Author's Note: Wellll I only got two reviews, but they were pretty awesome. So here's the next chapter, chronologically about Grace and the apostates from Starkhaven. Enjoy and review! :D
"The shepard drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepard as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty." ~Abraham Lincoln
"You know, I might not hunt escaped Circle mages if they didn't make it so much fun for me." Hawke declared, spinning her staff deftly into a threatening twist of circles and then tossing it to her other hand and snapping her wrist downwards so that the bladed end of her staff ended in the attack position.
"This is fun for you? These mage's are so desperate they've raised the dead and you have the audacity to enjoy yourself? You…you're repulsive!" Anders spat darkly, kicking the shattered ribcage of what had once been a possessed skeleton and storming past her. Hawke shrugged her shoulders and followed him, Fenris keeping step behind her and Isabela slinking from the shadows like a great, breasty panther.
"Repulsive is raising the dead. And yes, Anders, I'm enjoying myself. You and Justice should give this reckless joy thing a chance. Live a little and forget about the cause." She playfully bumped into his shoulder and he shot her a dirty look. A shaft of sunlight caught her white hair and made it shine in the gloom of the caverns, carefully contained in it's uncharacteristically tidy bun, a few wisps escaping to frame her dark blue eyes. She had the audacity to grin at him, on top of it all.
"The Templars caused this with their fear, it's not the mage's fault-Hawke, if you bump into my shoulder again I'm going to shove you back. This isn't a game-" She plowed into him-on purpose!-once more, looking nonplussed by his expression of black contempt.
"The Templars made me do it." She said solemnly, managing to keep a straight face as Isabela dissolved into hysterics and Fenris smiled despite himself.
"Fine. Be that way, you selfish, money-hungry, binge-drinking lunatic-" She didn't even have the grace to appear offended and was instead completely ignoring him by pretending to be otherwise occupied listening for something. Infuriating!
"Shush! I think I can hear-"
"Don't you dare shush me-" A shade burst from the ground and Anders only barely flung himself out of it's path. Hawke's face lit up like a child's on Satinalia night and she ran forward, past Anders and into the thick of the fray, coming up face to face with a rage demon. Her laughter echoed around the cavern as Fenris darted past her with a snarl and cleaved the closest shade in two.
Hawke's eyes glinted with fire as it flashed to life, enveloping her arms to the elbow as she fought the personification of wrath in front of her. It lunged and swiped at her, fiery talons coming within inches of her face as she danced backwards out of the way, paying it back with a bolt of force between it's glittering eyes. The demon roared with rage and Hawke laughed in it's face, the power at her fingertips the only thing keeping it at bay.
"I'm with you!" Isabela cried, flinging herself at a demon who's turning radius could hardly compete with the rogue's cat quick dodges. In a flurry of savage blows, the creature slumped back to earth. Anders put his back against the wall and watched them for a moment, trying to catch his breath: Fenris just charged at enemies, screaming incoherently and flinging his slender, elven frame into every attack. Isabela was a whirlwind of destruction, laughing and never in one place for more than a millisecond. All of it was seen through a haze of fire, a blue flash of concentrated force magic that smashed into a rage demon with such power the creature reeled back from the heavy handed blow. For all the loud noises and violent bursts of magic, Hawke wielded her power with skill. She was a battle mage, through and through.
That was what Anders hated most about Hawke's hypocrisy: the woman loved being a mage. She loved being an apostate, and yet she condemned the rest of them to the Circle-
"HAH!" The rage demon disappeared, popping up behind her. It had barely swept back to clout her with one of its fiery claws when Fenris's greatsword pierced through the things middle. The two of them fought well together, weaving a deadly dance between them. Anders felt a mixture of disgust, jealousy and disbelief at the display. Fenris claimed to hate mages and yet stuck to Hawke like glue…let them have each other, he thought angrily, selfish hypocrites.
"Ugh, you're making that face again." It took Anders a moment to realize she was talking to him, turning her back as Fenris finished the final shade with a mighty blow. Her small, shapely lips twisted into a grimace and the chasind tattoos across her cheekbones curving up with the expression of distaste.
"What face?" He restored his staff to its place on his shoulders and glared at Hawke as she brushed by him, blue eyes glittering. The power of her magic prickled across his skin even dormant. The feel of another mage was as intoxicating as the touch of flesh on flesh. No, you will not have these thoughts about Hawke. You cannot have these thoughts about Hawke. Anders forced himself to scowl at the back of her head instead of letting his eyes wander over the way her thin waist tapered to the fine but not overly voluptuous curve of her hips-Maker's breath, man!
"Your stick in the mud face," Isabela piped up from the corner of the cave, jimmying the lock on a chest. "it's very unappealing."
"I'm in a bad mood."
"You're always in a bad mood-"
"Forgive me if I'm feeling guilty for forcing my fellow mages to-"
"It's not sharing time, Anders. We have touchy feely conversations over drinks…which you and your bitchy spirit refuse to attend. Look, let's track down these blood mages-" Hawke murmured, amusement(Amusement!) colouring her voice as she picked up one of the decaying skulls and, with the smallest exertion of force magic, crushed it in her fist. "-And then we'll-"
"We don't know that they're all blood mages!" He interrupted, kicking at one of the reanimated corpses, dead for the second time in its existence.
"They raised the dead, didn't they? That's blood magic." Hawke turned on him, her shoulders thrown back and all the playfulness of a moment before gone from her gaze. Anders felt her reach for the Fade, an action akin to setting a hand on the pommel of a blade in preparation to withdraw it from its sheath. Don't threaten me, Little Girl.
"They're desperate, they think we're working for the Templars." He tried to appeal to her once more, but her Fade connection flared and she sneered at him. Fenris spoke before she could, a savage glower on his face.
"Desperate mages will resort to the most depraved acts to ensure their own skins remained intact. They need to be dealt with…harshly if necessary." Oh damn the elf! As if he knew anything about being a desperate mage!
"I'm not…Isabela, how can you just let this happen? You value freedom!" The rogue perked up from where she was readjusting her sash, eyebrows raised.
"While we're doing the opinion thing, I have a question. Hawke, do you think I need a bath? I think I need a bath but I'm not sure-"
"ISABELA." Anders gritted his teeth and stormed past Fenris, setting the pace as Hawke and Isabela discussed general cleanliness.
"If you turn us in, don't think your own talents will go unremarked." Grace, the leader apparent to the escaped Starkhaven mages, was glaring at him. Anders felt a small twinge of irritation at this, if the woman wanted someone to blame she had only to look to an increasingly aggravated Hawke. In the space of the last two corpse related altercations, Hawke's mood had gone from effervescently cheerful to savagely irritated.
"Threatening to turn me in really doesn't go with your 'all mages stick together' attitude-"
"You silly little Circle bitch," Hawke was suddenly there in front of him, her staff in one hand and the other wrapped in a fistful of Grace's robes. The feel of the Fade was fresh and powerful and writhing with promise in Hawke's grasp, enveloping Anders in it's comfortingly familiar embrace as the back-lash of Hawke's power washed over his aura. It would have been a good feeling if it wasn't so charged with her fury.
"Uh oh." Isabela breathed, her fingers twitching towards her knives as the other Starkhaven mages exchanged nervous, terrified looks. Fenris hefted his sword at one of the closest and the man shrank back, cowed and trembling.
"If you had any business being outside your Circle the Templars wouldn't have been able to track you here. That idiot-" Hawke nodded to Decimus's still cooling corpse. "-Would have slaughtered us if he had even an elementary grasp of how to properly use blood magic. If you really wanted to be free, your corpse would be lying next to his. I can still you give you that, if it's what you want. They say dying for a cause is the ultimate freedom. How about it, Circle mage? You want to live on your knees or die on your feet?"
Grace sputtered, trembling in Hawke's grasp as her hands clawed at Hawke's gauntleted wrists in an attempt to loosen her grip. Anders felt a chill; was Hawke really willing to kill this woman over a hastily muttered aside? Justice seethed at the edge of his consciousness, angry and curious.
"Let me…go…I am trying to save our lives, not fling them into the flames. We'll go with you." Hawke made a hissing sound and pushed Grace backwards into her fellows, spitting at their feet.
"A shame." Fenris rumbled under his breath, his greatsword rasping as it slid back into it's sheath.
"Threaten any of my companions again and I'll crush every bone in your pathetic body to powder, maleficarum." Hawke turned on her heel and stormed past them, nearly smacking into his shoulder as she strode by. "We'll clear the way for you. Any tricks and I'll set the Templars to hunt their own game."
"Hawke, we can't-"
"We can and we will. Thrask isn't going to kill them…and trust me when I say that's more than they deserve." Hawke hissed, getting within inches of his face.
"They deserve their freedom-"
"If you won't fight for it, you don't deserve it." Fenris crowded in on Hawke's side before Anders could snatch her elbow and make her listen to him. If he even so much as made a quick motion in Hawke's direction, the territorial elf would break his wrist and ask questions later.
"Hawke, do something! Defend them! He just said he's going to kill them! Surely you can't-" Hawke stood on his foot with the heavy leather boots she was wearing.
"Do what you must, Ser Karras." The Templar tossed her a pouch of gold that jingled as she caught it, studiously avoiding Anders's furious gaze as she did so. Grace and her fellow mages looked horrified as the Templars fell into formation around them, leading them away, Thrask assuring them he would dissuade Meredith and Hawke standing there with her arms crossed.
"Hawke, we can take them-"
"You want to end up in the Gallows, go ahead and start tossing bolts of ice around." She hissed back, leaning against the sun warmed stones at the mouth of the cave and taking a swig of a bottle of Antivan brandy Isabela had discovered. The sun glinted off the Templars armour as they descended the hill, Justice railing against the unfairness of it all.
"Well?" Hawke asked, smiling wickedly. "Are you going to take the moral high ground or save your own skin?"
He wanted to hit her, or at least trap her legs in a foot thick block of ice. Goad him, dare him, bait him like he was some sort of slavering fanatic. He wanted to save Grace and the others…but if Hawke wasn't bluffing, if she didn't come to his aid against the small army of Templars who'd come to escort the escapees to the Circle…he couldn't risk it, not when there was so much he could do to help mages outside the Circle's walls. And he'd never go back, he'd rather die.
"I hope the extra coin was worth it to you."
"Every copper goes to the good cause of keeping my arse free of the Circle and full of as much Rivaini rum as I can guzzle. Do you want your share now or when we get back to Kirkwall?" There was practiced coldness to her voice, daring him to lose his temper. To prove to her and to himself that mages were volatile, that he really was just an Abomination.
"I'm not taking a Templar's coin for this. Would it have been so hard for you to let them go?" Hawke took another swig of the brandy and passed it to Isabela, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and shaking her head.
"Of course not. I could have convinced those Templars that I'd slaughtered the lot of them. But what good would it do? They'd have caught them inside of a week and I'd have lost any good standing I'd gained with Cullen." Hawke scoffed as Isabela passed the bottle back to Fenris, who went to take a swallow and then shot the cheeky pirate a dirty look before chucking the empty bottle over his shoulder.
"You can't know that."
"Whatever. We're done talking about it. Take your share and use it to buy supplies for your clinic." She chucked him two sovereigns and they skidded across the sand at his feet, glinting poisonously in the sunlight. He bent and took them, Justice twisting in his mind like a writhing snake. For the Clinic, then at least her blood money will help someone. Maybe he'd donate it to the Mage Underground. Hawke nodded and turned to follow the path the Templars had taken, asking Fenris something in Tevinter that made him chuckle and hold out a clawed gauntlet to her.
Anders struggled to follow their conversation with Justice calling for retribution so loudly it made his blood pound in his ears and the urge to rip someone's head off just for some peace and quiet almost impossible to resist. Arcanum wasn't a hard language to learn and he could certainly read it, but Fenris's accent and Hawke's stilted pronunciation made it difficult to follow. He had to infer from the smug tone and Hawke's indignant and dodgy replies what the line of conversation was.
"-Vas debitirem, amicara meheus." You…something he couldn't quite catch to grasp the meaning of, then the female for my friend. Though, if he remembered correctly, amicara had more familiar connotations. Flirtatious, even. Ugh, terrific.
"Fasta vas," The insult the elf used with such vehemence was lightly spoken by Hawke, casual and playful. "Ego vocere nullos Medicina, ipse nunquam assentium monepentia. Meheus culpa."
"Etiam nunc debitirem," You still…debt. Anders couldn't help the frustrated sound of outrage that escaped his lips.
"You took bets on whether or not I would accept this?" The meaning of debiterem finally struck him and he glowered furiously at the back of their heads. Hawke groaned and her head fell against Fenris's shoulder.
"That's what they were saying?" Isabela shook her head disappointedly, sighing. "My version was much more interesting. The 'ass' bit in assentium was giving me all sorts of ideas- "
"If nothing else, Abomination, Hawke thought more highly of you then I. She didn't think you would take it." Fenris sneered uncharitably over his shoulder, one hand on the small of Hawke's back.
They look down on him, they think he's a wild raving fanatic. They have no idea what it's like, what he went through. Hawke leans against her elf and preaches strength and yet she knows nothing of it! She was never in the Circle, she never knew what it was like! She walks free, proud and noble and she has paid nothing for it. No tithes of blood and humiliation and pain; Hawke was not a woman who had had to bend.
"It's a lucky thing you never ended up in the Circle, Hawke. You'd never survive it." It his head, it is a good comeback. A vicious and glorious triumph that for a moment it seems like Fenris might try and make him pay for. But then Hawke chuckles, barely glancing back at him as she keeps a tense Fenris moving forward with a soft tug at his gaunlet.
"You're right. I never could get the hang of groveling for mercy and begging for my life."
"Do you think that's funny? What every Circle mage has to do just to survive? Is that why you send them back, because it amuses you?" Justice was seething inside his breast, pacing like a tiger in a cage. Hawke kept walking for a moment more in silence, the only sign of her irritation was the way she flexed the fingers of her left hand and then balled them back into a fist.
"Of course it does. I'm a big scary witch of the wilds who eats children and consorts with demons and fucks darkspawn. I sharpen my teeth with bones and bathe in blood. Oooooh! Look out, Anders! Throwing a few mages back where they belong is the least of the terrible, evil things I do." Hawke glared at him, a challenge in her eyes and a smile on her lips.
"Don't be stupid, Hawke. What makes you and I better than those Starkhaven mages?"
"Nothing." She sniffed, turning to face him. She walked backwards, her boots scuffing in the sand as Isabela and Fenris moved a ways away, the pirate rolling her eyes and the elf shooting him a poisonous glare. Even backwards, Hawke moved with predatory confidence, her dark blue eyes sharp and fierce as shards of sapphire.
"Then how can you justify throwing them in the Circle if we get to be free?" He growled at her, watching her lips twist and skin back over her teeth in distaste.
"They threw themselves in the Circle, Anders. You're just too blind to see it." Cold, careless loathing is in her voice. Not for the first time and certainly not for the last, Justice insists she is a demon. Or that she is at the very least like one. Hate for hate's sake, wrath for wrath's sake. So full of unreasoning pride…it is the only thing she can be.
"Too blind, am I? I came from the Circle, I fought my way free and you-" She's angry now, making a sharp cutting motion with a hand crackling with fire as she refuses to let him finish his condemnation.
"Freedom! Circle mage freedom is a legacy of dependence! You got free and gave up your liberty to some spirit! All Circle mages can do is panic and then get furious, they rely on desperation instead of Maker given sense! I'm sick of these dead-end conversations, Anders. We are free mages, they were not."
"They were while they were out from under the Templar's yoke! They can be taught-"
"Damn it. Fenris," Hawke shouted, "please tell me there's alcohol in one of those backpacks or I'm going to smash my brains out with a rock for some bloody peace and quiet."
"You're despicable." He spat, resisting the urge to strike her only with supreme force of will.
"And you're annoying." She retorted, though some of the fire seemed to have gone out of her when she did.
Anders stormed past her, furiously marching away. He heard Hawke tell Fenris to 'let him go' and bitterly regretted he didn't have an excuse to loose Justice on the smarmy elf. Anders was done, he didn't have to keep working with this arrogant Templar thrall who called herself a mage. Next time she demanded his presence, he'd be busy.
Arcanum Translation:
Vas debitirem, amicara meheus. - You owe me, my friend.
Ego vocere nullos Medicina, ipse nunquam assentium monepentia. Meheus culpa. - I didn't talk about the Clinic, he'd never have agreed to take the coin. My fault.
Etiam nunc debitirem - You still owe me.
Note on Arcanum: Mostly I derived from latin, but some of it's been changed to sound better/snazzier. Hawke's translations will always be rougher than Fenris's, so the poor grammar? Intentional. XD