The Fat Chocobo was a poorly lit pub with faded and peeling racing memorabilia on the walls and the smell of yesterday's spilled drinks in the air. A jaunty tone played from a box in the corner with half its lights blown out, and silent TVs behind the bar showed replays of old chocobo races.
Hawke stretched her legs out and grinned. She knew they were called TVs and felt rather pleased with herself over it. She still didn't know how lightbulbs worked, but progress was progress.
"It's electricity, innit," the very drunk man next to her said, waving at the light bulbs dangling overhead.
"Yeah, so?" she replied, squinting. "It's can't be just lightning in tiny glass orbs, that'd break the glass!"
The man scrunched up his forehead. "It's like.. wires and stuff. Mako energy." He nodded sagely.
"Oh, Mako energy, of course." She had meant to learn more about Mako and Shinra's whole thing. Hadn't found the time yet, between training Aerith, looking for a place to stay, and just surviving.
A hand brushed against her back pocket. She reached back, grabbed the hand, and hauled the attached person into view. Startled green eyes under a mop of chaotic red blinked at her. The Turk from outside the church.
"You're just in time," she exclaimed, dumping him on the seat next to her, "next round's on you!"
The drunk on her other side cheered.
"That's some bullshit, yo," the redhead said. He still waved at the bartender and settled onto his bar stool like that was where he had intended to end up all along.
"I'll have a nice dark ale," Hawke said, "something good and hoppy, lots of body to it, and a serious head on top, like a solid two inches."
The bartender passed her another warm pale ale topped with a mere hint of foam.
"Perfect, exactly what I wanted," she said.
The drunk clinked his drink with hers, chuckling, and raised a glass to the Turk.
The Turk smirked. A thought could be visually traced entered the drunk's mind at the sight, percolating through a lot of alcohol, and then blinking into realisation on his face. Hawke watched the process with curiosity. The smirk on her left grew, and the rosy red cheeks on her right drained of colour.
"I, uh, cheers, for the drink," he said, raising his glass again. He stumbled off his bar stool, nodded politely, and retreated.
Hawke took a sip of her sad beer. The Turk stretched out his lanky arms and cracked his neck, moving like a man who would have a lot of joint trouble when he was older if he had any plans of living that long. His red hair was all spikes falling this way and that, barely held back by a set of goggles pushed up onto his forehead. A sharp red line ran along each cheekbone. She thought they might be tattoos over scar tissue.
"So, how's Midgar treating you?" he asked. "I'm Reno."
"Hawke, and it's everything I could have hoped for," she replied, grinning.
"City of dreams, yo." He raised his glass and so did she and -oh. He wanted to get her drunk. To loosen her lips, or so he could beat her up and have an easier time making her disappear?
She took a swig, eying up the three empty glasses already in front of her. Eh. Whatever. She could outdrink a Carta dwarf most days.
"So what's that card game happening behind us?" she asked.
"Quetzalcoatl five?"
She blinked. "It's what?"
Reno raised his eyebrows, a lazy smile on his lips. "They don't play Q5 up north?"
She smiled back. "No, nobody plays that, back home, in the north."
He snorted. He pulled out a pack of cards and went over the rules. Or at least, what he said were the rules. She was pretty sure he was either making it all up, twisting it just enough to make her look like an idiot if she tried playing, or the people in this city had the worst taste in card games possible.
"So you want to keep a queen in reserve as long as possible?" she asked, staring down at the cards spread out on the bar in growing confusion. The game was played with teams of two, except for when it wasn't, and it had three stages unless you were playing Junon style which was five stages, but above the plate, people were playing four these days. She held onto her empty glass for comfort.
"Losing the queen early is pretty much a deal-breaker, and a good way to get your kneecaps broke by your partner." He was on his second drink and getting into the rhythm of it. "But you gotta play it when the second switch happens or it's too late. Unless it hearts, or you're the third player, then you want to get rid of it, A-bloody-SAP."
"So, so, the third player-"
"Third player, If you're playing with four. If you're playing with three then it's the first player, if two its nobody. You get it."
"Yes." She nodded. "I get it."
"Ready to play a round?" he drawled.
"Will I get my kneecaps caved in?" The spiked metal knees of her greaves scratched against the underside of the bar.
"Only if you don't pay up," he said with a grin and a flick of his hands as he shuffled and dealt her in. "But you're wearing a lot of blood, I'm sure you could take me."
She flashed him a toothy smile. "Na."
The night rolled on. The conversation was loose and fun and full of little barbed traps looking for information. She dished out lies and truth with equal generosity and no discernible pattern. He squinted at her in bafflement while taking her money. Her sleight of hand was just good enough to get her a victory or two, but even that was a stretch and she was pretty sure he was letting her.
"And I win again," Reno drawled.
"Why?" she asked, on the verge of tearing her hair out. The fact that the local variant of an Anvtivan Crow or Orlesian Bard was taking her for a ride didn't hurt nearly so much as being terrible at cards. Varric would be shaking his head somewhere.
He shrugged. "I played three of hearts after the second switch."
She let her head fall onto the bar with a thud. It was sticky. "This is for stopping you from getting my wallet, isn't it? It's a pantomime mugging of vengeance."
He laughed. "You're not even making it hard for me."
"That's it, I hate Midgar. I'm leaving."
"And go where?"
"Back north, of course." She rested her chin on her knuckles on the bar and sighed. "I never should have left the farm. I miss grandma's cooking."
"But we've got such a good thing going here."
"Maker, don't insult me."
"I bet you don't even have a grandma."
"Everyone has a grandma, Reno, that's how ancestry works."
He stacked the cards back up, tapping the deck on the bar. The barback had cleared away their empty glasses so she had no idea how many he was on. His patented slouch was getting slouchier "Play again?"
"No, thanks. I'm outta coin, must think of my poor vulnerable kneecaps."
"Don't worry so much," he said. "You already owe me, and here I am being so nice about it."
She looked at him sidelong. "I don't remember taking out a loan."
"Do you remember inviting yourself into a church and making yourself comfortable?" He rolled his neck lazily, with an unpleasant crack.
Her lip twitched and she leaned back on the stool. "Oh, finally going to share that threat you've been sitting on all night?"
"You know the drill, yeah?"
"Don't rock the boat, don't step on any toes, don't get too big for my britches, etc, etc." She drained her glass.
He nodded along. "Not that we mind having an extra set of eyes around the place, just so long as you don't get in the way, or start getting any bright ideas."
"Or I'll be sorry," she said with professional understanding.
"So sorry, yo." He folded his winnings into his wallet.
It was kind of nice to be a two-bit mercenary again, getting shaken down by the local corrupt government. The Champion of Kirkwall had to deal with armies and snide diplomats, but Hawke got threatened in dirty bars. Maker, she missed being just Hawke.
"Well, interesting game," she said, making a show of shaking herself and getting up. "Maybe I'll get better with some practice."
He smirked "Not too bad for a first-timer. That dealing from the bottom was very slick."
She gave a half-hearted smile and squeezed past him on her way out.
Reno stayed seated, staring at his half-full glass of light beer.
The pub had slowly emptied as they played and nobody else was sitting up at the bar anymore. He didn't look up until the barback stood across from him, her arms crossed.
"Well, that was a… fascinating waste of time," she said.
He cracked a smile. "Speak for yourself. I just made three hundred gil."
Cissnei gave him a flat look. The apron and borrowed uniform made her look tiny. "Did you learn anything in exchange? Or did she just pay you to get off her back?"
He waved the question off. "She's not going to be trouble."
"You think? Did you get her ID?"
"Got clever fingers, I'll give her that."
"Tseng will be… disappointed."
He scowled and sat up straight. "No way she's even got ID." He drummed his fingers against the bar. "She's a burned-out merc or bounty hunter who's too tired to go against the flow anymore and too experienced to get tangled up in anything. No friends or contacts in the city 'xcept the little flower girl, no affiliations, and nothing to her name but the clothes on her back."
"What's she doing in Midgar?"
"Just washed up here." He gestured with his head to the empty old bar. It smelled like piss and fried food gone cold. "Like everybody else."
"From where?"
"Does it matter?"
Cissnei looked thoughtfully towards the exit. "I guess not. I'll see you back at HQ."
He nodded and took one last swallow of beer. He stood, his hand reaching back into his pocket, only to find his wallet missing.
Entering the Fade while trashed was always a weird experience.
After drinking with Reno Hawke made it home and collapsed straight into bed, without a care for whatever was going to happen next.
Alcohol affected your brain but only your mind passed through the Veil. It was easy to get the two confused until you fell asleep and your mind neatly slipped into the dream realm and left the brain's drunken nonsense at the door. It felt a little like getting kicked out of a tavern onto the damp and dirty ground, only the tavern was your body and the ground was being stone cold sober.
Hawke sat up in the dream realm with a distinct sense of betrayal.
She had been so carefully avoiding entering the Fade too. Ever since stumbling into Midgar, she'd done what she could to make sure she never slept deeply enough for it.
She sucked in a breath and grudgingly got her feet. The dream version of the floral guest room that didn't have quite enough presence to settle on a particular colour or size. The room certainly had walls and a roof but how far away they really were and how solid they would be once you got there was less certain. The same for the colouring. Her mind recognised the carpets as 'pastel' but not any particular shade therein.
Stupid Fade.
She was used to it, it was fine, she was a mage and that meant entering the Fade whenever she dreamed. It was fine. She just so happened to hate it.
She wandered out into the corridor. The whole house was a bit wobbly, in Fade terms. That surprised her, surely Aerith wandered through here often enough with her full memories and grasp of the location to anchor the spot down.
Maybe Aerith wasn't a very strong dreamer. It took a strong dreamer to bring some clarity to the raw nonsense of the Fade. But that was ridiculous, Aerith was a strong mage and that equated to a strong dreamer. That was how it worked.
Hawke slung her staff off her back and hummed as she trotted down the stairs. The kitchen floor had been replaced with cracked concrete and upturned earth. Stringy weeds grew around the legs of the table and benches, flowering in little bunches of colour. Flowers spewed out of the walls like sap from a tree
Alright, so Aerith definitely had a strong impact on the Fade, just an inconsistent one. Hawke would probably have to talk to her about that.
She stepped around a tall reaching vine that was half steel girder. She squared her shoulders, twirled her staff, and sauntered out into the false daylight.
Confidence was vital in the dream world. If you acted like you knew what you were doing, it typically played along. If you felt afraid or vulnerable, it would play along with that too. You were at the whims of the Fade no matter what you did.
She looked up from the rickety porch. Instead of the expected metal underbelly of the plate, large islands floated above her, their dark rocky undersides much closer to the ground than Shinra's upper city was in the Material world.
"Huh," she said. "More green than normal."
The Thedas horizon was usually a kind of muddy brown. Fluctuating greens and blues coloured the air, filtering down between the various islands. There was a sort of stringy quality to it.
She waved a hand through it. It looked like it should have been thick, like moving through soup, but there was no resistance and only the slightest change in the swirls of the green air.
Weird.
She shook her head and kept walking. Of course it was weird, it was the Fade.
Paths of rocky earth and cracked concrete appeared and faded away around her. She reached the top of a small hillock and looked around. There were no buildings. Aerith's house stood out as strange little structure all on its own, under the shadow a cliff. There was the hint of something further up a floating island, something pearly white, like a marble wall maybe. But there was nothing down on the ground. It was just… empty. Desolate.
Not even any spirits.
That couldn't be right. She scowled, peering through the translucent green air. This should have been the territory of a powerful despair demon, or maybe rage, or sloth. Something! There was so much pain and aggression in the slums, it should have reflected into the Fade and birthed hundreds, thousands of little wisps and spirits feeding off the emotion.
The Veil between worlds was weak around Midgar too. With all the structural integrity of a doily, the spirits should have been flocking here, jockeying for power and slipping through the veil every which way. Possessions, abominations, and random hauntings should have been rampant like it was in Kirkwall.
The barren earth looked back at her bleakly, offering no answers and producing no demons as it rightly should have.
Even the Veil felt different.
Maybe the Dread Wolf did a trial run making the Veil here before committing to Thedas' version.
Her thoughts came to a screeching halt.
What? No, oh no. The stringy air was too green and sharp, pulling, tearing at her. Green and purple and shattering glass. She stumbled backwards, the thick viscous air choking her, cracking, shattering, fraying.
She woke up hyperventilating. She fell out of bed and threw up into a pot of marigolds.
The carpet was pastel pink and solid. The worn-down threads cut into her knees and cold seeped up from the kitchen downstairs. She panted, a thin string of spit clinging to her mouth.
The Veil was made by the Dread Wolf to stop the Evanuris from ending the world.
She clapped a hand over her mouth.
She didn't know that. How could anyone know that? She didn't even know the old elvhen gods were called the Evanuris before- before.
Maker, she was still drunk. She reached for the glass of water on the bedside table with shaking hands and gulped it down.
Nobody had called them the Evanuris within living memory. Or for what, six, eight thousand years? How did she even know that?
She got her breathing under control. Maker forsaken void, these weren't her memories and she didn't appreciate the loan. She rinsed her mouth out into the pot plant. Could hardly make it worse now.
She got up onto wobbling legs and stumbled down the stairs. Oh, when she got back home she was going to give that bald elf bastard in the Inquisition such a piece of her mind.
"'Solas,', my ass," she mumbled, leaning heavily against the kitchen bench. Flemeth too. This felt like she'd do. Ancient Elves, running around ruining everyone's day, dumping perfectly nice people in cities they didn't belong with memories they didn't ask for. Inconsiderate was what it was.
She splashed some water on her face and pretended like that helped.
She glanced through into the dark living room and saw the backpack vacuum cleaner was gone. Elmyra must have been at work still. Thank the Maker for that, she didn't think she could handle caring maternal concern right now.
She turned to the fridge and grabbed a snack. The box boasted imitation white apple juice flavouring, even though the apple pictured on the box was blatantly purple. She snorted and it turned into a giggle, thin and strained. What a ridiculous night.
With a shake of her head and a desperate attempt to pretend her stride was steady, she walked back upstairs. She wasn't going to let it throw her, not now at least. She was going to have such a headache in the morning. Back in her room, she picked up the abused marigolds and deposited them on the roof outside her window and closed the curtains. Tomorrow's problem.
She got back into bed, sighing and wiggling her toes. Honestly. She tried to think what Varric would say about it all but couldn't get much further than 'well, shit.'
She closed her eyes.
She opened them in the Fade.
"Oh, for goodness sake," she said, digging the heels of her palms into her eye sockets.
She got up, again, grumbling extensively. She glanced out the window. Yup, green-blue Fade world still out there under a shifting canopy of floating islands. The pot plant was still there too, looking at her accusingly. She walked over to Aerith's room and knocked on the door.
"Hey, Aerith, you in?"
There was no reply so she pushed open the door gently.
White light streamed out into the dimly lit corridor. She blinked owlishly at it before her eyes adjusted.
Flowers covered the floor like an infinite, lush carpet. Aerith was crouching a few meters away tending to a bush of yellow calla lilies. She looked up at the intrusion.
There was no ceiling. Just a white void stretching up forever.
Hawke stepped through the door and peered around. There was a single wall, the one with the door in it, that just sort of stopped existing after about four meters in each direction into the same white, bright, nothing.
Hawke stared at it long enough for her eyes to get sore. Then she squinted at Aerith.
The Cetra was looking up at her curiously, a slight frown creasing her forehead.
What exactly was going on, and why was it happening in Aerith's bedroom?
Aerith tilted her head sideways. "I'm dreaming, aren't I?"
"Mm-hm. This is the Fade." Hawke kicked at the ground, feeling very petty. "Despite my best efforts." There wasn't even any dirt. The plants were growing out of carpet, their roots disappearing between the worn down threads.
"So the Fade is the Lifestream," Aerith said, nodding to herself. "I knew it."
Hawke sank down onto the ground. She gave up, she didn't have the energy to keep on being confused. "What's the Lifestream?"
"It's our mother," Aerith said simply.
Hawke blinked at her.
She huffed and shrugged. She waved expressively for a moment as she drummed up the words. "All life comes from the Lifestream, and all lives returns to it afterwards. It's… it's energy. The planet's energy, Gaia itself." She sat back on her knees, her hands folded neatly in her lap. Even here there was dirt under her nails. She smiled as she spoke. "The Cetra were Gaia's first children, and they have a stronger connection to her. Humans came afterwards. They can't hear her calls, but they still return to her."
Hawke watched her, pieces falling quietly into place in her mind.
"Who told you that?" she asked.
Aerith turned her head, reaching for the nearest plant. "Why don't you like lilies?"
Hawke frowned at the non-sequitur. "Terrible accident in a perfume aisle."
Aerith pursed her lips.
"Did you do that?" Hawke pointed up. To where there should have been a ceiling of fickle Fade-scape and pleasant, uniform whiteness glowed instead.
"I wanted to make it brighter," she replied, looking up with one eye squinting. "I was… eight? The flowers weren't happy. They needed more light, and I thought I could try… bringing the sky to them. It didn't really work."
Hawke nodded slowly, calmly, feeling either a scream or a hysterical laugh catching in her throat. Without the least bit of training, Aerith had permanently reshaped the Fade, on a whim, and considered it a failure. And she was looking to Hawke for guidance.
"The Cetra have a stronger connection to the Lifestream," she said, just to make sure she had all the pieces lined up in the proper order.
"That's what makes us Cetra."
She smiled. Aerith's attention was wandering back to the lilies.
"You're a Fade shaper," Hawke said. "Like the Ancient elves."
"What does that mean?"
She pointed up again. "I can't do that. I'm just a normal mage." Her hand dropped and an affectionate smile split her face. "You, my dear, are something much more powerful."
Aerith grinned back at her, looking up only briefly from the plants. "I know."
Hawke snorted. She let herself fall backwards until she was lying amongst the blossoms. A patch of blue and purple pansies bobbed over her head. "Are the flowers happy?"
There was a hum. "Yes, I think they are."
"That's something at least," Hawke said lightly, closing her eyes.
Reno was waiting outside the church the next morning, his hands shoved in his pockets and a scowl on his face.
Hawke threw him his wallet as Aerith went ahead and opened up the doors.
"That's not funny, yo."
"It's hilarious," Hawke said, "drinks next week?"
He waved and wandered off.
Inside, they shut the doors and got down to business. They had covered a lot of ground in the week and a half since the start of the arrangement and Aerith needed time to process and practise it all.
She drew her staff and ran through some practice motions and basic spells.
Hawke paced near the altar, doing little loops by the mint bush on the edge of the hole in the floorboards and keeping Aerith in her peripheral vision.
A whole race of Fade shapers. Not elves though, Aerith's magic didn't feel elvhen, not even half elvhen. Or especially human, now that she thought about it.
They needed more information about the Cetra. There was a supposedly public library somewhere, maybe they'd have something. How much you could get for free remained to be seen. She'd take anything, at this point. Aerith didn't know much about them, not her fault, there just wasn't that much information available and nobody around to teach her. Perhaps the librarians could direct them somewhere more useful.
Assuming information about a magical and not-as-extinct-as-you-thought race wasn't tightly controlled. On Thedas it sure as the void would be. Maker, the thing the conniptions the Templars would have over just the idea of it.
Aerith twirled her staff through a shield spell. The power wobbled for a moment before the spell fizzled out. She cried out and dropped the staff. She stomped her foot with frustration.
Maybe… maybe there'd be some mention of Thedas in the libraries too.
Her eyes dropped. "You could be growing so much food here," she said, offhanded.
Aerith looked back over her shoulder.
"Do you have any idea how many tomatoes you'd get from that soil? How much you could sell them for? And courgette for days, I bet." She leaned back against the waist-high altar. Aerith's forehead scrunched up. "Set up some frames and you could have aubergine, peppers, cucumbers. Spinach and silverbeet if you can expand the topsoil."
"I'm not growing food in here," Aerith replied with an offended shake of her head. "That's not… that's not why I tend to the flowers."
"Oh. I'm sorry."
Aerith frowned and turned back to her staff, spinning it slowly. She already had a pretty grasp of how to use her weapon, and no hesitation in wielding a big stick in the normal manner when her magic ran out.
"Are the flower beds outside…hallowed too?" Hawke asked tentatively. She'd just been running her mouth, but now that she thought on it, it didn't sound that bad an idea. "It doesn't have to be about the money, but fresh produce would do this area a lot of good. That's a good cause, right?"
"It's not hallowed, it's just… personal."
Hawke blew her hair out of her face and leaned back on her hands. "When's the last time you ate a vegetable that didn't come from a tin or a freezer?"
Aerith bit her lip. "I had some fresh beans last summer."
"And wouldn't you like to have some more?"
Aerith narrowed her eyes at her. Hawke grinned.
"What do you know about gardening?"
She shrugged. "I grew up on a farm."
"But you're such a city girl," Aerith said, looking her up and down.
"Honey, I can pickpocket thugs with one hand while milking a druffalo with the other." Hawke tilted her head. "While on a train."
"At rush hour," Aerith added seriously.
"Standing on one leg."
She snorted a laugh. "You're ridiculous."
"Really? Nobody has ever said that before."
She tapped her staff lightly on the ground, little creation spells that sent the plants shuddering up with little bursts of energy.
"Tomatoes?" she asked, looking up tentatively.
"Juicy and fresh, still some crunch to them, bursting with sweetness, and a little tang," Hawke said, a slow smile stretching across her face. "10 gil a truss."
"What's a truss?"
"One vine's worth, usually four or five."
Aerith's mouth fell open. "Only 10 gil for 5 tomatoes!"
"You could easily get three hundred fruit out of the patch out the front."
Her eyes shone for a moment, then her expression fell again. "People would steal them."
Hawke lifted her chin. "People would try." Like she couldn't just set a lightning glyph over the patch and let the thieves education themselves.
Aerith's forehead scrunched up heavily. She counted on her fingers, tapping them against the staff. Finally, she looked up, determination in her eyes. "Where do we get the seeds?"
"If you can prep the soil, I can get them by the day after tomorrow." Hawke considered the flowers in front of her and the turns the weather had taken. "Given the time of year, we might be better off using saplings."
"That would limit our yield."
She threw back her head and laughed. "Alright, Messere Entrepreneur, don't let me hold you down."
Aerith put her hands on her hips. "If we're going to sell veg, then we need veg to sell."
"Alright, let's do it. But magic practice today, gardening tomorrow." She swung her staff off her back and spun it. "Shields up!"
Both women gestured and then slammed their staffs against the floorboards. Two shields sprung up in unison, impenetrable shimmering domes.
"Nice!" Hawke called.
There was a deafening crash. Smashed wood and roofing tiles thundered down around them, and a heavy body thudded against Aerith's shield. She yelped as it bounced off and landed with a thud in the flower patch.
The shields flickered out and Aerith rushed over to the unconscious man.
"I don't think he's hurt, thank the planet," she said, breathing heavily and her hand over her heart.
"That's good," Hawke said, a dagger in each hand.
He was tall and wearing a purple knit sweater with silver pauldrons. Aerith brushed thick black hair back from his face. He couldn't have been older than seventeen, and he was in a Second Class SOLDIER uniform.
"Stand back, Aerith, give him some space," she said, her hand on the girl's shoulder and casting a smaller, stronger shield over her.
The boy stirred. He mumbled something and blinked his eyes open. They glowed a violet-blue.
"Heaven?" he asked up at Aerith's smiling face.
Aerith giggled. Hawke groaned.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome.
Next Time: Fire spells and public libraries.
