barge, eyes gone cold, and she scans the shoreline. "Soldiers, but we're too far out to see who they belong to."

"Bannorn, probably," Alistair says, shrugs at her expression, lips turned down and eyes hard. "We did dock earlier. The Captain brought us back out when we saw the soldiers. I didn't recognize any of the shields."

"I missed the fun, too bad," Hawke says, more to herself than to anyone else, but her knuckles have gone tight around the railing. She sighs, all theatrics. "Maker, it's too early to go 'round killing people. You think we can avoid it?"

"Probably," Alistair sighs. "If there's a way to do it that doesn't involve me pretending to be a Templar, even better."

"There may not be," she says, already calculating. There's twenty of them—too many to fight in daylight, may the Void take them all—and they're all heavily armed and armoured. "But let's try the less bloody version, first. Your Majesty, pull your hood up. This may get ugly."

"Mar," Carver speaks slowly, standing up to full height, "what are you planning?"

Don't let this be like that time in Honneleath, he thinks. It's better to not think about that particular incident, of Father's quiet acceptance of having to move yet again, of Mother's sorrowful expression as that quaint house they'd built faded into the distance. His sister has never done anything that would put them in danger. He knows she wouldn't. It's just that sometimes her ideas about keeping them safe are not always the sanest ideas.

"We're going to be very quiet, keep our heads down, and pretend that we are taking Bethany to the Gallows," Hawke says. "And if that doesn't work, you all get the King to Highever, and I'll be a distraction."

Alistair sighs, puts the helmet back on. "I'm not putting her back in the cuffs," he says, nodding towards Bethany. "I hope you've got a plan to explain why she's not restrained."

"I wasn't going to ask you to—" she shrugs, "—because you're going to put me in the cuffs."

"What?" whether it's Alistair or Carver who says it is up for debate.

Carver shakes his head. "Mari, that's never going to work."
"You'd have to take Bethany's stave from her," Alistair tells her. "There's no mage in Thedas who would carry knives like you. The armour's an issue too."

"It's what we should have done in the first place," Hawke says, quite reasonably. "We can switch. Beth and I are about the same size, and I've no magic to drain. I don't like stave fighting, but I can do it if I have to."

"Bethany, can you wear armour and move normally?" Alistair asks. Mages and armour—the Templars were quite fond of the fact that mages typically don't have the strength to support armour. It made tracking them down so much easier, apparently. And Bethany, for all she seems to have led a life based on physical work, is still feather-light and small.

"I don't know…" she says, brow furrowing, mouth pinching down. "But I can probably carry the knives without killing myself?"

For the first time, he's happy for the helmet. It means Hawke can't see the wicked smile. "Then we'll have to sink Hawke's armour. Other than that, it should work."

"Or we can pack it," Hawke says, coolly. Oh, so that's how he wants to play, is it? This is revenge for the Templar armour, she can just tell. "Or leave it here. No point in wasting good armour, especially if we want to keep a low profile. But—" she eyes Alistair, "—probably I'll have to rob someone anyway, because I don't think we want to walk into hostile territory with you looking like that. Fine, sink it."

"It'd raise too many questions if the soldiers find it on the ferry," he says, shrugging. "And no, we don't. There were rumours about the Revered Mother in Highever. The Templar thing probably won't get us into the city."

"I don't want to know," Hawke says, already stripping the armour off. "Bethy, staff. And see if you can't at least wear the mail, we can belt it, it'll be better than nothing—"

"I hate wearing mail," Beth mutters, but tosses her stave to Carver. He catches it, because he's a wonderful brother, and then Mari dumps what feels like a hundred pounds of mail on her. "How do you wear this all the time? It's heavy!"

Hawke doesn't reply, too busy adjusting the mail on Beth's frame. For a moment, Beth catches her sister's gaze, and they look at each other—there are lock picks stitched into Mari's sleeves, and if things go bad, she'll get herself out of the shackles in a second. Because that's all they'll be, on her sister. Just shackles. There'll be no pain, no screaming panic, no loss. Just shackles, and if there's one thing Beth knows, it's that her sister is very good at getting out of shackles.

"I look like a fool," Beth grumbles, but mostly it's put-upon.

"Better you looking like a fool and me wearing the cuffs than the other way around," Hawke says, gentle. She makes quick work of her hand wraps; she ties them around Beth's waist, bright crimson red against dull steel. "Once was more than enough, Bethy, I'm never going to let you wear them again."

"I could, you know," Beth says, softly.

"But you're not going to," Hawke replies, and finishes up the knot. "As it is—no, it doesn't matter, you're not wearing them again. Carver, back me up?"

"She's right, Beth," Carver says, giving Mar an annoyed stare. "You couldn't think of this earlier?"

"Don't remind me," she says, voice tight. If she'd thought of it earlier, Beth could have avoided the whole thing, she wouldn't have panicked, she wouldn't have—

"It wouldn't have worked," Beth interrupts the sudden train of self-loathing. "It—hurt. More than anything I've… ever felt. You wouldn't have been able to fake it, Mar, and then things would have fallen to pieces."

Alistair picks up the cuffs from where they slipped beneath the ferry's bench. "I trust you can put these on yourself?" he asks, tossing them towards Hawke.

"Not had a lot of practise putting them on," she says, but obligingly slides her wrists into the cuffs. "Not really my thing, you know—"

"Here," he reaches over and clicks the cuffs closed. Not locked, of course, not that she needs to know that. "Try to look miserable. It'll make it more real."

Hawke looks down at the cuffs. There's something… off, about them. They're shaped right, and they clicked right, but there's—there's no lock.

"Where's the lock?" she asks.

"You're not a mage," he tells her, "so they don't have one. They use the mage's own magic to lock. Without it, they're just a very ugly bracelet that holds your hands together."

"Templars," she says, nearly awed. This level of incompetence is just… wow, she honestly doesn't want to know about it, it's too mind-boggling to think about. "It's efficient, I suppose. Shall we get this show on the road?"

The Captain has been keeping an eye on them since they all woke up. Alistair would find it creepy, if he didn't know the Captain to be a man that genuinely doesn't care. He points to shore and the ferry begins is slow approach to the docks.

"If we make it to Highever without killing anyone, it's going to be a miracle," Carver mutters. He keeps a close eye on everything, the way the soldiers on shore all turn to watch the ferry approach. There's tension in the air, lingering cold along his spine.

But they dock without incident. Alistair's painful-bright armour gleams like it's powering its own barrier, slowly parting the armoured men on shore. There are no questions, surprisingly, but maybe they're far enough north by now that the Gallows is a logical destination for a Templar with a handcuffed mage. He does his best to look as threatening as possible, for good measure.

It's painfully silent all the same. Water laps at the shore, a slosh-splash against the docks. There are birds, yes, and wind pushes leaves around on trees. There's plenty of sound, just an unease at so many people being in such a small space and not speaking. Once they're on the grass, free from the docks, the soldiers begin filing onto the barge.

"That wasn't so bad," the king says, very quiet. "Grim bunch, they are."

"They're heading south," Alistair says. "Darkspawn."

"They're Bannorn," Hawke says, watching the barge shove off from the dock. The soldiers huddle in the middle of the ferry, granite faced and silent. "Probably they're going to protect the farms."

The shackles fall off her wrists as she swings around, and Hawke holds them up to the light. "Is it wrong that I want to set them on fire?"

"Not at all," Beth murmurs, and she can't take her eyes away.

"Here," Hawke says, and holds them out to Alistair. "Do you want them back, or do you want to come throw them into the lake?"

"Lake," he says, watches at the cuffs gloriously sail through the air to land in the lake. The splash is so satisfying. "Now, about that armour situation…"

"You dump this nonsense in the lake as well," she grins at him, "and I'll go find us something decent. Splintmail, yeah?"

"Splintmail would be glorious," Alistair breaths a sigh of relief once the helmet is off. "You did pack my cloak, didn't you?"

"I'm not awful, you know," she shakes her head at him. "It's in Beth's pack. Give me half an hour, you'll have your armour."

And this is how Alistair ends up wrapped up in his cloak, waiting in the shadows of the lake for Hawke to return. The Templar armour had been so nice to toss away, watching it sink, glittering to its doom at the bottom of the lake. Except now he's wearing nothing but thin linen clothes and his cloak.

Maker, he is never doing this again, not unless she has new armour in her hands at that exact moment.

"Didn't she say it would only take half an hour?" he grumbles.

"She's probably looking for mercenaries," Beth says, smiling, holds out a blanket. "Sorry, you look cold."

"That would be the lack of dignity. It's surprisingly cold without it," Alistair says, taking the blanket. "Thank you."

Carver sighs. His sister is speaking to the Warden, but looking elsewhere, a faint blush building up. His sister is—nope, he's going to take a page out of Mar's book. Not touching it. He's dealt with her flirting with Templars for long enough. He has no desire to find out what this is going to lead to. Probably nothing nice.

"Beth, let's go find something to eat," he says. "Maybe we'll find Marian along the way."

Bethany looks up at her brother, face pulling down into a frown. He's got a look on his face that she doesn't quite know how to name, like there's something bitter on his tongue and he's trying not to spit it out. "No," she says, "we'll just get lost, and then she'll come back and be grumpy for a week."

"If she doesn't come back soon, we may need to think about a search party," he mutters.

"I'm right here," Hawke says from behind them. "You know, you might want to think about keeping an eye on our giant friend. He is the reason I'm wearing uncomfortable armour."

"No, this whole Templar idea is why you're wearing—very good armour," Alistair says, eyes the scratched up armour she's now wearing, a second set balanced precariously in her arms. "Is that red steel?"

"Heavier than I wanted," she says, mouth twisting sourly. She hands him the mail, careful not to drop it. It is nice armour, if you don't sneak around battlements at night for a living, hardly clunky at all. "But they didn't have any leathers for someone my size. Mercenaries, you'd think they'd know better."

"Mercenaries don't generally need leathers," he says, throws off the cloak and quickly works to pull on the armour. It's nice and scratched up, signs of use and battle all over. This is probably the best thing she could have found. Once it's on, he fixes the cloak back over his shoulders. "Now for the fun part. Walking to Highever. Let's get started."

"Or we could go steal the horses the mercenaries had," Hawke says. She's already looking for King Cailan—where has the man gotten to, she wants to get this over with and go home—and oh, there he is, he's sitting on the dock staring into the lake like some kind of large blond Mabari puppy waiting for its family to come home. "It's not like they'll need them, anymore."

"Thank the Maker," Alistair breathes, a smile working its way across his mouth. "You'd be surprised how many mercenaries don't keep horses with them anymore."

"That seems very impractical," Carver frowns. He's not sure he wants to know how his sister found mercenaries. There's a lot of things his sister does that he's just happier not knowing. He nods towards the King, "Who wants to go get him?"

"I'll do it," Alistair sighs. "Go get the horses?"

Beth reaches down to pick up her pack. Carver wanders off with their sister to go get the horses, and she's half a mind to follow them. Alistair's staring miserably down at the dock where the King's plopped himself down. She doesn't really know what to say—there isn't really anything to. Of course it's hard between them, hard in a way that it's not hard between her and Mari and Carver, in a way that it could never be hard between her and Mari and Carver.

And so instead, she smiles at his back, and walks off.

There are a lot of ways he can get the King's attention. He knows that. He could try speaking, could try stepping around to make himself visible. There are many polite ways of getting someone's attention. Alistair wasn't raised a heathen, after all. Not that it would likely matter. He's fairly certain the King is aware of where he is at all times.

Still, Alistair lightly nudges the other man's back with his foot. "You coming or should we just leave you here?"

(Alistair has many times been accused of having no tact. Normally he doesn't appreciate it. Sometimes, he indulges it.)

"Yes, I'm sure leaving me here would be very helpful," Cailan says, but it's a distant kind of thing. He's watching the water lap the shore, thinking about what on the Maker's green earth he's going to do about the mess that this country's become.

"As tempting as that is, I have absolutely no desire to be king," Alistair tells him. "Unfortunately for you, that means it's time to get up. Hawke's got horses for us."

"And here I was, worried that we'd have to walk," says Cailan.

Alistair sighs. He agreed to get the King to Highever, not babysit the man. "C'mon," he says, reaches down to wrap a hand around the King's arm. "Let's get going. We might actually be able to make Highever before Teryn Loghain sends people after us if we leave now."

Only, after a moment, it becomes obvious that there's one slight problem.

"Your Majesty, you're going to have stand up. I don't think I can lift you," Alistair says, sends a silent thank you to which ever god is listening that he isn't as big as the King. It seems unnecessarily troublesome.

Cailan actually laughs, at that, shoves up and into standing. "I don't even think the Qunari could lift me."

"Let's not find out," Alistair tries to smile, tries to not think of what the taint turns Qunari into and how that is a creature that could snap the King in half with one hand and not lose any energy. "I haven't really asked, but what is your plan for getting into Highever? We can get you to the gates, but beyond that it's going to be your game."

"I have no idea," Cailan says, rueful. "Do you think walking up to the palace and waving my arms around will work?"

"Given that we have to get through a walled city before we can get to the palace," Alistair muses, "my guess would be no. Walled city first. Then you get to deal with facing the—girl? Do we even know who this is?"

"Elissa Cousland," Cailan says. He runs his hand down his face. "Her brother is at Ostagar, and I'm praying to the Maker that he's not dead. Fergus is… rational, and I'm getting the feeling we could all use a little of that."

Alistair stops, turns, and stares. "You're going in to negotiate with a potentially hostile individual and that's all you know?"

"...Yes?"

"We're doomed."

"I appreciate the vote of confidence." Cailan mutters. "I don't know what happened, all I've got is a missive from a very angry acting Teryna. I have to go into it blind, I've no other choice."

"Let me get this straight," Alistair says. "This woman is the daughter of one of the most powerful men in your kingdom and you know absolutely nothing about her?"

"Her parents never brought her to Denerim," he shrugs. "Her father is a good man, and her brother as well—I've met both his wife and his son—but to my knowledge, Elissa's not left Highever."

"Is it normal to know so little about someone like that?" Alistair asks, thinking back on the gatherings in Redcliffe, a cycle of noblemen and their families in and out of the castle.

"I don't think so," Cailan says, grimly, thinks of Satinalias where it seemed like half the kingdom congregated in the palace's halls, and the marked absence of the Cousland girl was something to be commented upon. "But unfortunately, there are so many nobles in Denerim, it makes more sense to gather there."

"You never tried to find out what happened?" Alistair says, looking down at the grass that bends beneath their feet. He knows he's heard the name Elissa before, but can't quite remember if she was ever one of the young noblewomen who went horseback riding at Redcliffe. He never paid attention to the people who went through the stables back then. There was no need to.

"Once," Cailan says, but doesn't elaborate.

Alistair just nods. "This is going to be fun, isn't it."

"More than you'd even believe possible," Cailan's mouth twists, and he reaches for the reins to the nearest horse.

—

"Well, it's big," Alistair breathes, nearly tipping over off his horse while craning his neck to look up the walls of the city, "and very white."

Nine days after leaving Ostagar and here they are. It's an imposing city, Highever is, all stark white and surrounded by golden plains. The city seems to run right up to the cliffs and from there, it's a sharp drop down to the Waking Sea. This is a city built to intimidate, he thinks, a stark contrast to Denerim and it's complicated, lazy sprawl. Denerim is brown and grey, dirty from the bare earth streets to the tops of the highest buildings.

Not that there are many of those. Buildings in Denerim seem to squat, hunching over in the same way many of its citizens do.

Highever, well, he can't exactly see anything of Highever. Just the walls, and the lone, well-guarded gate. It's big and white and with stormclouds gathering overhead, the golden sunlight still scratching its way across the earth, the overall effect is one of cold dread down his spine.

"I'm starting to think we should have come with more men," he says.

"That would look like an attack," Hawke says, raises her chin to survey the city. "And they're already on edge—look at the guards."

She's not wrong; the guards all wear heavy leather armour reinforced with chainmail, a steel chestplate, bright pauldrons shining in the sun. Cailan runs a hand through his hair. Even here he's more than half a head taller than the rest of the traffic moving towards the city gates.

Maker, is there anywhere he doesn't stick out?

"This city is an attack," Alistair mutters. "How are we even going to get through the gate? I doubt we're going to be able to just waltz in without identifying ourselves."

"He's got a point, Mari," Carver says, draws his horse up beside his sister's. "Look at it. This place was built to keep people from sneaking in."

If everything has been for naught—Carver's not going to think about it. It's better that way. Because thinking about the way that gate looks like it was built with the intent of locking people out and making it easy to kill them leads to thinking about the stress of crossing the lake, about leaving Ostagar, about leaving Mother with only Dog to protect her, about how the whole country is going to to crumble out from beneath them because there is no way they are getting in.

There something going on at the gates, one of the doors cracking open. Cailan cranes his head, catches sight of a flare of hair turned bright red in the sun, and then the traffic is split by a guard and a little girl. She's looking around, searching for something—

Her face splits wide when her gaze finds his, and she tugs at the guard's hand, points at them.

Soris very nearly groans. Highever was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be devoid of Denerim's people (other than his) and yet, there in unshaven, disheveled glory is the King. What did he do to deserve this. Maker, Iona is going to kill him for letting Amethyne drag him out of the city.

"Forgive her," Soris sighs, "but we were expecting you to arrive earlier than this. She's been getting impatient."

"I told you it would take longer n'a week," the girl says, glaring up at him in the way only a righteous child can. "Why don't you and Mama ever listen, I'm always right."

"How many times do we have to tell you not to say things like that around strangers?" he says, gently. "You might scare someone."

"Anyone else confused?" Alistair asks, looking around at the others. They seem just as baffled as he is. That's good. No, wait, that's bad. That's very bad.

Soris smiles weakly. "Sorry about that. If you'll just come this way, I can take you to see Lady Elissa."

"I was still right," the girl grumbles, reaches with both arms in an undeniable demand to be picked up. When she's obliged—Cailan gets the sense she's very rarely not obliged—she looks their party over with the proprietary air of a general inspecting their finest troops. "Mama's gonna be mad, though. They're all dirty, an' you know how Mama feels about dirt."

"I'm sorry," Cailan tells her, honestly. "We didn't expect to be so long. Is Lady Elissa—is she alright?"

Soris frowns. "What do you mean?"

"They don't know anything, Ada," the girl sighs. She's small, and her ears come out points a little too sharp to be entirely human. She pats the guard's face. "Bring them to Mama, and then Mama'll bring them to Lady Elissa, and then things will make sense again."

"If you say so," Soris sighs. He looks up at the King and his somewhat eclectic party. There's a young man who looks startlingly like the King, and two soldiers who are obviously related—both have the same dark hair and a jawline that suggests iron for bones. The last one is a little slip of a thing who looks like she should be in a proper house and instead looks like she's been dragged across half of Ferelden.

Which, come to think of it, she probably has been.

"Are you coming?" he asks, trying to smile.

Cailan glances back over his shoulder. Hawke has crossed her arms, ice-eyed and a terrible little smile across her face—Maker, that can't be good, he doesn't want to have anything to do with whatever she's planning—and her siblings are standing very close to each other. He has very little frame of reference for either of them, Bethany or Carver, but they both look about to bolt. Alistair… well, Alistair is something different, isn't he.

It's not like Cailan has much choice.

And so he nods, hitching up the kind of grin that people who look far more confident than they feel wear. "Lead on, then. I'm sure your mother's going to be very disappointed if she doesn't have the chance to fuss."

—

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tbc.