I'll have a longer update for you next chapter, but for now, do enjoy Hawke's story. All is shown for a reason and there are many more surprises after the Fade. I'm working hard!

"Venhedis!" he said curtly.

The dog had dropped a bigger shit on his boot than the Fade had in his head. And to the periphery of it, a loud cackle was produced.

"You did this on purpose!" Fenris complained.

Hawke snorted. "Be grateful I got us here standing."

But he did not have the chance to throw a disapproving line. As it turned out, he should have been grateful to the dog. If he hadn't been looking down when he landed, he would have been blinded. Enormous and red, the sun made its path across the glittering sea. He shut one eye, put a hand against his forehead, and veered away so that the sign in front of him would block it out.

It said: Lake Calenhad.

Well, that is one gigantic lake.

Then he noticed the spangled mass of red oak trees and green pines everywhere and felt rather dumb. Walking the Fade hither and yon certainly killed a few brain cells.

In fact, he felt them melting as he thought about it.

As the eyes turned to the left, he saw Hawke taking off the layers upon layers of wool and then he realised the melting was in fact him sweating most of his body mass out.

Criminally cold in the winter, alarmingly hot in the summer. Interesting. He had almost forgotten what true heat felt like! Although colourful trees and shimmering lakes were better on the eyes than sand, sand and more sand.

The sunlight shone through the tiny holes in his sweater as he took it up and off his head.

And then all of a sudden, Hawke was in front of him, with her hand in his stomach.

"Well met, Corporal", said a man's voice right at the back of his neck.

He flinched, looked down. Yes, it was now quite clear from the alarming visual evidence that two people were shaking hands through his stomach. He moved away, startled.

"Major Hicks," she said in a neutral, respectful tone. This was an altogether new tone for Hawke. It wasn't her.

Oh… it's wasn't her.

The real Hawke was still to his left, biting off her tongue.

"Come here," she said, followed by little kissing sounds. She came down to meet the mabari. "Who's a good boy? Yes, you're the biggest most ferocious beastie."

This other "her" wore a plain short-sleeve shirt eaten out by moths with scale mail stitched to it and a small chest plate. She had leather gloves and a belt full of curious tools.

"I'm afraid you were right, Sir," she said as she opened the dog's mouth widely and unapologetically peered through it with one eye. She had two long red pigtails and a fringe that was most definitely cut without the assistance of a mirror.

"Bollocks," said Major Hicks. Behind them lay what was now clearly a wide military establishment. Myriads of swords and armours clanged and moved in the distant blur.

"Them ones will be fine," she said, as she gave it a small treat. She petted him vigorously as the dog slobbered and licked its mouth happily. Then she put a hand on her knee to get up. "But the next crap he takes will be painful."

"Suppose you don't have a magic trick to get it out sooner," he said.

"Only magic I know involves laxatives, Sir," she said with a contained smile. "And I just gave him one."

"One of them poop-thinners or suchlike," he said with a hand at the back of his neck. He looked at the descending sun as if he needed to be somewhere.

"Yessir," she said. "No worries, Sir, I will keep my eye on him."

He cleared his throat. "Keep it between us, Corporal."

She gave a faint nod, then thought better of it, straightened up and saluted.

"As you were."

Now she did allow herself to nod and made for the barracks.

"Corporal."

"Yessir."

"Captain Price tells me you've done well."

"I know my dogs, Sir."

"Wouldn't let you handle them if you didn't," he said in a monotone way. "What I meant was your training."

She brought her hands together at the back and straightened up. "Captain Price thinks I can manage being a medic in addition to the dog handling."

"Serious shortage of medics round here. Damn Chantry can't spare a robe or two unless it's a damn war."

She said nothing. She wasn't high enough in rank to have an opinion.

He nodded as if he understood and said, "Good work, Corporal." He made to leave. "Or should I say Sergeant, any day now," he said as he brushed past her.

Her eyebrows rose as he left. She stood straight until he was far away enough.

And then she broke into an embarrassing victory dance.

Fenris stared at her, rather befuddled in his statue-like posture, and his eyes veered to the real Hawke.

"I don't even know where to start," Fenris said.

"Well, the memory is not over yet," she said, as she picked up a rock and moved towards the lake. "Although I suppose we have to wait for a bit."

She sat down on a tree stump and he took a seat nearby on a rock.

"I hear Father approved," she said, as her eyes followed the ripples in the water.

"Pardon?" he said.

"Oh," she said. She had a tense smile. "I kind of skipped a few parts."

He scoffed. "Only a few?"

She scratched her head. "Right…well." She began with her hands. "Remember Independence Day?"

"The one where you showed up like a ghost in the ballroom and gave me a heart attack or the one where you passed out in a barrel," he said and gave a faint smirk, "and gave me something to laugh at?"

"In general," she said sharply. "Anyway, there are… huge festivities here. Everywhere. Marches, dances, rituals, it's a really big deal."

"Believe me, that much was obvious," Fenris said grumpily.

"One time, we went to Denerim. Finally we would see Denerim, right in the heart of history it felt like. Wonderful stuff. There were fireworks, and dragon shows, and oh, so many colourful funny-shaped candy and trinkets. I love colourful funny-shaped useless things." She stopped herself as she was going off topic and smiled. "Anyway, there were Circle mages there performing some of these shows and we, the young ones I mean, got lost in the crowd away from the parents—we were hardly broken up about it—and Daniel and Bethany steered away even further from me. They… started talking to them. And where there's Circle mages, there's Templars, and one thing led to another and… I was blamed."

"They blamed you?"

"No, no, not them," she said. "It was just a natural conclusion for my parents. I was the oldest, I allowed it, I was to blame." Her left shoulder raised slightly. "Although to tell the truth, I was kind of distracted."

"By all the colourful funny-shaped useless things, I imagine."

She laughed. "Sort of." Her shoulder rose again. "That time, the thing was a human."

He furrowed his eyebrows, but soon his mental shoulders sank. "Oh."

"I'm happy I skipped that memory. I do not particularly want to relive it." She sighed. "We really fell out. Father and I. We had a massive, massive argument. It had been built up upon many…many things. Double upon the fact that they would blame me for my sibling's blunders, as if they should be babied, as if they should be coddled, as if they should never learn of responsibility apart from witnessing my own."

There were strange voices coming from nowhere.

She scoffed. "Especially his precious little Bee." She rolled her eyes. And then she gave another sigh and shook her head. "It was like Bethany was the mage sibling who, by virtue of her seeming absence of 'special' powers, was meant to be the mage raised up in fuzzy pillows and feathers. And Carver. Well, Carver wasn't really babied. More like, he was," she said and tilted her head, "…ignored. That was the part where it really went to Father's heart. What I said to him."

Fenris started hearing arguing voices around his head.

"I said he was so busy pushing me around and coddling Bethany while teaching us how to shroud and control our magic that he completely forgot, for all these years, that he had a son. I said to him that he was a terrible father. That Carver suffered. He suffered in a way we never suffered. And in a hard and secretive way as was expected of a boy. What kind of father doesn't love his son? Love him enough to make him become a man."

The grass started to catch on fire.

"No. I did that. I spent time with him. I wound him up, like an equal would, with banter, with laughter, and some healthy competition. And sometimes he would win. And I also let him win occasionally, so that he knew he had it in him. And I stayed up with him, every so often when he'd let his guard down and speak to me about his desires and his fears. Maybe I made some mistakes with him, but I loved my brother the best way I possibly could. But he wasn't loved as he deserved."

Everything was becoming red around them and the ground shook underneath their feet.

"Hawke!" Fenris said in alarm, as he grabbed her shoulders.

She woke up, as if from a dream, and stared at him. "Sorry," she said and shook her head. "I forgot I can do that."

He looked behind him, as if to make sure the world was not being swallowed up by the apocalypse. He looked back at her, as the breeze ruffled his hair. "Please do write me a manual next time."

She gave a forced smile, faintly bitter.

"Anyway, we fell out so bad that night, Father actually kicked me out. Banished me." She tilted her head as she stared inside the memory in her head. "There was a flicker in his eyes. A small flicker, as we argued, as we were reaching that tipping point, and I knew that he saw in me the desire to leave, as if he had reached out to the back of my skull and took this thought from me—that I was tired of being the relay station, that I was tired of being the butt of every argument, that I had enough, that I just wanted to… be someone, anyone, anyone but someone's daughter or someone's sister."

"So you ended up here," Fenris said, and peered at the camps in the distance. "Somehow."

"It's not hard," she said. "Our military doesn't exactly meet with Templars for tea and biscuits and dance. They actually don't like each other very m— Oh, it's time."

"Oh… kay," Fenris said in bewilderment as she sat up and wentfor the camps.

The "other" Hawke was staring at a piece of transparent goo intently, nails buried in her mouth.

"Come on," she said out loud. Her leg started a nervous twitch.

"Well that is funny-shaped, but not colourful," Fenris said to the real Hawke.

The goo turned pink.

"NO!" she screamed, in fact the most deranged and aggressive scream Fenris had ever heard from her.

She punched the goo down on the table and destroyed it. Then with a sudden movement, the table threw itself against the wall. She took a chair, really the only chair in her little wooden room, and smashed it on the floor. Tens of wooden pieces clunked and rolled away.

Her breaths were so heavy her whole body was moving with them. Her fringe was standing up.

The door opened carefully.

"Skip, are you okay?" a man said who was unsure if he should really enter or not. It took him a second, but Fenris realised who had called her all those names. Andrei grew into a tall, well-built fellow, with thick black hair stretching below his ears and two gleaming eyes of light blue mingled with green.

She looked at him, very much as though she did not just break a table and a chair, and said: "I'm fine. Just one of those days."

"I never made Sergeant," the real Hawke said to him as she stared at herself. "I fou—"

"You were pregnant," Fenris said quickly. He knew it, he didn't know how he knew it, but he did.

"Let us go back to the lake," she said and brushed past the memory of Andrei as if she didn't see him.

Fenris followed her out, but the novelty and gravity of all he'd seen in the span of five minutes really played with his head. He couldn't help himself, and looked behind him as he went out the door. The other Hawke—he saw without a doubt—she had been content, up until the point of no return.

She had unburdened eyes. The Hawke he knew was always trying to make up for something.

And in the house, she looked hopeless, and concerned. He saw an altogether new and foreign emotion in a human being. And just like the real Hawke, she was only vaguely aware that Andrei was near her. She did not cry in his arms.

Why did this make his stomach twirl?

A rosy ashen twilight was deepening over Lake Calenhad. The oaks had become black and dense, the shadows beneath them broadening to eat the last of the warm summer light that clung to the gravel on the shore.

Fenris had a million questions, no doubt of that, but he merely followed her, silent and anxious, anxious enough that he thought she may disappear.

But she only rolled up her pants and dipped her feet into the water and sat down.

Like hell if he would pass up that opportunity. He did the same and sat down next to her. There was a small silence, as she leaned back on her elbows and looked at the scenery.

The water lilies gleamed boldly in the faintest light from the far-off sky. Insects hummed thickly and invisibly. The frogs sang.

He had heard her thoughts as if she was speaking them right in his ear.

Home. Where I belong. Where the sky looks as I remember it. Where the country spreads out forever. And the air is my friend.

He felt her terrible longing inside himself as if she was infecting him with it. He tried to resist it, much as though he failed. Indeed, it seemed that for a moment he saw the lake become a sea in earnest, and the trees bigger and greener, and he pushed a springy vine out of his face to see the red sun, and he heard the sound of elephants.

"You must have questions," she said, and he blinked several times. They were still at the lake.

He wanted to ask: Did you love him? But a great ball of thorns formed in his throat. It would be an insensitive question. The only appropriate question was: Where is your child now? But somehow the former mattered more to him than the latter.

"I…" he said. "I cannot ask," he said with an honest voice.

She looked at him, and her eyes seemed to be pleading, but she forced herself to smile and said: "It's alright… You will see. That's why we're here, isn't it?" But then he realised these memories were becoming so painful to her she was not all that prepared to continue. He saw this, guessed at it, and could not think of anything to do but to scoot closer to her.

He wanted to say something, but he thought anything he could say would be quite pointless. And maybe sometimes there was more comfort in silence than in an answer to a question.

A thin rain had begun to fall, and it was so very faint now that it was little more than a mist, giving its shine to the water and the gravel and hovering in the gleaming leaves above them.

If only they could receive all this, and hold it to their chests, and keep it, and cast off the dark things that waited and brooded and were sure to reveal themselves…

He gave out his hand. She didn't even look at it. She took it and they watched the sun disappear as the rain plonked on their noses.

They were back in Lothering. The transitions became less and less arresting.

It was proper autumn now. The village was surrounded by a myriad of red and yellow trees, and everywhere you looked people were carrying and exchanging sacks of fresh harvest.

Hawke was helped down from a horse by Andrei as they got to her old house. He did not look happy, but he looked a great deal protective. He looked like a human-shaped donkey carrying two closets.

"Weird," said Andrei. "I don't feel like we're home."

They walked towards the door.

"Maybe they're not home," she said with a tense expression.

"Oh, well then I guess we can just go back to the outpost and you can have our child in the bows and arrows closet," said Andrei sarcastically.

"And they will still make Sergeant before I do," she said. Her eyes rose caustically at him. "Thanks for that."

"You know it takes two to make a baby, right?" he said, crossing his arms. "I'm starting to think you've never had the talk and, thus," he said and lifted his shoulders, "here we are."

She wanted to punch him.

The door opened and Carver came out, but he didn't see them before. He was just going out.

"Hey, bro," she said as he literally ran into her.

"Andraste's tits!" he said as if he had just seen a ghost. His big eyes moved to Andrei. "What— what are you doing here? Both of you." He didn't ask it with any scorn, rather with a little joyful smile. "PTO? Or were you fired?" His eyes grew bigger and his shoulders sank. "Don't tell me you're getting married."

"Ugh," said Hawke. "Now I feel like throwing up for other reasons."

Carver's eyebrows came together. He looked almost of age, and his muscles were starting to show.

"Oh, yeah," she said with a cheerful smile. "You're replacing me in Redcliffe." She undid her long coat and revealed a pronounced belly.

Carver's eyes almost dropped out of their sockets. He looked petrified, his head only moving slightly backwards, and with a weak voice said: "M-Motheeeeer…"

Leandra came to the door with a bowl and a towel. "I told you, I'm not going with you, I have to—" and then she gasped very loud. The bowl broke on the ground.

Andrei was leaning with his arm against the horse and smiling. "Yep, now it feels like home."

"My baby," she said, and came with urgency to embrace her. She kissed her hair and held the back of her head and hugged her again. "Oh, my baby girl, I prayed every night that you would be alright."

"Maybe it was too much praying," said Hawke, pertaining to the extra passenger on her person.

"Malcolm!" screamed Leandra with all her lungs. "Malcom! She's back!"

There came a man, a tall man with a lined face and iron-grey hair. The smile broadened with his square, wrinkled jaws.

He came to her, rested his hands on top of his cane, the wind blowing some grey threads of hair from his forehead, and said: "Will you ever stop copying me?"

Her eyebrows rose and she scoffed. "I thought you'd be mad."

He puffed his lips together as if he was thinking and pressed his hands tighter on top of the cane. "I am," he said calmly, confidently. "Excuse me just a second."

He trudged on towards Andrei, very like an old man, and as the young man abandoned his casual position against the horse, Malcolm punched him.

Hawke gave out a big smile, and in that moment, Fenris knew her thoughts, and what she was thinking was that she had never felt more loved than in that very moment. Her father shook his hand from the pain.

"Malcolm!" cried Leandra.

"What?" he said and shrugged.

"My father would have done the same thing to you if we hadn't fled on that boat in time!"

"And I would have deserved it," Malcolm said sharply, walking with his cane back towards Hawke to hug her.

"Since when do you use a cane?" said Hawke as they all sat for dinner. Andrei's parents did not join as they were away for another few days, but Daniel did come and was not too fussed about his black eye. Fenris agreed that he had a very punchable face.

Malcom came back down to the table with a plate of cakes he stubbornly insisted to transport. "It's been raining far more this year." He wrinkled his nose and whispered in a silly voice: "My leg doesn't like rain."

"These are nice cakes, dad, we should have them for your birthday," she said. "What is it now? Your 150th?"

He wiggled his finger in agreement and talked while eating: "Joke's on you. At least you know my age. I've no bloody clue how old you are."

"Preposterous," she said in a high-pitched tone.

"Eh, there's too many of you. I can't keep track," he said with a dismissive hand.

Leandra hit him with a towel.

"What?" he cried. He cleared some food from the back of his mouth with his tongue and pointed at her. "She hits me, you know. Since you left."

"Is that true?" she asked her mother.

"It has been known to happen on occasion," said Leandra with a shrug.

"Nice!" said Hawke. She raised her palm out to give her a high-five.

Malcom scowled in mock-offense. "Nice?! I find that rather sexist. I've wed and bred into a sexist household."

Hawke raised an eyebrow.

Malcolm said with a chocolate in his mouth: "Well, it's not as if I can hit back!"

"Isn't that rather sexist?" she said. "Double upon the fact that you hit Andrei not an hour ago."

"Well that's different," Malcom said. "He's not mine, so I can hit him."

"So, sexism and nepotism."

He rubbed his hands to get off the crumbs. "Okay, it's none of those things." He looked at the men. "I told you boys a thousand times. You have one job. It's very easy. Just pull out. One job."

"Okay, I think it's time to make some tea," Leandra said loudly and got up. "Malcolm, will you help me make some tea?"

"Twice in my life I didn't do this and I've been paying for it threefold ever since!"

"Malcolm," said Leandra curtly.

All eyes and ears were on him and suffering an aneurism.

He looked at her and then suddenly he realised his blunder. "Oh, I was just stating an educational fact. I love you kids! All six of you!"

"Are you alright, Father?" said Bethany.

"Of course," he said, as he was being dragged away by Leandra. "I can't not say six, the dogs will feel left out!"

The siblings looked at each other.

"He's been a little weird lately," said Bethany.

"A little?" said Hawke. She peered at Andrei who was looking very amused.

"He has a point," said Andrei as he scratched the back of his head. "I did have one job."

"Yeah…" she conceded and made a silly grimace.

"Well, you two don't seem too fussed about it," said Bethany with a scowl.

Hawke looked down and smiled. "If I don't laugh about it, I will cry about it. And there are better things to cry about."

"I still can't believe you won't make Sergeant," said Carver.

"Is this a bad time to announce that I have made Sergeant?" said Andrei innocently.

"That's only because you stole it from me."

"Yeah…" he conceded, and mirrored a silly grimace.

Everybody was full, but Hawke was still consuming every possible leftover rather unapologetically.

"Anyway. Carver," she said and he lifted his eyebrows immediately as if to say 'I'm listening'. "I spoke with my superiors and I put in a good word for you. You'll want to go to Captain Price. He's a good man."

"Seriously? You weren't joking back there?" said Carver, trying to keep his expression neutral.

Her eyebrows came together and she stuffed another cake in her mouth. "I never joke about the army."

Andrei forcefully coughed.

"Damn, I forgot you were here," she said.

Hawke and Carver were walking along the river on the outskirts of the village. She had beaten the wooden pickets with a twig until they got out, and after some time she asked him to sit down somewhere as her legs were giving out.

"Damn, that brat's taking all the stamina from you," he said in a friendly tone.

She sat down on the gravel, keeping a hand over her slightly pronounced belly.

"And eating my breakfast, so I have to eat two of each," she said.

"I almost feel sorry," he said. "But it has won me a job."

"Don't be so superficial," she said in a disciplinary tone. "And you should keep the smartassery to yourself whence you get there."

"Point taken," he said. He bent his elbow over his leg and put his hand under his chin. "Anything else I should know?"

"Oh, so many things," she said with a bitter smile. "Boot camp is terrible. You will want to keep averagely silent, and display no remarkable thoughts or gestures deliberately. Everything is a trap. Let them get the idea on their own that you have prior fighting experience. Modesty and composure gets you a long way."

"Okay," he said.

"There was this guy in my squad who thought he was special because he had been an eagle-scout in Denerim. When we were in the woods, Sarge made him build a nest and had him squat over it to keep his eggs warm."

"No way," Carver said in excitement.

"We were medically evaluated as new recruits and there was this going trend I noticed. Nobody wanted to be placed in archery, so they'd fake having poor vision. The medic asked a recruit once if he could see the letters on the sign. He said, 'What letters?'. The doc said, 'Good, you passed the hearing test.'"

"Noted," he said.

"Oh," she said cheerfully. "Particularly, you should not volunteer yourself for any 'special' ability you can spare thinking you'll get extra points. Everything's a trap. My Sergeant asked if anyone had any 'artistic abilities' and the result was— everyone got a three day pass… except for me. I had to stay behind and knit each soldier's name into their army-issued underwear."

Carver broke into laughter. "Holy shit."

"I really can't stress enough that traps are lurking everywhere in the army. The superiors love playing pranks on the privates. One time, a recruit was asked to fetch a five-gallon barrel of dehydrated water. The Sergeant just wanted an empty barrel."

He laughed again. "What else happened?"

"Let me think," she said. She flinched. "Oh! One time a private was sent to the kitchens to look for left-handed spatulas." She rubbed her chin. "When I made a full medic, I got a visit from a recruit who was asked to fetch a pair of 'fallopian tubes'."

"Oh Maker," he said in amusement. He looked behind him. Then he gazed back at her. "What about Andrei?"

"I thought you'd never ask," she said with a devil's smile. "When we first signed up, Andrei didn't want to give his last name as he thought it was too hard to spell. He said to the enrolment officer, 'Just put down Private Andrei as my last name is just pain in the ass.' When he got his metal tag, it said 'Private Andrei Justpainintheass.' That stuck."

"You're shitting me!"

"When we started our training, Andrei dared to correct the Captain on a sword technique, and then prolonged it by giving out a sumptuous explanation on the differences between shortsword and longsword tips."

"Oh dear."

"The Captain was very angry. He stormed off in silence and returned with a small potted shrub. He said: 'You will carry this shrub with you wherever you go. If anyone asks you why you're carrying this shrub, you will say, 'It's to replace the oxygen I stole from everyone else.'"

They laughed and laughed, until finally Carver looked at her in an oddly responsible way.

"Are you gonna be alright?" he said.

She really thought about it and smiled. "It's too late to think about such luxuries."

"Does he want to marry you?"

"Oh yeah, he keeps pestering me about it," she said and flung her fingers back and forth to display nuisance.

"You probably should."

"I haven't found a good reason yet," she said rather casually. He looked at her as if she was dumb. "He's working on an endless list of good reasons why I should accept, you see."

"Like?"

"Like I'd have the whole closet for myself because he wears the same thing every day. And he will never get on my nerves because he'll never be around." She shrugged. "Now the second one sounds rather promising."

He laughed. "Has he been good to you?" he then asked. "I know I cut him slack all the time because he's my best friend, but now it's different."
"How's it different?" she said.

"Well, he impregnated my sister," he said in a serious tone. There was a faint smile. "She's more important."

Hawke was really taken aback. "Oh, wow, well, then maybe you can beat his ass up for me. He steals my candy."

"I'll make sure I replace his beard razor with my pube razor."

"Awwwwww."

Toward the dusk, Hawke came out of the house and saw Malcolm coming out of the pig sheds.

"Darling!" he said. "Could you help me in this here shed, I can't seem to find my coin pouch!"

"Sure," she said. "But I'd rather not squat if I can help it."

"Of course," he said and laughed. He shifted his weight onto his cane. "In any case, you look rather dashing, my dear."

"Thanks?" she said with an awkward smile and looked through the hay.

"It looks like twins," said Malcolm. "Runs in the family."

"I forgot about that…" said Hawke with a faint tone of annoyance.

"Little Hildegaard will be so happy to have two other rascals to play with."

Her eyes stopped, and moved in confusion towards him. "Huh?"

"I know you want five kids, but I'm already feeling like three's a crowd. We'd never get to travel, let alone retire."

"Dad," she said sharply.
He waved a dismissive hand. "Ugh, don't call me that. I know some people do, but it's just weird."

"What's my name?" she asked calmly.

"What do you mean what is your name?" he asked with a scowl. "Have you changed it or something?"

"Much as I would like to," she said.

"I've always liked Leandra. It has a unique grace to it."

Hawke shook her head slowly.

Fenris looked at the real Hawke with a solemn, questioning expression.

Hawke, who was sat on one of the big wooden boxes, pressed her lips and then looked down while her crossed legs hit the box repeatedly.

Hope you're enjoying my embellishments. I do feel like Hawke needs more character background. Do give me feedback! Fenris will tell his story soon too.