[ AN: Still Act 1, still before the Deep Roads. ]
While throwing very expensive bottles of wine against the wall was no doubt cathartic for Fenris, Hawke considered it among her accomplishments that she'd convinced him that drinking said wine could also be cathartic. Say what you will about Tevinter slave masters, but they had good taste in alcohol. Besides, wasn't it enough of a snub in Danarius' direction to have the escaped slave he sought so dearly sipping on his best bottles with an apostate mage?
Hawke certainly thought so, and she was glad she'd brought Fenris around to the idea as well.
She gave a relaxed sigh as she swirled her glass, lounging on one of the slashed couches in Fenris' mansion. "It ought to be illegal for bad people to own good wine. It's just not fair."
Fenris gave a small nod of acknowledgment, taking a sip from his own glass. "Hawke, can I ask you a question?"
Hawke felt just a little bit of her good mood start to slip away. "I'm just going to say no, on principle. Any question that requires permission to ask sounds like it's not going to be fun to answer."
Fenris frowned, but gave a small nod. "If you prefer."
Unfortunately, that was immediately followed by an uncomfortable stretch of awkward silence. Hawke wasn't sure if it was an intentional ploy to get her to relent, or if the elf simply had a greater tolerance for awkward than she did.
She gave up fairly quickly, rolling her eyes with a heavy sigh. "Fine, what is it?"
He raised an eyebrow. "I'm simply curious about the interactions we've had with mages so far, Hawke."
The sigh quickly devolved into a full groan. "Oh Maker, not this again. I take it back, you're not allowed to ask anything."
"What do you mean by 'again'?"
"If I tell you that Anders asked me the same thing," she snapped, "will you shut up about it?"
He didn't seem off-put by her annoyed tone. She still wasn't sure whether his ability to stay calm in most situations was aggravating or endearing. "Anders and I," he said, "may not see eye to eye on many issues, but I am not in the habit of disagreeing with him on principle alone."
Hawke scoffed. "Yes you are. You'd throw yourself down a flight of stairs if he decided to walk down them normally."
"I would not."
"Would too." She picked up a small ball of couch fluff and tossed it at him.
"I'm not going to have this argument with you, Hawke."
She grinned, taking a victorious drink of her wine. "I think that means I win."
He gave her a flat look. "I am not surprised that Anders asked you about this. Your views on this topic seem… unconventional, considering your situation."
"My situation?" She wasn't about to let him dodge away from this easily. If he wanted to make her talk through this, she was going to make it as uncomfortable for him too.
He glanced at her staff, resting beside the doorway.
"You can say the word 'mage,' Fenris," she said. "Or, Maker forbid, you could go all the way to 'apostate' if you wanted. I don't think there's any templars lurking outside your door to cart me away. Unless you invited them here, of course. Have you? Should I expect a squad to come bursting in to carry me away?"
Fenris didn't seem amused. "Hawke."
"No, I'm serious," she said. "You seemed pleased enough when I turned those runaway mages over. Why not add another to the templars' collection? You hate mages. Why not turn me in? I assume it's not my sparkling personality that's won you over."
Fenris leaned back in his own chair, though it looked damaged enough that she worried doing so might cause it to break. "If I answer you honestly about my motivations, will you answer me honestly about yours? An even trade."
Damn it. She'd been hoping to distract him enough to get the topic away from herself, but it seemed he was determined to figure her out. Good luck, boy. Because like hell do I have myself figured out.
She raised her glass towards him, reaching out across the empty space. "Alright, it's a deal, but you go first."
He clinked his glass against hers to seal the deal, then took another sip. "I told you the night we met, I was grateful for your help. I still am. You've shown yourself to be quick to help take down slavers, and refreshingly enough, you seem to have a grasp of how dangerous apostates can be."
Hawke shrugged. "Not really. What do I care if this city gets blown up by renegade mages or overrun with abominations? So long as they stay away from me. I just turn them in because the templars pay well and it's smart to stay on their good side."
Fenris shook his head. "You don't truly believe that, though. You feign disinterest when the topic comes up, but I do not believe that you care as little as you claim."
She scoffed, but there was a truth to his statement that bothered her. The way he seemed to be able to see through fronts that she put up in her attempts to brush him off was unnerving. "Not all of us have hidden depths, Fenris. Maybe I am just a selfish apostate who doesn't care about anyone but herself."
"You helped me," he said, voice dropping to a quieter tone. "You didn't hesitate when killing those slavers, either. Those aren't unselfish acts, Hawke. You've aided me in staying free of those who would capture me. It would be ungrateful of me to turn you over to those who would capture you."
"Ah," she said, raising a finger. "So you admit that the Circle of Mages is like slavery?"
"Most slaves do not pose the danger that mages do," he said. "Slaves are stolen from their lives to satisfy the only selfishness of another, mages are watched as a method of protection. Anders may argue that the Circle is inhumane, but the fact of the matter is that its intentions are to keep people safe, both the mages who cannot control their own power and everyday people who need not fear the mages in their midst.
"Anders claims against the treatment of mages may be somewhat valid-" Hawke's eyebrows shot up as he admitted that, but Fenris ignored her, continuing on, "-but the hard truth is that this is better than what would happen if mages were allowed govern themselves. If a few must be restricted for the good of all, then that is what must happen. Anders' idea of the way things should be will only end in oppression and enslavement for all. I am the living proof of what abuses will happen if his dream is ever achieved."
He stared down at his arms, eyes tracing across the lyrium patterns. Slowly, Hawke reached across the space between them and placed her hand on his wrist. "Hey, your master was stupid enough to give you power. Use it to destroy him."
His fist clenched, and she could feel his whole arm tense. "I plan to." He fell silent for a moment, then glanced down at her hand. "That covers my part of this deal, Hawke. Now it is your turn."
She sighed, pulling her hand back and taking a drink of wine rather larger than a sip. "I was hoping you'd forget about my part."
A small smile touched his normally serious face. "I had a feeling."
"What does it really matter to you why I do it, Fenris? Isn't it enough that I'm doing things your way and turning the mages over? Are my reasons really so important?"
"I'm not going to let you get out of this, Hawke. I answered your question."
She shifted her position in the couch to get a better look at him. "Fine. I told Anders it had to do with capability. Apostates who get captured obviously didn't have what it takes to make it outside the Circle. People like that are better off in the Templars' care, right?"
He raised a single eyebrow. "I didn't ask you what you told Anders. I asked you for an honest answer."
She leaned back, running a hand through her hair as she started up at the cracked tiles on the ceiling. "I don't see why it's supposed to be my job to help these mages. Just because I have magic too, everyone expects me to risk my neck to help them get free. No one helped me out. No one helped Bethany. If they want to live as apostates, they can't expect anyone to give them aid."
Fenris frowned at that. "You chose to help me."
"That's different."
"How?"
"Because..." She waved her hand about, frustrated that she couldn't find a good answer. "Slavers are easy. There's no question about whether it not slavers should die. They're bottom-feeding scum who don't even deserve to bleed on my boots. Killing them actually makes me feel good about myself, and as far as I care, the more brutal, the better."
He raised his glass as if in a toast. "I'll drink to that."
She raised hers just slightly as well in acknowledgment. "Beyond that, I'm not going to get in trouble for killing slavers. Maker's breath, the guards might even give me a reward for it. There's not a single downside, and if I happen to pick up an attractive elf warrior along the way, that's just bonus."
Fenris sputtered in an amusingly ungraceful way, coughing on the wine he'd just swallowed and Hawke had to keep herself from cracking a smile as she continued.
"The mages and templars on the other hand?" She shook her head. "That whole issue is a blighted mess. You know better than anyone what a good example the Imperium is of mage freedom gone wrong, and that's obviously not the way things should be. But you know what?"
She paused quickly before continuing, pointing a warning finger at him as her voice dropped low. "If you ever tell him I said this, I swear on Andraste's ashes I will string you up in front of the Gallows myself, but... Anders is right too. The Circle sucks. It's a terrible system too. It's why I'd risk living as an apostate, and why I worked so hard to keep Bethany out of it too. It's why my father ran away and escaped. I don't want to live my life as a prisoner, unable to do what I want and afraid I'll be made Tranquil if I step out of line."
Her voice grew softer, and she couldn't suppress a shudder. "I… I'm terrified of it, Fenris. You weren't with us when we tried to help Anders' friend. He was soulless, and for that one moment that he was himself again, he begged us to kill him. In a way, I'm glad for the nightmares I have about being made Tranquil, because so long as I'm waking up screaming, so long as I can still dream at all, they haven't gotten me yet.
"It's the templars themselves too. Even being around them makes me nervous, but I'm not about to show it. I've heard of the things they can do to mages with those weird powers of theirs. My father felt it a few times and the way he described it... They can drain you of power, until you're so weak and empty you can't cast a single spell. I never want to feel that powerless. I won't let them do that to me. I'd die first."
Fenris looked concerned. "Hawke…"
She wasn't sure if it was the wine loosening her lips, or if it was something to do with her conversation partner, but now that she'd started explaining herself, she didn't feel like stopping. "Even Aveline. I… she's my friend and she's a good companion, but when we found her and her husband on the road back in Ferelden, I thought that was it for me. I was glad that Wesley got the taint, because after he saw us, only one of us was walking away alive. I'm sorry for Aveline's loss, I really am. But I'm not going to pretend there wasn't a part of me that was satisfied to be the one to hold the knife when he needed to die..
"If I give the templars here a reason to come after me, I doubt it'll take them long to figure out I'm an apostate. So I don't. Maybe that should make me more sympathetic to the mages we hunt down, but it doesn't. Not really. Better them than me. I get paid and don't screw the Circle over. All I can think when I see them take mages away is that that's one more Chantry collar that isn't snapping closed around my neck."
The wine splashed out of her cup as she gestured, liquid running red over her fingers but she barely noticed. "I'm not a danger to society! Lowlifes on the streets at night excluded, Kirkwall doesn't have anything to fear from me. I'll leave blood magic to Merrill and stay well enough away from that. I'm not looking for a bosom friend in the Fade like Anders either. I don't need instruction to keep my magic in control!
"You know what I think?" Her eyes narrowed. "I don't think they're afraid of us so much as they like controlling us. What was it you said about your old master? He liked keeping a powerful pet on his leash? I don't think the Chantry is any different. And if we get away or don't cooperate, they say we're dangerous. They won't let powers like ours, yours or mine, walk free and they'd rather tear us apart than be leave us be. Danarius would rip the lyrium from your skin the way the templars would rip my soul from me."
Fenris' eyes grew hard. "They could try."
"You wanted to know what my stance on the mages and templars was. There you have it. I don't have one. I'm not picking sides in this dumb fight because both of the sides are terrible. You're right and Anders is right and you're both wrong and I don't care. I'm going to do what I think is going to get me paid and keep me out of the Circle. I'm not siding with or against the mages or templars or whatever. I'm on my side, and that's it."
He gave a small nod. "I wasn't trying to convince you toward one side or another, Hawke. I was merely curious about your motivations."
She sneered, standing up with a small sway. "Oh don't act like you're above it all. If I wasn't doing what you wanted, you'd be just as bad as Anders is, I'm sure. This issue is not my problem. It's not my job to fix this damn city. I'm just trying to live in it."
She drained the rest of her wine in two swallows, then, feeling impulsive, she the the empty glass against the wall. Fenris was right, there was something cathartic about the sound and sight of shattering glass.
The sudden destructiveness raised a concern, however. She turned back toward Fenris, fearing she could guess the answer to her question before she posed it. "How much of that bottle did we drink?"
He tapped a nail against the glass, which gave off a tellingly hollow sound. Hawke suddenly wished she had another glass to throw in frustration. No wonder she'd suddenly felt talkative tonight. How stupid did she have to be to get drunk and spill her thoughts to him like that?
She glared at him, deciding this was his fault. "This didn't happen. You didn't hear any of that because I didn't say it. Understood?"
He shrugged, but his eyes were much too keen to for her to hope the wine would haze his memories of this night. "If you like, Hawke."
As she turned away to leave, she could almost swear she heard him say softly, "Whatever you like."