A/N: as some of you have guessed, yes; Adaon is *that* Hawke. Have a little taste before she gets her own story in the sequel to this one, which will be based on DA2. Three guesses who her romance is going to end up being!
They followed Hawke on a winding path through the refugee camps, past several crumbling rock walls, until they came to the edge of the wood. There stood a charming stone house and small granary, complete with a water wheel turned by a wide little stream almost big enough to be a small river.
"Home, sweet home," Hawke said with a brilliant grin in their direction. Nike had thought the woman rather stunning from a distance; up close that grin was disarming, captivating, and soul-melting all at once. She felt her cheeks heat and chided herself.
Honestly, you're not any better than Daveth.
As they grew nearer, a boulder near the small front porch stood up and bounded forward. It took Nike a moment to realize it was a mabari. It's weathered, mottled gray and white coat almost exactly matched the stones of the house. He was young, but enormous, and the ground seemed to shake as he bounded toward Hawke with obvious delight.
Holly perked up on seeing him, and the motion made Nike realize suddenly she'd seen the dog before, too. Hawke had been crouched beside him back on the road to Ostagar. He'd looked black then, but it was the same dog. She was sure of it.
Did she grime up her dog with coal dust to hide his color? she thought, and was baffled at the very thought. Why would she have felt the need to hide her mabari's coat?
Holly moved forward and happily greeted the other hound, and in moments the two were rampaging around the yard like litter mates, albeit Holly's bounds were more restrained and stiffer than Nike would have liked.
"That's Rumble," Hawke said. "He's only just gone on eighteen months, if you can believe that. I thought he'd never stop growing. Come on then."
She opened the door with a shout inside, and as they went to enter Nike paused, looking around at the trees and skies.
"Everything all right?" Hawke asked, noticing.
"I was just looking for-…my bird," Nike replied awkwardly.
"I'm sure she'll be fine," Alistair told her.
"She won't know where we've gone."
Alistair looked back out the door over her shoulder at the two dogs still playing, barking, and tearing up the dooryard, then at her. "Do you really think she could miss that?"
That was true; if nothing else, Morrigan would spot Holly, and put two and two together. If she wasn't already watching them from a distance right now, that was.
The main room of the house seemed to be a combination of living space and kitchen. It was not the house of a rich family, and was obviously well lived in, but it was tidy and clean. A woman in her high middle years with thick, graying black hair came over to greet them. Her hair and eyes were darker than Hawke's, but it was clear where their unexpected savior had gotten her good looks; in her youth, the elder Hawke must have had quite a cadre of suitors.
Adaon introduced her mother, giving her name as Leandra. She greeted them warmly and in a familiar manner. It became quite clear to Nike very quickly that the cadre of suitors in her younger days had to have been knocking at a house of some nobility. Leandra would have been right at home in one of Nike's mother's summer salons.
How did someone like that end up in this little farmhouse in a tiny village just a stone's throw from nowhere? Nike wondered, then internally admonished herself. She came from nobility. She would have been right at home in one of her mother's summer salons. And yet here she was, without even a little farmhouse left to her name.
"I'm sorry we haven't much to offer," Leandra said, even as she gave them some crumbled cheese and stale bread. "With all the refugees, we've been sending most of our food to the Chantry to help feed them. My son is out hunting. When he returns, hopefully he'll have something a little more filling than this sad fare."
"He's going to have to go pretty far afield to find anything bigger than a mouse," Adaon said casually. "The woods have been hunted out of anything larger from here to the Maker's Tits-"
"Adaon!" Leandra said, but her scold sounded rather resigned. Adaon only smirked slightly in the wake of it, then looked at Nike.
"So, you're only the second person I've ever met that had as big a price on your head as Loghain's offered. I feel like I'm standing with a celebrity."
"Who was the first?" Alistair asked, and her grin widened a bit.
"Why, you, of course!" she said. Alistair blinked, then chuckled a little. It was short lived, but any amount of mirth right now was like water in a drought.
"I think it's dreadful," Leandra said. "Thinking that you Wardens betrayed the king!"
"While I appreciate the faith in us," Nike said. "How is it that you don't believe we did?"
Adaon cleared her throat a little and gave her mother a half-bashful, half-hesitant look. "Well, I-"
The look her mother gave her was half of nothing; it was entirely disapproval. She gave a faint shake of her head, and then before her daughter could keep on, she spoke.
"Suffice it to say we have it on good authority."
"Regardless, it was a route," Adaon said with a sigh. "The horde is coming. Even we won't be able to stay here much longer. What is it you two are planning to do?"
"First, we were hoping to at least find some horses and provisions, and see about sending a message to Weisshaupt-"
"Done," Adaon said. "And then?"
"Done? Just like that?" Nike asked.
Adaon winked at her, but did not explain. Instead, she repeated, "And then?"
"I-I guess then to Ar-" Alistair started, but Nike cleared her throat.
"We have just found out we are wanted, and have a bounty on our heads," she told him, then looked at Adaon. "I have no desire to offend, but you must understand. The fewer who know the specifics of our plans the better. I do not think you would have helped us just to betray us, but it may be putting you in a bad position if anyone were to discover we had been here."
"Say no more," Hawke lifted her hands. "I shall assume that whatever it is, it is suitably dramatic, dashing, and stinks of Grey Wardenry."
She looked over at her mother. "Mum, I don't think Carver is going to come back with anything enough to feed the lot of us. I have…better luck at hunting."
Her grin turned to Nike again; a sly and disarming lopsided blade of a grin. It was a weapon that Nike had no doubt she'd wielded before, and probably to excellent result. "From the look of your bow, you do a spot of hunting yourself. Might be faster if we went together."
"Adaon, she cannot be seen outside of this house," Leandra told her.
"We're going into the woods," Adaon said. "They're not looking for her in the woods. Brand and his lot; they'd piss themselves before going in there right now. They'd imagine darkspawn behind every tree."
"I will be most cautious, I assure you," Nike said to Leandra. "Now that we know we are hunted we will take great pains to avoid any unfortunate entanglements; and I swear to you, I will not bring such down upon your household. I'd give myself over before I'd let that happen to you or your family."
This seemed to reassure the older woman more than her own daughter had, and Leandra nodded. Moving over to a trunk, she pulled out a long grey cloak with a wooden clasp, and offered it to Nike.
"Wear that. If you keep the hood up, anyone from town that spots you at a distance with Adaon will assume you're Bethany."
"Thank you," Nike said, and drew the cloak on.
"Won't be gone long!" Adaon said cheerfully.
"And what am I to do while you're out hunting?" Alistair asked as they started out the door. Nike half glanced at him.
"I don't know. I'm sure Mrs. Hawke has a list of chores she could use your help with? I'll be back in time for supper."
"We'd better be," Adaon said to her. "We'll be the ones bringing it!"
They headed out and around the house toward the wood. Holly and Rumble, both mabari panting happily, left aside their playing and hurried after them. Nike unconsciously put her hand on Holly's shoulder again as the shadows of the trees fell around them.
"Your poor hound looks like she's been through it," Adaon said.
"She nearly died," Nike said, and knit her brows. "We all almost did."
"Indeed," Adaon said softly.
"So how is it that you know we're innocent?" Nike asked.
"Mother doesn't approve of me telling you," Adaon said, with a tone that told she really could care no less what her mother did or did not approve of. "She doesn't like it when I mention Ostagar."
"Why not?"
"We weren't supposed to go," Adaon said. "Carver- my rather pig-headed younger brother- well. When he found out that the King was amassing men at Ostagar to fight the darkspawn, he set his mind to going and joining the soldiers. He's decent with a blade, sure, but he's a farm boy at the end of the day. And a seventeen-year-old one at that. He'd have been cut down in a thrice, and Mother knew it. She forbade him to go. Absolutely put her foot down. So, naturally, being a Hawke…he snuck out in the middle of the night and ran off to go anyway."
"And you?" Nike asked. "Weren't you going?"
"I was not planning to, no. Not until my stupid younger brother ran off. Mother about lost her mind when she realized he was gone. Bethany too; she's his twin you know. There was nothing left for it but for me to go and fetch him back."
"That was quite brave of you," Nike said, and gave her a light smile "For just a farm girl, I mean."
Adaon laughed. "Yes, well. I have no hand with a blade whatsoever. I dug through scraps to find the cast-offs I used as armor. The sword I had in that big scabbard? Wood."
Nike gaped at her. "You took a fake sword to battle the darkspawn?"
"Well, you say it like that and it sounds downright stupid," Adaon said. "I had no intention of actually fighting the darkspawn, I just wanted to find my little brother and drag him by his ear back home. Though now that I think of it, it was pretty stupid."
"Now that you think of it?"
"Mother says I'm too much like our father was," Adaon said. "We do our thinking after we do whatever it is that we should be thinking about."
Nike chuckled, before a soft sound made her look up. They were well in the woods now, though very distantly they could still hear the clatter of the refugee camp. A dark shadow was on one of the branches above, one yellow eye glinting faintly as it tracked their path.
"There you are," she said, with some relief, drawing to a halt. The big raven just watched her, and after a moment she folded her arms. "Well? Aren't you coming?"
Adaon poked her head slowly over Nike's shoulder, matching her gaze upward at the trees. "…is the beech joining us now?" she asked.
The raven let out a raucous, angry sound and spread its wings. Dropping out of the tree, Morrigan swooped down close enough that Nike thought she was going to land on her shoulder again. Instead, there was the sharp clack! as her beak snapped shut only inches from their faces, making both women step back in surprise, before the raven winged back toward the Hawke house.
"She said 'beech!'" Nike called after her. "Beech! She was talking about the tree! Oh honestly!"
"That was your bird, hmm?" Adaon said, and something about the way she said 'bird' gave Nike a moment's pause.
"Yes, that was her," she said.
"If you say so."
"She just…doesn't like strangers."
"You don't say?" Adaon was smirking again in that disarming way that Nike was starting to find both enchanting and incredibly frustrating.
"What does that mean?" Nike asked. Adaon laughed, then caught Nike's hand and pulled her into the brush, away from the path they had been following.
"Come on, this way."
"Where are we going?" Nike asked.
"Such a deep question; honestly, where are any of us going?" Adaon's voice was a sing-song musing.
"You know, I'm starting to believe you are mad," Nike said lightly.
"Does that bother you?"
"You should have met the woman who owned the last house we stayed in," Nike replied. "You're pretty tame by comparison."
"Tame?" the grin back at her this time was rapscallion. "I don't think I've ever been called something so insulting before. Tame."
The dogs ran happily along behind them as Adaon led her down a gentle slope covered in ferns and falling leaves. Nike's back was giving more than one twinge of unhappiness but she ignored it. For the first time since Duncan had stepped into Highever, she felt herself again. She felt happy.
They reached a moss-covered ruin by a tiny trickle of water; an offshoot of the stream that ran past the farmhouse. The ruins were so old and tumbled it was impossible to tell what it had been before- a house? A small Chantry? The mabari headed immediately for the water and began to drink it with great, greedy laps.
Adaon stopped as they got into the shade of two of largest sections of wall that remained of whatever-it-was, before releasing Nike's hand and turning to face her.
Her eyes were sparkling in the soft, misty shade. "Watch this," she said, and lifted her hand.
Tiny dances of pink and gold light grew in an aura around her fingers, elongating into spiderweb thin tendrils that swayed and shimmered together. Nike stared, at first in wonder, and then in shock.
"You're a m-!"
Just that fast, the light was gone. The fingers that had been shimmering clamped over Nike's mouth, Adaon's other hand grabbing her lightly around the shoulders in a near embrace.
"Shh!" she said, then giggled. "Good Maker, woman, don't tell the whole wood!"
"You're a mage," Nike whispered as Adaon's hand fell away from her mouth. The other stayed where it was, something that didn't escape Nike's notice.
"I am?" Adaon teased, whispering herself. "Oh thank goodness! I thought I just ate too many fireflies as a baby."
"Does your family know?" Nike asked, and she nodded.
"My father was a mage," Adaon told her. She'd made no motion to move away, and Nike's awareness of how close she was had started to make her cheeks heat again. "Bethany is too. Carver and Mother are embarrassingly normal. After I manifested at age eleven, they moved us here to hide me from the Circle. Bethany's the prodigy; she manifested at nine."
"Why are you telling me this? Aren't you putting your family in danger?"
Her grin grew the tiniest fraction. "That's a good point, I hadn't thought of that."
"I'm serious," Nike said, trying to sound irritated and not doing a very heartfelt job at it. What she wanted to do was run that gold hair through her fingers, see if it was as soft as it looked.
"Come now. I hardly think a Grey Warden with a bounty on her head is going to rat me out. Especially when she's traveling with an apostate herself?"
Nike's ears drew back in surprise. "Wh-what?"
"Your bird?" she said. "I'm an apostate, not an idiot. Ravens have brown eyes, not gold."
"That's not true," Nike said, then added grudgingly. "Sometimes…rarely…they have blue."
Adaon burst out laughing again, and her hand very nearly fell away from around Nike, landing on the small of her back instead. "Oh, well then, by your leave!"
Nike smiled and laughed a little too. Adaon shook her head. Her smile hadn't seemed to fade once since they'd met her, only occasionally morphing into new iterations. "My father knew how to shift into animal forms as well. Myself, I never quite got the knack, but he was able to teach me how to recognize another mage, even in animal form. Don't worry. Turning your friend in would only get my own ass locked in the Circle; Bethany's too. And it would be terribly impolite."
"Yes, we mustn't be impolite," Nike said.
"Maker forbid!" Adaon whispered. Nike was completely stunned and yet, not in the least bit surprised, when Adaon kissed her.