Hawke raised a hand, magic swirling around her fingers. The circular glyph hung vertically at chest height as it built in power. The jagged lines and letters glowed bright white and blue.

She closed her fist and the spell exploded in a rush of power. A barrage of energy projectiles burst out, eight in total, shooting through the air.

They slammed into Genesis' translucent magical shield. The surface rippled under the first, the second, the third. She saw his eyes narrow in concentration, and the shield wobbled beneath the fourth blow. It collapsed under the fifth. He snarled and threw out his hand. A materia shield snapped into place, exponentially more powerful than the one it replaced, and soaked up the remains of the bombardment.

Hawke crossed her arms.

"This is ridiculous," he said, clenched and unclenching his hands at his sides. "I was casting more reliably when I was twelve!"

"With materia." She crossed her arms. "What does that have to do with the price of fish?"

They were in an abandoned warehouse in Sector 6. The light was weak, filtering in through high grimy windows, leaving them in murky shadows. The place was half filled with piles of cracked old ceramic tiles, forgotten by its owners for decades and too broken to be of any use to the slum dwellers. They had made a clearing in the middle to practise materia-free magic.

Hawke blew her hair out of her eyes then stretched her arms out over her head. In truth Genesis was making very good progress, for someone who could only half cast a single spell beforehand he had picked up the basics in just three days of practicing after work. It wasn't fast enough to satisfy him. She understood, intellectually at least. It was galling to go from a master of his craft to struggling with a basic shield and emptying his mana reserves with every third spell.

For all his determination to learn he was testy about it, and at first she had tiptoed around it, trying to frame the exercise as an opportunity to learn rather than evidence of his ignorance. He only got more uptight about it, so she stopped trying.

"There's no point to any of this if you're just going to keep falling back on materia."

"You're going to electrocute me if I don't!"

"You tell me off everytime I hold back! 'I learn better under pressure,' you said."

"That doesn't mean try to kill me," he groused.

"Energy barrage is an entry level lightning spell," she said, flat. "It's usually done with twelve projectiles."

He narrowed his glowing eyes and lowered his chin. "Then cast it with twelve."

She rolled her eyes. There was no pleasing some people.

"Just wait until I've figured this out, then I'll show you."

Hawke, who had long since taken Genesis off of her 'beware of' list, gave a toothy grin. "I am waiting, kitten. It's boring having all these powers and nobody competent enough to use them on."

He gave her a dangerous, facetious smile and reached for the ether on his belt. He swallowed a gulp and then brought his hands up.

A shield sprung up around him. His shields had started as simple spirit magic, but after a few days work they had turned curiously fibrous, like a woven material. There was some stretch and flexibility to it, and it would rip and fray into nothing when pushed to breaking point.

Hawke stood with her hands behind her back and erected her own shield. It was a fluid and wobbly thing that looked like flowing water, infinitely adaptable, with little structural integrity and an absurdly high level of energy it could absorb.

He moved first, his eyes sharp with focus. He moved his hands carefully through the motions to call on a fireball down upon her. It took him so much longer than it would have with materia, but only half the time it had taken the day before.

It splashed harmlessly against her shield nonetheless. She called on a strong wind to lift a stack of tiles and pelted him with them, chipping away at his shield. He ran, dodging and ducking to save his shield while his mana recharged. Tiles crunched under his feet and the metal walls creaked under the impacts.

Hawke clenched a fist. A bolt shot down upon him and ripped half the shield down. He snarled through clenched teeth and maneuvered the remaining half so it was between the two of them.

She raised her hands and filled the air with a howling blizzard. Ice and chipped ceramic tiles tore through the air. He charged through the storm, relying on his enhancements to handle what his magic couldn't. He leapt up and hurled another fireball, then another, each faster than the last.

"Good!" she called, sidestepping. "Very good!"

She threw another energy barrage. It finished off the shield, but he had another held in reserve that snapped into place, and soaked up the remainder of the barrage. She grinned and sent another on its heels.

They chased each other around the warehouse, roaming over the sliding and crumbling tiles, both braving and weaponizing the treacherous footage. He steadily refined his fire spells, breathing hard but refusing to slow his pace. She pelted him with whatever she could think of.

He dodged a flying spike of ice, moving his hands jerkily through a complex pattern. Nothing was as easy as it looked when under constant bombardment.

A red glyph lit up under her feet. She gasped in delight and leapt back, not quite fast enough. Her shield wobbled and shrank under the force of the blast. He charged in after it, throwing spirit bolts.

"Do that again!" she called, fending them off and backing up onto a stack of tiles. "Higher mana release on ignition than in shaping this time."

He raised his hands, pulling magic into reality with smooth and powerful motions. His hair floated and the magic of his own spells set shadows playing against his face.

The glyph roared to life beneath her. She flipped back off the tiles, but her shield caught in the inferno. It burned out with a hiss. Genesis yelled in triumph.

She landed on the cracked concrete, breathing hard herself.

He looked incredibly pleased with himself. She gave a dainty little two finger clap.

"Not bad, not bad at all."

He smiled and gave a dramatic bow.

"Next time I'll get it right on the first shot," he said, as he went and collected his things from the side of the room. He threw her staff to her and shrugged his coat back on.

"You should be ready to start using your sword as a focus soon," she said.

They headed up above the plate back to his place, discussing theory all the way.

"Why doesn't materia work in the fade?" he asked, sitting next to her on an empty train car.

"I think materia don't just contain the spell, they're also a conduit reaching through the Veil." She leaned back, her staff resting against her shoulder. "When you're already in the Fade, reaching through the veil just leaves you trying to pull power from the physical world."

"You think," he replied.

She shrugged. "Admittedly I have never used them, but I've held a couple. I'm reasonably sure that's how it works."

"My materia did work, the spells all went off as they would in the real world."

"Because you expected them to, and the Fade plays along. That's not going to fool a spirit though, you can't Fade-trick your way around them, or anyone else who knows better."

"I wonder if the sages of Cosmo Canyon have any mages among them. They would surely have their own techniques for these things."

She asked who they were. They talked all the way to a restaurant to pick up the food and then back to his place to eat and keep studying. It was mostly arguing, they were both experts in their own fields and he had some very strong opinions about how magic worked and related to the spirituality of the world itself. She was well versed in the majority of Thedas' theories and could offer up a rebuttal to almost any claim. He was at his most interesting when worked up, and more than happy to get worked up as well.

It reminded Hawke painfully of long nights discussing magic theory with Merrill and Anders. They would bicker until the candles had burned low and all the non mages had fallen asleep. Genesis made an outrageous claim about spirit wisps. She smiled, a battered sense of longing and grief taking a hold of her heart like a thousand tiny needles. She replied with something equally outrageous.

After eating they quietened and retired to his library nook. He was building a grimoire, seeing as each spell needed to be memorised on its own, and sketched out the patterns of the day. He sat at the desk and worked in a lovely hand bound white book that matched his favourite edition of Loveless. Hawke pulled a random book off his shelf and curled up on an armchair, ready to be interrupted every five minutes to answer a question.

The hours drifted by, pleasant, peaceful, and unguarded.

By the time Hawke looked up again the skies were dark and city lights glinting below. It was warm and comfortable in the apartment, even if the shadows of the hour were sneaking in at the edges.

"I should head home," she said.

Genesis looked up, the scratching of pencil on paper pausing. His hair shone in the golden light of the desk lamp.

"The last train left an hour ago."

"Oh. Of course."

"I'll drive you," he said, not getting up.

"Don't do that." A yawn split her face. "It's late. It's a Tuesday."

"Stay then."

She thought about it. Probably not for as long as she should have.

"Alright."

He got up and went to rummage through the linen cupboards. She rose to her feet with a symphony of cracking joints, and stretched down to touch her toes. She wandered over to the couch that she imagined he was probably sick of her monopolising.

"If our cover story is that we're together, we ought to make it convincing," he said, returning with an armful of blanket. "The Turks will think I'm a cad if I keep kicking you out at one in the morning."

"Make me breakfast then."

He gave her a look as he handed her the blanket. She wasn't entirely sure what it said. The dumb joke she'd planned as a follow up died on her tongue.

"Goodnight, Hawke," he said, his voice low.

The look in his eyes hung in her mind as she lay down to sleep, alongside the smooth tones of his voice, and a distinct sense that she was in trouble.


Hawke's mind passed through the Veil and into the Fade, leaving all rationale behind.

Friendly chatter and the crash of distant waves reached her first. Then the smell of salt and roasting nug over a fire of seaweed and driftwood.

She opened her eyes at the campfire cut into the side of the cliff. Reflection sat opposite her on the log, wearing Varric's face.

It was appropriate, she thought, Varric had always lived… lives to reflect and retell.

Reflection watched her and she considered kicking the spirit out. Yelling at her for wearing such a face. For sitting on the log that always sat empty, no matter how many people joined her, because it was Varric's log. She considered throwing her off the ledge.

She studied Varric's familiar face, with his broken nose and tired smirk. Her shoulders slumped. She gave in, and let the dream flow over her, carrying her away with its nostalgic lies. The gaps of the scene filled in, drawing on old memories, and other wisps of spirits joined in the delusion.

Merrill sat next to Varric, egging him on to repeat a joke she missed. Fenris and Aveline were standing guard by the edge, but listening in on their banter with a smile. Isabella poked at the food over the fire.

Hawke felt Anders' hand on her shoulder, warm with healing magic. She rolled out a now injured shoulder. Oh, that was the sting of a crossbow bolt, she hadn't felt that in a while.

"Hawke, think you could flambé this?" Isabela called, stirring a pot of soupy nug meat. She held a bottle of mystery spirits in her other hand.

"Absolutely not," Hawke replied, grinning, "I refuse to be involved in any such Orlesian indulgence."

"It's fire and alcohol, why do they get to call dibs?"

"Because they're greedy bastards."

Isabela poured some of the bottle in and tried to get it to ignite. It did no such thing. Hawke laughed at her disappointed expression. It felt like very slowly cutting herself open with a serrated knife.

Anders' hand on her shoulder gently stopped her from getting up.

"Don't you dare tear this back open again," he said, "How many more times am I going to have to patch you up?"

"As many times as there are stars in the sky," she replied without thinking. "Uncountable."

"The magisters have counted the stars, Hawke, there are only 4,500." Fenris called. "You can't have many healings left."

Hawke winced. Anders scoffed and patted her shoulder. "Don't worry, I could never be bothered counting that high. I'll always be here."

She looked away. "Laying it on a little thick, Reflection."

Reflection watched her through Varric's eyes and didn't say anything. Far below the surf crashed against the rocks, and the scraggly trees on the edge of their camp creaked in the cold wind.

It felt so removed from her new life that she wondered if maybe she was crazy. Maybe she had dreamed them all up, and such a wonderful, terrible, remarkable time and place had never really been.

She let her head hang.

"Did I tell you the story I heard from Chuckles, Hawke?" Varric said from the other side of the fire. He poked the flames with a stick, amusing himself with how the sparks flew. "About the man shipwrecked alone on an island, who whiled away the time making booze from the fruit?"

She stared into the fire from the other side, watching the stick break through embers and ash alike.

"First off," she said, "you didn't tell me about it because I was there when he told you, which is how I know about it for you to repeat it back to me, Reflection, and second, I cannot believe you gave my nickname away. I used to be Chuckles."

Varric rested his chin on his palm. It was such a good rendition of his face, right down to the tiny nicks and scratches on his skin. She thought even the chest hair looked perfect.

"Are you going to keep on brewing your fermented fruit juice, Hawke? Or are you going to walk into the sea?"

"It's a poor impersonation," she said. She brushed the spirit wearing Anders' skin off her shoulder. "Varric would tell me to keep on brewing, he wouldn't mention the alternative. He always was a covert optimist, beneath all the cynicism."

Reflection steepled her best friend's fingers. "Are you?

She refused to answer.

The dream lost its shape, and the spirits faded from view. She slept on, deep and dreamless.


Genesis woke early. He always did.

Sometimes he resented it, he quite liked the idea of an indulgent sleep in, to be the pleasure-soaked layabout so many assumed him to be. But alas, sleep abandoned him before the sun rose, and he had learned to make the most of it.

He got up, dragged a hand down his face, rolled his shoulder through the constant ache in the place where his wing sprouted, and opened his bedroom door.

Hawke resurrected immediately, sitting up on the couch, bleary eyed and crackling with electricity.

He paused, still holding the door knob.

Her eyes latched onto him, registered the non-threat, and she collapsed back into sleep. His lips quirked. The same had happened the night after the wing incident, presumably it was an instinctual response. She had said she didn't need to be out until seven thirty.

He continued past her on his way to the shower, then walked back the other way some time later, freshly scrubbed, wrapped in a silk bathrobe, and biting into a buttery croissant.

She didn't budge this time. He peered down at her over the back of the couch.

The dim grey light streaking between the curtains shone off her silky black hair, it settled gently on her cheek and ran down the curve of her neck.

He thought she deserved more gentle things.

There was a constant tension around her eyes when awake, whether she was smirking or scowling or in the throes of a full belly laugh, she was always holding herself in check. In her sleep it finally eased out. The evidence of the effort it took was carved into her face: she looked vulnerable and tired.

He felt privileged to be allowed to see her like this. If she didn't fully trust him he had no doubt that she would have remained awake and watched from the corner of her eye. She trusted him to keep guard while hers was down.

He wished he could do more. He would have liked to ease her burdens and let her rest, enough that she wouldn't look tired even in her sleep.

What could he do to help a fugitive of a system he himself was a slave to? She was so busy trying to free him of his chains, what could he possibly offer in turn?

Well, certainly more than an uncomfortable couch.

He let that thought simmer for a moment. He bit into the croissant. It was flaky and soft inside.

On the night of the wing incident they had been far too tired to give the arrangement any more thought besides his very recent and severe back injury, and now it had become a vexing habit. She slept on the couch, refused any offer to swap places, and he stretched out on his luxurious king bed and pretended he wasn't hyper aware of the soft sounds of every toss and turn of the woman in the other room.

He wondered if she ever looked at his closed door. If she ever thought about opening it.

He made himself turn away and resume his morning routine.

He donned his uniform, made himself comfortable at his desk in the library nook, and opened his laptop. Hawke was visible from the corner of his eyes but he didn't think about her.

He focused. He had emails to clear. Tseng had copied him into an email chain of concentrated bureaucracy.

His thoughts slid to the cover story she had given the Turks. She sounded very comfortable with the lie.

It was a redundant observation, Hawke sounded comfortable with just about anything, and he had yet to find a lie she couldn't sell with a straight face.

It had amused him at first, the notion that their impossible connection and covert operations could be handwaved with something so mundane as a casual dalliance. It was the sort of thing people often invented about him.

The gossip rags liked to cast him in contrast to Sephiroth's stoicism and Angeal's boy-next-door persona. It didn't matter that Angeal's soft romantic heart had led him through more partners and breakups in the public spotlight than either of the other two, or that Genesis poured the majority of his energy into his career. Public perception had already decided, and he was far too private and disinterested in their insinuations to disprove it.

His only real relationship in the last five years had been a long distance one with a set designer. They spent the summer cheating on him while he slogged through Wutaian jungle. He had always been particular over the company kept, he was even more so after that particular distastefulness.

He deleted Tseng's email and about five others. Outside the sun was rising.

He considered himself a luxury to be savoured, not some everyday mundanity to be exhausted upon anyone who asked.

Hawke did not regard herself as a luxury, nor as anything more than an inconvenience. What he first mistook for bravery in combat he had since learned was a dangerous disregard for her own welfare. When she took something for herself it was either with a self-deprecating cheekiness at having gotten away with something, or spiteful defiance, daring the world to just try and take it back off her.

He looked sidelong at her, at the increasingly bright stripe of light cascading over her face.

It got his hackles up, her dismissal of her own welfare. He wanted to prove her wrong. To inundate her with good things until she got it through her stubborn head that she was allowed to have them for no other reason than she wanted them.

She brazenly told the Turks that were using each other for sex, and everyone believed her.

That vexed him in a way that the lie itself didn't. That they found it so easy to assume that they were just taking advantage of each other.

He frowned. He crossed his arms and glared at his laptop screen, not seeing a word.

He would never take advantage. He only accepted what she offered. His thoughts pulled inexorably to the image of a planet from a satellite photo that only he knew about. Hawke offered a great deal. She said it wasn't dependent on what she got in return. She said a lot of things.

His back ached. So did his knee, he'd landed awkwardly at one point the day before.

He put his head down and focused on his work.

At seven twenty five Hawke snapped awake.

"Good morning," he said.

She looked just as bleary as before, blinking at the room, with comical bed hair. Then she shook her sleepiness off and rose like a miniature storm from the stillness of the living room.

She mumbled something that sounded like a reply, then threw down the remains of her abandoned glass of water and whatever food she could find within arms' reach. She yanked on her boots, armour, belts, and scabbards, and was out the door with a wave and a smile, hopping to snap the latches of her grieves into place.

The storm had dispersed as quickly as it had arrived, leaving him in the now slightly ruffled silence of her absence.

He smiled and went back to typing up a report.


N/A: Thanks for reading! Reviews and critiques are, as always, more than welcome.

Next Time: back to our regularly scheduled humans rights violations.