In some ways, it seemed perfectly normal, all of them focused on a common task. It wasn't slaughtering slavers or tiptoeing around Kirkwall politics, but it was something and they were working together.
In others? In other ways, everything felt wrong. It was too quiet, for one, and too strained, and it was the wrong Hawke calling the shots. And Sebastian had the distinct impression he was here on sufferance.
Sebastian had never deluded himself—he knew he'd never been the most popular of Hawke's companions. Even though he attempted to be honest and not intolerably preachy, his connection to the Chantry was polarizing to say the least. Even after years of acquaintance, only Fenris—and Hawke herself—were what he might consider friends, but he'd never been openly reviled. Except by Anders. But what, related to the Chantry, didn't Anders revile? We have proof enough of that. Now things were all turned upside down. That it was Merrill pitying him was evidence enough. The younger Hawke and not the elder spoke to him most frequently, most kindly now, and Fenris seemed disappointed with him. Not that he blamed the elf—more often than not, Sebastian felt disappointed with himself.
Now, for instance. It was the first time Hawke had spent more than half a moment in his presence since he'd woken, and although he knew he ought to speak, he couldn't find words. Her pale eyes glared up at him from beneath the fringe of her hair and he… froze. It wasn't the anger. Anger he could understand. It was the hurt. Her gaze was wounded, and, looking upon it, he knew he had been party to the wounding.
She trusted you. She trusted you and you betrayed her. You walked away when she needed you most.
You left her to die.
Tell her you're sorry. If nothing else, tell her that.
But then Amelle appeared to call her sister away. Not for the first time, Sebastian found himself wondering if the mage had truly done anyone any favors by bringing him back. He remembered little of his time in the Fade, but he'd woken knowing that without her interference he… would have remained. Strange recollections—Anders? A cat?—sometimes drifted through his memory, but it was Amelle herself who continually caught him off-guard. He couldn't even say why, precisely, but sometimes now he saw a self-assurance in her that struck an odd chord, and he knew she had done more for him—more to bring him back—than she let on.
He saw a hint of that self-assurance in the line of her back and the set of her shoulders in the moment before she closed the clinic door.
And Hawke looked like a stranger, head bowed and shoulders slumped, like a child preparing for a beating she thought inevitable.
When he looked away, he saw Merrill's eyes turned in the same direction, a thoughtful, almost mournful expression on her face. "Varric says he's worried about her," she said quietly. "I think he's right. She doesn't seem… she doesn't seem quite right anymore, does she?"
"Hawke?" he asked, knowing it was a silly question to ask. Of course it was Hawke.
Merrill nodded, looking again to the closed door. "It can't have been easy." She winced a little at a private memory and dropped her gaze to the bandages she was cutting so meticulously, snipping the shears in silence for a second or two before adding, "Any of it."
Sebastian turned his attention to the bandages he held, rolling them with inordinate care. "No. I suppose not. I… heard about the battle—"
"Oh, I don't mean that," Merrill interjected, her head coming up quickly enough to make her braids sway. "Though, don't misunderstand me, the battle was difficult. No, I meant… all of it. She tried to do her best for years and years, trying to keep people happy and safe — trying to keep Kirkwall safe — and it… so much of it just fell down around her." An impossible, untouchable sadness settled on the elf's face as she said, in a voice too soft to even qualify as a whisper, "It's awful when the things you try to do for the best turn out for the worst."
"Aye," he managed, looking down once again at the linen he wrapped. Too tight, he admonished, and let the bandage unroll slightly before rewrapping it. He was appalled at himself that he hadn't considered the truth the elf's words made so clear, but for as long as he'd known Kiara Hawke, every decision she'd made had been the one she'd thought to be right. She was not a woman lacking in empathy or integrity; she was not selfish or heartless. In all the years he'd known her, all she'd ever wanted was to keep her family safe. And, over the years, through trial and tribulation, her adopted family had grown — all the more people to protect.
And everything — every careful decision, every moment spent thinking about her actions — shattered and crumbled around her. And he had done nothing to alleviate that. He'd been smothered by anger, by rage, by vengeance — something about that word sent an icy tremor through him now — and he'd pushed, wanting her to make the same decision he'd already come to. He hadn't wanted her to think; he'd wanted her to react.
"It's probably enough to make you wonder whether it's worth the effort to bother anymore, doesn't it? If things are going to break anyway." Merrill looked around at the clinic with a speculative eye. "Maybe that's what she's doing."
Sebastian looked up, making no effort to hide the puzzlement on his face. Merrill's conversational leaps often lacked context. "What is it you think Hawke is doing?"
The elf blinked owlishly at him, looking every bit as confused as he felt. "Not Hawke. Amelle. Well," she said, quickly amending herself. "I suppose Amelle is still Hawke, since she is a Hawke, but she isn't Hawke-Hawke." Merrill tilted her head a little, "That's funny, isn't it? We call Amelle Amelle but Hawke Hawke. I mean, Kiara. Hawke. Doesn't she like her name? I think it's very pretty."
Sebastian nodded dazedly, more than a little amazed he'd managed to follow any of that. He found the thread he thought interesting and followed it backward. "All right. What is it you think Amelle is doing?"
Merrill lifted her slim shoulders in a shrug. "Healers heal broken things."
"You think Amelle is… trying to heal the clinic," he said, and yet Sebastian still felt as if the finer points of the conversation were escaping him.
"No, Sebastian," she replied patiently with a shake of her head. "I think she's trying to heal us."
#
Fenris only heard Hawke approach because she wasn't trying to move silently. It was a lesson she'd learned swiftly and well after the first occasion she'd come up quietly behind him. That time she'd nearly paid with her life before he realized the intruder was not one of Danarius' hounds come to hunt him. He turned his head, greeting her with a brief nod. It was enough of a look to recognize that Hawke looked… chastened, and, if not precisely happy at least less hostile.
He'd overheard just enough of the exchange between her and her sister to recognize the attempt to rein in the frustration and anger that was so upsetting Amelle. Not for the first time, he wondered what it might be like, to have such a relationship with one's sibling. To care about their happiness enough to attempt to alter one's own moods to please them. Then, with a disgusted shake of his head, he banished the useless thought, returning his attention to the puzzle of just what to do with the mess that lay before him.
"Seems like Mely should just gather them all together and have an epic bonfire," she said. Fenris frowned. It wasn't the words that struck him as odd—it was the tone. Before Hawke would have said the words lightly, laughingly. But this Hawke, the one that seemed patched together from mere pieces of the old, somehow made the jest seem mournful.
Fenris found himself unsure how to speak with this version of Hawke. She shifted from mood to mood so rapidly—only last night he had thought her almost her old self, but today brought defensiveness and snappishness once again—and he found he could not keep up. "Such a fire would doubtless call too much attention to this place," he replied evenly.
He was rewarded by the brief upturn of Hawke's lips. "I suppose there's that," she remarked. "Still. It would be… satisfying to see it all burn."
Fenris wasn't certain Hawke only meant the broken detritus and blood-stained tables.
He watched as she picked her way through the mess, brow furrowed and lips pursed. "Why didn't I notice this before?" she asked at last. "Are you honestly telling me the only thing he had on hand to use for beds were tables like these?"
Fenris wondered if she was remembering the worst use she'd seen tables like these put to. Even now, it made his gorge rise and his stomach twist to remember what had been done to her mother.
"I doubt the mage used them for their intended purpose," Fenris offered at last, but the pacification failed.
Hawke arched an eyebrow at him. "And I didn't expect Orsino to transform into the creepiest monster this side of a Varterral, either. Sometimes people do things we don't expect."
Fenris crossed his arms over his chest and regarded Hawke calmly. "Is this an allusion to the mage, Hawke? Or to another?"
She blinked at him, evidently startled by the question. "What do you mean by that?"
"It appears Sebastian will live."
Hawke wrapped her own arms about herself, but it was a defensive posture. "It appears that he will."
"What do you intend to do?"
"I don't know," she retorted, raising her chin. It pleased him to see at least a spark of her former fearlessness. "He betrayed me."
"Which of us has not, Hawke, at one point or another? Yet you… you appear to take this more personally, for all that no one was actually injured by him. How many died for the pirate's crimes? Yet she you welcomed back with open arms."
She narrowed her eyes. "If circumstances had been different, Sebastian would have killed every innocent in Kirkwall."
"There is no point in dealing with what might have happened," he replied shortly. "If circumstances had been different, Sebastian would have died of a sword wound in an alleyway." Hawke blanched at his words and he shook his head at her. "Words are not the same as deeds, Hawke."
"He would have kept his vow, Fenris," she answered, her voice low, but her eyes hard. "He would have—"
"And how often did I make similar such threats against mages?" he countered. "I, who called your sister a viper in the nest and swore to deal with her the very moment she revealed her true nature to us all — and yet, here you and I stand, neither blade nor bow drawn."
"That was different, Fenris. That was years ago! You didn't know us then. Maker knows you didn't know Amelle — particularly if you were calling her a bloody viper. You were a different person then."
He narrowed his eyes at her. "Did you think me unwilling or incapable of fulfilling such a vow against mages? Did you not take me at my word?"
Here, Hawke sighed, and made a move as if to sit on the corner of one of the filthy, bloodstained tables. She thought better of it and kept her feet. "Of course not. But Sebastian—"
"I cannot excuse what Sebastian said, but neither can I entirely condemn it. His vow was against maleficarum — not innocents. The mage destroyed his home. The mage murdered innocents. Sebastian wanted retribution. Whether Anders' death would have truly satisfied him remains to be seen."
"A vow against maleficarum I might have understood, but it wasn't just that. He said he would bring war to Kirkwall so the maleficarum would have no place to hide. 'I will bring such an army with me on my return that there will be nothing left of Kirkwall for these maleficarum to rule!' That was his vow. Word for word. Trust me, I remember it well. Nothing left of Kirkwall. I should say that includes innocents."
"Hawke…"
"Even apart from that," Hawke spat, "he would have seen Amelle slaughtered, Fenris. Amelle! Amelle, who—except for a facility with healing spells—couldn't be more different from Anders if she tried."
"And yet it was Amelle who saved his life, who tended — and continues to tend — his wounds. Amelle who ventured into the Fade for him. By your logic, she is the injured party, and should have done none of those things."
Here, Hawke made a wry face that almost — almost — gave her an air of normalcy. Rolling her eyes, she said, "Let's not discuss my little sister's propensity for hopeless cases and lost causes. We'll be here all day."
"Recall, Hawke, that I was with your sister when we found Sebastian." And Fenris was quite certain he would never forget the fierce determination and uncompromising resolve in Amelle Hawke's face that day. Whatever Sebastian had said or done in the heat of anger, it had not tempered her actions in the least. It shamed him when he'd realized he might not have behaved the same way.
Unfortunately, Hawke knew him too well. Her eyes narrowed shrewdly. "And if my sister hadn't been there?"
"What do you wish me to say? That I would have left him? That I already thought him beyond saving? That I, too, would have held him responsible for crimes he'd spoken of but not yet committed?"
"I know you," she said, daring him to contradict her. He found he could not protest. "I already know what you would have done. And I know Amelle, so I realize the decision was not yours to make. But tell me, Fenris, and tell me truthfully: what has forgiveness and leniency ever brought me but grief?"
Her voice broke on the final syllable, and it was this that kept Fenris from submitting to the reflexive reactions of disgust or disappointment or anger.
"We would none of us be here without it, Hawke, and you would not be the woman you are." She turned her face away, but he saw the words strike her and cut deep. He could hardly blame her; there had been times he thought her indeed too forgiving and lenient by far. Now he would give a great deal to see even some small part of her compassion returned to her. "You are allowing what Anders did to pervert all the other good you have wrought. And you are allowing him to change you. I would not have thought it possible, but this—" Fenris gestured, sweeping his hand out to include her from head to toe. "This is not you. And you are not Anders. But neither is Sebastian."
He saw a muscle jump in her cheek as she clenched her jaw, and she put one hand to the side of her head as though it pained her.
"It would be easier if you hated him," Fenris said. "But you do not."
She didn't insult him by protesting. Fenris considered this a good sign, and something almost akin to progress. Glancing upward, she blinked at the ceiling. He knew she would not wish him to draw attention to the tears, and so he ignored them, turning back to the task at hand and drawing yet another of the monstrous tables to the pile he'd already assembled. A moment later, Hawke joined him, lifting the other side of the unwieldy piece of furniture. They worked in silence, gathering debris into a pile that might be dealt with later, until the marks left by her tears faded, and until the elf girl arrived lugging a vast basket filled with lunch.
#
No one could have been more surprised than Sebastian was when, after sharing the meal Orana brought—and Maker's breath but the woman could bake; not even growing up in the palace of Starkhaven had he met with bread so perfect—Hawke joined him. He did not miss the meaningful look Amelle shot her sister's way, but Hawke only inclined her head in a brief nod before shooing Amelle away.
"We need to talk," Hawke said simply, her voice tired, but lacking its earlier vitriol.
"We do," he replied.
"I need to talk first." When he didn't say anything, her lips twitched in the ghost of a smile. "I'm angry with you," she explained, her voice cool and reserved and so clearly striving to maintain control. Her eyes were faintly red-rimmed. He wondered if dust or weeping was the greater culprit. He feared the latter. Heedless of his scrutiny, she continued, "I'm disappointed. I'm hurt. But above all, I'm glad you're not dead."
Most of what she said wasn't a surprise to Sebastian. Had she attempted to convince him she wasn't hurt or angry or disappointed — and that stung worst of all — he would have thought her lying. In a way, it was almost a relief to hear the words come from her own mouth, for now he knew where he stood. He had betrayed her, and with betrayal came a price to pay. There had been a point when Sebastian believed the price to pay for this betrayal was a sum beyond reckoning.
But Hawke was glad he was not dead. That… was more than Sebastian could have said for himself at points during his convalescence. More than that, it provided him with an emotional touchstone of sorts — she was glad not to see him dead, which meant there was a chance, however slim, he might be able to pay the price of his betrayal. He doubted it would be quickly done, and he doubted it would be an easy task, but it was not an insurmountable one.
"I understand," he said evenly.
Her eyebrow arched a fraction. Sebastian looked down at his hands and after a little while, clasped them loosely. He waited to be sure she would not say anything more before adding, "I wronged you, Hawke. More than that, I betrayed you. And very little — nothing, in fact — I can say or do will excuse it. So, aye. I understand this is… a situation of my own making."
"Yes," she said quietly, fiddling with cut-off end of a crusty loaf of bread, sending flaky crumbs drifting downward. "I suppose you do understand."
"And I do not… expect anything like… forgiveness from you. But that does not mean I will not try to work toward earning it."
This time when she raised her eyes to meet his, he was blessedly relieved to see… if not a lack of pain, at least an ebbing of it. He tightened his hands together until the ache of his still-healing wound reminded him how bad an idea it would be to reach out and brush away the strands of hair falling haphazardly across her cheek. She scrutinized him closely, carefully, with as intense a glare as he'd ever seen her use. For a heartbeat, he felt something almost like pity for those poor fools—slavers and blood mages and Meredith—who'd had the misfortune to meet this facet of Hawke.
When she finally nodded sharply and looked away from him, toward the clean windows with their newly planted windowboxes, he released the breath he hadn't been aware of holding. He felt like he'd passed a test whose questions he didn't understand. Barely passed, perhaps, but passed nonetheless.
"I'm still glad you're not dead," she repeated, half under her breath. There was a kind of surprise in her tone, and something he thought—he prayed—sounded just a bit like hope.
