Sebastian had counted himself part of more families than most, and he had lost them all.
It was distressing when he started to think about why and how and when he lost everything. He was, after all, far too culpable. More than he'd admitted. Even to himself.
The first family was his when he was Sebastian Vael, youngest son of Prince Lachlan of Starkhaven. His parents had their heir, a spare, and him. She never said as much, but he rather suspected his mother had wished him a girl; her eyes always held a particular disappointment when she looked at him, even before he earned it, and she'd had a tendency to gaze at the little girls running about Court with troubled longing.
Sebastian Vael wore his place in his first family like an ill-made suit of armor and it chafed, so he sought the false god of pleasure, thinking it would take him in, would anesthetize him. What ill, wondered the young prince, could not be cured by love, by laughter, by singing in taverns until dawn?
He was wrong, of course, that naive princeling. The countless nights spent in the arms of nameless women with their interchangeable faces and bodies and breasts, and the countless empty bottles and empty tankards and emptied purses did little to drown his sorrows or fill the empty, aching space within him. These things magnified his pain instead of numbing it. Lying with a woman was not love, no more than buying rounds purchased true friendship. Sometimes, in the middle of a particularly vulgar verse of some drinking song or another, snatches of the Chant of Light would drift into his mind, and the evening would taste only of disappointment, and be spoiled.
He was older now, and wiser, and hindsight had clarified all too much. His actions then were those of a spoiled child, a child denied nothing, who expected his slightest whims to be obeyed and acted upon instantly. He had been selfish, so very selfish, and thoughtless. Until the day his parents committed him to the Chantry, he'd never considered how his self-destructive desires might be destroying them, too.
He knew now. Now, when it was beyond too late.
Too late for too many things.
Though he could recognize now why his parents thought it best to banish him to the Chantry, the loss still stung. More so, perhaps, because amends would never be made. No apology could bring his first family back from their graves. He had waited too long, holding on to the vestiges of indignation, telling himself he would return to Starkhaven a full Brother and apologize then. He wasn't entirely sure what he wanted them to say, but his was fairly certain he wanted them to be proud.
Pride—having it, wanting it—was a dangerous thing indeed. This, too, was something he knew, now that it was too late. This, too, was something he had learned the hard way.
His second family called him Brother Sebastian and, almost against his will, the sanctuary of the Chantry became home. It was a family he did not want, in the beginning. Too many brothers and sisters, and no sense of how he fit in the hierarchy. He'd resented the Chantry. Hated it a little, even. Wanted to escape it, certainly. If not for Grand Cleric Elthina… but no. He could not bear to think of her, could not bear to consider this fresh loss.
For years he'd been a good son, a dutiful brother, and he'd avoided seeing disappointment in his new mother's eyes. He had done all she asked of him, allowed himself to be guided, and he'd thrived. The hollow space within his breast began to fill, slowly. Love, Brother Sebastian discovered, could be found following the Maker. Laughter was often heard in the chantry, echoing in the nave, dancing amongst the buttresses. The first time Sebastian heard Grand Cleric Elthina laugh, he'd nearly wet himself. It hadn't seemed… serious enough for a Grand Cleric. But Elthina was fond of laughter, the Chantry was not nearly as staid and melancholy as Sebastian had feared it would be, and the Chant brought song into his life that did not fill him always with dread and shame.
Still, however, he chafed. He clung to pieces of his past. He never gave up the fine armor his father had gifted him, though he knew the vows of poverty, certainly, ought to have included such an extravagance. Nights were long and lonely, and love of the Maker was not quite the love he longed for, no matter how ardently he attempted to convince himself it was.
Still, he had thought himself happy with that second family. Happier. Less empty. But not full.
It was never quite enough.
No wonder, then, he'd been so willing to give it all up the day he discovered the fate of his first family. The line between justice and vengeance was such a thin one. So easy to step over. The Grand Cleric had known it. Sebastian had not. Not then. And though it galled him to admit it, he still wasn't certain he knew where the distinction blurred.
He'd seen real disappointment in Elthina's eyes that day. And though her disapprobation stung, still he had walked away, knowing he could never go back, not really. Even if he returned to the Chantry—as he'd thought then he would do—it would be a different Sebastian who walked in the door. Elthina had known that, too. But he'd been too blind to see her concern for what it was.
And now the second family, like the first, was dead. Murdered. All those brothers and sisters. Love, ended. Laughter and song, silenced. Elthina, like his own parents, would never hear his apology.
He would avenge them. He would avenge them all. Or die in the attempt. He could promise that much.
Much as he'd like to, he could not pretend not to know the expression Elthina would have worn at such a declaration, and it gave him pause.
Death is never justice, Sebastian.
Too proud, too blind, too vengeful. His list of sins was grave indeed.
It was not until he'd walked away—a quarter of an hour passed, an hour, he wasn't certain—his vow to Hawke still ringing in his ears, that he realized he was leaving a third family to what might very well be their doom. At some point he'd been adopted by Hawke; he'd begun looking to her for guidance instead of the Grand Cleric. He'd seen the disappointment on Elthina's face more than once when he chose to follow Hawke instead of attending to his other duties. And still he'd gone.
In Hawke's little rag-tag family, he had been neither Prince nor Brother; indeed, he had constantly remained balanced on the knife-edge between those two extremes. With Hawke he was just Sebastian, and even when they didn't see eye to eye, she never turned her back on him (as his first family had done) or tried to push him toward some desirable outcome even when it went counter to what he felt necessary (as had the second).
Until she'd turned and snapped, "Do not interfere, Sebastian," he'd thought Kiara Hawke the best and truest friend he'd ever known.
The two images simply didn't add up. He couldn't see how the two faces of Kiara Hawke overlapped. It bothered him. No matter how he tried to ignore or deny one or the other, he couldn't. For years, Sebastian had watched Hawke attempt to do the right thing, even when right was not easy. For years he had admired her, even when he could not entirely approve of the company she kept. For years he had… but no. That, too, he could not bear to think of. Not now. Perhaps not ever.
To change a person's heart, one has to lead by example.
They were his own words, but they rang hollow even as he remembered them. What kind of example are you setting now, Vael?
Worse: what kind of example would it have set for Hawke to execute Anders?
It would have satisfied vengeance, certainly, but not justice.
Her "Do not interfere, Sebastian," had felt like the sting of a lash across wounds already torn wide by what the abomination had done. Was he meant to stand and watch, again, the way she'd accused him of standing and watching so many times before? Even now, the thought of her countenance and the sharpness in her tone made his hackles rise, and he felt his hands clench into fists at his sides. Do not interfere, as though he were some interloper, some common bystander, and not all but the sole survivor of the institution that had been family to him for more than fifteen years.
Do not interfere.
Who had more right to be angry than he?
And yet he found himself troubled as some unwanted recollection scratched insistently at the back of his skull, demanding his attention. When he tried to remember the scene he'd left, he could see only Anders, head bowed, sitting on his overturned crate, an insulting picture of penitence. Waiting. Hawke, pale with emotion—rage, grief, frustration, anger; some part of all of these—telling Anders to go.
He recalled surprise—genuine surprise—on the abomination's face, followed by the faintest flicker of something like disappointment. As if Hawke had, by her pronouncement, done the very last thing the mage expected her to do. The rest, of course, was lost to Sebastian's own declaration, his own rage, but now, replaying the scene over and over as he stalked through Kirkwall's smoky streets, he was forced to wonder if Hawke hadn't somehow done the opposite of what Anders had wished in letting him live.
Had she still been attempting, in her almost-incomprehensible way, to do the right thing yet again?
Worse, had he known on some level? Was that the reason he'd not simply put an arrow in Anders' eye before anyone could stop him?
He could have done it. He knew it. Hawke had likely known it. And he hadn't.
Shame flooded him when he thought of his words, when he remembered claiming he would raze Kirkwall to the ground if necessary. Sebastian swallowed hard. As if Kirkwall had not suffered enough. The city had been his home almost half his life, and his response was to threaten war upon it to kill one man?
Did that make him any different than Meredith, with her Rite of Annulment invoked to kill all when the one she wanted dead didn't fall under the Rite's jurisdiction in the first place?
Did it make him any different than Anders, killing so many in an effort to start a revolution that might only reflect even more poorly upon those he wished freed, and might end with mages even more feared and oppressed than they ever were before?
What, precisely, did it make him?
Sebastian stopped, shaken. He put a hand out to steady himself but misjudged the distance between hand and wall and fell to his knees in a grim mockery of prayer.
Had he learned nothing? Was he still the selfish, spoiled child expecting his every demand be catered to instantly? A princeling who threw tantrums when they were not?
"I've never had so many opportunities to help people!" he'd once exclaimed to Varric, flushed with pleasure, with enthusiasm. Varric had rolled his eyes, but Sebastian was undeterred, because it was true. Being with Hawke—working with Hawke, helping her help others—it was exciting. Fulfilling. Real.
And he'd left her. In her time of greatest need, he'd been proud, blind, vengeful and he'd left her.
He knew then he had to go back. If only to ask why she'd done what she'd done. If only to get answers. Too often he'd blundered through life acting without thinking, or thinking without acting.
He didn't want this to become just another of those mistakes.
He didn't want to turn his back on this family. If it wasn't too late already.
It was easier to make the decision than to act on it, however. The streets were crowded—too many civilians, too many wounded, too many templars. Paths he would once have taken were closed off, barricaded by fire and soldiers with flaming swords upon their breastplates. The chaos tormented him, but he had no time to stop, no time to offer assistance. Instead, Sebastian did his best to avoid the conflicts, slipping through shadows, sliding over walls and through dim alleys. He sent prayers when he could, and hoped they would help.
His prayers did not save him. It was his armor that gave him away. Of course. It was so white, and he kept it so pristine even darkness could not completely mask its brightness.
"There! He's one of hers!"
Sebastian was quick with his bow; he always had been. He had an arrow nocked, aimed, and ready to fire before the templar finished crying, "Traitor!"
And then the unthinkable happened.
His bowstring—the bowstring he'd worked almost his entire life to pull effortlessly, quickly, flawlessly—snapped, the broken end whipping back to lash him across one cheek. It stung. His perfectly aimed arrow flew wide; he heard the shaft shatter as it hit a wall. With the sound came pain, such pain, and at first Sebastian could not comprehend why the sound of a broken arrow might wound him so grievously.
Then he looked down and there, protruding from beneath the breastplate of his blinding white armor—how foolish to cling to a thing for so long; how foolish to blunder about in a war zone wearing a target; how many times had Hawke been seen or threatened or nearly killed because he was proud of the princely armor his father had given him?—was a blade. At the end of the blade stood a man. Just a man, no different than he. Misguided, perhaps. Led astray, possibly. A man. Just a man. They were all just men and women and mortal.
"Maker forgive you," Sebastian gasped. His mouth tasted of blood, sharp and metallic "Maker forgive me. Maker forgive us all. Blessed be the souls of the faithful that they ascend to His right hand. Blessed be the—blessed—"
Without bothering to pull the blade free, the templar released his grip and stumbled backward. Sebastian dimly registered the man shouting orders to leave, to abandon him. The templar sounded… horrified.
Death is never justice.
The true pain came then, bright and hard and cold, and with the pain came memory. Fenris, kneeling in prayer he would never admit to. Aveline's eyes filling with tears she was too stoic to shed the day he told her he'd added Wesley to the memorial wall. Isabela, stealthily dropping the coins she won cheating at cards into the hands of desperate children. Amelle, always shy around him, but quick with a pert remark, even quicker with bright smiles, and quickest of all with her healing hands. Merrill's childlike wonder, so wide-eyed and infectious. Varric, ever-smiling, ever-jesting, ever-boastful, and ever-watchful, so careful, so concerned about everyone staying safe, all while pretending not to be concerned at all.
Anders, wilting over a patient, unwilling to stop, unwilling to give up, pouring his magic into a body already too far gone to save. This memory pained him. Sebastian wanted to think only of the revolutionary, the murderer, the deluded traitor. He did not want to remember the mage as a man willing to give everything of himself to help dying refugees. He did not want to think of Anders as a man weeping over the dead he could not aid.
Misguided, perhaps. Led astray, possibly. A man. Just a man.
And Hawke. Oh, his Hawke. Laughing over a pint. The shadows her lashes cast on her cheeks as she bowed her head in prayer. The fierce desire to protect those less fortunate, those downtrodden, those enslaved. Her diplomacy. Her fire. How she couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but it had never stopped her from singing. How much she loved her sister; he'd almost been jealous of that, remembering his own dead brothers, but jealousy was too wrong, and so he loved her for it instead.
He'd loved her for so many reasons. For teasing him; for questioning him; for pushing him always, always, always to be a better man.
Oh, he realized, I'm dying. This is the moment of divine judgement.
Come to me, child, and I shall embrace you. In my arms lies Eternity.
Blessed are the souls of the faithful that they ascend to Your right hand.
He wasn't sure how faithful he'd been, in the end. He wasn't sure at all.
He would miss his third family most of all. It was not until now, staring down a blade at his own ending, he realized how little his life had chafed these past years.
How full his life had been. How tragic to only understand it now.
Draw your last breath, my friends, cross the Veil and the Fade and all the stars in the sky. Rest at the Maker's right hand, and be Forgiven.
The glowing figures appeared as if from nowhere, one white and one blue. The blue one reached out, and the light that enveloped him was warm, so warm. He hadn't realized how cold he was until the warmth seared along his veins, chasing the ice away. It pulled him slightly from his slide into memory. The figures were so beautiful. The pain ebbed when he looked at them. For a moment.
Sebastian breathed, "Blessed are the… to take… Maker's side…"
Perhaps it ought to have seemed odd that divine creatures of the Maker's will would pause and exchange concerned looks, but Sebastian could hardly focus enough to notice. His death was chasing him down a long, dark hallway, vicious as a rabid wolf, howling for his blood.
"I don't know about this, Fenris. This is bad. It's really bad. He's far gone. He's… not all here."
"We're not safe here," growled the glowing white figure. "We must return to the estate."
The blue figure gasped, clearly startled. Estate, Sebastian thought driftingly. Estate of the Maker, where I will walk at his side.
"I don't think we can move him like this."
"Then we must—"
"No," said the blue. "I have to try. You know I have to try."
The blue light grew warmer still, until it was too hot to be soothing. Cold danced with the heat, a strange, unearthly hotcold thrum that made him want to weep and scream and beg for mercy, all at the same time. Sebastian writhed under the force of the power, all the while hearing the half-uttered pleas of the woman—and she was only a woman he saw now, not divine after all; Hawke's little sister Amelle, with her shy smiles and healing hands—kneeling above him. When his vision cleared enough, he saw the white figure was Fenris, and that both of them were drenched in blood and gore and… substances not worth thinking too hard about.
"K-kia-kiara?" Sebastian managed to stammer past the hotcold burning his bones, his blood. "Is… she…?"
"Be silent," the elf commanded, never taking his sharp gaze from the entrance to the street. In a slightly—but only slightly—gentler tone, he added, "She survived. We all survived. As to the rest? Time will tell. This battle is over. The war has only just begun."
As the blue light began to fade, Amelle wiped a shaking hand over her face, indifferent to the fresh streak of blood that hand left in its wake. "Okay. I think that will hold. You'll have to carry him home, Fenris. Gently."
Home, Sebastian thought. The darkness was pressing in now, and with it came the memories again, and the regrets, but he was suddenly certain it was not his time to walk at the Maker's side. Amends. Apologies. Family.
Aye, home. Take me home. And I shall do my best to make things right again.
