Ok, so this is a chapter that enlists some heavy stuff that has happened. with Hawke as she tries to remember in a fit of a drunken black out. Next chapter, kind of climax of this "season" for Hawke and Fenris. So bear with me! IF YOU DON'T CARE for it, skip this chapter, AND GO STRAIGHT FOR THE NEXT ONE, ONCE IT COMES OUT.
I don't care. Just read. Thank you.
I WANT to start with the beginning, but I- I CAN'T.
H. B. Hawke here and I have a story to tell you of what happened to me.
Yes, yes, I know, I'm barging in, but I'm deeply besotted again and I can't help it! The writer of this story thinks too highly of me and I have to intervene. I'm too much in a dark frame of mind right now and I have to press that I'm but a vagabond mage roaming the earth covered in so much dust of my eternal stoicism in public, Templars hardly notice me anymore.
I strive for good far and wide, but there's more to it to the tale than you think. My name is once again thirst, baby and I must have you! All in good time, Fenris. I did not forget about you in this tale.
Not bad, you might think, but I loathe it. Without doubt, I was grieving for something I did not even know I had lost – maybe my old self in Lothering? I cannot tell. The senseless little brat queen from Lothering, now a newly born revenant once determined to be good at being bad if that was her predicament, much to be contradictory in itself.
I'm not a pragmatist, mind you. I have a keen and merciless conscience, so cruel that it is in fact, much too kind and patient sometimes. But I'm still bad to the bone. Ah, I could have been a nice girl. Maybe at times I am. But always, I've been a woman of action. Grief is a waste, angers renders one much too weak right on the verge of being swallowed by the flame, and so does and is fear. And action is what you will get here, as soon as I get through this introduction.
Alas, I have to do things my own way. And we will get to the beginning – if that isn't contradiction in terms – I promise you. I'll take care of you this chapter until the author figures out I'm ruthlessly and greedily stealing you away from her and her fine words that have no shame in penetrating others' thoughts and visions to give you and me an explanation for what has been happening.
Mages don't really like others of their kind, though their need for such companions is desperate.
… Where was I going with this? Ah, yes, the beginning.
Nah… I'm a fatalist right now, I'm much too energized and deeply deranged to bits to acquiesce to your request.
I will start with THE END.
And they lived happily ever after, once they fled Kirkwall.
No, that's not the right end… wait. Give me a second. GIVE ME. A. SECOND.
Oh right, so I woke up in this brothel…
"Tonight I'll just steal you away and savor this moment."
No, this wasn't how it happened. What? No. This was after the sudden tragedy that occurred a day before. My timing was wrong? Did I dream all of it? This must be something else. My head… oh, for all the wine in the world, this is painful. Flashes, just so many flashes, and my head bumping into some pillow, eyes tightly shut then opening again to be brutally smashed by the candle lights.
Wait… something, something about an Antivan elf. Not Armand. No, an Antivan human. Or both.
Oh, the brutal light of nightly dawn, it refreshed my sight and memory. A young, boyish little elf utterly intoxicated with my delightful drunken company and the many wonders of me which I did not allow him. Naturally, he found me a beautiful woman. Didn't everyone? I jest, of course. He was not all that ugly himself. Dark-skinned and green-eyed, with blonde to almost glisteningly white soft hair. It reminded me of someone, I wonder who. Even his lanky arms had a certain prettiness to them, especially given his outrageous hair.
No… he didn't really look like him. But I figured in my black out I sought out some resembling dollface much less difficult and overwhelming than Fenris, who was in my thoughts always, even now, as I struggled to remember how I got here. I wondered where he was and how in the Void he did not come to find me.
WHAT happened?
It was not all bad. I'm certain we didn't do anything. I remember now; he recited poems to me in Antivan with great charm. After an hour or two of only pretending to be a vanquishing brute, he had let on that he wanted to take me. I politely refused in my drunkenness and told him to keep his distance on the edge of the bed.
"Why not?" the white-haired beautiful elf repeated, with such boyish drive for adventure.
"Because I am quite spoken for, sadly," I said in amusement, thinking just how loyal I remained even in my black out, as it seems.
"Nonsense," he pressed. "You are nobody's."
"But you want me to be yours, do you not?" I played nonchalantly, placing my hands under my head with great ease.
"Does he want you to be wholly his as I do now?" he demanded sharply.
"The fuck should I know," I said and chuckled.
"So he hasn't fucked you," he said perceptively.
"Now, wouldn't you like to know," I mocked him with pleasure for the absolute. I didn't fear him.
"I would," he said firmly. "Much so that I would like to just listen, if that is all you allow of me."
"Oh, it is a tale far heavier than your limited understanding," I said with delight. "I would much rather talk about you."
From time to time, he implored me to confess who I really was and where he might find me afterwards, which of course, I wouldn't.
I stayed there with him at a distance, talking about the mysteries of the lands in which I set foot on and reading some Antivan poetry to him of which I did not understand much except for cullo which sounded like ass and apassionata which was passionate. Passionate ass? There's not enough words in the world of such cosmic proportions as to describe how utterly ridiculous a scene I found myself in…
He taught me a great deal of rank gutter-tramp Antivan, and he wanted to take me home, wherever that was. He had to regain his wits, he said; he was much too delighted with the mystery I had imposed on him. He could not conceive of such limitation on my part – that I came there and did not want to bed him. For that and other things I had impressed him with, he could not now live without me, he said. He would keep me in Antiva in a splendid house his assassin cousin had, a present from the former Antivan prince as courtesy for helping him be put first in line for the throne. If I was the daughter of some formidable nobleman, I should confess it, and this "obstacle" would be "dealt with". Did I hate my Father, perchance? No… my Father was dead.
His was a scoundrel. All the Crows were scoundrels and had been since the first day they set up shop in Antiva and practically took over the Crown itself. He would flee Antiva with me this very night if I so wished.
"You sound as if you don't know Antiva City and her noblemen," I said kindly, with a drunken smile. "Think on all this. You'll be cut to pieces for giving it a try."
I now perceived that he was fairly young. Since all older men seemed old to me, I had not thought about it before. He couldn't have been more than twenty- something. He was also mad.
He leapt on the bed impulsively, his messy light hair flying, and pulled his dagger, a formidable Antivan stiletto, and stared down into my upturned face.
"I'll kill for you," he said confidently and in a foolish fit of pride, in the Antivan accent. Then he drove the dagger into the pillow and the feathers flew out of it. "I'll kill you if I have to." The weathers went up into his face, and mine alike, but I kept my look unyieldingly unperturbed.
"And then you'll have what?" I asked confidently with a giant grin.
There was a creaking behind him. I was fairly certain someone was at the window, beyond the bolted wooden shutters, even though we were three stories above. I told him so. He believed me.
"I come from a family of murderous beasts," I lied and grinned viciously. "They'll follow you to the ends of the Dark City itself if you think of taking me out of there – they'll dismantle your whorehouse stone by stone, chop you in half and cut out your eyes, your tongue and your private parts, wrap them in velvet and send them to your Guild Master," I said while fiercely enjoying his sudden look of terror across his face. Then my voice became even more commanding, "Now calm down."
"Oh, you bright, saucy little demon," he said, "you look like a bloody angel and hold forth like a tavern knave in that sweet crooning cocky voice."
"That's me," I said smiling.
I got up and fixed my messy clothes hastily, warning him not to assault me just yet. Then when he let his guard down, I winked at him playfully and quickly made for the door.
He hovered in the bed, his dagger still tightly clutched in his hand, the feathers having settled on his white-colored head on his shoulders and his eyelashes. He looked truly dangerous.
I lost count of the days that had passed. I couldn't quite remember.
I only remembered this and Fenris's voice calmly declaring just how he would abuse of my availability to savor the moment I yielded to him and rested my head on his chest. But no, that wasn't it. It didn't happen that way.
No, it didn't happen that night. There was a giant gap in-between the first night in Antiva and that one haunting memory, and after that another huge gap, which led to me waking up in this whorehouse. The Bone Pit, I saw the sign written in emerald calligraphic letters by the main entrance. Perhaps I had mistaken it for the inn we were staying in, then the white-haired elf ran into me and … something extremely STUPID that was part of my DOOFUS mind made me go with him. Hm… truly interesting, that I did not do anything.
But where were the others? No… concentrate. I can't. I had to get out of there.
It was dark and just a little cold. The curfew had come down. Of course the Antivan cold of night seemed childishly mild to me after the snowy lands of the south, where I'd been born, but it was nevertheless an oppressive and damp air, and though cleansing breezes purified the city, it was inhospitable and unnaturally quiet. The illimitable sky vanished in thick mists. The very stones gave forth the chill as if they were blocks of ice.
Well, maybe it's the drunken shivers, I thought.
On a water stairs, I sat, not caring that it was brutally wet and I burst into silent growls. What had I learned from all this if there's no memory to bind it with, as to make sense of it all?
I felt rather sophisticated for once, like a stupid fucking princess fleeing the castle and trying to make sense of life. Bah, such idiocy. I desired no company, but I had no warmth from it, no real warmth and it seemed my loneliness now was worse than guilt, or fear, or the feeling of being damned.
Indeed it seemed to replace the old feeling. I feared it, being utterly alone. For once, I did admit it. As I sat there looking up at the tiny margin of this black heaven, at the few stars that drifted over the roofs of the buildings, I sensed how utterly terrible it would be to lose both Fenris, my friends, and my guilt simultaneously. To be cast out and tumbling through the world with nothing to defend, nor to be defended by, as I annoyingly had to admit. Nobody to love or damn you. That was it.
And then the memories struck me back like a cannon ball straight in the face. Oh, so many memories…
Two or three days ago,
Hawke strolled through the Piazza di Azzuro, right next to the famous San Giustinia Cathedral, which bore testament to Andraste's dearest friend in childhood who stood by her side each step of the way in her Exalted Marches.
There was one, vast painting over a grand façade, called The Procession of The Magi. It was probably the only painting in the world of Andrastianism that depicted mages from the Imperium repenting and joining Andraste's cause against their own kind. Now it was a marvelous painting, full of rampant detail. Not only was the Procession itself enormous, if not actually never ending, but the landscape behind it was wondrous, filled with towns and mountains, with men hunting and animals running, with beautifully realized castles and delicately shaped trees. The faces shimmering with honesty and drive for liberty, such strive to strive, she had never seen drawn with a brush before.
"Such a painting surely brings testament to how great some mages were," she said in amazement, looking up and feeling like she would fall down.
"Sadly, we may never know such mages in our times anymore," Fenris replied flatly.
"Is that what I am to you? A poor old weakling? An excuse of a mage? Really, truly?" Hawke asked him with honest, but masked desperation.
"You are not weak," Fenris said firmly. "I don't know if you are great, though. That remains to be seen."
"Well… I… Fine, you take what you can get, and it's more than enough coming from you, I think," Hawke said with a short smile.
"I thought we were past your terrible misconception of me thinking lowly of you," Fenris said with a short frown.
"We are… it's just," Hawke said and looked up at the grand painting on the monument again. "Andraste might not have thought so. At least, her Chant of Light which was probably tempered with."
Fenris came next to her and gazed up at the painting, then said, "It doesn't matter. What Andraste did long ago has been undone."
"That's not my point," Hawke pressed insistently. "My point is –"
"I know what you strive to press on, but I'm not the one to give you a proper answer," Fenris confessed knightly.
"Nor does anyone else," Hawke said bitterly. "Only the so called Maker could account for this."
"You think the Maker doesn't resent you as much as he resents us all?" Fenris said nonchalantly. "It is much a worldly injustice towards mages as with any other race and man alike."
"Worldly injustice," Hawke repeated in amusement and shook her head. "I wonder – is not that people strive for this injustice, rather than unhinge it, with the presumption of complete non-responsibility, of comfort and ignorance? An attempt has been made foolishly well in the same direction on the basis of the opposite doctrine of full responsibility and guilt of every man. But it still pressed on the guilt of mages more than any other. Just for the sake of it."
"What do you mean?" Fenris asked in confusion.
"It was the founder of Andrastianism who wished to abolish worldly injustice and banish judgement and punishment from the world, no? For she understood all guilt as 'sin' – that is, an outrage against the Maker, and not against the world. In fact, he looks at it so, not Andraste."
Fenris looked at her in awe of her remarks and listened carefully, for she continued, "On the other hand, he considered pretty much every man in a broad sense, and almost in every sense, a sinner. The guilty, however, are not to be the judges of their peers – so his rules of equity decided, no?"
"That would be the logic of it, but it is not what is happening in the world, as you can see," Fenris said flatly.
"Exactly my point," Hawke said confidently. "Thus al dispensers of worldly injustice were in His eyes as culpable as those they condemned, and their air of guiltlessness appeared to Him hypocritical and pharisaical. He would have no mercy even of the most honourable, kind-hearted soul. Moreover, He looked to the motives and not the results of the actions, and thought that only one was keen-sighted enough to give a verdict on motives – Himself or, as he expressed it, the one and only God. Who did so in abandoning us. What a fucking douchebag."
Fenris couldn't help but burst into laughter at her finishing statement.
"Oh, yeah, that's how I usually close my speeches," Hawke said with a smile. "Want me to do my tribute to the Maker?"
Fenris looked around with a raised eyebrow, to see if anyone was near enough to be appalled by Hawke starting to sing right in the middle of the piazza, but decided he was curious enough to let her go, "Proceed."
She raised a mocking hand to the sky, "Ho, ho, ho, you big dork. Thanks for nothing, big fucking good-for-nothing pussy!" She heard Fenris laugh again softly at her blunt and cocky statement.
– Gap –
She was in the Fade, dreaming about a time when she and her father went into the Fade together, exploring a memory of his. She felt like she was making a much too complex inception for her to grasp, which made her lose consciousness and awareness. He showed her a memory of his from when he was in Antiva City, within the Serene Gardens of the San Giustinia Cathedral, erected in the name of Justinia, the Tevinter slave and Andraste's closest friend who remained by her side as a disciple in the war against the Imperium.
He wanted to show her something, but didn't right away. He remained in a meditative state as they sat on the moist grass of the square cloister.
"Father, do we serve Him?" Hawke pressed, running out of patience. "I know you condemn the Chantry and the ravings of some Andrastians, but do you mean to lead me to the same god they do?"
"That's just it, my love, I do," Malcolm said softly, "even though you might not believe me for the pagan I seem to appear, but I do. I find the Maker in the flesh, in the blood and especially in our magic. I find it no accident that the mysterious Andraste resides forever in a pouch of magical ashes that are meant to cure any illness."
"But we don't know if that's true," she contradicted. "It might all just be a big sodding bunch of hogwash."
"I think it's true," he said firmly. "But we're digressing."
"Oh, now you don't want to digress? How perfectly contradictory and uncharacteristic of you, lest that's just another diversion in itself."
"You don't think He exists? Or that Andraste was a saviour?" Malcom asked her calmly.
She didn't answer. She had renounced the idea of a Maker for as long as she could remember. A relentless, unforgiving god who abandoned them in their darkest times and sent even more anguish and havoc onto the earth just because of people believing in other gods and some stupid mages who supposedly woke him up and disturbed his peace in his Golden City. No, if that was what created them, she wouldn't want to hear of it.
"I stumble with my conceptions," she confessed.
"We all stumble, pup, and so do all those who enter history. The concept of a great Being stumbles down the centuries; His words and those principles attributed to Him do tumble after Him; and so Andraste is snatched up in His wandering by the preaching puritan on one side, the muddy starving hermit on the other. But that's not important. Nothing about it is."
"Then why discuss it? To fill these moments with empty talk?" she demanded in annoyance.
Malcolm laughed softly, "Come then. I've had about enough of contemplating."
Hawke rolled her eyes, "You don't say."
"Come now, we'll slip into the dormitories. There is enough light to see the paintings."
"Paintings?" she asked in surprise. "You mean that Gustavo mage guy you kept muttering about?"
"That's the one," Malcolm smiled.
"You mean he painted the dormitories where sisters go to sleep? A mage?"
"Yes," he said and led her through a wide stone corridor and made a door spring open.
They swayed through the sleeping bodies and Hawke was more scrutinizing of them than the walls she was supposed to look at.
"Don't look at her face," Malcolm said firmly. "If you do you'll see the troubled dreams she suffers. I want you to look at the wall."
Hawke looked at the paintings on the wall and narrowed her eyes. She gazed upon the elegant rendering of Andraste in deep meditation in a garden. The flattened figure resembled very much the familiar, harsher style of Ferelden painting, yet the face was softened with genuine and touching emotion. It seemed a kindness infused in her, condemned to be betrayed by one of her own, no other than her husband, Maferath. Her Disciples looked on her with the same powerful emotion. Even the Tevinter soldier, in his heavy platemail, was painted with full might and feeling, who was reaching out for her to take her into their custody.
She was tunnelled, transfixed, to say the least, by this seeming innocence that infused every figure, this undeniable kindness and purity. The painter did his part thoroughly in highlighting this, apart from the terrible tragedy that was actually happening in the picture.
Malcolm walked away with her into another room which depicted Andraste before she had been taken by the Tevinters. She was praying to the Maker for strength. Again, she was reminded of the Ferelden paintings of her, yet there shone again the Antivan warmth, the unmistakable Antivan love of the humanity of all included. Even for the elves, which were there in the painting, sleeping peacefully by Andraste's side with Shartan as their leader.
Andraste apparently meant "in the name of victory". Present Hawke in the Fade, reliving the memory of the younger Hawke reliving Malcolm's memory… remembered what Shartan wrote in his book as she read it to Fenris. "Let us, therefore, go against the Tevinters, trusting boldly to good fortune. Let us show them that they are hares and foxes trying to rule over dogs and wolves." Apparently, the ancient elves had an act of divination of sorts, in which they let a hare go loose and whichever direction it went, it predicted the way of the future, good or bad. Shartan let the hare go loose and it ran on what they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude of his people and Andraste's shouted with joy and Shartan, raising his hand towards Andraste, said : "I thank you, Andraste, and call upon you as equal being to being from the same blood and soul, … I beg you for victory and preservation of liberty."
They went from room to room, traveling backwards and forwards through the life of Andraste. The 13 nights of one-tear shedding of Andraste in her despair for the fate of her fellow slaves and her husband, Maferath, gathering the tears in a vial. The first time she had her dream in which the Maker showed Himself to her. The time she sang and the Maker, enchanted by her voice, invited her at His side, but she instead encouraged Him to return to humanity and forgive them, compelling her fellow Alamarri and the elven slaves to fight against the magisters of the Imperium. One painting depicted her in the centre, gripped from each side in a very dark and creepy way by two positively hideous-looking magisters, and she, in turn, looking austere and peaceful, accepting of her fate.
They came by the painting that depicted Archon Hessarian putting the sword through Andraste's heart as he saw the errors of his ways and felt mercy at the sight of her anguish in her immolation, being burned at the stake. The sword was now a symbol of mercy in Andrastian lore and the Archon was the first to be converted to following the Chant of Light. Of course, a lot of people thought that Archon's repentance was just a cunning move to ensure his stay on the throne in the image of a wise, enlightening being driven by divine mercy. But then again there were a lot of wild tales, especially the one about Andraste being a very powerful mage whose intentions were more political than idealistic. And even if she was one… it didn't make a difference. She wasn't accusing magic, but magisters and people misinterpreted her entirely.
Although what transfixed Hawke was her anguish while being burned at the stake. How thoughtful in their distress were Hesarrian and Andraste's Disciples, Shartan tormented by despair. One tale suspected he was actually her lover and that's partly the reason why Maferath found it easier to betray her to the Imperium.
Hawke felt a stronger connection now with the tale and even with the quiet incandescent splendour of this Antivan painter who graced those walls. When they reached their last painting, they travelled through the whirls of the Fade and they were shoved back into reality. Her Father went by the desk and started to write something quickly.
Hawke shivered as she felt the physical world again, in that dark room in the abandoned house, and pressed, "What did he try to do through these paintings? Subtly bequeath to his brethren? Magnificient, grand pictures to put them in mind with Andraste's suffering?
Malcom wrote several lines before he resumed.
"The painter never scorned to delight our eyes, to fill your vision with all the colours the Maker had bestowed upon our eyes, for you are given two eyes, pup, and not to be…. Not to be shut up in the dark. You understand?"
She reflected for a long time. To know these things theoretically was one thing, but to have passed through the hushed and sleeping rooms of the Chantry, to have seen her Father's principles there, emblazoned by that painter, a mage himself – this was something else. Even if it was just the Fade.
"It is a glorious time, this," Malcolm said softly while still writing. "Even in all this tragedy that's coming upon us. That which was good among the ancients is now going to be rediscovered and given a new form. Things will change, for worse at first, but for the better in time. What Andraste did long ago seems to have been undone, but it is not late yet for another to come and make peace."
Hawke scowled at his words, and he looked up at her and gave her a warm smile, "You ask me if Andraste is a saint, our Saviour? I say, pup, that she can be, for she never taught anything herself but love, and so did her Disciples afterwards, Hesarrian taught us mercy, whether they know it or not, have led us to believe…"
She waited on him to finish his sentence, but he kept writing and contemplating himself. The heavy candelabra behind him, with its ten thick melting candles, lit her Father's face with that passion of his to know the truth but be cautious in finding it. He spent years writing, questioning, laughing and making jokes all the while and for a good part of it… being much too prudent for Hawke's taste.
"If Andraste is our Saviour," he continued, returning to his point, returning them both to his lesson, "then what a beautiful miracle it is, this Andrastian mystery – ." His eyes fell into deep realization. "That a poor, forsaken slave convinced nations to rise up and fight against a whole and vast, dangerous empire and she actually took the whole south of it. She convinced a Deity to join her fight. Or simply watch, I don't quite know, myself."
He looked up and scowled, "Only mark forever the lies they tell in Her name and His and the deeds they do."
Hawke sat in silence and almost burst into tears. Malcolm watch her quietly, respecting her perhaps, or only collecting his thoughts. Then he dipped his pen again and wrote for a long time.
"I set out to show you things and it's never as I plan," her Father finally said. "I wanted you tonight to see the dangers of going to deep into the Fade, how we can travel to other places and that this slipping in and out so easily is a deception of which we must beware, for the Fade is not the perfect spitting image of our reality. But look, how differently it has all gone."
Hawke didn't answer him.
"I wanted you," he said softly and smiled, "to be a little afraid."
"Father," Hawke said, wiping her nose with the back of her hand, "you can count on me to be properly frightened when the time comes. I'll have this power, I know it. I can feel it now. And for now, I think it's splendid, and because of it, this power, one dark thought falls over my heart."
"What is that thought?" he asked in the kindest way. "You know your angelic face is no more fit for sad tings than those faces painted by Gustavo. What's this shadow I see, your dark thought?"
"Take me back," she said firmly, "with your power, take me back to the Fade. We can travel through the whole of Thedas on which you set foot. Take me to the Imperium where you've been, that cruel land that has become a purgatory in my imagination. I want to understand - " she said but stopped, for she didn't know exactly what she wanted to understand. These lessons, this whole quest for understanding magic… it was too much for her young, brave, but bold and impatient little brain.
He was slow in giving her an answer. Morning was coming and they had to prepare themselves , wake the others up and leave the place where they were stationed, for their stay was too long and dangerous. They could see through the window the distant, already paling waters of the Amaranthine Ocean, twinkling under the moon and stars, beyond the familiar red forests of Ferelden scenery. Tiny lights flickered on the distant islands. The wind was mild and full of salt and freshness, and a particular deliciousness that comes only when one has lost all fear for the sea.
"Your request is brave, but reckless, pup," Malcolm said with a concerned, half-disapproving voice.
"Have you travelled so far before?"
"In miles, in actual physical space, and partly in the Fade yes, many times," he said. "But in another's quest for understanding? No, never so far."
And she never got to hold him for this request. It was too late, for he perished before she could remind him.
– Gap –
Back in her room, she sighed heavily and chose the Lamentation of Andraste as inspiration for a painting. She had quickly bought new tools and was eager to try them. It had been… how long? Years and years, since she painted. She made her Andraste as tender and vulnerable as she could conceivably do, but much with a strong emotional resistance in her figure, unyielding and staying true to her predicament. Pagan that she was, she didn't know who was supposed to be there! And so she created an immense and varied crowd of weeping humans and elves to lament the dead Andraste, and angels in the sky torn with anguish much like the spirits of compassion painted by that mage, Gustavo, whose work she had seen in the Fade.
She realized something. She was free. She could paint what she wanted. She could be what she wanted. The knight in shining armor she strove so much to be as a child. Nobody was going to be the wiser! But then again, she thought, perhaps that was not entirely true.
– Gap –
A few hours later, Fenris walked into her room with curious distress on his face. It was as if she'd never seen him before, so great was his impression of her, so soft and compelling his voice, saying "Am I disturbing?", so radiant his handsome face and his tired eyes. It was an agony and also an immeasurable consolation to be near him, that he would still come to her.
"Yes," Hawke said firmly. "Unless you wish to sit for me as I paint?"
Fenris frowned, only realizing now she was really using the easel.
"I…" he hesitated in a deep voice.
"It won't bite," she said with a warm smile. "Much."
"Very well," he said knightly. "How do you wish me to pose?"
"Hm, hmmm," she played childishly. "Would naked with a rose between your teeth be too much?"
"Far too much for the first attempt at painting me, certainly," Fenris said with a sensual grin.
"Oh, so it is bound to happen," Hawke said confidently. "Good to know."
"I seem to be full of suprises," Fenris said grumpily. "Sitting down would make up for a good start, I suspect."
"Very much so," she said happily, grabbing the cold colour palette.
He was irresistible to her, now that she put the brush on the canvas and effortlessly, as if not even needing to look at him, shaped every little detail of his tropically tan skin, his messy white hair, like that of a majestic little brat prince rising up in the morning from his slumber, and those green ravishing eyes masked with complete nonchalance, but still leaking piercing thoughts about her as he watched her paint. That usual regal figure about him in his Tevinter armor.
Ah, such weakness she had and how much she wanted to- But what could she do? What could I do? Claim him and accept his loyalty to me just so that he would rapidly find it overwhelming and run away from me? I would not survive that. I couldn't allow it.
– Gap –
NO. NO GAP. I remember now, shush! SHUSH.
Well, still some big gap, for what I remember was this:
Somehow, as I told him I was finishing up his portrait, I saw him staring, beastlike, from his chair, as if some ravener had come into him and banished all his civilized faculties and left him, thus, hungry, with glazed eyes and a ferocious grin finding its myriad little shapes over the silky margin of his lips.
Then, Fenris grabbing me by the arm and leaning lower with his dark eyes to steal a kiss away from me again as I was sitting on my chair in front of the canvas. He was impressed with my work of him. He wanted to lift me in both hand, cluthing my arms ever so gently, tucking his face against my neck. And I was about to subdue myself to his demanding wish for us to be close, for my weakness grew stronger and so did my lack of reason, as I spent so many a minutes deeply immersed into depicting him in all his glory. Until a bang came upon the floor.
A figure burst with haste into the room.
Not for a single second did I not know him. He was unchanged, just as I was unchanged, and he had not paid attention to the fashion of these times, any more than he had paid attention to the commoner fashion of times in Ferelden.
He looked dreadful, in fact in a ragged leather jerkin and leggings with holes in them and his boots were tied with rope. His hair was dirty and tangled, but his face wore an amazingly pleasant expression, and when he saw me he came at once to me and embraced me.
"You're really here," he said in a low voice, as though we had to whisper under my own roof. He still had our harsh Ferelden accent. "I heard of it but I didn't want to believe it. Oh, I'm so glad to see you. I'm so glad you're still…"
"Alive? … And well?" I said in amusement. "No I wouldn't really stick a hand in the flame for the latter."
"Oh, you put it far better than I could," he answered, sickly panting to no end. "But let me say it again, I'm so happy to see you, happy to hear your voice."
"Danny, always the astonished one," I said mockingly, moving him gently away towards the light of the candles. I laughed softly, "You look like a tramp."
"And you look like a majestic queen," Daniel said in amazement, taking a step backward to catch a better glimpse of me. "Finally got to be the knight in shining, well, dark armor."
"Not quite, lest for the appearance of it," I said in self-mockery.
I almost forgot Fenris was there watching. I sensed a sudden and violent jealousy in him. But nothing changed in his face. Don't trust him. That's what his soul said to me. And I knew somewhere deep in his mind he wished that Daniel didn't interrupt our little moment, that he would else just leave now, and we could have the shadowy bed, with its concealing velvet curtains, to ourselves. There was something stubborn in him, something directed entirely towards me. Perhaps constant concern? And how it tempted me, how it drew from me the most complete devotion.
But I had to get back to my new visitor. No, first, introductions were in order.
"Oh, where are my manners?" I said innocently, scratching my head. "Fenris – Daniel, Daniel – Fenris. Danny and I lived not far away from each other in Lothering. I trained with his brother and Carver-"
"While I had to sit and suffer every little annoying remark of your Father whenever I didn't get a spell right, Maker rest his soul," Daniel said in amusement, but finished in honest grief.
I saw a sudden lift to Fenris's eyebrows, knowing now with Daniel's curiously rapid declaration, that he was a mage.
"Forgive me, I have to sit down," Daniel said sickly and coughed. "I'm not in my best shape."
"So something is up with you," I said in anger. "I knew I had to come sooner."
"There was no need," he said honestly. "But I thank you that you did. I really wished I could see your face again before I-"
"Before you what?" I asked in terror, being almost certain of his next words.
"Before I die," he confessed humbly while looking down and panting.
"How did you find me?" I deflected, because I needed the truth to sink in.
He smiled. "There are not enough of your red X's in Antiva that you left for me to find you."
I lashed out, I couldn't bare it. I went by the bed and grabbed him by the collar. "If I hadn't run into you in Perivantium, would you even care to find me before you did as you so claim, die? Would you have told me in your next letter anything about it? Or did I have to hear it from your mother or from no one?" I shouted desperately.
"Mother is no more," he said bitterly. "She's with Father and Brother now."
I spat on the ground. "And you wouldn't have the courtesy to let me know when you joined them too?"
"Little Hawke, always so impulsive and driven," he said warmly, shaking his head.
"I can't even look at you right now," I said viciously and turned my back.
Fenris was watching us in complete confusion, so I pressed to explain, "We got separated during the Blight. His father died during the war and his brother disappeared or perished for all we know, a few years before that. It was only him and his mother, and I couldn't manage to keep them close with us."
"It wasn't your fault," Daniel said from behind in-between coughing. "I was stubborn not to listen to you."
"Great," I said in annoyance. "For once, you don't blame me for something. Good that you're trying to make amends on your deathbed."
"I am, in fact," he said. "Not so much as to really succeed though, for your anger with me might get in the way."
"You don't say," I hissed bitterly and crossed my arms.
But I couldn't fool myself, I was in pain masked by blind anger. That I finally saw him again, my friend, and he would just soon come to an end. His letter to me was very vague in this, but for all his style of deflecting, I knew it all too well. That's the reason I came to Antiva, first of all. I knew something was about.
And now I wished I hadn't known. I did wish to know it, but I could scarcely bring himself to accept the truth. What happened to Danny, to his family, to me in all the years back in Lothering, followed then by my journey to Kirkwall, it was all part and parcel of my life now.
There is nothing to do but cross the Bridge of Sighs in my life, the long dark bridge spanning what seemed like centuries of my tortured existence which connected me to this very moment. That my time in this passage I will not bring myself to remember any longer – it was dead and gone. And now he would be too.
I wish I had escaped this fate – of people making a tradition of dying on me every few years. I wished that Daniel had escaped what happened to him, everything that happened to him. It was plain now though, that I had survived our separation with far greater insight and strength than he survived it. But then he was already maybe even minutes away from dying at my feet, so old and wise he seemed though we were the same age, and I simply seemed like a child.
"What's happening to you? How much time," I almost whispered with grief.
"Soon enough," he said sickly. "Talk to me now before I lose consciousness, before I forget who you are."
"No," I said pleadingly. "Please tell me what's going on. Maybe I can help."
"You can't help everyone all the time, Hilde," Daniel said with a bitter-sweet smile. "You simply can't."
"I can," I said desperately. "Give me all of your poison, I could scream at the world. Give me all your venom, give me all your hopeless hearts and make me ill!" I screamed, not controlling myself anymore, succumbing to a hysterical crisis.
"Cry all you want, my friend, but who's going to save you?" Daniel said calmly.
"I don't want to be saved, I don't care. I could be damned for all I care, if it means others can live," I screamed furiously.
I saw Fenris's look of terror on his face as I screamed those words. Maybe I was indeed, as he said, the queen of the damned. I desperately wanted to ensure the continuity of the ones that were around me, yet they kept dying. Wasn't that reason enough to push him away? Would it not for all this venom in the world that lingered around me? He would die too just being in my presence. I was such a fool. So terribly greedy. I was no saint.
"Give me liquor," Daniel said. "I wish to taste the alcohol one more time."
"That's the great amend you're making? Getting drunk?" I screamed and went by the table to grab a bottle of brandy. He had meantime sat up on the bed, staring straight at the bottle as it hung from my hand. He reached out for it, and took it and drank it thirstily.
"Take a good look at me," I demanded angrily.
"It's too dark in here, idiot," he said. "How can I take a good look at anything? Hmmm, but this is good. Thank you, whoever you are."
He was starting to lose it. I was starting to lose it too.
"Take a good look at me," I growled and grabbed him by the collar.
Suddenly he paused with the bottle just beneath his lips. It was a strange thing, the way in which he hesitated. It was as if he were in Lothering again, and he'd just sensed a Templar coming up on him, or some other lethal beast. He froze, as it were, with the bottle in hand, and only his eyes moved as his eyes looked up at me.
"Hildegaard," he whispered.
"Yes, I'm alive," I said gently. "They didn't kill me. I got to Kirkwall and I'm safe. Both mother and Carver are safe."
"But not …" he whispered.
I sighed and shook my head, "No."
His eyes were sorrowful. Indeed, a grand serenity settled over him. He was far too drunk for his reason to revolt or for cheap surprise to torment him. On the contrary, the truth stole in and over him in a wave, subduing him, and he understood of all its ramifications again, as his mind came back. That I had not suffered, that I was rich, I was well.
"Hildegaard," he whispered again, but there was no change in his face. There was only sedate wonder. He sat still, both hands on the bottle which he had lowered to his lap, his huge shoulders very straight, and his flowing black hair as long as I'd ever seen it, melting into the fur of his cloak.
"I'm here," I said bitterly, taking him by the shoulders. "I'm here." I hugged him tightly, not knowing exactly what else to do and pushing back the tears.
"Look at me," he demanded sickly as I kept his balance. He looked at me with pale, suffering eyes, I could see that he was dying. I understood suddenly that he was indeed diseased from within and would soon truly die. I felt such terror, looking at him, such a terror for my whole world and all my friends, but more him than anyone else at the moment. It was just a tiresome, common and inevitable disease. "You can't do anything for me. Not even healing will work. I know you will try," he coughed heavily, "Don't. As much as you are tempted."
"I am indeed much tempted, I've been training again," I said pleadingly.
"You have?" he asked in utter amazement. He gave out a hoarse, painful and sickly laugh. "You? Oh, I'm so happy that I didn't die before I knew such wonder coming from you. Oh… my darling little Hawke, covered in mud and full of scars, crippled to no end every day by the sword and you kept going and going. And you left the magic behind," he coughed again hoarsely, "and now you tell me you've taken it up again."
"Well, I'm full of wonders," I said angrily.
He smiled. "Well, your Father was a wise man. He always believed you would find it in your heart to accept what you were. So he kept telling me and making me promise I won't whisper it to you."
"I haven't accepted anything," I said angrily and spat on the ground. "That's what magic is to me."
He laughed again, "Oh my, such familiar rudeness. Much like Andrei."
I ignored him, "Please, let me try to heal you."
"You will not," he commanded bitterly. "But I have something to ask of you."
"What is it?" I asked in fear.
"You must promise you will grant me this last wish, after I give you something that was supposed to go to you long ago," he said calmly in-between panting. His face was already sweating with illness, his eyes were fading off colour. No…
He reached out for his rugged coat, but looked at me firmly, "Promise."
I shook my head rapidly. "I- I can't promise. I know what you want of me."
He faintly tried to grab me by the arm, but barely could. He was so ghostly sick. "Please."
I pressed my eyes shut, the whispered bitterly, "Fine."
He got out a locket with a red rune inside. "This was your Father's. He asked me to give it you, when you-"
"Thank you," I said in amazement. Oh, what a marvel, that my Father had brought it back with him, all the way from the scene of such loss, a long time ago. And yet why not? Why not would such a man as he have done such a thing? And give it to Danny to give to me.
I feared for it, this fragile peace of steel and this glistering lacquered red rune, meant to shine all the time. I hadn't seen it for a very long time.
But is there anyone who needs now to ask me what this locket-rune meant to me? Is there anyone who needs now to know why, when I saw the Pheonix symbol on it – I saw the face of my Father in it, as if from beyond the Veil, telling me I'm not alone in this, that he did not want to leave me. That I would be fine, either way. That he did not resent me for how we left things.
"Do it," Daniel said bitterly. "I want you to do it."
"I can't," I shouted. "You can't ask this of me. I won't."
"Do you have no sense of honour, Hawke?" he asked firmly. "What happened to live, serve, protect and die? In victory – peace and in death – freedom?"
"That's a mere platitude when you're standing right in front of me!" I shouted angrily.
"Allow me to do it," Fenris intervened knightly with a lash of concern and sorrow directed at me. I thanked him in my mind for his compassion, but I couldn't allow him to do it for me.
Daniel snorted. "Hush! This elf has more sense of honour than you, Hawke! You're a coward!"
"I am not!" I screamed. "I- " I growled. "I'll do it. So help me I'll do it. I'm sorry."
"Do it, now!" he screamed. "Now, I beg you." He reached out with his hands around my neck. I reached for my dagger. "No, Hawke. With your own sword." I sighed and took my sword, and just when I thought I would change my mind at the last moment, I plunged it deeply through his heart. The last glimpse of his eyes I saw, a look of honest, friendly gratitude.
I swallowed heavily as he died, I held him into my arms and closed his eyes as he perished. Then I took my sword out, pressed my eyes shut and threw it at the wall, blood smearing all across from it.
Fuck. Fuck… Fucking bitch.
And just when I was about to fall onto my knees in tears, I swallowed all of it and dispatched of his body in the middle of the night, the patron kept distracted by Fenris.
Then Fenris helped me carry his body to the nearby shore and I set him on the sea on a boat I stole from the harbour nearby. I set it on fire with my hands and let it float away on the water, as it was the Ferelden custom.
Watching him turn to dust in the distance, Fenris felt clumsy at my petrified state and probably did not know what much to say or do. I appreciated him for not trying to comfort me in any way. It was a warrior's sense of honour to stay silent for the fallen. Only the living knew victory. For the dead, out of respect, you would remain quiet and pray in your mind, however childishly, that they would know peace.
I could not shed a single tear.
– Gap –
Fenris knew of my struggle, he knew the hold which Ferelden had upon me, and he knew of the crucial importance of all this to me. He understood better than anyone I've ever known that each being wars with his own angels and demons, each being succumbs to an essential set of values, a theme, as it were, which is inseparable from living a proper life.
For us, life was the warrior life. But it was in every sense life, and sensuous life too. And fleshy, and… joyful. I could not escape it from the compulsions and obsessions I'd felt as when I was younger. On the contrary, they were now magnified – the demons of my past.
No MATTER how long we exist, we have our memories— points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems and some mere sacks of filth I always strive to forget. For all the souls I could not save. For all the souls that made it so only apparently, as if by some cruel predisposition of destiny, that they did not let me save them.
Within the day after what happened, I knew I had set the tone for my approach to the world around me yet again. I should wallow in luscious beauty of Antivan painting and music and architecture, yes, but I would do it with the fervor of a Ferelden saint. I would turn all sensuous experiences to goodness and purity. I would learn, I would increase understanding, I would increase in compassion for the people around me, and I would never cease to put a pressure upon my soul to be that which I believed was good.
Good was above all kind; it was to be gentle. It was to waste nothing. It was to paint, to read, to study, to listen, to love, even to pray, though to whom I prayed I wasn't sure, and it was to take very opportunity to be generous to those people whom I did not kill.
As for those I killed, I would have probably struggled to dispatch them mercifully, that I would become the absolute mistress of mercy, but such fantasy was way over my head.
But regardless, I swallowed my grief and became cheerful again, for everyone else's sake, all the while thinking of the world - and now, you singular druggist-souls, you have made of death a drop of poison, unpleasant to taste, which makes the whole of life hideous.
And that's when the scene with the fountain came. When he forced me to rest upon his chest, when he said that he didn't see my magic as curse, when he told me he would teach me whatever he had to teach, for it was high time he repaid me for everything I had given him.
But the story is not over… I still couldn't remember how I ended up in the brothel. I had to press harder. I had to concentrate.
– To be continued –
– (duh) –