Author's Note
As always, a shout out to my beta strangegibbon, a hopeless romantic who falls apart on the words 'sugar' and 'crumpet' when used with reference to a certain genius detective with biting wit and cheekbones that are probably not allowed in-flight any , many thanks to everyone who read, added this story to their alerts & favourites and especially those who reviewed! You guys are the bestest!
The Dragon Age universe and everyone in it belongs to Bioware.
This story is rated T, but may on occasion trespass through M.
8. Restitution
Hawke stepped out of the Hanged Man and into the dark. Even though the sliver of sky visible above was yet a cool twilight blue, night fell early in this part of town. The sun had dipped behind the cliffs of Hightown leaving behind shadows that were long and deep. Here and there lamps sputtered to life on cheap oil, coughing up smoke and throwing splashes of gold on stucco walls and across the narrow alleys that threaded through the maze of storeyed shanties. In the somewhat wider square where the Bazaar was held, there was a breath of air rustling among the line of awnings, that still bore a touch of chill reminiscent of winter and Marian shivered, pulling the woolly wrap tighter about herself.
It was not so late yet that the streets were dangerous and she weaved through the crowds returning home after the day until she spotted Anders striding down the steep stairwell that fed into the undercity.
"Anders!" she called out and hurried down the narrow steps to catch up with him. "Anders, wait."
He turned around and glared at her sullenly.
"Anders." Hawke sighed, gathering her thoughts and picking her words carefully. "I'm sorry you were hurt. Fenris had no right."
"He's no more responsible for his actions than a pit fighting bereskarn tied up and left to starve."
There were only so many snide jabs she could overlook. She shook her head. "He's not like that. You just don't know him."
"Yet he didn't hurt me. You did."
She winced, feeling a stirring of remorse but drowned it out, remembering her purpose. "Why do you think there is something more between us?"
"It's no secret you carry a torch for him," he said in disgust. "Isabela as well but that doesn't count. She is what she is." There was a softening of expression as he looked at her and gave in to lamentation "But you, you're so much better than that. A candle in a coal mine and you deserve a man, a real man, who can love you for it."
"Oh, Anders." She exhaled, utterly touched and wanting to reciprocate in some fashion. She took his hands in hers. "Fenris resents you because he's jealous of you. There is nothing between us." She urged with wide, earnest eyes. It was technically true.
A part of her protested and there was a little voice that screamed the whole time but looking into his honey coloured eyes, she knew the exact instant her words broke through to him. A faint flicker of hope evanesced and she snatched at the brief window. Their association would survive neither a blaze of unrequited longing nor the complete extinguishment of heartbreak, but perhaps, in the delicate glow of a maybe, they could find equilibrium.
"I really like you, Anders and I wish I could say yes, but I don't know my own heart yet." It was always best to wander not far from the truth. "I won't lose you over this. I care about you. I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you."
"You don't need my forgiveness," he said.
"But I do!" She insisted. "I'll have your manifesto printed. Would that make you happy?"
He rewarded her with a small smile that encouraged her to continue.
"And I'll help you – your mage underground. I'll go down to the docks tomorrow – to that boarding house and speak to what's-her-name."
"Mistress Selby." Anders smiled wider. It was exactly what he'd have wanted.
"Yes. Liberty for all – Justice, Freedom and all that."
His face lit up, and overcome he clasped her tightly to his chest, laying a chaste kiss on her mouth. Hawke wondered briefly if she could ever convince him of the value-added benefits of a good friendship but filed that thought for later. At present, she was just glad that order had returned to her life.
"I was going to have dinner," he muttered into her hair, withdrawing a little and tucking a loose curl behind her ear. "-and your company would make it more palatable. What do you say?"
"Of course, I can stay-" Hawke agreed readily then it occurred to her, "-what are you having?"
"Oh, I don't know - rats? Though I think it's worm and lichen salad day at the Free Kitchen." He smiled at her horror-struck expression and the appearance of the little crinkles at the corners of his mouth made her melt into a smile. With a tinkle of laughter, she slipped her hand in his.
"Come with me," she dragged him behind her, "I saw this little corner stall by Lirene's with the most delicious smelling sausages-"
Later that night, Hawke left Anders' clinic satisfied with her handling of the crisis. Quite apart from the fact that she was fond of him despite the histrionics to which he was prone, she needed him more than she would ever admit aloud. He was a healer of exceptional skill and she owed him for saving her life.
Amongst all the dangers that went hand in hand with scurrying under the radar of the Circle and its templars, being forever denied access to healers was a little-sung misery that she knew very well. She had watched her father wither year after year as the cancer gnawed him from within, just outside the penumbra of the Circle. She remembered holding her mother and silently offering a much too young shoulder while she broke down and cried in a way she never would before the children, admitting the temptation to turn him in just to end his suffering.
She remembered how jealously Leandra had guarded their health growing up, her fingers still bearing the calluses acquired from obsessively scrubbing their clothes in the coldest of weather. Every childhood infection was a crisis, every sore throat a calamity and Bethany's childhood asthma a dread spectre of disaster. If Justice was Anders' demon it was Hypochondria who had haunted her childhood.
Stepping outside into Darktown, she skipped down the first flight of stairs in high spirits and passed under the vaulted base of the stairs that arched overhead. The diffuse moonlight that trickled through was insufficient to offer illumination and everything was shrouded in darkness. An involuntary tendril of fear curled in the pit of her stomach and as she made the effort to suppress it, realised that she was all alone.
She ducked under an overhanging and pressed forward in the semi-darkness. The walls closed in the deeper she ventured and it was disturbingly claustrophobic. Amorphous shapes and hungry eyes tracked her path lurking in the shadows, the impoverished squatters settling in for the night. Would it kill them to bring a lantern down here, she thought with nervous irritability, then reflected on the grinding poverty that made such an ordinary necessity, an impossible extravagance.
A misshapen, gnarled root unfolded in front of her, without warning tangling in her robes and startled her out of breath.
"A coin, Messere?" It croaked weakly and Hawke exhaled, feeling idiotic as she clasped a hand to steady her heart. It was only a beggar's arm.
She yanked open her purse and drew out a silver, her eyes straining in the dark to make out the cowering form. As they adjusted, bulbous nodules of leprosy became clear, protruding unnaturally from the man's profile. The shadows made the figure look sinister instead of pitiable. Hawke suppressed a shudder of revulsion.
He took the coin and coarse fingers grazed against hers. She recoiled, only to stumble over something new that had crawled near. "Oh Maker! Will you stop crowding me!" She exclaimed, retreating. The second beggar was a cripple and a dwarf, with strange inking on his swarthy face. He raised a spread hand.
"Coin please?" Was that a hint of impudence in his face?
She fumbled for another coin to hand over, glancing around nervously as the shadows, pregnant with mysterious shapes, surged and trickled into her line of vision. Beggars, cripples, sickly urchins with beady eyes drew around in a matter of moments and instead of instilling pity in her heart, their covetous stares made her nervous. She parted with coin in increasing urgency.
A scrawny child took hold of her sleeve, tugging to get attention and his grimy touch made her skin crawl. "Don't touch me." she warned, flicking her gaze over the rest.
"I haven't had nothin' t' eat." He dropped his hand but didn't move back.
She dug into her purse for more silver, warily noting as they gathered, like vultures picking at her faster than she could draw money. Her purse dwindled as their murmuring grew louder, echoing hauntingly in the narrow alley. She felt more fingers reaching for her and spun around. A beggar dragged himself forward and grasped her forearm and like a struck flint, her anger flamed.
"I said don't touch me, you freak!"
She shoved him back and he clattered to the floor, swallowed up by the gasping, swelling crowd. The precariousness of what she had gotten herself into dawned on her and her mood shifted. The alley was filled with them and she was trapped in the centre of a swarm of desperate vagrants, growing bolder with every passing moment. "Enough! Back away, all of you! I've no more coin. I'm leaving." She declared hurriedly, tossing her purse in the swell and using the distraction to press through them. "Back off!"
Someone gripped the back of her hem and it was the last straw. Magic flared violently, the sharp smell of ozone filled the alley as air sundered under her power and exploded, throwing everyone back against the walls. Hawke turned around and fled in panic as they all scattered, cries and wails echoing behind her.
She raced through the shadows, fleeing down dark corridors, navigating purely from memory. There was a narrow stairwell that lead to the second level somewhere through an alley on her right and searched desperately for it, ducking into dead-end alcoves, backtracking, side-tracking, circling around in the dark labyrinth. Just when she thought she was completely lost, the wall on her left gave out and she veered sharply, leaping for what she hoped were the stairs at last. Instead she ran straight into something hard that closed around her like a vice. She screamed. Her heart stopped. She couldn't breathe. Fear crashed over her with such force that her legs gave out.
"Hawke." The relief she felt when she heard that voice filled her eyes with tears.
"Oh Maker, it's you." She sobbed and kissed his face wherever she could reach. "It's you, thank the Maker." She wrapped her arms around him, clinging tightly.
"That's enough, calm yourself." He pried her off, uncomfortable with all that outpouring of emotion. "What happened?"
"A mob attacked me! I was running for my life!"
"I don't see a mob."
Hawke paused in her sobbing relief and concentrated. "They were in that alley under the southern causeway. I felt bad and gave out some coin but there were scores of them."
"You gave out charity to bandits?" He asked sceptically, and Hawke could imagine his eyebrows climbing in the dark.
"Not bandits! Beggars!"
"Just beggars?"
"And cripples, urchins. Scores of them." Now that her nerves were calmer and she was not harried, she felt less certain about their number but felt no great need to amend her description.
"You ran screaming from children, cripples and beggars?"
"It was dark. They looked dangerous." She glanced over her shoulder but the shadows lay still and silent.
"The cripples." He said in a perfectly level voice but she could still hear his amusement.
Hawke fidgeted under this cross examination. "Why are you here anyway? Did you want to torment Anders? Haven't you tortured him enough for one day?"
"I don't know, you stopped me before I could decide."
Hawke found her lips twitching in amusement and deflected. "Did you follow me here? Why did you do that?"
"I enjoy following you."
Hawke deliberated on that for a moment.
His hands closed around her upper arms and pulled her back, so close she could see his eyes shining in the dark. "So, you are with that abomination now?"
The suddenness caught her off-guard and once again she found herself out of breath, her stomach twisting up in writhing knots, her heart fluttering in her chest like a trapped sparrow and she welcomed it, feeling deliriously happy at his nearness. Her fingers roved up his chest and slid around his neck, feeling the tiny jolt of lyrium. She pressed herself closer and brushed her lips experimentally against his chin, seeking the leaping pulse under his jaw. His grip shifted to her waist and his hands slid indulgently over her rump. He rested his forehead against her hair, and exhaled an indistinct curse under his breath. "...maddening woman," he told her.
"I am only thinking of you, right now," she whispered, teasing her tongue along his tapered ear.
He tensed. "And did you assure him of any less?" He drew her hands from around his neck and shoved her off abruptly.
All amorous inclination was exorcised at once and replaced with indignation. "So what if I had?" She said hotly. "It doesn't mean I'm lying now. If I had him in my bed once, it means no more than that. It doesn't bind me. I don't belong to anyone."
He grunted but said nothing in reply.
They were at an impasse and as her anger settled, she realised she didn't want to fight. With an attempt at levity, she reached for him again. "I'm very much the untamed shrew."
"So you are." He caught her hands before they could touch him. The grip made her flinch but she couldn't tell from his tone if he was upset.
"Are you jealous?" She asked outright, a little shocked at her forwardness but she wanted to know, needed to know. She wanted him to say yes. With an epiphany of self-awareness, she realised that this moment was all that Anders had ever been about. He was silent for a long time, his luminescent gaze studying her.
"It doesn't matter," he said finally.
The disappointment was overwhelming, and she closed her eyes so they wouldn't betray her emotions, striving to stuff it all in the neat compartment where everything she found unworthy of herself went to languish. She took her hands back and re-arranged her shawl. "So what are you doing here?"
"I came to take you home."
TBC
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