"On your left! Maker, Isabela, your left!"

She knows her rights and lefts, thank you quite very fucking much. Fighting just leaves her so tailspun and electric and the entire universe narrows down to the two points of her daggers that she only very narrowly manages to throw herself out of the path of the miniature sun hurtling by.

There is a tremendous flash and a queasy spatter of meat and molten bone and that takes care of that. Isabela tuts. She had them.

"We talked about this, Hawke." She sighs, peeling a stray hair from the sticky blood coating her favorite dagger. The other one could stuff it. "It's port and starboard."

"I think your head is full of saltwater." Hawke grumbles, but Isabela hears the moony grin creeping over the apostate's face. Isabela rolls her eyes. Right, left, starboard, port, Hightown, Lowtown, tea, moldy grapes, whatever. Just don't die, and she didn't.

"Good news! You're both idiots." Aveline grouses, all clanking armor and world-weary haughtiness. "We needed one of them alive for questioning. Now they're… slurry."

Isabela regards the smear of Carta dwarf plastering the stucco and cringes.

"Well if you'd listened and only brought me along-" Carver starts, Andraste's quivering temperance, here they go again.

"They'd have been hacked in half." Aveline snaps. And well, wouldn't you know, they're arguing. It chafes Isabela mightily. She, inadvertently, somehow, despite herself, ended up in a strange flirtation with the straight-and-narrow, now that Aveline was captain of the guard pending some stray paperwork. As it turns out, she's no good at it, Hawke's no good at it, and Carver's no good at it, despite his insistence otherwise. Yet Aveline seems convinced that she can make them be good at it through sheer force of will and ironclad buttcheeks. She misses being a scourge, there was less quibbling.

"Cards? Varric said there'd be cards tonight." Hawke says, tossing a big silly noodly arm over Isabela's shoulders. It's not like she's really asking, they all know where they're going because they're already going there, like some hypnotic, inexorable magnetic pull, Carver and Aveline dutifully a few paces behind, still bitching.

"You're so eager to lose money, Hawke. It's like you didn't throw every coin under your floorboards at Bartrand just last week." Isabela says, leaning, half without meaning to, into that increasingly familiar scarecrow embrace. "Are you getting off on it?"

"Hey now, I've been practicing." Hawke pouts, a little. It's cute. She is terribly cute. Truly terribly.

"Playing with your dog doesn't count, you bird."

"I will have you know, I've been playing with my mother. And I'll tell you, I will tell you, the woman's been grifting me!"

"Your mother is a dear, an absolute darling." Isabela scoffs, rubbing her elbow into the spot between Hawke's ribs that she curses herself for knowing makes the other woman honk and squirm, ticklish all over but mostly there. "I will not hear these spurious attempts to besmirch her noble character."

"Noble character, my back teeth. Every last one of them." Hawke huffs. "Well then, how about this? While I'm off plundering the deeps for Maker-knows how long, you go on ahead and see how much of your coin she can make off with. And I simply shan't be paying you back! Not a copper, not a dust bunny!"

Isabela hums. Spending the afternoon with Leandra sounds something like nice. She truly is a lovely woman, enough that she suddenly remembers table manners and words like "please" and "thank you" and "that blouse is stunning" around her. Still, the thought of hanging about with Hawke's mother without Hawke there feels like a wool sweater on a summer day.

She's not sure what she's doing. Well, she knows what she's doing. She's walking to get drinks and play cards with people she should probably call her friends but still doesn't quite know how, tucked under the arm of a woman that she should want to call her friend but doesn't quite know why the thought of doing that disappoints her.

Maybe because she doesn't understand why she hasn't simply bedded Hawke yet. Not for lack of trying. She's as far from a blushing virgin as she is from those really cozy socks she lost half a decade ago, somewhere around Dairsmuid, and she knows Hawke is exactly as interested as she is. The stupid, incredibly stupid, thing of it is that they never seem to have a moment alone. Isabela lives in a mouldering tavern down the hall from Hawke's divinely marvelous and infuriatingly nosey best-friend-now-business-partner. Hawke lives in a two room shack with her mother, brother, uncle, and dog, where they presumably sleep in a large and bristly pile every night, because she's never bothered figuring out exactly how it all works over there.

Isabela doesn't have any compunction about finally scratching their mutual, incessant itch in some back alley in Lowtown, and she doesn't suppose Hawke would, if the opportunity ever came about. But they're never alone enough to even manage that. If it isn't Aveline and Carver engaged in a passive aggressive duel of snits, which, might she say, is awfully Fereldan of them, it's Anders and Fenris doing the exact same. Or Merrill tugging at her shirttails with a question or a daisy pinched between her little twig fingers. Or Varric alternating between some enthralling, nonsense tall tale about something they most certainly didn't actually do and classic dwarven hand-wringing about their impending expedition.

It's all been rotten and maddening and it's exactly the reason why she's brought strings of almost entirely useless sailors and dockworkers up to her room, ending every other night sore in a way that only ever feels strange and off and she knows in her marrow it wouldn't be that way with Hawke.

"Don't you start drinking if you're feeling… What even is this? Contemplative?" Hawke is saying, shoving open the door of the Hanged Man with the arm that isn't wound around Isabela. Her mouth is close and her voice is low and her eyes are cutting and bright and right there and she should do it now, just do it now and march this tall, unnerving, beautiful creature up to her room so she can stop imagining the ridges of her spine in her palm and her hips under her teeth.

But a cheer goes up from a table in the corner and she can't do anything but smile at Hawke and dislodge herself from her side and say over her shoulder as she beelines for the bar: "You know that I've never contemplated a thing in my life. First round is on me, sweet thing. You'll be paying me back for it later, anyway."

Hawke gives her a look, unsure but trusting, she looks at her that way so often lately, and then laughs that too-big silly laugh and ambles to their, her, friends.

Isabela wants to smile as she weaves her way toward them, warm dirty mugs of ale in both of her hands, so she does. It's nice. It's something. She leans over the table and the assortment of mismatched cards cobbled together from everyone's different decks and the spray of coins thrown haphazardly into the pot and sets Hawke's drink down in front of her. Fenris is already growling her ear off about something, they've barely been here a couple minutes, so she takes a seat next to Merrill, who smells like laundry and incense.

"Oh, Isabela! I'm so glad you're here!" Her eyes are wide and shiny and Isabela adores her so sickeningly much. "Fenris said I wasn't allowed to gamble with buttons, so I've just been sitting here. It's been quite boring, nobody talks when we're having a serious game."

"Nonsense! Malarky!" Isabela shouts, bringing her fist down on the table with a mighty clatter. Anders scowls as some ale sloshes over the rim of his tankard, and she blows a raspberry at him. Varric shoots her a look and yes, alright, she knows. She fiddles in her boot for some of the spare coins she keeps stitched inside and presses a few coppers and a couple silvers into Merrill's thin, chilly palm with a wink. The Chantry would do well to figure out how to harness the brightness of her smile, Isabela thinks. She might convert.

"Deal me in next round, please!" Merrill chirps. Isabela waggles her fingers at Varric to signal she's in, too.

"I'm in." Aveline says, gauntleted hands folded under her chin.

"Stipend came today, did it, Big Girl?"

"I don't like that you know when I have money."

"I'll play." Carver interrupts, dropping a handful of silvers on the table. His eyes slide to Merrill, and it's bashful and precious, but the little elf has her nose buried in her mug of watered-down mulberry wine, humming a tune Isabela doesn't recognize. Must be Dalish. The younger Hawke coughs and tries to flag down Norah, flushing pink. He'll figure it out. Or maybe he won't. He's handsome and daft.

"Hawke?" Varric asks, pushing some coins toward Fenris, who had evidently won the round, and gesturing for everyone to pass their cards to him.

Isabela drops her chin into her palm and drums her cheek.

Hawke's eyes meet hers and she swears up and down the next morning, to herself, that it didn't happen, but her breath hitches a little bit. Like it doesn't want to come out unless it's into Hawke. Against those chapped lips and moon-bright smile. Hawke is watching her, too. It all feels too personal, something too grotesque and loud and embarrassing, surrounded on all sides by people they know. It looks like something is dawning on her. Something great and terrible that she will lock away as long as she can keep it. Isabela is halfway between "good, keep it" and "wait, show me".

When she looks away from Isabela, it feels like something tearing.

"I'm a glutton for punishment, I guess! I'm in."

Hours later, they are all drunk and sagging against each other. Isabela made out okay, she supposes. At least she didn't lose money. Aveline, Hawke, Carver, and Anders are sullen in their cups, as if it was an enormous disappointment and not what's happened every night they met like this for the better half of the past year. Merrill never minds, though. Bless her to her toe tips.

"I am going home." Fenris announces, and off he goes. Like a wraith, always. He can be funny, though. Sometimes. It's starting to happen more often.

Anders waits until Fenris is definitely gone, and then he says goodbye, too. Then Aveline. Carver offers to walk a hiccupping Merrill home, and Varric issues the requisite thinly-veiled threat about being on his best behavior before Isabela can. They're not really worried, they just have to be.

For a little while, it's just Isabela, Varric, and Hawke shooting the shit, hemming and hawing about whether they should go for another round. They do, but Varric falls asleep halfway through his pint, so Hawke and Isabela pass what's left back and forth until it's all gone and they put shit in his hair until he wakes up with a snort and a curse, then trundles upstairs to bed, growling a reminder at Hawke that she's supposed to meet him here at noon sharp tomorrow. Well, today, now.

Her limbs and eyelids are leaden, but every nerve in Isabela's body is rattling. They're alone now, but her tongue feels like cotton dipped in honey in her mouth, slow and heavy and mired in so many sweet things she knows she'll never say, that she's surprised had even occurred to her. Hawke seems unbothered, unknowing, unwitting, saying something kind about Merrill and the basket of pastries she'd left at Gamlen's front door a couple days ago. Isabela feels stupid. She's not supposed to be riddled with angst about this. It's sex. It's sex they both want. Sex they could and should be having right now, but they're not and she doesn't even know why, and she didn't ever know why, she's only ever pretending to understand any of the things Hawke does to her.

"I just think she's lonely, y'know." Hawke is saying, scratching at the surface of the table and getting little bits of wood under her grubby nails. "And I don't know. I think Carver likes her. I think he's positively smitten, in fact. But I know how he is. He's going to say something dumb about magic or elves or magical elves. And maybe she won't notice at first, sometimes she doesn't notice a lot. But he'll keep saying dumb things and she'll notice, then, because she always notices eventually, I've noticed."

If she's so good at noticing things, then why hasn't she noticed how Isabela feels like she's drowning on dry land and it's all her fault. She wants to grab her by the collar and shake her down until the answers fall out and she wants to run away because she's been here too long already but her life depends on staying mired, right now. In this.

"I don't know, I think they're sweet." Isabela says, instead of any of that. Hawke is frowning, though.

"Carver doesn't know what he's doing ever. With anything. I hate that he's making me bring him, when we go." She's got her hands bunched up in her hair, like she does. Isabela reaches and wrests her fingers loose, like she does. When did it even start?

"He's going to be fine. And you're going to be fine. Everyone is going to be fine and it will all be roses, because you'll be rich and you'll buy me all kinds of shiny trinkets and swooping, feathered hats." She says, setting Hawke's hands on the table like they aren't burning her to touch. Hawke snorts.

"Why am I the bird, you're worse than… Oh, bugger, what are they called? Those crows that'll steal your wedding ring?"

"Well, the one I met was named Zevran." Isabela says. "But I think you're thinking of magpies, you big daft bird."

Hawke snaps and points at her.

"That's the one, you're a magpie. Worse than a magpie, because you steal my lunch, too."

"Sometimes. Those little sandwiches your mother makes are delightful."

Hawke finishes the last of her ale, foamy dregs lingering over her upper lip. She scrubs at it with the back of her hand and still somehow manages to miss some. Isabela, not thinking, reaches over the table and wipes it off for her. Hawke's lips are very close to the pad of her thumb, it would be nothing, nothing to make it abundantly clear where she wants this to go. Where she needs this to go, now. She almost does. Hawke looks like she wants her to. Her eyes are glassy and her breath whistles from between her lips and maybe her head tilts ever so slightly. Isabela pulls away, jamming her hand between her thigh and the bench and wishing Aveline was here to make everything unambiguously sexless.

"You know, I was serious about you playing cards with her. My mother, I mean." Hawke says, suddenly unaffected enough to bring up her fucking mother, apparently. Isabela nearly chokes. She's going insane.

"Oh, I don't know, sweet thing. She might be happy to be rid of her feral brood for a little while. And I mostly mean you, by the way. Your table manners are atrocious." she says, desperately trying to keep pace with the way Hawke's mind fritters about inside itself.

"Please, she's going to be beside herself. And stuck with Gamlen. We're taking Huge Dog down with us, so she won't even have him for company."

Isabela sucks the inside of her cheek. There's that hot, itchy feeling again. What if Leandra tries to show her Hawke's baby shoes? Or asks what her intentions are with her gangly, ridiculous daughter? Like they're something. Like Isabela wants to be anything at all.

"You know, I do things when I'm not with you. I have my own jobs to work, and Merrill and I have been talking about learning how to play squash. We might actually have the free time, without you kicking our doors in every other day."

Hawke pouts.

"You're going to learn to play squash without me?"

"Maybe." Isabela smirks, shrugging. "Maybe we'll even go treasure hunting up here, where there's sun and the darkspawn are not."

"You won't, you liar." Hawke says, dropping her chin to the table and goofily grinning up at her. Her eyes are a shade of blue that makes Isabela homesick for somewhere she's never been. "You'll miss me. You know it. We talked about it. But just drop by, if you have the time. She'd be happy to see you."

"We'll see, you tireless pain in my ass." Isabela concedes. She doubts that they will, but she'll make as much of an effort as she wants to, she supposes. "Maker, Hawke, it's late. Why are you still here?"

Hawke shrugs, batting her mug back and forth on the table like a spindly, petulant jungle cat.

"The closer I get to maybe having the money to never have to sleep under Gamlen's roof again, the less and less I want to be there at all. I slept in the barracks with Aveline last night."

"Oh, I bet that was firm."

Hawke honks that stupid, giddy laugh of hers.

"I got top bunk, if you can believe it. I always thought I'd be the bottom bunk, if it came to me and Aveline sharing a bunk bed. She's just so bossy, bless her. You never know until you know, I suppose."

Isabela grins and sips daintily from her tankard.

"How do you imagine it'd go with us, then?" She purrs. Innuendo is comfortable. Innuendo is safe.

"Oh, that's easy. I think we'd have a good enough time taking turns, but I think you'd probably trick me into thinking I earned the top bunk more often than I'd ever realize." Hawke says, shrugging. Isabela's knees bump hers under the table and they're both fighting themselves trying to keep from laughing at how Hawke should be embarrassed that she had an answer, the right one, so quickly. But she's not. Isabela adores it and her and is too drunk and too tired to be revolted by the notion.

"I think you're cleverer than you let on." Isabela says, like it's conspiracy. Hawke nods sagely.

It's strange. It's all so very strange and she is addicted to it, the way Templars are to lyrium, the way mages are to devouring knowledge that will rend their minds and wills. A borough full of fit, barrel-chested sailors, and busty, sharp-tongued barmaids, and here she is, enthralled with this juggernaut of sharp angles and mussed hair and stories duller than burnt toast that she shares like they're lost canticles. Isabela wants to kiss her about it, learn what that stupid laugh tastes like, understand what all the fuss is about.

"Sleep here for tonight." She says, the words falling out of her head, sudden and sheepish like that time Huge Dog dropped all the pebbles he'd apparently been carting around in his mouth on the Wounded Coast. Hawke at least has the decency to look surprised, shocked, even. Isabela's dignity might remain mostly intact.

"Are you sure?"

Of course not.

"Yeah, come on." Isabela says, heaving to her feet and only stumbling a little from the headrush. "I might even have an extra nightgown for you, you smell singed."

They make for Isabela's room in silence, leaving behind the hum and clatter of the bar, passing Varric's room, where they can hear him snoring through the walls, past doors containing arguments, moaning, silence. She fumbles for her skeleton key when they're at her door, Hawke close and quiet behind her.

The door swings open with a weary creak and her tongue can't find a place to get comfortable. It shuts behind them, and there they are. Isabela forgot that she'd left the fire burning before she left, hours ago, and she thanks the smouldering embers that remain for having the decency to not burn the place down in the meantime. She shucks her gloves off and sits on her bed, getting to work on her boots. Hawke glides to the mantle, eying the assortment of trinkets and baubles, collected from shipwrecks and damp caverns and Antivan mansions. Her hands are clasped behind her back, like she's at an art gallery and not witnessing a monument to Isabela's compulsive greed.

"I like this one." Hawke says, sounding bashful. Isabela cranes her neck.

"Which one?"

"The Mabari."

Isabela snorts. "You would."

"Everyone always makes fun of Fereldans for liking our dogs, like it's some kind of insanity to like dogs. Everyone likes dogs. You're a real bastard, if you don't like dogs, that's what I say." she grouses. Isabela finally gets her boots off and she's quite far from naked, but that's not what it feels like. She breathes in deep, holds it, steeling herself.

"Will you just. Come here. It's time for sleeping. I need to sleep." She says, quieter than she means to. Hawke turns, she looks concerned. Isabela feels queasy.

"Sure, of course. You're right, me too." She says, unbuckling the strapping of her leather chestguard and sliding it up over her head. She tries to kick her boots off as she walks, but trips over her feet. Isabela's heart catches fondly, then. She scoots over a tad and holds the covers open for Hawke.

"The smell isn't that, bad, then."

"Please be assured that it is, sweet thing. I'm just too drunk and exhausted to care." She says, her eyelids too heavy to negotiate with, Hawke in her bed be damned. She rolls to face the far wall, the one with the tiny, dirty, sad window, which is the thing she likes the most about her room, really.

The mattress buckles with the added weight.

"Thanks for this, 'Bela." Hawke mumbles, shifting around the lumps, trying to array her quite long self comfortably. Their hips graze and Isabela bites down a keening sigh.

"I'd say any time, but I don't mean that." She says, trying to sound playful. Airy. "You're welcome, Hawke."

That's the last they speak, for the night. Maybe Hawke drifts easily into sleep. Isabela hopes she doesn't. She hopes she is burning and sick and dizzy and deliriously happy and utterly furious about it, same as her. She doesn't roll over to find out, though. Not once.