Many people in the city owe you their lives, and I am one of them. When my friends and I were cornered by templars, you helped us escape. Over the years, most Starkhaven apostates have been captured. But thanks to the help of of many people, I have remained free. You've done so much for the apostates- if you are moved to do more, contact Mistress Selby near the Docks. She knows of many ways you could save more lives.
Forever in your debt,
Terrie of Starkhaven
The note is on a square of parchment, torn from the corner of a larger piece, the script hurried. Indigo smudges nearly obscure the last two lines, and it takes Wil several minutes to work out whom she should be contacting and where. She remembers Terrie, of course. The pretty apostate with horrible taste in boyfriends. It's curious that she would write directly to Wil, considering how easily notes such as these could be intercepted and tracked by the right person with the wrong motives.
Wil keeps the note close during breakfast. The potion Anders had given her had been something like miraculous. She'd slept without nightmares, and had risen with the sun, head no longer throbbing and the lingering weakness from yesterday replaced with renewed vigor.
Such is her motivation that she promises the scrap of paper by her plate that Selby near the Docks will be receiving a visit later this morning. She's already planning a trip up the coast to search for a lost Qunari patrol, so if this Mage Underground has any jobs in that direction, she can double up and get that much more done.
But before she can even think about work, she needs to eat. She's having trouble remembering the last time she'd had anything solid in her stomach, and although Bodahn's infamously soupy oatmeal isn't what she has in mind, it's relatively warm and will offer some fuel for a day of traipsing and getting shit done.
"Wilhelmina!" Leandra's voice rings from the dining room doorway, surprise clear in her tone. "I was just checking on you in your room...I hadn't expected you to be up already."
"Up and at 'em," Wil clarifies around a mouthful of oats. "In a manner of speaking."
"Yes, I see that," her mother is bemused as she takes a seat adjacent to Wil's and props her cheek up with her hand. Her blue eyes are bright as she watches her daughter eat, a secretive smile playing on her lips and between her attention and her abnormally good mood, Wil's growing more concerned by the second.
"Mother," she drops her spoon into the bowl and gives Leandra a thorough once over and comes away with the chilliest of thoughts. "Are you...did you...," she wrinkles her nose and forces it out. "Is there a, a, a man-type reason for why you're all rosy-cheeked and happy right now?"
And she expects admonishment and you and your dirty mind. She expects an embarrassed and exasperated Wilhelmina Amell Hawke.
What she doesn't expect is for rosy to become scarlet and her mother to giggle, once, and then stare off into space as if imagining...whatever it is that's cheering her up so very much.
"Oh. My. Fuck," Wil shoves her bowl aside, forgetting for a second that this is her mother, who had been married to her father and their love had been legendary in Wil's eyes. "There is a man!"
"I never said that!" Leandra is back down to earth after that fuck, although she's nowhere as angry as she normally would be. "I just...what would you think?"
"If you were getting laid?" She's baiting her now, almost desperate for a smack or anything to make their dynamic normal again.
"By the Maker, your mouth is getting worse every day," Leandra folds her hands on the table top and chooses her next words carefully. "I meant...what would you think if I married again?"
The word catches Wil out. Married? She's already thinking about marriage and Wil had no idea there was a thing even happening in that...area of her life. Her. Leandra. Her mother.
And she has no idea how she wants to respond, let alone how she should. On one hand, Malcolm had been dead for nearly seven years, his death mourned as long as a death can be mourned and Leandra had remained steadfastly faithful to his memory...for seven years. Wil has had how many lovers in that same time period? Why should her mother go without companionship?
Why should the thought of her mother committed to anyone who isn't her father make her stomach feel hollow?
"I...what brought this on?" Wil asks, her voice neutral.
Leandra draws a deep breath, and even as her tone grows serious, the light in her expression remains and she's younger, and prettier, than she's been since Lothering.
"Well...I just realized that I need to do something. I can't spend the rest of my life mourning Carver and Bethany, and you're far beyond my ability to control," her fingers drum against the table top for a moment before she continues. "I started to wonder about life once your children have outgrown you, and..."
"You met someone," and Wil's voice is no longer neutral. Instead, it's sympathetic. Wil's life is very much her own and Leandra has been existing on the edges of it for some time. Perhaps even before the Blight had taken her and Carver to Ostagar. She's never thought to consider how lonely her mother must be. She has friends, but only Wil and Gamlen to call family and that can't be satisfying in the least after forty some years of being loved- by parents and by Malcolm and by her children.
"I...did," Leandra's face flushes again, only this time she grows defensive. "But I'm not ready to talk about him. Not yet."
Wil holds her hand up in surrender. "Fine, fine! Take your time."
"I will," she nods and waggles a finger in Wil's face. "So no prying."
"No prying!" Wil echoes, taking up her spoon again. "Believe me, I can live without details."
"Good. And who knows," Leandra stands and pats her daughter on the shoulder. "Perhaps I'll inspire a certain apostate to finally take some initiative."
The oatmeal in Wil's mouth turns to cement and before she can sputter out a Leandra Amell Hawke!, her mother is out of sight and only Wil's chagrin and the floral scent of her favorite perfume remain.
Anders' clinic is busy when Wil arrives, although she can see that few of the patients are in serious need of attention. Most are here to have wounds cleaned and covered, or to purchase herbal remedies. Near the front, Muriel occupies herself with a pair of tweezers that she's using to pull debris out of a minor wound. Her attention wonders up to Wil when she walks in, her forehead crinkling in welcome as she nods towards the back of the room, where Anders is arguing with Isabela.
Of all the...Wil bites down on a sigh and meanders towards her friends, one of whom seems far more agitated than the other.
"Ointment? That's it?" Isabela's dressed almost conservatively, if a skirt that's slit up to her ass can be called "conservative". She's also eschewed her usual jewelry and Wil wonders if she's not attempting to go incognito for some reason. It's certainly not out of embarrassment of being seen down here, as she does nothing to lower her voice. "Are you telling me that you can close a knife wound by thinking about it, but a rash is beyond your abilities?"
Anders, to his credit, is amused. "That is exactly what I'm saying. And trust me, I was just as frustrated as you were when I found out."
"Rrrrrr," she palms the pot of ointment and tucks it into her cleavage. "Just so you know, I'm not paying you for this. Useless."
His smirk deepens. "Then stop running to me every time you pick up one of these diseases."
"It's not a disease," Isabela clarifies, spinning on her heel to leave only to find her eyes falling on Wil. They dart away reflexively. "It's a rash and seriously, what use is magic if it can't heal a rash?"
"Good-bye, Isabela," he leans against the examination cot, a near smile on his lips that fades when he sees Wil.
Always a good sign.
"Do I want to know?" Wil asks mildly, hoping to downplay the reason why Isabela's health would be of any concern to her. "Actually, I do want to know. For...my own reasons."
Those reasons dawn easily on Anders; he's not put it out of his head that she and Isabela had been involved in the not too distant past.
"A recent acquisition...she was shirty with the details," he wipes his hands down his thighs and shrugs. "In unrelated news, the Seneschal came by in the middle of the night and was also sent home with ointment."
"Oh, the Seneschal's tax collector will be leaving you alone, like you wanted."
Isabela.
"On the plus side," he begins towards the back room, "I was able to diagnose them both based on description alone."
"It really is the small things," she follows. "They make life so grand."
"Speaking of small things," he allows the door to shut behind them and she's got a quip about small things all readied to go when she sees the shadow that's fallen across his face. "Things are getting worse. I had hoped otherwise, but there have been more and more reports, and last night I closed the clinic just as templars were nearing my doorstep."
"Templars, here?" Wil's breath catches for a moment, quips and other things falling from her thoughts as quickly as the image of Anders in chains appears. "I don't care for the sound of that, Anders."
"It's the Knight-Commander," he paces for a few moments before squaring off with her, his jaw tight and his eyes bright with anger. "She's out of control. Even her own people are talking about it. The midnight raids, attacking anyone who might be helping an apostate...and I found out this morning that two mages I worked with were caught and made tranquil. The rest have been forced into hiding."
And she can see the toll this admission is taking even as he tells it. She can read the pain that builds on rage and helplessness, that is underscored by the realization that everything he's been doing is all for nothing. The mysterious business, the manifestos, the healing...nothing matters when your enemy has all the power. Power over life and death, power over humanity, and power over the common rhetoric that makes it too easy for safe and secret places to be discovered.
"Stay in my cellar, Anders," Wil fights to keep from touching him, instead moving back towards the door and curling her hands into tight fists. "You can come and go as you please, and I'll help in whatever way I can. Just...let me get between you. I'm not someone who can just disappear without anyone noticing or caring, and Maker knows enough people in this city owe me favors."
Even as she makes it, she expects him to flatly decline her offer. The last thing he wants to do is hide. He's not here to hide. He didn't take Justice into himself to hide. And even if the days would be spent in his clinic, or with her, stowing away in the night, when there are circle mages being violated in their beds and apostates with no save haven, would be anathema to everything he is.
"Every minute you spend with me puts you at risk...and the things they could do to you. The lies they could tell to justify imprisonment or hanging. You saw what they did to Karl, you've seen the Gallows. Do you think Meredith would hesitate to make an example out of you?" His voice falters, misery radiating from his pores as he considers it. "And if anything happened to you, I don't know what I'd do."
Drown us both in blood, if I remember correctly.
"If you expect me to sit back and let them get to you, then you're sadly mistaken," Wil fights the urge to add a bub or messere on there. She's walking a fine line already by being honest with him. About her feelings. "I'm with you. Whatever that means."
His head shakes head, his brow tense, and she wishes it could relax.
She wishes his expression could be for an admission made, and not for the precariousness of reality.
"You don't want to tie yourself to me," he forces out, his eyes held sideways as he peers into a past she does not know. "The things I've done...the violence. And the worse things are, the less I can control it. If you stay with me, you'll only be hurt."
It's infuriating and heartbreaking, a pushing away and the most pessimistic view a person could ever hold of themselves. No matter what she's done, no matter how hard she tries to ensure that the Anders he sees reflected back from her is ultimately good, he keeps getting stuck in this trap of self-denial and self-hatred and profound hopelessness.
Wil sinks into the door, her posture defeated even if she's far from giving up.
"You deserve a normal life, Mina," he must see that spark of defiance, but he's a damned fool if he thinks that's the way to kill it.
"I've never had a normal life. The Chantry saw to that," she straightens, arms folding against her chest. It's a firm stance for a truth she always thought obvious. "Father was a smart, gifted man and Mother was nobility...yet we spent our lives on the run, hiding from templars and trying to keep Beth safe and untouched by the reality of our situation," Wil frowns, and tries to control her voice and the newfound frustration that's catching the edges on fire. "Normal to me isn't living in a mansion and parties and having a 'respectable' husband and-and, children. Normal to me is running and fighting and loving someone enough to keep running and fighting, even though it's dangerous."
Now she's uncertain how she wants him to respond, although she knows that the way he's still refusing to look at her that he's piecing together more excuses-
reasons
why she should leave him and never come back, as if she's not heard them all already. The next time we have this discussion, she posits to herself, I'll just start chanting I don't care until he stops and maybe it will sink in.
His shoulders slump and the sorrow that befalls his face, the resigned bow of his head, both lances her frustration and adds new frustration in its place.
Dammit, Anders.
"Please. Just let me-"
"Anders!" The door behind Wil swings open and Lirene plows in, no apologies given and Wil can see panic in the older woman's face. She immediately steps away so Anders can get to a patient who is being helped onto a cot by a pair of his assistants.
She's elven and young, too young to be as pregnant as she is and incredibly small beyond the huge swell of her abdomen. The shift she wears is dirt-encrusted and clinging to her like a second skin and when Wil gets closer, she can see that her bare feet are calloused and covered in sores from exposure to the filthy, rubblestrewn pathways in the undercity.
Her legs are the most damning, however, bone thin and slick with black blood that Anders is already trying to wipe away, his brow furrowed in intense concentration as he searches her with his magic, hoping it will tell her something that she herself cannot convey with wordless screams and cries for mercy.
Wil has seen a few births in her lifetime, and enough alongside Anders for them to both know that she's a far from ideal assistant in these circumstances. So instead of hovering around and getting in the way, she slips out through the front of the clinic, her mouth tilted in mild bemusement as she realizes both patient and healer are exactly who the other needed.
The Hanged Man is as cool and empty as the Lowtown market had been packed with sweaty, impatient shoppers and Wil falls into the familiar tavern with a relief usually reserved for returning to the arms of an old lover. It's comforting after her...discussion with Anders, and the way he could talk himself out of so much progress.
You're almost as attached to this dump as Varric is, she distracts herself, running a hand over the rough wall before scanning the room. She's not certain who she expects to see besides the same faces that are always here, the same broad backs at the bar and familiar profiles in the shadowed edges of the floor. It's reassuring, all of it, and especially the raven haired woman who watches from her own perch, a seat that even new blood know not to touch and one that Varric swears has been worn down to fit her ample
distinctive
backside.
Wil hesitates for a moment because a look is not an invitation and Isabela has had two opportunities to do more than smirk in her direction. The fact that she'd not offered more than that means something, but Wil's suddenly past caring what that might be. Besides, with Anders occupied, she needs another body to join her on the Wounded Coast.
Isabela pretends to not be watching as Wil approaches the bar, but her glass poised so that she throws back the entire tumbler the moment Wil drops onto the stool beside her.
"I'll have a cider," coppers dribble from Wil's palm before she pushes them towards the bartender. Without turning her head, "If I didn't know better, I'd say you've been holding up that bar for the past three years."
Clank. The tumbler hits the counter and Isabela leans forward, the fall of black hair over her freckled shoulder coming into Wil's peripheral vision. When she speaks, it's arch and distant and clearly she doesn't give a damn.
"Makes me easier to find," Isabela taps the bar twice, an established order for quiet mornings and gives Wil a sideways glance. "Here for Varric, or did you really come all this way just to reminisce?"
"A little bit of column b...and all of column a," Wil can afford honesty here and Isabela would see right through any lies. "I thought I'd give you a proper...chatting up, rather than a passing nod. Besides, I could use an update on Captain Isabela's Tour of Mischief and Mayhem."
This earns a chuckle, surprised and pleased and perhaps charmed, and the sound of it's a good whiskey burn at the back of the throat and the slow spread of familiar warmth downward as it goes.
"The usual. Mischief, mayhem...cards and alcohol and other people's money. Oh," Isabela tosses her hair back and knocks against Wil's shoulder with the back of her hand and if anything could get them back to normal, it's this. "You'll be glad to hear that I've got another lead on my relic. I'm so close I can taste it."
"Relic?" Wil scrunches her nose in thought, eyes rolling up to search the ceiling as if it has the answers. "I don't think I recall anything...oh. That relic."
"Yes," Isabela exhales dramatically, clearly wondering what she's gotten herself into. Again. "That relic."
Wil offers Isabela an encouraging smile. "Hopefully this lead is more substantial than the last. I seem to recall we came back with nothing but a few bad poems and a handful of holey stockings."
"Don't forget the boot," Isabela smirks into her new whiskey. "And I've had worse adventures. Maybe I'll invite you along, again. You did offer to help me find it, after all."
"Of course I did. But I guess it was too much to hope that you'd forgotten."
Isabela laughs again. "It's the price you pay for having me at your beck and call every time the local color gets...too colorful. In a violent way."
"Speaking of...are you up for a jaunt to the coast? I promise we'll wave at the Siren's wreckage while we're out," Wil skirts the topic of Isabela's rash. "And who knows, maybe the stars will align and we'll trip over the relic while we're out."
"Not even I'm that lucky," Isabela swings her legs around and slips off her stool. "But I could use a break from holding up the bar. I'll meet you in Varric's room."
She ambles on her way upstairs and Wil follows close behind, relieved and amused in equal parts and grateful that something positive has come out of these past few days of...not much good at all.
Varric's ready and not alone when she reaches his suite. Fenris has slung himself across two chairs, a steaming mug of tea curled in one bared hand and his expression as close to blissful as she'd ever seen it.
"Tell Hawke what you just told me," the dwarf is working at Bianca's stock with a polishing cloth and his eyes never leave the crossbow.
Fenris jerks his chin to indicate Varric's unmade bed. "You were right...I don't think I've had a better night's sleep."
Wil's attention flits between the two men, a delighted smile insinuating what Isabela would have been confident, or crass, enough to announce to everyone in the Hanged Man.
"No, Hawke," Varric still hasn't looked up. "The elf got about as far as you ever did."
Fenris non-responds by taking a long swallow of tea, allowing the steam to curl up and around his cheeks and into his hair. It's almost fascinating to see the care with which he handles the teacup, especially after three years of watching him manhandle wine bottles and, well, people. She wonders if this is a habit picked up from observing Danarius and the other magisters, with the added bonus of it being horrible and hilarious to picture a group of powerful blood mages sipping delicately while discussing that morning's blood sacrifice or an upcoming slave auction. Maybe he knew a tea connoisseur, someone who scoured the markets for rare blends and stored them in a special wooden box that would be pulled out in the quiet moments between work and work and what rest could be stolen.
"Hawke," Fenris' flat pronunciation of her name pulls her out of that strange reverie. But it leaves behind a strange lump in her throat, one that she wants to leave untouched and unexamined.
Instead, she pokes.
"Did you get a handful of chest hair?" She touches her own breastplate for emphasis. "Run your fingers through it while pretending to be barely conscious?"
"Ugh, I knew you weren't really asleep," Varric shakes his head in mock disgust. "Although the giggle should have given you away."
"No, I did not grope his chest hair. I slept," Fenris lifts his eyes to meet hers. "It was...a long day."
And you know why, Hawke, he's not saying. You know something I can't share with anyone else.
"Now that you're well-rested, care to join us? Isabela's on her way."
This gets Varric's attention, and she can see from his expression that he's mentally drafting A Tale of Reconciliation: Hawke and Her Pirate. If there wasn't a room between them, and Fenris stretching in anticipation of another long day, he'd probably be prodding her for details, the better to fill in the gaps in his speculation. Instead, he finishes rubbing at Bianca's already gleaming surface and cradles her in her harness on his back. Then, with all the showmanship and verve she's come to expect from him, he cocks his head and gives her a little wink just as Isabela struts in, her arm going around Wil's shoulder.
"Fenris," she purrs. "I didn't see you come in."
Like he had back at his mansion, he sets her interest aside. "I didn't."
"Fenris stayed the night," Wil supplies, unable to suppress another wicked grin. "With Varric."
"Oooh," intriguing and Fenris is already sighing and readied for the attack.
"No. I did not touch anyone's chest hair."
"Your loss," Isabela drops her arm and shrugs. "I hear it's good luck."
"And it grants wishes," Wil frowns. "Or so I've been told. I might've been awake when I went for it, but I was far from sober."
Fenris glances between the two women and shakes his head, the tiniest of smiles curling at the corner of his mouth.
"Where are we going today, Hawke?"
Forcing herself to be more leaderly, Wil nods sharply and pivots towards the door. "First, I need to stop by the the docks, and then head up the coast. It should be a pretty straightforward day of, you know, killing," she shoots Fenris a meaningful glance. "Far less...long than yesterday."
I should just stop saying words, Wil chastises herself, reeling from the sights and sounds around them. Just…no more. Ever again.
There's a pile of bodies, corpses worn down by blades and bolts and a few with gaping holes in their breastplates, and a mercifully incomprehensible mess of viscera beyond. The room smells of smoke and lyrium, of loosened bowels and an age's worth of sweat.
Fenris stalks, as he's been stalking all afternoon, and Wil can see the rage that is building ever steadily as he kicks at the slavers he hasn't eviscerated, a passing insult to their memory. He's trying to collect himself, to return himself to the present where capture is not a foregone conclusion and he has more than himself and his own survival to consider.
For example, the girl who is not cowering in the far corner of a large holding pen despite being alone in a room with four heavily armed and blood-covered strangers.
Instead she waves at them, mistaking their quick pause to catch their breath, and to get Fenris under control, for a simple case of not noticing.
"Um..hello?" She has a sweet voice, high and heartbreakingly young. "Can you please...I don't know what's going on."
That makes all of us, Wil glances over to where Fenris has finally stopped his prowling and despite the menace in his sneer, which has been firmly in place since Tevinter slavers had ambushed them on the coast, he's not wholly without compassion and he manages to straighten himself up enough to help Wil deal with the girl.
She's an elf, which Wil should have guessed from her slight build. But even more so than Merrill, she's gaunt. Sharp cheekbones push against painted cheeks and her moss colored eyes are wide and bewildered. Her plain dress is torn, dirty but not bloodied and although her hair has mostly slipped free of its bun, it appears to have been recently washed and Wil gets the impression that this skulking about in the slaver pens is a recent development.
She allows Fenris to take the lead.
"Are you all right?" he asks roughly. "Did they touch you?"
The girls' eyes manage to grow larger, startled by his insinuation, and Wil all but grabs her attention, trying to give her a less bleak figure in which to confide.
"No!" The girl twists her hands in distress. "I'm...fine, but they've been killing everyone! They cut Papa, and they bled him!"
Fenris stiffens beside her, "Why?" He moves his gaze to Wil. "Why would they do this?"
"From what you've told me, it's the magister way," she frowns. "This...Hadriana. She could be taken by a demon now, with nothing of her left inside. She would need the blood for-" don't say evil magical rituals don't say evil magical rituals "-stuff."
The girl nods vigorously, pointing to Wil. "The magister...she said that she needed power. Someone is coming to kill her!" Then, as if truly noticing Fenris for the first time- from the faint glow of his tattoos and his blood-streaked hand, she takes the tiniest of steps away. "Oh."
He's already ashamed, his head lower and his breath grown ragged as he seethes in a rage that had been, until now, burning only for the slavers.
"It's all right," Wil finds her most soothing voice, one she'd thought lost to the Deep Roads. "Can you tell me anything else?"
"We tried to be good," the girl is plaintive. "She loved Papa's soup and he never talked back, I- I don't know how this could happen! I don't understand."
And that's not what Wil was looking for, but it certainly is crushing.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Wil struggles for the easiest way to alleviate the girl's shame and confusion. It wouldn't bring her father back, or erase the memory of what she's seen and endured, but it might make her feel better. A little. "You weren't a person to them, you were property."
Pale eyebrows droop and the girl hugs herself for warmth or comfort or reassurance that no, it was never that bad. "But everything was fine until today. I swear!"
"No, it wasn't," Fenris sags, perhaps remembering a day when he would have been as defensive as she is of those who did not deserve it. "You just don't know any better."
"…oh," it's quiet, and the girl scuffs her feet against the stone, clearly wondering what happens next, now that she's away from the blood mage and near people who seem safer. Then, her chin still down, "So...are you my master?"
The question is like a physical force that hits Fenris in the chest and he answers quickly, the very air knocked out of him carrying a single, definitive, "NO."
His vehemence does not dissuade her. "I can't cook as good as Papa, but I've done a lot of cleaning and minding children. Please," an edge of desperation cuts her voice. "I'm a hard worker."
Hopeful eyes beseech Wil and Fenris, and Wil remembers how it felt to land in Kirkwall, displaced and uncertain where she and her family would be sleeping or if they'd be able to afford food. As horrible as it had sounded at the time, and as bizarre it feels to admit it, Gamlen had done them a favor by connecting them with Athenril. It was a way into the city and once they figured out the whole looting thing, a steady income.
"All right," Wil rummages through one of her pouches until she hits upon the perfect thing. Withdrawing a tiny metal shield with the Amell family crest painted in crimson across the front, she hands the token to the girl. "Go to Hightown in Kirkwall and look for the Amell Estate. There will be crests that like this one outside the door. If I'm not there, tell them that Wil sent you and show them this."
There's a moment's hesitation before the girl accepts the offering, her head tilting sideways to see past the dead bodies that are strewn between her and the entrance. "You...killed them all?"
Wil nods. "It should be safe...just step carefully and get to Kirkwall as fast as you can."
"Okay," her expression grows determined. "Hightown. Amell. Wil...okay."
She runs past, her blonde head barely clearing Varric's and Wil's so strangely delighted by this fact that Fenris has to seethe Hawke to get her attention.
"I didn't realize you were in the market for a slave," his voice grinds through clenched teeth and the accusation jolts Wil because who could possibly think she would do that?
"Are you kidding me?" For a moment it's easy for her to forget why they're there, and what it must feel like for Fenris. The past, closing in on him. It's all horrible but...taking a slave? "I'm giving her a job, Fenris. She'll stay with me if she wants, and she'll be paid."
Silence stretches between them, underlined by the shuffling of boots on stone and the smallest creaking of Fenris' neck as he twists his head, tension drawing him too tight to maintain rationality.
"Oh," he responds at length, blinking hard against of course. "I'm...glad."
Andraste's ass. Wil draws a sharp breath and turns to assess the recent dead. She doubts they possess much of value, but there's always a chance they could have orders or documents that might help trace Danarius if this whole Hadriana thing turns out to be a bust.
Which, from the way Fenris has started moving again, like a predator as he stares into the dark passage that should lead them to his master's apprentice, it might all fall apart. He wants to make an example of this woman, and though Wil can hardly blame him, he'd be well-served by information, too. If he goes too hot, chances are he won't be able to control himself once he's close enough to kill her.
"Time is wasting," he calls over his shoulder. "We cannot let her get away."
Wil pushes her hands through the satchel of a fallen warrior, his armor more ornate than the others. She comes away with a two gold pieces, a blank scrap of parchment and an amulet wrapped in wool. The contents get hurriedly dumped into her own pouch and Wil signals Varric and Isabela to stop looting.
"Hadriana is a powerful mage in her own right," he sniffs the moment she's beside him. "And she will use every nasty trick she knows to survive."
"I'm not expecting anything less," Wil allows the the tip of her blade to touch the stone floor while she bounces the hilt in her hand. "She did kill innocent slaves to protect herself."
His eyes narrow and she can see them liquid with rage. "Her master would require far less reason to do the same."
Wonderful. Wil allows him to lead on, Isabela moving between them, stepping lightly and searching for potential traps. As if she could stop Fenris before he'd plow on through.
Varric catches up to her, his head bobbing at her shoulder and his attention rapt on Fenris. He's an observer right now, puzzling out the elf from the scraps Fenris reveals in conversation and far more under pressure. That a person he knew well enough to host after a rough day, expressed in vague hand waves and don't press on me, dwarf steeliness, could remain such a mystery might frustrate him from time to time, but being along for moments like these makes up for it.
Their pace is set by Fenris and his strides grow longer, urgent, as if everything that he could stand to lose
nothing much...just his freedom
is riding on this confrontation.
Wil wonders, someplace deeply held and reserved for thoughts that are far darker than she usually allows, if he's afraid that seeing a specter from his past will affect him now the way it had in Seheron, when falling into his role of slave and willing killer had seemed as inevitable as breath.
If it happened...would she be able to stop him? To convince him that this life in Kirkwall is his alone, and that nobody could take it from him? They've had their moments, close ones that might have been close were it not for the long shadows of others and the way that he could make her prickly like no one else, and he in turn even quicker to assume the worst of her.
She's still uncertain when they turn the last corner, Fenris more lightning bolt than man as he streaks across the chamber, sword drawn and slicing through the summoned corpses of the recently bled.
An arrow zips towards her, launched by an ancient skeleton and she's barely able to knock it away with her blade. If she dies, she has no chance of doing anything but being dead, and a dead Wil Hawke helps no one.
That she can think of off the top of her head, at least, and in between striking off at shambling corpses and hissing shades.
She tracks Fenris as she fights, which is always a good idea. Getting in his way is a sure way to perish. He seems bent on clearing a path to the far end of the chamber, moving towards a shimmering mass of arcane blues and purples that are shot through with the pulsing energy of blood magic. Once Wil sees it, she can smell it like the fetid corpses that her scouting parties would find in the Wilds around Ostagar. It lacks the striking thickness of the taint, but it's foul in a way she's never before encountered with a mage. Not even the worst of the maleficar in Kirkwall have possessed magic that felt so wrong.
"Hawke!" Fenris gets her attention over a rapidly diminishing horde of enemies.
Wil has only a second to spin around before the figure of a gaunt woman materializes behind her, the flood of decay overwhelming in her aura but without the excessive amount of wards to shield her. As soon as their eyes meet, Hadriana begins to cast, her blood-slick fingers twining sickly yellow light. The spell hits immediately; Wil's vision goes impossibly bright and the stench of the chamber around her becomes heavy with undertones of smoke and corruption.
But.
But she wills herself past the tendrils of fear that are attempting to claim her. She blinks off the sights and smells of Lothering as it falls, Carver's broken form disappearing beneath handfuls of dirt, and pushes herself to bring her sword up between them, the air offering more resistance than it should. Somehow she's stronger than Hadriana expected her and when Wil whips the flat side of her blade against the other woman's head all that is malicious dissipates, leaving only confusion as Hadriana collapses and finds herself at Fenris' utter lack of mercy.
"She's mine," he wards Wil away, but she refuses to take more than three steps back as Hadriana's eyes are wild in search of another source of power.
Fenris sees it, too, and throws his foot down between them, his tattoos fading but still distinct in the torchlit gloom of the chamber.
"Stop!" Her eyes, bright and small in her drawn face, betray fear that is no less clear in the panicked edge of her voice. "You do not want me dead!"
"Hadriana," he exhales, hatred ground into every syllable. He lifts his sword, balancing it as he does to ensure that the next blow it strikes is fatal. "There is only one person I want dead more."
She skitters away until her back is against a wall, "I have information, elf," elf is a distasteful word that gets spit out, even as said elf has her pinned by his fury, "and I will trade it for my life."
Take it, Wil mentally throws the words at Fenris. Or at least pretend to.
The sword wavers.
"The location of Danarius?" He scoffs. "What good does that do me? I'd rather he lose his pet pupil."
Behind them, Isabela makes a small noise that sounds a bit like don't be an idiot.
Hadriana's eyes narrow, but briefly. Then, as the sword steadies, she protects herself with a raised hand, allowing her words to tumble out in a rush of self-preservation. "You have a sister! She's alive and I can tell you where to find her."
Whatever he might have expected to hear, this news is beyond him. The revelation strips him of his posture, the threat of his sword abandoned to his side as he stares down at his enemy, mouth open in disbelief.
"You wish to reclaim your...," she works up a dismissal, "life? Then you will have to let me go. If you do so, I will tell you where she is."
"Riiiiiight," Wil rolls her eyes. "Because you've proven yourself the trustworthy sort."
Hadriana cuts her gaze to Wil, clearly displeased at having to answer to what she probably assumes are Fenris' lackeys. "I know Fenris, and I know what he's searching for. If he wants me to betray Danarius, he must pay for it."
"It's a fool's bargain unless your information is good," Wil shoots back. "We find his sister, and then we'll let you go."
Hadriana laughs, a hollow sound. "So you think I'm the fool. No. The woman is in the Imperium. I refuse to be captive for the length of time it would take to find her. If Fenris wants to find out who he was, he must let me go."
It's a horrible bargain. Wil recognizes as much, but she also knows that there's a chance it could benefit her friend. "This could be what you need to help you get your memory back, Fenris."
"Yes," Hadriana nods. "But I need Fenris' word...if I tell you where your sister is, then you'll let me go?"
He remains still, his expression hardened now and unreadable. Then, bending almost elegantly at the waist, he moves so that he can be eye to eye to her. Hadriana must sense that his hatred is tipping the scales towards you die as she flinches away from a blow that does not come.
Immediately.
"All right," he speaks in a carefully controlled rumble. "You have my word."
Hadriana licks her lips, her face tilting upward, to better appear trustworthy, Wil assumes. "Her name is Varania. She is in Qarinus serving a magister by the name of Ahriman."
"A servant," he pauses. "Not a slave."
Hadriana shakes her head quickly. "Not a slave."
"Hmmm," he remains bent low, but his right arm is raising, the faintest flare of lyrium alerting all that know better to glance away. "I believe you."
Wil does not watch him kill Hadriana, the visceral sound of his hand entering her chest and the wet gasp that follows is enough for her. When she looks back, the body has been carelessly tossed aside and he is ready to leave it with the rest of her victims.
"We are done here," he turns quickly, shouldering past Wil as if he doesn't see her there.
"You don't want to talk about it?" Her face opens in surprise. "People always want to talk about it."
"What?" He whips back to her and his voice becomes mocking. "No, I don't want to talk about it. This could be a trap! Danarius probably sent Hadriana here to bait me with this sister. Even if he didn't, trying to find her would be suicide! I now know, but Danarius has to know, too. And he has to know that Hadriana knows. My sister is nothing. All that matters is I finally got to crush that bitch's heart," his lips curl at the corner, a sneer as ugly as any Wil has ever seen. "May she rot and all the other mages with her."
Asshole. Wil takes a deep breath, reminding herself of what he's been through, how they'd been ambushed and taken alone, Hadriana really isn't a good poster child for mages.
"Maybe we should leave-" her hand reaches out, although even as it does so she questions her motives and what she could possibly offer him at a time like this.
Fenris wheels away from her touch, anger flashing in his eyes as if he can't believe she'd do this to him. "I don't need your comfort. You saw what was done here. There's always going to be some reason, some excuse why mages need to do this."
Wil clamps down on her tongue, the faint taste of blood a testament to how very badly she wishes to challenge him.
"Even if I found my sister, she's serving a magister. Who knows what they have done to her," his nose wrinkles and the vehemence with which he spits ties Wil's stomach. "What has magic touched that it doesn't spoil?"
"Oof," Varric coughs into his hand, his eyes wide in feigned innocence.
Fenris has said too much, gotten too angry. It dissipates and reflects back onto himself. "I...need to go."
And he does, quickly swallowed by dark and stone and leaving Wil, Varric and Isabela staring after him.
"You were saying?" Varric murmurs, his chin tilting up as he surveys the damage around them.
"What?" Wil unclenches her jaw and shakes out her frustration with it. "What was I saying?"
The dwarf smirks. "That it wasn't going to be a long day." Remember? "Something tells me you're going to have that one thrown in your face, Hawke."
"Of course I am," she sighs dramatically. "I mean, I am a seer. I should have known that his old master's apprentice was going to ambush us and be a crazy ass, slave-killing blood mage. It was all there in the stars."
"Tsk, tsk. And you were too busy thinking about mages to see it," he's on the move, mostly to get out of range of her swinging arms. "Or so I'm assuming."
Isabela remains quiet, her expression thoughtful.
"Do you think we should be worried about him?" Wil asks her, surprised. "We've only found the qunari patrol...we still have an apostate to save before we head back to Kirkwall."
Shoulders lifting lazily, Isabela saunters after Varric. "It's up to you, Hawke. But you'd only end up fighting…and he can handle himself."
It's true.
Even if true feels jagged around the edges and about a half size too small.