TW: Brief non-con
As Amell's monster interrogated the Magister, Zevran moved to lean against a wall, crossing his arms across his chest as he settled in to wait. Hawke and Alistair, by mutual silent agreement, chose the opposite wall, and scooted a bit further back so that Zevran could see them from the corner of his eye, but they weren't under his direct scrutiny. After a while, Hawke simply leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, trying not to dwell upon the various aches and pains in both his body and his soul.
Until he felt something strike his cheek.
Slowly he opened his eyes and looked around. Zevran's gaze was locked upon Amell, staring as if his life depended upon it. Alistair seemed to be snoozing, and had tucked his arms up into his body in such a way that it was almost impossible to tell one had been prematurely shortened. Amell stood in front of Erasthenes, ignoring the others in the room as he questioned the man under the glowing dome of magic. Slowly Hawke turned his head to look back to the half-open doors through which they'd entered.
His eyes widened as he saw a familiar and all-too-welcome figure press a finger to his lips. Hawke gave a very short nod, peering through the darkness to see who had accompanied Dorian. One by one they registered: Bull, Varric, Solas, Leliana, as well as the promise of more hovering behind them. His gaze met that of Leliana, finding there a level of understanding which surpassed words, and nodded. Keeping his movements casual, he turned his gaze to Zevran, noting that that the angle of the door blocked the elf's view of those who stood outside the room. With a slow breath, he looked at Dorian once more, then gave a signal to Varric he knew the dwarf would recognize: mage first.
Varric nodded and stepped back, tugging Dorian down so that he could whisper softly into the mage's ear. Dorian nodded, then looked at Hawke and pointed to his ear and then to Amell's back. It made sense, of course, that Dorian would want to learn all he could about why Amell had come to this godforsaken ruin in the first place, so Hawke settled back into his disinterested slouch and tried to pretend that nothing was out of the ordinary.
The next few minutes ticked by slowly, filling Hawke with an inordinate amount of tension as he prepared for what was to come once Dorian and his companions initiated an attack. He hoped they didn't delay it so much that Amell turned to see them, and he didn't even dare to alert Alistair as to what was going on for fear that it might blow the whole thing wide open. Instead, he kept his gaze as hidden as he could, leaning his head back and looking at the world through slits so he could monitor all sides. The conversation occurring through the bright dome of magic blurred into faint buzzing noises as he waited, tense, for the action to begin.
At one point, Amell turned to look at him with a speculative expression, and Hawke dared to return the look with a hint of boldness. Amell simply shook his head before returning to his conversation with the Magister, and Hawke let his head fall back as the pounding of his heart filled his ears.
Let this be my opportunity, he prayed fervently, over and over, to...well, honestly, to anyone who was listening. After all, maybe this time, of all times, someone would hear him.
As if in direct response to his desperate pleas, Varric stepped through the doorway and raised Bianca, aiming down his sights at the back of Amell's head. Hawke's muscles tensed immediately, knowing that there would only be one shot at this-literally. The tip of the bolt glowed with some sort of magic, and Hawke could only pray that it was enough to overpower whatever defenses Amell had in place. Varric waited one breath-two breaths-then tightened his entire body to brace against the power of his crossbow.
And then the bolt flew.
Time seemed to slow down as Hawke's head snapped to watch Amell, praying to the gods in all their aloofness to allow, this once, for a miracle. He watched the bolt flare as it hit some sort of magical barrier around Amell, but in the next instant lodge home. He couldn't quite see where the bolt had landed, but it was enough to make Amell shout and stagger. Even as Zevran swore and pushed away from the wall where he lounged, a figure blurred into sight from beside him and launched an attack. Her daggers struck true, slicing Zevran across the neck and face, but it wasn't quite enough. Zevran lashed out with a fierce kick, sending Leliana flying, then snarled as he drew his own daggers and ran after her, cursing extensively in Antivan.
As the others rushed into the room, Hawke grabbed a confused Alistair's arm and dragged him to the dubious safety of the corridor outside. Once there, he grabbed Alistair's shoulders and shoved him down to the ground. "You will not try to play the hero, understand?" he demanded. "You will stay here and hide as best you can and only leave with the Inquisitor."
"But-"
Hating to stoop to emotional blackmail, Hawke galloped over the line and reminded himself that it was for the man's own good. "Theirin, do you really want Leliana to see you get hurt more than you already are?"
Alistair swallowed visibly. "She's here?"
"Damned right she is. So stay here until she comes to get you." This time he cupped Alistair's face between his hands and held his gaze. "Promise?"
After a moment or two of his mouth opening and closing, Alistair finally sagged in place. "I promise. Not that I'd be much help anyway," he added bitterly, waving his truncated arm. When Hawke stood, though, Alistair's expression slipped into concern. "Where are you going?"
Hawke's gaze grew flat as he stared back into the room where the fighting continued. "I'm feeling a bit vengeful for some reason," he snarled, then launched himself towards the door, ignoring Alistair when he shouted Hawke's name.
When Hawke entered the room again, it seemed to be nothing more than a writhing mass of fighting. Where he had expected to see Dorian and his companions pitted against Zevran and Amell alone, he instead found that demons had been added to the mix. Gathering the chain still hanging around his neck as an impromptu weapon, Hawke threw himself into the fray, wrapping the chain around a nearby shade and using what strength he had to remove its head through brute force alone. Demon ichor flowed over his hands as the demon shrieked and clawed at him, but he refused to pay attention to the pain. Only when its flailing had ceased did he paused to wipe his hands dry of blood before he took up the chain again, looking around for another victim.
And saw Amell, locked in some sort of magic duel with Dorian, each man standing opposite each other and hurling spells over the dome containing the prisoner. As Hawke's vision turned red with rage, his focus narrowed down to Amell and nothing else. Before he had a plan, he burst into a run across the battlefield, ducking beneath a wide blow from Iron Bull and a sweep of the arm of the pride demon against whom the Qunari fought, until Hawke finally plowed full strength into Amell's back and toppled him.
Straight into the shimmering magical dome.
Amell's shriek was practically inhuman as the left side of his body fell through the barrier, in parallel with a startled cry from Erasthenes. As the barrier spell flickered and dissipated, the Tevinter shimmered and disappeared into nothingness with a soft sigh. Amell, however, simply collapsed onto the ground, motionless and seemingly without life. Around them, the demons sank into the ground en masse, clawing desperately at the air even as the Fade reclaimed them with a vengeance.
Even as Hawke knelt to wrap his chain around Amell's neck just to make sure, a blurred movement out of the corner of his eye gave him the barest hint of warning before an arm wrapped around his own neck. A snarled Antivan epithet deafened him in one ear just before Zevran violently shoved Hawke to the ground with enough force to knock the air from his lungs. In the next heartbeat, a blade drew a painful, shallow line along his throat, and a knee ground into the small of his back to keep him helpless.
"Stop, or the Champion dies!" Zevran called out.
The threat was enough to make Dorian and his companions halt in their steps, and Zevran took advantage of their hesitation to reach towards Amell and extract that odd amulet from around his neck. The moment of uncertainty quickly passed, however, and Bull bellowed as he rushed towards them, maul overhead. As it swept down, Zevran swung the amulet towards the skull surmounting Hawke's staff. When the crystal struck the glowing red lyrium, it suddenly flashed into life with a burst of white light so bright that it blinded Hawke for a moment.
When the blindness passed, the room had changed. Bull's maul still hung in midair, surrounded by a cloud of hovering dust which scintillated and sparkled in the sunlight streaming from above. Dorian was across the room, hand outstretched and mouth open as if he'd been caught mid-shout. But it wasn't until Hawke saw Varric, Bianca braced against his shoulder, and the crossbow bolt suspended in the air a couple of feet in front of him that Hawke finally figured out what had happened.
"How-?" he gasped, then cried out when Zevran cuffed him harshly across the head.
"No questions," Zevran snarled. "You fool, did you think the Master was so easy to kill?"
Even as the elf spoke, Amell slowly rose to his feet, then reached up to tug the scorched but mostly whole hood of his robe back as he looked around the room. Hawke's eyes widened as he saw what the magic of the dome had done to him: the left side of his face, before a mass of burn scars, now looked simply melted, and one of his eyes was completely gone. A hole shone through his cheek, revealing teeth and bare tendon, and his arm hung limply at his side looking like nothing more than a burned mass of muscle covering bones stained with the blood which still dripped to the floor. When he looked down at Zevran, Hawke saw red tears weeping from his single remaining eye, leaving streaks of blood on his face. He was alive, but how, Hawke had no idea.
"We leave," Amell told Zevran in a hoarse and cracked voice as he reached down and retrieved his staff. "Bring the little bird."
"Yes, amor," Zevran said, though his eyes were a little wild as he stared at Amell's face. "But what about-"
"Do not question me," Amell grated, speech obviously posing difficult for him. "We go."
Zevran's jaw rippled, but he bowed to the decision quickly. "As you say." Cuffing Hawke again, he stood and grabbed the chain around Hawke's neck, dragging the man along before Hawke could regain his footing. "There's no escape for you," he snarled at Hawke. "Never for you."
And with those words, a blanket of despair fell over Hawke. The only people he might call his friends remained stuck in that bizarre spell triggered by Amell's amulet. To their eyes, he and Amell and Zevran would simply vanish, a mystery impossible for even the Inquisition to unravel. His only consolation came from the fact that at least he'd managed to extract Alistair from Amell's clutches, but that also meant he was now alone, the sole target for Zevran's increasingly irrational outbursts and Amell's need for blood to feed his sadism and magic.
Their escape from the Shrine passed in a blur as he stumbled along behind Zevran in a targeted flurry of curses, kicks, and cuffs. When they did reach the horses, Zevran summarily threw Hawke over a saddle and lashed him into place with bonds so tight Hawke had to fight for each and every breath. Every jounce and bounce of the animal sent a shock of pain through him and his straining joints, until finally Hawke fell into a trance of sorts in a desperate attempt to keep the pain away and simply not exist.
How much time passed before he was pulled from the horse and flung to the hard stone floor of some distant cave, he never knew. His bonds remained in place, restricting his movements as he struggled to examine his surroundings. When the rumbling roar of falling rocks reached his ears, Hawke forced himself to twist round long enough to see the last few rocks fall to block the entrance they'd used to enter their temporary haven. He saw Zevran hovering at Amell's side, obviously ready to steady and aid his Master as necessary. When Amell batted Zevran's hand away, the elf whined, "But amor..."
This time Amell shoved him away with a snarl. "When I need help, I'll summon you. Until then, stay away."
Given the play of emotions over Zevran's face, which showed a mixture of hurt, betrayal, and adoration fighting for dominance, Hawke wondered how many more times Amell could take that tone with Zevran before even the elf succumbed to resentment. Even as he watched, however, Zevran turned to look at Hawke, and sudden rage suffused his face with a crimson flush.
Hawke had only that as a warning before Zevran rushed over and kicked Hawke in the side, then dragged him over to a convenient boulder, pinning Hawke on his back with a knee to the chest. "And you," Zevran hissed. "You have proven yourself a traitor and a liar, just like all shems." Hawke squeezed his eyes shut as Zevran used Hawke's dagger to slice the clothes from his body, desperately trying to push reality away as Zevran hauled his knees so far apart that his hips screamed in agony.
It didn't help. Not this time. Zevran assaulted him with brutal efficiency, his motions driven by a desperate frenzy as he repeatedly called Hawke a traitor and a liar with each thrust. At the end, when Zevran dug his hips deep into Hawke, Zevran grabbed a handful of Hawke's hair and yanked him upright, forcing eye contact as he spent himself deep within. "And to think I almost believed you," he whispered ever so softly, voice breaking with the intensity of the words. "I should have known you only wanted to use me. You're no different than all the others."
And with that, Zevran spat in his face.
Only then did the elf release Hawke, pulling out with a contemptuous sneer on his face before shoving Hawke off the boulder to lie on the ground. "You should have run with Theirin when you had a chance. Now, you have none left. You are mine."
Hawke lay on the floor where Zevran had left him, staring at nothing and trying to feel the same. Inside, though, the pain and despair welled up inside him in a whirlwind which swiftly blended into something else entirely: anger. Ignoring the agony in the motion, Hawke slowly pushed himself up, but almost immediately slumped backwards as a wave of dizziness swept over him. With a groan, he rolled over onto his hands and knees, letting his head hang down as he waited for the spell to pass.
"I trust you realize you brought this on yourself, cousin."
Hawke's body tensed at the sound of Amell's amused tone, and he slowly raised his head. An oddity momentarily caught his attention when he saw that their horses had been reduced in number, with two now lying on the ground as desiccated corpses not unlike the Venatori Amell had drained in the Shrine. The sight sent a shudder through his body as he wondered if Amell would ever do that to him.
But then, perhaps that fate would be preferred to whatever Amell had in store for him now.
Shaking his head, Hawke forced up to rest on his haunches, unsurprised to find Amell watching him closely. He found that his cousin had covered his scalp and most of his face with twisted cloth, leaving only his remaining eye and the undamaged side of his mouth uncovered. The sullen red glow made it look as if a fire burned and crackled beneath the cloth, an unsettling thought which sent a shiver down Hawke's spine. The mangled left arm had somehow had its skin restored, but it remained skeletally thin, as if the skin had been grown from the muscle itself. "It was worth it." The hoarseness of his own voice caught Hawke by surprise, as did the pain of saying anything at all, but he grimly pressed onward. "Alistair is free."
Amell tilted his head, his eye narrowing as he considered Hawke. Extending his right hand, he slowly tightened his hand into a fist as a slow pulse of magic enveloped it. Hawke found himself lifted to his feet and then elevated even higher as a crackle of energy locked him in place. "Ah, Alistair. Yes, you fulfilled your role well. He is with the Inquisition again, and will do as expected-just as you did."
"N-no," Hawke gasped, though the grip of the spell prevented him from shaking his head. "I h-helped him."
"You did exactly what I needed you to do," Amell told him, a slow smile spreading his lips. "They will welcome him back into their arms without question, even from the lost angel, and there, he will do what needs to be done. The Inquisition is an annoyance, certainly, and the Anchor stolen by the Inquisitor would be a lovely prize, but my true goal remains the same. Corypheus must fall, and the Orb come to me. Theirin is vital to that plan-but only from within the Inquisition. I will use him as I have used you, and I will emerge victorious in the end." When Hawke made a strangled sound, Amell boomed a laugh. "Did you really think you could succeed, little bird? When have you ever succeeded at anything save failure?"
No, no, no! Hawke's entire being shrieked in denial at the possibility that his single good act of rescuing his friend from the clutches of evil was nothing more than another part of Amell's plan. More than that, Hawke understood with a visceral, brutal honesty that he had thrown his own freedom away through a string of poorly considered reactions. Had he simply grabbed Alistair and kept walking, away from the fight and out of the Shrine to the world beyond-trusting in someone else to do what was needed to take down Amell once and for all-then it was altogether possible not only that he would be free, but that Amell would be truly dead. Instead, Hawke had only guaranteed his own torment in a desperate, ill-advised reach for vengeance.
In a way, that realization hit Hawke harder than all the pain inflicted on him by Zevran and Amell both-because he only had himself to blame.
As Hawke's struggles weakened, Amell's humor fled. Red eye burning, his cousin stepped closer and reached into the magical cage around Hawke. As his hand settled around Hawke's throat, Amell said, "Still, you did disobey me, despite me giving you one last chance to learn your proper place. Just because I knew you would spurn me once more does not mean I will let your rebellion, or the degree to which you inflicted harm upon me, go unpunished. All I truly need of you is to be the Vessel, and now I know you don't need free will to serve me in that capacity. Thus I will take from you what you value most dearly: yourself."
Those words galvanized Hawke once more, though all he could do was claw at Amell's unshakable grip around his neck. Each motion felt like he was reaching through shards of glass, but he couldn't simply do nothing- not when the stakes were this high. In the end, however, he accomplished nothing.
Just like always.
Amell's eye caught Hawke's gaze and held it until Hawke's arms fell limp to his sides once more in utter defeat. Amell shook his head. "Such a pity. I could have made you a true force to be reckoned with in Thedas, if only you had learned to obey. Alas," he murmured as his hand inexorably tightened around Hawke's neck, "it is time to say farewell."
Hawke tried to look away from that baleful eye, but found he could not. That red glow demanded attention, even as the world dimmed around Hawke and lost color, as his hands and feet dwindled to strange and distant objects, as his name vanished and his memories winked out from his mind. The eye remained-in the end, it was all that remained, its hue and intensity an overwhelming presence in a world gone dark.
Then even that was gone, leaving him alone and bereft.
He floated in a world of endless darkness with no name, no memory, and no hope. He was nothing, would be nothing for as long as nothing existed, and somehow he knew he deserved it even though he could no longer recall why. How he had come to be here, he could no longer remember-but then, he also no longer cared. It was all he knew, after all, and all he would know, into the far reaches of time and void. The understanding, though slow to come, proved to be both terrifying and comforting, yet even that faded after a few moments as the void around him claimed his final fears and left him with nothing.
Nothing was all he would ever feel.
Nothing was all he would ever know.
Nothing was all he would ever be.
When a hand landed on his shoulder, it took him a long time to remember what a shoulder was, or what it meant that something besides him existed. Nothing didn't have a shoulder, after all, and nothing was not him, and he was nothing. Once those thoughts had pushed through his mind, he tried to remember if he had ever been more than nothing. Curiosity was gone, as was fear, so when he found someone standing next to him, he didn't think to question their presence. Them being there was as likely as them not being there, and he couldn't possibly be bothered to figure out why either event had occurred.
Still, it was better than nothing. That much he knew.
The hand tightened on his shoulder as its owner said, "Thank the Maker I finally found you. You need to come with me, Hawke."
Hawke. Hawke. "Hawke." The word had once meant something, he was sure, but it meant nothing now, not even when he spoke it with lips he'd forgotten he possessed.
The other, the one who was not a part of the nothing, turned Hawke until their faces practically touched. "Hawke. It's me." A hand moved to cup his face. "Remember?"
He looked them up and down, at the worn robes with the feathers on the shoulders and the hair with the longer part on top pulled back into a messy queue. In the depths of his old, almost forgotten self, something stirred, and he nodded even as he remembered that he could make words, too. "I... could be made to remember." In the very next moment, a word was pulled from his lips, a whisper almost lost in the vastness of the nothingness around them… almost. "Anders."
"Yes," the other one breathed. Hands moved to rest on his shoulders. "Try to think of the one who did this to you. You can do it. Remember the eye? Remember the pain?"
Slowly the picture formed in his mind, and with it, something else: anger. The rage built slowly but surely within as memory of the eye became memory of a face became memory of the man. "Amell," he growled as an incoherent anger swelled in his mind. With the rage rose a stronger sense of self, a demand for something more than nothing. "I remember."
The hands on his shoulders tightened for a moment. "The man who stole your memories, made you betray your friends, and took everything from you."
Hawke closed his eyes for a moment, picturing the glowing red eye once more. The handprint burn on his chest suddenly flared into painful life, but that only made Hawke feel more himself than ever. He nodded in response to the other's words. "I will make him pay."
"Yes." The hands smoothed down to his chest, and at their touch, the pain grew more distant. It didn't go away-it simply didn't matter anymore. "There's really only one more thing you need, isn't there? One more thing to make it all right."
Hawke's nostrils flared as his eyes flew open. "Yes."
A spasm shook the hands resting on his chest, and Hawke felt an odd heat flash through his body. "Give it a name. I need to hear the name."
Taking a moment to savor the word in his mind before giving it voice, Hawke shifted forward until the breath of its utterance would fall on the other's lips. "Vengeance."
He felt the shudder which ran through the man-Anders?-as he smiled. "Exactly." Eyes still closed, he leaned in and claimed Hawke's lips for a desperate kiss. As their lips locked with his, a crack appeared in the skin of his face, showing a line of bright purple light. The lines slowly spread, growing until a network of purple jagged lines spread over him, glowing with a terrible purpose Hawke felt deep within his being. When he pulled back and opened his eyes, they shone the same color as that light, and his voice vibrated with a hidden power that made Hawke shiver with need. "Vengeance."
Something was wrong. Hawke knew that. There was a line he knew he shouldn't cross, a deal he knew he shouldn't make, but in the moment, all he truly cared about was encapsulated in the very being of the one who stood before him. "When the time is right."
"Always," Vengeance said, then pulled Hawke into another savage kiss.
.~^~.
.~^~.
End Act III - Subjugation