It wasn't that Amelle didn't like Wicked Grace — she did. And it wasn't even that her hand had been that terrible — it hadn't been good, but she'd had worse, and had sometimes even managed to play well despite a bad hand. It wasn't even that she didn't like the company; Maker knew that wasn't true, either. She simply didn't feel like it tonight, she realized as she ran up the stairs, unable to suppress the twinge of guilt she felt when she thought of Varric's face the moment she revealed just how much she disliked being called Little Hawke. She'd always tolerated it, for Varric's sake, because it was Varric, after all. But she never liked it.
Somehow knowing he wouldn't be calling her that anymore was but a cold consolation.
She pushed open the door to Moth— to the room Sebastian was in, and found him reading quietly by candlelight. He looked up when the door's hinges creaked and blinked at her as if he couldn't quite understand why she was there.
"Amelle," he said, setting the book down in his lap, "to what do I owe this visit? I thought you'd be otherwise occupied this evening."
She tilted her head and sent him a crooked smile. "Not too busy to check on my patient, Sebastian."
He regarded her shrewdly, letting several beats of silence pass before cocking an eyebrow at her. "You had a terrible hand, didn't you?"
She sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh. "It wasn't that bad. It wasn't very good, I'll grant, but…" Amelle trailed off with a shrug. "I just didn't feel much like it tonight."
"And so you've come to glare at my recalcitrant wound instead."
"And will do so until it starts behaving, I'm afraid," she replied as she started undressing the wound. "How are you feeling?"
"It is… sometimes difficult to tell, but I believe there might be some improvement."
Amelle's smile was instant and, she was sure, relieved. "Good."
Once she pulled away the dressing and applied a fresh poultice and a deep pulse of healing energy, she began binding it once again. "You know," she said, conversationally, "you're probably healed enough to move around a little. I wouldn't suggest a sojourn to the Wounded Coast, but you're probably fit enough to, oh, venture downstairs?"
She'd tried to leave just enough of an invitation to her words so she could suggest without sounding pushy, but Sebastian grimaced and shook his head, his cheeks flaming with color.
"I… don't think that is entirely… wise, Amelle."
Amelle narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't think it's wise to take a short trip out of bed, or you don't think it would be wise to do so while there's a card game going on?"
"Which do you think?"
"Well, considering I was going to suggest you take up my seat and join in—"
The flush disappeared from Sebabstian's face so quickly, leaving him almost grey, that Amelle's fingertips flashed and glowed with a surge of healing magic almost before she realized she'd summoned it at all.
"No," he said hoarsely, shaking his head. Looking at his face, Amelle felt her heart constrict a little — he looked horrified at the prospect. "No," he said again, more firmly.
"And why not?"
Kiara's loud laughter rang from downstairs—no concept of inside voice, indeed—and Sebastian went unnaturally still. "I am quite certain my presence would not be welcome."
Amelle sighed. "Sebastian, you can't—"
"Can't what?"
She lowered her voice and met his gaze unwaveringly. "You can't avoid them forever."
Her patient bowed his head and pinched the bridge of his nose. A lock of hair slid free and hung across his forehead, and it made him look incredibly young for a moment. "Nor can I expect them to forgive me after such a betrayal."
Amelle's derisive snort made him look up with a jerk. "Please. Isabela not only betrayed my sister, Kiara ended up in single combat against the sodding Arishok for it. You were there, Sebastian — I had to put her insides back inside of her once that mess was over. And she still forgave Isabela." Amelle had, too, but she had found it to be a much longer process than Kiara had. Much, much longer.
"Amelle, do you not remember the things I said?"
"I remember we've had this talk before," she said gently. Sebastian frowned, looking away, and Amelle took a deep breath. Another wave of laughter came from downstairs, and Amelle was nearly certain the sound of it made Sebastian flinch. Her breath became a sigh. "Sebastian."
After a moment, he looked up.
"For as angry as you were, I think if you had been determined to keep your word and follow through on such an oath of violence made under…" Amelle could almost see the red flare of magic, could almost hear the hum of it, could almost feel the shockwaves of the explosion, could almost smell the acrid stench in the air. "…Under those circumstances…"
"Under those circumstances?"
She shoved the memory away. "Then you are not the man I thought you were."
"Perhaps I'm not, Amelle."
"I don't believe that." She smiled, remembering the perfection of the Kirkwall Sebastian had wrought in the Fade, the rebuilt Chantry without its Chanter's Board. "I happen to be an excellent judge of character." Her smile faded into something more somber as she shook her head. "Life is too short to… to dwell on the things people say. Our actions define us."
She was sitting near enough to feel the way emotion made him tremble. He stared at her hands and swallowed hard. She felt that, too. "I realized my mistake almost immediately," he said without raising his eyes to meet hers. "But… I couldn't get to her. I wanted to. I tried. I swear to you, Amelle, I was attempting to return to her side when the templars found me. I knew I could not unsay the things I said, but I… I would have accepted any punishment she saw fit to mete out."
Amelle squeezed his hand in a gesture meant to be reassuring, but Sebastian only shook his head. "I have made so many mistakes, but none so grave as that one."
"Why don't you say this to her?"
"I haven't the words."
"You could start with the ones you just spoke to me."
Sebastian leaned back, dragging his hand from hers. "Perhaps. But… it is clear she…"
Again they heard Kiara's laugh. Sebastian put a hand to the wound at his chest. Amelle didn't think he was aware he was doing so. She rather wished she'd thought to close the door when she'd come in. Sebastian did not need to finish his thought… Amelle knew very well what he meant. Kiara had done everything in her power to avoid seeing Sebastian in the days since he'd woken. Moving stones in the garden and emptying quiver after quiver of arrows into practice targets had become Kiara's primary methods of passing time. Amelle opened her mouth to tell him about the broth, and then stopped herself. "She's angry," Amelle said at last. "Right now she's really angry. But she's… it's not in her to carry grudges, Sebastian. She might not be ready to listen now, but she will be."
He very much looked as though he wanted to argue with her, but he held his tongue. Rising to her feet, Amelle laid a hand on his shoulder, feeling him tense beneath it. "Please don't speak to her of this, Amelle."
"I won't. Unless I think your health is compromised." With a last dose of healing energy, she said, "Are you sure you won't join them?"
"I'm sure. They… sound like they're enjoying themselves. There's been little enough of that of late, I imagine." On Amelle's frown, he said, "Soon enough. But not tonight."
"I'll hold you to that."
The sound he made was not nearly lighthearted enough to be considered laughter, but it was some distant kin, and that was hopeful enough for Amelle. "I don't doubt you will. You Hawkes are nothing if not determined."
She shot him a wry smile. "Just figuring that out now, are you?"
A funny look crossed his face, gone before Amelle could name it. "I always had my suspicions."
A cry of despair—Isabela's—from downstairs heralded the end of the hand. That there was no loud exclamation of happiness meant Fenris had likely won the pot. Both Kiara and Varric were always thunderous in their excitement. "They'll be wondering where I've gone," she said. Then she snorted. "Or they'll be wondering where the wine is, at any rate."
Sebastian's lips twitched. "Best run and fetch it, then. Maker help the poor sod who keeps them from inebriation."
"Sebastian…" she began, and then stopped. He raised his eyebrows. "I… get some rest. I'll be back in the morning."
Sebastian nodded and went back to his book — Amelle wasn't surprised he refused to join the get-together downstairs, but she was relieved he wasn't against the prospect of eventually attempting to rejoin the ranks. And she'd planted the seed, at the very least.
Amelle took care to close the bedroom door behind her and kept her step light as she descended the stairs, slipping past the library's open door without calling attention to herself. Varric was dealing out another hand and Isabela was complaining bitterly that he never let her deal.
"Because whenever you deal, Rivaini, you win. Funny how it always works out that way." Varric's voice followed Amelle down the hall.
She lets us win and we let her cheat, Amelle thought, something not quite mirthful enough to be a smile curling her lips. She was too distracted — too annoyed, really — to find the pirate's character quirks charming. Isabela's hypocrisy, her outright dismissal of Sebastian grated, and the mage felt a sudden twist of anger she'd thought long buried.
She walked in with that bloody book like she was doing us a favor, she remembered, scowling as she picked her way down the cellar steps. Amelle liked Isabela, and she understood that the pirate turning around at all indicated huge strides in her character. But really, pirates who live on glass ships shouldn't shoot cannonballs. Or something. If Amelle knew her sister at all, Kiara was likely going to have a word with Isabela if she didn't lay off. It was true what she'd told Sebastian — Kiara Hawke did not hold grudges.
No, evidently that's my department, thought Amelle with a rueful little sigh.
The true shame of it was that none of them knew what she'd seen in the Fade — none of them, not even Kiara had any idea what Amelle had seen of Sebastian's construct. Of the demons weighing him down, the demons he'd faced. Perhaps Merrill would see — and wasn't that ironic? The only two people who could begin to understand Sebastian Vael well enough to forgive him his betrayal—other than Fenris, and she still wasn't entirely certain what had gone on between them when she'd interrupted them—were the very types of people he'd wanted to make pay for his heartache.
"Anders," breathed Amelle in the dark hush of the wine cellar, "you utter bastard."
She let a small ball of blue flame flicker to life in her hand and crossed the vast cellar, peering at dusty, faded labels. The Aggregio would stay — Amelle liked that one, and didn't want to waste it on Isabela, who'd never had an appreciation for it. Perhaps she, Kiara, and Fenris would open it later.
As she wound her way around the shelves, Amelle saw a sliver of light coming up from the floor, far in the corner. She sighed; the trapdoor that led down to Darktown had not been closed properly, and the faint, almost dingy light from below filtered up through the crack in the floor.
"Kiara Hawke, honestly. Close the bloody doors behind you," she muttered, going to the trapdoor and trying to nudge it closed with her foot. The door was stuck, however, and would not snap shut. Huffing a curse, Amelle crouched down and pulled. It resisted a moment before giving suddenly with a loud creaking groan.
Amelle hadn't been down here since her encounter in the Fade, and as she looked down at the closed clinic door, the air of neglect, she frowned a little. Even though this was as it had been left, and this was as it should have looked, part of Amelle was surprised not to find the lantern blazing away cheerfully, the clinic doors wide open, and—
Pleasant. Bright. Clean. The broken-down, dilapidated furniture— the blood-magic exsanguination tables — were gone. Window-boxes running wild with elfroot and spindleweed, the greenery peppered with bright embrium blooms, hung in the clinic's narrow windows. Heavily-constructed tables lined the walls, covered with clean linens.
Amelle remembered the cat suddenly, and it was with only the briefest backward glance that she edged toward the clinic doors. Intellectually she knew the room was going to look as hopeless and as deserted as it ever had, but… something inside her urged her to check. Quickly. Just in case.
She'd half-expected she'd need to break in, but the door wasn't locked. It was as if Anders had known he wasn't coming back, and no longer cared what became of the place. She found this bothered her immensely, and she swallowed hard to choke down her sudden anger. A means to an end, she thought, bitterly. A means to an end, and he didn't give a shit what would come after.
As she pushed the heavy door inward, it creaked in its frame and she heard the scurry of feet—animal, not human… hopefully not monster—within. She shuddered, praying it wouldn't be an enterprising nest of something wretched, like giant spiders. Conjuring a ball of light revealed the same dim interior she remembered, and filled her with a sudden, overwhelming disappointment. She hadn't realized how very much she wanted the windowboxes and the orderly beds and the cleaned floors and ceilings until she saw the filthy, disorganized mess Anders had left behind.
She was even more disappointed—ridiculous, really—that whatever the scritching noise had been, it certainly hadn't been a slim, green-eyed, orange tabby. She even looked under the tables and behind the various broken pieces of detritus meant to serve as furniture, but she found nothing but dust, dirt, and a distressing number of rat-droppings.
It would be a good place for a cat. It'd never go hungry.
Amelle smiled, momentarily closing her eyes and allowing herself to remember the way the clinic had appeared in her Fade construct. It would be work, certainly. The old furniture—the exsanguination tables first—would have to go, the wretched, dusty pieces of fabric hanging from the ceiling needed to be pulled down, everything needed to be scrubbed twelve times over, but…
It would be work. But not an insurmountable amount of work.
With the beginning of a plan forming, Amelle took one last look around for the cat she knew wouldn't be there. Her searching only startled a few (regular-sized, blessedly) spiders and a nest of mice. She found herself scowling at the state of the place. As a healer, Anders ought to have been aware what role filth played in the transmission and spread of disease. What was the point of healing someone if the rats in the clinic only made them sick again?
Inhaling deeply, Amelle forced herself to calm down. Again.
And then she heard the scream.
Amelle knew screams. She'd taken part in enough battles to have heard all sorts of them. She'd heard cries of pain, of torture. She'd heard the howls of the ill and wails of the dying. She'd heard and would forever remember the hideous sound Carver had made when the ogre crushed the life from him. She'd heard the noise Kiara made the day they came too late to save their mother. She'd heard the screams of monsters and men, darkspawn and dragons, and this was as unlike any of those previous sounds as anything she'd ever imagined.
Just as she was wishing she'd not been foolish enough to descend to Darktown alone, without even the focus of a staff, a woman staggered through the door Amelle had left open, collapsing to the filthy floor in a heap. When she screamed again, Amelle saw she was enormous with child, clutching at her distended belly with both hands as she writhed.
Even as Amelle dashed across the clinic, the woman's pain subsided long enough for her to look up and moan. Tears streamed down her face, and she began to sob anew when Amelle bent over her. "You're not him," the woman gasped. "When I saw the light… but you're not… you're not the healer. Oh, Maker, this… this will be the death of me."
Again she screamed, long and harrowing.
Contractions, Amelle realized. But something is terribly wrong.
"No, I'm not— I'm not the healer, but I am a healer." Amelle was certain the woman couldn't manage a trip up the ladder. And she wasn't sure the child within would wait — or survive — long enough for her to fetch anyone who could help. And who in the Maker's name did she know that could help, anyway? Kirkwall was short on healers; if it had been otherwise, Amelle wouldn't have spent all that time at the Rose.
"You're… you're a healer?" she asked, hiccuping a sob and looking as if she couldn't believe her good luck. "Did he… did he send you?"
"No," she said, trying to sound more impartial than she felt. "He's gone."
Amelle eased the expectant mother's arm about her shoulders and stood slowly and carefully. The woman clutched at Amelle's sleeve as another contraction took her and her knees buckled suddenly as she let out another scream.
"It's all right," she murmured, guiding the woman to one of the hated tables and helped her upon it and guided her back. "It's going to be all right."
"It hurts," the woman wailed. "Maker, it hurts."
"I know it hurts," Amelle soothed, her mind racing. She'd never — never — delivered a baby before, and she'd most certainly never seen anything like this. The woman was drenched in sweat, her pale eyes haunted and her cheeks bright with either exertion or fever. Amelle could see, even with her small ball of light, that the woman's simple dress was soaked from the waist down, her legs smeared with liquid that looked, even in the dimness, to be blood-tinged. She rested a hand on the woman's forehead and with a breath of mana, released a wave of healing — and, she dearly hoped, calming — energy into the as-yet unborn child's mother. The woman's breathing seemed to even out, and her color wasn't quite so hectic, and Amelle felt a small rush of relief that she'd bought herself a few minutes to at least attempt adequate preparation.
With an impatient flick of her wrist, a wash of flame lit the lamps in each corner of the room, and the horrible spiked monstrosity of a lamp that hung above.
"Will you be all right for a little while?" she asked the woman, running gentle fingertips over her sweaty forehead. "I need to collect a few things, but I swear to you, I will come right back."
"Don't leave me," the woman whimpered as a fresh wave of tears poured forth. "Please."
Amelle shook her head and placed a hand on either side of the woman's head. "Listen to me." After a few more wet sniffles, she nodded and Amelle realized, rather abruptly, that this woman couldn't have been any older than she was. "My name is Amelle. Tell me your name."
"My…"
"Name. Yours. What is your name?"
"Ianna," she said hesitantly. "My name is Ianna."
"And… and where is the baby's father, Ianna?"
Her face crumpled and Amelle hated herself for asking. "H-he's gone. He was— it's been bad, with the baby. It's been hurting me so much. And Adan — he went to… to talk to some of the sisters and see i-if they could… if they could take me in until—" Anything else she might have said was lost in another broken wail of pain, but Amelle had heard quite enough. She knew perfectly well what had happened to the babe's father, and she was suddenly resolved that if she had to consort with a bloody demon to do it, the child was going to live.
"All right then. Ianna, I need to collect a few things before I can help you. I give you my solemn word I will return, and help you and your baby. Do you understand?"
Ianna nodded, for all she still looked terrified, and Amelle turned on her heel and ran for the ladder, vaulting herself up the last three rungs and hurrying with light, quick steps up the stairs. There was going to be blood, and probably lots of it. Linens. She'd need linens. Towels, blankets — whatever was near to hand. What else? Water? Too much time — she'd get water later, after. Soon the sounds of revelry reached her ears and Amelle thought for the barest moment that it probably wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if she didn't have to go through this by herself.
But there was no time. They'd been drinking and she would have to explain and she simply didn't have time. Ianna was alone and afraid and waiting for her.
Amelle dashed into the kitchen where Orana sat at the large table, mending one of Kiara's tunics.
"Mistress Amelle?"
She went to the basin and began washing her hands, scrubbing them free of Darktown grime as swiftly as she could. "Orana," she said, using her skirt to dry her hands, "very quickly — I need old linens. Towels, sheets — anything we can spare."
Orana blinked, but to her credit, did not hesitate — or, worse, ask any time-consuming questions. "There are old linens in the closet under the stairs with a few other things Bodahn left behind. Is… is anything wrong, Mistress Amelle?"
A burst of hysterical laughter almost bubbled up past her lips, but Amelle simply shook her head. "Nope, nope. Nope, everything's just fine."
And without another word of explanation, Amelle hurried to the closet beneath the stairs and grabbed at what appeared to be a bundle of bed linens, gathering it into her arms and making her way carefully back down the cellar stairs. On the way back through the wine cellar, Amelle stopped long enough to pluck a bottle of whiskey from a niche. She wasn't sure whether her healing magics would ease Ianna's pain, if Amelle was focusing the energy on the child. Amelle also had a sneaking suspicion she was going to need a drink when this was done and over with.
Amelle heard Ianna screaming as she navigated the ladder, and hoped no opportunistic Coterie thug came running, thinking her easy prey. Then again, the sound was so wretched, perhaps it would frighten potential attackers off.
As soon as she reentered the clinic, Amelle knew things were progressing much too quickly. Ianna was panting madly between her screams, and clutching even more tightly at her belly. Wasting no time, Amelle spread the clean linens on a patch of floor—she trusted none of the makeshift furniture, and there was no way the child would be born on an exsanguination table—and went to Ianna's side.
"You're back," the woman gasped, tears and sweat streaking her face and matting her hair to her scalp. "I… thought…"
"You're fine," Amelle soothed. "I'm here. Ianna? Ianna, here, hold tight to my arm." It took some cajoling, but soon Ianna had moved her bruising grip from her abdomen to Amelle's arm. They maneuvered the few feet to the blanket and Ianna lay back just in time for another contraction to hit, and hit hard.
Focusing as well as she was able with Ianna still clutching at one arm, Amelle sent gentle tendrils of magic throughout the weeping woman. There was too much blood, but she was too frightened that staunching it now with magic might somehow injure the baby, or conflict with the birth itself.
When her magic sensed the baby, Amelle couldn't help the gasp that escaped her. Ianna's eyes widened. "No," she whispered, "no, no, no."
"He's fine," Amelle murmured. "Ianna, he's fine."
"He's not," the woman wailed. "I know it! I can feel it!"
Amelle closed her eyes, gathered a breath of mana, and very swiftly, without warning, dropped the heaviest sleep spell she could manage on the frightened woman. Ianna fought it for half a heartbeat—don't, Amelle wanted to plead, every heartbeat counts right now—but then subsided. Within her, Amelle felt the child still, too. She hoped—prayed—begged the Maker—that the baby was only sleeping, like his mother.
Some things magic could heal. A breech baby in distress… wasn't something she could simply wave her hands over and make right.
With an inhale that felt like a prayer, Amelle reached for the knife she kept at her belt. It had been a gift from Carver, a thousand years ago during happier times. She knew he'd saved his coins for six months to buy it. At the time she'd thanked him even while she puzzled at its usefulness. She had magic after all. She used that magic now, a controlled flash of fire to sterilize the blade, and ice to return it to a bearable temperature.
The pretty knife, with its bone handle carved in the shape of a leaping rabbit, tiny green stones for eyes, always honed razor-sharp exactly the way Carver had so painstakingly taught her, had saved her life dozens of times in the intervening years.
Tonight she hoped it would save two more.
