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By the time spring arrives in Kirkwall, the city has all but given up. It seemed so certain that spring would never come again, so absolutely unquestionable, that it was easier to accept this bleak new world than to continue praying for the sun. Black skies, sheets of rain, glum acceptance—for months, the city has been characterized by little more than gloom. No one had the strength to hope. There was nothing to be done.
Until one morning, as sudden as a thunderclap, the clouds part.
Isabela doesn't notice, not at first. She has spent the day far away from any traces of the sun, just as she has spent as much of the winter as she could manage: firmly ensconced in the warmth and filth of the Hanged Man, slowly working her way through Kirkwall's supply of ale. A hard job, but someone has to do it, Varric observes every time he sees her. It's a sacrifice she's willing to make.
She is sitting at the bar when Marian Hawke bursts in, illuminated by the sun behind her. Hawke is a bolt of breathless laughter, a smile wide enough to light up the dark room, and she reaches her in long, swift strides. Before Isabela has time to react, Hawke is spinning her around, planting a kiss on her lips, and leaning back to beam at her.
“Hello, Bela. You look positively stunning today.”
Isabela blinks at her more dazedly than she means to, lips burning from the kiss, head spinning from the surprise. “Wh—are you drunk?”
Hawke presses a second kiss to her forehead, catches her hands, and pulls her up from the barstool. “Drunk on the sight of you!”
“Possessed, then,” Isabela says, but she doesn't object when Hawke weaves their fingers together, and she can't help the hint of a rising smile when Hawke pulls her close enough for their hips to bump together. “What's the occasion? Not that I'm complaining, mind you.”
“The sun's out!” Hawke squeezes her hands, shakes her head like she still can't quite believe it, and continues. “And we're going to go celebrate.”
That catches Isabela's attention, and the lingering surprise in her voice fades into low desire. She is far less concerned with the weather than she is with the idea of a day with Hawke. “Now there's an idea. Your place or mine, hm?”
Hawke looks taken aback, as if Isabela has missed something glaringly obvious. She shakes her head. “Sundermount.”
“If your idea of celebrating involves bandits or spiders, sweet thing, I'm going to—” Find someone else to celebrate with, she means to say, but there are some lies that are too big even for Isabela.
“No spiders. Can't make any promises about bandits. I just want to get out of the city.” Her smile is still expectant; she takes a step back, towards the door, pulling Isabela with her. “Don't you want to just...be outside? Under the sun?”
“Not particularly.”
Hawke gives her hands another tug. “I ran all the way here from Hightown. Don't let me down.”
With one last wistful look back at her half-empty drink, Isabela sighs a long-suffering sigh and lets Hawke tug her from the tavern. “I don't know why I put up with you.”
“It's because I'm gorgeous,” Hawke says, and Isabela snorts as if the suggestion is far more preposterous than it really is.
“You're...well, you're alright.”
Hawke laughs, tightens her grip on Isabela's hand, and pulls her down the street. The sun has burnt away the last of the clouds, and when Isabela looks up at the light, she feels the old familiar doubts in her stomach burn away just as easily. The city is almost beautiful like this, she thinks, or at least as beautiful as Kirkwall could ever be. Bright and busy once again, almost worth returning to, almost worth staying—
Hawke's hand is warm and calloused and familiar in hers; nothing else matters.
*
When at last they crest a hill and stare down at their destination, Isabela finally understands why the trek was more that worth it. They are not far up the mountain, in a small field with a cliff rising behind it—the sort of place that is usually unremarkable, that blurs together with a thousand other identical spots in her memory. Yet she can hardly breathe, half from the breakneck pace of the climb and half from the sight in front of her. Months of rain have transformed it into a paradise. The grass is hardly visible beneath a thick blanket of wildflowers, gold and cerulean and vermilion and a thousand colors in between. It is the sort of place that belongs in stories, tall tales, not the Free Marches.
But Isabela hardly has time to soak in the glorious sight before Hawke is pulling on her hands again, tugging her further out into the field.
“What are you doing, you absolute idiot?”
“We're celebrating!” Hawke drops down into the grass, still reaching for Isabela. She catches her wrist, tries to pull her down, and nearly succeeds.
“Hawke, stop it, you goose! What has gotten into you?”
“It's spring! That's what!”
Though Isabela is trying her hardest to sound stern, the laughter she has been trying to restrain bubbles over at last, and she abandons any last shred of pretense as she lets Hawke pull her down into the flowers. “You're so—”
“Charming,” Hawke offers, grin wide enough to make Isabela's heart skip a beat, eyes sparkling with the mischief that has been long-absent through the miserable winter. “Funny. Smart. Sexy.”
“—stupid,” Isabela finishes, but when Hawke kisses her, she smiles against her nonetheless. “You brought me this far to roll around in the grass?”
Hawke rolls to the side and flops onto her back, sprawling out. With one outstretched arm, she beckons Isabela down to her. “Spring has sprung! At last! What could you possibly want to do other than roll around in the grass?”
After eying the grass for a suspicious moment, as if it is all still too silly for her, Isabela stretches out beside Hawke, pressing into her waiting arm. “A thousand things. Steal a ship, flee Kirkwall, shag you in the captain's quarters, throw you overboard for impudence.”
“You cold-blooded killer. I can't swim.” Hawke leans in to kiss her again, but this time Isabela pulls away, eyes narrowing in disbelief.
“What do you mean, you can't swim?”
“I mean,” Hawke says, reaching over to pluck a wildflower and twirl it between her fingers, “there's no water in Lothering.” Her smile is so disarming that for a moment, Isabela accepts the answer.
Only for a moment, though. “There's a river.”
Hawke slides the flower behind Isabela's ear, raising a brow innocently. “Is there? I never noticed.”
“You are absolutely useless.” Isabela reaches to remove the flower, but Hawke catches her hand, pulling it back down. When Hawke laces their fingers together, Isabela doesn't object.
“I'm not useless. I have plenty of talents. I'm not dead yet, which is fairly impressive.”
“Luck isn't a talent.”
“I have other skills.” Hawke shifts ever-so-slightly, enough to bump up against Isabela. When she tugs on Isabela's tunic, the invitation is less subtle.
Isabela acquiesces, pushing herself up from the ground to straddle Hawke in a fluid, familiar motion. The wildflowers frame Hawke's face; she looks like a portrait, a funeral, a thousand what might have beens—
But she pushes it away. Hawke is as solid as an anchor beneath her, all hard muscle and jutting bone—a rope tying her to reality. Isabela adjusts herself, settling a hand on Hawke's stomach. “Better?”
“Mm,” Hawke says, smiling up from beneath half-lidded eyes, “perfect.” She rests her hands on Isabela's thighs, fingertips tracing the rim of her tunic before edging beneath the fabric.
“A tumble in the grass. I assumed you were being more...literal.”
Hawke reaches up, brushes Isabela's hair back behind her ear, and fingers the stem of the flower that still rests there. “I was, but I'm not objecting.”
This time, Isabela succeeds in pulling the flower away and out of Hawke's hand. “Stop that. I don't do floral.” Hawke starts to object, but Isabela has already plucked a second flower, tucking one behind each of Hawke's ears. It takes all of her considerable self-control to not laugh. “You look positively adorable, however.”
“Positively ridiculous, I bet.” Hawke scowls up at her; the effect of the flowers is all the more endearing.
Isabela leans in to kiss her cheek, picking two more flowers as she sits back up. “A crown for the Champion,” she suggests, and the look of dismay on Hawke's face serves as all the encouragement she needs to continue. She weaves the stems together haltingly, well-aware that it has decades since she last found herself doing something so childish. Still, once upon a time, it had been a familiar task, and memory guides her fingers.
“I will not wear that.”
“Are you going to stand up and walk away?” Isabela gives her a pointed look, tightening her legs around Hawke and adding another flower to the expanding circlet in her hands. “Good luck with that.”
Hawke squirms, but it is to no avail. “Bela!”
“Don't try and tell me you have any dignity left to lose, not after the other night when you—”
“Bela!”
Isabela grins an absolutely wicked grin, turning the crown of flowers over in her hands. It's far from perfect—she is no longer working with a child's nimble fingers and determination—but lovely nonetheless, rich hues of violet and indigo, with foxglove and larkspur woven in with the larger blooms. She lifts the wreath as carefully as if it were made of gold and settles it over Hawke's brow.
“I was right. You look splendid.”
Hawke reaches, fingertips brushing against the flowers at her temple. “I feel like I should be at...a coronation. Or a wedding.” She cracks a crooked grin. “A blushing bride, clad in white and flowers.”
“I think white demands a touch of innocence, sweet thing.” She runs a finger along Hawke's sharp cheekbone, down her jaw, back again.
“I suppose you'll have to wed me and salvage my reputation.” It is a challenge, a prompt.
Isabela's retort catches in her throat, only half-formed, and her mouth goes dry. This isn't the first time she's found herself suddenly wordless. It hits her with a startling regularity, like a bolt to the chest, lightning in her veins: When they are lying in bed, wrapped in tangled sheets and gazing at each other; when their last foe falls in battle and they stand there, bloodied and exhausted; when they are in Hawke's kitchen, still trying to make dinner after a hundred burnt disasters—Hawke making up a song on the spot, loud and off-key, Isabela thinking that she could spend every night of her life in that room with that woman.
She still can't quite confess, though she never stops trying.
“I lo—I think I—” She stumbles over the words, or perhaps it is the sentiment—either way, she cannot finish; she can only stare down at her, reach out to trace a reverent finger along her cheek once again. “Hawke,” she breathes. It is all she can manage; it is enough. She wonders if Hawke has ever not known.
“You think you Hawke?” Hawke smiles up at her, as wide as ever, with only a flicker of acknowledgment in her eyes.
Isabela rolls her eyes and flicks the tip of Hawke's nose, fighting to hold back a smile at the disgruntled face she makes in return. “You know, I don't think I've ever met anyone less funny than you in my entire life.”
“Nonsense.” Hawke settles a hand on Isabela's wrist, tracing absent patterns against her skin. “Haven't you met our friends? When was the last time Aveline offered up a glorious gem like 'you think you'—”
Isabela presses a finger to Hawke's lips. “If you finish that sentence, I'll toss you off the cliff.”
When Hawke smiles against her finger, the simplest and loveliest of smiles, it's nearly enough to rip the words from Isabela again. Hawke fits beneath her like she's meant to, like two halves of a whole. Like home. Like she can stop running.
“What are you thinking about?” Hawke lifts a brow and tilts her head.
“I just—” Isabela reaches to finger one of the delicate petals in Hawke's hair. “You look lovely. That's all.”
“How...disturbingly sincere of you.”
“Oh, shut up, you goose.”
“That's more like it,” Hawke says, and her eyes are bright with affection as she reaches up to cup Isabela's cheek in one hand. “You're lovely, too. I suppose. For a pirate.”
Isabela bites at her lower lip when she kisses her, a weak-willed attempt at a reprimand, one that merely earns a soft sound of pleasure from Hawke. “Mm. Don't you owe me a tumble? You're going to have to start earning the pleasure of my company, sweet thing.”
With a sigh that barely passes for feigned reluctance, Hawke leans up and captures Isabela's lips in a kiss. Hawke tastes like honeysuckle; she feels like safety. Isabela pushes her down into the grass—lips parting, hands roaming—as Hawke presses up against her, every inch of her striving for every inch of Hawke. She would think that she could do this forever, if she had time to form a thought, but all she can do is kiss Hawke with a growing need.
When they finally pull apart to catch their breath, the crown is askew, half-broken, petals scattered and crushed. Isabela rests her forehead on Hawke's, on the broken wreath, and breathes in the smell of soil and lavender. Hawke is smiling at her with that silly slow smile that she reserves just for these moments, the one that used to tie Isabela's stomach in knots and tighten her throat with the sheer affection of it. Today, she returns it.
“I'm glad we came,” Isabela says. “We don't get many chances—”
“I know.” Hawke tucks a lock of hair behind Isabela's ear, tender and careful. “I know.”
The wildflowers rise up around them, a shield from the world, a shield from all the trouble past and all the trouble yet to come. None of it matters, nothing except for this single moment suspended in time. Isabela stares at Hawke, stares at the flowers in her hair and the smile on her lips, and thinks that she has never loved spring so dearly.