Author's note: Well, that certainly took long enough! I blame starting the school year. And, y'know, writer's block and laziness. Ah well. Thanks to everyone who's read and alerted and favourited!
9:32 Dragon - Hightown
"For the last time, serah, the Viscount is a busy man. I cannot allow you to barge in on him while he's attending to important matters solely because you want to bother him with complaints about insignificant pieces of legislation."
Hawke nearly had to bite his tongue to keep from shouting. "It's hardly insignificant," he said hotly. "How many families in Kirkwall are discovered to have mage children each year? Hundreds? This new law puts the fates of thousands of people at the discretion of an order of thugs who are well-known to abuse those they have power over, regularly, and are held accountable for their actions rarely if ever."
The seneschal sighed and put a hand to his forehead. "I have no desire to get into another mage debate this year, with you or anybody else, serah. The templars I tolerate because I must, but as it stands, you are simply a very lucky refugee, Amell mansion or no, and you are hardly so politically essential. Please leave before I'm forced to call over one of the guards."
It was enough to make him want to punch the arrogant bastard right in the face. Not the comments about his class, or lack thereof; the only way Hawke could care less about what Kirkwall's nobility thought of him would be if having money and connections suddenly stopped keeping him away from the templars' scrutinous eyes. It was the apathy. The attitude that if you were tired of thinking about the oppression of a certain group, you could just decide to stop talking about it and all consideration of the topic would float clean away from your mind, until the next time you deigned to consider it again. Nobody ever made you consider it, of course; no person or circumstance would beat you over the head 'til you had metaphorical mage-shaped bruises all over your body with no healer in sight. It was just a hobby to pick up if you felt you had the time and curiosity, and everybody else should just be grateful that you picked it up at all. What a fabulous luxury.
"You do realise I'm friends with the Captain, right?" Hawke retorted. It was better than repeating his true thoughts. "Aveline's not just going to let her men drag me out of here like a criminal." Or at least, he hoped she wouldn't.
"Spare me the posturing," Bran said with a raised eyebrow and a healthy dose of hypocrisy.
"I'll spare the posturing when the Viscount can spare a few minutes to see me," Hawke cut in. He folded his arms over his chest, scowling. Maker, what use were money and power when they didn't even let you do anything useful for actual people?
Apparently no use, because the seneschal still wasn't budging. "Well then perhaps you should go back home and posture there where nobody is around to be bothered by it until those spare minutes turn up, because it will be quite a long time. Now leave."
Hawke had barely turned his back to the seneschal, giving him the dirtiest glare he could manage for a parting gift, when he heard the click of a door opening behind him. "Oh, Bran, you are available, that's good. Would you mind coming to verify this one report for me?" said a voice, accompanied by a few footfalls against the floor of the Keep. A voice that sounded familiar.
Seizing opportunities was probably one of those actions that, in most cases, could be said to accurately describe Tamzen Hawke. It certainly did now, at least. He spun around and was rewarded with a view of the Viscount's shiny bald head. And the rest of his person, but it was the head that really stood out.
"Viscount Dumar!" he called out, far cheerier than his mood would have suggested. "Long time no see, isn't it? Say, I'm sure you're exceedingly bored by whatever administrative sort of thing you're working on at the moment, right? You can spare a minute or two to have a chat with me, of course you can!"
The Viscount's somewhat disconcerted gaze slid over to Hawke, followed by an irritated glance from the seneschal, who was probably thinking something like Oh dear Maker, did he really have to open the door at that exact time? "Excuse me, you look familiar but I don't quite recall your name at the moment," the Viscount replied, sounding rather weary. "And I am quite busy, as I'm sure Seneschal Bran has told you, so I'm afraid I cannot spare time for a 'chat', as you say."
He was not about to let this opportunity slip away from him now. "I'm Hawke," he said, moving closer to stand right in front of Dumar. Bran maneouvred almost gracelessly out of his way and contorted his face into an even more irritated look. "I brought your son home safe from that whole mess with the qunari and the stab-happy mercenaries, remember?"
"Oh. Yes, of course. Serah Hawke, you said? Was there something I could do for you?" He sounded distracted, and tired. Hawke felt a flash of pity for him, but the safety of mages and their families in Kirkwall was more important that one man's emotional state. Particularly if that one man had volunteered for his current position. He paid the momentary feeling no mind.
"Yes, actually," he said, all seriousness now. "I'm here about the law you passed recently that increases the potential maximum sentence for aiding and abetting apostates to life in prison, and allows the use of lethal force on those who resist a mage's arrest. I want it repealed."
The Viscount's face flashed briefly into an expression of resigned frustration and helplessness. "Will nobody in this city ever rest on their laurels for a moment? First it's templars in here, badgering me about allowing them more leeway in doing their job, and now I'm going to have you and probably countless other mage sympathisers snapping at my heels. I don't even know why I bother trying to please everyone."
"Neither do I," Hawke quipped. "How about you just try pleasing me? I'm really very good at being pleased."
"Good at being a rabble-rouser, more like," the Viscount nearly snapped. "First the qunari; now the mages. Is there any maligned group you haven't championed yet? Will you come back advocating for the elves next week?"
He shrugged. "I try. Really though, this law will do nothing but stir up hatred. Most of these people who're supposedly 'harbouring apostates' are just parents and siblings who didn't want to toss their children to the wolves the moment they found out they had magic. You can't let the templars put them in prison for the rest of their lives! And this part about letting the templars kill people for resisting arrest - do you really think that won't be abused? That you won't have people murdered in the street just for daring to stand up for themselves and their loved ones rather than stick their arms out for manacles and let themselves be spit on and kicked?"
"Serah Hakwe," the Viscount pleaded, "I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss this with you. The law will stand. The Knight-Commander will hardly allow this office to be jerked about by mage sympathisers like a puppet on strings, and your arguments are grossly exaggerated. The templars are a force for law and order in this city, not a corrupt band of roving marauders."
"Because of course the two are mutually exclusive," Hawke shot back. His anger was bubbling in the pit of his belly. How could everybody be so blind? "Do you remember the last Captain of the Guard?"
"Of course I do," he said. His brows and mouth had turned down into a glare, and his voice had grown a touch of steel. "That scandal was an absolute nightmare for this office, not least in that it allowed Knight Commander Meredith to come here grasping for more power under the excuse that the guard couldn't be trusted to handle their own affairs." He turned away from Hawke, looking out over the railing to the floor of the Keep and the windows to Hightown below. "But who's to say she's even entirely wrong? The templars have certainly seemed more adept at managing any potential criminality on the part of their order's members than the guard has."
Hawke could have choked at that last sentence. "If by 'managing' you mean 'not letting victims' claims reach the courts or the public', then yes, that sounds exactly like the templars." His voice dripped with the contempt that had welled up inside him. "They have free reign to do whatever they like to a captive population, and you really think they don't use that opportunity?"
He would not mention the stories Anders had told him. He would not mention Karl. He had no choice, not if he wanted to avoid throwing suspicion on himself. Even though the weakness of his argument made him cringe. Empty rhetoric was fine for preaching to those who already believed in you, but here he had to convince an opponent. He could already see the outcome of the conversation.
The Viscount had had enough. "Whatever indiscretions you think the templars get away with, the fact of the matter remains that we have had guardsmen as well as templars injured and killed in the street by private citizens looking to hide illegal mages. Adult mages, mind you – these were part of that band of apostates that escaped from Starkhaven last year, not some Lowtown families' four-year-old children. The Knight-Commander insisted on more freedom in dealing with such reprobates, and after incidents like that I quite agree that it is necessary. And that is the end of the matter."
The door was practically slammed, the seneschal gave a smug "Good day, serah," and Hawke was left standing by himself, fuming.
Even with his mother's name and mansion and all his gold from the Deep Roads, he was powerless when it actually mattered. He could practically hear the snide comment from Carver, though it had been close to a year and a half since they'd spoken, or seen each other at all. Oh, so someone finally sees through all your bullshit, brother. Not so funny on that end now, is it?
Well bugger them all. If he couldn't personally convince the Viscount to change the law, he'd keep coming back until he could. And if he had any luck… well, he was fairly certain luck was one of the things he did have, along with certain other resources. If things went the way he hoped they might, he would make sure the people who broke this particular law were never caught. After all – he'd belonged to a rich family for just over a year, but he'd been part of an apostate family his entire life.
When he stopped to think about it, Anders found he was really rather unsure about how all this had come to happen. He'd insisted – to himself, to Hawke – for over a year that he wouldn't allow the other mage to get involved in his… less than scrupulous activities. And yet, here they both were, standing in a crumbling abandoned barracks building surrounded by mage children and their frightened parents, very definitely doing something that would get them into serious trouble if they were discovered.
But doing something desperately needed.
Hawke had crouched low to the floor, on eye-level with the children who crowded round him, some eager, some hanging back and clutching at their mothers' skirts out of fear or shyness. "The templars want to take you away from all the good things you have here. Your mothers and fathers, your siblings, your friends. Maybe some of those people want you to go away with them. They think you're dangerous, and so they're scared. But look." He held out his palm, and a dancing blue flame sprouted from the centre. "I'm just like you. Are you scared of me?" A chorus of shaking heads. "Then you shouldn't be scared of yourselves, either. You have special powers, and they make you vulnerable, but that doesn't make you any less deserving of whatever life you want to live. And I can help teach you to control your powers, so you can do just that."
It had been - what? Nearly two weeks ago, now, when Anders had first broached the topic with him. It had been over drinks (if you could call them that) at the Hanged Man, after several nights of excuses for his absence on Anders' part and cajoling on Hawke's, Varric's, and Isabela's. The latter two had leaned close together in some sort of mischievous conspiracy, looking over something Varric had written, when Hawke had turned to him and fixed him with a stare.
"Everything alright?" he'd said, a hint of solemnity and concern beneath an otherwise conversational tone. "You've been fidgeting since you got here."
Anders had looked away, and down at the ground, and anywhere but back at Hawke. "I… There's a new law, or there will be, at least. The Viscount hasn't signed it yet, but there's no reason to think he won't. He's like clay in Meredith's hands. It would allow people found to have helped escaped mages to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives - possibly even murdered without trial."
It had set him pacing in circles in his clinic when he'd heard. The abuses the templars visited on mage sympathisers were bad enough already, when there was only internal pressure and individuals' sadism to account for it; how much worse would it get when even the slightest hint of anything but perfect compliance could be used as justification for murder, and with the law's blessing? The news had stirred the Underground like a storm over the Waking Sea at their next meeting - the nature of Anders' colleagues' routine activities were such that additional punishments would make little difference to them unless they were accompanied by additional patrols and a higher likelihood of being caught, but what of the people they only had marginal contact with? The families of children just come into their power who cared enough to prefer the risks of freedom to a life locked in the Gallows; the inkeeps willing to turn a blind eye to the occasional secretive boarder in suspiciously robe-like clothing? They were the ones with the most to lose, and even though the back of his mind hissed at the masses privileged enough to keep their comfortable lives while others lived and died like scared rats, Anders knew he couldn't ask them to make the same sacrifices he had.
Sure enough, the Viscount had signed the bill into law shortly after, and the Underground had come no closer to a solution. It had preyed on his mind like a parasite, hovering over his head and taunting him with his lack of agency. Working his clinic until he was near dead on his feet did nothing helpful, instead only leaving him exhausted as well as miserable, so when a trip up to the bazaar found him ambushed by friends who wanted his company while they got drunk, he finally gave in on the off-chance that cards and companionship might capture his mind the way working hadn't.
The hope had been a vain one. Anders had proved for rather mediocre company; no doubt why Varric and Isabela had functionally sectioned themselves off to snicker over absurd stories. But Hawke, at least, had not disappointed, reacting to his news with the appropriate expressions of horrified disbelief and stony outrage. It wasn't a solution, not even close, but their shared experience did something to calm his tunnel-vision anxiety that the frustrated wrath of his Underground friends couldn't match.
So when a women he'd seen a few times at his clinic pulled him into an abandoned passage on his way home one afternoon and tearfully confided that her daughter - a shy, stubborn little thing with big bright eyes - had shown signs of magic, it seemed only natural to relate the story to Hawke. She was an example of just what they'd spoken about, for certain, but even beyond that, there was something uncomfortably sobering in the realisation that, more than Chantry dogma about evil Magisters, or Tranquil shop owners in the Gallows courtyard, he was the face of mages to an not-inconsiderate portion of Kirkwall. People scared of having family taken by the Templars would come to him, because they knew nowhere else to turn to. And despite his connections, more often than not he had little and less of an idea how to help.
Anders wasn't sure whether it had been himself or Hawke or both of them together who'd come up with the idea. Most parents, even if they wanted their children to live free, were reluctant to send their babies off into a foreign town with strange activists who slid out of the shadows when they got word of mages; without knowledge of the inner workings of the Circles, they would doubt such a fate would be much better than contacting the templars. What they wanted was what the Dalish woman, Arianni, had wanted - to keep their children with them, magic and all. But their problem was the age-old one: how to conceal a magical child in a city crawling with the armed and righteous? Anders didn't have delusions enough to think he was any sort of expert in such matters, given how he was shielded by loyal Undercity-dwellers, Varric's and Hawke's (oft-denied) string-pulling, and Maker knew what else, and the precious few Underground mages who'd remained in Kirkwall proper had all been Circle-educated for at least a time, and had thankfully more self-control than a band of frightened children with ages still in the single digits.
But Hawke, though. Hawke was an apostate, trained by an apostate father. He knew how to hide in plain sight better than anyone Anders had known. And so Anders went back and spoke to the woman, and words went out through other hushed channels.
The results of those efforts had gathered here.
"First thing's first, and I'm sure you could all guess this on your own, but stay away from templars and Chantry folk," Hawke said. "Anyone who seems… overzealous. Don't go screaming and running in the other direction if you see one, mind you. Go about your business, don't look too interesting. If one of them comes up to you specifically, act the same as you always have. If they're looking for something, it's something out of the ordinary."
He paused a moment, eyes flickering down to the ground for a moment. He seemed to swallow, heavily, though Anders wasn't sure the rest of the crowd would have noticed. Or at least, they wouldn't have noticed the significance.
"Don't rock the boat," he continued. Was that a quiver in his voice? "Be moderate. Even if the people around you say things or do things that are horrible, you make yourself a target if you speak out against them. It casts suspicion on you, and the people around you. 'Why do they care so much about mages?' is what others will ask themselves. If I'm going to be honest, I can't in good faith tell you not to stand up for us, but know what it means. Know how unsafe it is, and just what you're jeopardising."
It was sound advice. Advice he should take himself, Anders thought, not for the first time. He had family and friends and money and status, and to think of him losing all the things any mage could ever wish for… it was just stupid. Stupid, and wonderful, and foolhardy, and perfect. He wanted to lock him away and fight off anyone who tried to hurt him, even as he wanted him right there at his side taking on the templars of every Chantry in Thedas. Hawke would do it, too. It thrilled and scared him.
"Anders."
Hawke and all the others were looking at him expectantly. Such looks might have started him running his mouth about idiotic rubbish, once upon a time. Nope, nobody responsible here; look somewhere else for reliable and boring, because I'm not sticking around long enough to see your expectations get crushed to teeny little bits. Now they barely fazed him, the currency if you will that bought him his freedom and his livelihood. And all that they wanted from him were cured illnesses and mended lacerations. Easy things, though he would have gotten strange looks for suggesting so. He wasn't sure where to place these particular looks.
"We need you to demonstrate controlling techniques," Hawke prompted him, and Anders nodded. Of course. He ambled over to Hawke and the clustered children and the parents farther back, and when he crouched low, pulling tendrils of mana from deep within himself until his fingers began to glow a faint blue.
He wasn't quite sure whose fault it was that the side of his arm ended up pressed against Hawke's, nor whose fault it was that moments later they ended up separate again.
"You just had to impress them all with that lightening storm, didn't you?" Anders hissed, jostling through the tight-packed crowd several paces behind Hawke. His breathing came in short, heavy puffs. The various sorts of violent mayhem that tended to erupt around a certain other mage had kept him decently active these past few years, but in his experience, it was running for one's life rather than fighting for it that tended to evoke the worst floods of panic. When Hawke looked back at him, Anders could see the sharp rise and fall of his chest as well, though for some incomprehensible reason, the man was also grinning at him.
"They were all doing so well!" Hawke said, nearly spinning in a full circle as he pulled Anders from the crowded hex into a tight side-alley. He was practically beaming. "I thought they deserved a treat!"
Anders stalked ahead of him and glanced over his shoulder. "You should have saved it for next time. I told you I recognised that man. You know what would have happened if we hadn't started posting sentries."
"Free scrap metal and new mystery meat for the stew at the Hanged Man?"
It took barely a moment before Anders made a noise and a face. "That's disgusting," he protested. Dreaming up violent and creative deaths for the particularly deserving was an amusing pastime, no doubt, but there were just some lengths that went a little too far past common standards of decency. Few, but still some.
Peeking through the rusty iron fence bars of what looked like an overgrown courtyard, Anders saw nobody nearby and decided it was worth the chance. He indicated the hiding spot with a tilt of his head, and Hawke promptly cleared the protruding spikes with a running vault and in all likelihood a touch of force magic. He frowned and rolled his eyes, but climbed after him nonetheless.
"You're probably right," Hawke replied, when Anders joined him on the other side of the fence. "Who knows how much lyrium could've accumulated in the muscle tissue? And what if everybody started being all pious and authoritarian afterward? After all you are what you ea- "
"Please stop elaborating," Anders said, cutting off the other mage's frequent mouth-running. That was really not a mental image he needed, ever. "And don't think I didn't notice that spell."
He just shrugged and proceeded onward. The lack of alarmed shouts or telltale feel of a mana-dampening ward being placed in the vicinity allowed Anders to feel secure enough to slow his pace to a normal walk rather than their previous half-running gait, and not soon after, they stopped in the narrow, dusty space between two houses. Anders stayed on his feet, peering out at the hex they'd come from every few seconds; Hawke slid down low into a crouching position, leaning back against the smog-blackened wall and probably getting all manner of filth in his coal-dark hair.
He eyed him when his attention wasn't focused on checking their surroundings for templars. "I hope you're ready to run again if they come down this way," he said. "I'd feel better if you were standing."
Hawke cracked open one eye to stare back, a smirk playing on his lips. Sometimes, Anders though ruefully, the man really needed to learn to act his age. "Don't worry," he replied. "I'm always ready. We do do an awful lot of running, don't we? Sometimes it's nice to just get down on my knees and enjoy the sights."
Anders turned back to watch the path so fast as to destroy any attempt at subtlety, if indeed one could even be made. He hadn't ever really blushed often, but Maker was it obvious when he did. Like when someone dragged up the image that had wrapped itself around his mind two nights ago and kept him awake until an ungodly hour, then left his gaze fixed on Hawke's mouth whenever the other mage wasn't looking.
They were both silent for the next few minutes. Anders refused to look back at Hawke, and so, absent the usual babbling, he had no idea what exactly he was doing. He supposed without the usual babbling, it didn't matter especially much. Not unless he decided to start conjuring lightning again, which he was decently sure wouldn't happen. But it soon felt like enough time had passed without the appearance of pursuing templars, so Anders flashed Hawke as brief a "let's go" expression as possible, and they slid back out into the throng of people on the nearest main street. It'd be best to head over to the Hanged Man, he thought - closer than either his clinic or Hawke's mansion, as well as less likely to cause trouble if anybody did still manage to follow them. And if he was lucky, Hawke would direct his inappropriate flirting toward Varric or Isabela instead.
When he finally glanced at the other mage again, he wore one of his rare pensive looks. "We'll need to pick out a new location for the lessons," Hawke murmured.
"If any of them still want to come," Anders replied. "They might decide a pair of grown apostates is more dangerous company than they're willing to endure."
"Doesn't mean we stop trying."
It was stupid, but Anders' heart swelled a little. Even though he'd made up his mind to be at least mildly cross with Hawke for an indefinite period of time. His actions had been more reckless than usual of late, but who was Anders to judge? Nobody. Not with Justice. His cause had become Hawke's cause, and Anders wasn't mad enough to hold any pretenses about who would be a more useful public face for mages in Kirkwall. Throughout all of Thedas, even. It was times like these that made him wonder why he held himself back. Though it was also times like this that gave him the answers.