With a great deal of effort Hawke managed to drag herself along to the front door and make her glorious escape. The wound in her side still throbbed with effort, but the first gust of winter wind felt amazing on her cheeks. The air was filled with the sweet smell of firewood, and the atmosphere tinged with the crisp feeling of an approaching snowstorm. She pulled her cloak around her tightly and leaned heavily on her crutch as she made her way towards the Hightown market square.
It felt like a century since she had been among the company of so many people; while she once knew what felt like every face in Kirkwall, that was no longer the case. Either there were hundreds of new residents, or her people had succumbed to the inevitable turn of time and had grown and changed in her absence. It seemed the city no longer recognized her either. Pale, frail, and thin as she was she was far from looking like the fierce and glib warrior she was known as. Thankfully, neither her personality nor her knowledge of combat had changed all that much despite her physical appearance.
As she hobbled her way through the square, avoiding the ever-watchful vulture-like eyes of Aveline's guards she noticed the colorful packages bundled in the arms of passersby. Wintersend…time had flown by since her injury. It was still early autumn when she was ran through and now it was nearly wintersend. She had missed an entire season, an entire quarter of a year that she could have been protecting the streets from thugs and bandits…an entire year that she had burdened her loved ones with the task of caring for her…especially Fenris.
It did not escape her how the elf seemed to have dark circles etched into the flesh beneath his eyes the same as the lyrium etched into the rest of his skin. While he was now remembering to eat and bathe regularly, his every moment was still devoted to caring for her. She had been overwhelmed with guilt for months feeling as though she had returned him to his servitude of old by caring only for her and neglecting himself. It was all she could do to thank the Maker every night that Varric and Aveline had finally nagged him into taking on some mercenary work at least once a week. He needed some time out of the house, as well as an outlet for his pent-up aggression towards Anders.
While she wandered the market daydreaming, bitter wind began to whip through her hair and chill her to her bones. Her thick winter cloak felt paper thin as snowflakes began to fall wet and heavy. The cobblestone streets became as slick as a mabari's nose. Her crutches skidded against the pavement a few times, and her ribs throbbed. She sighed heavily and made the decision to head back towards her manor. The storm was picking up and the square was emptying out.
She paused for a moment and leaned heavily on her crutches, catching her breath in the bitter cold. The wind was consistently taking her breath away as it swirled around her. The heavy snow landed on her shoulders and weighed her down. The conditions were becoming dangerous even for someone entirely capable of handling themselves in the elements. Inching through an oncoming snowstorm on crutches was far less than ideal, especially since she was alone.
Not slipping and falling on her way back home was the only thing on her mind as she made the tedious trek back home through the storm; something she regretted about halfway home. She leaned heavily on the railing dividing a set of Hightown steps, when out of nowhere, two figures in dark cloaks dropped down from the eaves of the mansions on either side of the steps. In the howling wind, their cloaks swirled around them, and knocked their hoods from their heads. Rather than finding the unwelcome faces of more Carta thugs, she came face to face with two masks made of bird skulls…Discreetly, she reached for the dagger in her belt and hid it under her cloak level with their navels. She knew there was not much of a chance for her if they happened to be wearing armor under their cloaks (which was more likely than not), but she was not going out without a fight.
"Greetings, Lady Hawke." One of the figures snarled in a thick, unfamiliar accent.
Hawke glared at the figures and shouted over the whipping wind, "Who are you?"
The other figure, the shorter of the two chuckled darkly. The sound was like the tolling of a funeral bell. It was then that Hawke realized the figure was a woman.
"It is always the same questions…" The female attacker sighed sarcastically, "Who are you, what do you want…"
"Why are you doing this…" The male counterpart finished.
Hawke rolled her eyes, "What a pity I am so predictable…" She grumbled
There was a heavy moment of silence thick with an unspoken smirk hidden beneath the attackers' masks. Then, there was the flash of a dagger whipped from the belt of figures. Hawke's dagger slipped from her weakened hand and she squeezed her eyes shut. I should have just stayed home… she thought as she fell hard against the cobblestone street below her before her world went black.
Hawke awoke to the heavy splat of ice cold snowflakes hitting her cheeks. Her eyes shot open she whipped into a sitting position. Her side screamed in pain, and her head whirled and throbbed. At her feet laid her two would-be attackers, each with a well-placed dagger through their eye sockets. Her neck was confusingly hot and confusingly damp. She reached for the problematic spot on her head, fully expecting a handful of blood, and froze when a gentle olive hand caught her wrist mid movement. Her stomach dropped and she winced, fully expecting Fenris to scoop her up in his arms with a huff and a silent glare. Instead, she felt the pressure of a thick cloth on the aching spot on her head.
"You really shouldn't have sat up so quickly," scolded a smoldering and distinctly sexy voice in the same unfamiliar accent as her attackers.
Aria turned to stare at her strange companion, wide-eyed and confused. He was an elf the same as Fenris, but shorter and a great deal less lanky. His hair was a soft honey color that flowed to the middle of his back and whipped around him in the wind. His eyes were the color of hot, golden whiskey with long sultry lashes. On his cheek, two Dalish-style tattoos accentuated his square and prominent cheek bones in a soft line that lead the eyes directly to his very full and velvety lips. Aria stared at him dumbfounded for a moment and the elf smirked.
"Not used to seriously handsome shirtless elves helping you up off the street in the middle of a blizzard are you." He quipped.
She blinked and blushed profusely. She hadn't even noticed he was shirtless…and for her own sanity, she was glad she hadn't; She wasn't sure her mind was capable of processing this amount of sheer beauty all at once. Her eyes raked over his broad shoulders and bare pectorals and found a very toned, but not overly buff figure before her. It was then that she realized the fabric pressed against the back of her head stemming the flow of blood was, in fact, his shirt. She continued to stare and his eyebrows knitted in concern.
"Or perhaps you hit your head harder than I thought…"
