Title: Sentinel
Characters: Really, all, at least mentioned in passing.
Genre: Angst/pathos, hurt/comfort, romance, friendship
Rating: T
A/N: Eventually, we all went our separate ways- well, all except Fenris.
This…turned out way more depressing then I expected.
Disclaimer: It's sad and the game isn't mine. Double whammy.
"I did need you, you know."
The words were so very soft.
"I always needed you. You were so- eager to assume I'd just shuffed you off, put you aside. You always thought you didn't- live up to me, somehow. You were wrong. I knew you'd protect her. Protect everyone I left behind. I was more surprised you didn't see what I was trusting you with. Instead, you saw what I was forcing on you."
"Brother."
"You're so determined to hate me. I don't know if that's because you're afraid of what will happen if you stop, or if it's me."
"Brother."
"I wasn't upset for me. I was upset for her. Do you know she wept when you left? Like you'd died. Nothing I could say would help. She'd lost one baby, and then you went and left her. I wasn't her baby, Carver. Not anymore."
"Sherwood!" Hand on his arm, yanking him around. "Will you just- stop? Stop it."
Pulling away, pushing; a step back, a soft exhale that comes dangerous close to being a whimper. "I need you to know. I can't- right now-"
"Don't. I don't want to have this- fight with you-"
"What fight?" Sherwood gripped his wrist, tightly. "Carver, just- we're all each other has left, now, really. I just want you to know-"
"You've got to go." Carver, to his surprise, pulled him into a fierce hug. "Aveline and Donnic and I- we'll be fine, here. But you have got to go, Sherwood."
"You won't be fine." He gripped Carver more tightly, even as Fenris appeared on the docks. "There's a war. You're my baby brother."
"I'm a Templar." A soft laugh. "Or I was. We won't be staying in Kirkwall, brother. Too infamous. But we have to help where we can. And anyway, a group our size would be too conspicuous. I'll catch you up, Sherwood."
"You already have, you bloody git." And they embraced again. He didn't want to let go. Maker, how he didn't want to let go of his little brother, his only real family left. They'd been through everything, and come out alive and mostly sane and now-
"Sherwood. Time is running short." His lover's voice, calm and unphased but anyone familiar with Fenris could hear the sharp note of alarm in it. "You'll see him again. Come."
"Come with us." The words were pleading and low, and surprised even him. "Maker, Carver, just- come with us. Please."
"I can't." Carver pulled away first, this time. "Aveline and Donnic need all the help they can get, and all the friends, too. I'm just the first good-bye you'll be saying, you watch." Almost gentle.
Sherwood shook his head, hands on Carver's shoulders- "Hawke!"- "Not goodbye. Not for any of you. Just- until later."
"Until later, big brother." Carver shrugged his hands away, stepped back once, twice.
And then he was gone, swallowed by the crowd.
Sherwood watched, scanned until he was sure all signs of his sibling were gone, even as Fenris grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him towards Isabella's ship, calling him six kinds of idiot and cursing in at least two languages.
He didn't say goodbye, not to a single one of them.
Not when Anders declared himself too dangerous and the tension between himself and Fenris too big a distraction and vanished one day, hiding himself like an ally cat among some new city's underbelly.
Not when Merrill and Isabella left together, off to new sunrises and ports and to do and be whoever they wanted.
Especially not when Varric told them he was getting to feel like a third wheel, and ready to start spreading the Magnificent Legacy of the Hawke around for all the world to hear, anyway.
He didn't say goodbye, and he prayed like he never had before that he wouldn't come to regret it.
Two years and counting.
Well. We never said how much later.
Two years and counting.
He'd gotten good at waiting.