Hawkquisition Part I: To Remain at Your Side
Chapter 4

Wherein friends want to help

"Come on, Broody," Varric pestered, "leave the girls to the nursery talk. I want to introduce you to people."

Fenris scowled. "Is that necessary?" He watched as Hawke and Josephine sorted through swatches of fabrics he could not name (and one particularly garish stripey pattern he would prefer not to), to be sewn into, he presumed, baby clothes and blankets and such. It seemed an exorbitant amount of fabric for one so small person. Just how many tunics would an infant need?

"You had to notice everyone staring at you at dinner," the dwarf persisted.

"Generally, I try not to."

"You're practically as much a celebrity as Hawke, you see."

"Which I presume I have you to blame for."

Varric preened. "I do my best! And it was a damn good book if I do say so myself. One of my best sellers, too. The point is, elf, I know you don't like being the center of attention, but that's where you'll stay as long as you have that broody mystique thing going on. It'll draw the ladies like flies, and you don't want Hawke having to murder every woman in Skyhold while she's pregnant, do you?"

"And introductions are going to, what, make them ignore me?"

"Exactly! Once their curiosity's satisfied a little, people will back off. Find someone new to obsess over. Especially the Orlesian visitors. Orlesians love trading off obsessions."

Fenris rolled his eyes at the dwarf. "Speaking of obsessions, you're not going to give this up, are you? Fine. Lead on."

Knowing where the curious gather, they began, of course, in the Herald's Rest tavern, where Fenris had the grace (and his usual luck) to lose spectacularly at Wicked Grace. The Iron Bull and a few of his Chargers had joined them for the game, doing their best to distract Fenris from his cards by peppering him with questions. Accustomed to this strategy from Varric, however, the elf responded to every query so tersely that their curiosity only grew. Finally, when Fenris let slip half a mention of the high dragon Hawke had once defeated at Kirkwall's Bone Pit, Iron Bull abandoned any pretense of subtletly and, keen as a reader of Varric's serials begging the author to reveal what happens next, pried detail after detail from him, while Krem dealt the next hand.

"Varric was there, too," Fenris pointed out when he tired of recounting the dragon's color, how big it was, how much fire it breathed, how many dragonlings had swarmed to its aid during the fight, and so on. "Make him tell the rest. You'll get a better story that way."

"Only because he exaggerates," Bull rejoined. "It's about time we got a real warrior's perspective on that fight. You were right up in its teeth!"

"No, that was Anders," Fenris said, deadpan. "The dragon tried to take a bite out of him at one point. Caught him by the coat and swung him around for a bit, till she apparently decided she didn't really like the taste of mage."

Bull roared with laughter. "See, that's what I'm talking about!"

"Who's exaggerating now?" Varric grumbled.

"I'm not exaggerating. The dragon did, in fact, snatch him up in its teeth. I suspect when she finally dropped him, he was as injured as he was dizzy. It was fortunate Hawke has some skill at healing. If we'd been relying on Anders alone as a healer, the fight might have been suddenly much shorter."

"Course, then the Chantry might still be standing," Varric huffed. "Also, did I just hear you refer to healing spells as 'fortunate'? What happened to 'All mages are dangerous, everything magic touches is blighted!'?"

Fenris looked bemused at the tone of voice Varric had slipped into when imitating the elf's mantras. "There are mages. And then there is Hawke."

"Eh. Right. Okay, I can't argue with you there."

"Anyway, Bull," Fenris said, "I am not really the one you should ask about the battles we have seen. Hawke is the strategist. Even when my markings aren't active, I fight in a sort of blur. Move from one target to the next as quickly as possible. I don't recall fights in detail, most of the time."

"And when your markings are active?" Krem asked. "If you don't mind me asking, that is. What's that even mean? What do they do?"

"I…" Fenris glanced down at the tattoos on his hands, tapping a finger idly against the backs of his cards. "It is difficult to explain. Perhaps a mage would know how they work, but I only know what they can do. Allow me to demonstrate." And with only the slightest flourish, he waved the hand that was not holding his cards over the deck, then with a burst of blue, that hand phased right through the stack of cards, emerging with one from the very bottom and leaving all the rest undisturbed.

"Ha!" Varric snorted. "Nice party trick, that."

"Yes, well, imagine the potential combat applications," Fenris said to the wide-eyed Chargers. "I can as easily snatch a man's heart from his chest as that card from the deck. I don't know exactly how it works. Hawke once tried to learn more about it, for...practical reasons," he coughed, "and it had something to do with the Fade. The lyrium is linked to the Fade somehow and when the markings are active, I exist partly here and partly there, so to speak. Thus physical objects present no barrier."

"Well, gild my horns and call me a dragon," Bull said, his eyes glinting. "That is one of the coolest things I have ever-"

"Not to one who wears them." Fenris' voice was low and warning, and Bull abruptly left off his dreams of battlefield ghost-elves. An awkward silence stretched on for too long, till Fenris suddenly turned over the card he had drawn.

"Ah," he said calmly. "The Angel of Death. How fortuitous." And he spread his other cards out beside it: the Angels of Fortitude, Truth, and Charity. Dusk Knight and Eclipse Knight. A winning hand, most likely.

"Hey!" Bull leaned in to glare at the cards. "That doesn't count! You...you...Fade-drew that card!"

"Easy, Tiny," Varric laughed. "Rules state the game's over when the Angel of Death is drawn and discarded. Doesn't say anything about a deck of cards that presents no physical barrier…"

"You got anything better than three Angels, Chief?" Krem prodded as he turned his own cards over. "I don't, that's for sure."

Bull growled menacingly at his second-in-command, then turned his most winning (and eerily predatory) smile on Fenris. "This ain't over, elf. See you back here tomorrow night?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Fenris said.

"You hope it is without magic. Why?"

The words, spoken so earnestly behind them, made Hawke and Josephine both jump and drop the plaideweave they had been measuring out for a layette.

"Oh. It's you, Cole," Josephine said, one hand fluttering to her chest. "You gave me such a start!"

But it was Hawke whose mind Cole had apparently been reading and on whom his troubled gaze now fixed. "He is pure. Innocent. What he will be waits for you to shape him, to show him."

"Wait...'he'?" Hawke's eyes widened. "You're talking about my baby, aren't you, Cole? It's a boy? You can...see that?"

"Yes?" Cole looked confused, surprised. "Can't you?"

"Perhaps not the plaideweave, then…" Josephine murmured.

"Can you see, then," Hawke asked, resting a hand on her belly, "if he does have magic?"

"No," Cole shook his head. "Would it be so bad if he did? Father's strength, mother's magic: a fine child."

"Believe me, I'm sure he will be that," Hawke smiled. "I just can't help but worry a little. Magic is not entirely a blessing."

"Is anything?" Cole cocked his head to consider.

Hawke sighed and sat on Josephine's couch. "Magic is different, somehow. Of course, the way things are going now, my child...he...might never have to worry about templars or keeping his powers hidden, the way my sister and I had to. But to live like this, constantly on his guard against demons…" She shook her head. "Sometimes I wish I'd been born without it myself. Or that my parents hadn't kept us hidden, that Bethany and I could have trained in a Circle, protected against our own weaknesses."

"I don't understand," Cole said. "You are not weak."

"Only because I'm so careful. About everything. How much magic I use. What I use it for. Even how much I have to drink, lest I lose my inhibitions about things like blood magic. What if the baby...what if he can't learn to control it? I've lived my whole life fearing I could become an abomination. If my son has magic, that fear gets doubled. And Fenris...magic has wronged him so many times. What will he think, if I give him a mage for a son?"

Cole brightened, finally seeing a way to help. "He loves him already, and he has thought of this too. You have taught him already how to love a mage. He is prepared to do so again."

Hawke's eyes narrowed as she studied the spirit's face, shadowed under his hat. "Somehow I doubt it will be that simple."