Bugenhagen did not appreciate his guests violently throwing each other off his balcony.
Hawke kept her head down while he lectured and nodded where appropriate. For her sins she had been sentenced to helping in the communal kitchens, grinding down soaked chickpeas in a giant mortar and pestle. Bugenhagen floated opposite her at the work table, chopping up industrial quantities of green herbs. His boney old hands were quick and clever with the kitchen knife, the clack-clack-clack punctuating his spiel.
Bugen slowed his lecture when Hawke didn't offer a response. He sighed and scrapped the last batch of mint into a mixing bowl and reached for a bundle of coriander. Genesis hated coriander.
Hawke scowled and focused on the stone pestle, pounding the pale chickpeas down into a fine mush. The giant mortar shook with the force of the impacts.
"So…" Bugen said, curiosity taking the place of his reprimanding tone, "not a Cetra."
"I already said as much."
"An alien."
"I… suppose so."
He raised a bristly eyebrow. "You didn't know?"
She scoffed because it stung. She should have known. In retrospect it was so obvious. They had different moons but the stars.
"If you woke up somewhere you didn't recognise would you assume: 'ah yes, this must be a different planet'? 'Surely I have crossed the vast emptiness of space entirely by accident and without even noticing.'"
"I think I would notice."
"Well." She shrugged. "We can't all be infinitely wise planet experts."
For some reason Bugen found this impossibly funny. "Only took me a hundred and thirty years," he said with a chortle and shaking shoulders.
Hawke focused on the repetitive motion of her work. It wasn't easy, her upper arms and wrist were getting a workout. A Midgar kitchen probably would have had a shiny plastic food processor, but she liked this more. It reminded her of home.
"You know," she began, "I once knew a man who tricked a witch into giving him eternal life."
Bugen looked up skeptically. "Really? Did it work?"
"Regrettably, yes. Poor Xenon. He failed to ask for eternal youth."
"Ho ho hoooo, oh no."
"Oh yes. His muscles are so atrophied he can't move on his own and he needs to be given a sponge bath every hour or his skin cracks and flakes off. But he got precisely what he asked for."
Bugen made a face.
"Semantics are important with these sorts of things." She lifted the pestle out and rolled her shoulders, taking a breather.
A plume of gold caught her eye, through the window and in the distance. An arc of red flashed in the sun a second later, cutting through the golden feathers on a neighbouring butte. Her breath hitched.
Bugen turned to see what had her attention. Genesis sliced through the flock of griffons, throwing bursts of fire out to keep them from taking to the air.
"Oh, thank the planet, finally." Bugen turned back to his chopping board. "Those pests have been such a danger to our caravans."
Hawke scowled at the little old man.
"That's not enough coriander," she said.
He shook his head sadly. "Not everyone likes it."
"But it's delicious. And it's very good for you, probably."
"I know! I don't understand them," he said, reaching for a couple more of the thick leafy bundles from the tub.
"Come on, don't be stingy." She tossed two more onto his pile.
He went back to chopping and she went about emptying her mortar and starting again with a new batch. She stood with her back to the window.
"Is the SOLDIER holding you hostage?"
She looked up, startled at the question.
"Did Shinra send him here to keep an eye on you?"
"…I don't think so." She frowned and considered it. Then shook her head. "No. No, he's not, and they didn't. He stood between me and Shinra when he could."
"You said he might hand you over to the Turks," Bugen said, looking at her seriously. "This place is a sanctuary, you can ask for help if you need it."
"...Thanks." She looked down into the soupy paste in the stone reservoir. "I was angry, but he wouldn't really do that. He lied to me and I'm furious at him for it, but he doesn't have anything over me. I'm not afraid of him. He just…"
"He doesn't want you to return home."
She sighed and blew her hair out of her face. "Eavesdropping is rude, Bugenhagen."
"So is throwing people off of balconies."
"I didn't throw him."
Sceptical eyebrows bristled at her.
"He couldn't remember which way to the stairs and was too embarrassed to ask. I assisted him to the ground."
"Tch." He shook his head and muttered something about young people. He looked up at her cautiously. She would bet money he was about to ask something very unpleasant.
"Is what he said true? Your friends are… um."
Look at that, she owed herself money. She was all out of chickpea to smash. Damn.
"If it is, then Genesis is a fool to want to keep me here and inflict me on his own world," she replied, terse. "If it's not then he has even less right to do what he did."
"You know if it's true or not."
She shrugged. She crossed her arms and turned to lean on the bench. Gold feathers drifted by outside. She turned back the other way.
"They're not all gone. They don't all hate me."
Bugen waited quietly for her, eyes focused on his work.
She hung her head and leaned heavily against the bench. "I'm... ashamed of how I left things. If they don't want me back... they're right not to." She shook her head. "I don't blame them for it."
"Decided for them, have you?" The knife clacked against the chopping board in a steady staccato. "You're angry at the SOLDIER for wanting to make you stay, and preemptively hurt your old friends might agree with him."
"It sounds ridiculous when you put it that way."
"What is it you want?"
A lot of things, she didn't say. To help the people she cared about. To not be a failure anymore. To be wanted. To be loved.
"I don't know," she said instead.
He did not look fooled.
"What does he want?"
She narrowed her eyes. "You are a nosy old gossip."
"I am. Nothing this interesting has happened in decades." He paused. "More coriander, do you think?"
"Glad to be of service." She emptied the tub of unchopped greens onto the chopping board.
"What's your planet like?"
"About the same."
"Really?" he looked up, disappointed.
"It's more brown. Or maybe that's just Fereldan and its excess of mud."
He huffed. "Then how did you get here?"
"There was a magic mirror. There was… falling… a lot of screaming, possibly mine, and then I was here. I can't recommend it."
"Hn." He laid his knife down. "There's an old story we tell of a woman, long ago, who fell from the stars. She walked among us and we thought her a friend."
She raised an eyebrow. "Are you about to accuse me of being The Calamity?"
"Well, are you?"
"Would I tell you if I was?" she asked with a grin. "Would I be wandering around acting as suspiciously as humanly possible if I was waging a secret war on the planet?"
He lifted his chin. "A double bluff?"
She laughed. "An inept one." Knowing her track record, if she was going to threaten the planet itself it would be out of the best possible intentions. She shook her head and sobered.
"I'm here because I want to go home. There's evidence my people were here before, long ago, but it's all been steamrolled by Shinra. Your libraries are the oldest I know of, if there's any information left, it'll be here. May I please search your records?"
He looked at her kindly and nodded. "The libraries are always open to searching souls."
They finished up under the instruction of the head chef, then Hawke spent the rest of the day exploring the libraries, buried deep within the rock.
Dinner that night was served in the communal hall: coriander falafel alongside coriander marinated goat kebabs, drizzled with a coriander yoghurt and a little coriander garnish on the side. Genesis excused himself before he could insult the servers and inform them that he would rather eat a raw bar of soap.
He went to bed angry, hungry, and sunburned.
The Fade embraced him. He opened his eyes to a dreamy desert just as hot and sweltering as reality.
Red towering buttes reached up to the green sky, hard and inhospitable. Sand blew off the tops, endlessly swirling and dispersing in gritty waterfalls. There was no mansion of apple trees, no floating islands, and no glittering city. Not even a stray spirit looking to feed.
He walked for hours, looking for something, anything. It was silent and dead.
Sand slid beneath his feet, crunching and shifting. He stumbled and tried to steady himself. It slid faster, pulling him backwards. He scrambled. There was no purchase, his hands fisting sand and his boots slipping. He fell.
He landed on his back with a thud. A plume of dust kicked up around him. He hauled air back into his lungs and sat up.
The buttes towered so high, the swirling green of the sky as distant as the stars.
He gritted his teeth and pulled himself back to his feet. Dust slid beneath his boots, caught in his hair, and clogged up his throat. He tried to climb back out only to slip back into the pit, forever scrambling and drowning in the dust, and getting increasingly angry at it all.
He slid back again and snapped.
"This metaphor is cheap and obvious!" he yelled. He hurled a trio of fireballs up at the surface. They burst uselessly against the rock.
The Fade did not care to respond. He scrubbed a hand down his face and growled deep in his throat. Dust swirled around him, before settling back into the pit of his own insufficiency and failure.
So he had lied to Hawke, but she attacked him. A First Class he may be but she knew better than anyone how compromised his immune system was.
Goddess, he hated it, the fear of injury. Did she think he was dependent on her? That she could strike out at him only to leave him helpless with her abandonment? The Cetra would still help him, her aid wasn't self interested.
The thought tasted like ash in his mouth. He knew it wasn't fair. The excuses for his vitriol crumbled away. Hawke didn't deserve it. She had put his wellbeing above her own too many times. She had always tried, no matter what it cost her, or how unreasonable the time and place, she showed up and gave her all.
He knew, with guilt-inducing certainty, that if he had gotten injured fighting the griffons and presented the injury to her, she would have been furious with an acid tongue, and healed it anyway.
The wind howled high above the pit. It's cool touch did not reach him.
He remembered the hot press of Hawke's hands against his shredded back. Holding him up and reconstructing his fractured wing. He had tried to stop her from coming in that night, too afraid she would reject him and leave, so he kicked her out first. She'd shoved her foot in the door and forced her way in anyway.
He had burned many bridges in the past. He always found a way to be satisfied with the embers, the fates, afterall, were cruel.
But Hawke cared about him. And he hurt her.
He sat in the dust.
"My friend, do you fly away now, to a world that abhors me and you?" he said quietly, into the still air. "All that awaits you is a somber morrow...No matter where the winds may blow."
He bowed his head.
A shadow intruded on the hazy light at the bottom of the pit. He looked up, and saw a bald head sticking over the edge. He shot to his feet.
"Do you need a hand?" Bugenhagen called.
"Yes!"
"Good thing you've got two then!"
The old man chortled, and left.
Genesis looked to the heavens. Neither the Fade nor the Goddess deigned to offer any explanation.
Hawke rose, well rested, after a deep and dreamless sleep. It was early for her, still cold and dark out with the stars hidden behind a wall of mist.
She made her way to the showers, and stepped out soon after to find a little old washer woman making off with her clothes. She clutched a fluffy towel to her chest and tried to negotiate their return. The laundress was not moved. Neither was she especially impressed with the state of Hawke's leathers, pointedly raising an eyebrow.
She handed over a set of things for her to wear in the meantime, and toddled off without apology.
Hawke pulled on the undyed linen trousers and shirt, grumbling the whole way. She bet they didn't do this to any other travellers passing through and were just messing her. The woman had left her a brown and red mohair poncho to throw on top.
She stepped out onto one of the long, thin balconies and sat, her legs between the railings and swinging over the edge. Mist shrouded the canyon below, only the odd butte peeking up through rolling white. There was no wind. She pulled her arms in under the woollen poncho and hugged herself against the cold. Somewhere higher up on the rock a desert owl hooted.
Far off on the horizon, a smudge of light crept into the sky.
A door opened behind her. She glanced at a figure practically drowning in an over-large yellow plaideweave poncho. It clashed terribly with his red hair.
She burst out laughing.
Genesis scowled and crossed his arms. It did not have the effect he probably hoped it would, seeing as it came to his knees and covered his arms entirely. The sloping shoulders diminished his build in the exact opposite way of his coat and pauldrons, making him look short and slight.
"You look like a kid in his parent's rain jacket," she said between guffaws. "Or like you're going undercover as a Fereldan peasant."
"Well, you look like a goat herder," he replied.
She grinned. "Swap my staff for a shepherd's crook and I'm ready for a career change."
"Why do you get the flame motif?"
She looked down at herself. There were pretty little flames stitched into the edges.
"It's because I'm so hot," she said.
"I'm hotter than you."
"Not wearing that, you're not."
He scoffed and turned his head. "I'm still angry at you."
"Oh, you're angry, are you?" she snapped.
"I didn't attack someone with a chronic illness."
She paused. "I didn't mean to."
"Yes, you did!"
"Alright, I did, but I take it back." She huffed and looked away. "I'm sorry. Are you hurt? I'll heal it."
She glanced up when he didn't reply. He looked like his fire had been doused.
"You don't owe me apologies, Hawke."
She raised an eyebrow. Was he playing the victim or not? Her own anger had grown cold with the night. She didn't want to yell anymore.
He sat next to her on the balcony, legs hanging over the edge and shoulders brushing. He bowed his head and was silent for some time. She watched the light on the horizon grow and the mist begin to glow.
"You were… not entirely wrong in your estimation of me," he began. "Your magic gave me hope. You gave me hope. I didn't want to risk losing it."
"Is that why you humour me?"
He frowned. "I'm not humouring you."
"It's alright, I'm not actually delusional. I've had many a friendship built on a bedrock of convenience." She looked at him sidelong. "One day, you too will be glad to be rid of me."
He winced. "I didn't mean that."
She looked straight ahead. "Yes, you did."
"Is that why you endure my company? Convenience?"
"You're not especially convenient."
"That is a great comfort, thank you."
She lowered her head. The truth was his lies and insults had given her an easy out, something to be angry about without facing reality. But she was tired of lying to herself. The mist melted in the light of a new day.
"It's been some time since I truly believed… I would see Thedas again."
"Don't give up."
She raised an eyebrow at him.
He made a noise of frustration and lowered his chin. "Nothing worth achieving was ever easy. I may not understand the appeal but this is important to you. You're not crazy and you didn't dream it: Thedas is out there. And I guarantee you there are people hoping every day that you will come home." His clear blue eyes looked at her with an intensity that made it hard to look away. "If you do give up, it should be because your goals have changed, not because anyone or anything dictated it to you."
She swallowed, slightly shocked at his vehemence. "For a world that hates me?"
"That's their failing. Get back up and try again." He looked at her with absolute conviction. "You are not defeated."
It was news to her. He made it sound so irrefutable she almost believed it. Meeting his gaze she felt… maybe she could believe such a thing.
His eyes dropped. "I'm sorry I kept the truth from you. I will do whatever I can to get you back home, regardless of… of what I would prefer."
"Why?" she asked, breathless.
"Because I was never just humouring you."
She didn't know what to say. The sun had snuck up on them, making the moment warm and relaxed and dying it golden. There were emerald depths to his eyes the glow normally disguised, hiding a vulnerability just as rare.
With no forethought, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. He made the tiniest noise and tilted his head to lean into her. For a heady, unsuspecting moment it felt so right. So relaxed and comforting, his tongue hot in her mouth.
She jerked back half a second later, startled at herself.
Still caught in that slow and comfortable early morning brightness, she blinked like an owl.
A slow smile spread across his lips.
"Right. Well." She cleared her throat. "Consider yourself forgiven."
She got up and made a swift retreat.
"Coward," he called behind her.
"Mm-hm," she said, letting herself back into her room.
A/N: Thanks for reading! Constructive criticism is appreciated.
Next Time: They do the thing they actually came to Cosmo for.
