Work Text:
Time doesn’t heal all wounds. Anyone who says that has a very loose grasp of physiology or an overly optimistic outlook.
Some wounds, time makes fester.
Pinched in the tight and rancid space of Gamlen’s shack, Hawke and Carver were like two fingers squeezing a whitehead against all better judgement.
“What happened to Bethany was your fault,” was what broke the skin.
Carver said the words with easy vitriol. Anything would do to expose his sister’s ineptitude. In one moment, he felt proud at the shock his words brought to her face. In the next, he watched her mien drop to such blank devastation that the heat at the back of his neck turned to ice.
The cold seemed to seize his body as it was before the statement, as if trying to pretend it never left his mouth. The side effect of this was that the anger stayed on his face and his jaw wouldn’t move.
“You’re right,” Hawke said.
His sister turned, mechanical. In the space of a moment the door creaked twice - open, shut - and she was gone.
In the gloomy and damp - that is to say, usual - evening of Kirkwall, Hawke meandered. Those of her mental faculties not preoccupied with putting one foot in front of the other were focussed on arranging her emotions into some semblance of order. As someone with magical abilities, Hawke’s parents had instilled in her at a young age that her tantrums could level a small village and, more importantly, that this would be Bad.
So she put all her fear, sadness, guilt, and outrage into an orderly queue, gave each the mental equivalent of a onesie with black and white stripes, and locked them firmly behind bars for later perusal.
A clawed hand covered her mouth as its sibling pulled her into an alley.
Fear began to chew at the bars.
“Hawke?” The fact that the voice was questioning, familiar, and knew her name convinced her to hold on to her fireball until further developments.
White hair peeked into the corners of her vision. The hair and the claw, she realised now, belonged to Fenris. They had first met a little over a fortnight ago when he set her and her friends up to kill more slavers than any of them expected, then hired them to clear a mansion of demons the same night. Not a man you forget, was Fenris.
She patted the hand covering her mouth with her own, reassuringly. Hawke was released, gently, and she used this newfound freedom to turn around.
“What are you doing here?” The phrase left their mouths simultaneously. They blinked owlishly at each other. Hawke answered first.
“I… needed some air. To relax. Everyone says nighttime strolls through Lowtown do the trick.” Fenris looked very skeptical. Hawke breezed right along. “What about you? Don’t you live in Hightown?”
“Aveline tasked me with dispatching a group of Sharps Highwaymen.” He peeked cautiously around the corner, presumably in their direction. “There are more than I expected. I was waiting for a chance to pick them off.” Fenris cast an inquisitive look her way. “However, since you’re here… ”
“Say no more. Let’s do this; I pull ‘em, you smack ‘em.”
Fenris was used to fighting for a mage, but not with one. The difference was astonishing. The former required him to be vigilant of both sides of the conflict lest some stray bit of magic turn him inside-out. Hawke, on the other hand, tailored the battlefield to suit him, so much so that fighting bandits felt like carving through a particularly lawless and bloodthirsty stick of butter. They were slowed, discombobulated, even knocked off their feet. When he and Hawke first fought together at the mansion, he was too overcome with rage and desperation to notice how enemies seemed to throw themselves on his sword like iron to a gory magnet.
It would almost seem a rash of lucky coincidences. Were he Carver, he might even attribute it to a meteoric rise of his own skill. But magic gently simmered over him in waves, then crashed into his opponents, Hawke’s quiet chanting keeping pace with his strikes. He was slightly unnerved with how comfortable it felt for someone to truly have his back.
A cacophony of groans and muffled swears surrounded them as Hawke began to sift through pockets. The ol’ “Pommel to the Temple” on Fenris’s part quieted one of the bandits. Curiously, the rest followed suit without the need for direct application.
“Find anything?”
“Lint. Some blood covered matches, dibs on those. More lint. Ah, here we go…”
Fenris stepped closer curiously as Hawke read, heels digging into the tender spots of a number of the Highwaymen on the way.
“‘Rally now, the streets are ours, make them flow with blood and coin,’ etcetera. Signed by Ignacio Strand. Hmm. Odd to sign something so illegal.”
“Likely an alias. There seems to be a map on the back,” Fenris pointed out.
“You’re right! How thoughtful of Ignacio. Looks like these poor souls were just on the way there.”
They shared a look over the page.
“It would seem they are rather unfit to attend,” said Fenris smoothly, unhooking a coil of rope from his belt.
“I’m sure Serah Strand won’t mind if we go in their stead. Now.” She looked around at the recumbent bodies. “What say we get you all out of the rain and into some nice warm cells, eh?”
Hawke beamed as the Sharps Highwaymen moaned in unison.
The upper echelons of Kirkwall seemed to consider pomp and filigree more vital to their safety than allowing their new Guard Captain time to read reports and organize patrols. This is why Aveline Vallen, the unfortunate bearer of the title, found herself flanked by a tailor and Seneschal Bran at nine in the evening. In her own office.
The tailor seemed to take it upon herself to be as obtrusive as possible; lifting, poking, measuring, and tutting under her breath. Bran observed the proceedings as he did everything: distantly, and with an air of smug evaluation.
“Seneschal, this is unnecessary. Simply give me the old Captain’s armour and let me get on with my work!”
Bran was as unmoved by the request as he was the last four times he’d heard it.
“Captain, the Viscount himself requested for you to be granted fitted gear, and,” he crossed his arms, “you would do well to remember who recommended you for the position. Don’t forget to measure the feet, Dorothy.”
“This nonsense is obstructing police work, Bran. Crime won’t rest just because you will it, and-,” here Aveline had to catch herself on her desk as Dorothy yanked her leg up.
“I’m sure the city will manage without your expert leadership for one night, Captain,” said Bran dryly.
Sudden echoes of a scuffle from beyond the door sounded to Aveline, at this moment, like a sweet harp of salvation. She started forward hopefully, commanding presence falling over her like a cloak.
And stopped short as the door swung open, allowing Hawke and Fenris into the room.
“Aveline! Fenris and I got you those Sharps guys you wanted. Not… all that sharp… though,” her sentence slowed in tandem to her taking in the scene. Aveline glanced behind Hawke to find the Guard leading away the criminals with annoying efficiency.
“As you can see, the Captain is preoccupied at the moment,” said Bran. “She is being outfitted in something befitting her station. And it cannot. Wait. So if you would-”
Fenris stepped past him with all the care of a battering ram and placed the map on the desk.
“We know the location of their leader, Ignacio Strand. Tonight is our best chance to apprehend him.”
Aveline drew herself up as haughtily as she could manage. “It seems like a matter best handled by the head of the Guard, wouldn’t you agree, Seneschal?”
She spoke with the conviction of one who desperately does not want to let go of her only lifeline, sadly blind to the fact that the letting go is going to happen at the other end.
“It seems you are needed here, Aveline. We will handle it,” said Fenris. I had better be imagining that smirk on his face , Aveline thought.
Hawke was not so subtle. She placed her hands squarely on Aveline’s shoulders - ignoring the tailor’s grumblings of protest - and smiled up at her.
“Be back faster than you can say ‘Don’t forget the plumed helmet.’”
Dorothy piped up helpfully. “I would recommend peacock feathers. To bring out her eyes, Seneschal.”
“Splendid, have it done. Be on your way now you… two.”
The Guard Captain leveled a particular digit - which was promptly measured by the tailor - at Hawke’s retreating back.
“We said we’d handle it, but we probably need a bit more firepower to take out the leader of a gang.”
“Agreed. Varric?”
“Varric.”
“Varric!”
Varric Tethras, merchant prince and novelist extraordinaire, was resigning himself to the evening’s role of babysitter. A role he was becoming familiar with, unfortunately.
Carver Hawke, deep into his second cup of somewhat-beer, seemed to have decided to be talkative, for once. Just Varric’s luck.
“Varric! Varric.”
“That’s me, kid.”
“She didn’t even let me say anythin’, she just up ‘n left. I mean,” he took another sip, “I mean honestly. We all say stuff. You say a shitton of stuff.”
“Yup.”
“Not my fault she blew it out of proportion.”
“Right, could’ve meant anything by ‘It’s your fault our sister died.’”
“Right.” A bigger swig this time.
Varric sighed. It was surprising that Carver decided to go to him to unload his guilt about a sibling spat. He was flattered. Really.
On the plus side, this let him put off sifting through his family’s accounts. Any port in a storm…
He looked up as a cheerful knock on the door to his private room interrupted the rambling. It opened without prompting as Hawke strode in, trailing Fenris behind her. The elf seemed to be preoccupied with dusting his feet off after treading on whatever passed for a floor in The Hanged Man.
“Hey Varric! D’you- Aw shit.”
The siblings locked eyes, briefly, before Carver went back to staring sullenly into his tankard and Hawke looked back to Varric.
“Right, well. That’s fine. Would you… both… like to help us clear out a nest of Sharps Highwaymen? And their leader? Sizable reward in it for you!”
Fenris shook his head at them from behind her shoulder and held up his hand with thumb and index finger only slightly apart.
Varric weighed his options. One was staying here and pretending to listen patiently as Carver worked through all the ways the world has wronged him. The other had a high probability of being murdered and/or maimed.
“Uh, sure, Hawke. Count us in. Come on, Junior,” Varric pulled Carver up to his feet and reached up to pat him on the shoulder. Wait, no, nevermind. Middle of the back. Humans.
The four of them made their way out of the tavern and into the quiet street, shadows stretching ahead of them like fingers, and shrinking, seeming to curl into a fist, as they left the light of the Hanged Man behind.
Fenris appeared to have snatched a bottle of wine from somewhere. He took a swig and passed it silently to Hawke. She took a slightly longer drink. A lot longer. Then passed it back.
He saw Carver reaching out expectantly from the corner of his eye. He ignored him.
It seemed he was to do all of the elaborating.
“The bandits are to meet in an abandoned shanty in Lowtown, not two blocks from here. Their leader will be inside.”
“Wanted dead or alive, huh?” said Varric.
“Alive, preferably. Aveline wants to squeeze him for information about smuggling routes.”
“Speaking of, why isn’t the Guard handling this guy?” Varric said, taking a swig as the bottle was passed into his hands.
Carver hopped over a drunk who was either deeply asleep or deeply dead.
Hawke spoke up, mirth in her voice for a moment. “The Captain was too busy being made ‘presentable.’ Plumes will be involved. You’re welcome.”
“Damn! Draw me a sketch later, will you?”
“The rest of the Guard have been told to keep clear of the meeting place to lower suspicion,” Fenris pressed on. “We are to go in, apprehend him, and deliver him to Aveline’s people waiting in a neighbouring building.”
“Yep,” Hawke said. “What could possibly go wrong?”
Varric groaned.
The shanty that seemed to serve as the Highwaymen’s meeting place for the night was…
Well, obviously it was decrepit. Rafters were about all that remained of the roof, and something kept dripping off the building. It was raining, yes, but as soon as water touched its walls it seemed to turn miraculously viscous.
Stranger, though, was that there were only two guards posted outside.
“You sure this is the place?” mumbled Carver.
“I know how to read a map, Carver .” The Hawkes exchanged a brief glare, which Carver broke. “Besides, they probably want to keep a low profile.”
She nodded to their now-empty wine bottle. “Distract them and sneak in?”
“I like the way you think, Hawke,” said Varric.
He tossed the bottle in his hand, experimentally. Aimed.
In Varric’s opinion, it was a magnificent shot. It sailed, tumbling over itself, without ever crossing the line of sight of the two bandits. The crash would have sent any self-respecting guard to investigate.
These guys? No self-respect at all, apparently. They simply exchanged glances, and went inside.
“What? Shit,” said Varric.
“So, time for plan B?“ whispered Hawke.
“What’s plan B?”
“Let’s just… barge in there. It’s basically what we were gonna do anyway.”
“Ugh. Sure.”
“Good try though.”
“Thanks, Hawke.”
They crept to the opposite side of the street, stopping at the eastern part of the building. The patter of rain silenced their approach, and Hawke peeked into the only window of the place.
“Four men inside. One other closed door.”
“Rooms will be about the same size, judging by the exterior,” said Fenris. “What are they doing?”
“Drinking and counting up loot. Very bandit-like.”
“Commendable. Hawke and I,” he turned to the other two men, “will enter through the window. Block the front door and watch for traps.”
“Let Bianca introduce herself first,” said Varric, “wouldn’t wanna catch anyone in the crossfire.”
“Alright. We‘ll wait for your cue.”
The cue turned out to be a shower of crossbow bolts. They peppered the room and its denizens, sending two of the men off their chairs and scattering the carefully piled gold across the table.
Fenris, crouched beside Hawke, threw the window frame open with ease, seemingly unconcerned by the fact that it looked to have been painted shut a number of times.
It gave way with a crack, which Fenris punctuated by leaping through the opening feet-first into the gut of a Highwayman.
Not to be outdone, the door gave a high-pitched creak of its own as Carver kicked it open. Offended by such rough treatment, it bounced off the wall and back into Carver’s shoulder in retaliation. No one noticed this over the rest of the action, surely.
A bandit had been waiting on the other side of the doorway, a wicked dagger poised to strike. He opted to drop into a deep sleep instead; Hawke shook the residual magical energy off her hands, and fumbled through the window.
Another Highwayman swung at Carver’s neck. Blocking the blow, Carver dragged his sword down the bandit’s, trailing sparks. It was clear that the man was malnourished; meaner because of it, but also weaker.
Carver stepped in to finish the job, and Hawke whacked the bandit over the head.
“I had him!”
“After another 10 minutes of posturing, maybe.”
The door to the other room in the building burst open. The first man out of it was greeted, and bid goodnight, by the cheerful whistle of a crossbow bolt.
“Eyes on the prize, Hawkes!” Varric was loading Bianca for another shot, fumbled, dropped the bolt, cursed.
Carver, at that moment, discovered within himself a unique knack for taking pleasure in the failure of his teammates in a life-or-death situation. “Right back at you, dwarf!”
The rest of the Highwaymen pushed the body of their colleague ahead of them through the door like a gruesome shield. Bianca’s bolts impacted it wetly.
One leapt at Hawke, trying to put her between himself and the contraption of unmitigated death that was pointed by Varric in his direction.
Fenris casually kicked an empty bottle across the floor and into his path, and the bandit sprawled with a grunt, a cloud of dust rising around him like silt on a sea floor. Fenris saw to it that the man did not get up again.
Two more rushed Carver from opposite sides. He twirled with a grace of an industrial meat grinder, throwing them against the wall. They lay there, crumpled.
The remaining Highwayman took in the scene: his band all in various states of sleeping, unconscious, or dead; the two enormous blades; the contraption that threw metal beams at a velocity terminal for the recipient…
He then tumbled, face-first, through the recently opened window. There was a grunt of impact; then footsteps, quickly retreating, on the wet ground.
Hawked looked after the fleeing man, nonplussed. “You all got one - where was my fearful stare?”
“Perhaps if you wore something sharper, Hawke.” Fenris flexed his gauntlets demonstratively.
“Hey now, I’m pretty awe-inspiring,” she pointed to her stained and oft-patched jacket, “this thing positively drips all my gritty, bloody battles.”
“Ah, on that we can agree,” Fenris conveniently diverted his attention to the darkened room beyond just as Hawke squinted at him.
“Any guesses what’s behind the magic door?” asked Varric. “Besides the half-dozen bandits we just killed, that is.”
Carver shoved past him into the room, with Hawke close behind.
Her eyes caught just a whisper of movement, as if someone had blown on the dust-covered floor. She shoved Carver aside-
The blade slid in silently.
Hawke’s surprised exhale made up the difference.
Anders liked sleeping, he really did. But if liking something was judged based on how much you did it, he and sleeping were not on speaking terms. One emergency or another was always vying for his attention, and there was no justice in resting when he could be saving a life.
Or, as now, trying to convince Mr Turmis that, despite the fact that overindulging in carrots could turn you orange, this effect did not transfer to other foods.
“How can I convincingly portray an ogre if I’m not purple? Think of it!”
“I understand completely Mr Turmis,” Anders lied, “but I still don’t see why you couldn’t just use… body paint? Or a costume?”
“Use your head, man! The paint will wash off two seconds into the stormy battle, and there’s nothing I can build a costume out of that won’t turn soggy.” The agitated man rested his hands on Ander’s desk, exhaling theatrically. “I have been eating nothing but blueberries for a week , with no results!”
The door to the clinic banged open against the wall behind the thespian, then ricocheted off and into Carver.
“Bloody! Flaming! Doors!” Carver kicked at it again with each exclamation and stumbled into the clinic, carrying Hawke in his arms. “Anders! Help!”
For Anders, reprieve from his self-appointed post as Darktown’s physician often came in the form of Hawke. Not the case tonight - her dark skin was ashen and covered in fever sweat, eyes darting wildly under closed lids.
He rushed to her, guiding Carver to the cleanest available cot.
“Here, put her down- what happened?”
Mr Turmis, having chosen acting as a profession in large part because it would allow him to be the centre of attention, was feeling a bit put out by the current display.
“Here now, I wasn’t finished with-”
Carver just looked at him.
“Ah, I’ll just be going, shall I? My lines won’t rehearse themselves!” The apparently loquacious ogre-to-be scrambled out of the clinic.
Varric and Fenris were left to wrap up the Sharps. Guards were summoned, hands were tied, and bandits were packed into the paddy wagon for one last scenic tour before going somewhere with considerably fewer windows to the outside world.
Varric was distantly aware of the proceedings, but was currently busy going through the pockets of Ignacio Strand as Fenris held him down, with more force than was strictly necessary.
“There’s the culprit,” Varric pulled out a vial of dark green fluid. “Should help Anders patch her up quicker.”
Seeing the look on Fenris’s face, Varric realised he felt the same disquiet, and tried to shake it off for both of them: “Hey, with our luck, she’ll be up and shouting Carver’s ear off about walking into dark rooms by the time we get there.”
Hawke was shouting, but rather incoherently.
“Hold her down!” Anders barked, and sent another pull on the poison to keep it from spreading further into Hawke’s bloodstream. Carver pressed down across her shoulders and torso as she spasmed. Blood was soaking through her already dirty tunic from the stab wound in her side, and he could see veins of something darker spreading out from the gash, pulled back reluctantly by Anders’s magic, like a tree growing in reverse. It reminded him of the Blight.
They had done this a couple of times now, with Anders searching through his notes in the breaks between. He’d told him that Fenris and Varric were on antidote duty, but time was ticking and Hawke wasn’t getting better.
Carver had said and done a lot of things today that even he would categorize as idiotic. Him and his sister have been through so many life and death near-misses already that they hardly seemed to mean much anymore. They’d met a dragon-witch, fought undead, darkspawn, and they always came out ahead, and none of it depended on Carver. And with each by-the-skin-of-their-teeth victory, he’d wondered why close calls didn’t seem to turn into actual calls for anyone but Bethany.
Even now, with Hawke on death’s door in Darktown, Carver knew, knew she would come out on top. It always worked out that way, somehow. He was glad of that, of course. She was his family. But a part, larger than he’d care to admit, was also deeply, deeply, bitter.
Varric kicked a crate over, hopped on it, and leaned over a counter.
“Oi, Tomwise!”
The elf was in the process of putting away some rather delicate looking vials filled with swirling gas. Varric winced, noting that an abrupt greeting might not have been the best way to keep the poison seller from dropping something that would then also drop everyone in a 20-foot radius. But Tomwise had the nerves of a surgeon. Varric guessed he’d have to, or he wouldn’t have made it very far in his profession, and, consequently, in being alive.
“Evenin’, Varric,” he said. “Though it’s hard to tell down here. What’ll it be?”
He glanced at Fenris cautiously, seeming to just realise he was there.
“Oh, and, hello...” he trailed off, looking to the other elf for a follow-up.
“Fenris,” said Fenris.
“Hi Fenris.”
Varric glanced between the two. “Look, I know we’re really hitting it off here, but we need an antidote.”
“Ah, yes. Against?”
Varric put the vial down on the surprisingly clean countertop. “Don’t have a name for you, sorry.”
“Maferath’s Ire. Pretty potent. Mind if I keep it?”
“If you have something that can kick its ass, sure,” said Varric.
Tomwise smiled. “Comin’ right up.”
“We’ve got the antidote,” Fenris announced, rushing into the clinic, Varric close behind. The scene in front of him could not be described as hopeful. Hawke lay splayed out on a cot, her breathing barely noticeable, and sweat had carved paths down the dust and blood covering her face. Carver, leaning over her, looking not much better, was tense. As much with guilt as with his inability to do something, Fenris gathered. This seemed to be the default with Carver, far as he could tell.
Anders got up from the notes at his desk and grabbed at the vial Fenris proffered. The mage even nodded at him in acknowledgement. Fenris almost keeled over in surprise.
“What do you need us to do, Blondie?” Varric asked, joining Anders at the side of the cot.
Anders sighed. “Just… try to keep her from jumping off the bed.” He shook the vial, holding it with his thumb and index finger. “If this is the right stuff, she should be out of the woods soon.”
Tomwise’s skills at mixology came through.
It was almost morning by the time Hawke shifted from passed out to sleeping to barely awake. Her whole body ached as if she’d run a marathon, and she felt her side to find a clean, fresh bandage where she last remembered seeing a gaping wound. So it looked like things turned out alright.
The clinic was quiet, and the only person she could see was her brother, arms folded over her cot, with his head on top of them. He sat up as she moved, and looked down at her with a constipated look she interpreted as concern.
“Hey. How do you feel?”
He looked terrible. His hair, face, and clothes were spattered with blood, and she assumed he didn’t sleep for however long she was out. He looked like he did after Ostagar.
Hawke was a person who compartmentalized. She sorted her feelings in order of intensity and tried to reason with them until they settled into something like acceptance, and, if that failed, tossed them by the scruff into a little mental box and kept them there until they learned their lesson, straightened up, and remade themselves into productive members of her brain. This, of course, didn’t always work, and those troublesome bits of her now smelled blood in the water.
The pain, the poison, the herbs to treat the poison and the pain coursed through her system and, like a river growing too wide for its banks, spilled out from her eyes all those things she so desperately wanted to wrangle into something upstanding.
“Why didn’t you leave Ostagar earlier? Or- or why didn’t you stay and fight and keep us safe? Why didn’t Wesley jump in front of Mother if he knew he was going to die anyway? Why didn’t she stay behind us so Bethany wouldn’t need to get in front?”
The tears were running hot down both their faces now.
“And I can’t answer any of those questions, Carver. You think I don’t wish it was me instead? That’s what I’m for! I’m supposed to take the risks first, me! You two aren’t supposed to be without each other, never… ” Hawke’s breath was getting stuck trying to come in and out at once, and the words stopped.
Carver scrubbed the tears from his face viciously.
“I didn’t mean it,” he mumbled.
Hawke sighed, caught her breath. “You did, a little bit.”
“Sorry you almost died yesterday.”
Hawke stared at him.
“Fine. I’m sorry that it was kind of my fault.”
“Just try not to walk into dark rooms head-first anymore. It’s a big target.”
“Alright,” Carver stood up. “Sibling moment over. I’ll see you at Gamlen’s.”
“And get me an apology cake!”
“Buzz off!”
The Hawkes’ half-sobbed laughter echoed off of the walls in Darktown’s clinic. Tonight, wounds were healing, if only just a little.