I was first aware of a splitting ache along the back of my skull, wrapping its fingers around my head and down my jaw. Squeezing my eyes shut, I lifted a hand – which I found the action also brought the other – to my forehead and let out a groan when the touch did nothing to appease the pain. The movement aggravated ripping pain through my right shoulder, bright white searing around the joint. On the other side, the action drove another arrow of agony through my left shoulder, closer to my heart. Fabric tore away from dried blood and the raw wetness began to weep again. A strange burning sensation then made itself known along the inside of my right forearm, aching through the muscle.
My eyes opened to, what looked like, a dingy stone ceiling that one might find in Darktown. Grime fitted itself nicely between the stones and had greased the iron protrusions that bore from it. The iron ran itself down through the air with identical partners before plunging back into the stone by my head. I noticed a glisten run down one of the bars, wetting the floor beneath it and causing dark red to streak up and down the length.
A soft, padding sound came to my ears, pulling my attention to a cage not too far from my own. Inside, paced a slender man, messy ivory hair thrown in front of his face, some of it matted with blood and plastered to his face above his left brow. The former-slave wore no metal shackles around his wrists as I did, his fists clenched as he walked the perimeter of his cell like a wild animal.
"Fenris?" I heard a rough imitation of my voice call out.
Dark eyes shifted down to me and his pacing ceased, his strides lengthening to the wall closest to my own enclosure. The two cells were separated by a few feet and shared no common wall, which quickly quashed my plans for escape.
His deep voice was raw, whether from yelling or from lack of use, I could not tell. "Hawke, are you okay?"
I clambered onto my feet, a bit awkwardly with my hands secured together, and surveyed the rest of the room before answering, taking note of the planks secured to the wall with leather straps hanging lifeless from them. Beside it was a table that was teasingly close to the door, though I could see nothing on it besides a piece of cloth that laid unevenly across the surface. The room was empty otherwise, save for a few wooden buckets and three other cages like ours. "It takes a bit more than a bump on the head to do me in."
"They've come in here twice since I've been awake," he growled, his deep voice coming back to me off the walls. I could hear his teeth come together. "The last time was to inject something into you."
I sighed, searching around once more, seeing no escape route save for a small barred window behind the cells, and it was much too small to fit through. "Can't you phase through these bars?" I asked, a small amount of hope etching the words.
He shook his head angrily. "They're lined with some sort of lyrium I've only seen once before – in the Deep Roads. They have us trapped."
I glanced down at the ache in my forearm, noting how the veins had left angry streaks beneath my skin. "Something tells me that I've upset Meredith more than she'd let on." A note of humor crept into my voice.
The door came open then, crashing loudly against the wall and announcing the four people that strode into the room. The woman whose fiery-red hair enflamed my heart smiled blackly and nodded in mocking respect came first, taking her place on the wall of which was not abused by the door. The second that came in was a soldier that I had no memory of – a burly man with dark hair that was cropped close to his head – lead himself to the door of my prison, a ring of keys grasped firmly by a leather strap at his waist, tinkling with taunting freedom. A mage came next. I could sense his pull on the Fade long before he'd come into the room. The last person to come through the door was none other than Meredith, her cold blue eyes regarding me in dark humor as she took her place by the planks on the wall.
"My dear knight-commander, I have been getting the feeling that you have an annoyance with me," I said, my voice cupped in an acidic quip.
Meredith looked older than I'd ever seen her; great lines marring the plane of her forehead, a deep fold in the flesh between her eyebrows and small crevasses along the outer edges of her eyes.
My door opened, the large man gripping the back of my neck in a cool steel grasp and pushing me closer to the mad woman. Pressure hit in all the right spots along my sensitive shoulder and I was forced to the ground in front of her, wincing as my knees crashed into the hard floor.
"Do you see where you are now, Champion?" she asked rhetorically. "Beneath me, kneeling before the good of man and serving me." I saw her metal boots take two small steps forward, clanging to the floor, unyielding and impassionate. She rocked her weight to one foot and, before I had time to flinch, brought the other soundly into my stomach. I fell onto my elbows, air rushing from my lungs as an arrow from a bow.
"Hawke!" Fenris called out behind me, anger ripping at his voice.
She continued as though nothing had happened. "This is where a mage belongs, a humble servant to man, doing only as they are asked." The hard steel of her boot came at me again, this time hitting me in the side of my chest and crushing at least one rib as I descended the rest of the way to the floor. Between gasps of air, I stared up at her, bleary-eyed. "Mages do not pick into the business of mercenaries, slave-traders, Templars or other mages. They simply do as they are commanded when they are called upon by authority and nothing more." I saw her draw back this time, pushing the energy in my body into my fingertips and drawing up the Veil between her and I. The shield I had constructed in my head never made it into the room with me, mana burning profusely in my right hand, but unable to escape from my body. The limb ached with power that had no way out, the joints and bones of the hand throbbing. The kick landed in my exposed stomach once more before rough, bruising pressure was clenched around my upper arms and jerked until my body stood before her.
Metal fingers closed around my throat and Meredith's face drew close, inches from mine as I struggled to breathe. "What part of that escapes you, I wonder? Why have I had to resort to this to get my point across to you?"
I drew in a painful breath, talons of white pain sinking into the flesh of my side as I did so. "I'm – I'm supposed to believe that this is all about m–my being an apostate?"
Her lips pressed into a thin line as her fingers dug into the soft flesh of my throat. Air was in short supply and not soon after, stars began to dance in my vision. "You are the insolent, underhanded and deceitful trash that has stained my name." Black began to creep around the edges of my vision before she released her grip. Blood rushed painfully back into my head and my lungs filled themselves with a torrent of biting wind.
Before I had settled into so much comfort, my body crashed back into another hard surface. This time my hands were freed from the metal shackles and extended to either side of my body where they were fastened with thick leather straps as the matching set were tightened around my ankles.
My head smashed into the wood in the same place that it had been hit earlier in Fenris' mansion, my stomach lurching from the impact and the room dancing before me.
I found my tongue before I had the chance to open my eyes again. "You've stained your own name plenty before I got here. What is this, really?
There was a shrill laugh in the air when the scene rolled around to me. Meredith had a small metal object clutched in her hand and had thrown her head back in amusement. Her face grew close to mine in a way that should have held great intimacy. "I shall see my debt repaid, one way… or another." Her voice was very soft, it touched a nerve in me that her punishing blows had not. "There is many a man that has a plentiful bounty on your head, from this land and the next, you see. Many wealthy magisters from the Tevinter Imperium have an eye on your companion and yourself. " She paused for a moment, her gaze wandering to the recesses of the dark room, a small smile curling her thin lips. "A man by the name of Danarius, I believe, wants his pet back and offered… to take you off of my hands." Her icy stare, returned to mine, blue penetrating deep into my soul. The face neared mine until her lips brushed my cheekbone, her voice drifting to my ear. "He'll be here in a week's time. Until then, you're all mine."
I shook my head against the information. "Danarius is dead. I saw him—Fenris killed…." My breath shook against my better intention and I could feel her smile deepen.
"It seems," she spoke softly, drawing her face back a few inches, "that it is surprisingly hard to kill someone who refuses to die." Meredith's eyes flickered back to Fenris, who was lit by pure rage, blue light erupting from his brands and setting the entire prison in horrific relief. "I'll make you a deal, however…" She smiled, enjoying her game beyond what should have been possible. "Give me the elf's life and there will be no more pain on your behalf, the magister will understand as long as the lyrium in him is recovered. I'll let you be and you'll go on to the Tevinter Imperium and I'll never see you again. What do you say?"
I pushed my head back into the solid structure of my biding table before I threw it forward with as much force as I could muster, smashing the front of my skull into hers. She stumbled back a few steps, a hand flying to her face beneath pinched brows. The metal hand drew away, leaving a trail of red dripping from her nose. Her eyes snapped to the blood on her glove, a wicked grin spreading across thin lips as a biting laugh escaped between them. I had blinked and in that time, the maniacal Templar rushed at me with the gleaming metal object pushed out away from her body.
She pushed the blade up beneath my ribs first, popping through the muscle and membrane. Every breath I pulled in felt like I had accidently swallowed water down my windpipe – choking, coughing and wetting my teeth. Dark and warm ran out of the wound as she retrieved her knife, soaking the front of my tunic they'd given me.
Meredith used the hilt-end of her sword to injure my body in the meanwhile, pummeling me about the stomach and the face. I'd managed to avoid most of the hits to the head, though one caught me just above the eye, spinning my world sideways for a time before it leaked down the side of my face.
I'd antagonized her at first, mocking her every blow and wound she'd inflict on me until she'd bled my wit from me. After the biting tongue had ceased to work, I refused to give her any satisfaction with utterances of discomfort. She'd quickly remedied that when she started breaking my fingers, naming a grievance I'd given her with every crunch of the bone between the metal clamp. I'd called out, first in words and then in mere shrieks of anguish when language had failed me.
Cries of rage echoed my yelps of pain. I could catch a glimpse of the elf in his cell, frantically pacing the length of his cage. He'd throw his hands against the bars in fury, yell, try to reason with me or my torturer and then finally grew silent. Somehow it gave me strength, even if in infinitesimal amounts, to see him alive and well – even if angered – as my beatings continued.
The light from the small window had nearly faded, all that was left was the faint bronze glow of a setting sun. How many hours had it been? Three? Four? It didn't matter, it could have been years for all that I cared, but when the sun had begun disappearing was when Meredith wiped her gloves clean of my blood and left.
The mage that had stood in the corner by the red-haired woman came up to me, then. Her face was hard and unfeeling as she pushed healing mana through my flesh. She was a good healer. She reminded me a bit of Anders in the way that she was gentle and had obviously been trained for years in the art. But somewhere along the way, she had sold her will to do good to Meredith and had bought her freedom with the task of healing the Champion of Kirkwall.
Burning magic knitted my flesh, drew the blood from my lungs and mended the bones in my fingers, leaving nothing but thin pink lines, dried blood and bruises when she was finished. Smaller wounds, raw rub marks on my wrists and ankles, a bloody nose, a broken rib and the small gash on my face, were left alone. The large Templar took me down from the wooden restraint board and threw me back into my cell without my handcuffs, my body hitting the stone floor limply and without a fight. I heard the heavy door come to its frame in a creaking sigh.
My body burned and ached, covered in a slight sheen of sweat. My mind wasn't much in the ways of coherent thought, but I did feel some relief in the fact that the pain was over for now, that until Meredith came back, I was no longer subjected to the endless white-hot pain that she'd inflicted over every inch of my body.
"Fenris?" I asked into the room, barely lit by the pathetic light that came through the solidary window.
The deep hum of his voice held an edge to it that I had only heard once before, on the night that he had left my room. "Yes, Hawke?"
I willed myself to look up into his cell, "Fenris…" I say once again, his name on my tongue bringing a small amount of relief and pain in the knowledge that I am not alone.
He made a sound that could be distantly be compared to a laugh as he crouched close to the ground, his ivory hair falling in his pained face. His lyrium glowed softly with enduring rage on his chin and down the hollows of his throat, casting a faint bluish glow on the surroundings. His eyes burned with fury and anguish in equal parts, looking over my defeated body lying on the cold stone.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, groaning as I rolled myself onto my side. "I'm sorry…. Sorry…."
He frowned, dark brows coming down over his angular face, but I interrupt before he could question me.
"She's going to kill me," my voice says from a long ways away, brutal and blunt, my mind too fatigued to do much else to dress up the blatant truth. "My mind or my body."
Lids fell over green in what I could interpret as defeat.
I huffed out a painful laugh. "You knew that, didn't you?" my tone bit into the words and I saw him flinch from the corner of my eye.
"Please…" he pleaded with me, his voice raw and raspy. "Just let her –"
"No."
"Adrienne…." My first name on his lips hadn't been there in three years, caressed gently by emotion. It hung in the air, but I shut my eyes against it, reopening them only to the iron bar that lay just a foot from my face.
I looked to the brown streaked bar that separated Fenris and I from freedom, hoping to have set it ablaze with my thoughts, turn the turmoil of emotions in my heart into liquid fire. "I can't." My voice broke on the last word.
A hand extended between the bars, sheathed in a razor-edged gauntlet. I knew the power behind that hand, I'd seen it many times before disappear into the depths of someone's chest, closing around a frantically fluttering heart and smother the life from it. I knew that even when he hadn't faded into a ghost, somewhere between this world and the Fade, the metal casing around his and was sharpened to perfection as I'd accidently cut myself on it that one night three years ago. But it wasn't fear that stirred in me, but a mixture between pain and awe.
Tied there, around the weapon that guarded his wrist, was a bright red scarf. I remembered it as the lengthy piece of cloth that I'd presented him to use as a bookmark when I was teaching him to read. He'd regarded it strangely at first, but had put it in between the pages of the book he'd been working on. And now it was tied to his wrist.
The hand came around to cup my face, his naked palm resting against my cheek. His eyes burned with a vulnerability that I'd never seen before. "I can't…" I whispered again, closing my eyes.
"You can't do this for—"
I pushed his hand from my face. "Fenris." My voice came out harsher than I had intended it as I gripped the bars between us with my good arm and hauled my protesting body into a standing position. "Don't make me fight you…"
Fenris recoiled, his hair falling in between me and his eyes. All I could see were the corners of his full lips turn down and press together a bit tighter. As he drew back into his cell, I grabbed at his wrist before it had slipped from my grasp, my fingers closing around the piece of cloth that neatly encircled his arm. His body went rigid but his shoulders began to square with me again.
"Fenris…" I breathed, barely audible to myself. I looked up from his gauntlet, my eyes meeting his dark ones. "I'll get out of this… I know I will…."
His eyebrows pulled together, though not in the fashion they usually did where they pulled crinkles around his nose, no, they set his face in pain. His voice came in a deep rasp, defensive anger darkening the edges of the sound that usually sent my heart aflutter.
"And if you don't?"
The possibility drug through my brain as blade through flesh, leaving angry red lines in its wake. I didn't care what Meredith did to me, in all honesty. Perhaps I could anger her to the point where she would injure me to where no amount of healing could bring my soul back to my mangled body. Even then, I only half-heartedly considered that as an out. Meredith, though cruel in her ways, was a carefully planned woman. She would find a way to keep her composure and draw out my life until I was severed from the Fade forever.
To live without emotions, without dreams, without magic? Was that even possible?
I knew the answer to that one, I'd seen the Tranquil walk the halls of the Templar's court. Empty and lifeless were the only two words that I could come up with, even if they were helpful and kind in nature, they still struck me as unnatural and dead.
But they felt no remorse, no pain. Never had I heard a Tranquil speak of their experiences with any more emotion than I would have browsed The Hanged Man's drinks on the night that the group played Diamondback. I wouldn't feel any guilt to having my magic stripped away, no lost at having no emotions or dreams to cloud my thought. My life would be freely lived, studying books that I read only to fill my now-empty mind. It'd be—
No, no, no! How could I even be possibly considering – that? I would be strong. I would fight Meredith as long as it took for me to figure a way out of here, for at least Fenris. If he was free, he could abscond from Kirkwall and go to Orlais, be safe there. Once he was out of sight and long out of the Free Marches – it would take maybe a day, or two – I would give in to Meredith. Let her take my everything from me. But, only after Fenris was gone…. Iron cages, much like the ones we stood in now, tightened around my heart at the thought of him witnessing Meredith strip the life from me.
"I will clear the way for you."