Author's Note

I'm profusely sorry for taking so long to post this chapter but between being unhappy with the initial draft and completely mired in spelunking wantonly in Skyrim, I needed a heroic rescue, finally delivered by my beta strangegibbon in the form of a well placed boot to the rear. Once again, a very special thanks to everybody who added this story to their alerts and favourites and to those who took the time to review - I love you guys!

The Dragon Age Universe and everyone in it belongs to Bioware.

This story is rated T but may on occasion trespass through M.


9. Reflection

Anders arrived early one blustery morning when she was absolutely loathe to emerge from the comforting cocoon of her bed to drag her grumbling drowsily and without breakfast to the Docks. A morning chill hung over the harbour, the water whisked into little peaks by the wind, slate grey against the mist shrouded cliffs while a meek early spring sun glimmered apologetically above.

They made their way through largely empty streets to the Western Warehouse District, where a handful of stevedores hustled crates in the quays below and a beggar or two sat on the steps leading down, picking at scabs and indulging in breakfast. Most businesses were still shuttered and the only thing filling the promenade were stray bits of scrap frolicking in the pungent sea breeze.

Mistress Selby's boarding house was inside a nondescript and derelict building at the very end of the pier, appearing at first glance to be no more than a hostel for out of town visitors that were light in the pocket. The interior was strictly utilitarian and unremarkable, only a few cheap wooden chairs arranged around a plywood table in the lobby. When they arrived, there was no one at the reception and she waited idly while Anders chased down someone to attend them.

Finally, about half an hour later, Hawke was introduced to the woman who had organised Kirkwall's underground apostate rescue railroad. She wasn't a mage herself, but her sister had been made Tranquil under Ser Alrik's diabolical scheme some two years ago and since then she had dedicated herself to the mission of helping inmates flee the Circle.

As Hawke sat there reluctantly at first, and then with increasing guilt, listening to Selby elaborate, she noticed the woman's striking resemblance to her mother and wondered what Leandra would have done if her father had ever been captured.

It was impossible to imagine her mother far beyond her comfort zone and Hawke reflected on the choices she had made to keep it that way. Her mother, like Bethany, was delicate – a nurturer not a protector – and Carver was often trapped by his scruples. Hawke had learnt very early in life that at least one of them could not afford to shy from whatever it took to keep them safe and she had never shrunk from that role.

"Your brother is a templar." Selby glared at her in cold assessment. "I must know whether you can be relied on."

Anders gave the necessary reassurance on her behalf while Hawke, for his sake, arranged her face into a passably trustworthy expression. After a brief moment of indecision Selby nodded in assent and dived straight into business, handing her a stack of urgent demands that Anders took great interest in analysing out loud all the way back to Hightown.

When she returned home she found her mother in tears. She had been snubbed by Dulci de Launcet at a tea-party, the milliner had ruined the hat she was to wear to the parade and Gamlen had argued with her over money. There was little she could do about the first and she refused to do any more about the last but it had taken the rest of the day to have the hat sorted out.

The next few days were no better with one minor crisis on the heels of another. At the end of the week Hubert finally capitulated and admitted to the lost shipments. The Coterie ferreted out a witness and it fell to Hawke to extract a confession. Their contact Lilley, led them to the exclusively Fereldan slums where she had lived for over a year, and stopped before a shabby little shack she recognised at once as belonging to Sabin – a man who had watched her grow up in Lothering and been a friend to her father.

Hubert foisted the task to make him talk upon her, eyes gleaming in triumph at her shock – he was Fereldan and therefore hers to deal with, he explained in his oily Orlesian way, neither he nor Lilley believing she had the wherewithal to do it. It was a test of whether she had the mettle to back her temerity. They expected her to flinch and back down. He could make her withdraw her demands and swindle more money from the accounts.

The slightest chink in her armour and they would pick at her flesh like vultures.

She glanced at Fenris, pursing her lips before the keen gaze studying her coolly, arms crossed. There was no encouragement there, no expression of support and she was entangled in doubt. Would he understand that it was not material comfort that she strived for when he had only himself to look after? Principles were easy to cling to when the stakes were simple, but where would it leave her mother if she showed weakness or Orana or dear, simple Sandal?

Poverty was insecurity and vulnerability and the constant, niggling fear of tomorrow. And if the price to keep the Circle from her heels so she could keep a roof over her household's head was a little guilt she had been prepared to pay it a long time ago. He would understand. He had to.

"Help him with his memory, Fenris."

Surprise registered on every face in a different stroke. Hubert sniffed, Lilley crossed her arms and Fenris subtly arched a brow.

For the briefest fraction, she was not sure of his reaction but he uncrossed his arms and wordlessly stirred to comply with her directive. There was anger in every supple movement and she turned away instead cowardly, unwilling to watch yet acutely aware of each blow and sicker in the heart for it. It was a weakness, she warned herself and like so many others, it belonged in that compartment in her heart where she kept all her weaknesses, along with the promise one day to examine them when she could afford the luxury to do so.

Sabin talked in the end but she could not get Fenris to do the same. It was enough to make her long for the biting whip of his tongue but he only levelled stormy eyes at her, full of indignation and reproach.

"Are you ever going to speak to me again?" she declared as they climbed up the steps from the Market. "I did what I had to do."

"Keep your excuses." he snapped viciously. "What will you have me do next – shall I serve wine to intimidate your guests?"

Marian stopped short, stricken with horror and felt it creep red and prickling up her face. "I'm not- it's not the same." It sounded hollow even to herself but made her no less angry. "I don't need this-" she finished hotly, marching toward home not caring if he followed.

Bodahn accosted her on the curb, pink faced and dishevelled as if he had spent the morning canvasing Hightown looking for her. He glanced uncertainly at Fenris a step behind her and then decided that the enormity of the crisis overruled the need for discretion.

"Messere! Please, Lady Amell is- your presence is required at the Estate at once, Madam. I am truly, sorry." He dipped low, hat in hand and his normally pretentious tone was inflected with grief.

It stopped her blood cold, anger giving way to worry. "What are you talking about? Has something happened to Mother?" She glanced at the house and broke into a frantic dash toward the front door.

"Mother!" She crossed the empty foyer, taking in the sheaf of discarded mail on the floor, her heart hammering in her ears. There was no answer as she ran through the quiet in the main hall and vaulted up the stairs several at a time. The the soft sound of weeping came drifting from her mother's quarters as she neared the top. "Mother?"

Orana was on the floor outside the door, her normally composed expression miserable, and dread slithered into the pit of her stomach. "Orana, where's my mother? What's happened?"

Without waiting for a reply, Hawke pushed open the bedroom door and entered.

Leandra was hunched over by the bay window, violent sobs wracking her body. The room was in complete disarray. Curtains taken down, the bed linen pulled off and all her formal outfits scattered around, the edges and trimmings in various states of unravelling. "For the Love of Andraste, what happened here?" She strode across the room and placed a hand over her trembling form.

"Oh Marian, everything is ruined," she sobbed brokenly, seam ripper hard at work in trembling fingers, undoing the applique on the lavender frock she was to wear to the Ball. Hawke could barely make out the words.

"What happened to your dress? There's no need to cry about it - or tear down the house."

Leandra only cried harder. "I'm redoing it, it's all wrong."

"Did Jean Luc not deliver your hat? I'll go fix him up right now," she offered but it seemed to make no discernible difference. With a sigh, she settled down in the window seat beside her, petting her on the back while she convulsed pitifully.

"Did Dulci say something again? That sanctimonious witch. Don't mind her, she's only jealous of you."

"Jealous!" Leandra exclaimed in a fleeting moment of composure before dissolving into fresh tears. "They are laughing at us right now! They dare insult me! If your grandfather were alive- Oh Marian! How will you ever debut now - and already 25!"

"Dear Maker, Mother. I can't fix it if I don't what it is. Calm down a moment and tell me what happened."

Leandra drew in a shuddering breath and clutched Marian's hands, tightly wringing them in her own. "We can't go! We aren't invited!"

"Is this about that blighted invitation again?" She shook her head. "It was probably just lost in the mail. I'll go to the Keep tomorrow first thing in the morning and ask for a duplicate in person. Seriously, Mother - you go looking for things to worry about. The noble families are always invited."

Leandra burst into another spasm of tears. "Yes! Everyone! Except us!"

"Stop crying, Mother. Fenris is right outside, he can hear you, you know." She hoped that would force some composure. Instead, it had the opposite effect. She flung away Marian's hands and shrank away from her. "I sent Bodahn to enquire of the Master of Ceremonies. There's been no mistake. We were never invited!"

Hawke frowned, "That can't be right." She slumped back as her mind dived into analysis. "There must be some mistake."

"No! There's no mistake! There were objections raised at the Planning Committee. They voted to exclude us!"

"What? Why would they do that? You're an Amell. We live in Hightown. I subscribe to all their bloody charities."

"Oh Marian, you foolish girl. I keep telling you! It's the company you keep! So unbecoming for a lady! Those nasty merchants and mercenaries and pirates," and she sobbed so loudly her next words were nearly unintelligible, "and elves!"

Marian felt a flood of emotion. "Mother! Mind yourself-" She sputtered, her mouth suddenly too dry, her skin crawling with guilt. "This house doesn't pay for itself. All these nice things you love cost coin. What would you have me do? I can't sustain us sitting at home embroidering heraldry! You think Carver can afford this on his little templar stipend? Do you have an inheritance squirreled away you forgot to mention?"

A potent mix of anger and shame surged through her veins heating up her face and the back of her neck, even her ears where it turned into a constant ringing. She stood up, unable to look at Leandra until she had ambulated it off.

"I have to work. I have to find coin and I have to move among people who know where to look."

"Lord Friedrich-" Leandra continued brokenly, "he called you a bandit. He said three years ago, you held him up at the harbour for coin. My daughter - an Amell - a thug!"

Hawke sank into the armchair in the corner of the room, feeling the weight of each one of her twenty five years. She felt chided - small and unworthy before her mother's disappointment, like the time she had stolen Father's brandy to bribe the boys in Lothering and was caught. While she rummaged about for a way to explain it away, she wondered what her mother would say to the truth, that she had really been hired to kill the man and settled for coin because her feet were struck cold at the last minute. That it was Gamlen who had placed her in that position in the first place and she was desperate because her family had been sitting outside the city without provision for three days.

"It was a misunderstanding, Aveline cleared it up years ago." She said at last. Aveline's name would give this vague eye-wash the credibility her mother needed to turn away from having to face it. She had never been able to level with her, not when she had had to make these choices the first time, and not now more than ten years later.

"I have to go. It's been a long day." She rose and walked towards the door, pausing by Leandra as she continued to weep softly by the window and gave her shoulder a squeeze. "I'm sorry, Mother."

Outside the room the expectant faces of Orana and Bodahn were waiting for an explanation, as contrite as if the whole thing was their personal failure. It wasn't. It was hers and she hated them for it. "The room is a mess - why hasn't anyone seen to it?" She snapped. Orana paled and quickly wiped away her teary eyes.

"Lady Amell wouldn't let me in, Mistress." She scampered towards the bedroom.

"She'll let you in now. Get to it."

Her gaze swept upon Bodahn and the dwarf braced himself, "Sandal is cleaning up the foyer as we speak, Messere."

The sting she had readied died on her lips and she pursed her mouth in a curt nod. She contemplated venturing into her bedroom but there was nothing within to attend. For a long moment she stood in the middle of the landing, too agitated by the inability to direct herself to a task that had not just been rendered moot. The shoes, the clothes, the hats, the gloves, the renting of the carriage, the readiness of the horses - everything on her list of things to do was tied into that damnable pageant, months of planning suddenly and completely redundant and now she simply had nothing to do.

Fenris stood half way up the stairs, concern softening the sharp edges of his frown.

"She's fine." She snapped irritably before he could ask.

"I should leave."

"That would probably be best right now."

He nodded and turned around.

She would read, she decided. It was the only thing that she could pluck from the ceaseless churning of her mind and she grasped it, setting off towards the library. It had been too long since she had settled down by the fire, put up her legs and delved into a ponderous book on something she cared not two figs about. The house loomed, silent and brooding as she walked - the very walls rustling with the lavish drapery she had provided, seeming to whisper in judgement. Everything pressed in upon her and her brain whirled as uselessly as the wheel of an overturned cart.

Hawke entered the library and reached for the first unwieldy tome on the nearest shelf, "let's see then, ah - The History of the Chantry, volume 7- this should put me to sleep for a month."

She lowered herself into the armchair by the fire with the tome on her knees and ran her fingertips absently over the gilt edges, her thoughts beginning to pull away from her again and it was a while before she realised she had been sitting idly with her mind thrumming away at everything and nothing.

"I need a drink." She set the book aside and strode to the console by the window, reaching for the bottle of wine. Then changed her mind; she wanted something stronger. Kneeling down, she fished out the bottle of Starkhaven whisky Varric had brought over long ago for Carver forgotten at the back of the cabinet and poured herself a shot.

The amber liquid caught the light from the window and she examined it against the waning sun, building up the nerve to take the plunge. Finally, she gulped it down in one go, coughing and sputtering as it burned down her throat. It was disgusting. How anyone could care for it was beyond fathoming but as warm numbness settled over her she acquired a fresh appreciation and carried the bottle back to her position by the fireplace, no longer needing the treatise on religion.


TBC

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