It turned out that being patient was extremely hard.
Hawke did not come to her door that day, or the next, and so the one after that Merrill decided to track him down herself.
She'd been up to Hightown to see the old Amell estate only once, when Hawke and his mother had first reclaimed it. The home was an exquisite building, right in the center of the square. It was covered in ivy, and had large windows of painted glass. On that afternoon, the sunlight had glinted off the panes, casting rainbows onto the cobbled road below.
Now in the nighttime, the residence was still grand, but there was an eerie sort of ambiance in the way that candlelight reflected from inside.
Merrill rubbed her hands together, trying to get feeling to come back into her fingertips as she waited in the alley across the street. She'd come to call earlier in the day, but Bodhan had sent her home, saying, "The young master is not here, and I'm sorry, I don't know when he'll be back."
She'd had the suspicion then that he'd been lying, but now—six hours later and no Hawke in sight—she was beginning to feel a bit foolish.
"Maybe he really isn't home," she murmured under her breath. How silly she was, wasting the better half of a day, sitting on a box. Merrill picked her staff up off the ground, and was just slinging it to her back as the low whine of door hinges reached her ears.
She gasped in excitement before she could contain it, and then threw her hands tightly over her mouth. She hugged herself as close to the stone wall of the alleyway as she could, praying to Mythal that she had not been seen.
Hardly daring to breathe, she peered around the building's edge.
The figure in the doorway of the estate had frozen at the sound of her voice. He was stock still now, listening, it seemed, for any other irregular noises.
Merrill stayed as still as he was, elated beyond words to be seeing the face of a friend who'd been tucked away for the majority of three, very long, years.
Hawke wore his hood pulled up, but she could still see the fire of his good eye as it darted across the shadows. Over the damaged right one he wore a swath of black leather that looked like it had been specially fitted to his face. He'd let his stubble fill out into a short beard, and she was embarrassed to admit how well it accented the sharp lines of his jaw.
Hawke watched the night a moment longer before starting swiftly down the street opposite her. She followed as close behind him as she dared. She had never been particularly graceful for an elf but, when the gods were kind, she could be light on her feet.
If Hawke heard her, he did not turn around.
She hesitated when the man started to go up the marble staircase into the ritziest part of the city. The affluence of the area made her feel a jarring sense of alienation, and she wondered for a moment if it might not be better to turn back. Fenris had claimed one of these fancy manors, she knew, but getting caught in this part of Hightown as an elven apostate would cause huge problems for her.
Hawke did not slow at the top of the stair, and he did not turn in the direction of Fenris' home. Curiosity won out, and Merrill raced to follow him, hoping that she hadn't delayed too long.
The upper streets were quiet as a grave when she reached them, and she circled the plaza, wringing her hands. Where could Hawke possibly have gone?
She was seconds from giving up, but then she heard the muffled tinkling of breaking glass. Whipping about, she noticed that one of the manor doors near her had been left ajar. Inside, she could just barely make out a man's voice. He sounded to be in some sort of distress.
Merrill darted through the doorway, following the voice across the grand foyer to the base of a giant curving stair. A vase had been toppled off one of the handrail pillars. It lay in a shattered pile on the floor.
She took the steps two at a time. Adrenaline coursed through her. She knew she was getting close.
She made to grab her staff and, in her moment of distraction, slammed headlong into a human girl with hay colored hair. They were both sent sprawling.
"I'm so sorry—" Merrill tried to say, collecting her breath.
But the girl didn't seem to hear her. She was crying and muttering to herself. She staggered back to her feet, and continued along her way out of the mansion without granting the elf so much as a glance.
Concerned, Merrill crawled back to her feet and turned down the corridor in the direction that the girl had come. The last door on the end of the hall was open, and she could hear two male voices inside.
The loud, frantic one that she had heard yelling from outside sounded like he might be Orlesian… or perhaps Antivan… Sometimes she couldn't quite tell the accents apart.
The other voice was much deeper, calmer, and unmistakable. It belonged to Hawke.
Merrill peered into the room, not certain yet if she wanted to be seen.
The area was a marvelous bedroom, with floor to ceiling windows on the outer wall that had been thrown open, revealing a balcony that looked over the city.
The near side of the room was devoted to a large, oak writing desk. It was as covered in nearly as many books and papers as her table at home. On the far side of the room there was a massive, ornate, four-post bed. It had a velvet canopy.
Hawke stood before the bed, his back facing the doorway where she hid. At his feet was a human noble with greasy blond hair, and a rising bruise on his cheek. If Merrill didn't know better, it might have appeared that the stranger was begging for his life.
"Serah," the man was saying, "You have me in ze wrong. I am not ze one. I swear to you. I am looking for 'im too!"
"You're lying," Hawke responded after a moment. Merrill shivered. His voice was astonishingly cold.
The man on the ground recoiled, his face twisted in fear. "I'm not! Zese murderz are not done by my hand—"
"You are involved," Hawke insisted, cutting him off. He readied the long bladed end of his staff, and Merrill stared, mesmerized, wondering what in the name of Elgar'nan Hawke intended to do.
Without warning the begging man's face changed. He went one moment from scared and innocent, to angry and filled with spite. "No!" he screamed, his face contorting with rage. "I 'ave come too far! Zis will not end here!"
Merrill felt the air around her begin to distort as the stranger reached into the Fade. "You mustn't!" she cried, falling in through the doorway.
But her concern was wasted.
The moment he had started to drag demons across, Hawke had acted, staking the man through heart as smoothly as if he were jabbing a knife into a pear.
The stranger's eyes went wide, and he gagged, spewing blood up onto the front of his ruffled shirt. Hawke must have pierced his lung as well.
She'd seen worse, but Merrill couldn't help flinching away from the gasping, dying man. There was a disturbingly wet noise, and then the choking stopped. Hawke had slit his throat.
Realizing that it was now just the two of them in the room with a corpse, Merrill took a deep breath and tried to edge away. Her feet refused her orders however, and she realized that the chill creeping up her legs was actually solid ice. Without realizing she'd been frozen to the spot.
"What are you doing here, Merrill?" Hawke asked her, without turning around. He wiped the blade of his staff with the crimson sash tied to his waist as he waited for her response.
I-I was just…" she stammered, "I was… well… I was curious."
He returned his staff to the clasp on his shoulder, and took a half step around so that he could watch her with his good eye.
"I wanted to know what you've been up to," she admitted, feeling as though he was still waiting for her to explain.
He said nothing for a moment, but then she felt the ice receding from around her feet. "Now you know," he told her.
Hawke brushed past her shoulder into the hallway. She chanced one more look at the bloody mess at the foot of the exorbitant bed before falling into stride behind him. She had to struggle to keep up.
"Wait!" she called, tailing after him. "Where are you heading now?"
Hawke ignored her, making his way back down the staircase, and out into the street. She followed, beseeching him as loudly as she dared in the middle of the night.
"Let me come with you!"
He glanced back at her. "Why?"
She fumbled. "I want to help. You," she managed. "I mean, if I can."
"…Go home, Merrill," Hawke said, after a second of delay.
"But—"
He rounded on her, and she drew back half a pace despite herself. It had been a long time since she'd felt the full weight of his golden eyes on her face. Even at half intensity his gaze still made the small hairs rise on the back of her neck.
"I've no need of you tonight," he told her, his voice crisp.
She swallowed, and willed herself to speak. "But will you in the future?" she asked. "When you go to meet the Arishok, maybe?"
Hawke's eye narrowed. "How do you know about that?"
"Oh!" she started. "I… um… Varric mentioned that you'd been summoned. I-it's not really my business, but I just thought, you know, you might want company. When you go to see him. He's pretty intimidating."
She looked up and noticed that Hawke was frowning. His uncovered eyebrow had arched into a skeptical slant.
"Ah… not that you would be intimidated, of course," Merrill corrected herself. Ma halani, she felt like a stammering fool. "You're pretty intimidating yourself."
Hawke sighed, and turned away, continuing his trek into the lower part of Hightown.
Merrill gawked. "I-I just meant—"
She chased after him.
This time she managed to keep pace the whole way back to his estate.