AN: Special thanks for this chapter go to w0rdinista, swaps55, barbex, and msdirected (all on Tumblr) for their invaluable knowledge and advice regarding horses. I've almost certainly still managed to stray anyway, but they did their level best to set me in the right direction. Thanks, ladies. Y'all are wonderful.
" . . . tell Wind and Fire where to stop," returned madame; "but don't tell me."
—A Tale of Two Cities, Charles Dickens
—
Elina does not mention that night again. Even as they come wearily to Ostwick there is a new quiet between them, as if she understands too well; Hawke has enough suspicions and enough sense to keep them to herself, and when they rein the last wagon before the inn at the city's edge she disembarks behind Elina without a word.
Only Elina, and Darren, and the silent girl left. Only three, of all that left Southfort together in chains.
Darren leaves first, a bright smile on his boyish face, the pilfered dagger spinning around one finger. The silent girl follows shortly after a quick embrace with Hawke, her steps unerring, pointing west, to the brother waiting there for her. And Elina…
And Elina, of the auburn braid and the sharp tongue, who wears something of a wry smile as Hawke follows her to the small, square building set just outside the square, down the long hall and up the narrow, steep stairs, to the room where an old woman has been waiting with two months' undaunted hope for any word of her daughter.
Elina knocks. The door opens—
A sharp breath. A table rattling as it is clutched for support, an inkwell overturning with a ceramic clink—and then nothing but joy, as Elina steps into the arms of her weeping mother, her own shoulders shaking, smiling bright enough to break the day.
Hawke grins. Steps back, away—but before she can vanish Elina tears away from her mother and comes to her again, kisses her roughly on the cheek. "Thank you," she says, holding Hawke's gaze, her voice low and hoarse. "For everything. I—I can't thank you enough."
"Your mother asked," Hawke tells her, her lips quirking. "I could hardly say no."
Elina lifts her head, fierce and proud. "I won't forget."
"Neither will I," Hawke says, and grips her hands. "And—for what it's worth, my real name. It's Hawke. If you ever need to reach me again."
"Hawke. Thank you."
Her mother moves, a sudden, too-quick gesture, her tears drying, her elegant brow furrowed. "Hawke?"
"Yes," she says, abruptly uneasy.
Then it comes, inevitable as stone falling to earth: "You're the Champion of Kirkwall."
Hawke closes her eyes, opens them again. Elina has stepped away, her tanned face gone pale; she lifts one hand to her mouth, then knots it at the base of her throat. "It's a lie."
"It's not. I was separated from my companions just after the last battle the night Kirkwall fell. I've been trying—" trying so hard, Fenris, so please, wait a little longer— "to reach them ever since."
"And then you found us."
Hawke spreads her hands. "I could hardly let something like that pass."
"You don't understand," her mother says, aged hands lifting palm-up between them. She steps forward, her eyes hard as they lift to Hawke's. "They're saying you're dead, Champion."
Hawke's heart—stops. Like a lightning bolt cracking a summer-blue sky, arresting all thought in the thunder of its passing. Her mouth works without voice, her chest hollowed out by horror; at last she manages, "What?"
"You're dead. You died near twenty days ago, falling off a cliff near Ostwick to save a man against wild dogs." Hawke makes a harsh, animal noise in her throat at that—Roald, she thinks, stunned by rage, and Elina's mother continues. "He claimed the bounty in Kirkwall. The Knight-Captain gave him coin and ordered his men to tear down the broadsheets with your face. Rumor has it he said there was no more point in looking—"
"What?"
"It's been all anyone's talked of for two weeks. I'm—sorry, Champion."
She cannot think clearly. She spins in place, her fist against her mouth—dead, dead for twenty damned days while she wandered in the northern hills without a word to anyone in the world. Every civilized city talking of her passing, spreading the word fast as wildfire, believing it to be—
"Blood of the Maker," she says to no one. Her voice is loud in the tiny room, made flat and distant by the hot pounding of her own blood in her ears. "Fenris."
Elina says, "Oh—"
And then Hawke is running, running, blind for fury and grief alike, Walter's staff in her hand, Elina's mother pressing some small packet of food into her arms, Elina tying a skin of water to Hawke's beaten, nicked belt. A scream is building somewhere deep inside her, tangled in the grief-sharp barbs that still line her ribs, fed firelike with frustration and guilt and the damned aching of thirty days, thirty days without him here, with him thinking, him believing of all things that she should dare to break such an oath to him now, now that everything has finished at last, now that they have a chance!
Hawke swears. Swears again at the bright brilliant blue of Ostwick's sky, at the soughing sea at her back, every wave a mark of another second lost and wasted. The wagon's horses are sturdy enough but she has no skill and little seat left from her childhood on Lothering's farms, not after ten years in Kirkwall—in a handful of minutes she has the stronger free and following after, the streets a sun-soaked blur as Elina's mother guides her to the stables. Fire in her fingers and a pair of sovereigns—and no questions asked as the startled stablehands saddle her horse, as they tie her pack behind it, as Hawke ungracefully mounts and takes the reins in hand. She can barely string two thoughts together through the rage.
It sidles sideways, stamps nervously. She slides her palms alongside its neck and calls for rejuvenation, for fresh energy and vigor; it stamps again, tossing its head, and without a second thought Hawke urges it forward into the open street. It trots forward briskly, as if it knows the desperation that drives her; she twines one hand into the horse's mane, praying for instinct to guide it where she can't—and if Andraste has any compassion for the mortals still yet singing Hawke prays that she hears her, now if no other time—
Elina's farewell call rings clear into the air behind her. Then the gates to the city's outer walls—and there the road ahead, wide and straight and carrying her north, arrow-true, unerring, to the city where Fenris waits with all that is left of her heart.
—
And yet, for all the magic still simmering in her skin, there is only so long either she or the horse can go a day. The traders on the road do not question her and she does not look to them, not for news or recognition or what sweet-smelling meals they cook on their campfires. They can have no reports she cares to hear, anyway.
The first day passes with little more incident than the rattling of her teeth at the horse's wagon-rough gait, than the stiff-legged fall the first time she tries to dismount with her knees like rubber and her thighs afire with pain. The second, dragging herself back into the saddle with enormous reluctance on both her part and the horse's, skirting Markham to the south no matter how much she wishes to rest. She grows used to the cool rush of healing against the throbbing in her legs, in her lower back. The horse no longer shies at the touch of magic to its neck, willing to endure much for her last, withered apples, for the whispered promises of both their homes. Had she thought of it she would have changed for a fresher horse in Ostwick, but after two weeks this gelding knows her now, and no longer sidles away at her magic, and for better or worse they are bound together, footsore and aching, for this last leg of their journey's circle.
She stops when she must, when hunger pulls at her and her horse both and their heads turn at every sound of a distant creek, when her legs burn hip to heel and the horse's withers fleck with froth. At night they rest well away from the roads, in the shadow of low trees and with no fire to give away their presence. The horse is patient through all of it, despite Hawke's certainty that it would prefer more skill at its mouth and the straps of its girth besides what habits she remembers from childhood, but she cannot—wait—
The third morning she bathes again in a clear creekbed, stripped naked and shivering with the chill, scrubbing sweat and dirt and the last vestiges of battle from her horse and herself alike. She wrings what stains she can from her tunic and trousers, abused near past saving, but they are better than they were when she yanks them over her head again, when she ties her hair away from her face and squares her shoulders against the pain to mount. And then—
And then—
At twilight of the third day, when her horse has begun to droop with exhaustion and Hawke herself has little strength left to her, when the first glimpse of evening stars has begun to filter through the leaves that stretch above the road, her horse's ears prick forward and its head lifts in sudden attention. Hawke shifts with it, wearily pushing her hair from her eyes, and tries to ignore the ache of every muscle below her shoulders. She'll count herself lucky if she doesn't have to crawl into her bed tonight.
There is a light. There is—a light.
Southfort.
She's done it. She's here, at last, a thousand years of waiting in the last three days, and she is—
She is riding towards Southfort on an exhausted horse stolen from its warden-led slavers, no word but her own against the guard and the man who commands them. It does not matter that the chance of its recognition will be near nothing with no wagon of slaves behind it—but near is not none. Hawke sucks in a breath, closing her eyes, torn between her wild urge to gallop heedlessly into the city and damn the consequences, and the last lingering voice of sense in her head that demands she delay a moment longer for her own sake—and for Fenris's.
At the last thin edge of trees Hawke dismounts, fingers clumsy with fatigue on the horse's saddle, his cloth and stirrups, ignoring the inquisitive nicker at this abandonment. She has little hope of hiding it in the brush so near the city, and neither does she wish to risk a fire so late at night; instead she puts her thumb to the places in the leather that are stamped with the Ostwick stable's brand, charring them black until no mark is left to trace. Then she shoves them, saddle, girth and all, into the crook of an old leaning oak, its gnarled roots twisted high enough from the earth to hide them from at least a cursory glance.
The horse nickers again. She strokes its forelock, touches it with her last palmful of rejuvenation until it gives a sudden shiver of fleeting energy; then she walks it with nothing but bridle along the road towards the Southfort lights until its ears prick again, until it begins to trot forward without her guidance, until instinct takes over where her hand does not and he turns his head towards his home. His tail flicks as they broach the city's outermost buildings together, not a soul in sight to raise alarm as the street curves to the right, to the hill she knows leads to the prison Grantham still holds—and he is still alive, and Hawke—
Hawke drags in a breath, and then two, her hands cold with sweat on the reins. Her pack hangs heavy on her back, the memory of Fenris's book a sharp corner to cut on, and if he is not here after all of this she will—she will not—
Enough. Enough. There is no more time for doubt—there is no more time to wait, not anymore, and Hawke lifts her head.
I'm coming, Fenris.
It is so hard to keep to the shadows, to watch for faces who might know her in the few townsfolk she passes in the streets. None glances at her a second time, nor stops her travels despite the horse that walks with her; and then the Silver Lion rises in the distance and every nerve in her body leaps to run this last little distance, such a paltry stretch of road in this tiny town she has been trying to reach for so long. Its windows are lit brightly with lantern and candle, its double doors thrown open to the cool night air and a noisy-enough crowd indoors tonight that Hawke can hear them even across the streets.
A tiny stable backs to the inn, clearly empty even from this little distance, and Hawke turns the horse's head towards it. At this hour the hostler is almost certain to be at supper, though he means to make a swift return if the half-empty wine bottle in the window is any indication, and Hawke quickens her pace.
A growl, low and menacing, falters her steps. A sudden surge of blind fury lodges in her throat but she will not be stopped, not now, not for anything, hurrying onwards even as the growl grows louder—and then a mabari steps out of the shadows of the stable, and Hawke's breath freezes in her chest.
She says, barely a breath, "Toby?"
The growl cuts off like a light has been put out. Her dog is—here. Her dog is—
Hawke is on her knees in the street. Toby is still fifteen feet away, hackles high as a Chantry belltower, his stance defensive and she thinks—afraid, and when she stretches out her hands to him they are trembling, and her voice trembles when she says again, "Hello, pup. I—I'm here, I've come back—"
He cocks his head. His body shifts, forward and back again, as if he cannot decide which truth to believe; Hawke stands and moves closer, the horse following her sedately out of the lit streets and the threat of passersby, but Toby does not move, eyes wholly fixed on her every step. She stretches out her hands, palm up, and his great dear head bends towards them—
She had expected barking, had expected too the frantic joyful circling around her legs she has always known from him after her returns from long journeys. But he does neither of these things; instead he licks her fingers, once, and then as if his paws have grown weak he lies down on his belly at her feet, high, quick whines cutting through the night, quiet and piercing as the keen edge of a blade to her heart.
Hawke falls beside him in the shadows of the stable, wrapping him in her arms as best she can, speechless with sorrow and grief, easing his head into her lap when he lifts it. "You lump," she whispers when she can, when she is certain no tears will choke away her voice and leave her mute. "Didn't you trust me to come back?"
He whines again, pushes his head against her knee. She kisses his folded ear, the tip of his nose, the rough fur of his neck where his collar rests; she strokes his sides over the steady thumping beat of his heart, resolute and unchanging from her every memory of it, reminding her of how long it has been since she stood on the tip of an outreaching pier with the winds behind her black with smoke and not with stars, the Gallows burning, Fenris dazed and lost even as Carver guided him away. Toby had been such a comfort, unflinching loyalty impossible to measure, and she has—
She has missed him.
Hawke tells him so, soft whispers, bearing with a smile the broad lick he swipes up her chin in answer, and every passing minute bleeds strength into his legs again. By the time twilight has ended in truth he is standing, all his weight against her chest, his head tucked under her chin; by the time he has mastered himself enough to wag his stumped tail in the excitement she'd expected her knees have begun to ache from how long she has knelt beside him.
She doesn't want to ask. She doesn't want to know the answer, can't bear it if—
"Toby," she says, her hands going still behind his ears. "Is—Is Fenris here with you?"
There is a long, pointed silence, and then a huff of hot dog breath against her collarbone. Toby looks at her reprovingly, his tongue lolling; but it is no answer, and she fists one hand against the hay-strewn stone of the stable's shadowy stoop. "Please," she says, and her voice breaks.
The dog gives a great shake, as if shedding something heavy he has worn for too long. Then he turns, looks up towards a dark corner-room on the second floor, then down again to the open doors of the tavern, where even now another two Southfort citizens duck into the pleasant chaos. He looks back, head tilted, and licks her chin again; she doesn't even feel it this time, locked to the warm spill of light and sound. Fenris is here. He is—
Her fingers have clenched into Toby's ruff. She says, "Will you wait? I don't—I've got to—please, if you can bear it."
Toby huffs again, nosing under her free hand; when she slides her fingers against his muzzle he blinks, holding her in place with that familiar intelligent gaze she has not seen for so long. Then he backs away into the darkness of the stable, and even as she watches he pads to a corner well-cushioned with hay, and turns three tight circles, and lies down with a heavy sigh. A narrow, horned head rises briefly from the gloom behind him and Hawke's heart leaps to her throat; then she laughs, stifling the sound in her hand as she pushes gingerly through the muscle-deep hurt of her thighs to her aching feet.
"You've made a friend," she says softly, as the goat resettles in sleep. "Me, too," she adds, looking for—
She has forgotten the horse.
But her quick spike of alarm dies as quickly as it comes, because without her prompting it has walked into the stable behind her, settled in the last open stall, and already gone to knee to sleep. "Andraste bless you," she murmurs, meaning it, and spares a precious moment to ensure the grain is good and water is plentiful. All she can do, now.
Toby cracks one eye at her, then glances meaningfully at the tavern still waiting across the street. Hawke turns, her pulse beginning to pound once more; she says, breathless, "I'll be back," and then she is in the street and past it, torchlight streaming over her feet, her hands, catching in the hollow of her throat to flush her skin with heat. All this time, everything that has passed, Kirkwall and Ostwick and Roald's dogs and sweating beneath the thin canvas of a too-crowded wagonbed, George's death and the death of the man whose staff she still grips like steel, Simon and the children and Elina and the book still hanging low on her back—
She is here. Thirty-three days, and after everything, she is here.
Hawke draws in a breath, blows it out again, and steps into the Silver Lion.