5 minutes before Varric and Fenris came back
It was long after midnight and the stars were aligning gracefully around the moon into the seeming constellation of general panic. The air was full of the busy silence of the night, which was created by hundreds of small furry things treading very carefully in the hope of finding dinner while avoiding being the main course at The Hanged Man.
Something like a hot and cold rush of air stormed into the place. The door opened with the sound of a howling wind, blowing in lonesome off the street. The windblown silence caught a distinct melody of peril. All that was missing was an opening rattle of percussion echoing the menacing warning of a venomous snake and an eerie twang of a jaw harp to really set the scene. You could practically hear some imaginary tumbleweed blowing ominously across Lowtown and into the tavern, while rival swordsmen stared each other down under the blazing sun. Only that it was night and there was only one swordsman, and it was a woman, and she was dressed in finery that while still scruffy did not really raise an urgency to innocently back away or look down and continue drinking, and only those few unfortunate souls that knew her felt the alarm—hold tight on your weapon, something terrible is about to happen.
And there was another unfortunate soul that while not entirely innocent in the larger scheme of things, did not exactly at the moment deserved that hot and cold glance of the silent redhead while the universe terribly miscalculated his position into her face as he bumped into her. It was the kind of glance that automatically triggers your life to flash before your eyes, only that his eyes were busy staring down an alternate life where something else would flash him. Fortunately for him, something did flash him, shovingly, and the man literally flew in mid-air and landed behind the bar and there was the distinct metallic sound of pots and mugs clanking against the skull and hitting the floor, whichever one that was.
There was general shocked silence, and then the quick-thinking audience raised their pints and went vigorously, "Hawke!". It was more of a powerful disguised salute of Please don't kill us rather than a praise of entertainment.
Completely ignoring this, and pacing towards the table where her companions were sitting, Hawke grabbed Isabela's pint and urgently finished it. There came a scowl of protest, but there was a mutual agreement in the air that they would not shoot the first sound.
Conveniently, Hawke fired the first few vibrations that somewhat passed for speech, in sounds and tones that convincingly passed for incessant growling.
"Misbegotten unchin-snouted lily-livered Wart-neckéd fen-sucked popinjay."
There was general confusion and agreement that this was not directed to them and also that this was an incoherent congregation of coherent-sounding words. There flashed another little question if Hawke was attempting to re-enact Fenris's pacing and swearing with a little translation that was not really very helpful.
"Coffee?" a low innocent sound came from Isabela.
Hawke gave her a look. "Why thou leathern-jerkin, crystal-button, knot-pated, agatering, puke-stocking, caddis-garter, smooth-tongue, Rivaini pouch!"
"Now wait a second, I am not puke-stocking!" Isabela protested nervously. And then she not so nervously added, "Watch your language, Ferelden bitch."
Hawke gave her the same look. "Those were carefully chosen words, in fact."
"Used with great undisguised anger," Isabela said. "Do you have something in particular you need to get off your chest, Hawke?"
She took the untouched Jäger and commenced to clear her throat and drain her wit. Then she said very calmly, "Methink'st thou art a general offence to humanity and every man should beat thee."
"Methink'st?" Isabela asked with a snort.
"Quite so," Hawke said.
"Why are you speaking in old common Ferelden?" came another innocent low question from Anders.
"For I can," Hawke answered nonchalantly. Then came another three or four good gulps of old common poison.
"How about you tone down the booze, if you can't the swears," Anders suggested innocently.
"I refuse," Hawke replied politely.
She was comparatively close to the child born out from a burley-brained drunken indecent miscreant and an esteemed, reasonable and decent aristocrat, and the child was infected with a grave case of smartassery twenty-three years later.
"Er… Maybe a bit of coffee would help," Anders faintly suggested to Isabela.
"And a quick attitude check for little Miss High and Condescending," Isabela said grumpily.
"How now, wool-sack, what mutter you?" Hawke said, taking a nonchalant stip.
"That's it," Isabela snapped and got up. Anders caught her by the arm and shook his head frantically.
Hawke didn't wince at all, instead she laughed a bit under her breath and grinned ever so elusively. "Why now, get thee to a nunnery, will you?"
"Hawke, how about we go outside, yes?" Anders proposed immediately. He got up from the bench and went behind her. "Hawke?"
But she kept staring through Isabela and said, "You dear, better check your attitude. I am most serious now. You know what I speak of and you also know that everything I've said about you is true."
Isabela now grinned and crossed her arms. "Oh, whatever do you mean."
Hawke waved this away and said, "My point exactly. You are as a candle, the better burnt out."
"Outside, Hawke?" Anders pleaded.
He grabbed her by the elbow and tried to drag her with him. She snapped away and caught him by the collar of his robe, "And you. Thou fishified scale-sided vassal."
"Fishif—what—"
"You breathe falsehood and you lie," Hawke said firmly.
"What do I—"
She ignored him and went on, shaking him a bit, "Hence, horrible villain, or I'll spurn thine eyes like balls before me! I'll unhair thy head and whip you with wire, and stew thee in brine, and leave you smarting in lingering pickle!"
Several muscles in his throat jumped in terror and his eyes went blank. "Aveline!" he shouted, either for a savior or for a translator.
"Calm thy tits, you barnacle," Hawke said and calmly put him down. What a paradox, being hot-headed and then just as quickly appear perfectly calm and reasonable and make her interlocutor feel like a fool. And somewhat a feather-light little ant who was very close to being crushed. Mercy, yes, how very reasonable of her.
A few minutes later
"Where is she?"
Varric was close to slipping under that thin line people with a very persuasive aura of sanity tripped over just before they blow a gasket. That one vein on his forehead growing into a living, throbbing bas-relief belonged to that series of legends no one believed but served as a nice mythical prototype to bullshit about once they were out of the ritual amiable wild exaggerations.
Despite that there was a lot to exaggerate about in Kirkwall, The Hanged Man suffered from the curse of what you could however oxymoronically call "calm mass hysteria". A mass hysteria that was too lazy and too taken with booze, and likewise much too tremendously flummoxed by general reality for their mind to judge when danger was knocking on the door or when it directly bashed it down. They simply took record of it, from a far far away land, the way the distance from here to the bar seemed at arm's length but from here to the bathroom it seemed this long, precarious, wild path where walls just seemed to bump into you everywhere you turn.
No, a humongous poisonous semi-reptilian could have walked into the tavern and no one would even bat an eye. However, a week later, someone would out of the blue come up with a wild story of how they saw a green semi-reptilian with three eyes, absent nose and throw in a bejewelled horn or two to really catch his audience's attention, but no one would believe him, much like he would not believe himself, unbeknownst that he was unintentionally telling the truth.
And that was the beauty and mystery of the brain—an organ that much like the King in chess, was the most important piece in the set that also happened to be the most neglected in its usage until the very last moment when it was about to be bucked—its power always either under- or overestimated exactly in the wrong moment, which made for a nice paradox regarding who was at fault, the man or the brain. They both however appeared to fancy their right in choosing to exist separately from each other, as Hawke said, and this reality lied at the heart of all the world's problems – incapability of simply estimating.
And tales were plenty, and it was not only Varric who liked to befrill and catastrophize every detail. However, the legend of the quadruple V motif (Varric's Vicious Vein from The Void) had only once come true in the Deep Roads upon his brother's betrayal, and no one wished, and no one dared to mention it ever again after that.
Currently that vein on his forehead was shyly coming out and catching wings from its carefully guarded cocoon and again, this remained just as carefully unnoticed to the general sloshed and tanked-up audience. Corff however was not drunk, and he was also not very resistant and doughty like his father Coriff when it came to soul-shuddering episodes of thorough interrogation. He lacked that one i for indomitable.
"Where is she," Varric's voice came to slaughter Corff's baby-soft skin and raise all the baby-soft hairs on his relatively manly body.
"I don't know," Corff drawled nervously, taking one step too many away from the bar.
To which Varric leaned over the bar with impossibly sharp semi-reptilian eyes and said, "You know I know you know where she went."
"I— he quickly lost thought —what?"
"Hawke. Where. Now."
Corff's early on-set declining cardiovascular system, courtesy of his late mother's poor genetics, came at a halt and the forty-three muscles of his face practically hid behind his skull, which was probably why his skin turned the same kind of impossibly gleaming white of Fenris's hair.
"Sherentdaroomanseddowakerapinalfaara."
Well, if the tongue was also made out of bone these were the clacking sounds it would make as it hit teeth in—for want of a better word— an attempt to speak.
"Come again?" Varric demanded very calmly.
Corff couldn't possibly hate his father now more than ever for proceeding early to go dead drunk and off to happy dreamland. He was the sturdy gatekeeper, guard, manager, tax doer, advertiser, economical prophet and now and then the monosyllabic but effective spokesman when faced with the occasional nutjob. And what would be worse? A fist from Varric or a fist from Father dearest? It could have been a close tie.
He caught his throat and cleared it, more to outrun Varric from flinging a hand to grab it first and choke the life out of him, and repeated, "She rented a room—Varric's eyes tightened, so he blocked for a second—an-an-andssaid totototooth—he cleared his throat again optimistically—wake'er upupupppuh in hah-hah-half anorah—hahaha-HOUR."
The Maker had to exist. There was no amount of hazardous mysteriously intelligent dark and white matter that could have possibly cared to put a stop to Varric's unnerving presentation of calmly verbalized bestial urges. Of course his nervous system had already been playfully suffocated by the dark matter in his brain, and his skin was being drained by white, as far as his anatomy went back slowly away from the bar.
Varric took his hands away from the bar and walked away without a word. Corff finally caught his breath and decided that if he survived this night, first thing tomorrow he would tell Norah that he had been in love with her for three silent cowardly secretive years. And he would leave out the cowardly part out because bitches like men of mystery, not men from Chickenshit Anonymous, as he overheard Varric explain once.
He detected that the poor fellow was telling the truth, and since the story matched the general situation of things, he decided halfway up the stairs to turn around and have a calm, calm drink. However his foot remained on that same step, unlike his eyebrows which went dangerously oblique and the vein on his forehead went relatively zigzag when he saw Fenris come out of his room with a sealed bottle of unknown Ferelden booze.
Elf, his eyes said, prepare to die.
Elf, Fenris assumed, go fetch me a drink.
He turned around and fetched another bottle from the grand bowl of ice and silently gave it to him. Varric took it and his eyes silently followed him go down the stairs and about to take a seat at their old empty table. He inhaled calm happy thoughts and went down the stairs behind him, then viciously smashed those happy thoughts to the more dormant too-old-for-this-shit mental area.
"Elf if you open that bottle I swear I'm gonna beat you in the head with it," Varric thus said with the Index Arrow-Finger of Perfect Shots pointed at the bull's-eye that made Fenris's head.
"Is it too much to ask that I walk home tonight unmolested?" Fenris asked tiredly.
He opened the bottle, took one sip and placed it between his thighs again. He noticed Fenris's non-purple eye flinching every few seconds.
"Booze won't help with the pain, highness," Varric said fatherly, taking a seat beside him. "Not at this point anyhow."
Fenris appeared very tense. He pressed his lips and muttered without looking at him, "Not with the pain you're thinking, no."
"What, well neither with the eye nor with the soul," Varric said philosophically.
"I suggest you cease with the concern and enjoy your night," Fenris said calmly. He flung his hand out and went on, "Go entertain your guests or …" he paused and curled a lip, "mingle, or whatever it is you do."
Varric opened his mouth to protest but Fenris turned his head to him and nodded amiably. "I am fine."
He couldn't really protest. Varric had been too busy to mingle and schmooze his guests and then too busy battling aneurisms for the thought to arrive in the sanctum of his mind and connect the dots—that even though it was clear the two had a serious argument somewhere before dessert, and it had to do with the other flabbergasting news hanging and sitting aroundin the mansion besides the dessert, both of them tried not to exchange any witty murderous words, Fenris blocked his anger and turned it into cold calmness solely for the purpose of not ruining Varric's day, Hawke didn't join their table solely not to accidentally trigger something that would ruin Varric's day, and … well, afterwards all that effort went shit-straight to the garbage; but after that terrible incident they still tried. Hawke made the reasonable call to sleep it off a bit, Fenris made the reasonable call of sittingit off a bit.
All in all, he would have to give them a medal tomorrow.
"Fair enough, I guess," Varric said. "But when I come back to the crazy's table, please join and for the love of my ancestors stop being so damn blue."
Fenris nodded silently and took his eyes away from him. Varric watched him for two more seconds before he left, two seconds in which he noticed that Fenris was not very urgent in drinking like before, but clutched to that bottle as if it was his only point of balance. And before he could give the act a romantic meaning of an elf holding on to a Ferelden object in an effort not to crumble down and break over his lost Ferelden maiden and his huge blunder, he remembered the unbruised eye twitching and tried with all his strong dwarven lungs not to blow up in little snorts—he thought of the wrong kind of blue.
In the time that followed, Fenris remained at the empty table, occasionally taking a few sips and staring down at the floor. He thought about what he said. The helping with problems and giving a few more in the process. Hawke was the kind to joke, but under many of those jokes lurked more often than not, an actual truth. She did mean almost about everything she said, and then thinking back, he decided he also meant everything he had said. He was a little bewildered by the fact that he kept waiting for the anger to come out again, some sort of negative feeling, an inconvenience, another protest, but he was completely absent of them. He didn't mind how she lashed out on him. Perhaps this was how she felt when he assaulted her in Antiva.
And then it dawned on him that in the same way that he used the argument of "You give me problems but I might also give you some" it worked for what she had said that one night in Antiva, that she was the only one who could bump horns with him and resist. And it was true, and it was also good, what she did, because it discarded his theory that he was no more than a monster behind an appearance of a reasonable knightly elf with a few fancy markings. They were just a pleasant pattern to draw the innocent eye and leave its guard down before the kill. That theory was more or less over now.
Well, a lot of his theories were over now, but even so, perhaps this time he was the one to make her see the truth. Perhaps with this he showed her acceptance. In a way, he knew all along that this was something Hawke had always needed, but taught herself not to wish it or waste her time seeking it. More times than not, there was none to be found, he was sure.
And what would she do when acceptance found her? He would have to see tomorrow. And he would also have to pay her a visit, drag her out, take her on a walk and apologize. For... something. He sighed—
He forgot what it was that he was sorry for, but he still felt guilty, and there were certainly some other details that he had overlooked, and that was not something his thorough analytic mind was used to, and this bothered him, and there was nothing to do now of course, so he resolved that he would remember the details after a good night's sleep.
Meanwhile, Hawke's mabari, Mojo, paid him a visit and stared at him in an elusive manner. He considered that it had, for a dog, a very offensive and knowing look.
There was an urban myth saying that some mabaris were not only very intelligent, but that some of them could talk. As in, growling words with the occasional excessive drool, perhaps. But it was still just a myth. It was always a friend of a friend who had heard it talk, and it was never anyone who had seen it. That was the tradition of words travelling from one naive mouth to the other, and believing was a term used very lightly in this place. People didn't really want to see anything, therefore believing stuff was really, very easy. You could see how clearly the world was flawed by this and how every other idiocy was tied to the core of it in strong knots, one by one, and then—splosh. Drunken philosophical Hawke was right yet again—an apocalypse was really not that unreasonable a demand.
And even so, the mabari in front of Fenris didn't look as if it could talk, but it did look as if it could swear.
Fenris gave it a cold look. "If you came here to judge me you can just leave."
Mojo immediately narrowed his eyes and commenced to the usual mabari snarl that the rest of the world understood as, "I don't like your tone, mister."
Fenris tightened his eyes too, unyieldingly, and commenced to the usual silence the rest of the world understood as, "—"
The staring match went on for several more seconds, then Mojo decided that this was pointless, and that also, his fellow cold-staring rival was not very bright insofar to understand that what it was demanding was a thorough belly rub. Two-legged beings were simply clueless. It walked away with a look that cut you dismissively.
Two-legged clueless Fenris sighed. Dog minds were simple, and also sharp. Dogs never spent time dividing experience into little bits and speculating about all the bits they had missed. The whole play field of the wide and wild world was neatly expressed to its rawest core as things : to eat, to mate with, to run away from and rocks; this freed the mind from stretching everything out of its proportions and getting overwhelmed with unnecessary thoughts. It gave the mind a cutting edge only to the things that really mattered.
The ordinary man however thought about all sorts of things around the clock on all sorts of levels with interruptions from dozens of all sorts of other thoughts. There were thoughts about to be said, which he was still learning and failing at half the time, and private thoughts, which he absolutely specialized in, and real thoughts, which were really not a very present experience at the moment, and thoughts about thoughts, like now, and a whole latitude of mysterious and inexplicable subconscious thoughts and—
…Oh, well now his right testicle paid a visit to winter-wonderland Ferelden, and it started to hurt in a whole new way, very different than the first way after it, well, they got kicked by the mighty boot of Hawke, and again, very unlike the way it… they had hurt after they got touched by the devil hand of Hawke, and well—
Will it— they— he—… all three ever get a bloody break.
An hour later
When Hawke came back, stumbling and smiling in the same kind of honest, crooked, zigzag manner, things started to attune to the original beat of appropriately crazy.
Someone suggested that they play a different game that did not unsystematically—someone made sure to carefully get away with the play of semantics—stole coin out of people's pockets and did not require a lot of thinking or bluffing, but did involve drinking as a reward disguised as punishment. So getting those three complicated actions out of the way and carefully not overlooking the one thing everybody wanted, needed, were looking for under the table, etcetera, someone came up with the fine solution of playing Never have I ever.
Never have I ever heard a more idiotic suggestion, Fenris thought, after he had thoroughly familiarized himself with the general rules and principles of the idiotic game. All one of them, as it turned out. The only reasonable thing about it was that it compelled one to drink, although his mind, as always, worked very fast in dismissing the positive side of things, and as always, within reason, because he didn't need to be a genius, or well, sober, to deduct that he won't be doing a lot of drinking within the game unless someone had an awful lot of experience with torture, running, mapping unknown territories in the mind, hunting, digging holes in the earth to sleep or counting up to five with very careful grace and precision before clawing off the aorta or letting go of the pulmonary arteries in the heart before it ran out of blood to pump when he shoved his gauntlet into people's chests.
And this game compelled you to be truthful, unlike Wicked Grace or Diamondback. But choosing not to drink even if you had done whatever was said by someone else was not really lying as much as it was withholding realities that were not anyone's damned business.
He thought all these things, trying not to overlook anything, and concluded this would be awfully terrible. Although he remained very stoic about it, especially after Varric gave him a wan smile that more or less said, "I feel ya, although I simply can't for the love of Bianca veto this off because of the very obvious and compelling argument thatI have to know stuff and this is like a sodding godsend right on a silver platter. And don't give me that look, you know that I have to know!"
And Fenris gave him a look that more or less said, "Festis tan ignud morev et vaccam futueve." Which meant more literally, "Die in flames" at first and more figuratively, "—and go fuck a cow" at the end. What Varric understood was the mere swearing generality of the look and silently nodded in agreement, although if he actually knew what he was agreeing to he might just innocently turn around and leave, and at last the rest of the world understood of the look was, as always, "—"
Hawke knew about the game and seemed to be content with playing it. Behind that innocent look of agreement however lay a very wicked grinning beast that knew what was in store, because in this game you got a chance to be an absolute bastard while playing it. You didn't win at it by the drinking the most, or even drinking the least; you won by constructing the most awkward and revealing social situation possible and she was already a champion at making people uncomfortable.
And the bottles were neatly aligned on the table, then drawn into a circle, then a rectangle and a hexagon, and then Varric slapped Hawke's hand away from them and gave the verbal signal that the game could begin that went, "Aye, ho—just fucking start already, I'm thirsty!"
The first to go was Hawke so that she would stop playing with the bottles, Varric suggested. She thought about it, carefully following the lazy moth flying around with her eyes, and then something appeared to clonk into place. She assumed a little smile, grabbed a bottle and said, "Never have I ever been in prison."
Anders, Isabela and surprisingly, Aveline drank away. Fenris thought about it. He was in a prison, but he had never been to prison, yet. He resolved not to drink at this time.
"You've been to prison, Captain?" Varric asked with a grin. "Don't tell me you drank because you practically run one."
"I was arrested for a day with Weasley actually," Aveline said. Everyone gave her a questioning look. She shrugged innocently. "Turns out the lake was private property." Some people gave her a saucy look and Hawke patted her congratulatorily on the back.
People gave her the same questioning look. Hawke shrugged in a little proud manner. "I used to lead a dangerous gang as a kid."
"Oh?" Aveline asked in an obvious tone of calm disbelief. "And did the other kids knew this?"
"Philosophically," Hawke answered. "As in they saw me beat the crap out of people and then there was general stoic agreement that there was nothing they could do about it, and more pragmatically they also agreed that it was rather useful to have a raving maniac rescue them from bullies, angry farmers, slavers, Chantry sisters, drunken ill-breeding pignuts, Templars… wait, I repeated myself."
"Philosophically, you are insane," Aveline said rather warmly.
"There is a thin line between genius and insanity," Hawke said elusively. "I resolved to erase that line."
"So in other words, you hallucinate being a genius?" Anders asked.
"No, I more or less hallucinate that I am an insane genius," Hawke said joyfully. "Which is truly much better than hallucinating that you are sane. That is one the more common delusions of most people."
Fenris and Varric started laughing. "Like attracts like," Varric said rather triumphantly.
"Good to know some people still manage not to go crazy here," Aveline said. This wasn't an unreasonable comment. After all, Aveline was Captain of the Guard, which meant she had to stay as sane and sharp as possible, or at least give everyone else this impression. Since she was involuntarily promoted to this position, the Kirkwall Guard was increasing in importance. And they were very instrumental in handling everything in fairness and with a lot of keenness and precision. And since Guards were people—and people with subconscious inferiority complexes as your ordinary man, and more often than not also unresolved Oedipal and castration complexes— who also happened to be very keen, at any wince or other given sign of weakness Aveline would have quickly fell into the snake pit, getting eaten alive by what would turn out to be tentacled monsters—again because of unresolved Oedipal complexes—with a hot grudge against commanding powerful castrating women that were increasingly annoying because of the simple fact that they had no real vices to use against them.
Hawke drew a smile and said, "What truly horrible lives they must lead."
Well, it wasn't far from the truth, but you could lead a horrible and rewarding life at the same time as long as you had nerves of steel and occasionally the coin to go on with scratching your butt nonchalantly as you walked into your office every morning at 6 A.M. sharp and prepared for the ritual shouting and face-palming.
Next went Anders. "Never have I eveeeer," he started, as if it was safe to start doing his vocalises even when he was calm, then looked at Hawke for a second and continued, "Done it in a dark alley."
Isabela and Aveline drank. This was dangerous. The Captain was loose with the truth in her current Ferelden-boozed state and to Varric's ears this was the sound of the soft flutter of official papers that instated him as the new owner of the Hanged Man in the following few days. And these were just thoughts to distract Fenris from staring at Hawke the whole time to see if she drank. She didn't. Although Anders raised an elusive eyebrow towards her and she grinned innocently and shrugged. What the hell was that—
"Never have I ever gave an Orlesian kiss," Isabela started all-smiling, and people were involuntarily shrugging and preparing to go for their bottles, "Downstairs on the Royal Gardens."
"Oh," some people quietly interjected.
Varric drank and eyebrows were raised. He shrugged with a confident air and said, "I don't kiss and tell."
"I could have sworn that you would say that," Fenris commented with a bored look. But behind that look hid a very secretive code between him and the dwarf that somewhat passed for, "Well now, good for you."
Next came Aveline. She began her instrumental officering belvedere and after several seconds began, "Never have I ever woken up drunk."
There was very rapid general drinking.
Then came Merrill's turn and she began pressing her lips in an effort to find something that could sound interesting. You could guess she would say something unexpected an in attempt to make it sound dirty and then terribly fail at it. She clutched at the bottle for a few more seconds and finally said, "Never have I ever fancied someone who was not the same race."
"By fancied you mean had sex with or—?" Isabela demanded.
"Fancied as in liked, er… liked-liked. Not necessarily…" Merrill drawled. "You understand."
"How is that not necessarily associated with it? How could that be absent from the—" Isabela protested vigorously.
"Like that time, or times, up to triple digits I suspect, when you got rej—" Hawke said.
"Of course, yes," Isabela cut her urgently. She drank and so did Hawke and Anders, and then Fenris froze and clutched at the bottle while battling thoughts of remaining silent or innocently excuse himself to fetch a drink from the bar. But he didn't have time anymore anyway, because Isabela asked Hawke and Anders, "Oh?"
"Well, what, do I have to talk about all of them?" Anders asked.
"Yeah, I'm with Anders on this," Hawke said all-grinningly.
"You fancied, highness, like as in, you have been capable of that, lest I should use the present tense?" Varric asked in mock surprise.
"Why yes I have been capable of that, highness," Hawke answered confidently.
Have been. What the hell did that mean? That she fancied some other non-human before Fenris or that she fancied him once and now this was no longer the case? And why was he even thinking about this now when thought wasn't much of an ally when connected to the brain, reason and the natural long-lost speed of it? He couldn't help noticing words, and that served as enough of an excuse to keep pondering on it. She could tell a lie by simply placing words together that formed a truth, while the other details remained obscure and unquestioned by the others, and Fenris was no stranger to this technical finesse in communication. He almost always told the truth, and while this was honourable and a bit of a compulsion, it also proved how great a wordsmith he was even if he wasn't fully aware of it.
He was snapped back into rational motion by Varric's charming voice which almost sang, "Never have I everrr…hm." He tapped the table with his index finger of fine precision. "Never have I ever spent an unreasonably big sum of money on something I didn't really need."
Hawke and Aveline drank and Isabela thought about it for a bit and drank too. Fenris clutched at the bottle, calculating and converting the price in his mind of those vertical-lined pants which he had worn only once and then were left in a sad forgotten dark corner of the closet, the cloak and the violet girdle for mocking Hawke and her diffidence to wearing purple which also laid in the dark corner of the closet keeping the pants some company, and the small carpet he bought from Antiva which went beside the table in his room. He conclusively drank away. Of course, he felt a great urge to purchase them on account of getting creative ideas, for want of a better word, all with his brain being filled with endorphins from what was happening and not happening back then, as he calmly rationalized, but he certainly didn't need them. The most he ever needed was water, food and his sword. And a lot of times he made do without even those.
"What, you mean the mansion?" Varric asked Hawke suddenly.
"No, that I sort of need, you know, on account of being illegal and more or less wanted dead or alive and everything," Hawke said grumpily. She shrugged. "I bought a journal with really thin vellum pages, which you could say was unnecessary."
"Yeah, I fell asleep halfway through reading the first sentence," Isabela commented innocently. "Something with vomit and orthodoxy and then something with unpardonable snakes, and then I just went snore."
"I write my sexual fantasies in code, if you must know," Hawke said nonchalantly.
"I hope," Isabela said. "If vomit and snakes were the literal deal then I really don't want to know what you do between the sheets."
"Which would be a blessing," Hawke added with a smile. She turned her head to Varric. "Not that it isn't obvious that you did, but what exactly did you spend a shit ton of coin on that you didn't need?"
"Those Antivan blue pajamas with a lion on the night shirt," Varric said.
"You mean the teddybear," Fenris said with a smirk. "And save your protests, I have a reliable witness," he said as he pointed at Hawke.
"You mean the awfully inebriated witness with a fondness for joyful mockery?" Varric asked nonchalantly. "Yeah, you can take my protest and shove it up your piehole."
"Don't you mean down your piehole?" Hawke asked.
"Well the pie is already down there so it's already on the way to the other end," Varric said in a serious tone.
"Ewww," people said.
"Well, there's also all this Ferelden booze you bought," Hawke quickly diverted.
"I needed them, highness," Varric said. Then he changed his mind. "That was my first impression at least. Now I regret it deeply."
"Well I always say that the poor stay—"
"Oh not this again!" Varric protested.
"What?" people asked.
Varric's eyes rolled very dangerously and he tapped his thighs in outrage. "Hawke's Boot theory of the unfair consistency of economic inequality and demise among the social classes in the ruthless capitalist system."
"Boot theory?" Fenris asked. People silently reasoned that this was the only sound that caught attention as well as passed for word.
"N—" Varric tried.
"The Generalized Boot Discrepancy—" Hawke stared energetically, raising hands and flinging explanatory fingers, "Regards the awfully sad reality that the poor stay or become poorer while the rich stay or become even richer."
"The end—" Varric tried again urgently.
"And the reason for it," Hawke stated while vigorously ignoring him, "Is that the rich afford to spend less."
"But why the Boot theory?" Fenris demanded.
And with that Varric rolled his eyes again at an unhealthy pace of motion. Of course they would have to debate this shit. The best way to describe what Varric felt was this—you are at a meeting. Let's say it's a Merchants Guild meeting. You'd like to get away early, all while making a great effort to even show up in time or at all. So would everyone else for that matter, because let's face it, they always go the same hippity-crappy way with ruthless dwarves complaining about taxes and inflation and interest and all those other official terms that people tossed like a fat greasy organ out of an ogre to one another, so practically not knowing one ounce of what they really meant, but acting upon the urge to speak because words were power and time was money. So there really isn't very much to discuss; same old shit as before—business is steady, and that's just a merchant code word for on that thin line between kind of okay and terribly fucked. And just as everyone else is preparing to stand up, a voice rises from a distant chair, "If I can raise a minor matter, Chairman—". And with that, you get this horrible metallic feeling in your stomach and you know, now, that the evening will go on for twice as long with much referring back to the minutes of earlier just as crappy meetings and that you would much rather get your skull opened and needled in by a mad scientist and it would still feel less intrusive, abhorrent and with a less bad aftermath than this shit. The man who had just said that, and is now sitting there with a smug smile of dedication to the committee, is as near what Fenris did as it made no bloody difference.
And with that, Hawke continued philosophically, "The boot stands for the little syllogism pertaining to the following logical series of events: A relatively middle class person, so basically a poor nut, earns about two sovereigns per month if he's lucky, plus allowances if you're like Aveline and you work for the city. But an affordable pair of boots, which are sort of okay for a season or two and then leak like hell when the cardboard gives out come in those kind of prices, one or two good sovereigns. But the good boots that last for years and years on end cost about seven to ten sovereigns. So a person who could afford this would have a pair of boots that would still be keeping his feet neat and dry in ten years' time, while the poor nut who can barely afford those cheap boots would spend about forty sovereigns in the same time and would still have wet feet."
Now Varric frantically deducted that the possible responses Fenris would give revolved around, "That seems reasonable, but—" or "Or you can be like me and not wear any boots", and both of them had the same dangerous potential of going on and on and on with debating something that he terribly dreaded and wished at least today not to hear, on account of always hearing it in the Merchants Guild, only that there this theory was considered a holy triumph of the system and a source of endless waterfalls of coin in their rapacious dwarven pockets.
"An interesting way to put it," Fenris said metaphysically, curling a finger over his jaw while the others supported his physical chin. Varric waited for the but, although it never came and since the illusory delay went on he did worse with not breathing than with actually hearing the metallic but. He watched the elf for several seconds, deciding that this was the time it took his inebriated brain to form that tactful counterargument. Then Fenris took away the hand from his face and folded his arms as he calmly said, "I believe it is my turn?"
"Go, go, go," Hawke suggested lively. Varric thought about it and decided this made no sense and that just reinforced the issue of deeply regretting his act of buying Ferelden fucking zero-sense-making poison. Drinks like these were commonly known in Thedas as Slide Under The Moon drinks and Burn-Your-Own-Throat Shooting Spices, and in places where truth was more highly valued, Hello and Goodbye, Mr Brain Cell. And he had seen those brain cells getting seriously keelhauled round the clock tonight, but he wouldn't have expected the anomaly of those brain cells coming back to lifein the process.
And then Fenris snapped him from his remorseful calculative thoughts when he started in a serene tone, "Never have I ever carried on a conversation where one or more of the participants held their heads inside the following: barrels, boxes, trash cans, large chests, holes in cavern or building walls, holes in trees, holes in a creature's chest, ancient sarcophagi and graves, sewer entrances and once, a very large hand cannon."
The vastly comprehensive list of holes the participant in question liked to stick their heads into while still conversing lively painted a clear enough picture. Everyone of course, drank, and Hawke did too, but only because she used to do that with Carver and with their father doing the sticking into. It was a Hawke thing to energetically introduce body parts into places and objects that did not necessarily welcome you.
And even to innocently brush or sensually graze against for that matter, Fenris thought meditatively. And then he stopped thinking about it. Specifically, he tried to force the delicious memory out his mind, but it was rather enjoying itself there, terrorizing the other occupants, kicking over the furniture and smashing flower pots on the way. But in his experience it was only a matter of time before the normal balance of the universe restored itself and started doing the usual terrible things to him.
"Hmm," Hawke went in a vague tone that suggested trouble and terrible things to start happening. She rested her chin in her hand and with a grin she said, "Never have I ever rolled over and introduced myself."
Isabela and Anders drank urgently. If they didn't do it urgently, shocked eyes and raised eyebrows would have followed, but the only ones present on someone's face belonged to Fenris, adding slowly furrowing brows and then more quickly discharging of any sort of expression.
"Why, you?" Isabela said instantly. "You're shitting me."
"Does she look like the kind of girl who swoons over fragrant bouquets and cotton-candied romance?" Varric protested.
"No, sir," Anders commented scientifically. He gave her a playful smile. "Did that happen just half an hour ago?"
"Do I look like I'm going to tell you anything?" Hawke asked with an elusive smirk.
"Oh well, maybe it happened when you left the tavern, although the rolling over part would have been er—tricky I suppose," Anders said methodically, being the expert of random dark alley encounters and all.
"Yeah, well, I beckoned for you and you never came, y'know," Hawke said sarcastically, although the sarcasm was not very well comprehended by many at first. "I stayed in the dark alley and waited and waited and well, what could I do but finish the job myself."
"Next time use words, Beckoness," Anders said with a tone that said mock, yet with a grin that said f—
"Words are tricky and they change meaning very fast, apart from their receiver choosing what they want to understand," Hawke said in an eased and wicked tone. "A beckoning is just a beckoning and if you can't spot it right then I can only assume you are less intelligent and that I took thee for thy better."
"Oh no, not again," several frustrated voices echoed at the table.
Hawke laughed and then stated in yet again that kind of firm and eloquent tone just after some old Ferelden balderdash that carefully put you back in your seat, "I am perfectly in control of my mental and physical faculties. I invite you all to calm yourselves, please."
Of course, the general exasperation was on account of the inner alarm going—fucking fury of Ferelden coming back to bite us!— but there also lurked a particular exasperation in a quiet elf which was busier battling the more primitive inner alarm of—Fuck.
Of course beside his habitual unconscious instinct of feeling like killing anything that walked on two legs, had male genitalia and even remotely looked at Hawke—and whose name was not Varric—Fenris's more rational threads of conscious processing already began reminding him the careful play of words, on the actual subject of words per se. Words are tricky and they change meaning very fast, yes, this was true, his inner editor said, and their receiver choses what they want to understand, that was also true. She also said a few hours ago upon the throwing flattering but elusive words about elves, that if you wanted to find snakes look for them in words that change their meaning. She'd never said that elves were nice. And in this bit, she'd never said that she had engaged in the nasty with the person she rolled over and introduced herself to. And then he relaxed a little, because it wasn't the first and it would not be the last time Hawke played with words to screw with her audience and sometimes he managed to catch the helpful hints too.
And when he didn't catch any hints, he would miscalculate horrifically. There was this incredibly baffling tradition of misinterpreting a lot of things at first over the years. When he invited her for the first time in his mansion and baptized the walls with Aggreggio, after again joking about the bet, and then also adding some ideas about battle stratagems of beating the snake out of the grass, she went on with a lot of misleading words about doing it and that they were teammates and they had never done, at least not with each other, and it was bound to happen sooner or later and that he was the only one she would share her experience with and that he would be a natural at it and even though he was stronger than her he wouldn't kill her in the process, and then after a lot of awkward coughing and elusive Mhms and I see's he had finally suspected she was not talking about the same thing his idiotic masculine brain was quite involuntarily thinking about and shamefully picturing in some fractions of a second. And then she said she meant dueling each other, so he had to contain his sigh of relief and also of very unconscious disappointment.
Then there was the time when she came back to Kirkwall and Varric spotted them on the roof and disturbed their quite direct exchange of clear words and when they came in the Blooming Rose after him, Dorian was all saucy jokes about coming back there, and being feisty which he missed, and that he never got her to actually kiss him and then something about strangling and bruising, and then her saying he had the finest and softest hands in Thedas. And only days of calm happy thoughts later he found out the naughty elf had only given her massages for her raving back problem and then only a year and half later he found out he was more or less gay. Armand of course, never bat an eye on her in that manner and he was grateful for this clarity, because again, he didn't want to accidentally become the maniacal elf who had a habit of accidentally beating up gay guys.
And ignoring the quick-witted low interrogation of Zevran in the catacombs and rushing urgently to this very night, when Alfie the Buttstabber came to her in hopes of some conversation then going out with her he very rationally interpreted as exactly what it looked like. Only that Hawke would have argued with—It looked exactly what it looked like. I went out and a dwarf went with me. And that is all there is to it that is obvious. And then he found out she was going for a duel.
Welcome to the wonderful world of jealousy, he thought. For the price of admission, you get a splitting headache, a nearly irresistible urge to commit murder, and an unconscious inferiority complex. Yippee.
So you could see how Fenris, while still having it his being to make clever use of words, also had to remind himself over and over again that Hawke was also a being who made intelligent use of such words. And more importantly, while her words seemed open to interpretation, her actions were not. Which added to the more general picture now, that kisses and inappropriate groping were things with only one meaning and she had insofar been willing only to share that experience with him, and also that he would do well to stop brooding right about now.
But of course the other bit, of Anders obviously giving her quite the saucy advances, and the relying evidence that they had already had a similar discussion before about dark alleys, made him think murderous thoughts again. It didn't really matter that Hawke was clearly being sarcastic, much to his great familiarity with it. What it mattered was him, because Fenris was no fool and he could smell a liar from a mile away, and now he also developed a much clearer distinctive sense of smell for men who were really interested in Hawke. And if he happened by any chance to misunderstand and Anders turned out not to be interested, he would have still enjoyed painting his face purple because there were so many other good reasons on his list for it, that he had insofar abstained from acting upon.
And then something like an ethereal voice from the beyond came in emergency into his ears that happened to roll its r's very sharply and also regarded itself as ridiculously awesome, "Do not doubt that she will have other admirers, and while you are rivaling in your courtship with them, you must always keep a perfectly content demeanor even more so because she is already taken with you. Unless of course you want to be doomed, in which case, well, knock yourself out!"
Then another voice which he also wanted once to beat the crap out of said, "Just be yourself. It doesn't matter what you do other than that, apart from how much of yourself you're putting out of course, which is to your choosing. Rule of thumb stands—be yourself."
Carefully ignoring the fact that there were multiple voices that were not his own echoing in his head, Fenris remained calm and vigilant to the game. And to the bloody possessed mage. Intelligently, he added with his own inner voice.
Anders had the next round. He proposed with a grin, "Well then, let's be more exact. Never have I ever socialized energetically in a dark alley tonight."
What an idiot, choosing the wrong word to accentuate and more so, choosing the wrong kind of elusive word for doing what he meant that she might have been doing. And with that, Hawke, Fenris and then Varric very proudly drank up.
So people looked at them. And Hawke spoke for both of them with a big shrug and a smile. "Yes, yes, I know what you're thinking. We had a threesome—"
And then it lay there in the air without the confirmation that should have followed her continuing-sounding tone.
"Did you put it in the wrong person that you got that huge bruise under your eye?" Anders asked mockingly.
"Probably," Fenris said flatly, then took a sip, which sort of harrowed Varric for a second there, and then he finally continued, "If I were on my knees and the person in question was also wearing battle boots to reach my face."
"Now if you said stilettos, this would have just sounded perfect," Hawke added joyfully. And that was still the truth. Stilettos could either be the daggers or the heels, after all and it was up to the audience to interpret.
"So this is the kind of fantasies I take it we may find in your secret journal?" Anders asked, quite clearly interpreting the second meaning.
"Oh, it's not a secret," Hawke said. "It's actually quite the public and gratis written declaration." Involuntarily and unintentionally so,she added to herself.
"In that we might never actually find it or there is nothing sexual in it at all, if we do find it," Anders concluded.
Now you're getting the hang of it, kid, Fenris thought.
"Well you can keep believing what you will until you see for yourself," Hawke said cheerfully.
"Well I will have to think of a good gentlemanly excuse to enter your bedroom and hack it then," Anders went on methodically.
Sure, Hawke thought, knock yourself out. It's not in my bedroom and there is no reasonable excuse for you to get in there anyway, unless I require home-based medical care and by that time I will have burned all my journal pages away on account of completely changing my viewpoint on life from "Good is good and bad is bad and there's nothing you can do about apart from doing some good yourself and killing the bugger" to "Good is bad and bad is still just as bad and when the hell can I die already?"
So she cut out most of that inner speech and came out only with, "Sure, knock yourself out."
And then maybe fifteen minutes later
They more or less agreed to play a quick round of Truth or Dare. And that was dared said, because the truth was less than more really agreed.
But something needed to shift after the discussions started pouring in philosophical rants from every smart mouth with half an opinion on things. It somehow went from talking about the weather, to Ferelden and Tevinter weather again, but leaving the cooking and freezing testicles part out this time, to mud, and then to rocking horses, then to wooden practice swords and then quickly turned into a discussion about the latest abomination march of horrors incident in Agamemnon's Praising Puppet Shop from the previous week, and then somehow, why, however could it shift to a great debate about the freedom of mages, and then even worse, to the ancient forgotten knowledge of Arlathan and the equal rights of all beings to protect themselves and stand up for what they believed in. And only the last part did everyone agree on, but didn't really verbalize as such because they were distracted by the sheer thought of snapping each other's necks on account of being totally stupid. And the last part was only what Hawke, Fenris and Varric felt, but to different people.
Varric was more or less democratic on wanting to kill everyone at the table.
It was all very well going on about pure logic however, and on how the world was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, although some of them argued that this could not be known unless magic was involved because it was the grounding pillar of all science and if magic didn't exist we would all be doomed—
—but the plain fact of the matter was that Thedas was manifestly swallowing itself up and pushing its flaming nucleus inside and out of the planet's crust with raging maniacal darkspawn swooping around every few centuries eating people, because the mighty Maker of the world was like this little selfish child that built sandcastles and saw that they were ineffective because they could be torn down by water, then built snowmen and cried again because the heat would melt them down, and then the child created humans and some with superior etheric abilities that made them haunted by dread satanic snowmen apparitions who sought to demonically possess them from a faraway desert that was progressively melting them and they could take no more while the good sandcastles were really very stoic about drowning in the waters. And then the Maker simply tossed the toy away and shouted, "I gilve ahp."
Then some superior magical beings really wanted to know more and since he gave them the power to do so, they paid him a visit. Unfortunately for those mages, The Maker did not consider it so much a visit as it was a full on official burglary and went piss mad and cast a curse on them, turning them into twisted reflections of their white spiritual light into dark ethereal light that totally jolted the general dictates of quasi-historical extrapolation, so smelly tainted monsters started to emerge from underground and multiply like rabbits and caused havoc upon the world. Hawke suspected that maybe this was just a huge irrational decision on account of being disturbed the first time the child boy Maker discovered what to do with his genitals and the mages coming in really upset him.
Then a few millennia later he grew into a really immoral horny teenager and haunted the dreams of a young married woman and sent her visions, and then he played the hard-to-get card with her so she sought him instead, and because he appeared like such a bad boy, she felt like any infatuated good girl that she could change him, so she convinced the hormonally-infused Maker that she would bring proof that the world was not lost and that with a bit of attention and help from him they could make it the place he wanted it to be in the first place and they would both be happy. And then that also went down with a huge thump.
Darkspawn were still crawling everywhere eating people and the Maker still had the habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.
At least that was what Hawke's viewpoint was.
And well, Anders and Merrill, though almost completely contemptuous towards each other, had paired in one respect against Hawke and Fenris from that point on. It went Team Knowledge Comes From Everywhere and Team Knowldege Comes from Mages. Or more literally, Team Raging Brain and Team Raging Butthole.
And none backed down from it, and Anders and Merrill were also sober, which meant that Hawke and Fenris were thousands of mental miles away from that long forgotten territory and also that this was worse than being in full mental capacity. They seemed to be much more eloquent and logical and persuasive when they were completely sloshed, and teamed together they really touched off the bomb.
To them, the two mages suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. Hawke believed in this, but not in the same way they did. She had a very raw view on things and she knew poverty and sickness and death dime a dozen. She believed that something somewhere sometimes could be done and it more or less swoops down upon you and you do the right thing. Or you help an individual by maybe slightly ignoring the rules and breaking the law, but if the guy was good and you didn't do anything harmful to some innocent bastard and maybe you might have even saved some lives, it was a good day and she could have a cold beer afterwards if she still had the coin in her pockets, because she used to donate a lot and almost everywhere that didn't begin with High— and The—.
But Anders and Merrill while passionately justifying their beliefs, seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted it to be or die in the attempt. And the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.
Hawke rather enjoyed times like this. They convinced her that she was definitely not mad because, if she was, then that left no word at all to describe some of the people she met.
The ancient elves were said immortal and they knew things that we do not anymore and there is no way for the elves to know things and achieve immortality again unless there was a little sacrifice and derring-do. But Fenris had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to know things and achieve immortality by not dying.
So when they reached the topic of this lost knowledge, Hawke and Fenris vigorously argued that knowledge, in all forms, is something that comes from within and acquired just as individually from personal experience, like a precious mineral hacked, as it were, from the grey strata of ignorance.
Therefore the two apparently very different mages with very different standpoints on magic, at least on the nature of blood magic, did still share the one view that they also methodically argued against Team Colorful Higher Stratas of Awareness— that knowledge could in a way, only be recalled, that there was once some kind of golden age in the very distant past when everything was known, or more importantly where mages had it all good and they knew things, and the mountains of this knowledge fitted together that one could hardly stick a knife or a head between them, and that they could probably teleport and communicate telepathically, and that they used the power of good spirits (Anders coughed and pressed on the word good and shut Merrill up on that part) to further help the world and create new ways of improving life, and obviously they probably had flying carpets too because of the way the old maps were, very thorough in drawing every curve and path and river and angle it made with every mountain, and there was also some distant gravesite in the Green Dales (here Merill cut Anders and went on scientifically) where they found some sort of gleaming sandglass under an altar that was said to teleport people through the space-time continuum and if she had that, then she would know more about the ancient ways and who the elves really were, but the Tevinters kept their leash on the site and hushed it up—
Hawke and Fenris, though not perfectly in agreement about magic with one another themselves, believed that knowledge could be acquired by shouting at people, and were endeavoring to do so.
It is at this point that normal language gives up, and goes and has a drink.
And that's why a voice innocently sprung from the head of the table, and adding just a tint of crazed demonic bloodlust, gently muted everyone else and vetoed Truth or Dare or Go Home.
And it was really just fine while it lasted, until it really became terrible. And no, it was not the time Varric dared Hawke to sing, because her voice was quite perfectly-pitched and strong. It was the others' voices joining the trill that painted the catastrophe.
Varric actually was a good singer, to Fenris's surprise, although to be fair he had only heard him sing when he locked himself in his huge marbled bathroom and perhaps the walls made his voice sound a bit like too much. With no artificial echoes vibrating and bumping from one wall to another, he actually had the soft tunes of a helluva nice tenor. But the others were bad. So, so horrifically bad.
Isabela and Anders were singing at the top their voices in awful pitches and Fenris could swear someone started banging two saucepans together.
Aveline and Merrill were singing a bit softer, and Aveline was fairly okay, but Merrill had the distinct trembling screech in her voice that sometimes also was punctuated by bouts of off-the-beat coughing.
Mojo the mabari also joined in energetically in relatively pleasant baritone howls.
Fenris did not even try, and he was probably incapable of singing, but at least he was attempting to swear in time to the beat.
Of course, some dwarves started to sing too, Corff as well, although he had the look of a guy who was always ready to wince and duck down from being hit. People always had the urge to sing and clang things in the dark of night when the spirits were pouring and good judgment went down the toilet, and when all sorts of psychic nastiness took advantage of the general silent frustrated audiences. It was those rare moments in the world and every year when all races joined hands together and sang at the top of their lungs to form a uniform, strong, melodic breath that screamed our hearts beats just the same and it also beats just as one and what the hell!
Fenris understood from this that this general feeling of belonging and equality for a night meant that people clanged things into other things and shouted.
And when the song hadn't finished after ten whole minutes, he strongly considered that people were just making a raving hubbub in the well-founded uniform hope that other people would give them money to stop.
He searched his pockets. He found the little rumpled note where he made a careful list of the ingredients for that apple pie, the dosage and the exact moments when he had to put every little thing in and when to get other things out before it blew up in fountains of mashed apple, powder, honey, cinnamon, thick crumbs and the primitive flames of elven despair.
Well he could stab himself in the eye with the nail, but he would still hear the metallic and organic separate ruckuses thumping into and over one another. And if he wrapped himself up in two layers of mantels and lace curtains he would still hear it because yippee, elves had highly developed hearing. He wished elves also had a highly developed survival mechanism of slightly pinching their ears and then, much like lizards did with their tails, they would just fall off and then they would grow back in a day or two away from the raging HROOORS and ALALAHALAYAS in the calm eerie silence of his mansion where only the occasional bat or swallow would sometimes creak in and flap its wings, and now that seemed like absolute paradise in comparison.
It was just possible to make out a consensus song in there somewhere.
What though on hamely fare we dine
Wear hoddin grey, an' a' that
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine
A man's a man, for a' that
For a' that, an' a' that
Their tinsel show an' a' that
The honest man, though e'er sae poor
Is king o' men for a' that
And if they shut up forever they would be king of all the wiser for a' that. And if they toned down the stomping and the clanking maybe his ears wouldn't feel like they were bleeding for a' that.
But then Hawke broke the general rampant brouhaha with a solo in the most beautiful voice that soothed his ears only just a little. Very little, but it helped, because he felt the brain hemorrhage cease for a minute to listen.
Yet it was not that nature had shed o'er the scene
Her purest of crystal and brightest of green
'Twas not her soft magic of streamlet or hill
Oh No 'twas something more exquisite still
Oh No 'twas something more exquisite still
Yes, indeed, it there was something more exquisite still and it was right in front of him singing like a mighty angelic phoenix, for want of a better bird term.
This was an quick Ferelden add-in improv to break the redundant brain cell stomping an' a' that, an' a' that, an' a' that. She raised her arm and thumped the table and looked at her companions.
Sweet vale of Avoca! How calm could I rest
In thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace
And finally there like the sweet vale of Avoca, all their hearts really did resume to mingling in peace. He thanked her with his eyes. She smirked a bit and nodded with her eyelids.
But then something even more awful happened. He swore that these things just came at him.
And it started with the creative suggestion, on a dare, coming from the most surprising source. That was real gifted source was Aveline and she had just dared, and when Hawke refused, she reminded that she also had a punishment she hadn't yet used on her, that they should all go into Varric's more private quarters and whence they were there, with the Antivan Vincento also coming in to do a real nice violin bit—and Aveline and whoever else wanted to again, smash at some damn improvised drums probably—Hawke should ever so gracefully attempt to give Varric a nice dance-around. She used the word politely. She probably meant something more of a limb there before the –dance part but did not verbally made use of it and more or less batted her eyelids and her lips widened in a sort of predatory manner, sort of like saying, "Hey-hoooh-well, knock yourself out!"
And when Fenris sat up and climbed the stairs up the room and tried to look for a place to sit and the large table, that bloody toad-spotted whoreson Anders lifted some of those improved drums and bumped with them against his back and very gently made him thump against the very dwarven, very rectangle corner of the table. And the pain, the pain came clawing and throbbing again and he swallowed his profane scream and it felt it as if he'd seen death and eaten it. VISHANTE KAFFAS, will he ever get a bloody break.
And then Hawke very grumpily waved this away into a final agreement, and Varric also stopped with the fatherly Fuck NOs. Then Isabela innocently disappeared for two seconds and dragged her away by force. Varric was also forcefully put into a high-chair, which was actually somewhat of a middle-chair and he kept pressing his lips, furrowing his brows and swearing in Kirkwall's finest slang because the last time Hawke had been dared to do something to him of a molesting nature, he ended up puking his guts out on account of tasting that cider on her lips. One kiss was oh just fine, but a dance-around, whatever that meant, was sort of a recipe for catastrophe.
Hawke must have done something terribly bad to Aveline either in the last recent days or in a past life. Either way the karmic nastiness would balance out the universe and terrible things would still happen because clusters of high-powered dust particles were just obsessive with keeping it constant like that. A lot of havoc equaled peace in quantum physics, who knew.