Chapter Text
The fight wasn’t fair – a fact that suited Hawke just fine. Rhatigan, and a war bronto, and a whole contingent of snipers, and when it was over, Hawke was only sorry there weren’t more of them to kill.
He knew – he knew that wasn’t the correct thought to have. His chest heaving, his lips drawn back, he snarled as he looked for another target, as he gathered power for another attack. He didn’t want it to be over. He didn’t want to listen to the well-ingrained part of him that urged toward restraint, toward control, toward purpose.
Two dwarves remained. They had broken rank from the others and were running away, down a shaft that led, not to another level of basement, but deeper into the earth. Hawke pulled power from the Fade, but he knew they were too far away, his range wasn’t quite there. He needed more, just a little more.
Just a little more, urged the spirits, who pressed against the Veil. It was as thin here as it was in Kirkwall, and Hawke hadn’t noticed. Just a little more is all you need.
Hawke, suddenly cold, let his power go.
Fenris was watching him.
“So much for answers,” Carver said, oblivious. “Do we keep chasing? Let them herd us down into the bowels of…whatever the Void is down there?”
“Darkspawn,” Anders supplied, helpfully. “It’s darkspawn. Mostly.”
“Cheery thought,” Varric muttered.
Anders shrugged. “I’m destined to end up there anyway. In the bowels of darkspawn. Maybe I’ll make a lovely soup. Isn’t that what stock bones are for?”
“And here I thought you’d never make anything of yourself at all,” Carver said.
Anders answered, “Right?”
“You can always turn back,” Fenris supplied. “Both of you.” His eyes were still on Hawke.
His eyes were always on Hawke.
Hawke couldn’t take it, for a moment. He scrubbed his hands over his face, a frustrated sound escaping him that had them all falling silent. It seemed when he looked up, Fenris might have taken a step closer. Might have extended a hand to him. The flickering light from a torch caught the scrap of red at his wrist, the red that he was still, impossibly, inexplicably wearing, and Hawke couldn’t – he had to focus.
He stalked to Rhatigan’s corpse. “Search them,” he said, kicking the dwarf over onto his back. “Find anything you can. Scraps of paper. Trinkets. Bloody…old socks with weird mending patterns, I don’t care. I’m not bringing you lot further without a damned good reason to.”
“You aren’t going on alone,” Fenris said.
Hawke ignored him. He squatted, ripping at the dwarf’s jacket, looking for hidden pockets. Tearing at his belt to get his coin purse loose. He could still feel the damned elf’s eyes on him. He didn’t look, but he could feel it when Fenris knelt on his other side.
“What about old tobacco?” Varric called. “Smells rank. Don’t think it’s a clue. You think it’s a clue? You want me to keep it Hawke?”
“Don’t humor him,” Carver said. “You know what a bleeding – oh a trinket! Oh look, it’s…it’s a naked dwarven woman.”
“I’ll take that, thank you very much.”
He couldn’t get the purse loose. Fenris’s hand passed through it. Silently, he dumped it’s contents on the corpse’s chest. A few coins, a vial of something black and foul. A key. Hawke’s larger hands, impatient, pushed his away to shove through the collection. When he touched the key, there was a pinprick of pain, like a needle piercing flesh. When Hawke yanked his hand back, a drop of blood was swelling on his finger.
And a sigil had been activated on the key.
Without thinking about it, Hawke grabbed at it, rose, took several steps back – tried to put distance between himself and the others, between himself and Fenris, tried to protect them from whatever it was as the sigil grew and swelled, grew brighter and brighter, blinding, until it lit up the cavern like a miniature sun.
He might have cried out. The force of the magic involved was deafening. It hummed in his ears, sang in his bones.
It felt like his father.
--
Hawke didn’t know how much time passed before he came back to himself. He was breathing heavily, bent, chest heaving, supporting himself only by means of his stave, gripped tightly in both hands and planted firmly against the ground, his forehead pressed to it. He felt clammy, cold sweat over his skin. Hie ears were ringing, his hair wet, plastered to his forehead. He was hot and cold at once. Nauseated, and giddy.
For a moment, he had felt him. For a moment, he had been home.
For just a moment, the weight had been off him. Hawke hadn’t been Hawke anymore, the pressure had been gone, because his father had been with him, and he could be Leo, he could let someone else handle things, could step back, could take care of himself and not worry about everyone else. For just a moment – a fraction of a moment – there had been relief.
And then it passed, and his father’s presence faded, and he had the presence of mind to wonder what it meant that it had been there at all.
Anders was beside him, a hand firm against his elbow, another cool, cold against his forehead. He was speaking, but it was like hearing him from underwater. Hawke had to shake himself, had to concentrate, to pull himself out from the haze of magic and memory to listen.
“-ke. Hawke, are you there? Blight take you, Hawke!” the healer looked truly concerned, terrified, even. Hawke blinked at him, surprised by how genuine the concern in his eyes was. The hand on his forehead lifted, pushed back his sweat-matted hair, and then slapped him.
“…do that again,” Hawke said. His voice resolved itself as a low growl.
“Maker, lov – Leo – you – you scared the – how dare you - !”
“I mean it.”
Anders slapped him again. This time it stung. Slowly, Hawke pulled himself up.
The others were around them, watching anxiously, except for Fenris, who had turned away. Carver was closer than Hawke had expected – on his other side, in fact, with hold on his other arm, which Hawke had failed to notice until he saw it. His brother looked as concerned as Anders did, which was equally surprising, for different reasons. He had thought Anders’s feelings for him were fantasy, fabricated by the mage out of loneliness and desire for a partner in his freedom fight. He had thought his brother’s feelings were relegated to the usual hatred and resentment. That either of them were genuinely concerned for his wellbeing was stunning to him, in his current compromised state.
His head was still a bit cloudy.
“This isn’t my stave,” Hawke frowned.
“It’s the key,” Anders supplied. His eyes were searching Hawke’s face. He moved closer, hands reaching for him to make a better examination of him, ignoring him when Hawke tried to brush him away. “There was a sigil, it reacted to your blood. Unlocked something. I’ve never seen magic like it.”
“The enchantment needed to do that,” Carver said. “What did father know?”
“You felt him too?” Hawke asked. His brother nodded, once, solemnly. Hawke looked at the stave, the key, again. It was a good one, well-made, with a powerful foci. He could see their father’s handiwork in its construction, though it was far finer than anything he would have been able to construct with what had been available to them in Lothering. It was not the simple wooden farmer’s staff Hawke could openly walk the streets of Kirkwall with, but clearly the tool of a powerful mage, created with materials found in the Circle. He could feel the difference in what he could accomplish with a weapon like this to help focus his powers. “This is going to take me to Corypheus,” Hawke said.
“So we follow those runaway dwarves?” Carver asked. “Into the, uh, hole in the ground?”
“That never leads to good things,” Varric sighed. He checked Bianca’s settings, casually, as if he was talking to himself. “It’s never follow those runaway dwarves, they’re going to an ice cream party.”
“They’re going to the Deep Roads,” Anders said. His tone was final.
Hawke looked at him seriously. “You can still turn back,” he said. “Anders. I mean it. I won’t hold it against you.”
“You really do think you mean it, too, don’t you?” he said, with a little bit of a grin. “No, you’d never forgive me for letting you down.”
“Carver…”
“Brother, if you try to send me back now, I swear by all that is holy…”
Hawke didn’t continue the thought. He’d let his gaze drift to Fenris. The elf stood apart from them, stiff, back to them all, facing the way the dwarves had gone. He didn’t give Hawke the chance even to offer to let him turn back. He simply began to walk.
Varric, shouldering Bianca, gave Hawke a Look and followed.
--
“Right on schedule,” Varric drawled, dry, unimpressed, with an expansive wave of his arm as, up ahead, the moist, dripping cave they walked through suddenly and without warning gave way to a splendid hallway. Well, all right, there was a little warning – an arch of perfectly cut stone over a landing that led to a stairway down. Sconces held torches already lit with bright, welcoming lights. The stone was carved and painted in exquisite dwarven detail. The Deep Roads.
Leo tossed his pack to the ground.
“We’ll camp out here,” he said.
Carver looked at his brother, incredulous. “You can’t seriously be tired already,” he said. “Sunset was only a few hours ago.”
“I’d like at least one more night outside the Deep Roads,” he answered. “I can’t be the only one.”
“The darkspawn can still come out, you know.”
Leo didn’t look impressed with Carver’s logic. Worse, the others were following his lead. None of them seemed to share Carver’s impression that it looked a lot nicer and more comfortable in there in the nice, dry, well lit, nicely carved Deep Roads than it did out here in this drippy, corpse-ridden, trash-filled cave. None of them were arguing.
“Maker I hate you!” Carver huffed, throwing down his pack with full dramatics.
“See if you can find something to use for firewood,” Leo said. “It looks like there’s an old cart over there.”
If he were with the templars, Carver grumped to himself, they would not be camping in the cave. Because the templars were reasonable. The templars did not befriend abominations and moon after prickly escaped slaves – the two of which, unsurprisingly, were griping at each other once again in their usual exhausting fashion.
“When I left the wardens, I swore I’d never spend another minute in the Deep Roads.”
“Left sounds like it was a mutual arrangement.”
“Fine. I ran away. What’s it to you?”
“Ran away from the Circle. Ran away from the wardens. It sounds like a habit.”
“And you ran away from Danarius. Maybe we’re more alike than you think!”
“I’ve always said so…” Varric muttered, proving Carver wasn’t the only one listening.
“It isn’t the same at all,” Fenris said, low.
Anders sounded cheeky when he answered, “And what about running away from Hawke?”
“That’s - !”
“I wonder, Fenris – medically, I mean, I really want to know. As a healer, I have a professional curiosity about these things. You’re so tight, and it’s clearly already occupied by something massive. How did Hawke ever manage to even get it up your - ?”
“Enough!” Leo said. They both fell into silence.
Eventually the fire was built, and the bedrolls laid out. Leo had them all remove their supplies from their packs so he could take inventory, and, painstakingly, they began to discuss their rations, and worst-case scenario plans for the Deep Roads. How to treat their rations if they were still down there after three days. After five. After a week.
It was when they started to discuss what order to kill each other in in the event they were irretrievably trapped that Carver had to laugh.
“I should be last,” Anders was saying. “I’m a warden. I’m practically half darkspawn anyway. I’m going to end my days down there one way or another.”
“Half darkspawn,” Fenris said, “Half demon. Is there any human left at all?”
“I won’t have it,” Leo said. “I’m responsible for this. I should be the one.”
“You just want to kill me,” Anders said, with a flirtatious smile. Leo, stone faced, only shook his head.
“You’re all touched in the head,” Carver said. “I know you had some difficulties before, but you act like your expedition was some traumatic event. You survived. You got rich off it. You cut me out of the profits, thanks for that.”
“Did I ever tell you about when I was in the Deep Roads with the Hero of Fereldan?” Anders asked.
“Piss off,” Carver said. “You don’t know the Hero of Fereldan.”
“I do too!”
“Maker, I hate you. You do not!”
“Here,” Varric said. “I think we need this.” He fished his flask out of his coat, and nudged Fenris with it, who blinked with surprise, but accepted it, unscrewing the cap without hesitation.
“The first night?” the elf questioned.
“Why not?” the dwarf countered. “I think we all need a little fortitude.”
Fenris shrugged, and drank, and passed it to Carver on his left.
--
It took the flask going around the group a few times before the tension began to settle a little, before misplaced worry and weird Carta-fueled blood rituals and darkspawn and booby-trapped keys, broken hearts and wounded egos and empty beds stopped leading to outright insults and ribbing comments. A joke was cracked. A story was told. They all started to loosen up.
Carver knew he was drinking a little too deeply whenever the flask passed his way, and he also knew that he didn’t care. Leo wasn’t going to drink enough to lose his wits, not unless he’d even changed more than Carver realized, and Carver wanted the friendly little confidence booster. For one, even though he thought they were all exaggerating, and maybe messing with him a bit, it was concerning, how scared they all were of going back in the Deep Roads. For another, like it or not, familiar as the position was, it was still damned uncomfortable being odd man out in a group like this. Always had been. Always would be. Particularly when it was these particular individuals he was stuck with.
Carver had wanted to be Fenris’s friend. Not for the reasons his brother had. Carver was a breast man. But there was no reason they shouldn’t have bonded as warriors. The elf’s curt dismissal of Carver’s attempts, his blatant lack of respect, well, it had stung then and it stung now, even all these years later. Just another person throwing themselves at his brother and acting like Carver was dirt. No big deal.
Carver did not want to be friends with Anders, but a bloody thank you would have been nice. The man was an abomination and a prime leader in the mage underground. Carver could turn him in and secure himself the kind of promotion that would let him buy Merrill a flat near Hightown, like, tomorrow, but he didn’t do it because he was a decent bleeding guy, not that any of them bothered to notice.
And Varric –
Oh, fine. It wasn’t that Carver hadn’t noticed that the dwarf had tried to include him back in those early days. It was what the damned dwarf did. And it wasn’t that Carver was unaware that there were times wherein his responses to those attempts might possibly have maybe have been perceived as somewhat less than gracious. Ok. He may even have claimed, on multiple occasions, to Varric’s face, that he hated him.
But Varric was even more in love with Leo than the other two were, and the fact it wasn’t a romantic or sexual kind of love didn’t make it any less bleeding disgusting.
Carver drank, deeply. He passed the flask to Varric.
And then, as often does when one is drinking, a sudden, unprompted, passing thought brought him to giggles. Perhaps he could have tracked the thought process, if he had tried. A comment about father’s involvement in whatever this was. A remark about how unlike him any of this would have been. A memory that led to another, and then another, and then –
Carver’s burst of hilarity interrupted Varric’s musings on Carta hierarchies.
“Leo – Leo, what was his name?” Carver asked. Suddenly, he had to know. It was crucial he remember. His brother, who hadn’t followed his thought process, looked at him across the fire without a shred of comprehension. “Don’t you remember?” Carver demanded. “That guy? When father caught you fucking that neighbor boy in the barn?”
“Neighbor boy,” Leo repeated, slowly. He snorted. He was, as predicted, keeping his wits, but he had had enough to drink to take the edge of his nerves at least. He was stretched out before the fire, that new key stave thing beside him, his bedroll, still rolled up, serving like some kind of cushion to prop himself against. He had the sleeves of his flannel rolled up over his forearms and a few of the top buttons of the shirt undone. It was more relaxed than he would have gotten in this situation three years ago. He accepted the flask when it came his way, frowning at Carver. “We were the same age,” he grumbled. He lifted the flask to his lips, but paused before drinking. His frown deepened. “And I wasn’t fucking him, anyway.”
“You were fucking every boy in the village who would have you,” Carver scowled back. “You were such a slut.”
Leo’s smile was grim and unamused. “It was a busy summer,” he said. “And we hadn’t gotten that far yet. Anyway, I stopped that, after him.”
“Wait, wait, I remember this story!” Anders brightened. He wasn’t at all subtle about the way he made sure his fingers brushed Leo’s when he took the flask from him, the way he leaned into his side, got a little closer as they spoke. Leo had had just enough to drink that either he didn’t notice or he was choosing to let it slide. “You were sucking him off, weren’t you?”
Fenris snatched the flask from Anders before the mage could drink.
“It seems that’s a specialty of Hawke’s,” Fenris said, in a strange tone of voice.
“I do happen to enjoy it, yes,” Leo answered, in measured tones.
Carver, fortunately, was too caught up in his own hilarity to take much notice of the exchange, much less the intensity of the eye contact shared between his brother and the elf over the fire. Fenris passed the flask back to Carver without drinking from it, and Carver accepted it, took another long pull, interrupting himself as he choked on laughter when he remembered more of the story.
“That’s right, because we had sausage for dinner that night!”
“It isn’t that funny.”
“And after he left, father took you back to the barn and took a strap to you, and you howled so loud it scared the chickens!”
“I’m so glad the memory brings you such joy.”
“The rooster ran away – and you couldn’t sit for a week!”
“Carver…”
He looked at his brother’s friends for backup. “How many sixteen-year-olds do you know who still get whippings?” he chortled. He drank again, until Varric wrested the flask back. By then it was empty.
“Andraste’s ass, Junior,” the dwarf said, upending it to find not so much as a drop remained. After a moment, a thought seemed to occur to him, and he looked up at Leo. “Wait, you mean to tell me your father beat you?”
“Only as a disciplinary measure,” Leo gave an unconcerned shrug. “When he felt it was warranted. Yours didn’t?”
“Might’ve done Bartrand some good!” Anders suggested cheerfully. When they looked at him, he made a show of rolling his eyes. “Come on!” he said. “I grew up in the Circle. They beat you if you breathed funny.”
Leo’s gaze shifted, as it always, inevitably, did, to Fenris. The elf appeared as unconcerned with the topic as Leo had been.
“I don’t remember my family, or anything prior to my markings,” Fenris reminded him, without having to be asked. “I…might have. Briefly. But it’s gone now. Who is to say whether I even knew my father, let alone how he considered it appropriate to raise children?”
“What about after the markings?” Anders asked. There was an edge of something like hunger there, a need for detail, as if he wanted to hear that the slave who he hated had had to endure more pain in his servitude than he had faced in his tower, as if something in him would feed off the knowledge of the other’s suffering.
The elf looked at him, flatly. “Are you comparing Danarius to a father figure?” he asked. “There was no need of beatings after the markings. I wa…obedient.”
The healer snorted, loudly. His disappointment was apparent. “That I find hard to imagine,” he said.
“Well, anyway,” Carver said, before it could turn into a fight, before his brother could jump in, could help the two of them ruin what had turned into an almost-pleasant evening. “I never got a whipping when I was sixteen.”
“I wager you never sucked cock in a barn before, either,” Fenris supplied dryly.
--
He didn’t like this.
He didn’t like this at all.
Stretched out on his bedroll, warm from the fire, Hawke did not let himself reach for the key that lay beside him, but he could feel it there, pulsing and warm like a physical body. The sigil had been set with his father’s blood. It had used Hawke’s blood to activate.
Leopold Hawke was a hard man.
His father had been harder.
Hawke took a deep breath. It seemed too loud, even over the sounds of the fire, and the others sleeping. Carver had always thought father had been hard on him, but he had gotten off light, compared to what Hawke himself had had to endure. Hawke had understood, eventually. He was the oldest. He was the mage. Bethany was a mage, too, but she was younger, and by the time they knew, he could protect her. And she had her own ways, too. She would have been fine, if she had lived. Hawke was the one who could singlehandedly doom the family. One moment of weakness, of selfishness, of hesitation. One mistake, and they would be destroyed, and it would be his fault. He’d had the lesson drilled into him for as long as he could remember.
Of course father had taken a strap to him for carrying on in the barn with the neighbor boy. Hawke hadn’t questioned it, hadn’t even resented it, even when Carver ran around town the next week, filled with the same kind of hilarity that had prompted him tonight, making sure everyone knew. They had discussed the issue and the punishment at length beforehand. Father had made sure he understood.
When Leo had hit his growth spurt at sixteen, it had gotten him a lot of attention from the other teens in Lothering, female and male. He had always been an isolated boy, too mature, too responsible, too grown up. He had never had a lot of friends, had never had time for a lot of friends. The other boys had never wanted much to do with him. And then his shoulders had broadened and his beard had come in, hormones had started stirring, and suddenly –
And Leo hadn’t been thinking.
Father had pointed out that he hadn’t been thinking. That was all. Leo’s brief era of promiscuity had ended, and rightly so. There was too much at risk for such foolishness. Too many secrets to let just anyone into his confidences, let alone his bed. Magic was a weapon. Magic was a responsibility. If he wanted to live his life free, he had to be worthy of his freedom. He had to have control. He had to have rules. He had to have discipline.
His father’s blood had powered that sigil.
“Hawke,” Fenris said.
He jerked at the sound of the elf’s voice, soft over the sound of the fire.
“I have first watch, remember?” Fenris said. “Stop thinking and go to sleep.”