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It used to be that Mina Hawke could walk through the Hightown market and take the long stairs to Lowtown relatively quickly. Her reputation, or the giant sword she wore, or both, caused people to move out of her path, so she could continue on her way to where she was going.
Now that she was not just Mina Hawke, but also the Champion of Kirkwall, it took forever to get anywhere. People were always stopping to bow to her, or shake her hand, or thank her for what she did, or ask her for a favor, or waste time paying her extravagant compliments that would impress her or make her remember them later. She hated it.
Only in the Hanged Man was everything still normal. She entered the chaos and the noise and the stench of the seedy bar with a sigh of relief and took her usual seat across the table from Varric. "This is all your doing."
"Mine? Why, what did I do now?"
"Remember what that squirrelly little mage said? 'Stay away from storytellers. You never know what they'll say.' If only I'd listened."
"We only ran into him last week, Hawke," Varric pointed out.
"I suppose it was too late by then."
"Too many people trying to cozy up to the Champion?"
"Far too many," Hawke agreed. She reached up to run her hands through her hair, forgetting that she had taken to wearing it in a braid recently, to keep it off her face and hopefully project a more forbidding image. It wasn't working. "It's not just Kirkwall, though. It's the others. Anders seems obsssed with trying to break Bethany out of the Gallows."
Varric frowned. "His manifestos are getting harder and harder to read, too."
"I'm impressed that you could ever read them at all. I'd rather try another one of Isabela's 'friend fictions'. If she ever comes back."
"She will. Give her time."
"Nearly three years seems like more than enough."
"To you. The Rivaini reckons things differently."
"Have you heard from her?"
Varric shrugged, which Hawke took to mean that he had heard from Isabela and had promised not to tell. "Speaking of the Gallows …" he began instead.
"Oh, what has that horrible woman done now?"
He chuckled. "You are the only person in Kirkwall with the stones to refer to the Knight-Commander that way."
"And she hates me for it."
"Wouldn't you?"
Hawke smiled. He had her there. "Probably."
"I hear there's growing unrest inside, that it's getting harder for Meredith and Orsino to keep their two factions apart."
Worry spiked in Hawke's heart. "Do you think Bethany will get herself caught in the middle?"
"Sunshine's pretty cautious—and good at keeping her head down."
Hawke caught his implication immediately. "You're worried that something I do will focus Meredith's attention on Bethany. Do you think we should break her out, too?"
"No … but I was thinking that you've been invited to Duke Prosper's party, in Orlais. Might be a good chance to give Sunshine a breather, take her along with us."
"Us?" Their eyes met across the table. Hawke wasn't at all surprised when Varric's gaze was the first to fall.
"I mean, I thought we agreed I would go with you. Take Broody if you'd rather."
The last place Hawke wanted to take a lyrium-inlaid elf was to a fancy party in Orlais. Well, second-to-last, after anywhere in Tevinter. "No, you're right, you should go. And taking Bethany is a good idea. I miss her." For a moment, Hawke imagined what it would be like to have Bethany free and able to live with her, helping to fill the emptiness of that echoing old mansion she couldn't bring herself to leave.
She got to her feet. "You want to get out of here?" Sitting and brooding wasn't going to accomplish anything, a lesson she had tried, and failed, to get across to Fenris.
"Sure." Varric tucked his manuscript pages away into a leather folio Hawke had given him last Satinalia, and dropped them off with Corff for safekeeping.
They headed out into the sunny day and the bustle of Lowtown. On their way to the docks, they were accosted by Samson, a former Templar who now filled his days begging for a lyrium fix. If Fenris had been with them, Hawke would have steered clear of this section—Samson looked at Fenris the way a starving man might look at a juicy roast.
"Champion," Samson said, his tone its usual mix of sneering disdain and overeager whine. "I hear you fought through half the darkspawn horde to come back with them treasures you have. Spare some for a broken man?"
"What's the point, Samson? I could give you title to my mansion, and you'd be back here the next day, having sold it all for lyrium."
"Ah, but wouldn't I be happy, though."
"Possibly," Hawke said skeptically. "Why don't you rejoin the Order? Or go join up with a merc company? There are always new ones forming."
Samson shook his head. "I don't got that in me. Not anymore." He sighed pitifully, only partly an act. "All I got is the thirst … and the dust."
"I could try to get you help."
"Your coin, to buy the dust. That's the help I need."
As usual, Hawke gave him a couple of coins, knowing they would go through a similar dance the next time she went by.
Even as his hand closed over the coins, Aveline appeared, hurrying up the stairs from the docks with a pair of her guards. Her face brightened as she spied Hawke. "Just the person I want to see."
"You have something fun for me to do?"
"Now you sound like that pirate whore." Her caustic tone aside, they all knew Aveline missed Isabela as much as the rest of them. "I'm told Orsino and Meredith are squaring off outside the Viscount's Keep."
"And you want me to come upstairs and put myself between them."
"You're the only one who can," Aveline pointed out.
As she followed her friend, knowing she had no other choice, Hawke started to consider what life might be like outside of Kirkwall. She loved it here, she really did … but it was becoming harder and harder to remember why.