Work Text:
Ever since she was a little girl Hawke knew that magic was dangerous.
'Daddy has magic,' she had once said to her mother. 'Why is it bad?'
Her father had lovingly petted her head and smiled. “Dearest, it is only bad if you cannot control it.”
She had never forgotten the words her father said. The day she pushed a boy with magic her father had scooped her up and taken her into the house. He paid a nice coin to the orphan boy and let him eat meals there for a year, before a sickness took him. His daughter's magic troubled his wife, who had twins newly born. Fear tred her dreams. But their little girl would not so easily scared.
Control.
Little Hawke did not let it take hold.
“Dehlian, you practice with me everyday, yet I do not see you using your magic otherwise. Even as a youngling, I sometimes scried with it. Do you fear it?”
His dark eyed girl, who was the mirror of himself, stared back at him.
“I will never fear my magic. Never. This is my body, my power, daddy. You always said so. I will control it. If it grows out of control, it is my fault. And I can fix my fault. I must always remember. . .to control it.”
Her father looked at her, her young eleven year old eyes gleaming at him. He put his hand on her head.
“Do you not wish to use your magic, sweetling? You were born with it” he looks to her with sincerity. She does not know it at the time, but he is both impressed and scared for her. He has always been scared for her, wished she was free.
“I am your daughter, father, because I am strong and wise like you. Or I will be one day. . . magic doesn't make us related, it makes us mages,” her father allowed this. For the next ten years she woud spend everyday meditating. She focused on the flow of her magic, never using it, always trying to understand it. She took up knives to pass the time, lockpicking to ensure her focus, and she was good at that too. Almost as good as she was at controlling her power.
Carver hated her for it.
He had been born the only normal one- something his mother was so pleased with. But Dehlian had taken what was special from both the twins and almost stolen it. He knew it made no sense, she was born first, but a mage who had the will to hold her powers back and use other means to defend herself was an impressive feat.
Over time refusing to use her magic became painful. She would sometimes sob into her pillow as the veins that pumped her blood seared with magic. Voices echoed in her ears. Her mind did not scream, it stood firm instead. 'No' is what she said. She never used her magic, despite the pain. And one day the pattern simply was. She was a mage who was so in touch with her magic she could supress it.
One day her father looked very ill and distressed.
“Sweetling,” he had said honestly as they walked down the road. “My time is almost up,”
Hawke was a woman now, but she was a child as she cried silently listening to her father explain. He was dying of something- something he did not know the cause of . And rather than rot away, he was going to let it go easily.
He told no one but his firstborn daughter. She nodded to him, and asked for one last day. He put his arm around her.
“Precious Dehlian, you have a will I have never seen. Be strong and face the world as yourself. You have shown that who you are does not have to be a mage, or a warrior. You are simply you. . . when you stood up and told me you would not use magic because control was more important- I was never more proud. Keep that will, darling, and I know you will do me proud no matter your choices.”
Her father was gone soon after. The news around town was that the apostate had passed on. The focus shifted from them. Her mother, sister, and brother were all lost. She had to be in control. She missed her father every day, but she had to keep it together.
She kept it together when Carver died. She did not lift her hand as a mage. She was a warrior, she reminded herself. Not a mage.
She kept it together as Bethany was eaten alive by the taint. Even as she was hoisted off to become a Grey Warden and her mother collapsed to the ground in grief.
She even kept the magic away when her mother lie dead on the floor of a maleficarum's twisted prison meant for her. Her family was all gone but she still lived. She could not stop the tears, but the constant growing flow of magic inside of her was kept at bay.
She had to prove it to the world. That a woman could be nothing of a mage, no powers involved, and simply exist. She had to show mages like Anders that there was an in between, a compromise they'd never considered. A school of thought that no one subscribed to. She had to show everyone.
She had to make her daddy proud.
It only takes a second to lose control, but she has no pity for mages who cannot control their fear. She has felt it just as they have. She has watched everyone she loves die, or walk away. But she stands now as the Champion, through no feat of magic. She has a chance to show everyone that the power of a mind is greater than the Fade.
But in a second Anders ruins it all.
Oh for years, years, he has taunted her with what being a mage should mean. Her father was free his entire life but he never blew up Chantry's. He helped people he could, and he found compromises where possible. She takes a breath. But the air is not there in her lungs, it is stagnate and cold.
What does Hawke have left now?
Her dream just died. There will be war.
Who can believe mages control themselves when they murdered innocents in the Chantry?
“Anders,” her voice quakes as everyone calls for the end of the mages. Fenris, the only one who knows, is looking to Anders as well.
“Do not start, Hawke, I....I know what I have done. But it was necessary. You can't understand. The chains....have never been on you!”
Dehlian Hawke has never lost control in twenty years. But she looks to the man who has taken the last ounce of hope that came with her to Kirkwall and feels in her a rage she cannot control. Every ounce of magic she has held in comes to her in force. The Knight-Commander, the First Enchanter, and everyone else who saw the destruction of the Chantry were witness to the sight.
“I will....destroy. . .” she begins to mutter. He looks up, thinking to respond, and stops. The sight of her is something ferocious, her hands erupting in blue spiraling fields. She has not used magic in a very, very long time.
“YOU!”
He is suddenly pummeled to the ground with quaking force. Meredith's mouth hangs open.
“How. . . how could I not know the Champion?” she looks to Orsino as if he knew. He shakes his head, his mouth open in awe. Anders coughs up blood. Hawke's companions are all in awe, including Fenris, the only one who knew. But Anders is the one who is the most caught off guard.
“You ruined it all! I came to Kirkwall from Lothering years ago- with my brother, and my sister, and my mother! They're all dead, or tainted by the darkspawn taint! But I held onto the one thing I knew would help us all. Would save all the mages. I would show them all this is a thing we can control, not something that controls us. But you showed them today all they needed to know. You are not an aid to us. There is compromise to be found and I am proof- I hope you die gurgling on the impurity of the demon you brought into your soul you loathsome radical idiot!”
She lifts down and picks him up by his neck, the strength she has spent years developing outside of magic allowing her to do so. Slowly his neck begins to frost over. He struggles to breathe.
“H-ha-” he wants to say something. Something self righteous, more than likely. And she is angry. She does not realize tears are streaming down her perfectly groomed face. Dark lines break apart with her tears and trace down her face. She is biting so hard she tastes blood.
And then she remembers the sad face of the Father. The dying face. His last looks. She remembers her mother's kind and worried hand on her shoulder all her life. She remembers her sweet sister and her annoying brother. She misses them all. She wishes they lived more than anything. And the whispers trace in her ear that she could- but she knows what they offer. They offer what killed her mother. Platitudes and falsities. Everything she loved is gone.
But her father's words ring true in her ears.
She can't let her father down now.
The tides of her magic dissipate and she drops Anders on his ass. She takes a deep breath and breathes the magic back in, back inside of her, where it belongs.
“Control,” she vocalizes and brings back down into herself. She wipes her tears away with a spare cloth, clearing her face of imperfection, then shudders. “Control.”
She looks up to all the witnesses of her sight, as much a mage as she had ever been, and they are all taken aback. The Knight Commander and Orsino look the most disturbed, knowing there might have been something else. The Knight Commander was now disturbed deeply and probably twisting this into something worse. Hawke took the blades from her shoulders and smiled to all her wide eyed companions.
“Well, we should get to work on saving all the innocent people about, shall we?” she smiles politely and gives a fun little smirk. “You know, all five of them. But let's start with the mages, they seem slightly less crazy.”
And they all stare in all at the Champion, who has mastered something none of them have been capable of:
Control of her destiny.